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I can't say I agree with this "stand up for weak people against bullies" defense of Richard Stallman. It doesn't do rms any favors, because it makes him look li

I can't say I agree with this "stand up for weak people against bullies" defense of Richard Stallman. It doesn't do rms any favors, because it makes him look like a weakling. I don't agree with rms right now, but he deserves a lot of respect for the work he has done throughout his life. I'm just going by the wikipedia page, but he wrote gcc and gdb - that alone should give someone a fair amount of respect. If you add the concept of copyleft and the GPL on top of that, you've got a substantial legacy that we owe a debt of gratitude towards. He is an extremist, though. He has always been an extremist. His opinions were often unappealing even when he was writing in opposition to The Borg. His opinions have only become more unpalatable as closed platforms from Apple and Google have become more appealing on their technical merits. In my own experience, though, it seems like some newer folks don't really understand that those extreme ideas came from an important place. They don't understand the hacker ethic or have much of an idea of the culture that rms comes from, exemplified, and fights for. I imagine most readers here are familiar with it, but it's a fading ideal, for sure. Anyway - I've made fun of rms as much as the next guy, but he doesn't need me to defend him. And I doubt he cares what people say about his rider.

pnathan 15y ago
Let us be reasonable and deal with thoughts (where appropriate) rather than the personal habits of someone (unless he is trying to push personal habits). More than a few of the ideas Stallman has pushed have come into wide acceptance, and some number of the things he's warned about have come to pass (or made a good stab at it). So his ideas have had a demonstrated merit, which - in my mind - makes them worthy of thoughtful consideration. Let us not parrot mindless bashings or equally mindless fanboyism.
loup-vaillant 15y ago
> He is an extremist, though. […] I have discovered lately that it is very easy to have "extreme" opinions. Such opinions only have to be irrevocably incompatible with what we think is mainstream. For instance, if I say that private banks should stop creating money and give that power back to the people (or at least to the states who represent them), I can easily have reactions like "Banks don't create money." (that's false, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_default_swap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_default_swap for a taste of the actual shenanigans), "Printing money is BAAD (hyperinflation and all)" (yes, for the rich), "But that would destroy the whole system!" (how sad, but that was kind of the point. Plus, I think a peaceful transition is totally possible.) Back to Stalman's ideas. I think they're seen as "extreme" because they happen to be incompatible to the way we do things right now. But, come to think of it, why any single piece of software should not be free? Why any single piece of knowledge or culture should not be open to access? Those are not scarce to begin with. Excluding any one from any abundant resource whatsoever is simply ludicrous. Yet, proprietary software is ubiquitous, and given how the world currently runs, it would be difficult to do away with it. So we have no choice: for all software to be free, we have to fix a thing or two in our Lovely Global Economy. Which would be extreme.
- lukifer 15y ago
  > But, come to think of it, why should any single piece of software not be free? It's simple: information asymmetry can be very, very profitable. Why should Coca-Cola have the right to keep their formula secret, even though I pay for their product? Because they risk losing money if someone could clone the recipe (you could patent it, but that arguably creates less freedom, not more). Other examples abound. And just because it's possible to make money using "open information" business models doesn't mean you can make the same scale of revenue, or apply a successful model to any particular industry. (Good engineers are expensive.) I'm completely in favor of all software being open. For that matter, I'm also in favor of a socialist paradise where every human has food, shelter, education and health care. But you can't just wave a wand or declare a mandate; we need new socioeconomic structures, whether by design or through natural emergence. But moral condemnations make very little progress, and as a FOSS spokesman and advocate, that is all Stallman has to offer.
  - billpatrianakos 15y ago
    Yes! Thank you lukifer! Thank you for injecting a bit of reality into these pie in the sky ideals RMS fans have. We would all love to see these great ideas be practiced but it isn't going to happen by Stallman's total and complete unwillingness not only to compromise but to even acknowledge that we all don't have the luxury of being able to GPL 100% of our code. And maybe he's wrong. Software is a tool. It is something we pay for because it gives us the power to get something valuable done. The majority of people don't care how the computer or it's software works. They just want to get work done. I drive a car or take a plan or ride a bus and I pay because it gets me where I need to go to often times make more money. I don't care how it works, just that it does. It seems Stallman's entire FOSS movement assumes that either everyone is or will be a coder or power user and that those who aren't want to be. The reality is that they don't. Programming is hard. Sure anyone can learn but to make anything truly worthwhile you have be smart. The being smart comment won't go down well with many but think about it, it's very true. If you apply the FOSS principles to other things like construction or car manufacturing or anything else it just falls apart. Sure, the tools are freely available but but will everyone start building their own? Will people build extras to just give away? No. You pay for convenience and happily so. Some companies do operate in ways that restrict freedom more than what we can all agree they should but I'd say we already have freedom. I like the capitalist way of software development and distribution because its survival of the best software that's right for the most users. The Stallman socialist way results in software that us programmers can use easily but will be considered hard to use and crappy by the masses. I benefit from free software all the time. Free software that I run on my proprietary, OS X running computer. I can honestly say that I benefit most from proprietary software. I use the free stuff for applications it is well suited for too and at the end of the day both FOSS and proprietary software have their merits. Honestly, if FOSS was so awesome it would have greater market share. I mean, come on, it's free!
omlette 15y ago
you cant call someone like RMS extreme just because his views are REALLY DIFFERENT. there is a lot of room on the spectrum between expressing your views non violently and actually forcing them onto people.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- dpark 15y ago
  Of course you can. "Extreme" does not mean "violent".
- billpatrianakos 15y ago
  I can't read your mind so I don't know if this applies to you, omlette, but I read a lot of similar comments and they come off as trying to be politically correct. Yes, very different views and extremism are different but there's a fine line. Should we say terrorists (even excluding the suicide bombing types and leaving only the hostage taking ones) aren't extremist but just expressing very different views? No. RMS can be called an extremist because he refuses to accept that the opposing views have any merit when they clearly do (see some of my other comments on this post for examples, my apologies for hanging around this thread so long haha). Just because the guy isn't holding college auditoriums full of undergrads hostage in exchange for GNU/Linux being installed on all campus computers doesn't mean he isn't an extremist. The FOSS movement, while stirring up a fair amount of debate and heated views, doesn't lend itself very well to suicide bombing, hostage taking, or any other type of violence. Maybe a little protesting but that's all. Even so, it doesn't mean he's not an extremist. It's all about that fine line between strongly held belief and extremism. Peaceful protest doesn't equal not being an extremist. Please don't pull out dictionary definitions of extremism to counter my point. I'm not saying black is white and white is red, I think I'm being pretty reasonable here. There's also a lot of people on the "well, x idea used to be considered extreme" bandwagon. I'd say to you that different isn't always better. Communism, socialism, feudalism, and others used to be considered extreme... And different too. Turns out all the naysayers were right! Those things unfortunately were tried and they all bombed out with everyone involved surely wishing they'd never been tried to start with. I'm not saying, at least not in this sentence and the next, that Stallman is wrong. What I'm saying is consider the possibility - really think about it. If you can do that then at least people like me can't call you am extremist.
philwelch 15y ago
"In my own experience, though, it seems like some newer folks don't really understand that those extreme ideas came from an important place. They don't understand the hacker ethic or have much of an idea of the culture that rms comes from, exemplified, and fights for. I imagine most readers here are familiar with it, but it's a fading ideal, for sure." You're right, obviously, but this might be only half of the story. Is it any coincidence that the spread of computing from universities and hobbyists to the general public happened at the same time that computing was commercialized? Would anyone be better off if software was universally free (by Stallman's standards) and yet inaccessible to 99% of the population?
dkarl 15y ago
It doesn't do rms any favors, because it makes him look like a weakling. What's wrong with being a weakling? Some people live in wheelchairs; some people can't do math. It's wrong to target a weakness like that as a means of ridiculing a person, and it's wrong (though effective in most circles) to stigmatize the views by stigmatizing the person. Richard Stallman is not very socially gifted, and no matter how much he polishes that turd he will never be able to hide his weakness and pass himself off as socially "strong." I identify with Stallman in that people who have a reason to resent me find it very, very easy to despise me for being a little socially out of tune. I'll never be able to perfectly hide it, so people will always find it easy to look down on me if they wish to do so. If you want to make it into a contest of "strength" I would have to mock them for their intelligence, their income, their boring jobs, the fatness of their girlfriends, how small they have to make their worlds to feel big inside them... that doesn't sound very attractive, does it? How much time would you want to spend around people who act that way? You can't win that way, not without becoming what you despise. So I'll stick up for Richard Stallman against those who personally insult him. What can he do to stop them himself? They don't care what he says; they're doing it because they enjoy it and think that everyone else who matters enjoys it. The only thing that will stop them is knowing that people find their behavior generally repugnant.
- billjings 15y ago
  How about this, stated more simply: this defense of rms ignores his achievements and points out his shortcomings, and so fails to defend him effectively. By discussing his social awkwardness instead of the free software ideas, organizations and artifacts that he worked for, we respect him as an individual in only a superficial way. This may be a defense against an ad hominem attack, but it's still an argument about the qualities of the man himself.
  - rictic 15y ago
    There are plenty of people debating free software and championing various positions. It is fashionable to insult Stallman, that's unacceptable, and it's worth standing up against it.
  - 15y ago
billpatrianakos 15y ago
Not to criticize you at all, billjings, but I noticed something I see a lot when people talk about RMS that even I'm guilty of. That thing is qualifying your opinion with a statement along the lines of "I respect what he's done but...". Let's stop qualifying our opinions like that and just come out and disagree. It seems like the only reason people add this line in is so that the RMS fanatics don't converge on you and say things like "how dare you! He did x, y, and z and built stuff you use every day and the world would have collapsed under its own weight if it weren't for Stallman's work!" etc. etc. I'm going to start just getting to my beef with whatever RMS is doing any particular day instead of adding the "I respect him but" comment and so should everyone else. When you complain about your parents you don't say "They did such a good job raising me and they were so loving and kind BUT they're a pain in my ass right now" do you? I have few kind words to say about Stallman and I disagree with him on a lot of point but nothing. That's it. It doesn't matter whether I respect his work or not, it isn't relevant to what I'm saying.

pnathan 15y ago

Let us be reasonable and deal with thoughts (where appropriate) rather than the personal habits of someone (unless he is trying to push personal habits). More than a few of the ideas Stallman has pushed have come into wide acceptance, and some number of the things he's warned about have come to pass (or made a good stab at it). So his ideas have had a demonstrated merit, which - in my mind - makes them worthy of thoughtful consideration. Let us not parrot mindless bashings or equally mindless fanboyism.

loup-vaillant 15y ago

> He is an extremist, though. […] I have discovered lately that it is very easy to have "extreme" opinions. Such opinions only have to be irrevocably incompatible with what we think is mainstream. For instance, if I say that private banks should stop creating money and give that power back to the people (or at least to the states who represent them), I can easily have reactions like "Banks don't create money." (that's false, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_default_swap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_default_swap for a taste of the actual shenanigans), "Printing money is BAAD (hyperinflation and all)" (yes, for the rich), "But that would destroy the whole system!" (how sad, but that was kind of the point. Plus, I think a peaceful transition is totally possible.) Back to Stalman's ideas. I think they're seen as "extreme" because they happen to be incompatible to the way we do things right now. But, come to think of it, why any single piece of software should not be free? Why any single piece of knowledge or culture should not be open to access? Those are not scarce to begin with. Excluding any one from any abundant resource whatsoever is simply ludicrous. Yet, proprietary software is ubiquitous, and given how the world currently runs, it would be difficult to do away with it. So we have no choice: for all software to be free, we have to fix a thing or two in our Lovely Global Economy. Which would be extreme.

lukifer 15y ago
> But, come to think of it, why should any single piece of software not be free? It's simple: information asymmetry can be very, very profitable. Why should Coca-Cola have the right to keep their formula secret, even though I pay for their product? Because they risk losing money if someone could clone the recipe (you could patent it, but that arguably creates less freedom, not more). Other examples abound. And just because it's possible to make money using "open information" business models doesn't mean you can make the same scale of revenue, or apply a successful model to any particular industry. (Good engineers are expensive.) I'm completely in favor of all software being open. For that matter, I'm also in favor of a socialist paradise where every human has food, shelter, education and health care. But you can't just wave a wand or declare a mandate; we need new socioeconomic structures, whether by design or through natural emergence. But moral condemnations make very little progress, and as a FOSS spokesman and advocate, that is all Stallman has to offer.
- billpatrianakos 15y ago
  Yes! Thank you lukifer! Thank you for injecting a bit of reality into these pie in the sky ideals RMS fans have. We would all love to see these great ideas be practiced but it isn't going to happen by Stallman's total and complete unwillingness not only to compromise but to even acknowledge that we all don't have the luxury of being able to GPL 100% of our code. And maybe he's wrong. Software is a tool. It is something we pay for because it gives us the power to get something valuable done. The majority of people don't care how the computer or it's software works. They just want to get work done. I drive a car or take a plan or ride a bus and I pay because it gets me where I need to go to often times make more money. I don't care how it works, just that it does. It seems Stallman's entire FOSS movement assumes that either everyone is or will be a coder or power user and that those who aren't want to be. The reality is that they don't. Programming is hard. Sure anyone can learn but to make anything truly worthwhile you have be smart. The being smart comment won't go down well with many but think about it, it's very true. If you apply the FOSS principles to other things like construction or car manufacturing or anything else it just falls apart. Sure, the tools are freely available but but will everyone start building their own? Will people build extras to just give away? No. You pay for convenience and happily so. Some companies do operate in ways that restrict freedom more than what we can all agree they should but I'd say we already have freedom. I like the capitalist way of software development and distribution because its survival of the best software that's right for the most users. The Stallman socialist way results in software that us programmers can use easily but will be considered hard to use and crappy by the masses. I benefit from free software all the time. Free software that I run on my proprietary, OS X running computer. I can honestly say that I benefit most from proprietary software. I use the free stuff for applications it is well suited for too and at the end of the day both FOSS and proprietary software have their merits. Honestly, if FOSS was so awesome it would have greater market share. I mean, come on, it's free!

omlette 15y ago

you cant call someone like RMS extreme just because his views are REALLY DIFFERENT. there is a lot of room on the spectrum between expressing your views non violently and actually forcing them onto people.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
dpark 15y ago
Of course you can. "Extreme" does not mean "violent".
billpatrianakos 15y ago
I can't read your mind so I don't know if this applies to you, omlette, but I read a lot of similar comments and they come off as trying to be politically correct. Yes, very different views and extremism are different but there's a fine line. Should we say terrorists (even excluding the suicide bombing types and leaving only the hostage taking ones) aren't extremist but just expressing very different views? No. RMS can be called an extremist because he refuses to accept that the opposing views have any merit when they clearly do (see some of my other comments on this post for examples, my apologies for hanging around this thread so long haha). Just because the guy isn't holding college auditoriums full of undergrads hostage in exchange for GNU/Linux being installed on all campus computers doesn't mean he isn't an extremist. The FOSS movement, while stirring up a fair amount of debate and heated views, doesn't lend itself very well to suicide bombing, hostage taking, or any other type of violence. Maybe a little protesting but that's all. Even so, it doesn't mean he's not an extremist. It's all about that fine line between strongly held belief and extremism. Peaceful protest doesn't equal not being an extremist. Please don't pull out dictionary definitions of extremism to counter my point. I'm not saying black is white and white is red, I think I'm being pretty reasonable here. There's also a lot of people on the "well, x idea used to be considered extreme" bandwagon. I'd say to you that different isn't always better. Communism, socialism, feudalism, and others used to be considered extreme... And different too. Turns out all the naysayers were right! Those things unfortunately were tried and they all bombed out with everyone involved surely wishing they'd never been tried to start with. I'm not saying, at least not in this sentence and the next, that Stallman is wrong. What I'm saying is consider the possibility - really think about it. If you can do that then at least people like me can't call you am extremist.

philwelch 15y ago

"In my own experience, though, it seems like some newer folks don't really understand that those extreme ideas came from an important place. They don't understand the hacker ethic or have much of an idea of the culture that rms comes from, exemplified, and fights for. I imagine most readers here are familiar with it, but it's a fading ideal, for sure." You're right, obviously, but this might be only half of the story. Is it any coincidence that the spread of computing from universities and hobbyists to the general public happened at the same time that computing was commercialized? Would anyone be better off if software was universally free (by Stallman's standards) and yet inaccessible to 99% of the population?

dkarl 15y ago

It doesn't do rms any favors, because it makes him look like a weakling. What's wrong with being a weakling? Some people live in wheelchairs; some people can't do math. It's wrong to target a weakness like that as a means of ridiculing a person, and it's wrong (though effective in most circles) to stigmatize the views by stigmatizing the person. Richard Stallman is not very socially gifted, and no matter how much he polishes that turd he will never be able to hide his weakness and pass himself off as socially "strong." I identify with Stallman in that people who have a reason to resent me find it very, very easy to despise me for being a little socially out of tune. I'll never be able to perfectly hide it, so people will always find it easy to look down on me if they wish to do so. If you want to make it into a contest of "strength" I would have to mock them for their intelligence, their income, their boring jobs, the fatness of their girlfriends, how small they have to make their worlds to feel big inside them... that doesn't sound very attractive, does it? How much time would you want to spend around people who act that way? You can't win that way, not without becoming what you despise. So I'll stick up for Richard Stallman against those who personally insult him. What can he do to stop them himself? They don't care what he says; they're doing it because they enjoy it and think that everyone else who matters enjoys it. The only thing that will stop them is knowing that people find their behavior generally repugnant.

billjings 15y ago
How about this, stated more simply: this defense of rms ignores his achievements and points out his shortcomings, and so fails to defend him effectively. By discussing his social awkwardness instead of the free software ideas, organizations and artifacts that he worked for, we respect him as an individual in only a superficial way. This may be a defense against an ad hominem attack, but it's still an argument about the qualities of the man himself.
- rictic 15y ago
  There are plenty of people debating free software and championing various positions. It is fashionable to insult Stallman, that's unacceptable, and it's worth standing up against it.
- 15y ago

billpatrianakos 15y ago

Not to criticize you at all, billjings, but I noticed something I see a lot when people talk about RMS that even I'm guilty of. That thing is qualifying your opinion with a statement along the lines of "I respect what he's done but...". Let's stop qualifying our opinions like that and just come out and disagree. It seems like the only reason people add this line in is so that the RMS fanatics don't converge on you and say things like "how dare you! He did x, y, and z and built stuff you use every day and the world would have collapsed under its own weight if it weren't for Stallman's work!" etc. etc. I'm going to start just getting to my beef with whatever RMS is doing any particular day instead of adding the "I respect him but" comment and so should everyone else. When you complain about your parents you don't say "They did such a good job raising me and they were so loving and kind BUT they're a pain in my ass right now" do you? I have few kind words to say about Stallman and I disagree with him on a lot of point but nothing. That's it. It doesn't matter whether I respect his work or not, it isn't relevant to what I'm saying.