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Comment by vvpan | Hacker News Reader

Let's suppose that Glenn Beck died. What a lot of people, including me, would think is that while we didn't wish for him to die, the world of "politics" is much better off without him.

I think this is the way Stallman feels about Jobs. I really don't see why people say that this is "tactless".

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The key is the difference between thinking it and saying it.

If we can't say what we think, then we don't really have freedom, do we? :c

I can't figure out if you are serious or not, because that is such a naive statement. But either way, obligatory PG essay link in case you are unfamiliar.

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

It would be helpful if you could enumerate the ways in which his/her statement was naive. It seems to be a relatively logical conclusion that being told or influenced not to say something is restrictive of innate freedom of speech, no matter how seemingly innocuous a reasoning established social or cultural norms are (ie. don't criticize the recently deceased, it's tactless).

It was naive in not seeming to grasp that there are many senses of "can't" and "freedom," and that the sentence could be either true or false depending on which you mean.

You're right, it is a very naive statement. But it's also a very serious one; the freedom to speak one's mind is the entire topic of this discussion, and I am of the opinion that freedom of speech is so important that it should be a reserved right, inalienable and indelible.

That was a good essay. I liked it. What conclusions did you want me to draw from it?

Much like brlewis said in his response to the GP, no one said that RMS can't say what he thinks: he will not be hauled away to labor camp for saying it. However, the other topic of this discussion is that the rest of the community has the freedom to pass judgment on tactless people like RMS, which is exactly what's happening.

I see. Thank you.

Discretion does not imply constraint.

Freedom is the presence of choices. It is not the absence of people passing judgement on our choices.

Yeah I've never understood the controversy here. He viewed Jobs as an enemy to the cause, why should he be pretend to be upset that he's no longer doing harm?

Some idols you just don't criticise right after they died. That is an insult to their memory, and to whatever makes them an idol in the first place.

Steve Jobs was such an idol. His media-foo was impressive, even after he passed away. Every soul in the western world old enough to talk knew about his death at most 30 hours after his last breath. Therefore, you just don't criticize Steve jobs until next spring.

I know of another way of being a tactless jerk: criticizing a religion. It won't change the fact that there is almost certainly no God, though.

Edit: I am being sarcastic here. Let me rephrase:

> Some idols you just can't criticise right after they died without causing serious backlash.

> I know of another way of being perceived as a tactless jerk.

To be clear, Steve Jobs was a champion of Treacherous Computing, and there is no God. I suggest those I have just offended to turn on their brains. (I said "those I have just offended", not "those who disagree with my statement".)

Why? I don't own and I don't like Apple products. Most people I know don't own Apple products and they don't have any impact whatsoever.

I respect a lot of aspects about Jobs' life, but making a successful software and hardware company is no more important a milestone than any other. If anything, Stallman's legacy will probably be felt for much longer into the future.

I was being half sarcastic. I wanted to point out the religiosity around Apple. People read Stallman's statement, saw that it was about Steve Jobs doing bad things, and just shut down their brains. Some nearly accused Stallman of being happy about Job's death.

Of course those strong reactions are totally unjustified. And despite what pg seem to suggest above, Stallman is very probably justified in doing his comment: Steve Jobs is being a martyr, and martyrs are nearly always a good thing for the cause they defend (here, the locked-down model of the iPhone and the iPad).

The error of Stallman was purely strategic (or tactic). He didn't foresee that people wouldn't read what he wrote as he wrote it. He didn't foresee that they would quote him out of context. He didn't foresee the near-total lack of rationality of Apple fanboys.

The problem is, I don't know how I could have avoided those mistakes if I were Stallman.

> Every soul in the western world old enough to talk knew about his death at most 30 hours after his last breath.

So what? The same could be said about Muammar Gaddafi.

> I know of another way of being a tactless jerk: criticizing a religion

Criticizing a religion is innately tactless? There are certainly tactless ways of criticizing a religion that would make you out to be a jerk, but I'd think there are certainly ways of criticizing a religion without being a jerk.

Steve Jobs was really in no way whatsoever an idol to me. He was a well-known public figure, which made his death news. If rms wrote an email to steve's wife about how her husband was a horrible person and that he was glad he was gone, that would be incredibly rude and tactless. Commenting on his blog about how a public figure's death affects him and his movement which he cares very deeply amount is, imo, not.

>So what? The same could be said about Muammar Gaddafi.

Hopefully, you can see how Muamar Gaddafi and Steve Jobs differ. Gaddafi's death was a relief, Jobs was a loss, that should have been implicit, in his argument.

He seemed to be implying that because his death was such big news he was someone to admire. I was making the point that how famous your death is has nothing to do with how good of a person you are. Though the point is moot, since it seems he was being sarcastic.

> Jobs was a loss

The whole point here is that to RMS it was not a loss at all -- it was a gain that a large entity that opposes his movement has now been hopefully (hopefully to rms) weakened. Of course the loss of human life is a loss and all that stuff, but this isn't about Steve Jobs the person, it's about the influence he had on the world.

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