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Comment by 0atman | Hacker News Reader

I went to a small talk rms gave in London in around 2009. The talk was unmemorable (my fault, likely, not his) but the Q&A afterwards was remarkable:

He screamed at people for using 'open source' instead of 'free software' in their questions, raved about the Amazon "Swindle" like a 12-year-old, and talked over and down to everyone. He was often accurate in the core of what he was trying to say, but his attitude was unhinged, and discouraged most people from interacting.

The 100 or so developers all left the talk in silence, mourning the loss of the hero we had imagined him to be.

To those who say we need him for GNU outreach: we absolutely don't. ANYONE would be better for the job.

I thank him for his many incredible contributions to our world, and wish him a speedy recovery, but we don't need these talented assholes to represent our community.

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> "He screamed at people for using 'open source'..."

RMS has been literally all about Free Software from day one. The term "open source" originated as a competing philosophy from Bruce Perens. It's like going to the CEO of Coca-cola and asking about Pepsi.

RMS was also a fringy fanatic from day one. It took a lot of willpower and vision to advocate for Free Software, a movement that that flew in the face of the overwhelming proprietary software industry that existed back in the '80s. A lesser person would have given up long ago.

In the South, "coke" is a generic term for soft drinks. Supposedly ordering "Pepsi coke" is a thing.

He can scream all he wants, but it's not a productive conversation.

They are productive, because they are literally different things.

I would equally be annoyed if someone called an Apple an Orange, because they are not the same thing.

If the whole world is using "cola" as a word to describe your "pepsi" and you are (maybe even rightly so!) convinced they are literally different things here is a free tip:

It is up to you to convince the people that the difference is big enough that they should want to change their language. And you know how to make sure they won't want to do that? Speak down to them, paint them as stupid for not knowing and so on.

This feels more like a banana/plantain scenario.

Do you think the CEO of Coca-Cola actually screams at waiters when they say, "we don't have Coke, will Pepsi be ok?"

The founder of Coca-Cola might. But either way, pointing out the flaws of a loose analogy adds nothing to the conversation.

and we we wouldn't let that founder do PR, right?

Well, as Scott Adams says, "Analogies are for fighting."

If an analogy is supposed to persuade me, but the internal premise of the analogy completely contradicts the purpose of the analogy, then perhaps it should be completely eliminated or at the very least it should be challenged.

Moreover, this contradiction within the analogy highlights the exact opposite. Likely, the CEO of Coca Cola experiences that "coke/pepsi" dialog with waiters all the time and merely shrugs it off --- because that is actually a reasonable response, unlike screaming at people over a tiny, unintentional slight.

For any decently structured argument, analogies are illustrative, not load-bearing. If you find that is not the case, usually the argument is not particularly sound.

Yes.

I don't believe your account of this 2009 talk, most definitely do not believe your suggestion of what 100 other people thought is anywhere close to accurate.

> To those who say we need him for GNU outreach: we absolutely don't. ANYONE would be better for the job.

But other people are, and you are ignoring them and helping create this supposed problem, which I'm unconvinced is a real or important problem. LWN said that Panos Alevropoulos gave a great speech at this very same event. Why don't you write or promote an article about his talk and leave the people who want to read this article alone instead of heckling them and RMS. I've read this same complaint for many years "Everyone look: we should pay attention to someone else besides RMS for free software (as I also give attention to RMS through this comment, do not pay attention to anyone else, and do not suggest anyone or do anything to help solve this supposed problem)." RMS said things at this event people are interested in reading about, so this got upvoted, and there is nothing wrong with that, and the fact that you didn't like his attitude in 2009 is really not very interesting as a comment on this 2023 speech where he had a good attitude. Is RMS irredeemable? Should someone be primarily judged by mostly anonymous internet commenters who are not actively involved in the activity they criticize and based on things like a grumpy attitude they once saw? I don't think so.

You don't believe me? That's an extremely weird reaction, he's on public record with this kind of behaviour, just look at most of the comments in this very thread of people saying the same thing.

You've forced me to look up the talk, and the one I have the ticket for in my email is actually from 2011, my memory of the date was wrong: https://localevents.theiet.org/register.php?event=bc7fd2

Someone took a terrible video of it (ah 2011 video) here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vazlMe7sNzM but that doesn't seem to include the Q&A section where he went off the rails.

> You don't believe me? That's an extremely weird reaction

Really? Let me spell it out for you. You wrote:

> The 100 or so developers all left the talk in silence, mourning the loss of the hero we had imagined him to be.

That is completely not credible on its face. It was a public event. I've been to RMS speeches, seen recordings, and I estimate there was a ~0% likelihood that all the people who attended that event considered RMS a hero before the event and lost that impression through it.

Well someone should do it though. He's surely an ambivalent person. But the point "Open Source" vs. "Free Software" stands. Right now working at a company that has been violating the GPL (and somewhat celebrating themselves as Open Source contributors) makes me truly understand the difference. "Open Source" means just taking but "Free Software" also - at the very least - complying with licenses.

> To those who say we need him for GNU outreach: we absolutely don't. ANYONE would be better for the job.

If that was true, that would have happened years ago considering the controversies. (Although at this point everybody might see things differently) The subtleties of open source licensing seem to interest only few people, and even less understand them fully. (I don't count myself in)

I sympathise with your position, but is rms all we've got?

No developers were persuaded to change their language from 'open source' to 'free software' that day in 2009, him shouting at us was utterly ineffective.

We need good communicators, not just passionate people. I'm not suggesting he shouldn't write his good ideas down, but keep him away from an AUDIENCE.

Meanwhile everybody knows what GNU is, who Stallman is, what free software is, and what that "lunatic", to paraphrase you, is all about.

His methods might've been of a lunatic indeed, but it's on you to argue that Free Software would have grown further than what it is today with a more mild mannered person at the helm.

I disagree completely with this proposition. You need crazy zealots to change the world: no one will accept their extreme view of the world, but choose a more moderate version of their message. And so the zealot has succeeded in his mission. Examples in history abound, whereas mild-mannered people don't go very far in radically changing the status quo.

I don't think that the parent's point was that he was wrong or exaggerating, but that the way he communicated his messages is bad. I think it would have been great if he said "I think you mean Free Software, not Open Source, because..." but if he indeed screamed at people for making what's essentially a mistake, that seems needlessly rude and probably makes his messages unrelatable.

As someone that grew up with a lot of respect to RMS, hearing that this was how his talk went saddens me.

he hasn't done anything for GNU in over a decade, this is just preaching to the choir

I stopped commenting on HackerNews years ago because of that same phenomenon. It doesn't matter if you agree or disagree with RMS. It isn't an excuse to act like a total asshole all the time.

He is a hero, but he's also "weird". That means, straight off the bat, at least 50% of the population won't like him. It's a shame, but that's just the way it is. You can wish all you want that Stallman were more like Richard Feynman, but he's not. And yet this one weird man is the only one out of all of us standing up and talking about this stuff.

> He screamed at people for using 'open source' instead of 'free software' in their questions

Yes, this is frustrating. I once tried to ask him a question about a project that calls itself open-source, and rather than answering it, he proceeded to go on about how he hates the term.

In that context: My most "fun" encounter was at a demonstration by farmers against patented seeds in Munich, Germany:

RMS spent half a sentence on crops and seeds before transitioning to emphasize that GNU/Linux isnkey and it's important to call it GNU. Most of the audience didn't know whonthat was and what he was talking about, while the interpreter tried to give a tiny bit of context in his translation.

We need fundamentalists who stick to their opinion. And I agree to many of RMS's points, but he is not a good poster head ...

He's quite clearly on the autism spectrum. When I saw him at FOSSETCON in Orlando (RIP that conference), he was.. interesting.

I will say that I was pleasantly surprised, given what I had read about him, at how he handled a question from someone who had a very severe intellectual disability; he treated his question at the Q&A as he treated everyone else's. Although he belittled my question, but that's neither here nor there.

That's me every time I try reading r/vegan comments, lol. Those people think they are helping our cause, but they're actually moving it backwards.

Yeah! I've seen a lot of re-branding to "plant-based", same meaning, less baggage.

I've seen this have a similar issue to "open source" where people misuse it even if the terms were supposed to mean something similar. e.g. food with plant-based written on it containing non-vegan ingredients (sorta like people calling public/visible source "open source" when it's very much proprietary)

I am always surprised anyone invites RMS to speak given he is both an unabashed fanatic of FOSS and a phenomenally bad communicator.

The fact that comments like this come up every single time there's an article about him is basically self-fulfilling. The size of the personality (and opinion of it) has overtaken the size of the cause.

It's unfortunate but the best thing FOSS can do is find more unknown people that can focus on the content.

My theory is he's bitter that Hurd failed and GNU took a back seat to Linux.

100%. An interesting property of most online communication is that you can’t see all the people ‘scrolling by’ like you would in person. This IMO gives people an unfounded sense of RMS’s…legitimacy(?) in these circles.

IMHO RMS’s socially abrasive attitude and communication style, and the overall unapproachability of the FSF, goes a way toward ensuring that anyone that can stomach advocating for “the cause” is similarly abrasive. This is to the point where some people conflate being a jackass with supporting Free Software as a movement or even as a concept. Like, aspects of some dude called Richard’s personality and even his proclivities wrt how he chooses to go about his computing life are cargo-culled by this decentralised group of fans. You see it here all the time. Someone will be talking about Free Software, and use this as a license to be an asshole to people.

There is in my experience a large silent majority that simply won’t engage with these conversations, not because they don’t see a legitimate place for the Free Software movement, but because the culture is so unnecessarily toxic and unapproachable on account of the people that it puts on a pedestal. It certainly puts others off from the actual principles of the movement altogether.

Time was, computing was for entirely socially adjusted - primarily - women. I as much as possible try to see the period of dominant industry voices being overrun with socially awkward asshole nerds to be a blip rather than an origin story or an ongoing necessity. At this stage I think we are at the point where continuing to give these people a social platform just because of some sense of prestige is not the way to go.

I read the infamous article that tried to cancel Stallman and agreed with most of it. She was wrong at the end when she tried to destroy his legacy and image.

Stallman has done a lot, but he's doing more harm than good nowadays. It's mature to know when to step down and give the next generation space to grow.

I read just today that there's no such thing as 'cancel culture', what it is, is 'consequence culture': The observation that it's becoming less accepted that we must protect the rich/famous/powerful just because they're rich/famous/powerful.

You should check out this interview with FIRE's president [0], and his upcoming book [1]. You can also check out Jerry Coyne's blog [2], which acts as a repository for a lot of the bad behaviour coming from the Critical Social Justice (CSJ) types.

The notion of "consequence culture" encompasses "cancel culture". It shouldn't be a surprise that bad faith actors exist, and netizens can be manipulated. To dismiss "cancel culture" is to dismiss the notion that bad faith actors exist. Of this set of bad faith actors, I think the CSJ types are by far the worst. They exploit the good reputation of liberal social justice (i.e. the original gay, female, black rights movement), and through motte and bailey, manipulate people into their version of social justice (CSJ), which is unsubstantiated, comically simplistic, discriminatory, and divisive. By masquerading themselves as purveyors of issues we care about, their bad behaviour becomes harder to call out as well, since they can misrepresent their critics as being against the issues we care about, and weaponize their compassion to mob their critics. Conflating "consequence culture" with "cancel culture" is just one of the many ways they're achieving that.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buarAx_u2qg

[1] https://www.amazon.sg/Canceling-American-Mind-Undermines-Thr...

[2] https://whyevolutionistrue.com/category/cancel-culture/

Oh there absolutely is. Problem is, many different situations all get thrown under the same umbrella term. Not everyone who gets canceled is in a position of power or a bully. Plenty of little guys have been taken down by online mobs over the years. The important thing is to be able to recognize the difference

I like that phrasing, but that doesn't mean that the consequences in "consequence culture" are sometimes hugely outsized for what the transgression is (or that there can't be a disagreement about various aspects).

This is the reality and thanks for saying it. Bullies and harassers get so used to having their way that they think they're being victimized when others call them out for bullying and harassment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8&vl=en

I think that it’s useful to hear a balanced take on cancel culture from someone that’s not, frankly, some Hollywood figure making dumb “cancel culture” jokes because they’re secretly pooping their pants over when it’s going to happen to them.

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