Wow. I've never really read much about Stallman in the past, but he really comes across as an arrogant jackass in most of those answers.
Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.
241–250 of 263 posts
Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.
#242Ah RMS, same fundamentalist as always! One thing I would suggest, for those not familiar with RMS's history, is to take a moment to read the Wikipedia page on Lisp Machines. Specifically, this passage: Symbolics still had the major advantage that while 3 or 4 of the AI Lab hackers had gone to work for Greenblatt, a solid 14 other hackers had signed onto Symbolics. There were two AI Lab people who did not get hired by…
It also makes his grumpiness a bit less of an outlier to consider him in that context. If you run into 60s/70s-era AI/Lisp-hacker types at AI conferences, they're usually pretty grumpy, but also quite intelligent, so they get away with their grumpiness and not-very-polite negative questions (often complete with Stallman-style interruption of people in the middle of a talk to correct some minor point).
(Not true of everyone, of course.)
Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
Including denying its users any freedom. Tell me one freedom that does not involve denying freedoms and I'll give you the point. If, however, the only freedom you want is the one to deny freedoms, then, this argument became circular a couple messages back. Using the GPL you deny no other freedom to your downstream users that that.
Yes. Including denying its users any freedom. "Freedom" is not black and white. Sometimes you need to deny users one freedom in order to give them another. For example, Spotify is a non-free application and it has DRM and lock-in and nasty things like that (no doubt required by the music industry). However, it's completely changed the way I listen to music and given me freedom to listen to more music than I could hav…
Actually, you traded your freedom to tinker for your ability to play whatever they chose to offer you. I hope you like their offering.
Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.
#244Here is someone who really, really needs to read Saul Alinsky: 15. MendaSpain: Hi Richard. I love all GPL software, but I have a dilemma: I'm writing a program which needs a lot of time to be coded but at the same time it's really easy to be used. I could license it as GPL and wait for donations, but from other people's experience just almost nobody make donations to free software projects. Support is not necessary b…
I'm not sure I follow. Any chance you could elaborate at all?
A guy telling you that he's a struggling small-time app developer is not going to be receptive to an argument that says it's immoral for him to support himself by selling his software. The choice Stallman offered, between being a good human being and eating, was an exceptionally tone-deaf and counterproductive response to his question.
Alinsky's ideas --- which are extremely relevant to marketing --- mostly involve adapting your message to the realities of your audience. That means listening to them, understanding their problems, and being prepared to spell out how their lives would work out after you've changed them.
Here Stallman stipulates that it's self-evident that unfree software is bad, and that your personal well-being is less important that the principle of freedom. It's not even a 'wrong' point; it's an overtly hostile and stupid one. Free software has answers to that problem ("design your application differently, run your business differently"), but Stallman's idealism keeps him from understanding those answers, and so all he can do is bloviate.
Rules for Radicals isn't just a good book, it's also a fun one. As the Tea Party people are showing, it's also not inherently left- or right-. It's short and cheap, and if any part of your life involves wanting people to change anything they're doing (from how they vote to what flavor of ice cream they buy), you should get it.
Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.
#245On a modern Linux system, Gnu is the command line userland, one compiler (among many, and not the dominant one for work if you're a Java shop), and Emacs. And that's it. Not X, not really Gnome, not KDE at all, not the polish put on by Ubuntu etc, and not most of the OS underpinnings either nowadays (dbus, hal, udev, upstart, dpkg, network-manager...). Tell me again, why he should get the Gnu/... in front of the kern…
Thank you! I think many of the more recent Linux users will spend the entire day without once using a GNU tool, except indirectly. And, of course, you could say the kernel and most of the tools were compiled with GCC, but that's not something to be proud of--that just means Linux is full of GCC-idiocy and potentially breaks every time there's a minor upgrade in GCC.
Also GCC's days as the dominant C compiler may be numbered - clang is catching up, and they are even trying to get it to compile the Linux kernel http://llvm.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=4068
Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who gets to decide if there is "no reasonable need"? Apple clearly believes (just like the microwave manufacturer) that there is "no reasonable need" to extend the iphones software.
Clearly the success of the app store shows that there's a desire to extend the functionality of the phone. Apple just doesn't believe that there's a reasonable need to do it beyond a certain point or to do it without their permission. However, no one is clamoring to write apps for a microwave. A microwave really just has one function and as long as it does that one thing then it doesn't really matter how the software…
What if I want to change what the buttons do? On my microwave, you have to type in the power setting before the time, what if I always want to default to 100% power unless I hit a specific button first? What if I want to hook a smoke detector up to the microwave so it will automatically shut off if its burning something?
Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.
#247I expect most responses here will be pretty negative, and I honestly can't defend his position because our politics differ so greatly (and his stance spins directly out of those philosophical roots). Nor can I forgive his personal attitude and general arrogance over the years, although it has softened significantly of late. But I'll give the man a grudging amount of respect: he hasn't budged one inch on his position…
Maybe that "clarity of purpose" is just age old stubbornness. Going at something so long, so hard, so staunch, and then learning over time perhaps you need to adapt and change. However, you have dug yourself into a deep hole, due to the rigidness over time, you would never be able to adapt, as people would see it as weak, and your own self/ego would not allow it.
The guy is in a tough spot.
I wish someone would have asked him about the eating of his toe jam. :) It was touched on, and I understand it is not important, but his appearance distracts from his goal. And who in the hell eats the crap between your toes? ( I mean, in public that is, I do so in the privacy of my safe room, duh! )
How in the heck could he have forgotten the belittling of a small kid. Either the OP was in fact making it up/embellishing, or there is no way he forgot, and was covering.
The hypothetical about the software based medical solution; that was a surprising answer to me. In a way, he has invented a religious dogma. He seems to have an answer to everything that comes up, in the same way religions also have an answer for dinosaurs and aliens.
Just pick a damn movie and pick a damn book for Christ's sake! :)
This one just killed me:
When a company says, "We want to merge with competitor XYZ,
since we are too small to compete in this market, and by the way
the merged company will become the biggest in the field," we
need to respond, "We won't let you merge. However, we just split
your biggest competitor into 5 pieces; maybe now you will find
it easier to compete."
His inability to adapt his position hurts him in the long run. When making comments about textbooks, it was clear to me, that the preferable solution would be to use a free textbook over a non free textbook. I can get behind that. However, when the quality of the non free textbook is abysmal, you must go with the non free version. We are talking about one's eduction, or health, or life saving scenario, their future in general.
Giving up a little in the beginning to position yourself to be able to make sure that what you gave up in the beginning never happens again, is the adaptation he lacks, which hurts his end game.
Compromise does not seem to be in his vocabulary, yet I suspect he would be so much further along had he learned about it. He may walk into a meeting with major leaders of other countries to get them to look into free software deployment on a scale of millions. That sets the tone to be able to one day implement his idealistic end game. That meeting would have no negotiation to it, it would be his way, or no way, in which case, Microsoft just made all the money, and he took a step backwards for the sake of being stubborn.
Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.
#248Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
The iPhone is pretty much marketed and sold as a multi-purpose computing device. There is a huge market for installing software on it, there is a development environment etc. People know this when they buy it. It is very obviously a computer-phone. When you buy a microwave, you are buying it to heat food. You are not expecting to be able to browse the web on it or play games. If you are, then you need your head exami…
So, iPod classic is OK but iPod touch is not? What about a TV? A TV that can play youtube viedos? A car? The kindle? The drobo? Are they all multi-purpose computing devices? The distinction is actually not as very very clear as you think.
Anywhere minor modifications to the firmware could cause serious injury, it makes sense to restrict access to the firmware, because the firmware is a very small part of a hardware system that has been well-tested for safety. This makes the car and the microwave off limits.
iPod classic, it's not going to hurt anyone if you screw with the firmware, you should be free to tinker to your heart's content. There are also enough obvious deficiencies (lack of support for a variety of codecs) which can be improved.
Same with a TV, the Kindle, the Drobo.
Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This man lives in an imaginary world where no one has to make any money (or if they do, they are evil) Did you even read the article? He says it's ok to make money with free software and should be advertised: "When you meet people who think free software is supposed to be gratis, tell them "It's free as in freedom; it doesn't have to be gratis." Then refer them to http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html , and yo…
He must know his philosophy on selling is fundamentally flawed though. The high-budget computer game question (which he side stepped) is a good one. Why would you spend millions of dollars on a software product if you could only count on selling the first copy?
You could charge for the binaries, like Red Hat and XChat do. Quoting from http://xchat.org/windows/:
You may use XChat for Windows for free for 30 days. If, after this time, you would like to continue using the product, you are required to register. Registration is a one time fee of $19.99 USD (US Dollars) which can be paid using the PayPal service below.