Comment by verandaguy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by verandaguy | Hacker News Reader

It's already been brought up in this thread, but I'm concerned that RMS is undermining his own points by distancing himself from reality, allowing him to exaggerate them to the point where nobody takes him seriously anymore.

Nobody on Earth* will restrict themselves to using only websites, operating systems, and software and hardware packages which are fully free and open source. That would be insanely restrictive, and generally speaking -- at the risk of being blunt -- you'd be resorting to consistently using lower-quality, less-supported software a lot of the time†.

I'm sure he's got some valid points, but his approach to modern technology based on them essentially involves reverting back to the days of the extremely early internet, where the actual person-to-person networking was restricted to mailing lists and IRC; two formats which the majority of internet users today likely wouldn't be crazy about compared to the alternatives.

    * who wants to be a normal and productive member of modern society

    † not that there isn't great F/OSS software out there -- Linux and BSD are absolute wonders compared to Windows, but a lot of the time it's like comparing the GIMP to Photoshop -- there's just more refinement in a piece of software developed by thousands of paid, dedicated, full-time developers over two or so decades.

Even when RMS started the GNU project his approach to (then) modern technology was at an extreme. There were no free compilers, editors, or even trivial userland tools like grep. Instead of being pragmatic, he (and others) worked to create what was missing.

I wouldn't be surprised to find a decades old USENET post that hits all the same points about RMS that you (and others in this thread) bring up. RMS's distance from reality and staunch commitment to principles has been a feature, not a bug.

Don't get me wrong, I also believe that the idealized free-software world is a utopia that we're very unlikely to see. However, RMS's efforts have resulted in (and will continue to produce) a tremendously positive impact for humanity.

i don't even believe a free-software world is desirable without a new way to structure our society. I don't know if i want that. I am also very critical of RMS and his "propaganda"-style of writing.

But this doesn't mean that what he is doing is bad for society or not important. I respect his work and what he has achieved, i just don't share the vision. It's often important to be somewhat crazy to achieve greatness.

It's actually not that ridiculous or difficult to reduce your proprietary software usage. I also think it's a fallacy to say that free software is generally low-quality -- let's not forget that there is plenty of shoddy, badly-supported proprietary software out there too. The worst of it also tends to include spying and malware.

Granted it was much easier to avoid proprietary software around 10 years ago before SaaS and smartphones took off. I think the community has been slow to adapt to these changes, but that isn't a reason to give up hope.

To be precise, op said "lowER-quality" (relative comparison) and not "low-quality" (absolute judgement that something is garbage).

I think the OP's GIMP-vs-Photoshop example made that distinction clear. One can simultaneously consider GIMP to be "high quality software" and also "lowER-quality" than Photoshop.

If you ask me, the GIMP-vs-Photoshop debate has become so much of a dead-horse-beating exercise, to the point where I no longer believe that it is fair to compare those two programs as being anything similar. The only comparison I can draw is this: As with any large and old programs, they both will suffer irrelevance in the coming years anyway, and hopefully become displaced by newer and better products. Disclaimer to make me not sound like a complete idiot: I haven't used Photoshop in many years, but I use GIMP infrequently for mundane image editing tasks.

The goals of RMS is much more ambitious then to make you stop using Google. RMS tries to move you to create world where freedom is normal and accessible for all. Or at least he tries to make you to dream about such a world. If there would be enough people who wants freedom, maybe there would be more freedom?

The one great thing, which RMS tries to make clear to everyone, that you can be free only if you are able to restrict youself. The world works such a way that you have a choice: either to have self discipline and free or to be disciplined by world. The more self disciplined people are in the world, the more freedom would be in the world.

Not everyone is ready to restrict herself to make world more free. But someone do it. RMS is the ideological leader for such a people. Like Dalay Lama or some priests of other religions. At least we can look at them and compare they life with ours. Compare and choose consiously.

Ah, and there is more then two possible choices. You are free to choose some tradeoff between sides which is acceptable to you personally.

Many worthwile causes require effort and sacrifice. A world of free software would most certainly be better, but to get there, some of us may have to suffer extreme inconveniences, such as using lower-quality, less-supported software just to boycott the proprietary stuff.

It's a political choice.

Classic Marxist-Leninism: we can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs -- great, unless you're the egg.

"Move fast and break things" -- capitalism was always the best at breaking (sorry, disrupting) eggs, and people.

> "who wants to be a normal and productive member of modern society"

Maybe it's just me, but being a "normal" member of any society isn't very appealing.

And that's the second comment with the exact same wording: "productive member of society". Productive. Member. Of society. It's got something scary.

I think that there is value in the points that he is making. Even if the lifestyle that he advocates is impractical, the mere fact that there is one advocate discussing about it, we are informed of its pros and cons, and are able to better evaluate the freeness of other softwares. That is, even if it is of merely theoretical interest, its presence gives us better situational awareness of the IP situation, and that leads us to making better decisions.

You have similar examples in other social movements; second-wave feminism, for example, borrowed not lightly from radical feminists who wondered to what extent the female condition was determined by biology (and especially as their means of reproductive production), and to what extent cultural; though impractical then and impractical now to take some of the extreme measures some were advocating, they open a possibility and frame discussions.

It's not an all-or-nothing decision. You can think Stallman is correct, but only heed parts of his advice. I use a lot of open-source software in part thanks to the inspiration I found in the free software movement. But I haven't became a 100% purist. For example, I use some open-source things that probably aren't perfect (and hence wouldn't merit RMS's unconditional approval) such as Ubuntu, Chromium, etc. And I'm also willing to use a proprietary piece of software if is significantly better than the FOSS alternatives.

In East Germany Stasi (Staats Sicherheit = Homeland Security) informers were normal and productive members of society.

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