I don't agree with Richard Stallman's political or social views but he was right all along when it came to being wary of software not having the user's best interests in mind.
My sentiments entirely. I think he's batshit crazy in a lot of ways - but one thing he got dead right was that letting companies put chips inside of devices that don't obey the device owner but the still obey the company is a damned terrible idea for freedom.
I've started calling it the "little green man" in the device that only takes orders from the company - not from me.
It's insidious, it's harmful, and it's definitely not limited to Huawei or China - governments and corporations all over the "west" are playing with this power, and we're going to get burned.
They don't mean it, it's a pre-emptive cancel-disclaimer. What's really meant here is "There are some easy low hanging fruit shots to take at this guy, but with this comment we remove those from the table."
Pretty much this - he made some bad remarks around Epstein, and he's genuinely more stubborn than is reasonable in a lot of cases (compromising is required to be effective in politics - and he won't compromise). Which is both admirable and batshit crazy.
But I'm not interested in having "that discussion" again with regards to RMS, I'd rather just focus on the spots he got right, and it's hard to argue he was wrong about free software, and the user hostility of these systems (although I still disagree with some of his hardline stances there, but it's more about quibbling with the details then a hard disagreement).
> But I'm not interested in having "that discussion" again with regards to RMS
Fascinating how nobody wants to talk about all of RMS's numerous problems, but only after they've declared that he's a poor victim of cancel/woke culture.
If you don't want to "have that discussion again"....why did you comment in the first place? This is like hearing a topic mentioned in a room you're walking past, running in, stating a position, and then running out of the room with your fingers in your ears, shouting "LALALALALALALALALALA CAN'T HEAR YOU"
Because this discussion isn't fucking about those topics. I'm not here to defend him at all on that front. I'm here to say that he has things that are correct to say about other fucking subjects.
Read the fucking room.
No one is an angel - no one is a demon. Which one is RMS? Don't really fucking care for the context of this conversation. This conversation is about how I happen to think his opinion about free software is - if not correct - at least way more prescient than many others.
Does that imply I have some opinion about his "victim of cancel/woke culture" bullshit? You have no fucking clue. Because I'm not talking about woke culture right now, I'm talking about software.
> My sentiments entirely. I think he's batshit crazy in a lot of ways... -
horsawlarway
> If you don't want to "have that discussion again"....why did you comment in the first place? -
KennyBlanken
> Because this discussion isn't fucking about those topics. I'm not here to defend him at all on that front. I'm here to say that he has things that are correct to say about other fucking subjects.
Read the fucking room. -horsawlarway
___
@horsawlarway...
If you don't want to discuss it, don't fucking make shitty comments about another human being. Then you won't be called out on your shitty statements about another human being.
You don't want to discuss this, because your position is undefendable; you have none.
You shouldn't disparage people. It's not nice asshole.
Claiming that he had never worked with women on projects; a woman was a co-author to a book he wrote about GCC, and GCC had a number of women code contributors, and one had maintained the test suite for 6 years at the time he made the comment.
Comments legitimizing/defending sex with underage people especially when he tends to make it a hill to die on or only backs down in an extremely petulant manner (ie 'sorry you were offended by my comments')
A long history of defending child pornography.
Likening people with downs syndrome to "pets" and asserting that they should not be born.
Ditto for being such a prolific serial sexual harasser that women newly hired into his building at MIT were advised to stock their offices with a number of houseplants, as they're apparently a sort of "RMS Kryptonite".
Ditto for keeping a mattress (no sheets) in his office and routinely having half-naked piles of people on it.
Ditto for multiple incidents of telling women substantially younger than him that he'd kill himself if they didn't date or have sex with him.
Ditto for passing out extremely creepy "pleasure cards" to women.
Ditto for repeatedly using virginity jokes in his talks, in one case singling out a 15 year old girl in the audience, repeatedly. (See defense of child sex above)
This is an ad-hominem logic fallacy. He can be the creepiest fucker around and still be dead right about this specific subject.
Trying to point the discussion at his morals is literally a failing on your part in terms of this discussion - you're not adding anything of value to the discussion.
If you want to have this discussion (and it's fine if you do) - go do it when the topic is sexual abuse, or women's rights, or progressive policy. I probably agree with you on all the above in that discussion - but this discussion isn't that discussion.
This discussion is Huawei abusing the little green man in the phones that their customers "own" to serve the needs of China's government. A topic where I think Stallman happens to have a history of being correct.
What? The question was "In what ways is he crazy", and your parent comment is a perfectly ok response to that question. At no point has anyone said, "he is crazy/has said or done these bad things and therefore he is wrong about this subject".
I agree, but sadly, we inevitably end up with folks who are here to point fingers and call for heads when his name comes up. And while I think there's a very valid criticism of him as a person in that context, I find that context tends to drown out the actual conversation if you're not particularly careful to avoid it.
I think the basic "how is he crazy" question was fine, and I happily answered it within the context of the discussion (he doesn't compromise easily. I see it as the same flaw in Bernie Sanders, with mostly the same results - lack of effective action because working with others always requires compromise. Basically - he's difficult to work with to his own detriment.).
But I think the pointed focus on his sexual behavior is pretty off-topic. Further - I think it's clear that most of the folks making those comments aren't here to talk about his opinion on software - they're here to delegitimize him because they have a personal grievance (real or perceived) with him outside the context of the discussion. There's certainly space for that discussion - but go start a new thread for it.
----
so... long story short. "he is crazy" is both true in the context of this discussion, and an attempt to immunize the conversation from the irrelevant aspects of his social life.
Although given the thread afterwards... I'd say the result was bad reaction to the vaccine. But who knows - it may have been even worse without it...
I'm aware of the kind of things stated in the article, I'm more wanting to know whether those are the main reasons (based on a reply above it seems not) and why people think the indicate crazy (his statements about 14 year olds match my experience just fine).
I'd go further and say that, for general purpose computing devices, it should be possible to fully use, repair and repurpose it without contacting the vendor ever again.
That is, bootloader locking and remote attestation should be forbidden by law.
He gave a talk at northeastern (acm) in 1999? He’s a very much hard core open source… (thanks for the correction: free software) I think he told someone if their job didn’t include makeing the source code open they should quit. It’s not Linux it’s gnu/Linux..
I still think it’s too far, but we should control our own devices. We’ve lost that.
I’ve started running Linux as my daily driver.. it’s been great. Perfect? No. But pretty excellent.
In both cases - I think the problem is that a device continues to listen to the manufacturer over the owner.
In China, we see this play out as government control. In the US, we see it play out as corporate profits under the guise of laissez faire governance (which then feeds back into political donations & lobbying, to allow more corporate profits).
A simple example right now: I can't use hardware I own if I want a static IP from Comcast. I literally have to rent a device from them. Is my hardware compatible? Sure is. Do they allow it? Nope.
Same problem is happening with "Rental features" that are built into devices. Bought that car but want to use the seat heater that's literally built in? Better have an account with BMW and pay 18/month. Why? Because BMW shoved their fucking little green man into the car, and it only respects them.
Using a phone? Even a phone that's working really hard to be open (like Librem)? You're loading a proprietary binary blob for the radio firmware. There's just no alternative at the moment. Who has control over that? No good way to know. Librem tries really hard to isolate that from the rest of your phone system, but that doesn't stop it from reporting your location any time the modem is on (even if you're not using it, or have asked it to be disconnected). At least librem provides a kill switch for it so you can ensure it's off, but it's annoying.
Using an Apple device? Apple owns that fucker through and through. They control the updates to the software, they report every app you use (for malware reasons, of course!!! /s), they capture all sorts of information about you - using their little green man.
And that's a company that actively works to market itself as privacy friendly - don't even get me started with Google and MS. They give you a little more control to wipe away their crap, but the defaults are pretty damn bad.
Basically - Control over the "owner/user" is still the desired state for these devices. In regressive regimes, that control is used to increase government power. In less regressive countries that control is used for rent-seeking behavior, which ends up increasing profit, which is used for lobbying, which creates incentives to allow continued rent-seeking behavior.
"Smart TVs" come to mind, though this is corporate rather than government. For example there's talk of them having an embedded 5G modem so that they're able to phone home even if you've blocked them from your network, or never connected them to your network in the first place.
Hey, have you ever thought of why even the $149 Black Friday loss-leader no-name-brand TVs all have Amazon Fire, Roku, or are now "Smart" in some way?
Certainly isn't because they need to incentivise you to connect it to the internet so it acts as a Nielsen-esq measurement device of all media you view on the screen via digital fingerprints that exist in all commercial media and advertisements. [1][2]
I don't think one needs to point to specific governments or their
actions, and it would indeed be wrong to. The very fact that Pegasus
and similar malwares are openly allowed operate as businesses, that
smartphone cyber-security is essentially a lost cause, that companies
like Huawei were able to ship devices with such deeply embedded flaws,
and that harms are visited upon even serving political leaders shows
that there's an epic power struggle which is out of control at every
level.
Without blaming this or that regime, fascist, communist or whatever,
we need to recognise a new dimension in power, call it
"techno-fascism" or whatever you like... that means it would be
foolish to invest much trust in digital systems at this point in
history. And that itself is a huge economic loss and bonfire of
opportunity for us all.
I think the loss of freedoms Richard Stallman described were very much what was already happening around in with the Lisp environment. He was correct in saying this would be repeated as software ate the world.
So roughly the things he was right about were very hard to prevent. Which is partly why he was right.
Stallman came up in the time of mainframes and dumb terminals; so he had mainframe concerns and mainframe critiques.
His relevance now is because we too have shifted to mainframes, but we don't call it mainframe and dumb terminals anymore, we say 'cloud' and 'mobile'. We are rebuilding the future in effigy of our past because it's what we know. Stallman's critiques being relevant again are a testament to the cyclical nature of humanity, like bellbottoms, hightop fades, and vinyl records.
Now if you don't mind, I must iron these JNCO's, times-a-wasting!
I'm not very familiar with the Lisp environment but what Stallman always argued was the logical conclusion of the current (at the time state) of software freedom and redistribution. Nothing being codified was ripe for abuse and misuse, but because the general community consisted of altruistic "doo-gooders" that reality always seemed very far away.
the problem is he also have so f**g wrong opinions about so much s*t, but yes when it come to software he was right all the way, that make follow him a mental gymnastics marathon.
Struggled to parse this, but why would it be a problem that he was wrong about things outside his speciality? A professor of astrophysics being "wrong" about his opinions on whether eating meat is ethical says very little about how right he is on exoplanet mass distributions.
(I happen to agree with Stallman on his non-software views that I know about, so am a bit curious on what you disagree with)
The whole rider is pretty nutty. Even on fairly mundane requirements he manages to sound a bit crazy. "I absolutely refuse to have a break in the middle of my speech. Once I start, I will go straight through." Presumably at some point he said he didn't want to take a break but someone stuck a break in the agenda anyway and he decided to declare his intention to throw a fit if that ever happens again. It reads a little like "100 ways in which RMS cannot handle the unexpected."
It's perfect by legitimate to prefer copyleft, but I struggle to take seriously the idea that a license can be abused by following its terms, particularly when the reason people put stuff under permissive licenses is to let anyone do whatever they want with it without giving back.
There are lots of people I follow - if I go to their Tweets/Replies "wall" I can see their posts. But they don't show up at all on my timeline (either home or latest tweets).
Now, most of these folks are non-mainstream street reporters, establishment-critical types and the like (who Musk has claims are "repressing" him). Most of these folks simply don't care about Elon and just want to geek out about electoral / activism. But I don't see almost any of their tweets in the timeline.
If I have to create a List to see all their updates, what's the point of a timeline? (note: when I tried to add a lot of people to a list, Twitter logged me out / locked my account until I did 2FA again - very antagonistic).
That's when I decided to leave and haven't gone back since. Mastodon is very quiet comparatively but doesn't smell of Musk.
RMS foresaw all of this crap happening. This is why his message is probably going to outlive us.
I just wish someone would wade through all the crap he wrote and collect all the actually relevant stuff. All the other weird stuff just takes away from the core message of FOSS
