A short critique of Stallmanism

"This is not very productive and you forget I have mod rights here, don't do that:)" said the true supporter of human rights and free speech. Free software is just a category of Open Source software. What has been proven to be detrimental to the cause of FOSS is connection to any other ideology. The beauty of it is that satanists, white power, fascists, Nazis, communists, socialists, anarchists, male chauvinist pigs, femnazis, tree huggers, muslims, trumpists, Christians or whatever deprived club you're part of may be part of this idea that progress is served best by opening up your creations (i.e. software), so others don't have to duplicate it in order to defeat some brain dead notion that humanity is served best by delaying progress for ten, hundred years in order for multinationals to cash in.

while i agree with your statement, i don't get your point. neither stallman nor the author of the article connect Free Software to some other ideology.

greetings, eMBee.

I have a lot of respect for Richard Stallman.

Say what you will, but for me he'll always be my hero.

I can tell you one thing I really hate and that is when I am corrected for saying Linux instead of GNU/Linux.

Whilst I know it is potentially correct I don't call my car a Volvo XC90 or my tumble dryer a hotpoint aquarius.

Opensource.com describes Linux as "the best known and most used open source operating system". Wikipedia calls it a POSIX like operating system and every other linked item in the first 2 pages of Google calls it an operating system.

New users couldn't care less that it should be called GNU/Linux. I couldn't care less that it should be called GNU/Linux.

All the time you get the idiots who say "huh, I stopped reading when he called Linux an operating system, its a kernel not an operating system". At this point I stop reading the comments and go looking for a large stick to hit them with.

Richard Stallman has done a lot of good but his followers are like druids who worship at his temple and heaven help anyone who doesn't praise the GNU overlords.

The thing is, Stallman is usually right. Extreme, but right.

As computers have become more common place in our society and products the dystopian future he warned everyone about has happened. Most people don't care or don't have the understanding to...some even buy Apple products.

I agree,... Stallman is almost always right... The problem with Richard Stallman is that he's Richard Stallman...

Eventually, people get sick of hearing the fire and brimstone from the guy on the pulpit... That doesn't make the sermon wrong,... just long and aggravating...

Quoting:I couldn't care less that it should be called GNU/Linux.

I admit that I used to think that also, however, Stallman was in this regard ahead of his time. It is important to distinguish between the various user space stacks. Today we have:

GNU/Linux

Android/Linux

ChromeOS/Linux

and interestingly enough we now have

GNU/Windows

Let's be careful we don't call that stack "Linux".

The first three of these examples all use the same Linux kernel, but the choice of user space really does influence the user's Freedom. I still find myself saying Linux when I'm referring to the GNU/Linux stack, but I now think that maybe I should improve the precision of my communications. I think RMS got this right, I'm just a little late to the party. Old habits are hard to break.

By the way, using this terminology, we are also free to say that Linux (the kernel) now enjoys the largest installed base of any kernel worldwide.

@ mbaehrlxer I quote: "How can our politics be effective, if we don't connect them to the actual source of the problem: profit? I know Stallman personally espouses some very socialistic ideas about financing the production of art for social good (and maybe even all digital works?) -- but such an approach should be crucial to the free software philosophy."

I don't think most Americans see "profit" as a "root problem", on the contrary. "but such [socialist] an approach should be crucial to the free software philosophy".

Or This one for that matter:

"Free software activists should accept that software freedom is not an isolated issue, with its own, completely independent value set, but is just one aspect of a wider struggle for justice, and that we can never achieve full software justice under capitalism".

No ideology? Well, it is in my book.

Hans Bezemer

@theBeez: >I don't think most Americans see "profit" as a "root problem", on the contrary. "but such [socialist] an approach should be crucial to the free software philosophy".

My understanding is that RMS has no problem with programmers making a profit programming. Don't you remember those heady days when you could buy an install CD for GNU/Linux from the FSF?

https://web.archive.org/web/19981205153719/http://www.gnu.org/order/order.html

And you can even read all about how the FSF encourages programming for profit:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html

In many areas of personal life, RMS is probably close to an socialist ideologue... however, he and his organization have always recognized the need for profit in programming.

RMS and his GPL proclaim ethical programming, not zero profit programming. The GPL is not 'socialism in programming'. Rather, it is about ethics.