I grew up at a time when people felt very strongly about Windows versus Linux. People would fight amongst themselves on Slashdot and elsewhere about whether it was OK to use Windows, or whether it was possible to do [whatever] on Linux.
I guess what I'm wondering is: is OSX/iOS versus Linux/Android the operating system flame war of our time? In this thread, I see almost entirely adhominem attacks on Stallman. (Not unlike a Daring Fireball thread in reverse.) Is he Glenn Beck or is he Rush Limbaugh? Is he just slightly impractical or is he extremely impractical?
What I don't see is any substantial discussion of the OP. At the moment, there are 2/72 comments that mention the iOS App Store at all, which is a major point that Stallman seems to be making here.
More generally, is no one worried about what Stallman is worried about? Jobs' explicit stated goal was to destroy the only Linux mobile platform (through patents), and his policies on the App Store and elsewhere were explicitly hostile to Free Software. Had Jobs been successful and perhaps lived another ten years, we might be living in a world with no Free Software on our personal devices at all. Apple laptops with software installed from the Mac App Store to develop iOS apps for the iOS App Store (with both App Stores of course rejecting GPL code).
Given that almost all startups rely heavily on Free Software, from emacs to gcc to Xen to Ruby to every poorly constructed library on Github, that would be tremendously negative for the startup ecosystem, no?
The irony is that Stallman can be most closely identified to the heroine in the 1984 commercial, trying to shake up people from their walled gardens of pure idiolatry. (I say this as a happy member of the iPad/iPhone/MacBook Air masses. :-)
I - a developer who open sources some code - totally agree, it is sad that, ios app store emerged in 21st century, to control what people can use, for their own safety (and not apple's walled garden dogma); governments in oppressive countries use exact same arguments to filter internet; to protect users (children etc) against evil ...
for startups, an apple-minded world would be detrimental.
> More generally, is no one worried about what Stallman is worried about?
I am not. I don't even know what is Stallman worried about. Some weird definition of freedom and some weird threats to the said freedom. His ideas are outdated and misplaced: it's like rms preaches tips for survival in the desert failing to notice that dessert is no longer there and we are in the jungle.
> Jobs' explicit stated goal was to destroy the only Linux mobile platform (through patents)
Is Android really the only Linux based mobile platform? I highly doubt so.
> and his policies on the App Store and elsewhere were explicitly hostile to Free Software.
This is a blatant lie.
> Had Jobs been successful and perhaps lived another ten years, we might be living in
> a world with no Free Software on our personal devices at all.
Another baseless speculation. How convenient to ignore reality and all the contributions Apple has done to open source.
> (with both App Stores of course rejecting GPL code).
But there are other licenses besides GPL which are more free ant compatible with App Store.
I would like to point out, that regardless of your feelings for either person Jobs or Stallman, both is/was very smart people, and what they say/do we should pay attention to.
Stallman is right about Jobs' legacy. iOS devices prevent installation of any GPL software. This is blatantly wrong. Most innovations within the last 20 years came from OSS developers creating incredible techniques used by Apple/MS/etc, yet this is being attacked. The shoulders of giants analogy perfectly applies. Except OSS developers don't get patents, the thiefs of OSS do.
Unlike Jobs, Stallman's view of the world is towards freedom and I respect him for walking the walk, he is not filthy rich and that is because he does not exploit people. He definitely has views and attitudes that are unpopular, such as his views on reproduction BUT none of those ever take choice away from people, nor do they ever take any freedom away from people.
His prediction of the patent war is true. Look at patents today. MS is taking royalties from 50% of android sales. Apple is preventing sales of tablets because they have round corners and the approximate shape of an iPad, and Intellectual Ventures is getting ready to obliterate companies. The legacy of Steve Jobs is anti-freedom.
"Most innovations within the last 20 years came from OSS developers creating incredible techniques used by Apple/MS/etc..."
Name one.
To take some examples I happen to have first-hand intimacy with: Linux is both original and good, but the original parts are frequently not good, and the good parts are clones of Solaris. Touchscreen happened in iOS first. Modern virtualization happened in VMware's closed-source base first. Modern information retrieval is still a proprietary Google secret.
The most important counter-examples I can think of are languages. The "everything is a hash table" descendants of Perl and javascript (in which I include Python, Ruby, and PHP) would not have been viable as commercial products. That said, even javascript began life as a Netscape proprietary implementation, and Perl is mostly a synthesis of ideas present in ksh.
Finger-responsive touchscreens were around long before Apple used them - they were just generally larger than the iphone. Surely you must have seen them somewhere, from museum displays to fast-food cash registers.
The iPhone is not a "finger responsive touch screen". These screens are really easy to make-- they have a grid of sense lines and can tell if there's a finger at the intersection of two of them. They are completely confused if two fingers touch the screen at the same time.
What the iPhone does is map the entire shape of a finger, as well as many other fingers, touching the screen to determine how many fingers, what orientation, etc.
This is completely different. That you and others claim they are the same shows the frank dishonesty at the core of the anti-innovation crowd here on hacker news. I'm at a loss for the motivation of anti-innovation people to hang out on an ostensibly startup oriented site, but you have succeeded in ruining it.
"The default behavior for attribute access is to get, set, or delete the attribute from an object’s dictionary. For instance, a.x has a lookup chain starting with a.__dict__['x'], then type(a).__dict__['x'], and continuing through the base classes of type(a) excluding metaclasses."
VMware was probably based on M Rosenblum's graduate work on SimOS, which was GPL.
If it's fair to call Perl "mostly a synthesis ideas present in ksh," I think it would also be fair to call Mac OSX "BSD plus a display server driven by postscript and a UI written in Objective C."
> VMware was probably based on M Rosenblum's graduate work on SimOS, which was GPL.
I worked on VMware's virtual machine monitor from 2000 to 2009. Mendel's students' work on SimOS had nothing at all to do with VMware, full-stop; SimOS was just a full-system simulator, useful for measurement and educational purposes, which has almost nothing to do with virtualization.
The research system of Mendel's that did influence VMware's founding was Disco[0], a virtual machine monitor for SGI's MIPS machines. But the technique Disco used (trap-and-emulate) was inapplicable on x86, and in fact there was peer-reviewed literature claiming the x86 was impossible to virtualize[1]. VMware's first six years of products were instead based on dynamic binary translation; we incrementally recompiled the privileged x86 guest into unprivileged x86 code, in much the same way modern JVMs incrementally compile Java bytecodes into native machine instructions. Our source base was 100% VMware proprietary, and had to be since no open source project was trying anything remotely related at the time.
Do not lump PHP with Python and Ruby. It is incredibly rude and betrays a lack of understanding about the pedigree of these languages.
Python predates JavaScript by nearly half a decade.
Perl's big inspirations were sed, grep, and awk, not ksh, according to Larry Wall. However, there is no reason that Larry might not have known about ksh, and it's entirely possible that he was thinking of ksh when he implemented Perl.
I work on a PHP compiler and runtime for a living, so I'm reasonably familiar with its past, present and future. While Ruby and Python are superior in many ways, these three languages (and Perl and JS) have much more in common than they do separating them: Algol syntax, runtime typing, hash-table like duck-typed objects, automatic memory management, some half-baked (for all but JS) concessions to functional style, etc. If you consider them in a world that includes C++, Haskell, Prolog, x64 assembly, Smalltalk, and Lisp, all of these languages form an incredibly tight cluster in the configuration space.
And granting for the sake of argument that Larry Wall wasn't thinking of ksh, sed, grep and awk were just as AT&T proprietary as ksh was.
Without disagreeing with you about their overall similarity, your claim that "descendants of Perl and javascript ... include Python, Ruby, and PHP" is obviously mistaken. Maybe you meant "descendents of Perl and Python include JavaScript, Ruby, and PHP". Just a question of historical accuracy.
Either way, this nit-picking doesn't affect your main claim that most revolutionary technologies came from closed companies, and that languages seem to be the main exception.
In response to that main point, it seems to me that in a lot of cases, the amazing closed-source technologies are actually rooted in technologies developed in the open, before FLOSS had a name (indeed, before AT&T's crackdown pushed RMS to coin Free Software). Consider the success of Unix: initial development by a closed not-for-profit lab, and elaborated by an informal open process. Consider the open and collaborative processes that gave us all sorts of networking technologies, including TCP/IP, including hypertext, etc. And Javascript would have died in a ghetto if it had been limited to one company's browser.
Ruby and Python have strong types, no automatic coercion besides numeric promotion, customizable and extensible type models, the ability to create new first-class types, a complete type system, dynamic attribute and method dispatch; these things are not in the flavors of ECMAScript used in browsers and Node, to the point where there is no "class" keyword, or an equivalent, in JS.
I object to Ruby and Python being lumped with JS mostly on account of features, and additionally because JS does not occupy the same systems-programming niche that Ruby and Python can easily fill. (And some companies, like Google, would not permit Ruby and Python to be grouped, nor Python with C++ and Java.)
" iOS devices prevent installation of any GPL software."
In what way? It is the GPL that prevents GPL software from being distributed via the App Store. Frankly, I see no reason why it should be a problem, as the binary distributed that way could easily link to a web page with the source.... but I remember a bunch of "Free" software types raising a stink when someone uploaded a GPLed App.
Apple doesn't care, so long as it isn't using private APIs, or stealing users data, or contain malware, etc.
You guys never seem to give Apple honest credit for what it does. For instance, before the App Store, independant software developers could not get apps on mobile devices, because the carriers controlled the ecosystem. Apple opened it up and made it a level playing field and now there are hundreds of startups targeting the mobile device market. Google didn't do that, Google just copied it. It was Apple that used its clout to force the carriers to accept the AppStore.
I install whatever software I want on my iPhone, and I don't have to ask Apple before I do it. I can install software with any license I want- apache, GPL, whatever. And I haven't jailbroken my phone.
You're shifting the goalposts. Stallman is complaining about the AppStore which is where Apple sells software and Apple chooses not to sell pornography. That's their choice.
Any consumer, with an iPhone that is not jailbroken, can install whatever software they want, provided it is written in HTML and javascript. The iPhone is a totally open, standards based, host, and Apple exercises no control over it. You can even go visit porn sites.
Further, Apple has worked to make this platform a first rate citizen in its operating system. HTML/Javascript Apps can be installed, added to the home screen, can have local data, and can run when there is no network connection, and they can do absolutely whatever you want.
I'm an iOS developer & a fan of the app store system (from the small indie developers point of view), but there is no way I can kid myself that iOS is an open platform.
Javascript & HTML are very nice inclusions, but really unless you can run arbitrary native code on the device I don't think it counts.
I don't, but I fully agree with Stallman that the fact that it accustoms people to the notion that they shouldn't expect to have complete control over hardware they own is a very, very wrong path to take.
Of course, like most of the things Stallman is right about, it's the kind of thing you don't notice until it actually affects you.
If you, Stallman and whoever are talking about what people learn (I.e. they don't have complete control over hardware) it is near entirely useless to speak of those who do so.
Assuming everything Stallman holds dear to his beard is true and will benefit everyone, with effective teaching (So, people understand the idea, see why it would benefit and are able toact) people would begin to change.
Lambasting Apple, Microsoft and whoever is such a petty way to go about this and shows a certain lack of trust in their own ideas.
Steve Jobs showed more trust in his own ideas. He [and others he worked with] went ahead, built something, and people now use it. Jobs and friends seemed less worried about others and whatever their ideas and products were which seems to be the opposite of Stallman, companies, groups, etc.
"There are those who always speak of themselves, and they are either insecure or proud. There are those who always speak of others. They are usually very boring. There are those who speak of stirring ideas, compelling books, and inspiring doctrine. These are the few who make their mark in this world."
your "etc" glosses over a lot of other reasons apple will reject your app, ranging from "we're not going to tell you why" all the way up to "your superior implementation makes our built in functionality look dumb, so we'll ban your app to prevent users from getting confused."
Apple does not reject Apps without citing chapter and verse in the standards book, and often providing screenshots.
I'm not aware of any examples of the latter, but since the App Store has been created, there have been no manner of false stories from Apple bashers along these lines.
Here's a concrete one: Firefox Mobile exists for Android devices, but iOS users have to settle for "Firefox Home", an app which provides access to your Firefox bookmarks and lets you open them with Safari.
"In what way? It is the GPL that prevents GPL software from being distributed via the App Store. Frankly, I see no reason why it should be a problem, as the binary distributed that way could easily link to a web page with the source...."
The whole point of the GPL is that wherever GPL-covered software goes, the freedoms (to run, study, modify, and distribute the software) go with it. Availability of source code isn't the goal; it's just a necessary condition. Because iOS devices will only run code signed by Apple's keys (and Apple doesn't distribute those keys, obviously), it's impossible for a developer to distribute software via the App Store without separating the software from the freedoms. That's why it's not allowed.
Jobs saw how to make these computers stylish and smooth. That would normally be positive, but not in this case, since it has the paradoxical effect of making their controlling nature seem acceptable.
One of the Jobs' supporting argument about integrated approach is that the tight control is what enables them to make the computers "smooth".
While there is some amount of truth in that, the other side of it is that it's just marketing cover for Jobs' control freak nature more than anything else - why is Springboard crashing on me 5 times a day if control makes it possible to have great user experience and Apple has full control? Why for another example Apple is letting me install apps that crash routinely if they claim they locked down so they can control the quality of user experience?
One of the "revelations" in the biography is that Tim Cook said to Jobs during the Antennagate that there is general impression that Apple is becoming another Microsoft - complacent and arrogant. That gives me some hope that post Jobs there might be at least a pause to Apple's nonsensical lock down policies.
Why is it that people always complain about iPhone and iOS but no one can reconstruct these things "issues". I had 4 iPhones till this day with all iOS Versions on the market and I never, ever saw or heard a problem about "springboard is crashing 5 times a day". NEVER.
That does not however mean that no one is having issues. This is a common fallacy repeated ad-infinitum on boards - if I can't detect or experience something it must not be happening. Google even auto completes ios 5 spr... to springboard crash. https://discussions.apple.com/message/16539394#16539394 has more than one person confirming this.
If you look at Settings->About->Diagnostics data (or something close) - you will see a sizable list of crashed programs and OS components.
Is that enough "evidence" for you? :) (I actually hated writing this to be honest - never understand what reason people have to doubt universally accepted things like crashing software!)
I can tell you why. Cause there are a lot of people who are just talking BS to harm the other "group". I will repeat it till my dead I never had any issues with Macs, iPhones, iPads and iPods. I can't reconstruct issues people have and until I see a iPhone which crashes 5 times a day I won't believe it.
Plus if you have so much trouble with you phone, what about calling Apple and telling them your issue. When I called last time because a failure they send me immediately a brand new device. Sorry mate but something seems odd.
I don't want to attack you personal, it just seems that a lot of people are trying to talk BS about Apple products.
That is the nature of bug reports. I was baffled by the reports that Android UI is "laggy" because I have never experienced this nor had anyone I know complained about it. That doesn't necessarily mean it is not happening to the reporter.
There are many many Android smartphones with many many different hardware stats. Even with low hardware stats to be cheap at the selling point. I can understand that this can lead to a lot of bug reports but if you have 5 devices and a handful of OS versions this is way better testable and fixable.
I think there are some interesting similarities between Steve Jobs and Richard Stallman:
Both are luminaries in computing with significant impact. Both attracted a cult-like following. Both often will speak their mind irrespective the feelings of others. Both "give a damn" about users, though with completely different ideas about what is important.
I find it exquisitely ironic that RMS is railing on about SJ.. both profess an anti-dogmatic , against 1984 approach.
Both ended up creating uniquely dogmatic ecosystems. One exploited it at an unbelievable commercial scale surpassing the beast they rebelled against ( IBM, the 1984 ad ) .. the other has become a very strange priest who keeps railing on against other churches that spawned from the original.
I personally admire and respect Steve more.. at least, he had and inspired poetry.. at least, he made Jonathan Ive craft a speech of a life-time[1] at the recent memorial.
Well, SJ was happy to put up a "down with the man!" front so long as he wasn't the man himself.
However, it seems from the Isaacson bio that behind the scenes, he wanted control of the end-user experience on his machines from the start. He wanted the Apple II to ship with two reserved expansion slots --- one for a modem, the other for a printer --- so that third-party hardware couldn't screw up the user experience. It was Woz who insisted on eight general-purpose expansion slots.
He's certainly head strong, and there are many modern cases of implementations that he didn't agree to (The app store, iTunes on Windows etc.) But despite his opposition and his ability to prevent these things from happening, he did eventually concede to them, stand up on stage and present them with excited fervour and ultimately sell them to the masses.
I suppose what I'm saying here is that Stallman too is head-strong, but probably needs to be surrounded by a team of rationalists to make his direction palatable.
People talk about Jobs like he was a genius, or the devil, or a god, or some personal friend. He was the head of a company that finds opportunity in tech-stagnation.
Also there is so much talk about Woz, I doubt anyone would really be interested in Woz if Apple went bankrupt towards the end of the 90s.
I admire Steve more; I wish I had some of his talents. I respect Richard more; the degree to which he doesn't compromise takes more bravery than it looks, IMO. He could have taken the easy way out, and been handsomely rewarded for it, long ago.
I can see where you are coming from. Reading the recent biography indicates that Steve had similar bravery chops against compromise, his arena is different to RMS.. but functionally.. about the same ( if not more ).
Of course Richard Stallman does not inspire poetry. There is no beauty coming from him. But you can just be baffled by beauty. Do you see the harm that apple policies (not products) do to innovation? to your freedom? Do you care?
I admire Stallman for his values. I respect him for his perseverance.
if you understand what RMS wrote (cmon it was 5 lines) you can't say they both "profess an anti-dogmatic , against 1984 approach".
jobs used that approach in marketing, for sheeples to buy apple instead of IBM. If you think (not even hard) about it, you will realise iOS is nothing more then a portable IBM mainframe. you pay a hefty price, that no one in reality pays, or you pay a subscription for service, and only run approved software.
people don't buy phone without contract because they can't. The operators would be fools if they made that a good deal.
In brazil it was like that. everyone bought phones along 2yr contracts "because they need to have a plan anyway".
prices were always rising. it was a joke.
then the regulatory agency said that you had to allow number portability between operators and added limits to contract breach fines. lot's of people would change ships every 2yr. or 1yr. or even sooner if the fine (1month) was worth the change in price.
now in brazil you can buy a SIM card in a newstand for US$5. which includes $4.5 in prepaid credit. put into your cellphone, and use unlimited data for 24h for a mere $.25
that would be unthinkable if the operators still 'owned' everyones phone number and hold them for a minimum of 2yr.
i left there on the first year after this regulation, and i was already paying for unlimited data on FIVE lines the same that i'm paying for AT&T in california for two lines.
also, forgot another regulation that contributes to this.
if you get a new phone because of a 1 or 2yr contract, and you stay with that contract for the whole duration, at the end the operator must UNLOCK your phone for free.
Stallman is way more philosophical than Jobs. Jobs focus was on building insanely great products. Stallman is focused on promoting a philosophy of sharing. I think they are much more different than they are similar.
Both have affected my life in positive ways. Stallman has affected me as a programmer and a thinker. Jobs has affected me through his company's products I would say stallman has had the deeper effect though I type this on an iPhone.
Both are zealots who would prefer everyone adopt their world view. I don't think a single view is possible nor is it preferable.
Let's suppose that Glenn Beck died. What a lot of people, including me, would think is that while we didn't wish for him to die, the world of "politics" is much better off without him.
I think this is the way Stallman feels about Jobs. I really don't see why people say that this is "tactless".
I can't figure out if you are serious or not, because that is such a naive statement. But either way, obligatory PG essay link in case you are unfamiliar.
It would be helpful if you could enumerate the ways in which his/her statement was naive. It seems to be a relatively logical conclusion that being told or influenced not to say something is restrictive of innate freedom of speech, no matter how seemingly innocuous a reasoning established social or cultural norms are (ie. don't criticize the recently deceased, it's tactless).
It was naive in not seeming to grasp that there are many senses of "can't" and "freedom," and that the sentence could be either true or false depending on which you mean.
You're right, it is a very naive statement. But it's also a very serious one; the freedom to speak one's mind is the entire topic of this discussion, and I am of the opinion that freedom of speech is so important that it should be a reserved right, inalienable and indelible.
That was a good essay. I liked it. What conclusions did you want me to draw from it?
Much like brlewis said in his response to the GP, no one said that RMS can't say what he thinks: he will not be hauled away to labor camp for saying it. However, the other topic of this discussion is that the rest of the community has the freedom to pass judgment on tactless people like RMS, which is exactly what's happening.
Yeah I've never understood the controversy here. He viewed Jobs as an enemy to the cause, why should he be pretend to be upset that he's no longer doing harm?
Some idols you just don't criticise right after they died. That is an insult to their memory, and to whatever makes them an idol in the first place.
Steve Jobs was such an idol. His media-foo was impressive, even after he passed away. Every soul in the western world old enough to talk knew about his death at most 30 hours after his last breath. Therefore, you just don't criticize Steve jobs until next spring.
I know of another way of being a tactless jerk: criticizing a religion. It won't change the fact that there is almost certainly no God, though.
Edit: I am being sarcastic here. Let me rephrase:
> Some idols you just can't criticise right after they died without causing serious backlash.
> I know of another way of being perceived as a tactless jerk.
To be clear, Steve Jobs was a champion of Treacherous Computing, and there is no God. I suggest those I have just offended to turn on their brains. (I said "those I have just offended", not "those who disagree with my statement".)
> Every soul in the western world old enough to talk knew
about his death at most 30 hours after his last breath.
So what? The same could be said about Muammar Gaddafi.
> I know of another way of being a tactless jerk: criticizing a religion
Criticizing a religion is innately tactless? There are certainly tactless ways of criticizing a religion that would make you out to be a jerk, but I'd think there are certainly ways of criticizing a religion without being a jerk.
Steve Jobs was really in no way whatsoever an idol to me. He was a well-known public figure, which made his death news. If rms wrote an email to steve's wife about how her husband was a horrible person and that he was glad he was gone, that would be incredibly rude and tactless. Commenting on his blog about how a public figure's death affects him and his movement which he cares very deeply amount is, imo, not.
>So what? The same could be said about Muammar Gaddafi.
Hopefully, you can see how Muamar Gaddafi and Steve Jobs differ. Gaddafi's death was a relief, Jobs was a loss, that should have been implicit, in his argument.
He seemed to be implying that because his death was such big news he was someone to admire. I was making the point that how famous your death is has nothing to do with how good of a person you are. Though the point is moot, since it seems he was being sarcastic.
> Jobs was a loss
The whole point here is that to RMS it was not a loss at all -- it was a gain that a large entity that opposes his movement has now been hopefully (hopefully to rms) weakened. Of course the loss of human life is a loss and all that stuff, but this isn't about Steve Jobs the person, it's about the influence he had on the world.
Why? I don't own and I don't like Apple products. Most people I know don't own Apple products and they don't have any impact whatsoever.
I respect a lot of aspects about Jobs' life, but making a successful software and hardware company is no more important a milestone than any other. If anything, Stallman's legacy will probably be felt for much longer into the future.
I was being half sarcastic. I wanted to point out the religiosity around Apple. People read Stallman's statement, saw that it was about Steve Jobs doing bad things, and just shut down their brains. Some nearly accused Stallman of being happy about Job's death.
Of course those strong reactions are totally unjustified. And despite what pg seem to suggest above, Stallman is very probably justified in doing his comment: Steve Jobs is being a martyr, and martyrs are nearly always a good thing for the cause they defend (here, the locked-down model of the iPhone and the iPad).
The error of Stallman was purely strategic (or tactic). He didn't foresee that people wouldn't read what he wrote as he wrote it. He didn't foresee that they would quote him out of context. He didn't foresee the near-total lack of rationality of Apple fanboys.
The problem is, I don't know how I could have avoided those mistakes if I were Stallman.
Every time an article involving Richard Stallman gets posted here I cringe as I read through the comments. There are a range of opinions so I don't want to overgeneralize but there are a large number of people here that seem to almost despise Stallman and the FSF. People make fun of him and make comments about how he has a net negative impact on software and computing. It pains me to see so many people, who quite likely rely on emacs, Xcode with gcc, gnu coreutils, or an operating system that would've never been possible without the Free software movement, sit around and ridicule RMS because he eats toe jam or really, really likes parrots. He's had more of a far reaching and positive impact on software than people with such naive views will probably ever realize.
What I really wanted to comment about though (I couldn't hold back a short rant...) is how these Steve Jobs comments relate to the E-Parasites Act that was discussed yesterday. I read a lot of great comments there about how we're losing our freedoms incrementally and how this will shape the future. In the US we've seen this ratchet effect taking place to a frightening extent in the last decades both inside of computing and in general. If the US ever ends up in a place where there's widespread censorship on the internet then you can bet that it can trace its ancestry back to the DMCA and something like the E-Parasites act which will allow entire sites to get shut down with lots of room for abuse. Every step we take in that direction makes it easier to keep stepping in that direction.
So why don't as many people feel this way about Apple? Because we like their products? Iphones have made it normal to buy a computing device that has artificial restrictions preventing you from running whatever software you want on it. If they had their way then it would have actually been illegal to jailbreak your phone in order to circumvent this. Sure, iphones are really cool but this is a step in a terrifying direction. If it ever becomes illegal to upgrade the RAM in your laptop yourself or to install third party software on it then you can bet that you can trace the ancestry of those laws back to the shifts in public perception of computing freedom caused by companies like Apple. Laws like that might seem laughably extreme now but with every step in that direction they seem less and less so.
Stallman sees this and he has dedicated his life to moving us in the opposite direction. He's been hugely successful at this and he's been almost prophetic in his opinions about what we should be worrying about. He was criticizing Apple for trying to take away peoples' freedoms and Steve Jobs for steering the company in this direction. He wasn't condemning him as a person, as he said "My feelings about Jobs as a person are not strong, since I barely knew him." I don't see expressing this view after Steve Jobs' death as being particularly disrespectful. Steve Jobs is known to the majority of people only for his role at Apple. This role is what he was praised for across the internet and in magazines after his death. This role is what Stallman condemned.
> Stallman sees this and he has dedicated his life to moving us in the opposite direction. He's been hugely successful at this and he's been almost prophetic in his opinions about what we should be worrying about.
He has not been hugely successful. He has failed outright at making users care about their software freedoms, which is why it's so easy to take them away from them. The users are the ones who care least about free software, mostly because they see every day how inferior it is to closed software. From the perspective of the average user, apple's stuff is far superior to the "free" stuff. This makes users interpret free in its worst meaning: free as in cheap, free as in low value.
And this is my real beef with stallman's brand of free. His freedom is a narrow-minded ideology, abstracted from what freedom means in the real world. In the real world the only freedom I care about is the freedom to spend my time the way I want. From that perspective, jobs did a lot to make me free, because the switch from linux to apple "freed" more of my time than it cost me.
It's also interesting to think that apple, in supporting webkit and web technology, helped make HTML5 happen, a movement that enables more user freedom than ever before. Even the ITMS, that bastion of evil, is just another web app selling DRM-free music.
I respect what stallman is trying to do, and strongly agree with it. I just think his tactics are dead-wrong.
And this is my real beef with stallman's brand of free. His freedom is a narrow-minded ideology, abstracted from what freedom means in the real world. In the real world the only freedom I care about is the freedom to spend my time the way I want. From that perspective, jobs did a lot to make me free, because the switch from linux to apple "freed" more of my time than it cost me.
You're overloading the word free, a common rhetorical confusion that invariably appears in discussions of this nature. You're not really saying that Apple gave you more freedom; you're saying it gave you more time. That's a legitimate point, but you shouldn't pretend that that's the same thing as "freedom" in any sense remotely resembling what Stallman or foob care about. As such, you clearly don't "strongly agree" with what Stallman is trying to do; he wants software to be something anyone can tinker with, modify and redistribute. Apple wants to give you the "best possible computing experience", which it can only do for you as long as you're in total agreement with Apple over what that means.
By the way, Apple machines are a huge timesink for me whenever I try to use them, precisely because I can't customize the things in the UI that drive me batty (namely, the global menu and the dock, two elements of the OSX UI that Apple holds sacrosanct). I'm orders of magnitude more productive on a machine I've set up to work the way I want than one that I haven't. So of what use to me is Apple's brand of "freedom"? Contrast it to Stallman's, which allows me to tear open a piece of software to see what it's doing or modify its behavior. I know which one I'd rather have.
>Apple machines are a huge timesink for me whenever I try to use them, precisely because I can't customize the things in the UI that drive me batty
Actually, it sounds like either machine is a huge time sink for you. Apple machines because you have to deal with how they're set up and your dream OS because you have to spend a bunch of time tweaking everything to be how you want it. For those of us who find the Apple OSX way just fine, we don't have that time sink.
>it sounds like either machine is a huge time sink for you
No, it doesn't sound like that. There are many things I like to tweak that make me more productive. Tweaking those things is time-consuming, but once it's done, I never have to waste time on it again. This default window manager sucks? Let me spend a day to throw it out and install awesome. I find myself doing the same things over and over again in Emacs? Let me write and store a macro for it. And you know what the really cool part is? _I can do these things!_. And I usually end up learning something useful about the system.
Now you may find Apple OS X perfect and that's great for you. But what if Apple makes some change tomorrow that bugs the crap out of you? Everytime you encounter that "shitty" detail, a little part of you will get irritated and want to take a hammer to your laptop. Or maybe these things don't bother you. I, however, won't live with something like that.
> And this is my real beef with stallman's brand of free. His freedom is a narrow-minded ideology, abstracted from what freedom means in the real world. In the real world the only freedom I care about is the freedom to spend my time the way I want. From that perspective, jobs did a lot to make me free, because the switch from linux to apple "freed" more of my time than it cost me.
This is one of the 'worst' qualities of him and his cause. He, and others, seem so thoroughly convinced they've stumbled upon a perfect understanding of what the world needs and don't have the ability to humour themselves with the possibility that maybe others (Apple, Microsoft, ..) are onto something good.
I've noticed that with many of these 'causes' they have a good ideology yet simply lack any actual teaching skills in order to get it across to others especially those who would apparently most benefit from it.
If something is inherently good/true it will stand by it's own characteristics and not need others who prove them though often they need others to teach others. Also, if the masses choose something 'bad' then that is what they receive.
If something is inherently good/true it will stand by it's own characteristics and not need others who prove them though often they need others to teach others.
That sounds pretty naive. At many points in history, what we now consider good and true were by no means widely accepted and had to be actively fought for. I'm pretty sure many people thought slavery was a good thing at one time and that women were inferior to men.
Perhaps naive if someone focuses on the first part on the sentence and not the latter half and the second sentence. I assume too my understanding of what truth is to vary from what I suppose I would refer to as a 'common' understanding.
People discover truth and until they do they often act in ways that do not align with truth hence, slavery and so on. Some people still think slavery is good and that women are inferior to men.
apple has the pr money to create status gadgets and use the profit to attack alll kinds of efforts in reverse direction, to show the users that their gadget is not superior but defected by design because it takes their freedom to install what they want..
if we lived in an apple dominated space even the web browser risks being banned and i m sure some of the end users you mention would applaud it.
people like rms are there to wake us from short sighted dreams.
> It's also interesting to think that apple, in supporting webkit and web technology, helped make HTML5 happen, a movement that enables more user freedom than ever before.
You utterly and completely don't get it. Web apps take away users' freedom by keeping everything but the interface on a locked-down server.
Reasoning like yours is why rms is more relevant now than ever.
Stallman comments on HN are so heated, in part, because a big part of his message is that developing non-free software is unethical. Not just wrong or misguided or foolish, but unethical. Morally wrong.
What percentage of HN readers develop non-free software for a living, or for part of their living?
So it hits a nerve, I think. And I am consistently drawn to Stallman threads on HN because people's reaction to this is so interesting.
I develop non-free software for a living. My lively-hood, my standard of living, my hobbies (all very nice, and very expensive), all depend on it. 100%.
And yet RMS was and continues to be a sort of software demi-god to me. I'm an atheist, but I'm expressing it with religious terms, so I don't use those terms lightly. RMS really is what I look up to and strive to achieve. No, I don't want to be him, but yes I do wish to match his philosophical purity.
So when I say I think that people who knock on RMS because of their profession are in error, I'm also not speaking lightly.
I develop closed source software. Because it is a niche marketplace and releasing our software as open source would probably not work out very well in the end.
However we couldn't develop our software without GNU software tools. Personally I support Stallman. He probably thinks what we are doing is morally wrong, so be it, I still support him because I think his ideas and philosophy changed computing world for the better. It doesn't have to be black and white and can be in between.
We have GNU/Linux -- probably the best, server OS in the world. And it is FREE. Think about that. If anyone remembers what big Unix vendors would charge for it, you'd see how huge it is.
Yeah Stallman is an extremist but I think every movement needs its extremists to push forwards. The ideals of the extremists are probably never realized fully but because they are there, the whole movement (including the moderate positions) moves forward.
I heard him talk last week in Zurich, and got a chance to ask him about those of us that work on what he termed as "custom software" for our clients, and whether this non-free software is bad. He was of the opinion that it does not involve the oppression of users, so is not ethically questionable.
Of course most anyone would be against them, but personally I think it's a consequence of how laws work and how word of mouth works. Remember the lady who bought coffee at McDonald's and managed to burn herself? She did that, but McDonald's was held responsible.
The other example is Windows. For years and years it was known as a horribly unstable OS despite the fact that most of the failures were caused by poorly written 3rd party software. By locking things down more, Apple makes it harder for 3rd parties to make them look bad.
I think that attitude grew out of the extreme frustration with not being able to fix basic printer bugs in the printer drivers inspite of having the expertise to do it and waiting on the manufacturer who may or may not care enough to release fixes/enhancements. We take for granted the ability to being able to fix(or get fixed by 3rd parties) various physical things around us(you paid for the car, so it's yours to fix or break), so why not software?
How would you feel if the car manufacturer attached locks to the hood of your car? Apple went one step ahead and did the equivalent of requiring to approve all accessories and anything to enhance your car.
I may not agree with his conclusions, but I can understand his reasoning and that there is a method behind his (alleged) madness.
I would be quite upset if the car manufacturer attached locks to the hood of my car without warning me.
I might be considerably less upset if there were both "cars with locks on their hoods" and "regular cars without locks on their hoods" and if I was offered the choice between them.
It's quite possible to support the choice between FOSS and commercial software, and think that FOSS is a great thing for people to develop, without deciding that people whole build closed-source software are "immoral". Don't like it? Don't buy it.
I know this is a bit disingenuous and there are corner cases where it's hard to avoid closed-source. There are even a few cases where no amount of consumer choice (even, say, someone who avoids smartphones and 'cool gadgets') will allow you to escape closed source (e.g. government services available as closed-source software only or working only on platforms where you have to use closed source). The point still stands, broadly.
You're talking about choice, but software platforms are natural monopolies and the winner takes all. Sometimes there is room for a second place in case you carve out a niche, but there is no room for a third place.
So enjoy your freedom of choice, for now, but I remember a time when Microsoft was so strong that alternatives to Windows seemed destined to die.
And alternatives would have died, if Microsoft had their way with Trusted Computing ... and personally I could see Microsoft banning Firefox because "it duplicates existing functionality". But hey, Apple is cool, right?
What if it were a criminal offence to break the lock on your car's hood so you could fix the engine yourself? That's the world the Free Software movement struggles against.
>How would you feel if the car manufacturer attached locks to the hood of your car?
Why would I care? I don't know anything about what's under the hood and I don't want to. You know what would be great about them locking the hood? If they do that they can't expect me to do maintenance things like pouring in oil, windshield wiper fluid or any of that stuff.
The more "freedom" you have on a computer the more maintenance you have to do. Linux is the most "free" OS and it also takes the most effort to administrate. Every second I spend administering a computer is a second I'm spending on something I don't care about and doesn't get me any closer to what my business is about.
However you fail to see that if you can open the hood of the car so can a mechanic. You are free to go and sign a contract that is just between you and him, that says that you will not open the hood of the car, but they will on any sign of trouble. As soon as something is wrong, you call them and they will come and do maintenance for you.
Congratulations, you just bought and installed Redhat Linux. Have problems configuring your software, call them up and they will be happy to help you. They are great, actually
But then someone wants to fix their car but they don't have the money to pay a mechanic. Instead they have all the time they need, so they can read through manuals and try to fix things themselves.
Congratulations, you just downloaded, installed and configured CentOS. Have fun playing with it, tearing its guts out, recompiling its kernel and doing whatever you want with it.
Now you are focused on features. "Oh look, super user friendly interface! Never have to open the hood of my car". That is great! What about anti-features. Now that you can't open the hood of your car. One or two car manufacturers can start installing tracking systems that report your position, record all your conversations, all your phone calls, etc. Why? Well because maybe they were approached by the FBI or because they decided they could sell all this as marketing info to third parties.
Now only that, there was legislation proposed to make it actually illegal to open the hood of your car. Think about that. You bought it, you open the hood, and police come to your door to arrest your for it.
let's not forget that it would kill the entire car service industry in favor of the dealerships. Thinking of the financial impact on society as a result is already scary but it also doesn't let me choose between getting a cheaper oil change at quickylube or paying twice the price at my dealer. (You get to decide how valuable the dealer guarantee is).
This is more along the lines of, what if all cars had locks on their hoods, but there was an 'open' car with no locks, but it was only a Pinto.
Then people point to the Pinto and say, "See no one is buying it! No one cares about openness!" The real conclusion is the there are relatively few people that are willing to go extremely out of their way to remain on the side of open-ness. If there were two products that could compete at the same level, people may skew towards the open one.
People also assume, in the car case, that the law will be rational about allowing them to circumvent restrictions. Locks on the hood? You bought the car, so cut 'em. It can void the warranty, but it can't be made illegal.
In fact, the law usually goes in the other direction: it's illegal for manufacturers to actively put in some kinds of restrictions, like first-party-only replacement parts or only-serviceable-by-manufacturer vehicles. Putting a lock on the hood, if it's intended to prevent third-party servicing, is probably illegal in the first place.
I don't think that can happen, though. The investment required to make something like the iPhone needs to be recouped somehow. If it were free, people would be able to clone it, reducing the ability for the original developer to create v2.
I would drop my Apple household if I could have a free environment that worked as seamlessly as my Apple environment, not just for me but for my wife and kids as well.
I am making a tradeoff between free (though I don't believe a free phone exists, no matter how open Google claims they are) and easy. I'm willing to make that tradeoff. Calling me immoral (RMS, not you :) is insulting.
That said, I am grateful for everything RMS has accomplished ideologically. I use emacs daily, but more important, things like GNU/Linux exist thanks to his work. I just want nothing to do with him.
This is what frustrates me so much with all the rabid "ZOMG, they want to take over the world!!!" fear mongering against Apple. Is is so hard to believe that Apple has just found that most users want their machine to just work as easy as possible? Is it so hard to believe they are just doing what their customers want?
Their system could be just as usable if they gave you the root password. They could have provided the App Store by default, as a seal of approval, and let the users get their software from elsewhere as well. The garden is still walled, but you have a door for when you want out.
Now without this App Store exclusivity, they probably wouldn't have been able to squeeze 30% out of the developers. But it wouldn't have affected usability.
What complexity are you talking about? Surely having 2 or 3 app stores instead of one isn't too daunting for the user? Surely allowing direct download of apps from the computer won't complicate things for those who don't want to bother?
Don't say "if you don't like it, don't buy it". Choice is not enough. Most people are just incapable of doing informed decision about privacy. Heck, even I used GMail until two years ago. Plus, even if they are so capable, there is a tragedy of the commons here: if you surrender your data, it could be crossed-reference with the other's, and it may end up affecting even those who didn't surrender their data (GMail is an obvious example: they collect data about whoever writes to their users, even when they host their own mail server). This is way, way more serious than your comment suggests.
Complexity: Apple already let 3rd parties in, so I'm not sure it would be significantly more complicated for anyone. Unless the presence of an additional icon is significant complexity, and there are some inherent complexity in letting the user have root permissions. Of course, 3rd parties applications could crash, but that is already the case.
Choice: to some extent, it is about privacy: Apple knows exactly what Apps you purchase. Anyway, I recommend regulation. First, the owner of any device whatsoever should be allowed to do whatever he wants with it, provided it wasn't illegal in the first place. We should also allow reverse engineering (doing it as well as publishing the results), even when it involves the discovery of "protections" such as cryptographic keys.
General-purpose computer system (which may include the OS) should be subjected to a more drastic regulation: as soon as there is any way to add or change functionality (mere firmware bug-fixes don't count), then the end user should be allowed and given the means to do it, at no additional cost, with no artificial restriction. Among other things, that would outlaw the monopoly that the App store currently enjoy over non jail-broken iPhones, and the restrictions Blizzard put over the creation of user-made maps for Starcraft 2 (they host the maps, and have discretion to delete them if they don't like it). Note: I don't mean to outlaw proprietary programs and OSes. But a program that is a tiny bit open should be at least that open to the end user.
The privacy side of things is more complicated, but boils down to one thing: private shenanigans should be kept private, end of story. E-mail is private. Chatting is private (even in a chat room with 10 or so people). Visiting a web site is private (between you and the web site owner). Restricted publications ("friends only") probably should be considered private as well. Servers who host private shenanigans should not be allowed to: log them, look at them (even if it is "just a machine"), aggregate them (except maybe in a reliably anonymous way, which is very hard to do). Well, you see the trend. Note that GMail, Facebook, and probably Blogger, in their current form, should totally be outlawed (heck, it applies to nearly all mail providers out there).
Note that privacy violations aren't less serious if they are performed by machines only. I don't care that "only machines" looked at my e-mail before sending me that specific ad. They still influenced me by using my private information.
Please. This is my killer argument, and if you know of a way to defeat it, I really want to know. I wouldn't want miss such an opportunity to actually change my mind.
I agree, but the larger point I'm trying to make is that there is a reason we don't see good open devices in the market.
So many tech people complain about this issue, yet none have succeeded in making one. If so many people are sure there is a need that isn't being fulfilled, then why don't they fill the need?
> How would you feel if the car manufacturer attached locks to the hood of your car?
Interestingly cars are increasingly heading in this direction. The level of on-board electronics is raising the bar significantly on exactly who has the ability and equipment to service or fix a car. Even something as simple as resetting the service indicators often requires specialist equipment in newer models.
On the longer term Richard Matthew Stallman would have ended up changing the world in a more meaningful manner than Steven Paul Jobs.
We must not allow cult leaders and their status in judging value added to the world with their work. Come to think of it, what is the new thing that Steve Jobs bought to the world. Surely he bought the iPhone/iPad or the iPod. But none of that was something that didn't exist before. Phones, music players et al have been there for a century now. If the gloss and entertainment value of Apple products is the measure of Steve Jobs's success. The status of iPhone in this world is nothing bigger than video games. Those are just cool-to-have gadgets of our time. iPhone hasn't changed anything in the primary paradigm. People used still send emails, communicate and get entertained in the same ways they did before iPhone. iPhone just enabled that to happen in a easier way. But we have other things to learn from Steve Jobs, which have little to do with larger implications on Software on the longer run. He is role model for totally different set of tasks.
On the other hand, here we have RMS. Who has a proven record for fighting for something that will decide how we will use and control what we buy or build over the foreseeable future. He is also a giant who has enabled, developed and helped developed FOSS software that is helping running thousands of dollars of business today.
Richard Matthew Stallman is trying to show us the moon, but some of us are busy pointing mistakes in his finger
Boy, the iPad sure feels new to _me_. Maybe its various capabilities predate it, but their combination into a package of that fluidity provides capabilities that _I_ didn't have. (Feedler + Instapaper + GoodReader | Kindle ) + Tablet Form Factor == recovery of 10+ hours / week lost to various dead fragments.
Complaining that the iPad is "unethical" is like offering to replace my "unethical" Subaru with an "ethical" Model T. At the foot of the Rockies. In a snowstorm. While grizzly bears close in. I'm gonna worry about the unhackability of my transmission with the sun shining. Yeah, the Model T might be fundamentally the same, but the differences in execution make for entirely different tools.
Now, I would rather deal with the grizzlies than belong to the guys making the Subarus. I don't want to belong to anyone. But the open source stacks and market competition will catch up. Free enterprise and free people won't let Apple keep those margins and powers for itself. I don't see why I shouldn't leave the grizzlies behind today, while starting work on building my FOSS Four Wheeler. Why not use the closed capabilities today while extending open to meet them tomorrow?
I do respect RMS, and I'm grateful for and dependent on free software. But the RMS posting lacked generosity. He and his would be much better off recognizing the enormous utility gains provided by a great many closed systems. I find it hard to imagine that Jobs' focus on the user's needs and perspective isn't a crucial contribution to the development of technology. It wouldn't kill people to recognize that some of this stuff has shown the way to new visions. And it wouldn't kill RMS to notice that Jobs had a passion and vision for technology as _human_ tools.
So if RMS is showing us the moon, he should probably notice that Jobs et al have put a couple of satellites into orbit.
My biggest gripe with Stallman is his "I know what's best for you" mentality. His moral standards are more important than whatever you can come up with.
During a question & answer session somewhere, someone asked him a question about videogames. The questioner mentioned that the best games are just not free software. Stallman's answer was that the person should "adjust their tastes" and play free software games.
Adjust their tastes?
That is plenty more restrictive than using non-free software. I'll proudly wear "digital handcuffs" than sit in Stallman's oppressive, disrespecting, dogmatic ideological prison cell.
I appreciate what RMS has done for free software, but as soon as I learned that he thinks his interests are more important for me than my own, I decided it might be time to develop my own Stallman-libre philosophy on FOSS.
My biggest gripe with Stallman is his "I know what's best for you" mentality.
My biggest gripe with Jobs was his "I know what's best for you" mentality.
Your criticisms of Stallman can equally be applied to Jobs. The user has to 'adjust their tastes' - to take on part of the Apple ecosystem means you have to take on all of it. Like gaming? Not on Apple. The user has to 'adjust their tastes' and play a limited subset of available games. Oppressive and disrespecting? Apple tried to make it illegal to jailbreak your own phone!
Duly noted! Although, I was not praising Jobs nor Apple in post. I was drawing a comparison (showing similarity) between the ideals of RMS and the ideals he was against. He is hypocritically fighting oppression in one field with oppression in another, and frankly I believe a person has more of a right to what goes on in their mind than what goes on in a computer.
True enough, but it seemed to be in the context of the thread when I first read it.
I don't think of what RMS does as oppression, but more as 'toughlove'. Not for everyone, sure, but I think it's mischaracterised as oppression. He's more interested in having you be principled than using his products, and only his products.
It's one thing I respect about RMS. He has a well-defined set of (entirely reasonable) freedoms that he wants to promote, and whatever follows logically from those freedoms is what he recommends to everyone. "His products" are free software in general. I'm sure he wouldn't mind you using a working, free piece of software that solves your problem, even if it were made by Microsoft.
If you can argue with logic that your viewpoint does not conflict with his axioms, I'm sure he would find it agreeable. It's not oppression, since there is no compulsion, but RMS tries his darndest to promote what he sees is right, and he seeks to have a logical reasoning behind everything.
Really? Stories abound about how single-minded he was about his creation, whether it be haranguing developers about design points to petitioning presidents to bust unions. Even tried to make 'jailbreaking' your own phone illegal. As in, the government will step in and punish you for doing so.
Jobs was very, very much about doing things 'my way or the highway'. He was very much against people using options he didn't sanction.
EDIT: To be clearer, Jobs' rhetoric is "we offer an alternative", but the actions of Apple under Jobs was very much about crushing ideological opponents, much like RMS would like to do.
Yes, seriously. Stallman holds that it's immoral and unacceptable (in the world he would create) to have non-Free software. There are no exceptions.
Stallman desires to take away my choice to create (and implicitly, to use) software that doesn't meet his ideological vision of "Free" software. I reject that desire in toto; I do not presume to tell other developers of software what restrictions they may place upon software they right, just as I reject their attempts to do the same to me.
(Stallman's inability to fulfill his desire does not exculpate him from the moral failure of that desire.)
RMS is uncompromising to the point of being tactless. Always has been, based on the old email threads people pass around.
I wouldn't call him hypocritical, though. I think he's wrong about some things, but he goes to great lengths to make his life consistent with his ideology with no regard to practicality.
Jobs, too. When you talking about the persons rather than what they do, I think they are more similar than they're different.
>> I wouldn't call him hypocritical, though. I think he's wrong about some things, but he goes to great lengths to make his life consistent with his ideology with no regard to practicality.
Macbook Air with no DVD drive. Some people thought Jobs was wrong, because it had no regard for practicality.
I hear you. I too cringe each time I see a post about RMS here. I know I "have" to read it, at the same time as I know I will get angry and extremely disillusioned about mankind doing so.
Personally I'm not a huge fan of RMS. I agree with a lot of what he says, but at the same time I cannot agree with the way he presents it. There are two reasons why I am a member of The Linux Foundation, and not the FSF, and their names are Richard Stallman and Matt Lee. Though I feel very strong about the motives and ideology of FSF, I simply cannot condone their way of presenting them. I personally feel that RMS does as least as much to harm their goal as to aid it, and I find ML to be horribly hypocritical. No matter how much a disagree with how their do tings, I would never disrespect them as human being. But sometimes it feels like I'm alone in the world. Everybody else either adores them, or tries their darndest to disrespect them.
This is in no way unique to HN. I see it everywhere. Even in the media (here in Norway). Last time RMS talked here, all of the important IT-related media where represented. (And I noticed immediately that they were more concerned with their beers than actually listening). The articles the day after were horrible. RMS had talked about some really far out there, fairly absurd stuff, and some really smart, realistic stuff. Every single media gave their best effort to make RMS look like a loon. _None_ of the smart, realistic stuff was mentioned, even with a single word, anywhere. An they had twisted the far out stuff, to look even worse. One of them seemed even to either not have listened to a word, or was simply making stuff up. RMS said at least 6 times specifically: "I'm not talking about Micropayments, I'm talking about making pay what you like/can easier", "Don't confuse this with micropayments", etc. Yet this journalist managed to write a half an article about all of the stuff RMS had "said" about micropayments.
I think the difficulty most people have is that Stallman is, or at least comes across as, an uncompromising idealist. Whilst there's nothing wrong with that (we need some people to stick to their guns), most of us are pragmatists who have to compromise regularly in order to get things done, so someone who appears to refuse to change his position and shoots down anyone who disagrees with him can be very annoying.
Compare Stallman with Torvalds, who seems to be much more pragmatic and willing to listen to people who may have different views, and seems to be much more popular as a result.
Godwin aside, he makes a good point, which is that just being an uncompromising idealist is not always commendable. A person may stick with the same ideology or message for various reasons - maybe because the philosophy really is true/best, or maybe because the person is to egotistical to change, or for many other reasons. We shouldn't be respecting people solely because they are unwilling to change - instead respect should be based on the actual views and the merits thereof.
One difference is that Stallman is a reasonable man. If you could put together a watertight argument that proprietary software is better than free software, I think Stallman would become a proprietary software advocate. Is Stallman being uncompromising by rejecting hand-waving arguments, or merely following a logical conclusion based on stronger evidence?
Torvalds uses the best tool for the job. The only reason git was even created was because some Linux developers refused to use BitKeeper.
The message of Torvalds is "use the best available to you" while the message of Stallman is "use the least restrictive available to you, and accept no substitutes"
No, although alot of kernel developers disliked the proprietary nature of Bitkeeper, the decision of making Git came when BitMover revoked the Linux developers right to use Bitkeeper for free. Good thing though, as Git turned out to be great as it's popularity shows.
Many times it doesn't matter if things are free or not. Even if thins block people doing things, after a short hiccup, people find a solution to their problems.
Stallman's ideology is, at the end, just about preventing hiccups...
> Every time an article involving Richard Stallman gets posted here I cringe as I read through the comments. There are a range of opinions so I don't want to overgeneralize but there are a large number of people here that seem to almost despise Stallman and the FSF.
Oh, his contributions have been (and still are) invaluable. He is the mastermind behind the FSF movement, not to mention that he has written some amazing pieces of software, by himself. I am writing this with Emacs.
But, as a spokesman, I think he falls short on several areas. The movement really needs someone with more charisma, diplomacy, empathy and tact.
Granted, it is not his fault that noone seem to want the job.
> or really, really likes parrots.
Hey, speak for yourself. If there ever was something that really touched me, that was it. I couldn't see the human being behind the persona before.
Yes. RMS may take rather unrealistic positions in today's capitalist society, but he's the only one around who has internalized Ben Franklin's famous quote:
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
idealistic? what are you talking about? the man created an operating system from scratch to make his ideals real. How many people today have the chance to learn how to code and contribute their work back thanks to GNU? The status quo is so much better today because someone fought and didn't accept the forming trends of his time.
If only things were so simple in real life where liberty is often abused so as to threaten the safety of others.
The historical trend has been the other way around: as societies have become more free in general, they have also become safer in general. I would much rather live in the liberty of the United States, where I enjoy a crime-free neighborhood, than in the one-party dictatorship of China in the 1980s, where I saw more fights among strangers in public in three weeks in three different cities than I have seen in an entire lifetime traveling all over the United States.
for more about increasing safety of human societies over time (when the long-term trend has also plainly been in the direction of greater individual liberty for all aspects of human behavior).
There isn't really much of a tension there. For the most part liberty increases security; it is only in very narrow situations, such as war-making, that it does not. Several libertarians, conservatives, and even Bruce Schneier have been pointing that out repeatedly, especially in anti-PATRIOT Act articles, over the last decade.
The problem is that many restrictions on freedom can give the illusion of security, and too many people are willing to sacrifice their own and others freedom for those warm fuzzies.
It's not his contributions (or lack thereof, depending on your point of view) to computing that draws the ire. It's the really, really stupid things he says, as if the world were physically constructed of 1's and 0's...
Personally, I find his political views on free software to be interesting only because they illuminate a fascinating personality. Coming from anyone else, they'd be discarded as irrational drivel. But from Stallman, they become an insight into a peculiar and interesting man.
>>>It pains me to see so many people, who quite likely rely on emacs, Xcode with gcc, gnu coreutils, or an operating system that would've never been possible without the Free software movement, sit around and ridicule RMS because he eats toe jam or really, really likes parrots.
He made some quite important things twenty or thirthy years ago that are still useful or relevant nowadays. So what? It doesn't entitle him to be a pretentious, hypocritical "I know what's best for you" moron.
I'm sorry for the rudeness, but enough with the cult of personality, please.
If Jobs was alive, but didn't manage to build any more new products opening new markets in the next twenty years, your message would quite aptly apply to him too.
"Jobs made some quite important things twenty or thirthy years ago that are still useful or relevant nowadays. So what? It doesn't entitle him to be a pretentious, hypocritical "I know what's best for you" moron.
I'm sorry for the rudeness, but enough with the cult of personality, please."
Unfortunately he's gone, and we won't be able to tell.
He did introduce the original Macintosh 17 years ago (1984). Sure, past performance doesn't necessarily mean much, but Jobs has had a hand in so many different areas.
Stallman is much more respectful and polite to a person who was neither of them to many.
So many see Steve Jobs as just a success story, fitting so well to the "american dream". They miss the fact that his success comes in expense of our freedoms.
To all who rant about Stallman's statements. Is it really so important to be politically correct (act according to taboo's, be pretentious, neutral or even just trendy), instead of being sincere and tell the raw truth as it is?
I'm currently reading Job's official bio, and from what I can tell from reading the book, the whole idea of locking down software on the iPhone and iPad was so that he could try and control every single aspect of the user's experience from end to end out of his perfectionist ideals.
I think the iPad and iPhone platforms will inevitably become more open as time goes on, and I think the next phase requires it (an awful lot of the apps are completely underwhelming compared to the possibilities of the devices), and as far as their computers go, they're sufficiently open enough for me to do what I want to do (which is linux based web app development and sysadmin type work).
As mentioned in other comments, Jobs did champion the iTunes Store as DRM free, and he got that in the end.
Personal computers have been commodity for at least a decade. In this respect they are no different from modern cars or any other highly computerized equipment. Users do not mess with their car's firmware. The whole point is lost.
Regardless of Stallman's contributions, the whole point of "free software" is no longer relevant. Not even for software enthusiasts -- those who care just use open source.
This canard is completely irrelevant. Free software creates a free market for the maintenance, distribution, support, and modification of software. Users of free software might not make the modifications themselves, but they can hire anyone they want to do perform the modifications. (And, with a popular project, they often won't have to, because someone else has already done so. See, for example, git.)
You are essentially talking about various effects associated with choice of the GNU GPL license. I agree with you on that. It is a useful tool.
My point was that the social movement for software freedom is not going anywhere. These are two different things.
According to Stallman, using GPL helps to achieve "software freedom". But many people use it as a tool for achieving their own (project, community, commercial, etc) goals and don't care about Stallman's social movement. See Linus Torvalds for example.
Lately Jaguar recalled 18000 cars because of a potentially lethal firmware bug. I'm pretty sure a common, generalized open-source automotive embedded platform would be a huge enhancement in all respects.
> Regardless of Stallman's contributions, the whole point of "free software" is no longer relevant.
On the contrary. At times when our governments are moving away from democracy and computer software are always more important tools of control and enforcement, Free Software is more critically relevant every day.
In this case, there is clearly a disconnect between idealization and the reality.
Today, Stallman's and FSF's real political and social influence is miniscule.
FSF had some impressive achievements in the 90s, but they failed to utilize the social capital efficiently and couldn't catch up with rapid ecosystem changes (e.g. software and computer programming becoming mainstream).
An example of this is tivoization clause in GPLv3 which is a nuisance for businesses and contributes to marginalization of the license.
> Today, Stallman's and FSF's real political and social influence is miniscule.
I don't think it to be minuscule among programmers and hackers.
> An example of this is tivoization clause in GPLv3 which is a nuisance for businesses and contributes to marginalization of the license.
I don't see what makes the tivoization clause a nuisance for business. I think it's a misconception, like the idea that software patents are good for anybody but lawyers and trolls.
That is because these are difficult questions that everyone want to avoid(subconsciously). It's easier to take sides depending on what OS(es) you're running or what devices you're a fan of and then blast the other party for real or perceived faults.
Some questions for discussion:
1. How do we make a software distribution system that simultaneously keeps malware off but allows developers and users liberty without a third party policing the content? (Without crippling the apps to a basic denominator like HTML does). Also, discouraging piracy is another goal.What do you do about the developers who abuse the liberty and do things to mislead the gullible users or kill battery life needlessly? Social reputation for apps?
2. How do we encourage innovation in technology(which sometimes takes massive investments of time and money) and design while simultaneously encouraging the reuse of code and ability to fix and tinker with things for yourself and others and all this while preserving the experience for the majority of users(who are not technically inclined at all)?
3.How do we workaround the fact that most people do not and will never have an interest in the technical workings of devices and asking them to research things and make an optimal choice of their own is too much to ask, should a company or central authority make that choice for them?
The above are some of the points that Jobs and Stallman were on the opposite poles of. But it's easier to discuss, "hahaha, he hates parrots" and "what a jerk, parking in handicapped spaces" rather than having a real discussion about these tough issues.
> 3.How do we workaround the fact that most people do not and will never have an interest in the technical workings of devices and asking them to research things and make an optimal choice of their own is too much to ask, should a company or central authority make that choice for them?
And malware creators with much more technical knowledge will try to mislead them about the choices.
Maybe say the central authority gets to make the choices on a day-to-day basis, but with a two month lead time, you can decide to switch to another authority for your device, and all apps that are happy with the new authority still work.
You would have to trust that the central authority doesn't sabotage your ability to switch with your existing data and apps intact, and this would be hard to verify in advance if DRM prevented you from seeing what code was running on the device.
> 1. How do we make a software distribution system that simultaneously keeps malware off but allows developers and users liberty without a third party policing the content?
Android lets you install alternative marketplaces. In effect, the user now has to trust only a couple of marketplaces and this should help keep away malware while preserving freedom.
> 3. How do we workaround the fact that most people do not and will never have an interest in the technical workings of devices
Regulation :-( Ford is not allowed by law to build cars that can only be serviced by Ford. It should be the same for computing devices.
> Regulation :-( Ford is not allowed by law to build cars that can only be serviced by Ford. It should be the same for computing devices.
Whilst I understand your point, that's not an apples-apples comparison. A car needs to be serviced, in order to remain road-worthy and safe. A computer, ideally, does not (even more so for smartphones, as they stand now).
The NeXT Operating system, upon which OS X is based, was created in the 1980s. It's not accurate to say it "wouldn't exist" without Richard Stallman.
I am glad to see that Apple has stopped using GCC and moved to LLVM - a project it helped create. I'm tired of hearing "Free" software advocates use the fact that people use "Free" software as a justification for claiming that these same are hypocrites for selling software (even though they are complying with the terms.)
The thing that keeps GPLed software out of the App Store is the terms of the GPL, not Apple. Yet, Stallman attacks Apple for this...
NeXTstep may have been started in the 1980s, but it was still built on many open source (generally BSD licensed at that time) components.
Apple hired Chris Lattner, who started LLVM when he was a graduate student at UIUC. It may be funding development now, but it wasn't "Apple's" innovation. Apple's primary reason for funding LLVM development was likely to be able to integrate their proprietary software more closely with the compiler, something that GCC is designed to discourage.
The GPL and the Apple store EULA are incompatible. Considering that the GPL has been around for decades, the incompatibility can be considered intentional.
Steal is inacurrate, however Jobs tried to combine GCC's backend with Next's proprietary ObjC frontend. He wasn't legally able to do so (he tried to sneak past GPL by distributing them as separate packages and claim that the end-user would do the actual linking) and since he really needed the GCC backend this meant that GCC got ObjC support.
How can you "steal" something that is given away for free?
Your accusation contains the truth of the matter. No "Free software" is actually free. The F stands for Fascism. Stallman gets to dictate who uses it and who doesn't without regard to what the GPL actually says.
At least, thats how it operates.
Notice how, Apple using and supporting free software has resulted no end in dishonest accusations from you and others in this thread?
This is why I will have nothing to do with your "movement" and oppose it at every turn.
I don't see how commenting on NeXT's attempts to circumvent the GPL was criticizing Apple at all. NeXT's goal was to wrap GCC with a proprietary wrapper thereby appropriating the FSF's work and denying users the freedom to modify and adapt it for their own purposes.
Copyright laws are reality. Free software is pragmatically protected by copyright. Misappropriation of copyrighted works is considered "theft"/"stealing" by the groups with which Apple chooses to associate and for which Apple forces restrictive DRM on end users.
> Apple hired Chris Lattner, who started LLVM when he was a graduate student at UIUC. It may be funding development now, but it wasn't "Apple's" innovation.
So what if Lattner wasn't working at Apple? Apple's not a person, it's a corporation; LLVM's not a person, it's a library. Apple funding LLVM now means a great deal more than you're giving credit for.
> Apple's primary reason for funding LLVM development was likely to be able to integrate their proprietary software more closely with the compiler, something that GCC is designed to discourage.
And that is a technical failing of GCC, kept in for ideological purposes. Yet somehow LLVM remains open source, Clang remains open source, and the half-proprietary system of XCode has something far greater than GCC will probably ever have.
In the end, Stallman just happens to be one of the guys who contributed to the GNU system. Personally, I'm confident that something similar would have come along with or without him and the GPL (in fact, you mentioned the BSD license that was applied to many components used in NeXT). People implement many parts of these kinds of systems in undergraduate college courses- they're not exactly new discoveries.
this is wrong, please read the below threads about this;
"There is plenty of GPL software available legally on Apple devices, particularly Macs. On iOS devices the conflict is the EULA only. The approval process has nothing to do with it. GNU/Linux distributions have approval processes too.
More about how the EULA conflicts with the GPL: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-...
Right, so because someone adopted a license, the GPL, that forbids distributing the software under the EULA, you guys are going to blame the EULA, rather than the GPL? And then say that it is Apple's fault?
Apple didn't write the GPL.
And at this point, I'm reminded once again, never to debate facts with people advancing an ideology. You can have the last word.
I don't see any real reason, apart from ire for the GPL, for Apple to insist on attaching its EULA to the app (as opposed to the use of the platform, say, which is GPL-compatible), for a free-software app where the author doesn't want to add a EULA, and where the source code is freely available. The purpose of the EULA for proprietary apps is to ban various kinds of reverse-engineering/piracy, which is a pointless thing to ban if the source and app are given away and the app author doesn't care about reverse engineering.
It seems perfectly reasonable to me for a software author to say: I give this app away for free, and you can redistribute it, but you can't attach an EULA to my app if you do. If you, for some reason, are so pigheaded that you insist on adding no-reverse-engineering conditions to my app, which has no actual effect because the damn thing is open-source anyway, I'd blame you for the pointless ideological policy.
As I pointed out, the incompatibility is on the part of the GPL, not Apple. It is Stallman who has decreed that they are incompatible, and then turned around and blamed Apple for the incompatibility.
This makes the FSF advocates position completely asinine. Which is why I have difficulty taking any of them seriously. They don't even respect their own license, so why should I?
(Don't worry, I simply don't use GPL code, and don't release any code under the GPL.)
> Right, so because someone adopted a license, the GPL, that forbids distributing the software under the EULA, you guys are going to blame the EULA, rather than the GPL?
Yes, because it is that EULA that takes away our freedoms, not the GPL.
You can blame the GPL for being uncompromising in this respect, but the GPL came first. They could've made the EULA compatible if that was a priority. Google managed to, after all.
As a user, i want to have the freedom to install whatever i want on my device, gpl, bsd or not. apple creates an eula to stop me from doing anything i want on my own device.
Not so simple. Let me illustrate in increasing levels of absurdity: if Peach Inc. tried to, say, claim property of any data or content authored, produced or processed with any of their devices, and forbid you from using them in the loo because it damages their image, and claims rights on the organs of your firstborn child when you open some DVD shrink wrap, etc. etc. and I find that aberrant, there is a point at which "so don't use Peach hardware" doesn't settle the issue.
For many people, being forbidden to use a piece of hardware that you legally own in whatever way you want is an unacceptable intrusion on personal freedom.
"For many people, being forbidden to use a piece of hardware that you legally own in whatever way you want is an unacceptable intrusion on personal freedom." So don't buy hardware with those restrictions! For all the acknowledged absurdity of your opening (there are laws that exist to prevent that sort of thing), the fundamental fact of the matter is that as a consumer, you are free to choose not to buy something. If the market doesn't offer what you want you have two options; the obvious one is to do without. The other option is to develop your own.
My point is, why are there laws that exist to prevent the sort of absurd things I propose? That is, why isn't "if you don't like it then don't buy it" sufficient in those cases?
There is a line to be drawn somewhere and different people may reasonably argue for drawing it at different places.
> My point is, why are there laws that exist to prevent the sort of absurd things I propose? That is, why isn't "if you don't like it then don't buy it" sufficient in those cases?
Because goverments like making up new rules and regulations.
Last time I checked Apple still shipped OSX with GCC 4.2 as the default compiler. And no, Apple did NOT help create LLVM, it was already 5 years into it's development when Apple came aboard.
As for Apple's EULA and it's GPL conflict, the EULA sets a limit on how many devices you can install the program where GPL explicitly grants you the right to make any number of copies of said program. This makes the Apple's EULA and GPL incompatible.
Not at the time, but it is now. It was owned by the Regents of The University of California, and in the intervening decades, it has gone from being a license you had to pay for, or otherwise negotiate, to a generally open source license.
Wikipedia puts the BSD (open source) at 1988 introduction with the GPL being 1989. NeXTSTEP was released September 18, 1989. So, I would say your dates do not mesh and joejohnson's comment is correct.
BSD wasn't completely open source until much later, so I would assume that NeXT purchased a license, just as they did for Display PostScript and other pieces.
it is always the time to discuss opinions about the doings of anyone of us after we are dead; and i believe most of us here would prefer to be discussed, criticized, supported in what we did rather than a fallacious silence in the name of respect.
"He designed them to refuse even to let users install their own choice of applications — and installing free (freedom-respecting) applications is entirely forbidden."
Uh... installing free software is forbidden by the GPL, not Apple. Since GPL forbids further restrictions on distributions, there's no way to legally install them in an Apple device, because of the EULA.
Since this is already forbidden by the GPL, for Apple it makes (legal) sense to not approve them in the first place.
EDIT: Removing comment about the approval process.
That's true, but sort of twists the point. The GPL is designed to preserve the freedom (in the sense the FSF has defined -- RMS is nothing if not consistent in that usage) of users to use and modify the software. The EULA and approval process deny that freedom.
The net effect is that copyleft apps simply cannot be shipped for iOS, and that is indeed a restriction imposed by the GPL. But that doesn't make iOS software free, either.
RMS isn't complaining that Apple dissallows GPL software. He's complaining that they dissallow redistribution of the software on the device even where the authors desire it to be redistributable.
> The net effect is that copyleft apps simply cannot be shipped for iOS, and that is indeed a restriction imposed by the GPL. But that doesn't make iOS software free, either.
That is my point. They both have restrictions. RMS designed the GPL on purpose so that a third party is not able to place additional restrictions. Apple designed its devices so users can only install Apps by agreeing with the EULA first. One of them must relax the restrictions - which one depends on your ideology alone. I tend to side with RMS here
> RMS isn't complaining that Apple dissallows GPL software. He's complaining that they dissallow redistribution of the software on the device even where the authors desire it to be redistributable.
Eat your cake or have it. With a permissive license, you can install wherever you want, at the expense of "freedom" (for some definition of). Get a strong copyleft license and you cannot install it on some devices, but it will be forever "free".
I feel it is shortsighted to blace the blame solely on Apple, while ignoring the ideological war as a whole.
You're still misinterpreting. RMS's goal is not merely getting GPL apps running on an iPhone. He wants the iPhone to allow redistribution and user-controlled software installation. Compromising on the license won't change that. The iPhone will still disallow freedom-respecting applications.
You can't legally get a BSD-licensed app from the App Store and then modify and redistribute it, last I checked. So it has nothing to do with the license and everything to do with the App Store EULA.
Technically, you can redistribute it, but not trough the App Store. That, in turn, means most people will not be able to actually _use_ the app you distribute to them.
As I see it, the issue the FSF has with Apple's model boils down to the following: the FSF claims that being free should be an unalienable right of _all_ software. Apple, on the other hand, claims that _not_all_ software must be free.
The two statements are in conflict. IMO, it is a matter of opinion which world view you prefer.
However, it also is true that, historically, 'A or B is a matter of opinion' can evolve into 'A is evil, B is good', or even 'B is an inalienable right' (for an example, look at the treatment of prisoners of war over the ages)
IMO, it is quite likely that, eventually, RMS will be found to be found 'right' in this discussion.
>Uh... installing free software is forbidden by the GPL, not Apple. Since GPL forbids further restrictions on distributions, there's no way to legally install them in an Apple device.
Talk about cognitive dissonance. The whole issue at stake is that Apple's terms are too restrictive. That's the point they're making here. Of course it's legal for Apple to set whatever terms they desire. It's also shitty of them.
RMS is very careful and precise about these things. When you think he is wrong, more likely it's you.
There is plenty of GPL software available legally on Apple devices, particularly Macs. On iOS devices the conflict is the EULA only. The approval process has nothing to do with it. GNU/Linux distributions have approval processes too.
"If she had just said Yes it wouldn't have been rape!"
Apple restricts end user rights. I cannot believe you found a way to blame that on the GPL. I want a piece of software on MY phone. Apple says no. The GPL receives the blame? That makes no sense.
Apple puts DRM on for the user's safety. GPL quite reasonably dislikes DRM, but if Apple's reasons are good, the developer still wants to have the app in the store, then the GPL is the blocker. There should be something between the GPL and the BSD licences, GPL with an exception for whatever DRM the first party agrees to.
It'd be trivial to redesign the bootloader so it could flash any image from the USB port. This would make it easier for Apple techs to restore a known-good state (say if a new exploit was used to install a rootkit rather than one-click jailbreak)
> There should be something between the GPL and the BSD licences, GPL with an exception for whatever DRM the first party agrees to.
This is called BSD. There is no middle ground - either the end user can tweak the software running on their device, or they cannot.
Any jailbreak exploit is capable of bricking the phone or even installing a rootkit so that the phone appears to function normally, but is instead running code from an unknown third party. The first stage bootloader has to be writable like this, as it's responsible for verifying input from the internet so that it can be legitimately updated in case of bugs.
If instead, the first stage bootloader were much simpler and only took input from USB, it could be read-only and always available to easily-reflash the entire phone. The second stage bootloader could then do all the signature verification it wanted, while itself being updateable through USB/stage1 in case of a rootkit.
(and once again, the only reason to require USB-loaded updates to be signed would be to restrict how consumers use their devices)
That still doesn't address any of the problems I stated. the best of both worlds are that anyone can restore, but only Apple can sign apps to be added.
The second stage bootloader would contain an Apple signing key for verification. However, users who considered it an anti-feature could reflash through USB and add whatever keys they'd like. It's not setup this way because Apple desires more than just security for users - they want control over users.
That's a function of the user's choice to use a installation channel that requires a approval process, not the GPL itself. Anyone can download GPLd source code and compile it ( in theory ) on a Mac if they choose not to go through Apple's channels.
I don't buy the separation of Stallman insulting Jobs' deeds versus his person being a lighter criticism. You are what you do. And I can dig irreverence, but isn't there a point where--when you are proselytizing about the evil labors of the man who died 24 hours earlier--you're kind of just an asshole?
I respect Stallman's contributions in GNU, understand his position on patents and copyleft and his political agenda and feel it's an important part of the discourse (albeit not gospel). But at the same time, he seems like kind of a small, angry man. IMHO.
"...isn't there a point where--when you are proselytizing about the evil labors of the man who died 24 hours earlier--you're kind of just an asshole?" Are you saying there is no amount of "evil labors" a man can do for which he deserves nothing but glorification for 24 hours? At risk of Godwinning, I think you and I can both name a historical figure or three for whom we'd have no qualms "proselytizing the evil labors of" less than 24 hours after they died.
The point being, your ad hominem is wrong, Stallman isn't being an asshole, he just saw Jobs as you see those historical figures. The fact that we all (yes, including me) disagree with that view of Jobs is irrelevant to and absolutely does not call for an ad hominem against Stallman.
I was not directly countering Stallmans' "Jobs is evil because he creates popular, 'closed' systems" with the fact that he is an asshole. I was merely pointing out that he is an asshole.
No ad hominem here. I don't have the time to take on the differences between practical and theoretically closed systems of which Stallman speaks.
And the implication of your Godwin reference is the height of absurdity.
So true! Linus Torvalds had the following to say about Stallman:
"I love seeing people who are really passionate about what they do, and many people have something they really care about. It’s just that when that becomes something exclusionary, it often gets ugly. It’s not passion for something, it becomes passion against something else."
I exclude stabbing myself and I don't think that's ugly. Its in the same vein that I exclude stabbing my computer with crapware from Apple and Microsoft.
> isn't there a point where--when you are proselytizing about the evil labors of the man who died 24 hours earlier--you're kind of just an asshole?
Not when all mainstream media is glorifying the man in question. It was the right thing to do, but probably not very effective. The global reaction to Jobs death has been a particularly spectacular demonstration of connivance between politicians, mass media and corporations.
> but isn't there a point where--when you are proselytizing about the evil labors of the man who died 24 hours earlier--you're kind of just an asshole?
To Stallman and many Free Software supporters, the last five years of Apple's activities have done more to detract the state of Free Software than almost anything else. From that standpoint there's nothing that can be said about his criticism being unjust.
How is it more reasonable? He's comparing Steve Jobs to an infamously corrupt mayor who brutally suppressed anti-Vietnam war protestors and fixed elections to a guy who created products people loved (and was something of a jerk at a personal level, but that's something Stallman should approve of).
But oops, he got the quotation slightly wrong. It doesn't change the meaning but better make sure he gets the quotation right.
Oh yeah, and Jobs was objectionable not for making computers stylish but for being GOOD at at. If people hadn't liked his computers that would have been OK.
At risk of Godwinning, let's just say that often the people actively and happily chose things that are very oppressive. And this is were Stallman is coming from. He very explicitly understands that people like Apple products (he even says that making things stylish and smooth are positives in this piece). It is because Apple products are so good that Stallman reacts so strongly to them.
You and I may disagree with him about how oppressive Apple devices are, but there is definitely a reasonable argument to be made that they are.
The problem with Stallman is he and I disagree on what the word "oppressive" means. I have no objection to people running FOSS software on their computers, but he objects to my running non-FOSS software on my computer and labels me "oppressed".
It's easier to hold onto principles than to deal with people. If there's anything that makes "tech people" in general outcast it's that. Ironically there's also a tendency to reject other people who strongly hold on to opposing principles, but I guess that makes sense without empathy.
Your first two sentences are contradictory; if holding principles was easier than compromising and dealing with people, then that group would be the majority, and "tech people" would not be "in general outcast" (though I happen to think they aren't).
Either that, or you mean something different by "easy" than I think you do. I mean, peer pressure is substantial; it's much easier to stick with the crowd, not stick out, go with the flow, etc. Holding to principles and walking against this tide is hard, not easy. Such people are very much the exception, not the rule.
Easier meaning more simple not easier in terms of effort. Dealing with the complexities and ambiguities of human behavior is more difficult in terms of the processing, both mental and emotional, that must happen. It's easier to say "it's always wrong to lie" then to consider all the situations that might come up in which it may be better to lie.
For sure, but saying you never lie is much easier than not ever lying, and I think that's what's at issue here. Stallman lives what he preaches, to the point he can be a major PITA (witness the rider thread on HN earlier). That's more than just parroting some principles.
His complaint isn't that Jobs was good at it. His complaint is that Jobs sells computers that restrict users freedoms to use their own hardware as they see fit, with their own software or software of their choice. He merely complains about Jobs being good at it because that helps convince users to use machines that otherwise restrict their freedom.
The thing is, a lot of people are willing to trade their freedom for a little convenience, especially if that freedom seems abstract and the convenience is immediate. But if enough people do that, you can run into serious trouble.
Everything in moderation? Arguing that a little bit of X is inherently bad because a whole bunch of it would be awful is silly. You can die of water poisoning. Not everything is a slippery slope.
I like a certain amount of convenience and a certain amount of freedom. iOS affords me a lot of convenience and a lot of freedom, including the freedom to stop using it when something better, or just as good but cheaper, comes along. (Consider that my sunken cost into iOS software is probably about $200 whereas my sunken cost for Windows software was closer to $10,000.)
Stallman advocates a world where, for example, I am not free to sell software I write or install proprietary software on my computer. Admittedly he is probably exaggerating for effect, or his supporters assume and hope he is.
Oh come on! As if you would be handcuffed by using a iOS device. Think about all those viruses and all those people who are not IT-guys, they don't need this complicated "you can do everything but you need to read a bunch of books before"-thing.
It is simple: Just make it easy and iOS is easy. There is one AppStore not 7 like on the Android. There are iOS updates for the newest devices not like Android for those who are the chosen ones. I could go on and on.
If you want crappy software and hardware back then please go and support those crappy software and hardware makers. I will stick to simpleness and convenience.
You're not a fan of the relatively low barrier to entry on the WiiWare, Xbox Live Arcade, and Steam platforms? You don't enjoy relatively new people creating games without large war chests or corporate backing? That's too bad. :c
I'm not a big fan of RMS, but this is a good point, in our current world the freedom to control the software that runs on devices you own is becoming more and more essential, not having that freedom undermines all other freedoms (from privacy to free speech).
It's not about the content; it's just about the level of empathy implied. This correction had some, and he went to greater length to explain that he had nothing against Steve personally.
I am confused by one of such points:
> He designed them to refuse even to let users install their own choice of applications — and installing free (freedom-respecting) applications is entirely forbidden.
Is installing free software (open source) on Apple products forbidden? Or that means something else?
This is largely because of the GPL, not because of the App Store.
In other words, it's not that the App Store says "you can't distribute software licensed under the GPL"; it's because the terms of the GPL (which the software's author chose to apply to it) prevent it from being distributed on the App Store.
Yet, the terms of the App Store are such that the end user is effectively incapable of re-distributing the stoftware, nor modifying it, unless he pays an additional "developer licence", at which point he's not an end user any more…
So, yeah, you can't distribute GPLv3 through the App Store. But even if you can do that with a BSD licence, what comes out is not free: it has been locked by the App store. So it doesn't really change anything: whatever the end user have access to is not free.
Please illuminate me on this, as I'm honestly curious. From what I've read the App Store places this restriction on what type of distribution is allowed for software sold on the App Store. However, what's stopping the developers from using a dual license for the same app, and using one for the App Store and another that they distribute from their website.
I could easily envision an app I purchase through the App Store giving me access to the source code from the developer's chosen distribution channel under the GPL. It seems to me that main gripe is that they want to use the App Store infrastructure to spread this.
Or am I missing something? I'll readily admit I'm not an expert on these GPL issues, but I'm interested in this topic.
I have a free game that you can download from my website. How do you propose to install it on your phone? Under iOS ecosystem rules, you can't (beyond some limits like 99 friends and family copy and a USB connection or something).
You can have free apps in the App Store as far as I'm aware. The only restriction that I'm seeing is that you can't put a GPL on it. But you could just slap on any other license for purposes of the App Store, and allow access to the source code from your website.
However, if you rely on other GPL'ed code then I can see that it would be impossible to do that, as then it break the licenses of that other software. In which case it seems that the strong copy-left is what's screwing things up.
It has been suggested elsewhere that the App Store probably excluded the GPL on purpose. Even if it didn't, it is unreasonable to say that it is copy-left's fault.
Also, I must repeat: "whatever the end user have access to is not free". My point is, if we want to free the end user, then the copy hold by the end user should be free. But a regular user isn't free to modify and redistribute the copy he hold on his iPhone, even if the original licence was a BSD one. Heck, even if he could, his modifications still have to pass through the App Store review process, which means there's no guarantee other users could benefits from them.
I think you are incorrect. See ajross's post lower down on this page to get a better explanation of the reason, the terms of the GPL are at odds with the App Store EULA.
Years ago I had Stallman personally demand that I quit Apple in protest of something that he felt strongly about. He was obnoxious to the point that I lost all respect for him.
The OSS community would do better without Stallman.
Was this back when Apple was suing everyone over "look and feel"? The FSF was "boycotting" Apple, which as a pragmatic matter, only made it difficult to find tools for A/UX.
Stallman is like the Rush Limbaugh of the Free Software movement. It doesn't matter if he occasionally has a point (he does here,) his complete lack of tact and his small-mindedness tend to overshadow his message.
He's right, Jobs' life work made him effectively Stallman's enemy, or at least the enemy of Stallman's cause so Stallman's not wrong to express a contrarian view. However, he should at least express some empathy and respect.
The big difference is, Rush does the blowhard thing for ratings and entertainment value. He has said as much himself - "this is showbiz". Not that he doen't hold his viewpoints, but he very much caters his delivery for the sake of "showbiz".
I don't get the feeling Stallman is exaggerating anything for the sake of a public persona.
Comparing Stallman to Limbaugh is unjust. Limbaugh makes millions off of being a small-minded tactless jerk. Stallman is not in it for the money, he's in it to build a better future, whether he's done a good job or not that's up for history to decide.
I don't. My point is that Stallman is an ascetic and really gains nothing but prestige (such as it is) from his actions. I don't see Limbaugh making sacrifices to live in line with his extreme ideology.
Do you honestly believe that RMS is on anything like the level of Fred Phelps, or are you just taking liberties with the truth for the sake of bombast?
Both Stallman and Phelps are willing to use the deaths of someone they dislike to promote their views. Both consider their own cause to supersede human feeling or basic practicality. Phelps is more extreme and his message less tolerable, but my point is that for both, their mode of expressing their cause hurts their cause.
For one thing, Stallman's made no attempt to get publicity from Jobs's death. He wasn't out picketing his funeral, didn't grant interviews on the subject, etc. He slipped in a few sentences on his all-text blog that's full of miscellaneous strong political opinions on nearly every conceivable subject, which only people who care about Stallman's political opinions read (the blog is usually pretty obscure), and he didn't call any attention to that post. The only reason it's gotten any attention at all is because the raging Stallman-hating crowd has put in so much effort to publicize it.
I'd like to believe folks when they defend RMS on things like this, but this isn't a first time offense for him. I used to have a lot of respect for the FSF and RMS but then I started reading their websites and publications and my opinions changed. I agree with RMS (to an extent anyway) on the importance of software freedom and I understand his reasoning in this post, but to strangers to the cause, he really does look like (Gene Ray, Alex Chiu, Jack Chick, Insert your cuckoo here.)
If you think analogy was extreme, that's fair I should pay more attention to how I sound to people who don't share my exact beliefs or experiences, but note, you are getting angry at me for exactly the same reason people are angry at Stallman. The difference is I'm a nobody who sometimes lapses in judgment and will gladly admit it whereas Stallman is the representative of his movement and he makes extreme comments all the time. Stallman does more damage to both Jobs and free software than I can possibly do to him.
(PS. This is just a hunch, but I think the reason these statements are getting notoriety is not the Stallman-hating crowd, which is rather small but the Jobs-loving crowd who've taken offense at his words.)
Stallman wasn't responding to Steve Jobs' death, rather the slick of unbalanced praise for Apple's devices that followed in its wake (no pun intended).
RMS would still piss certain people off, if he'd instead said :
"I am not the least bit upset SJ is gone. I've always fundamentally disagreed with the movements he spearheaded, to take away the user's freedom."
RMS is supposedly autistic, and the lack of empathy is likely a result of that.
Taking that into account, there hardly seems cause for all this fuss.
Anybody with any knowledge of what both Jobs and RMS have achieved and how their vision has affected our work and our lives can only have respect for both of them.
What we do every day would be very different without them.
And for fuck's sake, no matter how you feel about RMS as a person and his undiplomatic, uncompromising stance, listen when the man speaks. He's been right more often than not.
Totally agree, both men are worthy of great respect.
Regarding Richard Stallman you can take or leave his personality, but he does take a very long view of the software ecosystem and he has made more than a few prophetic observations ("The Right to Read" foreshadowing widespread DRM comes to mind).
I'll always take the time to hear what he has to say.
Is there not room in the world for both paid and free software? Why must all software be free, and why must all devices accommodate free software?
The free software movement needs to make something as interesting and as compelling as what Apple built instead of just complaining about what Apple built. Make something beautiful and easy to use and people will use it.
On a personal level, I don't want free software for my phone. It's too much work for me. I want my phone to just work, I don't want it to have viruses, I don't have the time or inclination to hack around with it and I'm a developer, I don't care as a consumer if that means that "free" software is given the boot from a device to make this happen.
For my $:
Good design + No Viruses > Free Software
That's not true for everyone, and for them Apple isn't the right product.
Why must all software be free, and why must all devices accommodate free software?
The question isn't "all", it's "any". If Apple gets their way then jailbreaking "your" iOS device will be a federal crime, and the only significant open-ish alternative will be forcibly removed from the market.
Too many comments here, but I'll still be shouting in the desert: rms is right, having so many tech guys using apple products is harmful for our children, computing is power, power needs separated, we need a separation of powers between hw and s, in the constitution.
Stallman has once again said exactly what I would expect Stallman to say. I admire(d) and respect(ed) both Stallman and Jobs. Even if their views are diametrically opposed (although I wouldn't say Jobs' position is actually at the complete opposite end of the spectrum), they both managed to advance computing in ways that no one else could have. Although I would expect Stallman to hate what Jobs has done, I wish he would try to understand why people value his work so intensely. Stylish and smooth is only the beginning.
Stallman should invest some of his time and passion into yelling at OSS developers for consistently failing to build products as usable and trouble-free as Apple's software. Almost no normal person cares about open vs closed. They care about works vs. doesn't work. Most of what Stallman advocates would not work for normal people so his work is just a waste of time until there is a credible OSS alternative to the things and people he hates.
I think RMS is similar to Jobs in some ways. They are both extremely strong willed individuals that has done a lot but have some pretty serious quirks.
While I disagree with his pretty extreme views he is at least consistent in them. Also, even though I'm not a huge FOSS-proponent myself, I think the world is better for having some of them.
In other words he doesn't feel empathy. Smart people tend to flip the bozo bit on the world. Put simply, that's very dangerous because when your principles are more important than anything else and when you can't see the pain you cause to others, significant human harm is possible if not likely.
Actually in a previous HN thread about exactly this (you can pull it out from my comments), someone referenced an interview where stallman mentions that he's slightly autistic. For those who don't know, a lack of empathy is a symptom of autism, so I wouldn't attribute all this to him being malicious or mean.
I wasn't making a judgment about the causes for the lack of empathy but rather what its effects tend to be. Someone who doesn't see people as people is capable of things that others are not. Some of those things are good, other are scary.
As someone who has an autistic person in their life, you have to understand that they think differently, and that can often seem scary to us because we value empathy so much in a society. I just think we should cut him some slack in the light of the fact that he very likely can't see it another way. If he were a sociopath, which IS scary, trust me -- we wouldn't know it.
Actually I'd say Steve Jobs was very empathetic in terms of his ability to see what regular people would want to use and what would be confusing to them. From what I read he chose not to use those skills with coworkers, employees, etc. Nonetheless I think he clearly had them. Whether that makes him "worse" than RMS is a highly subjective question.
This applies to everyone, not just Stallman. You can't expect people to feel empathy for everyone in a world as connected as ours, it would be overwhelming.
The empathy necessary to imagine the state of mind of someone who has just lost someone that they looked up to is not really that deep. You're laying out a straw man here. I'm not saying that people are required to have empathy with everyone. Nonetheless it's not unrealistic to expect some for a relatively common situation (death).
Regardless of the origin of the words or their perceived context, it's widely considered unacceptable to publicly post the content of private emails and subsequently attribute authorship. It's not the doing thing.
Stallman's in favor of software users having the right to modify their software and redistribute it. He's not some kind of "information wants to be free" cyberpunk, and doesn't have similar opinions in general. For example, he thinks it's perfectly fine for books to be copyrighted.
IMO that's exactly being hypocritical. Why book users should be prevented from modifying and redistributing them if software users are allowed this right? That simply makes no sense.
His argument, which seems pretty reasonable to me, is that software is a tool, whereas books are expression, and sees a stronger argument for it being important that people be able to modify their own tools (he does include some kinds of "tool-like" books, like instruction manuals, in that category).
I don't think it's useful to charge people with "hypocrisy" as an attempt to preemptively shut down debate about whether different classes of works ought to be treated differently, in any case.
AFAIK, based on the last talk by RMS I attended he condoned copyright on works of fiction only, not on works of fact. So no copyright on manuals, textbooks, scientific articles, etc.
Very cool that he is very attentive to important things going on in the world and keeps a political notes log - I didn't know that side of Richard.
That was a good link.
I also agree with other comments here that the USA is in real jeopardy of losing Internet (and other) freedoms so Richard's life work for software freedom seems relevant right now.
I would rather live in a world where people like Jobs are in charge (iPhones and Mac comes to mind), than the one in which people like Stallman are (unix terminal and command prompts come to mind).
I'd like to live in a world where neither are in charge, and we have the best of both worlds: beautiful devices that do not have restrictions on how they can be used.
Then be glad that you're in the top n% on a global scale. People in the third world may be able to cobble together a linux box out of our scrap machines, but Apple's philosophy doesn't include that kind of outreach. In fact, if the world was ruled by their choices, the third world would be perpetually reaching up for elegant devices beyond their grasp.
In such a world, Jobs would be unemployed. Apple got their second wind by selling iPods. Imagine if Microsoft had prohibited their connection for 'safety reasons'.
your ignorance is astounding!...your statement is equivalent to saying I want to live in a world with ice cream sandwiches and tasty doughnuts but not in a world with glucose or sugar molecules of any kind!
No. He thinks they don't do enough to protect the users' freedom, but he still considers them Free Software and acceptable. He has also advocated for them in some cases, particularly for the Ogg Vorbis library.
I got what the problem is. Stallman does not try to protect anybody's freedom. The freedom he fights for is a product of his imagination and has very little to do with actually users and their freedom.
The days when every software users was if not programmer then at least IT guy in some sense are long gone. That model no longer fits the world.
Some say they admire the man who stoics to principles, but I think stubborn refusal to notice that the world has changed is just a sign of stupidity and nothing to brag about.
I never touched a line of Firefox's code, yet I and millions of others benefit immensely from the source being available. Thousands benefit from CyanogenMod despite not having the faintest idea of how it was created.
On a different level, non-tech companies and organizations have hired small software companies to develop solutions based on OSS projects that would otherwise have been prohibitively expensive.
The belief that only IT people benefit from access to the source is completely incorrect; one may disagree with them, but calling RMS' views obsolete is nonsensical.
That is unfortunate, but I don't see its relevance for this discussion, seeing as RMS is not one of those (particularly since he wouldn't use the term OSS in the first place ;)
The problem surrounding Richard Stallman is that any thread involving him tends to devolve into a Stallman-bashing thread. (I've also noticed this happening whenever someone posts anything that Eric Raymond wrote, on any topic whatsoever.) It's dispiriting.
Exactly. These threads bring up the worse behavior of HN. A lot of disgusting personal attacks and insults.
- top reply thread somebody posted allegedly private emails (now deleted)
- 2nd compares him with Rush Limbaugh
- 4th calls him a small angry man
- 6th a troll calling GPL not free software
And not a single insightful or interesting comment. Hence, flagged.
At the moment, the top four comments in my view (foob, socratic, naner, & dlikhten) are all positive towards Stallman.
Edit: I think this is important to note because it means that allowing the topic to get fleshed out may surprise you. The more discussion, the more mature and informed opinions become. Attempting to suppress the topic altogether b/c you don't like some of the comments is the wrong way to go about it IMO.
I did attend Stallman's talk once, and it was interesting to say the least. However, there are some problems with the F/OSS type of development in practice. First thing is developers need to put food on the table. In practice, when someone asks "but is it Open Source?" about an application/web app, more of them are interested in the "free as in beer" aspect or in using it in commercial business for free rather than about customizing it and releasing it to the original devs/other users(regardless of the requirements of the license). This happens all the time on HN when new and cool projects are announced.
No one is still able to crack the make money while open sourcing something unless the tool is completely tangential to the way the company makes money(see Google/Apple for examples) or tease it as a way to sell the real ability to use it in closed app(see MySQL). Not to mention throwing code over the wall like Google likes to do with Chrome and Android source releases. Not everyone can be Red Hat.But Stallman expects them to be.
To provide some context on his aims, Stallman sees money as a malign influence; he lives his own life cheaply so he can concentrate on what's important to him, not what money tells him to do. See this transcript: http://www.gnu.org/events/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt
Another thing that Microsoft, well, not just Microsoft, people who don't support free software generally adopt a value system in which the only thing that matters is short-term practical benefits: How much money am I going to make this year? What job can I get done today? Short-term thinking and narrow thinking. Their assumption is that it's ridiculous to imagine that anybody ever might make a sacrifice for the sake of freedom.
Obviously, not everyone's priorities are aligned that way. I'm not sure to what extent he expects the same of other people. But I can at least see where he's coming from.
For many, the money is not the end goal itself, It's about what you can accomplish with the money. This is a community based on startups, and the founders can identify with this. If they can make a little money on the initial product, they can take it to the next level and serve users better with the money by paying it to others. Make no money and your startup goes to die and no, it's very unlikely that a willing army of hackers will descend on your git if you open source it and make it better for you and others. Instead, you're more likely to get people who are trying to use it for free, and make you feel obligated to support it for them.
Sounds like someone is mad that his brilliant code didn't get the attention he thought it deserved. There, there. Sorry you're lonely. Maybe your code is just sht?
> No one is still able to crack the make money while open sourcing something unless the tool is completely tangential to the way the company makes money
That's not entirely true: things like dual licensing, and consulting work, but... it certainly is far more difficult than simply selling a product.
Depends who you're trying to sell to. It'd be incredibly difficult to sell non-free software to someone like me who values the ability to tweak things.
> No one is still able to crack the make money while open sourcing something unless the tool is completely tangential to the way the company makes money
This might not be so much about making money as not losing some. Say you develop a product in Ruby and no fast XML parser exist but you need one. You could start development of such a library, and once it reached some maturity give it to the community, which in return will make all sorts of improvements (from code review to bug fixes to refactorings to translations, etc). Net result: you don't waste so much time on a critical dependency and can concentrate on your product, and so everyone moves forward.
I disagree with the making money argument you make, look at rawmaterialsoftware.com and the JUCE library, look at John Carmack's FPS engine releases. You mentioned Redhat. All these businesses make money while at the same time releasing software under the GPL. I'm sure other users can contribute more examples.
If you are citing John Carmacks engine releases as a way to make money, then you must forget that both, his assets have never been free, and the engine has never been released as GPL while he has been making money off of the product.
He is releasing historical code as GPL, which is a far cry from running a business on a truley "free" product.
I agree with you, it's a distinction worth making. The software makes money and then releases software as GPL after it has stopped making money. The GPL'd engines have had a secondary influence, increasing demand for future licences of his engine technology. So the act has made them money, just not as their primary source of income. It's not completely tangential to the way the company makes money.
You might not like it, but Stallman's life illustrates his view on how to make a living from free software business: set your profit target at $50,000/yr per full time employee, instead of $100k or more, all the way up to CEO.
Someone needed to keep an idea alive: that a developer's first duty is to freedom, even if presently they need to put food on the table. That's all Stallman needs to do, brandish the whip: "Stallman expects them to be."
Google got around the spirit of the GPL(there were no web apps when version 2 was written) by never releasing their custom kernel although they profit big time off Linux. The Affero GPL came too late to do any good.
I'm all for AGPL myself, and this isn't about Google's spirit, but Google is undoubtly "powered by OSS", like it or not. You may label it as "profiteering from OSS" if you want, but you can't entirely throw the baby away with the bath water -- think or Android, Go, etc.
Not sure how much the devs are paid if any, but the CEO was taking a cool 400K home every year. Their job was to diversify Mozilla so that it wouldn't depend totally on someone that was making a competing product, and utterly failing at that since multiple years.
Last I heard, the IRS was investigating them for claiming deductions as a charitable foundation but funneling money to the Mozilla Corporation.
They've only recently started concentrating on paying developers to reduce the memory leaks, bloat etc after Chrome started eating their lunch in a big way.
How is this a poster child for a good way to develop good and useful software for the masses? In fact, it seems to exemplify the pitfalls and weakness in the model, if nothing else.
Well enough that they can hire a few hundred full-time people, apparently, yes? Including some people who should clearly have no shortage of other job offers (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Seward ).
> Last I heard, the IRS was investigating them
The IRS is doing an audit (which is not the same thing as an investigation, by the way).
The IRS is also auditing, right this second, Apple, Google, and Microsoft. In fact, last I checked, for companies like Apple or Microsoft they had full-time auditors assigned to them on an ongoing basis.
As far as the memory leaks thing... That's a developer-driven project, like many other things at Mozilla. Most developers there are not paid to do a specific task; they're paid to do the right thing. Just like Google doesn't hire you for a particular project, by the way.
I have a couple of friends that work at Mozilla. They are indeed getting paid, have always gotten paid, and (in all likelihoods) will continue getting paid. You are probably referring to the Bugs for Cash thing they did. And a quick google search shows that, yes, mozilla has made good on that too.
As for the IRS, they were auditing Mozilla's finances. And since when is there an implicit assumption of guilt in an audit?
While true, your claim that nobody makes money with open source is false. The classic business model of selling IP doesn't work anymore, but there are other models out there. Mozilla being one of them.
In that sort of world, certain kinds of software would be underproduced. Software by hackers for hackers would probably still exist, but why would you go to the trouble of making something user friendly to sell to people?
As I have an interest in video games, the all-FOSS-no-proprietary approach is particularly troublesome. You see very few indie games being done as FOSS, and pretty much zero high-quality big-production games. Proposals for a system of funding game development in a FOSS-only world are.... iffy at best. At worst, everyone makes MMORPGs.
I'm not saying that, that quote is out of context. I was referring to the classic business model as applied to open source, not in general. As long as there is forced scarcity (FARTS--Forced ARTificial Scarcity) in software, there'll be people making money on it.
Forced scarcity as in tying Windows 7 to a license and OS X to a Mac device that you need to buy?
If "forced scarcity" as you call it is eliminated, the first copy of software, songs, movies, will cost a few billion dollars and the rest will be free. After all, it costs real money to feed the designers and coders.
I'm not saying that forced scarcity is a bad thing. What I'm trying to say is that, if you take a project/business open source, forced scarcity is no longer a viable strategy (you know, the whole free as in freedom not as in beer thing). There are other strategies, like dual licensing (Trolltech [before nokia]), or consulting (Red Hat), or even (yes) Mozilla with their cross agreements.
His original post should have been more along the lines of this correction. The original had awful timing and was totally tactless. Correction noted, doesn't make thing right, still dislike him very much.
I guess what I'm wondering is: is OSX/iOS versus Linux/Android the operating system flame war of our time? In this thread, I see almost entirely ad hominem attacks on Stallman. (Not unlike a Daring Fireball thread in reverse.) Is he Glenn Beck or is he Rush Limbaugh? Is he just slightly impractical or is he extremely impractical?
What I don't see is any substantial discussion of the OP. At the moment, there are 2/72 comments that mention the iOS App Store at all, which is a major point that Stallman seems to be making here.
More generally, is no one worried about what Stallman is worried about? Jobs' explicit stated goal was to destroy the only Linux mobile platform (through patents), and his policies on the App Store and elsewhere were explicitly hostile to Free Software. Had Jobs been successful and perhaps lived another ten years, we might be living in a world with no Free Software on our personal devices at all. Apple laptops with software installed from the Mac App Store to develop iOS apps for the iOS App Store (with both App Stores of course rejecting GPL code).
Given that almost all startups rely heavily on Free Software, from emacs to gcc to Xen to Ruby to every poorly constructed library on Github, that would be tremendously negative for the startup ecosystem, no?