Junior Member
Heh. Now I'm a FSF member, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt.
I really find reading these threads very entertaining. There is a lot of people who focus on personal attacks against Stallman, but that happens in every discussion. Those opinions are similar to anti-Poettering-ism, usually not fact-based and emotionally fuelled, and can be very quickly discarded.
Another large group of people might understand the issue partially, but gets sidetracked somewhere midway through what the mission of the FSF was. To all of these people, I honestly recommend reading up on the history of GNU, and some of Stallman's essays (the Free Software, Free Society collection for example). This same group of people has issues with real world logic, where anything is (according to them) defined as a "love or hate" relationship.
GNU and by extension the FSF were started as an idealistic project. The idea of the whole shebang is to provide "free as in freedom alternative" to proprietary IT solutions - a version of a popular text editor, which is guaranteed to be available forever. A compiler collection, which anyone can use. A de-facto reference C-library implementation, available to anyone. All that under one condition - whatever you do to the code, if you decide to publish the (modified or verbatim) code, it has to be "free as in freedom".
Now, the idea of all that was never to be the one and only option, to burn and erase all other proprietary softwares, and to make sure you can run only the "tagged" stuff. It was actually the exact opposite - to provide you with the (true) freedom of choice, with an alternative. It's like free range vs caged chicken - arguably, there the benefits of each are more clearly cut (conscience vs cost). And it also describes the current goal of FSF - you wouldn't want to buy free range eggs, only to find out that only 95% of them are really free range, and that it's at the distributor's disposal whether he decides to swap some eggs in your package for caged ones...
For a realist / pragmatist, Stallman's point of view is probably far too idealistic to be practicable. What is honourable about RMS is, though, that he eats his cake too - he doesn't use proprietary software (or hardware), he truly drinks water while preaching water. It were the pragmatists who took the GNU bits, the BSD bits and the kernel, and started making distributions. It took long time to have first true "GNU/Linux" distribution, and no one really insists on you using it - it's your choice - but you can't say you're eating organic, when your corn comes from a Monsanto seed.
Stallman and people at FSF usually assume that people reading their statements are not retarded and can perform a critical analysis. I would be very surprised, if in any of their publications you found recommendations on what you "generally should and shouldn't do" (as opposed to "do to remain truly FSF-free"). In any case, I do believe what Stallman says to be incredibly relevant, especially as he is one of the only people taking such a critical stance. I do not pretend I do what he suggests I do, but I do not pretend I am running only FSF-compatible stuff either.
Senior Member
I dont agree to your statement Stallman thinks that you do harm people and he also things that government should forbit proprietary software... so he is not of freedom of choice at least not in that definition. I agree with what he says but he is not a use whatever you want but dont call yourself a fsf-guy or something like that, what you tried to say...Originally Posted by PeterKraus
Junior Member
Sorry, I don't follow.
I'm not exactly sure he said exactly that. I'm pretty sure he definitely stated government should use open, unencumbered document standards; it is also quite likely that he said government should use free software whenever a free alternative exists. He definitely didn't say "government should forbid proprietary software".
In any case, at least in the US, it makes sense. All works made by the US government are public, and fall into the public domain. As the government is (officially) taxpayer funded, people should be able to use governmental works. It's not that much of a leap of imagination to apply the same reasoning to the tools the government is using.
Yes, he is a bit more radical than that - he is going to call you out if you pretend how "freedom friendly" you are, while you aren't.
Senior Member
I think I heard something like that in a youtube video (which he would hate that somebody uploaded his video there but whatever ^^).
He definatly said, making propriatary software is a crime:
"When Brian Reid in 1979 placed time bombs in the Scribe markup language and word processing system to restrict unlicensed access to the software, Stallman proclaimed it "a crime against humanity."[17] He clarified, years later, that it is blocking the user's freedom that he believes is a crime, not the issue of charging for the software"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman
so normaly one of the most important tasks a government have is to forbit crimes... good its not directly what I said but implicit.
and the clarification is no relativation... proprietary software != charging people for (distributing them) software... or even sell them software if they get then the source and all rights...
Maybe he dont belive in government what would not be very wonderish if you live in america. but he things that that are crimes...
And he just defines freedom of choice in another way then you do... by using non-free software you automaticly limit the freedom of choice and you limit the freedom of yourself and all your people around you... because you cant be a good naighbor and stuff like that...
So I would go further than you and stallman too... but I use a mobile ^^ but if my name would be richard stallman I would propably do the same for security issues... he have many enemies...
Banned
You heard him Cthulhux (BSD Troll), go screwed and please for the sake of the world get on your BSD infected computers, su to root and type in:
ShitBSD# rm -rf /
or even better,
ShitBSD# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/{all your partitions} bs=1G
Senior Member
And replace it by what? Windows? Or, even worse, Dumbux? Lol.
Senior Member
Any sane, non-retarded person is not going to buy point #1 considering how RMS has made it very clear that he would outlaw closed and proprietary software given the opportunity to do so. Just as he feels he is entitled to destroy the business model of major software houses all over the world in the name of liberty. businesses have the right to protect their proprietary work using any lawful means necessary
Point #2 is absolute rubbish as well: RMS has made it known time and again that he would rather have you use closed software on Linux than on Windows or OS X. And how is that supposed to the truly 'FSF-free'? That man just has a bone to pick with closed software, period. He has no intention of giving people that choice to choose between closed and FOSS in his little la-la land.
I made a conscious decision to go full proprietary after using Linux for 4 years and I will fight to the death to protect my freedom to reject my freedom for the sake of powerful proprietary software that I can rely on to get what I want to do done. And to escape from all these 'you-are-using-proprietary-software-on-linux-you-are-destroying-the-philosophy-of-FOSS' attacks.
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Posted from my Windows 8 PC..
Last edited by Sonadow; 12-11-2012 at 05:30 PM.
Senior Member
BWAHAHAHAHAHA
This keeps getting better and better! :rofl:
Senior Member
Isn't one of the basic mistakes this, what he repeats in the comments?
as a user, I would like to go “hmm, this program doesn’t do what I want quite, I’m going to extend it with my code”, and then chose to distribute *my* code any which way I like.
He can surely write his extensions to gpl code any way he likes and distribute *his* code any way he likes, he just can't distribute it together with gpl code under a nonfree license. And the user can completely legally get a copy of the gpl code, get the author's extensions to the code and use it together?
Senior Member
Has he? I think there's a good chance he might if he had the 'power' but has he actually said this? I'd like to hear his actual words on this.
On the other hand there's no doubt in my mind that Microsoft would have made open source illegal had they been able to. Heck, there was even the 'International Intellectual Property Alliance' consisting of RIAA/MPAA amongst others claiming that open source was 'un-american'. And let's not forget Microsoft OS chief saying 'open source stifles innovation', LOL.
In what context does this apply to the discussion? Is RMS somehow able to outlaw proprietary software?
Well obviously since he is against proprietary software he'd want people to use as little proprietary software as possible, Windows and OSX are both proprietary.
How could he possibly prevent it? All he can do, and is doing is to say what he thinks of proprietary software and try to provide FOSS alternatives.
Your bullshit absolutely reeks.
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