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I think that's an unreasonable lens for viewing his work. Of course he values purity over practicality. That's his entire platform. His decision making process

I think that's an unreasonable lens for viewing his work. Of course he values purity over practicality. That's his entire platform. His decision making process always prioritizes supporting Free Software over proprietary efforts, pragmatism be damned. Expecting Stallman to make life easier for commercial vendors is like expecting PETA to recommend a good foie gras farm. That's not what they do.

dralley 2y ago
>Expecting Stallman to make life easier for commercial vendors is like expecting PETA to recommend a good foie gras farm. That's not what they do. He threw open-source developers under the bus in the process. As a result approximately nobody writes GCC plugins, open source or otherwise.
- kstrauser 2y ago
  Alternatively, if you join a Stallman-led Free Software project and hope he'll accept your ideas for making life easier for proprietary vendors, you're gonna have a bad time. I mean, the GNU Emacs FAQ for MS Windows (https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/efaq-w32.html#Why-Emacs-on-Windows https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/efaq-w32...) says: > It is not our goal to “help Windows users” by making text editing on Windows more convenient. We aim to replace proprietary software, not to enhance it. So why support GNU Emacs on Windows? > We hope that the experience of using GNU Emacs on Windows will give programmers a taste of freedom, and that this will later inspire them to move to a free operating system such as GNU/Linux. That is the main valid reason to support free applications on nonfree operating systems. RMS has been exceedingly clear about his views for decades. At this point it's hard to be surprised that he’ll make a pro-Free Software decision every time, without fail. That doesn't mean you have to agree with his decisions, of course! But to be shocked or disappointed by them is a sign of not understanding his platform.
  - School-Cotton 2y ago
    But the person you're responding to never said he was shocked or disappointed by the views; he just said the views are bad/counterproductive.
    - kstrauser 2y ago
      But they're only bad/counterproductive when assessed against their own goals. They're a lot more reasonable if you assess them against Stallman's, where you could say "yeah, these actions kept GCC from becoming a handy tool for proprietary interests who don't want to share their work back with us".
    - Keyframe 2y ago
      I found out the older I get the more sense rms makes.
      - kstrauser 2y ago
        On the subject of software freedom, I hate how accurately prophetic he is. RMS: Here’s how they'll get ya! Me: Nice, but that'd never happen. Vendor: Here’s how we got ya! Me: Dammit. Seriously, he must have a working crystal ball. Now, my agreement with him starts and ends on that subject. He says plenty of other things I wholly disagree with. But his warnings about proprietary software lock-in? Every. Single. Time.
        Keyframe 2y ago
        for the record, I meant software freedoms and sometimes technical stuff only!
  - johnisgood 2y ago
    I mean, I think he is right. If everyone stopped supporting Windows, it would have long died out in favor of easy-to-install Linux distributions... probably.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - codedokode 2y ago
      In reality though Microsoft just added a WSL; not bad: Linux code can run on Windows now. Also, if you want Windows to die you need to work with OEMs: I assume that most users simply use whatever OS is pre-installed.
      - johnisgood 2y ago
        I agree.
      - pjmlp 2y ago
        As gray dog around the prairie, had Microsoft actually been serious with POSIX subsystem on Windows NT/2000, instead of some marketing material and low level effort, GNU/Linux adoption would never taken off, at least not at a level that would have mattered. With OS X on one side, and POSIX subsystem on Windows NT/2000 side, everyone would be doing their UNIX like workflows without thinking once to try out GNU/Linux. At my university we only cared about Linux on its early days, Slackware 2.0 days, because naturally we couldn't have DG/UX at home, and that POSIX support was really unusable beyond toy examples.
Analemma_ 2y ago
> His decision making process always prioritizes supporting Free Software over proprietary efforts, pragmatism be damned. No, this is giving him too much credit. His stance on gcc wasn't just purity over pragmatism, it was antithetical to Free Software. The entire point of Free Software is to let users modify the software to make it more useful to them, there is no point to Free Software if that freedom doesn't exist - I might as well use proprietary software then, it makes no difference. Stallman fought tooth and nail to make gcc harder for the end user to modify, he directly opposed letting users make their tools better for them. He claims it was for the greater good, but in practice he was undermining the whole reason for free software to exit. And for what? It was all for nothing anyway, proprietary software hasn't relied on the compiler as the lynchpin of its strategy for decades.

dralley 2y ago

>Expecting Stallman to make life easier for commercial vendors is like expecting PETA to recommend a good foie gras farm. That's not what they do. He threw open-source developers under the bus in the process. As a result approximately nobody writes GCC plugins, open source or otherwise.

kstrauser 2y ago
Alternatively, if you join a Stallman-led Free Software project and hope he'll accept your ideas for making life easier for proprietary vendors, you're gonna have a bad time. I mean, the GNU Emacs FAQ for MS Windows (https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/efaq-w32.html#Why-Emacs-on-Windows https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/efaq-w32...) says: > It is not our goal to “help Windows users” by making text editing on Windows more convenient. We aim to replace proprietary software, not to enhance it. So why support GNU Emacs on Windows? > We hope that the experience of using GNU Emacs on Windows will give programmers a taste of freedom, and that this will later inspire them to move to a free operating system such as GNU/Linux. That is the main valid reason to support free applications on nonfree operating systems. RMS has been exceedingly clear about his views for decades. At this point it's hard to be surprised that he’ll make a pro-Free Software decision every time, without fail. That doesn't mean you have to agree with his decisions, of course! But to be shocked or disappointed by them is a sign of not understanding his platform.
- School-Cotton 2y ago
  But the person you're responding to never said he was shocked or disappointed by the views; he just said the views are bad/counterproductive.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    But they're only bad/counterproductive when assessed against their own goals. They're a lot more reasonable if you assess them against Stallman's, where you could say "yeah, these actions kept GCC from becoming a handy tool for proprietary interests who don't want to share their work back with us".
  - Keyframe 2y ago
    I found out the older I get the more sense rms makes.
    - kstrauser 2y ago
      On the subject of software freedom, I hate how accurately prophetic he is. RMS: Here’s how they'll get ya! Me: Nice, but that'd never happen. Vendor: Here’s how we got ya! Me: Dammit. Seriously, he must have a working crystal ball. Now, my agreement with him starts and ends on that subject. He says plenty of other things I wholly disagree with. But his warnings about proprietary software lock-in? Every. Single. Time.
      - Keyframe 2y ago
        for the record, I meant software freedoms and sometimes technical stuff only!
- johnisgood 2y ago
  I mean, I think he is right. If everyone stopped supporting Windows, it would have long died out in favor of easy-to-install Linux distributions... probably.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - codedokode 2y ago
    In reality though Microsoft just added a WSL; not bad: Linux code can run on Windows now. Also, if you want Windows to die you need to work with OEMs: I assume that most users simply use whatever OS is pre-installed.
    - johnisgood 2y ago
      I agree.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      As gray dog around the prairie, had Microsoft actually been serious with POSIX subsystem on Windows NT/2000, instead of some marketing material and low level effort, GNU/Linux adoption would never taken off, at least not at a level that would have mattered. With OS X on one side, and POSIX subsystem on Windows NT/2000 side, everyone would be doing their UNIX like workflows without thinking once to try out GNU/Linux. At my university we only cared about Linux on its early days, Slackware 2.0 days, because naturally we couldn't have DG/UX at home, and that POSIX support was really unusable beyond toy examples.

Analemma_ 2y ago

> His decision making process always prioritizes supporting Free Software over proprietary efforts, pragmatism be damned. No, this is giving him too much credit. His stance on gcc wasn't just purity over pragmatism, it was antithetical to Free Software. The entire point of Free Software is to let users modify the software to make it more useful to them, there is no point to Free Software if that freedom doesn't exist - I might as well use proprietary software then, it makes no difference. Stallman fought tooth and nail to make gcc harder for the end user to modify, he directly opposed letting users make their tools better for them. He claims it was for the greater good, but in practice he was undermining the whole reason for free software to exit. And for what? It was all for nothing anyway, proprietary software hasn't relied on the compiler as the lynchpin of its strategy for decades.