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Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

alexeymk.com

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Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#81

Post by cosmok »

It is almost impractical for me to be like Stallman and shun a lot of Hardware/Software. But, I do not wish for Stallman to be any less radical than he is as: by being radical he gains my attention and some of his thoughts and ideas stick with me and, it has made me think about 'freedom' while buying any piece of Hardware/Software.

I would never want to work him on anything - I watched him tear apart people while responding to their concerns - but, people like him are essential to the Free Software movement.

Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#82

Post by [deleted] »

eliasmacpherson wrote: post #40
emilsedgh wrote: post #8

A few points i would like to remind everyone who criticizes rms. 1) rms is a radical guy. You cannot change that. He fights for what he thinks is right. He is not the kind of person you can ask to censor himself. If he thinks u.s goverment is to blame for 9/11, no matter how saying it in a lecture seems childish, he will say it. If you invite rms for a lecture, he is coming with his radicalism. That is to be expected…

"even if you believe that the government had nothing to do with the attacks of September 2001," - could well be blaming foreign policy of previous governments, not theorising about conspiracies. I always wonder why conspiracy theory has become such a loaded phrase, people conspire in secret, other people theorise about it, I don't really see the problem.

[deleted]

Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#83

Post by mvalle »

hubb wrote: post #34
leoc wrote: post #21

Eben Moglen http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/ is a more winning spokesman for the FSF these days. I hope he'll forgive me for mentioning that there's plenty of him on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=eben+moglen :)

eben's a wonderful speaker, but i believe he's resigned from actively working for the FSF? i could be wrong

I believe he now works for the Software Freedom Law Center, which is sort of affiliated with the FSF.

Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#84

Post by kevbin »

ugh wrote: post #80
kevbin wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether killing animals is comparable to murder is a different question than whether animals are people. Peter Singer argues against the species-ist argument that they're incomparable. Or that killing any human is worse than killing any (or even all) animals, i.e. he argues that for some human,animal pairs killing the human is less-worse than killing the animal. http://www.princeton.edu/~psinger/faq.html : > Q. I’ve…

When someone says murder most people think 'subset of killing humans' — that's how people come into play. I don't ink you are really referring to a mainstream vegetarian argument there. There is even vast common ground between meat eaters and vegetarians. Most people agree that killing primates it morally clearly wrong.

Singer's is a utilitarian framework for arguments about vegetarianism and other animal-rights issues; not an argument for vegetarianism, per se. Animal Liberation is a great, mind-opening read.

> Most people agree that killing primates it morally clearly wrong.

Roughly, you're probably right: killing primates is generally wrong. But it's not always, clearly wrong: killing a primate that's about to kill you, killing primates that are consistently killing other primates, killing one primate to save a hundred other primates, etc., etc. Singer's framework gives us a way to reason-through cases where there isn't consensus.

Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#85

Post by doki_pen »

schrototo wrote: post #24
patrickaljord wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If he thinks u.s goverment is to blame for 9/11, no matter how saying it in a lecture seems childish, he will say it. By the way he doesn't believe that. Last time I read about his opinion on the subject he said that proofs were lacking on both sides (truther and non-truther) but that it was probably the work of religious fundamentalists (either christians or muslims).

> ... proofs were lacking on both sides ... religious fundamentalists (either christians or muslims). These are equally ridiculous statements. We know who did it, we know how they did it, we know why they did it. People just can't accept that enormous events can have relatively simple causes.

It's ridiculous to think that there is no possibility that there were people who could have prevented it, but choose not to.

Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#87

Post by jberryman »

AlexeyMK wrote: post #6
michaelpinto wrote: post #4

If Stallman wasn't a crazy hippy he wouldn't have been into this cause years before even the first dot.com boom. It's unfair for someone to insist that a visionary go corporate all these years later because you feel uncomfortable. If you want to be the next generation spokesman than become that, but don't waste time trying to make a zebra shed his stripes.

Thanks for making that point. I want to make perfectly clear that I have a tremendous amount of respect for RMS and everything that he's done. By no means would I recommend that he compromise his ideology or 'go corporate.' All I'm saying is: almost everybody at his talk (already a self-selecting group) was put off by the tone and extremist nature of his delivery. His message got lost, and that sucks - it's an import…

Posted it earlier but now that I see you're in this thread, just wanted to say that I appreciated the tone of your post. Thanks.

Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#88

Post by autarch »

I think Stallman needs to read this book - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159056233X

Activism doesn't need to be mysterious, there's lots of psychological research that you can look to when you ask "how can I convince people to {go vegan, support software freedom, support gay rights}?"

Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#89

Post by dget »

cgray4 wrote: post #63

I really don't think the signs that are used to illustrate this article are comparable. The Kindle/Swindle sign isn't making up a new name for the Kindle. It is saying that this thing in the sign is a swindle. You shouldn't buy it because it makes false promises. If a person made up a sign with a bottle of Coke and put "Tastes Great" beneath it, that person wouldn't be calling Coke "Tastes Great". Sure, it's negative…

In his talk, he referred to the Kindle nearly exclusively as the "Amazon Swindle," only clarifying that he was talking about the Kindle at the end, for what its' worth.

Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#90

Post by [deleted] »

cgray4 wrote: post #63

I really don't think the signs that are used to illustrate this article are comparable. The Kindle/Swindle sign isn't making up a new name for the Kindle. It is saying that this thing in the sign is a swindle. You shouldn't buy it because it makes false promises. If a person made up a sign with a bottle of Coke and put "Tastes Great" beneath it, that person wouldn't be calling Coke "Tastes Great". Sure, it's negative…

[deleted]
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