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Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman [pdf]

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Re: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman [pdf]

#51

Post by lolikoisuru »

confounded wrote: post #10
acehw wrote: post #8

Is this the first edition? There is a third edition, so why not post it instead? https://www.gnu.org/doc/fsfs3-hardcover.pdf

One guess might be that the forward for the third edition was provided by Jacob Appelbaum, who turned out to be not such a cool guy. I’m glad the version with the Lessig forward was posted (though I should probably read the new essays, too).

> who turned out to be not such a cool guy.

Only if you believe anonymous smear campaigns. None of the alleged victims ever made any effort to start a proper investigation and one of the claimed victims (some of the stories were written by people who thought they witnessed something) came forward saying that she was in fact not a victim and that the allegations were all bullcrap.

Re: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman [pdf]

#53

Post by jessaustin »

thecatspaw wrote: post #35
confounded wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One guess might be that the forward for the third edition was provided by Jacob Appelbaum, who turned out to be not such a cool guy. I’m glad the version with the Lessig forward was posted (though I should probably read the new essays, too).

> who turned out to be not such a cool guy all I could find was allegations of sexual assault which could not be proven? Or was that comment about something else?

RMS should be the focus here. If the forward-writer is the focus, for whatever reason, it's not a good forward.

Re: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman [pdf]

#55

Post by cup-of-tea »

rileymat2 wrote: post #32
jrauser wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A followup: The GNU project was born while I was in junior high, gcc started when I was a senior in high school. Linux was started when I was in college. Stallman, in a very real sense, made my entire career possible. Likely yours too.

That is a jump, software may have eaten the world without free software and been more lucrative. It is impossible to know.

People would be using software with or without free software existing but that's completely beside the point. Free software enables people to do computing. The fact that you can do computing at home with state of the art tools is something you can thank the GNU project for.

Re: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman [pdf]

#56

Post by cup-of-tea »

weinzierl wrote: post #42
jrauser wrote: post #26

Wow, the close of Lessig's introduction is powerful. We have indeed not earned that freedom yet. > I don’t know Stallman well. I know him well enough to know he is a hard man to like. He is driven, often impatient. His anger can flare at friend as easily as foe. > He is uncompromising and persistent; patient in both. Yet when our world finally comes to understand the power and danger of code — when it finally sees th…

A lot of what makes Stallman hard to like is that what he says are inconvenient truths. It took me a while to realize that.

It's the same reason people hate vegans or hippies etc. People hate having their comfortable illusions shattered.

Re: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman [pdf]

#58

Post by _lbaq »

From the first essay, a word that should be reclaimed.

"The use of “hacker” to mean “security breaker” is a confusion on the part of the mass media. We hackers refuse to recognize that meaning, and continue using the word to mean, “Someone who loves to program and enjoys being clever about it

Re: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman [pdf]

#59

Post by throw2016 »

Most people don't believe in idealism but the open source movement is living proof of it. This is a society that worships 'wealth creators' and is skeptical of altruism and has no way to understand or value their work.

Stallman, Torvalds and thousands of others have undeniably added immeasurable value to society and have directly and indirectly enabled thousands of startups and tons of jobs. Yet they are not thought of as 'wealth creators' and 'job creators' and its those who use their work for profit who get these self-congratulatory titles.

Stallman was particularly prescient but it does not look like the values that powered the generation that created and grew the open source movement will persist. Those who work for and defend the surveillance economy can hardly claim them.

The communities that were more open source focused have more of less died and a lot of that tech traffic spills here but HN itself is not focused on open source but how best to use it for profit - not that that is a bad thing. But now its a side effect of efforts to make money.

Re: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman [pdf]

#60

Post by severine »

davidgould wrote: post #49
jrauser wrote: post #26

Wow, the close of Lessig's introduction is powerful. We have indeed not earned that freedom yet. > I don’t know Stallman well. I know him well enough to know he is a hard man to like. He is driven, often impatient. His anger can flare at friend as easily as foe. > He is uncompromising and persistent; patient in both. Yet when our world finally comes to understand the power and danger of code — when it finally sees th…

I am not religious, but I think that Richard Stallman is as close as we can get to an actual literal saint. He has changed the world through his works, will and vision in ways that are still unfolding and that will not be fully understood for a long time. There has been a lot of criticism of the GPL and the principles behind it often by people who do not wish to abide by the licence. This has led to some bitter and u…

For those who didn't know: https://stallman.org/saint.html

Warning: taking the Church of Emacs (or any church) too seriously may be hazardous to your health.

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