4 ms·

Outspoken misanthrope with poor social skills and a tendency towards an absolutist black/white view of the world dislikes social networking? Color me surprised

by evgen 15y ago

Outspoken misanthrope with poor social skills and a tendency towards an absolutist black/white view of the world dislikes social networking? Color me surprised...

Udo 15y ago
I agree about the absolutist black/white world view but it is unclear to me how RMS is a misanthrope. Skimming the whole discussion on that mailing list it's also apparent to me that - while RMS did go offtopic by advising people to not use Facebook - poor social skills were in fact exhibited by the next commenter who replied to him in a very sarcastic and hostile way. Taking the subject matter into account it would have made sense to instead chastise Stallman for exploiting an entirely different discussion (apparently about some student project) and injecting his own absolutist view into the original story that was at best only tangentially connected to Facebook.
- msbarnett 15y ago
  Well, there is the mailing list incident where, when someone congratulated another contributor on the birth of their child, Stallman labelled the entire phenomenon of childbirth as "menacing" and went on to say "these birth announcements also spread the myth that having a baby is something to be proud of, which fuels natalist pressure, which leads to pollution, extinction of wildlife, poverty, and ultimately mass starvation." Not to get into the whole discussion about whether that was the right forum or etc, but by definition I'd say being generally anti-humanity-propogating-itself meets the bar for "misanthropy".
  - zbuc 15y ago
    Also the conversation a few weeks back where free software enthusiasts who developed non-free software at their jobs were talking with him... http://lunduke.com/?p=2273 http://lunduke.com/?p=2273 > You see, I make software for most of my living. And I talked with Stallman (in email) before the show, about how I would love to get any ideas he has on how a developer, of proprietary software, can move that software to a Free and Open license… while still keeping food on the table for his family. From a practical standpoint. > This is a topic that has come up time and again. And I really wanted to get Stallman’s thoughts on the matter. > So, near the beginning of the interview, I ask him about that. How does someone like me make the move to working on only Free Software and still support his family? > The end result was that he feels that all developers and businesses of proprietary software should fail. And that it is more important for there to not be proprietary software… than it is to be able to feed your children. > I’m not kidding. I’m not exaggerating. I’m not putting words in his mouth. I even asked him, point blank, to verify his stance. > He did not say that having Free Software is more important than kids having food to eat. I repeat: He said that it was more important that non-free software be gone… than for you to be able to feed your kids. That’s how evil he thinks non-free software is. Evil enough to justify causing significant harm to your family to do away with a small amount of it. (Of course this isn’t the first time Stallman has been anti-children.)
    - mquander 15y ago
      Do you care to elaborate? Your whole blog post is spent describing his rude tone, not addressing any of the content of his remarks. It is really, really not obvious to me whether the world would be better off if you and I stopped writing proprietary software, did something else as a career, and wrote free software as a hobby. That is a hard question. My intuition agrees with Stallman. Whether or not you agree too, it's obvious from his published opinions that he has thought hard about (and acted in accordance with) the specific goal: what helps humanity the most? That is the clear point of his answer to you and it is the polar opposite of misanthropy.
    - dreamdu5t 15y ago
      Stallman may be misanthropic but not his message.
IsTom 15y ago
That's what I've thought for a long time too, until I realized that the person writing http://www.osnews.com/story/25469/Richard_Stallman_Was_Right_All_Along http://www.osnews.com/story/25469/Richard_Stallman_Was_Right... has a point.
- pascalr 15y ago
  Wow, excellent link. I never saw it this way. Has it been posted on HN? It should be if not.
  - jamesbritt 15y ago
    http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3417033 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3417033
arkitaip 15y ago
Now that you got your ad hominem out of the way, maybe you could focus on the issues RMS brings up.
- wpietri 15y ago
  He didn't actually bring up an issue there. His message reduces to "I don't like Facebook and don't think you should use it because I think is harmful to your users in some unspecified way." For those curious, here's what appear to be his views on Facebook: http://stallman.org/facebook.html http://stallman.org/facebook.html That doesn't strike me as a serious set of issues either, more a collection of possibly-bad things put together by somebody who didn't like it from the start. That's not to say that there isn't a good case to be made for staying away from Facebook. But I don't think Stallman is making one.
praptak 15y ago
Compare RMS' achievements in the social field (you know, like starting the social movement to popularize free software) with, well, just about anyone else on this planet before judging his social skills as poor.
- Sanddancer 15y ago
  Yes, he did a lot. 25-30 years ago. What's he done lately?
  - skore 15y ago
    Sticked to his principles to remain a beacon that reminds us why the foundation he built those 25-30 years ago is still worth fighting for.
    - Sanddancer 15y ago
      I disagree. His actions lately have driven many, including myself, away from supporting GNU projects and into supporting other free alternatives. Using the GPL 3 on software such as gcc has caused many people, such as Apple, the FreeBSD foundation, and the OpenBSD foundation, to seek alternative sources for GNU software, such as the clang project and the pcc compiler project. His reluctance to use modern technology, such as cell phones, has distanced himself from many who realize the benefits of such actions, and who know that such devices are available prepaid, and with off buttons, for if you want to use them anonymously. His petty name-calling of closed-source products that he doesn't like, such as iClone for the iPhone, has served to turn off many to his message, to the detriment of the FOSS community. I agree with many of his principles, however, his time has come and gone. His view of computing seems stuck to how it existed 25-30 years ago, which is proving increasingly detrimental to recruiting new people to the cause of Free Software. By ignoring why people use closed products, such as his views on why Free Software users would use closed source dictation software ( https://lists.csail.mit.edu/pipermail/csail-related/2012-February/007145.html https://lists.csail.mit.edu/pipermail/csail-related/2012-Feb... ), he has made Free Software less capable of competing because it doesn't do what people expect software to do. Once he realizes this, and that one can and should look at why people use alternatives to GNU software, then we can possibly move forward. Unfortunately, I don't have much hope that that will happen as long as RMS is at the helm.

by evgen 15y ago

Outspoken misanthrope with poor social skills and a tendency towards an absolutist black/white view of the world dislikes social networking? Color me surprised...

Udo 15y ago

I agree about the absolutist black/white world view but it is unclear to me how RMS is a misanthrope. Skimming the whole discussion on that mailing list it's also apparent to me that - while RMS did go offtopic by advising people to not use Facebook - poor social skills were in fact exhibited by the next commenter who replied to him in a very sarcastic and hostile way. Taking the subject matter into account it would have made sense to instead chastise Stallman for exploiting an entirely different discussion (apparently about some student project) and injecting his own absolutist view into the original story that was at best only tangentially connected to Facebook.

msbarnett 15y ago
Well, there is the mailing list incident where, when someone congratulated another contributor on the birth of their child, Stallman labelled the entire phenomenon of childbirth as "menacing" and went on to say "these birth announcements also spread the myth that having a baby is something to be proud of, which fuels natalist pressure, which leads to pollution, extinction of wildlife, poverty, and ultimately mass starvation." Not to get into the whole discussion about whether that was the right forum or etc, but by definition I'd say being generally anti-humanity-propogating-itself meets the bar for "misanthropy".
- zbuc 15y ago
  Also the conversation a few weeks back where free software enthusiasts who developed non-free software at their jobs were talking with him... http://lunduke.com/?p=2273 http://lunduke.com/?p=2273 > You see, I make software for most of my living. And I talked with Stallman (in email) before the show, about how I would love to get any ideas he has on how a developer, of proprietary software, can move that software to a Free and Open license… while still keeping food on the table for his family. From a practical standpoint. > This is a topic that has come up time and again. And I really wanted to get Stallman’s thoughts on the matter. > So, near the beginning of the interview, I ask him about that. How does someone like me make the move to working on only Free Software and still support his family? > The end result was that he feels that all developers and businesses of proprietary software should fail. And that it is more important for there to not be proprietary software… than it is to be able to feed your children. > I’m not kidding. I’m not exaggerating. I’m not putting words in his mouth. I even asked him, point blank, to verify his stance. > He did not say that having Free Software is more important than kids having food to eat. I repeat: He said that it was more important that non-free software be gone… than for you to be able to feed your kids. That’s how evil he thinks non-free software is. Evil enough to justify causing significant harm to your family to do away with a small amount of it. (Of course this isn’t the first time Stallman has been anti-children.)
  - mquander 15y ago
    Do you care to elaborate? Your whole blog post is spent describing his rude tone, not addressing any of the content of his remarks. It is really, really not obvious to me whether the world would be better off if you and I stopped writing proprietary software, did something else as a career, and wrote free software as a hobby. That is a hard question. My intuition agrees with Stallman. Whether or not you agree too, it's obvious from his published opinions that he has thought hard about (and acted in accordance with) the specific goal: what helps humanity the most? That is the clear point of his answer to you and it is the polar opposite of misanthropy.
  - dreamdu5t 15y ago
    Stallman may be misanthropic but not his message.

IsTom 15y ago

That's what I've thought for a long time too, until I realized that the person writing http://www.osnews.com/story/25469/Richard_Stallman_Was_Right_All_Along http://www.osnews.com/story/25469/Richard_Stallman_Was_Right... has a point.

pascalr 15y ago
Wow, excellent link. I never saw it this way. Has it been posted on HN? It should be if not.
- jamesbritt 15y ago
  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3417033 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3417033

arkitaip 15y ago

Now that you got your ad hominem out of the way, maybe you could focus on the issues RMS brings up.

wpietri 15y ago
He didn't actually bring up an issue there. His message reduces to "I don't like Facebook and don't think you should use it because I think is harmful to your users in some unspecified way." For those curious, here's what appear to be his views on Facebook: http://stallman.org/facebook.html http://stallman.org/facebook.html That doesn't strike me as a serious set of issues either, more a collection of possibly-bad things put together by somebody who didn't like it from the start. That's not to say that there isn't a good case to be made for staying away from Facebook. But I don't think Stallman is making one.

praptak 15y ago

Compare RMS' achievements in the social field (you know, like starting the social movement to popularize free software) with, well, just about anyone else on this planet before judging his social skills as poor.

Sanddancer 15y ago
Yes, he did a lot. 25-30 years ago. What's he done lately?
- skore 15y ago
  Sticked to his principles to remain a beacon that reminds us why the foundation he built those 25-30 years ago is still worth fighting for.
  - Sanddancer 15y ago
    I disagree. His actions lately have driven many, including myself, away from supporting GNU projects and into supporting other free alternatives. Using the GPL 3 on software such as gcc has caused many people, such as Apple, the FreeBSD foundation, and the OpenBSD foundation, to seek alternative sources for GNU software, such as the clang project and the pcc compiler project. His reluctance to use modern technology, such as cell phones, has distanced himself from many who realize the benefits of such actions, and who know that such devices are available prepaid, and with off buttons, for if you want to use them anonymously. His petty name-calling of closed-source products that he doesn't like, such as iClone for the iPhone, has served to turn off many to his message, to the detriment of the FOSS community. I agree with many of his principles, however, his time has come and gone. His view of computing seems stuck to how it existed 25-30 years ago, which is proving increasingly detrimental to recruiting new people to the cause of Free Software. By ignoring why people use closed products, such as his views on why Free Software users would use closed source dictation software ( https://lists.csail.mit.edu/pipermail/csail-related/2012-February/007145.html https://lists.csail.mit.edu/pipermail/csail-related/2012-Feb... ), he has made Free Software less capable of competing because it doesn't do what people expect software to do. Once he realizes this, and that one can and should look at why people use alternatives to GNU software, then we can possibly move forward. Unfortunately, I don't have much hope that that will happen as long as RMS is at the helm.