Comment by mettamage
20 days ago
I asked an LLM, so I think I get it but could you try to mention what is meant with "Stallman was right"? The reason I'm asking you and not posting the LLM answer is because it still feels a bit icky to post an LLM answer for everything I don't understand [1].
[1] Feel free to discuss this too, if you want. I'm developing my opinion on it.
Richard Stallman has spent basically his entire career trying to convince people that all software should be free as in freedom, so that people truly control the devices that they own--preventing things like Google being able to lock users out of the ability to install applications on a device that they purchased.
Read up on the principles of the Free Software Foundation if you want all the details.
Stallman has a long history of being very abrasive and ideological. He is the kind of guy who makes zero concessions for practicality, and he insists on prioritizing user freedom because he has always feared that otherwise users will be locked out of having the ability to truly control their computers. It's always been kind of easy to laugh at his crusade because of how zealous he is, and how absurd the scenarios he warns about seem to be. The thing is... he seems to have been right the whole time. Companies really do want to lock you out of controlling the devices you own, and do so at the first opportunity. So... Stallman was right.
> He is the kind of guy who makes zero concessions for practicality...
Respectfully, this claim is incorrect. See this 2013 essay [0] for one example out of many where concessions are made to practicality.
Folks who are unfamiliar with Stallman's writing and the general philosophy of the FSF and/or the GNU Project might find spending an hour or so reading through some of the essays here [1] (perhaps starting with this 1991 essay [2]) to be informative.
[0] <https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/is-ever-good-use-nonfree-prog...>
[1] <https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/essays-and-articles.html>
[2] <https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html>
From your link 0:
> The question here is, is it ever a good thing to use a nonfree program? Our conclusion is that it is usually a bad thing, harmful to yourself and in some cases to others. If you run a nonfree program on your computer, it denies your freedom; the immediate wrong is directed at you.
That is most certainly not making concessions for practicality in my book. So if anything, the citation you provided is IMO evidence for my claim.
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> He is the kind of guy who makes zero concessions for practicality
Didn't he give some wiggle room in GPL license ?
Inasmuch as the GPL itself is not Stallman's preferred state of affairs (he would prefer to see copyright abolished altogether, at least for software, and copyleft is just a compromise for now), I suppose so. Otherwise I'm not aware of any wiggle room, was there something specific you had in mind?
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Probably https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html , mentioned elsewhere in the thread.
I wish it was as absurd today as it was the first time I read it.
I find Stallmans views are best summed up by this quote from him:
“I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place.”
In this case it worked out well as a rhetorical device to make you look it up and learn something. Sometimes leaving out something for the reader to wonder about is more powerful.