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Transcript of Talk with Richard Stallman
An anonymous reader writes "This is the transcript of the talk with Richard Stallman, the father of GNU in the background of the 4th International GPLv3 Conference being held at Bangalore where RMS is a prominent delegate. He answers questions related to GPLv3, DRM and a couple of other queries."
Yes, he is, but sometimes that's what it takes to get the job done. He doesn't let people walk all over him: he is self-assertive because he believes what he believes so strongly. If it weren't for him, free and open source software wouldn't exist the way it does today. I'm sure it would exist, but we'd be very far behind the power curve.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
To me it seems like RMS totally dodged the question. What is "...there are many people who don't have to make money" supposed to mean in this context? I'm sure there are people that don't have to make money, but most people do have to make money, and I wonder why RMS is so opposed to economic acceptance. It seems that he believes F/OSS's noble goals will be corrupted if Linux gains momentum in the corporate world, but don't we have the GPL to prevent just that? Ultimately, corporate support will help secure the foundation of F/OSS -- I'm thinking of IBM and Sun, and the corporate support behind OpenBSD and FreeBSD.
They are the leaders of a large community.
When he says (without the careful wordsmithing) that developers shouldn't be paid, and that they should just either be independently wealthy or find other means of supporting themselves, he demonstrates an almost willful disconnection with/disdain for many of the very people who praise his efforts.
If you are a paid programmer, RMS is not your friend.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Is it just me, or are other people getting a bit wearied of people distilling this rather complex world into the rather simplistic ideas of good and evil? My god - the world is not a comic book.
There is no need to be parsimonious with your gratitude. You say that as if we must choose between giving thanks to both the community and RMS and Torvalds. By the standard you endorse we end up essentially saying "what have you done for me lately?" instead of valuing both the community including both men for their work in the past and their continued work on things that matter.
After all, even by the silly logic of valuing what is and not what was, Torvalds and RMS both deserve thanks; Linus Torvalds is still involved in Linux kernel development, despite not writing all of the code in his fork of that kernel. Richard Stallman is the author of the most widely used free software licenses—the GNU GPL, the GNU LGPL, and the free documentation license the GNU FDL. And when it comes to the GPL (the subject of the talk at the heart of this /. thread), Eben Moglen says "there is no other copyright license in the world that is so strongly identified with the achievements, and the philosophy, of a single public figure".
Digital Citizen
The fact is that RMS is loaded, and he hangs out with other such people (you know the kind.... they come up with a concept, hype it to venture capitalists, run the company into the ground or simply never produce a product, but they walk away with millions), and he is completely and totally out of touch with those of us poor souls that (God forbid!) have to WORK in order to earn money and pay our bills. Not all of us can be a blowhard that gets paid for spouting nonsense like "First of all there are many people who don't have to make money. " He sounds like a smug, pretentious asshole to me.
He doesn't have a lack of understanding. He knows why people don't want to share. He merely disagrees with them at a very fundamental level. He disagrees with the concept of information as property.
A lot of people are paid to create software - custom software for some particular customer's needs. For me, the act of writing of software is the process of creating wealth, not the act of selling it. Enough companies make their living just producing code rather than licensing the same code over to a million customers.
Now, when I create something out of nothing, I expect to be paid. But that doesn't go against any Free Software concept to be remunerated for work, but it does go against a few of mine if you merely sell licenses instead of the work done. Proprietary firms do exactly that, they sell you the use of some code, but not the code itself. And RMS might be a hardliner, but we need those in moderation too - because otherwise the rational people among us will accept compromises which might be harmful in the long run ... (yes, I'm talking about ESR).
In short, with free software, you get what you pay for and sometimes a few developers whom you didn't pay for.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Lemme see if I am following this thread:
Kind of puts a damper on a discussion when the mention of someone's name in any context provokes you to to start questioning his entire life work.
Chill out. We know he's a bit nuts, but the GNU and the GPL are an important part of the community, even if some of you wish that it wasn't. I am entirely capable of respecting the man's work and what he's trying to accomplish without having to worship his every word.
yp.
>> Stallman has never suggested that software developers should not be paid.
> Is that so? "The programmers writing non-free software? They are doing something antisocial. They should get some other job. [- Stallman]"
Stallman is not against making money for writing software. As I said elsewhere in this topic, he would probably support e.g. FLOSS developers getting paid by governments. What he is against is non-free software. So, it follows that he is against getting paid for making non-free software. He is also against paying money for non-free software, using non-free software, teaching people how to use non-free software... you get the point.
...then his viewpoint is shared by an overwhelming majority. Most people have no problem prohibiting whatever their personal moral code says is wrong. Real, honest-to-goodness "live and let live" is rare. Up to a point, that's fine; I think that murder is not a morally acceptable way to make a living, and I encourage you to find other means of support. I doubt Stallman considers non-Free Software to be as bad as murder, but he clearly prefers that you find other means of support.
Consider those claims again:
Claim 1: Many people don't have to make money. Correct.
Claim 2: Even if you have to make a living, not everything you do has to make money. Not true for everyone, but certainly for the average working human being.
He nowhere states that devs should not profit from programming. However, I agree that he feels that devs should freely contribute.
Anyway, your poorly supported conclusions show that you need to improve your logical reasoning.