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Yup, apparently very few capitalists around here. It's easy to shout rah rah rah in response to RMS from the sidelines but if he had his way very few of the po

by HNJohnC 13y ago

Yup, apparently very few capitalists around here. It's easy to shout rah rah rah in response to RMS from the sidelines but if he had his way very few of the posters here would be making a living writing code, perhaps they don't though, that would explain it I guess. I've not been a HN member for long but the support for Stallman here is one of the most surprising things I've seen about this place.

omegaham 13y ago
There are Congressmen that are really, really far left and far right. They're widely seen as kooks, but they serve a valuable purpose - they go against the groupthink of everyone else and get them to think about things differently. Sure, they're crazy. Often their ideas are completely at odds with reality. But the more rational parts of their beliefs also get communicated with their kookiness, and it helps everyone. For example, Dennis Kucinich made a great Congressman. That being said, he would most definitely not make a good President. Richard Stallman is the same way. Is it a terrible idea to take all of his ideas and mold the programming community in his image? Yes. It would be impractical and completely insane to expect everyone to work for free. But that doesn't mean that we should completely discount everything that he says. There are great ideas in there right alongside the craziness.
- gillianseed 13y ago
  >It would be impractical and completely insane to expect everyone to work for free. Do you have any examples of him saying that code should be free of cost. As far as I know he has no problem with people charging for programs, only that the source code should be made available to recipients, along with rights to modify and redistribute (the latter obviously poses problems for business-schemes based upon artificial scarcity). I also seem to recall him arguing for micropayment schemes to be used to finance developers (and artists), this is something which could perhaps become a reality in the (hopefully not too distant) future, as shown by successful kickstarter type projects like for example openshot: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/421164014/openshot-video-editor-for-windows-mac-and-linux http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/421164014/openshot-video...
dinkumthinkum 13y ago
You can respect and understand RMS without being a full fledged member of his ideology club. A tremendous amount of this industry exists because of Stallman, even if things like "open source" are actually not in any way representative of Stallman's view, in his own mind, they were at least an inspiration. Much good has probably been done in Stallman's name, most of which probably Stallman would think shouldn't exist in the first place. :) Anyway, you should be more fair to him. If Stallman ever gets his way and the world changes to his ideology, then we can worry!

by HNJohnC 13y ago

omegaham 13y ago

There are Congressmen that are really, really far left and far right. They're widely seen as kooks, but they serve a valuable purpose - they go against the groupthink of everyone else and get them to think about things differently. Sure, they're crazy. Often their ideas are completely at odds with reality. But the more rational parts of their beliefs also get communicated with their kookiness, and it helps everyone. For example, Dennis Kucinich made a great Congressman. That being said, he would most definitely not make a good President. Richard Stallman is the same way. Is it a terrible idea to take all of his ideas and mold the programming community in his image? Yes. It would be impractical and completely insane to expect everyone to work for free. But that doesn't mean that we should completely discount everything that he says. There are great ideas in there right alongside the craziness.

gillianseed 13y ago
>It would be impractical and completely insane to expect everyone to work for free. Do you have any examples of him saying that code should be free of cost. As far as I know he has no problem with people charging for programs, only that the source code should be made available to recipients, along with rights to modify and redistribute (the latter obviously poses problems for business-schemes based upon artificial scarcity). I also seem to recall him arguing for micropayment schemes to be used to finance developers (and artists), this is something which could perhaps become a reality in the (hopefully not too distant) future, as shown by successful kickstarter type projects like for example openshot: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/421164014/openshot-video-editor-for-windows-mac-and-linux http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/421164014/openshot-video...

dinkumthinkum 13y ago

You can respect and understand RMS without being a full fledged member of his ideology club. A tremendous amount of this industry exists because of Stallman, even if things like "open source" are actually not in any way representative of Stallman's view, in his own mind, they were at least an inspiration. Much good has probably been done in Stallman's name, most of which probably Stallman would think shouldn't exist in the first place. :) Anyway, you should be more fair to him. If Stallman ever gets his way and the world changes to his ideology, then we can worry!