News: 1616416004

" We were working on a video to announce this with, but that turned out to be difficult, we didn't have experience doing that sort of thing so it didn't get finished "

How hard is it to point a mobile phone at yourself, speak for a few minutes, then toss the video at YouTube?

Oh...wait...that implicates a pile of non-free software...

To record a video one must first invent the universe (or at least finish Hurd)

I'm glad they realised they didn't need to make a video to make an announcement.

I'm not glad that they originally thought they did.

Richard, welcome back. We don't need "woke" SJWs in FSF. Let them carry placards and walk the elite's dogs and scoop up their shit.

"Woke SJWs"? I think you want the Daily Mail website.

I think the poster was referring primarily to the "piling on" of bizarre hit pieces at the time *after* the comments that he made that some people objected to, and I am mainly pointing to the "mattress" comment which was doing the rounds at the time.

This should have been the correct response: https://medium.com/@revistakubis/richard-stallman-had-a-mattress-on-the-floor-of-his-office-because-he-lived-and-slept-there-a5dd1eb43e5f

It was all a bit shabby and very obvious.

The thing with Stallman as always is he is extreme, weird, and extremely weird. Between eating things he finds on his feet and writing a rider with speaking demands about parrots he expresses a lot of opinions. These opinions very from nuanced points on free software, to the crazed ramblings of a conspiracy theorist. Herrin lies the problem. Having Stallman around will bring to light important points that probably no one else would raise, however this has to be filtered from the absurd. The FSF does a good job of filtering out the non-software related political/social commentary. The result are some suggestions which are still pretty unrealistic for those of us that want to do work in the real world. But I appreciate that they shift the Overton window towards software freedom. This all said, letting Stallman back in after what he said, and his characteristic refusal to apologise makes it very hard to argue that the FSF is an organisation that represents the movement. It makes it clear it is an organisation to promote Stallmanism, this damages the FSF and free software as a whole.

I've thought before about why so many intellectual leaders and visionaries are so intensely weird. I suspect that there's a general personality factor of "group conformity", and it's important to have a low level of this factor in addition to high technical understanding to reach new insights and push in unusual directions. Without that, you don't get bizarre behavior and opinions, but you also don't get work that requires pushing against the consensus for years.

I don't think everyone should have low conformity, or that it would be good for society if everyone did, but we need some amount of those people to keep from falling into local attractors.

> These opinions very from nuanced points on free software, to the crazed ramblings of a conspiracy theorist.

I've not seen or heard any "crazed ramblings of a conspiracy theorist" from Stallman. You may not like what he has to say sometimes, but I've always found that his arguments are founded in reason.

> This all said, letting Stallman back in after what he said, and his characteristic refusal to apologise

Did you mean "after what people accused him of saying"? Because, as is typical of the hyperbolic blame culture of Twitter and such, he didn't say what he has been accused of saying.

> makes it very hard to argue that the FSF is an organisation that represents the movement.

Which movement do you mean?

Free Software, by definition, doesn't care who you are, what you do, where you are, what you say or think; neither now nor in the past. So long as the FSF does what's best for the Freedom of software, it continues to represent the Free Software movement.

> I've not seen or heard any "crazed ramblings of a conspiracy theorist" from Stallman.

his second amendment stuff comes pretty close to this mark

It was easy to dismiss him as a beardy weirdy before Snowden. Now, not so much, because he was right all along.

It is impossible for any utopian vision to fully succeed across a wide population, because only a subset of the population will buy into it fully. Stallman's "free software" is a utopian vision that illustrates this. Some people bought into it fully, while others bought into only a subset of the vision, and hence there was the "open source" faction that splintered off, and later the Creative Commons faction that had an even more watered down concept of what open/free means. Unfortunately, it is common for a person who believes in one particular faction to label people in other factions as "extremists", "sell-outs" or some other disrespectful term. Unfortunately, it is also common for criticisms to focus on a perceived failings in a person's characteristics (rudeness, personal hygiene, appearance, promiscuous etc) rather than perceived flaws in the person's utopian vision.

A perfectly normal fit for around these parts then, methinks. Don't make yourself a stranger, Richard. There's mountains to move and lots still waiting ages just patiently patently biding their time yet to come, and be done ......... as in finished and started.

Crikey, that all sounds very excellent hard core porn. Now that's a vocation which is not for everybody. Fickle fashionable and much sought after one minute, simply forgotten and replaced by another model the next, and all acting as if they demonstrating anything new and ground-breaking rather than just following the oldest of primitive scripts and most abused of money-making programs?

One of my favourites :)

https://xkcd.com/225/

Welcome back, rms! Not just because of your contributions, and of course because #StallmanWasRight, but because the tech community has always had a place for weird and kinda offensive people, and I like that about it.

Glad to hear it. Regardless of Mr Stallman’s opinions (many of which I disagree with), the late Mr Epstein’s reprehensible conduct, and the late Professor Minsky’s involvement with him (far from clear), the pedantic comment that got Stallman cancelled was simply mischaracterized or misunderstood by the mob doing the cancelling.

"mischaracterized or misunderstood by the mob"

Characteristic behaviour of mobs.

"Quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand"

RIP Neal

On the Epstein topic:

The problem there is onion layered

Several of Epstein's associates clearly knew what was going on and/or were part of it

A lot more were simply accreted by Epstein because it made him look more credible and those individuals had no idea whatsoever what was going on (essentially their only interaction with the Epstein Travelling Roadshow was as names at social events)

A bunch more were accretionary hangers on wanting to make a name forthemselves by being associated with the the names that were in the outer orbital shells

Some of the information about who knew what in the deeper layers might come out via Maxwell's trial (but I doubt it)

If Marvin Minsky had associated with Epstein, while that could have been innocent on Minsky's part - and part of Epstein's cover - despite the esteem in which we hold Marvin Minsky for his accomplishments, suspicion is understandable. Although the article doesn't give details on whatever the controversy was, and the comments indicate that remarks were imputed to Stallman that he did not make, I suspect I would be more inclined to take Stallman's side than that of the FSF of the time based on what I see from the article.

EDIT: Ah, I see from another comment that, no, Stallman wasn't let go for being too "woke". However, if the comment that got him cancelled was mischaracterized, well, while I am strongly sympathetic to our new awareness of sexual violence against women, I still also oppose political correctness or cancel culture when it goes too far.

I'm not totally enamoured of the FSF movement. I think it's done some great things, but I don't think that commercial 'pay-for' software is a great evil that needs to be defeated either. I'm also very concerned by the prevailing attitude that software, not being tangible, should be free - and that only hardware has value. I am very aware that this isn't what RMS has ever said, but it seems to be how many people interpret it (and, as a software developer, I'm quite partial to being able to feed myself and my family - and we don't eat toe jam)

That said, and however revolting RMS's personal hygiene might allegedly be, I've found the internet to be a breeding ground for lies and misinformation. For all I know, he might smell quite fragrant and eat the finest lentil curries (although such a diet might not be conducive to fragrance, tasty though it might be). It's irrelevant though - he is clearly a (greatly misunderstood, I suspect) man of interesting ideas, whether or not I agree with all of them, and I absolutely would buy him a beer and be interested to hear him talk.

> I'm also very concerned by the prevailing attitude that software, not being tangible, should be free - and that only hardware has value.

If that were true, the same logic would imply that all other artistic endeavours (music, literature, cinema etc) should also be free, as they are easily copied and distributed as a stream of bits. I don't think that's what's being argued, not by the majority anyway.

I think the problem is that when you buy a gadget - say a laptop, a phone, a TV - the functionality is restricted by the manufacturer by means of the software on it. Or worse, the software works actively against you, for example by spying on you. Then when the manufacturer decides no longer to support the gadget, then either it stops working, or it you can't use it safely because security holes are no longer being fixed.

So I see it more as a branch of the "right to repair" / "right to use" philosophy.

A quote I read very many years ago (and sorry, I've no idea where):

"It is foolish to expect ordinary behaviour from extraordinary people."

I think R.S. fits the category. There is a lot of software that exists today thanks to him.