
Richard Stallman agrees to do an AMA on reddit - obsaysditto
http://www.reddit.com/r/gnu/comments/c8rrk/rms_ama/
======
pyre

      > As the cloud is moving in (gmail, google docs, etc) and
      > slowly replacing more and more of our traditional applications.
      > What can we do in order to free the web from closed source
      > systems which we can't just use, share and adapt as we like.
      > Can free software compete with this or are we forced to live
      > in the last century where everything is hosted on out own
      > computers?
    

I know it might go against the grain here on HN (with all the Web 2.0 buzz
that goes around), but why is running applications on your local computer now
considered 'old fashioned?' While things like Google Maps/Earth are really
awesome, I'm not about to say that we get rid of locally stored maps (or turn-
by-turn directions). What happens when we _don't_ have cell reception or and
Internet connection?

~~~
coderdude
IMO a better question is why does every Web app now qualify as being "in the
cloud?" Cloud computing started off (if I remember correctly) as being related
to on-demand servers (coined around the time Amazon EC2 was released?). Now
it's like _everything_ is the cloud. Like the Web turned into the sky.

~~~
sp332
"The cloud" was originally a metaphor for the Internet between you and the
server you were actually talking to. You know, routers, various ISP's
backbones, DNS servers, BGP etc, basically the part of the Internet that you
_don't have to care about_ to get your work done. There was some talk, at
least a decade ago, that data and/or computation could be extended into the
"cloud" as well. For example, instead of asking a specific server for a
specific file, you just ask "the cloud" for some information. It's an
extension of "the part of the internet you don't have to care about to get
your work done" to include location and ownership of disks and CPUs. It's
pretty much come true, with distributed computing and peer-to-peer networks.

~~~
loup-vaillant
> It's pretty much come true, with distributed computing and peer-to-peer
> networks.

That is the "good" cloud. The "buzzword" cloud, however, is much more about
centralized computing and client-server networks. In other words, about many
helpless customers being dependent on a few, powerful, corporations.

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barmstrong
I saw him speak at Rice University a few years back and he really left a bad
impression on me.

At the heart of his message there are some good ideas - but his insistence on
people saying GNU with Linux made him seem childish and bitter. He also went
over the time and didn't take any questions. By about the 1.5 hour mark large
number of people were walking out during the talk. He mocked one of them.
There appeared to be no end in sight. Around the hour 45 minute mark it was
just getting rambling and incoherent and I also walked out.

There is a place for free software, but I certainly wouldn't want Richard
Stallman as a spokesman for my cause.

~~~
sp332
GNU is Stallman's life work. Linux is headed up by Linus Torvalds. They're
different things, with different communities of developers, different leaders,
different goals. I'm not completely defending Stallman's overreaction, but it
must be hard to see your magnum opus drop to 0% mindshare under the shadow of
a smaller project.

~~~
crux
And yet anybody who has spent any time learning about or working with Linux
understands how fundamentally important the GNU tools are. If, a long time
ago, he had been more gracious and not essentially made a joke out of the fact
that the OS is called Linux much more than it's called GNU, I could easily
imagine a present where he is seen as one of the fundamental co-creators of
the operating system most commonly called 'Linux'—or, to be honest,
Ubuntu—rather than a crank who will hunt you down if you don't say the word
'slash' out loud. GNU's mindshare is only so lousy because they're so famous
for a silly insistence on an inconvenient and irrelevant nomenclature.

~~~
prodigal_erik
In my experience most people who have heard of Linus at all think he's some
amazing genius who wrote the whole thing in a cave with a box of scraps. Very
few realize his contribution was the capstone to a much bigger project dating
back to his childhood, which created his license and most of his tools for the
exact purpose of doing what he did with them.

------
whimsy
Reddit has managed to arrange some pretty cool interviews. I've enjoyed many
of them.

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mattmaroon
Is he going to email a daemon that answers the questions?

~~~
puredemo
Pretty much. The interview will be text based and not video based.

~~~
ciupicri
I wonder if the license of the video codecs used by most cameras have anything
to do with it.

~~~
tjr
The FSF has made several videos (including some with Richard). I would guess
the reasoning is either personal preference, or that he is out of the country
traveling a great deal of the time, without a reliable way to do a video
interview.

~~~
jbrennan
And I would much rather read an interview with him than watch an interview
with him (not just because of him; generally I prefer written interviews to
having to pause my music, load some video player, watch/transcribe/etc.).

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rokhayakebe
This makes me think there is room for a service that does nothing but AMA with
famous people only.

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pellicle
I saw him speak a few years ago. The impressions I got were:

* nice guy, but a bit awkward socially

* very smart and good memory too

* has written a lot of free software, and would like others to consider making theirs free as well

Also, I wished that he would've included more technical topics in the talk.

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elblanco
It's too bad that he can't just login to reddit and answer the questions
directly.

------
kevinelliott
If it wasn't for this article pointing to the reedit post, I would have never
discovered this juicy, delicious, and distasteful video of Stallman eating his
foot pickings.

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

That literally brightened my day. Brilliance is questionable if it means this
is the end result!

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axod
Has he answered any of them yet? :/

~~~
flipper
No. Have a look at the posting on reddit to see why.

~~~
axod
oh ok, that's pretty boring then. No real point having it on Reddit in that
case, may as well send in letters :/

------
gonzo
"Why do you eat the split-ends our of your beard?"

"Why do you eat your toenails?"

(both live, on stage)

------
philjackson
So that'll be ten questions about the flavour of the stuff between his toes
then...

------
yason
This isn't exactly on topic but wow, having now used to HN, I can see that
Reddit really has bad commentary!

Reddit was the best thing in the world when it happened but I'm not missing it
at all since I left around two years ago.

~~~
hachiya
Perhaps that is how Richard Stallman and Donald Knuth feel about the web,
particulary the (un)social web. Who wants to voluntarily let their mind be
invaded with idiotic comments like those you refer to on Reddit.

~~~
ubernostrum
_Who wants to voluntarily let their mind be invaded with idiotic comments like
those you refer to on Reddit._

Me, for one.

So, for most of the past decade I've been involved in building online
communities. I've been participating in them for longer than that. And I've
seen the same pattern occur over and over again: as a community grows, the
members become more and more concerned with what's appropriate and less and
less concerned with whatever actually brought them together in the first
place.

You can see this happening here, now, on a regular basis: "is this really
appropriate for HN" is almost at meme status, and occasionally we see waves of
blunt enforcement through downvoting of comments, or through posts designed to
shame people.

There are basically two ways this can end:

1\. The community becomes extremely rigid and insular, developing rules and
conventions to protect itself at the cost of new members who get run off or
never join in the first place. Wikipedia seems to be at this stage right now,
if you'd like an example.

2\. The "old guard" (who aren't necessarily original or even early members)
either migrate away or get over it, and the community adapts and keeps on
growing. Places like Fark, where stupidity and outright trolls just get mocked
mercilessly, provide useful examples of this.

Reddit, I think, is either at or approaching the second option. Yes, there's
dumb stuff posted, yes, there are comments making fun of people, but the
community there seem to have realized that's not the end of the world. And
because they're much less rigid and much less concerned with "is this
appropriate for reddit", there's a lot more room for creativity, for humor,
and for lots of other stuff that just couldn't happen on HN. And I'll take
that any day, which is why I spend most of my time reading reddit instead of
HN.

