
Richard Stallman on proprietary software, SaaS and open source - pixelmonkey
http://gigaom.com/2013/08/06/hactivist-richard-stallman-takes-on-proprietary-software-saas-and-open-source/
======
mathattack
"Richard Stallman, revered by some as a genius (after all, he won a McArthur
“genius” grant in 1990) and by others as a crackpot"

When I first heard him speak many years ago, I thought he was a real crank. My
negative thoughts centered around:

1 - How can we build the next Microsoft without true ownership?

2 - Does his model of thinking demand that 100% of the population be technical
enough to troubleshoot their computers?

3 - I can see people writing software for love, but who writes all the
documentation?

As the years go by, he's one of the few people who sounds less like a
crackpot, even though he hasn't softened his extremism. With the current state
of patent trolling, it's getting harder to create the next Microsoft.
Improvements in GUIs is taking some of the issue away for #2. But I still
haven't figured out #3.

Edited for formatting

~~~
clicks
> I can see people writing software for love, but who writes all the
> documentation?

1\. People like me? :) I genuinely love writing documentation. Though I should
mention it's easier to write books/tutorials than to write detailed
documentation of the software you are yourself not writing, which brings me to
point 2.

2\. Writing documentation is very much a part of software-writing. It's
usually best to do write documentation as you're writing the software... I
haven't met anyone yet who really hated the process, so I wouldn't consider
this to be a big problem at all.

~~~
tjr
I too write documentation. Not exclusively, but in my day job I often write
manuals and other documents for our software, and I've done documentation work
as a volunteer for Project GNU.

It's no more strange that someone would enjoy writing documentation that it is
that someone would enjoy writing software, though just as non-developers don't
understand the joy of programming, I imagine that non-writers don't understand
the joy of documenting.

~~~
mathattack
Fair enough. I think my bias showed. :-)

So a question in return... Do you share my belief that documentation tends to
lag in most projects? And if so, is the bottleneck not enough documentation
writers, or not enough engineering time and attention? I've assumed it's the
latter, though it could be the former. Or is it something else?

~~~
tjr
_Do you share my belief that documentation tends to lag in most projects?_

Absolutely.

I suspect that the number of people interested in writing software
documentation is fairly small: they have to have enough knowledge of software
engineering to be able to understand what they are writing about, and they
have to be good writers. Anyone could learn software development, but not
everyone does. And anyone could learn how to write well, but not everyone
does. So the set of people who learn both is even smaller.

On commercial software engineering projects, my experience is that
documentation of any sort is made as much of an afterthought as possible, if
even that. Unless there's some business case (i.e., obvious money) that comes
from spending time on documentation, then it doesn't make it very high on the
priority list. Which is unfortunate, because as a software developer, I've
wasted a lot of time figuring things out that should have been documented. So
money can be saved later on, even if no money is "earned" up front.

For free / open source projects, the story may be different. There's not
necessarily paid engineering staff involved, so if documentation doesn't get
written, I can only presume that the developers either didn't want to, didn't
know they should, or felt incapable of writing it. I find it hard to imagine
taking a principled stand against having good documentation.

BUT... in my anecdotal experience, I've encountered volunteer open source
software developers who in fact did seem resistant to accepting offers of
volunteer help with documentation. So I'm not really sure what's up with that.

------
will118
I didn't think this article was very good at all, I've read all this before.

These are just Stallman's exact ideas rehashed under hotwords like Snowden &
SaaS...

I'd usually try not to whine but I'm not even sure if the quotes they use are
from the talk or from years ago.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Probably both. Like a lot of other speakers, Stallman has a few canned
speeches. He asks the organizers which one they want, and he gives it. It
probably evolves over time, but the differences are minor.

The issues Stallman talks about have not changed much over the last 20 years,
so his speeches haven't either.

------
borplk
I have to admit before the whole PRISM story I didn't think much about Richard
Stallman and thought he's too extreme or delusional. After PRISM however I
realised he was right all this time and I was just too stupid and blind to see
it. I'm going to read more of his notes. Very few people have what it takes
and are willing to pay the huge and continuous cost of rejecting proprietary
software/technology. But he has been standing by his principals for a lifetime
and I respect him for that.

~~~
rpgmaker
Read this and talk about ominous: [http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-
read.html](http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html) I think rms has
other interesting articles on the same subject but I fail to find them right
now, I now I read a few back in the days when I was diving into FLOSS.

------
tunnuz
I attended a talk by Richard Stallman about two years ago, and it revolved
around the same ideas. While some of his ideas are a bit too extreme for my
taste, e.g., when a guy asked how to make money by building Open Source
software he replied something like "get another job", I think that many of
them are inspiring. Such as the ones about proprietary formats and owning your
own data.

~~~
pixelmonkey
I attended the talk covered in this article, and someone actually asked him a
similar question there.

His reply this time is that, personally, he had never made more money in his
life than when companies paid him to fix or improve open source software. And
I can see his point!

It may not be common, but there certainly plenty of organizations that either
have business interests aligned with open source technology (e.g. 10gen, MySQL
AB), have open source ingrained into their culture (e.g. Wikimedia Foundation,
Mozilla), provide consulting/training services around open source (e.g.
DataStax, Elastic Search, LucidWorks), or simply use open source so heavily
that they need to pay people to improve it (e.g. Intel, Google).

And then, there are plenty of companies (like mine,
[http://parse.ly](http://parse.ly)) that take the business perspective that
anything that isn't core to our business / competitive advantage not only can,
but _should_ , be open source, eventually.

Getting a job working on open source isn't some fringe thing anymore. If it
feels that way because _your_ employer doesn't allow open source work, you may
want to get the heck out :)

~~~
rimantas
And Mozille gets its money wrom where? Google paying for being the default
search engine? Is Google search open source?

------
unclesaamm
This was a terrible piece. Why/who think Stallman is a crackpot? And what is
up with this snide editorializing?:

'“Almost everyone in the world using proprietary software is also using
propriety malware,” said Stallman, who looks every inch the part of a
hactivist with his long mane of graying hair.'

I actually bust out laughing when I read that. Journalistic standards, please.

------
dreen
who is a "Hactivist"?

why is rms one?

the article only says: "Stallman, who looks every inch the part of a hactivist
with his long mane of graying hair."

does that mean i can Hac if I look like Gandalf?

the fact this is not a typo and the explanation given practically discredit
anything written in the article

