We need absolutists like him who go to extremes and are known widely. For a few moments, leave aside his personality and what people have said about his behavior or hygiene. If he hadn’t been there, our world would’ve been a lot different and a lot poorer. A visionary is what he was and is.
While the Free part of FOSS is being substituted by “(just) open source” and “source available”, while DRM goes deeper into our lives, and while everything is becoming a “hosted service”, one can only hope for (and put efforts into) going back to the ideals he proposed and pushing back on the elements that control us and seek to do even more so.
We all don’t have to be absolutists (it comes at the cost of convenience, which most people prefer), but there are enough of such people around the world as far as FOSS is concerned. Whenever I see FOSS meetups and people connecting over it, that’s something I’m grateful for and wholeheartedly support (though I’m not one of them).
Programs were way simpler, and shipping the source code in paper was the de facto way of distribution.
It's not like he was a wacko around his peers. He just created what seemed a logical step from that.
I'm just sad that there's no young people to pass the torch for when the time comes and the founding fathers are no more.
Check out doomworld some time to see what’s been going on. Unbelievably good level design and mods all over the place, custom source ports everywhere, thousands of maps, etc
Time and time again showed me why free and open source software is important, but they keep lagging behind their competitors in term of funding.
He once got irritated with me in an email because I wouldn’t do something (release one of my old Lisp books under a FSF document license), but I happily accepted that irritation because I understand where he was coming from.
Richard, get well.
Global warming is one ecological problem out of dozens and we'll economically outscale it even if we don´t do anything special about it. Damage to human health and infrastructure plus spending in adaptation will be a steady drag that will be much slower than our increasing ability to withstand its effects.
In the meantime, we have tons of global and local issues caused by human activity that have next to nothing to do with global warming: destruction of natural habitats; invasive species; overfishing; plastics; toxic and/or long life chemicals/medicines... We have a couple of resource issues coming up: cobalt, helium, rare earths; hydrocarbs; hell even copper might become a problem soon-ish... We are faced with the effects of being able to reliably control our own reproduction, a revolution that we're absolutely not ready for as a species and that requires us to rethink a 100.000 years old societal structure pretty much from scratch. We will soon have the technology to concentrate power and security into the hands of an ever-shrinking minority pretty much to the point that any violent rebellion of any amount of normal people will fail. Again that's a first for any social species.
The whole point of the GPL was to empower users, and it's pretty clearly failing at that. SaaS providers provide access to GPL software, but users can't decide which version to run, or move their data, or even use an old version of the software if the new one comes with unreasonable restrictions, surveillance clauses, or unreasonable price tags. At this point, FOSS isn't even free-as-in-beer for most people.
On top of that, Red Hat has basically said they're not going to abide by the GPL any more. They're taking third party code, modifying it, distributing binaries, and if you exercise your rights under the GPL, then they'll stop giving you access to the code or the binaries.
Ironically, BSD and Apache licenses seem to be better at preserving user freedom at this point. They allow commercial distribution on hardware and as a SaaS. GPL 3 forces *aaS business models in practice.
I hope RMS makes a quick recovery, but I'm pretty bummed about how the GPL has played out at this point.
But what is he known for, outside tech circles, if he is known at all?
When you want to deliver a message, it matters a lot, how you deliver it.
Unfortunately the world doesn't know how to really appreciate people as much when they're alive for some personality types.
What is plato known for among people who don't give a shit about philosophy?
Most people don't know what the kernel is, but they do see user space, and that was largely GPLed for a while. I think IBM ran some super bowl ads about how amazing Linux and open source were, about ten years ago.
Also, stuff like raspberry pi and ssh exploits (yes, BSD, I know) also show up in pop culture. The Matrix and Mr Robot come to mind. During the end of the dot com boom, I think people were largely aware that Apache + Linux were what things ran on.
> While the Free part of FOSS is being substituted by “(just) open source” and “source available”,
Free software and open source are the same category of software and licenses (except for sporadic instances that are at the very edge of that one category, as categories tend to be blurred).
Software that is merely source available, of course, is not FLOSS by default. But I don't actually see free software being replaced by software which is just source available.
There are companies trying to push source available proprietary software as "open source", perhaps hoping for such replacement, and this has had some success in some specific areas, but the open source community is pushing against it. Or, at least, the wise ones in it are.
GP here. I agree. I should’ve worded it better to say that a lot of “*source” terms are used to make it seem as if the publishers are meeting a great ideal (like FLOSS), but are muddling things more and more. I shouldn’t have listed “source available in the very same sentence” without being clear. I don’t have stats, but “open source” and similar terms have been used as buzzwords for marketing while the publishers really want their SaaS to be the one people ultimately pay for and use.
> While the Free part of FOSS is being substituted by “(just) open source” and “source available”
The OSD is very much compatible with the FSFs list of freedoms.
“Source available” is a new name for “shared source” and is fake open source proprietary trash.
But in practical terms, it is too complicated (ethics!), so all is down to copyleft or not, which I believe is what the parent comment was referring to.
Perhaps that's what we should be using: copyleft vs open source, instead of free software vs open source.
I agree we need passionate people working tirelessly for software freedom.
The broader free software community agrees we don't need people like him though.
From Wikipedia:
> The FSF board on April 12 [2021] made a statement re-affirming its decision to bring back Richard Stallman.
> Multiple organizations criticized, defunded and/or cut ties with the FSF, including: Red Hat, the Free Software Foundation Europe, the Software Freedom Conservancy, SUSE, the OSI, the Document Foundation, the EFF, and the Tor Project.
For those out of the loop, the Richard Stallman had repeatedly defended adults having sex with children over many years and he most recently said sex slaves aren't raped.
But has any other license had the same impact as GPL?
Has any other set of OSS tools enabled so much as the GNU command line tools which were (and are) the foundation of Linux?
I put him up for the night once. I'm a BSD guy, ran the local FreeBSD society. He was pleasant enough about BSD we could hang out a bit. I know what my preferences are, but I'm not so arrogant as to believe I'm anywhere near in a majority, and his influence through his work (including GNU), is completely obvious. Without him, we'd all be paying Microsoft, Sun, IBM or HP through the nose for licenses to much worse technology than we have today.
My email:
Greetings Dr. Stallman,
First of all, Happy 40th GNUversary!
I was not able to attend the GNU40 meeting in Switzerland, but I have heard rumours that you have announced that you have some form of cancer.
Can you give me some more information about this? And is the cancer manageable?
I hope you are around for many more years.
--- tusharhero
Stallman's reply:
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
I'm glad you are concerned about my well being. At the same time, I am disappointed that people are spreading incomplete rumors, instead of passing along all of what I said about this. That is going to waste a lot of people's time and concern, just as it has done with you.
My prognosis is good. I can expect to live many more years.
-- Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org) Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org) Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
And wasn't a total stranger anyway, he let Stallman know that he's a part of the same tribe, that's probably enough.
For example, the right not to have to use some random company's app to interact with a government agency or a public school (and agree to said company's EULA, etc). It only takes a few dozen people to create a church with legal standing in many countries.
The FSF and the EFF are nice, but churches have additional legal protection for their adherents.
It does sort of vaguely border on religious zeal at this point. I've told companies they can either talk to me on Signal (or email), wait til I arrive on site, or find another contractor, but I will not use WhatsApp no matter how much they pay. This also applies to, for example, Microsoft/Google/Amazon products where learning their APIs and products mean my human capital, my skills, can be revoked by someone I never met, made valueless, my income made moot, in a sense.
Imagine having invested substantial time and effort into a proprietary ecosystem that was killed (by the company or its competition) and not being able to quickly leap into a competing esoteric, obtuse product.
Please elaborate on why this is an inaccurate view instead of just saying "you're wrong", which adds nothing.
https://stallman.org/saint.html
"Sainthood in the Church of Emacs requires living a life of purity—but in the Church of Emacs, this does not require celibacy (a sigh of relief is heard). Being holy in our church means exorcizing whatever evil, proprietary operating systems have possessed computers that are under your control, or set up for your regular use; installing a holy (i.e., wholly) free operating system (GNU/Linux is a good choice); and using and installing only free software with and on the system. Note that tablets and mobile phones are computers and this vow includes them.
Join the Church of Emacs, and you too can be a saint!
People sometimes ask if St IGNUcius is wearing an old computer disk platter. That is no computer disk, that is my halo — but it was a disk platter in a former life. No information is available about what kind of computer it came from or what data was stored on it. However, you can rest assured that no non-free software is readable from it today.
In addition to saints, the Church of Emacs also has a hymn—the Free Software Song. (No gods yet, though.) Hear the song sung by Saint IGNUcius himself."
I am installing it now.
computer science is not real. computers are not found in nature. they're not a natural object, hence the methodology of study (from a philosophy of science standpoint) cannot be the same.
similarly to how math is not subjected to experimentation; but to intelligibility (a modern math proof is accepted if mathematical "peers" understand it and agree with it). so can't computer be subjected to experimentation as a matter of studying them. they're not found they're made. so the "experimentation" is really end-to-end testings; a philosophically distinct practice from a physics experiment (which is often just measuring something extremely precisely)
maybe I should ponder on the "philosophy of chemistry" which also blurs this line between "making" and "experimenting"???
you jest about making a religion (which funnily RMS also does); but recall that Academia (and RMS is an academic) was started by religions, which means if there's a faculty of computers, then it already IS a church... an academic church 2.0
Almost every human being reaps the benefits of our technological and scientific progress in some way, but only a small portion of us contribute to it.
Of course, there are plenty of other important areas of work, but it certainly wouldn't hurt to have a higher percentage of people be interested in this stuff.
It's just so crazy, that using "cutting edge integrated circuit R&D" as an example, there are maybe what, a dozen people in the world who are intensely familiar with that ecosystem? And yet it forms one of the pillars of our entire modern world.
I think people in the medical field are probably the most important, though. Can't do science or write code if you're sick, so I have an intense appreciation for them; they help all of us.
Only recently, I happen to realise, we could have listened to this man little more. Too late then, we are sold already.
Recover well Mr Stallman! I wish you the best!
Zigbee/Matter/... are widely adopted open standards without vendor lock in.
Things like Home Assistant are getting serious attention and funding.
Could be much worse.
Sadly, the enshittification has also taken over parts of the Linux desktop as well though. For example, the mobile-first, flat-everything user-hostile design. (like gnome)
Dark themes were not common while skeuomorphism was mainstream, they are only in demand right now because viewing an extremely low-contrast white flat theme is an eyesore.
Luckily, KDE and the similar still exists and you can theme it:)
Other then in most stuff migrating to the browser how so? Browser + terminal has been a good combo for a long time, the desktop enviornment only have suffered enshittification due to a push to touch screen oriented UI conventions.
But when someone is willing to pay us a lot of money, many of us will willingly become deaf to the free software ideals and submit to the corporations in exchange for stable employment.
Genuine question: what proportion of developers actually understand the free software ideals? Have you ever tried to go to your colleagues and ask what [choose your open source license] implies?
My experience is that most people think that GPL means that you need to publicly distribute all the code and that BSD means that you can just use it without any attribution.
The real problem are mobile operating system. Android phones are nowadays even more and more locked down, and using ROMs without Google Services is nearly impossible.
There's SailfishOS. It still uses Android kernel+drivers, but above that it's a "real" GNU/Linux system (glibc, systemd, bash, Qt, connman+ofono, zypp/packagekit, Gecko). It's not completely FOSS, but it is usable as a daily driver, and has been for at least 10 years (based on personal experience).
Ever hear of GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, /e/ OS, LineageOS, divestOS? I have been using one of those for 2 years now, just like a "normal" Android. I bought my phone with it pre-installed, I didn't have to do anything.
Of course I can't use the apps that require the Google Services, but in my experience that's mostly just stuff like Google Maps (there are great alternatives) and YouTube (there are apps like NewPipe that work really well).
So yeah, I wouldn't say "nearly impossible".
I think it's deeper than that; I think the problem is mobile devices. The OS has to somehow paper-over the fact that there's no mouse, and that everything has to be done with finger-stabs on a 3"x5" screen. That doesn't work with the traditional desktop widgets, so a variety of OS-level widgets and Javascripty plugins is layered on top. But (a) they're not consistent with one-another, and (b) they're not consistent with the desktop metaphor (which isn't going to go away).
Basically, I don't think a phone is suitable for user-input of any complexity. It's a device for selecting content that you then consume passively. It can't be used as a replacement for a desktop. "Mobile first" sounds all very well, but nearly all mobile-first projects have the desktop portion permanently stubbed.
Without GNU, that's just a fever dream.
Many cancers are survivable these days. I hope he has one of those.
You get an ESP8266 micro with wifi plus a power supply, relay, momentary button, current and voltage sense, and a couple LEDs all for about $8. Serial debug and flash headers are broken out for easy access on the PCB.
They ship with chinese firmware but the headers and standard hardware make them dead simple to flash with your own firmware, or ESPhome or Tasmota if you prefer.
Shelly devices offer a firmware that can be controlled trough a REST API locally. Unfortunately it's still proprietary and not open, but it doesn't require a cloud connection.
Otherwise you can buy a device and replace the firmware, there are number of open alternatives, such as ESP Home, Tasmota, etc.
Or... you can build it yourself. Building a smart plug is an easy task, if you have some practice on electrics. You will likely build a better product in terms of safety and capabilities that one you can buy.
The primary reason off the shelve products are cloud etc. is because these companies spent the time and money to do the above and since no on wants to pay 100+ for an iot switch they add cloud garbage etc. These products are now sold to the masses and if you have to support them you need control over them or your costs go through the roof.
I am working on a hardware iot product (no cloud) and I have to tape off the USB service port not because there is anything that could go wrong but because people don't read instructions and think the thing will power over USB when there is a power supply included with a barrel plug...
I think he is one of the most influential persons in the last decades, not only regarding GNU or FreeSoftware but also about technology overall. While sadly at the same time lots of people underestimate his works and foreseeing.
He has really been and still is an inspiration for me. Really all the best to him!!
May he recover well, or at least have long enjoyable years ahead.
He has/had arguable/unacceptable behavior, but I believe we strongly owe him. He has built incredible software, defined important stuff and kicked our asses in the right direction.
This is not to belittle his experience or cast him in a negative light; I wish him well and I know that overall it leaves you feeling less than normal, and I can completely relate. But “under chemo” is not always as debilitating as you might think.
Isn't chemo tolerated differently in different patients? It's still anecdotes, but I've heard many stories of people, some usually very dynamic, being strongly weakened by it. To the point some even decide it's not worth it and stop the treatment altogether. I personally know someone currently under chemo too.
Anyway, it's good you tolerate it well and I wish you a good recovery!
Doxorubicin might be a good example. It has nicknames like "red death" and "red devil", and many unpleasant secondary side effects. Side effects that are different from other chemo drugs, including an unusually high rate of congestive heart failure.
Arguably that describes most people ever considered heroes. Just look at the controversy of anyone who ever had a statue made of them
I think to change the world you have to be somewhat not of it - you have to rebel against social norms. The people who rebel against social norms don't just rebel against the right ones but also are wrong sometimes too.
However, you don't need to make women uneasy (among other things) to promote free software.
His heroic work on free software shall not shield him from criticism about other aspects of him.
Reacting because accepting bullshit from heroes is widespread but dangerous (not saying you are doing it).
Since he's 70, he's eligible for Medicare[0]. And likely has access to other insurance through his professional affiliation(s) as well.
Can you explain what you mean?
I guess that's why fake, phony, status-oriented people can't stop themselves criticizing him for all his superficial shortcomings. It's as if his genuineness is a trigger for them and they need to attack him to feel better about how phony they are in comparison.
As I am prone to do when I'm brought back to that moment where I was just chatting with the RMS, I smile and wonder how many other dumb college compsci kids were exposed to a different kind of way of doing things that basically changed their lives.
Get well soon Mr. Stallman!
Richard Stallman has certainly been successful inspiring Ton and others to do great work and carry the flame! I hope he has access to excellent healthcare, and is as lucky as Ton.
Can we just take a moment to appreciate Ton Roosendaal:
https://www.reddit.com/r/blender/comments/jlaxaf/can_we_just...
"Money doesn't interest me" - Ton Roosendaal interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg
BlenderCon 2020 closing address transcript:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24951703
DonHopkins on Oct 31, 2020 | parent | context | favorite | on: Can we just take a moment to appreciate Ton Roosen...
It's well worth watching and discussing the entire video, including Ton's introduction and close, bracketing all the amazing contributions by blender artists and developers:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24951550
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEjmbsiflMU
I think he saved the important personal news to discuss at the end, so it didn't distract from the virtual conference's focus on Blender itself, its community, and developers.
Ton is an unstoppable lucky force of nature: First he survived a vicious ceiling attack, now he survived leukemia!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJwG-qt-sgk&ab_channel=Blend...
In the introduction, Ton says that it has been a year of introspection and renewal, and describes how the Blender organization has been restructured.
That's followed by a series of mind blowing videos by a diverse worldwide bunch of talented Blender artists and developers.
In his closing statement, Ton tells what has happened to him in the past months, explains his change of perspective, and the implication and changes at the Blender Foundation.
Ton Roosendaal's BCON2020 Blender Conference closing address transcript:
https://youtu.be/uEjmbsiflMU?t=5427
I think it is a quite common effect in films.
Imagine, you are standing in the middle of a waterfall.
It is noisy, it is messy, it is colorful, it is wet.
You see everything is falling down.
Suddenly stops, the jets are coming down.
You see a bit of splashes.
You are standing there in the darkness.
On a black mirror.
That's how it feels when the doctor tells you that you have leukemia.
On February 24th, this year I was urgently hospitalized because I was developing bruises all over my body.
I started to bleed on my mouth.
The doctor said go to the hospital. Ton, we have to examine you.
At midnight I got the infamous bad news delivery by the doctor that I have acute leukemia of the quite rare kind.
It is called APL, which is not very common, but it is very lethal.
So usually you don't survive two weeks with this, unless, of course, the treatment works.
So that's what happened.
They immediately gave me blood transfusions and chemotherapy, and luckily after a few days I was recovering.
So I quickly moved from the critical phase to the phase of that you may get cured.
Four weeks later I was released from the hospital.
I was strong enough to join the rest of the world in the ... lockdown, staying at home.
After five weeks I had my first bone marrow test, which was extremely good.
And cancer was in remission, the doctor said. We are going to take you to the next phase, to cure you fully.
And that's called the maintenance phase.
Maintenance, right?
Then he said, well ... actually it is 7 months of treatments in which you have to be four months in hospital.
Not full time. But imagine in the afternoon you go to the hospital, they hook you up with the bag of poison, you wait three hours, you get sick, you go home, go to bed, in the morning you feel a little bit better.
And in the afternoon you go back to the hospital.
They hook you up, and you get sick again.
That's for 4 weeks, and then you get 4 weeks to recover, another 4 weeks getting sick, and 4 weeks to recover, another 4 weeks to get sick, another 4 weeks to recover, another 4 weeks to get sick!
It was last Friday, the last of the chemotherapy.
And this morning I went to the doctor again to discuss the tests I had.
And luckily my blood is fantastic, the bone marrow is looking really good, I could be declared cured.
But there was one little test they are still waiting, is the DNA test, which will take another 2 weeks to get.
But the doctor said I shouldn't worry about that.
I'm recovering extremely well.
So basically I've got my life back
So ...
And oh, how much I would have loved to sit together, today, at the conference with everyone because there would have been a conference and we would have thrown an enormous party not this year.
So I'm telling you this because this whole experience has had a profound impact on me, on my personality, on my life of course, plus I had time to think.
And I learned a couple of lessons.
First, getting cancer and surviving it it is not a fight. It is not something you win, something you lose.
You only need one thing. A little bit of discipline of course, to take care of yourself, eat well, do some exercises.
But what you need is luck.
And I was lucky.
I was lucky that science found the right treatment for me.
This is only 15 years old. This treatment for people with this kind of leukemia.
I was lucky to have family, friends around me to stand by.
I was lucky to have a team here in the company to stand by and to have.
Francesco Siddi to replace me for 8 months, doing fantastic job on it.
So I was lucky to live in the Netherlands, where there is a universal health care for everyone.
So there was not a moment that I had to worry about what would the treatment cost, and the doctors didn't have a moment to think other than what can we do for Ton, to help him, to cure him, and to make it as good and easy as possible for him.
So next time if you see people having cancer, don't wish them strength, or in Dutch "sterkte", just say good luck, and I wish you well, or a good day, a good evening.
Other things that I learned was that I want to start taking better care of myself, and I want to, I have a feeling that I was sacrificing myself too much.
So I want to put myself more forward, and also take care better of myself in a way that I can pay myself a little bit better. So I can afford a little house outside of Amsterdam with a garden.
I also mentioned last year that at some moment I have to step aside from Blender, for the future, to allow other people to come in.
And the process is been sped up, but not so much that I want to step down, but to get very strong people around me to help making Blender strong, and keep it strong, and move on, and step forward.
Because the main thing I learned was that I was really really not ready to let that go.
I couldn't let go of Blender, because that' s my life' s work.
Blender is life, right.
Blender is a community.
It is a team of people here.
It is everybody who is contributing.
It's the developers.
The bug fixers.
It is the people that make add-ons.
It is even the people who complain, or the people use Maya and don't like Blender.
It is the forum trolls.
And even the people who want to have the game engine back.
So all of them are the people I love.
And all of them I feel like is my family.
And I would never let go of that family.
So, enough drama, right?
I want to end with a little more happy note.
As you all know 2020 is not very nice.
It is a year that we are going to forget.
But the happy message is that 2020 didn't get me down, and I want to spread that positive vibe with everyone.
So please take care of yourself, take care of each other, and a little bit of Blender.
And I see you next year in Amsterdam, or somewhere else.
Bye Bye!
Hank Green, the YouTuber, said that the thing he didn't appreciate until he had cancer was, how much you want the 40-year-old treatment and not the cutting edge treatment, because the 40-year-old treatment means that you have a cancer which is well understood and very treatable.
golden snippet taken out of context
Father God in Heaven,
Please heal Richard Stallman of the cancer afflicting his
body, and give him a strong will to endure all of this to the end.
Let him keep his health through this period of his life here on Earth, LORD.
And let both him and his legacy continue shine the light of freedom and
transparency and human decency in this world, which is getting so dark.
And keep him healthy through his chemo, please God. And give him the joy of Your
salvation through Jesus Christ, and the hope of life eternal.
Save his soul, please God. And if it is Your will, even make him a saint in the
church of Jesus Christ, Your Son. Heaven wont be the same without him.
In Jesus Christ's name I ask,
Amen.
Before that, he talks about covid and long covid. But I couldn't tell if he says that he has long covid now. I know that he was being pretty careful to avoid covid, to the extent that's possible while travelling on planes as much as he does. I had some discussions with him about N95 mask fitting and testing.
Can anyone tell from the video if he still has the big beard? That interferes badly with mask seals. I never had such a bushy beard myself, but before the pandemic I was lax about shaving and often had some beard growth. I keep it clean now so that masks will work better,
Anyway, I hope he beats the cancer and stays healthy and active.
Does he travel on planes a lot? His speaking rider used to explicitly say that you should NOT book a plane for him, because he wasn't comfortable with the level of personal information required. In fact, he said you should book trains under a false name.
You can a video of Stallman's now without his beard in his closing remarks at GNU 40th anniversary.
https://audio-video.gnu.org/video/gnu40/closing-remarks-gnu4...
In minute 3 of the video he takes off the mask, he no longer has the beard
almost like a rite of passage for a/v content from the foss sphere
`Richard Stallman has cancer. Fortunately it is slow-growing and manageable follicular lymphona, so he will probably live many more years nonetheless. But he now has to be even more careful not to catch Covid-19.`
The problem is that it is chronic. It can reoccur. And it can mutate into malign lymphoma. But some people go twenty or more years without it reoccurring.
BTW. I got Covid-19 while having lymphoma. I recovered from that normally. But if I had also been under chemo, it would have been a different matter.
I also know that if he reads this, it will be from an Emacs mail client on his dusty ThinkPad in text mode (no X11 or Wayland) by sending a URL to a service he wrote that will email him the Web page back - a clean process without any using any tainted proprietary software.
He only ever exchanged one sentence with me when we had dinner together with other computer scientists two decades ago in Edinburgh: "I don't do smalltalk." - and he didn't mean the programming language. :)
I had asked him to sign my t-shirt, that depicted him with a beret with a Gnu on it, in the style of Che Guevara
(Yes, I know about RMS' history too (yes, that history) and I'm not defending that at all - but so far, of what I've seen, he seems to be wanting to avoid being misinterpreted by others, which is something I deeply empathise with, such is life-on-the-spectrum)
He is way too careful for this.
Stallman had to fight people comparing free software to communism, and left wing people didn’t help at all in that sense.
[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-interview-edinburgh.html
This was close to midnight in London when I was helping him get his stuff back to his accommodations (his bag is frikkin HEAVY). He needed to rest for a minute, and he whipped out his laptop to laugh at comics he'd written.
They were /not/ in favor of the proprietary Motif desktop environment, nor the (at the time, non-FLOSS Qt library dependent) KDE (C++) environment, hence the FSF creating the GNOME (C) environment. "...GNOME and KDE will remain two rival desktops, unless some day they can be merged in some way. Until then, the GNU Project is going to support its own team vigorously. Go get ’em, gnomes!"
https://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/stallman-on-qt-the-gpl-...
Related - the BSD License:
> ...a quote directly from Bostic himself. I asked him about it, after reading this FSF page: "People sometimes ask whether BSD too is a version of GNU, like GNU/Linux. The BSD developers were inspired to make their code free software by the example of the GNU Project, and explicit appeals from GNU activists helped persuade them..."
This is the setup that RMS described using well over a decade ago. Is there any reason to believe he is still using it?
Anyone who is not as strong-headed as he is will have no hope of defending software freedom. The only thing I wish is that he would learn how to be more persuasive, i.e. improve his rhetoric skills. His reasoning and logical skills are exceptional, but winning over the public is not always about being right.
Right person at the right time - live long and prosper RMS.
Nobody is perfect. World is moved forward by imperfect people that are able to do something productive for the society.
I hate that word. It's not being "cancelled". It's being called out for being a jerk, and it's past overdue we did that.
For the Stallman case the impact of "cancellation" was probably 0, anyway.
Perhaps, but we all know not to make other people uncomfortable by staring at their secondary sex characterists. RMS is an adult, he should know better than to treat women like objects like I saw him do at my university.
Do you have some examples of someone being “cancelled” in this way?
fuck cancer.
Fuck proprietary software!
referring to his story of "right to read" or something like that about books being able to get deleted of your bookshelf... and then Amazon making this a reality some decades later
Surely we can set our standards a touch higher than this sort of behaviour.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37705885 [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37706055
We need his vision to inspire us to keep inspiring. And to help us understand what is right and what is wrong.
I hope he will heal soon.
Two days later I found myself selling books alongside a self-described nomad and was approached by the leader of the communist party of Great Britain who shook my hand and said “I’m a big fan of your work.”
Was one of those surreal moments.
The more the tech world develops and the more I learn, the more I start to like free & open source tech.
I do think there will always be a a large and growing amount of space for paid software work, but the variety and quality of free software seems to go up and to the right over time.
But I think the world is better with him than without him and that he's worked hard to further his mission. Not everyone should be like him, but it's great that he is.
I sincerely wish RMS all the best.
Do you guys know of any ways to reduce your risks of getting cancer? I know not smoking tobacco works.
What foods, bad habits should one avoid. What other habits can reduce cancer risks?
Are there any prophylactic techniques?
But I think some big part of it is genetics and/or luck. I see what happened to Jobs, and people like him - reasonably healthy people. Then I see men in my family who've routinely drank a ton and chewed tobacco, overweight, spent all day in the sun to the point of looking like leather, and live well into their 80s. Yes everyone has some anecdote that doesn't mean much, but it's hard to reconcile.
I think about this kind of thing lot, like how I think about TotalBiscuit's cancer and his regret regarding not getting seen to earlier. The profound level of regret these people must have felt during their final days must have been frustrating and saddening, but I appreciate their efforts to warn others as they have been responsible for me personally making sure I get serious signs and symptoms seen to rather than ignoring a bloody stool as though it's normal, or thinking I can treat something myself without professional advice.
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/oct/21/steve-job...
Not to say you shouldn't minimize your risk, but it can still hit you regardless.
Also not drinking alcohol [1].
[1] https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/a...
Remember, though. You can still get it, even if you do all that. Having cancer is not a moral failure. Even kids may get it.
Realizing, not in a philosophical way, one way way or another, that we will die, is something that changes you. Fewer reasons to accumulate fame and money. More reasons to make yourself happy in this life.
(1) https://veganhealth.org/chronic-disease-and-vegetarian-diets...
We know most cancers are preventable and caused by our lifestyle/environment
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2515569/
Don't smoke, don't drink alcohol, avoid smoked food, avoid processed red meat, avoid plastic food containers/beverage containers, buy bio food or food which has grown with minimal amount of pesticide
Exercise, that'll help not being overweight/obese/diabetic
Get vaccinated against hpv (you're probably too old for that one)
Don't live in a polluted area/city center, avoid owning furniture's that release toxic gases (a lot of things treated to be fireproof or fire resistant are awful)
Wear sunscreen or long clothes, get your weird moles checked
At the end of the day we all know it deep down, you can easily prevent a lot os health issues by not being overweight/obese and avoiding alcohol/cigarettes
because of the poisonous vitriol that responses will undoubtedly have, i wont be reading responses. dont even bother.
The biggest tension at the GNU 40 years event was when an old Mr. was speaking about social economics and his attempts to make a local money in Basel (ch). Two american protagonists interrupted the speach telling it is too political. Later i talked to the one of them, a Chinese girl studiying in Harvard USA, she started telling me things about her big rich buisiness family and personal crypto projects she had in liberal finance field in Switzerland, she proposed me a job as a Solidity develloper. And I UNDERSTOOD why the previous speech was "TOO POLITICAL" for her.
For me, FSF and GNU are not enought political; I was always disappointed of the FSF and GNU political positioning, while their fight is about freeing the world of proprietary licences (property right) they don't consider to support anticapitalists movements who are fighting for that to. Stallman was the only to publicly support the French left social-reformist party "La France Insoumise" with the candidat Jean Luc Mélenchon, and for me it means a lot.
Now, let's say it; OF course I understand why this is strategic for them, but i don't stand for it because it is irresponsible and dangerous.
So sad to hear this :(
For me that’s a great example. I personally know many old (even obsolete iPads) lying here and there collecting dust, as their software (and hardware) vendor decided they are all in for nature and ecology (sarcasm), so let millions of perfectly capable devices would be thrown away as a trash.
Eyeing some Android tablet for that, the one I can flash with Lineage OS and be happy with. Maybe Google’s Pixel C or even Nexus 7.
Meanwhile we continue using the iPad unlogginned till it stop working.
GNU seems to have little interest in keeping up with modern developments, and seems to be content with maintaining the old command line tools for the most part. Meanwhile, they're becoming a smaller and smaller proportion of an useful software stack, and people are rewriting them in more modern fashions, eg, Rust. Pretty much none of that is done under the GPL.
The FSF is clearly not reaching the people it needs to reach. Where's their Youtube channel, or their Twitter? As far as I know, they have neither. I barely hear anything about the FSF on Linux sites. Their reach elsewhere has to be essentially nonexistent.
And with the FSF it appears that RMS has no viable successor. That doesn't bode well either.
The sad outcome is that we keep rehashing things like Right to Read -- a fine thing from 1997, but what has happened since?
A car that already has the hardware but requires payment to enable that by software is exactly the same thing as paying for a video game: The video game is already created and uploaded on the servers but software requires payment to let you download and play it. There are numerous other examples like game consoles sold at loss, printers sold less than the cost, search engines or mail services provided for free, free hosting etc. - all investing huge sums on creating the product in hope to recoup that and make profit by collecting small fees later and they need their products locked down to be able to do this.
The whole thing revolves around collecting small payments for a the very large capital investment that is required to create the product in first place. Since the small payments are collected post-development, someone has to risk their large capital for this to happen, they also expect compensation and guarantees that the small payments will arrive if the product is developed successfully.
The software is locked down only because they want to enforce that business model. You can refuse to participate in that but ultimately, those who can invest large amount of money end up making the much better products.
Open source is a great thing. But it’s not better (morally) than closed source. Open is just a feature. Like Lego vs a solid plastic toy.
Unfortunately, I can't find a link with this claim to share.
If RMS made a choice to use proprietary software, with the only alternative being his dead, there is absolutely no moral conflict, or even anything against his principle. The only issue could only ever arises if he claimed "Free Software is more important than human lives", which I am pretty sure not a claim he, or anyone, has ever made.
It's basically the same principle as if you point a gun to my head and tell me to kill a puppy or get shot (and I'm certain you would shoot me). It's obvious which choice I would make, and I hardly see that as an evidence of my hatred for puppy.
+ the opposition against proprietary software does not mean that using proprietary software is immoral on its own. (Although you'll find plenty of people who will make this some sort of purity contest, rms is not one of them.) The moral evil that the free software movement address is to be forced or coerced to use proprietary software. The mere use of proprietary software only becomes a moral issue when it results in drowning out free software. Much like the widespread acceptance of proprietary mobile phone apps leads to cultural shifts that essentially force everyone to use said apps to participate in life. (See wechat in China.)
+ The second is addressed here: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy//po/who-does-that-server-real...
As others have pointed out, there is no moral dilemma here. The demand for computational autonomy is not a dogmatic, religious belief that conflicts with medical treatment of a disease.
FSF gave Karen Sandler an reward for her work on this: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2018/mar/26/sandler-fsf-free-...
"Richard Stallman, President of the FSF, presented Sandler with the award during a ceremony. Stallman highlighted Sandler's dedication to software freedom. Stallman told the crowd that Sandler's “vivid warning about backdoored nonfree software in implanted medical devices has brought the issue home to people who never wrote a line of code. Her efforts, usually not in the public eye, to provide pro bono legal advice to free software organizations and [with Software Freedom Conservancy] to organize infrastructure for free software projects and copyleft defense, have been equally helpful.”."
He's not unreasonable, he's just very adamant about software freedom.