
A short critique of Stallmanism - thegeomaster
http://jancorazza.com/2016/09/24/a-short-critique-of-stallmanism/
======
gumby
Here's a sympathetic perspective on some of these issues (note: I've known and
worked with RMS since the late 1970s, e.g before he grew his hair long and
decided to start the FSF).

From the article: > ...crucial mistake: confounding individual virtue and
purity with wider social liberation. > ...the familiar liberal ideological
mistake of lifestylism: the belief that changes in one's own personal
preferences are the beginning and end of political action.

I hadn't really known anyone else like RMS, but in the mid 1980s I had a
girlfriend from the Bronx. The first time she met her reaction was simply,
"oh, one of those." She said she had grown up with a large number of guys
_just like him_. And indeed, when I went back to the jewish neighborhood in
the bronx where she had grown up there were in fact a ton of guys around his
age, _just like him._. Their causes seemed to be a mixture of judaism and
socialism, but they expressed the same intensity and belief in the
universality (within an interest group) of their cause.

This made him a much more sympathetic figure in my eyes. And once I could see
this, I could see all sorts of people like him.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
They're not all from the Bronx. Some of them are from Brooklyn ;)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Sanders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Sanders)

~~~
labster
Heh, I get it, they're both socialists and all. But Bernie is the opposite of
what OP describes. Stallman is a purist, Sanders is a realist. Stallman fights
to keep "GNU/" attached to "Linux", while Sanders talks about the fake news
coming to people on Facebook's closed platform.

~~~
gkya
Well, want it or not GNU/ is a big part of Linux distros, at least until a
distro with an alternative userland and c library makes it to the top. And
even then most of open source has some GNU somewhere in the foundation.

~~~
phpnode
The insistence that Linux be called GNU/Linux when even Linus calls it Linux
is exactly the kind of behaviour that alienates people who would otherwise
align with them.

There is also no requirement that a Linux distribution includes any GNU
software at all, should we refer to them as e.g Busybox/Linux?

~~~
phjesusthatguy3
Is there an OS that uses Linux as the kernel but then no GNU software on top
of that? It would be interesting to see, at least.

~~~
phpnode
Isn't android effectively that?

~~~
phjesusthatguy3
yep

------
schoen
(Here I'm focusing on part 2 and the conclusion of the article, not part 1.)

This article suggests that RMS ought to make his own leftist beliefs an
explicit part of the free software movement. As the author is aware, RMS has
generally tried _not_ to do this, recognizing that free software advocates can
have a wide range of beliefs about other issues, even if a plurality of people
in the movement are hold leftist views. In general, RMS has stood for the
effort of trying to find common cause around specific issues and principles
among people who might radically disagree about other things (another example
was the League for Programming Freedom, a single-issue campaign against
software patents that actively aspired to include people who disagree with RMS
about free software!).

It's true that the big-tent concept could fail as a tactical matter if it
turns out that the success of one cause really is indispensable to the success
of another, which is a big part of what this article is claiming. But I wish
the article had engaged a bit more with the fact that _RMS does not appear to
agree with this analysis_ and _has consistently wanted people with non-leftist
views to join the free software movement_ , including enthusiastic supporters
of capitalism and private property. In other words, it's not an oversight or
an accident. (To be clear about this, the classic formulation of RMS's free
software philosophy calls for not regarding _software_ as private property --
for example, in "Why Software Should Not Have Owners" \-- but stakes out no
position on regarding, say, financial instruments, airplanes, factories,
companies, plots of land, or apartment buildings as private property. Hence
many more people could agree with it.)

~~~
petertodd
Indeed, as an independent consultant I'm far more inclined to use
LGPL/AGPL/GPL licences for work that I think I could sell commercially
precisely because I see those licenses and private property/capitalism as very
compatible. Quite simply, I'm happy if you either pay me money or code for the
right to use my code; the users who contribute neither are more often than not
still benefiting me via a wider userbase - aka advertising to the minority who
will give something back.

Meanwhile I often joke that the highly permissive BSD/MIT/etc. licenses are
for commies.

~~~
smsm42
I've seen a lot of companies using GPL/AGPL for exactly the same purpose - to
prevent other commercial companies from reusing their code. It is especially
common in areas where added-value customizations are valuable - i.e., if you
have GPL (or, usually, dual-licensed commercial/GPL) core for, say, document
handling system, you can market it as open-source, take contributions, and
build add-on business on it, but if a competitor comes out and wants to use
your core, they now have to publish source for all their add-ons, so you can
have them for free. That puts you at the advantageous position. It's not the
unique practice, I've seen many companies doing this. Not sure that's what FSF
meant to happen, but that's what is happening.

~~~
spangry
I would have thought the FSF/Stallman would be perfectly fine with this. Their
main objective is to maximise the freedom of users by advocating for software
that can be inspected, modified, shared etc. As far as I know, they are not
opposed to someone making a private income off this kind of software.

However, it's probably true to say that a number of possible methods of
extracting an income would be closed off to you under these conditions.
They're closed off not because the copyright(left) is anti private income, but
because they're probably _user oppressive_ practices (ones that would be very
quickly ripped out of the codebase e.g. sending user private information back
to home-base for subsequent sale to advertisers etc.)

That's my layman's understanding of the situation anyhow (happy to be
corrected if wrong).

~~~
int_19h
Thing is, a very common model along these lines is to dual-license under
copyleft for free, _and_ proprietary commercial license for those who don't
like copyleft "virality" (e.g. the way Qt used to do it until switching to
LGPL).

This works great; but the proprietary part is completely antithetical to the
whole "free software" concept.

~~~
spangry
I've been thinking about the dual-licensing approach. Strategically, one could
argue that it still aligns with FSF goals. My logic is roughly:

(objective) We want people to use software that doesn't oppress them -> People
naturally want to use the 'best' software -> Copyleft licences ensure the
'best' software is non-oppressive (via open source, freedom to modify etc.) as
derivative improvements can be merged back into the mainline.

The key part is that the 'non-oppressive' software is 'the best' (or at least
of decent quality) so that people will naturally use it and society as a whole
will remain un-oppressed. Mightn't one extend this logic and say: Although we
don't get the benefit of useful modifications being mainlined for closed-
source, secondarily licensed derivatives, more money for the project means
more resources/devs -> ultimately means improved mainline software?

I mean, I'm unsure if I agree with that argument, but it seems at least
plausible.

~~~
int_19h
I think it's a perfectly plausible argument. The problem is that it is a
_pragmatic_ argument. It is possible to be pragmatic in pursuit of one's
ideals - indeed, I would argue that this approach is the one that usually
works best (or at all) - but FSF, and Stallman personally, seem to frown upon
short-term pragmatic deviations from ideological purity.

------
SwellJoe
I assumed this would be yet another "Stallman is gross and old-fashioned and
dresses funny" article, but it's actually well-argued and reasonable. And,
interestingly, in many regards it makes the case that Stallman isn't extreme
enough to be effective (or rather, that while his extremism is very deep it is
only in tightly focused areas, and misses the mark for making widespread
change that positively effects the general population).

As I age, I've kinda come to the conclusion that individualism being the
driving motivation of so many people in tech (including both proprietary and
Free Software advocates) means that we often miss the forest for the trees.
Individualist decision-making doesn't solve a problem for the general public,
in cases like this. Free Software "won", by some definition of won, the battle
when it became the dominant server and mobile OS. But, it continues to lose
the war for people's freedom.

I don't actually have a philosophical framework to hang that bit of acquired
wisdom on, however, because I, too, have a very individualist mindset that is
deeply ingrained. So, coming up with actionable ideas for improving privacy
(for example) on a non-individual level is proving difficult; my ideas, thus
far, have included helping organize and host cryptoparties, contributing to
projects that add encryption to more stuff on the Internet, etc. But, it
requires policy, too, probably even moreso, which is far outside of my
wheelhouse. Those cryptoparties reached mostly technical users. Those tools
for encryption reach mostly technical people who already knew they wanted to
encrypt their stuff.

When profit motives are aligned against us (where "us" is the general public
that is vaguely uncomfortable with being spied on all the time, by
corporations and the state), it's tilting at windmills to stand there, using
your Free OS and your Free browser and your Free whatever else, while the
whole world uses facebook and Google dozens of times a day. There's only so
much an individual can do.

------
zekevermillion
RMS' personal choices are important. I could not live with the same ethical
purity myself when it comes to software choices (or for that matter, much of
anything else). But I have been personally influenced by reading his essays on
ethical topics. If he did not live consistent with his personal ethics, not
only would he be much less persuasive, but also he would be at conflict with
himself.

the critic is right that software freedom does not exist in a vacuum. However,
it does not follow that living in an ethical manner is pointless.

~~~
jcora
I have too been influenced by Stallman but I don't see why anyone should be
above critique. I've developed as a person, politically, and think that my
criticism may be useful to well-intentioned peopled, that's why I wrote this.

> However, it does not follow that living in an ethical manner is pointless.

I fully disagree. Personal ethics is only important with interpersonal
relationships. Anything political transcends the individual and his actions
and requires systemic analysis and action. That is the point of the article.

~~~
zekevermillion
Stallman is not above critique, but I don't think you have hit on the more
interesting parts of his philosophy to question. If I could eat Chinese with
RMS, I would want to ask him about when free hardware will become relevant,
and what he thinks about user subjugation that doesn't involve privacy
invasion or software restrictions -- like, why isn't it mandatory to boycott
every monopoly business? Perhaps at some point he would throw up his hands and
say, we're only human!

I take comfort from the Biblical parable, Render Unto Caesar.

------
cbdfghh
IMHO, Stallman made two mistakes:

1\. He moved into politics (which is in my HO, one of the failure points of a
lot of tech people. Everyone has a right to an opinion, but certain people
have more talent at politics than others, and certain people have more talents
at code than others).

He's a great programmer, and could have pushed the FSF community directly by
committing and improving code. And even if he can't code anymore, he could
have focused on fund-raising/raising awareness in winnable (as in, not
facebook)/worthwhile (as in, not HURD) battles, where others would benefit
also.

Like a free Flash or free CAD (which are "FSF High priority projects", though
practically dead).

What new coding projects were they involved in since HURD started (OK.
Replicant.)?

And how did his political rants help the FSF (and the Free Software movement
as a whole) lately?

2\. He doesn't let the FSF be larger than him.

Who's their 2nd in command?

Who'll take over after he passes on?

What will the FSF look like in 30 years?

~~~
Fnoord
> What new coding projects were they involved in since HURD started (OK.
> Replicant.)?

"New" is difficult to assess.

I'd say: GPLv3, Libreboot (fork of Coreboot). But it depends on what you find
important. A starting point is here:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation#High_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation#High_priority_projects)

> 2\. He doesn't let the FSF be larger than him. > Who's their 2nd in command?

Fallacy, easily disproven at
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation#Struc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation#Structure)

I guess you never heard of Eben Moglen (who's a lawyer and does great work
with advocacy and public speeches), or Bradley Kuhn from FSF Europe.

> Who'll take over after he passes on?

Did you know who'd gonna take over Microsoft or Apple beforehand? No.

> What will the FSF look like in 30 years?

What will USA, Microsoft, Google, or Apple look like in 30 years? _shrug_

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
> I'd say: .... Libreboot

Didn't libreboot start outside the FSF, then come inside, and is now trying to
get out?

~~~
Fnoord
> Didn't libreboot start outside the FSF, then come inside, and is now trying
> to get out?

Yup, drama, long story. The question was though:

> What new coding projects were they involved in since HURD started (OK.
> Replicant.)?

Looking at the original question: former packages qualify, as long as they're
_new_. When does this 'new' qualify though? Perhaps not here because of
Libreboot being based on Coreboot.

As soon as a project joins GNU though, it becomes "GNU Name" and it is
officially a new project.

Development of Hurd was started in 1990. So we're looking at least from 1991.
A list of current GNU packages is available at [1] and [2]. Of note, I suppose
GNOME qualifies.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_GNU_packages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_GNU_packages)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU#Components](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU#Components)

------
greyman
> Stallman's rhetoric is filled with this problematic logic on all layers:
> from trying to correct other people's terminology

Yes, this is my main obstacle accepting RMS. In my opinion, he took the word
"free", made a term "free software", and described it in accordance with his
agenda, while what he advocated only partially conforms to the meaning of the
word "free" or "freedom". There are certainly licenses offering more freedom
than GPL v3.

Therefore I myself do not even recognize this term "free software". I am more
than willing to discuss RMS ideas, I agree with many of them, but let's stop
messing the language first.

~~~
Ace17
> There are certainly licenses offering more freedom than GPL v3.

More freedom to who? Users, distributors, maintainers, vendors, service
providers? You can't guarantee complete freedom to each of them
simultaneously.

For example, allowing distributors to do everything they want (e.g not
providing source code) will prevent users to do everything they want (e.g
modifying the program). So it makes no sense to talk about which license
"offers more freedom".

So, let's stop saying imprecise things like "GPL code doesn't give me freedom
because I can't use such code in my proprietary software". The free software
movement is about protecting the freedoms of the end users first.

~~~
fryguy
There is absolutely no possible way that you can defend GPL as being more free
than licenses like BSD/MIT. Copyright is about being able to copy the
software. GPL places restrictions on who is able to copy your software.
BSD/MIT place less restrictions. It's black and white; there is no argument.

When a project includes code from another project (be it GPL or MIT), it is
creating a new work under copyright. What GPL does is hold the developer
ransom with a lighter over the GPL code, in order to guarantee the new work is
distributed to other people with the same restrictive license. It just means
that code under GPL is orders of magnitude less valuable to the world than
code under less restrictive licenses.

It's not just about proprietary software that can't put GPL code into their
software, but software that's released under less restrictive licenses as
well. If code is GPL, I just stay away.

~~~
AsyncAwait
> There is absolutely no possible way that you can defend GPL as being more
> free than licenses like BSD/MIT.

If you define free in terms of users and individual developers, GPL is
absolutely more free than BSD/MIT, but if you define it in terms of software
development houses, MIT is much more "free" than the GPL indeed.

The argument against the GPL having restrictions on what you can do with the
code as to not take away freedom, is like the U.S Constitution having
restrictions on what the government is allowed to do to restrict your freedom.

Nobody would argue that the right to free speech is restrictive, because it
takes away your right to restrict free speech, or would they?

------
throwaway729
_> it is not a solution for people to simply stop using e.g. Gmail._

I strongly disagree with this part. For example, if you think the primary
problem with GMail is user privacy, then the only solutions are legal or
technical. And the legal framework required to protect privacy for GMail users
is utterly draconian -- to the point that Google would probably just shutter
the service.

The problem with Stallman's approach is only that his purism doesn't scale.
The solution to that problem -- one that's been demonstrated effective time
and again -- is to make purity utterly pragmatic.

~~~
sprafa
The problem with this is incentives. Without the profit motive, and without
revolutionary support programs like the ones Stallman imagines, people simply
have got to pay rent somehow. And FOSS, as Stallman describes it, does not pay
rent. So programmers end up working in proprietary applications, often
building up on top of FOSS or Open-source to build better user capture and
lock-in and winning the market share.

~~~
prodigal_erik
The incentive was supposed to be access to a growing library of copylefted
code. But we somehow abandoned POSIX in favor of a half-assed scripting
language where a critical mass of desirable code doesn't exist yet.

------
trav4225
IMO, the fundamental problems with Stallmanism are not to be found in its
tactics and execution, but rather in the very core of the philosophy itself.

~~~
milesrout
I completely disagree. There are some problems with the free software movement
but the fundamental idea behind it is essentially inarguable: proprietary
software is anti-user.

~~~
schoen
(Free software supporter here.)

Thomas Schelling mentions the notion of "incomplete antagonism": you could
have partly opposed interests to someone else's but still have ways in which
you can cooperate with each other. Other people thinking about trade have
suggested that this is almost always the case, even, maybe surprisingly, when
people have directly opposed values in some respects (but not others).

[http://www.amirrorclear.net/files/moral-
trade.pdf](http://www.amirrorclear.net/files/moral-trade.pdf)

When you're buying most things from other people, you might have an
"incomplete antagonism" because you may each want to get the best deal you can
at the expense of the other person -- driving a hard bargain, so to speak. But
you might still appreciate the opportunity to trade and not necessarily resent
the other party to the trade (I wish that the vegan sandwich I just bought at
LAX had cost me $8 instead of $19, but I'm still grateful that I could buy it
at all).

Most attempts to defend proprietary software that aren't based in "romantic
authorship" (emphasizing a special moral relationship between creators and
their creative works that would make their preferences or interests count in a
way that other people's don't) would probably focus on the benefits of trade:
proprietary software fails to optimize perfectly for the user's interests and
includes some intentional disadvantages for the user, yet many users could
willingly accept these limitations because they've been bundled with benefits
that the users appreciate, or because they help to incentivize activities the
users appreciate (like continued development or support of the software).

This is normally the case for situations where trade can occur: each party may
be asked to accept things that aren't that party's most preferred outcome,
even deliberately where an alternative that that party prefers is logically
conceivable. For example, if you rent a physical object then you might not be
able to use it for any purpose, or if you hire someone then they might not be
willing to perform any task you ask them to, or if you buy something then you
might have to pay for it -- even though if others were making your interests
their first priority, none of these limitations would exist. Presumably
proprietary software advocates think that "selling software" is mostly akin to
selling other things, where private ownership and sales work (fairly
well|extremely well|better than any available alternative) for allocating
resources, incentivizing productive activities, and increasing people's
welfare, and that it's only anti-user in the ways that the costs or
restrictions accompanying other kinds of trades are anti-customer.

~~~
schoen
Sad to see that Schelling died yesterday (!):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13172957](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13172957)

------
geofft
Thanks for posting this. I like this a lot and it clearly argues a lot of what
I don't like about Stallman's free software advocacy. Free software isn't a
moral good in itself, and non-free software isn't a moral evil in itself;
software is a _tool_ for accomplishing things in the world, including moral or
immoral things. When Stallman says that it's better to have no software to do
a task than non-free software, it sounds like the Catholic teaching on
intrinsically evil acts, which can never be done even if we think they may
result in good—but software does not have a moral value of its own. What we
_do_ with software is, absolutely, a moral question; as software continues to
eat the world, every moral question may one day involve software. But we
should look at software freedom with consequentialist eyes: the ends, the good
or evil done to people, justify or condemn the means, whether that good or
evil can be done with the software at hand. _Generally_ one can do more good,
or at least be assured of fighting evil, with free software. But that does not
mean that free software itself is an intrinsic moral good.

Related, I think, is Mako's 2011 essay "Freedom for Users, Not for Software":
[http://wealthofthecommons.org/essay/freedom-users-not-
softwa...](http://wealthofthecommons.org/essay/freedom-users-not-software)

But in practice, that ends up being more of a defense of the AGPL than a call
for social action - and the AGPL, if widely adopted, would make the goal of
using only free software even more of a burden (since it is GPL-incompatible).
The FSF seemed to recognize an actual problem well worth solving, but address
it through the tool they were comfortable with, writing licenses. (And the
minimal adoption of the AGPL indicates that this didn't actually solve
problems, so per consequentialism, we must admit that the AGPL did at most
minimal social good.)

It's also worth talking about the resources required to make effective use of
free software; freedom #4 is only realistic if you can actually make the
changes. If Chrome OS (to take Mako's example) can be effectively hacked on by
the second-largest company in the world, but much less effectively by an
individual, is that really better than the closed-source OS which only the
largest company in the world can hack on? And has free software really changed
the social order for the better, compared to the pre-software days?

~~~
krapp
Regarding freedom 4, I've always assumed (possibly erroneously) that Stallman
envisioned "software" as being limited more or less exclusively to Unixlike C
programs. It really doesn't make a lot of sense as an axiom if you assume
software will eventually become too complex to be comprehensible to a single
individual, or that the typical software user won't require a working
knowledge of CS and C compiler and be able to edit and compile from source.

~~~
icebraining
I really disagree with this view that one has to have the skill to understand
and edit the code to benefit the Four Freedoms. The fact that everyone who
gets a copy has that Freedom is the important part. How many use Cyanogenmod
without even knowing what a compiler is? How would that be possible without
Freedom #4?

~~~
krapp
Users can't benefit from the fourth freedom, specifically the right to
republish their own modifications to their own software, without having the
skill to understand and edit that software to begin with.

~~~
BuuQu9hu
You are ignoring the fact that users exist in society, around them there will
be programmers who may be friends, colleagues or consultants. Some of those
will be willing to modify the software gratis, for a favour or for money.
Others will be willing to teach the non-programmers enough to be able to make
the changes they need.

~~~
prodigal_erik
This. You wouldn't want a car with the hood welded shut. You can take it to a
third-party mechanic rather than being at the mercy of the dealer (who would
prefer you replace the car), and that's valuable even if you don't have the
knowledge or tools to repair the car personally.

------
vivekd
I don't agree with everything in this article but I think a part of it really
put into words something I had been feeling for some time. I had always found
it easy to agree with Stallman's view of free software. I think most
reasonable people who didn't have a stake in proprietary software would agree
with him. But, something about Stallman that made it hard for me to really
take his movement seriously enough to want to take up his banner and follow
him, and I think this article hit on why. He is right about the problem but
there's a flaw in his approach to solving the problem.

While Stallman is right in asserting that software should be free, he moves
into Zealotry in insisting that he only use free software and thereby
excluding himself from much of the technology available today. I think
ordinary people looking at something like this would be reluctant to follow
him or take up his cause because the average person's reaction would be "I
could never live like that, yes I agree with him, but I'm simply not willing
to give up my facebook, or google chrome, or microsoft word."

I don't think Stallman would look like a hypocrite or have his point weakened
if here were to advocate for legislative changes to make software free while
still using proprietary software. If someone challenges him or calls him a
hypocrite he could just respond that he is living within the unfortunate
realities of the current day, which is dominated by proprietary software,
while still fighting for a better tomorrow with free software. I don't think
any reasonable person would take him less seriously just for using software
that, in many cases, he has no other option but to use. I mean really, this
guy doesn't even browse the internet because websites have proprietary
software and instead uses some kind of software to get info off the web -
that's extreme.

I don't think convincing the world to only use free software is a very
realistic goal, because most people don't really understand the problem, let
along care enough about the problem to make the huge sacrifices that a life
without proprietary software would demand. Instead I think he would have a
much stronger chance of succeeding if he worked to protest and raise awareness
geared towards legislative change to prevent software companies from using the
restrictive licensing agreements they use today.

~~~
zekevermillion
Stallman has compromised in some ways, even when it comes to using proprietary
software. For example, before there was grub I believe he made an exception
and used non-free bios.

Ultiamtely, even RMS seems to suggest a convenience standard. If the tradeoff
is too harsh, at some point it is permissible to use proprietary software. And
this is even leaving aside the various non-relative exceptions he has made,
such as use of proprietary software in devices that are not primarily for
general purpose computing.

So even RMS is OK with proprietary software where there are no free
alternatives, or where using proprietary software is somehow not part of a
"computer". But now that there is a good free system in Gnu + Linux, the user
has no excuse for using proprietary programs in general computing. There is
still a sacrifice to live by RMS' standards, but it is relatively small
compared with, say, the sacrifices demanded of civil rights campaigners in the
60s.

Of course, one could debate whether reasonable free alternatives exist in
certain areas. Perhaps to RMS it is only a minor inconvenience to use only
free software to view web pages, and to avoid websites that run proprietary
scripts or that spy on users. What kind of moral weakling would betray the
cause of freedom for the convenience of one-click ordering of crap on Amazon.
The obvious weakness to this argument is that there are surely people for
which proprietary software offers convenience that they view as essential to
their lives. This is a hard problem, both in philosophy and practice.

~~~
keithpeter
The freed bios is libreboot derived from coreboot I believe (not sure about
the derivation).

[https://libreboot.org/](https://libreboot.org/)

[https://www.coreboot.org/](https://www.coreboot.org/)

I'm posting this off an old Thinkpad X61s variant which happened to be
manufactured with an atheros wifi card and I'm running gNewSense 4.0. All my
major use cases covered.

[http://sohcahtoa.org.uk/pages/gNewSense.html](http://sohcahtoa.org.uk/pages/gNewSense.html)

At some point in the future I may purchase a ministry of freedom modified
Thinkpad simply because I'm pretty bourgeois and can afford it.

[https://minifree.org/](https://minifree.org/)

I take the OAs criticism but I despair of the organised left in the UK for
other reasons that are outside of the scope of HN.

------
wanderingjew
Oh, this is hilarious.

The art for this blog post was taken from here:
[http://hackaday.com/2016/01/13/stallmans-one-
mistake/](http://hackaday.com/2016/01/13/stallmans-one-mistake/) This art was
taken without crediting the artist, and without permission from either the
artist or the publisher.

~~~
bluejekyll
I agree that this is bad form, though, as the original article is very
supportive of the Free Software movement, the author may have assumed a Gratis
usage of the image.

I could not find on Hackaday any specific information about using their
content, or not, but they do explicitly mention their general copyrights in
their footer...

Edit: what I did not say, is that because there is nothing explicit it can not
be assumed that you can use it without reference. Accreditation should be
given where asked, technically it can not be used unless it was agreed upon.
That's what my ... meant.

~~~
wanderingjew
You can't assume gratis usage of _anything_.

The free software movement, creative commons, and anything surrounding
copyleft is predicated on the fact that everything is copyrighted at its
creation. Copyleft is a 'hack' of sorts of copyright, in that the author or
owner of a piece of work gives everyone else explicit permission to use it.
You can't have copyleft without copyright, and everything is copyright unless
it's explicitly copyleft. This isn't 'bad form'. This is copyright
infringement and possibly the best teaching moment you could ever have.

The idea that the author of the above post would assume gratis usage of
something shows how little even technical people understand how copyright and
copyleft works. I could use this as a jumping off point to the _actual_
failures of Stallman, where instead of educating people on these issues for
the last thirty years, he's spending his time rhyming Uber with Goober, i.e.
[https://stallman.org/uber.html](https://stallman.org/uber.html), but I
digress.

As the author of the Hackaday piece, I'm cool with the author of the OP using
the graphic, only because it's hilarious. Shout out to our resident artist,
joe kim:
[http://theartofjoekim.tumblr.com/](http://theartofjoekim.tumblr.com/) He does
awesome work.

~~~
darpa_escapee
Everything that is 'copyleft' is inherently copyright. The protections
enshrined by copyright protect 'copyleft' works.

~~~
BuuQu9hu
The GPL and copyleft are not magic pixie dust. Just as proprietary software is
pirated very frequently, so too do companies and individuals ignore copyleft
licenses. Like the BSA spends money to enforce proprietary licenses, so to do
the FSF, SFC, gplviolations.org and others have to spend money to enforce
copyleft.

There are also lots of violations of permissive licenses, but generally the
authors of permissively licensed software do not bother to enforce their
licenses.

~~~
ommunist
Yes, this is because OSS authors do not have union, which could have lawyers,
which could do the job.

~~~
BuuQu9hu
The SFC functions sort of like a union, but they don't have very much funding
though:

[https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/](https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/)

------
sprafa
essentially brilliant.

I've been thinking more and more about how Stallman has blocked perhaps the
only effective way to make companies make more open-source software: allow DRM
to work properly with open-source code.

That is, the main issue with making open-source software is that anyone can
copy it, thus placing the value of your software at 0. But if DRM effectively
put a a stop to this, by not allowing you to run unlicensed code, you could
distribute open-source as much as you'd like, safe in the knowledge that while
people could emulate your application, they wouldn't be able to copy your code
directly.

My view on this is increasingly that software should be forced to be open-
source and modifiable by the (individual) user. But it should not allow the
user to run the code without the developer/owner authorization. The developer
also should not be allowed to stop users from sharing modifications amongst
themselves, as long as they were paying for the original code, so as to stop
him from using it as a weapon agaisnt users who modify it and wish to share
their mods.

Any other defence of free software is basically an attack on capitalism
itself. Regardless of your opinion on capitalism, this is too radical a change
for most people.

~~~
dTal
>My view on this is increasingly that software should be forced to be open-
source and modifiable by the (individual) user. But it should not allow the
user to run the code without the developer/owner authorization.

How can you stop someone from running code they have access to? If I write a
new program but use routines from yours, who is the "developer/owner"? I can't
picture this scheme.

~~~
sprafa
You can't run someone else's code, unless you have paid them first. And no one
you share the code to can do it either, unless they paid the original author
of the code.

~~~
schoen
I think the parent's question is not about the policy matter but more like
"how could this kind of DRM work?" (technically).

------
saghm
Interesting read! I agree with most of this, but the I'm not sure I agree with
the argument that it would be more effective to convince government agencies
to switch to free software by appealing to a civic sense rather than a fiscal
one; maybe I'm just overly cynical, but I find it more likely that government
agencies would be swayed to adopt free software by showing them how much money
they'd save.

~~~
ommunist
Government is not interested in saving. The power of individual in the
government is associated with the budget he is responsible for. No costs on
software - no budget, no power.

~~~
saghm
Ah, true. I had forgotten the phenomenon where agencies make sure to spend
their whole budget just to make sure they don't get less money the next year.

------
krick
I think this is pretty great analysis, really. Sobering, so to say. I _know_
all of this, but tend to ignore quite often. This is because (unlike Stallman)
I don't think I'm fighting a war, I'm just living the way I think is "right".
But is it really not my war? In the and, I do believe it would be a better
world if some goals of Stallman have been achieved.

However, this analysis has the same flaws it points out in the movement of
stallmanism: pointing out the problem is not the same as proposing a solution.
Take this Gmail example. I absolutely hate it and would love it to disappear,
but expressing it the usual way — as pointed out — is useless, if not harmful.
Why people use Gmail or Google Docs? Because it's handy, obviously. They need
something that does something like these services do, and google products
simply happen to be better than alternatives. And they seem free too.

So what should I do instead of demonstratively avoiding them? Propose
something better not only for myself, but for other people too. Give them a
better option. Obviously. But the truth is I can't do that. I do not have any
"smart solution" and Gmail is "free" not because it costs nothing to operate
it, but because Google has shitload of money.

And the same is true for nearly every popular service and non-trivial piece of
software. We may bring up Linux and Blender all we want, but the sad truth is
free software just sucks. There is no open-source alternative for AutoCAD or
Native Instruments, because it requires way too much domain-knowledge for your
typical Finnish CS student to make one. Making this stuff is expensive as in
"money". And "making money" a.k.a "business" is dirty game, so you don't make
it easy for your competition to copy stuff you wasted your money to make.
Blender is an exception that does not prove the rule.

Fighting for FOSS is basically fighting for communism. People outside of USA
tend to agree this is nice idea, but we still haven't seen working
implementations of that.

So, if I don't have a better war strategy, how can I complain? Do I think it
would be better if Stallman was not fighting this silly war of his own? I
guess I don't. Even if "normal people" tend to make fun of him, at least they
know about him and this FOSS stuff. Well, at least some of them do.

~~~
jasonkostempski
"Fighting for FOSS is basically fighting for communism."

Communism is an economic system of physical goods and services, digital and
intellectual things aren't either so I don't think it's useful to equate the
two. Digital media is easily obtained by anyone so is made with a lock to
which the key is sold. The keys are usually some form of digital media, so a
central authority is needed to validate the keys. The validation process is
also digital, so laws get made to threaten anyone that tries to bypass that
process and, instead of preventing attacks on ships, those laws get used to
mess up peoples lives that usually don't deserve it. Software is just a big,
messy math function, and trying to sell it is just as silly as trying to sell
addition. Sell goods; sell services (even the service of writing software);
but trying to sell the software itself is pretty much insane; the only way to
win at it is to treat your customers like no-good, lying thieves.

~~~
jcora
> Communism is an economic system of physical goods and services, digital and
> intellectual things aren't either so I don't think it's useful to equate the
> two.

This is a very confused definition of communism. The proper definition is a
classless, stateless, and moneyless society (although I prefer marketless).
What that almost certainly implies, is a form of goal-oriented economic
coordination in the form of central planning of production.

The problem you're _trying_ to describe is called commodification. It is
harder to commodify digital goods than physical ones. But this is merely a
pragmatic issue for the capitalists, as they have commodified and will
commodify pretty much any facet of life.

------
hackermailman
I've always considered Stallman as somebody who strategizes in decades instead
of tomorrow. He sees a future of locked devices that imprison people and so
seems radical to everybody stuck in the state of present day. I don't know if
his strategy will work but it seems better than any compromises that could
lead to dumb terminals running proprietary webasm binaries watching everything
you do.

------
vic-traill
I think the use of 'Stallmanism ' in the headline (with its obvious reference
to 'Stalinism ') is pejorative and click-baitish.

Right up there with 'a card-carrying member of the ACLU'[0] and 'sister who
was once a thespian'[1].

[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_e...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1988)

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/1983/02/24/us/legendary-campaign-
pepp...](http://www.nytimes.com/1983/02/24/us/legendary-campaign-pepper-vs-
smathers-in-50.html)

[edit: fixed typo on 'Stalinism']

------
jwildeboer
And I hoped this article would be a critique of
[http://stallmanism.com](http://stallmanism.com) the religion we created a few
years ago. :-(

------
greyman
One issue I see with so-called free software is the coming era of AI. The
software might be as free as RMS would like, but we still would not be able to
decipher what exactly it does.

~~~
wmf
For this reason I wouldn't be surprised to see the FSF advocate using machine
learning only as a last resort when normal algorithms can't be used.

------
ommunist
I fail to recognise how confounding individual virtue and purity with wider
social liberation is a mistake? I met RMS at Riga Politech when his group
campaigned against EU Software Patents, and his logic in the presentation was
flawless. I signed petition because of that. When we talked very shortly after
the presentation, I concluded for myself that Stallman is indeed very careful
with words and the meaning.

------
WhitneyLand
Ideologue, idealist, zealot, weird person? All fine with me.

I don't like that he starts with some good ideas, but then slippery slopes his
way to see existential threats to our life liberty and happiness. It starts
out making sense and takes on an air of paranoia.

~~~
chippy
Although it's interesting to see the types of threats he has outlined in the
past and how at the time when he was saying it people were calling them
paranoid, and looking back we can see that he wasn't paranoid, but on point
and predictive.

Perhaps the things we think are paranoia now are similar. They may not be
apparent, but perhaps they are similarly on point and predictive.

~~~
WhitneyLand
I think we agree more than disagree about how paranoia can become reality. The
Snowden fallout rewired my thinking, and I'm still recovering from/reconciling
the election.

But some Stallman stuff I see as hyperbole or just wrong.

For example he would label a hobbyist creating a compression utility and
choosing to keep code private:

\- anti-social

\- an instrument of unjust power

\- disrespectful of the freedom of others

He makes no distinction between government oppression or megacorp monopolies,
and 1 person making personal choices. In reality things fall on a spectrum.

------
tedks
As a formerly ardent software freedom lifestylist I hear this criticism and
have embraced it myself. I don't encourage the "designers" I know in my life
to use GIMP anymore. Much like social revolution can be tragically violent, in
2016 it sometimes falls to us to surrender our computing integrity for a
shorter-term tactical gain. This isn't good, but it's not good to avoid
either.

That said, I think this essay paints an overly narrow view of Stallmanism.
Stallman would much prefer systematic change, even though he is a self-
identifying liberal; you see this less in the blessed FSF essays and more on
stallman.org and similar because he doesn't get so speculative to talk about
policy in most of the exhaustively-edited technical specifications on the
finer points of software freedom theory.

Stallman is I think overly pragmatic. He lives in a society where
individualist liberal political action, voting with one's dollar, etc., is the
only acceptable method of political change, so he only ever expresses change
in these terms. This makes for a weak praxis, because liberalism always makes
for a weak praxis. But this isn't Stallmanism; it's just the overpragmatism of
rms. Marx thought that electoralism was a good idea, for example, but that
doesn't mean communism is inherently electoralist.

I think the best thing to do is to explicitly approach software freedom from a
collective liberation stance and be ready and willing to point out the
contradictions between the totality and the underlying ideological motivations
of software freedom. Stallman doesn't need to do this; I think he's
contributed quite enough honestly, and that if you want a better praxis, you
should provide it yourself, because it isn't hard.

------
tnones
>problematic >oppressive social relations >conceptualize

I just wanna spray Pomo-B-Gone all over this.

------
quitspamming
I'm surprised the HN crowd isn't calling this out for what it is, anti
capitalist BS. I've seen people talk about tactics, DRM, ethics, but the
author's point was Stallman is right expect for one thing: profit. Stallman
tries to explain over and over again how free software can be profitable, and
the author of this post's whole point is, "nah, it can't be. Want free
software? You need socialism."

Stupid article pushing tired socialism, in old arguments.

~~~
Mouq
Don't really see why it needs to be called out as such. It's pretty explicitly
radical leftist. Is Hacker News exclusively capitalist now? TBF I tend to
avoid this site, so maybe it is.

If you think materialist analysis isn't useful, well, maybe it's not useful
_to you_. But geez, the author didn't even get into, e.g., Marxist analysis or
anything so controversial :P

~~~
afsina
Actually IMO majority of hacker news commenters are left leaning, and I try
avoiding political news here because their rethoric is tiring (to me).

~~~
vacri
I think it's quite the opposite. There's a lot of people living in the high-
paid tech bubble here. Actual lefties seem thin on the ground, and less
numerous than libertarians.

If HN is seen as left-leaning, then the political diversity spectrum in the US
is in truly dire shape.

