Richard Stallman: How I do my computing (2015)
stallman.org
stallman.org
That being said, I'm perpetually frustrated by the boneheadedness of his ethical commitments. They strike me as ineffective and, more critically, unsound: it seems to me like Stallman ad-hoc transformed an (absolutely justified) distaste for closed-source software into a system of ethics by, fundamentally, adopting aphorisms as axioms. Whether this was done as a post-hoc justification for his depth of passion in this area, or whether it was just a gradual metastasis, I don't know.
I still remember when The Linux Action Show interviewed RMS and Bryan Lunduke couldn't even wrap his brain around the ethics piece besides (I have to feed my family). RMS said get a different job if closed source is your job and explained his ethical system.
I disagree with RMS on most things but I do identify him as an intellectual genius above my own abilities. As crazy as he is we are so far better off in this world with RMS then a world without RMS.
I think he ought to let himself make mistakes, punch out for the day, crack open a brewski, kick back with an iPad, and listen to some classic rock, Google some porn on pornhub (incognito of course) and just take a load off.
Even if he started using closed source products in old age or, God forbid, did anything for profit or selfish reasons, he's still a good guy who made a difference in the world. His legacy lives on in his Copyleft, all those sweet GNU tools and Emacs.
But all the same life moves pretty fast. And if he doesn't stop and look around once in a while, he could miss it.
Also, I frankly doubt that Stallman's life would be improved by kicking back with an iPad and a beer and jerking it to Internet porn. Classic rock, maybe -- but there's no contradiction between that and his approach (as long as it's DRM-free).
That's a pragmatic assessment about lifestyle, of course -- it's not germane to the rigor of Stallman's ethics (or, more accurately, the apparent lack thereof).
Again, I am not here proposing an alternative to capitalism. But -- even if it was the best system around -- its abuses are monstrous.
So it's amazingly easy to live RMS's ethics when you're given money to talk about living your ethics and those ethics are not impacted by most of the world around you.
No it's not. The mechanics are capitalism are fundamentally about mutual benefit. I give you money because having your product is worth more to me than having the money. You give me the product because having the money is worth more to you than having the product. Mutually beneficial exchange is the cornerstone of capitalism. At the end of the transaction, we are both better off.
That's not to say that there's not problems around monopoly and violence, but the latter is the failure of the state, not of the market. And monopoly is not exclusive to capitalism. Under alternative systems, everything is controlled by a monopoly (the state).
That's not capitalism by any definition.
That's extortion and it was a well known practice thousands of years before we invented (or at least understood) capitalism.
I'd argue capitalism is not even an ideology, it's just a simple understanding of comparative value and how to go beyond zero-sum economics.
In the example of "give me what I want or I'll shoot you", you could argue that "X prevents Y from being shot" and "Y gives X what he wants" is a benefit for both sides, but that ignores the first part, "X puts Y in a position where he is going to be shot" is not mutually beneficial, so the salient part of the example (the threat) is not actually an example of mutually beneficial exchange.
That is just trade, not capitalism. You are mixing them.
Actually, it's like this: I give you money because I want to make a profit and become richer. You work in order to survive.
Maybe those people are working because it offers better pay than other jobs, even if the conditions seem bad to you? (this may not be true in all situations)
(And it's not clear that capitalism is, in fact, the best of the bunch: it's bizarre that Silicon Valley, a culture that is so dedicated to pushing the boundaries of the possible that curing death is a completely pedestrian ambition, believes that /this/ economic system is the real global maximum.)
I guess that settles it.
P.S. Your family did not grow up “under communism” unless they grew up in Ukrainian Free Territory[1] or Catalan and Aragon countryside during the Spanish Civil War[2], which are the two only socio-economic entities in modern history to reasonably approximate communism. What your family grew up in is state socialist Bolshevik dictatorship. If you're going to get all worked up about ideological wars, you should at least learn what these words mean, instead of blindly reproduce vulgar, politically illiterate Cold War obfuscations.
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production...
Yes - we can admire his tenacity, and some of the great things he's contributed.
Paradoxically, his 'ideals' have probably contributed to his personal ability to make these things, at the same time, his ideology is I think more than naive, it's just plain wrong.
I like Stallman, but I take him with a huge dose of salt.
Then:
> My favorite programming languages are Lisp and C. However, since around 1992 I have worked mainly on free software activism, which means I am too busy to do much programming. Around 2008 I stopped doing programming projects. As a result, I have not had time or occasion to learn newer languages such as Perl, Python, PHP or Ruby.
There's a whole lot to the programming world than disproportionately popular dynamic languages.
What is so great about Lisp that other languages don't have? Macros? Simple syntax? I mean, that's basically it, right?
This is just fanboyism for a language he has nostalgia for. Nothing else.
One of my favorite points about Lisp was made by Kent Pitman back in 1995: http://www.nhplace.com/kent/PS/Lambda.html
In it, he describes through a though experiment what it means for a language to be defined by its community and how that impacts its development and use. It isn't as much about the specific features as it is the approach that led the language to get to have those features in the first place.
Just to illustrate, the simple syntax is a good example. It's not immediately obvious why simple syntax is a good thing... in fact, given the fact people prefer infix and a big part of the backlash against Lisp is due to the syntax, you might argue that it'd be better for Lisp to drop the syntax entirely. (As was tried in Dylan and Logo) That, you'd lose a lot that's not necessarily obvious. There's a real value in having a concrete syntax for your language's core data types and then defining the language in terms of those data types. The simple syntax isn't the point as much as what it enables you do accomplish.
homoiconicity
It does not mean that other programming languages do not have merits though.
Also, is it really "nostalgia" if the language is still in use? Some dialects, even more so.
Combining that with a professional LISP can have a profound, combined effect on people that irritates them when they use tools with less power.
Edit for nice example of ot making hard things easier:
There is a simple elegance to it but I also think it pushes a lot of complexity into other places. My opinion is that the trade off in where the complexity is doesn't benefit most programmers/projects -- Lisp users would obviously disagree.
Think of it this way: infix syntax is just another form of DWIM. The computer is trying to act like it thinks the way you do. However, it doesn't, and because it's pretending to, bugs happen. Lisp doesn't pretend, and this helps to avoid bugs.
Infix is such a small percentage of what I do, it hardly matters. And where it's extremely critical, I have to share with non-programmer humans so consistency there helps.
>I have to share with non-programmer humans
Non-programmers read your code?
Why would it be harder to learn yet easier to read? If anything it's syntax is easier to learn (because there is so little syntax) but harder to read (also because their is so little syntax) and harder to understand (because the syntax doesn't reveal as much semantics).
Ha ...
A case can be made that they're too set in stone, with no flexibility - but isn't that what makes them principles? They are core beliefs and in absence of fundamentally view-altering events, they seldom see changes after we reach maturity. IMO if you find yourself rationalizing your way around your own principles, then what you have are a set of things you'd like to believe about yourself - which is quite a different thing.
For as many years as RMS has been in the public eye, I've never seen him rationalize away his principles for the sake of convenience. Agree with him or not, that's a rare thing and I can't help but respect it.
What I find refreshing is the tiny tiny tiny percentage of people that treat their beliefs like a probability distribution that they update very frequently with new empirical and analytic information.
People say things like, "all software should be free" but continue to pay the bills by working for a non-free company. They say, "I think DRM is wrong" but many will still buy DRM'd content when they want it badly enough.
Coming across someone who holds a firm, clearly defined belief (again, regardless of whether I agree with the belief - that's not related to the point I'm trying to make) and who also adheres to that belief in all aspects of life - that's the refreshing thing.
>I firmly refuse to install non-free software or tolerate its installed presence on my computer or on computers set up for me.
>However, if I am visiting somewhere and the machines available nearby happen to contain non-free software, through no doing of mine, I don't refuse to touch them. I will use them briefly for tasks such as browsing. This limited usage doesn't give my assent to the software's license, or make me responsible its being present in the computer, or make me the possessor of a copy of it, so I don't see an ethical obligation to refrain from this. Of course, I explain to the local people why they should migrate the machines to free software, but I don't push them hard, because annoying them is not the way to convince them.
>Likewise, I don't need to worry about what software is in a kiosk, pay phone, or ATM that I am using. I hope their owners migrate them to free software, for their sake, but there's no need for me to refuse to touch them until then. (I do consider what those machines and their owners might do with my personal data, but that's a different issue, which would arise just the same even if they did use free software. My response to that issue is to minimize those activities which give them any data about me.)
>That's my policy about using a machine once in a while. If I were to use it for an hour every day, that would no longer be "once in a while" — it would be regular use. At that point, I would start to feel the heavy hand of any nonfree software in that computer, and feel the duty to arrange to use a liberated computer instead.
While his views can be seen as extreme, there's a hint of open-mindedness scattered throughout.
Yes, the man is a proper ideologue, in a way that most of us will never be about anything. But even in this list, he mentions using computers with non-free BIOS options, accepting trivial-case non-free Javascript, and otherwise conceding to basic common sense. He even acknowledges that he'll use totally closed software in incidental contexts like a library computer!
He goes much further out of his way than most of us would, certainly. We all have standards for 'acceptable inconvenience', and his standards would drive me mad. But even Stallman isn't practicing the kind of zealotry those examples imply.
Maybe I'm getting lost in the semantics but doesn't Python have a REPL a la the interpreter?
RMS is a very principled man, but I think he may have misunderstood "Netflix and chill".
A lot of what user experience has become is trying to induce users to do what you want them to rather than "how do I make it easy for the user to do what they want." That, along with a tendency towards what I perceive as "over-design," makes this viewpoint refreshing.
My experience as well. I'd been using Apple's keyboards for years, and was experiencing hand pain. I switched to a nice mechanical keyboard that activates with a click part way down so I don't need to bottom out the keys. The hand pain went away and I can't stand typing on those "chiclet style" keyboards now.
Still I see a lot of developers just pop open their laptop on a desk and work like that for the rest of the day…
I've also switched from the "magic trackpad" to a trackball. I lose a few of those fun gestures, but the rotation on my wrist from swiping on a pad was doing me no favors, and now I genuinely prefer a trackball to anything else for "work" activities.
I never much saw the point of a good mouse: You're not going to be using it all that much (emacs user), you're not getting much in ergonomics out of it, and you probably don't need the sensor accuracy. Am I wrong about where the money goes, or something?
It's like Randall puts it: This is a man who believes in something.
don't you get a REPL when you type "python" in a terminal?
What he means is that he skipped the languages that have it!
When you refuse netflix and chill due to ideological conflicts with the key distribution model, just stallman things
> I edit the pages on this site with Emacs ...
has a formatting error.
> "I have a Twitter account called rmspostcomments, which I use to log in on other sites to post comments on articles."