This is why I get very angry whenever somebody calls Stallman a nut. He's not a nut. He's a visionary; albeit a very pessimistic and dystopian one. Call him crazy now, but in 2023 you'll look back at what he said now, and you'll see how it's all right and wish you'd done something. Anything.
But no. Free software is not business-oriented. He's a nut because of his privacy advocation; he must have something to hide. Let's just ignore him, and start startups and get everyone to accept our vendor lock-in and remain blissfully unaware how we're harming everyone.
> Call him crazy now, but in 2023 you'll look back at what he said now, and you'll see how it's all right
You don't have to wait until 2023. The linked posting has a copyright date of 2001, and the wording of the last few paragraphs implies it was written late in 2001 a few months after 9/11.
And in the middle, is this sentence:
"What I am worried about is massive surveillance of all aspects of life: of our phone calls, of our email, and of our physical movements."
Which we have all now learned over the last few days is actually what has been happening, for far longer than anyone realized.
So you only have to look at this article with what we know today, to realize how correct his warnings actually were/are.
It's been safe to assume that all telephone conversations, text messages, instant messages, VOIP calls, email traffic, and all unencrypted web traffic is or could be subject to inspection, capture, and archiving. If it's not encrypted, it can be captured. If it is encrypted, it might be possible to decrypt it, you'll probably never know.
Facebook has long been suspected of being partially owned and/or controlled by the CIA (http://www.globalresearch.ca/facebook-the-cia-conspiracy/126...), and who could blame the CIA for taking an interest in such a valuable dataset. It's not clear if this is true, but if you're truly surprised that it's the case, you're far more of an optimist than I am.
The only thing surprising about this is that it leaked out, not that it was happening in the first place.
If I could give you more than one upvote, I would. This was EXACTLY my reaction - "Didn't this exact same thing happen 7 years ago? Complete with half the internet losing their mind? What am I missing?"
Once the 2 minutes hate is over, nothing will come of this. We'll repeat it again in another 7 years.
Anyone who grew up watching The Prisoner or reading Orwell would know that this level of surveillance enabled by technology was foreseen by other kinds of visionaries...
I would venture to say that most of the dismissive criticism I've read regarding him hinges on his having BO or idiosyncratic speech patterns or similar surface attributes.
It's possible for someone to be visionary about some things and nuts about others.
Stallman seems to be right about the government's actions after 2001. That doesn't automatically mean he's right about the way I should or shouldn't run my business.
He may not be in most cases; but usually if you're going to sell proprietary or closed-source software, you should at least give back to the community somehow with an open source project.
Of course, it's not always right. And that's fine; the issue is yours, not mine.
What he IS right about is that licensed software limits the user's freedom. That's unequivocal, you can't deny it.
What he IS right about is that licensed software limits the user's freedom. That's unequivocal, you can't deny it.
This becomes much less clear if you bother to consider things like how that software came to exist in the first place.
Consider that there are things you can do, things you can't (or aren't permitted to) do, and things outside of possibility (eg web browsing before the internet was invented).
Requiring software to be Free/unrestricted reduces "things you can't do", which given a fixed set of possibilities increases "things you can do".
But the set of possibilities is not fixed. Depending on how any particular software being free affects the rate that things are removed from "outside of possibility", it could either increase or decrease the amount of "things you can do".
Edit: Is your freedom defined by how much you can do, by how much you can't do, or by the ratio of how much you can vs can't do? It's silly to be concerned only with the second of those.
Very true. At least prior to the cloud model (back when companies sold proprietary executables), a software industry limited to F/OSS applications would have meant innovation only came either from personal projects or from trickling down from a big patron who had financial incentive to release the software to the community (e.g. Sun and Red Hat). With proprietary software, innovation was much more market driven and, therefore, more common. You have to weigh that gain in innovation with all the problems it brought or intensified (proprietary file formats, the greatly increased potential for spyware/rootkits, DRM, patent trolling, etc.)
I'll grant that some innovation comes from the market - and, moreover, specifically from the market incentives created by constraining what individuals can do with their bits and bytes in whatever format.
Like most things, there are trade-offs. The question is: does the increased value and freedom afforded by that marginal innovation outbalance the tremendous destruction of value and freedom that these restrictions entail?
"Decreasingly," I would argue (even if we're presently making some people very very rich); I'm working on a project to make it even less the case.
Most criticism of Stallman boils down to the fact that people are reluctant to resign from even the slightest bit of what is convenient or pleasurable, even if ethically this would be the right thing to do or even if it is likely to cause harm in the long-term. I mean I have never seen anyone criticize Stallman in a logically or ethically coherent way, most people just whine that they are not going to stop using Facebook or their mobile because they won't.
Stallman's only "flaw" (but I'm not even sure it is one, actually), IMO, is that he could be more tactful about spreading his message.
If most nerds don't take him seriously, why would any average non-techie person?
People will receive bad news better if you know how to communicate and engage with them.
As an example, the angry vegan on the street shouting, "Shame! Shame on you!" doesn't convince you to go vegan. The vegan that engages you in rational debate and shows you how a vegan lifestyle isn't as hard/daunting as it seems, may convince you.
It's foolish to realize that people will ignore bad news from some unkempt academic that seems a bit off, rather than by a clean-cut smooth-talker in an expensive suit.
A vegan that is explaining to you how easy their lifestyle is can hardly be said to be bringing you bad news. On the other hand a vegan that is calmly/politely/diplomatically explaining their point of view on the ethics of eating meat could be said to be bringing bad news, and I expect you will find that vegans are 'heard' far less often when they discuss that topic. I certainly tune them out and start getting annoyed when they go down that route, no matter how diplomatically they do it.
The bizarre dual nature of patriotism and politics in the US makes it even worse for anyone looking to bring Stallman's message to the public. Telling people that "the system is not flawless and world would be wonderful if only 'those other jerks' stopped trying to subvert the system" is somewhere between "eating a hotdog is like eating your child" and "cows should be able to vote in elections". People have too much emotional stake in that system being the right system. Many of them have literally killed for it, or known people who were killed for it. They've lost sons, daughters, fathers and grandfathers who were fighting for it. They put people currently fighting for it on a pedestal of unconditional support. They have romantic notions of people before them fighting and dying for it.
Maybe there is somebody out there charismatic enough to convince the general population to consider fundamental flaws with the system itself, but I don't think that such a person has really been seen in politics for many many years.
Well, you can take a shortcut if you appeal to stronger allegiances than faith in American democracy... but those shortcuts drive us in the wrong direction.
A vegan telling you about how easy an ethical lifestyle can be is still telling you, albeit very nicely, that our society is engaged in institutional atrocities and that you are complicit in them. They are just not dwelling on the negatives.
The point is that those are things that people do not want to hear. This is why vegans, no matter how polite they are, rarely find a receptive audience when they talk about those things.
People rarely like bad news when it means great change. If you can convince them that the change isn't as daunting as they might initially conceive, you've got your foot in the door.
An example, "Beef is bad for you, but chicken/turkey is better." Sure you might miss steaks, but most recipes that call for ground beef could easily be substituted with ground turkey or chicken with little fuss.
It's not that he's factually incorrect, it's that his conclusions are insane and that's what makes him dangerous. Like Glenn Beck, he starts in the realm of reasonable and ends up painting a picture that's surreal.
His solution to these problems is to disconnect, to remove himself from the equation to the best of his ability. No cellular phone. No internet connection. No credit cards. Cash only. Don't use web services. Turn off cookies and JavaScript and Java. His answer to any problem seems to be to boycott it, as if that'll change things. Who but Stallman can operate like this? Not even secret agents are as paranoid, they're trained to hide in plain sight.
What someone in his position should be doing is talking about how to avoid this dystopian future by promoting standards, accountability, and more transparency. They should be engaging with law enforcement to understand their need for information and protect a person's right to privacy. There's a legal framework out there that needs updating by people that understand technology, but if they're all stubbornly opposed to co-operating, more stupidly out of touch laws will be passed.
This is why the EFF and organizations like it are extremely important. They're not advocating shutting down the internet just because it's being wiretapped. They're not hiding in a cave while invasive laws are being passed.
You haven't read him. Those aren't his conclusions. Those are his personal actions, as a single person without any political power. If you're a judge in an international human rights court, you bring Coca-Cola forth to respond to their hire of murderers. If you're just a bloke of the street, you might boycott Coca-Cola, if only just for having a clear conscience.
What his conclusions actually are have been stated many times before. Free software in every device, under the GPL. Free software in servers, under the AGPL. Being able to install open source firmware on those devices. Using free standards. Banning intrusive DRM, restrictions to second hand sale, et c. All very reasonable and implementable today, if there were the political will.
Well, maybe not all very reasonable, but reasonable to varying degrees. Still, I don't get why you are so worried about Stallman, when he actually wants what you want.
While his response to this (almost completely removing himself from society) is unrealistic for the majority of people, his conclusions here are not insane, and are frighteningly accurate and prescient.
I actually disagree with Stallman on a lot of political issues, but highlighting the dangers to liberty in the wake of attacks is completely sane.
The only thing about Stallman that I find insane is his personal grooming habits/food choices.
Until the early 80's there was no widespread use of mobile telephony and internet. It's not crazy to think that the surveillance state has ruined the internet and that there is more value in avoiding it than in using it. Maybe it's over.
I can recall some TI managers looking at Stallman like he had two heads when he told them, over 25 years ago, that developers would make money with free and open software.
The car industry is facing a generation of buyer who find cars a burden. It's crazy to think that we can't screw this up.
Those aren't Stallman's conclusions; they're his immediate actions. His conclusion, at the bottom of the page, is:
> Please let your elected representatives, and your unelected president, know that you don't want your civil liberties to become the terrorists' next victim. Don't wait -- the bills are already being written.
Refusing to be surveilled in the meantime is a temporary measure that Stallman adopts because of his extreme deontological ethics. He does that in the background, to the extent that it doesn't interfere with his work for a large non-profit dedicated to political activism. Remember, he used a computer with non-free software on it until the Lemote Yeeloong was released.
>His answer to any problem seems to be to boycott it, as if that'll change things.
False dicotomy, he's done more than just that.
>What someone in his position should be doing is talking about how to avoid this dystopian future by promoting standards, accountability, and more transparency.
Or, hacking the legal system to create an entire class of intellectual product resistant to the kinds of control he criticizes? Plenty talk, Stallman is one of the few who has done.
Honestly, what more could be expected of one person.
Stallman and the Free Software Foundation may have started this movement, but they haven't been the primary driver for the last decade. First it was Linux, then a multitude of others like RedHat and Debian that built on the Linux foundation. Now there's a robust ecosystem built on and around open-source.
Where before The Free Software Foundation and the GPL were important at pushing things forward, they are now holding things back. People want even more freedom than the GPL offers, they'd rather use the MIT or BSD license. In some circles, GPL is the kiss of death, that no matter how good the software is you can't use it.
My point is Stallman has done important things, but if he thinks he's still as singularly important as he once was, he's delusional. The movement is much, much bigger than one person taking a stand against proprietary printer software. It's millions of people working together to make software as a whole better. Nobody will ever be at the center of this movement again.
If Stallman moved to a tiny island in the Pacific and was never heard from again we'd get by, and many of us wouldn't even notice. He's done his part and left his mark.
By way of contrast, when we lose someone like Aaron Schwarz we're diminished. He was someone who was not just opinionated, but motivated to change things. He didn't just write papers or give speeches, he wrote software to further his cause, he went out of his way to challenge the status-quo and force people to to pay attention.
I'm not sure how that's "by contrast". How exactly does "He didn't just write papers or give speeches, he wrote software to further his cause, he went out of his way to challenge the status-quo and force people to to pay attention" not also apply to Stallman? Stallman probably wrote even more code than Aaron Swartz, in addition to writing the first software license that guaranteed the freedom of all future users of the software. All licenses, including proprietary ones, are shunned by some people; the effectiveness of the GPL is evident in the simple fact that it's the most common free software license in use today by a wide margin.
So what if Stallman doesn't contribute to software projects much anymore? The whole point of this link was to direct attention, not to his coding skill, but his unusual foresight, which he retains.
"All licenses, including proprietary ones, are shunned by some people; the effectiveness of the GPL is evident in the simple fact that it's the most common free software license in use today by a wide margin."
I'd appreciate a source on this - not in a "I doubt it" sense, but "I would find it useful"!
>People want even more freedom than the GPL offers, they'd rather use the MIT or BSD license.
Oh please, stop with 'people' generalisations. First off GPL is the most used open source licence there is, and that doesn't mean it's what the 'people want'. Just as certain as MIT or BSD is also not what 'people want'.
The 'people' is a diverse mass of individuals which have different needs and ideologies, some want the source code of modifictions/derivatives as an exchange for their code, others want their name retained in the source code commentary, etc.
Also many times developers chose one licence for one type of project and a different one for another type of project. What we typically see is that for full application style projects, copyleft is dominant, while for component/framework style code, permissive licencing is dominant.
Copyleft and permissive licences caters for different needs, they fullfill those needs and hence they are used.
You can't compare the GPL with the BSD/MIT licenses. They're two different types of free software licenses. The MIT/BSD licenses give the developer freedom, while the GPL is more free if you're talking about the code itself, and not who wrote the code.
And, just like Aaron, Stallman has done a lot. He's also written software to further his cause, and he also went out of his way to challenge the status quo and get people to pay attention.
Half the software you use now wouldn't be here otherwise.
Given that you can license something MIT/BSD or GPL, I don't see how this is something you can't compare. It's something you should compare.
Also, I think developer freedom trumps code freedom in this day and age. GPL served its purpose when code was being threatened by corporate concerns, but now, because of people like Stallman, it's recognized that open-source can be good for business.
Your points would probably be better received if you did not exaggerate. He of course does have an internet connection, as he uses email. Plenty of people turn off some subset of cookies, javascript, and java (who has java turned on?). I agree that better subversion comes through acting normal and engaging people closer to their own terms.
"better subversion comes through acting normal and engaging people closer to their own terms."
But the "better subversives" need someone to point to, to say "you think what I'm suggesting is unreasonable and difficult? What about this guy's suggestions?"
It's called shifting the Overton window; the people who do it generally aren't widely liked (or likable), but if we all stayed closer to the center, we wouldn't get nearly as much movement as we'd like.
Maybe he's more flexible now, but I'd read that he browses the web by downloading pages over email, and even when it came to email it was under very strict self-imposed rules.
Honestly, he sounds like he's never given up on UUCP.
I think the real question is why people pretend they cannot and end up acting helpless.
My co-workers can't even say no to $startup that acts like it's a requirement that you put your picture and bio on the company website. Some will grunt and complain about it, then act like I did something wrong when refusing this request (which is never presented as a request, of course).
People are the problem here, the government is doing exactly what I would expect when you have a bunch of ineffectual serfs running around.
The government already has information on who you work for (via taxes), so putting up a picture and a short bio (e.g. "i like long walks on the beach") isn't going to change much.
I'm not saying I agree with pressuring you to put up your bio information. I'm just saying that it seems so small compared to the other stuff out there.
Ignore the crypto approach for a minute. The issue is responsibility. If we aren't responsible directly for the crimes our government commits, who is. People look at the scale of the problem, the difficulty of the solution, and decide because it's too difficult, it's not worth doing. Why? Because they haven't really accepted responsibly. Our government is invading other nations on false pretense... what have you or I done in return? Shouldn't the wheels screech to a halt at this point? Why didn't they? Because no one is responsible to inact a solution we actually believe in, because all of the solutions require too much damn work.
There was a comment below to the effect of "If only terrorist targeted the real problem instead of innocent civilians...", I don't think the comment was meant as sarcastic, which just depresses me further.
You don't plant a tree underneath a power line then blame the tree for doing what's expected, known, and in their nature.
#edit, I shall elaborate as I know I sound crazy.
Think about software, the employees complain for more time to refactor, the boss continues driving forward with feature creep and reactionary programming/patching/hotfixing. The developers are just as responsible for the quality for the software and will have to support the decisions. Instead of putting their job on the line to stop this behavior before it's too late, they grunt, complain, and meet their silly deadlines. Fast forward a few years, the company cannot keep talented developers, simple new features take years, now the developers are ready to either quit or put their foot down, but now it's way too late, bad choices in data partitioning, scheme design, etc, now you need a complete rewrite. See how the solution scales with the problem?
To me, the problem is out of hand, so naturally people will start trying to start doing what should have been done a long time ago, except it's too late, and the actual solution is still met with "well, no, but I'll do the easier version now".
>But no. Free software is not business-oriented. He's a nut because of his privacy advocation; he must have something to hide. Let's just ignore him, and start startups and get everyone to accept our vendor lock-in and remain blissfully unaware how we're harming everyone.
I use Github, and I love it, but they're closed-source, in spite of so many free software projects being hosted on the site itself. It's ironic. Now, of course, Github doesn't have vendor lock-in because it runs on Git, and you can switch to Gitorious should you need to, but nobody will be there, and there's no features. In essence, you either use Github and it's awesome yet closed-source interface, or you just do local revision control or use a hosting site nobody uses.
It's a vicious cycle. What if Github changes something? We can't change it back. What if they implement a backdoor to leak code out to third-parties? We can't change it back. We can't move anywhere else either, because everyone uses Github.
You can apply this scenario to perhaps more critical applications as well. Office is one more example.
Github is a business, and I think they're fairly entitled to have some closed source components, something proprietary to differentiate themselves.
They also create a lot of open-source software that can be used as an alternative to what they do. If Github becomes a poisonous influence, people can and will abandon that platform and move to something better. It happened to Sourceforge and it can happen again.
"They are entitled" typically means more than "strictly they have the legal ability." No one disputes that the current legal situation is the current legal situation. Some people dispute the broader meaning.
So Github is a good example of why the traditional open/closed dichotomy falls apart on the web.
The things that make Github really valuable are by definition closed. They own a well-known URL and have a ton of content behind it. I know where to go to find projects, I have a consistent workflow for acquiring or modifying those projects, and I have a reliable method for commenting on and contributing back to those projects. Even if Github were completely open and simple to customize and deploy (which are very different things), a fork would have very little of the value we associate with the original.
Not an open/closed issue, but illustrative of the concept: Google+ is a noticeably better written piece of software than Facebook, but no one uses it because that's not where they can see their sister's baby pictures.
This is very different from desktop applications, such as Office. Assuming file interoparability, I can use an alternative that I like better to improve my workflow without losing much value.
So what we really need is to move away from focusing on project source and toward open data. We should be pushing for better and richer APIs for third-party access to large datasets.
Except for the single URL, there's nothing in there which couldn't work using an open, federated Github implementation.
Take the example of the StatusNet server I used to run own my VPS. I would go to Identi.ca or any other site, and to follow a user I'd just have to click on "Subscribe", fill in my handle (easy to automate) and then I'd be redirected to my own server, where I could with one click confirm the subscription.
The messages from that user would get POSTed to my StatusNet server, which would display them in my feed as if it was a local user.
Doing the same with forking, pull requests and bug reports is perfectly feasible; there's nothing inherently "closed" about an easy, consistent interface and workflow.
I think "consistent" is the operative word there. On a desktop app, if I change something it changes the entire experience and only for me. On the other hand, if on my theoretical distributed github host I decide that I hate markdown and I want my comments to use textile instead, then not only do I not solve my own itch (I still have to deal with markdown on everyone else's repos) but I've created friction for everyone else who comes to my repo and wants to comment like they do everywhere else.
Multiply that by several thousand hosts and the friction involved in using, let alone contributing to a project goes up considerably. Having a world where every repo uses the same visual and interaction metaphors and supports the same features is a huge UX win, almost regardless of the quality of that interface.
We used to have something sort of federated for source management. Before Github basically won everyone had their own bugtracker and repo set up. It was not uncommon to spend an hour trying to figure out where they hid the pull URL, then installing whichever version control tool they were using, then fighting with whatever half functional import tool you needed to convert their repo to whatever version control your project had. Then spend another half hour creating yet another account and then fighting with whatever half functional plugin they had installed or trying to figure out the difference between "Critical" and "Severe" just to submit a bug.
We didn't have a federated system, we had a bunch of silos to which we would connect to. The advantage of a federated system is that you use your system to interact with others' data, so the experience is consistent to you†. The server to server protocols are domain specific (unlike HTML), so it's much harder to deviate from the standard without breaking the connections.
In the end what you're advocating for is governance, but I disagree that it must be enforced top-down; shared consensus works in irrigation systems in Nepal, and it works in online systems as well.
† Mostly, but then again, Github isn't perfect either. Some repos don't have READMEs, some don't accept pull requests (e.g., torvalds/linux), many depend on various build tools
In the sense that I don't have access to the source code for the software that I am interacting with as a user. It's not "free software" in more ways than that.
But no. Free software is not business-oriented. He's a nut because of his privacy advocation; he must have something to hide. Let's just ignore him, and start startups and get everyone to accept our vendor lock-in and remain blissfully unaware how we're harming everyone.