Stuff Richard Stallman Said on the Linux Action Show

by macco • 14 years ago

48 59 14 years ago

kinleyd3• 14 years ago

For all the good work that rms has done for the FSF movement, and for all his brilliance compared to the rest of us average Joes, he stands out as an example of what happens when you have a binary, black and white view of the world. It's no compromises, at any cost. What a pity.

ynniv• 14 years ago

The real tragedy is that few people understand the value of an ideologue.

Zaak• 14 years ago

I'm glad that Richard Stallman and his uncompromising position exist.

I'm also glad that his is not the only voice in the open source/free software community.

maxwell• 14 years ago

Not compromising doesn't mean "black and white". rms asserts that proprietary knowledge/software is bad for society, and he (naturally) gets a lot of resistance from people who have strong ethical convictions in general, but also skin in the game profiting from the way it is: i.e. us founders and developers and consultants. It's easy for us to see that the legal system is fucked up, but hard to be honest about our own field when our interests start conflicting. We talk ad nauseam about patents and engineering techniques, but have comparatively little discussion about the ethics of proprietary software. It's easy to just kinda take it for granted. And when rms does come up, these ad hominems are usually about as far as it goes. There's a line from Mad Men, "nobody knows what's wrong with themselves, and everyone else can see it right away."

rms isn't a businessman or a politician, he's a "prophet". However secular his beliefs, he sacrifices for his convictions (not that he has a "side", this isn't a sport!). He's in the tradition of Jesus, Luther, Copernicus. Their ideas threatened the orthodoxies of their time; what kept the money-changers in the temple, the Church profiting from indulgences and remaining the scientific authority. It wasn't a pity that Jesus waged peace on war, that Luther called bullshit on indulgences, or that Copernicus proved Earth went around Sun. If they'd've chosen otherwise, in retrospect, what good would it have done?

If Jesus led a rebellion against Rome, or Copernicus didn't publish, or, I don't know, Luther embraced the printing press + surplus cloth to trail-blaze the romance novel...

Their common enemy was ignorance, and history's been shaped by those who didn't compromise on what they knew mattered. That doesn't mean we all have to! I'm no prophet. I write proprietary software. But when I run across one of these articles, I remember that most software works best as a public good, that I should release more code on GitHub, that I should keep moving on my back-burner OSS projects, etc. His views aren't convenient to many hackers, but I find his determination admirable.

kinleyd3• 14 years ago

"no compromises, at any cost" is black and white. The operative part is "at any cost". rms has been brilliant at what he has achieved, with the problem being that he believes he's right and brilliant at anything he does. That's a huge leap in logic right there - you just have to visit his blog to see what I mean.

While there is wisdom in advising one to be single minded in one's pursuits, there is also wisdom in being open to the possibility of being wrong in that single mindedness. I believe rms is right to pursue the principles behind the FSF - it has brought much good. However, I think he is wrong to believe that FSF applies to everything.

bad_user• 14 years ago

Not quite true, LGPL was a big compromise.

icebraining2• 14 years ago

He has also supported a BSD license for Ogg Vorbis: https://lwn.net/2001/0301/a/rms-ov-license.php3

bluekeybox• 14 years ago

Working programmers should be incredibly thankful to Mr. Stallman for pied-piping thousands of people out of workforce and for keeping the cost of hiring a good software engineer high.

JS_startup3• 14 years ago

If Richard really cared about FSF he would stop making such a spectacle of himself as it's easy to discredit a movement with a gibbering lunatic as its frontman.

Then again, maybe he's setting an example of how programmers should make money in a post-FSF world (writing books and doing interviews)

paulhauggis3• 14 years ago

Programmers should make money by creating services. Since there is no source code, you don't have to worry about piracy or distribution licenses.

simonbrown• 14 years ago

Stallman disagrees.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-se...

HerraBRE3• 14 years ago

You're joking, right?

Free Software is not about slavish compliance with licensing terms or inventing shiny new technology for technology's sake (that movement is called Open Source). Free Software is about having the freedom to control your computing environment.

I believe this is really, really important because in a world increasingly shaped and even dominated by technology, people have to be able to look under the hood and fix the code that runs their society. Otherwise they become slaves to whoever made the rules by writing the code.

Proprietary software violates this requirement, but at least you can reverse engineer it, hack it. With cloud services, even that option is removed. The user has lost all control. This is pretty obviously bad for a democratic society, but hey, it's great for tech wizards aspiring to be the next Mark Zuckeberg, so who cares about that? :-P

botj• 14 years ago

There's A GPL for that (pun intended ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License

and

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html

Estragon• 14 years ago

He, might be crazy, but definitely not a gibbering lunatic. His position is perfectly logical, no matter how much it pisses you off/frightens you. It is the interviewer who was spouting an emotionally loaded false dichotomy, which is an effective rhetorical tactic for defending the way he's making his living and so might be a sane response, but is also nonsense.

sedachv• 14 years ago

tl;dr - Man went in trying to interview Stallman with a bunch of preconceptions ("here's what I expected to happen:"), ignored what Stallman was trying to say, and is now writing an article about how not understanding someone confirmed the prejudices and stereotypes he had about them.

Lunduke is obnoxious, Stallman is a jerk, and it doesn't surprise me that most programmers continue to think they are entitled to earn a living from programming while being the first to shout about the "buggy whip makers" cliche whenever a discussion about jobs and automation comes up.

acabal• 14 years ago

Seriously. And I expected better than a "think of the children" stance from the interviewer.

xSwag• 14 years ago

I found it hilarious the way Stallman simply brought down any argument presented to him, I'm sure he mentioned proprietary software not respecting our freedom atleast 20 times, no matter what the argument was. It is safe to say that this man is a true idealist. I wonder what Hacker News' opinion is on this.

gm• 14 years ago

Agreed, interviewer did no research beforehand. Stallman has always maintained free software is the most important thing, certainly more important than feeding your chickens or your children. No news there.

And Stallman also thinks GNU is more important than Linux. And so on.

vvpan• 14 years ago

Oh no, let's not go this way again. It a conversation that has been had on-and-on, and it is always the same thing. To me this is a form of soap opera. We know that this is a guy who chews skin that he just peeled off of his feet in front of an audience. So, obviously this is somebody who has to be taken for what he is, discussing his pros and cons is a waste of time.

lutorm• 14 years ago

We know that this is a guy who ... <insert something that has absolutely nothing to do with software here>

Nice ad hominem there, pretty much right from the textbook. Really, how does that affect the status of his statements about software?

abdulhaq• 14 years ago

The world of software and its ecosystem/environment, like the rest of the world, is immensely complex and not susceptible to simple analysis that can be summarised in an essay. Therefore when we decide how much attention to pay to someones thoughts about the world of software it is useful to know if his opinions on other matters stack up, thereby casting light on how effective is his ability to analyze complex scenarios.

krig• 14 years ago

It's not an ad hominem at all. It's not used as an argument against his statements about software. It was used as an example of his personality. How is a known fact about his personality not a valid example of his personality? The statement being made was that the personality of rms is well known, so to act all shocked and surprised when he exhibits that personality is ludicrous.

You could even say that it was the opposite of an ad hominem: an appeal to look beyond the known idiosyncrasies of Stallman and focus on, well, his statements about software.

That's not an ad hominem.

cbs• 14 years ago

People seem to forget he is an idealist. If he thinks free software is the most important social issue of our time, don't be surprised his other beliefs flow from it. I think his role as an uncompromising figure is important to maintain the shape of the overton window. I wouldn't want him to be anything else.

You don't have to agree with him (he is ridiculously idealistic), but his position provides us a lenses to analyze our own. To understand what we want software to be, our ability to affect that, the constraints practicality places on that, and how we reconcile the two.

There is always going to be a line where we say "fuck it, I need money", so poke around and discover yourself rather than taking the quick route and just writing off everything you're not already involved with as someone else's problem.

Hopefully, on the other end of that process, we have discovered enough about our stance on software that we're above a banal characterization of free software like: Good at making software that helps people and brings joy to others? Don’t do it.

mhurron• 14 years ago

He's not an idealist, he is an ideologue. He will not even consider a compromise or gradual moves to his position. His position is unquestionably right and just and everyone who disagrees or does otherwise is wrong and undeniably evil.

He is no different than a religious zealot. He just worships a different god.

The only lens he provides is one for us to say 'hell, at least I'm not that crazy.'

victork2• 14 years ago

What a "brilliant, well argumented" point...

I am not going to comment the article in itself, I think many people have pointed out in other comment that the guy completely missed the point. But I want to answer this comment:

There's a reason why we sometimes shouldn't compromise. A LOT of powers in this world are just waiting for the opportunity to use the good ol' "foot in the door" strategy, especially with free/ open source software. Richard Stall, hate it or love it, with the GPL license has found a way to prevent it. So, in that case there is no compromise, and he's right.

There's also a reason with Free/Open source software are now a subject of philosophical research, and your lack of understanding of the forces at play is a good example why some people, the author of this post in question, should stop to look at open source softwares through the "is it conveniant for me?" lens.

God, the eternal september syndrom is so strong with Open Source software!...

javascriptlol• 14 years ago

What a narrow-minded position. RMS is mostly harmless, has brought some good things into this world, and provides a reliable reservoir for a particular set of ideals. Nobody has to agree with him for him to be useful. He's operating within the confines of the law. He is not trampling on anyone's rights. He is worth 100 people who just compromise everything away for short term gain. He's like Ron Paul; kind of a nutter, but a necessary antidote for these times.

astrodust2• 14 years ago

Can we just get rid of him? Set him on a proverbial iceberg and let him chart his own course?

As a spokesperson he has an obligation to present himself in a manner that's representative of the movement itself, not of himself.

I don't care how busy you are, you can make time to learn how to interact with people better. You can't know how to write a compiler and not be able to figure out simple human interaction. It's obviously a case of priorities and not caring.

comice• 14 years ago

Won't somebody think of the children!

If you think something is unethical, as rms does with proprietary software, why would that change if it puts people out of work? He still thinks it's unethical.

He ties it up with a false dichotomy: either I develop proprietary software or my children starve. If children really did starve due to there being no proprietary software jobs, then the discussion is different, but it's not the case.

Surely there are job losses in the tobacco industry, but I don't think we should stop discouraging it as a society.

This is such an ignorant and lazy article, why has it got so many votes here? Sigh.

coffeeaddicted• 14 years ago

Very biased interviewer and horrible introduction to a an interview about a rather interesting topic. I also do not agree with Mr. Stallman about this specific point, but this is just bad journalism.

chjj• 14 years ago

This is getting frustrating. While I don't agree with Stallman that _all_ software needs to be free, I think the LAS interview with RMS was pathetic.

Bryan Lunduke quickly jumped to the, "think of the children!" argument. It was very unclassy of him. It's fine, I see people fallback to that kind of argument a lot, especially when they think they're losing their footing in a debate, but I expected better from him.

Bryan took a lot of emotion-fueled cheapshots at Stallman. In contrast, at least Stallman was very clear and straightforward about what he believed, even if you think some of the things he said were insane. I'm surprised he had such little exposure to RMS before this, and was actually surprised by his beliefs.

"If you disagree with me, then you obviously hate children." This is really pathetic. Go ahead, try to make it _impossible_ for people to disagree with you. Blackmail the audience, play on their emotions, and guilt them into agreeing with you. I was really disgusted by these tactics.

jfruh2• 14 years ago

Uh, telling you that the way you make a living is unethical is not the same as wishing harm upon your children. You may not agree with his ethical system (lord knows I don't, it's bonkers) but everyone's economic activities are subject to ethical judgments, even if they're feeding children with their profits. Lots of people raise children in less financially comfortable circumstances than computer programmers, and most of them turn out fine.

Re: RMS's bonkers ethical system: I really don't think he ever moved past the mindset he had in academia, where he was essentially a researcher of how computers do and could work. To him, code should be shared freely just like research in biology and physics is. This has nothing to do with the real world as it exists today, but I do honestly belief that's the germ of his worldview.

munin• 14 years ago

FYI, code is not shared freely in biology and physics, it's a big problem.

academia is not a hegemony. there are a few people in academia that share beliefs with stallman, there are many others that have no problem with making money off of their work.

jfruh2• 14 years ago

I guess what I meant is not the code people write to conduct the research, but the actual results of that research. As in, you can't copyright a fact. You can't copyright a beaker or a flask. I know there's a lot of debate within the scientific community about commercialization, but I think there was a lot less of this in the '70s when Stallman was forming his ideas.

apsurd• 14 years ago

This guy's article blatantly admits he went in expecting and preparing to be on the defensive. That's never a good way to go about understanding another human being. Surprise, surprise he says he doesn't understand the audacity of RMS! =O

EvilLook• 14 years ago

Wow. Talk about missing the point.

Let's take a look at what really went down here. First, Lunduke decides to ask Richard Stallman about moving from working on proprietary software to Free software while continuing to make. Second, Stallman answers and says that he thinks having Free software is more important than making money, and that if somebody really cared about Free software that they would be willing to take a job in a factory or some other profession to meet their needs in life. Third, Lunduke decides that Stallman hates children and is a lunatic.

Quoting from the linked piece: "Good at making software that helps people and brings joy to others? Don’t do it. Go work 'in a factory' even if you are going to do a terrible job at 'working in a factory' and couldn’t support your family that way."

Stallman never said anything about not working on software that helps and brings joy. Merely that it ought to be Free software. There are plenty of companies out there selling Free software and support. Just because you produce Free software doesn't mean you can't make money doing it.

This is a classic case of an interviewer just not getting it.

zachbeane• 14 years ago

http://chrisdone.com/posts/2012-03-11-fsf-stallman-interview... has a recent take on it.

kinleyd3• 14 years ago

Thanks, the link gives more balanced details on the interview itself, adding a better context to what rms said.

dholowiski• 14 years ago

I saw RMS speak in person at WordCamp one year. Although he has some great, important ideas and he's made great contributions, I think he might be mentally unstable. Seriously - seeing him in person, he came across as quite crazy.

freshhawk• 14 years ago

Ignorant and uninformed commentary from the Linux Action Show? I would be surprised but I've listened to the podcast before.

So I'm not.

Although the literal "think of the children" argument is a surprise. Poe's law in full effect.

nollidge• 14 years ago

> I was being a good boy… I didn’t even make a joke about eating toe stuff or anything.

Oh, but you managed to squeeze it into the blog post.

praptak2• 14 years ago

If you start with such a blatant false dychotomy ("It is either proprietary software or the children will die!!!") expect to be treated with hostility. Next time try asking the Pope why he thinks that banning condoms is more important than preventing all the misery caused by the spread of HIV.

adambyrtek• 14 years ago

> Next time try asking the Pope why he thinks that banning condoms is more important than preventing all the misery caused by the spread of HIV.

This is actually a very good question, and I don't see any false dichotomy here.

praptak2• 14 years ago

Nope, given that they also ban any form of sex other than with a single partner chosen for life.

wicknicks• 14 years ago

This is typical Stallman behavior. I think the right person to ask such questions would be Eric Raymond or maybe even Linus Torvalds. They have a more practical approach to free software. Also, looking at how companies provide free software, and economize on the service packages is a good way. Github provides "free" service, but they have different plans for different requirements, which helps them make money, and develop Git.

angersock2• 14 years ago

Freedom has nothing to do with practicality, my friend.

tikhonj• 14 years ago

You can turn this argument on any way of making money. Ooh, you think truth in advertising is more important than feeding my children!? Or from Facebook's perspective--you think privacy is more important than feeding my children!?

Really, it's a trite argument--just because something makes you money does not mean it's justified. If that was true, how could we justify punishing people like Madoff? This is actually a good parallel--nobody had to buy into Madoff's scheme, but if they did it hurt them. Nobody has to buy into proprietary software, but if they do they lose some of their rights.

And, of course, this argument has another fatal weakness--just because you can't hide the source from your users does not mean you can't make money. If anything, the main reason free software is relatively weak in the market (although not that weak) is because of competition from proprietary software. If all software was free, you could expect making money that way to be easier.

So really it's a flawed argument that would have been invalid even without the flaw.

sequoia• 14 years ago

You want to see fewer people in prison?? I'm a prison guard. [...] than feeding my children!?

naner• 14 years ago

So this is kind of humorous that this guy is taking this personally and actually seems to think Stallman wants his kids to die, but Stallman really would do better with more compassion and empathy so people don't just tune him out.

This is like when a person claims they don't believe in evolution for religious reasons and many people just dismiss or insult them. Nobody takes the time to address their fears and try to explain things to them in a non-threatening way.

(See the highlighted text in the comments: http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/q0ee4/i_aint_even_m... )

Buzaga• 14 years ago

My take:

Stallman probably thinks of freedom as the most important right, so he'd probably tend to "the less I depend on society, the better" line of thought

and that's what happens, if you live completely immersed in society, you need money, and always more money then, to live, and that's the rules of the game, if you adopted simpler and more idealistic living, you wouldn't depend on money so much... and you'd turn out to be less of a slave of money

so how much of this "feed my children" is about capitalist race and how much of it is "feed my children"?

He really doesn't care that you think you need to make 200k/year to feed your children, the fix is inside the problem

Stuff Richard Stallman Said on the Linux Action Show

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