"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.
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.
Unfortunately the world doesn't know how to really appreciate people as much when they're alive for some personality types.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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 )
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.
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.
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 ..
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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?
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.
What is plato known for among people who don't give a shit about philosophy?
There are even strong theories connecting early Christianity directly to Plato.
[Before anyone gets offended, this is just a metaphor. Obviously plato had a much more significant impact on the world than RMS did]
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.
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.
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.
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.
His message is pretty much user-centered.
(and programmers deserve good message delivery too)
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.
> 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)
This is a good point, and shows why we need people like Stallman to press us on important but unglamorous issues.
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.
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.
These "gross" people are the ones who made overpaid dev positions possible.
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.
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.
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."