Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter
alexeymk.com
alexeymk.com
1) rms is a radical guy. You cannot change that. He fights for what he thinks is right. He is not the kind of person you can ask to censor himself.
If he thinks u.s goverment is to blame for 9/11, no matter how saying it in a lecture seems childish, he will say it.
If you invite rms for a lecture, he is coming with his radicalism. That is to be expected. You cannot invite rms and expect steve jobs.
2) rms is a practical guy. stop acting like he's a mad man who knows nothing. He started GNU, wrote emacs, glibc, gcc and probably others. He created the concept of free software and wrote a license as good as GPL to defend it.
He also managed to gather a community around this very crazy idea of free software.
3) rms doesnt want people only to use free software. he wants people to value their freedom, and as a result of that, use free software.
It doesnt really matter if whole world uses android instead of ios. The point is, these days, most people involved in open source community, do not even care about free software and the freedom it offers.
Most people are interested in technological advancements or affects of an open source project on market. None of them are concerns for rms.
And, what i said above is just what i interpreted from his actions and are not facts.
By the way he doesn't believe that. Last time I read about his opinion on the subject he said that proofs were lacking on both sides (truther and non-truther) but that it was probably the work of religious fundamentalists (either christians or muslims).
These are equally ridiculous statements. We know who did it, we know how they did it, we know why they did it. People just can't accept that enormous events can have relatively simple causes.
However, the president and his associates certainly saw the opportunity and ran with it. The damage done will take decades to undo.
True for civilian planes, but it stretches the imagination a little too far that the US military could discount planes as missiles, given the precedent of pearl harbor.
You and many, many others need to start providing citations for these claims of what "he said." If you heard it, there's probably a citation somewhere about it.
If the 'truthers' are correct then many hundreds, if not thousands, of people decided to conspire to murder thousands of innocent civilians and, somehow, managed to prevent any leaking of this whatsoever.
On this basis alone, the idea that 9/11 was a conspiracy is insane, before we get to the fact that, as with all other conspiracy theories, there is just no evidence whatsoever (though the 'truthers' require an unattainable standard of proof from reasonable people, despite requiring none for their own beliefs) then the idea that there is 'no proof' on either side is equally unhinged.
If you can't think clearly on something so clear and obvious then it really draws into question your reliability on any subject, especially if you are 'preaching' on the subject.
I'm sorry, you just have to draw the line when you're talking about the murder of thousands of innocent people. Seriously.
We all have extremely conflicting opinions with others. You have to consider every issue and not the man so much.
He's the way he is. I agree with him in many points. In some very impopular issues I agree with him (not the "inside job" thing though). What I wouldn't do is come out in lectures with that kind of stuff. Political correctness is sadly a need when you stamp your real name on something.
Now, I think the FSF is right about basically every single point it's active on. That's what matters to me. I agree it's approach might be sometimes lacking, and I think RMS himself should step down and go back to writing software. Which is why I donate to the EFF instead, and I think it's pretty awesome.
Discounting a conspiracy as impossible is just as silly as arguing a conspiracy of hundreds. Improbable, yes, impossible, no.
No, because the people at the top are not the ones who do the work. They set policy, and sometimes directly tell people what to do - but, more often, they tell people who then tell other people what to do. If a conspiracy is going to involve the top of the chain - and it should be pointed out that the VP is technically not in the chain of command - then it's going to involved dozens, if not hundreds of others if the conspiracy is actually going to do something effective. And in that case, there will be enough written down that eventually it will out. See, for example, the Iran-Contra affair.
An excellent account of both what the critical points for intervention were, and what happened on the day is "The Ground Truth": http://www.amazon.com/Ground-Truth-Untold-America-Attack/dp/... The title has unfortunate "truther" connotations, but it comes from a term the aviation industry uses to establish what happened after a crash. They use first-hand material and evidence to establish the "ground truth" of the crash, and from there try to extract lessons. The author does exactly that, using primary sources exclusively - such as recorded conversations between air controllers - to determine the sequence of events.
In either case discounting a conspiracy as impossible isn't silly if there's no evidence of said conspiracy nor even a plausible hypothesis of how such a conspiracy could have worked. The onus of proof is on those proposing a conspiracy, not on everyone else to prove a conspiracy didn't occur.
saw an interesting documentary about this 9/11 stuff from zeitgeist: 4 videos in youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_E4N5YIycI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECMJ2LBK90Q&feature=relat... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSW1x_h4Kfo&feature=relat... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeSDOb7NcgE&feature=relat...
Like the free-fall speed of the buildings: http://www.drjudywood.com/articles/BBE/BilliardBalls.html
The odd 'toasting' and sometimes sudden rusting of 1400 cars about 7 blocks away.. sometimes even engine blocks are missing?!?
http://www.drjudywood.com/articles/DEW/StarWarsBeam5.html http://drjudywood.com/articles/DEW/moretoastedcars.html
And what about the 'dustification' of
http://drjudywood.com/articles/DEW/dewpics/Image43.jpg http://drjudywood.com/articles/DEW/dewpics/Image44.jpg http://drjudywood.com/articles/DEW/dewpics/Image45.jpg http://drjudywood.com/articles/DEW/dewpics/Image46.jpg http://drjudywood.com/articles/DEW/dewpics/Image47.jpg
Animation: http://drjudywood.com/articles/DEW/dewpics/dustspire.gif
More 'dustification': http://drjudywood.com/articles/DEW/StarWarsBeam3.html
You can say what you want, but I find seeing the type of massive steel beams used in those building turning to dust and blowing away in the wind in just seconds very, very odd. Were does the energy come from? Especially because the steel to which this is happening is 'standing alone', seemingly untouched, suddenly going 'poof'..!?!
Not saying that I agree with the described causes on that web page.. but I am quite certain it isn't caused by a plane crash an hour or so earlier.
You can't argue against the fact of what would be required for this to actually be a conspiracy, that is concrete and vital to the contention that it wasn't what it appeared to be. You have to explain that, or otherwise we have nothing to talk about.
Remember - extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. 'This is weird' does not count.
But... I'll carry on for the sake of it. Saying things looking 'weird', or 'how do you explain x?' is meaningless - yeah, weird stuff happened, so what? In many scientific experiments 'weird' stuff happens that can't be explained, that's the way it is - nature is just a strange beast and weird stuff happens, despite us being able to determine the truth of the core matter. Ask any experimental scientist about this.
That is, of course, assuming there is any truth or validity in the 'evidence' provided which I really can't be bothered to look at, as I have n number of seconds left to live in my life, 0 of which I want to spend reading crank bullshit.
A brief few seconds of googling got me this - http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2010/02/21/dr-jones-reanimat...
I recommend in future you google both for and against ridiculous claims made with little to no evidence.
The crux of the matter is - did planes strike the buildings and cause them to collapse? The answer is yes, unless you believe the vast majority of competent engineers (note there are many engineers + architects who are also conspiracy theorists - also note my reference to 'competent' - there are plenty of incompetents and nuts in every walk of life, engineering + architecture being no different) and scientists out there who accept the cause of collapse are conspiring to lie too, in which case you may as well abandon any attempt at reason whatsoever because the whole world is just utterly one endless conspiracy.
On a personal note - I am a Civil Engineering graduate from one of the best CivEng departments in the world (Imperial College, London). I remember discussing the collapse with a professor of structural mechanics and he had no problems with the mode and cause of collapse whatsoever. I make this, not as a resort to authority, but rather pointing out that you, yes you have to explain why he could not work out what this internet randomer could.
The simple fact is that you can cling on to all sorts of 'weird' goings on as evidence of all sorts of strange theories, however several points remain the case:-
1. To prove point X, you don't need to explain every weird apparent occurrence Y and Z, you only have to prove point X. If this was not the case, experimental science wouldn't really have made much progress over the years.
2. If you make an extraordinary claim that utterly contradicts point X, you need to provide overwhelming evidence to back that up - saying 'oh isn't Y and Z weird?' isn't really sufficient.
3. Random shit off the internet doesn't count as 'evidence'.
I'd ask you to consider what we're talking about here - the murder of thousands of innocents, and I'd like you to ask yourself whether your not having even bothered to google for opposite points of view (took me all of 10 seconds), or considering whether that evidence is valid or sufficient to discredit the 'mainstream theory' is in good taste, or actually in essence quite offensive.
Note that a hell of a lot of the 'evidence' these sites mention is flatly false. Practical Mechanics gave a good overview - http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/news/122...
Okay, that's it on this subject. I'm not interested in responding further to this.
- I just find it odd that Dr. Jones doesn't count as some 'internet randomer' for you while someone with an opposing theory with similar degrees does (Dr. Judy Wood).
- If you have to prove point X that was accompanied with weird occurrences X1 and X2 with theory Y. Theory Y is not complete until it can fully proof point X, /including/ its weird occurrences. Until that point, theory Y might be a good explanation, but never a complete one.
- Completely ignoring oddities and weirdness in an event where thousands of innocents died, that's what I call offensive. If things like surviving passports, hijackers that are still alive, engine blocks melting and cars rusting in no-time at blocks away behind other buildings and 100's of other strangeness and coincidents don't give you ANY gut feeling to look beyond the official story then I'm sorry it's not a University course.
- I agree that a whole lot of 'evidence' on alternative sites is false. But I'm not mentioning these sites so don't try to associate me with those. I mentioned a few things that /I/ find odd, nothing more, nothing less.
Two final points:
- I'm not saying that the (US) government did it, but if you have any historical knowledge, you know that governments have and will definitely sacrifice some of their citizens if the things they can gain with it are worth it.
Unpleasant to think about: hell yes!
A reality: very sadly yes!
- You probably have never looked into the more alternative physics and their horrific weaponization potential. Think the work of people like Tesla, the super-classified research done by the Soviets, the Nazi's, etc. Stuff you can find discussed by 'non-kooks' if you look for it.
If you come from this perspective of history and alternative weapons research, the signatures of such technology could fit many of the things seen like a glove..
Conspiracy theorists are assuming the conclusion before the evidence is in place. You know just like religious people can make anything seem like an act of god. Or believers in Nostradamus make everything seem like he was right. The list of alternatives stories one can make in retrospect is more or less limitless.
If you have already decided that the government are conspiring against their citizens then you will take any weird phenomena and use that as an argument for you case.
But you could might as well make another conclusion far less spectacular yet as horrific. For instance that the US government knew something was going to happen and they let it happen.
This would be a far less outrageous claim to make even though it's really pretty much wrong.
Conspiracies look like those that Wikileaks expose once in a while. They aren't well orchestrated, they aren't masterminded, they are messy, with lot's of potential leak risk and more importantly they are very small in scale.
Yet wikileaks have managed to get a hold of that.
One would think that if there are people who leak videos of US pilots shooting down journalists, there would be people leaking a far greater story, requiring a far larger conspiracy involving thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people.
One would also think that if the government really was that great at covering up something a huge as 9/11 then they wouldn't make stupid mistakes like the ones that the conspiracy theorists seems to attach themselves too.
In fact one would think that if they made such fundamental mistakes as those that seem to be used as a proof for the conspiracy then the likelihood of the conspiracy being leaked would increase by many many factors.
Unpleasant to think about? Yes for the conspiracy theorists.
A reality: Very sadly yes!
I completely agree with this.
"If you have already decided that the government are conspiring against their citizens then you will take any weird phenomena and use that as an argument for you case."
I also agree completely with this point. I also want to make it very clear that I have not decided that the government is conspiring against their citizens, nor is it my starting point.
It is however not something that can be ruled out from the start either, as I mentioned, history has proven that too.
"But you could might as well make another conclusion far less spectacular yet as horrific. For instance that the US government knew something was going to happen and they let it happen."
Agreed, there are so many shades of gray between the often official/'truthers' dichotomy that is almost always maintained and promoted.
Once again to be explicit: I'm interested for the correct shade of gray, because the official version doesn't do it for me, but most alternatives are complete non-sense too.
"This would be a far less outrageous claim to make even though it's really pretty much wrong."
At least the government messed up by ignoring too many signals in the months leading up to the day and by acting to slow on the day itself. Having a training with almost the exact same scenario on the same day doesn't help. This also applied to the attack in London. "One would think that if there are people who leak videos of US pilots shooting down journalists, there would be people leaking a far greater story, requiring a far larger conspiracy involving thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people."
Not necessarily. Large groups of people can work on a common goal while still keeping it secret. See e.g. the Manhattan project with 100K people working on it.
"One would also think that if the government really was that great at covering up something a huge as 9/11 then they Unpleasant to think about? Yes for the conspiracy theorists."
As I noted in another reply in this topic: conspiracy theory is also a word that's used to create false dichotomies.
The official version is also a conspiracy, the conspirators being those Arabic hijackers (of whom quite a few are still alive too btw).
So the real issue isn't: is it a conspiracy or not
It's: who are the conspirators and how can everything observed that day be explained.
If you are comparing those two projects as equals then you are basically insinuating that Obama must know about this project and is keeping it a secret?
Otherwise it's pretty obvious that you are trying to build an argument out of basically nothing.
You are simply proving my point. You are claiming there are conspirators. Unless you are willing to assume the likelihood that there aren't any, that pretty much means end of any meaningful debate from my point of view.
He was not claiming that the Manhattan Project was a conspiracy, or a conspiracy against Americans. He was only citing it as evidence that a large number of people can work together in secret.
"If you are comparing those two projects as equals then you are basically insinuating that Obama must know about this project and is keeping it a secret?"
Again, not claiming the Manhattan project was a conspiracy. No reason to bring Obama into the argument.
"Otherwise it's pretty obvious that you are trying to build an argument out of basically nothing."
I think that he cited fairly clearly that there is evidence that is not "basically nothing" that he finds suspect. See the links that he posted.
"You are simply proving my point. You are claiming there are conspirators. Unless you are willing to assume the likelihood that there aren't any, that pretty much means end of any meaningful debate from my point of view."
No, he isn't proving your point. What he is stating is that in most explanations, whether the official or the truther's, there are conspirators. In the official version the conspirators are middle eastern terrorists.
Very few knew what it even meant and it was all documented and known by parts of the government. A government in war btw. A secret weapon that was not used against it's own people.
So it's pure brute forcing unrelated events in a attempt to make something completely unrelated look like it's the same.
But I have no doubt that the next time around hitler will be used as part of the argument to show that a leader can blind his people to believe in anything using the news outlets as his propaganda machine.
Only problem is that we don't live in 1948 or 1984 for that matter.
It's not brute forcing. You can place many people in their role and position, letting them do their job honestly without any need for them to have any clue at all about the greater scheme.
(This would probably apply more to the government scenario than to other scenarios, but for sake of the examples..)
Simple examples, more elaborate ones can easily be thought of with a bit more time:
Did the person giving the hijackers pilot training play a role that day? definitely!
Was this person to be blamed? in the know? no! Doing his/her job in good faith and with honesty? yes!
What about those people scheduling an air force training that day, causing many planes and pilots that normally defend the NY airspace to be away from the area? (assuming this was a 'purposeful move in the 'allowed to happen' scheme or something)
They were just following orders. Training pilots regularly is a good thing to do right? Who can predict that the lack of defensive capability that day would be such a bad/tragic timing? The people actually organizing the training? No! Would the pilots moving to a training need to be in the know? No! Can they be blamed? Not at all, but they might regret not being at their home base.
Just a couple of people in strategic places can move all the 'pawns' (not meant derogatory in any way!) to the correct place and time for the greater strategic (chess) plan to work / allowed to work / insert possible variations here.
These 'pawns' would often truly believe that they are doing their job to the best of their abilities and not be able to see any 'evil' in what they are doing.
Hope what I'm trying to convey is somewhat clear.
Once again, these examples are easier to make for the 'government scenario'.. which is not something that I fully support.
To be honest: I really don't know what really happened that day. I don't have a definitive answer that I want to 'push on to others'. I only know that the official story is something with too many holes and too many strange coincidences for me.
You have answered none of my arguments. Basically you think that most people are idiots being fooled by some clever evil leaders through the use of propaganda. Each and every of your posts illuminates that more than anything else.
No, once again, I'll not allow you to corner me because of my examples with which I'm trying to explain that the events as they happened could be explained BY a conspiracy and they could JUST AS WELL be explained by it NOT being a conspiracy..
"But instead of being honest about it you simply hide behind vague insinuations."
I mentioned before that I don't claim to know what happened that day. Only that I have unanswered questions or things that are not explained sufficiently for /me/. If you're happy with your views on that day, good for you.
Is it now allowed to NOT have a position these days? Many people don't hold multiple theories/world views/models in their mind at the same time, keeping all of them open while gathering more information.
I can't help that most people directly follow either the mainstream/official approach OR the alternative approach.
Once again: the world is not black or white, 'not with us or against us', etc
"You have answered none of my arguments."
And apparently you just don't get that my points are examples.. not my opinions..
"Basically you think that most people are idiots being fooled by some clever evil leaders through the use of propaganda."
I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that propaganda nowadays would work just as well and insidiously as 60 years ago. And people don't have to be idiots for this to function, two words: human nature
And if you can't see how at least the whole situation was used to 'force through' all kinds of executive orders, laws and regulations and the creation of the Homeland security thing, I'm really sorry for you but then you've missed a few things that have changed in the world since that horrible day..
"Each and every of your posts illuminates that more than anything else."
I'm not a 'truther' and I'm not a 'mainstreamer'. That day is still very open-ended because of it's complexity of events.
I don't have a position, deal with it. And most of all, don't try to push me into that 'elitist' corner stating that I'm calling people idiots, fools whatever.
I'm generating scenarios and examples and I'm being realistic with what we've seen in human history and human nature/psychology.
So just stop trying to label me and put me in one of those two convenient boxes you have in your mind: normal/mainstream or truther/kook.
I'm neither!
"Only problem is that we don't live in 1948 or 1984 for that matter."
You forget one thing: human nature hasn't changed that much.
There are still plenty of modern examples of leaders that are blindly followed by people. E.g. cults, certain countries, etc.
Perhaps the risk of this happening in the West has gone down, but it's still there.
Do not underestimate the power of TV and the like.. and do not forget how fear is an effective method to sweep people into action. Perhaps not invading other countries.. but things like body scanners and privacy invasions are common place now.. why? fear + media outlets = powerful.
Different effects, same underlying principles..
Were he to choose not to mention 9/11 conspiracy theories, or to not act in a way that marginalises the movement; it's quite likely that it would alienate fewer people and be generally more successful.
It's great to have a leader who is genuinely passionate about what he's doing, but for others who might agree with much of what he says, it can be disheartening to see so many turned away by some of the rhetoric.
What im trying to say is, if he doesnt code anymore, its probably because he doesnt think that would be a necessary contribution anymore.
Or maybe he is simply tired of coding :)
Wouldn't that be better than being just a gadfly? At least that's my impression; RMS will appear on some group or maillist, drop a bomb, tell everyone they're doing it wrong, and then disappear while the flamewar blazes, accomplishing nothing constructive in the process.
And, in this community, everyone's status is based primarily on their programming, including Richard Stallman's.
No he didn't! He wrote a text editor, a compiler and a library. It's not like he's the only person ever to do that. He also had a lot of help from others. He isn't the sole author of EMACS, GCC or glibc.
Perhaps you should ask Socrates.
I always wonder why conspiracy theory has become such a loaded phrase, people conspire in secret, other people theorise about it, I don't really see the problem.
The official story is a conspiracy (theory) too. The only thing that's different between the various explanations is who the /conspirators/ are.
But there's no doubt that on that day a group of people acted to follow an agenda they had planned together, one that was against the U.S.
My personal interactions with RMS have drawn me to the conclusion that he's just a smart asshole, and a little crazy. Steve Jobs is like that, too. The difference is, I would jump at a chance to work with Jobs.
That said, I'm sure that Gnu Emacs is fine.
I have used Emacs under Windows and I have to agree it's a bit too surprising at times.
Being involved in open source seems to be mainly a thing to put on the CV. And often, people who start or run an "open source" software product are co-directors of a consulting company, or else employees bound by non-compete clauses, charge out as much as possible for as little as possible supporting "special client addons", get other people (e.g Google SOC) to pay for as much of their product development as possible, spend a lot of effort gaming search engine results to score high in popularity rankings, and suddenly change their product API's to keep away other developers who won't sign onerous involvement contracts with them.
I respectfully disagree. Often the consulting company is a very valid way to pay for the development of the Open Source Software. It's a practical way to do OSS and still make a living. That in no way detracts from the usefulness of the Open Source development Model or the freedom of that software.
Google's SOC is primarily a way find and incent good developers. It helps to expand the pool of hirable talent. In our Chicago office we've hired our fair share of former GSOC alumni. We don't limit the applications to any class of project so while some of the work may indeed be useful to us commercially, a lot of it isn't.
As far as gaming search engine results and changing api's I'm not even sure where you're going with that one?
I'm sure you have valid examples of badly done open source but painting the whole class of software with that same brush is a mistake.
this can't be outlined strongly enough.
> 2) rms is a practical guy. stop acting like he's a mad man who knows nothing. He started GNU, wrote emacs, glibc, gcc and probably others. He created the concept of free software and wrote a license as good as GPL to defend it.
He created the concept of 'Free' (note the capital F) software as his definition of free. People were sharing source code beforehand. The source to Unix was available under licence, there were plenty of tools available (ISTR TECO, EMACS' predecessor being open source for example) with source. I can create a definition of something that distorts other peoples' views of the truth and misappropriate it as my own.
Secondly, he wrote all of those things as part of his GNU OS, which he never finished. As someone who's written hobby OSes before I can understand that GNU was a massive undertaking, but he's not the only guy ever to write an OS and deserves no more kudos for it than the BSD guys or any other OS developers. He is not some magical wizard of software freedom.
> 3) rms doesnt want people only to use free software.
This[1] article by a certain Richard Stallman on gnu.org begs to differ. Maybe it's a different Richard Stallman?
Yes, RMS has (very clearly) stated that the only software a person should use is software that is free.
However, I think emilsedgh's point is that RMS _first_ wants people to value freedom, and use only free software as a result - as opposed to using free software because, for instance, it is (generally) cheap.
My experience of him was that publicly he wants people to value free software, but it's a means to an end. I don't actually have a problem with about 60% of what he has to say on the matter. Open source software fuels innovation and as long as people can still fund further innovation I'm happy with that. However, what I object to is the idea that only FSF-papal-blessed software constitutes free software. If I want to release my software under a BSD licence, it's not free software because RMS doesn't think it is. That's my problem with him, at least professionally speaking. On a personal note I don't think we'd get along - primarily because (and credit to him) that entire argument is pretty much his life (as far as anyone can say from meeting him twice).
Now I could be completely wrong about all of this, and maybe RMS is a pragmatic standup guy and I just got the wrong impression, but even Theo De Raadt had a sense of humour.
I thought the FSF had publicly stated that BSD licenses were compatible with the GPL, and thus "Free" software. I wouldn't be surprised if rms wished the software were more free (in his sense of the word), but I don't recall him ever saying it wasn't free.
He's not. No radical people are practical, it goes with the job of being radical.
rms wants you to write code for free, give it away for free and never ask for any money if anyone uses it. It's anything but practical. It's not even realistic.
He was lucky to be at the right place and the right time where this kind of delusional ideology could actually work (because nobody had this idea before him). Good for him, and he's reaping the benefit of getting there first (basically living off speaker fees). But he totally fails to realize that nobody else can do this.
I respect what he did for the software industry, but personally, I think he's a lunatic, a bit like your crazy grandpa that you quietly wheel over in the kitchen when there are guests so he doesn't make them run away.
Given that Stallman used to charge $200 for tapes of Emacs, I gotta wonder how you come to this conclusion.
He just finds the concept of charging for software repugnant.
However, their campaigns were getting so off-target, that much of my sympathy dwindled, and I ended my membership. Childish 'anti' advertising, such as 'BadVista' and DDoSing Apple's genius bars (gee, that's will convince anyone who was visiting an Apple Store) only made the whole free software movement look bad, childish, and unsocial. To this day, they seem to put their energy into almost hilarious campaigns (Windows 7 sins? Seriously?).
This open letter is on the mark, their current course only marginalizes the FSF and part of the FLOSS community. Whatever happened to relying on your own strengths, rather than caricaturizing the competition?
However, we always thought: Well, the USA have a different culture, so maybe this kind of campaign is needed there, and probably our style of campaign would not work there.
(With "our style" I especially mean: not to exaggerate, and to prefer positive campaigns over negative campaigns.)
It is interesting to see that our objections seem to be also valid within the USA, too. Maybe it's time for some people to join the FSF and to encourage them to learn from their European branch.
There's an old saw which seems to apply perfectly here: Think global, act local.
One example would be the Document Freedom Day: documentfreedom.org
https://fellowship.fsfe.org/login/join.php
However, engaging in FSFE campaigns might become a difficult undertaking if you can't attend any of the local meetings. (Of course there are mailing lists, but those are, well, just mailing lists.)
So for a US citizen, I think it would be more effective to join the FSF instead, and to stay in contact with the FSFE from there. Those connections should already exist and probably just need to be pushed forward.
Of course some of the really great thinks of FSFE are the local Fellowship meetings, etc. which is more easy to organise with more Fellows around. But I would love to see Fellowship meetings in the US (usally 2-3 Fellows are already enough if you invite "non-Fellows" too). But all this is not mandatory to join FSFE. There are als FSF members at Europe without any FSF or LibrePlanet meetings. So the other way around would be perfectly OK too.
So, if you like FSFE than join us! :-)
I say all of that as a libertarian member of the FSF who disagrees with the way that many of the FSF's campaigns are run.
It was a rather big shock for me when I saw a US ad for a Ford car (for example) saying "our fuel consumption is X lower than the Prius".
This would never happen in Greece. At most, they would say "our fuel consumption is X lower than the nearest competitor".
>At most, they would say "our fuel consumption is X lower than the nearest competitor".
This is what usually happens. It's only when a competitor is so well-regarded that people wouldn't even consider the company running the ad that they mention names.
For example, fuel econonmy and the Prius and almost inseparable in people's minds thanks to good marketing, to the point that someone shopping for an efficient car would probably not even consider Ford unless you challenged their assumptions with a surprising fact (that the Ford had better MPG than the Prius).
It's like the "Droid does" ads (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e52TSXwj774) - the iPhone was so dominant that they basically had to say, "You think that Apple/Toyota is the best in this field? Well guess what, we're better!"
Many countries have advertising standards that, if not outright prohibit negative advertising, at least set the bar very high as to what can be said and what level of supporting evidence needs to be provided.
In the US, the protections of free speech convolved with the fact that corporations seem to enjoy the same "natural rights" as individuals, means that you can say pretty much anything in an ad.
In the US... the ads go for twice as long... and the second half is all disclaimer that is folded into the main ad. It's surreal.
This is exactly what my issue with the FSF is. Their stated goal is to deliver freedom to software users, but in my opinion they've totally failed at this in recent years by sticking to the GPL, which at this point does more harm than good.
First of all, the GPL creates an unhealthy incentives structure. In GPL software, there's little incentive to add the features that end-users need. Corporations can afford to pay developers to add features to GPL software, but end users don't stand a chance. Most developers will build the features they personally find most useful, and because of this there are very few GPL-licensed pieces of software that have superior usability for non-technical users when compared to proprietary alternatives. If a feature isn't necessary for the developers personally, it faces an uphill battle to get into the software.
But let's discount that discussion and assume that it's true that an open license produces software whose fitness for purpose matches that of closed software, for all users. Even in that case the GPL isn't helping.
Suppose facebook released their entire codebase under the GPL tomorrow. Would it actually make their users any more free? Would the risk of privacy intrusion be any less? Would it be easier to set up a competing platform? That's three times no in my book. The GPL's freedom, that you can build any software you want with it, is its biggest deficiency. By not including a standard of ethics in the license itself, developers are free to add user-hostile features. As long as you could fork the project to remove those features, this wasn't an issue, but what use would it be to fork facebook's code?
The FSF's only recourse at this point to achieve their long-term goal of user freedom is to go back to the drawing board and develop a new GPL-incompatible license that enforces a code of conduct on the part of the users _and_ developers of the software (not just a license but a contract). Basically they need to three-laws-ify software licenses. You can only exercise your freedom to adapt the software in so far that you don't hurt the freedom of others. I don't know if someone like stallman has the mental agility to make this strategy shift though, so I suspect the FSF will remain largely irrelevant to the future battle between free and closed.
All I'm saying is: almost everybody at his talk (already a self-selecting group) was put off by the tone and extremist nature of his delivery. His message got lost, and that sucks - it's an important message.
The thing is that you can't call him on his eccentricity and radicalism when this is exactly what got him there in the first place. Sure, he's not business friendly but we already have very powerful entities such as google advocating foss in a business friendly way. I still find his speeches entertaining and things like swindle and digital restrictions don't offend me, they're actually refreshing compared to the usual politically correct speeches.
Then again, maybe the criticism they've received all along has helped to drive them to those successes, so we actually should be criticizing them...
RMS is part of a very different property rights movement... one that has a history in Western society but was generally abandoned in favor of the sort of understanding of property rights that most of us take for granted.
It is a coincidence that RMS is radical about other issues, such as 9/11, etc. It's likely that someone with his intellect who is so open to new ideas may tend to believe a wide variety of things that mainstream thinkers (like most of us) would find absurd.
The key points are that RMS's views are profoundly Western in their ideological roots (it's not like he smoked some herb and started reading about the property rights views of some remote island society)... and that he puts that philosophical difference ahead of the many possible compromises and middle ground positions he could have adopted. His views are not utopian either, they represent a mostly lost thread of Western thought.
Realizing this about RMS made me appreciate him more. In a world where we all take certain beliefs for granted, RMS reminds us that property is a social construct.
Interesting. Does that philosophy have a name?
Saying that the government may have caused 9/11 is eccentric. It's crazy and "radical" in an uninteresting way, and most intelligent people will ignore it.
But the idea that one shouldn't use Google docs if one values freedom is radical. I think RMS is completely and totally wrong, but the radicalism or apparent impracticality of the idea is not what I object to.
The cheesy campaigns and slogans have elements of both. They are radical ideas presented in an eccentric way. I think the 7 sins stuff, Swindle, etc., are stupid and childish and really have no upside.
But contrary to what the OP seems to suggest, while many people are turned off by radicalism, radicals are influential way out of proportion to what one would be led to expect by making a quick survey of people's negative reactions to them.
It can be hard to separate what's radical and what's merely eccentric. Especially if you're the one trying to figure out how to present radical ideas.
An activist like him is selling two things: his ideas, and a call to action. If he restricted himself to giving "practical" recommendations, he would no longer be selling his ideas; he might get some people to switch to using free software, but they wouldn't be part of the "movement"; they'd switch back to proprietary software as soon as their job or some particular task required it, and then he'd be left with nothing. Whereas if he argues for his ideas, and takes them to their logical conclusion, he will convince a few people (many, if he's lucky) that will likely become members for life (if not necessarily active members) and can build a real community that has a chance of growing and eventually achieving total success.
Now, it might help to give people some things they can realistically do right now. But the life of a movement lies in its radical members, and "practicality" should not come at the expense of the promotion of the (radical) ideas. Cf. the abolitionist movement, the civil rights movement.
Is radicalism a hack for getting attention? Is RMS's radicalism such a hack? If not, could it have started out as such? Is Swindle, RMS's use of 9/11, et alia a misguided attempt to use this radicalism hack?
Imho, the problem the FSF has is that they don't have a MLK to Stallman's Malcolm X.
Eben Moglen? maybe? Is he active anymore?
Do the BSD and BSDish licences have any front people the same way GPL do in Stallman?
There is nothing wrong with not wanting to be persuasive if you do anything other than persuasion but RMS is very much in the persuasion business.
A good friend of mine (a fellow hacker, actually a much much better hacker than me) and I were talking about Richard Stallman the other day. The guy deserves an enormous amount of credit for his contributions to humanity.
Think about what happened as a result of GCC. Think of how many things were enabled because of that.
Right now I'm sitting in one of the design studios over at ASU borrowing some bandwidth and hanging out with one of my friends while she works on an architectural model. Something that I never realized until I spent some time talking with her was how unbelievably lucky we are as nerds.
I was talking to her about what an architect hopes for after college.
Spend tons of $$ on school->hope you get a good internship->Hope you get hired somewhere good->hope that you get the privilege of working on something cool->maybe get a good job doing something fun.
You have to spend other people's money, lots of it, in order to do cool things in architecture.
With open source software (and I understand that GCC isn't all of open source software, but it's important) this isn't true at all.
My passion is for building websites. My webservers run linux, I use python as a scripting language, I use apache as a webserver, I use mysql as a database. If I get really big, maybe I'll use nginx as a proxy cache.
The only limiting factor in how much stuff I can build on my computer is how fast I can input new information into my brain. I'm constrained by my ability to learn and that is pretty much it.
This is huge, and this is something that is pretty unique to computers.
And think about the ways in which this freedom to create has revolutionized the way that humans communicate with one another. Think about how equalizing this is across the economic spectrum.
(I'm sorry, I went kindof off topic there...)
You've got all of these absolutely wonderful things happening in OSS. If somebody wanted to give Dr. Stallman a Nobel Prize for contributions to humanity, I wouldn't bat an eye.
But to "the outside world" a lot of these things are hidden behind a personality that is incredibly off-putting, and that's a little bit tragic. I wish Stallman was a tiny bit more "normal" just because I want more people exposed to the things that he has done.
If RMS were more reasonable, it would be easier to recognize him for his accomplishments. However he'd be less likely to have those accomplishments.
Well, I think it is more subtle than that. You are relying on certain externalities - for example, you can't build a chip fab without spending an enormous amount of money, and you need all that power so you can work in Python and not ASM, you can't lay ubiquitous bandwidth without spending an enormous amount of money, etc.
What you are doing is equivalent to your friend creating whatever she can imagine in MicroStation (or whatever CAD architects use these days). It's just that she seems to be more aware of the commercial aspects of actually making it happen than you are.
Last month, my website had ~150,000 visitors. People who I know and look up to in the tech community tweeted about it (it was for an article I wrote).
I was able to design something, implement it (the software the runs the site [on top of the OSS stack]), then release it to the world and watch people use it.
It wasn't just a demo, it was a real-life, functioning product.
I pay $20/mo for hosting on linode. $20/mo gets me the ability to compete with multi-billion dollar media publishers, and multi-billion-dollar software companies (faecbook, twitter, etc [obviously my $20/mo doesn't scale. The point is that I'm creating the same thing they are, just smaller).
I got "noticed" by a whole bunch of people who used my product.
This is not the case with architecture. You could make an really cool model, or design in CAD, and nobody outside of your social circle would likely see it.
I just paid $48 for a year of hosting on prgmr because I wanted to give some friends of mine a sandbox to play in while I teach them python.
Imagine an architecture teacher giving their student a plot of land, as well as a crew of builders, and a yard full of raw materials.
That's where OSS software is right now, and that is amazing.
But there aren't many organizations trying to derive software principles from objective logic instead of subjective cost-benefit analysis, who insist that freedom and controlling your own computing is not just another feature but a vital issue. RMS may not convert many Windows users, but he does come up with valuable insights. If no one else is going to be a vocal, uncompromising advocate for software users, I can cringe through Windows 7 Sins and jokes about letting presidents drown.
It's shocking and irresponsible that people are commenting on "what rms says" based only on hearsay, speculation and mis-quotes. At least take the time to Google before condemning the man for things he never said.
My apologies once again because it has nothing to do with you.
In today's world, it is possible to do all of your work using free software. It may not be Google Docs, but LibreOffice is pretty awesome and you can just use Empathy or Pidgin IM to talk to people over an XMPP network.
At some point you have to pry yourself away from proprietary software and the sooner you do it, the less likely you are to cave in and use more proprietary software.
Stallman has been repeating the same ideas for years. It's hard to sound persuasive or charismatic when you're not trying to be a leader and when you've been saying the same damned thing over and over and having to adapt it to the realities of today (which could have been avoided if only more people had listened in the first place...)
Way off topic, but: I can imagine a future world where there is an underground using free software, private but linked ad-hoc networks, etc. The victories of the super rich over the rest of us in the last decade actually have me looking at fiction like the world in Gibson's 'Johnny Mnemonic' as a real possibility for the future.
I actually prefer to see him marginalize his views – it helps intelligent people who are not interested in buying into other people's ideology realize that he is an egomaniacal cult leader without needing to waste time considering the soundness of his ideas.
I prefer the "open source" guys.
Marx hoped that technology would make human labour redundant through mechanisation of production, allowing humans to spend all their time doing r&d (or r&r) --- he hoped that stuff like food would become free to create. With software, it's already possible to make this a reality, as programs can be replicated without cost. All other things being equal, this should lead to great benefits to society, a prospect that has attracted RMS and others.
That being said, it is as useless to ask RMS to compromise as it would be to ask those revolutionaries to in russia, 1917.
Furthermore, asking them to take baby steps is condescending, and they will ignore this advice. The reason is that their motivation differs from the majority of the hackernews readership. Sure, if they took baby steps and focused on PR and focused their agenda, free software might become more mainstream, and many entrepreneurs and small companies would benefit. But they don't want entrepreneurs and small companies to benefit, esp. if it means making these compromises.
Essentially, this is why I find articles like this condescending. The point of FSF is to improve society by advocating universal adoption of free software. Entrepreneurs indirectly benefit from these endeavors. Entrepreneurs then complain that the FSF could be more effective if they compromised their platforms. But this is sort of disingenuous because it's essentially the entrepreneurs telling the FSF to redirect effort that would benefit all of society to effort that would benefit the entrepreneurs. Granted, the former efforts are harder than the latter, but it is no one's place to tell the FSF how to direct their charity and advocacy, especially not someone who stands to gain from the reallocation that they themselves suggest.
Sorry but this is not true. Stallman already said many times that he doesn't think proprietary software should be banned. In fact the first version of the emacs license used to oblige people to redistribute their modifications even when there were no re-distribution. RMS realized that was fascist and decided to only ask for source in case of redistribution (as in the gpl later).
This article is sillier than calling the kindle "swindle".
I wouldn't expect PETA to stop with their off-putting campaigns ("Your Mommy Kill Animals"), it is what they genuinely believe, and for them keeping silent and advocating "a healthier lifestyle" would be so far from their viewpoint that it would practically be a lie, even if it might win them more friends and influence.
Same with RMS. His views are radical, and toning his messages to make them more palatable down would be dishonest to who he is. Let someone else play the moderate and practical.
Of course, moderate and practical people don't dedicate their life to a message, be it "a healthier lifestyle" or "a better way to develop software". The Open Source spokespeople like Michael Tiemann or Tim O'Reilly) tend to get distracted by having a life to live.
Peter Singer argues against the species-ist argument that they're incomparable. Or that killing any human is worse than killing any (or even all) animals, i.e. he argues that for some human,animal pairs killing the human is less-worse than killing the animal.
http://www.princeton.edu/~psinger/faq.html :
> Q. I’ve read that you think humans and animals are equal. Do you really believe that a human being is no more valuable than an animal?
> A. I argued in the opening chapter of Animal Liberation that humans and animals are equal in the sense that the fact that a being is human does not mean that we should give the interests of that being preference over the similar interests of other beings. That would be speciesism, and wrong for the same reasons that racism and sexism are wrong. Pain is equally bad, if it is felt by a human being or a mouse. We should treat beings as individuals, rather than as members of a species. But that doesn’t mean that all individuals are equally valuable – see my answer to the next question for more details.
There is even vast common ground between meat eaters and vegetarians. Most people agree that killing primates it morally clearly wrong.
> Most people agree that killing primates it morally clearly wrong.
Roughly, you're probably right: killing primates is generally wrong. But it's not always, clearly wrong: killing a primate that's about to kill you, killing primates that are consistently killing other primates, killing one primate to save a hundred other primates, etc., etc. Singer's framework gives us a way to reason-through cases where there isn't consensus.
Within the group, you'll likely find a small subset that actually thinks meat is akin to human murder, but that takes a leap of logic that many vegetarians aren't willing to take when there are so many other perfectly reasonable reasons to choose the vegetarian lifestyle.
Nothing wrong with that and the letter makes that pretty clear. It's about persuasion and spot on when it comes to that.
While conspiracy fetishism is unfortunate, it's good to have people questioning the official line, and it isn't as if all the facts around 9/11 are clear cut--yes, there is much unsupported speculation that can be thrown out immediately, but simply positing government involvement on some level is not a priori outlandish.
I don't think we should expect anything different from Stallman, or any radical thinker. Controversy is part of the job.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/031411-richard-stallma...
Anyone happen to know where some pure Stallman code can be found?
Sure, it's negative advertising, but that doesn't put it on the level of Lyndon Larouche advertising. It might be on the level of the people who called Microsoft M$ on Slashdot 15 years ago, but I don't really think it is. I didn't see the talk, so I don't know if he called it a swindle during the talk but if he did, then I would put the remark in the latter category.
I'm even less sure what the objection to the other sign is. Is it the word "sins"? They want you to go to their website to see the things that they don't like about Windows 7. Mainly, I would guess, in the way that it restricts your freedom. What is a short word that is less incendiary that means things-I-don't-like-about-a-thing-that-restricts-my-freedom?
Finally, "baby steps"? In this day and age? I've used almost exclusively free software for over ten years. It's really not that hard. I prefer it. So start using free software or don't. I don't care. But don't pretend it's a big hassle that someone told you that you should.
(To be clear, I'm not a total apologist for RMS. He has said some distasteful things about women and from what I hear his hygiene isn't the greatest either.)
These are practical consequences of a lack of Free Software
Huh Wut!?
How is free or open software going to prevent any company from receiving a court order to disclose data about its users?
This has nothing to do with technical implementation of a service.
If we were using a decentralized twitter alternative like identi.ca or status.net, then all of the IP/log data wouldn't be in Twitter's hands to give in the first place. This is the 'if you let other people do your computing for you, you lose control/freedom over your data' argument.
The same logic (albeit less convincingly) applies to PokerStars - if we were using some sort of Bitcoin-driven, no-single-point-of-failure architecture for online poker, the US government wouldn't have been able to shut down the operation nearly as easily.
Also, I thought that guy looked a lot like RMS, but I was going too fast to get a good look.
If someone's on a diet and refuses to eat chocolate because that would be against the point of the diet, countering with "I think you should try it---it tastes so good" completely misses the point.
I know Stallman isn't interested in products because they're "better". But he should be - even if only to push the free software movement to make itself even better.
today's proprietary stuff isn't marijuana;
it's heroin, and it's really, really good
When it comes to freedom, there's is no black & white classification, only shades of gray. And the whitest of them all are the BSD-like licenses, which are frowned upon by the FSF.
And the reason I think proprietary software is like marijuana is because you CAN be careful when using it, you can also take it in small dosages where it makes sense, you're only required to use it responsibly to not end up hooked with freedoms lost.
And of course, for some people marijuana usage turns into heroin -- but everybody fears heroin and heroin comes with a heafty price for the junkies, which isn't that good in the eyes of consumers (best things in life tend to be cheap ;))
Also, leaving this analogy behind -- let's take as example GIMP.
Gimp is awesome for what it does and I actually think its grotesque interface is the reason why I ended up working with masks, really groking effects like smart-sharpening.
But if you're deep into photography, using Gimp is unacceptable. First, it has serious limitations like 8-bits per color (which means you're losing color info, when importing from RAW formats, or when composing layers -- and as a practical consequence, correcting over/under-exposed photos becomes a nightmare). CMYK support is hackish at best, and photographers (professional or passionate amateurs) do print their photos (whether it's for selling, or for doing exhibits). Then, while the UI forces you to learn about the inner-workings of digital image processing, it becomes a pain in the ass to quickly retouch hundreds of photos (unless you can do them as a batch, with some scripting, but since every photo is unique, no, you can't).
So comparing a product like Adobe Photoshop, which provides real/measurable value to photographers, with a drug that you can get rid of -- that's stretching it a lot. I also view a product like Photoshop as something that gives you more freedom for expression -- also saving you bucks which you'd spend otherwise on extremely high-priced gear.
I would never want to work him on anything - I watched him tear apart people while responding to their concerns - but, people like him are essential to the Free Software movement.
As an example I know from the people at MIT Open Course Ware, that even though they share a very similar view on free information, and RMS can show great achievements, it was really hard to use RMS as an effective advocate for OCW. The key audience was simply turned off by his appearance. As smug as that might sound.
In reality, you can hardly put people into sales, when they refuse to wear a tie every so often.
Activism doesn't need to be mysterious, there's lots of psychological research that you can look to when you ask "how can I convince people to {go vegan, support software freedom, support gay rights}?"
This is not exactly true. There do exist free samples in open formats, for instance the Freepats project:
This may be partly why he seems out of touch with programmers.
(the zinger here would be a comment on finger gymnastics required to enter all those parenthesis is elisp)
If I were in his shoes, I'd be crazy too.
From wikipedia: "Stallman then enrolled as a graduate student in physics at MIT, but abandoned his graduate studies while remaining a programmer at the MIT AI Laboratory. Stallman abandoned his pursuit of a doctorate in physics in favor of programming."
perhaps he has an honorary doctorate?
1996: Honorary doctorate from Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology [85]
2001: Honorary doctorate, from the University of Glasgow [89]
2003: Honorary doctorate, from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel [91]
2004: Honorary doctorate, from the Universidad Nacional de Salta. [92]
2007: Honorary doctorate, from the Universidad de Los Angeles de Chimbote.
2007: Honorary doctorate, from the University of Pavia [93]
2008: Honorary doctorate from the Universidad Nacional de Trujillo, in Peru
2009: Honorary doctorate, from Lakehead University [94][95]
RTFA :)
Maybe universities need a new class of degree called "honorary doctorate and we mean it for this guy".
(edit: and Bob Barker, Tim Allen... obviously, RMS has accomplished more than many PhDs, but you shouldn't refer to a holder of an honorary doctorate as "Dr.")