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Eric Raymond: Why I think RMS is a fanatic, and why that matters

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Re: Eric Raymond: Why I think RMS is a fanatic, and why that matters

#151

Post by motters »

The pure pragmatism of Torvalds and the "I won't use it unless it's 100% free software" attitude of RMS are both valid viewpoints. In practice most of us mere mortals accept some state of affairs in between those two poles.

Ignoring software freedom as an issue would IMHO be a major mistake given the overall direction in which contemporary society is going. In broad terms I think RMS was right in the sense that as software becomes ever more deeply embedded into all aspects of life, who owns and controls that software, and the ability to audit it, becomes an important question. Theoretically, in the long run it may not be possible to have a free society without some amount of free software infrastructure.

Re: Eric Raymond: Why I think RMS is a fanatic, and why that matters

#152

Post by cheatercheater »

luser001 wrote: post #42
cheatercheater wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with RMS on many points, but I think you're misguided: > I've always used the GPL for licensing my open source code ITYM "free software" > specifically because it ensures that it stays open and that improvements are given back. No, it does not. Any software not being redistributed does not have to publish its improvements. And even if it does publish the improvements, they don't have to be made accessible in…

Ubuntu doesn't contribute to upstream? What do you mean? The limitations you point out on publishing changes are nits imho. It's far better than nothing, and social pressure has been successfully used in many cases to make sure proper SCM logs are sent.

I'd upvote for humour.

Re: Eric Raymond: Why I think RMS is a fanatic, and why that matters

#153

Post by cabalamat »

icebraining wrote: post #98
cabalamat wrote: post #65

> There are some advantages to this strategy. It taps into old, powerful emotional responses in human beings – the same responses that give messianic religions their power. As a way of recruiting a small hard core of dedicated followers it’s tough to beat, and sometimes – if you’re, say, the Gautama Buddha or Jesus or Mahavira – you can make it scale up. But I described it as a trap for a reason – most such attempts…

You shouldn't mix up RMS with the Pirates. While there are obvious similitudes (particularly in terms of privacy, DRM, etc), RMS was initially opposed to their platform of reducing or killing copyright, since that would limit the effectiveness of the GPL without really fixing what he fights against - after all, lack of copyright doesn't mean you'll have access to the source, which is a precondition of freedoms 1 and…

> You shouldn't mix up RMS with the Pirates

Shouldn't I? RMS mixes with Pirates, seems to be broadly in favour of what they stand for, and comments a lot on internal Pirate Party mailing lists.

Re: Eric Raymond: Why I think RMS is a fanatic, and why that matters

#154

Post by raganwald »

orangecat wrote: post #134
raganwald wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From time to time I go slumming and read the kind of thing Mr. Raymond has written, things like: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4278 He quotes something which appears to be backed up by statistics, then carries off into some social speculation. He rails against “political correctness” muzzling the truth. I have read similar things from people who feel a need to “have an honest conversation about the actions of Israel in t…

It’s a massive Ad Hominem on my part, but I can’t help but wonder when I read such passionate words, “Why is this person fixated on this particular topic?” Because in their view, which may or may not be correct, they are injustices which receive very little mainstream attention. Is that not enough? I’m not going to say he’s a racist. I'm not going to say that John Doe has ever had any inappropriate relations with his…

Because in their view, which may or may not be correct, they are injustices which receive very little mainstream attention. Is that not enough?

Enough for you, not enough for me. That’s how human behaviour works. You may meet someone who goes on and on about men’s rights and think, “here is a fellow who has encountered injustices which receive very little mainstream attention, how perfectly ordinary.” Someone else may beet the same fellow and be disquieted by their choice of injustice which receives very little mainstream attention they have picked as their fixation.

And I didn’t say he’s a racist. Pointless waste of time when discussing a man who wrote an essay asking for the word “racist” to be defined in such a way that he explicitly isn’t one. Likewise, it would be a waste of time to insinuate that Mr. Does had inappropriate relations with his students in the middle of a debate about the word “inappropriate.”

If you and I can agree on a definition of the word, I’ll happily denounce or exonerate Mr. Raymond. Until then, I’ll use a made-up-phrase so there’s no misunderstanding: He strikes me as a man fixated on race. Do you disagree?

Re: Eric Raymond: Why I think RMS is a fanatic, and why that matters

#155

Post by zbuc »

pvarangot wrote: post #33
zbuc wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ESR doesn't strike me as particularly fanatical from what I know of him. Are you thinking of something in particular?

Are you familiar with his views about Islam or Homosexuality? Those seem pretty fanatical to me, they are completely biased and downright offensive and illiterate. He equates homosexuality with paedophilia, denies HIV is the sole cause of AIDS and believes in a conspiracy to hide the true causes, and calls for the murder of religious leaders of the middle east equating them with animals. I tried multiple times to dis…

Well, that's undeniably pretty fanatical.

I have only read his technical articles that get posted to news aggregator sites -- I don't particularly care about what strange political beliefs some washed-up developer has -- and hadn't noticed anything so vile as this.

I think he still (occasionally) makes good points about development and open source, but his political and sociological views are very immature.

Re: Eric Raymond: Why I think RMS is a fanatic, and why that matters

#156

Post by specialist »

cstross wrote: post #38

We need people like RMS. He marks one side of the Overton Window framing the debate on freedom and software. (Overton window: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window ) This doesn't mean he's right but what he does is necessary . If he didn't exist we'd need to invent him (or someone like him). (Oh, and he is indeed a fanatic, but of the pacifist variety -- not the kind who's interested in killing people to enforc…

Agreeing with you: Absolutists (like RMS) expand the Overton Window. I'm more BSD than GPL, but without RMS, BSD would be seen as radical.

ESR wrote:

Unfortunately, RMS made an early decision to frame his advocacy as a moral crusade rather than a pragmatic argument about engineering practices and outcomes.

Having done a bit of policy work, value statements are what works. "Intellectuals" (progressives, geeks, libertarians) think The Right Answer wins. Nope. Cite George Lakoff, David Domke, Thomas Frank, Noam Chomsky...

Further, open source is a moral issue. Example:

Diebold hid their software. We lost transparency of our elections. Bad things happened. John Bonifaz and voteraction.org proved in court that John Kerry won New Mexico in 2004. The same things happened nationwide. Extrapolate.

Ditto medical devices, our personal data, etc.

So I'm with RMS. I'm sorry that RMS makes ESR feel weird. Tough.

Re: Eric Raymond: Why I think RMS is a fanatic, and why that matters

#157

Post by cwp »

dspeyer wrote: post #123
cwp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The difference between RMS and ESR is one of kind, not one of degree. Both the free software movement and the open source movement believe that open system are good, and the more open they are the better they are. The difference is in their answer to the question of "why?" RMS and his adherents believe in inalienable human right to tinker, and consider limitations to that right, such as closed source technology,…

We do need RMS. Compromise is a dangerous game. Especially when the proprietary world doesn't compromise back (and it usually doesn't). How long could the free software movement have continued to mean anything if each year it had crept a little closer to the mainstream technological community?

Open source isn't a compromise between free software and proprietary software. It's a different philosophical basis for advocating the same practices.

Re: Eric Raymond: Why I think RMS is a fanatic, and why that matters

#158

Post by indubitably »

adavies42 wrote: post #92
papsosouid wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly "never produced any code" was hyperbole, but "contributions" is being pretty generous. Hobbling together some random scripts nobody has ever used isn't really contributing. Most of what he has tried to contribute has been rejected.

giflib is probably his most important project in terms of how many people use it gpsd is probably the project he's working on right now with the most potential for widespread use and importance forgeplucker http://home.gna.org/forgeplucker/ (oddly not linked at http://www.catb.org/~esr/software.html ) is probably the project he's working on right now that's the most interesting (and ironically something i expect RMS…

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Ok then.

Re: Eric Raymond: Why I think RMS is a fanatic, and why that matters

#159

Post by smsm42 »

jcbrand wrote: post #144
smsm42 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it ensures that it stays open and that improvements are given back" Actually, this phrase can be understood in two ways: 1. I want to ensure that the software is improved and the improvements are shared. 2. I want to ensure that the if the software is improved, then improvements are given back. If it's not happening, I prefer it not to be improved or used. The difference between these two are the difference between…

> 2. I want to ensure that the if the software is improved, then improvements are given back. If it's not happening, I prefer it not to be improved or used. This is false. You are free to use and improve it, even if you don't want to give your improvements back. But then you are just not allowed to distribute the software with your changes as closed source. > It's like one person giving to charities with no precondit…

You seem to be confusing political stance with GPL legal language. GPL legal language, due to the way copyright works, may not allow the author to control usage - even though Affero GPL comes close. But mere fact that the ASP scenario is called a "loophole" and mere fact that Affero GPL exists suggests that the use of improved software without distribution of the improvements is considered something that needs to be discouraged.

You missed the point of the analogy. The point was that if somebody gives away his work for charitable reasons without any strings attached, and somebody else demands that whoever uses that work behaves in certain way that is politically approved by the giver - the latter has little base for claims of moral high-ground over the former. It is an empirical fact that restrictive licenses like GPL lead to more friction in integrating various software projects, often making it impossible to use existing code and requiring to reimplement existing functionality from scratch. Again, this is fine if the goal is certain political action and not just improving the world of software available.

You of course are entitled for compensation for your work, and entitled to choose in which form it comes. However I do not see a base for claiming that your requirement of compensation somehow morally superior to both people that prefer monetary compensation and people that do not require any compensation at all and allow their work to be used freely by anybody.

Re: Eric Raymond: Why I think RMS is a fanatic, and why that matters

#160

Post by Karunamon »

dredmorbius wrote: post #114
dpark wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not coincidentally, those are also areas where there's basically no longer any profit to be made. No one makes money selling web servers or compilers for Unix, because it's not possible to compete on price with "free". The businesses that make money from open source typically do so by selling something else on top. Google doesn't sell open source. They sell services. Red Hat doesn't sell open source. They sell suppor…

Too: proprietary solutions cannot (at a sustainable price point) compete with the quality of free. As someone noted -- there's a development model which shares the load among many eyes, and produces higher quality work as a result. There are a few other mechanisms at work, but the upshot is that for utility, and even a fair amount of specialized software, there's no longer a marketplace for the software itself.

>Too: proprietary solutions cannot (at a sustainable price point) compete with the quality of free.

That depends entirely on the community behind the free solution, and what class of software it is. For instnance, I'm not aware of a FOS document management system which would compete with, say, Paperport or DevonThink (Windows and Mac systems, very proprietary).

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