
Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions. - abstractbill
http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/rms-ama.html
======
logic
I expect most responses here will be pretty negative, and I honestly can't
defend his position because our politics differ so greatly (and his stance
spins directly out of those philosophical roots). Nor can I forgive his
personal attitude and general arrogance over the years, although it has
softened significantly of late.

But I'll give the man a grudging amount of respect: he hasn't budged one inch
on his position toward "freedom to tinker" as it relates to software in the
entire time I've been aware of his work. And, more than that, he walks the
walk; he won't urge anyone to do something or take on a position that he's not
willing to jump into wholeheartedly himself.

He's a fundamentalist, but any successful movement needs people with "clarity
of purpose". He has it in spades, allowing many of the rest of us to be rather
more pragmatic.

~~~
moxiemk1
I normally have the same sentiment about RMS, but one of his responses here
really ticked me off in the 'clarity of purpose' department: The bit about the
microwaves (#23)

'Installing software' is a fairly abstract concept, especially given how
liberally RMS likes to see the GPL used beyond normal software. To that end, I
think that if he were truly logically pure, the same logic would apply to the
iPhone. But, he would never agree that allowing something like an iPhone to be
OK with free software (rightfully so), and so I think that should have
demanded that every bit of that microwave be free. And everything else in his
life.

Also, his comments on co-op food "Thus, food co-ops are not useful for me. I
like them in principle." GPL-encumbered libraries are not useful for me. I
like them in principle. Good day sir.

~~~
sprout
Your comparison of the microwave to the iPhone is just false. The point is
that if the software is simple enough that it's pretty obviously bug-free, and
you have no reasonable need to tinker with it, there's no reason you should
need the source for the microcontroller. If the controller isn't working, the
source is probably not going to help you. You just need a new microcontroller.
On the flip side, there's no reasonable need to extend the microwave's
software.

The iPhone, by contrast, has millions upon millions of reasons you might
need/want to tinker with the software. Hence the demand for source. Seriously,
RMS is not the one with a logic problem.

~~~
smallblacksun
Who gets to decide if there is "no reasonable need"? Apple clearly believes
(just like the microwave manufacturer) that there is "no reasonable need" to
extend the iphones software.

~~~
culled
Clearly the success of the app store shows that there's a desire to extend the
functionality of the phone. Apple just doesn't believe that there's a
reasonable need to do it beyond a certain point or to do it without their
permission.

However, no one is clamoring to write apps for a microwave. A microwave really
just has one function and as long as it does that one thing then it doesn't
really matter how the software works.

~~~
jacquesm
> A microwave really just has one function and as long as it does that one
> thing then it doesn't really matter how the software works.

To a hardware hacker that would be a false statement.

------
Aaronontheweb
"I faced the same question at the beginning of the GNU Project. I decided that
I would rather do something good with no monetary reward than profit by
mistreating people."

Thank God Stallman helped all of those sick kids with Malaria in Africa with
by giving them GIMP and GCC.

Way better than the billions of dollars and thousands of vaccinations Bill and
Melinda Gates gave to them.

In all seriousness, if we're going to argue the ethics of charging for
software,at the end of the day who has done more good? Bill Gates who made
himself rich, gave thousands of people jobs, created products that made the
lives of millions of other people easier (all snarking about Windows and
Office aside, they ultimately made computing more accessible to everyone), and
has created the world's most well-funded charity which actually goes out and
does good, like giving vaccinations to sick kids around the planet.

When I compare the more calculus of capitalism and propreitary software
against Stallman's dogmatism, it's obvious to me that capitalism is utlimately
more moral and does more good.

~~~
patrickaljord
> Thank God Stallman helped all of those sick kids with Malaria in Africa with
> by giving them GIMP and GCC.

>Way better than the billions of dollars and thousands of vaccinations Bill
and Melinda Gates gave to them.

RMS and the free and open source community have given way more billions of
dollars and jobs that Gates ever has. Let me explain. Many governments have
switched to Gnu/Linux and are saving billions of dollars _each_ year for the
last ten years such as Brazil ($1 billion per year
[http://www.brazzil.com/2004/html/articles/mar04/p107mar04.ht...](http://www.brazzil.com/2004/html/articles/mar04/p107mar04.htm)).
Given that many governments have switched to gnu/linux and free and open
software, that's billions of dollar saved each year for the last 5 to ten
years. Those are billions that can be spent on health, education, employment
and more, it's an invaluable gift to humanity. I know Bill Gates fortune
doesn't exceed $50 billions so I'll let you do the math. RMS and the free
software world have given way more to the world than Bill Gates ever will. And
Free Software will continue to give while Bill's fortunes will soon be over.

> In all seriousness, if we're going to argue the ethics of charging for
> software,at the end of the day who has done more good?

See above.

> Bill Gates who made himself rich, gave thousands of people jobs, created
> products that made the lives of millions of other people easier

Free and Open Source software give millions of jobs too. I'd say even more
especially with the internet. Do you think Google could have been done without
Gnu/Linux when they needed to install thousands of servers and didn't have yet
the money to pay licenses? How about the internet? It's all free/open source
software, a way bigger revolution than the PC which was a boring work machine
before for most people.

> When I compare the more calculus of capitalism and propreitary software
> against Stallman's dogmatism, it's obvious to me that capitalism is
> utlimately more moral and does more good

Well, think and try to calculate again. Gates' done way less.

~~~
rick888
"Many governments have switched to Gnu/Linux and are saving billions of
dollars each year for the last ten years such as Brazil"

It's funny how you can make the argument about money that "would have been
spent". Many open source zealots (and Stallman himself) talk about how the
software industry can't equate piracy to dollars people would have spent. Why
should this be any different?

Software licenses are also a very small part of the entire cost. The biggest
costs are support (this is how most open source companies make their money).

Even if governments had saved as much money as you want us to believe, I
seriously doubt it would go into healthcare, education, and employment.

"Do you think Google could have been done without Gnu/Linux when they needed
to install thousands of servers and didn't have yet the money to pay
licenses?"

There are other variants of unix that have even less restrictive licenses. BSD
comes to mind. Gnu/Linux was a means to an end.

"It's all free/open source software, a way bigger revolution than the PC which
was a boring work machine before for most people."

Most users don't use a variant of linux on their desktop. Microsoft brought
computers in every home and made computers "interesting".

"Well, think and try to calculate again. Gates' done way less."

Gates has proof that he has helped the poor with billions of dollars. Stallman
has possibilities and no direct proof of anything.

~~~
jodrellblank
_Stallman has possibilities and no direct proof of anything._

Stallman is the guy who pushed the asteroid and watched it sail harmlessly
past. In alternate reality, Gates is the guy on the ground helping the
survivors clean up after the asteroid hit.

Metaphorically, of course. Stallman's good is causing unknown amounts of
freedom restriction and consequent problems to not ever have happened - which
isn't really tangible.

~~~
rick888
"Metaphorically, of course. Stallman's good is causing unknown amounts of
freedom restriction and consequent problems to not ever have happened - which
isn't really tangible."

Without Stallman and the GNU, we would still have just as much software on the
market. Many of the people and companies would have most likely released it
under the BSD license (or public domain).

..and like I said. I still don't buy it. Piracy causes unknown amounts of
damage to commercial software companies. If the community comes to terms with
this, I might be more apt to come to terms with the amount of unknown "good"
Stallman has done.

------
okmjuhb
I wonder how many Hacker Newsers really remember what it was like back before
the GPL and the FSF. The availability of a high-quality open source unix
system is pretty much the defining quality of modern computing, and it took us
out of the dark ages of a half dozen mutually incompatible proprietary OSs,
compilers, and commandline utility packages (sometimes broken - with fixes
impossible).

Stallman's contribution is much greater than that of cheerleader or discussion
framer - the ecosystem that exists in large part because of him is, I suspect,
tremendously important in the day to day lives of many of the people reading
this.

~~~
evgen
I wasn't really online _before_ GNU/FSF, but I was around early enough to
remember ordering GCC on 9-track magtape from the FSF to help support them
back in the day. I was also pulling down great kit from mit (like X), project
athena (kerberos, etc), and free code and utilities from hackers around the
world (many that were later "embraced and extended" by GNU/FSF.) Maybe working
in a university computing center gave me a distorted view of the world at the
time, but I am reasonably certain that we would have gotten along just fine
without RMS. Some things might have taken longer to appear or converge on a
standard, but other things might also have moved a lot faster if the BSD
license was the dominant format within the open source movement.

------
jballanc
Ah RMS, same fundamentalist as always!

One thing I would suggest, for those not familiar with RMS's history, is to
take a moment to read the Wikipedia page on Lisp Machines. Specifically, this
passage:

 _Symbolics still had the major advantage that while 3 or 4 of the AI Lab
hackers had gone to work for Greenblatt, a solid 14 other hackers had signed
onto Symbolics. There were two AI Lab people who did not get hired by either:
Richard Stallman and Marvin Minsky. Stallman, however, blamed Symbolics for
the decline of the hacker community that had centered around the AI lab. For
two years, from 1982 to the end of 1983, Stallman worked by himself to clone
the output of the Symbolics programmers, with the aim of preventing them from
gaining a monopoly on the lab's computers_

\- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_machine>

I find, knowing a bit of the backstory, that RMS is a more sympathetic
character. Honestly, I can't say that, put in the same position, I might not
have arrived at the same world view he did.

~~~
protomyth
The counterpoint: [http://danweinreb.org/blog/rebuttal-to-stallmans-story-
about...](http://danweinreb.org/blog/rebuttal-to-stallmans-story-about-the-
formation-of-symbolics-and-lmi)

~~~
tjr
And some counter-counterpoint:

<http://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.html#foot-3>

------
milesf
I lost patience with RMS years ago. The problem with Free Software is a
marketing problem. If you have to keep explaining things over and over again,
saying "Free as in Freedom", or trying to get GNU/Linux to take hold instead
of just Linux, you're doing it wrong.

Richard is a tremendous hacker, but he's a lousy salesman. I'm not a big fan
of salespeople in general, but guys like DHH have proved that it's not enough
to be a great hacker if you want your code and ideas to flourish. You need to
understand that marketing really does matter.

Glad to hear he's lightened up a bit over the years, though. Maybe GNU will
finally see a rebranding. GNU is such an ugly logo.

~~~
tjr
_GNU is such an ugly logo._

A few years ago I asked Duane Bibby to do some artwork for _The GNU C
Reference Manual_. I rather like his whimsical approach on the gnu...

<http://www.gnu.org/software/gnu-c-manual/gnu-db-1.jpg>

~~~
celoyd
_Whimsical_ line art of the ugly, hairy wildebeest. Dot dot dot.

If GNU wants to brand itself to anyone other than hardcore hackers, it’s
probably going to need the kind of logo that hardcore hackers will complain is
generic and corporate-looking. The 1975–era homebrew esthetic is exactly the
kind of surface feature that people dismiss RMS for. (Not that he’d
necessarily be super popular even if he were a charismatic Lawrence Lessig
type, but it couldn’t hurt.)

~~~
Jach
I don't consider myself a hardcore hacker, but I certainly enjoy the GNU
(along with Tux) far more than a frikkin Window or an Apple. Changing the
name/logo would be a step in the wrong direction.

I wasn't aware that GNU tools had a marketing problem, since they're all over
the place, even in business worlds. Leave the marketing to the distros and
programmer employees.

~~~
celoyd
I’m not saying GNU _should_ brand itself differently. But _if_ it’s going to
change the logo to look less homely (in either sense), I think it could go a
lot further than that version.

~~~
tjr
The picture I linked to isn't a GNU Project rebranding effort... I just liked
what Duane had drawn, and thought it was an opportune moment to share.

------
tptacek
Here is someone who really, really needs to read Saul Alinsky:

 _15\. MendaSpain: Hi Richard. I love all GPL software, but I have a dilemma:_

 _I'm writing a program which needs a lot of time to be coded but at the same
time it's really easy to be used. I could license it as GPL and wait for
donations, but from other people's experience just almost nobody make
donations to free software projects. Support is not necessary because as I've
said before, it's a really easy to use software and nobody would pay for a 3
page manual._

 _For "big" software it's easy to get money using any GNU license, but for
"little" software the only option I see is selling it using the Apple App
Store approach._

 _What can I do in this case?_

RMS: You have a choice between deserving a reward and not getting a material
reward, and getting one but not deserving it.

RMS: I faced the same question at the beginning of the GNU Project. I decided
that I would rather do something good with no monetary reward than profit by
mistreating people. I hope you will do the same, because that way your program
will be a contribution to society instead of a social problem.

 _Yikes._

~~~
angusgr
I'm not sure I follow. Any chance you could elaborate at all?

~~~
jseliger
Saul Alinsky wrote a number of books about community organizing:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_Radicals> , including Rules for
Radicals and Reveille for Radicals. Community organizing is about bringing
people in communities together and helping them achieve some kind of goal; in
the case of Alinsky, he was envisioning physical communities that needed
things like coops, particular kinds of government services, and the like.

One of his major principles is that the community organizer has to help people
see why it's in their best interest to organize or make change. According to
Alinsky, arguing that people should agitate and work for change because of the
common good or because the change is the right thing simply doesn't work.

I believe the OP is saying that Stallman isn't doing a great job of
incorporating that aspect of Alinsky's principles and in doing so is setting
back the free software movement.

EDIT: I just read a little further down in the thread and saw this:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1559283> : "The problem with Free
Software is a marketing problem." That's similar to an Alinsky comment,
although in different language: if you can't "market" the change you're trying
to encourage by making people realize why it benefits them, you're not going
to make that change happen.

~~~
chanakya
RMS _is_ advocating that using free software is in people's interest. As he
says in the answer to one of the questions, he rates freedom as the most
important self-interest.

~~~
dasil003
Right, but so is any community change "for the better". The job is to convince
people it's in their self-interest.

Meanwhile, only the tiny population of people who are programmers really even
have a basic understanding of what Stallman's freedom is all about, and even
_they_ do not value it very high.

On a micro level I don't care about software freedom that much, because mostly
I just want to get something done, and if 0.5% of my yearly income is going to
commercial software that I find useful and have no desire to modify, then the
freedom issues just don't even enter my conscience.

However on a macro level Stallman's slippery slope argument is correct. If the
balance of software shifts to proprietary, then I feel the goodness of
software in general is greatly reduced. If GNU/Linux didn't exist for
instance, the technological landscape would be a shadow of what it is today.

But I digress... for free software to ever gain any mindshare in the non-
developer community would require a stroke of marketing genius the likes of
which I've never seen. It's just not reasonable to rank freedom with such a
high priority for the average person who has no ability or desire to modify
any software. There might be a redistribution angle, but again, it would have
to be sheer marketing brilliance to convince anyone of that.

------
dasil003
Hats off to Richard Stallman.

Whatever your views on software—and by default most people will disagree with
him on many points—his contributions to the software world are undeniable.
There are a lot of fundamentalists out there, and 99% of the time they scare
the shit out of me because of what their unchecked advocacy could ultimately
lead to. Stallman's fundamentalism on the other hand, does not seem likely to
ever lead to any detrimental effect on society.

In other words, it's not just about respecting Stallman's conviction, but also
acknowledging that his convictions are well-placed, even though my lifestyle
would never allow me to share his position per se.

~~~
smallblacksun
His anti-business views, if widely adopted, would lead to a massive economic
meltdown.

------
mseebach
His answer regarding games show the bounds of his philosophy.

 _I don't know whether our community will make a "high end video game" which
is free software, but I am sure that if you try, you can stretch your taste
for games so that you will enjoy the free games that we have developed._

The asker wants a high end video game, and is prepared to pay for it and
accept non-freedom. RMSs position is basically "you're wrong for wanting that
which doesn't fit into my dogmatic world view".

I mean, his Hollywood-answer is coherent (don't give money to Hollywood, they
spend that money to actively destroy your freedom), but this is declaring
bankruptcy on his philosophy. His "iGroan/iBad" and "Billionaire Polluters"
puns doesn't make him sound less like a 12-year old. Does he also spell
Microsoft with a $?

------
tmsh
all this time i never understood what FSF was about really.

in some ways, the guy is right. annoyingly, stubbornly, horribly-marketedly
right.

to get people to really understand how freedom to modify software is important
the way freedom of speech is important (i.e., it just saves time for everyone
in the long run. take the gates-has-done-more-good-for-kids-in-africa
argument. the counter argument is that those kids wouldn't have malaria if
something more akin to the freedom to modify software were believed by more
people. i.e., we did not excuse exploitation and we safeguarded against it
heavily. against de beers. against remnants of colonial governments. against
rebel armies. against anyone who takes advantage of other people.) -- anyway,
to get people to see why it's important (and it took me -- what -- two decades
of interaction with software as a user and now a developer?) -- this may sound
lame, but i think there is a great character out there that could be part of
some novel or screenplay.

it would be like sue sylvester as a team leader / tech lead. this incredibly
uncompromising hardass who for some reason insists on free software. total
jerk to new hires. rejects code left and right, almost arbitrarily (i'm
reminded of the whole xemacs situation, but i suppose that's different.)

but then one day you'd have the sue sylvester's sister episode or whatever.
maybe some unexpected vulnerable conversation with our once brow-beaten,
junior-developer protagonist. and the glorious recognition scene would hit you
and you'd realize -- f-, in some ways that dude is right.

------
DaniFong
Most of life consists in trading one kind of freedom for another. What is
striking about RMS is that in his defense of software freedom he sacrifices
other freedoms of life that you and I enjoy.

------
akkartik
His opinions that were new to me:

"I value freedom more than technical progress."

"We need to make it so hard to move production from one country to another
that each company will be stuck in one country, so that country will be able
to regulate it.

~~~
tomjen3
Thats interesting. As far as I recall (and I used to read his website
everyday, before PG slapped me with his "how to create wealth" essay and
showed me how wrong that world-view was) Stallman has always been a leftist,
never liked corporations, and always been interested in human rights. He may
have refined his position over the years, but it hasn't changed much.

------
pradocchia
I must be showing my age but I can't believe the animosity displayed by some
here towards RMS. He's the archetypal "stubborn man", and anyone who uses
computers today is in his debt.

------
rbanffy
For CAD, I would suggest investigating BRL-CAD.

And a hybrid between a Unix box and a Lisp machine would be awesome. Too bad
GNU didn't turn out that way.

edit: apparently, BRL-CAD has no teapotahedron primitive:
<http://brlcad.org/gallery/s/diagrams/primitives.png.html>

Someone must add it.

------
jhuckestein
This makes me a little sad, maybe I even pity RMS. He is the most vigorous
defender of a great cause but has also sacrificed his life for that cause.

Some people say he softened up over the years, but sometimes it appears to me
as if he were just growing wary. In another interview that was on HN a while
back he said something along the lines of "It is not great, but this is the
life I have chosen for me and I have to live it this way".

Am I the only one who feels that way? Maybe it's just because I'm listening to
the Schindler's List theme ...

------
JulianMorrison
On a modern Linux system, Gnu is the command line userland, one compiler
(among many, and not the dominant one for work if you're a Java shop), and
Emacs. And that's it. Not X, not really Gnome, not KDE at all, not the polish
put on by Ubuntu etc, and not most of the OS underpinnings either nowadays
(dbus, hal, udev, upstart, dpkg, network-manager...).

Tell me again, why he should get the Gnu/... in front of the kernel name?

~~~
jff
Thank you! I think many of the more recent Linux users will spend the entire
day without once using a GNU tool, except indirectly. And, of course, you
could say the kernel and most of the tools were compiled with GCC, but that's
not something to be proud of--that just means Linux is full of GCC-idiocy and
potentially breaks every time there's a minor upgrade in GCC.

~~~
JulianMorrison
Also GCC's days as the dominant C compiler may be numbered - clang is catching
up, and they are even trying to get it to compile the Linux kernel
<http://llvm.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=4068>

------
gaius
_I decided that I would rather do something good with no monetary reward than
profit by mistreating people_

A $1M grant from the MacArthur foundation and another $1M from the Takeda
foundation tends to skew one's view of economics somewhat.

~~~
whyenot
He had no permanent residence, no salary, and lived out of his office at MIT
for years before he got either of those awards.

~~~
gaius
Out of lifestyle choice. You trying living in your employers office and see
how long before the call the cops!

Note also in that article he talks about how much he likes to travel, and
slates BP a paragraph later. Hypocrite, much?

~~~
shadowfox
Maybe he walks all the way ;)

------
tzs
"iGroan"? "iBad"?

~~~
swilliams
I think names like that (and Digital Restrictions Management and all the
others) just undermine the seriousness of their position. They sound like the
playground taunts of children.

~~~
ynniv
I'm not fond of the "iGroan", but Digital Restrictions Management is a great
clarification of what the term means.

~~~
RodgerTheGreat
In the term "Digital Rights Management", the "Rights" refer to the rights of
the copyright owner, not the rights of a consumer licensee.

It's a lot like "Trusted Computing"- a surface reading might suggest it means
the computer is "trustworthy" or dependable to the user, while it actually
refers to a "Trusted System" in a security engineering sense.

------
alanh
There is a formatting issue in #12. It becomes ambiguous what parts of that
section are RMS and which are the question-asker.

------
sandee
To all those, who find RMS weird and eccentric :

PG > Sounds pretty eccentric, doesn't it? It always will when you're trying to
solve problems where there are no customs yet to guide you. ... We'll
increasingly be defined by what we say no to.
<http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html>

RMS was the first to venture into the new world of OpenSource , software
freedom .. and so he has all the traits of early explorer.

~~~
tome
FWIW, RMS would definitely not say "Open Source", he'd say "Free Software".

------
benofsky
In response to software which requires a lot of development time to create,
specifically tax software or games, RMS says:

> The reason I don't use nonfree software is that it would take away my
> freedom. I don't want to let that happen. So I don't consider installing
> nonfree program, even as an possible option. I treat them as poison. I hope
> that you will too.

This man lives in an imaginary world where no one has to make any money (or if
they do, they are evil) or _deserves_ to live a comfortable lifestyle by
receiving monetary rewards for _good_ and _hard_ work.

Frankly, I believe that this tone and rhetoric devalues some of the great
things he has done.

EDIT: clarification where I say (or if they do) I mean if they want to.

EDIT 2: I don't understand why I'm being downvoted for expressing my
opinion...

~~~
avar
That's completely wrong. You're fundamentally misunderstanding what the free
software movement is about. Ultimately it's a sort of grassroots consumer
protection movement, not a bunch of hippies trying to abolish money.

Stallman believes that you should vote with your feet and avoid using non-free
software, and that if we all did this for everything there would be no space
for non-free software in the market.

That doesn't mean that you can't sell software. The FSF has always sold copies
of their software (I know because I've bought some). All of their licenses
allow you to sell software, they consider any license that doesn't allow this
to be non-free.

~~~
hugh3
_Stallman believes that you should vote with your feet and avoid using non-
free software, and that if we all did this for everything there would be no
space for non-free software in the market._

And this falls under the mantle of "consumer protection" how? Maybe a world
with no non-free software would be better for me personally, or maybe it
wouldn't (I think it probably wouldn't), but trying to create a world in which
a particular product category doesn't exist doesn't exist isn't consumer
protection.

[Silly counterexamples include: flamethrowing baby-cribs. Fine, abolishing
flamethrowing baby cribs does count as consumer protection.]

~~~
avar
I said "grassroots" consumer protection. He's suggesting that people that use
software band together and collectively reject software under proprietary
licenses. Because doing so creates a bigger market for free programs, and
reduces the market for proprietary ones.

There are similar movements that advocate boycotting e.g. out of season fruit,
or goods manufactured by oppressive countries.

~~~
rimantas

      Because doing so creates a bigger market for free programs,
      and reduces the market for proprietary ones.
    

And this protects consumers how exactly?

------
10ren
About the lisp in unix question (#3): ocaml has struck me as lisp +c, because
it's functional + mind-blowing performance. I'm not experienced in ocaml, it's
just that when I tried it, it was that fast. I don't know if it has the
homoiconism of lisp. It is statically typed, which is a pain (the type
inference requires methods like "print_string" - perhaps these are rare if you
code in ocaml idioms).

I'm very glad to see him looking happy.

Love his geek answer to "what's your favourite movie?". Why don't normal
people react better to answers like that?

Perhaps the love for him is because, for anyone who is even the least little
bit weird perhaps in secret, Stallman is a shining beacon of weirdness. More
power to him!

------
loewenskind
>but I am sure that if you try, you can stretch your taste for games so that
you will enjoy the free games that we have developed.

This is a _terrible_ way to sell. You're going to have a hard time convincing
people that the only way to be "morally acceptable" (in the eyes of someone
they don't even know, no less) is to take a step back in most of your
computing experience. He would have had an easier time getting fat kids to eat
their spinach.

------
filosofo
I have a great amount of respect for Richard Stallman, but I don't understand
how he reconciles his concerns about a large "surveillance state" (#24) with
his insistence that governments take away enough power from companies to make
them "squeal." (#17)

Doesn't one work against the other? In other words, a government with enough
power to make citizens' organizations squeal by practical necessity risks
becoming a "surveillance state."

------
Semiapies
It's old hat to note how carpenters don't get tribal about their preferred
brands of hammers and whatnot.

As much as I like GNU, free software, and open source, I can't help thinking
that carpenters also don't construct _fervent ideology_ about hammers, either.

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SoftwareMaven
I have to admit I've always considered RMS somewhat of a freak (but one who
has done some amount of good in this world).

However, I have now lost all respect for him for making non-free software a
human rights violation.

EDIT: Grammar

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aaronz3
Wow. I've never really read much about Stallman in the past, but he really
comes across as an arrogant jackass in most of those answers.

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koeselitz
Somebody get that guy a parrot, stat.

~~~
dedward
If he said anything different, everyone would be chastizing him for flip-
flopping - but when he stands his ground - we need to get him a parrot?

At least he's consistent.

~~~
zacharypinter
You seem to be implying that the parent comment was an insult. RMS said he
wanted a parrot:

> No. I spend most of my time travelling, so I could not have any pets.

> If it were possible, I would like to have a friendly parrot.

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Maro
I spoke to Richard Stallman after an FSF talk some years ago. He has no
manners and is a rude.

~~~
igravious
hacker.

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Flemlord
I read all of his comments in a Dwight Schrute voice.

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bosch
I don't care what this guy has to say anymore. After he pulled his sock off,
picked his foot and ate whatever the fuck it was he picked off, all in front
of what appears to be a lecture class sized audience - I lost all respect for
the guy.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ>

No wonder computer people have a brutal rep for social interaction. WTF.

~~~
jarin
I'm surprised that wasn't one of the top 25 questions.

~~~
astrange
It was #11.

