I think RMS's most likely response to this article would be, "If I hadn't been so crazy, you wouldn't have written about my talk at all."
If I were in his shoes, I'd be crazy too.
Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter
161–170 of 210 posts
Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course there is, but I think in some ways it hurts RMS, and it hurts the image of the FSF. A good friend of mine (a fellow hacker, actually a much much better hacker than me) and I were talking about Richard Stallman the other day. The guy deserves an enormous amount of credit for his contributions to humanity. Think about what happened as a result of GCC. Think of how many things were enabled because of that. Rig…
I'm constrained by my ability to learn and that is pretty much it. Well, I think it is more subtle than that. You are relying on certain externalities - for example, you can't build a chip fab without spending an enormous amount of money, and you need all that power so you can work in Python and not ASM, you can't lay ubiquitous bandwidth without spending an enormous amount of money, etc. What you are doing is equiva…
You're right, but these externalities are accessibly cheap.
Last month, my website had ~150,000 visitors. People who I know and look up to in the tech community tweeted about it (it was for an article I wrote).
I was able to design something, implement it (the software the runs the site [on top of the OSS stack]), then release it to the world and watch people use it.
It wasn't just a demo, it was a real-life, functioning product.
I pay $20/mo for hosting on linode. $20/mo gets me the ability to compete with multi-billion dollar media publishers, and multi-billion-dollar software companies (faecbook, twitter, etc [obviously my $20/mo doesn't scale. The point is that I'm creating the same thing they are, just smaller).
I got "noticed" by a whole bunch of people who used my product.
This is not the case with architecture. You could make an really cool model, or design in CAD, and nobody outside of your social circle would likely see it.
I just paid $48 for a year of hosting on prgmr because I wanted to give some friends of mine a sandbox to play in while I teach them python.
Imagine an architecture teacher giving their student a plot of land, as well as a crew of builders, and a yard full of raw materials.
That's where OSS software is right now, and that is amazing.
Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter
#163What bother's me about Dr. Stallman is that he is concerned with particular freedoms, such as the freedom to tinker with software, and brands this as the freedom. This is ideology. For me the most important freedom is the freedom to get my work done with the best available tools. Often the best available tools are not "free" software, especially if you do anything other than web or systems programming. I actually pre…
you don't give a damn about freedom, you just want a good tool. Its not really that hard to understand the difference.
Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ar…
That doesn't stop some big organizations from doing it, though. Just look at PETA.
And it works just fine for PETA, assuming the purpose of PETA is raising money for PETA rather than preventing cruelty to animals. If PETA were sane like the ASPCA then there'd be no need for PETA to even exist.
Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
It's interesting how advertising cultures are different. In Greece, for example, it is unthinkable for an ad to acknowledge the competition, especially in a negative light. It was a rather big shock for me when I saw a US ad for a Ford car (for example) saying "our fuel consumption is X lower than the Prius". This would never happen in Greece. At most, they would say "our fuel consumption is X lower than the nearest…
In Greece, for example, it is unthinkable for an ad to acknowledge the competition,
Many countries have advertising standards that, if not outright prohibit negative advertising, at least set the bar very high as to what can be said and what level of supporting evidence needs to be provided.
In the US, the protections of free speech convolved with the fact that corporations seem to enjoy the same "natural rights" as individuals, means that you can say pretty much anything in an ad.
Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter
#166I've always found a connection between brilliance and "yelling at cars on the side of the road." Take the good with the bad.
I've read a number of your books and never drew that connection before, thanks.
Also, I thought that guy looked a lot like RMS, but I was going too fast to get a good look.
Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the spokesperson for the Vegetarian Society was trying to persuade others to become vegetarian by branding all farmers "murderers" and engaging in ridiculous rhetoric, I think other vegetarians might be concerned that their message wasn't being conveyed appropriately and was alienating them from the mainstream, thereby resulting in fewer vegetarians.
I can't tell if you are being facetious, but the main argument for vegetarianism is that "meat is murder."
Dubious claim. There is no single argument against eating meat. I know vegetarians who abstain from eating meat on grounds ranging from waste of biomass resources to "I don't like the taste." It's a multifaceted belief system.
Within the group, you'll likely find a small subset that actually thinks meat is akin to human murder, but that takes a leap of logic that many vegetarians aren't willing to take when there are so many other perfectly reasonable reasons to choose the vegetarian lifestyle.
Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
The analogy works fine. We have the politically motivated FSF on the "meat is murder" side, and on the other hand the Open Source movements belief that open source is simply a more practical way to develop software on the "healthier lifestyle" side. I wouldn't expect PETA to stop with their off-putting campaigns ("Your Mommy Kill Animals"), it is what they genuinely believe, and for them keeping silent and advocating…
And let's not forget that RMS' views create the space that moderates inhabit. In other words, if there were no RMS, the moderates would be the extremists and we'd all be poorer for it.
The difference though, is that usually the moderates have the pulpit and the radicals are ever marginalized. That hasn't happened to a great degree here. Stallman is still the front man for the movement.
Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's ridiculous to think that there is no possibility that there were people who could have prevented it, but choose not to.
While I think the intelligence agencies were just incompetent to identify the proper threat, perhaps for lack of an adequately warped imagination (911 was a game changer in the rules of plane highjacking - nobody ever used a passenger plane as a missile before), I don't think anyone allowed it to happen on purpose. However, the president and his associates certainly saw the opportunity and ran with it. The damage don…
Just google for Nikola Kavaja.
Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter
#170Sorry, I cant read something about RMS without remembering his horrific foot incident: