
Richard Stallman on Steve Jobs: correction - Tsiolkovsky
http://stallman.org/archives/2011-jul-oct.html?ohai#27_October_2011_%28Steve_Jobs%29
======
socratic
I grew up at a time when people felt very strongly about Windows versus Linux.
People would fight amongst themselves on Slashdot and elsewhere about whether
it was OK to use Windows, or whether it was possible to do [whatever] on
Linux.

I guess what I'm wondering is: is OSX/iOS versus Linux/Android the operating
system flame war of our time? In this thread, I see almost entirely _ad_
_hominem_ attacks on Stallman. (Not unlike a Daring Fireball thread in
reverse.) Is he Glenn Beck or is he Rush Limbaugh? Is he just slightly
impractical or is he extremely impractical?

What I don't see is any substantial discussion of the OP. At the moment, there
are 2/72 comments that mention the iOS App Store at all, which is a major
point that Stallman seems to be making here.

More generally, is no one worried about what Stallman is worried about? Jobs'
explicit stated goal was to destroy the only Linux mobile platform (through
patents), and his policies on the App Store and elsewhere were explicitly
hostile to Free Software. Had Jobs been successful and perhaps lived another
ten years, we might be living in a world with no Free Software on our personal
devices at all. Apple laptops with software installed from the Mac App Store
to develop iOS apps for the iOS App Store (with both App Stores of course
rejecting GPL code).

Given that almost all startups rely heavily on Free Software, from emacs to
gcc to Xen to Ruby to every poorly constructed library on Github, that would
be tremendously negative for the startup ecosystem, no?

~~~
rimantas

      > More generally, is no one worried about what Stallman is worried about?
    

I am not. I don't even know what is Stallman worried about. Some weird
definition of freedom and some weird threats to the said freedom. His ideas
are outdated and misplaced: it's like rms preaches tips for survival in the
desert failing to notice that dessert is no longer there and we are in the
jungle.

    
    
      > Jobs' explicit stated goal was to destroy the only Linux mobile platform (through patents)
    

Is Android really the only Linux based mobile platform? I highly doubt so.

    
    
      > and his policies on the App Store and elsewhere were explicitly hostile to Free Software. 
    

This is a blatant lie.

    
    
      > Had Jobs been successful and perhaps lived another ten years, we might be living in
      > a world with no Free Software on our personal devices at all.
    

Another baseless speculation. How convenient to ignore reality and all the
contributions Apple has done to open source.

    
    
      > (with both App Stores of course rejecting GPL code).
    

But there are other licenses besides GPL which are more free ant compatible
with App Store.

------
dlikhten
I would like to point out, that regardless of your feelings for either person
Jobs or Stallman, both is/was very smart people, and what they say/do we
should pay attention to.

Stallman is right about Jobs' legacy. iOS devices prevent installation of any
GPL software. This is blatantly wrong. Most innovations within the last 20
years came from OSS developers creating incredible techniques used by
Apple/MS/etc, yet this is being attacked. The shoulders of giants analogy
perfectly applies. Except OSS developers don't get patents, the thiefs of OSS
do.

Unlike Jobs, Stallman's view of the world is towards freedom and I respect him
for walking the walk, he is not filthy rich and that is because he does not
exploit people. He definitely has views and attitudes that are unpopular, such
as his views on reproduction BUT none of those ever take choice away from
people, nor do they ever take any freedom away from people.

His prediction of the patent war is true. Look at patents today. MS is taking
royalties from 50% of android sales. Apple is preventing sales of tablets
because they have round corners and the approximate shape of an iPad, and
Intellectual Ventures is getting ready to obliterate companies. The legacy of
Steve Jobs is anti-freedom.

~~~
kmavm
"Most innovations within the last 20 years came from OSS developers creating
incredible techniques used by Apple/MS/etc..."

Name one.

To take some examples I happen to have first-hand intimacy with: Linux is both
original and good, but the original parts are frequently not good, and the
good parts are clones of Solaris. Touchscreen happened in iOS first. Modern
virtualization happened in VMware's closed-source base first. Modern
information retrieval is still a proprietary Google secret.

The most important counter-examples I can think of are languages. The
"everything is a hash table" descendants of Perl and javascript (in which I
include Python, Ruby, and PHP) would not have been viable as commercial
products. That said, even javascript began life as a Netscape proprietary
implementation, and Perl is mostly a synthesis of ideas present in ksh.

~~~
colanderman
_Touchscreen happened in iOS first._

 _What?_ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_Zaurus> is just one
counterexample of many.

~~~
nirvana
That is not a touchscreen. That is a stylus driven OS. Much like the Newton,
which preceded it.

~~~
vacri
Finger-responsive touchscreens were around long before Apple used them - they
were just generally larger than the iphone. Surely you must have seen them
somewhere, from museum displays to fast-food cash registers.

~~~
nirvana
The iPhone is not a "finger responsive touch screen". These screens are really
easy to make-- they have a grid of sense lines and can tell if there's a
finger at the intersection of two of them. They are completely confused if two
fingers touch the screen at the same time.

What the iPhone does is map the entire shape of a finger, as well as many
other fingers, touching the screen to determine how many fingers, what
orientation, etc.

This is completely different. That you and others claim they are the same
shows the frank dishonesty at the core of the anti-innovation crowd here on
hacker news. I'm at a loss for the motivation of anti-innovation people to
hang out on an ostensibly startup oriented site, but you have succeeded in
ruining it.

------
blinkingled
_Jobs saw how to make these computers stylish and smooth. That would normally
be positive, but not in this case, since it has the paradoxical effect of
making their controlling nature seem acceptable._

One of the Jobs' supporting argument about integrated approach is that the
tight control is what enables them to make the computers "smooth".

While there is some amount of truth in that, the other side of it is that it's
just marketing cover for Jobs' control freak nature more than anything else -
why is Springboard crashing on me 5 times a day if control makes it possible
to have great user experience and Apple has full control? Why for another
example Apple is letting me install apps that crash routinely if they claim
they locked down so they can control the quality of user experience?

One of the "revelations" in the biography is that Tim Cook said to Jobs during
the Antennagate that there is general impression that Apple is becoming
another Microsoft - complacent and arrogant. That gives me some hope that post
Jobs there might be at least a pause to Apple's nonsensical lock down
policies.

~~~
oemera
Why is it that people always complain about iPhone and iOS but no one can
reconstruct these things "issues". I had 4 iPhones till this day with all iOS
Versions on the market and I never, ever saw or heard a problem about
"springboard is crashing 5 times a day". NEVER.

~~~
blinkingled
That does not however mean that no one is having issues. This is a common
fallacy repeated ad-infinitum on boards - if I can't detect or experience
something it must not be happening. Google even auto completes ios 5 spr... to
springboard crash. <https://discussions.apple.com/message/16539394#16539394>
has more than one person confirming this.

If you look at Settings->About->Diagnostics data (or something close) - you
will see a sizable list of crashed programs and OS components.

Is that enough "evidence" for you? :) (I actually hated writing this to be
honest - never understand what reason people have to doubt universally
accepted things like crashing software!)

~~~
oemera
I can tell you why. Cause there are a lot of people who are just talking BS to
harm the other "group". I will repeat it till my dead I never had any issues
with Macs, iPhones, iPads and iPods. I can't reconstruct issues people have
and until I see a iPhone which crashes 5 times a day I won't believe it.

Plus if you have so much trouble with you phone, what about calling Apple and
telling them your issue. When I called last time because a failure they send
me immediately a brand new device. Sorry mate but something seems odd.

I don't want to attack you personal, it just seems that a lot of people are
trying to talk BS about Apple products.

~~~
vacri
_I will repeat it till my dead I never had any issues with Macs, iPhones,
iPads and iPods._

vs

 _When I called last time because a failure they send me immediately a brand
new device._

'Last time' seems to indicate that you come across a number of failures. Which
particular device are you talking about here?

------
naner
I think there are some interesting similarities between Steve Jobs and Richard
Stallman:

Both are luminaries in computing with significant impact. Both attracted a
cult-like following. Both often will speak their mind irrespective the
feelings of others. Both "give a damn" about users, though with completely
different ideas about what is important.

~~~
Hitchhiker
I find it exquisitely ironic that RMS is railing on about SJ.. both profess an
anti-dogmatic , against 1984 approach.

Both ended up creating uniquely dogmatic ecosystems. One exploited it at an
unbelievable commercial scale surpassing the beast they rebelled against (
IBM, the 1984 ad ) .. the other has become a very strange priest who keeps
railing on against other churches that spawned from the original.

I personally admire and respect Steve more.. at least, he had and inspired
poetry.. at least, he made Jonathan Ive craft a speech of a life-time[1] at
the recent memorial.

[1] -
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPUsuY8JZJI&t=2905](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPUsuY8JZJI&t=2905)

~~~
rst
Well, SJ was happy to put up a "down with the man!" front so long as he wasn't
the man himself.

However, it seems from the Isaacson bio that behind the scenes, he wanted
control of the end-user experience on his machines from the start. He wanted
the Apple II to ship with two reserved expansion slots --- one for a modem,
the other for a printer --- so that third-party hardware couldn't screw up the
user experience. It was Woz who insisted on eight general-purpose expansion
slots.

["Steve Jobs", p. 74]

~~~
idspispopd
He's certainly head strong, and there are many modern cases of implementations
that he didn't agree to (The app store, iTunes on Windows etc.) But despite
his opposition and his ability to prevent these things from happening, he did
eventually concede to them, stand up on stage and present them with excited
fervour and ultimately sell them to the masses.

I suppose what I'm saying here is that Stallman too is head-strong, but
probably needs to be surrounded by a team of rationalists to make his
direction palatable.

People talk about Jobs like he was a genius, or the devil, or a god, or some
personal friend. He was the head of a company that finds opportunity in tech-
stagnation.

Also there is so much talk about Woz, I doubt anyone would really be
interested in Woz if Apple went bankrupt towards the end of the 90s.

------
vvpan
Let's suppose that Glenn Beck died. What a lot of people, including me, would
think is that while we didn't wish for him to die, the world of "politics" is
much better off without him.

I think this is the way Stallman feels about Jobs. I really don't see why
people say that this is "tactless".

~~~
loup-vaillant
Some idols you just don't criticise right after they died. That is an insult
to their memory, and to whatever makes them an idol in the first place.

Steve Jobs was such an idol. His media-foo was impressive, even after he
passed away. Every soul in the western world old enough to talk knew about his
death at most 30 hours after his last breath. Therefore, you just don't
criticize Steve jobs until next spring.

I know of another way of being a tactless jerk: criticizing a religion. It
won't change the fact that there is almost certainly no God, though.

Edit: I am being sarcastic here. Let me rephrase:

> Some idols you just _can't_ criticise right after they died _without causing
> serious backlash_.

> I know of another way of being _perceived as_ a tactless jerk.

To be clear, Steve Jobs _was_ a champion of Treacherous Computing, and there
is no God. I suggest those I have just offended to turn on their brains. (I
said "those I have just _offended_ ", not "those who _disagree_ with my
statement".)

~~~
alecbenzer
> Every soul in the western world old enough to talk knew about his death at
> most 30 hours after his last breath.

So what? The same could be said about Muammar Gaddafi.

> I know of another way of being a tactless jerk: criticizing a religion

Criticizing a religion is innately tactless? There are certainly tactless ways
of criticizing a religion that would make you out to be a jerk, but I'd think
there are certainly ways of criticizing a religion without being a jerk.

Steve Jobs was really in no way whatsoever an idol to me. He was a well-known
public figure, which made his death news. If rms wrote an email to steve's
wife about how her husband was a horrible person and that he was glad he was
gone, that would be incredibly rude and tactless. Commenting on his blog about
how a public figure's death affects him and his movement which he cares very
deeply amount is, imo, not.

~~~
lotu
>So what? The same could be said about Muammar Gaddafi.

Hopefully, you can see how Muamar Gaddafi and Steve Jobs differ. Gaddafi's
death was a relief, Jobs was a loss, that should have been implicit, in his
argument.

~~~
alecbenzer
He seemed to be implying that because his death was such big news he was
someone to admire. I was making the point that how famous your death is has
nothing to do with how good of a person you are. Though the point is moot,
since it seems he was being sarcastic.

> Jobs was a loss

The whole point here is that to RMS it was not a loss at all -- it was a gain
that a large entity that opposes his movement has now been hopefully
(hopefully to rms) weakened. Of course the loss of human life is a loss and
all that stuff, but this isn't about Steve Jobs the person, it's about the
influence he had on the world.

------
foob
Every time an article involving Richard Stallman gets posted here I cringe as
I read through the comments. There are a range of opinions so I don't want to
overgeneralize but there are a large number of people here that seem to almost
despise Stallman and the FSF. People make fun of him and make comments about
how he has a net negative impact on software and computing. It pains me to see
so many people, who quite likely rely on emacs, Xcode with gcc, gnu coreutils,
or an operating system that would've never been possible without the Free
software movement, sit around and ridicule RMS because he eats toe jam or
really, really likes parrots. He's had more of a far reaching and positive
impact on software than people with such naive views will probably ever
realize.

What I really wanted to comment about though (I couldn't hold back a short
rant...) is how these Steve Jobs comments relate to the E-Parasites Act that
was discussed yesterday. I read a lot of great comments there about how we're
losing our freedoms incrementally and how this will shape the future. In the
US we've seen this ratchet effect taking place to a frightening extent in the
last decades both inside of computing and in general. If the US ever ends up
in a place where there's widespread censorship on the internet then you can
bet that it can trace its ancestry back to the DMCA and something like the
E-Parasites act which will allow entire sites to get shut down with lots of
room for abuse. Every step we take in that direction makes it easier to keep
stepping in that direction.

So why don't as many people feel this way about Apple? Because we like their
products? Iphones have made it normal to buy a computing device that has
artificial restrictions preventing you from running whatever software you want
on it. If they had their way then it would have actually been illegal to
jailbreak your phone in order to circumvent this. Sure, iphones are really
cool but this is a step in a terrifying direction. If it ever becomes illegal
to upgrade the RAM in your laptop yourself or to install third party software
on it then you can bet that you can trace the ancestry of those laws back to
the shifts in public perception of computing freedom caused by companies like
Apple. Laws like that might seem laughably extreme now but with every step in
that direction they seem less and less so.

Stallman sees this and he has dedicated his life to moving us in the opposite
direction. He's been hugely successful at this and he's been almost prophetic
in his opinions about what we should be worrying about. He was criticizing
Apple for trying to take away peoples' freedoms and Steve Jobs for steering
the company in this direction. He wasn't condemning him as a person, as he
said " _My feelings about Jobs as a person are not strong, since I barely knew
him._ " I don't see expressing this view after Steve Jobs' death as being
particularly disrespectful. Steve Jobs is known to the majority of people only
for his role at Apple. This role is what he was praised for across the
internet and in magazines after his death. This role is what Stallman
condemned.

~~~
Joeri
> Stallman sees this and he has dedicated his life to moving us in the
> opposite direction. He's been hugely successful at this and he's been almost
> prophetic in his opinions about what we should be worrying about.

He has not been hugely successful. He has failed outright at making users care
about their software freedoms, which is why it's so easy to take them away
from them. The users are the ones who care least about free software, mostly
because they see every day how inferior it is to closed software. From the
perspective of the average user, apple's stuff is far superior to the "free"
stuff. This makes users interpret free in its worst meaning: free as in cheap,
free as in low value.

And this is my real beef with stallman's brand of free. His freedom is a
narrow-minded ideology, abstracted from what freedom means in the real world.
In the real world the only freedom I care about is the freedom to spend my
time the way I want. From that perspective, jobs did a lot to make me free,
because the switch from linux to apple "freed" more of my time than it cost
me.

It's also interesting to think that apple, in supporting webkit and web
technology, helped make HTML5 happen, a movement that enables more user
freedom than ever before. Even the ITMS, that bastion of evil, is just another
web app selling DRM-free music.

I respect what stallman is trying to do, and strongly agree with it. I just
think his tactics are dead-wrong.

~~~
mithaler
_And this is my real beef with stallman's brand of free. His freedom is a
narrow-minded ideology, abstracted from what freedom means in the real world.
In the real world the only freedom I care about is the freedom to spend my
time the way I want. From that perspective, jobs did a lot to make me free,
because the switch from linux to apple "freed" more of my time than it cost
me._

You're overloading the word _free_ , a common rhetorical confusion that
invariably appears in discussions of this nature. You're not really saying
that Apple gave you more freedom; you're saying it gave you more time. That's
a legitimate point, but you shouldn't pretend that that's the same thing as
"freedom" in any sense remotely resembling what Stallman or foob care about.
As such, you clearly don't "strongly agree" with what Stallman is trying to
do; he wants software to be something anyone can tinker with, modify and
redistribute. Apple wants to give you the "best possible computing
experience", which it can only do for you as long as you're in total agreement
with Apple over what that means.

By the way, Apple machines are a huge timesink for me whenever I try to use
them, precisely because I _can't_ customize the things in the UI that drive me
batty (namely, the global menu and the dock, two elements of the OSX UI that
Apple holds sacrosanct). I'm orders of magnitude more productive on a machine
I've set up to work the way I want than one that I haven't. So of what use to
me is Apple's brand of "freedom"? Contrast it to Stallman's, which allows me
to tear open a piece of software to see what it's doing or modify its
behavior. I know which one I'd rather have.

~~~
danssig
>Apple machines are a huge timesink for me whenever I try to use them,
precisely because I can't customize the things in the UI that drive me batty

Actually, it sounds like _either_ machine is a huge time sink for you. Apple
machines because you have to deal with how they're set up and your dream OS
because you have to spend a bunch of time tweaking everything to be how you
want it. For those of us who find the Apple OSX way just fine, we don't have
that time sink.

~~~
vedang
>it sounds like either machine is a huge time sink for you

No, it doesn't sound like that. There are many things I like to tweak that
make me more productive. Tweaking those things is time-consuming, but once
it's done, I never have to waste time on it again. This default window manager
sucks? Let me spend a day to throw it out and install awesome. I find myself
doing the same things over and over again in Emacs? Let me write and store a
macro for it. And you know what the really cool part is? _I can do these
things!_. And I usually end up learning something useful about the system.

Now you may find Apple OS X perfect and that's great for you. But what if
Apple makes some change tomorrow that bugs the crap out of you? Everytime you
encounter that "shitty" detail, a little part of you will get irritated and
want to take a hammer to your laptop. Or maybe these things don't bother you.
I, however, won't live with something like that.

------
outworlder
"He designed them to refuse even to let users install their own choice of
applications — and installing free (freedom-respecting) applications is
entirely forbidden."

Uh... installing free software is forbidden by the GPL, not Apple. Since GPL
forbids further restrictions on distributions, there's no way to legally
install them in an Apple device, because of the EULA.

Since this is already forbidden by the GPL, for Apple it makes (legal) sense
to not approve them in the first place.

EDIT: Removing comment about the approval process.

~~~
ajross
That's true, but sort of twists the point. The GPL is designed to preserve the
freedom (in the sense the FSF has defined -- RMS is nothing if not consistent
in that usage) of users to use and modify the software. The EULA and approval
process deny that freedom.

The net effect is that copyleft apps simply cannot be shipped for iOS, and
that is indeed a restriction imposed by the GPL. But that doesn't make iOS
software free, either.

RMS isn't complaining that Apple dissallows GPL software. He's complaining
that they dissallow redistribution of the software on the device even where
the authors desire it to be redistributable.

~~~
outworlder
> The net effect is that copyleft apps simply cannot be shipped for iOS, and
> that is indeed a restriction imposed by the GPL. But that doesn't make iOS
> software free, either.

That is my point. They both have restrictions. RMS designed the GPL on purpose
so that a third party is not able to place additional restrictions. Apple
designed its devices so users can only install Apps by agreeing with the EULA
first. One of them must relax the restrictions - which one depends on your
ideology alone. I tend to side with RMS here

> RMS isn't complaining that Apple dissallows GPL software. He's complaining
> that they dissallow redistribution of the software on the device even where
> the authors desire it to be redistributable.

Eat your cake or have it. With a permissive license, you can install wherever
you want, at the expense of "freedom" (for some definition of). Get a strong
copyleft license and you cannot install it on some devices, but it will be
forever "free".

I feel it is shortsighted to blace the blame solely on Apple, while ignoring
the ideological war as a whole.

~~~
ajross
You're still misinterpreting. RMS's goal is _not_ merely getting GPL apps
running on an iPhone. He wants the iPhone to allow redistribution and user-
controlled software installation. Compromising on the license won't change
that. The iPhone will still disallow freedom-respecting applications.

~~~
outworlder
Does a BSD license "disrespects" freedom, for instance?

But this is all academic. RMS has shown that he will never allow compromises,
no matter what.

~~~
bzbarsky
You can't legally get a BSD-licensed app from the App Store and then modify
and redistribute it, last I checked. So it has nothing to do with the license
and everything to do with the App Store EULA.

~~~
Someone
Technically, you can redistribute it, but not trough the App Store. That, in
turn, means most people will not be able to actually _use_ the app you
distribute to them.

As I see it, the issue the FSF has with Apple's model boils down to the
following: the FSF claims that being free should be an unalienable right of
_all_ software. Apple, on the other hand, claims that _not_all_ software must
be free.

The two statements are in conflict. IMO, it is a matter of opinion which world
view you prefer.

However, it also is true that, historically, 'A or B is a matter of opinion'
can evolve into 'A is evil, B is good', or even 'B is an inalienable right'
(for an example, look at the treatment of prisoners of war over the ages)

IMO, it is quite likely that, eventually, RMS will be found to be found
'right' in this discussion.

------
gavinlynch
I don't buy the separation of Stallman insulting Jobs' deeds versus his person
being a lighter criticism. You are what you do. And I can dig irreverence, but
isn't there a point where--when you are proselytizing about the evil labors of
the man who died 24 hours earlier--you're kind of just an asshole?

I respect Stallman's contributions in GNU, understand his position on patents
and copyleft and his political agenda and feel it's an important part of the
discourse (albeit not gospel). But at the same time, he seems like kind of a
small, angry man. IMHO.

~~~
laughinghan
"...isn't there a point where--when you are proselytizing about the evil
labors of the man who died 24 hours earlier--you're kind of just an asshole?"
Are you saying there is no amount of "evil labors" a man can do for which he
deserves nothing but glorification for 24 hours? At risk of Godwinning, I
think you and I can both name a historical figure or three for whom we'd have
no qualms "proselytizing the evil labors of" less than 24 hours after they
died.

The point being, your ad hominem is wrong, Stallman isn't being an asshole, he
just saw Jobs as you see those historical figures. The fact that we all (yes,
including me) disagree with that view of Jobs is irrelevant to and absolutely
does not call for an ad hominem against Stallman.

~~~
gavinlynch
I was not directly countering Stallmans' "Jobs is evil because he creates
popular, 'closed' systems" with the fact that he is an asshole. I was merely
pointing out that he is an asshole.

No ad hominem here. I don't have the time to take on the differences between
practical and theoretically closed systems of which Stallman speaks.

And the implication of your Godwin reference is the height of absurdity.

------
breck
This was more reasonable than his first post and he brought up some
interesting points. I'm very happy he clarified.

~~~
podperson
How is it more reasonable? He's comparing Steve Jobs to an infamously corrupt
mayor who brutally suppressed anti-Vietnam war protestors and fixed elections
to a guy who created products people loved (and was something of a jerk at a
personal level, but that's something Stallman should approve of).

But oops, he got the quotation slightly wrong. It doesn't change the meaning
but better make sure he gets the quotation right.

Oh yeah, and Jobs was objectionable not for making computers stylish but for
being GOOD at at. If people hadn't liked his computers that would have been
OK.

~~~
Kylekramer
At risk of Godwinning, let's just say that often the people actively and
happily chose things that are very oppressive. And this is were Stallman is
coming from. He very explicitly understands that people like Apple products
(he even says that making things stylish and smooth are positives in this
piece). It is because Apple products are so good that Stallman reacts so
strongly to them.

You and I may disagree with him about how oppressive Apple devices are, but
there is definitely a reasonable argument to be made that they are.

~~~
podperson
The problem with Stallman is he and I disagree on what the word "oppressive"
means. I have no objection to people running FOSS software on their computers,
but he objects to my running non-FOSS software on my computer and labels me
"oppressed".

~~~
SergeyBrin
no, he objects to not even being able to install foss software on an iphone

~~~
podperson
I'm sure he objects to that too, but that's not what he says.

------
kabdib
Years ago I had Stallman personally demand that I quit Apple in protest of
something that he felt strongly about. He was obnoxious to the point that I
lost all respect for him.

The OSS community would do better without Stallman.

~~~
spodek
rms is not a member of the OSS community. He is a (founding) member of the
Free Software community.

At least that's my understanding.

------
astine
Stallman is like the Rush Limbaugh of the Free Software movement. It doesn't
matter if he occasionally has a point (he does here,) his complete lack of
tact and his small-mindedness tend to overshadow his message.

He's right, Jobs' life work made him effectively Stallman's enemy, or at least
the enemy of Stallman's cause so Stallman's not wrong to express a contrarian
view. However, he should at least express some empathy and respect.

~~~
lukeschlather
Comparing Stallman to Limbaugh is unjust. Limbaugh makes millions off of being
a small-minded tactless jerk. Stallman is not in it for the money, he's in it
to build a better future, whether he's done a good job or not that's up for
history to decide.

~~~
jacoblyles
How do you know that Limbaugh is not also in it to "build a better future", in
the best way that he knows how?

~~~
lukeschlather
I don't. My point is that Stallman is an ascetic and really gains nothing but
prestige (such as it is) from his actions. I don't see Limbaugh making
sacrifices to live in line with his extreme ideology.

------
vimalg2
RMS would still piss certain people off, if he'd instead said : "I am not the
least bit upset SJ is gone. I've always fundamentally disagreed with the
movements he spearheaded, to take away the user's freedom."

RMS is supposedly autistic, and the lack of empathy is likely a result of
that.

Taking that into account, there hardly seems cause for all this fuss.

Move on.

------
rickmb
Anybody with any knowledge of what both Jobs and RMS have achieved and how
their vision has affected our work and our lives can only have respect for
_both_ of them.

What we do every day would be very different without them.

And for fuck's sake, no matter how you feel about RMS as a person and his
undiplomatic, uncompromising stance, _listen_ when the man speaks. He's been
right more often than not.

~~~
5hoom
Totally agree, both men are worthy of great respect.

Regarding Richard Stallman you can take or leave his personality, but he does
take a very long view of the software ecosystem and he has made more than a
few prophetic observations ("The Right to Read" foreshadowing widespread DRM
comes to mind).

I'll always take the time to hear what he has to say.

------
seasoup
Is there not room in the world for both paid and free software? Why must all
software be free, and why must all devices accommodate free software?

The free software movement needs to make something as interesting and as
compelling as what Apple built instead of just complaining about what Apple
built. Make something beautiful and easy to use and people will use it.

On a personal level, I don't want free software for my phone. It's too much
work for me. I want my phone to just work, I don't want it to have viruses, I
don't have the time or inclination to hack around with it and I'm a developer,
I don't care as a consumer if that means that "free" software is given the
boot from a device to make this happen.

For my $:

Good design + No Viruses > Free Software

That's not true for everyone, and for them Apple isn't the right product.

~~~
orangecat
_Why must all software be free, and why must all devices accommodate free
software?_

The question isn't "all", it's "any". If Apple gets their way then
jailbreaking "your" iOS device will be a federal crime, and the only
significant open-ish alternative will be forcibly removed from the market.

------
gbog
Too many comments here, but I'll still be shouting in the desert: rms is
right, having so many tech guys using apple products is harmful for our
children, computing is power, power needs separated, we need a separation of
powers between hw and s, in the constitution.

~~~
gbog
Edit (dunno why I can't edit this post): "we need a separation of powers
between hardware and software, in the constitution."

------
9999
Stallman has once again said exactly what I would expect Stallman to say. I
admire(d) and respect(ed) both Stallman and Jobs. Even if their views are
diametrically opposed (although I wouldn't say Jobs' position is actually at
the complete opposite end of the spectrum), they both managed to advance
computing in ways that no one else could have. Although I would expect
Stallman to hate what Jobs has done, I wish he would try to understand why
people value his work so intensely. Stylish and smooth is only the beginning.

------
jsz0
Stallman should invest some of his time and passion into yelling at OSS
developers for consistently failing to build products as usable and trouble-
free as Apple's software. Almost no normal person cares about open vs closed.
They care about works vs. doesn't work. Most of what Stallman advocates would
not work for normal people so his work is just a waste of time until there is
a credible OSS alternative to the things and people he hates.

~~~
forensic
You're still equating OSS with RMS when OSS was the enemy of RMS.

~~~
Peaker
More of an ally camp..

------
TorbjornLunde
I think RMS is similar to Jobs in some ways. They are both extremely strong
willed individuals that has done a lot but have some pretty serious quirks.

While I disagree with his pretty extreme views he is at least consistent in
them. Also, even though I'm not a huge FOSS-proponent myself, I think the
world is better for having some of them.

------
shrikant
What's with the 'ohai' in the URL? The link works even without it, so
genuinely curious..

~~~
awj
Probably working around a repost filter.

------
jfb
I spend all day in Emacs, and I used to work for Apple. Who do I root for?

(Kidding. I think Stallman makes his point eloquently clear here, and while I
disagree, I can't impugn him as a person.)

------
mark_l_watson
Very cool that he is very attentive to important things going on in the world
and keeps a political notes log - I didn't know that side of Richard.

That was a good link.

I also agree with other comments here that the USA is in real jeopardy of
losing Internet (and other) freedoms so Richard's life work for software
freedom seems relevant right now.

------
padmanabhan01
I would rather live in a world where people like Jobs are in charge (iPhones
and Mac comes to mind), than the one in which people like Stallman are (unix
terminal and command prompts come to mind).

~~~
barrkel
I'd like to live in a world where neither are in charge, and we have the best
of both worlds: beautiful devices that do not have restrictions on how they
can be used.

------
kingsidharth
"stylish and smooth"

he doesn't understand design.

~~~
thomasgerbe
Pretty much.

Crazy. Normal people just care about stuff that works well and is easy to use.

------
sigzero
Like HURD, I applaud Stallman for his vision but not his implementation.

------
dupe123
i'm somewhat surprised stallman is even remotely supportive of android.. i
thought he thought that anything non gpl was the devil.

~~~
icebraining
No. He thinks they don't do enough to protect the users' freedom, but he still
considers them Free Software and acceptable. He has also advocated for them in
some cases, particularly for the Ogg Vorbis library.

~~~
rimantas
I got what the problem is. Stallman does not try to protect anybody's freedom.
The freedom he fights for is a product of his imagination and has very little
to do with actually users and their freedom. The days when every software
users was if not programmer then at least IT guy in some sense are long gone.
That model no longer fits the world. Some say they admire the man who stoics
to principles, but I think stubborn refusal to notice that the world has
changed is just a sign of stupidity and nothing to brag about.

~~~
icebraining
I never touched a line of Firefox's code, yet I and millions of others benefit
immensely from the source being available. Thousands benefit from CyanogenMod
despite not having the faintest idea of how it was created.

On a different level, non-tech companies and organizations have hired small
software companies to develop solutions based on OSS projects that would
otherwise have been prohibitively expensive.

The belief that only IT people benefit from access to the source is completely
incorrect; one may disagree with them, but calling RMS' views obsolete is
nonsensical.

~~~
rimantas
Sad to see that for many OSS = GPL.

~~~
icebraining
That is unfortunate, but I don't see its relevance for this discussion, seeing
as RMS is not one of those (particularly since he wouldn't use the term OSS in
the first place ;)

------
alecco
Yet another Stallman-bashing thread. Flagged.

~~~
bostonpete
You flagged a submission because you didn't like some of the comments people
posted about it?

~~~
alecco
Exactly. These threads bring up the worse behavior of HN. A lot of disgusting
personal attacks and insults.

    
    
      - top reply thread somebody posted allegedly private emails (now deleted)
      - 2nd compares him with Rush Limbaugh
      - 4th calls him a small angry man
      - 6th a troll calling GPL not free software
    

And not a single insightful or interesting comment. Hence, flagged.

Edit: spelling

~~~
bostonpete
At the moment, the top four comments in my view (foob, socratic, naner, &
dlikhten) are all positive towards Stallman.

Edit: I think this is important to note because it means that allowing the
topic to get fleshed out may surprise you. The more discussion, the more
mature and informed opinions become. Attempting to suppress the topic
altogether b/c you don't like some of the comments is the wrong way to go
about it IMO.

~~~
alecco
Unusually it turned around. Anyway, there's nothing new on this thread after
the infamous ones the past month.

------
recoiledsnake
I did attend Stallman's talk once, and it was interesting to say the least.
However, there are some problems with the F/OSS type of development in
practice. First thing is developers need to put food on the table. In
practice, when someone asks "but is it Open Source?" about an application/web
app, more of them are interested in the "free as in beer" aspect or in using
it in commercial business for free rather than about customizing it and
releasing it to the original devs/other users(regardless of the requirements
of the license). This happens all the time on HN when new and cool projects
are announced.

No one is still able to crack the make money while open sourcing something
unless the tool is completely tangential to the way the company makes
money(see Google/Apple for examples) or tease it as a way to sell the real
ability to use it in closed app(see MySQL). Not to mention throwing code over
the wall like Google likes to do with Chrome and Android source releases. Not
everyone can be Red Hat.But Stallman expects them to be.

~~~
aklofas
See: Mozilla Foundation

~~~
cooldeal
Not sure how much the devs are paid if any, but the CEO was taking a cool 400K
home every year. Their job was to diversify Mozilla so that it wouldn't depend
totally on someone that was making a competing product, and utterly failing at
that since multiple years.

Last I heard, the IRS was investigating them for claiming deductions as a
charitable foundation but funneling money to the Mozilla Corporation.

They've only recently started concentrating on paying developers to reduce the
memory leaks, bloat etc after Chrome started eating their lunch in a big way.

How is this a poster child for a good way to develop good and useful software
for the masses? In fact, it seems to exemplify the pitfalls and weakness in
the model, if nothing else.

~~~
bzbarsky
> Not sure how much the devs are paid if any

Well enough that they can hire a few hundred full-time people, apparently,
yes? Including some people who should clearly have no shortage of other job
offers (e.g. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Seward> ).

> Last I heard, the IRS was investigating them

The IRS is doing an audit (which is not the same thing as an investigation, by
the way).

The IRS is also auditing, right this second, Apple, Google, and Microsoft. In
fact, last I checked, for companies like Apple or Microsoft they had full-time
auditors assigned to them on an ongoing basis.

As far as the memory leaks thing... That's a developer-driven project, like
many other things at Mozilla. Most developers there are not paid to do a
specific task; they're paid to do the right thing. Just like Google doesn't
hire you for a particular project, by the way.

------
shareme
Put it this way if the Patriot act was a human dying would you feel pain or
joy might illustrate his point better

------
billpatrianakos
His original post should have been more along the lines of this correction.
The original had awful timing and was totally tactless. Correction noted,
doesn't make thing right, still dislike him very much.

