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Stallman Does Slides -- and Brevity -- For TEDx
New submitter ciaran2014 writes Richard Stallman's long-format talks are well-known — there are videos going back to 2001 and transcripts dating back to 1986 — but he recently condensed his free software talk down to 14 minutes and set it to hand-drawn slides for TEDxGeneva (video link). He introduces with the four freedoms, as always, and then moves on to spyware, surveillance, non-free drivers, free software in schools, non-free javascript, Service as a Software Substitute and how free software is today necessary for a strong democracy. As usual, the talk is suitable for non-technical audiences.
for SaaS is SaaSS (Service as a Software Substitute).
*phew* Just think, it could've been SaaGNU/SS and our hallway conversations would've taken that much longer.
One of the things that I've always been confused by with Stallman is where he draws the line between what in his view must be free open-source software and what can be free non-open-source, and what can be truly paid commercial software.
This confusion stems from his fairly regular changes as to what Linux distributions he's willing to endorse or criticize. At one point he was very happy with the Debian folks, but at some point decided that their making available non-GPL or other free-to-distribute-but-not-modify software was anathema, and last I looked (admittedly awhile ago) there were only a handful of very obscure Linux distributions that he actually endorsed. They're obscure because they don't have the software available that users want in order to have their computing experiences be the way they want them to be.
I get that the platform being open-source is a good thing, but I don't think that where he draws the line between platform and applications works well.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Shortsighted scum.
There's a big difference between physical things that have limits (land, food, water, etc) and 'intellectual property' which can be copied any number of times at virtually no cost. Until physical items are limitless or there is overwhelming cost to reproduce ideas, GPL and communism will be incomparable.
In the end though, it's effect is mind numbing.
If we could go back to pre-PowerPoint days for a moment, there were three main methods of presentation
1. Viewgraphs. These were the old 8.5 by 11 inch Ozalid or halftone images on transparent media placed on a light table with a projection lens.
2. 35 mm slides - this was for when you wanted to have a polished presentation. You knew you were getting some attention when presenting these.
3. Back to the view graph projector - the roll of transparent material that you drew on with a sharpie or similar instrument. Whne you were finished, you rolled a fresh surface, and drew some more.
What was good about these? The first two took a little work to prepare. And despite the idea that labor costs need to be minimized, just teh preparation effort mad you whittle the information down. That whittling process made presentations better.
The third method of real time drawing was pretty crude, but incredibly efficient for brainstorming.
Contrast to today, where it appears not a thought will be left unsaid. Presentations in general have become worse with the advent of PowerPoint. The ease with which you can add "one more slide" maenas that many people will add 25 "one more slides".
In the end, it is mind numbing. Engineers will spend time telling you about some minutiae they find interesting, Bean counters will spend forever trying to justify hiring a 100 k a year person to keep track of pencil theft, which is costing the company 5 hundred dollars a year, and on and on.
I'ts not a get off my lawn issue, it's just that the process has been made so easy it is abused, and pointless points are consistently made.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Idiotic comment! You obviously have no idea of what "Free" means in "Free Society". I would suggest a study of the history of development of economic theory to educate yourself.
As usual, the talk is suitable for non-technical audiences.
I'd say the talk is primarily directed at a non-technical audience. There's not anything in it that /. 's haven't heard before from Stallman.
At some point, though, I would like to hear what he has to say on corporations that produce free software, but at the same time have large US military contracts and work closely with the intelligence agencies that are involved with ubiquitous surveillance.
Oh, and the slide showing the relative size of the Linux kernel in importance to the size of GNU was kind of unintentionally humorous.
A more useful link to the video.
I started doing presentations back in the days of 35-mm slides. I didn't have to prepare them myself—I sent the text to the corporate slide presentation department, and they sent me back the slides.
I prepared my presentation by first writing out what I wanted to say, word for word. I then distilled that document into a few topic lines, which I had made into slides, generally about three topics to a slide. At this point I discarded the original manuscript. When I gave the presentation I glanced at each slide to remind me of what I wanted to say, then spoke extemporaniously.
Today I prepare the slides myself using LibreOffice Impress, the free equivalent of Microsoft PowerPoint, but I use the same method.
Uh, "my way or the highway" is what the copyright industry ascertains by buying politicians. It is easiest to buy politicians in the U.S.A. where corruption is legal, and then use the U.S. military to promote "U.S. values" abroad in order to ensure access to global resources that then are used for using market pressure to promote "U.S. values" abroad.
That kind of "my way or get wiped off the planet" attitude is quite more unfitting for a free society than Stallman's.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought it was possible to deploy "service as a software substitute" in a manner consistent with free software philosophy. Make the server software's source code available to the service's subscribers and let the subscriber download backups of his account. AGPL was designed for applications intended for use in free SaaSS, and though Google isn't free, it does offer Takeout for the second point.
Stallman is not a "communist"...it's 2014, and we've progressed as a society beyond pointless politically charged words like 'communism' because it means 'totalitarian state' in some contexts and 'socialist utopia' in others...one has freedom one does not...it has cause **litterally** millions of unecessary arguments for decades in the 20th century
slapping a dumb label like "communist" on theories like Stallman's only serves to cause confusion and pointless arguments
Thank you Dave Raggett
To me, "free society" means being able to have and express that opinion and perspective without people like you blaming them for being idiots just because they don't side with your view of the world. Think about what you said and its implications for a second.
Have you noticed that Stallman only has power to the extent that people agree with him? That he has no means of enforcing anything other than by making a convincing argument? His highway has less tolls than any alternative.
Give Stallman some software with a BSD license and see how he responds.
He's of the "It's only free as long as I say it's as free as I want it to be" people.
There's a big difference between physical things that have limits (land, food, water, etc) and 'intellectual property' which can be copied any number of times at virtually no cost. Until physical items are limitless or there is overwhelming cost to reproduce ideas, GPL and communism will be incomparable.
Actually, a fundamental core philosophy is very similar; the idea that people will contribute willingly based on their abilities independent of what they get in return.The challenge is to get people to contribute beyond that needed to meet their needs. For exam,e, someone might be quite capable of fixing many bugs but will only fix those that impact their ability to us etch software and leave the rest to others. There is nothing wrong with free software and I actually use it; the challenge is how do you get people to continually invest time, money and other resources for which they will get nothing in return?
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
There's a big difference between physical things that have limits (land, food, water, etc) and 'intellectual property' which can be copied any number of times at virtually no cost.
You are comparing the wrong things. Both physical things and intellectual property have two costs: Cost To Produce and Cost To Distribute. While the cost to distribute is near nothing for intellectual property, the cost to produce is not.
Physical things have limits like land, water, etc, and intellectual property has limits such as the number of smart educated people in the world. Nothing that requires human labor is free. Nothing.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
For those who want something more useful than webm:
http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video...
The Gnu\Linux slide was accurate though... perhaps it would have been better portrayed with Linux as a tree trunk with Gnu roots and branches. Where the roots would be toolchian etc.. and the branches the rest of userland.
Its been 20 years. We've seen lots of successful open source business models by this point. Mostly people don't contribute when they get nothing in return rather:
B takes code written by A whom could care less about advancing B's purpose and as a result of the license ends up contributing to C for a purpose B could care less about.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
-- George Bernard Shaw
You talk like a narrowminded dullard who thinks the world starts and ends with the United States.
Stallman is the crazy outlier. Where he stands, at the very edge, is exactly where we need him to be. You dont have to follow all of it, but there would be less of his ideas if he was more concerned with being central and accessible. There is a point to Stallman being far out there, its so the rest of us dont have to. Let him do his thing.
Good-bye
This is a troll, and not even a good one. Someone mod this mother fucker down into oblivion.
Indeed, free software projects aren't even run as democratic organizations; rather, they are emergent hierarchies formed via the spontaneous participation of individuals.
Each person involved in free software chooses how to appropriate his own resources—that is, how to appropriate his own capital, including time, intellect, money, etc. Democracy, on the other hand, is about choosing how to appropriate someone else's resources, especially against that someone else's will, especially by threat of violence as punishment for noncompliance.
Democracy is no friend of freedom, and certainly no friend of free software.
Over the past few years, I've learned that people care more about "freedom" when it's called "flexibility". So I've come up with my own sound bite to summarize the benefit of free software: "Free software is flexible software. Using free software gives you the flexibility to hire anyone to make the program do what you want instead of some other big company wants."
Ad hominem attacks are all the rage on Slashdot lately.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
He doesn't propose forcing people to use free software. Only says that it is morally superior. You can agree or disagree, but trying to scare people with big words like 'far left' or even ridiculous comparisons to communism - is disingenuous and achieves nothing.
Give Stallman some software with a BSD license and see how he responds.
The FSF recognizes that a non-copyleft free software license is better in some cases, such as when trying to replace entrenched patented MP3 with newcomer free Vorbis (source; more reliable ones would be appreciated). It's also better for programs shorter than the GPL itself, as mentioned in the page about the suggested license for build scripts and the GPL FAQ's recommendation of the Apache License 2.0.
Its been 20 years. We've seen lots of successful open source business models by this point. Mostly people don't contribute when they get nothing in return rather:
B takes code written by A whom could care less about advancing B's purpose and as a result of the license ends up contributing to C for a purpose B could care less about.
Most of the successful open source business models have been around creating a business where selling support and ancillary services brings in the revenue and justifies ongoing development effort. OSS happened to provide a good foundation to build on but the underlying motive is profit driven; it just happens that others benefit as well. There's nothing wrong with that, in fact it helps strengthen support for OSS; it however belies the notion that if you make it free the community will create this wonderful product.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Things I noticed from the video:
11:25 "Don't bring any proprietary software to this class." So which cell phone running free software should students be putting in their bags instead? Even Replicant OS, which is based on Android Open Source Project with the non-free parts cut out, uses non-free radio firmware.
12:48 "So how to help? Well you can write free software." So how would you go about feeding yourself while you write a free video game? Video games can't rely on support to the same extent as software critical to a business.
It's richly ironic that a man so utterly committed to his ideals has faltered with the fonts on his slides. There are a few sans-serif fonts available licensed under the GNU GPL like the (very ugly) Liberation Sans.
he should be working on a FOSS presentation editor.
What a load of Redmond Propaganda. If I have your binary, I will find lots of vulnerabilities because I am an x86 assembly expert with a CS degree. And I have some serious debugging tools. Of course, I also need plenty of time to do that. So if my financiers are the U.S. military or the Chinese military or the Russian mafia, I will get all your "hidden" bugs. Google did this for a demonstration and found dozens of exploitable bugs in Adobe products.
So you are "secure" against the badly funded criminals, but everything is open to the really dangerous criminals.
Talking about open-source businesses is missing the point entirely. Most businesses that are successful as a result of open source (or Free Software, for the RMS-style folks) or that contribute significantly to open source are not 'open-source businesses' any more than companies that use Windows and Office are 'closed-source businesses. The difference is that one category of businesses realises that writing software is expensive and copying software is trivial, so spends its investment on the software parts of its infrastructure paying people to write software (typically customising and improving existing projects), whereas the other pays someone for copies of software and hopes that that will give them an incentive to produce software that's more like they want.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Well, a lot revolves around the U.S. simply because it's politic system is the most readily corrupt one while at the same time wielding extensive power.
I will be snide and I will not post as AC. There are too many comments labelling Stallman as a uncompromising, communist, extremist, liberal, etc... Though it may be true, without his uncompromising stance on freedom, would we have GNU/Linux? Would the Open Source movement even exists?
Sure, there would be source code out there on the web, and the BSDs would probably exists, but he's fighting to ensure that we do not lose the very freedoms that we enjoy with (forgive the term) FLOSS software.
Yes, I run a Linux distro with non-free warts (Mint), I use proprietary software (Steam). But for the most part, I'm in control of my computer, and quite thankful of that. I may not live in the 'ideal' free world of Stallman, but without folks like Stallman and their extreme position on freedom, I suspect the world of computers would be much more closed.
Thank you Richard Stallman for your fight.
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
"Mostly people don't contribute when they get nothing in return rather:"
Basic issue is that they have to function within a otherwise capitalistic system. If they had food, clothing and shelter covered for the rest of their life, things would perhaps operate differently.
Even if those smart, educated people have, say, a personal farm that provide them with the needs for survival with time to spare for other activities?
Lots of cowards out there call themselves Followers of Christ, but they all love a good hanging of Today's Jesuses like Bradley Manning or Ed Snowden. In other words, we exist in a sea of egotism and nastiness.
It's the "moral" connotation to which I object. There is no means of putting source code on the same behavior continuum as, say, sexual mores or discussion of the afterlife. There are pragmatic reasons to support the FSF, and I do, but they are not moral ones.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
people who try to claim that the bsd license is morally superior are ridiculous. You're just trying to justify your whoring.
Concur. I think that there are a spectrum of motives for doing code, from joy to business.
What matters is that the legal system allow and deconflict a flourishing of motives, not that Any One True Opinion prevail.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Both sides of the aisle possess those attributes.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
I don't necessarily agree with everything he has to say (as a developer, my livelihood depends on being paid a reasonable wage for my efforts. With free/open source software, I think that's a harder thing to do), but he does make a number of good points, in a concise way that's easily understood by non-technical audiences.
I'll point out, though, that software "freedom" doesn't necessarily give protection and security from "the bad guys" (the NSA, etc.). Consider heartbleed..
Extremism has no place in a free society.
Slightly off topic but I watched the video. I've read a lot of what Stallman has written but haven't heard him speak before. He's a pretty bad public speaker judging by this TED talk. His slides looked like something a sixth grader would draw, he sounded like a robot and he clearly didn't spend enough time rehearsing. He kept looking at his slides as if it was a surprise what was coming next. If you want people to take your arguments seriously, having a good argument is not sufficient. You have to be able to present it well. He's been making these arguments long enough that he ought to be more polished by now. I respect the stance he is taking but based on this talk he's doing a pretty crap job of being an evangelist to the general public.
I really can't imagine anyone coming away from that presentation convinced that they've had their eyes opened. His argument was moralistic but he didn't really explain convincingly the consequences of not-free software or why anyone should care. He explained that we control software or it controls us as if it was axiomatic which it is not. Here on slashdot we understand what he's talking about (whether or not we agree) but a more general audience will NOT be convinced by such a superficial argument especially when presented in such an amateurish way.
Stallman's a bit of an extremist, and wants all software to be open-source.
No he doesn't. He wants it to be free. Had you watched the video you would have seen him negatively describe open source as a way for people to avoid the subject of free software. He doesn't care at all about open source except insofar as it gets us to free software as defined by himself.
"labelling is pointless"
ugh
using words is "labelling"...if what you say is true then speech itself is pointless
the problem isn't "labelling"...it's people who consciously affect the meanings of words for strategic ends over decades...like the word "feminism"...
with "communism" it's common knowledge that the word isn't helpful for discussion...
"labelling" a thing is necessary...every idea we can think of can be "labelled" by representing it with words
what is pointless?
**arguing over definitions instead of ideas**
many people say "i disagree with Stallman".....which is *fine*...what is trolling is the insistence on making the point of controversy something that will always cause endless arguments
arguing over bullshit is pointless..."labelling" things is necessary
Thank you Dave Raggett
and more about religion. It's about that dogmatic with him. Does he drive a car?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Actually no. Most of the successful open source business models are not ones in which the open source product is, for the entity writing the code, just an expense not a revenue source and broad participation help reduce that expense. The assumption had been that ancillary services would be the primary, and certainly there are plenty of those but that has not been the dominant class.
Give Stallman some software with a BSD license and see how he responds.
BSD software has a strong tendency to turn into proprietary products - i.e. not free. That doesn't really bother someone like Stallman who is a programmer but it causes a huge problem for the majority of people who are not programmers like myself. My skills lie elsewhere and for the majority of us out there functionally there is little difference to me between a BSD license and a proprietary license.
He's of the "It's only free as long as I say it's as free as I want it to be" people.
Doesn't mean he's wrong. A BSD license may as well be proprietary because eventually it will become proprietary if it is of any use at all.
Stallman is the crazy outlier. Where he stands, at the very edge, is exactly where we need him to be. You dont have to follow all of it, but there would be less of his ideas if he was more concerned with being central and accessible.
Just for the edification of the other readers here, which parts specifically do you feel you don't have to follow?
For the record, I know exactly which ones I would choose, but I'm interested to know what exactly you think makes Stallmann a 'crazy outlier'. Because, in my estimation, it would take a lot for someone to qualify for that kind of labeling.
I disagree with his statement that Linux distro maintainers allow non-free components because they're not sufficiently committed to freedom, but I don't think him 'crazy' for having said it. I think his blanket characterisation of profit motive as evil is too much of a generalisation, but tragically, I don't think he's entirely wrong in stating that the effects of profit motive on a lot of commercial organisations has been detrimental to our freedom - dangerously so. So yeah: same conclusion, more temperate language. That's not nearly crazy or even an outlying opinion, to my mind.
There is a point to Stallman being far out there, its so the rest of us dont have to. Let him do his thing.
I take your point, but I remind you that the same could have been said about Ghandi, or even Martin Luther King, when people were blaming him for the violence in Selma and the bombing in Birmingham.
See, the problem I have with this kind of rhetoric is that you seem willing to stand to the side at a witch-burning and say, 'Well, I would never cast a spell, but I can see why people bought magic services from her.' It's a little disingenuous, isn't it, that you would be willing to profit from someone's courage, when you're not willing to defend it?
Again, this isn't a case of 'My Free Software, Right or Wrong.' On the contrary, I'm arguing that you can quibble all you like with the arguments Stallmann makes, and the rhetoric he makes them with. But I have to ask: With an attitude like yours, how much have you actually done to promote freedom?
(Real question: I'm open to correction.)
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Actually no. Most of the successful open source business models are not ones in which the open source product is, for the entity writing the code, just an expense not a revenue source and broad participation help reduce that expense. The assumption had been that ancillary services would be the primary, and certainly there are plenty of those but that has not been the dominant class.
I guess we should star by getting agreement on terms. I consider red hat, for example, makes money selling ancillary services a as predominant model, where those services are everything from installations and updates to added features beyond the base GPL version. Does that agree with your definition? What do you consider the dominate class?
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
physical prisons and EULAS are the same thing. I'm sorry, but when you equate educational use of paid software with teaching kids to smoke cigarettes, you've gone 'round the bend.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
There are people who have food, clothing, and shelter covered. They're not the people who are contributing. (ok, maybe a few basement dwellers and college students are!)
Copyright (c) 1990 - 2014 Dice. All rights reserved. Use of this comment is subject to certain Terms and Conditions.
You do know what an _analogy_ is? And that an analogy is something different than equivocation? And that you have to pay some attention to which aspects the speaker intends to point out as being analogous?
Just in case you really haven't figured it out yet: He was not presenting the argument that proprietary software causes lung cancer, but that the use of proprietary software in educational institutions creates a "habit" that requires effort to break out of, and thus a dependency on the producer of the respective software.
Also, given that he explicitly talks about selling free software, you cannot really have paid much attention if you think that he is against the use of paid software in education.
We agree on the definition of the the ancillary services and I agree RedHat makes their money that way. I'd say the dominate class would be things like Rackspace which develops (with RedHat) OpenStack but is primarily selling CPU, electricity, network and renting hardware. The management system they use is just an expense. Microsoft / Azure, Amazon / AWS, Verizon's cloud... would all be in the same boat. Or another example would be HP's work which makes its money selling hardware or enterprise packages to run on top of open source OSes.
It has been written on the wall for a long time. Stallman will eventually give up the "Free Software" discourse, replacing it for the better fitted "Free Users", as oposed to "Propietary Users". He's almost there, judging from the video.
Also, software cannot be Free, only "for free".
I agree with much of what Stallman claims and congratulate him on such a well constructed and delivered presentation, however I am still left with a felling that perhaps his ideals are, in places, utopian and at odd with some of the baser aspects of human nature such that, while they sound good in principle, they cannot be universally implemented without exposing society to collateral risks. It boils down to this, Stallman seems to see human society as a singular organism that is capable of maintaining its integrity simply though homoeostatic feedback from the open flow of knowledge and information, but the human body can't even manage such a thing without eventually suffering from diseases that are all manifestations of dis-regulation, i.e. cancer, autoimmune or senescence (which is an anticancer mechanism). e.g. True racism is the social equivalent of an autoimmune disease and phenomena such as we see emerging in Syria are humanity's version of cancer.
The human body uses reproduction and evolution to ensure continuity in the face of these problems, but what are the social equivalents of these processes that we need to implement in order to ensure humanity's freedom in perpetuity?
Stallman's utopia seems in part (and I do hope I am wrong) to be like a optimistic eunuch with no immune system who is living blissfully in the moment. How is that sustainable in the face of the nasty shit the universe manifests from time to time?
We agree on the definition of the the ancillary services and I agree RedHat makes their money that way. I'd say the dominate class would be things like Rackspace which develops (with RedHat) OpenStack but is primarily selling CPU, electricity, network and renting hardware. The management system they use is just an expense. Microsoft / Azure, Amazon / AWS, Verizon's cloud... would all be in the same boat. Or another example would be HP's work which makes its money selling hardware or enterprise packages to run on top of open source OSes.
It sounds like we are in agreement here. I'd consider Rackspace, Red Hat, et al similar OSS business models.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
+1. Too many people in this discussion are rabidly calling stallman disenters stupid names to try and color them as "non-free" or "uneducated". Free means not having to follow. Get a grip extremists.
No true scotsman about freedom!
very good talk.
While I still have a soft spot in my heart for the FSF, I must admit it is not so much of a love affair as it used to be.
GPLv3 (and it's LGPLv3 cousin) pretty much changed the course. Previously Richard Stallman and the FSF were adamant about not being "against business", but then they pulled out all the stops to put a knife in the heart of Tivo (you know, because Tivo had the gall to make a successful business out of FSF software).
Now that Tivo's been dealt a blow, GPL is so "viral" that from a legal point of view, it is untouchable in business. That's why Apache's licenses have been doing so well.
B takes code written by A whom could care less about advancing B's purpose and as a result of the license ends up contributing to C for a purpose B could care less about.
Could care less about or couldn't care less about? The two are opposites and change the entire meaning of what you're talking about. I would seem like you mean "couldn't" but you did write "could" twice there so I'm wondering if that's what you're misunderstanding or there is some other error in the point you're trying to make.
Its been 20 years. We've seen lots of successful open source business models by this point.
For corporate software yes, not so much for end users. The most common OSS model is support contracts but end users predominantly get their support from community forums, we've seen the advertising model viewed with disdain (and mostly people use adblockers or would patch the software to remove them anyway) then there is paying for enhancements which is another thing end users don't do due to it being prohibitively expensive. Ultimately the changes and improvements to most free software is driven by corporate needs.
That's one of the things about open source producers and contributors not end users drive the software not purchasers. But that's not necessarily terrible. Android is the most successful OS on the planet, its open. Webkit: Firefox and Chrome. Libre / Open Office (about 18% of the office market). I'd say we are seeing success for end users. Certainly changes are driven by corporate needs but corporate needs and end users align sometimes.
Since this a liberal establishment:
Profit by acting, drinking, and by living responsibly!
Will there be a video on eating parts of your feet? I'm sorry bit I wouldn't want R.S. I serve me up a bowl of soup, let alone his ideas on OS.
I know, giving rights to users is going to bring the end of western civilization. I mean what assholes, protecting those people.
Just for the edification of the other readers here, which parts specifically do you feel you don't have to follow?
For the record, I know exactly which ones I would choose, but I'm interested to know what exactly you think makes Stallmann a 'crazy outlier'. Because, in my estimation, it would take a lot for someone to qualify for that kind of labeling.
On a number of occasions RMS has been asked how professional software developers can make enough money to earn a normal middle class income using only Free software licensing, and his response has been that earning money should not be a priority, to the extent that if a developer cannot earn enough money to support a family, that's ok. Software developers shouldn't have children. (example link)
If he had said that most software developers shouldn't expect to have as much money as Gates/Ballmer/Zuckerberg/Jobs/Ellison type people, I'd have been ok with that, but to take it to the extreme that you should deny developers the ability to have children, one of the most basic and fundamental life experiences, that was what tipped the balance into 'crazy outlier' in my opinion.
Android is the most successful OS on the planet, its open.
Well only somewhat, most Android distributions use a proprietary GUI layer, or proprietary Google Play Services and pretty much every single one in use has non-free software for driving the hardware. It's open out of convenience rather than ideology.
Webkit: Firefox and Chrome.
Chrome and Firefox are supported by Google's Ad revenues so yes the end user needs are met in order to drive advertising profit.
Certainly changes are driven by corporate needs but corporate needs and end users align sometimes.
Agreed, sometimes they do though often they do not so that is why I don't think free software will ever fully supplant proprietary software.
Video games are the worst example... I think it was ID released the code for Quake but the art is still not free. This means anyone can port or package the Quake engine for any device. There is even Quake for a little hand held device called the Open Pandora. People have improved the Quake engine and even created other games. But if I want to play with the original game creators art I still legally have to buy it.
Gaming is a fairly good example where the code is only part of the finished product and people could just purchase art assets for open source game engines.
after non-free javascript what's next? Year of GNU/HURD on desktop?
will we never go back to it?
Plus I know that nicotine is physically addictive and a software brand is not. His idea that students in schools that use non-free software "can't learn anything" for programming is simply false. I did pay attention to the part where he says "So you should only bring free software to class, except as a reverse engineering exercise." Again, it's like saying you can't buy a car unless you want to learn to build your own (which you can't do because how the bought car works is a secret). "Instrument of unjust power" - give me a break. If that's true about software, then it's true about everything ever printed, broadcast or distributed, and anything you ever purchased, including clothing and food. "Lighten up, Francis." You wanna make an OS? Great. Join the crowd. But don't tell people they are violating people's basic freedom if they don't embrace your disrtibution model and tell them how wrong they are to do so. Just pitch your stuff. If it's good, people will use it. No need to demonize everyone else in the process.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
And the OpenSSL bug along with various decade+ old bugs in the Linux kernel prove without a doubt that open source is by no means the answer when it comes to security and no better than closed source.
Funny, I'm pretty sure you just made a pun.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
from free in practice, i.e. he is missing any concept of substantive freedom or constitutive practice.
Most users can make this distinction easily.
Free in theory but utterly constrained in practice is something most users don't care for. Since most users are not coders, most are much freer in practice with software that "just works." Sure, they *could in theory* be more free with free software that does less, since they could just rewrite the missing parts themselves, without IP encumbrances, but in practice, they would have to dedicate time and resources to learning how to code and architect software that most do not have the time and resources to dedicate.
The choice between "live without functionality that makes you more practically free" and "sacrifice other important parts of your life and study to become a programmer instead if you want that functionality" does not feel like freedom to most users, it feels like constraint.
On the other hand, "take this money that you already have, buy a product that you can already afford, and do the entire list of things you'd like to do" feels very much like freedom to most people.
Stallman's argument is a long-view, edge-case worry that will never affect most users. I'd argue that for 90 percent of the users out there, limiting themselves only to free software would actually make them less free in practice, because the actual, real-world universe of things they could likely manage to do with their tech on a day-to-day basis as a result would, in practice, be shorter.
Stallman's myopia is not new—it goes fairly far back in western philosophy. But as has long been pointed out, finding a way to drop out of society may be the path to the greatest freedom in theory, but in practice, society (roads, planes, trains, automobiles, electricity, grocery stores, and so on) makes most of us more free, even though it comes with a bunch of restrictions (a.k.a. laws) that don't afflict the lone "natural man" that has no connection to it.
But in fact the lone "natural man" is unlikely to ever be able to duplicate, in practice, every enablement and enabling facility that society is able to grant—even if he is free to duplicate them himself, without rules, when outside of society—in theory.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The proper word for what RMS advocates is not free. It's public. He wants software to be strictly a public endevour, like a public park, or a public school.
Wrong. I can't change the "public park" according to my private wishes.
If you really want to call some software public, then it must be proprietary software because the government can send people to Microsoft or Apple any time and request them to spy on users, let them hack into computers, etc. - The Windows or iOS ecosystem is in that way just like a public park.
Free software is much more private than that because it is not controlled by a corporation which can be forced to do the government's bidding.
Note, there's nothing wrong with having public parks or schools. I take exception to the idea that we should have *only* public land and public schools.
In fact there is a lot wrong for public schools, and they are one of the things the state should immediately get out of. (and public schools among central banking was one of the planks in the communist manifesto, BTW.) But that is another topic altogether.
Despite the many regards regarding quality I find his presentation absolutely refreshing, because it's personal and direct, not anonymous like the usual powerpoint presentation are.
Also he talks with passion and does NOT sound rehearsed - that's a big plus.
Nothing in Stallman's philosophy precludes profit-driven development - on the contrary, he actively encourages it !
He precludes a certain METHOD of profit generation, not the idea of profit.
Your response is like saying "We can't have pollution standards because saying you can't make profit by dumping strychnine in my drinking water is the same saying you can't make profit at all".
There is absolutely no free software problem with profit. There is a freedom problem with software that are sold in one PARTICULAR bad way because the harms that it causes to the public far outweigh the profit earned by the seller.
The only thing Stallman has ever done is point out the age-old lesson that if you don't force the medicine seller to tell you what's in his medicine most of it ends up being snake-oil.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Quite a lot of smaller projects, notably ones that target individuals, have voluntary donation based business models - and make enough to keep the developers' bills paid so they can write the software. Because a dollar here or a dollar there is not prohibitively expensive, and it adds up quite a lot if you have a few thousand people who do so every month which for a reasonably successful end-user project these days would only require about a 25% donation rate.
This is the exact same business model that humble bundle uses.
For quite a few years I maintained a project that was the market-leader in it's class for free software. I never made money out of end-users but I ran a successful business based on selling features to other business. My software was a management tool used for running a type of small business - a lot of indy such businesses used it, some NGO's distributed it for variations on the theme - but there were also quite a few big companies who were franchising business built around it. They wanted customized management software that would protect their franchised brand and offer functionality that the indy guys didn't care about (like integration between franchises) - and they paid me very handsomely to develop those for them.
Of course they COULD go to anybody to do it - but they didn't because I knew the code better than anybody and could do it cheaper.
For doing it, I would charge them an hourly rate. I would also make them a choice. I could either include the features they wanted back in the main branch for others to use (including competitors) or I could keep it in it's own branch - never publicly distributed to anybody else (hence without violation of the GPL) - and if any other customer wanted the same feature I would have to pay somebody else to clean-room it. But if they wanted feature exclusivity - the rate-per-hour was doubled.
I made very good money that way - drove a nice car, had a nice home. Eventually the technology changed and the market for that kind of business dissapeared almost entirely (actually - mobile replaced it) and so I moved on to other things (no point writing code nobody needs anymore).
Basically - you have no idea how many people successfully do the very things you just claimed nobody does.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Nothing in Stallman's philosophy precludes profit-driven development - on the contrary, he actively encourages it ! He precludes a certain METHOD of profit generation, not the idea of profit.
Your response is like saying "We can't have pollution standards because saying you can't make profit by dumping strychnine in my drinking water is the same saying you can't make profit at all".
There is absolutely no free software problem with profit.
Of course, and nothing I said is anything remote to your drinking water example. I did point out that profit drives much free software development; if only because it is difficult to maintain enthusiasm for development by volunteers over time or to get bugs fixed that are not of interest to the volunteers.
There is a freedom problem with software that are sold in one PARTICULAR bad way because the harms that it causes to the public far outweigh the profit earned by the seller.
The only thing Stallman has ever done is point out the age-old lesson that if you don't force the medicine seller to tell you what's in his medicine most of it ends up being snake-oil.
However, free open source software is not the only way to do that. The assumption that non-free software is bad and harmful and by extension free software is good and beneficial is incorrect on particle as well ideological terms. Stallman has a very narrow view of what software development should look like and even what constitutes "free." I simply disagree with the idea that his viewpoint is the correct one.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
What's the problem? There has to be some sort of business model to support open source. If it revenue doesn't come from selling software it has to come from selling something. When we talk about consumer software either consumers are going to pay for the software with money, they are going to pay for the software indirectly by buying hardware (like Android) or they are going to pay for the software via. advertising of some sort. There aren't really any other models. Many of the activities required to support general consumers aren't fun, and IT people won't do them unless they are compensated.
I agree with that. I was saying it can partially supplant proprietary software.
The most common form of software is one off individual development for a single company. I could see open source owning a huge percentage of that since development costs are almost entirely a pure expense and companies collaborating will often make sense. OTOH that software has lots of proprietary knowledge as well. So some of it is going to have to be closed.
The next most common is niche vertical software. That's likely to stay proprietary as even when it is mostly a vehicle to sell consulting services (like IBM) they don't want their consulting competitors to have access.
(at last, a Stallman lecture that you can sit through) Now, as regards topic, presenting "free software" as the only way to gain customer rights is a recipe for disaster. It basically gives proprietary companies the "right" to never deal with customer rights complaints, because "if you want that use free software".
So what? How does someone taking some free software I create and adding it into their own propriety product stop someone else from making some open source software using the same free, BSD licensed code to make their own?
The BSD license allows developers prohibit others from seeing, using or improving the source code past the point in time where it was put into a proprietary product. The benefits of FUTURE development are not shared. The development branch ends for the community. While I don't have an ethical problem with this if that is what the developer intended, I'm also not going to pretend that the community isn't being hurt. The rest of the world would clearly be better off having access to the source code than not.
Sure thing, the code may be included in a closed source system but the code itself never becomes propriety
Any enhancements to it do become proprietary and original code slowly becomes obsolete in a huge number of cases. After all, there was obviously a reason the added to the code. As soon as it forks into a proprietary product, that development branch is forever closed to the general public.
It is factually wrong. If you can't see or accept that then you really do need to grow up a little, both politically and intellectually.
"Factually wrong"? Prove it. You appear to be arguing that BSD licensed software is not regularly incorporated into proprietary products which is quite incorrect. Since you and I both know that happens on a regular basis (you admit as much) I'm a little puzzled where you think I'm wrong. A useful BSD licensed product WILL almost inevitably become part of a proprietary product at some point. While that if the developer choice to make, it happens constantly. Apple, Sun Microsystems, and countless other companies have significant parts of their business based on taking BSD licensed software and "enhancing" it in proprietary products.
"Factually wrong"? I think not.
Has Apple somehow robbed the world of the original BSD-licensed software they based their OS on?
They have robbed the world of the code Apple builds off that BSD licensed software. The original code has a utility half-life and to remain useful over time it requires continued development. Apple has closed off a development branch that other might find valuable just like Apple did. The ENTIRE reason we give a shit about source code is so that someone can do something with it tomorrow. Otherwise you might as well just release a binary which is what Apple eventually did. Someone basically did Apple's work for them and Apple has gone on to make billions off of that work without so much as a thank you. Nobody can build off their work because they do not share.
The worst you can argue is that they're being poor citizens
That's a pretty bad thing to be accused of.
If the OpenBSD community cared about "preventing that from happening," well... they probably would've chosen a different license - don't ya think?
Probably so. Pity they don't seem to give a shit about the community they live in.
I think I get the distinction he is trying to formulate. Red Hat focuses their products around their GNU/Linux distribution, that is without GNU/Linux they would not have a product. Rackspace on the other hand have a product that would exists even without OpenStack. Their primary gains in reduction of development costs, since other individuals and companies are contributing to the effort.
Basically these are the two vectors commercial companies have with free software. Either they provide ancillary services to existing software, that is they are basically consultants; or they copyleft some piece of software that is not their in business model and as a result reduce costs.
>However, free open source software is not the only way to do that.
Please provide a way to do that without some ability to audit the source ?
> The assumption that non-free software is bad and harmful and by extension free software is good and beneficial
Being non-free is, by itself, already bad - freedom is worth far more than money. It's generally stupid to sacrifice your life to prevent losing money as it precludes the ability to make more (which always exists), but those who sacrifice their lives to prevent the loss of liberty are widely considered heroes.
Liberty is fundamentally more valuable than almost all other considerations.
This is why the FSF distinguishes between proprietory and commercial software. The one is harmful and the other is not in terms of liberty.
Now there may or may not be other harms - there could be malware in a free software project hoping nobody looks, a non-free program could offer you a way to guarantee you'll win the lottery this week - nevertheless the free software would STILL be superior in terms of liberty.
>Stallman has a very narrow view of what software development should look like
He had never proposed any view on this topic whatsoever. He has DONE software development in a certain style (which, by the way, was no the open source methodology but the traditional bazaar style he knew) but he never declared it a better way of developing software.
He has limited his position purely to the ethical and philosophical issues of freedom, which is a higher consideration than quality or commercial success.
After all - would you agree to a law that said you couldn't tell your friends what you saw on the news last night in order to help Fox make more money by forcing more people to watch the show themselves ?
Surely you would consider that an unacceptable constraint on your personal freedom of speech.
What Stallman's arguments prove, VERY convincingly is that the four freedoms he cares about are all - JUST as important.
People who wish to paint a strawman (which you did) tend to accuse him (falsely) of not recognizing some free software as such - which is actually not true at all. Stallman has NEVER denied that any BSD system is free, nor has he denied that of any GNU/Linux distribution (except for a few very specific cases like the Tivo which really weren't).
He does however refuse to endorse a product that does not share his values. So he won't endorse openBSD or redhat, but that is not denying that those products are free, it's just not endorsing something which (in turn) endorses other things he is opposed to. That's a perfectly reasonable position to take.
If you're opposed to something, would you endorse somebody who, while not themselves engaged in that thing, do however endorse it publicly in the very same sphere where they asked for your endorsement ?
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
You're an idiot.
"...and wants all software to be open-source."
No, he absolutely does not want all software to be "open-source".
He espouses 4 freedoms which can only be achieved through "FREE/Libre software".
"Open-source" has different aims and he speaks against them.
The rest of your post is equally ill informed and utterly misses his points, which demonstrated either you didn't even bother watching the TEDx video before vomiting out your rather moronic post or you were incapable of understanding.
Free software is literally nothing to do with whether "it's harder to write and debug applications".
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
I think I get the distinction he is trying to formulate. Red Hat focuses their products around their GNU/Linux distribution, that is without GNU/Linux they would not have a product. Rackspace on the other hand have a product that would exists even without OpenStack. Their primary gains in reduction of development costs, since other individuals and companies are contributing to the effort.
Basically these are the two vectors commercial companies have with free software. Either they provide ancillary services to existing software, that is they are basically consultants; or they copyleft some piece of software that is not their in business model and as a result reduce costs.
Good point. I can see where they would be considered two distinct models.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Merely using a software program over the network
How is this not public performance of the computer program?
So a free society is when you can blame others but others cannot blame you?
For your info: This would be an unfree society.
"...Stallman is unreasonable, ergo his ideas must be 'progress'..."
I began to use the GNU toolchain on SunOS in the '80s; RMS and I are of the same generation, and I value his code and contributions.
However, at the end of the day, his utopian and context-independent understanding of freedom falls flat. Freedom is not about potential, or about futures unrealized. It is about agency, today—at least for most people.
In very simple terms, if what you want is the freedom to watch DRM'ed content that you value, then RMS has no answer for you other than sacrifice—i.e. give up that freedom in the interest of some other freedom that he promises will be better. But that's not an answer to the question, nor is it—practically speaking—freedom at all. I want to watch that movie. RMS suggests that I should choose not to, as a matter of ethnical responsibility and self-interest.
But I already know where my self-interest lies—in watching the movie. And the ethical responsibility to others may be laudable—but it rings hollow to call that a measure of freedom: "Your freedom lies in not doing what you want to do, and others not doing what they want to do."
That's a strange definition of freedom, indeed. It's rather like other utopian versions of freedom, say under the Soviet system—"We are all setting each other free! We have almost no freedom at all today, particularly in comparison to others, but by god, someday, maybe a few decades or a few generations down the road, we'll get there and have far more than them! In the meantime, heads down and sacrifice, everyone! And stop complaining!"
You just won't get that far in the world if you're selling that as "freedom."
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Actually, what I've usually read from him is that most developers do not benefit from the sale value of their software. Most software is written internally, for internal use. (This is changing.) I've had two jobs in which we profited from selling software, and the impression I get is that that's more than usual. The rest of my software development jobs have been in creating software for the company's internal use, with no intention of ever letting that software get out.
Except for those two jobs, which are six years of my career, it wouldn't have made a single difference if everything I was paid to work on was GPLed (although the beginning of my career does predate GPLv1 by a considerable margin).
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
choice. Again—the freedom to do what we want vs. the inability to do the things that we want/need to do, yet labeled conveniently as "more freedom (*though you can't do what you want/need to do with it)."
It's a losing argument. I'm happy to pay for a view. The market has set prices reasonably well. I'm happy to pay for Kindle books, for an iPad, for Adobe Creative Cloud, and many other things. They enable me to do the things that I need to do before I *die*.
Free software can offer none of these things right now. My life is finite; I don't have time to wait for the second coming before doing my computing. The freedom to be shafted? Sure, I suppose if that's how you want to see it. Nonetheless, it's what I want to do. Telling me not to, then selling that to me as "freedom" is just not persuasive. Paternalistic, sure. Persuasively free? Not really.
I used Linux exclusively as my desktop for 17 years (1993-2010). I did it because Linux did what I needed at a price that I needed—for most of that time. Toward the end, it became clear that Linux wasn't able to do the things that I wanted to be able to do—that it was restricting my freedom. The pendulum had swung; I switched to the GNU toolchain way back in the SunOS days because it gave me more freedom, not for ideological reasons, but for practical ones—the freedom to get stuff done that I couldn't otherwise get done; by 2007 or so, being stuck with the FSF world was like using stock SunOS back in the '80s—there were things I wanted to get done that I just plain needed other tools in order to accomplish. I was willing, and remain willing (and most consumers are willing) to pay a reasonable cost to accomplish those things. When powerful computing cost $tens of thousands, GNU was persuasive. But now that it's priced reasonably, we're happy to pay.
The heavy costs of a complete platform switch in mid-life kept me on Linux from about 2007 through 2010, but eventually it became clear that a switch was in order. My labor in maintaining a working Linux desktop and trying to bang free and open software into shape to do the things I needed was exceeding the costs of buying an off-the-shelf solution from a proprietary vendor, by several orders of magnitude.
FSF advocates can argue all they want that somewhere down the road, as a result of my having chosen a "non-free" platform, my freedom will be restricted—but I'll be happy to deal with that eventuality when it comes. I have no interest in sitting around for decades to wait and see if more freedom to accomplish my tasks arrives in pure FSFland; by then, my working years will be over. It's not a tenable proposition.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Congratulations on your complimentary Cool Aid. But did you have to drink it all in one go?
If you want to get shafted, be my guest. Just don't expect me to thank you, because when you ask for a shafting you reduce *my* freedom by making it that much harder to get rid of DRM.
Quite a lot of smaller projects, notably ones that target individuals, have voluntary donation based business models - and make enough to keep the developers' bills paid so they can write the software.
For example? I can imagine only the hugely popular ones (like the Humble Bundle) could survive on donation-ware and eve then the Humble Bundle games aren't exclusive to the Humble Bundle.
For quite a few years I maintained a project that was the market-leader in it's class for free software. I never made money out of end-users but I ran a successful business based on selling features to other business.
Yeah, like I said the features are driven by corporations.
Basically - you have no idea how many people successfully do the very things you just claimed nobody does.
And what exactly do you think I claimed nobody does?
What's the problem?
Well personally I don't think there is one with that model, but have a browse through the comments here sometime and you'll see all manner of people advocating for adblockers and HOSTS files with the "rah rah you have no right to use my bandwidth to show me ads!" mantra. I'm not saying it can't work but certainly if you ask people here it is viewed with disdain.
There has to be some sort of business model to support open source. If it revenue doesn't come from selling software it has to come from selling something. When we talk about consumer software either consumers are going to pay for the software with money, they are going to pay for the software indirectly by buying hardware (like Android) or they are going to pay for the software via. advertising of some sort. There aren't really any other models.
Yeah fair enough. The business of "selling" free software is really non-existent and not everybody requires special hardware for their software that can offset the cost so I agree advertising is really the only option.
The most common form of software is one off individual development for a single company.
Yep, that's why FOSS is so successful in custom setups that deliver services.
Very true. A lot of the people here like the something for nothing type position. But as long as ad avoidance isn't widespread it doesn't damage the revenue model too much. Once it becomes widespread well then ads have to get more obtrusive or cost of production has to drop.
Sounds like we agree.
I don't think that's the reason because he used to try far too hard IMHO to push things, he was doing something like your advice suggests and it was less effective than what he's doing now. The show didn't work earlier so you get bald content laid out instead and hopefully he's also given up on well rehearsed attacks on people that use "free" in terms of a dictionary definitions instead of the personal definition of RMS. It's better to get content than such repetitive time wasting.
For about five years every RMS interview was exactly like every other - a rant at some poor reporter who dared to use the word "free" and the "Linux? Never HURD of it!" joke. That was RMS as a showman. It's better for everyone if he's just himself laying out the information to be taken on it's merits instead of trying to sell something or put on a show.
The webm video kept sticking for me (right around the part about sacrificing convenience . . .) so I found the TEDx Talks video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Liberty.
I love Stallman, but I was very disappointed in this talk. I had the crazy idea that I'd watch it with my girlfriend to show her some Free software ideals, but I don't think Stallman did a good job here. He clears his throat in a strange way very often and he cut down his speech so much that a lot of the meaning is lost. I found myself mentally tuning out very quickly. I think I could do a better job of explaining his positions quickly to non-techies in an accessible way.
Why does everyone have to be a showman?
Because he's putting on a show. Quality of the presentation matters. A lot. Especially if you are trying to persuade others on a topic they are not familiar with. If he's not good at presenting then let someone who is good at it do presentation. I realize he is sort of the figurehead for the movement but part of being a good leader is knowing your limitations. He clearly is not very good in front of a crowd in a context like this. Maybe he's better speaking in other formats but he wasn't good here. Geeks tend to be uncomfortable with the truth that sometimes image matters. Your message isn't just what is being said but how it is being said and by whom. A stupid message well delivered will be far more convincing than an brilliant idea poorly expressed.
Reagan as a professional actor was better at looking "Presidential" than any other US President but that doesn't mean he was the best President of all time.
True but it's a LOT easier to get people to listen to what you have to say if you are charming and persuasive and look the part of a leader. RMS is certainly not charming and at least in this talk I don't think he was very persuasive either and he never has looked the part of a leader. The best leaders aren't always the most telegenic but the ones that aren't usually know that and stay away from the camera. RMS should play to his strengths and it seems that TED talks are not one of them. Frankly as a supported of free software I'm kind of embarrassed that this guy gets the platform. I strongly suspect that a lot of people came away thinking RMS is a weirdo with weird ideas that don't apply to their lives.
It's better for everyone if he's just himself laying out the information to be taken on it's merits instead of trying to sell something or put on a show.
That sounds like it should be right but in the real world it doesn't work that way. He is "selling" an idea and there are ways to do that that work well. Showmanship is a part of the equation. I more or less agree with his thesis but the argument he presented in this TED talk wasn't logical or systematic or credible if you aren't already convinced. If you are going to make the argument that "you control software or software controls you", you're going to have to explain that. It's not axiomatic. It was poorly presented and really didn't understand the audience. He clearly didn't spend time rehearsing or preparing and for a talk like this you have to spend a HUGE amount of time rehearsing and polishing. The reason that politicians sound so polished in their stump speeches is that they've given that exact same speech hundreds or even thousands of times. They know exactly the right cadence, how to deliver the jokes, how to make it sound off the cuff even though it isn't. This takes practice and lots of it.
Remember that he is making a political argument. He's trying to convince and persuade people of an idea that they are not forced to go along with. Simply having the superior argument is not even close to sufficient. You can still lose even if you are right.
However, to be blunt, when he did actually try to put some effort into presentation it just came off as fake, silly and condescending so IMHO he's better sticking with his talents instead of trying to put on a show with improvement hampered by so many people going on about how wonderful he is on matters unrelated to presentation.
Also anybody that is going to see him is already "sold" on the idea so content matters more than trying to be convincing.
I think you've confused RMS with ESR. Those statements sound like chapter three of The Magic Cauldron. This sort of argument is typical of "Open Source" types, who tend to promote open source on the basis of economic arguments, as opposed to "Free Software" types, who promote free software on moral/ethical grounds.
I can't quickly find it now, but I believe RMS has pointed that out. RMS isn't interested in Open Source software as a better way to write software, but he does have to sell the idea and deal with objections.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes