8 ms·

You have to give the guy some credit; Stallman believes in the free software movement, fights for it, and refuses to compromise his rights or values.

by rudiger 15y ago

ldesegur 15y ago
Richard Stallman is to software what Jean-Paul Sartres was to philosophy during his time and still now. JPS like RMS was living through his convictions and ideas to the point of refusing the Nobel prize because it would have tinted his motivations. RMS would do the same without any questions. Don't get them wrong: these people are not fanatic, they are just living and breathing a cause they started for a good reason. It takes courage not to give up to consumerism from corporates who try to milk everyone for the goal of making money and definitely not for bringing better living to our lives. Apple, Google, Facebook, they have a simple goal: $$$. When I see a guy talented and proficient like RMS defending his cause on a 9" OLPC, that takes guts.
- Czarnian 15y ago
  Don't get them wrong: these people are not fanatic, they are just living and breathing a cause they started for a good reason. AKA Fanaticism. He's become an inflexible, computerized hermit. His dogmatic adherence to a demonstrably untenable principal of "freedom" has relegated him a permanent state of pre-1995 digital stasis. He's not principled, he's dogmatic. At best, he's a cautionary tale demonstrating the state of the world if he had his way.
  - fragsworth 15y ago
    > At best, he's a cautionary tale demonstrating the state of the world if he had his way. How do you know what the state of the world would have been if he had his way? All you know is his state in our current world, which is vastly different from a world with nothing but free software. You think hardware manufacturers wouldn't use free software if that was all that existed? You have no idea what the world of technology would look like if we had nothing but free software. And neither do I, and neither does Richard Stallman. But we do suspect it would be better. At the very least, don't discount the possibility.
  - jshen 15y ago
    " he's a cautionary tale demonstrating the state of the world if he had his way." Almost all of the things you consider modern in the computer world are built on top of his creations. OS X, google, facebook, HN, etc ... all built on the foundation RMS laid. Without his creations we would be closer to your idea of a "pre-1995 digital stasis"
    - Czarnian 15y ago
      And how many of those things would be around if they weren't generating revenue for someone? He's a living, breathing demonstration of the limits of free software. A world where progress slows to a crawl because the only people who have the time to write code are hobbyists and people who can get paid to lecture about how everything should be free. That's the main issue I have with his ideas, they are thoroughly disconnected from reality. Not in a "Everyone should be nice to each other all the time way," but a "I'm going to ride my dragon to work," way. Free software is a nice sentiment, but impotent. Nothing that has happened in the past 10-15 years in computers happens without a profit motive. Without a profit motive you may get a spreadsheet program, but no one motivated enough to get it distributed. Free may get you on the path, but it doesn't get you very far down the road.
      - nikron 15y ago
        I think you are confusing free as in beer, and free as in speech. No one says you can't sell GPL software.
        redthrowaway 15y ago
        In fact, many people make quite a good living doing just that, or giving away the software and making money via imbedded means a la Firefox.
        Czarnian 15y ago
        Not really. It's the cognitive dissonance of the Free Software Movement. Software is either free or it's not free. It's either restricted or it's unrestricted. It's either proprietary or it's open. Using hyper-capitalistic entities like Google and Facebook as a defense of the viability of free software is an interesting way to go. If anything, I'd argue they are almost perfect subversions of Free Software. Going a little deeper, a place like Y-Combinator is an even further subversion because, at it's core, it is a company that specifically exploits the profit motive of developers. That aside, I think it's not particularly useful to argue that Stallman's contributions to the field are a vindication of his basic philosophy. Especially when those contributions are being used in a way that subverts it.
  - baddox 15y ago
    > demonstrably untenable Please, demonstrate away.
- syawaworht 15y ago
  I don't mean to belittle RMS's achievements, but as a general point, I don't think that simply adhering to conviction is courageous. It's the easy way out. It's the way that doesn't address the greys in reality, for the sake of simplicity of what you believe in. You are not tested in your decisions, because you have already refused to make any.
  - marekmroz 15y ago
    > Adhering to conviction is the easy way out. Sounds legit.
  - pjscott 15y ago
    How does that not count as a decision?
  - dkarl 15y ago
    Socially speaking, I find it's easier to see gray. When you run into somebody in a social situation who knows you see him as heinously immoral, or maybe just a little bit of a sleazebag, there's tension. The tension is likely to get to him, causing him to needlessly bring up the issue in some contrived way. At that point, there's a magic phrase to completely banish the tension: "Well, yeah, shit's complicated." Suddenly you can be best friends. I learned this trick when I was a strict vegetarian. I wasn't eager to confront people about their meat-eating, but when you don't eat meat, people pretty quickly jump to the conclusion that you think they're morally wrong to eat meat. The tension bothers them, so they bring it up in some awkward way. When my girlfriend's father did that (and later at one point her boss, at a company barbecue) I didn't want to get into the details, so I just said, "Well, it's a complicated issue." It was an honest statement, and I really had no idea exactly where I stood on eating meat, but I was so impressed with how completely it put them at ease and averted all conflict that I stored that memory away. Since then, I have used it many times dishonestly to avoid conflict with people who had power over me, my friends, or my family. Seeing gray is a "get out of conflict free" card. I think the only time it takes bravery to see gray areas is when everybody else sees black and white. Otherwise, the "ability" to see gray helps you paper over disagreements and maintain valuable relationships with people. Also, it usually isn't correct to think that a person avoids addressing gray areas by being black-and-white on a certain question. I am single, and for me, sex is an endless gray area. I have a conservative Christian friend who doesn't see any gray at all when it comes to premarital sex, but not because he's stupid or unthoughtful. He has to deal with gray areas in other places, such as divorce and state-mandated immunization against HPV. (His daughter will be immunized, and he thinks that's okay. He has friends who think it's not, and who are shocked by the fact that he doesn't resist in some way.) RMS sees gray areas in the use of non-free technology, and he makes concessions to reality. He's proud of his ability to use a completely free computer system, and he understands that it isn't practical for everybody, and he knows that even his success is limited to a very small portion of the technology that contributes to his existence. That's a gray area! I can understand where he's at. When I was a vegetarian, and now as a near-vegetarian, I know some people might think I'm being black and white to subsist on beans and potato salad at a catered barbecue lunch, but I think I'm being plenty "gray" by eating beans from a barbecue joint without asking why they taste so darned good. Everyone's thinking is gray someplace; the perception of "black-and-white thinking" is created by an observer focusing in on a certain place where he expects to find gray and is surprised to find black or white instead.
- Estragon 15y ago
  > RMS would [refuse a Nobel] without any questions. What's the difference between a Nobel and a MacArthur Genius grant? http://tech.mit.edu/V110/N30/rms.30n.html http://tech.mit.edu/V110/N30/rms.30n.html
  - mark_l_watson 15y ago
    Perhaps a MacArthur Genius grant carries a little less baggage than a Nobel prize? A MacArthur Genius grant is a no strings attached "do any research or work you want" funded by people who didn't have the huge negative impact on world society that Nobel did. I would gladly accept either honor :-)
    - chimeracoder 15y ago
      They're both honors, yes, but incredibly different in the implementation. A MacArthur is much more of an abstract honor ('You have done some great work, possibly in some field that can't even be named because it is so unique, so here is some money that we hope you will use to continue doing great work.'). Many MacArthur recipients would never in their lifetimes be eligible for a Nobel. (On the other hand, many Nobel laureates would never receive a MacArthur either). A Nobel prize, by contrast, is only given in certain fields, which already constrains the way that it is perceived. With a MacArthur, you're not necessarily competing against others in your field, because you oftentimes don't have a field (what you do is so highly specialized that nobody else really comes close). Furthermore, the prize is a political tool as much as anything else nowadays. (Looking at many of the recent Nobel Peace Prize recipients, I think anybody would agree to that.) The MacArthur has much less political identification, even compared to the prizes for biology/chemistry. It's nice to be able to attach it to your name when convenient as it gets a little bit more respect, but it's hard to interpret it in a negative way (or to see a recipient of a MacArthur as somehow compromising his/her views -- remember that Stallman has rather weak opinions on money per se when it comes to freedom; one can have a FLOSS product that nevertheless generates money). (And as for the awards, I agree - at this point in my life I would probably be satisfied with either one!)
- bluekeybox 15y ago
  Don't forget that Sartre supported Stalin (and that Orwell despised him for that). The more I live, the more I realize that old men without or with messed up sex lives are not to be trusted as gurus or guides in life. It's the Pied Piper of Hamelin all over again.
  - reuser 15y ago
    Sartre's relevance or value depends on the relevance or value his arguments, not his age or affiliations or sex life. It happens that I think he was full of steam, but it wouldn't make him any better simply to be a woman, or young.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - bluekeybox 15y ago
      I think what I was trying to get at is that when I was younger, I looked up to certain bearded "wise men" and professors as archetypal "guides" or role models or whatever, but that was a mistake. Now that I am a bit older, I realize that it was wrong for me to look up to such men while ignoring others because by emulating the "wise man" directly I might have "skipped" a very important stage in a man's life: adulthood, when you're strong, aggressive, competitive, and otherwise awesome. It is my philosophy that one should go through all stages in life in order, otherwise one will never be happy, though timing is not as important as order. I've seen old people get bitter and resentful when they see youth partying and going out -- because they themselves had never done so when they were young. One of my favorite quotes from Nietzsche (though this guy also had a messed-up/nonexistent sex life): "Man is something to be surpassed, but only a buffoon thinks that man can be overleapt." Surpass but don't skip.
mhurron 15y ago
Which by and large hurts his position if that is to be held up as what it takes to follow the free software movement.
- slowpoke 15y ago
  Quite the contrary. It shows that something is severely wrong and in dire need of improvement if you need to go to those lengths to be able to run entirely on Free Software. Someone who wants to run only Free Software should not, by any means, have to rely on a 9" netbook from a single, Chinese manufacturer. It should be easy to buy hardware that is open, just as much as it should be a non-issue to run Free Software. Actually, it should always be the preferred solution.
jorgecastillo 15y ago
Don't take this the wrong way but I personally feel that the GPL is not a free software license, I feel it's a community software license. BSD is a free software license, BSD code is truly yours, you want to create a proprietary fork you can do it, you want to create a GPLed fork you can do it, you want to expand the BSD code base you can do it. One thing I really love about BSD licensed code is that I feel like I own it, best of all this doesn't stop anyone else from feeling the same.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- slowpoke 15y ago
  >you want to create a proprietary fork you can do it Why should you be allowed to take away the Freedoms of others? The one thing the GPL restricts is your Freedom to restrict the Freedom of others. That's the foundation of copyleft: your rights stop where mine begin, and that includes being granted the four Freedoms of software as defined by the FSF. In an ideal world, we would not need the GPL. Everyone would have realized already that it is in no one's prolonged interest to make proprietary software, and it would be frowned upon to do so. We would have implicit CC-BY (or -Zero) for everything and be done with it. No more copyright and licensing crap.
  - ugh 15y ago
    But can you not at least understand that many people don't understand why those four Freedoms have to be assumed as given? The disagreement is not about how to best make sure the four Freedoms are respected, it's not about implementation. It's about whether the Freedoms are Freedoms at all. That tends to get lost when all everyone always talks about is licenses (i.e. implementation details).
    - slowpoke 15y ago
      >But can you not at least understand that many people don't understand why those four Freedoms have to be assumed as given? No, I can't. I fundamentally don't understand why you would keep source code secret, why you would deny me the right to change it or to redistribute copies. It's utterly incomprehensible to me. On the contrary, I believe the burden of proof as to why we should deny people these Freedoms lies on the side of the advocates or proprietary software, and thus far I haven't seen any compelling argument.
mike-cardwell 15y ago
He has to compromise at some point. He can refuse to stick non-free software on his computer, but he can't refuse to benefit from the use of non-free software in the computers of the cars and planes that he uses for travel, and he can't refuse the non-free software that was used in the manufacture of many of the products he uses every day.
- Shamanmuni 15y ago
  So, what's your point? That he shouldn't fight for free software because it's difficult? Imagine the world in the 80's, when there wasn't a free as in freedom OS; rms knows about compromise when there are no alternatives, he just doesn't want a non-free OS in a non-free computer when there are free alternatives. We usually call it coherence.
  - mike-cardwell 15y ago
    The claim: "Refuses to compromise" My response: "Is forced to compromise in the following cases" I don't know how you managed to form your bizarre interpretation of what I said. I like the guy. I admire his ideals and approach and agree with his goals.
    - Shamanmuni 15y ago
      Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude, but it's not really much of a point to say "He doesn't refuse when there aren't viable alternatives". It's the same situation he was in the 80's with OS's, there wasn't a free OS for his computer, so he used a non-free one to code, a temporal compromise. When there's an alternative, even a very impractical one, he goes with that even though he could choose the other. So, "Refuses to compromise" is accurate, he refuses whenever he can.
      - mike-cardwell 15y ago
        My point is that non-free software is pervasive and impossible to avoid, even for people like RMS. That is all.
DanBlake 15y ago
Does he have the same moral reservations for other devices in his life? ie; what car does he use and own? All (modern) cars accept software updates which is his definition of a computer. Most modern televisions, dvd players, routers and even some microwaves/refrigerators can take firmware updates also. Genuinely curious about the above - Not being a troll, just wondering how far the man really takes his beliefs. Does he stop at the most publicly noticeable devices ( laptop/cellphone ) or does he go all the way.
- julian37 15y ago
  Does he have the same moral reservations for other devices in his life? Yes, as far as I know. ie; what car does he use and own? All (modern) cars accept software updates which is his definition of a computer. I am pretty sure he doesn't drive, but this is what he had to say on the topic: So, what about cars? Free cars would mean you are free to modify them and redistribute copies. Well, as for the modification, you are free to do that-lots of people modify and customize their cars. But when it comes to redistributing copies, the fact is we don’t have the technology to do it. There is no automatic car copier. Cars, today, are like books before the Xerox machine-the only feasible way to make copies was with a special factory. Copying your car is so hard that it makes little practical difference whether you are allowed to do this. Perhaps someday, through nanotechnology perhaps, a car copier will be developed. Then a Free Car Movement will be necessary. Source: http://www.resonancepub.com/rstallman.htm http://www.resonancepub.com/rstallman.htm
  - rhizome 15y ago
    In fact, to equate cars and computers in this manner is to commit a Category Error. They simply don't share very many properties (save that they are both sold for money). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_mistake http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_mistake
    - namidark 15y ago
      Except that cars contain thousands of microchips and pieces of software that run things like your radio, ABS, and other major systems in the car.

You have to give the guy some credit; Stallman believes in the free software movement, fights for it, and refuses to compromise his rights or values.

by rudiger 15y ago

You have to give the guy some credit; Stallman believes in the free software movement, fights for it, and refuses to compromise his rights or values.

ldesegur 15y ago

Richard Stallman is to software what Jean-Paul Sartres was to philosophy during his time and still now. JPS like RMS was living through his convictions and ideas to the point of refusing the Nobel prize because it would have tinted his motivations. RMS would do the same without any questions. Don't get them wrong: these people are not fanatic, they are just living and breathing a cause they started for a good reason. It takes courage not to give up to consumerism from corporates who try to milk everyone for the goal of making money and definitely not for bringing better living to our lives. Apple, Google, Facebook, they have a simple goal: $$$. When I see a guy talented and proficient like RMS defending his cause on a 9" OLPC, that takes guts.

Czarnian 15y ago
Don't get them wrong: these people are not fanatic, they are just living and breathing a cause they started for a good reason. AKA Fanaticism. He's become an inflexible, computerized hermit. His dogmatic adherence to a demonstrably untenable principal of "freedom" has relegated him a permanent state of pre-1995 digital stasis. He's not principled, he's dogmatic. At best, he's a cautionary tale demonstrating the state of the world if he had his way.
- fragsworth 15y ago
  > At best, he's a cautionary tale demonstrating the state of the world if he had his way. How do you know what the state of the world would have been if he had his way? All you know is his state in our current world, which is vastly different from a world with nothing but free software. You think hardware manufacturers wouldn't use free software if that was all that existed? You have no idea what the world of technology would look like if we had nothing but free software. And neither do I, and neither does Richard Stallman. But we do suspect it would be better. At the very least, don't discount the possibility.
- jshen 15y ago
  " he's a cautionary tale demonstrating the state of the world if he had his way." Almost all of the things you consider modern in the computer world are built on top of his creations. OS X, google, facebook, HN, etc ... all built on the foundation RMS laid. Without his creations we would be closer to your idea of a "pre-1995 digital stasis"
  - Czarnian 15y ago
    And how many of those things would be around if they weren't generating revenue for someone? He's a living, breathing demonstration of the limits of free software. A world where progress slows to a crawl because the only people who have the time to write code are hobbyists and people who can get paid to lecture about how everything should be free. That's the main issue I have with his ideas, they are thoroughly disconnected from reality. Not in a "Everyone should be nice to each other all the time way," but a "I'm going to ride my dragon to work," way. Free software is a nice sentiment, but impotent. Nothing that has happened in the past 10-15 years in computers happens without a profit motive. Without a profit motive you may get a spreadsheet program, but no one motivated enough to get it distributed. Free may get you on the path, but it doesn't get you very far down the road.
    - nikron 15y ago
      I think you are confusing free as in beer, and free as in speech. No one says you can't sell GPL software.
      - redthrowaway 15y ago
        In fact, many people make quite a good living doing just that, or giving away the software and making money via imbedded means a la Firefox.
      - Czarnian 15y ago
        Not really. It's the cognitive dissonance of the Free Software Movement. Software is either free or it's not free. It's either restricted or it's unrestricted. It's either proprietary or it's open. Using hyper-capitalistic entities like Google and Facebook as a defense of the viability of free software is an interesting way to go. If anything, I'd argue they are almost perfect subversions of Free Software. Going a little deeper, a place like Y-Combinator is an even further subversion because, at it's core, it is a company that specifically exploits the profit motive of developers. That aside, I think it's not particularly useful to argue that Stallman's contributions to the field are a vindication of his basic philosophy. Especially when those contributions are being used in a way that subverts it.
- baddox 15y ago
  > demonstrably untenable Please, demonstrate away.
syawaworht 15y ago
I don't mean to belittle RMS's achievements, but as a general point, I don't think that simply adhering to conviction is courageous. It's the easy way out. It's the way that doesn't address the greys in reality, for the sake of simplicity of what you believe in. You are not tested in your decisions, because you have already refused to make any.
- marekmroz 15y ago
  > Adhering to conviction is the easy way out. Sounds legit.
- pjscott 15y ago
  How does that not count as a decision?
- dkarl 15y ago
  Socially speaking, I find it's easier to see gray. When you run into somebody in a social situation who knows you see him as heinously immoral, or maybe just a little bit of a sleazebag, there's tension. The tension is likely to get to him, causing him to needlessly bring up the issue in some contrived way. At that point, there's a magic phrase to completely banish the tension: "Well, yeah, shit's complicated." Suddenly you can be best friends. I learned this trick when I was a strict vegetarian. I wasn't eager to confront people about their meat-eating, but when you don't eat meat, people pretty quickly jump to the conclusion that you think they're morally wrong to eat meat. The tension bothers them, so they bring it up in some awkward way. When my girlfriend's father did that (and later at one point her boss, at a company barbecue) I didn't want to get into the details, so I just said, "Well, it's a complicated issue." It was an honest statement, and I really had no idea exactly where I stood on eating meat, but I was so impressed with how completely it put them at ease and averted all conflict that I stored that memory away. Since then, I have used it many times dishonestly to avoid conflict with people who had power over me, my friends, or my family. Seeing gray is a "get out of conflict free" card. I think the only time it takes bravery to see gray areas is when everybody else sees black and white. Otherwise, the "ability" to see gray helps you paper over disagreements and maintain valuable relationships with people. Also, it usually isn't correct to think that a person avoids addressing gray areas by being black-and-white on a certain question. I am single, and for me, sex is an endless gray area. I have a conservative Christian friend who doesn't see any gray at all when it comes to premarital sex, but not because he's stupid or unthoughtful. He has to deal with gray areas in other places, such as divorce and state-mandated immunization against HPV. (His daughter will be immunized, and he thinks that's okay. He has friends who think it's not, and who are shocked by the fact that he doesn't resist in some way.) RMS sees gray areas in the use of non-free technology, and he makes concessions to reality. He's proud of his ability to use a completely free computer system, and he understands that it isn't practical for everybody, and he knows that even his success is limited to a very small portion of the technology that contributes to his existence. That's a gray area! I can understand where he's at. When I was a vegetarian, and now as a near-vegetarian, I know some people might think I'm being black and white to subsist on beans and potato salad at a catered barbecue lunch, but I think I'm being plenty "gray" by eating beans from a barbecue joint without asking why they taste so darned good. Everyone's thinking is gray someplace; the perception of "black-and-white thinking" is created by an observer focusing in on a certain place where he expects to find gray and is surprised to find black or white instead.
Estragon 15y ago
> RMS would [refuse a Nobel] without any questions. What's the difference between a Nobel and a MacArthur Genius grant? http://tech.mit.edu/V110/N30/rms.30n.html http://tech.mit.edu/V110/N30/rms.30n.html
- mark_l_watson 15y ago
  Perhaps a MacArthur Genius grant carries a little less baggage than a Nobel prize? A MacArthur Genius grant is a no strings attached "do any research or work you want" funded by people who didn't have the huge negative impact on world society that Nobel did. I would gladly accept either honor :-)
  - chimeracoder 15y ago
    They're both honors, yes, but incredibly different in the implementation. A MacArthur is much more of an abstract honor ('You have done some great work, possibly in some field that can't even be named because it is so unique, so here is some money that we hope you will use to continue doing great work.'). Many MacArthur recipients would never in their lifetimes be eligible for a Nobel. (On the other hand, many Nobel laureates would never receive a MacArthur either). A Nobel prize, by contrast, is only given in certain fields, which already constrains the way that it is perceived. With a MacArthur, you're not necessarily competing against others in your field, because you oftentimes don't have a field (what you do is so highly specialized that nobody else really comes close). Furthermore, the prize is a political tool as much as anything else nowadays. (Looking at many of the recent Nobel Peace Prize recipients, I think anybody would agree to that.) The MacArthur has much less political identification, even compared to the prizes for biology/chemistry. It's nice to be able to attach it to your name when convenient as it gets a little bit more respect, but it's hard to interpret it in a negative way (or to see a recipient of a MacArthur as somehow compromising his/her views -- remember that Stallman has rather weak opinions on money per se when it comes to freedom; one can have a FLOSS product that nevertheless generates money). (And as for the awards, I agree - at this point in my life I would probably be satisfied with either one!)
bluekeybox 15y ago
Don't forget that Sartre supported Stalin (and that Orwell despised him for that). The more I live, the more I realize that old men without or with messed up sex lives are not to be trusted as gurus or guides in life. It's the Pied Piper of Hamelin all over again.
- reuser 15y ago
  Sartre's relevance or value depends on the relevance or value his arguments, not his age or affiliations or sex life. It happens that I think he was full of steam, but it wouldn't make him any better simply to be a woman, or young.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - bluekeybox 15y ago
    I think what I was trying to get at is that when I was younger, I looked up to certain bearded "wise men" and professors as archetypal "guides" or role models or whatever, but that was a mistake. Now that I am a bit older, I realize that it was wrong for me to look up to such men while ignoring others because by emulating the "wise man" directly I might have "skipped" a very important stage in a man's life: adulthood, when you're strong, aggressive, competitive, and otherwise awesome. It is my philosophy that one should go through all stages in life in order, otherwise one will never be happy, though timing is not as important as order. I've seen old people get bitter and resentful when they see youth partying and going out -- because they themselves had never done so when they were young. One of my favorite quotes from Nietzsche (though this guy also had a messed-up/nonexistent sex life): "Man is something to be surpassed, but only a buffoon thinks that man can be overleapt." Surpass but don't skip.

mhurron 15y ago

Which by and large hurts his position if that is to be held up as what it takes to follow the free software movement.

slowpoke 15y ago
Quite the contrary. It shows that something is severely wrong and in dire need of improvement if you need to go to those lengths to be able to run entirely on Free Software. Someone who wants to run only Free Software should not, by any means, have to rely on a 9" netbook from a single, Chinese manufacturer. It should be easy to buy hardware that is open, just as much as it should be a non-issue to run Free Software. Actually, it should always be the preferred solution.

jorgecastillo 15y ago

Don't take this the wrong way but I personally feel that the GPL is not a free software license, I feel it's a community software license. BSD is a free software license, BSD code is truly yours, you want to create a proprietary fork you can do it, you want to create a GPLed fork you can do it, you want to expand the BSD code base you can do it. One thing I really love about BSD licensed code is that I feel like I own it, best of all this doesn't stop anyone else from feeling the same.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
slowpoke 15y ago
>you want to create a proprietary fork you can do it Why should you be allowed to take away the Freedoms of others? The one thing the GPL restricts is your Freedom to restrict the Freedom of others. That's the foundation of copyleft: your rights stop where mine begin, and that includes being granted the four Freedoms of software as defined by the FSF. In an ideal world, we would not need the GPL. Everyone would have realized already that it is in no one's prolonged interest to make proprietary software, and it would be frowned upon to do so. We would have implicit CC-BY (or -Zero) for everything and be done with it. No more copyright and licensing crap.
- ugh 15y ago
  But can you not at least understand that many people don't understand why those four Freedoms have to be assumed as given? The disagreement is not about how to best make sure the four Freedoms are respected, it's not about implementation. It's about whether the Freedoms are Freedoms at all. That tends to get lost when all everyone always talks about is licenses (i.e. implementation details).
  - slowpoke 15y ago
    >But can you not at least understand that many people don't understand why those four Freedoms have to be assumed as given? No, I can't. I fundamentally don't understand why you would keep source code secret, why you would deny me the right to change it or to redistribute copies. It's utterly incomprehensible to me. On the contrary, I believe the burden of proof as to why we should deny people these Freedoms lies on the side of the advocates or proprietary software, and thus far I haven't seen any compelling argument.

mike-cardwell 15y ago

He has to compromise at some point. He can refuse to stick non-free software on his computer, but he can't refuse to benefit from the use of non-free software in the computers of the cars and planes that he uses for travel, and he can't refuse the non-free software that was used in the manufacture of many of the products he uses every day.

Shamanmuni 15y ago
So, what's your point? That he shouldn't fight for free software because it's difficult? Imagine the world in the 80's, when there wasn't a free as in freedom OS; rms knows about compromise when there are no alternatives, he just doesn't want a non-free OS in a non-free computer when there are free alternatives. We usually call it coherence.
- mike-cardwell 15y ago
  The claim: "Refuses to compromise" My response: "Is forced to compromise in the following cases" I don't know how you managed to form your bizarre interpretation of what I said. I like the guy. I admire his ideals and approach and agree with his goals.
  - Shamanmuni 15y ago
    Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude, but it's not really much of a point to say "He doesn't refuse when there aren't viable alternatives". It's the same situation he was in the 80's with OS's, there wasn't a free OS for his computer, so he used a non-free one to code, a temporal compromise. When there's an alternative, even a very impractical one, he goes with that even though he could choose the other. So, "Refuses to compromise" is accurate, he refuses whenever he can.
    - mike-cardwell 15y ago
      My point is that non-free software is pervasive and impossible to avoid, even for people like RMS. That is all.

DanBlake 15y ago

Does he have the same moral reservations for other devices in his life? ie; what car does he use and own? All (modern) cars accept software updates which is his definition of a computer. Most modern televisions, dvd players, routers and even some microwaves/refrigerators can take firmware updates also. Genuinely curious about the above - Not being a troll, just wondering how far the man really takes his beliefs. Does he stop at the most publicly noticeable devices ( laptop/cellphone ) or does he go all the way.

julian37 15y ago
Does he have the same moral reservations for other devices in his life? Yes, as far as I know. ie; what car does he use and own? All (modern) cars accept software updates which is his definition of a computer. I am pretty sure he doesn't drive, but this is what he had to say on the topic: So, what about cars? Free cars would mean you are free to modify them and redistribute copies. Well, as for the modification, you are free to do that-lots of people modify and customize their cars. But when it comes to redistributing copies, the fact is we don’t have the technology to do it. There is no automatic car copier. Cars, today, are like books before the Xerox machine-the only feasible way to make copies was with a special factory. Copying your car is so hard that it makes little practical difference whether you are allowed to do this. Perhaps someday, through nanotechnology perhaps, a car copier will be developed. Then a Free Car Movement will be necessary. Source: http://www.resonancepub.com/rstallman.htm http://www.resonancepub.com/rstallman.htm
- rhizome 15y ago
  In fact, to equate cars and computers in this manner is to commit a Category Error. They simply don't share very many properties (save that they are both sold for money). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_mistake http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_mistake
  - namidark 15y ago
    Except that cars contain thousands of microchips and pieces of software that run things like your radio, ABS, and other major systems in the car.