Dr. Stallman responded to my open letter | Hacker News Reader

Dr. Stallman responded to my open letter

alexeymk.com

143 pointsAlexeyMK132 comments

I was giving feedback to a subordinate once a long time ago and the person replied "I'll take feedback if I think it's valid". On its face, a perfectly reasonable reply, even if antagonistic. The problem in that case was the reply was endemic of a further, much deeper attitude misalignment, one that I had to take care of right away.

I view this reply as nearly exactly the same thing. On it's face, it might be a reasonable response, but knowing what we know about RMS, it just shows more of his lack of humility, ability to empathize with others and general disconnectedness from the "movement" and "community".

As someone might say in war time, RMS is a general for a different type of fight...he is ill equipped to handle the current one.

I'm not sure this really stands up. If a person is lacking an understanding of basic principles whose comprehension is vital to the comprehension of the principle you are trying to teach, you have to first instill within them an understanding of the lacking basic principles. Of course a person must find some merit in your advice if you expect them to follow it in any meaningful way -- sometimes this merit can come from credentials, but when the advisor is some guy you just met, or worse, a stranger on the internet, an appeal to credentials or authority isn't very effective. You must convince them by pure argument.

I recognize that there are times this can be very difficult or impossible if the advised individual is unwilling to "take a leap of faith" and just try a different way for a while, but if you don't have the authority that makes an individual believe your advice is worth following even if that individual can't personally see its benefits, then all you can do is hope to plant a seed.

I think it's a bit much to ask someone to follow your advice just because, which is essentially what you seem to be asking here.

Your reply doesn't actually contradict fingerprinter's. I agree with you that sometimes people just won't listen to anything they don't want to hear, and if you wish to have them consider your idea you have to let them come to the same conclusions you did organicly- that is, by planting a seed.

However, it's that personality type that fingerprinter was talking about. I don't think we should feel obligated to suffer through their pathology if we can reasonably avoid it. You can point out to people like this that they are as they are, and how it is holding them back (say, by costing them business or whatever), but in my experience they are dismissive of such discussions.

I think the open letter was a quite good attempt, and Stallman's response is quite telling. Note: I've never met Stallman.

> Note: I've never met Stallman.

I have, and he is one of the kindest, smartest, most reasonable people I have ever met. He's also funny and brutally honest.

I asked him (this was about 6 years ago at a LUG) if Microsoft had ever attempted to intimidate him, whether through lawsuits or other means, whether subtle or overt.

He paused for a second, and then simply said, "No. No intimidation of any kind."

This man is just an honest, straightforward Socratic kind of guy, not a point-scoring spin-meister.

I for one am overjoyed that he's remained a principled shaggy uber-hacker, resisting the never-ending suggestions that he become a palatable, bridge-building difference-splitter serving up a friendlier, diluted version of his message. Screw everything about that.

Perhaps "pathology" is too strong a word... But to your point, meeting someone isn't the same as knowing them. Did you get the chance to discuss, say, why the GPL license was too "contagious?" Let me say again I've neither met nor gotten to know Stallman, but let me share my experiences with this personality type, just for future reference.

I've gotten to know a few people who have the type of personality I describe. In particular, I have the infrequent occasion to enjoy the company of someone who also charming, funny, intelligent- all of the things that make for a great lunch or evening. However, you'll never change his mind about anything. When he makes up his mind he is absolutely convinced he is right and there is nothing he has overlooked.

And sometimes he just doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. He'll talk about how his doctor is full of shit because what the doctor said doesn't fit with his mental model that he built upon reading a couple of articles in a science magazine. Or how teachers ought to do "X" (he's never taught). Or how programming is "Y" (not a programmer). Or how the football coach should do "Z" (never played or coached). Backs everything up with solid-sounding, logical arguments. But he simply doesn't know enough facts to start with the right axioms.

Very smart. Very persuasive. Very creative. And often very wrong.

Interestingly, as long as their right/wrong ratio is high, they can make great leaders- at least in the beginning of a movement. Alot of people find comfort in their black and white world.

But they are very difficult to deal with as a peer or in an employee/employer capacity. Tireless, pointless arguments that end with "I'm not convinced..." because NOTHING will convince them. They think they have the right axioms. Again, "pathology" may be too strong, but it's certainly a personality type I avoid all but the most casual relationships with if I can help it.

I appreciate your post and the thoughtfulness behind it. I readily concede that the man is stubborn but it's just as often a virtue as a vice.

How can he be "wrong" though, about something that he created from scratch, founded and has kept going strong for all these years?

Also, why should he take our advice when we've obviously rejected his (in many cases)? Anyway, good post and thank you for it.

I'm not exactly commenting on RMS. It's a point of faith for me that all our strengths can become vices, and all our weakness transformed to virtues. Any of us can be still more ourselves with some reflection and humility. But how RMS might best go about that is beyond my knowing.

But let me speak to stubborn as virtue or vice.

I'm a huge beneficiary of open source / free software. That culture seems founded by people who are a little bit nuts. Who can say whether more or less pragmatism would have accelerated or killed the movement?

It seems to me that some of what he's saying is even more applicable today. I've only lately stuck my head into in corners of the startup culture, and maybe I'm in the wrong corners, but I'm shocked by how little technical proficiency I've found. A lot of the design and implementation seems rote, and I have to wonder if some popular frameworks risk mind capture the way Windows did in the early 90s. (Caveat: New kid! Haven't seen it all yet!) One aspect of "free" is the ability to truly design anew from an understanding of core principles, right? Even where issues of commercial trust and network privacy are solved there is still a problem with not-free, right? I think this could be a real challenge for a new generation.

But we're not likely to hear the RMS take on the above, because he isn't even looking at all this stuff. From a simple rhetorical standpoint, he's missing a chance to make a possibly important point to a whole new generation. And even if he did, he's such an avowed fanatic that anything he did say would now be dismissed as a twist on his zealotry, rather than an honest concern of a viewpoint sympathetic to the generation's viewpoint.

Now, is that a necessary consequence of his radicalism? Is such radicalism necessary for the communal formation of proper principles? Does every Abraham Lincoln pragmatist require a John Brown wild-eyed radical? That certainly seems like an unsatisfying outcome, and one that might be avoided with some creativity.

Interesting. Well, our heroes have flaws :) While an RMS 2.0 might be better, the RMS 1.0 still accomplished what he set out to do, and the man is still kicking.

I'll never forget when he was promoting a book, and needed to get more copies from the car. It was an absolute downpour. But he was not dissuaded and I just had to follow this man (decades older than me) out to his car. I was huffing and puffing trying to keep up with him. And while I was miserable in that cold summer rain, he didn't seem to mind it at all.

On another note (unrelated to your comments), it's not a healthy culture that dismisses its elders. Of course it's a hallmark of youth to have little real appreciation (or mere lip service) toward the founders / elders, but in the case of RMS, the youth are more conservative, and the elder is more principled and uncompromising :)

This reminds of myself. I find it helps to preface my grand theories with "of course, I've never done X / Y / Z." I generally find that my grand scheme overlooked some important rule or risk constraint, or that I'm hyper-focused on an edge case, or some such thing. I learn a lot from both forming strong opinions and figuring out why they're wrong.

Every now and then I can't find out why I'm wrong. I'm trying to learn how to make better use of those cases . . . .

> I agree with you that sometimes people just won't listen to anything they don't want to hear, and if you wish to have them consider your idea you have to let them come to the same conclusions you did organicly- that is, by planting a seed.

Aren't most people like that, at least to some extent? As I see it, everyone has a bullshit detector, through which all external communication is filtered. They have to have this, because it's not in one's interests to be fooled when one is lied to. But when a person generates ideas in their own mind, they aren't passed through the bullshit detector, they are just accepted.

But some people are more open to being proven wrong. There are some who don't mind being challenged so long as at the end of the day they are smarter than they were at the beginning. It doesn't mean that they aren't skeptical, but rather that they are willing to consider the advice of those who have a very different mental model of things.

I think the writer offered excellent advice.

Now, as I said I don't know Stallman, so maybe he responds to 10 of these per month and is just sick of it. But even then, that's not a cool response IMO. If he has defended this before, point to a link or something.

"I don't think we should feel obligated to suffer through their pathology"

Some people seem to like following these type of undoubting & uncompromising leaders.

Out of curiosity, how did you take care of the attitude problem?

If it were me I would have said something like:

0: Before we start, I'd like to give you some feedback on what you just aid - is that ok? <if not then wait until later>

1: When you said "you'd take feedback as long as it was valid"... <use direct evidence of behavior>

2: ...it made me feel that you were not receptive to feedback, and that you would not be ready to change if I gave you feedback. <say how it made you, your colleagues, clients etc. feel>

3: pause <and wait for explanation, give clarification on behaviors but don't enter into squabble on whether it was right or wrong>

4: In future I'd suggest there are three things I've found that are good to do when someone wants to give feedback. Let's go through them: a: drop what you are doing and listen - they have taken the time to try to understand what you are doing and to help you to improve. b: listen to the feedback with an open mind, ask clarifying questions and have a proactive problem soling approach to solving the issue c: thank the person for the feedback at the end <think of a practical and doable solution, and don't be afraid to offer your help to the person.>

The whole process should take 5 minutes or less, and should focus on one specific behavior. Try not to do several feedbacks at once - there is only so much we can handle.

This is straight from the McKinsey playbook, and one of the reasons the firm has been so successful.

I see. It looks like an effective method.

Though I'd argue the problem isn't quite that he's not receptive. Maybe emphasize that feedback sometimes has to be done, even if it looks wrong to him.

My guess is s/he fired him/her.

In communication courses, I learned that a rule of feedback is that the receiver is allowed to refuse it, which actually makes sense as feedback is quite subjective. I don't know if that is specifically German (Wikipedia tends into that direction).

Still I agree with your and the original poster opinions. RMS should reflect a bit on that.

Maybe it just irks you that RMS is not your subordinate?

RMS is a man with deep seated principles -- a radical. He has a vision that is well thought out and extreme by most people's standards. We need radicals as a society, people who see the world in black and white bring needed clarity to those of us who live in a world that consists of shades of grey.

Asking someone like Stallman to moderate his message displays a profound misunderstanding of who he is and what he stands for.

William F. Buckley, a man who was, politically, very different from Stallman, showed us that you can be a deeply radical and influential person without being childish or unreasonable. In fact, he was instrumental in kicking the nuts--Randists, Birchers, and so on--out of the movement he helped to found, neoconservativism.

Though I suspect most people here (me included) would mostly disagree with him, you have to admit things went pretty well for the neocons.

Asking someone like Stallman to not moderate his message through the collimator of reason shows a profound misunderstanding of how to stand for something and how to influence people. I hate the idea that you have to be a troll in order to make a point.

The point is that you don't ask a radical to moderate themselves and get a productive result -- it just isn't who they are.

Likewise, if Buckley were alive, you probably would not have been successful at getting him to become a cheerleader for the tea party mob.

The answer to the "out there"-ness of Stallman are the mainstream people and companies that make open source work in the real world. The answer to the maniacs on the opposite side of the argument -- organizations like RIAA and RightHaven, are the content owners who embrace creative commons or make art available at no cost.

Yes, his principles are internally consistent and well thought out. The problem is with his crackpot government conspiracy theories. By talking about that stuff publicly he's harming the truly important principles he stands for.

> "I'll take feedback if I think it's valid". On its face, a perfectly reasonable reply, even if antagonistic.

It's not so much antagonistic, as honest. No-one internalises feedback if in their heart of hearts they don't agree with it, although they might pretend to to appease their boss.

> No-one internalises feedback if in their heart of hearts they don't agree with it, although they might pretend to to appease their boss.

This is not true. One may accept feedback to try a different perspective than his own, which may be effective... or not.

I am skeptical of advice from people who disagree with what I stand for.

As a rule this is a pretty impoverished epistemic strategy.

Exactly. Shouldn't he be skeptical because he disagrees with some element of their advice? Shouldn't he be willing to engage with it, rather than dismissing it out of hand?

Oh, wait-- that's what he always does when he encounters someone who disagrees with him even in the slightest, even if it simply means referring to an operating system as merely "Linux".

He didn't dismiss the advice, but indicated he was skeptical of it. Pretty mild really.

As a rule I am skeptical of all advice, irrespective of how well aligned the provider may claim to be; but you can be certain I'm listening.

When your reply to criticism consists of only the statement that you are skeptical of that criticism, it is an implicit rejection of the criticism. I think almost any human would read it that way.

Yes, all he said was that he was skeptical. But if Stallman really is just commenting that he is skeptical, it is a poorly timed observation. I suspect you are wrong and that he means more than the literality of what he is saying.

It's obviously a rejection, but not obviously for the reason stated. From his point of view, he's just received a forward of an "open letter" that some blogger he's never heard of has already published seeking to gather attention at his expense. My guess is that he really wanted to write "Who are you? Go fuck yourself" but thought better of it, and this was really the only point he could score given how little he knows about the blogger.

It shouldn't matter what Stallman knows about the blogger. Either the argument itself is worth responding to, or it isn't.

In this case you can be certain Stallman is not listening. That's the interpretation that any native English speaker would and should take from that reply.

Sorry to do the pedantic-nerd thing, but why should he take the time and effort to "engage with it?"

I could imagine that after fighting for a cause for decades, the arguments and advice tend to repeat themselves. At some point it is not economical anymore to engage with every opponent.

For all RMS knows, this advice could be alexey's way of manipulating him into working against what he values.

If alexey is honest in his sincerity, he could reiterate his points more strongly with evidence. 'It looks like a crazy marginalized perspective' is something to think about, but there's no weight to the argument offered. Does RMS's talks do worse than expected? Is it caused by people ending up with this opinion after hearing him?

How much time should he devote to exploring unsupported ideas from those who disagree, versus his own ideas for persuasion?

You're arguing against thinking.

This is absurd. We're not talking about measuring the rate of cellular mitosis in a lab, this is about how persuasive Stallman is as a speaker for his cause. You can follow him around to 50+ speaking engagements meticulously collecting metrics and come to the same conclusion you'd get listening to the buzz after a few of them and adhering to rules of thumb for public speaking developed over the past 5000 years, if you'd like. The difference is if everyone did it your way no one would ever get anything done (and they'd probably do it worse).

And let's not act as though this guy is in some camp that is opposite to Stallman's in the first place. They clearly share a lot of same values.

>How much time should he devote to exploring unsupported ideas from those who disagree, versus his own ideas for persuasion?

Perhaps you should more clearly explain the link between the efficacy of a person's rhetorical strategies and their opinion on a given subject first.

I need to clarify:

* Evidence doesn't mean prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Also, given the sorts of arguments in other matters in the public sphere, and the numbers of adherents, I think you do not realize just what can succeed. 9/11 truthers, for instance.

* The rift between the free software and open source philosophies is well known, especially from RMS's own writings which is something that's especially relevant here. alexey's comments clearly put him in the latter camp.

* It is not disagreeing that makes their ideas unsupported. People who agree can also have unsupported ideas.

Same values? When Alexey wrote

> We live in a world where having the technological edge makes the difference between success and failure; asking us to just give up that edge for a theoretical idea of freedom is not going to work.

he embraced pure expedience and pretty much disclaimed having any values he'd go out of his way to uphold in this area.

Hm, that’s not how I read that sentence at all. It doesn’t sound like he is stating any values of his own in this sentence to me. Where do you see his values? I don’t see them.

Where do you see his values? I don’t see them.

I think that's the point.

Ok, so where do you see his absence of values? This reads to me like a value-neutral statement. We just don't know them and shouldn't make any claims about them.

I think Stallman would probably agree with the famous Howard Zinn quote: "You can't be neutral on a moving train."

I don't mean neutral in the sense of "having neutral values", I just mean that he does not explicitly express his values. We do not know his values.

> For all RMS knows, this advice could be alexey's way of manipulating him into working against what he values.

Some of the advice that I remember most from the original post was about things that are tangential, at best, to FLOSS. Referring to the Kindle as the "Swindle" is related, but conspiracy theories about 9/11 and "Big Brother" almost certainly aren't.

> If alexey is honest in his sincerity, he could reiterate his points more strongly with evidence. 'It looks like a crazy marginalized perspective' is something to think about, but there's no weight to the argument offered. Does RMS's talks do worse than expected? Is it caused by people ending up with this opinion after hearing him?

I think the main piece of evidence he offered was data on what his friends did: "Several friends of mine who had not heard of the FSF before left half way through because they were so put off by some of conspiratorial rhetoric above." While not an unbiased sample, it's about all you can expect from someone's after-action report on one talk that he went to.

I honestly feel like such a mentality is at odds with the overall philosophy of the open source software RMS loves to extol. Community engagement drives such products, and a big part of this sort of communication is disagreement.

It's not exactly "freedom" if we're only free to listen to RMS. His response reeks of self-righteousness; that alone should be enough to disqualify him as the voice of the FSF.

I was hoping for a thoughtful response, but he would have been better off not saying anything.

open source != free software

You make a number of very valid points. When a program is distributed without its source code, users don't have as much control as they would otherwise. Internet censorship is on the rise and presents a serious and credible threat to society.

open source != free software, but RMS was definitely talking about both

So you are not skeptical if someone who doesn't share your goals gives you advice on how to achieve those goals? I think that's healthy skepticism.

Exactly. In political circles that type of advice is referred to as concern trolling and is summarily dismissed.

> I think that's healthy skepticism.

Or a rationalized expression of confirmation bias.

In this case, the advice was from someone who does share the goals, and was offering advice on how to achieve those goals.

Someone who uses unfree software because it gives him an edge does not appear to share RMS' goals.

... and thus we see how the perfect is necessarily the enemy of the good then? Nonsense.

Two people can share a relative ranking of goodness for outcome states while differing on the methods to reach the better of such states.

I agree with that. It's not a black and white thing and it is sometimes very difficult to even tell goals and approaches apart because a particular approach to solve a larger problem can become an intermediate goal. Sometimes minor differences regarding the preferred approach become dogma. On the other hand, it's always possible to define goals broadly enough to find common ground with almost everybody but then it becomes meaningless. So I still think Stallman's skepticism is legitimate and doesn't necessarily mean he is ignoring other opinions. But I don't know him personally and I don't share his opinions on freedom.

In general, I don't agree with Stallman's hyperbole and think that many of his beliefs are extreme.

However, in this case, I respect the fact that he chose to reply to the OP. Many arrogant people might prefer to ignore criticism. It appears that Stallman reviewed the OP's letter and took the time to reply to him (tersely, but honestly)

Stallman nearly always answers email sent to him, though he takes 24 hours or so to do it.

Skepticism is never impoverishing.

This was rejection, not skepticism, despite what he called it.

Only RMS is in a position to say how much RMS actually considered the points raised.

I'm not as generous as you are in allowing that this just might be an issue of communication. As I understand it, he is a lawyer and also quite clever. I believe that he knew how it would be interpreted when he wrote it.

A rational skepticism is necessary for science to work at all. But radical skepticism is so impoverishing a philosophy that no one, except possibly a few nuts, believes it any longer. And there are several gradations in between.

There is a difference between skepticism and blind rejection. Distinguishing between the two in yourself, I have found, can be difficult because it requires significant and constant introspection.

(Sticks fingers in ears).

My six year old son does that.

So basically, "I see you've written me with some advice. However, you may have overlooked the fact that I'm Richard Stallman."

Having seen him give his spiel at Rice University a few years ago, I came away from it with thoughts nearly identical to the original letter. Your comment here fits the tone he used when responding to the few questions that were allowed at the talk I saw (if memory serves, he went over time and so Q&A was abbreviated).

His strongest points discussed the indoctrination of children into using only proprietary software while in schools. He avoided a conspiratorial tone and set up his case very well. I was impressed, but also disappointed when he didn't expand on it for very long, at least when compared to the topics laden with more hyperbolic rhetoric.

A friend of mine (a relatively well-known person who has contributed a good deal to free software) once introduced himself to Richard Stallman. Richard Stallman immediately told him he was evil because he had once worked for Microsoft.

Behavior like that, where Stallman immediately alienated a potential ally, does little but harm the free software cause. The only thing it enhances is Richard Stallman's reputation among a small (and probably dwindling) group of radical free software advocates.

You say that like it's a bad thing. Stallman is who he is. His time has passed. Oh well, move on. Life is to short to spend it giving advice to someone who clearly couldn't give a damn.

Perhaps the real point of giving advice to Richard Stallman is to give advice to some of the younger folks who might be considering acting like Richard Stallman.

Don't be like Richard Stallman! Even Richard Stallman can barely get away with it!

You must remember how many times Microsoft has used underhanded or illegal tactics and lies against its opponents including GPL and Gnu/Linux. They even secretly funded the SCO attack. To contribute to such an organization seems evil to me.

According to Wikipedia Microsoft had 89000 employees in 2010. Do you really think all of them agree with every "underhanded" tactic Microsoft used over the years? Or should be damned for things Microsoft did (maybe even before they worked for Microsoft)?

Working for Microsoft is still a job, not a lifetime decision. And attributing a job with "evil" sounds like a hyperbole (ignoring jobs that involve killing people, that's a different matter).

This sounds about right.

I was working for Apple in the early 90s, and he called me evil. (A friend of mine, who also worked for Apple, was in the same room. To the best of my knowledge he didn't call /her/ evil. My assumption is that he didn't do that because she was attractive and single).

I can respect radical. Being a hypocritical asshole, I cannot.

What does this have to do with HN?

I use very little GPL software. If something is GPL 3 I really, really try not to use it; I'll buy a commercial package instead, or write my own (if that is feasible), or do without (ditto).

Stallman's radicalism can have the opposite effect that he thinks it does. His unreaonableness creates markets. Probably small ones, but they're there.

I've heard a story of Stallman being given a lift by person A, while person B sat in the back seat. Upon discovering that person A wrote proprietary software for a living, Stallman instantly pivoted around, talked only to person B, and pointedly ignored the driver for the rest of the journey. Childish and rude.

I'd have put his beardy ass out on the street for that one, no lie. "Sorry dude, this is CLOSED SOURCE petrol, out you go".

I'd count that response as a win. An "I am skeptical" from RMS is really mild -- it's like he actually told you he'd take what you said into consideration.

He'll be so very brutally honest if he disagrees with you.

Yeah, I read that the same way, too. I've seen correspondence from RMS to people that he really disagreed with. In RMS parlance, his response to Alexey sounds like a polite form of, "I'll think about that."

Meh. The internet loves it some drama.

Yeah I think it's important to remember that the guy is pretty busy, probably gets more than one of these kind of emails (probably on both sides) a week. Also some of the hardcore free software crowd is pretty radical and these are the kind of people he probably deals with the most thus that could shape his opinion of things.

He could have at least had the good sense to say something like...

  I am skeptical of your position. I wrote an essay on a similar topic back in 1988, here's a link.

Which essay are you referring to ?

I'm not referring to a particular essay. RMS has a large body of work. The point I'm making is that rather than dismiss a critic in that manner, he could have pointed him to something useful. If he'd done that, folks on HN wouldn't be grumbling about RMS being <something_bad>.

Our issue with Stallman is us expecting something of him that he's not the appropriate person to give.

Stallman is a seed planter, he's come up with a powerful pure idea, planted the seed, and now years later most people agree that many of these ideas have merit -- the world is a better place with free software.

Now that we've all caught on (or so we think) to this idea, we want Stallman to pragmatically carry it forward, to grow the movement. But to do so, you have to acknowledge certain, impure realities about Free software in the real world. Stallman, as essentially a theoretician, is not the right person to acknowledge those things. The real world gets messy, growing a movement involves marshaling conflicting people, it involves Politics.

Stallman doesn't get Politics, he's not a pragmatist, it's not in his blood and he's just not the right person to take his idea past seed planting into orchard growing. It takes a completely different kind of person. Expecting to be anything more than what he is will only ever leave one disappointed.

Stallman isn't the tide that raises all boats. Before the GPL we had the BSD licence and when I was a kid, things were just put into the public domain.

I think its very arguable if RMS and his group had anything to do with OSS success. Their attempt to build HURD is a huge failure and Linus's success may have more to do with his better management skills and the desire to build a free OS and an easy way to collaborate.

Before the GPL we had the BSD licence and when I was a kid, things were just put into the public domain.

That's really a great point. I've found Stallman's remarks about those alternate takes on Free (non-GPL, but also open source) rather off-putting and frankly silly myself. Some of his responses remind me of this scene

http://www.viddler.com/explore/loopytube/videos/819/

Certainly free software existed before GNU. Most software was free software for years. Project GNU was started in an effort to proactively continue the tradition of free software in a computing world that was increasingly proprietary.

I am skeptical of advice from people who disagree with what I stand for.

I imagine this is what George Lucas kept saying whilst working on the Star Wars Prequels

That doesn't seem true. Look to Lord of the Rings where the director kept in touch with the LOTR communities to ensure the authenticity of the series. It's even reflected in the credits that's jokingly purported to be the names of everyone in NZ.

George Lucas probably listened to investors over customers.

I think that's what the parent was getting at. George Lucas pretty obviously got trapped in his own asshole sometime between Howard the Duck and Willow, and it shows in the prequels. Peter Jackson engaged the wider community and got heaps of conflicting ideas and advice to draw from.

that was exactly my point, thanks.

Okay, rms is officially being an ass here. That response is the grown-up equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and going "Nyah nyah I can't hear you!".

He is, at this point, no better than fundamentalist Christians who refuse to even entertain the smallest possibility of the notion that any piece of what they're doing is wrong.

Intellectual discussion requires all parties involved to be open to an exchange of ideas. Rejecting a source of ideas out of hand because it disagrees with your ideas is ultimately only going to hurt you.

He's a fundamentalist and has been for some time now. This isn't news, and Christians didn't invent religion, so yeah, there is a connection between rejecting the author's "ideas," and the author not accepting the Founder's principles.

I don't like baseball, should I be commissioner? The author is talking out of turn and deserved that one-sentence reply.

Notice anything funny about this followup post, by the way? The author links to all kinds of praise, but doesn't link at all to the original letter! I don't know if he expects the world to have memorized or bookmarked it already, but it sure tells you where his priorities are. I bet he silently updates it with a link, but the fact remains that it didn't even occur to him to link back to the original article.

Finally, why is it more important for RMS to stop marginalizing himself than it is for the author to stop trying to drag RMS to compromise? I'm no RMS fanboy, but the author sure seems to think him an idiot who doesn't know what he's doing. Have you read the original post? Here's a sample of the author's compelling rationale:

  Dr. Stallman, Google Docs is really useful. I imagine you're unlikely
  to have tried the service yourself, abstaining as you have from proprietary
  software for the past several decades.  It may be worth trying the
  service out, if only to better relate to your target audience.

Several decades!

Link to original article added (albeit not silently). Fair point, though the oversight came more from negligence than malice (I figured only the HN crowd that had seen the original article would be interested).

Anyways, the whole 'speaking out of turn' thing kind of rubs me the wrong way.

I'm only using the Google Docs as an example, but it's written like you're trying to convince your mom.

RMS wrote fucking emacs, dude. Do you know what emacs is? I've never used it and I probably know more about it than I do vi, which I do use every day, and have for the past 15 years! I'm not arguing from authority with that, btw, just an illustration about how much I don't use emacs. That said, let's not even countenance gcc and gdb.

There are myriad issues I could take issue with RMS over, but his need for advice on word processors is not one of them. He already has one. Everybody knows this. He wrote it. 35 years ago. A zillion other people use it too.

"Talking out of turn" was the wrong way to articulate that, so sorry about that. Ask anybody who knows me and they'll tell you I'm not much for hierarchies and authority (I'm certainly not afraid of being negged on HN), and I don't put RMS on a pedestal, but he has several important, long-standing, and long-recognized accomplishments in the history of personal computing, and computing in general (cf. his AI algo he wrote before emacs, still in use). This is undeniable. Google Docs! Sorry dude, I just can't get over it!

Thing is, I bet all of this was already spelled out in the HN thread for the original letter post, which I didn't read. Did you?

I didn’t read that as advice on a word processor at all. He should try it out (not actually use it) to see what all the fuss is about. To see why people don’t want to give it up. Emacs is not even comparable with Google Docs. They are different things.

Not claiming Google Docs is amazing (it's not), but since when was emacs good for collaborative real-time document editing over the internet?

Regardless, having made important contributions to computing does not let you off the hook when you act like an ass.

Indeed. rhizome's quote is taken out of context. The google docs example isn't about word processing, it's about collaborative editing. When your options are using a tool like google docs or emailing around a file, only staunch idealism would make a person side with email. That was Alexy's point. Mainstream pragmatists aren't going to dump a technically superior tool because a seemingly crazy idealist told them it is the Right Thing to Do.

Isn’t Stallman’s reply just an ad hominem? I presume “what I stand for” in Stallman’s response refers to the concept of all software being free. But even if Alexey disagrees with that premise, it’s still possible for his advice to be sound.

It certainly didn’t look like Alexey was trying to sabotage the free software movement by giving bad advice – many people in the HN discussion of the open letter agreed with the advice.

Alexy, was this message you received published in a public forum or private correspondence? If it was normally a private channel, does Mr. Stallman have a standard policy of accepting that his private emails may be published? If not, did you set that expectation?

I don't want to jump to a lot of conclusions here, but what I'm seeing is a real lack of sincerity in your actions by writing him an open letter instead of sending him a private email, then publishing what appears at first glance to be a private response.

I may have it wrong, so please set me straight: Are you really trying to influence him, or are you using him as a foil for sharing your views with us?

Mr. Braithwaite, did you ever take that test yourself? What sincerity can you claim when you wrap your criticism in a faux-question and then pose that question in a public forum?

Hey,

That's a fair question. I wrote the open letter and sent it to RMS in addition to publishing it; given that RMS doesn't frequent HN, it seemed insincere to do otherwise. I did not ask for explicit permission to publish his one-line response; that said, this was a response that I had heard RMS use in conversations while he was here, and did not feel that there was any reasonable violation of privacy in publishing what I considered to be a boilerplate response.

As to my intentions: certainly, influencing RMS would be fantastic; that said, from reputation and from meeting in person I've found RMS to be a difficult person to convince (I tried inquiring about his position on certain issues in person, and was interrupted/dismissed several times until I gave up). More realistically, I was looking for a way to collect my thoughts on the matter and did not expect quite this much attention. If I have at all influenced any Free Software advocates that the best argument for their position is a dignified one (cynicalkane proposes William Buckley as an example), that would be a happy accomplishment.

Say what you will, but every ingredient for the world RMS has described in "The Right to Read"[1] is by now well in place.

"Pragmatic" line of thinking will likely land us in the most restrictive police state in history.

1. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

> the most restrictive police state in history.

This is the sort of hyperbole the author was originally arguing against.

Did Himmler have the technology to continuously monitor movements and verbal and written communications of every citizen?

We also "have the technology" to obliterate the planet many times over. You need a few more facts than just "having the technology" to start inferring things.

You have it - either obliteration or (as an optimistic scenario) total control enacted with the justification of preventing splinter groups from achieving said obliteration.

And while someone should think about these things I do admit that something else might work better to win mind share for the FSF.

Well, what I think dvse was saying was that pragmatic thinking (only) will lead to such a situation. I.e., we also need unrelenting people who are not pragmatic, who upholds their principles. Like Stallman.

That doesn't mean that you have to be Stallman, just that it might be a good strategy to accept people who choose to live as they learn.

When asked his opinion of pragmatism, Morgenbesser replied "It's all very well in theory but it doesn't work in practice."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Morgenbesser

Here's my POV. If you can't understand what RMS is saying or what he is about - then probably you are not his target audience.

Stop telling him to water down his act. He can't and he must not. He is somewhat prescient on these issues (as he has proven more than once) and to lower his tone would be to admit defeat.

He is the prime mover and as such he is not Your momma's evangelist - he is your momma's evangelist's evangelist. Don't listen to him if you don't like him - you can always get to hear it by proxy that will be more suitable to your ears.

I think the problem is that the mainstream doesn't view RMS/free software and open source as different things. When RMS gets in front of a group of people and shoots his mouth off (I heard him speak at FOSDEM in 2005 and had a similar reaction as Alexey), he hurts the rest of us who don't have such extreme views.

I don't need to hear his or anyone else's evangelism on free or open source software. I already know where I stand. Alexey's original open letter pointed out that some of his friends who'd never heard of the FSF before walked out of Stallman's speech because they were put off by what he was saying. In those people's eyes, that reflects poorly not only on RMS and the FSF, but on open source as a whole. And that's what pisses me off about Stallman.

Yes everybody agrees that his manners suck. But that is not what FSF or Stallman is about. The key question is of whether he is right about practical implications of sharing or not sharing, which mostly he is.

He is not only obnoxious and unlikeable person in history that sports a true genius. So let people who are capable of understanding what he is saying and also have the ability to translate to masses do their work.

That might be you - so go ahead and don't pay any attention to RMS if you don't want to. However you might want to calibrate yourself on RMS once and awhile :).

He is a human being and an exceptional one at that. And saying: Richard be like this or Richard be like that, accomplishes nothing. It's like telling a rose not to grow thorns.

The key question is of whether he is right about practical implications of sharing or not sharing, which mostly he is.

Sure, I'll buy that, but I still believe he's a terrible spokesperson for the FSF and (intentionally or otherwise) for free/open source software as a whole. He's not persuasive to anyone but people who already agree with him, and he tends to come off as arrogant and condescending. And as much as I don't want to "judge a book by its cover," many people do, and let's face it: the man looks like a maladjusted hippie most of the time, which I don't think many people relate to anymore. Any way you try to spin it, that's not a good way to evoke sympathy for your cause. But yet we're kinda stuck with him.

However you might want to calibrate yourself on RMS once and awhile :).

Haha, I really like how you put that, and you're very right. I was a little afraid that I might come off similar to RMS in my original post, (incorrectly) implying that I'd already made up my mind and wasn't interested in hearing others' opinions. But yes, it's always good to check in now and then.

He is a human being and an exceptional one at that. And saying: Richard be like this or Richard be like that, accomplishes nothing. It's like telling a rose not to grow thorns.

Yeah, I know, but I wish the FSF could... "manage" him a bit better, and perhaps promote as their spokesperson someone more likable and able to talk to people without alienating them.

This is a nitpick, but when did RMS start calling himself "Dr."?

As far as I can tell, all of his degrees are honorary, and he never struck me as the sort of guy who'd extend that into an actually honorific.

(Don't get me wrong -- I think he's more than capable of doing a PhD. He just hasn't.)

He has four honorary doctorates. It is his prerogative if he wishes to use that title. From Wikipedia:

"Recipients of an honorary doctorate may if they wish adopt the title of "doctor". In many countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, it is now a matter of personal preference"

"The term honorary degree is a slight misnomer: honoris causa degrees, being awarded by a university under the terms of its charter, may be considered to have technically the same standing, and to grant the same privileges and style of address as their substantive counterparts, except where explicitly stated to the contrary."

The original author addressed him as Dr. Stallman, so perhaps RMS was just responding in kind (perhaps even ironically).

I popped a comment in the original post about wanting to see some RMS code. After doing a lot of searching, I still can't find a thing. I don't want to get terribly off topic, but as I said, I'd always heard he was a great programmer and would love to see some code that was of his creation.

I don't know what parts of early GCC were his, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs#GNU_Emacs suggests Emacs 13.x or 15.x source tarballs from around 1985 would be mostly his own work. I don't know whether they'd still be around, though. The oldest I can find at a glance is http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/old-gnu/emacs/emacs-18.59.tar.gz from 1992, and I don't know how many other contributors there had been at that point.

I'm a supporter of the FSF and free software but I agree that discussion is better served without refering to conspiracy theories. It's much harder to be take seriously when your seen as a crackpot. I'm a fan of Stallman and his past achievements but this makes me wonder if the FSF would be better served by a different spokesperson. Suggestions?

Sure, it is harder to be taken seriously when even a few people see you as a crackpot.

On the other hand, if you're not telling the truth you'll never be taken seriously by anyone who matters irrespective of how many people do or do not see you as a crackpot.

Truth? I'm not sure how anyone can characterize the statement "proprietary software is evil" as "truth." It's merely an opinion, and a very minority opinion at that.

How about John Sculley?

Stallman kind of reminds me of Richard Altmayer from the Asimov store "In A Good Cause--". Brief summary:

The story opens describing a statute of Richard Altmayer that stands in the center of the courtyard of the capital of the galactic union. It has inscribed a quote, "In a good cause, there are no failures", and there are three dates inscribed. They are the three dates Altmayer went to prison for his beliefs.

The story then jumps back to the first date, and tells about the first arrest. At that time, Earth had established many colony planets throughout the galaxy, and many of these had become independent. They were organized into many small groups of allies, and relations were sometimes hostile. A war had just broke out, and Altmayer, and his friend Geoffrey Stock, had just been drafted from college. Stock was preparing to head off to the war. Altmayer was refusing, feeling that humanity must unite, not remain divided. Altmayer is jailed for refusing.

The story then goes to the second incident. Stock did well in the war, and has become a member of the Earth government. He was on the first diplomatic mission from Earth to the one race of intelligent aliens known, the Diaboli. There were more human planets than diaboli planets, but they were one united race, and were expanding faster than humans. Although they required an atmosphere that was poisonous to humans (and our atmosphere was poisonous to them) so there was no competition for habitable planets between us and them, there was competition for resources from non-habitable planets. The Diaboli were taking advantage of the fact that humanity was not unified, negotiating separate deals with different human planets.

Altmayer fears that the Diaboli are a threat to humanity, and tries to force the issue by assassinating a Diaboli diplomatic mission on Earth, hoping to force a war to contain the Diaboli before it is too late. (He's a pacifist when it comes to war between human planets, because he thinks we need to be united. He thinks a war with the Diaboli would actually help accomplish that, as humanity would unite to fight the common enemy).

Stock knows of this plan, and tricks Altmayer, preventing the assassination, and sending Altmayer to jail for the second time.

The story then jumps to the final arrest, which occurs many years later, when Altmayer is an old man. The Diaboli have organized a galactic conference, to organize a Galactic Union. They occupy most of the galaxy, and there has been little expansion of humanity. Altmayer obtains secret documents that show that the Diaboli have been terraforming some human-habitable planets to make them suitable for Diaboli. Some of those worlds were occupied by small colonies.

Altmayer manages to get the documents to a broadcaster before Stock (now leader of Earth's government) comes to arrest him. Stock tells him that the government doesn't support the Diaboli-led plan for galactic union, but can't support exposing the documents. No doubt Altmayer believes, Stock says, that humanity would unite in indignation and defeat the Diaboli, but Stock knows better. The Diaboli would deny the accusations, and several human worlds would find it in their immediate interest to side with the Diaboli. No human worlds could defeat the Diaboli if there were other humans fighting on the Diaboli's side.

Altmayer is disappointed, figuring that Stock will stop the broadcast. Stock says he is not--but after they are broadcast, Earth is going to join the Diaboli in saying they are lies. The other human planets won't believe that--they will think Earth is allied with the Diaboli. No other world will attack Earth if they believe Earth and the Diaboli are cooperating, and they will stay neutral if there is then a future war between Earth and the Diaboli.

Altmayer points out that Stock may fool the other human worlds, but the Diaboli will know that Earth is lying when Earth says the documents are lies. Stock then reveals that the documents ARE lies. His government made them up, and purposefully had them leaked to Altmayer.

The story winds up with Stock visiting Altmayer in jail, to set him free. He tells Altmayer that Earth has been at war with the Diaboli for the last six months. He explains how when he first visited a Diaboli world, he realized it was eventually going to be humanity or them (just as Altmayer had realized). Since then, all of Earth's diplomatic efforts have been toward making it so that when the war with the Diaboli came, no human world would join the Diaboli. When the time came, the Diaboli were no match for Earth. They ha never fought a war, whereas Earth had fought many wars with other human planets, and so had much more experience and much better military technology. The Diaboli main fleet has been defeated, at almost no casualties to Earth. The other human worlds are now jumping in to declare war on the Diaboli. Most are calling to now unite and form a galactic union. Stock wants Altmayer to be Earth's representative to the galactic conference to form the union. Altmayer was always the voice in the wilderness, crying for union. His words will carry much weight.

Altmayer is stunned and doesn't understand, since Stock turns out to have been right all along. Stock tells Altmayer that he always misunderstood human nature. When the United Worlds is formed, and future generations look back, they will have forgotten the purpose behind Stock's methods. He will represent war and death. Altmayer's idealism and calls for union will be remembered forever. Altmayer barely hears his last words as he leaves: "and when they build their statues, they will build none for me".

You should read Darkness at Noon.

I just wanted to let you know that based on your synopsis, I went out and bought an Asimov short story collection that contains this story. I've read one other Asimov collection and I enjoyed it, so I figured it was time to read another.

I don't know what you would expect. Your advice was unsolicited and he treated it as such.

I'm more intrigued by your campaign than by the advice itself. It seemed to me that your primary goal was not to advise RMS, but to get front page HN.

RMS is a little bit nutty at times. I think everyone acknowledges and accepts this.

I prefer his eccentricities out in the open rather than him try to hide them away.

There is value to open and honest disclosure. We live in a world with far too much "marketing friendly" presentation.

Sometimes you should be skeptical of people who agree with you.

[edit] And your own reasoning ofcourse.

If we're going to stand on principle, we have to admit vi was always a better concept than emacs, and must doubt the intelligence or motives of anyone who would divert attention from vi. emacs is just a big fork that wasted a lot of effort that could have gone into displacing Word! Who knows where we would be without these splitters?

Think about it. Do we _know_ that RMS is _not_ a Bill Gates plant, inserted to dilute the momentum generated by Bill Joy? Hmmm? Improbable, yes, but not impossible.

I just don't see how we can trust anything RMS has to say on anything.

That reply has Steve Jobs written all over it. What you wrote was heartfelt, sincere, honest, and balanced. What RMS wrote in his reply just exemplifies why so many people ridicule and mock FSF. There is a strange tendency among FOSS supporters to belittle everyone who uses proprietary stuff. Instead of encouraging and inviting others to switch to FOSS, they try to belittle them and try to coerce them into switching to FOSS by basically saying "If you use proprietary software, you are evil".

I hardly define "balanced" an approach which divides the world in "those who agree with what I stand for" and "those who disagree with what I stand for".

I misread the post, actually.

-- Sent from my ivory tower

You should have set up your argument against the views of the FSF. His views on things like 9/11 are irrelevant in this argument. We all have our crazy and not so crazy beliefs. Sometimes the more of a splash you make in our world the more on the crazy side your beliefs can be.

Unsurprising. A childish, low-brow response from someone who uses childish, low-brow rhetoric and imagery. A benefit of age is realizing there are very few people who can be won over or convinced with logic and good intentions.

That's too bad. Hardly surprising, though.

Sadly this falls under the category of "Intellectual honesty, lack of".

Apparently found in both the cathedral and the bazaar.

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