When it comes to well formulated talks about free software, none seems to beat those from Stallman's lawyer, Eben Moglen. He knows very well how to speak to a crowd, and tends to use local references and languages to explain concepts (professor of law and history of law). Stallman has excellent skills in seeing problems in software before they get noticed by everyone else, but when I want to introduce someone to the philosophy of free software I would rather put on a talk like Freedom of Thought Requires Free Media from 2012 or the now 11 year old talk Die Gedanken Sind Frei from 2004.
Look, Stallman doesn't care who he alienates. He doesn't care if you disagree. He doesn't care if he offends you.
That's what zealots do.
But as creepy, and petulant, and obnoxious as I tend to find him, I'm grateful every day that he's out there, because there are things he's right about, about which he's pretty much the only person with any visibility or credibility at all to say something.
More to the point, he wouldn't have that credibility if he compromised and made his position more palatable.
I'm glad for what he's done, but every day he's out there yelling and screaming and generally causing shit for no reason he's damaging the open-source movement.
There are undoubtedly others that are able to fill that role, and while they may not be as bombastic or driven, they could be more constructive and willing to engage in serious discussion rather than mock and ridicule anything that is not pure.
His stubborn refusal to use things like Google Docs makes him completely blind to what that sort of tool can do. Where's the open-source version of same?
It's like to him using the MIT or BSD licenses is the same as heresy and if he had the power to, like some ordained pope, he'd excommunicate all those that refused the GNU license.
That's why being "creepy, petulant and obnoxious" is a serious problem.
I don't understand how he can be almost literally losing his mind about Windows, which is of no real threat to anyone, when the real problems are closed source code inside hardware embedded in cars, medical equipment and voting machines where the stakes are much, much higher.
If you ask me, he's fighting the right war on the wrong battlefield.
> I'm glad for what he's done, but every day he's out there yelling and screaming and generally causing shit for no reason he's damaging the open-source movement.
Well, since he overtly views the Open Source movement as harmful to the Free Software movement (which has fundamentally different goals, even if the kind of software licensing each supports overlaps considerably), that's not exactly accidental.
> about which he's pretty much the only person with any visibility or credibility at all to say something
But the only people he has any visibility or credibility to are people who a) know who he is, and b) agree with him. I can't imagine any situation in which his arguments would sway someone who currently disagrees with him.
I'm willing to bet that if you talked to the majority of geeks these days who weren't already using linux in 1998, most either wouldn't have heard of him, or would have heard of him in the same vein as Eric Raymond, Dennis Ritchie, or Donald Knuth: people who have done great things in computing, in times long since past, and who have no relevance to what's happening in computing today beyond those legacies.
So imagine Stallman showing up to a CS class, looking and behaving like a bushman who'd been lost in the wilds of Alaska for 40 years, insinuating that the US government was responsible for 9/11 and telling them to stop using Facebook and Google Docs and cell phones. What possible credibility could he ever have?
The FSF, with him at the helm, is going to continue to remain a valuable organization, but the FSF without him at the helm would be a valuable organization that would finally have a real chance at being taken seriously.
Side note: I spoke to my 25-year-old coworker, and he had only the vaguest idea of who Stallman was, proving my point that, to this generation of programmers, he's almost completely irrelevant except in a historical context.
> he wouldn't have that credibility if he compromised and made his position more palatable.
To an extent I agree, but you can stick to your positions without snide remarks ("Swindle") or needlessly provoking on issues unrelated to your mission (9/11 truther material).
Drop those things, and you can have your positions and increase credibility. They hurt the mission, as the article's author says, for no benefit.
I suspect that RMS' refusal to use a web browser limits his ability to research things thoroughly, and leads sometimes to him accepting the first version he encounters about something as the truth, especially if it supports his presuppositions.[0] He also tends to latch on to things that make his favorite targets look bad[1], even if there's really nothing there to latch on to.
I'm reminded of this comment[1] by screenplay author David Simon:
"Labour doesn't get to win all its arguments, capital doesn't get to. But it's in the tension, it's in the actual fight between the two, that capitalism actually becomes functional, that it becomes something that every stratum in society has a stake in, that they all share."
Total devotion to pure ideology is always the wrong answer, because it implies hubris: that a problem has been totally solved, no further research is needed. People like Stallman, Gates, Rand, and Marx give us clear distillations that are really good as solving some problems, often before others even realize those problems even exist.
As the above quote points out, these ideologies are not final, total solutions on their on. It is the conflict between them that bring the best results. From that conflict a good long-term planning pragmatist can try and pick out the parts that work and fix the parts that don't. Refactoring and bugfixing may not be fun, but they do keep the world working.
My thoughts exactly. I don't think anyone would like to sacrifice convenience for freedom the way Stallman does, but to me he is the maximum of the "How free can we be" scale. I believe he reminds everyone (especially open source developers) that there is always room for more freedom in the sofware we create and use, in the behaviors we engage in, and in the data we release. He remains in the software crowd's mentality reminding us that there is always room for more freedom for the user.
In short he's not the Leader we want to follow, he's the Explorer telling us of the harshful yet free landscapes he lives in. We may not want to go and live where he is, but there are things we can apply back in our world.
There is a page on Stallman's own website which contradict this:
"I don't believe that the US government directly planned or instigated [the attacks of September 11]. But in a larger sense it laid the foundation for them, through two decades of support for armed religious fanatics in Pakistan and Afghanistan, up to and including the Taliban."
No, I don't think stallman is a 9/11 conspiracy theorist. When people quote Stallman they tend to be vague, and the quote in the article simply said:
"even if you believe that the government had nothing to do with the attacks of September 2001,"
What is lacking is context. It may be simply a comment regarding the US Foreign policy. After all, the reason Al-Qaeda had power in the first place can be directed linked to weapons and money which the US gave to Al-Qaeda in order to have a proxy war with the Soviet.
I try to listen to all of his talks on the web and I don't think that I have ever heard him say that, but I might have missed it.
BTW, those four images are inflamatory. I can't find them on the fsf.org web site. If the author placed those there, and they have nothing to do with the FSF or Stallman, then this article should be hell banned, if that is possible. If Those four inflamatory images are from FSF or Stallman's web properties then I would like to see evidence (URLs please). Shame, shame, shame on the author if he just placed those images to be provacative.
At least 2 of them are LaRouche, not Stallman/FSF, so I'd agree with you that they are unfair and inflammatory. The Obama/Hitler one is apparently from LaRouche organizers [1]. The global warming one obviously is as well. The Windows 7 sins image is actually from the FSF [2]. I don't know about the Swindle image.
They are illustrating the author's contention that Stallman's rhetorical approach is similar (and similarly offputting to anyone not already committed to the cause) to that of the LaRouche crowd, and are presented in pairs with a LaRouche poster beside one from the FSF/Stallman side (the Windows 7 sins is from the FSF, I'm not sure of the origin of the "Swindle" poster but the "Swindle"-as-abusive-alternate-name-for-Kindle thing is something that, per the letter writer, Stallman engaged in in the speech.)
In my opinion, including a picture of Obama as Hitler (which has nothing to do with any Stallman/FSF statement) raises an already tenuous ad hominem attack to its Godwin extreme. That they aren't clearly labeled is disingenuous at best.
Its not an ad hominem attack. Saying Stallman's arguments are wrong (or, in a weaker form, that they should be dismissed) because of the tactics similar to those of the LaRouche crowd similarity would be ad hominem.
Saying that Stallman's presentation of his ideas is, in fact, alienating to people who aren't already converts, and that the presentation's similarity to LaRouche extremists tactics is helpful in understanding why that happens (whether or not it should happen) is tactical criticism.
There may be a problem with it, but it isn't even remotely ad hominem.
I believe the footnote states that he changed his mind after having written the article. I also failed to see it the first time I read through, though I appreciate your desire to get the facts out there.
I look forward to the day when 9/11 enters the same category as the JFK assassination, and questioning the official story is merely fringe and not (necessarily) crazy. 2300+ engineers are on record disputing the science of the 9/11 Commission; even if they're utterly mistaken, it doesn't mean every single one is a paranoid lunatic.
Uprated because I think the points Alexey makes are valid, having seen Stallman speak. I give the FSF money every year because of what they do, but... Stallman is out there. Then again, if he wasn't, would he have created the FSF?
Stallman doesn't appear to be very open to honest advice, so there isn't much you can do to change his approach.
> That said, I nor the people that I spoke with about your talk found you to be a particularly charismatic or persuasive speaker. The only people that seemed convinced by your speech were the ones who had already been leaning towards your point of view to start with.
I had the same impression a few years ago when Stallman came and gave a talk at CERN. I already agreed with him on most of his points, but I didn't expect anybody to change their mind just because of the talk.
I went to a talk Stallman gave when he was in Vancouver a few years ago. I found him not only uncharismatic, but almost actively so. Rather than promoting the FSF's agenda, I left with an even worse impression of it than I had originally had.
I give Stallman credit for his commitment to his cause, but at the same time I have to criticize him for maintaining his methods.
You want people to stop using Google Docs, because it's proprietary and hordes your data under Google's control? How about encouraging, spearheading, and promoting the creation of an open-source alternative? The suggestion of 'Just don't use Google Docs' isn't practical; people use it for a reason, and he doesn't seem to understand it, presumably because he doesn't 'collaborate' on documents the way that teams often have to. But if you put a free alternative in front of people, I'd wager you'd get a lot more converts.
Hell, how about just some modifications to OpenOffice to allow multi-user document edits using your native app, facilitated by a central server or peer-to-peer networking (e.g. zeroconf/avahi). Boom, now your full-featured word processor, which is better than Google Docs, has all the features you want, plus a local copy of the file.
Stallman's arguments seem to be 'This thing you like is bad, so just don't have it'. It's like someone without any children saying "Why do you need a playpen? And so many toys? And baby gates? Just don't let your kid go near the stairs, problem solved.' If you don't understand the challenges involved, which he obviously does not, you can't really provide input on the process.
He's also generally opposed to Clang/LLVM, for the sole reason that it provides an even more freely-licensed replacement for GCC. Now don't get me wrong, GCC is ridiculously important, and might be the most important thing the FSF has ever produced, but it also devolved into a complex, unmaintainable mess. Very few people in the world were capable of adding substantial features, and even fewer were willing to do so.
Now we have a competitor, an open-source compiler toolchain which provides better results faster than GCC, while also including tons of new features that makes a lot of work easier for everyone (e.g. integrating source code parsing into your IDE so you can find programming errors as easily as your spell checker can correct words). Clang/LLVM have forced the GCC team to sit up and start implementing all the things they had no time or interest to implement before. Now everyone gets a better compiler, no matter what OS you're on or what you choose to use. GCC is a significantly better compiler, and Apple is largely to blame. But because Apple is involved, LLVM is bad, because it can be used in non-free build systems, like Apple's or Adobe's.
And yet, despite Apple's use of it in non-free software, it's still far better than GCC in a lot of ways. So his fundamental objection is that proprietary software exists and can be used, and not that it's being forced on users. Apple and other corporations have advanced the state of computing and compiler technology, and he's upset about it because of the very reasons these corporations were able and willing to put the money in to give us all something better.
I can't take him seriously anymore. He's been tenured for too long, and disconnected from users for so long. He has a lot to say about how the users of 1995 should use their computers, but nothing new since then.
Re: Clang/LLVM vs GCC, you need to understand Stallman actually stands for Free Software and considers the aims of Open Source Software as misguided. Clang is not "more freely-licensed" according to the FSF's definition. Once you understand this, you'll see Stallman's position is quite consistent.
I perfectly understand his position, and that his Freedom has to come via restrictions (just like our personal freedom requires the rule of law).
I don't think 'more freely licensed' is ambiguous, in the sense that the license allows more freedom of use of the code. It's not 'more Freely licensed', and it's not 'more free' (or 'more Free'), but in the end none of that is really relevant to the point I'm making.
The point, specifically, is that GCC is made better, and people who endorse, enjoy, and use Free Software have a better product to use, specifically because Clang/LLVM exist. He doesn't have to like the licensing, but it's an inherently better product in a lot of ways and his argument seems to be 'it can be used non-freely so who cares'. He can only plug his ears and sing to himself for so long before the world passes him by, and by and large that's what's happened already.
Wow. This is written like no one has every said this to Stallman before. These are old arguments with well thought through answers (even if you don't agree with them). Ironically the letter demonstrates the same tone deafness it accuses Stallman of.
I believe that Stallman is going to be Stallman. He made an incredible contribution to society, but what the free software movement needs with regards to public awareness is a Neil Degrasse Tyson / Temple Grandin / Steve Irwin.
> You don't get somebody off heroin by lecturing them about how they should value their freedom; you switch them over to methadone for a while and let them slowly detox.
Really bad analogy. That's like saying the best way to quit smoking is to start chewing tobacco to give your lungs a rest.
Well is that not the point of nicotine gum and patches?
Anyway, it's a bad analogy because apathy regarding privacy is not an addiction. It's just apathy, informed or uninformed. Anybody who was likely to care about privacy but was ignorant/uninformed should not need to be weaned off privacy-abusing services. Anybody who was never going to care about privacy need not be pursued further.
> Well is that not the point of nicotine gum and patches?
Methadone really isn't analogous to the patch, though. It really is, at its core, replacing a socially unacceptable drug (heroin) for a socially acceptable variant (methadone).
The patch is used to help taper off the craving for nicotine by administering the same drug, but in a regulated dose which gradually decreases, and using time-release (skin absorption is much slower)[0]. Methadone doesn't use this model.
Interestingly, when heroin is administered in the same controlled setting that methadone is, it has better success rates and less recidivism than methadone does. These are known as "diacetylmorphine maintenance" programs.
[0] In other words, think of the patch or gum as "extended release" versions of cigarettes.
Somewhat, although this is tangential. A lot of that is because research has shown that a not-insignificant part of addiction is the social/behavioral side of things. Lighting up. Habit.
Nicotine gum and patches allow you to conquer one aspect of the addiction at a time, which may be more achievable for many.
There's a great deal to be said on message-crafting. Leave that up to more moderate folks, like ESR (and yeah, that kind of tells you how extreme rms is, that Eric Scott Raymond is a moderate).
Stallman and the FSF are basically the platinum standard by which all free software rhetoric is judged. It is of utmost importance that they not bridge one iota. They are the reference implementation for what it means to have truly free software, what it means to value philosophy over culture, and to value ideals over pragmatism.
That's cost them, and yeah, that doesn't make them popular. But you know what? Their track record has been pretty correct. The number of infringements and abuses of power they have warned against have only multiplied--and will continue to multiply.
They're going to lose, of course, because the people they're trying to help don't want help. The people whose freedoms they hold dear forsake them and mock them and sell out at the smallest sign of convenience. It's a forgone conclusion--so, they might as well fail as martyrs instead of salesmen.
I want to upvote the first two paragraphs and downvote the second two, so I'll comment instead :-)
Stallman's ideological intransigence is the backbone of the free software world. If he was even a little bit "reasonable", free software would have been nibbled to death by ducks by now. Instead it's still going strong after thirty years.
Freedom isn't reasonable, and there will always be a few people who go to unreasonable lengths to defend it. This is a good thing, and Stallman has managed to do so by not killing anyone, not overthrowing anything, but by building something unequivocally positive and good.
Free software is going to win, of course, because it will never go away. Companies are transient. Ownership is temporary. Freedom is persistent, so long as the rule of law is operative. GPL is still the dominant open-source license: http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2012/02/15/decline-of-the-gpl/ (or it was as of 2008-ish)
The thing that gives free software power is precisely the freedom Stallman baked in: the freedom of developers to change the code. A decade from now any given proprietary system will be a pile of undifferentiated hexidecimal sludge, but we'll still be able to compile the Linux kernel from source, on architectures that aren't even invented yet.
For all that he rants about users using non-free software, the core freedom Stallman is defending is developer's freedom. To paraphrase George Orwell, "Freedom is the freedom to modify source. Grant that, and everything else follows."
> If he was even a little bit "reasonable", free software would have been nibbled to death by ducks by now.
If he had been flexible in the 1980s and 1990s, maybe.
Once the practical case for free software was established by facts on the ground, free software has been on a pretty secure footing whether or not the Free Software movement (or the FSF and Stallman) was flexible, or even present.
People have always said that “now” is the time to be flexible, since “now” we are on a secure footing. Constantly. Since the beginning. You will excuse me if I don’t believe it this time, either.
I don't recall anyone staying that in, say, 1990, nor do I remember any facts that would have supported that if they did, like many leading firms releasing free software without compulsion, either where they were the original copyright holder or where the upstream was under a permissive license so that they had no obligation to release anything, with thriving community driven free software projects, with major firms frequently contributing or sponsoring, under permissive free software licenses in many application domains.
The fact that the pragmatic case for free software has been made and well-avcepted is quite evident.
I do. It started when the BSD project made its initial free release, and really got going when BSD became a runnable OS in its own right. Ever since then, people have been saying that the GNU project is unnecessary since BSD exists.
The problem is that ESR and the "open source" people have a fundamentally different understanding of software freedom than do the FSF. I'm not judging one over the other, but I think it's a mistake to conflate the two. It's not simply the narcissism of small differences; they have fundamentally incompatible motives, even if their means can be seem as congruent.
> The problem is that ESR and the "open source" people have a fundamentally different understanding of software freedom than do the FSF.
No, if you read the Open Source Definition and the Free Software Definition, you'll find that there understanding of software freedom is pretty much identical.
Their ideas of the moral purpose of advocating for software freedom and/or the most effective tactics of advocating for software freedom differ, certainly.
I think you make an interesting and very valid point that "Stallman and the FSF are basically the platinum standard by which all free software rhetoric is judged".
That said, it's unfortunate that the standard for free software rhetoric is shrill, conspiratorial, and purposefully marginal.
Most successful organizations realize the value of aesthetics. There's a good reason that the World Wildlife Organization has a panda as its logo and not, lets say, a water buffalo.
Which is a great response, considering that the letter was about framing your message in a way that appeals to people rather than 'stop being so pro-free software'. Seems like he missed the point entirely, or just dismissed it out of hand because it was criticism, even though it was highly constructive.
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKOk4Y4inVY
2: http://www.archive.org/download/3_do_t1_11h_3-Moglen_a/3_do_...