

Stuff Richard Stallman Said on the Linux Action Show - macco
http://lunduke.com/?p=2273

======
cbs
People seem to forget he is an idealist. If he thinks free software is the
most important social issue of our time, don't be surprised his other beliefs
flow from it. I think his role as an uncompromising figure is important to
maintain the shape of the overton window. I wouldn't want him to be anything
else.

You don't have to agree with him (he is ridiculously idealistic), but his
position provides us a lenses to analyze our own. To understand what we want
software to be, our ability to affect that, the constraints practicality
places on that, and how we reconcile the two.

There is always going to be a line where we say "fuck it, I need money", so
poke around and discover yourself rather than taking the quick route and just
writing off everything you're not already involved with as someone else's
problem.

Hopefully, on the other end of that process, we have discovered enough about
our stance on software that we're above a banal characterization of free
software like: _Good at making software that helps people and brings joy to
others? Don’t do it._

~~~
mhurron
He's not an idealist, he is an ideologue. He will not even consider a
compromise or gradual moves to his position. His position is unquestionably
right and just and everyone who disagrees or does otherwise is wrong and
undeniably evil.

He is no different than a religious zealot. He just worships a different god.

The only lens he provides is one for us to say 'hell, at least I'm not that
crazy.'

~~~
victork2
What a "brilliant, well argumented" point...

I am not going to comment the article in itself, I think many people have
pointed out in other comment that the guy completely missed the point. But I
want to answer this comment:

There's a reason why we sometimes shouldn't compromise. A LOT of powers in
this world are just waiting for the opportunity to use the good ol' "foot in
the door" strategy, especially with free/ open source software. Richard Stall,
hate it or love it, with the GPL license has found a way to prevent it. So, in
that case there is no compromise, and he's right.

There's also a reason with Free/Open source software are now a subject of
philosophical research, and your lack of understanding of the forces at play
is a good example why some people, the author of this post in question, should
stop to look at open source softwares through the "is it conveniant for me?"
lens.

God, the eternal september syndrom is so strong with Open Source software!...

~~~
astrodust
That software is getting more free over time has almost nothing to do with
imposing licenses like GPL and everything to do with attitude.

People want to share. People love to share. It used to be in the days before
version control systems, before reliable internetworking, that sharing was
hard, tedious, often impractical. The difference between open source and
closed source was often a matter of proximity.

Now with tools like Github that foster community and encourage people to build
things that are free and/or open there has been an explosion of open-source
software.

People like RMS refuse to acknowledge or even entertain the idea that there
needs to be a healthy balance between open and closed. You can be too open
just as you can be too closed.

His extremist, binary position is not based in reality.

~~~
greyfade
His ideas aren't realistic, no, but you have to respect a guy that so
consistently and fervently holds on to his ideas. Few people are as
consistent.

------
jfruh
Uh, telling you that the way you make a living is unethical is not the same as
_wishing harm upon your children._ You may not agree with his ethical system
(lord knows I don't, it's bonkers) but everyone's economic activities are
subject to ethical judgments, even if they're feeding children with their
profits. Lots of people raise children in less financially comfortable
circumstances than computer programmers, and most of them turn out fine.

Re: RMS's bonkers ethical system: I really don't think he ever moved past the
mindset he had in academia, where he was essentially a researcher of how
computers do and could work. To him, code should be shared freely just like
research in biology and physics is. This has nothing to do with the real world
as it exists today, but I do honestly belief that's the germ of his worldview.

~~~
munin
FYI, code is not shared freely in biology and physics, it's a big problem.

academia is not a hegemony. there are a few people in academia that share
beliefs with stallman, there are many others that have no problem with making
money off of their work.

~~~
jfruh
I guess what I meant is not the code people write to conduct the research, but
the actual results of that research. As in, you can't copyright a fact. You
can't copyright a beaker or a flask. I know there's a lot of debate within the
scientific community about commercialization, but I think there was a lot less
of this in the '70s when Stallman was forming his ideas.

------
comice
Won't somebody think of the children!

If you think something is unethical, as rms does with proprietary software,
why would that change if it puts people out of work? He still thinks it's
unethical.

He ties it up with a false dichotomy: either I develop proprietary software or
my children starve. If children really did starve due to there being no
proprietary software jobs, then the discussion is different, but it's not the
case.

Surely there are job losses in the tobacco industry, but I don't think we
should stop discouraging it as a society.

This is such an ignorant and lazy article, why has it got so many votes here?
Sigh.

------
chjj
This is getting frustrating. While I don't agree with Stallman that _all_
software needs to be free, I think the LAS interview with RMS was pathetic.

Bryan Lunduke quickly jumped to the, "think of the children!" argument. It was
very unclassy of him. It's fine, I see people fallback to that kind of
argument a lot, especially when they think they're losing their footing in a
debate, but I expected better from him.

Bryan took a lot of emotion-fueled cheapshots at Stallman. In contrast, at
least Stallman was very clear and straightforward about what he believed, even
if you think some of the things he said were insane. I'm surprised he had such
little exposure to RMS before this, and was actually surprised by his beliefs.

"If you disagree with me, then you obviously hate children." This is really
pathetic. Go ahead, try to make it _impossible_ for people to disagree with
you. Blackmail the audience, play on their emotions, and guilt them into
agreeing with you. I was really disgusted by these tactics.

------
sedachv
tl;dr - Man went in trying to interview Stallman with a bunch of
preconceptions ("here's what I expected to happen:"), ignored what Stallman
was trying to say, and is now writing an article about how not understanding
someone confirmed the prejudices and stereotypes he had about them.

Lunduke is obnoxious, Stallman is a jerk, and it doesn't surprise me that most
programmers continue to think they are entitled to earn a living from
programming while being the first to shout about the "buggy whip makers"
cliche whenever a discussion about jobs and automation comes up.

~~~
acabal
Seriously. And I expected better than a "think of the children" stance from
the interviewer.

~~~
xSwag
I found it hilarious the way Stallman simply brought down any argument
presented to him, I'm sure he mentioned proprietary software not respecting
our freedom atleast 20 times, no matter what the argument was. It is safe to
say that this man is a true idealist. I wonder what Hacker News' opinion is on
this.

------
tikhonj
You can turn this argument on _any_ way of making money. Ooh, you think truth
in advertising is more important _than feeding my children_!? Or from
Facebook's perspective--you think privacy is more important _than feeding my
children_!?

Really, it's a trite argument--just because something makes you money does not
mean it's justified. If that was true, how could we justify punishing people
like Madoff? This is actually a good parallel--nobody _had_ to buy into
Madoff's scheme, but if they did it hurt them. Nobody _has_ to buy into
proprietary software, but if they do they lose some of their rights.

And, of course, this argument has _another_ fatal weakness--just because you
can't hide the source from your users _does not_ mean you can't make money. If
anything, the main reason free software is relatively weak in the market
(although not _that_ weak) is because of competition from proprietary
software. If _all_ software was free, you could expect making money that way
to be easier.

So really it's a flawed argument that would have been invalid even without the
flaw.

~~~
sequoia
You want to see fewer people in prison?? I'm a prison guard. [...] _than
feeding my children!?_

------
kinleyd
For all the good work that rms has done for the FSF movement, and for all his
brilliance compared to the rest of us average Joes, he stands out as an
example of what happens when you have a binary, black and white view of the
world. It's no compromises, at any cost. What a pity.

~~~
maxwell
Not compromising doesn't mean "black and white". rms asserts that proprietary
knowledge/software is bad for society, and he (naturally) gets a lot of
resistance from people who have strong ethical convictions in general, but
also skin in the game profiting from the way it is: i.e. us founders and
developers and consultants. It's easy for us to see that the legal system is
fucked up, but hard to be honest about our own field when our interests start
conflicting. We talk ad nauseam about patents and engineering techniques, but
have comparatively little discussion about the ethics of proprietary software.
It's easy to just kinda take it for granted. And when rms does come up, these
ad hominems are usually about as far as it goes. There's a line from Mad Men,
"nobody knows what's wrong with themselves, and everyone else can see it right
away."

rms isn't a businessman or a politician, he's a "prophet". However secular his
beliefs, he sacrifices for his convictions (not that he has a "side", this
isn't a sport!). He's in the tradition of Jesus, Luther, Copernicus. Their
ideas threatened the orthodoxies of their time; what kept the money-changers
in the temple, the Church profiting from indulgences and remaining the
scientific authority. It wasn't a pity that Jesus waged peace on war, that
Luther called bullshit on indulgences, or that Copernicus proved Earth went
around Sun. If they'd've chosen otherwise, in retrospect, what good would it
have done?

If Jesus led a rebellion against Rome, or Copernicus didn't publish, or, I
don't know, Luther embraced the printing press + surplus cloth to trail-blaze
the romance novel...

Their common enemy was ignorance, and history's been shaped by those who
didn't compromise on what they knew mattered. That doesn't mean we all have
to! I'm no prophet. I write proprietary software. But when I run across one of
these articles, I remember that most software works best as a public good,
that I should release more code on GitHub, that I should keep moving on my
back-burner OSS projects, etc. His views aren't convenient to many hackers,
but I find his determination admirable.

~~~
kinleyd
"no compromises, at any cost" is black and white. The operative part is "at
any cost". rms has been brilliant at what he has achieved, with the problem
being that he believes he's right and brilliant at anything he does. That's a
huge leap in logic right there - you just have to visit his blog to see what I
mean.

While there is wisdom in advising one to be single minded in one's pursuits,
there is also wisdom in being open to the possibility of being wrong in that
single mindedness. I believe rms is right to pursue the principles behind the
FSF - it has brought much good. However, I think he is wrong to believe that
FSF applies to everything.

------
coffeeaddicted
Very biased interviewer and horrible introduction to a an interview about a
rather interesting topic. I also do not agree with Mr. Stallman about this
specific point, but this is just bad journalism.

------
nollidge
> I was being a good boy… I didn’t even make a joke about eating toe stuff or
> anything.

Oh, but you managed to squeeze it into the blog post.

------
zachbeane
[http://chrisdone.com/posts/2012-03-11-fsf-stallman-
interview...](http://chrisdone.com/posts/2012-03-11-fsf-stallman-interview-
jupiter.html) has a recent take on it.

~~~
kinleyd
Thanks, the link gives more balanced details on the interview itself, adding a
better context to what rms said.

------
praptak
If you start with such a blatant false dychotomy ("It is either proprietary
software or the children will die!!!") expect to be treated with hostility.
Next time try asking the Pope why he thinks that banning condoms is more
important than preventing all the misery caused by the spread of HIV.

~~~
adambyrtek
> Next time try asking the Pope why he thinks that banning condoms is more
> important than preventing all the misery caused by the spread of HIV.

This is actually a very good question, and I don't see any false dichotomy
here.

~~~
praptak
Nope, given that they also ban any form of sex other than with a single
partner chosen for life.

------
freshhawk
Ignorant and uninformed commentary from the Linux Action Show? I would be
surprised but I've listened to the podcast before.

So I'm not.

Although the literal "think of the children" argument is a surprise. Poe's law
in full effect.

------
wicknicks
This is typical Stallman behavior. I think the right person to ask such
questions would be Eric Raymond or maybe even Linus Torvalds. They have a more
practical approach to free software. Also, looking at how companies provide
free software, and economize on the service packages is a good way. Github
provides "free" service, but they have different plans for different
requirements, which helps them make money, and develop Git.

~~~
angersock
Freedom has nothing to do with practicality, my friend.

------
JS_startup
If Richard really cared about FSF he would stop making such a spectacle of
himself as it's easy to discredit a movement with a gibbering lunatic as its
frontman.

Then again, maybe he's setting an example of how programmers should make money
in a post-FSF world (writing books and doing interviews)

~~~
paulhauggis
Programmers should make money by creating services. Since there is no source
code, you don't have to worry about piracy or distribution licenses.

~~~
HerraBRE
You're joking, right?

Free Software is not about slavish compliance with licensing terms or
inventing shiny new technology for technology's sake (that movement is called
Open Source). Free Software is about having the freedom to control your
computing environment.

I believe this is really, really important because in a world increasingly
shaped and even dominated by technology, people have to be able to look under
the hood and fix the code that runs their society. Otherwise they become
slaves to whoever made the rules by writing the code.

Proprietary software violates this requirement, but at least you can reverse
engineer it, hack it. With cloud services, even that option is removed. The
user has lost all control. This is pretty obviously bad for a democratic
society, but hey, it's great for tech wizards aspiring to be the next Mark
Zuckeberg, so who cares about that? :-P

~~~
paulhauggis
"people have to be able to look under the hood and fix the code that runs
their society. Otherwise they become slaves to whoever made the rules by
writing the code."

This is where we disagree. If you don't like the license that I use, don't use
the software that I created.

Are we "slaves" because we don't know the specifics of something inside our TV
or car? no. and we won't be slaves if we don't get all of the source code to
the software that we use.

You act as if it's a right and when enough people start feeling this way, the
next step is usually to get the government involved to force software vendors
to open up their source (Stallman has openly stated that he would like this).
Viewing my source code isn't a right and should never be a right.

The free software and open source movements have both devalued developers. Why
would I hire a software engineer that has years of schooling and costs $80K,
when I can just hire a software mechanic for half price and make simple
changes to the free stuff that the engineer created.

The same thing that is happening to other industries will happen to developers
in 5-10 years. We are just at the beginning of the transition.

I've worked at many places that could have hired 5 developers, but only hired
me because we were using open source and the majority of the what was needed
was already finished. Another factor is that the younger generations, who have
been using open source throughout their lives, are growing up and starting
businesses.

I'm not saying this is a bad or a good thing, just my prediction.

~~~
icebraining
_This is where we disagree. If you don't like the license that I use, don't
use the software that I created._

That's doesn't necessarily conflict with HerraBRE's position. Personally, I
don't think people should be forced to distribute their code, but I sure as
hell will avoid such software if there's an open alternative. Ideally, I hope
we as a society can eliminate the demand for proprietary software, thus
eliminating it without ever violating anyone's rights.

 _The free software and open source movements have both devalued developers.
Why would I hire a software engineer that has years of schooling and costs
$80K, when I can just hire a software mechanic for half price and make simple
changes to the free stuff that the engineer created._

More efficient competition is always scary. But for society as a whole, that's
a very huge gain of resources that'll be applied somewhere else, possibly
paying engineers to actually develop something new and worthwhile instead of
reinventing the wheel.

In any case, we're on HN! Where's your contempt for the salarymen? ;)

------
naner
So this is kind of humorous that this guy is taking this personally and
actually seems to think Stallman wants his kids to die, but Stallman really
would do better with more compassion and empathy so people don't just tune him
out.

This is like when a person claims they don't believe in evolution for
religious reasons and many people just dismiss or insult them. Nobody takes
the time to address their fears and try to explain things to them in a non-
threatening way.

(See the highlighted text in the comments:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/q0ee4/i_aint_even_m...](http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/q0ee4/i_aint_even_mad/c3try9d)
)

------
apsurd
This guy's article blatantly admits he went in expecting and preparing to be
on the defensive. That's _never_ a good way to go about understanding another
human being. Surprise, surprise he says he doesn't understand the audacity of
RMS! =O

------
bluekeybox
Working programmers should be incredibly thankful to Mr. Stallman for pied-
piping thousands of people out of workforce and for keeping the cost of hiring
a good software engineer high.

------
dholowiski
I saw RMS speak in person at WordCamp one year. Although he has some great,
important ideas and he's made great contributions, I think he might be
mentally unstable. Seriously - seeing him in person, he came across as quite
crazy.

------
EvilLook
Wow. Talk about missing the point.

Let's take a look at what really went down here. First, Lunduke decides to ask
Richard Stallman about moving from working on proprietary software to Free
software while continuing to make. Second, Stallman answers and says that he
thinks having Free software is more important than making money, and that if
somebody really cared about Free software that they would be willing to take a
job in a factory or some other profession to meet their needs in life. Third,
Lunduke decides that Stallman hates children and is a lunatic.

Quoting from the linked piece: "Good at making software that helps people and
brings joy to others? Don’t do it. Go work 'in a factory' even if you are
going to do a terrible job at 'working in a factory' and couldn’t support your
family that way."

Stallman never said anything about not working on software that helps and
brings joy. Merely that it ought to be Free software. There are plenty of
companies out there selling Free software and support. Just because you
produce Free software doesn't mean you can't make money doing it.

This is a classic case of an interviewer just not getting it.

------
Buzaga
My take:

Stallman probably thinks of freedom as the most important right, so he'd
probably tend to "the less I depend on society, the better" line of thought

and that's what happens, if you live completely immersed in society, you need
money, and always more money then, to live, and that's the rules of the game,
if you adopted simpler and more idealistic living, you wouldn't depend on
money so much... and you'd turn out to be less of a slave of money

so how much of this "feed my children" is about capitalist race and how much
of it is "feed my children"?

He really doesn't care that you think you need to make 200k/year to feed your
children, the fix is inside the problem

------
vvpan
Oh no, let's not go this way again. It a conversation that has been had on-
and-on, and it is always the same thing. To me this is a form of soap opera.
We know that this is a guy who chews skin that he just peeled off of his feet
in front of an audience. So, obviously this is somebody who has to be taken
for what he is, discussing his pros and cons is a waste of time.

~~~
lutorm
_We know that this is a guy who ... <insert something that has absolutely
nothing to do with software here>_

Nice ad hominem there, pretty much right from the textbook. Really, how does
that affect the status of his statements about software?

~~~
krig
It's not an ad hominem at all. It's not used as an argument against his
statements about software. It was used as an example of his personality. How
is a known fact about his personality not a valid example of his personality?
The statement being made was that the personality of rms is well known, so to
act all shocked and surprised when he exhibits that personality is ludicrous.

You could even say that it was the opposite of an ad hominem: an appeal to
look beyond the known idiosyncrasies of Stallman and focus on, well, his
statements about software.

That's not an ad hominem.

