Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing • Hacker News Board

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#221

Post by lispm » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 6:29 PM UTC

pygy_ wrote: post #149

b1daly wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not being literal! Their are flavors of personal ethics. You can be a non-conformist and have ideals about behavior that don't extend to other people. Really that's the core of my annoyance with his point of view. It's just annoyance. Richard Stallman is a person of influence, but only in a narrow community. So I don't think he is dangerous. He's a person of great accomplishment, and has contributed a huge amount…

He advocates his views loudly, but he's not trying to impose anything to anyone. He's judgmental towards those who don't share them, though. Maybe that's what you mean when you say he's conformist? Technology is not all there is to oppression, for sure, but he's doing his part as a programmer to prevent it. The creation of the GNU movement, and subsequently of the FSF stems from a personal grief: the demise of the MI…

the 'demise of the MIT AI Lab'? WTF?

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#222

Post by homosaur » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 6:37 PM UTC

m0nastic wrote: post #63

homosaur wrote: post #42

The one thing I get kind of annoyed with Stallman at is that he keeps mentioning this Leemote machine he has, which runs free software even in the BIOS. He might as well say that he runs Linux on a magical unicorn. I have tried and never been able to get my hands on one of these things. I'd really like to see Stallman jump off his insistence on free for one second and maybe suggest something realistic for users who c…

Freedom Included is a company that got set up in Cambridge specifically to sell the Lemote. They ship internationally apparently through a partner (can't vouch for it). The folks who run the site seemed like decent enough people, so I think it's on the up-and-up. (I haven't bought one though) If you actually want one of these things, it looks like about $450: http://freedomincluded.com/

Oh, it's a 10.1 inch, that actually makes it quite a bit more usable. Thanks for the link.

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#223

Post by peterwoo » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 6:38 PM UTC

robomartin wrote: post #219

How does RMS earn a living? I often find it odd that people even talk about free software or software having to be free. There is, of course, no such thing. There's subsidized software, but no free software exists. Linux, as an example, is probably the most expensive piece of software ever developed. Think of all the people employed at universities and businesses who devoted time paid by their employer to develop Lin…

RMS doesn't require that software be "free as in beer". It's okay to sell and purchase software -- so long as person making payment actually ends up owning what they get.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?FreeAsInBeer

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#224

Post by mixmastamyk » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 6:43 PM UTC

local-variable wrote: post #178

mixmastamyk wrote: post #105

Every time an rms article comes up trolls come out of the woodwork to rally about what a kook he is and all "the horrible things" he's done. "Why the nerve, living a life different than I would choose!? IT MUST BE STOPPED." Snooze. I've been reading this fear-mongering regularly since '97. Why is he so threatening? It's not like you have to share a studio apartment with the guy. Have any complainers contributed 1/10t…

> "Why the nerve, living a life different than I would choose!? IT MUST BE STOPPED." That's what RMS is basically saying.

Everything I've read by him, including this article, has been written in a calm instructive tone, as if he is providing an example to follow. You are of course free to ignore it or disagree. From his writings and the ubiquitous negative comments, it appears RMS isn't nearly as threatened by others as they seem to be of him.

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#225

Post by mixmastamyk » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 6:49 PM UTC

hackermom wrote: post #140

mixmastamyk wrote: post #105

Every time an rms article comes up trolls come out of the woodwork to rally about what a kook he is and all "the horrible things" he's done. "Why the nerve, living a life different than I would choose!? IT MUST BE STOPPED." Snooze. I've been reading this fear-mongering regularly since '97. Why is he so threatening? It's not like you have to share a studio apartment with the guy. Have any complainers contributed 1/10t…

"Why the nerve, living a life different than I would choose!? IT MUST BE STOPPED." Hm, is it just me or doesn't that sound like the agenda RMS is trying to push down everyone else's throat regarding their choices in personal computing?

Instructive blog posts and advocacy talks don't constitute "pushing down my throat." A response to an idea often says more about the responder than it does the idea. (I replied a little more to local-variable below.)

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#226

Post by homosaur » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 6:50 PM UTC

robomartin wrote: post #219

How does RMS earn a living? I often find it odd that people even talk about free software or software having to be free. There is, of course, no such thing. There's subsidized software, but no free software exists. Linux, as an example, is probably the most expensive piece of software ever developed. Think of all the people employed at universities and businesses who devoted time paid by their employer to develop Lin…

#1. You're confusing free as in beer and free as in freedom. Stallman cares about free as in freedom. You really want to go back and review this because you are clearly unfamiliar with the philosophy behind the free software movement. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html The freedom the FSF talks about is not related to cost, it's related to the freedom to modify and share software.

#2. Software in the days you speak of WAS more like free software today. Hackers did share software and patches and such. If you had a problem with a piece of Unix code, whoever the commercial vendor was would often just send you the source. If it stayed like this, there would never be a need for the FSF.

#3. Developers can work on whatever they want in their spare time. If a developer feels that it's valuable to donate his or her labor to improve a piece of software that can improve everyone's lives then that's their business. They have the FREEDOM to do what they want with their time and intellectual capacity and if that's in creating software that supports user freedom, then obviously they see a benefit in it.

#4. It's shortsighted and wrong to say that free software is anti-commercial. Red Hat is a billion dollar company now. Microsoft was one of the largest contributors of code to the Linux kernel last year. Every internet company we ever talk about on HN mostly owes their business to free software like Apache, Linux, BSD, Nginx, PHP, Ruby, etc etc etc etc etc

#5. No, RMS would not refuse medical treatment at a non-free facility. This is a specious argument that has been brought up time and time again and shot down repeatedly. Read this very thread, that point is addressed.

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#227

Post by homosaur » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 6:55 PM UTC

b1daly wrote: post #95

I've only read a few writings by Richard Stallman. It seems plain to me that he is an egomaniac with some kind of rigid obsessional thinking patterns. People like this are very annoying, and ironically undermine their own case if they intend to persuade others of their views. The willingness with which he labels the practices of large swaths of the population (of the US) "unethical" would be very disturbing if he was…

You might be right about all of this. RMS clearly does not have the same sort of thinking as a "normal" person and his bio Free as in Freedom even suggests he probably has some sort of mild spectrum disorder. Maybe he is less egomaniacal and more oblivious.

That puts him in good company with thousands of other geniuses and philosophers. We need absolutists so someone will stand up for these important arguments down to the bitter end.

Even though RMS is still disgusted with the state of software, there's no question that software and freedom have been massively advanced by his life's work.

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#228

Post by homosaur » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 7:01 PM UTC

robomartin wrote: post #219

How does RMS earn a living? I often find it odd that people even talk about free software or software having to be free. There is, of course, no such thing. There's subsidized software, but no free software exists. Linux, as an example, is probably the most expensive piece of software ever developed. Think of all the people employed at universities and businesses who devoted time paid by their employer to develop Lin…

Oh and RMS makes a living mostly off speaking fees and academic stipends. He has talked in the past that he chooses to live like a grad student so he has the freedom to basically do whatever he wants. If you haven't guessed, Stallman is kind of big on freedom.

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#229

Post by homosaur » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 7:08 PM UTC

X-Istence wrote: post #207

reinhardt wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"a quick Google search did return valid results this time around, particularly that it is for sale on Amazon." It's kinda amusing that in your quest for more RMS-inspired freedom you came in contact with two of his companies-non-gratae.

I didn't really want it for RMS-inspired freedom, as a hardware hacker/tinkerer I think it would be interesting to own a machine where I could change the way the BIOS worked, where I can get full access to the datasheets. Some of RMS's policies and ideas and thoughts seem completely foreign to me... for example, I absolutely love my iPhone and enjoy working on OS X as my day to day machine, but every so often I reall…

Yeah, this is the same reason I would like it. I'd actually like to hack on the BIOS and learn more about the full stack of technology in general. I think if you only worked in terminal it would be quite enough beef to run with. I think X would even work alright if you ran with a low end WM or none at all. You're probably not going to get LibreOffice going but I bet Abiword runs great. I was running X on Pentium II with no WM recently so I think it would be good on this machine.

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#230

Post by azernik » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 7:14 PM UTC

I'm not sure I quite understand his criticism of Python; it most certainly acts like it has a REPL, and it actually does have a builtin functions for eval() and print() (the equivalent of read needs to do additional parsing).

So what's RMS's beef with Python?