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Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

alexeymk.com

51–60 of 210 posts

Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#51
post #50
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if you are being facetious, but the main argument for vegetarianism is that "meat is murder."

For many of the vegetarians I've known, that's a secondary argument, the primary being a healthier lifestyle.

I know people like that, too. However, if I had to bet money on the primary motivation of the majority of the world's vegetarians, I would bet they hold ethical arguments against eating meat.

Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#52
This man is arguably the greatest hacker of all time. He's hacking the culture, he's been incredibly successful.

It's shocking and irresponsible that people are commenting on "what rms says" based only on hearsay, speculation and mis-quotes. At least take the time to Google before condemning the man for things he never said.

Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#53

This man is arguably the greatest hacker of all time. He's hacking the culture, he's been incredibly successful. It's shocking and irresponsible that people are commenting on "what rms says" based only on hearsay, speculation and mis-quotes. At least take the time to Google before condemning the man for things he never said.

The link to the video of the lecture was in the first sentence of the letter. Apologies if this was unclear.

Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#54

minor nit: i don't think rms is a "Dr.", since he didn't get a Ph.D. (unless he has a secret M.D.) From wikipedia: "Stallman then enrolled as a graduate student in physics at MIT, but abandoned his graduate studies while remaining a programmer at the MIT AI Laboratory. Stallman abandoned his pursuit of a doctorate in physics in favor of programming." perhaps he has an honorary doctorate?

From the same wikipedia article: 1996: Honorary doctorate from Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology [85] 2001: Honorary doctorate, from the University of Glasgow [89] 2003: Honorary doctorate, from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel [91] 2004: Honorary doctorate, from the Universidad Nacional de Salta. [92] 2007: Honorary doctorate, from the Universidad de Los Angeles de Chimbote. 2007: Honorary doctorate, from the Uni…

I don't think an honorary doctorate entitles one to be referred to as Dr. In fact, most people with doctorates that I know would rather not be referred to as Dr. In the case of this article, it seems like the author is trying to be overly-formal in the manner of a Keith Olbermann rant.

Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#55
When you talk about the risk of software as a service, you can mention that the US gov't is attempting to collect identifying user data from the Wikileaks Twitter account, or the recent domain name seizures of PokerStars and other online gambling websites.

These are practical consequences of a lack of Free Software

Huh Wut!?

How is free or open software going to prevent any company from receiving a court order to disclose data about its users?

This has nothing to do with technical implementation of a service.

Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#57

A few points i would like to remind everyone who criticizes rms. 1) rms is a radical guy. You cannot change that. He fights for what he thinks is right. He is not the kind of person you can ask to censor himself. If he thinks u.s goverment is to blame for 9/11, no matter how saying it in a lecture seems childish, he will say it. If you invite rms for a lecture, he is coming with his radicalism. That is to be expected…

> The point is, these days, most people involved in open source community, do not even care about free software and the freedom it offers.

Being involved in open source seems to be mainly a thing to put on the CV. And often, people who start or run an "open source" software product are co-directors of a consulting company, or else employees bound by non-compete clauses, charge out as much as possible for as little as possible supporting "special client addons", get other people (e.g Google SOC) to pay for as much of their product development as possible, spend a lot of effort gaming search engine results to score high in popularity rankings, and suddenly change their product API's to keep away other developers who won't sign onerous involvement contracts with them.

Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#58
post #27

Years back, I used to be an FSF member. Not that I liked the GPL much (in fact, I mostly use the Apache License), but they raised important issues, and had a track record of investing into fine software (GNU) that I benefitted from a lot. However, their campaigns were getting so off-target, that much of my sympathy dwindled, and I ended my membership. Childish 'anti' advertising, such as 'BadVista' and DDoSing Apple'…

I'm a happy fellow of the FSFE ( http://fsfe.org/ ), the European pendant to the FSF. Sometimes we also discuss FSF campaigns, and usually agree that those would almost certainly be counter-productive here in Europe, especially things like the "Windows 7 sins". However, we always thought: Well, the USA have a different culture, so maybe this kind of campaign is needed there, and probably our style of campaign would n…

Exaggeration and negative campaigns can work in the U.S., but as soon as "hyperbole" starts sounding like "crazy conspiracy theory" Americans tend to shut down. For the majority of Americans (contrary to the loudest voices in the political sphere), being outside of the "mainstream" is the kiss of death.

I say all of that as a libertarian member of the FSF who disagrees with the way that many of the FSF's campaigns are run.

Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#59

This man is arguably the greatest hacker of all time. He's hacking the culture, he's been incredibly successful. It's shocking and irresponsible that people are commenting on "what rms says" based only on hearsay, speculation and mis-quotes. At least take the time to Google before condemning the man for things he never said.

The link to the video of the lecture was in the first sentence of the letter. Apologies if this was unclear.

Apologies to you but I was referring to commenters on this thread, not your post. Specifically, the 9/11 stuff. I should have replied to those directly, but was disgusted.

My apologies once again because it has nothing to do with you.

Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#60
post #47

A few points i would like to remind everyone who criticizes rms. 1) rms is a radical guy. You cannot change that. He fights for what he thinks is right. He is not the kind of person you can ask to censor himself. If he thinks u.s goverment is to blame for 9/11, no matter how saying it in a lecture seems childish, he will say it. If you invite rms for a lecture, he is coming with his radicalism. That is to be expected…

I like Emacs; I've been using it for 30+ years and I thank RMS for inspiring the commercial Emacs clone I use today. Pretty much everything else he's done: Whatever. My personal interactions with RMS have drawn me to the conclusion that he's just a smart asshole, and a little crazy. Steve Jobs is like that, too. The difference is, I would jump at a chance to work with Jobs.

I'm curious -- what is considered a commercial Emacs clone?
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