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I hope he’s able to manage it well (since the prognosis is good) and is around for a lot longer.

We need absolutists like him who go to extremes and are known widely. For a few moments, leave aside his personality and what people have said about his behavior or hygiene. If he hadn’t been there, our world would’ve been a lot different and a lot poorer. A visionary is what he was and is.

While the Free part of FOSS is being substituted by “(just) open source” and “source available”, while DRM goes deeper into our lives, and while everything is becoming a “hosted service”, one can only hope for (and put efforts into) going back to the ideals he proposed and pushing back on the elements that control us and seek to do even more so.

We all don’t have to be absolutists (it comes at the cost of convenience, which most people prefer), but there are enough of such people around the world as far as FOSS is concerned. Whenever I see FOSS meetups and people connecting over it, that’s something I’m grateful for and wholeheartedly support (though I’m not one of them).

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I feel similarly. While I absolutely can't and won't operate under the severe restrictions that an ideologically pure stance on software freedom ala Stallman would impose, I'm glad that there are some people, like Stallman himself, who take it to those extremes, tirelessly advocate for improvement and thus move the needle towards a better middle ground for everyone.

It's a lot more understandable if you consider the state of computing he experienced while growing up:

Programs were way simpler, and shipping the source code in paper was the de facto way of distribution.

It's not like he was a wacko around his peers. He just created what seemed a logical step from that.

I'm just sad that there's no young people to pass the torch for when the time comes and the founding fathers are no more.

> I'm just sad that there's no young people to pass the torch for when the time comes and the founding fathers are no more.

I wish I can be one of those young people who can be a worthy successor to Richard Stallman. I already am to a great extent, preferring FLOSS whenever possible (with an unfortunate exemption for video games, especially many PC and all console games).

My primary issue is now trying to find like people who are also into FLOSS as much as I am, and they're not as common as tech illiterate people are. Maybe someone can advise me on how I can get started (online or local around the Houston, TX area).

I'm also a big FLOSS advocate to the point where I'll use GIMP and kdenlive (which I feel are great software) even though it would be far, far easier for me to use something non-free.

An important thing RMS did was producing good software along with his advocacy. For example, even though it's inferior to vim (joking), it was and is a killer app. What RMS didn't write himself, he helped to drive and organize, and ended up as a force behind some of the most important tools we still use today, like gcc.

For RMS it was pretty obvious where the needs were. Today it's much less so, but if you want to make a big difference and start a name for yourself, I would probably look for areas where there aren't great FLOSS options and try to take on one of those. It will be challenging no doubt.

My best advice (take with a grain of salt as I'm not the next RMS which is where you want to be), keep preaching the gospel of FLOSS! Help people find and use software (and hardware) that respects their freedom! Pay attention to users that you teach, and identify usability issues that hurt adoption and work to fix them. Be "that guy" that people call when they have a problem and need a solution.

> I'm just sad that there's no young people to pass the torch for when the time comes and the founding fathers are no more.

I feel like this is a bit of a misperception. Does this historically happen?

Yes, every institution is default dead without constant recruitment of young people to the cause. Most things won’t make it past a generation because everyone fails to focus on how to pass it on.

It’s not too late by any means, but it’s looking very bleak for Free software with most kids’ computing being smartphones and cloud services via chromebooks.

Indeed. The FSF is a very worthy cause. If it is true there is a lack of young people involved I'd look for reasons why amongst things like "is it a pleasant space to cooperate in", "are people accepting of new people"? I never had anything to do with FSF directly, but whenever I dealt with people involved with heavily "politically charged" projects like guix, guile, linux-libre and few others in addition to very nice people I always encountered complete idiots that would try to chastise me for example for having the audacity to report problems running a nVidia gpu. Or one person told me flat out he will not answer any of my questions regarding a programming language syntax because I admitted to be making a non-Libre package for my own use. It is 100% bonkers. You may say so what, it's just one person. Every community has idiots, right? Yes, correct, but in case of these projects I had dealings with the toxicity is rather bad to the point that only very dedicated people stay. This also means the communities are tiny and it's much more difficult to get help when you're just starting out.

I think that's why we don't see many new people flocking to FSF projects.

Honestly this is a sign that times are relatively good. Most people of any stripe have little desire to engage in politics for its own sake, and FSF is fundamentally a political entity. When the only people participating are the radicals and crazies who make it their whole identity/want to play revolutionary, that means all the normal/reasonable people have better things to do. It's when things are so bad that the normal/reasonable people are forced to participate that you get effective political organizations.

Perhaps FSF has solved all the problems the community at large deems as worth solving.

Yes, people on the extreme ends treat FOSS etc almost as a religion. Humans are wont to get very tribal, unfortunately.

wow, that's wild. I get the appeal of living in the world you want instead of the world that exists, but at the end of the day that approach is self-defeating.

It makes me wonder if a new org isn't what we need. I love the FSF and feel they did a tremendous service to the world, but the religious extremism limits their appeal only to true die-hard believers.

I would not say it's all doom and gloom. I just founded a FOSS/Linux club at my university. There are going to be some kids who are so interested in technology that they go down a rabbit hole of different communities, open source included.

I definitely agree that the general trend towards less advanced technology will harm that though (some 18yo's don't even know how files work because they just use Mac's Finder), but some cohort of the generation will _always_ be interested in digging deeper.

It perhaps doesn't help that the general attitude of someone in FOSS/tech in general could be perceived by the average person as elitist or exclusionary - I try my hardest to challenge these notions.

(Let's see if one of the other founding members of the new club will read this comment)

> some 18yo's don't even know how files work because they just use Mac's Finder

Huh? Finder is the macos equivalent of explorer.exe and it's the GUI for the file system. I assume you're taking about Spotlight which searches the entire file system and the internet much like the Windows start menu.

Anyway people have been making claims like this for as long as computers have been around. Smart people use Spotlight and the start menu because it requires fewer keystrokes than typing full paths or clicking 10 times to navigate a directory tree with Finder. It would be stupid to avoid using the fastest tools available

I mean people who are literally unable to navigate directories because they drop all their folders on the desktop, and use exclusively Spotlight to find these files. Of course it makes sense to use Spotlight - I use the equivalent on Linux - but I still know how to navigate a directory, unzip a zip file, etc when many people simply never learn that.

I refuse to believe that a smaller proportion of people know how to navigate a directory and unzip a zip file today compared to any prior year. A lot of people didn't know how to use computers at all a decade ago because they didn't have any kind of computer at home, not even a smart phone

When I TAed a CS1 course for a handful of years, I'd definitely say easily like 1/4 of the class would also end up needing a general primer of basic computer usage.

Ultimately, some people are just not interested in technology or using it efficiently.

It peaked and is in the decline. The number of households with desktops/laptops is in the decline. Fully native tablet+phone is the way a bunch of kids are growing up. Only computer usage in our local public schools is chromebooks.

I don't believe you. A quick google search finds several charts showing monotonic increase and zero charts that show a decrease.

https://www.ibisworld.com/us/bed/percentage-of-households-wi...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/748551/worldwide-househo...

The whole "charging for distribution is fine but charging for development is wrong" thing is what keeps me well away from any kind of involvement with FOSS groups.

I don't believe anyone ever said that you can't charge for development. The only issue is that you're not allow allowed to limit people's right to distribute it. Once you already developed it and have given access to one person, it's up to them whether to pass it forward.

It's just like if you tell someone a joke. You can still claim credit for coming up with it, but not to stop its propagation.

In particular, you can still make money as a developer by asking for it upfront, whether from an employer, or patrons, or early access, or whatever model. Similar to how Netflix might pay someone upfront to develop a stand-up comedy special

I don't get where you get that idea of not charging for development.

That said, I basically never seen anyone charge for a distribution. I figured that people think there's no point, so they just don't.

Now, charging for development? That absolutely happens.

Exactly. It isn't really possible to discuss this without "copyright" and that is why RMS focused on that topic. Conventional commercial copyright in practice is making a monopoly of redistribution and then burdening the distribution cost with additional cost-recovery and/or profit-taking.

I charge for development of (F)OSS. It's my salary. My employer likewise charges the patrons/funding agencies. But we get paid once for the effort, like any usual labor contract. We don't try to get paid again when our past work products are copied.

In the old days, paying a distribution cost was more common for free software, when it actually took effort such as writing and shipping media. This handled the case where someone asked for a distribution, so that sharing did not become a financial burden. It's a mostly obsolete concept now with pervasive internet and many low cost or free hosting options to put content out there at essentially zero marginal cost to deliver copies.

> I'm just sad that there's no young people to pass the torch for when the time comes and the founding fathers are no more.

yes there are; but also not really.

due to my age cohort I'm see my self as this "next generation" software scientist/engineer who is aware and believes in FOSS and "liberty minded software";

I suppose most of use are millennials but the whole generation-label stuff is not accurate so maybe in the USA this next gen of people are a bit older but in other poorer countries they're younger???

in any case I think a lot of younger engineers got swayed away from the FSF/GNU ideological stuff by means of 'being pragmatic' which is just a consequence of when the open source movement distinguished itself as different from the free software.

I think the impact of this may have something to do with leidenfrost's appraisal that there's no next-gen to pass the torch to.

it seems like us millennials do not rally, we don't come together into any kind of social movement or dunno.

> I'm just sad that there's no young people to pass the torch for when the time comes and the founding fathers are no more.

TBH I would put Drew DeVault in this category.

Ironically Drew DeVault shared this thought about Stallman on his blog earlier this year:

> Fuck Richard Stallman and his enablers, his supporters, and the Free Software Foundation’s leadership as a whole. Shame on you. Shame on you.

(He uses the word fuck in that post five times.)

Drew has done some great work in OSS but he has a history of going after people he doesn't like in a very vicious way. You can't really behave like this and be a leader. A leader needs to unite not divide. For all the criticisms leveled against Stallman he saved most of his vitriol for the enemies of OSS. If everything he wrote had been as personal and expletive-laden as what Drew writes the FSF would not have gotten very far.

IMO, a good leader is someone who can set his ego aside and turn the other cheek against such vitriol thrown at them. It seems like Stallman does a good job at this.

Yeah, I don't know if I would put him in a leadership position, but at least you can trust him to carry forward the FOSS ideals.

It’s commonly said that his inspiration was from wanting to improve a printer driver but couldn’t because it was proprietary.

I feel like back in the day there would have been so many easy wins for modifications. Like how people used to root Android to add screenshot capability.

These days modern software is so extremely sophisticated and refined that I can’t think of anything I could improve for say iOS.

Still love foss, but the idea of “it’s open source, you can improve it yourself any time” has worn off for me.

I think you might not be considering personal bugfixes (X interaction is great for the common denominator, annoying to me), long-term support (I want to use my device securely in 2045), or custom features (I want to be able to do X, but only 0.001% of people care so Apple doesn't). I use Android, so I can't be more specific. I have heard the unverified complaint that Apple sometimes slows down old devices as new ones are released, which would be impossible in FOSS.

Apple is ultimately going to work in their own best interest. Their particular brand aligns that with the consumer fairly well, but there will be disconnects.

I don't really understand this. You plan to single handedly replace the entire OS and security teams to maintain the OS on your phone for a decade? How will you update the kernel when the proprietary driver blobs stop being maintained?

I expect more people than just me are interested in reducing tech turnover or using old tech in the hobbyist space, ie. not single handedly. And yeah, as the sibling says, if we're relying on proprietary drivers, we're not really FOSS- my fantasy world doesn't just apply to Apple.

Yes, it would be very hard. But today it is impossible, so very hard is hardly a complaint you can make in comparison.

Did my other two examples seem more reasonable?

No. They want iOS to be open source, because they want to be able to modify a few bits of source code and use their modified OS for their personal use, and then keep pulling updates from upstream forever after that. Like a small fork.

Perhaps the more generous take is that, with FLOSS software, you don't have to go it alone. My Pinephone Pro will not be running security fixes I write myself. But entirely because of its open nature, it doesn't need to - it will continue to recieve updates for years and years. For once, the hardware of a cell phone is likely to die before the software.

If it gets the support of the right people who know how to write such security software and have an interest in maintaining it, sure. But that's the reason many open source initiatives fall short of proprietary. It's either based on the altruistic whims of a few particular talents, or some company is paying to have them maintain it. And we know the latter is fleeting.

The caveat is that sometimes an initiative can be funded by charity or bounty to keep interest, but relying on generosity for 99.99% of projects is a fool's errand.

I imagine their ideal open source phone OS wouldn't include any proprietary driver blobs, but what do I know...

It's "commonly said" because it's true.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt

via

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/201cthe-printer-story201...

There are several OS level things I wish I could change/override on iPhone: ability to share screen during a video call, ability to control how certain Bluetooth devices pair automatically, ability to throttle apps that I know are abusing the CPU and costing me battery.

You can share screen, Shortcuts supports Bluetooth automation triggers, turn off Background Apps or let the CPU race to sleep.

> These days modern software is so extremely sophisticated and refined that I can’t think of anything I could improve for say iOS.

> Still love foss, but the idea of “it’s open source, you can improve it yourself any time” has worn off for me.

If you look at major MacOS or iOS releases, you will often see new features being advertised that were copied from FOSS systems that experimented with them and proved them out often many years beforehand.

That is to say: iOS might have the edge on QA, but if you want to have impact and shape the future of how people use computers, contributing in the community is still a good way to do this. And in fact, commercial development tends to rely on this talent pool for survival, as companies do a comparatively poor job in educating new talent. It's where you get people with "job experience" in doing certain things.

When it comes to large sophisticated software the goal is not so much to improve it one self. Rather it is the knowledge that any anti-patterns will be removed by the community if it ever get added. Most of the time the community will not even need to remove anti-pattern from open source projects, since companies know that adding anti-pattern is just wasted developer time.

People are still rooting Android and adding thousands of modifications to it.

You don't root OSes, you root devices. I learned that the hard way when I got a Samsung Z-Fold 4 and learned that the US version isn't rootable.

All this terminology is muddied and often misused. The whole term is supposed to refer to getting access to the root user, which is definitely an OS-level thing. One thing people often don't remember also is that gaining root on your phone and unlocking the bootloader are not only different things, but entirely separate things. You can gain root in your vendor ROM without being able to unlock the bootloader (common case on Amazon tablets), and you can install LineageOS in your phone after unlocking the bootloader but you still won't have root access in the OS unless you do an extra step, setting up Magisk or similar. You also have to re-set-up Magisk after every LineageOS update, which often means once a week if you do all the OTA updates in a timely manner. Gaining root is usually the easier thing and the less useful thing. It doesn't help much with getting a nearer-to-AOSP experience. You can remove some apps but there are still limits to what can be done without just flashing a different ROM with less crap in it.

When picking a phone I like to see if it's on the LineageOS devices page (you bring up a good point that different variations of the same model aren't equal, definitely watch out for that), as that means both that the bootloader is unlockable and that someone else is already maintaining a ROM for it, and hopefully will for years to come. If I just go after the shiny new hardware, chances are the bootloader is locked and it will never be unlocked, generating e-waste.

Android is not proprietary.

https://source.android.com/

That makes it rather easier...

You linked to AOSP, not Android. AOSP doesn't have things like the Google Play Store; the shipped image is substantially different and isn't necessarily open-source just because it contains open-source components - Windows contains BSD networking code but that doesn't make Windows open-source.

Sure, but the vast majority of those mods and alternative distributions are based on the sources that are available.

It is a bit like a Linux distro running Steam. Yeah, there are proprietary bits, but the FOSS part naturally happens on the FOSS parts.

You know what the "A" in AOSP stands for, right? :-)

All I'm saying is that there's a big difference in jailbreaking an OS when most of the source code of that OS is publicly available for study and experiment. Surely that is not a controversial statement?

Our young people only seem to care about witch hunting for perceived slights without proper evidence. We basically have a mob frothing at the mouth for its next potential target

Human history seems to show that all humans love forming into a single mob to attack some perceived "other." This is a habit which has existed since long before the current "mob" of young people, or the internet, or the Boomers...

The internet makes it really easy to purity test a community into an echo chamber. Many people willingly subject themselves to these purity tests to fit in and be part of the community, which is also why we see negative communities tending toward a downward spiral (like any of the 4chan communities) as people walk step by step to more extremism in their views.

What can we expect when most of the internet is paid for by abusing people's vices. The "whales" of the mobile gaming industry exist in other industries too. The majority of alcohol is purchased by a relatively small percentage of consumers - meaning the alcohol industry's main source of income is people so addicted they drink as much as they can, regardless of consequences.

When your money is made because people can't help themselves, that's blood money. It's not surprising that a society which tolerates (and encourages!) companies to pursue blood money would likewise have other moral failings, including a tendency to separate into tribes and attack different tribes.

Well, RMS tirelessly advocates for his beliefs, but sometimes his beliefs are regressive and outdated. In particular I remember a debate perhaps 8-10 years ago when the gcc team wanted to expose more info from the compiler back end to enable better support for editor integrations and similar tools, because gcc simply couldn't compete with LLVM in that department. IIRC RMS stepped in with a unilateral decision blocking the effort, saying that it wasn't a big deal anyway because editor integration wasn't an important feature. RMS, a guy who (AFAIK) hasn't done any serious coding in 30 years.

Decisions like this have definitely ended up harming the movement more than helped ultimately. Him refusing to have gcc support that ended up pushing a lot of people to other compilers (llvm) and have sidelined gcc in many spaces.

I thought it was actually worse than that, that he wanted it to be harder to integrate with so that proprietary software couldn't easily hook in.

Speaking of stallman, the doom community is still alive and going strong all these years later. Dooms source was released under gpl a long time ago and the modding scene is incredible.

Check out doomworld some time to see what’s been going on. Unbelievably good level design and mods all over the place, custom source ports everywhere, thousands of maps, etc

I don't think his position is extreme, just impractical to implement for the time being.

Time and time again showed me why free and open source software is important, but they keep lagging behind their competitors in term of funding.

I just don't understand the severe misunderstanding that results in one thinking that what Stallman advocates would impose severe restrictions. I'd love you to think about what you mean so I can see where you're going wrong. It's honestly that far out from my understanding of reality I can't begin to comprehend what you're thinking.

If you actually tried and really can't see how living by the gospel of Stallman would impose severe restrictions on how you use your computer then I'm afraid I can't help you. Still, a few examples to illustrate

I wouldn't be able to use Word attachments (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html)

I wouldn't be able to use Windows (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/upgrade-windows.html)

I wouldn't be able to package useful non-free software for my Linux distro (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/compromise.html)

I would have to call the Linux distro a "GNU/Linux distro" (https://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html)

I would have to ideally stop, but at least reduce, my usage of WhatsApp, Facebook, Slack, etc. (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/saying-no-even-once.html)

These are just all-in-all minor examples I could find in a couple of minutes on gnu.org. I remember reading much more radical takes by Stallman and his companions, but would have to spend more time searching for them.

Do you understand there's a difference between advocacy and imposition? Stallman recommends you don't do those things because they all surreptitiously undermine your freedom to use your computer.

During the civil rights movement black people were encouraged to not use the buses while segregation was in place. You'd be the guy complaining about how difficult it would be to get around without the bus.

Sometimes the way forward involves going back to fix the wrongs of the past. People like Stallman see the world from a higher dimension. He isn't living on flatland like you and me. There is no world where proprietary software and computing freedom can coexist. If there was you can bet Stallman would be advocating the shortest path to such a world.

I don't think we are necessarily in disagreement here, so I'm not sure how to respond. I never said that Stallman was exerting power over me to get me to live by his standards, just that I would have to change and restrict the way I use software and which software I use if I (voluntarily) followed all his recommendations. As I've said in my original post I even respect his commitment and perseverance in this regard and think they lead to a better outcome for everyone, but I'm unwilling to follow his example out of laziness and convenience.

I agree, he has been overall a great benefit to society.

He once got irritated with me in an email because I wouldn’t do something (release one of my old Lisp books under a FSF document license), but I happily accepted that irritation because I understand where he was coming from.

Richard, get well.

None of the criticisms I have of the guy are the sort of thing where him dying could actually improve the world. He's no vicious and influential religious firebrand wishing hurricanes on gay people. I hope he comes though it okay.

The idealists had it right about global warming too. It's our own incapability to be idealists that will inevitably and ultimately bring about the worst case scenario for global warming.

The idealists have it right today.

Global warming is one ecological problem out of dozens and we'll economically outscale it even if we don´t do anything special about it. Damage to human health and infrastructure plus spending in adaptation will be a steady drag that will be much slower than our increasing ability to withstand its effects.

In the meantime, we have tons of global and local issues caused by human activity that have next to nothing to do with global warming: destruction of natural habitats; invasive species; overfishing; plastics; toxic and/or long life chemicals/medicines... We have a couple of resource issues coming up: cobalt, helium, rare earths; hydrocarbs; hell even copper might become a problem soon-ish... We are faced with the effects of being able to reliably control our own reproduction, a revolution that we're absolutely not ready for as a species and that requires us to rethink a 100.000 years old societal structure pretty much from scratch. We will soon have the technology to concentrate power and security into the hands of an ever-shrinking minority pretty much to the point that any violent rebellion of any amount of normal people will fail. Again that's a first for any social species.

> We will soon have the technology to concentrate power and security into the hands of an ever-shrinking minority pretty much to the point that any violent rebellion of any amount of normal people will fail.

This isn't new. Read up on the dark ages, and how Gutenberg ended them with the printing press. As technologists, the best thing we can do is figure out how to build technology that scales down enough to be wielded by individuals. That includes education and media distribution technologies.

Also, climate change models that estimate economic damage project annual damage from extreme weather exceeding global GDP in a few decades. Humanity will probably survive, but its unclear that anything resembling the modern economy will.

I'm a bit worried about the health of the GPL ecosystem. GPL 3 is basically an anti-TiVo and (now) anti-Apple license, but it leaves giant loopholes for Google and other service providers.

The whole point of the GPL was to empower users, and it's pretty clearly failing at that. SaaS providers provide access to GPL software, but users can't decide which version to run, or move their data, or even use an old version of the software if the new one comes with unreasonable restrictions, surveillance clauses, or unreasonable price tags. At this point, FOSS isn't even free-as-in-beer for most people.

On top of that, Red Hat has basically said they're not going to abide by the GPL any more. They're taking third party code, modifying it, distributing binaries, and if you exercise your rights under the GPL, then they'll stop giving you access to the code or the binaries.

Ironically, BSD and Apache licenses seem to be better at preserving user freedom at this point. They allow commercial distribution on hardware and as a SaaS. GPL 3 forces *aaS business models in practice.

I hope RMS makes a quick recovery, but I'm pretty bummed about how the GPL has played out at this point.

The solution is simple: don't pay for SaaS products. And that's if you consider it a problem. When email was created, you didn't care what the remote mail server's software was, as long as it conformed to the protocol, you're good.

That's not a solution, and it's certainly not simple.

For one thing, it would mean that I'd have to pull my kids out of school, pull my money out of the bank and cancel all of my utilities.

Heck, I'd need the equivalent of a degree in tax accounting just to avoid being jailed by the IRS, since I wouldn't be able to use tax software. (Not that this would matter, since I have to use *aaS stuff to pay my mortgage and insurance and collect my paychecks, so my taxes would be simpler next year.)

Even if I somehow managed to connect to the Internet without indirectly paying for a SaaS, I wouldn't be able to browse it in practice without agreeing to ToS contracts from companies I haven't even heard of.

Don't agree with the cloudflare, google and aws ToS agreements? Try blocking all their servers (since continuing to use the services implies agreeing to continuously-updated ToS terms). If you succeed, you'll find that the internet doesn't work at all. You can't even use email normally, since it's unclear what addresses get routed through which service providers, and what terms you have to agree with to "use" their SMTP services.

You definitely should not send your kids to public school; that's crazy.

Anyway, as for the rest, you can pay mortgage by check in the US. No software required.

You can also file your taxes by paper.

As far as connecting to the internet, Stallman somehow manages it, I'm sure you can sort it out.

> You definitely should not send your kids to public school; that's crazy.

The private schools, supplementary education and home school resources I know of all operate web sites, including online registration, emails with parents, and so on. The Amish fought this battle in the 1950's and lost badly. The compromise was that Amish kids don't have to go to high school (whether that's private, public, or home-schooling):

https://groups.etown.edu/amishstudies/social-organization/ed...

> Anyway, as for the rest, you can pay mortgage by check in the US. No software required.

To process the check, my bank has to have an ACH backend. That's a software service. I can't run my own, and it's likely using GPL software.

> You can also file your taxes by paper.

The IRS does not accept cash unless you call them first (requires a phone, which is a service), or pay at a retail partner (likely also requires use of some sort of service or agreement to a ToS. Plus, payments are limited to $1000.): https://web.archive.org/web/20230514105205/https://www.irs.g...

Also, I don't think there's any way to get them to mail you your refund in cash.

How do you suggest downloading and printing IRS forms and reading the directions explaining how to fill them out (and which forms you need) without using their website (and therefore third-party services)?

> As far as connecting to the internet, Stallman somehow manages it, I'm sure you can sort it out.

The last time I checked, he borrowed internet access from universities and strangers. He slept on couches to avoid agreeing to hotel contracts, but I think ultimately ended up compromising his principles by purchasing commercial airline tickets.

Also, I'm not a celebrity, so it would be harder for me to get random people to let me sleep on their couch.

>Stallman somehow manages it, I'm sure you can sort it out.

How does he do that? Even Google didn't want to take the time to battle ISPs.

I'm worried about that but also feel like GPL 4 needs an anti-AI clause. I don't want code I'm written fed into a machine that writes code that doesn't respect user freedom.

Are you suggesting Stallman should create a new kind of licence for SaaSes?

Isn't that what AGPL is for?

"We need absolutists like him who go to extremes and are known widely."

But what is he known for, outside tech circles, if he is known at all?

When you want to deliver a message, it matters a lot, how you deliver it.

I'd bet there will be a blockbuster movie about this guy within 10 years of him dying and it'll be in the pop culture, and maybe even stoke a temporary privacy / freedom focus for a while in common consciousness.

Unfortunately the world doesn't know how to really appreciate people as much when they're alive for some personality types.

I'll take the other side of that bet.

Agreed, but only because of the word "blockbuster," as there will be approximately zero of those within the 10 years (at least) the GP is proposing.

I don't know for sure what the movie business will look like in 10 years, but one possibility is that everyone is able to create their own movies just by describing them, and a small number will say some variant of, "Give me a biopic of this Richard Stallman guy. Base it on his wikipedia entry and whatever else you know about him. Make it factual but an action neo-noir; you know what I like. Probably starring an amalgam of Bogart and Mitchum, the rest you can just make up."

Hammering the under on # of blockbuster Richard Stallman biopics is free money.

I mean, there are multiple Snowden films. I guess it depends on if you need it to be Oppenheimer levels of budget to be "blockbuster" or not.

I would think waaaay more people have heard of Snowden than of RMS. If a movie about RMS will get made, than in the shape of a crowdfunded community project.

Well, yea. Because he metaphorically died in terms of US politics. It's one of the few bipartisan issues that sticks out like a sore thumb to the public eye.

I hope it's far in the future, but we'll see how the media spins it when Stallman dies. They can easily sell him up as some Godfather of computers. Or it can just be a small whimper in the corner of HN. I'd still bet on something closer to the former, but it's not a sure bet.

Nick Offerman as Richard Stallman.

Yes.

I think you're vastly over indexing in how many people in our circles know about him.

I'd bet less than 10% of professional developers could say who he is, and that a tiny portion of the population has any clue.

There are probably thousands of similarly important/influential people in various subfields that we have never heard of, because they're not our Subfield, and I highly doubt any of those would get a biopic.

I keep hoping for a Silicon Valley style dramedy about the open source movement, starring Donal Logue as Stallman and Nick Offerman as ESR.

His likeness will be portrayed by a proprietary AI.

Nah, the world only really cares to hear about techie stories if they make a few billion for themselves.

There are phases in which change happens: Stallman's preaching to people who can actually make free software (eg, people you might find on HN) has accomplished a huge amount of capacity building. He's tremendously good at encouraging it, and always has been. That provides the raw material for people who are perhaps a little more adoption focused (and apt) which is work that can't happen if there's no capacity.

Well, I am also good at making software, share the goal of a world where everyone fully controls their devices - yet I am appalled by many things around him.

Mostly the "superior" ethical stance. You do things this (my) way, then it is ethical and you love freedom or you are not ethical and don't want freedom.

Sorry, but I just have some different opinions about some things, but I rather feel not like working together with people who consider me lower. So the result is not cooperation but lot's of fragmentation in the free software/open source world. I do not think that helped the common cause. Otherwise we would not be where we are. Lots of open source and free software for tech people - everything closed down for ordinary people.

The ego of anons who are "also good at making software", try to minimize Stallman, then step back into anonymity is hilarious.

You're comparing yourselves to a guy who has changed the face of software and privacy, probably forever- his license is quoted to be one of the most important decisions in Linux by Torvalds himself.

> Lots of open source and free software for tech people - everything closed down for ordinary people.

It just wouldn't get made. Software would be worse without OSS because there would be no fire under Microsoft's ass

Maybe just look at some data, how often the GPL is used in new projects and how often MIT or alike.

And how often projects gets reimplemented because people and organisations don't want to have to deal with copyleft.

That was my point, not comparing my hacker skills with RMS which I do not recall having done with any word. I just said, I won't work together with people of your attitude. And I know I am not the only one, see above.

> how often the GPL is used in new projects and how often MIT or alike.

That's strictly about businesses not willing to give back in the way the GPL forces you to. It's nothing to do with how RMS behaves.

No, that's not what it is about. I certainly don't choose permissive licenses based on how RMS behaves (that would be stupid), but I also don't choose them because I think businesses shouldn't give back. I choose permissive licenses because I believe that the GPL is hypocritical in claiming to be about freedom, yet placing limits on the freedom of those who use the code. I believe that freedom must include the freedom to do even those things I disagree with personally.

You probably don't think that's a worthwhile ideal, and fine. I'm not here to convince you of my ideals. But your assertion as to the reason behind the increasing prominence of permissive licenses is overly reductive and not true.

>I believe that freedom must include the freedom to do even those things I disagree with personally.

In an ideal world sure. But I'm guessing Stallman made this license precisely so people can't "do whatever they want", which from a business standpoint is taking that code, modifying it in-house, and closing it off. Prevent a tragedy of the commons, so to speak.

Stallman didn't approach this as some idealist of "we make great code and everyone will share and progress society". Partly because tbf: open source was a lot harder to doiin his time. He came from an angle of trying to combat proprietary software. That's why he didn't make the MIT license (even if it preceded him, I'm not sure).

I realize all that. I disagree with it (or else I would be using the GPL), but that really wasn't my point. My point is that there exist people who use permissive licenses because it fits their ideals better, not because they are corporations trying to capture profit.

Sure, but Stallman was focusing on corporations. A small project isn't going to be modifying much of a GPL library to begin with, so it's less work to document their changes. So GPL wouldn't be as hostile to a small project as a corporation.

> your assertion as to the reason behind the increasing prominence of permissive licenses is overly reductive

Possibly. The push to use MIT/BSD from businesses, however, is very much real. To mention one, Apple methodically purged their OS of pretty much anything GPL. Most businesses involved in opensource insist that everything should be MIT/BSD, and absolutely nothing should even smell of GPL. They certainly don't do it because of philosophical differences.

No, it also is about people wanting their software to be used by everyone, including buisness, without limitations. That can have selfish reasons like wanting money of buisness people, but can also have idealistic reasons.

Not everyone is a fan of enforcing freedom, as that is a contradiction to some.

Like I said, different opinions. Freedom etc. Not accepted by RMS and co I know. Which is why I will continue to stay away from you.

GPL software can be used and modified by businesses. There's absolutely nothing preventing that, except the business being more lawyers than brains.

Yes but some companies think they need trade secrets and or licence fees. And GPL companies somehow have not replaced them. So they maybe have a point in todays capitalistic world?

I mean, how many articles and blogs are there about how to make money with foss and how many desperation and frustration is around that topic? How many games exist, that are donation funded?

I mean, please tell me, I want to publish a game, how could I make money with it with the GPL?

Selling it to only one person, who then can publish the code?

Having the code open, but serve ads or ingame purchases, rewarding addictive behavior? Sounds not so ethical either.

That leaves only donations and traditionally people do not value things they get for free. Some do and I hope their number will grow. But as of status quo the majority does not. Some GPL games I know make money, because they sell at steam and the users do not know they could also download it. Is that really ethical? What other GPL buisness modells exists?

A game is not a professional software, people would be willing to buy support contracts for.

I know how you might make money. You build a game. Maybe its fun and ripe for mods like minecraft. Open source it under GPL. Build a community of hackers/gamers who want to learn and collaborate. Have an awesome collection of mods for your game. Once you build a name for yourself, take donations or release a new game or talk at conferences.

Soo, assuming I build something like Minecraft, something that made the developer millions (I think over 100) via the conventional way.

And your proposal for how to make money with such a moneymaker game and the GPL is eventually down the years take on donations and talk at conferences? Was that irony? Then I missed it. Because the context was someone above claimed that it is only the stupid lawers fault, that companies reject the gpl.

I also hate the "make a name for yourself" angle. I guess even amongst programmers there will be people "working for exposure".

Nah, by that point I may as pitch to some billionaire studio and make a hefty salary that way. Or you know, sell your IP for actual millions if it's that valuable. If "exposure" is the alternate currency I'll happily sell out. I'm not my game IP.

If you don't like the idea, you don't have to do it. I mean you're making games. There's not much money in that to begin with.

>I mean you're making games. There's not much money in that to begin with.

I know you mentioned Minecraft, but it's not 2010 anymore. That "poor" indie creator sold off the game for 2.5b dollars and it seems like he still got the short end of the stick given how big the game is.

I'm fine with open source games, but the fact of the matter is that mods need a community and community is hard to build. If you're trying to replicate MC's success, note that it also wasn't made with modibility Orr convinent licenses in mind. You gotta make something appealing first and then you can futz about with nodding support if people bite.

This guy made GCC and Emacs. GCC in particular has shaped how most software has been compiled for decades.

His operating system, GNU, is the de-facto UNIX implementation and runs many critical systems around the world.

Anyone who claims that the guy is unlikeable has never truly bothered to hear him speak and isntrad relies on what they've been told by malicious actors. Stallman doesn't attack other people or ideologies.

If anything his biggest mistake was using Linux as a kernel for people decided to call the GNU operating system "Linux" and it eventually took most of the funding and development away from the OS and its ideology.

"If anything his biggest mistake was using Linux as a kernel for people decided to call the GNU operating system "Linux" and it eventually took most of the funding and development away from the OS and its ideology."

Well, what other kernel could he have used instead? Hurd? And linus is writing code till today and activly leading the developement.

What relevant contributions did RMS made, since gcc and emacs? So do you really think it is accurate saying "his" operating system is so much used today?

>What relevant contributions did RMS made, since gcc and emacs?

Let's be fair here: stall man's last technical contributions were when he was Linus's current age. Some people will code to their deathbed but I don't think that is a requirement to properly champion tech. He's more than paid his dues there.

Tech is relatively young and Stallman is one of the oldest living people left. Older than Gates, older than Jobs if he was still alive today. I see Linus less as a comparison so much as a torch Stallman's generation passed on.

Yet there are enormous amounts of cooperation within free software. There are the various organisations like the GNOME foundation, the Free Software Foundation, Debian, and many more beside. Thousands of volunteers keep these things going to produce well integrated, usable software.

Not to mention the common principles in most free software around interoperability and loose coupling. Apple and Microsoft (and the rest) have less to do on this, because they don't have to make their software nearly as generic. Microsoft famously fixed something in SimCity at the OS level. Google and Facebook don't have to worry about interoperability, which undoubtedly removes a lot of complexity for them. In some ways, free software has a greater burden to carry.

The problem with usability in free software is not one of culture or cooperation, it is one of capital. The fact is, Apple and Microsoft have at this point invested hundreds of billions in finding the best engineers and designers around the world and paying them to focus on polishing their operating system. By comparison, Debian's (very impressive) 3500 or so developers, maintainers, and contributors, are almost exclusively volunteers and working at most part time on their chosen packages.

If you want to see better free software, what I'd suggest to you and everyone else is this:

Next time you want to buy a phone, pick something cheaper, and donate the difference to a developer of free software. If you're an iPhone user and you switch to a Fairphone 5, say, you can throw £600 at someone like Joey Hess, or just pick an organisation that makes good stuff and give it to them if you don't want to find a specific author. Let's remind ourselves that if 1000 people did this, it'd be £600k of funding to improve free software.

Personally, I'd recommend a donation to the NLNet foundation: https://nlnet.nl/

(plug for nlnet, they're currently taking proposals and will fund successful ones: https://nlnet.nl/news/2023/20230801-call.html )

So can you install gnu/linux on someones desktop and he can just use it on his own without the terminal? What do they do, when the next update tells them that some pgp keys are invalid?

Free software works for devs and geeks, yes and I happen to be one of them. But for common people? Usually not very good, as they don't know the terminal and don't know config files. I know, because I tried to spread linux. It is hard work.

May I recommend you try Debian and its package `unattended-upgrades`.

Besides, I recommend servicing the device every so often. People create weird failure modes (putting too many files onto the device, clicking at random in menus). I also recommend setting up a backup.

As a figure of speech: Nobody is expected to service a car on his own. You'll get professional help every so often.

"May I recommend you try Debian and its package `unattended-upgrades`"

I will try that.

"As a figure of speech: Nobody is expected to service a car on his own. You'll get professional help every so often."

And also windows computers can have serious problems, but usually they are easier to solve for beginners, compared to when I try fix someones linux computer, that has not been updated in a while ..

Didn't have much of an issue when I installed Ubuntu on my dad's laptop with his limited computer experiences, didn't have many issues. Have you never encountered issues with Windows or MacOS? My experiences with Windows had many very frustrating experiences where I am sure won't be good either for common people.

NLNet is awesome ! :)

edhelas! Movim is awesome too <3

Does it matter? His message isn't for non-programmers.

What is plato known for among people who don't give a shit about philosophy?

"Does it matter? His message isn't for non-programmers."

I see. Well then, carry on.

But maybe then do not wonder when the rest of the world does not care about software freedom and also don't donate or support it in any way.

Oh and Plato is well known as a philosopher, but yes, most people do not know that he proposed a very totalitarian state and is rather known for platonic love.

>But maybe then do not wonder when the rest of the world does not care about software freedom and also don't donate or support it in any way.

30+% of my country can't even be damned to vote for their next president. Getting the layman to care is really hard, which is why advertising is a trillion dollar business.

Perfect enemy of good and all that. Lawyers for 99% of their cases don't rely on public sentiment to get their argument through. At least not active public sentiment.

> But maybe then do not wonder when the rest of the world does not care about software freedom and also don't donate or support it in any way.

I mean, i would more wonder why people would think the rest of the world care about the gnu project's four freedoms or even understand them.

Half the time we can't even get citizens to care about basic things like freedom of speech.

Everyone wants to fully control the devices they own. But more importantly they want their devices to work. So a half working open source lineageOS mobile is less valuable to them (and me), than a closed source, but working blob.

But if you can get them to understand, that open source eventually means consumer friendly, that the device will be fully under their control(no ads, no restrictions) and working if OSS gets more support, they will listen. But since they largely do not know all this, I think it is exactly because most free software preaching evolves only around devs.

> Does it matter? His message isn't for non-programmers.

His message is pretty much user-centered.

(and programmers deserve good message delivery too)

True, yet most users don't care about the details in any meaningful way. They just want to be able to use a convenient service like Spotify...who cares that they don't OWN the music anymore? Who cares that they don't pay artists as much as they could?

The only time it's a problem is when an artist doesn't release their music on a certain platform and it's now work to try and go download a second app, make an account, possibly pay a subscription, and THEN listen to the new album. These are the kind of things users actually care about, not whether the app/backend is FOSS or not.

HN is a power user community so it's easy to improperly extrapolate our experiences and what we tolerate to what "normal users" will tolerate.

> most users don't care

> who cares that they don't OWN the music anymore?

That's the thing, he is trying to raise awareness on this stuff. I do too.

If people cared, he'd be mostly done with his raising awareness work.

Open source is pretty much a developer issue. Free software, though, is a user issue.

(Of course we often use the terms interchangeably)

>If people cared, he'd be mostly done with his raising awareness work.

This is a good point, and shows why we need people like Stallman to press us on important but unglamorous issues.

Maybe not the best example there, known or not - Plato's influence on us today is pretty heavy.

There are even strong theories connecting early Christianity directly to Plato.

Sure, and arguably RMS has had a pretty significant indirect impact on the lives of people who don't care about technology but still use free software in their day to day lives (it is everywhere). But those people don't really think about his message anymore than the average person contemplates the impact of neoplatonists on their present cultural context.

[Before anyone gets offended, this is just a metaphor. Obviously plato had a much more significant impact on the world than RMS did]

Being so bad at dating that "never getting laid" is named after him?

He doesn't have to be. Tech luminaries who can understand compromise will figure out what will practically work after listening to him rant. The world still needs raving mad prophets like him to help us understand where the poles are.

I'd say he's known for Linux and the building the base of TiVo, then Android, Chromebook, and MacOS (all of those impressions are wrong, but bear with me).

Most people don't know what the kernel is, but they do see user space, and that was largely GPLed for a while. I think IBM ran some super bowl ads about how amazing Linux and open source were, about ten years ago.

Also, stuff like raspberry pi and ssh exploits (yes, BSD, I know) also show up in pop culture. The Matrix and Mr Robot come to mind. During the end of the dot com boom, I think people were largely aware that Apache + Linux were what things ran on.

> I'd say he's known for Linux

Er... what?

He's known for forcing the name Gnu to be appended to Linux because of some wildly exaggerated claims of ownership.

We're talking about rms, not Linus.

Even as someone who has been a dev for 5 years I only know him as that gross guy who likes free software. Note that 'gross guy' is the main point here. He has failed to communicate any nuance to his message. Another person might have 80% the same opinion as him but be able to reach 200% of the people as him by way of not having such a bad reputation. If the free software 'movement' wants to move anyone they need to get out of their own way.

> that gross guy who likes free software

He founded the idea of Free software. Him being "gross" is completely orthogonal. "I would have agreed with the guy who fought against slavery if he didn't pick his nose in public."

Always good to know that the modern generation of devs are ok with discounting someones ideas because they are "gross".

These "gross" people are the ones who made overpaid dev positions possible.

It's crazy to think how back in the day, software devs were basically hard science engineers, needing to be proficient in hardware and the nitty gritty of CPU architecture to be effective programmers. All so they could be paid $60-80k/yr in today's dollars for 50-60 hour work weeks.

Whereas nowadays you can do a few weeks of a javascript crash course and land a $100k job organizing text windows on a webpage for a few hours a week from your bedroom.

As a devil's advocate: while you had to know the nitty gritty it was legitimately possible to have the entire machine's architecture in your head. Maybe a few heads shared at worst. Microsoft' humble beginnings started with a dozen people who would make what most people type on daily.

No one person knows the entire modern x86 architecture. And ofc those who know a lions share are paid top dollar. Maybe still underpaid for the value they bring to the entire world, but very comfortable.

Don't have much to say about the web dev stuff. Just note that CoL is still kinda crazy in the places with most demand. I'm not gonna say "100k is so hard to live on" like some spoiled CS students but it does cut a lot more into your spending power than you'd expect.

Well, that’s because demand for sales-y engage-y web pages is furious while demand for exquisitely refined self-balancing distributed power grids (for example) is at the “call me back when the tech has become a 0.02 commodity” level

While I agree with most of your comment (and upvoted it), I'm not sure about this:

> While the Free part of FOSS is being substituted by “(just) open source” and “source available”,

Free software and open source are the same category of software and licenses (except for sporadic instances that are at the very edge of that one category, as categories tend to be blurred).

Software that is merely source available, of course, is not FLOSS by default. But I don't actually see free software being replaced by software which is just source available.

There are companies trying to push source available proprietary software as "open source", perhaps hoping for such replacement, and this has had some success in some specific areas, but the open source community is pushing against it. Or, at least, the wise ones in it are.

> Software that is merely source available, of course, is not FLOSS by default. But I don't actually see free software being replaced by software which is just source available.

GP here. I agree. I should’ve worded it better to say that a lot of “*source” terms are used to make it seem as if the publishers are meeting a great ideal (like FLOSS), but are muddling things more and more. I shouldn’t have listed “source available in the very same sentence” without being clear. I don’t have stats, but “open source” and similar terms have been used as buzzwords for marketing while the publishers really want their SaaS to be the one people ultimately pay for and use.

That was a beautiful comment, but I want to make an important point:

> While the Free part of FOSS is being substituted by “(just) open source” and “source available”

The OSD is very much compatible with the FSFs list of freedoms.

“Source available” is a new name for “shared source” and is fake open source proprietary trash.

You're right. I guess one difference would be the part where the free software tell us "why".

But in practical terms, it is too complicated (ethics!), so all is down to copyleft or not, which I believe is what the parent comment was referring to.

Perhaps that's what we should be using: copyleft vs open source, instead of free software vs open source.

All copyleft software is free software, but not all free software is copyleft, since some free software may be distributed under permissive licenses that do not require derivative works to maintain the same freedoms or licensing terms.

The MIT License is a permissive free software license that isn't copyleft, as it allows proprietary modifications.

https://www.gnu.org/graphics/copyleft-sticker.en.html

>This is a scan of the “Copyleft (L)” sticker on the back of the envelope mailed from Don Hopkins to Richard Stallman on 1984. The envelope contained a 68000 manual that Don borrowed from Richard, that he was returning. The sticker inspired Richard to use the word “Copyleft” for licensing free software.

>attention:

>READ NOTE BEFORE OPENING!

>Copyleft (L)

>The material contained in this envelope is Copyleft (L) 1984 by an amoeba named “Tom”. Any violation of this stringent pact with person or persons who are to remain un-named will void the warrantee of every small appliance in your kitchen, and furthermore, you will grow a pimple underneath your fingernail. Breaking the seal shows that you agree to abide by Judith Martin's guidelines concerning the choosing of fresh flowers to be put on the dining room table. Failure to break the seal on a weekday is […]

> Perhaps that's what we should be using: copyleft vs open source, instead of free software vs open source.

Unless I misunderstand them, what about using the actual definitions?

- Proprietary software can be closed-source or source-available

- Open-source software can be under a permissive or copyleft license

- Free software is a philosophy around open-source software, but in practice FOSS and OSS are mostly the same thing.

These are good definitions but the original post wasn't referring to people not taking into account the philosophical part of free software, unless it really meant "copyleft".

A permissive licence doesn't really transmit the intent of the author, philosophy or not (it doesn't really matter, the licence is the same).

A copyleft licence, on the other hand, backs the philosophy behind free software via the actual licence.

But you are right, it should be "copyleft vs permissive open source".

Does he have a reputation for poor hygiene?

More anectodal evidence: I've eaten pizza with him twice. Didn't notice anything.

Also anectdotal: Ate at a Chinese restaurant with him, he's not gross at the table.

I did hug him later and he was very sweaty - but we did just traipse across London in a bit of a rush and he was absolutely exhausted.

Years and years ago he talked at my university lug. I picked him up in my car from the train. The BO smell remained in my car for WEEKS. Dude had a serious aroma.

On the other side, back in college to earn extra money, I was his typist for around 10 hours (3 or so hours at a stint), meaning he sat diagonally behind me, reading the screen I was typing on. The only thing I noticed was his hair was a little wild.

That was a few decades ago, so perhaps things have changed, but he was well within normal odor back in the early 90s.

What were you typing for him?

Everything. He would sit behind me and dictate keystrokes (mostly driving emacs, of course) to do email, edit code, and generally operate the computer. I don't want to talk about someone else's medical situation, but I think it's well-enough-known that rms had a period of RSI so severe that he was barred from using a keyboard to let his wrists/hands recover.

A few hours in a row of hearing and typing C-Space C-u 2 4 M-w C-x C-b <RET> C-y C-x C-s is exhausting. It was also amusing (in retrospect) to get a polite-enough admonishment to "don't think about what the keystrokes are doing; please just type what I say" when he could tell that I was slowing down because I was paying too much attention to what the intent behind the keystrokes was.

Wow that must have been fascinating. Did you end up learning a ton of emacs-fu along the way, or did it sorta start to just flow through you?

If I were in either of your shoes (sandals?) in that situation, I’m sure I would be super frustrated all the time. Impressive on both your parts.

I learned a lot, but I wish I could have gutted it out for longer in order to learn more about emacs and gcc internals. (I knew "we" were doing some maintenance on gcc because I remember asking questions about a comment that said "this is a win" and asking rms if we were working on gnu chess and him telling me that it was a compiler optimization. [Yeah, that's how amazingly skilled I was at the time.])

I ended up doing 4 sessions totaling about 10 hours and when I told him I was quitting, I was apologetic that I felt like I'd wasted his time quitting so soon after starting. His response I can remember to this day and it was something like "Don't worry about it; most people quit after the first session. You helped me out and we'll make sure you get your check."

That's amazing, it feels similar to people playing chess in movies (not sure if it happens in real life) without the board, just remembering the positions.

A lot of people would pay good money to have their car smell like Stallman for weeks.

I'm one of them. I want my children to meet him so badly. This news about his health is heart breaking

Classic Seinfeld

stallman and jon voight both well known assholes!

I think that might be referring to an incident where he picked at his foot then ate the pickings.

https://youtu.be/I25UeVXrEHQ

FWIW, there is a rare medical condition some people have, where their body odour is abnormally high. I knew a girl in high school, very attractive and a wonderful person, but she sufferred from this condition, despite her best efforts to manage it. She would be regularly bullied by the girls and rejected by the boys for it.

stallman doesn't have some highly rare medical condition, he's just a lazy hippy programmer type. and it sounds like he's got reasonably decent hygiene.

more like people like to exaggerate anecdotes for karma points

> We need absolutists like him

I agree we need passionate people working tirelessly for software freedom.

The broader free software community agrees we don't need people like him though.

From Wikipedia:

> The FSF board on April 12 [2021] made a statement re-affirming its decision to bring back Richard Stallman.

> Multiple organizations criticized, defunded and/or cut ties with the FSF, including: Red Hat, the Free Software Foundation Europe, the Software Freedom Conservancy, SUSE, the OSI, the Document Foundation, the EFF, and the Tor Project.

For those out of the loop, the Richard Stallman had repeatedly defended adults having sex with children over many years and he most recently said sex slaves aren't raped.

OSS predates GNU, and GNU's influence is waning. I wouldn't say Stallman's impact was that large. OSS was a thing before Stallman and will remain after Stallman.

OSS pre-dates GNU, sure.

But has any other license had the same impact as GPL?

Has any other set of OSS tools enabled so much as the GNU command line tools which were (and are) the foundation of Linux?

I put him up for the night once. I'm a BSD guy, ran the local FreeBSD society. He was pleasant enough about BSD we could hang out a bit. I know what my preferences are, but I'm not so arrogant as to believe I'm anywhere near in a majority, and his influence through his work (including GNU), is completely obvious. Without him, we'd all be paying Microsoft, Sun, IBM or HP through the nose for licenses to much worse technology than we have today.

You’re mistaken. His impact has changed the industry.

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