Comment by y0ghur7_xxx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by y0ghur7_xxx | Hacker News Reader

"I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone."

This means to me that Stallman is glad that Jobs is no more a malign influence on people's computing.

But he is not glad that he is dead.

That is exactly the same thing the poster says about Stallman:

"While I'd love it if Stallman would retire, or at the very least improve his social skills, I hope he lives to be 120. As long as he's alive, there's hope he might change. I'd never be glad that he's gone. And I'm certainly not glad that Steve is."

Saying that you'd love it if Stallman would retire means that you would be glad if he's gone.

That is exactly the same thing the poster says about Stallman

Yup. Stallman tried to separate the Job's death from the end of his influence on the computing world. It was short and to the point and not the most tactful, but that molehill is reaching mountain proportions. Way more has been written about it than seems reasonable.

If you read closely you can see what has really upset people isn't just lack of tact. Its that Stallman's ideals of computing paints Jobs' contributions as a net negative. See this line in the article: and insult millions of Apple users simultaneously. It doesn't insult me that someones ideals give them a different opinion of a piece of plastic sitting at my house. I'm a nerd, but my identity isn't that caught up in my devices.

48 hours after someone's death is not the appropriate time to start trying to draw distinctions between their death and their absence, and declare their influence "evil".

When that's your initial reaction, there's no way you're not going to come off like a giant ass.

When is an appropriate time? How about 30 years before his death, which is about when RMS started calling Apple/Steve Jobs evil.

Yep, it's okay to criticize someone before they die (though "evil" is usually overdoing it). And it's okay to criticize someone with a reasonable buffer after they die. But taking the opportunity of their death to criticize them is just plain tacky.

yeah, but I'm saying this is about par for the course with stallman, and even if people happened to expect tact from him, why the huge fuss? Say "Not the right time for this conversation RMS" and _move on_. By attempting to refute his point about Jobs' absence, they lose whatever higher ground they might have had about timeliness of his statement.

It upset me enough that I never want to use any of RS's software again.

Are there any FSF/GPL/GNU stuff on OS X? Ubuntu? (I'm trying to think of anything I use that is GPL/FSF/GNU).

I don't use any of Microsoft's stuff anymore because generally I've found better alternatives. I think open source software is a better philosophy. I think the same thing about the GPL/FSF/RS/GNU stuff, (I think it's a bad philosophy), and I'd love to rid myself of it.

Could someone give me some pointers how I can avoid RS's stuff completely?

Thanks!

Are you, by any chance, saying that you have certain principles that outweigh things like convenience and fitness for purpose? That you are prepared to go out of your way to reject the use of certain software purely because you dislike its philosophy, and not because it’s objectively worse for you?

If so, you and Mr. Stallman have something in common.

I used to use Windows, even though I had gripes, because it was okay and there was no good alternative.

GNU/FSF/RS helped create a good alternative.

I've used their stuff, despite my gripes, because there was no good alternative.

Now there is. There's a tremendous amount of rock solid, MIT & other licensed open source software out there. And I want to switch to that. And ditch GNU/FSF/RS.

It's a free marketplace, and RS & Co. have to compete too. They got me to switch from MSFT, but now they're the ones who are behind the times IMO.

There's a ton of GNU and GPL software that you probably unknowingly use. If you don't use any MS software, and you don't plan on using any FSF/GNU/GPL software, then you're really limiting yourself.

I don't even think it's really possible to avoid it all, GNU libraries/compilers/... are used by pretty much everything that's not on Windows platform. You'd basically have to write all your software yourself.

What are these? I don't know of one program on OS X that is GNU. I'm probably wrong, just curios to know.

Well if you ever printed from OSX then you used CUPS which is a GNU tool. The shell is filled with them, if you ever used bash you used a GNU tool. You might say I never used that stuff directly but GNU libraries, shell scripts etc... are built into so many other applications that it's hard to not use any at all. Most applications written in C on the mac are probably compiled with gcc that means they have gnu code in them. I'm not 100% sure but doesn't all iOS app also get compiled with gcc? Xcode includes it as the default compiler.

Apple has done a good job hiding those things from us to build a user friendly operating system and tools on top but at the bottom there a bunch of GNU tools.

I guess it depends how gnugan you want to be. But it's probably got some GNU code in everywhere.

You would stop using software written by millions of people because of one comment made by a selfappointed spokeperson that seemed a little harsh?

Prepare yourself to abandon technology altogether, I guess.

I think you're missing an important distinction here: Stallman has not, in fact, died. The writer of the article is talking about a living person. That fundamentally changes what you're allowed, in polite society, to say about him.

Bingo. Stallman, and many of his supporters, are just missing the nuance. You simply don't say, "I'm glad he's gone" a day and a half after someone dies. Even if you are, and even if you don't mean you're glad he's dead. It's one of those unspoken rules of human interaction that Stallman just doesn't seem to get.

Which is why Stallman explicitly said "I'm not glad he's dead".

People may be reacting to it regardless, possibly even subconsciously, because it was placed (and sounded) like a 'hedge' phrase.

So, uh, in recent years, Ken Lay, Strom Thurmond, Jack Valenti, Saddam Hussein, and Ronald Reagan all died. Quite a few people were extremely unkind to them immediately after their death, and with far harsher words than "I'm glad he's gone." People do simply say these things.

Fidel Castro is widely believed to be in declining health, just like Steve Jobs a few months ago. People have been saying that they'll be glad when he's gone for a while; do you think that they'll suddenly go quiet when he passes away?

With the exception of Reagan, none of those people were well-liked. In the case of of Reagan, he was about equally loved and reviled. With Jobs, even most of those who didn't like him had a grudging respect for him, and acknowledged the contributions he'd made.

You can get away with saying you're glad someone's gone if there are enough people out there who feel the same way. You can't if there aren't. You can't boil it down to a logically consistent principle or moral value; it's just one of the vagaries of human interaction. You can debate the merits of such an unspoken law, but you can't deny its existence.

Stallman broke that law, and that's why his comments were viewed as distasteful, whereas you could say anything you wanted about Bin Laden after he died.

It's okay to express gladness about the death of the truly evil (Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, Osama bin Laden).

It's not okay to express gladness about the death of people with whom you merely disagree, or who might have done things of which you disapprove (Strom Thurmond, Jack Valenti, Ken Lay, Steve Jobs).

The dividing line is something along the lines of "Did this dude actually murder people?" (And no, I'm not interested in discussing any particular borderline cases.)

And who get's to decide what who the 'truly evil' are? In my opinion, putting Fidel Castro in the same set as Bin Laden or Sadam Hussein is unfair, yet for you he is evil just like those other two. I could present a sh*tload of evidence that things are way more complicated than that. But it's not up to me to decide for everyone else.

Now, I think RMS could be more reasonable, it's not a nice to drop such negative and strong sentences about someone that just passed away. But my opinion remains the same concerning sadam hussein, we cannot just decide he is evil and then everything goes.

Saying that you're not interested in discussing particular borderlines cases, in your case means you're not interested in discussing any case at all, since every case has its particular borderline. Your opinion becomes of little or zero value if you're not willing to discuss it. Just saying.

I find it extremely telling that you added Osama bin Laden to the list. I did not mention him.

Just because they do doesn't mean you should.

When redthrowaway said: "You simply don't say" he was describing how people should behave, not how they actually behave.

I actually wasn't talking about the moral dimension at all, I was talking about unspoken rules of human interaction and how they affect one's suitability as a public spokesperson.

For what it's worth, I agree with you that it's just not something you should do.

I'm not particularly interested in Stallman and most of his ideas and comments. I like open source but I don't think they've completely figured out the philosophy yet and of what roles it has—this is another story, but, ..

How do people on HN generally feel with the idea that we allow ourselves to be offended/annoyed OR we should act rather than react. There will forever be people who say things like this that some group of people do not like but is it not their choice to either have a knee-jerk reaction or to craft an intelligent reply or ignore the person?

Basically, I don't like to allow myself to become annoyed or offended even though I've been in more than enough situations, even recently, to allow that.

My concern is not with being offended (I wasn't), but with the fact that's it's just a very stupid thing for a public spokesperson to do.

Not exactly - once someone dies they cannot evolve their thinking any further. No matter how stuck, people can change. (And sometimes, yes, there is very little chance that that will happen).

So as long as he's alive, there's a chance for controversy. Once he dies his followers can create gospel.

Sounds cultish, I agree.

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