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Richard Stallman’s rider

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Re: Richard Stallman’s rider

#211

Post by wnight »

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #180
smacktoward wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having had experience organizing lots of public speaking/platform events, I can assure you that "please provide milk and sugar" is one of the easiest-to-comply with requests I've ever seen. He doesn't specify that it must be soy milk, or 2%, or half and half. He doesn't say it has to be natural cane sugar grown on the sunny side of a hill and harvested by certified sugar cane naturalists during the summer solstice. H…

It would've helped if he had just specified which kind of tea he likes. That way, he wouldn't have needed to write most of that paragraph. Now we're left to guess, which means we will stock several kinds of tea, in the hopes of one being to his liking.

Or, not, because he hasn't asked for it.

He's basically saying, "if you provide tea provide a full tea service or I likely won't like it." If you don't want to provide that, don't.

If that's too complicated he repeatedly says "email me and ask". "Hey RMS, what tea would you like us to buy" would do it. As would giving him $0.75 for the tea bags he brought, if you feel the need.

It's so low maintenance.

Re: Richard Stallman’s rider

#212

Post by ddol »

We invited rms to speak at SkyCon '07[1], but he double booked and ended up not coming to Ireland.

The rider has changed significantly since I received it in late 2006 - http://diffchecker.com/851d9eU

Can anyone point me toward more unique copies of this rider? I would like to be able to keep track of the changes over time.

[1] http://skycon.skynet.ie/2007/

Re: Richard Stallman’s rider

#213

Post by bad_user »

billpatrianakos wrote: post #197
phzbOx wrote: post #176

I, too, was disappointed by Richard Stallman' talk. We were a bunch of students in a conference in general software engineering. And he was invited to give a talk about copyright and freedom.. cool, right? Not exactly. He came in and started acting like he really didn't wanted to be there and didn't care at all about us, the place and the organizers. I'm usually not the kind to judge someone else dressing but Stallma…

I feel for you. Stallman seems to think we all live in some free love hippie commune where we can all just give source code away. The world doesn't work like that and his fundamentalist attitude doesn't take people's need to eat lunch into account. You can't deny his skill and the great work he's done. Free software has its place in this world but so does proprietary code too. This rider while not being supremely hig…

Stallman has an uncanny ability to predict the future in regards to our industry. Everything he predicted has happened already or it will.

Trusted computing? It is here, it is popular and because of Apple it is also considered cool. It doesn't matter that the device you paid for is not your property anymore, people love shiny. Also, trusted computing got rejected by the market when Microsoft tried it, but now Microsoft is back on the horse and this time they'll succeed, because hey, we'll do anything for the sake of our grandmas, including giving up liberties for our future children.

Building proprietary lock-in on top of open-source? Yep. Before 2001 when OS X got released, Linux was the future of computing in our eyes. Fast forward 11 years later, go to any software-related conference and you'll see 85% of all software developers with a MacBook in their lap. Basically OS X destroyed Linux's chances on dominating the future desktop.

Uncompetitive advantages by any means necessary, including patents (which is something new)? Yep ... Java may be GPL.v2, but Oracle can kick the living crap out of you by using their patents and trademarks on it. On the whole, Sun releasing OpenJDK was nothing more than a publicity stunt of a dying company, just like the JCP was, to give the illusion of an open standard.

    The world doesn't work like that and his 
    fundamentalist attitude doesn't take people's 
    need to eat lunch into account.
I think he earned the right to behave like a fundamentalist. You can agree or disagree with him, but if you do disagree, you should give a more detailed answer than "the world doesn't work like that".

Because in fact the world does work like that. People have always helped each other in return for favors or for the greater good. The emphasis on individuals and individual gains is rather new and our economy is the one that resists, but considering the depression we are in, our economic systems don't really do a good job apparently ;-)

You may not feel it now, even though it's 2011, but our lives and the lives of our children will depend greatly on software functioning for us. When certain software will stop functioning for individuals, make no mistake about it, that will be life-threating.

Also, software companies can yield great control over our lives and can do great damage already. Remember when Google was the underdog just 11 years ago? Look at them now ... with a push of a button they can delete you from the Internet.

Proprietary software pays the bills, but that doesn't mean it isn't a really big socio-political problem that needs to be fixed, sooner rather than later.

So yeah, keep buying iPhones, but when the shit hits the fan Stallman will be there to teach you again why it was a bad idea; or he'll be dead with nobody to take his place.

Re: Richard Stallman’s rider

#214

Post by wnight »

fleitz wrote: post #146
Duff wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That fact is well known. If your university hired someone who only spoke Mongolian, would you be upset at the speaker, or the idiot who hired him?

If your university hired someone who only spoke Mongolian but spit in people's faces when they extended their hand for a handshake, would you be upset at the speaker or the idiot who hired him? RMS lacks basic social graces. He preaches to the choir but somehow still manages to piss them off with pedantic shit like GNU/Linux. Why doesn't he just copyright it so he can plaster the GNU logo all over everything and be d…

> He preaches to the choir but somehow still manages to piss them off with pedantic shit like GNU/Linux.

Maybe, just maybe, you aren't in the choir. I'm only saying this because you dismiss things many people find important.

Re: Richard Stallman’s rider

#215

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

jrockway wrote: post #206
phzbOx wrote: post #176

I, too, was disappointed by Richard Stallman' talk. We were a bunch of students in a conference in general software engineering. And he was invited to give a talk about copyright and freedom.. cool, right? Not exactly. He came in and started acting like he really didn't wanted to be there and didn't care at all about us, the place and the organizers. I'm usually not the kind to judge someone else dressing but Stallma…

I see this come up in RMS threads again and again. "There are ways to make things change. But you have to adapt." Why should he? He's famous and you're not. Why should he take advice from you that's clearly not working? Also, he did change the system from the inside. This is why people deal with his quirks.

The fact you can get away with something because you're famous is just another example of "might is right".

Sure he can get away with it, but that doesn't mean that he's not being a dick at times.

In terms of whose way is working: Stallman has created something that works for him but I wouldn't swap my life for his in a million years (and I'm sure he reciprocates that).

But I don't think he's such a success that his life can be held up as some unimprovable template.

Re: Richard Stallman’s rider

#216

Post by bad_user »

nimblegorilla wrote: post #185
phzbOx wrote: post #176

I, too, was disappointed by Richard Stallman' talk. We were a bunch of students in a conference in general software engineering. And he was invited to give a talk about copyright and freedom.. cool, right? Not exactly. He came in and started acting like he really didn't wanted to be there and didn't care at all about us, the place and the organizers. I'm usually not the kind to judge someone else dressing but Stallma…

I agree totally. The most frustrating part about Stallman's "free software" is that he has to control how everyone else uses it. Linux people don't even get the freedom to name their own operating system.

    he has to control how everyone else uses it
One of the goals of free software is to allow you to use it for any reason whatsoever, and I don't know if you realize what this actually means, or maybe you are to young, but once upon a time you couldn't use Visual Basic to create a Microsoft Office competitor.

If by usage you mean the copy-left behavior of GPL, I think it's only fair for a software author to demand whatever the fuck he wants from the software he wrote. And it's also in everybody's right to have his own opinion on how things should be done.

    Linux people don't even get the freedom to name 
    their own operating system.
But in fact "Linux people" have always named their operating system however they pleased, which is really what upsets Stallman so greatly. But even so, he remained true to his original beliefs and never included such requirements in his own software or the GPL, he only bitched about it.

You really should look for the definition of "freedom" in a dictionary ;) Here, I'll do that for you ...

    the state of being free or at liberty rather than
    in confinement or under physical restraint
Are you in any kind of confinement or physical restraint regarding the naming of Linux-based operating systems?

Re: Richard Stallman’s rider

#217

Post by bad_user »

nodata wrote: post #192
tibbon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. Nothing is left to ambiguity, and then hopefully the fewest possible things will go wrong. About the only thing that I laughed at (in joy) was the thing about parrots...

DON'T buy a parrot figuring that it will be a fun surprise for me. I love to imagine that this actually happened.

The best jokes come from actual experience :)

Re: Richard Stallman’s rider

#218

Post by gaius »

billpatrianakos wrote: post #197
phzbOx wrote: post #176

I, too, was disappointed by Richard Stallman' talk. We were a bunch of students in a conference in general software engineering. And he was invited to give a talk about copyright and freedom.. cool, right? Not exactly. He came in and started acting like he really didn't wanted to be there and didn't care at all about us, the place and the organizers. I'm usually not the kind to judge someone else dressing but Stallma…

I feel for you. Stallman seems to think we all live in some free love hippie commune where we can all just give source code away. The world doesn't work like that and his fundamentalist attitude doesn't take people's need to eat lunch into account. You can't deny his skill and the great work he's done. Free software has its place in this world but so does proprietary code too. This rider while not being supremely hig…

Stallman's ideas on economics are predicated on every programmer getting a $1M grant from the MacArthur foundation, and another $1M from the Takeda foundation. That's how he can afford to do what he does.

Re: Richard Stallman’s rider

#219

Post by gaius »

bad_user wrote: post #216
nimblegorilla wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree totally. The most frustrating part about Stallman's "free software" is that he has to control how everyone else uses it. Linux people don't even get the freedom to name their own operating system.

he has to control how everyone else uses it One of the goals of free software is to allow you to use it for any reason whatsoever, and I don't know if you realize what this actually means, or maybe you are to young, but once upon a time you couldn't use Visual Basic to create a Microsoft Office competitor. If by usage you mean the copy-left behavior of GPL, I think it's only fair for a software author to demand whate…

once upon a time you couldn't use Visual Basic to create a Microsoft Office competitor

I don't know if you know much about VB, but doing that would almost literally be a case of creating an app with a rich text control in the middle. It would be like changing a few keywords and calling Python your own language.

Re: Richard Stallman’s rider

#220

Post by glaurent »

jrockway wrote: post #206
phzbOx wrote: post #176

I, too, was disappointed by Richard Stallman' talk. We were a bunch of students in a conference in general software engineering. And he was invited to give a talk about copyright and freedom.. cool, right? Not exactly. He came in and started acting like he really didn't wanted to be there and didn't care at all about us, the place and the organizers. I'm usually not the kind to judge someone else dressing but Stallma…

I see this come up in RMS threads again and again. "There are ways to make things change. But you have to adapt." Why should he? He's famous and you're not. Why should he take advice from you that's clearly not working? Also, he did change the system from the inside. This is why people deal with his quirks.

> he did change the system from the inside

Yeah, no, not really. Linus did, by precisely following that advice : compromise and be practical. Yes, he couldn't have done it without rms's previous work, but without Linux, Free Software would have been all but forgotten by now.

I'd also argue that one of the reasons why Linux is still at around 1% of the desktop market is similar : blindly following principles at the expense of convenience and practicality.

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