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Comment by houseabsolute | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if anyone at the FSF realizes how unprofessional their iPad -> iBad conversion and other similar slogans sound. It makes it hard to take them seriously.

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As a FSF member, I can tell you that their entire (print!) newsletter has the tone of a DPRK press release. Interestingly, the last actual piece that I read by RMS was considerably more reasonable -- it concerned the licensing of Javascript AJAX code running on your local machine.

This is really frustrating. I'm more-or-less idealogically aligned with the FSF, but feel like they've been doing more harm than good for a bit, especially as far as how these ideals are perceived goes.

I think they need a nice healthy dose of pragmatism, but I can't think of an effective way for them to get it.

This problem is common to groups of people aligned with more fringe or extreme ideals, and it's really annoying to deal with.

Yep, basically, it makes me want to be childish and support closed software simply because of how simperingly idiotic they come across as.

Upvoted for vocab :)

I agree. I mean, I totally support what the FSF stands for, but specifically calling out certain products make me want to say "So don't buy one then!" I think all too often we complain about the ethics of companies, but don't actually care enough to change our lifestyle so as not to support them.

Um, the FSF is precisely challenging you to change your lifestyle so as not to support companies whose ethics are troublesome.

How about freedom to use whatever I want to and live the lifstyle that I, not Mr. Stallman likes?

He has the freedom to promote what he believes are ethical lifestyle choices. You in turn have the freedom to follow his recommendations, or not.

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