11–20 of 101 posts
Metacomment: a few years ago anything by RMS would have been jumped on within minutes of posting with lots of comments against him and his principles. Is he now being looked at in a different light by the wider software development community?
I also think that open source is nice, but by far it's not the most important thing there is to software.
I really appreciate what RMS has done as far as start a movement that I think has contributed greatly to the human existence but when he says things like "The basic point of the free software movement is that nonfree software is unjust and should not exist." I can't but seriously question his judgment. It's one thing to personally want to use free software, it's another to claim that nonfree software "should not exis…
Note that radicals don't necessarily support passing laws to get what they want - the goal of most political radicalism is to cause a change in society, not to force society at gunpoint to do something it doesn't want to.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure what timezone you're in but it's about 4AM US Eastern time.
Hmm, I asked since my mental model of the 'programming community' that I osmosify by reading comments on these kind of websites detects a slight shift on the RMS popularity front over the last year or so. I feel he's coming in from the cold a bit. I am mostly browsing HN during my european daytime. Lots of people seem to comment on stories during my daytime. Do you mean his detractors are predominantly American? Do y…
Even if things have changed such that only a third of HN users are in the US, that's still a lot of people sleeping. Though I suppose I am implying that more of RMS's detractors are from the US. On one level, it wouldn't surprise me. Even though RMS's reputation is global, most of his writings are in English, and his homepage is currently focused on North-America-centric topics: https://stallman.org/
But I'm going to make a guess that HN is still busiest when America is busiest, judging by the time frequency of submissions currently in the /new section, as compared to what it will look like at 9am east coast time.
I really appreciate what RMS has done as far as start a movement that I think has contributed greatly to the human existence but when he says things like "The basic point of the free software movement is that nonfree software is unjust and should not exist." I can't but seriously question his judgment. It's one thing to personally want to use free software, it's another to claim that nonfree software "should not exis…
From the link:
The basic point of the free software movement is that
nonfree software is unjust and should not exist.
Metacomment: a few years ago anything by RMS would have been jumped on within minutes of posting with lots of comments against him and his principles. Is he now being looked at in a different light by the wider software development community?
I think free software as a concept is great, but everything I've ever read from RMS sounds psychotic.
I really appreciate what RMS has done as far as start a movement that I think has contributed greatly to the human existence but when he says things like "The basic point of the free software movement is that nonfree software is unjust and should not exist." I can't but seriously question his judgment. It's one thing to personally want to use free software, it's another to claim that nonfree software "should not exis…
Many legal and ethnical systems have limitations on what you can consent to. You're not allowed to consent to work for less than the minimum wage, for example
Metacomment: a few years ago anything by RMS would have been jumped on within minutes of posting with lots of comments against him and his principles. Is he now being looked at in a different light by the wider software development community?
I really appreciate what RMS has done as far as start a movement that I think has contributed greatly to the human existence but when he says things like "The basic point of the free software movement is that nonfree software is unjust and should not exist." I can't but seriously question his judgment. It's one thing to personally want to use free software, it's another to claim that nonfree software "should not exis…
RMS' movement allows for little wiggle room when it comes to 'free software', because it is a movement. Unless you're willing to join a movement, its perfectly okay to criticize it from the skirts - but the point is, RMS has set those skirts at a boundary of his choosing, according to an ideology.
That ideology has done a lot of good for the world. It is worth considering seriously, just what the world would be like today without a Free Software movement happening, as it did, over the last 40 years. 40 years of software development culture has existed with this ideology in its midst; what of the world, were it not so?