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I wrote about this a few years ago in [1]. I think some of the more recent personal attacks have been unfair and misguided, but criticism of Stallman goes back

by arp242 3y ago

I wrote about this a few years ago in [1]. I think some of the more recent personal attacks have been unfair and misguided, but criticism of Stallman goes back decades. Why does X use the MIT license and not GPL? Because they found Stallman too difficult to talk to (see quote in the article). Many prominent people involved in Free Software have been at odds with Stallman for a long time. When I first heard of Stallman in an interview sometime in the early 2000s I compared him to Osama Bin Laden in terms of extremism, which was a mean and wrong thing to do and I'm sorry I did that (I was young...), but it's indicative of the kind of responses he's evoked for a long time. Some of his ideas are good, but many are also silly, and some downright misguided. You can have good ideas and be a bad leader of a movement. These two things are not mutually exclusive. A wiser and less ego-centric Stallman would have stepped back decades ago. [1]: https://www.arp242.net/rms.html https://www.arp242.net/rms.html

toyg 3y ago
> A wiser and less ego-centric Stallman would have stepped back decades ago. I don't agree. For all his limits, Stallman maintained an ideological purity that is required to firmly signpost one end of the Overton window. Opensource licenses and projects can mix and match rights and regulations, but you will always have an unwatered GPL option, there to remind people of what the original ideal looked like. Compare the trajectory of the GNU project with that of Mozilla, for example. Mozilla compromised ideals to gain popularity, and now that popularity is waning the compromise gets worse and worse (pocket, pop-unders...). GNU compromised nothing, ignored ebbs and flows in popularity, and will continue to do their thankless work for the good of the community at large.
- bigcat12345678 3y ago
  The puny weak souls shudders in the sight of an unbreakable mind
- dale_glass 3y ago
  I don't think ideological purity is the problem here.
  - liotier 3y ago
    Ideological purity is the point. A whole range of other options are available but ideological purity is what Stallman offers, with no expectation that everyone will appreciate its benefits. The very existence of the FSF's offerings is necessary to understand what other positions compromise to obtain other benefits.
    - throw0101b 3y ago
      > Ideological purity is the point. Can a person be ideologically pure and not be an asshole? Or do the two go together (as is alleged with Stallman)?
      - Hamuko 3y ago
        The assholes are probably firmly inside the union in the Venn diagram of "ideologically pure" and "vocal advocates".
      - teekert 3y ago
        I agree with throw0101bm but then there are people like Henry Cavill.
        CoastalCoder 3y ago
        What's the Cavill reference?
        teekert 3y ago
        Henry Cavill is vocal (but kind and respecting) and an "ideologically pure" geek, in the sense that he seems to try and change scripts of series and movies he plays in, where they overlap with his nerdiness, ie [0], but there are more references. Of course, this is true in so far as geekiness can be seen as an ideology, if so, Cavill is pretty pure and vocal, but also just a great guy it seems. Now he’s going for a Warhammer 40k series and people are looking forward to it, because he knows his s*. [0] https://redanianintelligence.com/2021/12/09/henry-cavill-added-a-scene-in-the-witcher-without-permission-and-it-worked/ https://redanianintelligence.com/2021/12/09/henry-cavill-add...
- arp242 3y ago
  It's about effective advocacy. Stallman can think or do whatever he wants, but he is not and has never been an effective advocate. And from an advocacy position, ideological purity almost never works. An advocacy organisation like the FSF should be pragmatically "climbing the ladder" one step at a time, not insisting on an instantaneous revolution. You might as well advocate for the moon to be painted blue: it's just not going to happen, no matter how right you are. You absolutely can achieve short-term wins without losing the long-term picture. The idea that any compromise somehow diminishes the longer term ideals is just wrong. Consider a law that states that purchasing software must come with the source code (under any proprietary license/NDA) as a matter of "right to repair". This would be a complete non-starter for ideological purists because it's not True Freedom, but clearly it would be a huge improvement over the current situation. This is how the ideological purity is impeding progress. The reasons for Firefox's decline are unrelated to "compromised ideals" (which have IMO been hugely overstated in the first place). Quite frankly, no one cares about any of this outside of a relatively small group of people. If Mozilla had been more "ideologically pure" they never would have implemented DRM and would be considerably more irrelevant today. If you think "oh, this new browser has more Freedom (a concept you need to spend 10 minutes explaining in the first place) but you can't watch Netflix with it" is going to convince many people then you're sorely mistaken. The fact is: Firefox started declining as Chrome was just a better browser. That's all there is to it. Firefox Quantum significantly improved things, but it seems it was "too little, too late". All the cases where Free Software is a resounding success is because it's the best possible software for the problem, and the cases where it's not is because it's not the best software for the problem. Free Software will succeed if it's the best solution, so that's where the effort should go, not the (frequently minor or even petty) stuff Stallman keeps banging on about. Edit: the fact that this got downvoted in less than a minute – hardly enough time to actually read the post – is also part of the problem. I don't really care about downvotes, but it's indicative of the kind of hostility that makes these kind of internal community discussions hard. My article that I previously mentioned got posted to HN, where it was promptly flagged[1], seemingly because some pro-Stallman people were upset by it. Fine, whatever, I didn't even care enough to email dang about it, but it does make these discussions a lot less constructive than they can be. I received more emails and private communication about this article than everything else on my website combined, almost all positive by people who appreciated a more nuanced take than "Stallman == atrocious" or "Stallman == secondComing(Jesus)", so clearly it wasn't all that bad. But on HN it was "censored" – for lack of a better word. I'm not directing this at you – your comment was constructive and fine – but in general it can be hard to have these discussions. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26579225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26579225
- pjlegato 3y ago
  As a direct result of Stallman's uncompromising disinterest in what values people in the broader world actually wanted to engage with -- instead attempting to dictate his own moral views as a petty tyrant -- GNU _as a project_ hasn't been relevant to computing for decades. When was the last time you booted up the Hurd kernel? I would be surprised if more than 10% of HN readers even know what that is. (Stallman actually summarily dismissed Hurd's lead developer when he dared to criticize the GFDL in public. https://lwn.net/Articles/59147/ https://lwn.net/Articles/59147/) Stallman's abrasive and confrontational posturing is related to but distinct from his ideological goals. His rude posturing actually _damaged_ the chances of ever reaching those goals. Even the GNU "copyleft" license -- the project's greatest success in terms of "actually impacting the world" -- has fallen more and more into disuse in favor of less restrictive licenses such as BSD and MIT.
  - kevviiinn 3y ago
    AFAIK the Hurd kernel isn't ready for production because Linux is so solid so it hasn't been focused on
    - ebiester 3y ago
      That is true today, but Linux didn’t have that much of a lead. People chose to develop for Linux instead when the future was in doubt, and that was largely due to the pragmatism of Linus.
  - arp242 3y ago
    GNU wants to recreate a 1988 Unix. That's not necessarily a bad thing – I'm an old Unix beardy type myself as well – but it's not really how you stay at the forefront of computing, yeah. Also didn't help Stallman alienated the GNOME and GTK people so they're not longer GNU projects (and they were independent for a long time before that anyway). There are still some important GNU projects though, GCC, GNU libc, and Grub being the most notable.
    - toyg 3y ago
      > didn't help Stallman alienated the GNOME and GTK people I don't know the details but, I mean, GNOME/GTK people themselves have been very good at alienating folks of all sorts...
- raxxorraxor 3y ago
  I agree. Stallman can be subborn and arrogant and he often rubs people the wrong way. It is a character flaw just as it is a character flaw to not be able to seperate these issues from the ideas proposed. People that demand a sanitized environment have their flaws as well and I believe them to be far more detrimental. People demanding his resignation would probably have installed a far less effective and competent leader. I also thought about Mozilla here that tried to set a new course which is as pale as the next corporate environment. People that tarred Stallman certainly would be insufficient in any leadership position even with Stallmans perhaps very eccentric flaws.
evilotto 3y ago
X is an interesting case. It was released with a permissive license and the Free Software people argued against it saying that the vendors (Sun, IBM, HP, SGI, etc.) would take it and make a dozen different incompatible versions without sharing any improvements. And that is exactly what happened. The state-of-the-art was arguably held back by a decade because of the permissive license.

by arp242 3y ago

toyg 3y ago

> A wiser and less ego-centric Stallman would have stepped back decades ago. I don't agree. For all his limits, Stallman maintained an ideological purity that is required to firmly signpost one end of the Overton window. Opensource licenses and projects can mix and match rights and regulations, but you will always have an unwatered GPL option, there to remind people of what the original ideal looked like. Compare the trajectory of the GNU project with that of Mozilla, for example. Mozilla compromised ideals to gain popularity, and now that popularity is waning the compromise gets worse and worse (pocket, pop-unders...). GNU compromised nothing, ignored ebbs and flows in popularity, and will continue to do their thankless work for the good of the community at large.

bigcat12345678 3y ago
The puny weak souls shudders in the sight of an unbreakable mind
dale_glass 3y ago
I don't think ideological purity is the problem here.
- liotier 3y ago
  Ideological purity is the point. A whole range of other options are available but ideological purity is what Stallman offers, with no expectation that everyone will appreciate its benefits. The very existence of the FSF's offerings is necessary to understand what other positions compromise to obtain other benefits.
  - throw0101b 3y ago
    > Ideological purity is the point. Can a person be ideologically pure and not be an asshole? Or do the two go together (as is alleged with Stallman)?
    - Hamuko 3y ago
      The assholes are probably firmly inside the union in the Venn diagram of "ideologically pure" and "vocal advocates".
    - teekert 3y ago
      I agree with throw0101bm but then there are people like Henry Cavill.
      - CoastalCoder 3y ago
        What's the Cavill reference?
        teekert 3y ago
        Henry Cavill is vocal (but kind and respecting) and an "ideologically pure" geek, in the sense that he seems to try and change scripts of series and movies he plays in, where they overlap with his nerdiness, ie [0], but there are more references. Of course, this is true in so far as geekiness can be seen as an ideology, if so, Cavill is pretty pure and vocal, but also just a great guy it seems. Now he’s going for a Warhammer 40k series and people are looking forward to it, because he knows his s*. [0] https://redanianintelligence.com/2021/12/09/henry-cavill-added-a-scene-in-the-witcher-without-permission-and-it-worked/ https://redanianintelligence.com/2021/12/09/henry-cavill-add...
arp242 3y ago
It's about effective advocacy. Stallman can think or do whatever he wants, but he is not and has never been an effective advocate. And from an advocacy position, ideological purity almost never works. An advocacy organisation like the FSF should be pragmatically "climbing the ladder" one step at a time, not insisting on an instantaneous revolution. You might as well advocate for the moon to be painted blue: it's just not going to happen, no matter how right you are. You absolutely can achieve short-term wins without losing the long-term picture. The idea that any compromise somehow diminishes the longer term ideals is just wrong. Consider a law that states that purchasing software must come with the source code (under any proprietary license/NDA) as a matter of "right to repair". This would be a complete non-starter for ideological purists because it's not True Freedom, but clearly it would be a huge improvement over the current situation. This is how the ideological purity is impeding progress. The reasons for Firefox's decline are unrelated to "compromised ideals" (which have IMO been hugely overstated in the first place). Quite frankly, no one cares about any of this outside of a relatively small group of people. If Mozilla had been more "ideologically pure" they never would have implemented DRM and would be considerably more irrelevant today. If you think "oh, this new browser has more Freedom (a concept you need to spend 10 minutes explaining in the first place) but you can't watch Netflix with it" is going to convince many people then you're sorely mistaken. The fact is: Firefox started declining as Chrome was just a better browser. That's all there is to it. Firefox Quantum significantly improved things, but it seems it was "too little, too late". All the cases where Free Software is a resounding success is because it's the best possible software for the problem, and the cases where it's not is because it's not the best software for the problem. Free Software will succeed if it's the best solution, so that's where the effort should go, not the (frequently minor or even petty) stuff Stallman keeps banging on about. Edit: the fact that this got downvoted in less than a minute – hardly enough time to actually read the post – is also part of the problem. I don't really care about downvotes, but it's indicative of the kind of hostility that makes these kind of internal community discussions hard. My article that I previously mentioned got posted to HN, where it was promptly flagged[1], seemingly because some pro-Stallman people were upset by it. Fine, whatever, I didn't even care enough to email dang about it, but it does make these discussions a lot less constructive than they can be. I received more emails and private communication about this article than everything else on my website combined, almost all positive by people who appreciated a more nuanced take than "Stallman == atrocious" or "Stallman == secondComing(Jesus)", so clearly it wasn't all that bad. But on HN it was "censored" – for lack of a better word. I'm not directing this at you – your comment was constructive and fine – but in general it can be hard to have these discussions. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26579225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26579225
pjlegato 3y ago
As a direct result of Stallman's uncompromising disinterest in what values people in the broader world actually wanted to engage with -- instead attempting to dictate his own moral views as a petty tyrant -- GNU _as a project_ hasn't been relevant to computing for decades. When was the last time you booted up the Hurd kernel? I would be surprised if more than 10% of HN readers even know what that is. (Stallman actually summarily dismissed Hurd's lead developer when he dared to criticize the GFDL in public. https://lwn.net/Articles/59147/ https://lwn.net/Articles/59147/) Stallman's abrasive and confrontational posturing is related to but distinct from his ideological goals. His rude posturing actually _damaged_ the chances of ever reaching those goals. Even the GNU "copyleft" license -- the project's greatest success in terms of "actually impacting the world" -- has fallen more and more into disuse in favor of less restrictive licenses such as BSD and MIT.
- kevviiinn 3y ago
  AFAIK the Hurd kernel isn't ready for production because Linux is so solid so it hasn't been focused on
  - ebiester 3y ago
    That is true today, but Linux didn’t have that much of a lead. People chose to develop for Linux instead when the future was in doubt, and that was largely due to the pragmatism of Linus.
- arp242 3y ago
  GNU wants to recreate a 1988 Unix. That's not necessarily a bad thing – I'm an old Unix beardy type myself as well – but it's not really how you stay at the forefront of computing, yeah. Also didn't help Stallman alienated the GNOME and GTK people so they're not longer GNU projects (and they were independent for a long time before that anyway). There are still some important GNU projects though, GCC, GNU libc, and Grub being the most notable.
  - toyg 3y ago
    > didn't help Stallman alienated the GNOME and GTK people I don't know the details but, I mean, GNOME/GTK people themselves have been very good at alienating folks of all sorts...
raxxorraxor 3y ago
I agree. Stallman can be subborn and arrogant and he often rubs people the wrong way. It is a character flaw just as it is a character flaw to not be able to seperate these issues from the ideas proposed. People that demand a sanitized environment have their flaws as well and I believe them to be far more detrimental. People demanding his resignation would probably have installed a far less effective and competent leader. I also thought about Mozilla here that tried to set a new course which is as pale as the next corporate environment. People that tarred Stallman certainly would be insufficient in any leadership position even with Stallmans perhaps very eccentric flaws.

evilotto 3y ago

X is an interesting case. It was released with a permissive license and the Free Software people argued against it saying that the vendors (Sun, IBM, HP, SGI, etc.) would take it and make a dozen different incompatible versions without sharing any improvements. And that is exactly what happened. The state-of-the-art was arguably held back by a decade because of the permissive license.