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It's one thing to have some Larry Wall style eccentricities, but Stallman hurts any movement he attaches his name to because of his extremist views. He believes, for example, that programmers should not expect to be paid for their work and that it's more important that non-free software disappear than it is for someone's children to be fed (he also believes nobody should have children). He's also made vile statements about what he calls "voluntary pedophilia", claiming that it should be legalized.

The annoying part is that in nearly every Stallman discussion, people will say things like, "You may not agree with everything he says, but we sure need someone like him who always sticks to their guns!" No, we don't. He's hurting the movement.

GNU was an interesting philosophy when it was started, but it's not as if it was the only open source ideology or that other open source movements wouldn't have taken hold. This isn't to diminish GNU so much as it is to diminish Stallman's glorified role in history among computer geeks and lessen the movement's reliance on a crazy person.

Yes let's all pledge allegiance to a hyper-political organization beholden to extremists. Sounds fun!

“On-line education is using a flawed Creative Commons license” -- Richard Stallman — a personal article on a problem with NC non-ND licenses.

Do you still feel that a child should have the right to pick who they have sex with - http://stallman.org/archives/2003-may-aug.html - "The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia" also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally--but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness. " while holding the belief that "Writing non-free software is not an ethically legitimate activity, so if people who do this run into trouble, that's good! All businesses based on non-free software ought to fail, and the sooner the better." http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-licensing&m=89249041326259&w=2 So, to recap, an adult selling closed source software is wrong while an adult having sex with a child isn't. That is rather strange....

Maybe it was just buried, but its hard to believe not ONE of you remembered Stallman's comments on Amazon:

http://stallman.org/amazon.html

You kind of have to admit that Stallman is doing more harm than any good every time he sticks his beard out of his hole. I mean, just look at him or listen to him -- is it any wonder then that people make irrational assumptions about him?

Irrational assumptions? I've been following his Web-site for years, and that's what I go by. I agreed with him more when I was young and stupid, and I agree with him a lot less today. Every tyranny inevitably comes packaged in a layer of truth, which in this case is Stallman's support for civil liberties, but that's just the cheese in his mousetrap.

I don't like it when people criticize Stallman for stupid things. He doesn't have a hygiene problem, and he's generally a pleasant-sounding and charismatic guy. I can tolerate socialists who just want to play socialism on their on turf and not use force against others. If that was the case, then we could be pals.

Stallman, on the other hand, is an aggressor, and he is willing to use the force of government to do his bidding - not just in enforcing the legal threats attached to his code (I mean GPL'ed code - he never wrote much good code himself), but on every level. He believes in massive amounts of government violence - with people like him in charge. Perhaps most significant is the fact that he wants to end all intergovernmental competition, thus ending the only effective counterbalance to government power...

--libman

You kind of have to admit that Stallman is doing more harm than any good every time he sticks his beard out of his hole. I mean, just look at him or listen to him -- is it any wonder then that people make irrational assumptions about him?

Irrational assumptions? I've been following his Web-site for years, and that's what I go by. I agreed with him more when I was young and stupid, and I agree with him a lot less today. Every tyranny inevitably comes packaged in a layer of truth, which in this case is Stallman's support for civil liberties, but that's just the cheese in his mousetrap.

I don't like it when people criticize Stallman for stupid things. He doesn't have a hygiene problem, and he's generally a pleasant-sounding and charismatic guy. I can tolerate socialists who just want to play socialism on their on turf and not use force against others. If that was the case, then we could be pals.

Stallman, on the other hand, is an aggressor, and he is willing to use the force of government to do his bidding - not just in enforcing the legal threats attached to his code (I mean GPL'ed code - he never wrote much good code himself), but on every level. He believes in massive amounts of government violence - with people like him in charge. Perhaps most significant is the fact that he wants to end all intergovernmental competition, thus ending the only effective counterbalance to government power...

--libman

Nothing could be further from the truth. I prefer copyfree software for philosophical reasons. Copyleft is not really free software - it is open source software with legal threats and anti-capitalist propaganda attached.

Notice how anyone critical of GPL gets "(Score: -1)", regardless of the substance of their arguments... This is making Slashdot look like a commie cult! Having a freer license is one of Haiku OS's greatest accomplishment, which needs to be recognized. They could have gone the easier route and borrowed code from Linux and other GPL projects, but they didn't.

So big kudos to the Haiku OS team for trying to create a Linux competitor in the market segment where the pure copyfree stack is rather weak: user-friendly desktop clients, netbooks, tablets, etc (although FreeBSD + E17 might be gaining ground as well).

--libman

First of all, the argument against GPL is primarily a moral argument. GPL is a product of socialist thinking that completely misunderstands how the FLOSS marketplace works, and tries to use "intellectual property" laws (thereby legitimizing them) to hurt "evil corporations". GPL is a gun, and one that is becoming more and more dangerous with every version. It is hypocrisy to call restrictively-licensed software "free".

Secondly, you are wrong on the pragmatic side as well.

Read a bit of UNIX history, will ya? BSD was entangled in legal FUD at just the very time when Linux was taking off (1991 to mid-1994). By the time BSD became BSD-licensed, Linux was the buzzword of the year. This avalanche of attention was great enough to allow it to overcome its licensing handicap.

If your premise was correct, then we'd be seeing a trend of other permissively licensed (copyfree) projects being leapfrogged by restrictively licensed (copyleft) ones, but in reality it's the other way around. The smartest new projects tend to use permissive licenses instead!

The Apache license hasn't stopped Apache httpd from dominating all potential GPLed alternatives over the years, and now it has been supplanted by the even more permissively-licensed Nginx. We've seen popular scripting languages go from copyleft (Lisp, Perl, SpiderMonkey) to almost-copyfree (PHP, Python) to fully-copyfree (V8 / Node.JS, relicensed Ruby, Lua, Go, alternative PHP and Python implementations, etc). Mozilla has been leapfrogged by Chrome. MySQL is slowly beginning to lose market share to PostgreSQL, SQLite, and the various copyfree NoSQL alternatives.

GPL still dominates only among the software projects that were "grandfathered in" in the 1990s, when most people uncritically accepted GPL as "THE open source license". This includes the Linux kernel, mplayer, the popular widget toolkits, and things based on top of them. (The BSD people were geekier than the Linux people, and thus didn't rush to create things like GTK+.) The popularization of HTML5 with copyfree media codecs (and eventually HTML6+, with NaCl, etc) will help the copyfree world leapfrog in the latter two categories.

--libman

I'm still pissed at that situation. I can't believe somebody did that, specially since it was for sure somebody that was at the conference. I mean, not some random thief in the street, but a guy that actually went to his conference in the UBA. Incredible.

The story I told actually happened back in 2004. He still had a thinkpad back then.

http://www.stallman.org/photos/argentina/mar-del-plata/img_0851.jpg (that's in La Serranita, Mar del Plata, Argentina).

Some of those things mentioned in TFA aren't software, so I'm not sure the term "open source" even applies. H.264 is not software, but there is Free software that supports it. The issue regarding H.264 is freedom, because it is encumbered by software patents.

Perhaps relevant:
http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

... However, if I am visiting somewhere and the machines available nearby happen to contain non-free software, through no doing of mine, I don't refuse to touch them.
...
Likewise, I don't need to worry about what software is in a kiosk, pay phone, or ATM that I am using. I hope their owners migrate them to free software, for their sake, but there's no need for me to refuse to touch them until then.

On a side note, will this person be using Free BIOS and Free firmware? RMS uses a Lemote computer (MIPS) in order to achieve this. Also, his website linked to Vimeo, which requires non-free JavaScript in order to run.

(replace "Free" with "open source" if you prefer that term)

Terrible news! However will you measure his rhinophytonecrophilia?

It doesn't exist because that would mean the it would be easily copyable...and we don't the other kids playing in our sandbox, do we?

Sure it does, otherwise Stallman wouldn't have anything to compute on.

It seems to me that it is not only Saverin who is not mindful of and not caring about the health of the nation and the people around him. Judging from the articles linked below, it seems that the entire of Facebook is not healthy:

Facebook's reputation in the mainstream media is rapidly getting worse. Facebook is getting a bad reputation partly because of articles like these:

Worst company: Facebook was a semi-finalist in the April 2012 competition to be voted the worst company in the United States .

Facebook follows its business rules? Not always. The April 7, 2012 Wall Street Journal story, Selling You on Facebook, says:

"Facebook requires apps [mobile phone software applications] to ask permission before accessing a user's personal details. However, a user's friends aren't notified if information about them is used by a friend's app. An examination of the apps' activities also suggests that Facebook occasionally isn't enforcing its own rules on data privacy."

There's more like that in the article.

Facebook tracks every web page you visit that has a Facebook button (using Javascript). For example, if you visit the Oregonian Newspaper web site, Facebook tracks every story you visit, even if you don't click on the "Like" button. There are ways to prevent that (using Firefox with the NoScript add-on), but most people don't know about them.

Companies pay people to click on Facebook "Like" buttons. The number of Facebook "Likes" doesn't give any indication of popularity.

On December 9, 2011 it was necessary to click on a Facebook "Like" button to be allowed to see Fry's Electronics ads.

Do 86,688 people (on April 9, 2012) really like Firestone Complete Auto Care, or did the company offer something to be "liked"?

A few problems with Facebook: Richard Stallman wrote a short list of things wrong with Facebook.

How much information does Facebook keep? Read the December 13, 2011 article, Twenty Something Asks Facebook For His File And Gets It - All 1,200 Pages.

What do people in other countries think? The May 14, 2010 article, Facebook is not your friend gives one idea.

The June 15, 2011 article, The End of Facebook, and the June 14, 2011 article, Is this the beginning of the end for Facebook? give others.

Most people don't understand the problems that may occur. For example, consider the March 28, 2012 article, Teacher's aide says 'no access' to her Facebook; now legal battle with school.

This April 4, 2012 article would be funny if it weren't so sad: Woman arrested for assault based on Facebook photo. Quotes:

"Aston ... was charged ... based solely on a Fac

Maybe he ate some infected toe jam. But the big question is: Did he refuse treatment until he had personally verified that the ambulance and hospital computers were running open source software? If not, he's a hypocrite, because he has called all closed source software an "evil system" that should be avoided at all costs.

Make that 'the ambulence and the hospital computers were running free software, or more recently, libre software. Remember, he specifically refuses to be associated w/ open source, and is all about people getting certain rights, regardless of whether they're capable of doing anything w/ it. By which, I'm talking about the vast majority of things. But to answer your question, yeah, he's indeed a hypocrite, b'cos not only does he want 'non-free' systems to be avoided at all costs - he wants them to actually be shut down by government fiat.

Note that this is also the same man who wrote on his blog:

"[P]rostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia ... should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness." - May 2003

In other words, he thinks that children & animals are capable of approving sex acts? But I believe this, having read his wacko blog, which even the Greenies and Communists would cringe reading. But not NAMBLA or any of the Islamic groups now taking over the 'Arab Spring' countries.

"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing." - June 2006

RMS fans hate when these get mentioned, and they'll often call them lies without clicking on the links and seeing that they come directly from Stallman's online blog. Stallman is a kook, and he needs to be called out as one. This conference he fell ill at was about the "dangers of a digital society." He's a anti-progress luddite who doesn't even visit webpages--he actually emails a daemon that wgets the page and sends it to him. Techies worship him as if he's the only one who ever came up with the idea of free source code or there weren't any other free source movements (hello, Berkeley UNIX?).

How does this 'emailing a daemon' work? One still needs an internet connection to be able to do that. And one means to say that after everything else that's been tossed into Emacs, it can't contain a simple text based browser like elinks? His computer - a Lemote Yeedong - based on a Loongson CPU - has everything he considers sacred - a free BIOS, one great libre distro 'GNewSense' (since ones like Debian, Red Hat are not really free), and Emacs - what else could he need? Now, he should be admitted into a hospital whose computers have only that configuration, so that even the MRI machines and other computerized equipment are hooked on to only free, sorry libre, computers.

Maybe he ate some infected toe jam. But the big question is: Did he refuse treatment until he had personally verified that the ambulance and hospital computers were running open source software? If not, he's a hypocrite, because he has called all closed source software an "evil system" that should be avoided at all costs.

Make that 'the ambulence and the hospital computers were running free software, or more recently, libre software. Remember, he specifically refuses to be associated w/ open source, and is all about people getting certain rights, regardless of whether they're capable of doing anything w/ it. By which, I'm talking about the vast majority of things. But to answer your question, yeah, he's indeed a hypocrite, b'cos not only does he want 'non-free' systems to be avoided at all costs - he wants them to actually be shut down by government fiat.

Note that this is also the same man who wrote on his blog:

"[P]rostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia ... should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness." - May 2003

In other words, he thinks that children & animals are capable of approving sex acts? But I believe this, having read his wacko blog, which even the Greenies and Communists would cringe reading. But not NAMBLA or any of the Islamic groups now taking over the 'Arab Spring' countries.

"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing." - June 2006

RMS fans hate when these get mentioned, and they'll often call them lies without clicking on the links and seeing that they come directly from Stallman's online blog. Stallman is a kook, and he needs to be called out as one. This conference he fell ill at was about the "dangers of a digital society." He's a anti-progress luddite who doesn't even visit webpages--he actually emails a daemon that wgets the page and sends it to him. Techies worship him as if he's the only one who ever came up with the idea of free source code or there weren't any other free source movements (hello, Berkeley UNIX?).

How does this 'emailing a daemon' work? One still needs an internet connection to be able to do that. And one means to say that after everything else that's been tossed into Emacs, it can't contain a simple text based browser like elinks? His computer - a Lemote Yeedong - based on a Loongson CPU - has everything he considers sacred - a free BIOS, one great libre distro 'GNewSense' (since ones like Debian, Red Hat are not really free), and Emacs - what else could he need? Now, he should be admitted into a hospital whose computers have only that configuration, so that even the MRI machines and other computerized equipment are hooked on to only free, sorry libre, computers.

Yes, let's show some goddamned decency. After all, RMS has never, in your parlance, cut off a hearse to piss on someone's grave:

Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.

As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, “I’m not glad he’s dead, but I’m glad he’s gone.” Nobody deserves to have to die - not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs’ malign influence on people’s computing.

Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective.

Nope, Stallman's a complete class act. He'd never do anything like that, he's too goddamned decent.

"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing." - June 2006

That was just a big misunderstanding. He thought he was talking about people who really like feet.

Maybe he ate some infected toe jam. But the big question is: Did he refuse treatment until he had personally verified that the ambulance and hospital computers were running open source software? If not, he's a hypocrite, because he has called all closed source software an "evil system" that should be avoided at all costs.

Note that this is also the same man who wrote on his blog:

"[P]rostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia ... should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness." - May 2003

"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing." - June 2006

RMS fans hate when these get mentioned, and they'll often call them lies without clicking on the links and seeing that they come directly from Stallman's online blog. Stallman is a kook, and he needs to be called out as one. This conference he fell ill at was about the "dangers of a digital society." He's a anti-progress luddite who doesn't even visit webpages--he actually emails a daemon that wgets the page and sends it to him. Techies worship him as if he's the only one who ever came up with the idea of free source code or there weren't any other free source movements (hello, Berkeley UNIX?).

Maybe he ate some infected toe jam. But the big question is: Did he refuse treatment until he had personally verified that the ambulance and hospital computers were running open source software? If not, he's a hypocrite, because he has called all closed source software an "evil system" that should be avoided at all costs.

Note that this is also the same man who wrote on his blog:

"[P]rostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia ... should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness." - May 2003

"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing." - June 2006

RMS fans hate when these get mentioned, and they'll often call them lies without clicking on the links and seeing that they come directly from Stallman's online blog. Stallman is a kook, and he needs to be called out as one. This conference he fell ill at was about the "dangers of a digital society." He's a anti-progress luddite who doesn't even visit webpages--he actually emails a daemon that wgets the page and sends it to him. Techies worship him as if he's the only one who ever came up with the idea of free source code or there weren't any other free source movements (hello, Berkeley UNIX?).

Open Source advocate Dr. Richard Stallman for one. I was listening to an interview he did with Alex Jones, and I was surprised to hear he boycotts the Kindle and other e-readers, and prefers physical books. Read more here:

http://stallman.org/articles/ebooks.pdf

Facebook's reputation with the mainstream media is rapidly getting worse. Facebook is getting a bad reputation partly because of articles like these:

Worst company: Facebook was a semi-finalist in the April 2012 competition to be voted the worst company in the United States .

Facebook follows its business rules? Not always. The April 7, 2012 Wall Street Journal story, Selling You on Facebook, says:

"Facebook requires apps [mobile phone software applications] to ask permission before accessing a user's personal details. However, a user's friends aren't notified if information about them is used by a friend's app. An examination of the apps' activities also suggests that Facebook occasionally isn't enforcing its own rules on data privacy."

There's more like that in the article.

Facebook tracks every web page you visit that has a Facebook button (using Javascript). For example, if you visit the Oregonian Newspaper web site, Facebook tracks every story you visit, even if you don't click on the "Like" button. There are ways to prevent that (using Firefox with the NoScript add-on), but most people don't know about them.

Companies pay people to click on Facebook "Like" buttons. The number of Facebook "Likes" doesn't give any indication of popularity.

On December 9, 2011 it was necessary to click on a Facebook "Like" button to be allowed to see Fry's Electronics ads.

Do 86,688 people (on April 9, 2012) really like Firestone Complete Auto Care, or did the company offer something to be "liked"?

A few problems with Facebook: Richard Stallman wrote a short list of things wrong with Facebook.

How much information does Facebook keep? Read the December 13, 2011 article, Twenty Something Asks Facebook For His File And Gets It - All 1,200 Pages.

What do people in other countries think? The May 14, 2010 article, Facebook is not your friend gives one idea.

The June 15, 2011 article, The End of Facebook, and the June 14, 2011 article, Is this the beginning of the end for Facebook? give others.

Most people don't understand the problems that may occur. For example, consider the March 28, 2012 article, Teacher's aide says 'no access' to her Facebook; now legal battle with school.

This April 4, 2012 article would be funny if it weren't so sad: Woman arrested for assault based on Facebook photo. Quotes:

"Aston ... was charged ... based solely on a Facebook photo and a generic description offered to police by the victim's boyfriend."

Defending herself required a "... court appearance and several thousand dollars in legal bills."


Open source will prevail. E

And the fact that it's not a GNU/Pangolin means the Church of Emacs is pissed, too.

The financial system in the U.S. is corrupt, in my opinion. There are many arrangements that help those in control steal from the average person.

Sooner or later, people will realize that Facebook promotes fake relationships. Unfortunately, that realization will apparently come after investors have lost billions in Facebook's IPO.

Facebook's reputation with the mainstream media is rapidly getting worse. Facebook is getting a bad reputation partly because of articles in the mainstream media like these:

Worst company: Facebook was a semi-finalist in the competition to be voted the worst company in the United States.

Facebook follows its business rules? Not always. The April 7, 2012 Wall Street Journal story, Selling You on Facebook, says:

"Facebook requires apps [mobile phone software applications] to ask permission before accessing a user's personal details. However, a user's friends aren't notified if information about them is used by a friend's app. An examination of the apps' activities also suggests that Facebook occasionally isn't enforcing its own rules on data privacy."

There's more like that in the article.

Facebook tracks every web page you visit that has a Facebook button (using Javascript). For example, if you visit the Oregonian Newspaper web site, Facebook tracks every story you visit, even if you don't click on the "Like" button. There are ways to prevent that (using Firefox with the NoScript add-on), but most people don't know about them.

Companies pay people to click on Facebook "Like" buttons. The number of Facebook "Likes" doesn't give any indication of popularity.

On December 9, 2011 it was necessary to click on a Facebook "Like" button to be allowed to see Fry's Electronics ads.

Do 86,688 people (on April 9, 2012) really like Firestone Complete Auto Care, or did the company offer something to be "liked"?

A few problems with Facebook: Richard Stallman wrote a short list of things wrong with Facebook.

How much information does Facebook keep? Read the December 13, 2011 article, Twenty Something Asks Facebook For His File And Gets It - All 1,200 Pages.

What do people in other countries think? The May 14, 2010 article, Facebook is not your friend gives one idea.

The June 15, 2011 article, The End of Facebook, and the June 14, 2011 article, Is this the beginning of the end for Facebook? give others.

Most people don't understand the problems that may occur. For example, consider the March 28, 2012 article, Teacher's aide says 'no access' to her Facebook; now legal battle with school.

This April 4, 2012 article would be funny if it weren't so sad: Woman arrested for assault based on Facebook photo. Quotes:

"Aston ... was charged ... based solely on a Facebook

Of course they're all terrorists. Have you ever bumped in to one of these GNU/Linux types?

http://stallman.org/rms-bw.jpeg

Where's McCarthy when we need him?

That's guilt by association, and something you have no evidence of. E.g. I have political views of my own that ain't remotely close to anyone else in my family. Not everybody follows family like sheeple on such issues - in fact, I'm not even sure that a majority do.

I don't think there is any doubt that RMS himself is a Marxist - just a casual perusal of his personal website would reveal that. I also don't doubt that the FSF is leftist as well. But other organizations, like OSI, do tend to be more libertarian, and are a lot easier to work with, despite the fact that they don't label GPL in hostile terms the way the FSF treats them.

I gave links to both. First he wrote on his blog in 2003:

Dubya has nominated another caveman for a federal appeals court. Refreshingly, the Democratic Party is organizing opposition.

The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia" also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally--but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.

He also said this in an interview:

DR: So is child pornography not a good enough reason to censor the Internet?

RS: Certainly not, certainly not a good enough reason. There are videos I’ve seen that shocked and disgusted me, but I don’t want to censor them. I do not advocate censorship just because I or you find them disgusting. ...

But those who simply redistribute [child pornography] are in the same position of people who redistribute the collateral murder video. They’re not participating in the crime and there are a lot of films that depict murders except nobody really got killed. And there are a lot of films that depict the harm of animals except none really got harmed so if somebody was really torturing an animal, we would stop it. But depicting that without actually doing it we consider okaybut there’s no need to censor depictions of that.

And finally, he wrote on his blog in 2006:

I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.

Children can't legally or emotionally consent to sex; there's no such thing as "voluntary pedophilia."

To be honest, it's surprising that more people don't know about Stallman's positions on these issues. You'd think such controversial positions would be more widely reported.

I gave links to both. First he wrote on his blog in 2003:

Dubya has nominated another caveman for a federal appeals court. Refreshingly, the Democratic Party is organizing opposition.

The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia" also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally--but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.

He also said this in an interview:

DR: So is child pornography not a good enough reason to censor the Internet?

RS: Certainly not, certainly not a good enough reason. There are videos I’ve seen that shocked and disgusted me, but I don’t want to censor them. I do not advocate censorship just because I or you find them disgusting. ...

But those who simply redistribute [child pornography] are in the same position of people who redistribute the collateral murder video. They’re not participating in the crime and there are a lot of films that depict murders except nobody really got killed. And there are a lot of films that depict the harm of animals except none really got harmed so if somebody was really torturing an animal, we would stop it. But depicting that without actually doing it we consider okaybut there’s no need to censor depictions of that.

And finally, he wrote on his blog in 2006:

I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.

Children can't legally or emotionally consent to sex; there's no such thing as "voluntary pedophilia."

To be honest, it's surprising that more people don't know about Stallman's positions on these issues. You'd think such controversial positions would be more widely reported.

Probably a lot of normal people's reaction to Reddit's policy change is "You mean sexual imagery of children wasn't already against the rules? How is that not firmly established from day one?" Unfortumately, the Reddit admins' bizarre six-year acceptance of child porn on its site is reflective of an overall lax attitude in online geek communities. Rather than seeing themselves as what they actually are--just nerds running computers--they like to perceive themselves as freedom fighters battling all forms of censorship in the world. This lack of practically toward obviously illegal stuff leads to a lot of eye-opening attitudes toward issues of sex and gender. For crying out loud, Reddit's statement actually refers to this new rule as a "slippery slope," as if it's somehow more difficult for them not to censor legitimate information if they can't have a subreddit named /r/preeteen_girls devoted to underage photos submitted by creepy Facebook stalkers.

The lax attitude toward this sort of thing even comes from community leaders like Richard Stallman, who wrote on his blog that "[P]rostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia ... should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness." And he told an interviewer that people who redistribute child pornography are "not participating in the crime" and so shouldn't be censored. Hell, even bringing this up on Slashdot risks copious downmods from Stallman fans (it's happened in the past).

There has to be a line drawn between OMG-FREEDOM-AT-ALL-COSTS and posting sexual pictures of children. Living in a civil society requires some level of protection of the innocent. Reddit should shut the hell up about slippery slopes and do what it should have done six freaking years ago.

The statement is on Richard Stallman's blog from May 2003:

Dubya has nominated another caveman for a federal appeals court. Refreshingly, the Democratic Party is organizing opposition.

The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia" also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally--but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.

He is quite clearly advocating the legalization of child pornography possession and pedophilia. Now, if he was being sarcastic, facetious, or attempting to make some other point, it sure doesn't come across in his statement, nor has he corrected himself since.

(for the purposes of drama you can imagine me standing in robes in front of an altar with longish white hair and long beard billowing in the wind, staff held aloft in my left hand, a long boney finger pointing at you from my right hand, and thunder and lighting raging in the background. Obv. I'm not... I'm just slumped in front of my computer in an ill-fitting t-shirt and jeans, but I read somewhere that image is everything. Or something.)

Like this?

Your Wrong. Now say 40 Hail Emacs & use VI for a week.

One of my favourite Stallman pieces, featuring nasal sex with plants: http://stallman.org/articles/texas.html

How did you get +5 Insightful? Allow me to quote RMS from his own blog on June 28, 2003:

"Dubya has nominated another caveman for a federal appeals court. Refreshingly, the Democratic Party is organizing opposition.

The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia" also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally--but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness."

Richard Stallman also thinks necrophilia and "voluntary pedophilia" should be legal, including possession of child pornography.

While I definitely disagree with him about child porn, I may be in the minority if I say I don't have anything against necrophilia. No, I have no interest in corpses myself, I'm disgusted by them, but that shouldn't be the only basis for denying other people that. A corpse is a corpse, simple as that, and a corpse doesn't care anymore what happens to it. Just have it illegal to rob graves or such, but leave the actual act of necrophilia legal for those who have obtain their corpses legally, ie. by e.g. people who like the idea that someone will hump their dead corpse after their gone themselves. People are so strange that there is bound to be people like that, too.

Richard Stallman also thinks necrophilia and "voluntary pedophilia" should be legal, including possession of child pornography.

While I definitely disagree with him about child porn, I may be in the minority if I say I don't have anything against necrophilia. No, I have no interest in corpses myself, I'm disgusted by them, but that shouldn't be the only basis for denying other people that. A corpse is a corpse, simple as that, and a corpse doesn't care anymore what happens to it. Just have it illegal to rob graves or such, but leave the actual act of necrophilia legal for those who have obtain their corpses legally, ie. by e.g. people who like the idea that someone will hump their dead corpse after their gone themselves. People are so strange that there is bound to be people like that, too.

I'm not getting into this argument myself, but here's your cite ... Stallman wrote it on 28 June 2003 (and the poster's paraphrase seems valid, though I doubt the statement represents the full breadth of Stallman's views).

The whole article is a complete non sequitar. Free software wouldn't prevent Obama from signing an indefinite detention bill, nor it would it stop government intrusion on ISPs. There's no relationship between government overstepping the mark and buying a proprietary product from a company you respect because you want to use the product and are willing to sacrifice unrestricted access to its innards.

Richard Stallman also thinks necrophilia and "voluntary pedophilia" should be legal, including possession of child pornography. He doesn't visit web sites--instead, he sends email to a daemon that wgets the page and emails it back to him. Perhaps most infamously, he eats toe jam in public.

Perhaps not the best spokesperson to get behind.

A broken clock can be right some of the time. Claiming Stallman was right all along is like claiming the paranoid street preacher predicting natural disasters as God's judgement was right all along after a hurricane hits. He may have predicted something that ended up occurring, but that doesn't mean his approach to solving the issue nor his philosophy are in the same bucket.

The author of this piece, Thom Holwerda at OSNews, is becoming known over there as a pandering, flamebait author in the vein of Dvorak. His essays come off as if they're specifically designed to get posted on Slashdot. Because of that, I suspect there will be more submissions from him in the future, unfortunately.

The whole article is a complete non sequitar. Free software wouldn't prevent Obama from signing an indefinite detention bill, nor it would it stop government intrusion on ISPs. There's no relationship between government overstepping the mark and buying a proprietary product from a company you respect because you want to use the product and are willing to sacrifice unrestricted access to its innards.

Richard Stallman also thinks necrophilia and "voluntary pedophilia" should be legal, including possession of child pornography. He doesn't visit web sites--instead, he sends email to a daemon that wgets the page and emails it back to him. Perhaps most infamously, he eats toe jam in public.

Perhaps not the best spokesperson to get behind.

A broken clock can be right some of the time. Claiming Stallman was right all along is like claiming the paranoid street preacher predicting natural disasters as God's judgement was right all along after a hurricane hits. He may have predicted something that ended up occurring, but that doesn't mean his approach to solving the issue nor his philosophy are in the same bucket.

The author of this piece, Thom Holwerda at OSNews, is becoming known over there as a pandering, flamebait author in the vein of Dvorak. His essays come off as if they're specifically designed to get posted on Slashdot. Because of that, I suspect there will be more submissions from him in the future, unfortunately.

Richard Stallman also believes that ... voluntary pedophilia should be legal.

Well better to be behind him than have him behind you.

Richard Stallman also believes that necrophilia and voluntary pedophilia should be legal. Maybe not the best spokesperson to get behind.

Richard Stallman also believes that necrophilia and voluntary pedophilia should be legal. Maybe not the best spokesperson to get behind.

This is EXACTLY the thing RMS means when he is shouting his song.

Of course, when he's not doing that, he's advocating necrophilia and "voluntary pedophilia". Maybe not the best spokesperson to get behind.

This is EXACTLY the thing RMS means when he is shouting his song.

Of course, when he's not doing that, he's advocating necrophilia and "voluntary pedophilia". Maybe not the best spokesperson to get behind.

True about Comrade Stallman, if you've ever read http://stallman.org/

I believe that taxing the Internet causes much more harm to the economy than the money that can be gained.

Why do you believe that? What I am saying, taxing the Internet does not even begin to compare with censoring the Internet. I would much rather have the former. IMHO, it is strictly better than Copyright. Copyright is a way to reward publishers, distributors, and artists (in that order) for their work. The money is being obtained at the distribution stage. There is some consistency to taxing the raw Internet access (while abolishing non-commercial copyright): they would still be getting money out of the distribution stage, sans the intellectual monopoly. Here's a more specific proposal of the same nature.

I fail to see how copyright is unethical. Sure, lifetime+70 years is as unethical as it can get,

Yes, that's enough to vindicate my statement, isn't it? But beyond the obscene length of the copyright, there is also the matter of domain. Is it ethical to allow to copyright research pertaining to a life-saving drug? Or a piece of software that can save billions of dollars for a developing country? As soon as you leave the domain of pure entertainment, ugly ethical questions come up, especially with regards to non-commercial infringement. I agree with you on this narrow ground though: something like a 5-year copyright on works of pure art is perfectly fine. And a 5-year copyright on anything is suboptimal, but could be a decent compromise.

Now, now - he wasn't old at the time - he was within spitting distance of graduate school-age, IIRC. The GPL was created in 1989, at the time RMS was about 36 years old then.

What does he do daily on Stallman.org?

He also refuses to have a cell phone because "they are tracking and surveillance devices" and "most of them are computers with nonfree software installed". Except if he needs to make a call, he has no problem borrowing someone else's.

Using someone else's phone eliminates any legitimate concern about tracking and surveillance, unless those tracking you are tapping every single phone in the area they think you're in and listening for your voice. If that was the case you're stuck if you need to make a call at all, cellular or not.

The second part is true, though that technically can be avoided today if one's willing to put up with a lot of pain to use it through phones like the OpenMoko running OsmocomBB on the cellular baseband processor. OpenMoko's UI is not great and OsmocomBB doesn't have much functionality though, so you end up with a device that has hardware comparable to a first-generation Android device but functionality comparable to early prototype GSM handsets.

I wonder if RMS drives a car with modern fuel injection. Those tend to use proprietary RTOSes, and even the open source Megasquirt is most certainly not Free Software.

Yet he's perfectly willing to give in to the same requirements in order to fly in a plane. I guess pragmatism wins over principle at some level of inconvenience.

Well, of course it does. In his own words:

I firmly refuse to install non-free software or tolerate its installed presence on my computer or on computers set up for me to use.

However, if I am visiting somewhere and the machines available nearby happen to contain non-free software, through no doing of mine, I don't refuse to touch them. I will use them briefly for tasks such as browsing. This limited usage doesn't give my assent to the software's license, or make me responsible its being present in the computer, or make me the possessor of a copy of it, so I don't see an ethical obligation to refrain from this. Of course, I explain why they should migrate the machines to free software, but I don't push so hard it would be counterproductive.

Likewise, I don't need to worry about what software is in a kiosk, pay phone, or ATM that I am using. I hope their owners migrate them to free software, for their sake, but there's no need for me to refuse to touch them until then. (I do consider what those machines and their owners might do with my personal data, but that's a different issue. My response to that issue is to minimize those activities which give them any data about me.)

That reasoning is based on the fact that I was not responsible for setting up those machines, or for how that was done. By contrast, if I were to ask or lead someone to set up a computer for me to use, that would make me ethically responsible for its software load. In such a case I insist on free software, just as if the machine were mine.

He'll use non-free systems whenever necessary if there's no alternative. There's not a good non-free alternative to air travel in the US, or to travel abroad in a timely manner.