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From the article: >Disclaimer: I’m aware that Richard Stallman had some questionable or inadequate behaviours. I’m not defending those nor the man himself. … I

From the article: >Disclaimer: I’m aware that Richard Stallman had some questionable or inadequate behaviours. I’m not defending those nor the man himself. … I’m defending a philosophy, not the philosopher. I pretend that his historical vision and his original ideas are still adequate today. The problem is that the man himself epitomizes his own ideas. A lot of his behavior is a consequence of taking his ideas to their logical conclusion. For example, consider the following interaction [0]: My closest interactions with him involved trying to get him off a conference stage so the next session could happen (just as bad as you’d imagine) and being seated next to him on a puddle-jumper during a 90 minute ground hold (whatever you’re imagining, worse). He … berate[d] me for having noise canceling headphones (something to do with them not being based on free software). He spent the whole time telling me about software freedom and how my headphones were a symbol of oppression or some such. I’m not sure how forcing the manufacturer of those headphones to make their hardware and firmware fully open source would benefit the world in any way, shape, or form. This sort of demagoguery does way more harm to the Free Software movement than good. If more of RMS’s ideas means more people thinking and behaving like that, we really, really don’t need any more. [0] https://twitter.com/mattblaze/status/1374460079798292487 https://twitter.com/mattblaze/status/1374460079798292487

hardware2win 3y ago
How about attacking an argument instead of a man?
- Kye 3y ago
  There's a reason every famous civil rights protest in the last century or so started with someone carefully chosen to stage it. A poor quality advocate can get in the way of change.
  - hn_thrwn 3y ago
    [dead]
  - modo_mario 3y ago
    I can't think of a lot of em that moderated their views towards a middleground vis a vis the status quo or were not on some fronts called dogmatic so I find this a bit of a lacking comparison. For example: "First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."
- brookst 3y ago
  As the top comment notes, the FSF is not about an argument, it is a about a man. In that case it seems fair to hold the debate on the same topic FSF advocates are so passionate about.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    >the FSF is not about an argument, it is a about a man we're still talking about the Free Software Foundation, correct? I don't know if I can agree with this angle. It's like saying Linux is about Linus Torvalds. Sure, he was and is a very influential part of the project, but it has grown far, far past him.
informatimago 3y ago
[flagged]
- MontyCarloHall 3y ago
  Like most things, the harms of closed-source {firm,soft}ware fall on a spectrum, and a black-and-white absolutist view is impractical and demagogical. When the harms of closed-source are high and hard to detect via other means (e.g. Dieselgate, like you mention), I agree that said firmware should be auditable. Maybe even for things like network cards, although in that case it would be very easy to detect any spy traffic via network traffic analyzers, and any company caught shipping network cards with embedded spy firmware would cause a news sensation and be immediately driven out of business. But when the harms are low-to-none, I'm not sure what good your proposed legislation would do. In the case of the headphones, the best argument you present against closed-source firmware is literally a joke about subliminal messaging.
- simiones 3y ago
  I get your point, but it should be noted that there is little evidence subliminal messages have any significant effect outside extremely specific circumstances, so this hardly seems like a real threat. More broadly, the problems you are discussing would rarely be accurately addressed by open source firmware, since so few people have the required expertise or time to actually audit that. What would be far more useful would be state authorities maintaining code review boards, and asking for auditable firmware, not necessarily open source. If a state board received access to these sources and reviewed them, that would actually fix all the problems of confidence that you mention.
weevil 3y ago
Agreed — supporting free/libre software is invariably made less attractive to most because of the people* shouting loudest about it. * some of, at least
- Spivak 3y ago
  Oh man this hits hard, I used to be such a strong advocate for Free Software, copyleft, open firmware and drivers. I worked on FOSS projects, was an actual "member" of the FSF during a time when I really didn't have the money to donate. The dream just like… died. There was so much pointless drama, public opinion (tbh rightfully) turned against RMS and the GPL, the banner flown by people who believed in the mission, just became another license. It was one of my first sad "don't meet your heroes" moments. I don't even bother licensing my work under the L/GPL anymore because nobody cares and it just makes my code less useful to folks.
_ktx2 3y ago
RMS did a really poor job of explaining why closed source firmware is problematic to free software, I agree, and I'll explain better below. I also have some critique of activist language. First, activist language is pretty hard for any human to listen to. Anyone that's been tackling the "long fight" of what they view as oppression has this map in their head of things that add up to their main point in life and cannot help but continually extrapolate it for people. On some topics, people eat this kind of language up. On others, it's rather dull, especially if the person using the language can't quickly connect relatable points for people. RMS was good at long-form broad thinking that was dealing with the issues at the time. He was pretty fuck all when it came to really explaining them in a digestible, conversation style manner. As for why proprietary headphone firmware hurts free software: take some Bose noise cancelling headphones and try to connect them to something like a mainstream Linux distribution like PopOS and use them on Zoom. They'll work, but only in a low quality mode, or the audio receiver will work but not the microphone. Now do the same with Airpods, or use Airpods on an Android phone. Airpods will work and you'll get high fidelity audio, but they're constantly exhibiting weird disconnection behaviors. On Linux you'll get incredibly low fidelity audio. Proprietary drivers are at the source of all of this. RMS came from a day where the pioneers of Linux and alternative operating systems weren't building them for servers. They were building them for users because Windows was expensive and the machines to run it on were more expensive. Oppression to someone like him, and many others, were linked to this and many other circumstances at the time. The idea that the optimizations of computing were available only to a few was utterly disasterous. To connect the two ideas, product x which is proprietary works best on product y which is also proprietary. It's a system that reinforces itself and excludes or marginalizes the rest, which eroded the original mission of building optimized software that is collectively free enough for anyone in the world to use. Somewhat ironically, a lot of people in this thread are complaining about diversity when really that's what most of these initiatives were born in.
- MontyCarloHall 3y ago
  >take some Bose noise cancelling headphones and try to connect them to something like a mainstream Linux distribution like PopOS and use them on Zoom. They'll work, but only in a low quality mode, or the audio receiver will work but not the microphone. My Bose QC45 headphones work identically on all my hardware (Mac, Linux, and occasionally Windows). They can use both standard Bluetooth or a standard 3.5mm TRS connector, neither of which requires any special drivers. Although I've never had any Linux-specific issues, I would guess that if you're experiencing them it's due more to Linux's notoriously poor audio stack than the actual hardware, which conforms to industry standards. >Now do the same with Airpods, or use Airpods on an Android phone. Airpods will work and you'll get high fidelity audio, but they're constantly exhibiting weird disconnection behaviors. On Linux you'll get incredibly low fidelity audio. I've also done this to a limited extent (AirPods on Android), and did not notice anything unusual, aside from a few missing Apple-specific features (e.g. auto-device switching, which is not part of the Bluetooth protocol). >To connect the two ideas, product x which is proprietary works best on product y which is also proprietary. It's a system that reinforces itself and excludes or marginalizes the rest It is generally in the best interest of companies to produce goods usable by a maximal marketshare; willingly excluding customers and their money is usually not a good business strategy. This is why companies voluntarily conform to standards. The main exception to this is when standards inhibit the quality of the good. In that case, companies are willing to trade a smaller marketshare for a better user experience in that smaller market (e.g. AirPods' Apple-only features). As an extreme example, consider cars. Parts are proprietary to a given model because each car is optimized for its specific market niche (size, appearance, performance, etc.), which requires all parts for a given model to be closely integrated. The engine of a Honda is not compatible with a Nissan, because engines and cars must be so tightly integrated that it would be an impossibly bad experience otherwise.
kcplate 3y ago
> He spent the whole time telling me about software freedom and how my headphones were a symbol of oppression or some such. Easily solvable by telling him “I don’t care” and placing your headphones on your head and activating the noise cancellation in his full view then ignoring him for the rest of the flight.
- sparrish 3y ago
  You do realize that this is exactly what most people and corporations have done to RMS and the FSF for many years now? Got tired of his inappropriate antics, brash manner, and said "I don't care" and stuck their fingers in their ears. And that's exactly why RMS should take a back seat. FSF believes the principles are important and so they should be communicated in a way that is most palatable so others can hear them and interact with them on a personal and professional level. Until that happens, most will just keep ignoring the ever-irritating RMS and in-turn FSF as they would an annoying neighbor on a flight.
  - kcplate 3y ago
    It’s definitely a tough hill to climb already without your primary evangelist being tactless ass.
jottinger 3y ago
I've had this experience myself, with RMS. I actually was asking if the FSF had the right to assert the copyleft on bison, and sign a document asserting that Bison's open licensing applied to bison - who had the right to assert the license, which was open, basically. As a consultant for IBM. We were trying to USE bison, and this was when MS would chase every possible avenue to sue people for violation of copyright, so it was a big deal ... and had RMS been willing to assert that the copyleft applied to bison, that the FSF actually wrote the software and applied the copyleft to its code, IBM told me that it was willing to _defend the GPL in court_. For a signature, RMS would have had the 800-pound gorilla defending the GPL. (We were also going to make a donation to the FSF to help them along, although that wasn't part of "the deal" - it was, like, "hey, you do good stuff, we're planning on putting this in the project budget next because if we can use your stuff, that helps us a lot." And RMS first off refused to say the copyleft was assigned to bison; it did, of course, everyone knew it, but we needed the legal affirmation or it was pointless. (I can claim that I can fly, everyone knows it, but unless I'm actually airborne at some point...) Then he asked for money (less than we'd talked about budgeting internally) ANYWAY, before we'd even brought it up, if memory serves. (It's been a long time.) Just... a giant moment of jackassery.
johnnyanmac 3y ago
>A lot of his behavior is a consequence of taking his ideas to their logical conclusion. Any philosophy taken to an extreme leads to zealotry. I don't think Stallman is special in that regard. If I'm in layover I don't wanna hear anyone's elevator pitch, full stop. I'm miserable enough as is after being legally frisked and fighting airport traffic to get to a gate an hour early despite the airlines inevitably delaying the flight themselves by 2 hours. We can learn what NOT to do while embracing the aspects that made him so empassioned about this stuff to begin with.

hardware2win 3y ago

How about attacking an argument instead of a man?

Kye 3y ago
There's a reason every famous civil rights protest in the last century or so started with someone carefully chosen to stage it. A poor quality advocate can get in the way of change.
- hn_thrwn 3y ago
  [dead]
- modo_mario 3y ago
  I can't think of a lot of em that moderated their views towards a middleground vis a vis the status quo or were not on some fronts called dogmatic so I find this a bit of a lacking comparison. For example: "First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."
brookst 3y ago
As the top comment notes, the FSF is not about an argument, it is a about a man. In that case it seems fair to hold the debate on the same topic FSF advocates are so passionate about.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  >the FSF is not about an argument, it is a about a man we're still talking about the Free Software Foundation, correct? I don't know if I can agree with this angle. It's like saying Linux is about Linus Torvalds. Sure, he was and is a very influential part of the project, but it has grown far, far past him.

informatimago 3y ago

[flagged]

MontyCarloHall 3y ago
Like most things, the harms of closed-source {firm,soft}ware fall on a spectrum, and a black-and-white absolutist view is impractical and demagogical. When the harms of closed-source are high and hard to detect via other means (e.g. Dieselgate, like you mention), I agree that said firmware should be auditable. Maybe even for things like network cards, although in that case it would be very easy to detect any spy traffic via network traffic analyzers, and any company caught shipping network cards with embedded spy firmware would cause a news sensation and be immediately driven out of business. But when the harms are low-to-none, I'm not sure what good your proposed legislation would do. In the case of the headphones, the best argument you present against closed-source firmware is literally a joke about subliminal messaging.
simiones 3y ago
I get your point, but it should be noted that there is little evidence subliminal messages have any significant effect outside extremely specific circumstances, so this hardly seems like a real threat. More broadly, the problems you are discussing would rarely be accurately addressed by open source firmware, since so few people have the required expertise or time to actually audit that. What would be far more useful would be state authorities maintaining code review boards, and asking for auditable firmware, not necessarily open source. If a state board received access to these sources and reviewed them, that would actually fix all the problems of confidence that you mention.

weevil 3y ago

Agreed — supporting free/libre software is invariably made less attractive to most because of the people* shouting loudest about it. * some of, at least

Spivak 3y ago
Oh man this hits hard, I used to be such a strong advocate for Free Software, copyleft, open firmware and drivers. I worked on FOSS projects, was an actual "member" of the FSF during a time when I really didn't have the money to donate. The dream just like… died. There was so much pointless drama, public opinion (tbh rightfully) turned against RMS and the GPL, the banner flown by people who believed in the mission, just became another license. It was one of my first sad "don't meet your heroes" moments. I don't even bother licensing my work under the L/GPL anymore because nobody cares and it just makes my code less useful to folks.

_ktx2 3y ago

RMS did a really poor job of explaining why closed source firmware is problematic to free software, I agree, and I'll explain better below. I also have some critique of activist language. First, activist language is pretty hard for any human to listen to. Anyone that's been tackling the "long fight" of what they view as oppression has this map in their head of things that add up to their main point in life and cannot help but continually extrapolate it for people. On some topics, people eat this kind of language up. On others, it's rather dull, especially if the person using the language can't quickly connect relatable points for people. RMS was good at long-form broad thinking that was dealing with the issues at the time. He was pretty fuck all when it came to really explaining them in a digestible, conversation style manner. As for why proprietary headphone firmware hurts free software: take some Bose noise cancelling headphones and try to connect them to something like a mainstream Linux distribution like PopOS and use them on Zoom. They'll work, but only in a low quality mode, or the audio receiver will work but not the microphone. Now do the same with Airpods, or use Airpods on an Android phone. Airpods will work and you'll get high fidelity audio, but they're constantly exhibiting weird disconnection behaviors. On Linux you'll get incredibly low fidelity audio. Proprietary drivers are at the source of all of this. RMS came from a day where the pioneers of Linux and alternative operating systems weren't building them for servers. They were building them for users because Windows was expensive and the machines to run it on were more expensive. Oppression to someone like him, and many others, were linked to this and many other circumstances at the time. The idea that the optimizations of computing were available only to a few was utterly disasterous. To connect the two ideas, product x which is proprietary works best on product y which is also proprietary. It's a system that reinforces itself and excludes or marginalizes the rest, which eroded the original mission of building optimized software that is collectively free enough for anyone in the world to use. Somewhat ironically, a lot of people in this thread are complaining about diversity when really that's what most of these initiatives were born in.

MontyCarloHall 3y ago
>take some Bose noise cancelling headphones and try to connect them to something like a mainstream Linux distribution like PopOS and use them on Zoom. They'll work, but only in a low quality mode, or the audio receiver will work but not the microphone. My Bose QC45 headphones work identically on all my hardware (Mac, Linux, and occasionally Windows). They can use both standard Bluetooth or a standard 3.5mm TRS connector, neither of which requires any special drivers. Although I've never had any Linux-specific issues, I would guess that if you're experiencing them it's due more to Linux's notoriously poor audio stack than the actual hardware, which conforms to industry standards. >Now do the same with Airpods, or use Airpods on an Android phone. Airpods will work and you'll get high fidelity audio, but they're constantly exhibiting weird disconnection behaviors. On Linux you'll get incredibly low fidelity audio. I've also done this to a limited extent (AirPods on Android), and did not notice anything unusual, aside from a few missing Apple-specific features (e.g. auto-device switching, which is not part of the Bluetooth protocol). >To connect the two ideas, product x which is proprietary works best on product y which is also proprietary. It's a system that reinforces itself and excludes or marginalizes the rest It is generally in the best interest of companies to produce goods usable by a maximal marketshare; willingly excluding customers and their money is usually not a good business strategy. This is why companies voluntarily conform to standards. The main exception to this is when standards inhibit the quality of the good. In that case, companies are willing to trade a smaller marketshare for a better user experience in that smaller market (e.g. AirPods' Apple-only features). As an extreme example, consider cars. Parts are proprietary to a given model because each car is optimized for its specific market niche (size, appearance, performance, etc.), which requires all parts for a given model to be closely integrated. The engine of a Honda is not compatible with a Nissan, because engines and cars must be so tightly integrated that it would be an impossibly bad experience otherwise.

kcplate 3y ago

> He spent the whole time telling me about software freedom and how my headphones were a symbol of oppression or some such. Easily solvable by telling him “I don’t care” and placing your headphones on your head and activating the noise cancellation in his full view then ignoring him for the rest of the flight.

sparrish 3y ago
You do realize that this is exactly what most people and corporations have done to RMS and the FSF for many years now? Got tired of his inappropriate antics, brash manner, and said "I don't care" and stuck their fingers in their ears. And that's exactly why RMS should take a back seat. FSF believes the principles are important and so they should be communicated in a way that is most palatable so others can hear them and interact with them on a personal and professional level. Until that happens, most will just keep ignoring the ever-irritating RMS and in-turn FSF as they would an annoying neighbor on a flight.
- kcplate 3y ago
  It’s definitely a tough hill to climb already without your primary evangelist being tactless ass.

jottinger 3y ago

I've had this experience myself, with RMS. I actually was asking if the FSF had the right to assert the copyleft on bison, and sign a document asserting that Bison's open licensing applied to bison - who had the right to assert the license, which was open, basically. As a consultant for IBM. We were trying to USE bison, and this was when MS would chase every possible avenue to sue people for violation of copyright, so it was a big deal ... and had RMS been willing to assert that the copyleft applied to bison, that the FSF actually wrote the software and applied the copyleft to its code, IBM told me that it was willing to _defend the GPL in court_. For a signature, RMS would have had the 800-pound gorilla defending the GPL. (We were also going to make a donation to the FSF to help them along, although that wasn't part of "the deal" - it was, like, "hey, you do good stuff, we're planning on putting this in the project budget next because if we can use your stuff, that helps us a lot." And RMS first off refused to say the copyleft was assigned to bison; it did, of course, everyone knew it, but we needed the legal affirmation or it was pointless. (I can claim that I can fly, everyone knows it, but unless I'm actually airborne at some point...) Then he asked for money (less than we'd talked about budgeting internally) ANYWAY, before we'd even brought it up, if memory serves. (It's been a long time.) Just... a giant moment of jackassery.

johnnyanmac 3y ago

>A lot of his behavior is a consequence of taking his ideas to their logical conclusion. Any philosophy taken to an extreme leads to zealotry. I don't think Stallman is special in that regard. If I'm in layover I don't wanna hear anyone's elevator pitch, full stop. I'm miserable enough as is after being legally frisked and fighting airport traffic to get to a gate an hour early despite the airlines inevitably delaying the flight themselves by 2 hours. We can learn what NOT to do while embracing the aspects that made him so empassioned about this stuff to begin with.