Rant about RMS

[Gomer_X]

Mark Shuttleworth praises RMS on his blog today...

Funny, because RMS won't even use or advocate use of Ubuntu, since it isn't completely "free".

One thing I have never understood is why people criticize Richard Stallman for not recommending distros that include a few proprietary drivers.

It sounded to me more like he was pointing out the irony of Shuttleworth praising a man who disagrees with what he's doing. If Shuttlewoth is so excited about freedom, why doesn't he make a free distro? At least Stallman practices what he preaches.

[yeti]

sorry late posting on this, catching up on episodes after being away.

well, i enjoyed the interview and indeed all the viewpoints expressed.

[Spankminister]

Disclaimer: I haven't listened to the interview (and probably won't, since I've already read RMS' rants, and they're basically all the same)

It seems like a lot of people disagree with RMS because they don't really understand why he's so adamant about closed source drivers and proprietary things making their way into Linux as "accepted" parts of the kernel or distro-- because once those things are in place, they'll be deemed "good enough" and will never be replaced by good free alternatives. He's branded a zealot (and rightly so) because he's unwilling to compromise on this, but it's important that people understand he has logical reasons for doing so.

What I personally don't understand is why the discussion always turns to "wider adoption of Linux" or "how can developers make money with free software?" To be blunt, that's really not the GPL's problem. At the end of the day, the point of free software is free software. Both those goals are worthwhile, and there are solutions out there for them. Convincing people they should be using Linux is a distraction from the real job of making Linux better-- once that's done well enough, people won't need much convincing.

There seem to also be a lot of confused developers. Take CastPodder for example. That team put a lot of hard work into the project and added a lot of code. Now the project lead decided to take the program closed source because he felt that he was entitled to monetary compensation. The community is taking the GPL'ed source and forking it so that people can still have free software, and life goes on. Do people just not understand the GPL? How it's greatly biased in favor of ensuring that any software based on GPL'ed code cannot profit any individual without also benefiting the community? The GPL was made to serve those interests, and it does that very well, I don't know why people think it needs to be changed so that someone can make a living doing it full time, or why that question is even worth asking; it's not the point. It's very encouraging when individuals and companies can base their business models around open source software, but I don't know why it's RMS's problem when they can't.

[Tsuroerusu]

Disclaimer: I haven't listened to the interview (and probably won't, since I've already read RMS' rants, and they're basically all the same)

If you wanna know about GPLv3 from the man himself, you should listen to it, or read this transcript of a speech he just recently gave in Japan: http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3 ... transcript

He's branded a zealot (and rightly so) because he's unwilling to compromise on this, but it's important that people understand he has logical reasons for doing so.

ard Stallman or Theo de Raadt are zealots for not being willing to compromise on proprietary drivers, I ask back, so is Denmark a zealot of free speech because the government vigorously refused to either prosecute the painters of the (in)famous paintings of prophet Muhammad or extradite them to Pakistan for prosecution where they would have received death penalties?
Denmark stuck to our goals, ideals and principles of free speech and free press, likewise I stick to certain goals, ideals and principles myself and so do Richard Stallman, what in the freaking world is wrong with that? Just sticking to what you believe in doesn't necessarily make you a zealot. During I think it was episode 93 of TLLTS, Pat described how you cannot use Gentoo and have a family at the same time because of all the compiling.

Pat: "I have a full time job, I have wife and I have a child"
Dann: "And the second one on the way right?"
Pat: "Soon."
Dann: "See now there's just no way you can do Gentoo."
Linc: "Second what? Second wife or second child?"
Pat: "Second child (Laughing)."
Linc: "You have to ask these things because you never know."
Pat: "I'm catholic, I don't believe in that."

So is Pat a catholic zealot for sticking to some principles and ideals of his? I certainly do NOT think so.

Same case I make for Richard Stallman. Back in the 80' he had a number of really negative run ins with proprietary software, these experiences greatly soured him. A few examples of this was when a printer driver was making some systems unstable, he went to printer company and asked for the source code so he could fix it, but he didn't get even a single line of code, nor did the printer driver get fixed. Another example is when Symbolics, Inc. hired all the MIT hackers (Except one notable one, can you guess who?) made proprietary software and started getting it into the MIT AI Lab, for two years Richard right out duplicated their efforts to prevent them from monopolizing the lab's computers.

When you take these, and similar experiences in the account, it's not really so hard to see why Richard Stallman is against proprietary software and rejects it like he does. I think "not willing to compromise" is the wrong word for describing Stallman, because it sounds like some parties of a world war that can't decide on which land they and the other gets, at least to me. "Sticking to ideals and principles" I think is the correct description of what Stallman does, not being a zealot.

What I personally don't understand is why the discussion always turns to "wider adoption of Linux" or "how can developers make money with free software?" To be blunt, that's really not the GPL's problem. At the end of the day, the point of free software is free software. Both those goals are worthwhile, and there are solutions out there for them. Convincing people they should be using Linux is a distraction from the real job of making Linux better-- once that's done well enough, people won't need much convincing.

You're completely correct, Richard Stallman is not doing what he is doing to make all the stupid Windows users out there switch to Linux or *BSD, he's doing it make sure that you can use a computer in freedom, which means having "the four essential freedoms".
Remember, Richard Stallman came out of the hacker culture of MIT in the 70' and 80', at that time, software was viewed like science largely still is today, it was a collaborative process of sharing invention and innovations. Over time people change and forget, and it would seem like a lot of people forgot why certain freedoms benefited software as much as it did. One person didn't however.

There seem to also be a lot of confused developers. Take CastPodder for example. That team put a lot of hard work into the project and added a lot of code. Now the project lead decided to take the program closed source because he felt that he was entitled to monetary compensation. The community is taking the GPL'ed source and forking it so that people can still have free software, and life goes on. Do people just not understand the GPL? How it's greatly biased in favor of ensuring that any software based on GPL'ed code cannot profit any individual without also benefiting the community? The GPL was made to serve those interests, and it does that very well, I don't know why people think it needs to be changed so that someone can make a living doing it full time, or why that question is even worth asking; it's not the point. It's very encouraging when individuals and companies can base their business models around open source software, but I don't know why it's RMS's problem when they can't.

GPL != Not being able to make a living.

I think Red Hat has very much showed that you absolutely can make a living doing free software. Now the way you do it is different than proprietary software, mainly because, as I have argued earlier, the typical business model of proprietary software is not fitting well with free software, because of the "free redistribution" part of it. Proprietary software business models typically say "People who pay me, can use my program", free software says "Everybody can use my program", those are vastly different approaches to software, which needs different business models, or at least for free software, you need a fitting one.

I have argued that "custom software" which is a much larger business than "boxed/retail proprietary software" anyway, fits perfectly for free software. See this post of mine earlier in this thread where I argue how to do custom free software.

[Spankminister]

"Sticking to ideals and principles" I think is the correct description of what Stallman does, not being a zealot.

We're getting into semantics here when I think we are basically in agreement. I called him a zealot because of his unwavering convictions and his unwillingness to compromise. We could say that that simply makes one a "man of principle" and shows integrity. However, I would also say that he would remain steadfast in his beliefs no matter what rational argument is made to him-- I'm not going to drag a dictionary into this, but I think a zealot is anyone whose mind is not open to be changed given enough evidence and rational discussion to the contrary.

GPL != Not being able to make a living.

I agree entirely, my point was that the above statement is completely irrelevant to the GPL itself and its goals, and I don't see why it keeps getting brought up.

[Tsuroerusu]

"Sticking to ideals and principles" I think is the correct description of what Stallman does, not being a zealot.

We're getting into semantics here when I think we are basically in agreement. I called him a zealot because of his unwavering convictions and his unwillingness to compromise. We could say that that simply makes one a "man of principle" and shows integrity. However, I would also say that he would remain steadfast in his beliefs no matter what rational argument is made to him-- I'm not going to drag a dictionary into this, but I think a zealot is anyone whose mind is not open to be changed given enough evidence and rational discussion to the contrary.

Well, if you're going to discuss Richard Stallman, always take into consideration that he sees the four freedoms as essential, as something everybody deserves to have, if you take Eric Raymond's statements/points as a starting point of a discussions, then everything about Richard Stallman seems zealotish. If we start with the four freedoms being essential, as the foundation, what you refer to as a "rational argument" might sound like complete non-sense. For example, to RMS the point some people (Namely folks like Chris and Bryan at The Linux Action Show) make about making it easier to make proprietary drivers by "having a stable ABI for folks like NVIDIA to link their stuff against", is complete non-sense, because of two things. First of all, it's about not giving people the four essential freedoms, aka denying them something they ought to have. Secondly, it's promoting non-free software, because if you have a free software driver for the Linux kernel, it would just be included in the mainline Linux kernel and would just be "there" on any system, or be super easy to add to any modern Linux distribution.

I know that most people use the Eric Raymond-style points as a foundation for talking about Linux and open source, and that inherently makes Richard Stallman's and the Free Software Foundations arguments, always sound, more or less, ridiculous.

If you want to make the absolutely highest quality, with the best features and the best hardware support, then denying to use a good quality proprietary driver seems stupid, because it results in "less quality" drivers, or drivers that lack certain features (Like HDCP, TPM etc.).
If you want to make a purely free software OS, because you believe that as something essential, then denying to use say NVIDIA's graphics driver, or the Madwifi wireless driver, makes perfect sense, because it's not free software and violating your ideals and principles, and if you wanna take it beyond the philosophical side, it makes development a lot harder, because if the proprietary driver causes the rest of the OS to have differently, you probably have no idea that it's doing that and even if you found out (By comparing behavior between having the driver loaded and not having it loaded), it's impossible to debug.