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Stallman Selling Autographs
UltimaGuy writes "Sports stars, musicians, and other celebrities have been charging for autographs for years, but who would have thought Richard Stallman would be doing the same? Is this just for fun, or a clever, highly effective protest? Hackers, geeks and nerds gathered together at the 7th FISL - Internacional Free Software Forum, in Porto Alegre (Brazil) last week, were astounded when they got word that Richard Stallman, the founding father of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the GPL, was charging R$ 10 (about US$ 3) for an autograph and R$ 5 (less than US$ 2) to get his picture taken by free software enthusiasts at the event floor."
Does RMS allow anyone to copy and modify those autographs?
I'd venture to guess that RMS just wants some extra money for the FSF. In the article he says he wants to be compensated for the time it takes to sign and pose -- a fair request, I dare say.
just to piss him off, if his point was to show that it's wrong to charge for photos.
The FSF should exploit RMS some more. I'm sure there are loads of products which could be based on RMS.
OMG!!! RMS PONIES!!!
There's now way the FSF fanboys will be able to make it past the crush of girls desperate to get close to the Man :-)
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
with someone like Stallman you can be sure it's going into trinkets and geek toys, probably a new macbook. Stallman has been selling out from the begining.
Stallman would have to pay me to own a photo of him. Don't get me wrong, I like the guy but his regexp.c is prettier than him!
I, for one, welcome our Nerd celebrity overlords.
In all seriousness, I applaud Stallman's ironic sense of humor.
The PC Weenies: 11 Years of Online Tech 'Too
Not quite Microsoft evil.
PS : Please don't reply "Whaddya got?"
RMS wrote:
"People who ask me to sign or pose are asking for some of my time, which needs must come from my other volunteer work for the cause. On most occasions, the total time involved is not very large, so I do as they ask, taking steps to make the process efficient. But this does not mean my time is theirs to dispose of. I think it is entirely proper to ask people to make a small contribution to the cause in exchange."
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When I write a piece of open source code, that takes a bit of my time too and is sometimes boring. By RMS's logic, I should charge each user some sort of nuissance fee so that my time is better spent on more "productive pursuits" or somesuch. Hrmmmmm...
I do like the fact that he is starting to grasp how scarcity is managed in a capitalist economy though.
"Does RMS allow anyone to copy and modify those autographs?"
Of course! However you must use emacs and call it GNU/graph
So, somebody asks Stallman to sign their badge. Stallman realizes he could be stuck there for hours signing badges instead of doing something more useful. So he asks for a donation for the FSF (not even for himself!) to get something out of it, and hopefully reduce the size of the queue. Sounds completely reasonable to me.
It's not like Stallman ever had anything against charging money, from what I heard, he sold Emacs tapes.
Yes, and if you read the entire article you'll see that he's not opposed to selling software. What good is it to click on the link to the article and then only read half of it?
Slagborr
After everything's said and done he has bills as well you know!
Is this just for fun, or a clever, highly effective protest?
;)
Anyone care to explain how this can possible be construed as to be highly effective?
Let's see, RMS does something very subtle that nobody in the mainstream press will bother to report, or actually even *notice*, not to mention *understand*. I fail to see how this can in any way, shape or form be seen as an "highly effective" protest.
Of course this is Slashdot, but even then....I mean come on
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
Autographs are only the beginning. I hear a Richard Stallman nude calendar is in the pipeline!
If you'd ever read the GPL, you'd notice that source only needs to distributed to the people who got the binary, and the binary can be charged for. I never heard Stallman say that services like duplication, tech support, etc should be free. IIRC, Stallman has a webpage somewhere detailing his requirements if you want to have him give a talk, which sounds completely fine to me.
Stallman was always about freedom in the political sense, not in the lack of economic compensation one.
*rofl*
RMS isn't keeping the money for himself: he's trying to reduce demand by charging, and giving all the proceeds to the FSF.
What do you people all have against RMS? Remember that you use his software every day.
[ home ]
Yes, that's what he's always said. He just doesn't whan people to sell him something and make it legally impossible for him to alter it, so it works better for him, and to give the altered version to a friend.
So, if you want to put a smiley face on his autograph and xerox a copy for your brother, I'm sure he'd be okay with that.
wasn't it kde dev aaron seigo who was charging for people to take photos with stallman?
Stallman autographs are clearly free as in speech, not as in beer.
My March 1987 copy of the GNU Emacs Manual (Sixth Edition, Version 18) has a FSF order form in the back. The source code is avilable on tape for $150. The Gnu C Compiler on tape for $150. Gnu Emacs manuals for $15 each.
Why is there an 'outcry' about Stallman and his organization making some money to support their efforts? It's how movements based on ideals, not keeping 'the bottom line' number big, sustain their organizations and themselves.
He's buying Microsoft.
-- Dvorak
It's a very fair proposition. He also presents a very lucid and logical argument for his actions. But, that won't stop the free as in gratis Slashweenies from vilifying him.
I, however, did find it very amusing that he was arrogant enough to think that people would spend that much for his autograph. It must have been a bit deflating to have only made a couple of hundred dollars rather than the thousands that he had anticipated.
Isn't an autograph something you are proud to get from a celebrity ? Who in hell knows Richard Stallman except geeks at slashdot ? I'll sure get a troll mod for that but at least admit it's true.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Some people produce products and sell them. They are ok.
Some other people produce products but give them out for free. They believe that is fair and money will naturally come from some place. Years pass, money don't come. So naturally, the people in question gotta rework their model so they can put food on the table. They will try to sell T-shirts, logos, tea cups and even branded underwear, but won't sell their products.
Years pass, some of those people are still living in their mom's basements (pardon the cliche) working on their pet projects, while some other ones move on with their lives and sign up to work in a real company. They succeeded with never sold their products, they instead abandoned them and became yet another drone in the enterprise industry.
Not everyone is Richard Stallman and can afford to fund his favorite organisations by selling autographs, but apparrently in the end even Richard Stallman has to sell something, there's no free lunch.
And don't put me that crap about reducing demand. It's embarassing to sell your signatures especially given your status, and especially given that you can't really make a change with those money (100 bucks a month?). You can instead say "I'm sorry I'm really busy, glad we met" and continue on your way. Was that so much harder? I guess it's easier to sell your dignity.
Seriously does anyone actually pay attention to what RMS does these days? He's an embarrassment to the open source movement with his childish media stunts and unkempt appearance.
Well I guess some goofballs can be entertaining but RMS just goes too far!
... there was no cost as long as you downloaded the autograph onto your own media? Was he also charging for copies of his public key?
"The Internet is made of cats."
root mean square
...that free and open-source celebrity is not a sustainable business model.
The last time he was in Singapore he charged S$10 for his autograph from everyone. Ironically though he didn't charge anything for taking a photograph with him. You know which option I opted for :)
Great point!
If I am a celebrity and if there is a demand for my autograph, I might also choose to charge for it. It has atleast two advantages.
One: It reduces the crowd as only those who are serious about getting the autograph will pay up. The others who get autographs just for kicks will stay away.
Two: It helps the cause a little bit. Especially if it is a person of the likes of Stallman who is associated with a not-for-profit movement.
Any way, charging $5 for an autograph or $2 for a photograph is much better than charging hundreds of dollars for a piece of software.
Linux Help
for all things on Linux
I'm looking at the GPL right now and that does not appear to be true. Under "Terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification" point 1 the second paragraph reads as follows: That seems to imply that you cannot charge a fee for the binary (and accompanying source code) that reflects your time to develop the software.
Even if this were not so, because the source code must acompany any binary distribution or be available to all third parties under point 3 of the same heading it would be difficult for the author to charge for more than the initial copy of the program unless those who already had it were unwilling to redistribute it themselves for some reason not related to the liscence. It would be virtually impossible for the creator to charge for more than the initial copy of any program intended for consumer use since consumers have no incentive not to copy amongst themselves.
I am not a lawyer, so I admit that my understanding may be flawed, please clarify your position.
Surprise, Slashdot is mainstream press. Slashdot is the 64th most visited site on the net. That's right behind the New York Times, which is 56th and more read than the Drudge Report, 75th. Only BBC, CNN, Google, Yahoo and MSNBC are more read news sources. Neither CBS nor ABC news make the top 100.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Yes, but under the GPL, the person you sell to has the same rights you do. So they can just turn around and make it available for anyone to download for free. So unless you were planning to just sell to just one person, the GPL effectively prevents you from making money by selling your software.
You're new here, aren't you.
By RMS's logic, I should charge each user some sort of nuissance fee so that my time is better spent on more "productive pursuits" or somesuch.
Where in RMS's logic does he say that you can't charge for something? If you're going to mischaracterize someone's position at least be able to pass a cursory test by someone that knows a little about the subject.
As the president of the Free Autographs and T-shirts Foundation, I much object to this practice. Authographs, like T-shirts, want to be free! We ought to freely hand them out to anyone interested. To cover the costs of this operation, and feed the unfortunate mouths that depend on our activities, I propose we sell a little software on the side...
Bill Gates now has an easy way to get RMS out of the way ... just let him make 10M autographs. That'll keep him busy for a while :-)
You people tagging him as a sellout are dumbasses. He doesn't have a regular steady income. He lives off shit like this. Fees for appearing at events and the like are what he uses to his buy pizza and mountain dew.
Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish)
And from the GPL FAQ:
Does the GPL allow me to charge a fee for downloading the program from my site? Yes. You can charge any fee you wish for distributing a copy of the program. If you distribute binaries by download, you must provide "equivalent access" to download the source--therefore, the fee to download source may not be greater than the fee to download the binary.
What the GPL DOES mean, is that, while you can charge for distribution, this is (as I see it) intended as recompense for the expense of the act of distribution, not the act of creating the work. Anyone can distribute it for free if they wish, but people can and do make money from selling GPLd programs - with source code, and with the receiver being fully able to distribute it for free.
im in ur
Software Hippy[old position]:You can make money selling support, documentation, and customization!
Software Hippy[new position]: Ok, I admit anybody can find the documentation and support they need via Google or customize on their own. Now everybody can make money selling autographs and giving keynote speeches!
If it's an official donation to the FSF, the foundation should also provide the option of official tax receipts to those who donate, unless there is a lower limit imposed; for example: no tax receipts for donations under $10. So they were anonymous donations. I have no doubt the money will go to FSF. FSF should publish the amount raised for interest sake (if not for us to calculate how many autographs he actually signed!)
There's nothing that goes against freedom here that I can see. It's a standard donation model being used.
All your answers here:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html
The fee was a contribution to the FSF of course.
"By charging for autographs and for poses, I raised a few hundred dollars for the FSF and FSF Latin America..."
True, but what about it?
RMS never said he had anything charging for services being wrong. What he doesn't like is the producer being able to hold him hostage. That's his opinion of how things should work, if you don't like it that way, then just don't release your work under the GPL.
Besides, earning money under the model of selling it to one person is perfectly possible. It's called contract work. Not all software is made to be sold on the shelf.
Complete translation of the original article in the Business Journal Baguete
FISL: Stallman's autograph auctioned for R$ 22 (~US $10) 22/04/2006
An autograph from Free Software guru Richard Stallman was auctioned for R $23 (~US $11) at FISL 7.0 (International Free Software Forum) this Saturday, the 22nd. The initiative by gaucho Leonardo Vaz (Open BSB - RS) [Ed: Residents of the state of Rio Grande do Sul are called "gauchos".] caused a joyful uproar on this last day of the event when he went to personally deliver the money collected to Stallman, accompanied by about a hundred people.
Vaz bought Stallman's signature during the first edition of the Forum, six years ago. To charge contributions for the Free Software Foundation in trade for autographs or photo ops is only one of the eccentric habits of the American, who accepted the money gratefully and affirmed that it would be delivered to the recently founded Free Software Foundation of Latin America.
The auction concept summarizes the distracted atmosphere of this last day of FISL 7.0. The launch of GULA (Alcoholic Linux Users Group) is scheduled for 4:00 pm, which promises to shake up the final hours of the meeting.
[Obs. Apesar de ser canadense, moro em Brasil há seis anos agora.]
Geeze guys, he's giving money away and you report it all wrong. You ask for an auto-graph and he *pays you*. Honestly, who would want his autograph for any other reason.
The grandparent of my post, and my own post, are concerned only with charging users a fee for the development of that software, so I assume that the parent of my post also applies to this. My own post said that the GPL probably does not allow this even though it does allow for a distribution fee, and that even if it did allow for such an inflated distribution fee as to reflect the development cost there is no mechanism for the author to enforce the payment of the fee more than once. In this sense our comments are identical? It is true that someone can charge to distribute copies of open source programs but to pretain to my post and the grandparent, please explain how a software author may ensure that they make money charging for binaries wich reflects their cost for developing their software and prefferably is based on the number of users?
Are they blessed? :P
That's less true everyday. The average US citizen spends no more than 15 minutes a day on news. That's an old figure from a journalism class I took, but it's not going to change much. As those 15 minutes are increasingly consumed online at work, other forms will dissapear. Here's a mainstream admission of that, just in case you need someone official and legitimate to tell you the obvious. Note also that the USA Today also failed to make the 100 top web sites. What's easier for you is easier for others too.
It's all a farce anyway, "mainstream" is something that may have existed in an era of 3 tv networks, but it's gone now. This article is more amusing than the above and is not so far from the truth.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
That is the way it is spelled in Portuguese (which is the language spoken over there)
See, it's simple. When you're charging 10 dollars for something, and you sell one copy, and the person you sold that copy to then sells it for 5 dollars and you can't do anything about it, you can no longer sell it because no one will buy it from you.
Now reduce that price to free. Now tell me how you sell it, again? Oh yeah, you don't.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
No market segment ensures the ability to make a profit. You can charge however much you like for GPL software. The only question is: Will people be willing to pay you that much for it? This is no different than any other industry; it's the free market in its purest form.
No one's forcing you to write GPL code. If you don't like its terms, don't agree to it and don't use it.
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
So don't license your software under the GPL. Duh.
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
very often, in the software world, the "cost" includes things like support - now would you rather get support from the authors of the software, or from some noname giving away the same software for free? Larger corporations would pay and freeloaders like me will go with the free version. To each his/her own.
Oh! and another point, nobody is forcing you to distribute your code under the GPL - you're free to use the licence of your choice. Use the BSD licence if it pleases you, or use a proprietary "All your base are belong to us" EULA if you wish. It's up to the users of your software to decide whether to accept your licence. I find it rather sad that there's so much vitriole against GPL, many times from people who don't even seem to have read the licence.
Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes. - Mahatma Gandhi
Oh, I've read it. I've release certain things under BSD, because when I give something away, I really give it away, not 'give it away but you've got to promise me shit in return.'
The vitriol of which you speak is very easy to figure out - GPL is only a good license if you want to force your way of thinking down stranger's throats. That's distasteful to a large number of us.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Whaddya got?
[When I write a piece of open source code, that takes a bit of my time too and is sometimes boring. By RMS's logic, I should charge each user some sort of nuissance fee so that my time is better spent on more "productive pursuits" or somesuch.]
Nope, not a good parallel. You can easily charge a fee to the one asking you to write that piece of code and get closer.
Also, nothing stops you from charging for every "handover" that you make. (Or am I missing something?) Now, why would they pay for his autograph and not for a "handover" from you? Perhaps if you gave an autographed certificate of "handover" with each one you might stand more of a chance? I don't know...
all the best,
drew
-----
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/145261
Record a song and you might win $1,000.00
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
I understand that it's distasteful to people like you who prefer the BSD or a similar licence. And I agree, except that I see the GPL as more of a means to and end. Sometimes the means can be unpleasant.
However, my comment was more for the increasingly larger number of slashbots that support all kinds of proprietary licences and find the GPL not to their liking. I'm sad because it looks like we're winning the battle on one level but losing the war on another level. Too many people just don't give a damn about some basic freedoms.
Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes. - Mahatma Gandhi
Maybe he could reserve some of the money for shower gel and shampoo.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
According to RMS and other FSF dingbats, if you don't license your software under the GPL, then you are anti-social, evil, stealing peoples' freedoms, blah, blah, blah...
Inserting a "$" in place of the "S" in RMS's initials is clever, intelligent, and unique.
I wonder if these same people would build on libraries or deploy on OSes that required them to pay a percentage of the revenue from their software "product"?
Hey, why not license your software such that the user has to pay a percentage of their revenue as a yearly license fee?
1. a. Don't write it unless you get a fair compensation for the labour involved.
1. b. Or unless you need to use the functionality to make your "life" better.
2. In the case of 1.b. - can you get done quicker starting with already written "Free Software" - if so, no problem.
See how easy this really is? (I know I am posting this in a reply to your post when it is really answering some of the posts further up the tree. Down the tree?)
You will see a lot of straw men being knocked over if you read many posts in this thread.
all the best,
drew
----
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/187924
Bahamian Nonsense
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
Ah right, the old "charge $150,000 for the binary because the first person that buys it will just redistribute the source code completely legally under the terms of the GPL" approach.
Of curiosity, do you know this in some authoritative way or are you speculating? I didn't see this stated in the article.
You could, I suppose, test this by making a GPL'd program (to eliminate red herring objections based on your market paradigm) that uses a picture of Stallman (with a rectangle missing) and merges a gif you give it of yourself to that photo, and then give your program away as freeware (perhaps for media-cost on a disk you brought to one of his events). Like with any free software, you could get your grins from trying to drive down the market price of the original idea to a more "tolerable" level... zero, being the canonical tolerable level.
His primary point (made in the article), that fans have no inherent right to his time is right in principle. However, when you make yourself available for an event and especially if you're already paid for the event, it gets more questionable. [Credential: I've hosted a conference at which RMS spoke. He wanted a fee, which I had no objection to. Where feasible, speakers should get paid for time and travel. There are fortunately speakers who sometimes have the resources and interest to travel and/or speak where they can't be reimbursed, but it's not an obligation on speakers. Speaking takes prep time and time to do. And, in my limited experience, Stallman rightly insisted on being reimbursed for such things.] But if he had arrived and started charging people at my event for his services while he was on "our time", I'd have found that to be "double billing" (at best) and would have strongly considered kicking him out on the street on the spot.
Perhaps the conference event people approved of his action in advance. Or perhaps they didn't think to object on this basis. I suspect there's also a question at a conference on free software whether it's "his" conference. It may be his topic, but the ownership of time and conferences is something where I'd follow the money. Perhaps the conference had him as their guest speaker and didn't want to offend him even when he offended them. I don't know the full fact pattern, so am substituting questions for people to ask in order to speak on the issue. But Stallman speaks as if this were simply an issue of signer's rights, he's oversimplifying by not similarly qualifying his advice to others according to forum/venue, which certainly influences any discussion of rights.
It'd be quite another thing entirely if this fee were asked on his own time (say, when someone finds him in a restaurant or hotel or out on the street where he's not already scheduled). I might then argue that the fee was too low. Fans should not have their right to inject themselves upon unwilling celebrity in their private lives. But I don't see that that's what's going on here.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
[Oh, I've read it. I've release certain things under BSD, because when I give something away, I really give it away, not 'give it away but you've got to promise me shit in return.']
Ah, but when I release stuff under the GPL or under a CC BY-SA I am not giving it away, but then neither are you fully giving it away if you put it under the BSD, you would need to somehow put it in the public domain to really give it away.
So, you can distribute the software you create under terms way more restrictive than the GPL and that is cool, but if I distribute the software I write under the GPL, I am some sort of bad guy? I am not sure I follow.
(Sorry if I set up a straw man to fight unintentionally.)
all the best,
drew
-----
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/187924
Bahamian Nonsense
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
As soon as you give one copy to anyone, then you can no longer sell it, as that person can just re-distribute it for free. Selling GPL software may be "allowed" but it does not actually work in the real world.
In a related story, RMS has just agreed to pose for PlayGirl.
I don't use any of RMS's software at all, nothing he wrote is even vaguely useful. I assume you meant GNU software, since "his" software is pretty much just emacs. But I don't even use any GNU software every day, I only use it when I have no other option. GNU software is buggy, bloated crap.
Next he will be doing Nike ads and wearing Walmart hats to open source conferences.
Stallman will be speaking at Bob Jones University shortly.
That was one of the best layouts of a case I've heard, and there's quite a bit of space between you and the next fellow. Or would you say that your education came from outside of institutionalized learning?
To my knowledge, there's no patent on gif decoding--only on the encoding. The patent is on gif creation. Lots of GPL'd tools accept gifs.
Count me in the camp that says "kleenex" when I mean "facial tissue". Hand me a "kleenex" doesn't mean I won't take a Scottie. Xerox may wish I didn't have that usage, but that's Xerox's problem, not mine.
Likewise I just use the term gif because it's easy to pronounce. (Yeah, I know, png is encouraged to be pronounced ping, but it doesn't mean people understand me when I do.) I didn't mean to exclude accepting .png's, .jpg's, .tiff's, .bmp's, or whatever you like, nor did I specify the output format.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
He just spoke at the University of Illinois at Chicago on Friday and the first thing did was tell people they should buy some GNU/GPL/FSF merchandise that he brought with him. Then he milled around for a while so people could before he began his talk.
"No one's forcing you to write GPL code. If you don't like its terms, don't agree to it and don't use it."
That's fine. Just don't turn around and call me evil, immoral, unethical, robbing people of their freedoms for having the gall to release non-GPL software.
The fact is, RMS and his followers do accuse writers of non-GPL software for the masses as immoral, etc. You say nobody's forcing one to write GPL code, but you guys are indeed trying to lay on a guilt trip on software devs to shame them into following the GPL party line.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
...maybe he's just got a funny sense of humour! :-P
http://nathanlindsell.blogspot.com/
Thats All.
I think people would look down on you if you took money and pocketed it. But I think giving the money to a worthy cause (like the FSF) is fine.
Xenu loves you!
The bigger question would be, what if I copied RMS' autograph and started selling it myself at a cheaper price, or even just giving it away? Would he want to be the only one able to sell RMS autographs?
"Sufferin' succotash."
"very often, in the software world, the "cost" includes things like support - now would you rather get support from the authors of the software, or from some noname giving away the same software for free?"
Many developers are good at programming but poor at tech support. Others are better at tech support than programming. Under your utopia, those that program are less valued than those that provide tech support, so the latter can more easily charge for their services. Under your utopia, a small dev team might write a GPL program but suck at tech support (because they lack the infrastructure, or are unfriendly on the phone, or whatever). But because the program is GPL, the dev team can't make money from the software itself. Meanwhile, a large company that *specializes* in tech support can make millions charging to support the program written by that small dev team, while the dev team gets nothing.
Case in point: People would sooner go to RedHat for Linux support than Linus or any of his community of free labor contributing programmers. So people *would* rather go to someone that specializes in support rather than the original authors. The Red Hat execs are much richer than Linus and even more so than the community of free labor contributors to Linux.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
It's reasonable to raise this, but I don't think this can be a dominating claim.
In any place of business, you pay workers for only a period of time. That doesn't mean that on premises they can set themselves up in a shop and capitalize on the people that have come to your business for their own economic gain. If I write a book "on my own time" while full-time employed and my employer isn't going to claim ownership, my contract says it has to be not just on my own time but on my own premises/equipment for it to be free and clear. (I'm pretty sure some places--the State of California [California Labor code section 2870] is an example--codify this obvious bit of common sense into law.)
The situation in a conference may be somewhat more gray, but not completely.
As someone who's been a speaker at a number of conferences, I know I have at least some responsibility to the venue not to work against what it is that they've brought me in for. It's common for book authors to sell their books (though I've never seen book authors charge for autographs--it's usually seen as a sales tool to encourage buying). Most conferences don't mind on-site sale of books because it serves attendees, but if a conference said "we don't want you selling your book here", I think it would be a reasonable request. (The most likely reasons would be traffic patterns, fire regulations [too many people], equity of investment, and overall happiness of the attending conference members--who if they get angry enough won't come back next year.) Most speakers would find it still well worth their time to conform to requests to avoid sales and simply raise visibility of their name/image.
There's probably a legal basis for saying the conference organizer's will should dominate, but even just appealing to common sense: If the people running the convention can't control how their convention runs, they can't assure its success or failure on their own terms, and are less likely to offer to host conventions. I would not begrudge Stallman for saying in advance that he was going to do this (though I would recommend that the conference advertise the fact in order to keep people who come from having their expectations violated). I would not begrudge him for saying he'd not want to be photographed. Or he might say meet me later offsite and I'll sign for you under my own terms. But in this latter case, the restaurant or hotel he directed them to might have their own rules. A small number of people exchanging money might not offend a hotel, but if you have lines around the lobby or building, they might insist that you rent a room to avoid clogging things for other people. Venue matters, and one cannot just set up a free enterprise on someone else's property (owned or rented).
Of course, these are just my opinions. I'm not saying I run the world. I'm saying that it's not surprising people objected. And I'm saying that to the extent that he thinks he has a moral cause to press, that moral cause is met by other moral causes pushing back. I'm just articulating the basic framework that some of those forces of pushing back might reasonably take.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Some people will never get it, they don't want to. Of course you can redistribute the source code . That is the whole point.
Instead of thinking that it is madness and could never work they should try looking at some of the many large open source projects and work out why they are so successful. Start with Apache, Samba and Perl then take3 a look at IBM and Sun. ZB
I acquired one of those signatures, and since it's a original (and the GPL didn't fit on the sheet of paper), it is a transfer of ownership and copyright. Hereby I re-release it under the standard BSD license.
I am a software-developer and there is a demand for my software-writing services, so I do charge for that, just as RMS is charging for his autograph-writing services.
The question is whether RMS will charge for the ability to make photocopies or other derivative works of his autographs.
And (continuing the equivocatuion) yes, charging $500 for writing and
revising software, or $200 for just writing software, is better than charging millions of dollars to watch an airplane--I usually end up charging thousands of dollars just to write the initial version or a piece of software, while watching planes usually costs nothing (unless I want to record then, in which case I usually have to buy my own media).
$30 per hour of software-development is more than $5k per week! Quite a living, eh?
-rozzin.
In the photo situation, RMS is asking for a small donation in compensation for his time spent performing the photo op. It is a one-time fee proportional to the amount of his time used. The proper analogy to this in the software business is "work for hire" where a software engineer is paid for his time to write the software and then the person the hired him gets to use the code as he will. RMS has publicly stated that he used this sort of employment to support himself during some of the earlier parts of his software career.
In the software situation you describe, a "nuisance fee" from each user is not proportional to the time spent by the developer in writing the software. In the photo scenario this is analogous, not to the one-time donation RMS requests, but to charging every viewer of the photo a small "nuisance fee".
RMS is being very consistent with his views here. I really don't know if it was intentional or not, but this request for donations he made is acting like a GPL koan, allowing RMS to teach about the GPL through his own actions that at first seem paradoxical. My guess is that it is not intentional per-se, instead, I think he is acting consistently within his own sense of integrity and these little teaching stories just pop out every now and then without an explicit intention to teach on his part.
I noticed the smile in your subject line indicating that perhaps you only meant your post to be a joke. Whether your post was a joke or not, it was essentially anti-RMS, anti-GPL, anti-FOSS FUD. We already have enough of that from people how don't know any better, there is no need for more of the same from people who do.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Here are some pictures of the auction, as well as the receipt given by RMS for the donation.
e ts/72057594117016306/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/executive_override/s
I don't think what he was doing was exactly bad, but he was just asking for misunderstanding...
The only thing that surprises me is the idea that there's any real demand -- outside of a tiny circle, I mean.
Move about five feet away from geekdom and you discover that he's no more important to the world than, say, past bridge champion Pierre Jais. O.K., maybe that's too extreme... certainly he's no more important than Esperanto-creator Ludwig Zamenhof.
Every subculture has its heroes, and every subculture overestimates the value of its heroes to the general public.
Tom Geller
Three dollars, and I'm cutting me own throat!
-- Cheers!
"Besides, earning money under the model of selling it to one person is perfectly possible. It's called contract work. Not all software is made to be sold on the shelf."
That, however, limits the freedom of the developer. You're basically saying that if you want to be paid, you have to write what other people tell you to write.
And many varieties or genres of software simply don't fall into that model, at all.
If you have an idea for software that could be broadly useful, and want to implement it and make it widely accessible for the general public, and earn a living, then you're out of luck.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
and what language was the post written in?
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Aren't autographs information?
;)
Doesn't information want to be free?
Following the logic to its conclusion. . . don't autographs want to be free?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I was there and saw it. RMS was charging R$ 5,00 for autographs AND someone (Leonardo Vaz) auctioned one of his autographs for R$ 23,00 (some accounts say R$ 36,00). Someone also made him sign a receipt of this donation, which stated (in portuguese): "I, Richard Stallman, received R$ 36,00 and a handful of coins for an autograph". There is a picture of this flying around the Internet but I can't find find it.
"Remember that you use his software every day."
Far, far more people use Bill Gates's software every day than RMS's, so what does that prove? (Yes, I know Bill didn't write most of MS's code but RMS didn't write much of the available "free" code either.)
Sheesh, then I repeat: Don't license your software under the GPL!
First, all I'm saying is that under the GPL it's *possible to make money*. Perhaps you don't like the way that works, but there's a very easy solution to that: Don't use the GPL for your work.
And BTW, if you want to be paid, you ALWAYS write what other people want you to write. If you write something for which there's no demand, you get zilch as a reward. It's called capitalism.
I can't wait for this guy to die in his own pile of disgusting, long-haired, fat-guy-in-a-stained-shirt, pile of goo.
Since when does a rant containing no real information and a bunch of hateful ad hominem attacks count as +4 Informative?
Isn't Stallman on the payroll of the FSF?
If so, this "charity" argument is like a university that provides free tuition to the poorest students, which looks good from a public relations standpoint. But they keep jacking up the tuition for everybody else every year, and reward the research faculty with pay raises. ( "Screw U. screws me." ) Somebody's getting rich hiding under the guise of "charity"...
Besides I thought Stallman's carpel tunnel syndrome was so bad that he can't finish the GNU Hurd (which is ten years old and still in pre-alpha), but apparently he can spend a couple of hours signing autographs without complaining about physical pain?
By the way, how much money does the FSF distribute to the projects its sponsors?
In other words, the money didn't go to just FSF Latin America, it also went to the FSF based in the United States.
Isn't Stallman on the payroll of the FSF in the United States?
Yep, that is one very short-sighted view of the GPL. Now, think it through to the next level:
It's a simple matter of complex programming.
He's asking for a contribution to the FSF to compensate for the time he's spending signing autographs instead of doing other work (for the FSF, on code, on answering snot-nose kids's questions about their inability to comprehend the GPL, getting a suntan, whatever).
Your copying the autograph and selling it does not (a) detract from his "selling RMS autographs" because copies are not typically what collectors and GNU/fanpersons are after, and (b) does not cut into his personal time so there is no need for compensation for it.
It's a simple matter of complex programming.
I believe that if you buy a copy of his book, "Free Software, Free Society" that he will be happy to provide his "Happy Hacking" autograph, as he did for my copy.
(Then read it all, especially the chapter "The Right to Read"!)
Also, FSF Associate Members can get him or Eben Moglen to record a personalized greeting if they convince three other people to join the FSF.
I think you would have to be pretty dumb to pay for a Stallman autograph... I would definitely pay to keep him away from my neighborhood for fear of decpreciating propoerty values though. A friend of mine (Indian) had stallamn stay in his home for a couple of days... His wife was not impressed... especially with the hair chewing habit.
RMS was at UIC this week, giving an official speech Friday, and giving a Q&A session with CS students Thursday. After the session he sold off various wares such as T-Shirts, Books, keyfobs, etc.
The guy lives off his speeches. Give him a break. I "donated" $45 by buying a book and a t-shirt.
Now I also shot about 30 mins of footage (stupid kodak camera using ulaw for audio, meaning I couldn't fit more than 30 mins on a 1GB card, video is mp4v 640x480), and he obviously didn't mind. Video WILL be up at http://acm.cs.uic.edu/ at some point this week. Argh.
there's a big difference here - RMS is asked by people for a bit of his time, so he asks them to contribute. When you code on FOSS, it's often to scratch your own itch. If somebody asks you to code something for them, by RMS's logic you can charge them, sure, no problem. 8-)
Yesterday was the time to do it right. Are we having a REVOLUTION yet?
I suspect an awareness may be dawning that his star is starting to fade. He's probably trying to cash in while he still can, before he slides into more or less total irrelevance.
To his devotees, Stallman can do no wrong. To the rest of us, he's just one more cult leader. Wasn't the first, won't be the last.
It's unlikely he would try to charge someone else who appeared in a press photo with him. It is only when he is milling with the "little people" that he charges them. So there is an inherently seamy side to the practice that lurks around it whether it is a good cause or not.
Someone I think gets it right (with a link to Robby the Robot) is Anne Francis because the karma works out. She sells her autograph with photos or her book. For bothering a little old lady in tennis shoes, you are getting a product and she gets some pocket change. Some of it gets donated to charity. And, what is quite cool, she's a senior citizen with a blog.
Well when I read it I understood that as the name of the event - names don't necessarily have to be translated.
But then I checked and it looks like it was half translated from the original name "7 Fórum Internacional Software Livre". Well, whatever.
exactly.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I got Stallman to autograph my book but later noticed that my Linus Torvalds signature had been changed to GNU/Linus Torvalds
I was just curious what his reaction would be. Or what if I distributed his speeches for free so nobody would have to pay and attend. Given all the insane contradictions in the very ideas behind the GPL, I can't help wondering his reactions to various situations.
"Sufferin' succotash."
I bet far more time has gone into the philosophy, concept and wording of the GPL than just about any other software license on the planet.
As for reselling recording of his talks, ask yourself: why do people go to a music concert once they own the recording that is on tour?
Aloso, once the ideas are out why bother selling his speeches. Simply regurgitate them of your own free will (voice) and sell those. Would these do as well as his speaking tours do you think?
It's a simple matter of complex programming.
I don't know where the CDR got his numbers, but as of 5/1/06, the dollar is at about 2:1 face value, but R$10 is especially much when there are people in Brazil who make R$200 a month.
On RMS' page he links to a petition in favor of network neutrality.