Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

>Within reason of course, nobody wants Nazis or Pedophiles to spread their opinions because they are obscene.

Who decides what's reasonable? Who decides what constitutes a "Nazi" or a "Pedophile"? If someone tries to suggest that convicting a 14 year old girl as a sex offender for having nude photos of herself on her phone is preposterous that person can be effectively silenced by labeling them as a pedophile.

"But that's ridiculous. Nobody would do that." -Somebody who has never been on the internet.

Every idiotic position you can think of exists on the internet, and can be amplified to make it seem like it's a more popular opinion than it really is.

The only logical course of action is to allow all speech and let the reader discern for themselves.

In my experience, the American society places a high value on 'balance' - from "checks and balances" to balanced individuals, to balanced meals, to balancing criticism with some praise first, etc. When this balance is off, most people's innate reaction is to reject the imbalanced person, and by extension, their ideas, regardless of any objective measure of the value of those ideas.

Being direct creates an imbalance, for example when one describes an issue or person purely from a negative point of view, regardless of whether all of it is actually true. Most people will innately attempt to say something positive about that same person to restore some sort of balance to the discussion.

Generalizations are also an example of imbalance, with people typically having a strong reaction to it, even though I think most people would agree that if 97 times out of 100 something is true, it's safe to say that thing is true.

Lastly, as a special case of generalizations, taking an absolute stance is also seen as imbalanced, and therefore bad, because, I assume, most things in life aren't black and white - there's lots of gray areas, so it's pragmatic to start out assuming that in actuality there's a gray area with any issue.

This is all to say that Stallman doesn't speak in a balanced way, which is why I think his speeches and ideas do not appeal to the American audience, or any other audience that places a higher value on balance than on the actual ideas.

If he were able to convey those same ideas in a less absolutist, more nuanced and more pragmatic manner, I think he, as a person, would be more appreciated in the US and perhaps people would listen more closely to what Stallman has to say.

I've lived in several other countries, particularly in Europe, and generalizations, absolute positions and speaking in a direct manner are all generally appreciated by the society there, or at the very least it's tolerated much better and won't get you dismissed right away (since that's how most people speak).

At the end of the day, I personally think Stallman is right. When I look at what he says, I see a non-compromising idealist who places more value on truth, and how things "ought to be", than on pleasantries and gray areas, and that's a difficult sell to the American audience. When I focus on his content with the understanding that he's converting gray into either black or white, I see a dreamer and a believer in a utopian society. I too would like to live in a world where all software is FOSS and we all write FOSS code that runs on FOSS hardware, but I recognize that's a dream. It shouldn't stop us from trying to make that dream a reality though.

Perhaps because I do not use google (are you in a bubble?) I did not have that result searching.

Before I commented I tried to find the source, interesting digressions ensued, but nothing that suggests this is typical.

Also I mentioned I have been following him for a long time (nearly three decades, golly). I have never heard those sorts of words pass his lips.

So I accuse you of telling a lie here. It is not uncommon to make up stories and exaggerate faults of those you politically oppose. Still lies

Not the poster in question, but I think some of it might just be the "big ball of mud" of long maintained software, and some of it may indeed be the managerial structures around software, which incentivizes managers to grow their teams and find problems for them to solve, regardless of the need of either the growth of team size, or the so-called problems.

And we all know bored developers will make up work for themselves and bikeshed themselves to death.

> a strategy

I don't think it's conspiratorial, so much as emergent. All structures which persist have means of ensuring their persistence. Institutions (including open ones) will push for things that further their existence, status, funding, and ultimately their power. They will make themselves indispensable, regardless of their actual value-added.