Why Richard Stallman Doesn’t Matter | Hacker News Reader

Why Richard Stallman Doesn’t Matter

maffulli.net

75 pointssmacktoward80 comments

I've stopped reading at > He has mental issues ...

I don't know if it's true and already public, but how can you write that publicy about someone, you must be a profesional to diagnose someone and still that's very personal information.

Even more, he's acusing Stallman of being "poorly socialized because nobody taught him manner", so revealing somone mental issues publicy must make him very well socliazied and good manerered.

That's a bit harsh. I'm ok with people saying he's eccentric. But outright saying he has mental issues, that's quite the accusation.

Agreed, that was a total jerk comment.

It's not an accusation, since having mental issues is not a crime. But using somebody's supposed health issues as a bludgeon in political confrontation is despicable. And even if we knew for a fact (which we most definitely don't) that Stallman is affected by some health issues, how would that justify treating him unfairly and dismissing all his achievements and all his work for Free Software cause?

having mental issues is not an accusation tho... why would it be? let's not reiterate the stigma. we should be more aware and tolerant of mental issues (or neurodiversity, if you prefer the sjw world).

how I see it, it's not a stigma, but also we shouldn't trivialise it randomnly diagnosing people, the risk of trivialising is that when someone has real issues we won't take them as seriously because anyways we all have "mental issues" *or so says people that disagree with you)

Yeah, nobody has the right to diagnose anybody with "having mental issues", and if the author knows more about Stallman personally, it isn't his place to bring that up here, IMO.

Also, "poorly socialized because nobody taught him manner" sounds subjective and I feel has no place in a piece like this.

Other than that, I think the author has mostly valid and excellent points.

While I agree with you on that, I encourage you to read on. The author does make some interesting points later in the text which are not related to that statement.

I found this a worthwhile argument:

"The FSF should have nurtured and grown new leaders a long time ago, leaders who looked into the future, understand cloud and mobile computing and their threats to a free society.

...

I never heard anyone at the FSF ask what it means for a digital society that Facebook has been legally using free software to develop algorithms that modify human behavior. Quite the opposite, the problem was javascript in the browser for apps like Gmail."

I wish the author had taken his own titular advice, though...the post would be better for it.

well thanks, I'll give it a try later, perhaps my response was a subtle Ad Hominem to a very harsh Ad Hominem, In general I think we need to get pass falacies and have a real conversation.

He's responding to material accusations; "they claim that his social behavior has prevented more people from joining."

And if you're evaluating a spokesman, which is a role Stallman has to fill, being unusually awkward is a strong disqualifier.

So he's not bringing this up from nowhere.

> I don't know if it's true and already public, but how can you write that publicy about someone, you must be a profesional to diagnose someone and still that's very personal information.

I don't like charges of mental problems. I think when people go for a cheap shot it's usually one of the holy trinity of stupid, crazy or mean. And people like to dress a cheap shot up with some Latin or Greek; worse still is when a pro does exactly what you're complaining about.

In this case, though, he's sticking to what I can condone. I've already pointed out how it's relevant, and that he's bringing it up to respond to charges others have already made.

The other factor is he's not trying to pretend he has any medical qualification or that they even matter:

> He is socially inept, whether incapable because of his Asperger brain or poorly socialized because nobody taught him manners is a moot point.

It's okay to observe someone is socially inept as that's something most adults can intuit. And he also tries to humanize Stallman:

> He has mental issues and nobody cared enough about them to help him.

That's indicting people around Stallman more than Stallman himself. Because of that, I think this is acceptable discourse.

You have all valid points, I admit the second part of my comment is an ad hominem fallacy In reply to ad hominem fallacy, so I’m not proud of it. I’d stick with the first part, the illness mention I think it’s beyond those other legit appreciations you pointed out, which you also dislike. I take note of the holy trinity of stupid concept :)

And let's be fair, Stallman's own supporters have often defended his behavior with their own armchair diagnoses of autism or neuro-atypicality[0,1]. So the horse has kind of fled the barn on this being a valid topic of discussion.

[0]https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[1]https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

That inference comes from a long pattern of speech and behaviour made in public. Far from being private or personal information, it's an elephant in the room.

It's necessary to be able to critique leaders. Discussing a person's mind with regard to their fitness for leadership is not the same as making a personal attack at somebody's mental health.

>>It's necessary to be able to critique leaders.

There's one particular leader who comes to mind... I know many people would have no problem publicly asserting that this leader clearly has some sort of mental/cognitive/emotional problems.

It's ironic that bad faith accusations of insanity against people with different opinions are generally more tolerated than good faith assertions of mental issues impeding those who we are sympathetic to.

Yes, ironic indeed. That said, I'll admit that the author might have word-smithed the post a little bit. For example, unless it's publicly known that he has Aspergers, the author probably should have avoided being so specific. Instead of saying that he has mental issues, they could have said "years of public behavior would indicate that he very well may have mental issues". Maybe that would have struck many readers as more "good-faith" criticism.

This is 2019. We want to cast out anybody different, in the name of empathy and inclusiveness.

I had serious temptation to stop reading after "cacophonous conversations" - if I already know everything the author is going to say, should I waste time continuing? But I did, and I regretted it.

As an autistic guy with issues similar to Stallman's, I don't like the idea that only professionals are allowed to observe and comment on mental issues. There's nothing wrong with pointing out pervasive behavior patterns. You should do so responsibly and without being a jerk about it; using "mental issues" as shorthand for "I don't like you so you must be crazy" is bullshit. But I don't think that's what's happening here. The author mentions it mostly to say that it doesn't matter.

Actually it is the other way around - anyone can state whatever they like about other people mental state (and suffer the consequences if the statements are defamatory), only the US practicing members of American Psychiatric Association are forbidden by their association to diagnose people that are not their patients - the so called Goldwater Rule.

I like Stallman, and even if he is mad as a hatter and offends the whole progressive world - he is still right about the only thing about him that interests me - his opinion and work on software freedom and privacy.

This guy just doesn't get it.

> That’s because Stallman’s world was and still is, stuck in the 80s: computers are physical devices that users can own and keep in their homes. For that use case, the four freedoms, the definition of source code and installation tooling introduced in GPLv3 made a lot of sense. Nothing else seemed to matter to him. The decision for the Linux kernel not to adopt GPLv3 wasn’t considered a problem and it was often downplayed by FSF leadership.

...

> Folks closest to the FSF community were so myopic about completing GNU for Stallman’s laptop that nobody did anything about the big picture. I never heard anyone at the FSF ask what it means for a digital society that Facebook has been legally using free software to develop algorithms that modify human behavior. Quite the opposite, the problem was javascript in the browser for apps like Gmail.

The copyleft movement/FSF was always consistently focused on working within the legal framework of copyright. That's important, because the Supreme Court decided in the 1960s and 1970s that turning over custody of information to a third party essentially abrogates your rights/expectations to privacy. (See: Third party doctrine)

Does that make sense? Not to most modern technology practitioners. But there is nothing that you can do (outside of contract and market forces) to ensure control of information that you place in custody of a third party. Those "1980s" principles matter because that is the only thing that the law recognizes. When the law evolves and figures out how to deal with "virtual" custody of information, those same principles will be applied.

Yes, and the FSF does have something to say about facebook. Don't use it https://www.fsf.org/facebook. And afaik, they are working on writing more about this issue.

Also, RMS is just not paying attention to his own laptop: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/03/facebo...

"Just don't use" for what is arguably the world's most successful interpersonal networking system is a pretty vacant suggestion.

Might as well recommend people stop using roads and sidewalks because of the environmental hazards they create.

It's necessary advice given Facebook's practices and the lack of meaningful regulation to mandate certain practices.

There are many occupations where you are strongly advised to not use Facebook, or may expose yourself to significant financial, career or security risk if you do so.

That is only true for the U.S. People living in outside of the U.S, and especially in the E.U (which is the case of the author) have way to control they information after placing it in the custody of a third party.

I think this is were the FSF missed the goal. Laws like GDPR should have been fought for way earlier.

They were a non-starter in the US, and still are. The US has deeply-ingrained political views (started by the Revolution, reinforced in recent history by Nixon and the Cold War) that the powerful use institutional tools of privacy to avoid scrutiny.

"For over 30 years, Stallman has been a tireless advocate of a world that hasn’t mattered for the past 15 years."

I think that, if anything, the exact opposite is true after Snowden's revelations.

Remember when Snowden released all those documents and nearly nobody changed the way they behave because it turns out passive, ubiquitous state surveillance wasn't the end of the world it had been made out to be?

Good times.

Spying in the name of national security and viral software licenses are unrelated. Further, as another point of irrelevancy, Open Source predates, is more popular than, and is more influential than Free Software.

You're right. But you have to recognize it is because corporations recognized they can commodify tons of their code to reduce costs and improve code quality and security. The linux foundation has dozens of multi-million-dollar partner corporations, whereas the FSF has maybe 5000 contributing members globally. But those corporations have no reason to guarantee that your computer will do what you want it to do, and many reasons to guarantee that it will do what they want it to do. This is a pervasive norm now, especially on hackernews where the demographic is primarily entrepreneurial web-only devs.

Before deriding free software, ask yourself, who benefits from being able to read the source code of a program that restricts what ebooks you can read?

More popular and more influential I understand but please explain what you mean that it predates.

Let's keep in mind that beyond just his tireless efforts to advocate for Free Software Stallman also built almost all of the GNU toolset.

Let's put aside his politics and views on licensing and what we have is a genius developer who single handedly has done more to advance computing with the GNU tool set and the distribution thereof than anyone else in the past 30 years. Without Stallman for example there would be no Linux as we know it because you'll notice most of the actual tools that allow you to do things on Linux are GNU tools written by Stallman.

Regardless of his views on how society and software should interact he still is one of the most important figures in the history of computing and deserves some respect and appreciation for that.

Stallman founded the FSF at a time when people licensed their software from companies and as a result didn't truly own the machines that they used. We've transitioned to a time where people don't even own most of the hardware they use and have given up ownership of most of their data. So yeah, the situation has gotten a lot worse and the specific focus on software is less relevant than it used to be.

One moment of weakness and you see all the people that ever hated you out for your blood with vengeance. Humanity won't ever progress if we stick with this ugly algorithm...

Particularly odious considering these very same people did not have the guts to publish their criticism when he was seen as unimpeachable. It would've had more seeming validity then, and now just seems like an attempt to flog the dead horse, even if some genuine points are present.

I've talked about how out-of-touch Stallman seems to be for years, and I'm not the only one.

Out of touch in certain areas (as you point out in your other comment) doesn't mean you cease to matter or be relevant. Much of what he speaks about is still very much relevant the way I see it: non-Free software, lack of control over your device, the largely non-free javascript, the disadvantages of locked down platforms like Facebook, Kindle etc. I don't see how "Stallman no longer matters" holds up. At the same time I'm not saying he has to head FSF or be the only voice. Of course not. It would be good to see a new face take over if only because Stallman has fought the fight for decades and it is unfair to keep expecting him to lead from the front till he drops dead.

Nobody's stopping him from speaking. The FSF, MIT, and portions of the GNU maintainer community have simply aligned on the meme "He doesn't speak for us." As they may.

Couldn't have said it better.

I hope Stallman survives this coup because there is potential here for the GNU project to be destroyed by the actions of a few (I'd like to say misguided but I fear that some of them have been planning this for a long time).

And unlike what they say they want to push towards, there is value in GNU not being a "democracy". Committees can easily get corrupted - we've seen this repeatedly in the open source world - and are not a good substitute for a single person with a strong moral code. A "democracy" would never have given raise to the GNU project to start with.

Here is Andy Wingo beating the war drums [1] and starting a witch hunt [2] against some poor guy:

" "He starts his talk by stating his hope that he won't be seen as "offensive or part of rape culture or something" "

"His microphone wasn't on, so once he gets it on he repeats the joke. I stomp out, slam the door, and tweet a few angry things"

To Andy Wingo, this was a "rape culture joke". Notice his snap judgement on the matter, there is no room for additional interpretation here, no room for thinking. His mind is already made up. He "stomps out and slams the door".

We have reached the point where people with hair-thin triggers are ready to jump on someone and brand him with the vilest form of - career destroying - criticism if they deem what he says offensive. I'm disgusted by this behavior and hope that the GNU project finds a way to distance themselves from this sort of idiotic ideology.

[1] https://wingolog.org/archives/2014/08/18/on-gnu-and-on-hacke...

[2] https://twitter.com/andywingo/status/500637145342935040

I don't think his philosophy is irrelevant in the era of cloud computing. For example, 'The Right to Read' is an allegory about textbooks, but I realized that the fact that my old laptop can run Netflix (since the PC & browser support general computing!) while many smartphones and 'smart tvs' of the same vintage can't, makes the concept relevant today-- perhaps more than ever: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

That said, this post makes some salient points about how Stallman's personal habits & interests have overly narrowed down the issues he focuses on.

>Nobody at the FSF cared about cloud or mobile

Stallman back in 2010 about SaaS

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...

Also,

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero-gpl.html

"We don't see any sensible way to address the SaaSS problem with license conditions on particular programs. Even to write a legal condition to distinguish between SaaSS use and non-SaaSS use would be a challenge, and if we had that, we don't see anything that the program's license might require in the SaaSS case that would correct the inherent wrong of SaaSS. Thus, our solution to the problem of SaaSS is simple: refuse to use services that are SaaSS."

Unfortunately, that's not a solution; that's throwing up one's hands and ignoring the issue with extra steps.

Refusing to put pieces on the field means the other players can move without your input. They did, and now whether the OS on my machine is open is somewhat irrelevant because the things that provide services I care about won't talk to it unless I'm running closed-source blobs they control.

It still matters, as you will have options to build open replacements, ignore lock in. Hardware and firmware are bigger problems, as per cryptographic signing and legal framework to prevent breaking these solutions.

I agree in general, but saying "Nobody at the FSF cared about cloud or mobile" is not true [1][2].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/sep/29/cloud.com...

[2] https://www.networkworld.com/article/2200967/software-cell-p...

Actually, the articles are from 2008 and 2011, so maybe the author is right (maybe no one cared in 2005).

I respect Stallman for everything he's accomplished, but I don't understand how anyone saw him as an authority on modern Web issues given his public stance on using the internet. https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

He's never owned a cellphone--any cellphone, not just a smartphone. His preferred way to use the Web is to email the URL to a service which emails him the site, which he reads in Lynx. He'll use a GUI browser when he has to, but he never does a Google search, because Google asks him for a CAPTCHA (because he's connecting through Tor) and the CAPTCHA doesn't work (because he refuses to run JavaScript).

Those may be reasonable choices for an individual, but treating him like a Web authority is like hiring a traffic engineer who's never driven a car.

opinion opinion opinion, it's nice 'moot point' was in bold. i stopped reading there and took it as a summary of the article. don't care about stallman nor FSF, but this article seems a sad attempt at making any kind of point. Much negativity in the first few scentences makes the writer seem exactly the kind of person he's trying to describe. :')

> i stopped reading there and took it as a summary of the article. don't care about stallman nor FSF

So you didn't read the article and you don't understand any of the things that it's discussing, but you want us to know that you think it's bad?

> All around him, not a single voice could argue strongly enough about the Google issue that later would become the *-as-a-service loophole and cloud issue.

Not an expert in the matter, but isn't this loophole exactly what the AGPL [1] is about ?

Maybe we can argue that to be effective it should be the default instead of regular GPL, but I have never seen people being too fond of it, though things may change now that developers have become more sensitive to the matter.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Affero_General_Public_Lice...

Every nonentity lining up now to put the boot into RMS

Without Richard Stallman, no linux as complete OS, no gcc, no emacs and hundreds of other libs/software.

Stefano Maffulli: make a list of what you brought to the world and compare with what he did and then ask this same question for yourself. I assure you, it'll be revelatory.

Yeah, nobody else could/would do it. Just nobody. How do people get these ideas, that some guy is solely responsible for the progress of the human race?

That's a very stupid argument it's basically like saying that Roger Ebert should not have written a single review because he hasn't directed any movie. Furthermore the FSF is eminently a political and legal organization, having software chops doesn't really make you any better at that (take Lessig as an example).

The author of this article, Stefano Maffulli, claims to be the leader of the Italian chapter of the FSF during the mid 2000's. Besides the personal attacks on Richard Stallman, it's clear that his perspectives on software freedom diverged from Stallman's and the FSF's around that time (after the release of GPLv3).

Maffulli definitely does not help his point by attacking Stallman's and the FSF's position. Maffulli does have a point in that the scope of software freedom has greatly expanded and has come under even greater attack than before (through the rise of mobile and the cloud), and there needs to be organizational efforts made to resist it. I don't see how either of their perspectives are mutually exclusive.

One point Maffulli should have emphasized more and elaborated upon is how FOSS actually ended up being the "most perfect shackles that society has ever had." The only thing to say anything about that is a video that the phrase is linked to. If he had attacked Stallman and the FSF less and focused more on the crux of his arguments, then he would have a much more meaningful and impactful article.

This is such an eloquent exposition of the exact opposite of my thoughts! It's been a long time since I've had that deep connection with something I read. It feels strangely great.

You should try meeting up with him. Let us know how that went via HN.

This article hurt to read.

If you weren't given right to read it, you wouldn't have been hurt! See?

Many blogs are just long winded comments immune from external input

why?

I don't agree 100% with the author, but I do wholeheartedly agree that the relevance of FSF movement definitely peaked after the ratification of GPLv3. After which, the relevance and political visibility of the movement has decreased significantly as we moved from PC/Laptops being our primary computing device to smartphones.

I remember Stallman's obsession with "TiVoization," and I remember wondering if that was really the most pressing thing on the horizon at the time. I also find the claim that the goal of the FSF became "completing GNU for Stallman’s laptop" credible.

But I kept wondering what the future of the GPL could be under new leadership? Would a GPLv4 be even less congenial to a company like Apple (that is systematically trying to remove any trace of the GPL from its entire stack)? Or would it try to make some concessions toward the Linux kernel and the LLVM/clang project (for example)?

edit: missing word

It still is an issue. Can you run your own software on the phone? How about its modem chip?

How many closed drivers and services are necessary then, because documentation is not provided and firmware is cryptographically signed?

Services have a problem related to copyright assignment and another due to lock in switching costs, but it's not something a software license can fix easily.

And whether protocols are copyrightable is somewhat of an open question. Others are fighting for open protocols and standards - and still losing. (Mozilla Foundation for example.)

The move to smartphones doesn't change anything. The only thing different this time around is too many people were willing to overlook the lack of control upfront, and it's hard to undo that. But it is being done and the FSF is an important part of making that happen.

I used to be very adamant about free software and I reached out to stallman a while ago, the interaction wasn’t great, I think this author crossed a line discussing his mental health, not cool. But my life has been a lot easier since giving up on digital purity

Richard Stallman rocks.

Hindsight is very distorting. It was not inevitable 10 years ago that we would get to this point now.

The point of the author being? Since he has poor manners, or Asperger's syndrome, or he lacks vision to lead the free software movement into the future, then it's okay to plant news stories, coat them with outrageous not-technically-lies and perform character assassination on him?

From the conclusion

> the FSF needs to focus on the algorithms that change people behavior

Is this satire or does the author really want the FSF to engage in mind control? This is such low-effort tripe and obvious personal attack.

Why does criticism of Richard Stallman matter then to the author if the man himself doesn't?

(Yes, this is allegiation of riding on coattails. Steffano Maffuli of OpenStack matters even less.)

Not sure why this is flagged. Not saying that I wholly agree with the author but there are interesting and relevant points to be made here.

Sometime articles or comments get flagged because it is clear that it will lead to lots of flamewars, even if the article is valuable.

There is a strong presence of his cultists on HN. By "cultists" I mean the people having "he can do nothing wrong" mentality. Double standards were going strong recently.

If only the author knew about GNUnet...

Wake us up when that's an actual usable thing.

This GNUNet?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Gn...

The interface has been different for quite a while now.

Who the hell is this idiot and why is this horseshit being posted here?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNUnet

Literally everything in that article is unsubstantiated. I can't find one true fact in there.

"open source marketer and community manager"

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