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RMS did a really poor job of explaining why closed source firmware is problematic to free software, I agree, and I'll explain better below. I also have some critique of activist language.

First, activist language is pretty hard for any human to listen to. Anyone that's been tackling the "long fight" of what they view as oppression has this map in their head of things that add up to their main point in life and cannot help but continually extrapolate it for people. On some topics, people eat this kind of language up. On others, it's rather dull, especially if the person using the language can't quickly connect relatable points for people. RMS was good at long-form broad thinking that was dealing with the issues at the time. He was pretty fuck all when it came to really explaining them in a digestible, conversation style manner.

As for why proprietary headphone firmware hurts free software: take some Bose noise cancelling headphones and try to connect them to something like a mainstream Linux distribution like PopOS and use them on Zoom. They'll work, but only in a low quality mode, or the audio receiver will work but not the microphone. Now do the same with Airpods, or use Airpods on an Android phone. Airpods will work and you'll get high fidelity audio, but they're constantly exhibiting weird disconnection behaviors. On Linux you'll get incredibly low fidelity audio. Proprietary drivers are at the source of all of this.

RMS came from a day where the pioneers of Linux and alternative operating systems weren't building them for servers. They were building them for users because Windows was expensive and the machines to run it on were more expensive. Oppression to someone like him, and many others, were linked to this and many other circumstances at the time. The idea that the optimizations of computing were available only to a few was utterly disasterous.

To connect the two ideas, product x which is proprietary works best on product y which is also proprietary. It's a system that reinforces itself and excludes or marginalizes the rest, which eroded the original mission of building optimized software that is collectively free enough for anyone in the world to use.

Somewhat ironically, a lot of people in this thread are complaining about diversity when really that's what most of these initiatives were born in.

>take some Bose noise cancelling headphones and try to connect them to something like a mainstream Linux distribution like PopOS and use them on Zoom. They'll work, but only in a low quality mode, or the audio receiver will work but not the microphone.

My Bose QC45 headphones work identically on all my hardware (Mac, Linux, and occasionally Windows). They can use both standard Bluetooth or a standard 3.5mm TRS connector, neither of which requires any special drivers. Although I've never had any Linux-specific issues, I would guess that if you're experiencing them it's due more to Linux's notoriously poor audio stack than the actual hardware, which conforms to industry standards.

>Now do the same with Airpods, or use Airpods on an Android phone. Airpods will work and you'll get high fidelity audio, but they're constantly exhibiting weird disconnection behaviors. On Linux you'll get incredibly low fidelity audio.

I've also done this to a limited extent (AirPods on Android), and did not notice anything unusual, aside from a few missing Apple-specific features (e.g. auto-device switching, which is not part of the Bluetooth protocol).

>To connect the two ideas, product x which is proprietary works best on product y which is also proprietary. It's a system that reinforces itself and excludes or marginalizes the rest

It is generally in the best interest of companies to produce goods usable by a maximal marketshare; willingly excluding customers and their money is usually not a good business strategy. This is why companies voluntarily conform to standards. The main exception to this is when standards inhibit the quality of the good. In that case, companies are willing to trade a smaller marketshare for a better user experience in that smaller market (e.g. AirPods' Apple-only features).

As an extreme example, consider cars. Parts are proprietary to a given model because each car is optimized for its specific market niche (size, appearance, performance, etc.), which requires all parts for a given model to be closely integrated. The engine of a Honda is not compatible with a Nissan, because engines and cars must be so tightly integrated that it would be an impossibly bad experience otherwise.

How would you feel if Google started building its websites to function significantly better in Chrome than in any other browser? (I guess is already happening to some extent... but not as egregiously as it could.) Because that's the same idea. We have Web standards, which all websites should use, just like we have wireless standards which all wireless hardware should use. Efficient implementation of the standard should be all that's required.

Why do we do this? Because it's better for individual large companies? No, it's not. We do it because following interoperable standards is better for everyone. Having tightly-integrated Apple products is nice, but having tightly-integrated everything is better for consumers, innovators, and small new companies.

Car analogies are not apt here. Cars and engines are physical things. Software is not.

>How would you feel if Google started building its websites to function significantly better in Chrome than in any other browser? (I guess is already happening to some extent... but not as egregiously as it could.) Because that's the same idea. We have Web standards, which all websites should use

If the proprietary Chrome-only extensions to web standards provided a dramatically better user experience, I would have no issues with this, as long as users are 100% free to choose whichever browser (and online services) they please, and as long as other companies were free to independently implement/reverse engineer these extensions.

I would only have a problem if Google abused a monopoly position to force users to use its products, à la Microsoft and Internet Explorer in the late 90s.

>Why do we do this? Because it's better for individual large companies? No, it's not.

It's almost always better for companies to maximize their marketshare, unless maximizing marketshare would compromise the quality of the product. The iPod was originally Mac only, and was a rather niche toy until Apple opened compatibility, at which point it became a global sensation. This was likely due to the fact that in 2001, when the iPod debuted, all Apple computers had a port fast enough to transfer gigabytes of music (FireWire, 400 Mb/s), while most non-Apple machines still had USB 1.0 (12 Mb/s), so a high capacity MP3 player simply would not have been a good user experience. It wasn't until USB 2.0 (480 Mb/s) became common a year or so later that a large MP3 player became a good experience on non-Apple machines, and Apple rationally decided to maximize its marketshare.

>Car analogies are not apt here. Cars and engines are physical things. Software is not.

You are correct that analogies to physical goods are imperfect; I was merely using them to point out how the experience of tight product integration can sometimes be more valuable to the user than interoperability. It all depends on the use case.

Not to be rude, but your vision is very exclusivity focused, which is at odds with the era of free software that RMS emerged from.

Chrome is very resource intensive. If I'm giving machines away to people to make computing "free" your description of an acceptable standard is not compatible with mine. Specialized machines, Chromebooks, now exist for this purpose but they're still arguably expensive and sacrifice other "free OS" capabilities and standards to make this possible.

On the note of Apple I didn't even bother mentioning them. Their whole business is exclusivity, incompatibility, and avoiding standards/sharing.

Today's free software is optimized for business congruency, which is another valid side of free software but I'd argue we've over indexed in this category at this point.

To some of your original points about PulseAudio I agree that it's old and shit for today's age. I think there's some WIPs that aim to replace it with a modern stack, but I haven't checked in a bit. That said, I'd also argue that Bose had to work with Microsoft and Apple to develop drivers for their headphones. I don't think it'd be much of a stretch for them to do that with the Linux community. I'm not blaming them for how shit Pulse is; I'm disappointed that the standards of audio are not shared so that developing one product that works everywhere is possible in that category as it is in other categories of computing. This is what free software organizations harping on standards do for everyone. They also do so mostly behind the scenes.

There's a place for talking about the viability of FOSS firmware for headphones and similar devices, but I'm sure we can both agree that on an airplane ride (omitted from parent response, but that's when it happened) is not the right time. The problem imo isn't the argument, it's where and when it was presented.

Most people on airplanes are, at least in my experience: half-tired, somewhat sleepy and vaguely annoyed due to all the annoyances and frustrations with getting through customs. Few people want to be subjected to angry rants at that point. RMS should at least have recognized that[0] this is the sort of rant that is best put on his website after the ride rather than at the person who just was wearing some headphones[1].

With RMS having placed himself as the de facto speaker for the FSF, this is an extremely bad look for them once this story got out and by extension Free Software as a whole[2] (and why, imo, he should've been moved to some sort of "guru" position long ago instead of being the public speaker).

[0]: Yes, I realize he's probably autistic. The counter I have to that is that autism isn't an excuse. It's an explanation and RMS has habitually rejected any attempts to understand that his behavior may be regarded as extremely rude according to everyone who has worked with him, which is why I still consider this to be a detriment to him as a person. Almost every autistic person I know is miles more understanding than RMS is in that their behavior might sometimes come across in ways they didn't intent to. RMS is full head-in-the-sand-I'm-always-right on this sort of thing whenever he's confronted.

[1]: Which probably would have made it a more useful argument too, since more people would've been aware of it as opposed to severely irritating a random individual on an airplane.

[2]: Not to dismiss the merits of FOSS on that, of course. There's plenty of other organizations that I would consider more useful advocates such as the FSFe and the SFC.

An autistic person may have difficulty reading social cues, but it's hard to imagine a clearer social cue than "this person is wearing a device for the express purpose of not listening to things".

> Yes, I realize he's probably autistic. The counter I have to that is that autism isn't an excuse. It's an explanation

It’s a disability.

> Almost every autistic person I know is miles more understanding than RMS is in that their behavior might sometimes come across in ways they didn't intent to.

It’s also a spectrum. Something that might be easy for an autistic person might be hard for another.

That said…

> and RMS has habitually rejected any attempts to understand that his behavior may be regarded as extremely rude according to everyone who has worked with him, which is why I still consider this to be a detriment to him as a person.

If this is true, then I can see your point.

> Anyone that's been tackling the "long fight" of what they view as oppression has this map in their head of things that add up to their main point in life and cannot help but continually extrapolate it for people.

Well said. This is a good point for any activist to keep in mind.

Good insight on "activist language", it's something I've been sensible (and irritated) more and more the last few years, but had trouble putting words on it.

I've had this experience myself, with RMS. I actually was asking if the FSF had the right to assert the copyleft on bison, and sign a document asserting that Bison's open licensing applied to bison - who had the right to assert the license, which was open, basically.

As a consultant for IBM. We were trying to USE bison, and this was when MS would chase every possible avenue to sue people for violation of copyright, so it was a big deal ... and had RMS been willing to assert that the copyleft applied to bison, that the FSF actually wrote the software and applied the copyleft to its code, IBM told me that it was willing to _defend the GPL in court_. For a signature, RMS would have had the 800-pound gorilla defending the GPL. (We were also going to make a donation to the FSF to help them along, although that wasn't part of "the deal" - it was, like, "hey, you do good stuff, we're planning on putting this in the project budget next because if we can use your stuff, that helps us a lot."

And RMS first off refused to say the copyleft was assigned to bison; it did, of course, everyone knew it, but we needed the legal affirmation or it was pointless. (I can claim that I can fly, everyone knows it, but unless I'm actually airborne at some point...) Then he asked for money (less than we'd talked about budgeting internally) ANYWAY, before we'd even brought it up, if memory serves. (It's been a long time.)

Just... a giant moment of jackassery.

> He spent the whole time telling me about software freedom and how my headphones were a symbol of oppression or some such.

Easily solvable by telling him “I don’t care” and placing your headphones on your head and activating the noise cancellation in his full view then ignoring him for the rest of the flight.

You do realize that this is exactly what most people and corporations have done to RMS and the FSF for many years now? Got tired of his inappropriate antics, brash manner, and said "I don't care" and stuck their fingers in their ears.

And that's exactly why RMS should take a back seat. FSF believes the principles are important and so they should be communicated in a way that is most palatable so others can hear them and interact with them on a personal and professional level.

Until that happens, most will just keep ignoring the ever-irritating RMS and in-turn FSF as they would an annoying neighbor on a flight.

It’s definitely a tough hill to climb already without your primary evangelist being tactless ass.

How about attacking an argument instead of a man?

There's a reason every famous civil rights protest in the last century or so started with someone carefully chosen to stage it. A poor quality advocate can get in the way of change.

I can't think of a lot of em that moderated their views towards a middleground vis a vis the status quo or were not on some fronts called dogmatic so I find this a bit of a lacking comparison.

For example:

"First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."

Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."

As the top comment notes, the FSF is not about an argument, it is a about a man. In that case it seems fair to hold the debate on the same topic FSF advocates are so passionate about.

>the FSF is not about an argument, it is a about a man

we're still talking about the Free Software Foundation, correct? I don't know if I can agree with this angle.

It's like saying Linux is about Linus Torvalds. Sure, he was and is a very influential part of the project, but it has grown far, far past him.

Agreed — supporting free/libre software is invariably made less attractive to most because of the people* shouting loudest about it.

* some of, at least

Oh man this hits hard, I used to be such a strong advocate for Free Software, copyleft, open firmware and drivers. I worked on FOSS projects, was an actual "member" of the FSF during a time when I really didn't have the money to donate.

The dream just like… died. There was so much pointless drama, public opinion (tbh rightfully) turned against RMS and the GPL, the banner flown by people who believed in the mission, just became another license. It was one of my first sad "don't meet your heroes" moments.

I don't even bother licensing my work under the L/GPL anymore because nobody cares and it just makes my code less useful to folks.

>A lot of his behavior is a consequence of taking his ideas to their logical conclusion.

Any philosophy taken to an extreme leads to zealotry. I don't think Stallman is special in that regard. If I'm in layover I don't wanna hear anyone's elevator pitch, full stop. I'm miserable enough as is after being legally frisked and fighting airport traffic to get to a gate an hour early despite the airlines inevitably delaying the flight themselves by 2 hours.

We can learn what NOT to do while embracing the aspects that made him so empassioned about this stuff to begin with.