
Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing - Ideka
http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html
======
msg
Stallman's critique of software, hardware, and services as tools of social
control has only become more relevant over the years. Can you imagine his
search records being rifled through by a government investigator? Or his
Facebook profile being examined by an employer? No, because they don't exist.
Nor can you imagine his computer being locked by a bootloader that only allows
"Genuine Windows".

He's not concerned about looking weird. For certain audiences this is a
disadvantage. But he is concerned about tying his computing down to his core
philosophy. He did it so well that you can almost hear him when he's not in
the room. We should all be such effective weirdos.

At some level we have to trust a substrate of computing to get anything done.
Stallman's work to make that substrate as trustworthy as possible was very
farsighted.

~~~
ameen
While I certainly agree with RMS's reasons for being so committed to his
philosophy, I just don't know if it would still be possible to practice in
today's world.

Almost every system out there, free software or otherwise is monetized one way
or another, either you pay for the software, or you are the product being
sold.

~~~
jiggy2011
Not necessarily true. While plenty of free software is funded (I don't think
Stallman has particular issue with that). I'm not sure how me using the Linux
Kernel, GNU System, Gnome , GIMP , Emacs or any of the other free software
tools I use makes me somehow a "product".

------
mixmastamyk
Every time an rms article comes up trolls come out of the woodwork to rally
about what a kook he is and all "the horrible things" he's done. "Why the
nerve, living a life different than I would choose!? IT MUST BE STOPPED."
Snooze. I've been reading this fear-mongering regularly since '97.

Why is he so threatening? It's not like you have to share a studio apartment
with the guy. Have any complainers contributed 1/10th as much to the public
good? Highly unlikely. The sickest individuals are those who angrily rail
against the unconventional in my opinion.

I, for one welcome rms and nonconformists in general. Life is a lot more
interesting and fruitful with them around. I appreciate my free operating
system thank you, and don't pass judgements on what he does in the privacy of
his own home (or blog).

Watch the revolution os doc and you'll see these geeks are quite likeable,
sometimes funny, and nothing to be afraid of.

~~~
Aethaeryn
Personally, rms doesn't bother me and he's free to do as he pleases, but what
annoys me is the people in rms related threads online who act as if the
development of FOSS[0] is entirely dependent upon him. There _were_ a lot of
parallel developments in software, which is not a zero sum game.

I find a lot of rms's essays interesting and I regularly use a lot of GNU
software, especially emacs. Still, rms is often divisive and
counterproductive. We must call it "GNU/Linux"? We must use one of a handful
of "totally free distros" instead of even distros like Fedora and Debian?
Stallman played a vital early role, but _no_ role was necessary.

If GNU never existed, we wouldn't have emacs/gcc/etc., but there are
alternatives and those alternatives would have become more developed over
time.[1] Linux would have used the BSD programs instead of the GNU programs or
they would have written their own.

(In fact, if Linus never invented Linux, there would still be FreeBSD, NetBSD,
and OpenBSD. These are all, as far as I know, less dependent on GNU
applications (if at all) and many people in the BSD communities see the GPL as
_restrictive_.[2])

If the FSF never was founded, we wouldn't have the GPL and we might not have
gotten copyleft at all, but we would still have BSD, MIT, Apache, etc.,
licenses. "Free software" is an ideology that is largely dependent on
Stallman, but "open source" software is inevitable because of the benefits it
provides society.

\-----

While one particular philosophy of freedom and computing were largely driven
by rms's writings, the practical benefits of sharing source under a free
license are not at all dependent on some broad philosophical goal. It's just
more profitable for businesses to not have to pay for software (while at the
same time not being "pirates"), to have access to the source code (for
patches, even if the upstream refuses them), and so on. I find it hard to
imagine a company with lots of servers like Google existing if they had to pay
Windows or UNIX license fees (especially if the competitive pressure from
Linux and BSD never existed). Software like Apache's httpd would have existed
even if rms never wrote anything, in my opinion.

Companies don't care about the freedoms that rms cares about. They care about
making money. It just so happens that you make more money in the long run[3]
if you don't get forced into overly restrictive terms by a vendor who then
locks you into their proprietary technology, continually increasing fees and
restrictions over time. Open source software gets major contributions by
people who are paid to do this by big corporations who would rather do this
than pay for closed source software. It just so happens that the terms allow
end users, startups, and so on to benefit from the big businesses who are
ultimately acting in their own best interests. If rms had his way, this
virtuous circle might not have come about because rms is very much opposed to
any sort of compromise at all.[4]

Stallman is the _opposite_ of this sort of pragmatism that is common in the
"open source" world. To rms, one ought to act ethically, and anyone who does
not do so is essentially evil. At one point, he said that you didn't _have_ to
make software for money, you could just be a waiter. (I can't find the source,
but it stuck with me.) The implicit assumption behind this statement is that
free software is inherently not profitable in the world where Internet
distribution makes charging for distribution of free software impractical. In
rms's mind, something like GNU would exist even if one could not make money
off of it, had to get a day job, and development had to be sponsored by big
not-for-profit organizations like the FSF.

It's noble to be this committed to a philosophy, but fortunately the world
does not exist as the "worst case scenario" that rms prepared for. The rest of
the FOSS world has largely moved beyond this mentality. Companies like IBM and
Red Hat sponsor development for, and make money off of, "Linux and open
source". They use those terms instead of "GNU/Linux and free software" because
the latter are ideologically loaded, and hence have the potential to hurt
their businesses by scaring away potential customers.[5] The people who wanted
FOSS in the 1990s got creative and found ways[6] to get massive amounts of
cash to sponsor their development so that they _could_ get paid to do what
they love. Apparently, you can make software without charging directly for
copies.[7]

So I can see other reasons why people active in FOSS would want to not be
associated with rms: his complete hostility toward "open source", major Linux
distributions, the common use of the term "Linux" instead of "GNU/Linux", the
complete lack of the ability to compromise, focus on philosophy and politics
over code, etc. If people associate all of the open source movement like
rms[8], it could scare away some who would otherwise contribute and help make
the world a better place. The useful contributions rms made was his source
code (such as GNU emacs) and he did make many useful contributions in the
past, but if his ideologies scare off someone from making major source code
contributions, then now he's being counterproductive. It doesn't matter how
notable his name/initials are if he's making a very public mistake. In the
end, all that matters in the FOSS world is the source code.

\-----

[0] FOSS means "Free and Open Source Software" and is a compromise term
between "free software" fanatics and those who prefer the term "open source".
All three terms are largely equivalent in meaning, but have different
ideologies attached.

[1] I think one of the appeals of FOSS is that there is no one leader, no one
ideology, no one organization or company, and so on. There is not even just
one program for any given niche, there tends to be at least two. Often the
alternatives to a given program are inferior in some way, but if the major
program they are alternative to never existed, they probably would have been
made more capable or forked at some point. (Or another program would have been
written from scratch to fill the niche.)

[2] Even the so-called "permissive" licenses are restrictive when compared to
the WTFPL. :-P

[3] It's not surprising that contemporary big businesses care about profit. It
is surprising that some pay attention to their long run interests! :-P

[4] If you don't believe me (and this very article that's being linked to
implies the same thing), see the GPLv3 controversy and also note that the
Linux kernel is still under the GPLv2.

[5] If you're making money, the term "free software" is misleading. Also, the
term is not unambiguous in English: Google it and you'll find a lot of
freeware. It would also be confusing for a company like Red Hat to "charge for
free software". "Freedom Software" probably would have made more sense than
"free software".

[6] One of the compromises they made was dropping "free software" for "open
source" and rms never forgave them.

[7] The ease of distribution and copying that broadband Internet provides
should encourage other industries to find ways to make money without charging
for copies, as well. Music, movies, books, and so on, probably have ways to
make money without the traditional "charging for copies" model. Also note that
if you do not charge for individual copies of your software, making all or
most of your source code available under an open source license is probably a
great cost-reducing technique that just about everyone should use. Sites like
reddit have source code available on Github, and they benefit from it because
the value for reddit is the domain "reddit.com" and the posts located there,
not the software that runs it.

[8] Very few people would want to live in as pure of a free software
environment as rms does. I personally don't know how he can get any work done
on a tiny netbook. I use two 1080p 24 inch monitors.

~~~
zach95
This general argument pioneered by ESR against RMS is something that you hear
a lot: the idea that open source software is just better. (And it is that
too!)

#1: it's too hard to say whether the free software movement would have evolved
without RMS. We do know that Linux was able to bootstrap from GNU which was
founded some 7 years earlier and without that, it probably wouldn't have taken
off the way it did. By the time Linus came around, the only thing missing from
GNU was its kernel. The Berkeley people got bogged down with the BSDi lawsuit,
and you might ask yourself how that happened if their license was so freedom
preserving. If it wasn't for that, I imagine that BSD would be in the place
linux is now.

#2: People say it's divisive not to have one way of thinking about open
source, but why this need to do it one way only? Surely there is a place for
the GPL for some projects, and RMS isn't forcing anyone to GPL their software.
The FSF counts lots of other licences as GNU-compatible.

RMS just wants people to understand that if they license their software
restrictively they're not doing the hacker community any great service, even
if they claim otherwise.

#3: "To rms, one ought to act ethically, and anyone who does not do so is
essentially evil." That's not just RMS who thinks that. You're going to have a
hard time justifying why unethical people who harm others are essentially
good. You make it seem like it's radical to stand on the side of ethical
behavior. Maybe it is.

~~~
Aethaeryn
> it's too hard to say whether the free software movement would have evolved
> without RMS.

Hypothetical speculation of how history would have turned out if certain
details were changed a little bit are hard to argue because they're
hypothetical and thus a realm of opinion. There does not exist an _actual_
alternate universe in which a given event never happened that we can just
observe to see how things worked out differently.

I think that where we're heading in software is inevitable. Yes, RMS
contributed to it early on and yes, things might have taken off more slowly
without the FSF and GNU, but in 100 years, I think we'll have won no matter
what. This is an opinion. There's no empirical way to evaluate it. I think the
nature of easy copying via the Internet has created a sort of inevitable
force, like gravity, and that fighting it is ultimately futile. Am I right?
We'll see how things are in 2112.

\-----

> Surely there is a place for the GPL for some projects, and RMS isn't forcing
> anyone to GPL their software.

If you think that proprietary software is evil instead of just bad, then yes,
the GPL is good for some things because it is "freedom-preserving". I could
easily imagine an alternate reality in which Mac OS X used a BSD-licensed
Linux kernel.

It could also be argued, for the sake of argument, that the GPL is ultimately
a bad thing. It requires copyleft, sharing with the same license, and about
half of FOSS has been "infected".[1] Very few projects do the copyright
assignment that the FSF does. If there is a currently unseen issue with the
GPL, it would be very hard to get every single contributor who owns copyright
to switch every major project from the GPL. If you say "GPL v2 or later" or
"GPL v3 or later" in your software's license, you are dependent on one
organization for your "upgrade path" of licenses. An advantage that the
permissive licenses have is that there isn't one major permissive license:
there are lots of them. It's a more diverse ecosystem, without one point of
possible future failure and without any dependency on one organization.

> RMS just wants people to understand that if they license their software
> restrictively they're not doing the hacker community any great service, even
> if they claim otherwise.

Those companies are not doing themselves a great service, either. The big
proprietary software companies will realize this eventually, or like the big
media companies who are so resistant to change, they'll go out of business in
the long run. Reinventing the wheel is expensive, time consuming, and there's
no guarantee you'll get the best programmers on board. You'll also get stuck
into other vendors' lock-ins unless you're a very big company like Microsoft,
so you'll lose more than you'll gain by going with closed source, non-free
software.

\-----

> You make it seem like it's radical to stand on the side of ethical behavior.
> Maybe it is.

It's not radical to focus on doing ethical behavior (or maybe it is, but it's
not the radical thing I'm talking about). I do admire him for his courageous
ability to take an ethical stand against all odds. I just don't think it's the
most productive way to achieve to his goals.

If you want all software to be free, then you need to convince companies
making software to make it free. If you can't do that, then you need to make
your own company and put those older companies out of business. There's only
so many things that an organization or individual not making any money can do.
In the world as it is, money matters. Maybe that's not how things should work,
and maybe all software should be made by the FSF, but very radical structural
changes are probably never going to happen.

People went with "open source" not because they hate freedom or rms, but
because they needed to "sell" the concept to companies like IBM.

\-----

[1] <http://osrc.blackducksoftware.com/data/licenses/>

~~~
zach95
Instead of responding to things that might be factually inaccurate, let me
just save time and reframe the debate between ESR and RMS.

ESR thinks that open source makes good business sense since open source is
better than closed source. Computing is something that extends our ability to
get things done, but isn't an end in itself. We need to be pragmatic about
what businesses want, and how the business world works in order to perform our
role of helping people do business.

RMS doesn't care so much about what the business world wants or the fact that
open-source is indeed better.

He sees hacking and computing as one of the greatest achievments of mankind.
Because it's a great achievement of mankind (like writing, or alphabets, or
language itself) he thinks that it should be made available to everyone, and
never closed off. In other words, for the people who live in it, spending
their lives working on it and in it, software is culture. It's not just an
application that you use like a word processor. And in the hacker culture,
there needs to be a free flow of ideas like there is in the scientific
community.

This is reflected in the different licenses. The GPL "restricts" people from
trying to close off one of the greatest achievements of human kind for the
sake of some people who want to earn some more money off of it. The BSD-style
licenses consider themselves more practical in that they allow for better
commercial exploitation by eventually imposing restrictions. This is why Apple
is so heavily involved in converting FreeBSD away from GPL code Currently I
think it's about 50% GPL and OpenBSD is more like 60%. They plan to replace
the GPL code with BSD licensed code so they don't have to contribute to the
project eventually.

Clearly some code isn't the equivalent of Shakespearean drama, and it won't
matter that humanity is deprived of it. Microsoft word comes to mind. But for
the really amazing software, the software that involves the cutting edge free
flowing of ideas, and I would argue that the linux kernel falls into this
category, GPL gives it the ability to serve as a lasting monument to human
ingenuity, as well as a way of transmitting culture. It's no coincidence that
the linux kernel powers nearly all web servers, smartphones and
supercomputers.

------
mrtron
I think it is really tough for younger people to realize that technology can
be seen as a highly dangerous in different forms.

Instead of trashing his principles, perhaps try to see the motivation behind
them. I respect anyone who establishes their own code and adheres firmly to
it. RMS meets this criteria. He is also very open and honest about his views
which I find refreshing.

I also think that this type of boycotting/selectively using technology will
become far more common with physical hardware as it rapidly develops. Robots
will not smoothly integrate with everyone's tastes.

Consider a highly sophisticated sex robot not noticeably different from a
normal human. I can imagine there will be a strong division of people for and
against this type of human intimacy replacement.

~~~
billpatrianakos
That's the thing. You said it. Not many will see his motivations unless he
spells it out and the man is an awful communicator in that he can't go two
words without putting someone off. Unfortunately he's a bit of an extremist.
At least that's how he presents himself. So I doubt younger folks will get
where he's coming from. I'm 25 and I've read about Stallmam for only the past
five years and I can tell you that what he stands for sounds great in theory
but unfortunately he's not too good at showing us how to reconcile that theory
with reality. I don't think kids younger than me will ever get Stallmam. As
far as I see he becomes more irrelevant in the eyes of each passing
generation. Not that he's irrelevant, just that he's seen that way as you go
younger.

And I'd totally be willing to try out the first sex robot.

~~~
mrtron
He is an extremist and puts many people off with what he says.

That is the point. He doesn't need to change his approach or principles. His
actions are still in line with what he says.

~~~
billpatrianakos
Well you're kind of making my argument. There's a misunderstanding. I'm
talking about young people. Stallman doesn't need to change his approach or
principles but what I'm saying is that I have a feeling that one day all the
people like you who "get" it will die and very few if any of today's young
people will be on board with his views. They'll probably think Stallman was
the father of Open Source and not be able to tell the difference between Free
Software and Open Source software. If only there was a more moderate, more
palatable version of Stallman then maybe the message would reach more people.

And I'm not saying Stallman's views are right or wrong. They just are.

~~~
thejteam
I think your points about young people are right on the money. To be more
specific, there is a history to his views. They have evolved over time in
reaction to specific events, just like everybody's ideas. People who have not
experienced the same events will not understand how his views are shaped
without this background being explained. In order to understand how the
building is made you need to see the scaffolding. Many times Stallman's(and
others) views are presented without the proper narrative in place.

------
homosaur
The one thing I get kind of annoyed with Stallman at is that he keeps
mentioning this Leemote machine he has, which runs free software even in the
BIOS. He might as well say that he runs Linux on a magical unicorn.

I have tried and never been able to get my hands on one of these things. I'd
really like to see Stallman jump off his insistence on free for one second and
maybe suggest something realistic for users who care about free software but
aren't willing to work on an obscure, unavailable 7" netbook.

~~~
m0nastic
Freedom Included is a company that got set up in Cambridge specifically to
sell the Lemote. They ship internationally apparently through a partner (can't
vouch for it). The folks who run the site seemed like decent enough people, so
I think it's on the up-and-up. (I haven't bought one though)

If you actually want one of these things, it looks like about $450:

<http://freedomincluded.com/>

~~~
weiran
Ironically you have to buy it through Amazon which Stallman detests:
<http://stallman.org/amazon.html>.

------
sgt
I did however find this comment quite interesting. He recommends Lisp to
beginner programmers. Honestly this makes me want to play with Lisp (I do just
about every other popular language but I've never done Lisp):

"The most powerful programming language is Lisp. If you don't know Lisp (or
its variant, Scheme), you don't appreciate what a powerful language is. Once
you learn Lisp you will see what is missing in most other languages.

When you start a Lisp system, it enters a read-eval-print loop. Most other
languages have nothing comparable to read, nothing comparable to eval, and
nothing comparable to print. What gaping deficiencies!

Lisp is no harder to understand than other languages. So if you have never
learned to program, and you want to start, start with Lisp. If you learn to
edit with Emacs, you can learn Lisp by writing editing commands for Emacs. You
can use the Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp to learn with: it is
free as in freedom, and you can order printed copies from the FSF."

~~~
homosaur
Several Lisp dialects like Scheme and Clojure are still going strong. It's a
very useful language to learn even in 2012.

~~~
mahmud
_specially_ in 2012.

------
dill_day
_I skimmed documentation of Python after people told me it was fundametally
similar to Lisp. My conclusion is that that is not so. When you start Lisp, it
does `read', `eval', and `print', all of which are missing in Python._

Could someone explain what he means? (Did Python not have a repl when he wrote
that?)

~~~
ajross
Python's read doesn't return a s-expression, nor does its print take one; they
just use strings. It's eval likewise takes a string. The part missing that
lisp has is the inspectable data structure containing an arbitrary parse tree
and function result.

~~~
why-el
I am curious, would Ruby be a good fit in this case? With its irb and all.

~~~
oconnor0
No, Ruby's implementation of it's interactive mode is similar to Python's -
not via data structures, but via strings.

------
b1daly
I've only read a few writings by Richard Stallman. It seems plain to me that
he is an egomaniac with some kind of rigid obsessional thinking patterns.
People like this are very annoying, and ironically undermine their own case if
they intend to persuade others of their views.

The willingness with which he labels the practices of large swaths of the
population (of the US) "unethical" would be very disturbing if he was a
political leader with significant power.

Oddly, the patterns I see evidenced in his writings (that I have read) remind
me of the thinking used to justify totalitarian states!

I think his views on his core issue of the badness of copyrighted software are
not well thought out and absurd on their face. He makes a point of pointing
out that the copyright laws are arbitrary, they are not some kind of natural
right. One of his main arguments is that making a copy of a digital good does
not destroy the usefulness of the original, or harm the person who has it in
his "possession."

What he is apparently oblivious to is that a system of laws is entirely a
social construct. It contains huge amounts of arbitrariness. The whole concept
of property is extremely abstract, unless you consider it in some kind of
caveman scenario. "It is wrong to take this food that a person has in their
hands because then they will be deprived of the ability to eat it." As far as
I can tell that's how he thinks about property.

I think a lot of his confusion is because he is an absolutist. He thinks laws
should be "ethical." There is certainly an overlap between law and morality.
But there are major areas of disunion.

IMO, the ability to accept ambiguity in the areas of law, ethics, and personal
conduct is needed to keep society humane.

Just writing this to think through my thoughts. I usually try to not be
judgmental of others being a fallible human, but I make exception in cases of
people who have chosen a career as self appointed judges of their fellows.

~~~
pessimizer
This argument could be made against anyone who stands by any conviction.

The diagnosis of some psychological problem solely based on the fact that he
won't agree to follow the arbitrary established order which is against his
convictions is a common feature of authoritarian regimes.

The accusation that if he disagrees with a system of laws because he wants
them to be more ethical and less ambiguous he is undermining a social
construct that is needed to keep society "humane" is worse.

It's not helpful, when someone disagrees with a law or set of laws, to argue
against the entire concept of disagreement with law - unless you want to
either paint them as an absolutist or an anarchist. Psychological problems are
usually diagnosed based on the amount of suffering of the individual, and RMS
doesn't seem to be suffering at all. He has specific concerns that can be
replied to specifically.

------
callumjones
I find it odd that he choses to dump platforms that also support Windows.
Manufacturers adding Windows support (realistically the other way around with
Linux being supported after the fact) is about giving consumers choice in how
their product runs.

I feel this is somewhat core to the FSF movement, a choice for how your
computer runs. Why should Stallman criticise a company for allowing someone to
pick the OS that best meets their needs? If a person picks Windows over a FOSS
aligned OS then there is clearly something wrong in the feature-set or user
interface of that FOSS OS.

~~~
orblivion
For better or for worse, the Free Software movement has a strange notion of
"choice". They believe that the user is entitled to complete control over
their computer, which precludes Windows. To someone like me, that would mean
that the user should be free to waive those rights and use Windows anyway, but
to the FSF that somehow is an infraction. Who the victim is and who the
oppressor in that case, is unclear to me.

------
krollew
I don't understand his point. I'd be very sad if set myself so strict rules.
Terminal is powerful, but this doesn't mean not to user X11. I like *nix and
open source, but why souldn't I use Windows (which i find very nice system
since Windows 7). He says Lisp is powerful, I agree. I prefer Scheme, but it's
the same strengh. However it doesn't mean I use only C and scheme. I rather
use a rule - match programming language to task you do. Somethimes it's C,
sometimes scheme, sometimes perl, sometimes even C#. And so on...

~~~
ricardobeat
> but why souldn't I use Windows

And I thought you were going to say something that made sense...

~~~
krollew
There is no way Windows could be useful? Oh c'mon, don't be fanboy. xD

------
a_macgregor
Over the years Stallman has passed to be an iconic figure that contributed a
lot to a fanatic out of touch with the current world.

Comments like saying he was glad Steve Jobs was dead, are what in my opinion
makes him a fanatic, yes Steve Jobs was a greedy asshole but being glad that
he is dead doesn't portrait Stallman any better.

------
jakeonthemove
Stallman is a smart man, a genius - that's exactly why his way of computing
will never be used by most other people.

I do my computing in a terribly inefficient way - Windows and GUI as much as
possible to avoid text/code and throw as many apps and resources at a task as
possible to make it easier/faster - I've managed to outgrow a T9600 Core 2 Duo
in daily use (it's 100% loaded all the time), and now I'm on the way to doing
so with a Core 2 Quad.

If RMS saw me, he'd probably shoot me on the spot :-D, but still, things get
done....

~~~
kasbah
>If RMS saw me, he'd probably shoot me on the spot

You must be thinking of ESR: <http://www.catb.org/~esr/guns/>

~~~
konstruktor
That is very distasteful. Just because someone is advocating firearms rights
doesn't mean he will shoot you if you don't share his opinions.

~~~
jakeonthemove
Am I missing something? I don't even know who the guy is, and I was joking in
my comment above. I am a gun nut myself, member of IPSC...

~~~
kasbah
<http://www.catb.org/~esr/software.html>

------
zach95
I don't understand the hostility to RMS here in hackrerland. RMS is trying to
recreate the best hacker environment that ever existed bar none: MIT's AI lab
in the 1970's. I was alive then and knew some people there and it was all true
--it was hacker nirvana. It got blown apart by his friends going off and
founding some lisp machine companies that killed off lisp as a commerical
language when those companies died from infighting.

What does RMS want? Four freedoms that businesses want to take away from you:
the ability to read, modify, share, and run the programs that you or hackers
like you write. There's nothing purist about wanting control over your own
program, or for it not to be closed off from you against your will. That's
what happened in the 1980's, and what continues to happen with proprietary
software.

Obviously, as the leader of this movement RMS has to stay especially pure or
no one would follow him. RMS may have his idiosyncracies, but you have to give
him credit for not being hypocritical, which is more than you can say about
virtually any other leader out there.

I'm a really proud supporter of RMS and what he stands for because I've spent
half my life being burned by proprietary software, and I'd love to go back to
the garden of eden that was MIT's AI lab in the 70's and early 80's.

~~~
paulhauggis
"What does RMS want? Four freedoms that businesses want to take away from you:
the ability to read, modify, share, and run the programs that you or hackers
like you write."

He wants these at the expense of the freedoms of the people that wrote the
software. If you want these freedoms, write the software yourself and
distribute it.

"and I'd love to go back to the garden of eden that was MIT's AI lab in the
70's and early 80's."

Right. With none of the technological advances we have today. No thanks.

~~~
zach95
"He wants these at the expense of the freedoms of the people that wrote the
software."

Huh? These are the freedoms that the people who wrote the software should
enjoy.

And, I never said "with none of the technological advances", I meant the
hacker culture. I think that was pretty clear. If you want to understand the
culture read the book "Hackers."

I understand that it's hard for some people to understand that software can be
more than something to commercialize. I suspect that even though this site is
called hacker news, most of the people here are not hackers and don't really
respect the culture.

------
bfrs
Can someone help me understand what the purpose of this is:

 _I have several free web browsers on my laptop, but I generally do not look
at web sites from my own machine, aside from a few sites operated for or by
the GNU Project, FSF or me. I fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail
to a program that fetches them, much like wget, and then mails them back to
me._

~~~
ramses
He does not want to be tracked.

~~~
tedunangst
Browsing the web using a one of a kind user agent is not a good way to avoid
tracking.

------
bfrs
_I skimmed documentation of Python after people told me it was fundametally
similar to Lisp. My conclusion is that that is not so. When you start Lisp, it
does `read', `eval', and `print', all of which are missing in Python._

Lisp experts, what does this mean? As far as I can tell, Python has pretty
good REPL facilities.

~~~
praptak
Python has a good REPL and it even has 'eval' and 'print', so RMS is wrong
stating that _all_ of them are missing in Python. But in principle he is right
- Python does not have separate 'read' and 'eval' which is a manifestation of
deeper differences.

~~~
turkeysandwich
The type of REPL he's referring to has very specific features. Read returns a
parsed structure, eval evaluates a parsed structure and print writes a parsed
structure. Python's REPL just deals with strings, I believe.

~~~
praptak
Yes, this is the case - Python's REPL (and eval) deals with strings and does
not go through an explicit representation of the parsed code, mainly because
there is no such representation in Python. There is an ast module that parses
Python code but it is an add-on, not at the core of the implementation. That
is what I meant by manifestation of deeper differences between Python and
Lisp.

~~~
aangjie
This makes me think. I know the ast module is an add-on and not at the core of
the interpreter implementation. Has there been any attempts at building a
interpreter that does the same(Read, eval,print, loop over data structures and
not strings)?? It would be hard i guess, but interesting right?

~~~
xyzzyz
All interpreters do it on some level, they just don't expose this
functionality to user.

As soon as you want to expose it to user in a non cumbersome way, you realize
that the thing that stands in your way is the syntax of your language --
converting from textual and structural representation back and forth does not
look like the way to go. You need to get rid of one of them for it to make
sense. But if you get rid of textual representation, you'll just get another
Lisp.

------
kamaal
The attitude in this difficult to understand.

RMS is different, and it takes guys like him to do something different. Its
like Steve Jobs. His attitude is different. Its difficult to understand that
unless you are somebody like RMS himself.

Sometimes this level of eccentricity and madness is needed if you are out on a
lofty mission. You can question why Gandhi had to wear clothes and live the
lifestyle of peasant. Or why Linus Torvalds has a bloated ego, Or why Steve
Jobs behaved the way he did. These are all eccentric personalities in their
own and they won't part with what they are.

You will never see their energy wear off, or they running out of passion doing
something. In their own eccentric style, they are what they are because they
are _unique_.

That is what sets them apart from most of us. There is very little difference
between genius and insanity.

------
endlessvoid94
> However, since around 1992 I have worked mainly on free software activism,
> which means I am too busy to do much programming. As a result, I have not
> had time or occasion to learn newer languages such as Perl, Python, PHP or
> Ruby.

I'm sorry. What does this mean? What does he spend his time doing?

~~~
SamColes
He tours the world giving talks and speeches.

------
IvoGeorgiev
I cannot even believe that there are people who agree with this moron. First
of all, he's chasing an ideal that's not even THAT valid: not all of the
crappy-written software is knowledge, not all source code is worth reading.
Plus, proprietary software improves industry. Industry feeds people.

Not to mention, in today's world, it is impossible to live without depending
on corporations. The only way to live without someone knowing a lot about you
is to live in a cave, miles away from civilization.

The way he is using computers: he is just putting restrictions on himself,
thinking he actually removes them.

The only thing I agree with here is his opinion about Lisp.

~~~
sgift
Let me just paraphrase your words the same way you've paraphrased Stallman:
"If something is hard, don't try it! And if you try it: You're a moron!"

You may note that this doesn't accurately reflect your words. That's the risk
of paraphrasing without context and argumentation.

------
shreeshga
rms is way ahead of the times. somewhere in the future,the bearded dude will
point at us and go 'hah! told you so!'

------
bbsabelli
RMS should be proud because open source has already won. His focus should not
be on software freedom, it should be on data freedom.

So, where is the "Free Data Foundation"?

------
redact207
It took me 20mins to force read my way through that entire page, and the whole
time all I could think was "can this guy be any more boring?"

------
damian2000
I'd like to know his view on the rise of the app stores on smart phones
(Android and iOS for example). Although companies like Apple have undoubtedly
gotten rich on the backs of developers by taking their 30% cut, I would argue
that the app store model is the best market for selling software from
independent software developers that has ever existed.

~~~
zach95
Applying his principles, he wouldn't have a problem with the app store model,
but he happens to have a problem with Apple's app store since they also
restrict the freedoms of users: [http://stallman.org/archives/2011-jul-
oct.html#25_October_20...](http://stallman.org/archives/2011-jul-
oct.html#25_October_2011_\(Deification_Of_Steve_Jobs\))

Restricting the freedom of users is not necessarily part of an app store
though.

~~~
damian2000
thanks for the link - although restricting the user to a choice of half a
million apps is hardly restricting their freedom ... but I guess he probably
means the restrictive review process that apple uses before letting an app
onto the app store. But I wonder what the alternatives are though... Android
marketplace is a fair bit more open in terms of letting apps on there, and
they have had significantly more security issues as a result.

------
prtamil
wow So many Trolls. its like troll zoo.

------
mahmud
" _I do not post on 4chan_." -- RMS

~~~
mappu
It's actually really interesting he feels the need to point that out. Possibly
because the /g/ and /prog/ boards have such a fascination with him (perhaps
deservedly). Stallman has famously called /g/ full of "inane comments" [1] -
and I remember someone venturing far enough outside of /prog/ to mail another
idol, Gerald Sussman, who said that such fandoms were "unscientific and
ultimately destructive", which was very funny at the time.

4chan is a simple enough website that (a) it would perform well on his
Leemote, and (b) he probably wouldn't be threatened by e.g. non-free
javascript, since there basically isn't any. I think it highlights the way
4chan is "heard and not seen" that RMS refers to "accounts", of which of
course there are none, and curious again he uses the gender-inspecific "it" as
if the account itself has an identity as a person, let alone any identity at
all.

Of course, things like this [2] (possibly NSFW) probably have a very strong
influence on his opinion of 4chan.

____________________

1\. <http://i.imgur.com/fhEQX.png>

2\. <http://i.imgur.com/WXvva.png>

~~~
stfu
Thanks for those wonderful screenies. I just intended to request further infos
on the Stallman/4chan "relationship" but your posting cleared some things up.
4chan is still after all these years one of the most fascinating places
around.

~~~
DanBC
I haven't checked, but probably NSFW.

(<http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/8326/screenshotmh3.png>)

(<http://dis.4chan.org/read/prog/1202783375>)

(<http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/1861/screenshotlm2.png>)

etc etc.

------
maschwenk
I really respect everything he's done and his opinions, but to me he's much
like a devout religious figure. His dedication to free software is akin to a
Buddhist monk. I appreciate his devotion (like I do non-atheists) but
respectfully disagree with his strong feelings.

------
azernik
I'm not sure I quite understand his criticism of Python; it most certainly
_acts_ like it has a REPL, and it actually does have a builtin functions for
eval() and print() (the equivalent of read needs to do additional parsing).

So what's RMS's beef with Python?

------
leeoniya
"...I fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail to a program that
fetches them, much like wget, and then mails them back to me."

that's one tough pill to swallow, sir.

~~~
salgernon
I thought that at first too, but then I started reading blogs that were
scraped and fed to my kindle. Now I find that it is much easier to read and
take the time to comprehend content when the cost of following links (through
the kindles ersatz browser)is so high. Since most of what I'm interested in
reading centers on computers or general science, plain text formatting and
lack of images isn't a problem.

------
unabridged
He seemed to cover everything but what phone he uses. Is the closed hardware
of android acceptable? Or does he just stick with nonsmart phones?

~~~
jp_sc
He doesn't own a cell phone at all. "Stanlin's dream" he calls them.
[http://www.geekosystem.com/richard-stallman-cell-phones-
stal...](http://www.geekosystem.com/richard-stallman-cell-phones-stalins-
dream/)

~~~
rimantas
He just borrows one when needed. How convenient.

~~~
incosta
Does he use his own toilet paper, or also borrows one for the occasion?

~~~
reinhardt
Why, toilet paper must be Free too.

------
olalonde
Related post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3551345>

------
pbhjpbhj
> _This site is maitained in a very simple way._ //

Emacs does have spellcheckng though, doesn't it.

~~~
Luyt
spellcheck _i_ ng ? ;-)

------
robomartin
How does RMS earn a living?

I often find it odd that people even talk about free software or software
having to be free. There is, of course, no such thing. There's subsidized
software, but no free software exists.

Linux, as an example, is probably the most expensive piece of software ever
developed. Think of all the people employed at universities and businesses who
devoted time paid by their employer to develop Linux. Even if they did the
work at home "on their own time". The only reason this was even remotely
possible is because they had gainful employment that kept a roof over their
heads and paid the bills. The same is true of students who contributed to
Linux. Their parents, or the government (through a loan) provided the
financial support to work on Linux.

Not one of these people would have been able to work on Linux had their
financial needs, need for shelter and generally "having a life" needs had not
been met through either employment, parental support, loans or grants.

Free software is, at best, subsidized, and at worst, not free at all. I'll be
that Linux probably cost more to develop than Windows or OSX.

Now, there's free to the end user. OK. That's fine. People will take free
food, free beer, free ice-cream and free software. That's human nature.

I don't find reveling against commercial software a particularly intelligent
stance. No offense intended. Those writing software for sale are simply
choosing to earn a living writing software that they sell rather than doing
something else to subsidize software to be given away.

If I am good at writing software, why should I be a gardener to pay for food
and shelter and give away software?

Furthermore, all of the software that RMS used as the model for GNU was the
result of years of expensive development and none of it was free. It's a lot
easier to, say, study and learn Unix and then go off and develop a "free" Unix
clone than to have to invest years upon years developing and optimizing Unix
in the first place.

One of my favorite saying goes something like this: The second person who saw
the wheel thought it was obvious.

I don't find waging war against non-free software a particularly honorable
stance when you are standing on the shoulders of giants who devoted years and
billions of dollars to evolve an industry and, yes, make money with it.

I wonder if he refuses medical attention when he goes to the hospital because
the software on all of the systems at the hospital do not use free software.
There's a word that describes a type of person who thinks and behaves this way
and it isn't a flattering one.

~~~
homosaur
#1. You're confusing free as in beer and free as in freedom. Stallman cares
about free as in freedom. You really want to go back and review this because
you are clearly unfamiliar with the philosophy behind the free software
movement. <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html> The freedom the FSF
talks about is not related to cost, it's related to the freedom to modify and
share software.

#2. Software in the days you speak of WAS more like free software today.
Hackers did share software and patches and such. If you had a problem with a
piece of Unix code, whoever the commercial vendor was would often just send
you the source. If it stayed like this, there would never be a need for the
FSF.

#3. Developers can work on whatever they want in their spare time. If a
developer feels that it's valuable to donate his or her labor to improve a
piece of software that can improve everyone's lives then that's their
business. They have the FREEDOM to do what they want with their time and
intellectual capacity and if that's in creating software that supports user
freedom, then obviously they see a benefit in it.

#4. It's shortsighted and wrong to say that free software is anti-commercial.
Red Hat is a billion dollar company now. Microsoft was one of the largest
contributors of code to the Linux kernel last year. Every internet company we
ever talk about on HN mostly owes their business to free software like Apache,
Linux, BSD, Nginx, PHP, Ruby, etc etc etc etc etc

#5. No, RMS would not refuse medical treatment at a non-free facility. This is
a specious argument that has been brought up time and time again and shot down
repeatedly. Read this very thread, that point is addressed.

~~~
robomartin
No, I get the free == freedom part. And it is still nonsensical at many
levels.

I developed hardware for many years. A lot of this hardware was based on
FPGAs. FPGAs, while hardware, are made into a functional solution through
code. You write your hardware description in Verilog of VHDL and you get a
working product in return. Some of this code took years to develop, evolve and
optimize. It was very, very costly. And, there was no imaginable way that it
made sense to release it as free (freedom) code. Doing that meant going out of
business or seriously damaging a revenue stream that funded the development in
the first place.

The same applies to my hospital example. Not free to own and not free to
modify. In fact, it is both expensive and very much closed. And there is
nothing wrong with that.

My basic premise remains true regardless of which flavor of "free" you choose
to focus on: None of this would be possible without the financials to support
and promote the release of gratis/freedom software. Impossible.

You mentioned MS as the greatest contributor to the Linux kernel last year.
That cost MS millions to support. Those millions had to come from non-
gratis/non-freedom software that MS charges for and keeps as closed source in
order to earn money and employ their people. That's their model and there's
nothing wrong with it.

RMS --or anyone else-- rejecting non-freedom software offerings in isolation
of the realities that connect the two is nonsense. You would not have one
without the other. It's a symbiotic relationship.

To further use your example: Support Microsoft non-gratis/non-freedom software
offerings if you want to support the worlds largest contributor to the Linux
kernel last year. I don't know, it could be a nice gesture by RMS and other
proponents of his philosophies to support, rather than reject, MS in order to
voice approval for their --per your assertion-- unmatched support of Linux
(and probably other gratis/freedom software).

The healthier approach, in my opinion, is to recognize that both models have
their place and that both have their evolutionary reasons to be perfectly
valid and exist. I do and I try to support both.

The problem with the word "free" in English is that it has two meanings. In
other languages there are distinct words for these two meanings. In Spanish
they are "gratis" and "libre". So, gratis/libre software cannot exist outside
the realities of the exact opposite type of software, non-free in every sense
of the word. And that's OK.

My problem is with extremists who insist in not recognizing this and see the
world through one and only one lens.

I use gratis/libre software. However, more often than not, I will look for
paid software for a lot of applications where I need to ensure that proper
support exists and, sometimes more importantly, that the software continues to
be developed and evolves. All too often gratis/libre software falls short as
developers loose interest in a field, leave school and need to earn a living
or completely falls through the cracks and remains stagnant for years. Stories
about this kind of thing abound.

In my own case, I have many examples of using gratis/libre software and then
actively seeking paid alternatives in order to have a better solution with a
single point of support.

The other issue with the freedom to modify part of the argument is that this
is only good for us geeks. The average folk out there derives no direct value
whatsoever from this. And, in a lot of cases, neither do we even though a lot
of us could.

Here's the non-computing example for this: Do you fix your own car? Perhaps
you do. I don't. Any more. When I was 19 I spent most of my weekends under the
car or in the engine compartment. I can take an engine or transmission apart
and rebuild it like the best mechanics. Yet, I have not done this for years.
Why? That's just not what I do any more. I have other interests. And, more
importantly, I need to focus my time, money and efforts elsewhere.

When faced with gratis/libre software that comes with source and a license to
hack, frankly, in most cases, I have zero interest in doing so. I've done
some, but that's not what I am in front of the computer to do every day. No, I
need to get my work done and my job isn't defined as fixing problems with
OpenOffice or some other piece of software. OpenOffice, as an example, has
never worked for me or any business where I tried my best to introduce it. It
is unreasonable to expect any business to continue to use a solution that does
not work. So, in all cases, we moved on, paid for MS Office and got back to
real work.

So, geeks want the ability to hack but I'd bet you that most just want to get
on with building their products rather than fixing a problem with PHP or
whatever. Sure, some do hack, a lot of them do hack, but that does not justify
a position AGAINST closed source software.

I think that, in the end, we probably agree on a lot. I just don't like
extremes in anything, from politics to religion and, yes, software. In most
cases one population needs the other. It's OK to want to support gratis/libre
software. I am just contending that this should not happen at the exclusion
and vilification of paid/closed software because one would not exist without
the other. Your MS example is the best proof I need: Support non-free software
and you get huge benefits in the free software community. And that's OK. RMS
and other should actively promote and support this.

This ain't a hobby.

~~~
zach95
Sorry, but I don't think you get it.

To use your car analogy. The analogy would be correct if the only way to
legally service your car would be to use the dealership's mechanic. Any
attempt by you to rebuild your engine or use after-market parts would be
illegal. Forget about improving your car in any way. That's illegal too. No
new car stereo for you unless you upgrade to a whole new car.

Most people are fine with this because they know nothing about cars, and only
care if they work. You hear them saying "as long as I get to drive it, I don't
care. I have better things to do than service my own car."

But the restrictions go deeper. You aren't allowed to operate the cars the way
you want. It's a huge revenue stream for the car companies to place
restrictions on how you use your car. Want to drive somewhere new? Apply to
the company and wait for them to hear back. You're not a big customer so you
speak to someone in India and the wait is 6 months. Most applications are
bungled and you have to resubmit it repeatedly. Still people don't complain
saying "most of the places I need to drive are allowed by the car company.
Only very strange and extremist people want to drive to some place new."

Now suppose you want to lend your car to a friend. You can't, unless they pay
a hefty sum to the car company for an "additional driver license." The
standard license allows two adults as drivers and up to two passengers, but if
you want to carry more passengers, there's a fee for that too. Some people
grumble, but they've been taught since an early age that sharing your car or
giving unauthorized people rides is immoral.

Lots of people don't obey these laws, and there is a huge media campaign to
call them "car Pirates" and an illegal movement called "hackers" who want to
fix their own cars when they break, and add new features or drive to new
places. They are often sued and the media goes nuts deriding them, calling
them wackos and extremists.

When the car company goes bust and most of them do, you can continue to use
the car for as long as it will run, but when anything breaks, you need to
scrap the car and buy a new one with a different but equally incompetent
company.

This is the situation of proprietary software extended to cars.

~~~
robomartin
The analogy was not intended to be strict. That is impossible.

What you want, really, might be akin to the car company releasing the full
design files of the car to you when you buy the car. What's the difference
between source code for software and source code (the design) for making a car
or a refrigerator these days. I fire-up Solidworks and can design a car. I
fire-up various compilers and write the embedded code that runs the engine
control systems, etc.

To create Linux, PHP or any piece of software you have teams of programmers in
front of computers typing away. The case is the same for designing a car or a
microwave oven.

Are you suggesting that Samsung should grant you the ability to download all
the design files for that $69 microwave you bought at Walmart? Probably not.
Why not? It's the same thing. I have spent years designing products that
combine hardware and software. I've done it all in front of a computer.
Exactly as I do when I code a website or an iPhone app. No difference. So,
then, why treat them any different? Why aren't the proponents of free/freedom
also not buying cars or supporting microwave oven makers than don't release
their design files.

Ridiculous you say? So be it. It may very well be that it is not I who isn't
getting it. My world is complete and equitable because I understand, like,
support and promote that BOTH points of view are part of a symbiotic
relationship. You cannot have free/freedom without paid/closed. Period.

I noticed that you neglected to mention my observations about you bringing up
that MS was the largest contributor to the Linux kernel last year. You, with
that, made my point with absolute precision: The largest contributor to Linux
last year could afford to do so because they earn a revenue stream from
another paid activity. And, in this case, it happens to be paid/closed
software.

Again, I propose that the extremist view that ALL software ought to be free or
free+freedom is simply not realistic and actually counterproductive.

What do you think would happen if someone like RMS came out and said something
like: "I've decided to start supporting MS products because they enable MS to
make significant and valuable contributions to the FOSS software community"

I'd bet you a good cup of coffee that you'd see a huge boost in the amount of
FOSS work coming out of MS and others.

If you look at what RMS represents you can't help but cringe. He's actually
proud of working with a piece of crap computer that is probably a decade
behind the times. In his world the millions of people that have gained and
continue to enjoy employment due to the evolution and improvements of
paid/closed platforms and software would not have jobs. It's a joke.

I come from the vantage point of having designed and built my own computers
down to the chip level. Having literally wire-wrapped my own boards. Designed
my own disk controller cards and written my own OS and applications. So, I'll
say that I have some skin in the game. And, yes, I know that a 1GHz machine
with very lean software can do quite a bit. I was running AutoCAD on a CP/M
system with 64K of RAM and a two-card math co-processor and RAM disk with 640K
of memory. And I did a lot of good work with that. But, you know, today, I
gladly pay thousands of dollars a year for licenses to programs such as
SolidWorks and Altium Designer to get my work done. They are amazing and do a
great job. They represent a tremendous amount of R&D and expertise in the
field. And, no, I don't care to have the source code and don't really give a
shit if they don't want to release it. It's their product and they should be
entitled to do with it as they please. My annual license fees get me continued
and consistent improvement and support.

We might want to agree to disagree at this point.

~~~
zach95
I have no problem with agreeing to disagree, but it's clear you just aren't
understanding the word "freedom." So you think you disagree, while I
understand what you are saying and can see clearly you just don't understand.
I don't think I can disagree with you under these circumstances.

To get you to think more carefully, as a computer engineer can you tell me the
difference between a computer and a microwave oven or a car as finite state
machines? Which regular languages does a computer accept that a car does not?

Also, can you tell me the the difference between software and the licensing of
the software?

I think getting clear on those two questions will go along way towards
clearing up your confusion.

You might also think about how RedHat recently made a billion dollars.

------
ktizo
I view Richard Stallman's attitude to this as though he has set himself up as
some kind of social/technological guinea-pig for the general public good.

Yes, he is fanatical in several senses, especially nasal and botanical, by all
accounts ( read Stallman does Dallas:
<http://stallman.org/articles/texas.html> ).

But the day that Stallman cannot get on the internet, without compromising his
own set of restrictions, is the day when it is literally impossible to have
dominion over any computational objects that you think you own.

[edit] for clarity, I thought about this, added the qualifier computational,
and am not including abacuses ;)

~~~
fleitz
Last time I checked iOS (the router OS) is not free, he probably does violate
his own principles connecting to the Internet.

Rms is like a vegan always preaching some moral high ground and always
violating it whenever it becomes inconvenient.

~~~
justauser
If you're referring to Cisco, it's IOS. You're right though that the odds of
him not touching something like IOS or JUNOS or IronWare border on close to
impossible.

~~~
wtn
He meant to say "IOS", it's just that iOS autocorrects those characters.

~~~
whatusername
The joys of Original Operating System Names. Cisco IOS, IBM i, Apple iOS.

Not to mention: iRMX, IRIX, IOS-XR.

------
billpatrianakos
Oh boy. RMS wrote yet another opinion that we just have to read. I'll be hated
for this but I must state the obvious. This is a list of really boring
opinions. Interesting for rms fanatics but many are barely explained and most
aren't realistic to actually try out unless you want to be a software
philosopher for a living. Did people just see Stallman in the title and up
vote? Come on.

~~~
officialchicken
I was surprised to see that there were no rules whatsoever on the
consumption/conservation of energy (nutritional or electrical) - such as
avoidance of corn flakes encumbered by Montasano patents.

i.e. "I only drink rain water and pure grain alcohol"

~~~
chrischen
Well this page is specific to how he does his _computing._

------
hackermom
It's like it was still 1980 around him. To me, freedom also includes choosing
what I feel like and what I desire, and allowing myself to move with the times
rather than against, instead of fooling myself that I strike a blow for
freedom by tethering myself to the floor in every single question. All he does
is putting restrictions on himself (and in the process also on other people
who blindly follow his fundamentalism) rather than removing restrictions and
bonds. But that's just me and where I draw my line.

~~~
th
> All he does is putting restrictions on himself (and in the process also on
> other people who blindly follow his fundamentalism) rather than removing
> restrictions and bonds.

I highly doubt that anyone blindly follows Stallman.

Stallman acts as a living litmus test for open source. His actions seem less
ridiculous in technical realms where freedom and privacy are more easily
attainable and more ridiculous in areas that it is not.

------
benihana
His tone is so arrogant and condescending.

>I recommend all the ethical distros — namely, those that are 100% free
software.

i.e.: Any distro that uses anything that I don't like, namely 100% free
software, is unethical.

>If you don't know Lisp (or its variant, Scheme), you don't appreciate what a
powerful language is.

If some random person on hacker news came out and said this, we'd call them a
buffoon and say they need to get out more. When Richard Stallman says it, we
lap up his words and marvel at his terse wit.

~~~
stiff
Honestly, what the hell are you talking about? He spend his life explaining
why non-free software is unethical and providing free software, what this has
to do with liking or not liking and what is arrogant about that? There are
objective criteria by which non-free software is unethical and he certainly
has the right to state his opinions on this.

~~~
tedunangst
He crossed the line when he decided OpenBSD is nonfree because the ports tree
contains _URLs_ he doesn't like. I take being called unethical as an insult.

------
goggles99
I was surprised to find such an article here. I thought that this site was all
about promoting starups? If you think about it for a minute, Richard
Stallman's point of view would eliminate most startups that ycombinator
promotes (directly or indirectly). They would fail financially. He mentions
using google and duckduckgo on friends computers. Do you think he would
consider clicking on adverts free? I don't think so because clicking on them
results in a transfer of money somewhere. Unless his definition of free is
that he himself did not pay out of his own pocket for it? (someone else pays
for it). If this were the case, If someone bought him a copy of windows as a
gift would he use it.

So I ask, why is this anti-startup (at least for the 90% of startups you see
here) blog linked from here? If you disagree with my reaction/question -
answer with your solution which would allow these 90% of startups to survive
financially if only Richard Stallman followers used them.

~~~
rpicard
I think you might misunderstand what he means by "free".
<https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html>

~~~
goggles99
No, not at all:

source: <https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html> "...Roughly, the users
have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the
software."

What would this do to most startups today?

~~~
zach95
You wrote: "Do you think he would consider clicking on adverts free? I don't
think so because clicking on them results in a transfer of money somewhere.
Unless his definition of free is that he himself did not pay out of his own
pocket for it? (someone else pays for it). If this were the case, If someone
bought him a copy of windows as a gift would he use it."

I think the previous reply was right to point out you were confusing free as
in beer with free as in liberty.

------
rjim86
great..

------
fleitz
If you're reading hacker news it probably means you don't share the same rigid
commitment to free software as rms and thus his recommendations are virtually
useless. I wonder where rms stands on airtravel or using a crosswalk given the
non-free software that operates these devices.

~~~
joshAg
"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 why they should migrate the machines to free software, but I don't
push them hard, because that would be counterproductive.

"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. My response to that issue is to minimize
those activities which give them any data about me.)

"That reasoning is based on the fact that I was not responsible for setting up
those machines, or for how that was done. By contrast, if I were to ask or
lead someone to set up a computer for me to use, that would make me ethically
responsible for its software load. In such a case I insist on free software,
just as if the machine were mine.

"Skype is another kind of exception. Using Skype to talk with someone else who
is using Skype is encouraging the other to use nonfree software. So I won't
use it under any circumstances."

source: <http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html>

~~~
fleitz
And exactly what does he pay bank fees for if not for the bank to setup ATMs
and such to enable him access to his cash. He could keep his cash under his
mattress, but chooses not to instead of just admitting cash under a mattress
is too inconvenient and that he's rather pay his bank to setup ATMs with non-
free software for his benefit.

Skype is an exception but the PSTN is not? This is intellectual BS to the
highest degree for RMS to maintain his hoity toity attitude instead of just
admitting that it's too inconvenient for even RMS to live the life that RMS
preaches. RMS uses A LOT of non-free software by choice when he could choose
not too.

Whatever RMS does is pro-freedom, but when I run OS X I'm supporting fascism.

It's a bunch of holier than thou (for christ sakes the guy thinks he's St.
Ignutious) assholes making up rules so they can pretend they're better than
the rest of us. When you point out how they don't really give a shit about the
principles which they shove down your throat they then make exceptions miles
wide to avoid looking like the pretentious assholes they are.

~~~
gioele
> Skype is an exception but the PSTN is not?

You, as an individual, can choose to run and use Skype or an alternative
communication system. You, as an individual, do not have the chance to force
your telco to change to another communication system.

You cannot force your waiter to eat meat neither not to eat meat, but that
does not prevent you from being a strict vegan and yet being served by that
waiter.

~~~
fleitz
No, but you as an individual don't have to pay your telco money. RMS could opt
out of having a telephone number and simply use whatever horrid communication
system has a GNU license, just like he does with Skype.

No I can't force my waiter to not eat meat, but when someone says they are
vegan and then orders a meal that involves fossil fuel or animal fertilizer to
grow and transport those vegetables they look like pretentious assholes to
anyone who knows how the world works. When vegans start avoiding pavement and
stop living in ancient animal habitats I'll start listening to their arguments
about animal welfare.

Same with RMS, when he stops using non-free software I'll start caring what he
thinks about free software. Until then he comes off like an ass. Just like the
mormons who knock on my door talking about a message of love and then spread a
message of hate to any man who wants to marry a man.

"I'm a Christian, unless you're gay" "I'm a free software advocate, unless I
want to travel by air, or withdraw money from a bank" "I'm a vegan, unless the
killing of the animal is one step removed"

It's all the same pretention and I don't want any part of it. For the most
part I don't even care if people hold those mutually exclusive points of view,
I just don't want to hear about it. I know lots of FSF advocates, vegans and
Christians who simply shut up about it, I'm hoping that RMS simply becomes one
of those people.

