This isn’t FUD. Instead, it’s an excellent response to Richard Stallman’s ludicrously particular speaking conditions.
The author confirms what I’ve been saying all along. That Stallman is an eccentric malcontent with a severe set of social disorders who contributes nothing to open source but his irreverent voice. A voice which, at the best of times, divides people, and at the worst of times, scares and disgusts people. Worse still, he’s so disconnected that his talks are little more than overblown lectures in philosophy that exist only in some imaginary plane with no basis in reality.
He’s been given a free (as in beer?) pass by the freetards because of his figurehead status. But you’ve got to be pretty desperate if this is the best you can do for your public mouthpiece. Perhaps his supports are so socially awkward that they don’t see what a terrible representative he makes.
The man has carried a grudge since his days at MIT. Like a wounded general, he seeks an army to bend to his will. And like so many real world conflicts, he’s managed to find enough lost souls to surround himself with to believe that he’s right in his actions and his demands.
Comments
Meh. The comments on your original post were far better reading than this schmuck. If it takes a (nuanced, by RMS standards) diatribe against Jobs to put Loons off other things that Stallman says, then (a) they’re indulging in the mother of all ad hominems and (b) they’re still not addressing the glaring fault-lines in their beloved FOSS.
It’d be churlish to vote it down again, but I’d be happy to see Adam log on with his endless series of sock-puppets and do it for me. I guess that would be “freedom of speech,” in a way.
If he’s always been so uppity about commercialisation of research and big business, specifically in his case when his work-mates all went to work for startups, I’m at a loss as to why the man would go to work at the MIT in first place… I wonder whether it was his time there that made him start his crusade, or whether he was indeed like that beforehand.
Wow some huge
StallmanMinuteOfHate™
All he does is preach freedom and peace and wants a working air conditioner and Pepsi in return. How f|_|cked up.
And a friendly parrot. Don’t forget the friendly parrot.
All around the world, domestic fowl are purposefully contracting psittacosis rather than have to indulge in idle small-talk with the man.
“He’s been given a free (as in beer?) pass by the freetards because of his figurehead status.“
So true. There are plenty of bitter and out of touch with reality loons out there, but only Stallman manages to be a bitter and out of touch with reality loon AND have people who pay attention to his rants and consider him a figurehead. The tech tabloids everywhere write about every a$$hat comment he makes, and he has been awarded “honorary doctorate“ in some universities (srsly). Something must be wrong with the world if people pay attention to Stallman and the FSF. The advocacy against DRM in movies and music and for patent reform can be done by the EFF (despite FSF‘s effort to monopolise those two), and open source affairs can be taken care of by the OSI, so all that‘s left for the FSF is the fight against the existence of proprietary software.
Well, let’s see:
The OSI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Initiative) are a bunch of obnoxious irrelevant Loons who have made a living out of selling snake-oil.
The EFF (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Frontier_Foundation) is probably halfway dead by now (I haven’t heard much recently), but as usual with Loons degenerated into a lawyer-fest with no obvious benefit to the public.
And the FSF? Oh, they’re much naughtier than that. So much naughtier that I cannot begin to split the appropriate hairs.
This is not a comment about political positioning (left, right, authoritarian, libertarian, I don’t care on this subject).
But doesn’t all this remind you of the Trotskyist groups of the ’70s, ’80s and even ’90s?
I mean, do these people have nothing better to do than to piddle around in futile irrelevant theoretical argument?
That is more or less the reason of existence for many lefties – they just want to complain.
They define themselves through what they hate and fight against, without their pet enemy they would have nothing to live for.
@RC:
“This is not a comment about political positioning (left, right, authoritarian, libertarian, I don’t care on this subject).
But doesn’t all this remind you of the Trotskyist groups of the ’70s, ’80s and even ’90s?”
Sometimes I wonder why I even bother.
It’s nothing to do with “politics.” That is a snare and a delusion for simple minds.
It’s about “Ideology.”
@Dr.L
If I see one more posts about capitalism vs. communism or state-sponsored health care my head is gonna explode, Scanners-style.
@JoeMo:
Tempting.
Send me the foties, and I promise I will keep up the good work.
Meanwhile, both of us should just tone things down a little bit, shouldn’t we?
Not that I don’t like IMGX64’s characterising of both of us as “trolling” Adam. I mean, that’s priceless.
Keep on trolling, brother.
“That is more or less the reason of existence for many lefties – they just want to complain.”
The thing is, I would consider Stallman to be incredibly conservative. While the more liberal minded would encourage choice and alternatives, Stallman actually encourages a “one true way” mentality that’s parroted by the loons.
FOSS advocates claim they’re in support of choice, but only as long as you choose FOSS. They’re like a modern day Henry Ford claiming you could have your model T in any colour as long as it was black.
I agree w/ Kurkosdr on OSI (dunno about EFF). Netscape found out the difference b/w closed and open source, and Mozilla recovered some of the ground Netscape lost to IE. Obviously, licenses would vary, but it’s a good thing to see Open Source being promoted by sane people w/o being in your face about it.
The main problem I have is that w/ the FSF, if something is easy to install and runs smoothly on your computer, chances are that it’s not free, and therefore unworthy. The OSI at least tries to make an argument that something being open source would be easier to manage if the company that sold you that software goes under, or it’s easier to tweak the application if one has the source code. It however doesn’t try to argue that if something is working well for you, you should stop using it b’cos it threatens your freedom.
With Open Source, I don’t have a mental co-relation of openness being inversely proportional to works-right-out-of-the-box. With Software Freedom, I do – the freer a software is, the more likely it is that I won’t be able to install it (b’cos it’s too arcane) or that even if I could, it wouldn’t run as intended (maybe b’cos it refuses to work w/ my non-free network card and recognize my online connection).
Essentially, to the Free Software crowd, my ability to tinker w/ the software is more important than my ability to use it in the first place.
I think that a simple visit to http://stallman.org should be enough to convince everybody that he is a Communist. Now, whether he’s a Trotskyist, or Marxist, or Leninist, or Stalinist, or Maoist, I have no idea.
Quite a number of his stances are funny, but I also notice that he’s virulently pro-Jihad, as noted in his postings on Syria & Libya, in addition to his usual anti-Israel rants. And all these predatory views are beyond even his fanaticism in the FSF.
The FSF exists for the sole reason of promoting software freedom. It wouldn’t make sense to support systems that use or promote non-free systems. There are plenty of companies already filling that niche.
@Adam:
The FSF exists for the sole reason of promoting Richard Stallman. It wouldn’t make sense for it to support something that doesn’t promote Richard Stallman.
... now, you and I know that my previous statement is not strictly accurate. I have conjured it out of thin air, just as you have conjured your statement out of thin air.
Unfortunately for you, my statement is far more likely to be accepted by the average computer user.
Saying “he is a communist” is no worse than claiming someone is a liberal or a conservative. American’s seem to have a real knee-jerk reaction to the term “communist”, though now that knee-jerk reaction has started to be to the term “muslim”.
Both are pretty foolish reactions, just like someone having a knee-jerk reaction to proprietary software or FOSS software. Judge someone, or something, based on their character, not background.
However, in the case of Stallman, the guy is clearly delusional. Surrounded by yes-men and basically a hermit holed up in his bunker, trying to recruit others to do his dirty work and “spread the word”.
I’m quite serious about that “promoting Richard Stallman” thing, btw.
How many cults can you name that outlast the self-proclaimed messiah?
Do you actually believe that the FSF will last even two years after Richard pops off at the ripe cheesy old age of 100 or so?
Because, well, I don’t.
“All he does is preach freedom and peace and wants a working air conditioner and Pepsi in return.”
Actually, it’s more complicated than that. Stallman is a figurehead, a representative, a spokesperson! He should be diplomatic if he wanted people to listen to him. Whining about his personal preferences1 in advance2 is just bad publicity, will make him look vain, and will yield the reactions he’s getting right now.
You might complain that being diplomatic means giving up on his ideals, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I can understand his insistence on not using software he doesn’t agree with, but he goes way beyond that to trivial things like an exact temperature degree and not being offered breakfast. Imagine if Gandhi refused to go somewhere because the people there had animals he disliked, or (gasp!) someone asked him what he wanted for dinner (or didn’t, Stallman complains about both). A person “with a message” like Stallman should be ready to withstand trivial things like that in order to support his message. Instead, he acts like a selfish jerk.
Now imagine if Steve Ballmer wrote such list before speaking somewhere. Honestly, what would your reaction be?
[1] Even if they weren’t eccentric
[2] If he asked an organizer for something when it happens, like keeping the dog away or turning the air conditioner, that’s usually alright
Also, this isn’t an isolated incident. Many things over the years keep proving that Stallman is a bad public representative (I’ll leave the full list to other people).
@IMGX64:
Give up, mate.
Stallman is just Stallman.
If there is anything of value to glean from his nuttiness, you’d think there’d be a Stallman in a parallel universe, wouldn’t you?
Well, let’s be brutally honest about this. There is no such thing.
Stallman’s view of software development and software distribution is, to be honest, almost indistinguishable from the beliefs of the people who developed Cobol in 1957 or so. 'Twas ever thus, and always will be thus.
Except … not.
Even Grace had the grace to admit that there’s something more to it than that.
Dick doesn’t.
Well, that made no sense at all. From the gut, and I apologise.
It’s a response to “Stallman is a bad public representative.”
Bollocks.
He’s the perfect representative for what he believes.
What you, on the other hand, believe is between you and your maker.
And apparently Richard is an awfully good Pirate (emacs, gcc, bash, etc), but a friggin’ awful maker.
I don’t use the term 'Communist’ lightly, and certainly not to substitute Liberal, or even Socialist ideologies – even the latter tolerated SOME freedom and humanity. However, a continuous reading, especially over time, would convince anyone who’s followed Stallman’s views over the years – that he’s a staunch Communist. I’m not even referring to his endorsements of Kucinich or Nader in the past – when you see his statements about Coke killing workers in another country (I forget which, but it was mentioned in his talking conditions) or boycotting Caterpillar for doing business w/ Israel, or supporting OWS protests everywhere, I don’t think there is much room to conclude otherwise.
I know that Communist has (actually had) a bad reputation in America, but doesn’t seem like that these days. At any rate, if the label fits, I don’t see why it should be called a smear. If someone calls me Libertarian, or Right Wing, I don’t mind, since it’s more or less accurate. If Stallman doesn’t like being thought of as Communist (actually, his FSF propaganda is LESS Marxist than his other political views), he (or anyone else who disagrees that he’s Communist) can point out ONE capitalist ideal that he has.
On whether FSF would outlive Stallman, I wonder one thing. The OSI has a board and people who’re there even though Eric Raymond hasn’t been there since 2006, and it hasn’t earned the resentment of software developers and companies (like Mozilla, or Google) the way the FSF has. While they don’t have the visibility of Raymond, their work still goes on. But I wonder whether the FSF has people who count as much, or is it just Stallman’s cult? B’cos I can’t imagine FSF outlasting him either.
GNU is another matter though, since each of those projects are manned by people who are not Stallman, but have some interest in seeing their projects progress.
I don’t think there is anything crazy about his rider list at all. He doesn’t even request a hotel..
I don’t see RMS preaching communism, he seems more like a civil rights activist and anti-corporatist in political ideology, very common liberal slant to everything, but that’s not the same thing as communist despite what the tea party says.
Anyway nobody cares about RMS’s politics it’s his Free Software / Free Culture philosophy that is brilliant and why he gets speaking tours and Ph.D.s.
“Also, this isn’t an isolated incident. Many things over the years keep proving that Stallman is a bad public representative (I’ll leave the full list to other people).”
No he is a really good public representative and I’ll tell you why. Because people seem to be obsessed with him, including the Winbreds of this site.
Really count how many FUDs and TMs directly are about Stallman. Versus how many are about Lessig. Nobody talks about Lessig because he’s not a bearded eccentric quazi-hippie.
Lessig is a well-manicured elite Harvard Law School professor. Which should make him even more visible than Stallman, but no. He is too normal for anyone to notice that his philosophy is extremely similar to RMS.
Nobody can seem to ignore Stallman. It seems society has some obsession with bearded fat men like Santa Claus and Karl Marx.
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