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Comment by benihana | Hacker News Reader

This presents an interesting situation. Is Stallman okay with being hooked up to medical computers even though they may not be running free software? What about the privacy issues involved in being checked into a hospital?

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I'm not rms, and I don't speak for him, but his opposition to non-free software is predicated upon the claim that it harms the user. As death is arguably a greater harm than any non-free software could inflict, I suspect he would say that it is not wrong to use non-free software to save a life if no free alternative is readily available.

You can ask him yourself, if you want: rms@fsf.org

He replies to almost all emails within a couple of days.

EDIT: He actually answered a very similar question in his reddit AMA [1]:

22. two_front_teeth: Suppose your doctor told you that you needed a medical procedure to survive but that the procedure would require inserting a device inside of your body which ran proprietary software. Would you be willing to have the procedure done to save your life?

RMS: The only way I could justify this is if I began developing a free replacement for that very program. It is ok to use a nonfree program for the purpose of developing its free replacement.

[1] http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/rms-ama.html

To continue with the above comment, I'd like to point out that RMS has valid concerns regarding non-free software running inside your body.

You don't want to have a buggy pacemaker with unencrypted unprotected wireless access.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/27/buggy_pacemaker_code...

https://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2010/transparent-m...

Moreover I don't feel comfortable using a technology that is owned, developed and maintained exclusively by one company.

As if free software cannot be buggy and with lousy security. I am so tired of this "open and free makes everything perfect by magic" thinking.

It's not about it being more secure. It's that at least when it's suffering from malfunction, you got shitloads of eyeballs on the thing to make it work and work well. Why do you think all the OpenBSD tools are so ubiquitous?

Keeping this in the context of devices like a pacemaker, do you really believe that an open-source development model would be safer for the people who depend on it than a closed-source model? Do you expect them to flash custom ROMs to the pacemaker that keeps them alive if it turns out there may be a problem with them, instead of going to the hospital to get the thing replaced?

One of the things I've learned in life is that We're All Just Folk. There's no magical divinely-inspired programmer out there creating firmware for your pacemaker. The difference between him and me is process, and little else. If I'm given access to the same testing processes they use as part of the open source package, I see no reason to believe my code is going to be worse than anybody else's. Sure, I'd think twice before installing it, but in some sense that's irrational; I should think twice before anything like that because We're All Just Folk, and it's just some guys writing all the firmware we all depend on.

In some ways, it's best not to think too hard about this.

Whether or not a pacemaker is running free open source software is independant of whether or not a person can flash their own version of the software to it.

If it were open source you, or anyone who was fitted with the pacemaker could look at the rules that control it.

Making _anything_ visible and open to criticism instantly makes its creators more accountable and adds pressure for them to try and be responsible.

Nobody's saying they wouldn't just reflash it at the hospital. Replacing a pacemaker requires surgery, which is why they're externally programmable in the first place.

Oh come on, free software does not imply an open source development model and vice versa. You could very well have the software developed by a professional team and release it as free software.

Its not that it can't be buggy but rather that you can fix bugs once you find them. A proprietary manufacturer of a pacemaker wouldn't necessarily fix your bugs in a timely manner; you depend on his cooperation. He could be out of business, no longer support that model of pacemaker, argue that it isn't a bug or use any other reason not to fix your bug. If you have the source code, you are always free to fix the problem yourself or hire a specialist to fix the problem for you.

With enough eyes all bugs are shallow. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Law

Free eyes have lower marginal cost to the consumer than proprietary ones.

Very similar to my concerns for running non-free software inside our democracies.

> The only way I could justify this is if I began developing a free replacement for that very program.

If the Oracle suit taught me anything, it's to be careful when using APIs.

You could do it in EU though

This Stallman quote (transcript from an interview) may be instructive here:

"And the issue doesn't really arise for software that goes in a watch or a microwave oven or an automobile ignition system. Because those are places where you don't download software to install. It's not a real computer, as far as the user is concerned. And so, it doesn't raise these issues enough for them to be ethically important."

Source: http://www.gnu.org/events/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.html

A similar argument could be made about software running on servers, and circa that same time as that quote on microwave ovens I believe Stallman in fact took the position that servers did not raise such issues either.

He's changed his mind about servers since then, so I wonder if he also has since changed his mind on devices?

IIRC he's fine with servers that are simply used to publish information but he does not use SaaS type websites unless they are free software and he has control of his data.

http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

> However, if I am visiting somewhere and the machines available nearby happen to contain non-free software, through no doing of mine, I don't refuse to touch them. I will use them briefly for tasks such as browsing. This limited usage doesn't give my assent to the software's license, or make me responsible its being present in the computer, or make me the possessor of a copy of it, so I don't see an ethical obligation to refrain from this. Of course, I explain why they should migrate the machines to free software, but I don't push them hard, because that would be counterproductive.

http://www.stallman.org/articles/asked_to_lie.html

Interesting. A similar thing happened to me at college: I had to sign that I would abide by a license agreement that was not actually available for me to read. I signed the paper, because it was MS software and I figured it was probably the usual EULA junk. A few weeks later, I was told that the college was possibly in violation of their agreement with MS because of my behavior! I went to the office and was scolded for buying more than one copy. I told them I had no idea, since I was never shown the agreement. They said, "Oh, we don't really show that to people. But you need to abide by it, we could be in big trouble if you don't!"

If it were anyone but Stallman, I would have thought you were being an ass about the situation. But realistically, I could see that being a concern for him and his ethics. I hope he doesn't die on principle quite yet though. There aren't too many FOSS clinics AFAIK.

I don't see how it would realistically be a concern for him. That's like saying he wouldn't be willing to get on a plane or drive a car b/c they use closed source software...

I wouldn't put it past him. A friend of mine who has worked for the FSF told me that Stallman won't even use the web. He emails his employees to look things up for him because he assumes web sites to be malicious unless he has the entirety of their source accessible.

I am pretty sure he has thought about this.

Which is what makes RMS so valuable. He does think about things others take for granted, and he raises the alarm if he feels there's something there to be concerned about.

Sure, he raises that alarm early and often (and in an annoying voice), but he's been right more than once about issues nobody else had considered before.

Medical software is something that should be more free. The software in medical equipment goes through less rigorous review than the rest of the system. There as a recent paper about the review process and closedness of medical software and there is little to no software audits required for getting approval from officials.

The first fatalities from software in medical systems were in mid-80's when an X-ray machine gave excess radiation to patients because of a programming mistake. I recall it was an integer overflow.

This issue is more serious than just making fun of RMS's extremist views.

(sorry for the lack of links to sources, I'm sure you can find them if you're interested)

This one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25

I was thinking about this just the other day as I was getting a flu vaccine. As far as accepting closed source technology in your life, that seems like the vastly more salient domain.

Perhaps he would be, so long as the EKG readout was transcribed into ASCII text and emailed to the nurse, who reads it using Mutt.

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