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Comment by Karunamon | Hacker News Reader

It's not feasible for the average person to restrict their lives to the point that RMS does and advocates for.

* Reading the web via email only

* Using completely free software and hardware (which as far as I can tell, limits you to a very small subset of Linux on a single Chinese-made netbook)

* Not carrying a cellphone

* Not using any social networks.

Stallman's principled stand is admirable, but untenable for most. I need to violate every single one of these tenets in an average day at work.

And that's before we even enter the realm of entertainment, which is even worse as far as the FSF's definition of freedom goes.

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Principled != crackpot. Crackpot is an insult intended for the feeble minded and is used to reduce any opinions a person might hold on a subject as reject-able out of hand.

Over unity energy generation from the vacuum is rightly labeled as 'crackpot' imo, Stallman's position, while extreme should (again, imo) not be labeled as such.

Where Stallman breaks from admirable principle and dives into untenable crackpottery, IMO, is where he calls proprietary software evil.

Crackpot => unsupported by evidence.

Calling proprietary software evil is an opinion, and there are plenty of examples of evidence that proprietary software was created in ways that one could label as evil. Give it a while and there might be some revelation which will cause lots of people to go 'oh, that Stallman was such a visionary, calling proprietary software evil'.

Now on this particular aspect of Stallman's reasoning I find him hard to follow because that would mean a whole class of something is bad whereas I believe it should only apply to instances on a case-by-case basis. But I'm going to hedge my bets here and sit it out for the next decade or two (assuming I have that much time remaining) to see if he might not be on to something again that is still hard to see from where we are standing right now.

One way in which this could play out is that in order to avoid certain societal fates is to have nothing but open source for certain classes of application (for instance, voting computers, software in use by the government in general or software that is used to power network infrastructure).

Don't be too quick to judge, Stallman has been right more often than I'm comfortable with on some of his most 'extreme' views.

I've never heard Stallman be right about anything that wasn't blindingly obvious to anyone who was an open-minded observer of the same things at the same time.

He's not the only one that's been crowing about electronic surveillance. Ever since things like Carnivore (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_(software)) were uncovered in the 1990s, it's been obvious that there's a lot going on we will never be fully informed about, that the internet is no longer a safe playground devoid of malevolent actors. Mailing lists and USENET groups at the same period of time were constantly aflame with these sorts of issues.

If you can cite an occasion where Stallman has had a unique insight into the situation, I'd be surprised.

Stallman, for all his posturing and relentless drum beating, which is at least admirable from the point of dedication, is still no Alan Kay, Marvin Minsky, Marshall McLuhan or Raymond Kurzweil.

Moral judgements are subjective opinion by nature, fair enough, but I bring the crackpot label in for exactly what you say, thinking in absolutes, in black and white, instead of nuance.

In the real world, that shows a distressing lack of critical thinking and a further distressing abundance of dogmatism.

"Proprietary software is bad" -- Subjective value judgement.

"Properitary software is evil" -- Subjective value judgement that shows a lack of thought.

"You should always use free software wherever possible." -- Subjective value judgement.

"You should use absolutely nothing but free software ever" -- Subjective value judgement that shows a lack of thought.

I mean, the FSF "disapproves" of software that is completely free on its own (Fedora, Firefox), merely because they point out nonfree things you can use. (Fedora's firmware bundles and some repos, and Firefox's addons site).

That's completely idiotic. Apparently the FSF's "freedoms" do not include the freedom to run whatever software you choose if it's "unfree".

The proprietary software as evil thing comes as a morality judgment, that the potential evils from such software/licensing far outway whatever positive nuance it could bring to the table. A nuanced reading of the past 75 years of copyright/patent law and judgments can come to the conclusion that such an ecosystem is detrimental to the rights and ability of end-users and developers.

Guess what the solution to the proprietary software problem is? Not using or promoting proprietary software or platforms that enable it.

You are getting upset that the Free Software Foundation has standards to be met to consider software as "free". To dismiss their agenda as existing in 'crackpot' territory is invalidating a legitimate argument to support your shaky conclusion.

* RMS reads the web via email because he's traveling virtually all the time and rarely has Internet access. A batch-based system makes more sense for him. This isn't an ethical stance, and the fact you include it hits your credibility severely.

* The FSF uses computers other than Yeeloongs. The FSF also doesn't really care about free hardware. The Yeeloong has chips with non-free firmware burnt in, and the FSF doesn't care because that isn't software. It's the Free SOFTWARE Foundation, after all.

* Stallman is on a few social networks, notably identica @rms@identi.ca (possibly now defunct). He probably has a GNU Social endpoint.

I think you're conflating Stallman's willingness to be uncompromising in his own lifestyle with his calls for reform. Stallman is fairly intelligent and understands that not everyone can live like he does, but I suppose he feels the need to answer the question of "what should you do in the present beyond push for reform."

I also don't know what "entertainment" you're talking about. The FSF is against proprietary video game engines, but their mission pertains to software, not music/movies/etc.. They campaign against DRM because DRM requires non-free software to enforce.

RMS reads the web via email because he's traveling virtually all the time and rarely has Internet access

Surely you can't expect people to take this argument seriously. It's easy to get internet access on the go in much of the world already.

RMS emails in restaurants, cars, trains, etc., in Europe and the United States but also frequently in SE Asia and South America. There are pictures of him responding to email in the mountains in Nepal.

It's easy to get Internet access on the go in most of the places I've been to, but I've been to a tiny fraction of the places RMS has been to.

I didn't say one should never use offline mail. I'm just disputing that it's a sensible default, rather than a backup.

> Over unity energy generation from the vacuum is rightly labeled as 'crackpot' imo

Then it seems that crackpottery is a term that may be removed in retrospect. I'm sure at some point in the future someone will crack the energy from the vacuum riddle, who knows.

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