8 ms·

The reasoning in this short message seems very unlike anything else I've heard from Stallman. Has he changed a lot since 2001? From what I've read I'd gander th

The reasoning in this short message seems very unlike anything else I've heard from Stallman. Has he changed a lot since 2001? From what I've read I'd gander that Stallman has become markedly less pragmatic (or more radical?) since this was written. Listening to him speak in 2009 was surreal, especially during the Q&A session. I can't recall any specific quotes but he was ready to burn ten bridges for an ounce of symbolic freedom. The whole time I kept thinking of this John McCarthy (coined the term AI, "discovered" lisp) quote: "He's a man of principle. He'd cut his mother's throat for a principle."

ajross 14y ago
Stallman has been viewed as "radical" his whole career. Certainly there was nothing more "pragmatic" about him in 2001. The important distinction is that the things (you don't list specifics, so I'm just assuming) that Stallman finds "important" seem like senseless distractions to his audience. It's hard to remember now, but in 2001 the idea of patent-encumbered algorithms being a threat to free software was not nearly as well-understood as it is now. Most people in the community were happy to download and build LAME (or whatever), and just shrugged when the Linux distros turned out not to be able to ship it. Stallman was right (and to be clear: he'd been screaming about patents for a decade already in 2001). We were wrong. This has been a pattern his whole career. So, again without actual evidence, I'm just going to guess that within a decade that stuff you heard in 2009 that sounded so "radical" is going to seem a lot more clear in hindsight.
- angersock 14y ago
  Stallman has two really, really annoying features: 1. He is a grating and uncompromising lunatic, and does not make any attempts to present himself as agreeable to other people. 2. He's been proven completely correct on everything he's warned us of in this industry to date.
  - rimantas 14y ago
    #2 is total bullshit.
    - holri 14y ago
      can you elaborate on that?
    - olefoo 14y ago
      [ citation needed ] on both the declaration that he's been proven right and on your slapdash dismissal of that assertion. And, please, could you be more of a contributor and less like an aggressive drunk starting a bar fight?
      - cgh 14y ago
        This very story is a potential example. The mp3 patents in the US will expire in 2015. What "harm" has been done in that time? Fraunhofer made a pile of dough and that's about it. The open alternatives failed to catch on and my guess is that after 2015, mp3s will still be used as before. Very few users will know or care that the patents have expired. I guess you could say Stallman wasn't wrong exactly, just unnecessarily alarmist over this particular issue. I'm not saying software patents are benign, by the way - I'm only addressing mp3 here.
        nitrogen 14y ago
        What we lost was a competitive disadvantage for Linux distros and countless software and hardware products never released by independent developers. Failure lacks a marketing budget.
        cgh 14y ago
        I don't think desktop Linux's competitive disadvantage had much to do with mp3s, given its tremendous deficiencies elsewhere. I say this as someone who contributed to KDE back in the 3.x days and has been running Linux since 1997. But that's just an opinion - I guess it's possible a lot of people were put off by the hoops necessary to install an mp3 player, although to be honest I don't recall it being a problem for a good decade or so now.
  - bane 14y ago
    2. He's been proven kinda correct on everything he's warned us of in this industry to date...yet for the most part it hasn't really mattered all that much.
    - duaneb 14y ago
      > yet for the most part it hasn't really mattered all that much. I'm a little confused by what you mean. Do you mean what he's afraid about doesn't matter that much? Considering the massive patent lawsuits flying around I think that's pretty blatantly false. I mean, some of this has been ameliorated by industry's unexpected generosity towards the open source world (Google via a ton of shit, Apple via LLVM), but certainly not all of it. Personally, I've stopped ignoring what Stallman is saying. I'm not saying he doesn't have a side of him that worries about completely irrelevant shit, but I think he's been proven well enough on important topics that he deserves our (as hackers, consumers, and business owners) respect, even if you decide you disagree with him.
      - bane 14y ago
        I guess I'm being too strong. I think what I mean is that if the world had followed RMS in keeping away from non free software we'd all be surfing the web through daemon that scrape a URL and then emails us the results. Put another way. RMS has warned about the dangers of hot water and has spent a lifetime taking cold showers. He's right of course, hot water can be dangerous, but warm water is just fine and gets things done. He's presenting a binary choice when its not the choice that matters. It's about how hot the water can get for your needs and not be dangerous is where all the important things are happening. I don't really care about what RMS says because it locks you into thinking binary extremes. Free or evil, the past or some hypothetical future, when it's the now that matters.
        vanderZwan 14y ago
        I guess I'm being too strong. I think what I mean is that if the world had followed RMS in keeping away from non free software we'd all be surfing the web through daemon that scrape a URL and then emails us the results. You don't think massive adoption of open source software would not at all imply that all the R&D effort spent on everything else over the last decades would have shifted to that instead?
- chimeracoder 14y ago
  To further this point, take a look at "Why you shouldn't use the Lesser GPL for your next library", which outlines Stallman's very pragmatic reasoning for his strategy regarding the GNU C libraries: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html > So, again without actual evidence, I'm just going to guess that within a decade that stuff you heard in 2009 that sounded so "radical" is going to seem a lot more clear in hindsight. I remember reading what Stallman said about cell phones, location tracking, and privacy back in ~2004 and thinking he was being paranoid. Boy was I wrong.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  I think the problem is not so much with his message but with the steps that he suggests to address it. People are uncomfortable with doing things that severely change their lifestyle and it's easier to rationalise someone as crazy than it is to change. In 2001 there were plenty of people who were critical of Microsoft and their market share abuse but this was at a time when saying "stop using Windows" was akin to saying "stop driving a car".
  - bmj 14y ago
    In 2001 there were plenty of people who were critical of Microsoft and their market share abuse but this was at a time when saying "stop using Windows" was akin to saying "stop driving a car". Why was this? Perhaps because the state of free (as in speech) operating systems didn't allow most people to make the switch (put aside the corporate world for now). People want stuff that just works[0], and looks relatively pretty, and that was really not the state of GNU/Linux desktops at the turn of the century. I realize that the developers have fought against certain things outside of their control (closed source drivers, for instance), but there's always been that hacker attitude driving GNU/Linux development and usage, so the concerns of the non-power user are often an afterthought. If there existed a legitimate alternative to Windows with the same ease of use, it would be far less difficult to convince someone to switch. [0] Yes, I know, Windows crashes and Plug and Play is often not that.
    - pekk 14y ago
      Installing Windows was often complicated at the turn of the century, too.
      - bmj 14y ago
        How many "normal" users actually installed Windows, rather than just having it because it was already installed on the computer they purchased from Best Buy?
  - dllthomas 14y ago
    > In 2001 there were plenty of people who were critical of Microsoft and their market share abuse but this was at a time when saying "stop using Windows" was akin to saying "stop driving a car". In 2001, that wasn't the case at all. You still needed to put in some elbow grease, and there were corner cases for sure, but I was using Linux with no problems (except a lack of Counter-Strike), had been for years and so had my parents.
babarock 14y ago
Regardless of how you feel about the man, it's very difficult to predict when he's willing to compromise. LGPL is another common example of unexpected (at least for me) compromise.
elwin 14y ago
> Listening to him speak in 2009 was surreal, especially during the Q&A session. I can't recall any specific quotes but he was ready to burn ten bridges for an ounce of symbolic freedom. Was that when RPI ACM brought him in to speak? I recall he spent a while complaining about Linus letting binary blobs into the kernel. Then in the Q&A, he got trolled by someone claiming a music sample business was being undercut by CC-licensed competitors. RMS didn't handle that well. In my opinion, RMS is actually very pragmatic, meaning he's willing to do almost anything to further the goal. He only appears radical because he has uncommon ideas about what the goal is and what furthers it. His radicality varies according to pragmatic considerations. He'll give his blessing to BSD-style licenses in a case like this, and he'll hold out against GCC plugins for years when he thinks that furthers freedom. From a purely principled point of view, Free Software advocates might want to weaken copyright for software. RMS hasn't put much effort into that, because it would weaken the GPL. It would also be harder for Free software to compete if all software could be distributed free and legally. So he rarely attacks copyright in general, for pragmatic reasons.
pavanky 14y ago
Stallman on steam for Linux (in 2012/2013 ?). "However, if you're going to use these games, you're better off using them on GNU/Linux rather than on Microsoft Windows. At least you avoid the harm to your freedom that Windows would do. Thus, in direct practical terms, this development can do both harm and good. It might encourage GNU/Linux users to install these games, and it might encourage users of the games to replace Windows with GNU/Linux. My guess is that the direct good effect will be bigger than the direct harm. But there is also an indirect effect: what does the use of these games teach people in our community?" http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/nonfree-games.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/nonfree-games.html He may not be as pragmatic as you would like. But he has his valid reasons and walks the talk. It is important to not be offended when he calls you unethical for using / writing non-free software.
rivd 14y ago
Being less radical would diffuse his message and make it more difficult to explain to the masses. I dont agree to with him to extent he make his points and historically he has always acted "radical", so the thing im trying to say is very arguable. But his uncompromising stance could very well be a pragmatic approach, because there is next to no one doing it instead of him.
dasht 14y ago
The reasoning in this short message has been a consistent part of RMS' talk and actions since the very beginning of the GNU project. Earlier than Ogg Vorbis, the very existence of the LGPL is an example of similar reasoning, applied. You wrote: "I can't recall any specific quotes but he was ready to burn ten bridges" I think you might have been conditioned to expect RMS to be that kind of self-defeating extremist because many people who are opposed to him, including some who pretend otherwise, describe him that way.
bitwize 14y ago
He's both pragmatic and radical. He feels that using free software is morally superior to using proprietary software -- and is unwilling to concede that point. But it's not a binary distinction between the righteousness of free software and the sin and damnation of proprietary software. There are gradients of freedom that can be climbed; so Stallman will defend the use of non-GPL or proprietary software in situations where there are no other options, and said use gets more people to use free software. For example, a port of a widely-used proprietary CAD system to (GNU/)Linux would be viewed as a good move by him, but only as a precursor to the development of just-as-good free CAD systems.
spiralpolitik 14y ago
I think it's not that Stallman has become more radical it's more that the mainstream of the free software community has shifted away from Stallman making him seem more radical and more fundamentalist. Really he should have stepped out of the discussion about 10 years ago to make way for someone more pragmatic. The reality of the situation is that for the foreseeable future software patents are here to stay and the sooner the free software organizations get themselves involved in the committees that define things like media standards and start playing up the advantages of a "free" (as in software) implementations for everybody involved the sooner the damaging effects of software patents in these areas will be mitigated. Sadly with Stallman as a figurehead the Free Software community isn't in the same room as these discussions. In fact they aren't even in the same building. They are looked on as the crazy people on the streets with the "end of the world is nigh" flags. And that is the real tragedy of the whole affair.

ajross 14y ago

Stallman has been viewed as "radical" his whole career. Certainly there was nothing more "pragmatic" about him in 2001. The important distinction is that the things (you don't list specifics, so I'm just assuming) that Stallman finds "important" seem like senseless distractions to his audience. It's hard to remember now, but in 2001 the idea of patent-encumbered algorithms being a threat to free software was not nearly as well-understood as it is now. Most people in the community were happy to download and build LAME (or whatever), and just shrugged when the Linux distros turned out not to be able to ship it. Stallman was right (and to be clear: he'd been screaming about patents for a decade already in 2001). We were wrong. This has been a pattern his whole career. So, again without actual evidence, I'm just going to guess that within a decade that stuff you heard in 2009 that sounded so "radical" is going to seem a lot more clear in hindsight.

angersock 14y ago
Stallman has two really, really annoying features: 1. He is a grating and uncompromising lunatic, and does not make any attempts to present himself as agreeable to other people. 2. He's been proven completely correct on everything he's warned us of in this industry to date.
- rimantas 14y ago
  #2 is total bullshit.
  - holri 14y ago
    can you elaborate on that?
  - olefoo 14y ago
    [ citation needed ] on both the declaration that he's been proven right and on your slapdash dismissal of that assertion. And, please, could you be more of a contributor and less like an aggressive drunk starting a bar fight?
    - cgh 14y ago
      This very story is a potential example. The mp3 patents in the US will expire in 2015. What "harm" has been done in that time? Fraunhofer made a pile of dough and that's about it. The open alternatives failed to catch on and my guess is that after 2015, mp3s will still be used as before. Very few users will know or care that the patents have expired. I guess you could say Stallman wasn't wrong exactly, just unnecessarily alarmist over this particular issue. I'm not saying software patents are benign, by the way - I'm only addressing mp3 here.
      - nitrogen 14y ago
        What we lost was a competitive disadvantage for Linux distros and countless software and hardware products never released by independent developers. Failure lacks a marketing budget.
        cgh 14y ago
        I don't think desktop Linux's competitive disadvantage had much to do with mp3s, given its tremendous deficiencies elsewhere. I say this as someone who contributed to KDE back in the 3.x days and has been running Linux since 1997. But that's just an opinion - I guess it's possible a lot of people were put off by the hoops necessary to install an mp3 player, although to be honest I don't recall it being a problem for a good decade or so now.
- bane 14y ago
  2. He's been proven kinda correct on everything he's warned us of in this industry to date...yet for the most part it hasn't really mattered all that much.
  - duaneb 14y ago
    > yet for the most part it hasn't really mattered all that much. I'm a little confused by what you mean. Do you mean what he's afraid about doesn't matter that much? Considering the massive patent lawsuits flying around I think that's pretty blatantly false. I mean, some of this has been ameliorated by industry's unexpected generosity towards the open source world (Google via a ton of shit, Apple via LLVM), but certainly not all of it. Personally, I've stopped ignoring what Stallman is saying. I'm not saying he doesn't have a side of him that worries about completely irrelevant shit, but I think he's been proven well enough on important topics that he deserves our (as hackers, consumers, and business owners) respect, even if you decide you disagree with him.
    - bane 14y ago
      I guess I'm being too strong. I think what I mean is that if the world had followed RMS in keeping away from non free software we'd all be surfing the web through daemon that scrape a URL and then emails us the results. Put another way. RMS has warned about the dangers of hot water and has spent a lifetime taking cold showers. He's right of course, hot water can be dangerous, but warm water is just fine and gets things done. He's presenting a binary choice when its not the choice that matters. It's about how hot the water can get for your needs and not be dangerous is where all the important things are happening. I don't really care about what RMS says because it locks you into thinking binary extremes. Free or evil, the past or some hypothetical future, when it's the now that matters.
      - vanderZwan 14y ago
        I guess I'm being too strong. I think what I mean is that if the world had followed RMS in keeping away from non free software we'd all be surfing the web through daemon that scrape a URL and then emails us the results. You don't think massive adoption of open source software would not at all imply that all the R&D effort spent on everything else over the last decades would have shifted to that instead?
chimeracoder 14y ago
To further this point, take a look at "Why you shouldn't use the Lesser GPL for your next library", which outlines Stallman's very pragmatic reasoning for his strategy regarding the GNU C libraries: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html > So, again without actual evidence, I'm just going to guess that within a decade that stuff you heard in 2009 that sounded so "radical" is going to seem a lot more clear in hindsight. I remember reading what Stallman said about cell phones, location tracking, and privacy back in ~2004 and thinking he was being paranoid. Boy was I wrong.
jiggy2011 14y ago
I think the problem is not so much with his message but with the steps that he suggests to address it. People are uncomfortable with doing things that severely change their lifestyle and it's easier to rationalise someone as crazy than it is to change. In 2001 there were plenty of people who were critical of Microsoft and their market share abuse but this was at a time when saying "stop using Windows" was akin to saying "stop driving a car".
- bmj 14y ago
  In 2001 there were plenty of people who were critical of Microsoft and their market share abuse but this was at a time when saying "stop using Windows" was akin to saying "stop driving a car". Why was this? Perhaps because the state of free (as in speech) operating systems didn't allow most people to make the switch (put aside the corporate world for now). People want stuff that just works[0], and looks relatively pretty, and that was really not the state of GNU/Linux desktops at the turn of the century. I realize that the developers have fought against certain things outside of their control (closed source drivers, for instance), but there's always been that hacker attitude driving GNU/Linux development and usage, so the concerns of the non-power user are often an afterthought. If there existed a legitimate alternative to Windows with the same ease of use, it would be far less difficult to convince someone to switch. [0] Yes, I know, Windows crashes and Plug and Play is often not that.
  - pekk 14y ago
    Installing Windows was often complicated at the turn of the century, too.
    - bmj 14y ago
      How many "normal" users actually installed Windows, rather than just having it because it was already installed on the computer they purchased from Best Buy?
- dllthomas 14y ago
  > In 2001 there were plenty of people who were critical of Microsoft and their market share abuse but this was at a time when saying "stop using Windows" was akin to saying "stop driving a car". In 2001, that wasn't the case at all. You still needed to put in some elbow grease, and there were corner cases for sure, but I was using Linux with no problems (except a lack of Counter-Strike), had been for years and so had my parents.

babarock 14y ago

Regardless of how you feel about the man, it's very difficult to predict when he's willing to compromise. LGPL is another common example of unexpected (at least for me) compromise.

elwin 14y ago

> Listening to him speak in 2009 was surreal, especially during the Q&A session. I can't recall any specific quotes but he was ready to burn ten bridges for an ounce of symbolic freedom. Was that when RPI ACM brought him in to speak? I recall he spent a while complaining about Linus letting binary blobs into the kernel. Then in the Q&A, he got trolled by someone claiming a music sample business was being undercut by CC-licensed competitors. RMS didn't handle that well. In my opinion, RMS is actually very pragmatic, meaning he's willing to do almost anything to further the goal. He only appears radical because he has uncommon ideas about what the goal is and what furthers it. His radicality varies according to pragmatic considerations. He'll give his blessing to BSD-style licenses in a case like this, and he'll hold out against GCC plugins for years when he thinks that furthers freedom. From a purely principled point of view, Free Software advocates might want to weaken copyright for software. RMS hasn't put much effort into that, because it would weaken the GPL. It would also be harder for Free software to compete if all software could be distributed free and legally. So he rarely attacks copyright in general, for pragmatic reasons.

pavanky 14y ago

Stallman on steam for Linux (in 2012/2013 ?). "However, if you're going to use these games, you're better off using them on GNU/Linux rather than on Microsoft Windows. At least you avoid the harm to your freedom that Windows would do. Thus, in direct practical terms, this development can do both harm and good. It might encourage GNU/Linux users to install these games, and it might encourage users of the games to replace Windows with GNU/Linux. My guess is that the direct good effect will be bigger than the direct harm. But there is also an indirect effect: what does the use of these games teach people in our community?" http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/nonfree-games.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/nonfree-games.html He may not be as pragmatic as you would like. But he has his valid reasons and walks the talk. It is important to not be offended when he calls you unethical for using / writing non-free software.

rivd 14y ago

Being less radical would diffuse his message and make it more difficult to explain to the masses. I dont agree to with him to extent he make his points and historically he has always acted "radical", so the thing im trying to say is very arguable. But his uncompromising stance could very well be a pragmatic approach, because there is next to no one doing it instead of him.

dasht 14y ago

The reasoning in this short message has been a consistent part of RMS' talk and actions since the very beginning of the GNU project. Earlier than Ogg Vorbis, the very existence of the LGPL is an example of similar reasoning, applied. You wrote: "I can't recall any specific quotes but he was ready to burn ten bridges" I think you might have been conditioned to expect RMS to be that kind of self-defeating extremist because many people who are opposed to him, including some who pretend otherwise, describe him that way.

bitwize 14y ago

He's both pragmatic and radical. He feels that using free software is morally superior to using proprietary software -- and is unwilling to concede that point. But it's not a binary distinction between the righteousness of free software and the sin and damnation of proprietary software. There are gradients of freedom that can be climbed; so Stallman will defend the use of non-GPL or proprietary software in situations where there are no other options, and said use gets more people to use free software. For example, a port of a widely-used proprietary CAD system to (GNU/)Linux would be viewed as a good move by him, but only as a precursor to the development of just-as-good free CAD systems.

spiralpolitik 14y ago

I think it's not that Stallman has become more radical it's more that the mainstream of the free software community has shifted away from Stallman making him seem more radical and more fundamentalist. Really he should have stepped out of the discussion about 10 years ago to make way for someone more pragmatic. The reality of the situation is that for the foreseeable future software patents are here to stay and the sooner the free software organizations get themselves involved in the committees that define things like media standards and start playing up the advantages of a "free" (as in software) implementations for everybody involved the sooner the damaging effects of software patents in these areas will be mitigated. Sadly with Stallman as a figurehead the Free Software community isn't in the same room as these discussions. In fact they aren't even in the same building. They are looked on as the crazy people on the streets with the "end of the world is nigh" flags. And that is the real tragedy of the whole affair.