
Richard Stallman: How I do my computing (2015) - aleyan
https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html
======
bertiewhykovich
I admire Stallman's unworldly, unfettered commitment to his principles. It's
difficult to live an ethical life, and twice as difficult to live an ethical
life under capitalism. Stallman's manic devotion to assiduously following his
own moral compass is, bizarre though its manifestation may be, something we
should all aspire towards.

That being said, I'm perpetually frustrated by the boneheadedness of his
ethical commitments. They strike me as ineffective and, more critically,
unsound: it seems to me like Stallman ad-hoc transformed an (absolutely
justified) distaste for closed-source software into a system of ethics by,
fundamentally, adopting aphorisms as axioms. Whether this was done as a post-
hoc justification for his depth of passion in this area, or whether it was
just a gradual metastasis, I don't know.

~~~
tomcam
Why is it twice as different to live an ethical life under capitalism? And
under what alternate systems is it easier to live an ethical life?

~~~
bertiewhykovich
I want to be careful here to avoid asserting that there is a system that is
known to be ultimately more ethical than capitalism under current global
conditions. (Social democracy may fit the bill, but I'm not prepared to argue
that here.) That, however, doesn't mean that capitalism is ethical, or makes
it easy to live an ethical life. The mechanics of capitalism are fundamentally
exploitative -- again, even if they are less objectionable than many
alternatives -- and participation in a capitalist economy makes you party to
this. Nearly everything that I do is inflected with some sort of abuse: my
laptop contains lithium ion batteries that use cobalt mined in insane
conditions, my commute uses oil that, in turn, funds the malignant gangster-
kings of Gulf states, my sweater was sewn in factory conditions that endanger
the lives of people whose only mistake was being born in the wrong place at
the wrong time. (And this is to say nothing of the tremendous misery that
occurs /within the United States itself/.)

Again, I am not here proposing an alternative to capitalism. But -- even if it
was the best system around -- its abuses are monstrous.

~~~
marcoperaza
> _The mechanics of capitalism are fundamentally exploitative_

No it's not. The mechanics are capitalism are fundamentally about mutual
benefit. I give you money because having your product is worth more to me than
having the money. You give me the product because having the money is worth
more to you than having the product. Mutually beneficial exchange is the
cornerstone of capitalism. At the end of the transaction, we are both better
off.

That's not to say that there's not problems around monopoly and violence, but
the latter is the failure of the state, not of the market. And monopoly is not
exclusive to capitalism. Under alternative systems, _everything_ is controlled
by a monopoly (the state).

~~~
bbctol
Mutually beneficial exchanges can still be exploitative. You give me money, I
don't shoot you, we're both better off. Whether or not capitalism is
"fundamentally" exploitative depends a lot on definitions, but the issue of
violence isn't limited to state actors, and the market can definitely coerce
people.

~~~
jomamaxx
"You give me money, I don't shoot you"

That's not capitalism by any definition.

That's extortion and it was a well known practice thousands of years before we
invented (or at least understood) capitalism.

I'd argue capitalism is not even an ideology, it's just a simple understanding
of comparative value and how to go beyond zero-sum economics.

~~~
bbctol
Oh, I know; my point was that the principle of mutually beneficial exchanges
doesn't preclude an overall negative outcome. I don't know if capitalism is an
ideology, but it certainly stems from a certain ideological framework (it's
hard to have capitalism without belief in property.)

~~~
x1798DE
I'm pretty sure that by definition it _does_ prevent a negative outcome, since
"mutually beneficial" generally means that each person is better off than
before the trade, meaning there are positive payoffs on both sides - I'm not
sure where exactly you get a negative from there.

In the example of "give me what I want or I'll shoot you", you could argue
that "X prevents Y from being shot" and "Y gives X what he wants" is a benefit
for both sides, but that ignores the first part, "X puts Y in a position where
he is going to be shot" is _not_ mutually beneficial, so the salient part of
the example (the threat) is not actually an example of mutually beneficial
exchange.

~~~
bbctol
Again, my point was that even if every exchange, in and of itself, is mutually
beneficial, the overall society can still be unpleasant. But it should also be
noted that mutually beneficial exchanges do _not_ prevent negative results
even directly, but merely improve the outcomes for those who are agreeing to
the transaction; two parties can agree to an exchange that leaves them both
better off than they were before, but harms a third party. Which doesn't even
bring up that these exchanges are based on _perceived_ benefit...

------
gamache
> The most powerful programming language is Lisp. If you don't know Lisp (or
> its variant, Scheme), you don't know what it means for a programming
> language to be powerful and elegant. Once you learn Lisp, you will see what
> is lacking in most other languages.

Then:

> My favorite programming languages are Lisp and C. However, since around 1992
> I have worked mainly on free software activism, which means I am too busy to
> do much programming. Around 2008 I stopped doing programming projects. As a
> result, I have not had time or occasion to learn newer languages such as
> Perl, Python, PHP or Ruby.

~~~
sdegutis
...or Java or C# or Scala or Haskell or Rust or OCaml or...

There's a whole lot to the programming world than disproportionately popular
dynamic languages.

What is so great about Lisp that other languages don't have? Macros? Simple
syntax? I mean, that's basically it, right?

This is just fanboyism for a language he has nostalgia for. Nothing else.

~~~
mschaef
It's hard (if not impossible) to pick a single attribute of 'Lisp' that's
shared by all the languages that are part of the Lisp family of languages.
There are Lisps without macros, there are Lisps without the simple syntax,
there are Lisps without dynamic typing, or lexical scope, or any of a dozen
other features that are present in at least on Lisp.... so I think reducing
Lisp to a handful of features and calling that 'basically it' is a good way to
miss the point. (Not to belabor the obvious

One of my favorite points about Lisp was made by Kent Pitman back in 1995:
[http://www.nhplace.com/kent/PS/Lambda.html](http://www.nhplace.com/kent/PS/Lambda.html)

In it, he describes through a though experiment what it means for a language
to be defined by its community and how that impacts its development and use.
It isn't as much about the specific features as it is the approach that led
the language to get to have those features in the first place.

Just to illustrate, the simple syntax is a good example. It's not immediately
obvious why simple syntax is a good thing... in fact, given the fact people
prefer infix and a big part of the backlash against Lisp is due to the syntax,
you might argue that it'd be better for Lisp to drop the syntax entirely. (As
was tried in Dylan and Logo) That, you'd lose a lot that's not necessarily
obvious. There's a real value in having a concrete syntax for your language's
core data types and then defining the language in terms of those data types.
The simple syntax isn't the point as much as what it enables you do
accomplish.

~~~
good_gnu
>It's hard (if not impossible) to pick a single attribute of 'Lisp' that's
shared by all the languages that are part of the Lisp family of languages.

homoiconicity

~~~
mschaef
Dylan. Logo.

------
GrinningFool
While I don't agree with his stance on a number of things, I find the
consistency and unapologetic nature of posts such as these refreshing. _This
is the thing I believe. You don 't have to, but here's why I think it's wrong
not to._

A case can be made that they're too set in stone, with no flexibility - but
isn't that what makes them principles? They are _core beliefs_ and in absence
of fundamentally view-altering events, they seldom see changes after we reach
maturity. IMO if you find yourself rationalizing your way around your own
principles, then what you have are a set of things you'd like to believe about
yourself - which is quite a different thing.

For as many years as RMS has been in the public eye, I've never seen him
rationalize away his principles for the sake of convenience. Agree with him or
not, that's a rare thing and I can't help but respect it.

~~~
VladKovac
How is that refreshing? This has basically been the natural state of human
thinking until maybe around the enlightenment. People used to just say things
like "all is water" or "all is fire" in very principled assertive ways all the
time.

What I find refreshing is the tiny tiny tiny percentage of people that treat
their beliefs like a probability distribution that they update very frequently
with new empirical and analytic information.

~~~
GrinningFool
But we're not talking about a mis-evaluation of facts or insufficient data to
form a proper conclusion. The core belief here is along the lines of "data
should not be constrained, and my access and usage of data is nobody's
business but mine".

People say things like, "all software should be free" but continue to pay the
bills by working for a non-free company. They say, "I think DRM is wrong" but
many will still buy DRM'd content when they want it badly enough.

Coming across someone who holds a firm, clearly defined belief (again,
regardless of whether I agree with the belief - that's not related to the
point I'm trying to make) and who also adheres to that belief in all aspects
of life - that's the refreshing thing.

------
mankash666
Dear HN - at what point does the proclivity towards a philosophy transition to
insanity? Is it when an FSF zealot refuses medical treatment demanding the
source code of the firmware used in his life-saving medical device? Is it when
he refuses to use the roads paved by _insert paving device here_ running
closed source software?

~~~
grawlinson
I think this part of his notes would be relevant:

>I firmly refuse to install non-free software or tolerate its installed
presence on my computer or on computers set up for me.

>However, if I am visiting somewhere and the machines available nearby happen
to contain non-free software, through no doing of mine, I don't refuse to
touch them. I will use them briefly for tasks such as browsing. This limited
usage doesn't give my assent to the software's license, or make me responsible
its being present in the computer, or make me the possessor of a copy of it,
so I don't see an ethical obligation to refrain from this. Of course, I
explain to the local people why they should migrate the machines to free
software, but I don't push them hard, because annoying them is not the way to
convince them.

>Likewise, I don't need to worry about what software is in a kiosk, pay phone,
or ATM that I am using. I hope their owners migrate them to free software, for
their sake, but there's no need for me to refuse to touch them until then. (I
do consider what those machines and their owners might do with my personal
data, but that's a different issue, which would arise just the same even if
they did use free software. My response to that issue is to minimize those
activities which give them any data about me.)

>That's my policy about using a machine once in a while. If I were to use it
for an hour every day, that would no longer be "once in a while" — it would be
regular use. At that point, I would start to feel the heavy hand of any
nonfree software in that computer, and feel the duty to arrange to use a
liberated computer instead.

While his views can be seen as extreme, there's a hint of open-mindedness
scattered throughout.

------
nhatbui
> I skimmed documentation of Python after people told me it was fundamentally
> similar to Lisp. My conclusion is that that is not so. `read', `eval', and
> `print' are all missing in Python.

Maybe I'm getting lost in the semantics but doesn't Python have a REPL a la
the interpreter?

~~~
dickbasedregex
Yes. Also, there absolutely are all three functions. I don't know what the
hell he's on about.
[https://docs.python.org/2/library/functions.html](https://docs.python.org/2/library/functions.html)

~~~
cytzol
The point he's stuck on is that the versions of 'read', 'eval', and 'print' in
Python aren't the same as the ones in Lisp. In Python, you read a string, eval
that string into a value, then print that value. The intermediate
representation is a string -- just a bunch of characters. In Lisp, you read a
data structure, eval that data structure into another data structure, then
print out its form -- nested lists and atoms that you can inspect and
manipulate, rather than characters that you need to parse to do anything
useful with.

------
oldmanjay
A perennial favorite. I never get enough of a person stating their opinions in
such assertive terms.

~~~
jowiar
As I've grown up, I've realized that "such assertive terms" tend to translate
to "I have an unfettered view of the inside of my ass, and I'm positive what
everything looks like in here".

~~~
sdegutis
I once read that those who are prideful (i.e. arrogant, conceited, pompous)
are universally despised, because those who are humble recognize and abhor the
ugliness of this vice, and those who are prideful can't stand the thought
others thinking they're better than them.

~~~
paulpauper
but then why are many assertive, pompous people successful, but that I don't
think that describes Stallman though. He seems pretty down to earth

~~~
LeifCarrotson
Being successful does not imply not being despised. In fact, it often seems
the two are positively correlated. Success is often shorthand for wealth and
power, and there's a lot more to life than that.

------
gamache
> A friend once asked me to watch a video with her that she was going to
> display on her computer using Netflix. I declined, saying that Netflix
> streaming was such an affront to freedom that I could not be party to its
> use under any circumstances whatsoever.

RMS is a very principled man, but I think he may have misunderstood "Netflix
and chill".

~~~
rnhmjoj
RMS on "Netflix and chill":
[https://twitter.com/gexcolo/status/637383659318734849](https://twitter.com/gexcolo/status/637383659318734849)
I don't know if it's really him, though.

~~~
dickbasedregex
What's with him and birds? Let's not address why I had this saved though:
[http://imgur.com/a/iGMmb](http://imgur.com/a/iGMmb)

------
pyrophane
> An explanation of the concept of designing a "user experience" which also
> shows why I find it loathesome. This is why I want stallman.org to remain
> simple: not a "user experience" but rather a place where I present certain
> information, views and action opportunities to you.

A lot of what user experience has become is trying to induce users to do what
you want them to rather than "how do I make it easy for the user to do what
they want." That, along with a tendency towards what I perceive as "over-
design," makes this viewpoint refreshing.

------
pyrophane
> After a few years I found out that this was due to the hard keys of my
> keyboard. I switched to a keyboard with lighter key pressure and the problem
> mostly went away.

My experience as well. I'd been using Apple's keyboards for years, and was
experiencing hand pain. I switched to a nice mechanical keyboard that
activates with a click part way down so I don't need to bottom out the keys.
The hand pain went away and I can't stand typing on those "chiclet style"
keyboards now.

~~~
Freak_NL
Every coder should take the time to find the keyboard that suits their body
best once funds allow it. I can't imagine doing serious (development) work on
a laptop for more than an hour or so without a decent keyboard (currently
using a DasKeyboard with Cherry switches), a well-positioned monitor, and a
good mouse (a left-handed Razor Deathadder now).

Still I see a lot of developers just pop open their laptop on a desk and work
like that for the rest of the day…

~~~
qwertyuiop924
I end up working on a laptop a lot of the time, but nothing feels quite as
good as my Unicomp Model M. And Unicomp stuff sells for cheaper than a lot of
the Das stuff, plus it's nicer IMHO (but that's just me).

I never much saw the point of a good mouse: You're not going to be using it
all that much (emacs user), you're not getting much in ergonomics out of it,
and you probably don't need the sensor accuracy. Am I wrong about where the
money goes, or something?

~~~
Freak_NL
I do like having an accurate mouse for drawing diagrams and web browsing (and
a lot of other things).

~~~
qwertyuiop924
Oh. Well, that explains it. I don't do a whole lot of drawing, and even in FPS
the loss of accuracy is negligable, IMHO.

------
qwertyuiop924
I admire Stallman. I think he's crazy, or at least a little weird, but I can
respect him: he's extremely talented, he has his principles, and dammit, he
sticks to them.

It's like Randall puts it: This is a man who believes in something.

------
SRSposter
The free software movement is blessed to have such a soul as Stallman

------
symlinkk
> `read', `eval', and `print' are all missing in Python

don't you get a REPL when you type "python" in a terminal?

~~~
schoen
Also, Python has "eval" and "print" functions that are even _called_ "eval"
and "print". One could argue that Python eval is different from LISP eval, but
I don't understand what RMS means by "missing"!

~~~
Bartweiss
> Around 2008 I stopped doing programming projects. As a result, I have not
> had time or occasion to learn newer languages such as Perl, Python, PHP or
> Ruby.

What he means is that he skipped the languages that have it!

------
oneplane
Basically he lives in a way incompatible with most of the western consumers. I
do wonder what he does for fun.

~~~
phee
Fun use of words given the context, consumers.

~~~
witty_username
I think it's redundant. Who is not a consumer? You need to consume food,
water, etc to live, so to live you must be a consumer.

~~~
phee
Sure, but you'll agree that's not the common acceptation. Anyway, I guess it
was a typo for costumes. I found interesting the implication that you need to
"consume" to have fun.

------
jorgec
A good programmer is measured by the programs that he does. Sometimes you can
win the day by programming in visual basic, if works and its efficient then
why not?.

------
45h34jh53k4j
"A friend once asked me to watch a video with her that she was going to
display on her computer using Netflix. I declined, saying that Netflix
streaming was such an affront to freedom that I could not be party to its use
under any circumstances whatsoever."

When you refuse netflix and chill due to ideological conflicts with the key
distribution model, just stallman things

------
kmote00
I find it amusing that the line:

> I edit the pages on this site with Emacs ...

has a formatting error.

------
wh0rth
I'm often amazed at what we've done with programming languages. They're
perfect examples of accurately and concisely communicate information in a
small space

------
Demoneeri
I'd like to live my life with strict principles like that. Non-aggression
principle style. Unfortunately, other statists don't let me. There is one
other small thing too, I like Microsoft products.

------
Cyclone_
Just imagine how scary it would be if this guy had any real power

~~~
aq3cn
He would make every piece of code free of cost and community driven. Does that
scare you?

------
strictnein
It's weird that he devotes all of this time to not being tracked online and
then shares this one bit of info:

> "I have a Twitter account called rmspostcomments, which I use to log in on
> other sites to post comments on articles."

