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How Psychology Today Sees Richard Stallman (psychologytoday.com)
After our article about Richard Stallman's new video interview, Slashdot reader silverjacket shared this recent profile from Psychology Today that describes Richard Stallman's quest "to save us from a web of spyware -- and from ourselves."
By using proprietary software, Stallman believes, we are forfeiting control of our computers, and thus of our digital lives. In his denunciation of all nonfree software as inherently abusive and unethical, he has alienated many possible allies and followers. But he is not here to make friends. He is here to save us from a software industry he considers predatory in ways we've yet to recognize... for Stallman, moralism is the whole point. If you write or use free software only for practical reasons, you'll stop when it's inconvenient, and freedom will disappear.
Stallman collaborator Eben Moglen -- a law professor at Columbia, as well as the FSF's general counsel -- assesses Stallman's legacy by saying "the idea of copyleft and the proposition that social and political freedom can't happen in a society without technological freedom -- those are his long-term meanings. And humanity will be aware of those meanings for centuries, whatever it does about them." The article also includes quotes from Linus Torvalds and Eric S. Raymond -- along with some great artwork.
In addition to insisting the reporter refer to Linux as "GNU/Linux," Stallman also required that the article describe free software without using the term open source, a phrase he sees as "a way that people who disagree with me try to cause the ethical issues to be forgotten." And he ultimately got Psychology Today to tell its readers that "Nearly all the software on our phones and computers, as well as on other machines, is nonfree or 'proprietary' software and is riddled with spyware and back doors installed by Apple, Google, Microsoft, and the like."
Stallman collaborator Eben Moglen -- a law professor at Columbia, as well as the FSF's general counsel -- assesses Stallman's legacy by saying "the idea of copyleft and the proposition that social and political freedom can't happen in a society without technological freedom -- those are his long-term meanings. And humanity will be aware of those meanings for centuries, whatever it does about them." The article also includes quotes from Linus Torvalds and Eric S. Raymond -- along with some great artwork.
In addition to insisting the reporter refer to Linux as "GNU/Linux," Stallman also required that the article describe free software without using the term open source, a phrase he sees as "a way that people who disagree with me try to cause the ethical issues to be forgotten." And he ultimately got Psychology Today to tell its readers that "Nearly all the software on our phones and computers, as well as on other machines, is nonfree or 'proprietary' software and is riddled with spyware and back doors installed by Apple, Google, Microsoft, and the like."
and I still do but I'm slowly accepting there's some wisdom in forcing the software we all rely on to be transparent.
GNU/Linux is factually incorrect.
GNU is a trademark owned by the FSF.
Linux is a trademark owned by the Linux Foundation and is not a GNU/FSF project.
So that makes GNU/Linux factually incorrect; unless the FSF wants to allow everyone to brand their project as GNU/xxx, without signing over the copyright to the FSF, simply because the project is dependent on GNU software.
the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
- George Bernard Shaw
Have gnu, will travel.
Nothing else matters. You can hate the man or feel inconvenienced by what he says. Nothing changes the simple fact that he's right.
...and I still do but I'm slowly accepting there's some wisdom in forcing the software we all rely on to be transparent.
RMS is a bit crazy and certainly could be fairly described as a fanatic. I also think he is a clumsy advocate, a terrible public speaker, and his arguments aren't always grounded in reality. He is too easy to dismiss as a loon by those who have an interest in doing so. That doesn't mean he's entirely wrong. While I think he goes off the deep end a bit with his moralizing but in practical terms he is quite right that there is a huge loss of value to society in allowing too much of our tools to be kept under lock and key.
One of the great things about owning a drill press for example is that I can open it up and tinker with it if I feel the need. Nobody can tell me that I cannot. I might void a warranty but that's my choice and I can willingly take that risk. Heck I can even sell the modified device in most cases. But with most proprietary software I cannot do the equivalent tinkering. I can't open it up (figuratively speaking) and tweak the tool to my particular needs. Free (as in speech) software remedies this problem.
I don't have a principled objection to the existence of all proprietary software but RMS is very correct that if we lack a large toolbox of software tools that we can modify and adapt and build upon then we are ultimately causing very real and measurable harm to society. Imagine where science would be today if scientists were prevented by law from sharing their discoveries. Imagine a world where tool makers weren't allowed to improve on or use tools made by others. Imagine if chemists couldn't share chemical formulas. We are at risk of the doing something incredibly stupid in making it too easy to prevent the sharing of mere instructions for machines. That's not a moral argument - it's a practical one. We're limiting our own economic future by having clumsy copyright and patent laws that allow a few to lock up much of what should be accessible to all.
The issue Stallman has (software that is not under lock and key, can be freely modified and redistributed is good) but oh my god he needs to stop acting like the bearded freak show on the city corner on a soap box screaming THE END IS NIGH.
Yes, spyware, malware, freakware, stealware is bad and open source software can help address these issues. But coming off as a loose cannon who is going to insult anyone who is not in lockstep alienates everyone you get within ten yards of. It also doesn't help that Stallman has a reputation as a misogynist, immediate turning off half the audience that could be sympathetic to the issue he is bringing up.
Stallman is going to have to decide which is more important: The content of the message he wants to deliver or how he plans to deliver it. Eventually some other person is going to package the exact same Stallman is saying in a more palatable form for mass consumption. Come to think of it, its already occuring with mainstream Linux distributions. But eventually someone who is charismatic and how the technical background will supplant Stallman as the flag bearer for the "Purer open source" that will protect everyone.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
I thought Psychology Today disappeared after Phil Donahue went off TV back in the day.
GNU/FOSS is the way to go if you want at least a reasonable sense of peace of mind as to what your PC or laptop is actually running, even if you dont audit the code yourself at least it is open source and the GNU/FOSS Open Source community can look though it. so if any bugs or strange behavior appears it can be fixed or if some dirty crook tries to sneak something nefarious in the software it will be found and routed out
Kudos to RMS & Torvalds and the GNU/FOSS community at large
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
He also sometimes carries zero-dollar bills, which he uses to bribe people, including passport agents. As Stallman says, “It’s legally valid and any U.S. agency will give you zero dollars in gold for it.” He gave one to Barney Frank hoping he’d vote no on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which bans breaking digital restrictions management. (Frank voted yes, and Stallman “lost all respect for him.” Plus Frank kept the cash.)
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Nothing else matters. You can hate the man or feel inconvenienced by what he says. Nothing changes the simple fact that he's right.
I don't hate or love the man. Nothing he does inconveniences me in the least. But he's not "right" about everything. He does have many very valid points, quite a few of which are logically unassailable as far as I can tell. Tools that cannot be modified or improved are a serious hindrance to society. Human society was built on the ability to make, modify, improve, and share tools. The notion that we can write mere instructions for a machine that aren't allowed to be shared with anyone is a very dangerous and stupid idea. Imagine if scientists were prohibited from sharing discoveries and formulas and you get a good idea of the severity of the consequences.
But he also makes the mistake of making it a moral argument in places where it clearly is not. Perhaps worse, he does so in places where a moral argument is unnecessary or even counterproductive. Morals vary from person to person and society to society. This allows people who do not share his moral belief system to dismiss him easily. Much of what RMS argues for can and should be argued from an economic perspective. RMS should explain it to people why it is in their own economic self interest to have free (as in speech) software. It's FAR more likely to be persuasive and the end result is the same - more people using free software. Economic self interest is a much stronger incentive to most people than abstract morals about tools that most people barely understand how to use much less build.
I agree with RMS for the most part but let's take his work and improve on it just like he hopes we will do with code. He's done some good work but it's imperfect and its up to the rest of us to build on it and make it better.
In his outrage, Stallman spent nearly two years single-handedly re-creating (and sometimes besting) every new Symbolics feature in the MIT code, keeping LMI alive. The feat astounded his fellow software designers. Eventually Stallman saw there was no future in Lisp machines and decided to do something constructive rather than vengeful. “And that’s GNU,”
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Why? Do arguments become more valid when presented by someone well groomed?
Persuading people involves a great deal more than simply making an argument with airtight logic. If logic was all that mattered, organized religion would have died out centuries ago. Like it or not, how an argument is presented can often matter more than the argument itself. And yes this can extend to personal grooming habits at times. This is a concept that understandably tends to be an anathema to many engineers but it's provably true. It doesn't matter if he is factually right if no one is willing to listen to what he says. Personal grooming and presentation can matter greatly at times. There is a reason that salesmen tend to present a polished image with a friendly face - it works. There is a reason preachers in church are very good at public speaking and understand the value of ceremony and presentation. It's the sugar that helps the medicine go down.
That said, the idiot who made the comment about grooming and toejam is an imbecile. Dismissing someone's idea out of hand because you dislike their appearance is idiotic and juvenile. Whether or not RMS presents himself well has zero bearing on whether what he is saying is correct.
Of course we're free to tinker with it. Some black electrical tape and making sure it can't access any networks is no big deal. You can use a regular antenna to get HDTV signals, and if that's not enough, you can always use sneakernet to move any music or videos you want to watch to the TV via a cheap USB key or an external hard drive. .
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
> I can open it up and tinker with it if I feel the need
:).
Right, but the difference is that it's much more expensive for you to replicate that drill. If you buy a piece of software and get the source code so you can tinker with it, you can replicate and distribute that software at pretty much zero cost.
They are not giving you the manufacturing design specifications and assembly line process with that drill either.
Still, if there was one driving force the last 20+ years to get where we are today in computer and software technology it's definitely the Free Software Foundation and Open Source Initiative. Okay, that's two forces
written from my linux laptop. No MS or Apple for me, thank you very much!
...like any zealot he's easy to undermine due to his rigidity.
He does a lot of good, and that's what's important. People look at him and think "if only he was perfect" - that's missing the point. He's not perfect, he's weird, obsessed (compulsively so), rigid, and he does have ego problems they're just once removed from himself and buried in what he has replaced 'the self' with in his mind - his mission.
But that doesn't mean what he says isn't true. Much of it is.
The irony being that what RMS calls "free" doesn't mean what almost anyone else would use the term to describe.
Software, to RMS, is to be controlled absolutely with a very specific set of limitations and qualifications. It's, actually, the opposite of what anyone, in my opinion, means as 'free.' - and no - I'm not confusing 'free as in beer' with 'free as in speech' - because RMS doesn't believe in either. He believes in 'free as in whatever RMS thinks free means - usually meaning available...'
Important, borderline crackpot, zealot - the world is a better place because he's in it. Quite an amazing man actually.
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The geek has been trying to dethrone Microsoft Office for longer than I care to remember without having any great impact on Microsoft's small business and enterprise markets. Photoshop remains the choice of professionals.
Ideological purity or political correctness is not a substitute for the software users need or want.
Part of the problem is that the geek sees only the code and not every element that contributes to the success or failure of a program --- and there his resources are often lacking. The game engine is not the game.
What about psychiatry? :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Anyone who stays in a particular field for 40 years has a calling. Anyone who is it for the glory would have already moved on. That isn't my point.
To the uninitiated, Stallman comes off as screaming at clouds. Let me have a couple of thought exercises:
1. To most people, their android/IOS/Windows/Mac machine does what they want it to do and they don't think about it much beyond that. They don't have the time or the energy to look under the hood and play with the engine. They just want it to work, and Windows and Mac does that. Yes, Linux has gotten *alot* friendlier in the last 20 years but it isn't going to hold your hand like Windows and Mac does. So (like it or not) convenience is winning the war. So when Stallman comes by screaming the "end is nigh", "proprietary software is bad" uneducated people look at him like a screamer. The alternatives are not perceived as useful or inconvenient, even if more secure. So he is fighting an uphill battle.
2. Go watch people debate on the internet about a hot button political issue: Guns, Abortion, HealthCare, Taxation; You name it. It will quickly breakdown in to a couple of camps: The ProPeople and the ConPeople who will go at it all day and the WhyDon'tTheyShutUpPeople who might have been interested except someone who may have been friendly flamed them out of hand. Now change out Guns/Abortion and insert OpenSource or FreeSoftware. A lot of people get turned off by the zealotry and set it on ignore. Stallman's approach to people can be very inflammatory. I understand he has a specific message and is out to push that message. Without adjusting the presentation to account for the audience is like trying to teach Sanskrit to a pony. He has a reputation for insulting his audience or driving people away. I understand he is a purist, he is allowed to be a purist. But it turns alot of people off. Stallman wants people to go cold turkey and most people can't or won't do that.
Bringing people around means you have to find some common ground and a place where these people are willing to change. Start with a web browser, mail reader or art program (FireFox, Thunderbird, Gimp) and get them comfortable with those changes. Introduce them to additional programs that can replace the proprietary programs they used day-in, day out. That means programs that can replace iTunes, Word for Windows and every other daily use program out there. These programs have to be the real deal. Open/Libre Office does not have 100% of the functionality of Word so it isn't a replacement. iTunes is even harder to replace-yes there are music/move players out there; until it also has a movie,music store that can also update your phone with music it will be a tier 2 product.
rant over.
TLDR - Rehashing old arguments why open source software is at a competitive disadvantage to proprietary software.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
It's the Stallman Slam Article time of the year. Springtime as usual. Wonder if we'll get about half a week's worth of that feminist talking-point shit next?
Take a look at the published statement.
"Nearly all the software on our phones and computers, as well as on other machines, is nonfree or 'proprietary' software and is riddled with spyware and back doors installed by Apple, Google, Microsoft, and the like."
Now what is the implication of a statement like that? The implication is that nonfree or proprietary is riddled with spyware and backdoors. The converse implication he's making is that FOSS software does not have these problems.
Yeah, yeah, spare me the various justifications, invocations, shadings of meaning and all that. 'Oh, he only means that FOSS software can be audited!' 'Oh, he never said that all proprietary software has backdoors!'
He never said that, it's true, but he meant that. Stallman's whole argument is that proprietary software is a dead end and contains boogeymen holes that you cannot possibly know about. That is wrong on every level.
The strength of FOSS is that it has accelerated the race to commodity status of many software functions. It has promoted an ideal of openness and transparency. However Stallman himself has become a major liability with his inability to see any merit, ANY MERIT WHATSOEVER, to proprietary systems. Even though those systems were indispensable in the digital revolution. By his logic we cannot possibly be here, at this stage of freedom, information flows, and digital capability!
Stallman would rather impale himself on the principle of freedom than acknowledge that proprietary has some value. He would burn down the houses of corporate innovation, revenue streams and intellectual property rather than say, "FOSS isn't for everyone, all the time."
For Stallman, proprietary can do no right, and GNU can do no wrong. And that is just wrong.
The open-source community has mostly shifted to BSD-style licenses these past few years, which has lead to a huge influx of people being paid to work on open-source projects, career prospects for people working on open-source in their own time, and generally better technology.
All you get by using copyleft is loneliness and obsolescence.
We live in a pragmatic world, not some hippie utopia.
Oh, look, you've reinvented the open source movement, right down to imagining that the most important thing in the world is the number of people using your products.
Who said anything about popularity? Economic self interest can simply be having access to the code so you can tinker for your own personal use. It is hardly limited to mass market popularity.
The Free in Free Software means freedom.
Freedom isn't just what RMS says it is. He has merely one perspective among many on what freedom is. Others see it differently. While I actually agree with him in most cases I think his tactics to achieve his stated goals are routinely stupid and/or clumsy. I admire his uncompromising stance but you can be uncompromising in subtle and clever ways. He can argue that it is a moral issue all he wants but that is an argument that is unlikely to persuade anyone not already inclined to agree with him. The GPL is a brilliant hack of our legal system but it cannot be the only tool in the tool box if your goal is actually free (as in speech) software.
You have that precisely backwards
He does not argue it from an economic perspective, because he knows that economics can change easily
Economics doesn't change at all. Capitalism works precisely because it harnesses economic self interest in useful ways. It is largely unconcerned with what that self interest is at a given moment. Arguing that free software is a moral issue is fine but to claim that morals don't change is clearly not true. Worse it's routinely not the best approach. Economics is a much more dependable basis for a rational argument. That's not to say that making a moral argument shouldn't be a part of the approach but make no mistake that convincing people to care about software as a moral issue is a challenge that will take generations in the most optimistic of cases. Much of the goals and the same ends can be achieve in other was much more readily and in many cases already have. Linux has moved things along nicely by taking a more pragmatic approach than RMS typically advocates but has achieved many of the same ends.
Morality does not on a whim.
People shift their morals all the time. Morals vary between people and societies. No two people share the exact same moral outlook. The notion that morals are some fixed thing independent of human experience is preposterous nonsense. As recently as 60 years ago it was considered perfectly moral by many people to treat minorities as sub-human via Jim Crow laws. Arguing that morality of individuals doesn't change on a whim is so easy to disprove it's hardly worth the effort. Evangelical christian churches are loaded with people who have made rather radical changes in their moral outlook.
That this is all fairly parsable for the readership of this esteemed journal, however, transparency only goes so far for Joe Public. Assuming that someone has the wherewithal to run either setup.exe or apt-get, for most people their knowledge is likely to stop there, with the free or closed product being equally opaque. Ability to understand what you're seeing is also implied by the transparency argument.
I've listened to a few interviews e.g. this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?..., and it's hard to bear his hostility and his insisting on not being interrupted while interrupting the interviewers constantly. As much as I value many of his arguments for Free Software â" his behavior is not suitable for promoting his cause, or make it easy for people not already convinced to endorse Free Software.
Sounds like a perfect opportunity for an enterprising innovator to take a GNU solution, adapt it, and sell it and support of it to hospitals.
In the long run this will out-compete anything from the "throw our stuff away regularly" Microsoft.