Richard Stallman: "I Wished I Had Killed Myself"

http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2010/04/richard-stallman-i-wished-i-had-killed.html

by Sandman • 16 years ago

101 108 16 years ago

opendotdotdot.blogspot.com

ars• 16 years ago

He needs to get married and have a kid.

He doesn't want to because he thinks it's too easy, but he's still a human.

dasht2• 16 years ago

He is on record as not wanting to have a kid because in his view the planet is over-populated. Also, I don't fully understand (due to lack of inquiry into it) his view of marriage but I'm fairly certain that "thinks it's too easy" is not accurate.

prpon• 16 years ago

I guess Richard Dawkins' selfish gene theory and Free Software Foundation don't go together. :)

mrkurt4• 16 years ago

Generating a baby isn't the only way to "have a kid", though. I haven't really seen what he's said, but that reasoning always rings hollow to me.

jimmyjim• 16 years ago

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/bos/533096562.html

I'm not 100% sure if that was put up by him, but I've been told that it was.

kunley• 16 years ago

This point of view is miserably broken. Yes, planet is overpopulated, in Asia & Africa. On the contrary, by having kids in a highly developed country and by giving them education one is doing a favor to this planet & its culture.

koningrobot2• 16 years ago

He should definitely not have a kid. He seems of the opinion that life is painful, and he has wished he had never been born (well, he has wished he had "killed himself when [he] was born", but there's little difference).

To "have a kid" is to create another person who might well wish to never have been born, another person who will have to decide whether or not it is justified to bring kids into this painful world.

I am glad that RMS is so honest about it. Most people cover up their unhappiness.

Tichy3• 16 years ago

A classic dilemma, but I suppose then nobody should have kids, by that logic. Or only stupid people should have kids, who are unable to see the dark sides of life.

derwiki• 16 years ago

Seems to me that without the programmers who went the commercial route (Gates et al), computers wouldn't be as widely used and his impact wouldn't be as big. Or that someone else wouldn't have stepped up in his absence. And statements like those quoted in the article seem just a wee bit overdramatic.

flatline2• 16 years ago

Stallman is nothing if not dramatic;) I have trouble imagining that computers would not be as widely used today, not without corporate backing and innovation, but without the kinds of hijinks that have kept the Wintel near-monopoly in place for so long. It was a bunch of hackers, not suits, who started the personal computer revolution.

CamperBob• 16 years ago

There's no way in hell every Tom, Dick, and Harry would have their own 3000 MHz computer if it weren't for that Wintel near-monopoly, though.

Wintel doesn't get the credit they deserve. Everybody running Linux on anything faster than an 80386 owes Bill and Andy lunch, at least.

rbanffy5• 16 years ago

> programmers who went the commercial route (Gates et al)

It's a false dichotomy. There is no need to imprison (as Stallman would say) the user and disrespect his rights (at least to use, understand, improve) in order to be commercial. What "Gates et al" have done is to bind their users through the software they use to manage their lives and jobs, ensuring long-term prosperity through technological dependency.

The folks at Red Hat, Canonical and MindTouch (just to name a few I have in my head right now) are every bit as serious as Microsoft when it comes to be commercial and to be paid for their work.

The main difference being they show much more consideration towards their users and customers.

apotheon11• 16 years ago

I agree.

I also believe that the "Stallman or nothing" suggested by so many of his fans is a false dichotomy. You don't need to be rabidly communistic about software to oppose the "imprisoning" influence of corporate software vendors, after all.

chc3• 16 years ago

Red Hat, Canonical and MindTouch combined have not had as much impact on computing as Apple or Microsoft alone. I was going to qualify that, but no, I think it's pretty unequivocal.

Also, your selection of companies seems a bit deceptive. These companies' profit strategies are very narrowly focused on the one market where it's possible to make money with free software — and even that isn't really making money from the software. You have to be in a market where people will pay through the nose for support contracts, because the software itself isn't making much money.

The one real exception I can think of is Mozilla, which makes decent money off of Firefox. Otherwise, unfortunately, it does generally seem to be necessary to bind the users enough to make them pay you for the software. (That's not a sarcastic "unfortunately" — I do think it would be great if I could reasonably sell free software as profitably as non-free software, but I don't see any evidence that it's feasible.)

doki_pen• 16 years ago

The comments in the blog talk about arrogance and how someone else would have done what RMS did if he didn't exist. They also complain that him being a "nutjob" has actually done harm to freedom. This line of thinking is dead wrong. It takes someone precisely like RMS to stand for his ideal and dedicate his life to what he believes. I, personally, feel a great debt to the man.

dasht2• 16 years ago

It's "funny" that people see his statement, that perhaps it's better he didn't die as an infant because he's done some good, as arrogant. He could be paraphrased as saying something like "I've experienced such misery that sometimes I wish I wasn't here at all but on the other hand I think I've done more good than harm for others and there is some comfort in that." How that's arrogant is beyond me. I can understand people having the opinion that, no, he's done more harm than good - but he's not arrogant for thinking otherwise.

mrkurt4• 16 years ago

"I think I've done more good than harm" is vastly different than "in terms of the effect on the world, it's very good that I've lived", though. A little humility goes a long way.

iamwil• 16 years ago

Yeah, I'll have to agree with that sentiment, and hope that at least Stallman reads HN. I, for one, have been personally paid over multitudes of times due to free software, not just free to use, but also free to read and free to tinker. I'm better at what I do because of what he championed.

_delirium4• 16 years ago

The "someone else would have done it" seems particularly unlikely to me, at least at the time. If you were to list significant bodies of free software that were released between the FSF's founding in 1983 and the Linux kernel's release in 1991, they're almost all GNU projects. The one significant exception I can think of is the X consortium's decision in 1986 to freely license X. And the stuff that started to be released starting in the early-90s pretty much without exception built on GNU stuff (even all the free BSDs still grudgingly include GNU code, despite 10 years of actively reducing their reliance on it).

apotheon11• 16 years ago

"Good enough" is the enemy of "perfect".

What do you think would happen to FreeBSD if GCC vanished tomorrow? Hint: It would probably suddenly finish incorporating some other, more freely licensed, compiler into its base system.

btilly2• 16 years ago

Not to diminish the wonderful work done by the FSF, but you didn't look very hard for exceptions. Here are a few more for you:

Sendmail 1983 BIND 1985 patch 1985 CVS 1986 Perl 1987 TCL 1989 Expect 1990 TK 1991 Python 1991

wisty2• 16 years ago

Free, Open Source software grew out of the polemic position it took.

BSD / MIT licenses might be "freer", in some sense, but almost all free projects are released because of the ideal of fighting propitiatory software.

I'm pretty sure that the GNU project was one of the main forces that inspired this culture.

The fight is still going on. Academia and business is still getting pushed to release code - think climate models and finance. If it weren't for RMS's work, would people really take such a hard line on propitiatory software? I doubt it.

modokode• 16 years ago

Quite true. A movement like the free software one needs people who are not willing to barter with their ideals. I for one do not agree with RMS on everything, and I do still use a few proprietary pieces of software, but I do appreciate the fact that RMS is who he is.

johngalt• 16 years ago

Either computers would be useless novelties or they would be mainstream and lose the hacker/counterculture status. Those are the only two options. There is no way that every person on earth was going to care about source code. Progress is still progress even if it's not what you want.

There is plenty of fun to be had still in technology, just don't get married to a philosophy. I learned that the hardway.

In the early days I ran a BBS. When the Internet became mainstream I remember thinking "how do I compete?" I redoubled my efforts: upgrading modems, adding drives/door games, increasing my software library, etc.... All the time thinking "where's the 'community feel' on the Inet?" By the late 90s I realized the problem was me and not the world.

dgabriel3• 16 years ago

I cut my teeth on the BBS scene in southern new England, and 94/95 was quite a time of change, no?

r0s• 16 years ago

Either computers would be useless novelties or they would be mainstream and lose the hacker/counterculture status. Those are the only two options.

Maybe you don't look at your cell phone or nintendoDS and think "hmm, there must be some way to run irc on this thing". Maybe you don't care anymore, but there are huge communities who do. Maybe the spirit of openness is fundamental to the tools themselves?

petercooper• 16 years ago

It's a real shame that inventor of the time machine, Leo Schultz, travelled back in time from 2042 and killed himself as a child. We'll never have a time machine now :-(

JCThoughtscream• 16 years ago

I don't see Stallman's statement as to whether his birth had a good impact on the world or not as necessarily arrogant. Arguably, that's a question everybody needs to or ends up asking themselves: on balance, has my existence been a positive one?

While there might've been an open software advocate without Stallman, it can't be seriously said that the world would've been better off without Stallman's advocacy. And thus, on balance, the world's better off with Stallman than without.

flipper2• 16 years ago

I for one am very glad RMS existed to write emacs and save us all from vi.

apu• 16 years ago

I'm glad RMS existed to write emacs and give vi users someone to look down on ;-)

strait• 16 years ago

I'm glad that I get to enjoy the never ending drama of emacs vs vi. It's better than watching re-runs of 7th Heaven.

astine2• 16 years ago

I'm glad I have voper-mode +vimpulse so that I don't have to decide between them. :)

flipper2• 16 years ago

Something that emacs and vi users can agree about then - we're both glad that RMS wrote emacs!

dzlobin• 16 years ago

I'm glad he lived, and I'm thankful for his contributions. But holy shit, he makes me sad everytime I see him or read about him.

This guy needs to cheer up.

Herring• 16 years ago

He's about the worst PR possible for free software. I like his code & I mostly drink the kool aid, I do, but he really needs to let Eben Moglen do the talking..

codyrobbins• 16 years ago

He needs a makeover. Or to be on ‘Dancing with the Stars’. Something to make him feel good about himself. I’m half-joking but I’m also half serious.

axod• 16 years ago

He's a martyr. Feeling 'persecuted' is part and parcel of that. He probably wouldn't be satisfied if he was happy.

yesbabyyes• 16 years ago

Of course Stallman can relax and have fun.

Here, he's dancing to Soulja Boy's "Crank Dat" together with a few other MIT people:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C6r6fG4k40

donaq2• 16 years ago

Sure, in his absence others may have stepped up to the job, but in this world, he did. We can sit and imagine all we want that with a different leader, FOSS would be better. But, that doesn't change the fact that we have him to thank for so very much.

From the comments on the OP's blog. :)

patrickgzill• 16 years ago

An appropriate quote from George Bernard Shaw: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him... The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself... All progress depends on the unreasonable man."

apotheon11• 16 years ago

Stallman's hubris is shocking -- and I'm not talking about his claim that the world is a better place for him having lived. I'm talking about this line of shit:

> I’m the last survivor of a dead culture.

jf• 16 years ago

That quote makes a lot more sense when taken in context. It's from the 1983 epilogue to Hackers.

In 1983, there was no "free software" as we have today. No FSF, no EFF, no Creative Commons.

Additionally, Stallman's interview is at the end of a book about the guys who started "hacker culture". These guys did some amazing stuff: they physically modified one of their computers to add new machine instructions, wrote editors, compilers and games from scratch, etc, etc. Then they made their code available for free.

When I read that quote in the book, I interpreted it as Stallman expressing sadness over the loss of hacker culture.

ErrantX2• 16 years ago

I think that is what apotheon means! Hacker culture is far from dead; it is alive and well, just different.

It's just him being stuck in the "glorious past" (nothing really wrong with that) and assuming that hackers should be working with computers on that sort of level.

Things move on; if we still had to do all that computing wouldn't have moved on very fast :P

I heartily disagree that the culture is materially different - it's just spread out a bit more (instead of being on the university campus' etc.)

jimmyjames2• 16 years ago

I think that a great free open source leader has already been born but he committed suicide, so instead, now we have Stallman.

tomkinstinch• 16 years ago

The linked article [1] is worth reading.

1. http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/04/ff_hackers/all/1

j_baker• 16 years ago

"This "pain" that Stallman says he has endured makes his decision to champion tirelessly freedom and free software for all these decades all the more remarkable."

Alright, I realize this might be a bad statement to make on this subject... but seriously? He's a free software advocate. It's not like he's Ghandi going on a hunger strike or Martin Luther King Jr going to jail over his beliefs.

astrec2• 16 years ago

Stallman agrees with you:

"I hesitate to exaggerate the importance of this little puddle of freedom," he says. "Because the more well known and conventional areas of working for freedom and a better society are tremendously important. I wouldn't say that free software is as important as they are. It's the responsibility I undertook, because it dropped in my lap and I saw a way I could do something about it. But, for example, to end police brutality, to end the war on drugs, to end the kinds of racism we still have, to help everyone have a comfortable life, to protect the rights of people who do abortions, to protect us from theocracy, these are tremendously important issues, far more important than what I do. I just wish I knew how to do something about them." - Free As In Freedom by Sam Williams (p66 or p73 depending on version).

apotheon11• 16 years ago

I think the importance of freedom as it applies to software is often underrated. The idea of freedom in software use and development is really a near-perfect model in microcosm of intellectual freedom as a whole, and there's little that can compare with that for importance.

I also think the importance of Stallman as applied to freedom of use and development of software is often overstated, though.

Osmose• 16 years ago

I know very little about Stallman beyond his role in the GNU Project. What pain is he referring to that makes him wish that he had never been born? The loss of hacker culture?

fnid2• 16 years ago

I'm wondering too. He has a kind of "Woe is me" attitude, but all I know of him is that he eats his toe skin in front of his audience.

I also don't know if his existence has had a net positive effect. Free software he advocates is used to power robots, missiles, and other weapons that kill many people. It has also taken money from developers who write good software and shifted it to middlemen who sell services for free code, which limits the viability of writing code and the financial options for hackers to put a roof over their heads and food in their mouths.

If you really want to help hackers and keep the hacker culture alive, teach the world that software has value and is worth paying for.

jawn• 16 years ago

After reading this I felt a deep sense of pity for RMS.

Even if he was only referring to his perceived lack of belonging, openly fantasizing about suicide is not the sign of someone in a healthy emotional state.

I hope very much that he has grown past this point his life.

Richard Stallman: "I Wished I Had Killed Myself"

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