
Why Stallman is wrong when he calls cloud computing stupid - makimaki
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080930-why-stallman-is-wrong-when-he-calls-cloud-computing-stupid.html
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iigs
Stallman is to Open Source what Ralph Nader is to Liberals or Ron Paul is to
Conservatives/Libertarians. He has a well-formed, strongly held but atypical
opinion aimed at solving a particular problem, often at great cost in other
areas.

In other words, he's the kook that says stuff that blows our credibility with
moderates leaning the other way, but does so with good intentions and a kernel
of truth that would go a lot farther if posed more pleasantly.

Likewise, he provides good food for thought and frames the situation clearly
for people who agree or want to incorporate more of that line of thinking.

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rplevy
He's a monumental figure, working for something extremely important, and
surrounded by people who are very wrong. While Nader is much less respected
than Stallman, the magnitude to which their respective fields are ungrateful
for their respective contributions is about the same. Stallman's contributions
I would argue are much bigger than Nader's. Come on he invented the OS that is
now the basis of the majority of internet business. I think he deserves a
little more respect for that contribution. If Nader had done something equally
big in his work of keeping rogue corporations in check, we would have gone on
a more Canada-like path than the Reagan-led path of decline that we did go
down. Free Software has become a major force that continues to grow and
improve our lives. Nader's contributions were not lasting, and have mostly
been reversed by decades of corporate think tank astroturfing and lobbying
that has whittled away the rights and protections of individuals.

~~~
iigs
You contend that the creation of the GNU utilities -- differently licensed but
by and large feature clones of an existing software package was a more
important contribution to society than the American automobile safety
regulation changes brought about by
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed> ? Don't forget that BSD was
already walking a similar course by that time. Emacs is pretty important, as
well, but I think it ranks behind the GNU utilities, as well.

I haven't really tried to contrast them before, honestly, but I don't think
it's quite that cut and dry.

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bayareaguy
This article would have been better if it actually addressed the "very real"
concerns Stallman raises instead of babbling about a bunch of things that
don't.

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run4yourlives
I really didn't need an article to explain why Stallman is wrong. It's usually
my default position until he convinces me otherwise.

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umangjaipuria
Reminded me of this post by Seth Godin:

It's easy to be against something that you're afraid of. And it's easy to be
afraid of something that you don't understand.

([http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/09/its-easy-
to-...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/09/its-easy-to-be.html))

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toxik
I thought it was rather well-established that RMS has some severe paranoia-
like syndrome.

