6 ms·

Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

61 points by bpierre 12y ago

vezzy-fnord 12y ago
Previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2477586 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2477586
pif 12y ago
> That said, I nor the people that I spoke with about your talk found you to be a particularly charismatic or persuasive speaker. The only people that seemed convinced by your speech were the ones who had already been leaning towards your point of view to start with. I had the same impression a few years ago when Stallman came and gave a talk at CERN. I already agreed with him on most of his points, but I didn't expect anybody to change their mind just because of the talk.
- danudey 12y ago
  I went to a talk Stallman gave when he was in Vancouver a few years ago. I found him not only uncharismatic, but almost actively so. Rather than promoting the FSF's agenda, I left with an even worse impression of it than I had originally had. I give Stallman credit for his commitment to his cause, but at the same time I have to criticize him for maintaining his methods. You want people to stop using Google Docs, because it's proprietary and hordes your data under Google's control? How about encouraging, spearheading, and promoting the creation of an open-source alternative? The suggestion of 'Just don't use Google Docs' isn't practical; people use it for a reason, and he doesn't seem to understand it, presumably because he doesn't 'collaborate' on documents the way that teams often have to. But if you put a free alternative in front of people, I'd wager you'd get a lot more converts. Hell, how about just some modifications to OpenOffice to allow multi-user document edits using your native app, facilitated by a central server or peer-to-peer networking (e.g. zeroconf/avahi). Boom, now your full-featured word processor, which is better than Google Docs, has all the features you want, plus a local copy of the file. Stallman's arguments seem to be 'This thing you like is bad, so just don't have it'. It's like someone without any children saying "Why do you need a playpen? And so many toys? And baby gates? Just don't let your kid go near the stairs, problem solved.' If you don't understand the challenges involved, which he obviously does not, you can't really provide input on the process. He's also generally opposed to Clang/LLVM, for the sole reason that it provides an even more freely-licensed replacement for GCC. Now don't get me wrong, GCC is ridiculously important, and might be the most important thing the FSF has ever produced, but it also devolved into a complex, unmaintainable mess. Very few people in the world were capable of adding substantial features, and even fewer were willing to do so. Now we have a competitor, an open-source compiler toolchain which provides better results faster than GCC, while also including tons of new features that makes a lot of work easier for everyone (e.g. integrating source code parsing into your IDE so you can find programming errors as easily as your spell checker can correct words). Clang/LLVM have forced the GCC team to sit up and start implementing all the things they had no time or interest to implement before. Now everyone gets a better compiler, no matter what OS you're on or what you choose to use. GCC is a significantly better compiler, and Apple is largely to blame. But because Apple is involved, LLVM is bad, because it can be used in non-free build systems, like Apple's or Adobe's. And yet, despite Apple's use of it in non-free software, it's still far better than GCC in a lot of ways. So his fundamental objection is that proprietary software exists and can be used, and not that it's being forced on users. Apple and other corporations have advanced the state of computing and compiler technology, and he's upset about it because of the very reasons these corporations were able and willing to put the money in to give us all something better. I can't take him seriously anymore. He's been tenured for too long, and disconnected from users for so long. He has a lot to say about how the users of 1995 should use their computers, but nothing new since then.
  - the_af 12y ago
    Re: Clang/LLVM vs GCC, you need to understand Stallman actually stands for Free Software and considers the aims of Open Source Software as misguided. Clang is not "more freely-licensed" according to the FSF's definition. Once you understand this, you'll see Stallman's position is quite consistent.
    - danudey 12y ago
      I perfectly understand his position, and that his Freedom has to come via restrictions (just like our personal freedom requires the rule of law). I don't think 'more freely licensed' is ambiguous, in the sense that the license allows more freedom of use of the code. It's not 'more Freely licensed', and it's not 'more free' (or 'more Free'), but in the end none of that is really relevant to the point I'm making. The point, specifically, is that GCC is made better, and people who endorse, enjoy, and use Free Software have a better product to use, specifically because Clang/LLVM exist. He doesn't have to like the licensing, but it's an inherently better product in a lot of ways and his argument seems to be 'it can be used non-freely so who cares'. He can only plug his ears and sing to himself for so long before the world passes him by, and by and large that's what's happened already.
pif 12y ago
> That said, I nor the people that I spoke with about your talk found you to be a particularly charismatic or persuasive speaker. The only people that seemed convinced by your speech were the ones who had already been leaning towards your point of view to start with. I had the same impression a few years ago when Stallman came and gave a talk at CERN. I already agreed with him on most of his points, but I didn't expect anybody to change their mind just because of the talk.
pokpokpok 12y ago
I believe that Stallman is going to be Stallman. He made an incredible contribution to society, but what the free software movement needs with regards to public awareness is a Neil Degrasse Tyson / Temple Grandin / Steve Irwin.
- yepguy 12y ago
  I think you're looking for Eben Moglen.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
angersock 12y ago
There's a great deal to be said on message-crafting. Leave that up to more moderate folks, like ESR (and yeah, that kind of tells you how extreme rms is, that Eric Scott Raymond is a moderate). Stallman and the FSF are basically the platinum standard by which all free software rhetoric is judged. It is of utmost importance that they not bridge one iota. They are the reference implementation for what it means to have truly free software, what it means to value philosophy over culture, and to value ideals over pragmatism. That's cost them, and yeah, that doesn't make them popular. But you know what? Their track record has been pretty correct. The number of infringements and abuses of power they have warned against have only multiplied--and will continue to multiply. They're going to lose, of course, because the people they're trying to help don't want help. The people whose freedoms they hold dear forsake them and mock them and sell out at the smallest sign of convenience. It's a forgone conclusion--so, they might as well fail as martyrs instead of salesmen.
- jfb 12y ago
  The problem is that ESR and the "open source" people have a fundamentally different understanding of software freedom than do the FSF. I'm not judging one over the other, but I think it's a mistake to conflate the two. It's not simply the narcissism of small differences; they have fundamentally incompatible motives, even if their means can be seem as congruent.
  - angersock 12y ago
    I think it's worth observing that the FSF position--absolute as it is--is by construction incompatible with any other motive. It seems like the best that can be done, for now, is to have congruent means. :)
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > The problem is that ESR and the "open source" people have a fundamentally different understanding of software freedom than do the FSF. No, if you read the Open Source Definition and the Free Software Definition, you'll find that there understanding of software freedom is pretty much identical. Their ideas of the moral purpose of advocating for software freedom and/or the most effective tactics of advocating for software freedom differ, certainly.
cwyers 12y ago
...am I the only person who didn't know that Stallman is a 9/11 truther?
- lukifer 12y ago
  I look forward to the day when 9/11 enters the same category as the JFK assassination, and questioning the official story is merely fringe and not (necessarily) crazy. 2300+ engineers are on record disputing the science of the 9/11 Commission; even if they're utterly mistaken, it doesn't mean every single one is a paranoid lunatic.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- mark_l_watson 12y ago
  I try to listen to all of his talks on the web and I don't think that I have ever heard him say that, but I might have missed it. BTW, those four images are inflamatory. I can't find them on the fsf.org web site. If the author placed those there, and they have nothing to do with the FSF or Stallman, then this article should be hell banned, if that is possible. If Those four inflamatory images are from FSF or Stallman's web properties then I would like to see evidence (URLs please). Shame, shame, shame on the author if he just placed those images to be provacative.
  - dunstad 12y ago
    https://stallman.org/stopping-terrorists.html https://stallman.org/stopping-terrorists.html In a footnote at the bottom here, he says he believes (believed?) Cheney played a role.
    - mark_l_watson 12y ago
      Thanks for the link. I know a few people who think that Cheney knew 9/11 was going to happen. Personally I doubt it.
    - emilsedgh 12y ago
scrame 12y ago
> You don't get somebody off heroin by lecturing them about how they should value their freedom; you switch them over to methadone for a while and let them slowly detox. Really bad analogy. That's like saying the best way to quit smoking is to start chewing tobacco to give your lungs a rest.
- wanda 12y ago
  Well is that not the point of nicotine gum and patches? Anyway, it's a bad analogy because apathy regarding privacy is not an addiction. It's just apathy, informed or uninformed. Anybody who was likely to care about privacy but was ignorant/uninformed should not need to be weaned off privacy-abusing services. Anybody who was never going to care about privacy need not be pursued further.
  - FireBeyond 12y ago
    Somewhat, although this is tangential. A lot of that is because research has shown that a not-insignificant part of addiction is the social/behavioral side of things. Lighting up. Habit. Nicotine gum and patches allow you to conquer one aspect of the addiction at a time, which may be more achievable for many.
  - chimeracoder 12y ago
    > Well is that not the point of nicotine gum and patches? Methadone really isn't analogous to the patch, though. It really is, at its core, replacing a socially unacceptable drug (heroin) for a socially acceptable variant (methadone). The patch is used to help taper off the craving for nicotine by administering the same drug, but in a regulated dose which gradually decreases, and using time-release (skin absorption is much slower)[0]. Methadone doesn't use this model. Interestingly, when heroin is administered in the same controlled setting that methadone is, it has better success rates and less recidivism than methadone does. These are known as "diacetylmorphine maintenance" programs. [0] In other words, think of the patch or gum as "extended release" versions of cigarettes.
adamc 12y ago
Uprated because I think the points Alexey makes are valid, having seen Stallman speak. I give the FSF money every year because of what they do, but... Stallman is out there. Then again, if he wasn't, would he have created the FSF? Stallman doesn't appear to be very open to honest advice, so there isn't much you can do to change his approach.
rosser 12y ago
Look, Stallman doesn't care who he alienates. He doesn't care if you disagree. He doesn't care if he offends you. That's what zealots do. But as creepy, and petulant, and obnoxious as I tend to find him, I'm grateful every day that he's out there, because there are things he's right about, about which he's pretty much the only person with any visibility or credibility at all to say something. More to the point, he wouldn't have that credibility if he compromised and made his position more palatable.
- astrodust 12y ago
  I'm glad for what he's done, but every day he's out there yelling and screaming and generally causing shit for no reason he's damaging the open-source movement. There are undoubtedly others that are able to fill that role, and while they may not be as bombastic or driven, they could be more constructive and willing to engage in serious discussion rather than mock and ridicule anything that is not pure. His stubborn refusal to use things like Google Docs makes him completely blind to what that sort of tool can do. Where's the open-source version of same? It's like to him using the MIT or BSD licenses is the same as heresy and if he had the power to, like some ordained pope, he'd excommunicate all those that refused the GNU license. That's why being "creepy, petulant and obnoxious" is a serious problem. I don't understand how he can be almost literally losing his mind about Windows, which is of no real threat to anyone, when the real problems are closed source code inside hardware embedded in cars, medical equipment and voting machines where the stakes are much, much higher. If you ask me, he's fighting the right war on the wrong battlefield.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > I'm glad for what he's done, but every day he's out there yelling and screaming and generally causing shit for no reason he's damaging the open-source movement. Well, since he overtly views the Open Source movement as harmful to the Free Software movement (which has fundamentally different goals, even if the kind of software licensing each supports overlaps considerably), that's not exactly accidental.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
_jgvg 12y ago
Stallman's answer: "I am skeptical of advice from people who disagree with what I stand for."
- danudey 12y ago
  Which is a great response, considering that the letter was about framing your message in a way that appeals to people rather than 'stop being so pro-free software'. Seems like he missed the point entirely, or just dismissed it out of hand because it was criticism, even though it was highly constructive.
belorn 12y ago
When it comes to well formulated talks about free software, none seems to beat those from Stallman's lawyer, Eben Moglen. He knows very well how to speak to a crowd, and tends to use local references and languages to explain concepts (professor of law and history of law). Stallman has excellent skills in seeing problems in software before they get noticed by everyone else, but when I want to introduce someone to the philosophy of free software I would rather put on a talk like Freedom of Thought Requires Free Media from 2012 or the now 11 year old talk Die Gedanken Sind Frei from 2004. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKOk4Y4inVY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKOk4Y4inVY 2: http://www.archive.org/download/3_do_t1_11h_3-Moglen_a/3_do_t1_11h_3-Moglen_a_64kb.m3u http://www.archive.org/download/3_do_t1_11h_3-Moglen_a/3_do_...
- teddyh 12y ago
  Video of the second one: https://archive.org/details/3_do_t1_11h_3-Moglen https://archive.org/details/3_do_t1_11h_3-Moglen
guyzero 12y ago
Walter Sobchak: Am I wrong? The Dude: No you're not wrong. Walter Sobchak: Am I wrong? The Dude: You're not wrong Walter. You're just an asshole. Walter Sobchak: Okay then.
cbsmith 12y ago
Wow. This is written like no one has every said this to Stallman before. These are old arguments with well thought through answers (even if you don't agree with them). Ironically the letter demonstrates the same tone deafness it accuses Stallman of.
phazmatis 12y ago
Observation: People have been writing this exact letter since day 1 of the GNU project.

61 points by bpierre 12y ago

Previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2477586 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2477586

pif 12y ago

> That said, I nor the people that I spoke with about your talk found you to be a particularly charismatic or persuasive speaker. The only people that seemed convinced by your speech were the ones who had already been leaning towards your point of view to start with. I had the same impression a few years ago when Stallman came and gave a talk at CERN. I already agreed with him on most of his points, but I didn't expect anybody to change their mind just because of the talk.

danudey 12y ago
I went to a talk Stallman gave when he was in Vancouver a few years ago. I found him not only uncharismatic, but almost actively so. Rather than promoting the FSF's agenda, I left with an even worse impression of it than I had originally had. I give Stallman credit for his commitment to his cause, but at the same time I have to criticize him for maintaining his methods. You want people to stop using Google Docs, because it's proprietary and hordes your data under Google's control? How about encouraging, spearheading, and promoting the creation of an open-source alternative? The suggestion of 'Just don't use Google Docs' isn't practical; people use it for a reason, and he doesn't seem to understand it, presumably because he doesn't 'collaborate' on documents the way that teams often have to. But if you put a free alternative in front of people, I'd wager you'd get a lot more converts. Hell, how about just some modifications to OpenOffice to allow multi-user document edits using your native app, facilitated by a central server or peer-to-peer networking (e.g. zeroconf/avahi). Boom, now your full-featured word processor, which is better than Google Docs, has all the features you want, plus a local copy of the file. Stallman's arguments seem to be 'This thing you like is bad, so just don't have it'. It's like someone without any children saying "Why do you need a playpen? And so many toys? And baby gates? Just don't let your kid go near the stairs, problem solved.' If you don't understand the challenges involved, which he obviously does not, you can't really provide input on the process. He's also generally opposed to Clang/LLVM, for the sole reason that it provides an even more freely-licensed replacement for GCC. Now don't get me wrong, GCC is ridiculously important, and might be the most important thing the FSF has ever produced, but it also devolved into a complex, unmaintainable mess. Very few people in the world were capable of adding substantial features, and even fewer were willing to do so. Now we have a competitor, an open-source compiler toolchain which provides better results faster than GCC, while also including tons of new features that makes a lot of work easier for everyone (e.g. integrating source code parsing into your IDE so you can find programming errors as easily as your spell checker can correct words). Clang/LLVM have forced the GCC team to sit up and start implementing all the things they had no time or interest to implement before. Now everyone gets a better compiler, no matter what OS you're on or what you choose to use. GCC is a significantly better compiler, and Apple is largely to blame. But because Apple is involved, LLVM is bad, because it can be used in non-free build systems, like Apple's or Adobe's. And yet, despite Apple's use of it in non-free software, it's still far better than GCC in a lot of ways. So his fundamental objection is that proprietary software exists and can be used, and not that it's being forced on users. Apple and other corporations have advanced the state of computing and compiler technology, and he's upset about it because of the very reasons these corporations were able and willing to put the money in to give us all something better. I can't take him seriously anymore. He's been tenured for too long, and disconnected from users for so long. He has a lot to say about how the users of 1995 should use their computers, but nothing new since then.
- the_af 12y ago
  Re: Clang/LLVM vs GCC, you need to understand Stallman actually stands for Free Software and considers the aims of Open Source Software as misguided. Clang is not "more freely-licensed" according to the FSF's definition. Once you understand this, you'll see Stallman's position is quite consistent.
  - danudey 12y ago
    I perfectly understand his position, and that his Freedom has to come via restrictions (just like our personal freedom requires the rule of law). I don't think 'more freely licensed' is ambiguous, in the sense that the license allows more freedom of use of the code. It's not 'more Freely licensed', and it's not 'more free' (or 'more Free'), but in the end none of that is really relevant to the point I'm making. The point, specifically, is that GCC is made better, and people who endorse, enjoy, and use Free Software have a better product to use, specifically because Clang/LLVM exist. He doesn't have to like the licensing, but it's an inherently better product in a lot of ways and his argument seems to be 'it can be used non-freely so who cares'. He can only plug his ears and sing to himself for so long before the world passes him by, and by and large that's what's happened already.

pif 12y ago

pokpokpok 12y ago

I believe that Stallman is going to be Stallman. He made an incredible contribution to society, but what the free software movement needs with regards to public awareness is a Neil Degrasse Tyson / Temple Grandin / Steve Irwin.

yepguy 12y ago
I think you're looking for Eben Moglen.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

angersock 12y ago

There's a great deal to be said on message-crafting. Leave that up to more moderate folks, like ESR (and yeah, that kind of tells you how extreme rms is, that Eric Scott Raymond is a moderate). Stallman and the FSF are basically the platinum standard by which all free software rhetoric is judged. It is of utmost importance that they not bridge one iota. They are the reference implementation for what it means to have truly free software, what it means to value philosophy over culture, and to value ideals over pragmatism. That's cost them, and yeah, that doesn't make them popular. But you know what? Their track record has been pretty correct. The number of infringements and abuses of power they have warned against have only multiplied--and will continue to multiply. They're going to lose, of course, because the people they're trying to help don't want help. The people whose freedoms they hold dear forsake them and mock them and sell out at the smallest sign of convenience. It's a forgone conclusion--so, they might as well fail as martyrs instead of salesmen.

jfb 12y ago
The problem is that ESR and the "open source" people have a fundamentally different understanding of software freedom than do the FSF. I'm not judging one over the other, but I think it's a mistake to conflate the two. It's not simply the narcissism of small differences; they have fundamentally incompatible motives, even if their means can be seem as congruent.
- angersock 12y ago
  I think it's worth observing that the FSF position--absolute as it is--is by construction incompatible with any other motive. It seems like the best that can be done, for now, is to have congruent means. :)
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > The problem is that ESR and the "open source" people have a fundamentally different understanding of software freedom than do the FSF. No, if you read the Open Source Definition and the Free Software Definition, you'll find that there understanding of software freedom is pretty much identical. Their ideas of the moral purpose of advocating for software freedom and/or the most effective tactics of advocating for software freedom differ, certainly.

cwyers 12y ago

...am I the only person who didn't know that Stallman is a 9/11 truther?

lukifer 12y ago
I look forward to the day when 9/11 enters the same category as the JFK assassination, and questioning the official story is merely fringe and not (necessarily) crazy. 2300+ engineers are on record disputing the science of the 9/11 Commission; even if they're utterly mistaken, it doesn't mean every single one is a paranoid lunatic.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
mark_l_watson 12y ago
I try to listen to all of his talks on the web and I don't think that I have ever heard him say that, but I might have missed it. BTW, those four images are inflamatory. I can't find them on the fsf.org web site. If the author placed those there, and they have nothing to do with the FSF or Stallman, then this article should be hell banned, if that is possible. If Those four inflamatory images are from FSF or Stallman's web properties then I would like to see evidence (URLs please). Shame, shame, shame on the author if he just placed those images to be provacative.
- dunstad 12y ago
  https://stallman.org/stopping-terrorists.html https://stallman.org/stopping-terrorists.html In a footnote at the bottom here, he says he believes (believed?) Cheney played a role.
  - mark_l_watson 12y ago
    Thanks for the link. I know a few people who think that Cheney knew 9/11 was going to happen. Personally I doubt it.
  - emilsedgh 12y ago

scrame 12y ago

> You don't get somebody off heroin by lecturing them about how they should value their freedom; you switch them over to methadone for a while and let them slowly detox. Really bad analogy. That's like saying the best way to quit smoking is to start chewing tobacco to give your lungs a rest.

wanda 12y ago
Well is that not the point of nicotine gum and patches? Anyway, it's a bad analogy because apathy regarding privacy is not an addiction. It's just apathy, informed or uninformed. Anybody who was likely to care about privacy but was ignorant/uninformed should not need to be weaned off privacy-abusing services. Anybody who was never going to care about privacy need not be pursued further.
- FireBeyond 12y ago
  Somewhat, although this is tangential. A lot of that is because research has shown that a not-insignificant part of addiction is the social/behavioral side of things. Lighting up. Habit. Nicotine gum and patches allow you to conquer one aspect of the addiction at a time, which may be more achievable for many.
- chimeracoder 12y ago
  > Well is that not the point of nicotine gum and patches? Methadone really isn't analogous to the patch, though. It really is, at its core, replacing a socially unacceptable drug (heroin) for a socially acceptable variant (methadone). The patch is used to help taper off the craving for nicotine by administering the same drug, but in a regulated dose which gradually decreases, and using time-release (skin absorption is much slower)[0]. Methadone doesn't use this model. Interestingly, when heroin is administered in the same controlled setting that methadone is, it has better success rates and less recidivism than methadone does. These are known as "diacetylmorphine maintenance" programs. [0] In other words, think of the patch or gum as "extended release" versions of cigarettes.

adamc 12y ago

Uprated because I think the points Alexey makes are valid, having seen Stallman speak. I give the FSF money every year because of what they do, but... Stallman is out there. Then again, if he wasn't, would he have created the FSF? Stallman doesn't appear to be very open to honest advice, so there isn't much you can do to change his approach.

rosser 12y ago

Look, Stallman doesn't care who he alienates. He doesn't care if you disagree. He doesn't care if he offends you. That's what zealots do. But as creepy, and petulant, and obnoxious as I tend to find him, I'm grateful every day that he's out there, because there are things he's right about, about which he's pretty much the only person with any visibility or credibility at all to say something. More to the point, he wouldn't have that credibility if he compromised and made his position more palatable.

astrodust 12y ago
I'm glad for what he's done, but every day he's out there yelling and screaming and generally causing shit for no reason he's damaging the open-source movement. There are undoubtedly others that are able to fill that role, and while they may not be as bombastic or driven, they could be more constructive and willing to engage in serious discussion rather than mock and ridicule anything that is not pure. His stubborn refusal to use things like Google Docs makes him completely blind to what that sort of tool can do. Where's the open-source version of same? It's like to him using the MIT or BSD licenses is the same as heresy and if he had the power to, like some ordained pope, he'd excommunicate all those that refused the GNU license. That's why being "creepy, petulant and obnoxious" is a serious problem. I don't understand how he can be almost literally losing his mind about Windows, which is of no real threat to anyone, when the real problems are closed source code inside hardware embedded in cars, medical equipment and voting machines where the stakes are much, much higher. If you ask me, he's fighting the right war on the wrong battlefield.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > I'm glad for what he's done, but every day he's out there yelling and screaming and generally causing shit for no reason he's damaging the open-source movement. Well, since he overtly views the Open Source movement as harmful to the Free Software movement (which has fundamentally different goals, even if the kind of software licensing each supports overlaps considerably), that's not exactly accidental.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

_jgvg 12y ago

Stallman's answer: "I am skeptical of advice from people who disagree with what I stand for."

danudey 12y ago
Which is a great response, considering that the letter was about framing your message in a way that appeals to people rather than 'stop being so pro-free software'. Seems like he missed the point entirely, or just dismissed it out of hand because it was criticism, even though it was highly constructive.

belorn 12y ago

When it comes to well formulated talks about free software, none seems to beat those from Stallman's lawyer, Eben Moglen. He knows very well how to speak to a crowd, and tends to use local references and languages to explain concepts (professor of law and history of law). Stallman has excellent skills in seeing problems in software before they get noticed by everyone else, but when I want to introduce someone to the philosophy of free software I would rather put on a talk like Freedom of Thought Requires Free Media from 2012 or the now 11 year old talk Die Gedanken Sind Frei from 2004. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKOk4Y4inVY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKOk4Y4inVY 2: http://www.archive.org/download/3_do_t1_11h_3-Moglen_a/3_do_t1_11h_3-Moglen_a_64kb.m3u http://www.archive.org/download/3_do_t1_11h_3-Moglen_a/3_do_...

teddyh 12y ago
Video of the second one: https://archive.org/details/3_do_t1_11h_3-Moglen https://archive.org/details/3_do_t1_11h_3-Moglen

guyzero 12y ago

Walter Sobchak: Am I wrong? The Dude: No you're not wrong. Walter Sobchak: Am I wrong? The Dude: You're not wrong Walter. You're just an asshole. Walter Sobchak: Okay then.

cbsmith 12y ago

Wow. This is written like no one has every said this to Stallman before. These are old arguments with well thought through answers (even if you don't agree with them). Ironically the letter demonstrates the same tone deafness it accuses Stallman of.

phazmatis 12y ago

Observation: People have been writing this exact letter since day 1 of the GNU project.