(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 enforce his views -- and therefore worth debating with.)
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, to morally offensive. ESR and his followers believe that open technology is better technology and that the benefits of technology are more fully realized when it's possible to tinker with it. RMS is concerned with morality, ESR with practicality.
The key thing here is that there's no spectrum with the RMS on one end, Steve Jobs on the other end and ESR somewhere in the middle. The open source movement is just as ardent, just as committed and just as "extreme" as the free software movement, but more successful.
Now perhaps you mean that the FSF serves an important function, in that their fanaticism makes the open source movement look more reasonable and thus more acceptable to the mainstream. But I think the very fact that actual positions held by free software and open source advocates are so similar make it hard for mainstream observers to appreciate the distinction.
So no, we don't need people like RMS.
[edited the last line for clearer rhetoric]
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.
* RMS is technically competent. ESR is technically clueless. * ESR is more charismatic. He manages to convince people he's important. RMS has on charisma. * ESR will do everything he can do undermine RMS. It's a way of building himself up. RMS will do whatever he believes will further free software. They're both often wrong. * RMS's writings from the late nineties are prophetic. ESR's writings from the same period are, in retrospect, idiotic. * RMS created the whole movement. ESR did little bits of damage to it.
the current groundswell of clang adoption has revealed just how many people wanted a good, free, modular c++ compiler, but by rms's principles, making gcc serve their purposes would have come at too high a cost.
Before I stray too far from my point; I am glad he does what he does.
Compromise is a dangerous game. Especially when the proprietary world doesn't compromise back (and it usually doesn't). How long could the free software movement have continued to mean anything if each year it had crept a little closer to the mainstream technological community?
Take what RMS wrote about the early days of Symbolics. When you read him, you begin to realize that he believed the community of hackers that developed at MIT to be a goal unto itself, not as a means to achieve something specific. This is in spite of the fact that every individual who started hacking at MIT (this ironically includes RMS) surely saw himself as pursuing a specific goal. It is hard to reason with a man who believes that groups of people exist in and of themselves, independently of individuals and their goals. The only possible consequence that can stem from such a position is to define freedom as a property of groups, not of individuals, which is completely alien to the notion of freedom as most people (at least in the U.S.) understand it. The exact same position, when held by people in other countries, has lead to tyrannies being established, both of right- and left-wing kind.
The issue that ESR is raising is a very practical one -- RMS has become the de facto spokesperson for the free software movement, which hurts free software more than it helps it.
Also, lots of people have hopelessly romantic views about the group to which they belong (or used to belong). At least in that respect, RMS is not unique at all. But the fact that he falls prey to this common error is not very relevant when we ask whether it is indeed "evil" to make proprietary software, or any other current issue that RMS rants about. (We don't evaluate Peter Thiel's startup advice on the basis of his odd philosophical commitments, do we?)
ESR wrote:
Unfortunately, RMS made an early decision to frame his advocacy as a moral crusade rather than a pragmatic argument about engineering practices and outcomes.
Having done a bit of policy work, value statements are what works. "Intellectuals" (progressives, geeks, libertarians) think The Right Answer wins. Nope. Cite George Lakoff, David Domke, Thomas Frank, Noam Chomsky...
Further, open source is a moral issue. Example:
Diebold hid their software. We lost transparency of our elections. Bad things happened. John Bonifaz and voteraction.org proved in court that John Kerry won New Mexico in 2004. The same things happened nationwide. Extrapolate.
Ditto medical devices, our personal data, etc.
So I'm with RMS. I'm sorry that RMS makes ESR feel weird. Tough.
Santorum adds nothing to the debate but repetition of the narrative that's already going on. I should add to this that no one ever likes the same tactic they use to be used against them - in this case having Stallman define an extreme position to maintain a more pragmatic narrative.
All considered, I'm glad both Stallman and Paul are doing their thing - even if I don't agree with them much of the time.
There's a difference between a leader who drinks the kool-aid, and a leader who mixes the kool-aid. Kool-aid drinkers by definition cannot set the agenda.
I fit into neither of the caricatures of either a 'true believer' or someone scared of RMS. I see him as someone who truly believes in something and has stood by it no matter what. His 'fanatical' language of evil etc. is because he truly believes those things to be evil. I've always used the GPL for licensing my open source code specifically because it ensures that it stays open and that improvements are given back. On one occasion I've been persuaded to use another license so that $CORP could use the code (http://gmsl.sf.net/) internally and I see that the non-fanatical position helped $CORP but I'm not sure it helped the greater cause of open source.
Any fanatic truly believes themselves to be right.
That said, I'm a free software advocate. I see where the guy is coming from. I agree on most points. The one that I absolutely cannot get behind is that 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). I can't imagine a global business environment environment in which open source software is the norm, but I would really to hear some theories - can you imagine how wonderful it would be to be able to explore the source code of say, SpaceX?
It's obvious that software nerds do have some concept of "evil" as it applies to software, and they like to label things as "evil" or not.
Nerds believe the potential for "evil" exists through software. Even if they are not fanatics.
Actually, this phrase can be understood in two ways:
1. I want to ensure that the software is improved and the improvements are shared. 2. I want to ensure that the if the software is improved, then improvements are given back. If it's not happening, I prefer it not to be improved or used.
The difference between these two are the difference between OSS and FSF. I think the latter doesn't have better moral claim at improving the world than the former, since it bundles positive environmental change (making better code available for more people) with control over other people's behavior (I won't allow you to benefit from the change unless you act as I like). It's like one person giving to charities with no preconditions and another giving only to charities that support his political views. Both approaches are valid, but the latter doesn't have a base to feel morally superior to the former.
This is false. You are free to use and improve it, even if you don't want to give your improvements back.
But then you are just not allowed to distribute the software with your changes as closed source.
> It's like one person giving to charities with no preconditions and another giving only to charities that support his political views.
That is a crap analogy.
The people who don't want to open source their improvements to GPL'd code aren't charities, they are businesses who want to make money of other people's work. The GPL provides a kind of compensation to these people for their work. Which is the guarantee that all (distributed) improvements will be GPL'd as well.
That's one of the main reasons why I like the GPL. I know I will in some form be compensated for my labour (as opposed to BSD), in the sense that any improvements to it will come back to me.
You give money to charities that do things you don't agree with? Weird.
> 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 any useful way (for example, just a source dump, rather than a version control repo). And even if it is made accessible in some useful way, often the projects don't end up contributing back upstream (Hello Ubuntu!)
> On one occasion I've been persuaded to use another license so that $CORP could use the code (http://gmsl.sf.net/) internally and I see that the non-fanatical position helped $CORP but I'm not sure it helped the greater cause of open source
They still can. You're confused about licensing and what GPL does.
HOWEVER, I do resonate with your concerns. I think the world needs to start making programs which are NOT "free" according to RMS, in that if someone uses the program, and he improves it, he has to give back to the general population. How to execute this properly is another question, but I really want to be able to release code which is a public good, rather than something everyone can take, without ever giving back.
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).
The limitations you point out on publishing changes are nits imho. It's far better than nothing, and social pressure has been successfully used in many cases to make sure proper SCM logs are sent.
The point is that two people can agree on a particular goal that needs to be achieved, while disagreeing -- perhaps quite strongly -- on the means appropriate and best suited to achieve that goal.
RMS' approach to a business which produces proprietary software is, essentially, "Your business is evil, you are evil, and I will crusade to end your evil."
ESR's approach is, essentially, "Your business could be so much more efficient and productive. Let me show you how."
ESR is, much as it pains me to admit this, correct as to which approach is more likely to achieve the stated goal of convincing businesses to stop producing/using proprietary software.
I work regularly with social scientists; they are really interested in Free Software and don't care much about Open Source. You can talk about efficiency and reduction of cost endlessly and to them it's just another "marketing speech" but if you talk about ethics and the well-being of society at large they are instantly hooked.
RMS is just a man, he can't be all things to all people. There are situations in which his rhetoric is really effective, and others in which it isn't; as simple as that. It's great to have Open Source to make an argument that businessmen will pay attention to. However, criticising the "Free Software guy" because he's not an "Open Source guy" is kind of pointless.
I think the diversity in points of view is a testament to the cultural importance of FOSS, and we should celebrate that.
He's been around for some years now. He's had the time to formulate his thought on matters. It's okay to not know what exactly he said/wrote, but it's not okay to just make up stuff you thought he might say based on your own biases.
What he actually wrote, is: "Over the years, many companies have contributed to free software development. Some of these companies primarily developed non-free software, but the two activities were separate; thus, we could ignore their non-free products, and work with them on free software projects. Then we could honestly thank them afterward for their free software contributions, without talking about the rest of what they did." Which is a far cry from what you assumed he might have had to say about it.
You can't really argue about axioms, though. There's no way you can address the core issues of RMS's position, because it's a religious issue. Either God exists or it does not. Either the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists or it does not. I happen to believe the first, and not the second, but I also believe that I can never convince anyone about that using reasoned argument, because fundamentally you can't prove or disprove axioms. You can prove or disprove what follows from a commonly held set of axioms, but that's a different story.
You can't change such people, you won't be able to. And they won't change, And they must not change. If people like him, don't live like he does- Its impossible to take on entities like Microsoft and Apple single handedly.
Although you can argue that ideas from Free software were there ahead and during RMS's times. You can never debate that he gave it a sense of cause, activism with passion and enthusiasm never seen before. This man, made Free Software a purpose in his life. He never gives up, never compromises, his passion and intensity never wanes. He just seems to find infinite energy to go on and on.
Don't get me wrong. We are not just dealing Steve Jobs grade material here. He is more than Steve Jobs. This guy wrote some of the most widely used programs on earth today. And of supreme quality. He designed them, wrote them and marketed them. He is also the author of the most widely used license in software history. He is a prolific organizer, and executor.
He also holds strong views on political issues. Although he is often aggressive. I have never heard him do cheap talk or bad mouth some one, criticize, hate and bash them pointlessly without facts, or because of their ethnic origin, faith, belief or way of life.
But I see ESR as a epitome of hyperbole, bad mouthing, hating people because of their belief, faith and their way of life. Advocating violence. Yet his contributions towards are hardly few. I don't know of the last time he made a big contribution. And I don't even know if he has ever contributed something signification. All I know is has a high Blog noise to work ratio. Has written books based on some one else's work. And now feels qualified in the world to take on anybody and comment on them. People like ESR generally don't get taken seriously.
1. You conflate RMS being supremely talented programmer with his political strategy. ESR criticized the latter and never doubted - but actually emphasized - the former.
2. Anybody who actually read ESR article knows that RMS was never criticized for his ethnic origin, faith, belief or way of life - only for his political strategy and manner of achieving this goal.
3. Advocating violence? Care to give any proof of that? This goes so far that I actually checked the profile to see maybe this is just an anon trolling going on here. Such accusation needs serious proof.
4. Ad hominem attacks on ESR don't add anything to your argument as they do not defend RMS in any way (even if ESR were nobody, his argument still could be valid on merits) - and they are also completely false.
5. One does not any special qualification to comment on anything. One needs only to make sense and be able to build a solid argument. At which you seem to be failing now, since your argument seems to sum up to "RMS is great, ESR is nobody" and a bunch of factually incorrect statements. Such argument in no way can be persuasive to defend RMS's political strategy and rhetoric which ESR is criticizing.
ESR is long know to write blog posts advocating US military campaigns on Middle east(Remember so far no proof found about WMD's in Iraq). He also used to write extreme hate blogs against Muslims and Islam in General, I used to follow some of his posts then. But later gave up on reading it was full of too much hate for nothing. I find it difficult to offer such people audience. Hate is a dangerous thing to encourage, no matter whom its diverted towards.
He would advocate all out wars to 'defend his way of life', So you now want several millions of people bombed, killed and a generation of people with a broken national infrastructure and hope. All of this just because you like hearing to Micheal Jackson and they don't?
ESR to me is nothing more than a guy who use to write articles on controversial issues during pre blogging days. And seems to have made some name encouraging/bashing/thrashing/bad mouthing people. Such bloggers are worth dime a dozen today.
RMS on other hand has proven credentials as a hacker. Both in the MIT Lab and later writing software like Emacs and other GNU utils. His political views are more non violent and more left leaning, yet far better than that of ESR's.
You realize that this is practically a textbook example of an ad hominem fallacy, right?
For example, because of his past behavior I do have trouble taking him, personally, seriously. But I would not use that as a formal argument against any of his specific ideas "ESR believes X, ESR is a Y, therefore X is false".
Then you haven't stumbled upon kuro5hin I take it?
Honestly I suspect his distaste for Stallman has more to do with general politics than free-software politics in particular; ESR is an anarcho-capitalist and Stallman is leftish.
Not that that makes ESR particularly unique, but I wouldn't nominate him as a representative of even-keeled pragmatists; his temperament is much closer to the firebrand type that RMS and Theo de Raadt represent.
For some time already his mind has been drifting in a sea of obscurantist choosing of statistics and a convenient selection of right-winged american-exceptionalist conspiracy theories.
I could link to his twisted essays, but although biased the entry in Rational Wiki about him sums most of the hard facts, though I suggest you ignore their opinion and go read the compiled cited writing of ESR. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond
In fact, I'll argue that, whether despite his fanaticism or because of it, RMS has been - and remains - a positive influence on the F/OSS world. No, his position and his rantings aren't for everyone but they are for some and to the some who are deeply inspired by his actions, the "RMS as messianic figure" thing is probably very valuable. And considering their are fanatics on the "opposing team" (if you will), like certain people who refer to the GPL as communist, I believe a certain measure of fanaticism is good, in terms of counter-balancing the opposing fanaticism.
The mainstream of culture itself will likely always hang somewhere in the middle. But one has to wonder where things would wind up without Stallman and the FSF proselytizing so strenuously for Free Software.
Every so often an event will happen where an ideological purist's rhetoric is true, and this arms them for years of ideological advocacy and warfare...while day-to-day practicalities are dismissed and pass them by. Sure, one could spend 16 hours a day praying at the alter of a particular path, but then there's no time to eat.
Interestingly, highly intelligent ideologues often (not always) follow an interesting path of massive and early creativity and productivity, while trailing off quickly into years of chasing imaginary rabbits down imaginary holes -- when simply continuing to produce would have done a better job of getting their point across.
RMS is like this. Early on he produced absolutely amazing stuff at an astonishing rate -- pieces of software which are still being actively used and developed decades later. Many developers would give their left arm to have achieved this.
And then it suddenly stops. The creative outpouring and concrete contributions to the material world suddenly end and he focuses his energies almost entirely in ideological purity.
It's akin in some ways to Newton's deeper dive into Alchemy or Savonarola's switch from medical school to religion.
Don't forget, Savonarola, despite his desire to pitch the Western world back into the Dark Ages, also fought corruption and exploitation of the poor -- he was right some of the time.
The recent news of Stallman's laptop's theft makes me even sadder because of his ideological purity, the chances of him finding a replacement, and getting back to just making stuff are even further away.
Here's a more prosaic possibility: he got old and/or moved into management.
Anybody have a link to this comment? I couldn't find it.
[EDIT] After an hour nobody claims to have found it. Is there a real comment, or is ESR just fantasizing about RMS caring what ESR writes?
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4371&cpage=1#comment-381328
Luke Leighton writes:
i spoke to dr stallman about the assessment concepts presented here, because i think they’re fantastic and should be more formalised, and adopted more widely including by the FSF. unfortunately he was sufficiently upset by the personal references that he can’t possibly recommend that. what’s the best way to proceed?
Is fanatism working for RMS? Well, the German Pirate Party regularly top 10% in the polls, which is rather better than you'd expect from a "tiny marginal cult", so one has to conclude that it is working.
Shouldn't I? RMS mixes with Pirates, seems to be broadly in favour of what they stand for, and comments a lot on internal Pirate Party mailing lists.
People have no more right to "free software" in the RMS absolutist sense than they have right to free beer, free lunch, or free anything. (And yes, I know the 'free as in speech' slogan, but my point is that I have a right to enter into a contract, or offer someone a contract that limits their rights to share certain information I want to protect.) The fact that the thing in question is information rather than something more 'real' doesn't change the morality of the situation one bit -- it's merely a practical consideration, that bits are easy to copy, and cars and lunch are not.
People are utterly dependent on software.
Net effects mean that people aren't free to choose the software that has the agreements they agree with.
I think the question anyone should ask -- is what kind of society do we want to live in? One where everyone controls their computers and software, or one where the norm is to surrender control of this part of your life to third parties?
So why in the world would it be reasonable to force Microsoft, Apple, or anyone else to give you something they choose to withhold? Instead, speak with your pocketbook -- refuse to pay their tithe, and work with open software and/or with companies whose policies on this issue you accept and agree with.
TL; DR: Market forces are almost always more efficient and less prone to unintended consequences than top-down laws and regulations. Let the market work.
The overall GNU/Linux/OSS movement/project is the only thing I can think of where a work of such magnitude has been carried out on a global scale and has not been orchestrated by a single entity such as a government of corporation.
Something that has been tested on this scale and succeeded as well as it has is likely to be spread to other areas of life. Once Stallman dies , he will be remembered much more fondly than we think of him now and it would not surprise me if he became the inspiration for some future ruler or political movement.
Copied and pasted from stallman.org. I understand the rationale of ESR and many others, but RMS is trying to move the centrepoint of the discussion as far as he can, and to do that he must "resist with his whole soul". Compromise is for others.
Which "us" is this exactly? ESR presumes too much.
This is actually reasonable. I’ve used Stallman this way myself – he more or less begs for it. But I don’t think you’re answering the usual intent of the claim “the moral viewpoint is essential”, which has nothing to do with anything as cold-blooded as gaming the Overton window and everything to do with deep-seated convictions in the speaker."
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.
I don't agree with the complaint about bringing in moral arguments in what he sees as a purely technical issue. Every human endeavour can be viewed from a moral standpoint and it's a perfectly valid perspective and doesn't exclude others.
George Bernard Shaw - Maxims for Revolutionists - http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/26107/pg26107.html
In my opinion Eric argues against his point simply by making it.
If RMS want to dress like St Ignacious, do what the fuck you want.
If RMS wants to be the new Che Guevara, do what the fuck you want, man.
ESR is libertarian, and libertarianism is all about deploying that kind of license in your personal life.
RMS is not a fanatic. He's passionate, and I like his passion and his cause.
I don't think that engineering pragmatism is politically neutral. Sure, you can write a fine piece of software, but Who controls the software? For me, that's the crucial question, and I think is a very pragmatic question, indeed.
Some might know him from his work "the Cathedral and the Bazaar", or know him as contributor to "Battle for Wesnoth". And some might even know him for his contributions to GNU (yes, really! open up the documentation to various utilities some time, and his name will be there). The problem with esr is however, his fanaticism. Where rms speaks of software, he speaks of software and its impact on society only. Whether this is done in the most effective way is open to debate. To expound on the rest of his personal political ideas, he uses his homepage. In general he makes a clear distinction between his general political stance (which everyone has one), and his ideas on software (where he can speak authoritatively).
esr's views are "all in". You are either part of "the tribe" and accept him as your "silverback gorilla" alpha-male, or you're wrong. He's been using his notoriety as a hacker to create visibility for his ideas on other aspects of life, creating, imo, a position of false authority for himself.
You can agree or disagree with rms. But irrespective of the way he presents his ideas on software, they stand on their own, they stand up to scrutiny, and can be defended by and discussed in terms of logical arguments; meaning you are free to agree or disagree with the body of ideas behind free sofware and radically differ (from rms) in any other aspect of life.
Pitting esr's and rms's ideas on free sofware as "two sides of the same coin", needs a coin in a very non-euclidian universe.
In short. esr's influence on opensource dwindled over the years, alienating readers because of tying in his views on software with his strong political beliefs. rms's influence on free software has remained strong, not because of his persona (some might say, "in spite" of), but because they are sound and selfcontaining, and don't require people to "buy into" ideas on other aspects of life that are not strictly software related.
Exactly what is at stake in Raymond's communication of his opinion about Stallman? If the answer is "nothing", is it worth pointing out how flawed his analysis is?
He is a fanatic or an extremist? Absolutely. But he continues to attract interest, and his contributions to society are real and significant.
Society needs fanatics. We need someone to question that moral righteousness of things like copyright, or to set a boundary for the meaning of "open source". If he's personally difficult for Mr. Raymond to deal with, so what? How would the world improve if everyone sat around getting along with each other?
Raymond's post is self-serving, and more about reminding us about how important he is while criticizing someone else.
I say screw public relations, stand up for what you believe is right! If free software needs a more agreeable head figure, why don't they hire Paris Hilton or whomever?
ESR wouldn't be as recognizable as he is if he had chosen to opine on something less important and influential than RMS and his contribution.
Ignoring software freedom as an issue would IMHO be a major mistake given the overall direction in which contemporary society is going. In broad terms I think RMS was right in the sense that as software becomes ever more deeply embedded into all aspects of life, who owns and controls that software, and the ability to audit it, becomes an important question. Theoretically, in the long run it may not be possible to have a free society without some amount of free software infrastructure.
