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Comment by RyanZAG | Hacker News Reader

I find it intriguing to consider that in history and philosophy textbooks in 100 years time, Stallman is likely to have a number of very positive (and possibly even large) contributions to humanity, while Obama is likely to be regarded very negatively for his wiretapping and with no notable positive contributions. Meanwhile today, Stallman is regarded as some kind of madman while Obama is an amazing celebrity.

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People denouncing Stallman's views just because he's not charismatic and conventional has always bothered me. I hope people will start realizing that using free and open software/hardware/web services exclusively isn't something that only free software extremists should be doing.

"Should be doing" and "is practical or feasible to do" are too different things. Not all of us are satisfied with browsing the web by emailing a wget daemon and reading it on a computer designed for a Chinese government contract with a 500 MHz MIPS processor. It works for Stallman because he puts a lot of value in having free software down to the BIOS level. The rest of us value other things (convenience, comfort, performance) and thus make different choices about the tech we use.

That's not to say that people not using more free (as in speech) isn't a bad thing. It's just that for quite a few things, there are either no free software alternatives or the free software alternatives are not user-friendly enough, not fully-featured enough, are not compatible enough with popular proprietary programs or proprietary hardware, or just generally aren't as good. We should work on improving the free alternatives and advocate their use, but we should also be mindful that users will often need to use a piece of proprietary software because there aren't any good alternatives available. Just saying, "If you use any proprietary software at all, you hate your own freedom" is not an effective strategy for driving mass adoption of free software.

I denounce Stallman's views because they are plain stupid and not based on reality and don't match with human psychology and sociology. Attempts to portray recent privacy debacles as the proof of Stallman being right are even more stupid, because it has nothing to do with software being open-source, free or not. If my service runs Apache, MySQL, the source is on github, but NSA has access to all the data, how does being open-source help?

People won't start using "free and open software/hardware/web services exclusively", because none of that matters for the end users. I do like and use open source for infrastructure, this is where it shines. But as Joe User I prefer highly polished (and paid) apps to "free" software which is powered by advertising. I am sick of this "advertising will pay for everything" world with ever increasing noise and subpar quality. How about paying some real money for some real work?

> If my service runs Apache, MySQL, the source is on github, but NSA has access to all the data, how does being open-source help?

I can host it on my own server and not share the data, or make a fork which respects user privacy and compete with you. Failing that, I can verify any claims you make about the integrity of the data - what is kept and how it is stored - and petition for appropriate change.

For a man of such strong opinions, you seem to have a poor grasp of Stallman's philosophy. He's against SaaS, and would refuse to use a hosted service. He doesn't object to charging a fee for software. The user must merely be free to use it after the purchase. Yes, people are ready to sacrifice some freedom in return for convenience. That in itself does not prove him wrong. Cellphones are tracking devices. The "cloud" does allow for wholesale surveillance. In light of recent revelations, his warnings seem to be more prescient than ever.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out things like cell phones being tracking devices and the cloud facilitating surveillance.

First we all knew it would happen, then we found out it was happening, and now we're saying thank god for Stallman or we'd have never known and lets be sure to listen to him from now on? Stallman's idea of freedom doesn't work unless everyone gets involved. We live in the real world here and we know that isn't happening. He needs to live and let live a little.

So are you saying that we should just accept everything as it is now? That way things will never change and probably only get worse.

There are however people that don't accept everything that's going on in the world and will fight for change. And they DO make change, ever heard about GNU/Linux?

You've got that part very confused. Nobody is saying "thank god for Stallman or we'd have never known" - what people are saying is "Stallman was right - these tracking devices and cloud services are harmful to freedom and we should find better solutions". There may not be better solutions though, but the message is still very clear over which is harmful and what a solution might look like.

i object to the characterisation of such opinions as strong. they are not strong, they are weak. weak for their justification, weak for their referencing and weak for the world view which informs them.

(but i totally agree with you)

The wast wast majority of people who write code get paid real money for real work, and the buyer get functionality, source code and most of the time, copyright assignment.

Its called a salary.

I think it would be better described as "principles" than "views".

People do not share his principles, or worse, they give lip service to the principles but compromise. This creates internal dissonance that is difficult to reconcile without admitting that your principles do not in fact include "freedom" of this sort.

We tend to get unhappy when we believe we value something only to be shown that we do not. We can be angry at ourselves (depressed, sad, etc.) or we can look outwards.

RMS is not a sympathetic figure, so if one were to look at a target of ridicule, he is just about perfect. Stinky pinko whining hippy couch-surfer with a thing for parrots.

Hey! Don't knock parrots. I own a parrot, a very cool and interesting creature.

If only we could eliminate this harsh parrot bashing from HN :-)

Yeah, they're nice until you have a flock of feral parrots. They cruise this city like a gang of harpies!

Since they live forever, you know your 'pretty bird' is deciding which bits of you to eat first. Talking is their way of testing if you're dead yet.

I agree with you. I will defend Stallman against any strawman attacks. However, we should be honest and recognize Stallman's views as promoting a very radical and perhaps fundamentally untenable path forward. It may be that even if Stallman's view was the morally correct one, it would bring about a world/situation none of us really want to live in.

You're a bit filter bubbled. Of course Obama is an amazing celebrity. He's the president of the USA. That sort of makes him an amazing celebrity by definition.

Stallman, however, is not the president and not Brad Pitt, so he has a harder time achieving celebrity status.

Current celebs may need to be powerful or beautiful, but in the future, at least from what we've seen in the present, it is the thinkers and innovators that get remembered.

Plenty of celebrities get remembered too. Ever heard of Marilyn Monroe? It's pop culture, this is just how it works.

How many Marilyns do you remember from ancient Greece? How many thinkers?

Well, there's always women like Helen of Troy in history.

You never know, Marilyn could go that way. Everyone knows her name, but I'd bet already many people don't even really remember how she looked, sounded like, or what she acted in.

Sure. My point was not that there were zero.

Wow, how many films and photographs was ancient Greece putting out way back then?

Who is better known amongst the (anglo) general public - Louis XIV, the Sun King, probably the most long-lived, powerful, and reformative monarch in Europe's history... Or Marie Antoinnette, famed utterer of a vapid phrase which she probably didn't even say?

Granting (probably correctly) that Marie Antoinette is better known, the fact that you can pick out two examples with a particular relationship doesn't tell us a lot about the distributions they're drawn from. Looking at rough contemporaries, I would expect Descartes is better known than either, and Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Voltaire aren't exactly obscure.

Great point. I should also note, that when I said innovators and thinkers, that definitely included any politically related character. I'd like to think that Marie Antoinette is mostly popular because of her involvement with the French Revolution, and all of the characters relevant to that.

That's a really misleading rhetorical question. Attic actors wore masks and were expected to melt into their roles; what would you say if an Attican asked you "How many theatrical technicians do you remember?" Something more appropriate would be "How many playwrights do you remember?" Many poets not only wrote their own scripts but also directed them, having bigger roles than our famous contemporaries. History notes quite a few. I can name four right off the top of my head: Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Diogenes (different man from the philosopher) and Euripides.

A fair point, to be sure.

OP (ish) here. You've definitely made me reevaluate my statement. And for that, I thank you.

It's not a great example. From the Ancient world, the thinkers were the only ones capable of recording such things, so we have a bit of a sample bias!

Granted.

> You're a bit filter bubbled.

And the developed world in general is filter bubbled by the mass media.

Fair point.

One could say that an intellectual's goal should be to get as little filter bubbled as possible, but then we'd all end up like the cranky people on lesswrong.com.

'cause there's no bubble there, at all.

My favorite example: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/LessWrong#Roko.27s_Basilisk

Eh, I think that's overblown, but yeah.

You are staying very far in our niche. As much as I understand Stallman and appreciate him, I think what you propose is a little out there. Let's be honest. Stallman's view would make it nigh impossible to have software development as a profession in anything but an "in house" development sort of capacity, or perhaps it may be possible some world where everyone altruistically contributes to the development ... but let's just be practical about it. If Stallman's very ideological view had been with us from the start, it's hard to imagine the technology wheels turning very swiftly.

I'm sure you or any follower of Stallman could debate but this has been debated with Stallman before and Stallman's response is basically (paraphrasing) "yeah, well that's the way it is." If Stallman had his way en toto, then entire industries would crumble; maybe this would be great in some egalitarian fantasy but ... If you actually examine RMS' position, it is much more radical than you might think if you have only a cursory understanding and Stallman does not attempt to hide these ramifications, he merely claims his view is morally superior and the consequences be damned.

You could say the same about a lot of crimes. Prostitutes, hitmen, scammers, drug dealers, a lot of professions are inherently hurtful for the society. Heck, you could say the same about banking, insurances, real estate, utilities: a lot of people would be out of a job if theit companies were honest. Entire industries rely on some degree of scamming. And yet we still complain about dishonest banks, lack of competition, etc.

Stallman's views are pragmatic: some people would lose their job but that's the price to pay to get closer to an ideal society. That's not more extremist than socialism.

Yes but it's ludicrous to equate selling software without providing the source code to hitmen. Stallman's views are not pragmatic in the sense of them being realistic in a world people would really want to live in. I have actually never heard anyone refer to Stallman's views as "pragmatic;" that's a new one for me. I was a little taken aback. :) Also, I don't really understand your examples, beyond the fact that equating those things with proprietary software is a little cuckoo. Presumably technological progress is good, having software that solves our needs is presumably good, no one seriously thinks of having "CD burning software that works well" as being in the same league as "Rapists and murderers," well no one with half a brain anyway, so it's hard to see your point exactly in this way.

If you want to say "Stallman's ideology is morally right and consequences be damned" then fine but don't sit here and compare proprietary software developers to hitmen. Let's be serious.

> it's hard to imagine the technology wheels turning very swiftly.

On the contrary, tech iterates most rapidly when there are no barriers to sharing. "Against Intellectual Monopoly" has many great examples of this. I think my favorite was about the steam engine; originally patented, it didn't change the world much until ~40 years later (IIRC) when the patents ran out, and a ton of different companies could manufacture them.

It's the same way with software: which stack lets you move more quickly:

  1. IBM-branded big iron hardware, Microsoft OS, Microsoft language, Oracle Database
  2. commodity hardware, Linux, LAMP

I'll bet on #2 every time, and the market seems to bear my hunch out.

You've got to be joking right? Stallman would view your "commodity hardware" as evil proprietary garbage. Also, how is the development of all of these things funded, such as Linux and so on? I'm not debating how to fund open source. I'm debating how to fund your wonderful LAMP stack in the world where Stallman's ideology is the way of the world. You certainly wouldn't have Linux kernel developers working at a proprietary software company like Novell because none of these would exist.

Honestly, on some level, while I do admire Stallman in a certain way, seeing otherwise intelligent people seriously defend the possibility of enacting this paradigm is sort of a totally fruitless endeavor. I mean, I myself couldn't imagine living in such a world. As much as I love open source (which is not something Stallman things is even minutely worthwhile) and can, from a distance, admire the notion of FSF, I can't help but think how crazy it would be for me to seriously think of myself as some sort sinner for even pondering the idea of developing a piece of software and distributing it without the source; it's sort of hard to take seriously for me. :)

Without looking, who was the POTUS 100 years ago?

That's like asking "Without looking, who was a Nobel Prize winner 40 years ago?"

That's an easy one, but thanks for proving my point. (Henry Kissinger is the one I remember from 1973.)

Assuming you're from the USA, if you can't remember who was president in 1913 (Hint: there was a rather significant war we sat out until the big finish.) you're just demonstrating the stereotypes about our ignorance.

I'm not USAian and I could still guess who it is, or at least one of the presidents in 1913 since it was a year when they changed office.

Only if you forget all the financial headlines during August 2008 through 2011.

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