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Eric Raymond: Why I think RMS is a fanatic, and why that matters

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Re: Eric Raymond: Why I think RMS is a fanatic, and why that matters

#81

Post by jgon »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #45
papsosouid wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, RMS at least used to write code. ESR has always been a creepy hacker fanboy, latching on to and idolizing hacker culture, but has never been part of it, and never produced any code.

I'm curious, how does ESR make a living? He seems to spend a lot of time running his personal site (which carries no charges or ads) and has written a bunch of Open Source software. I don't see him doing anything that would put money into his bank account, or is he being sponsored by some company? If so who?

I am going to simply go by what ESR himself says, which is that his wife is a lawyer and so she goes and works every day which funds his ability to stay at home and write blog posts about the intellectual inferiority of black people and how the poor deserve no government help. No I am not making this up.

Re: Eric Raymond: Why I think RMS is a fanatic, and why that matters

#82

Post by hollerith »

btilly wrote: post #58
marquis wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>not releasing the source is evil I believe it's a cultural necessity given how we make money as software developers. Hardware developers have a buffer in terms of actual production, which requires significant investment. You can reverse engineer any hardware you have in your hands but it's unlikely given 2012 technology that you can mass-produce it and steal revenue from the copied source (patents notwithstanding).…

Not true. A number of years ago a friend of mine took the largest 10 software companies by revenue, and broke out their software revenue according to whether it was from sales of software, or from consulting. Microsoft was the only one who made more from sales than consulting. Every other one made more from consulting. Generally at least an order of magnitude more. I am sure that a similar exercise today would produc…

I question whether revenue is the right metric given that Microsoft's profit from software sales over the last 20 years probably exceeds the profits from consulting of the other 9 companies.

Also, I question whether the 10 largest companies are representative of the industry as a whole.

Re: Eric Raymond: Why I think RMS is a fanatic, and why that matters

#83

Post by raganwald »

cwp wrote: post #76
cstross wrote: post #38

We need people like RMS. He marks one side of the Overton Window framing the debate on freedom and software. (Overton window: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window ) This doesn't mean he's right but what he does is necessary . If he didn't exist we'd need to invent him (or someone like him). (Oh, and he is indeed a fanatic, but of the pacifist variety -- not the kind who's interested in killing people to enforc…

No. The difference between RMS and ESR is one of kind, not one of degree. Both the free software movement and the open source movement believe that open system are good, and the more open they are the better they are. The difference is in their answer to the question of "why?" RMS and his adherents believe in inalienable human right to tinker, and consider limitations to that right, such as closed source technology,…

The difference between RMS and ESR is one of kind, not one of degree

Yes.

RMS is concerned with morality, ESR with practicality.

Also yes, for some definition of “practicality.”

The open source movement is just as ardent, just as committed and just as "extreme" as the free software movement, but more successful.

I don’t know how to measure commitment, but I agree that the open source movement is more successful in the sense that it is more popular.

But what else should we expect? If you take two groups with similar ideas, but one thinks of moral arguments as a way to achieve practical goals, while the other thinks that practical arguments are a way to achieve moral goals, you should almost always expect to see the “practical” group be more successful than the moral group.

I see this in school, where students who study how to pass tests get higher marks than students who study the material to learn. I see this in business. I see this in politics. Why would we expect to see anything else in software?

no, we don't need RMS

I think that’s a fine statement to make if you qualify who “we” are. If you mean people concerned with practical objectives, you may be right. I caution against rhetoric that might be mistaken for suggesting that your point of view encompasses everyone reading your arguments.

Re: Eric Raymond: Why I think RMS is a fanatic, and why that matters

#84

Post by JamisonM »

Eric Raymond's working definition of a fanatic is, "Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim".

RMS is to me the exact antithesis of this definition. He has always had a complete focus on his end objective and everything he does is geared towards it (and scraping out a meagre living so he can continue it). One could argue that the path he has chosen to his objective is incorrect but to say that he is now acting having lost sight of his objective is wrong.

RMS to me has always been very conscious of his ethical position and has been pragmatic to the extent that being so does not put him in the position of being a complete hypocrite. For example, his position of the use of the LGPL. This has never seemed to be to be the behaviour of a fanatic of any variety.

I think offering the suggestion that religious language is detrimental to his message is perfectly reasonable. I have always viewed RMS real audience as hackers, and since the hacker culture is one of using religious language tongue-in-cheek I think the language fits the audience.

Re: Eric Raymond: Why I think RMS is a fanatic, and why that matters

#85

Post by dpark »

cabalamat wrote: post #64
dpark wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not coincidentally, those are also areas where there's basically no longer any profit to be made. No one makes money selling web servers or compilers for Unix, because it's not possible to compete on price with "free". The businesses that make money from open source typically do so by selling something else on top. Google doesn't sell open source. They sell services. Red Hat doesn't sell open source. They sell suppor…

> No one makes money selling web servers or compilers for Unix, because it's not possible to compete on price with "free". That may or may not be the case. However, it certainly doesn't stop high-quality compilers and web servers being written for Unix.

I never said it did.

Re: Eric Raymond: Why I think RMS is a fanatic, and why that matters

#87

Post by dpark »

cheatercheater wrote: post #39
jgrahamc wrote: post #2

"The problem with it is the same problem with messianic religions in general; for people who are not flipped into true-believer mode by any given one, it will come off as at best creepy and insular, at worst nutty and potentially dangerous (and this remains true even for people attached to a different messianic religion)." I fit into neither of the caricatures of either a 'true believer' or someone scared of RMS. I s…

I agree with RMS on many points, but I think you're misguided: > I've always used the GPL for licensing my open source code ITYM "free software" > specifically because it ensures that it stays open and that improvements are given back. No, it does not. Any software not being redistributed does not have to publish its improvements. And even if it does publish the improvements, they don't have to be made accessible in…

The Affero license sounds closer to what you want. It doesn't stop someone from using the code internally without releasing improvements, but it does stop a company from building a network-based product on top of your code without releasing their improvements.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html

Beyond that, though, it sounds like what you want is actually a bunch of mandatory process bureaucracy. You seem to want everyone to be required to contribute to the original repository, but that's a maintenance nightmare. This would pretty much prohibit forks (pushing changes upstream from a heavily modified fork is non-trivial), and add senseless work to lots of derivatives (e.g. some project B uses a tiny piece from A, but now has to attempt to send all changes upstream, no matter how irrelevant).

Re: Eric Raymond: Why I think RMS is a fanatic, and why that matters

#89

Post by cwp »

raganwald wrote: post #83
cwp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The difference between RMS and ESR is one of kind, not one of degree. Both the free software movement and the open source movement believe that open system are good, and the more open they are the better they are. The difference is in their answer to the question of "why?" RMS and his adherents believe in inalienable human right to tinker, and consider limitations to that right, such as closed source technology,…

The difference between RMS and ESR is one of kind, not one of degree Yes. RMS is concerned with morality, ESR with practicality. Also yes, for some definition of “practicality.” The open source movement is just as ardent, just as committed and just as "extreme" as the free software movement, but more successful. I don’t know how to measure commitment, but I agree that the open source movement is more successful in th…

I think that’s a fine statement to make if you qualify who “we” are. If you mean people concerned with practical objectives, you may be right. I caution against rhetoric that might be mistaken for suggesting that your point of view encompasses everyone reading your arguments.

Fair point. That line was actually meant as a direct response to cstross's "We need people like RMS," but I botched the parallel construction. The "we" there should be the same "we" that cstross was talking about.

one thinks of moral arguments as a way to achieve practical goals, while the other thinks that practical arguments are a way to achieve moral goals

That's an interesting way to think about it, but for me at least, neither of those characterizations is accurate. I think practical arguments are a way to achieve practical goals. I oppose the philosophy of the FSF, because AFAICT, they're making moral arguments to achieve moral goals. You seem to consider morality and practicality to be two sides of the same coin, where I see them as quite separate.

What I dislike about the RMS position is that it seems to consider tinkering, and perhaps geek culture in general, as inherently good and goals in their own right. I take a more utilitarian view: tinkering is good insofar we benefit from the results. (That "we" is very broad by they way. Users of technology and humanity in general.)

[turns out I can still edit the gp, so I fixed that line]

Re: Eric Raymond: Why I think RMS is a fanatic, and why that matters

#90

Post by [deleted] »

cwp wrote: post #89
raganwald wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between RMS and ESR is one of kind, not one of degree Yes. RMS is concerned with morality, ESR with practicality. Also yes, for some definition of “practicality.” The open source movement is just as ardent, just as committed and just as "extreme" as the free software movement, but more successful. I don’t know how to measure commitment, but I agree that the open source movement is more successful in th…

I think that’s a fine statement to make if you qualify who “we” are. If you mean people concerned with practical objectives, you may be right. I caution against rhetoric that might be mistaken for suggesting that your point of view encompasses everyone reading your arguments. Fair point. That line was actually meant as a direct response to cstross's "We need people like RMS," but I botched the parallel construction.…

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