Thomas Bushnell (?):
But I’ll give you a personal take. By my reckoning, I worked for RMS longer than any other programmer.
There has been some bad reporting, and that’s a problem. While I have not waded through the entire email thread Selam G. has posted, my reaction was that RMS did not defend Epstein, and did not say that the victim in this case was acting voluntarily. But it’s not the most important problem. It’s not remotely close to being the most important problem.
[…]Add to all this RMS’s background of having defended the idea of adults having sex with minors under some circumstances, and people’s visceral and sharp reaction was entirely sensible.
[…]I was around for most of the 90s, and I can confirm the unfortunate reality that RMS’s behavior was a concern at the time, and that this protection was itself part of the problem. He was never held to account; he was himself coddled in his own lower-grade misbehavior and mistreatment of women. He made the place uncomfortable for a lot of people, and especially women.
[…]The end result here, while sad for him, is correct.
The thing most of the pro-Stallman comments I’ve seen in various places seem to be ignoring is that we exist in a context; our intentions simply do not matter as much as how our words and actions will be interpreted in the social and political context. RMS strayed out of his proper place, and said things that can be easily (arguably, mis-) construed as a defence of pedophilia and/or sexual assault. Whether that’s what he intended or not, I do not know, nor do I particularly care; as a person in a leadership position in his organization, his ability to perform his duty is contingent on his reputation being acceptable to the wider community; his comments and attitudes and actions over the years have so damaged his reputation that no amount of technical competence is sufficient to justify keeping him in a leadership position, or even associating with him at all. Firing him is just the sensible, appropriate thing to do. It’s the *meritocratic* thing to do, even: he’s no longer able to do his job, so he doesn’t deserve to keep his job.
Firstly, thanks osnews for posting a more well rounded take on this, I really appreciate bushnell for speaking frankly without hysteria and misrepresentations. Obviously it’s not my call, but to the extent that my opinion means anything, I vote that osnews should boycott sources from motherboard in the future after the crap they pulled.
TheRealKMan,
I kind of agree, but I think you’ve got it backwards actually: we exist without context. Social media is largely guilty of judging things superficially and jumping to conclusions without context, If they had context, then our intentions would matter a whole lot more than they do. The problem is taking things out of context such that we loose the underlying intentions.
In fairness, that was misconstrued partly due to bad journalism in which he was misquoted in the recent coverage. Obviously this won’t happen, but in the interest of journalistic integrity the reporter over at motherboard ought to be fired for his blatant unprofessionalism. And no, it has nothing to do with criticizing stallman, that is fair game but rather for changing what stallman said in the report. That ought to get him disbarred as a journalist anywhere.
Anyways, you can read stallman’s response to this issue here:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/17/richard_stallman_final_interview/
He actually resigned. But I agree with you and I also think it was the right call for the sake of the FSF that he leave.
It does make me wonder though, does this spawn unintended social consequences? It does feel like there’s an element of “thought crime” at play. Does this kind of reaction encourage people to self-censor? If so, then is that a good thing or is that dangerous? I don’t even know, there’s a lot to think about!
The sad fact is that the world is driven by spam. Deliberately distorting/sensationalizing the truth attracts clicks, which attract advertisers, which increasing income. “Good journalism” (attempting to be as fair, as unbiased and as truthful as possible, without even the slightest attempt to sensationalize, and including spending extra time researching to find out what that truth actually is) is not economically viable.
Not addressed to anyone in particular, just quoting a relevant bit:
I’m going to go out on a limb, not to defend the journalist or to give him the benefit of the doubt, but to say I think it really was just a failure to read properly. It’s a monumental fuck-up in comprehension and premature ejaculation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9mRtTahZTM . The journalistic manifestation of Hanlon’s Razor.
Turns out people in the tech industry can’t fucking read. I was right to rant about it on OSAlert (and at other people elsewhere) before. They don’t follow the discussion. They pick out a sentence as though a sentence is independent of surrounding sentences or paragraphs, or previous comments in the thread. They don’t even parse the sentence properly. They don’t reread multiple times to make sure they actually comprehended what was said, but rather perform some crude mental pattern matching to guess at meaning. They certainly don’t do any background research and any perceived failure of others to spoonfeed them background information to their satisfaction is somehow proof that they’re right and the other person is wrong.
Tech nerds seem to think that because they’re in a highly technical industry, that makes them smart, and because they are smart, that excuses them from making logical and factual fallacies.
Sure, it was (probably) just a failure to read properly; but what caused that failure to read properly?
Rereading multiple times, contacting people close to the issue to get their views (possibly including trying to contact RMS himself), double checking facts, searching for historical collaborating information, etc. That all takes time and ends up getting less clicks.
If it takes twice as much work to get half as many clicks then what’s the incentive to bother? How long would it take before a journalist develops a habit of simply not bothering? How long before “not bothering” becomes standard practice?
Alfman,
Yes it does. But so does everything else. There would be unintended social consequences if Stallman was still the head of organizations. Just as there would be in firing the “journalist” for unprofessionalism.
How would free speech extremists justify allowing Stallman to speak his mind freely, and then not allow the journalist to speak his mind freely? Wouldn’t free speech extremists argue that free speech overrides the need to be factual and honest (hint: they do)? All answers to those questions have unintended social consequences.
Is it a good thing, or dangerous, if people don’t self-censor? Self-censoring used to keep the extent of prejudice in society an undercurrent. Now people are less inclined to self-censor, but that’s also lead more people to carry out their ideas, rather than merely entertaining the thought in private.
kwan_e,
I think I’ve been pretty clear that stallman shouldn’t be above criticism, but at the same time one of the worst sins of journalism is just making shit up.
Most of us are quite aware that the white house has an occupant who’s on a mission to purge all honest people from it’s ranks and has mastered lying over truths as a way of life. He attacks people all the time and it doesn’t matter to him whether anything he says is actually true, his base does not hold him accountable. His actions show that he aspires to be just like dictator kim jong-un. The thing is, lies don’t get better on the left, in fact it just makes things worse if we loose our integrity.
Alas, I agree with Brendan that there’s an incentive to exaggerate headlines and stories for click-bait. It just makes me worry what happens to society if hysteria and deception become the new norm on all sides. It is imperative that we combat the lies with truths and balance, lest we cause the events of 1984 to become real. We’re getting closer than ever. Integrity’s in short supply.
Yeah, there are no easy answers, but I definitely sense a change. “I don’t agree with what you say but stand up for your right to say it” used to be the motto. Now days there’s a hyper ‘PC’ culture that jump on people like a pack of wolves for not conforming to their views.
Alfman,
Yes, but this argument also applies to not firing that journalist, and allowing people to make shit up. You must also stand up for that journalist’s right to say what they say, under that principle.
Hyper PC culture is an exaggeration, compared to what actually happens when people spread obvious falsehoods. The whole hyper PC culture exaggeration is used by people like the David Dukes and Alex Joneses of this world to spread their views that ultimately end up with people shooting political opponents, driving into protesters and shooting up garlic festivals.
kwan_e,
I can’t really agree with that. Making things up is diametrically opposed to the essence of journalism. The moment we start to accept made up information as journalism is the moment that journalism means absolutely nothing. I’m not saying he can’t make things up, but not in the course of doing journalism, it simply is not the place to do it and IMHO that does disqualify him for that role. I’ll grant you that some news organizations don’t really care about journalistic integrity though and there’s even a supply/demand relationship for bad journalism.
It’s not an exaggeration though, the extremists really do set out to spread falsehoods either for politically motivated agendas or personal gain. You’ve pointed out instances of misunderstanding, and I accept that. However it’s not always a side effect, for some people spreading misinformation really is their goal. Most people don’t necessarily act on it, but sometimes it does manifest itself into physical violence as you point out.
Alfman,
That’s not the point. Making things up is free speech, not just according to free speech extremists, but even according to the more moderate motto you trotted out earlier: “I don’t agree with what you say but I’ll defend your right to say it.”
Making things up is opposed to journalism. But it is not opposed to free speech (at least, ideologically). And this is what the anti-PC police wants people to think – that spreading lies that cost real lives is not as bad as someone being wrongly vilified in the media.
kwan_,e,
I did understand the point., They can deliberately make stuff up, but not as a journalist, this is clearly cause for termination. Take a different example: say there’s a doctor who deliberately makes up false medical advice to hurt someone, he may have the freedom to say what he pleases, but it clearly disqualifies him as a professional doctor. It is clear cause for termination. Having free speech rights has never liberated people from the consequences of their words & actions. If you get away with a crime and then confess to it in the name of “free speech”, you still go to jail. I maintain that if you lie about facts in the name of ‘free speech’, you still loose your job if your profession requires you to not lie.
Granted I concede the real world isn’t so black and white, there are degrees of everything. People can inadvertently slip up, and it doesn’t imply malice. I really think that we need to look at intent. The problem in this case is that if they did not intend to misquote stallman, journalistic standards require them to issue a correction, which they have not done…they are sticking with the misrepresentation, suggesting that the misrepresentation really is intentional.
The way free speech works is that you have the right to say anything (including the right to say things that you intentionally made up to maliciously damage someone else’s character), and everyone else has the right to sue you for defamation.
In theory; a journalist (and/or their employer) cares about their reputation and/or wants to avoid being sued. In practice; the internet means anyone can slap random trash on a web site; people forget faster than ever; and defamation cases take too long, cost too much, and can’t fix/reverse the damage done.
That is actually what needs to happen here – RMS needs to sue for defamation/libel; not for his own sake, but as public service for everyone else’s benefit (as an attempt to slow down the continuing deterioration of “journalism”).
Fake news and lies has got nothing to do with freedom of speech. There are other laws to protect private citizens from harassment and defamation by online and offline bullies. Sure, in this day not every “journalist’s” job is to produce real news but loathsome clickbait, so it is hard to comment on whether or not this one specific sheeple should be fired or not — maybe he is hitting his performance goals perfectly with this kind of crap.
He resigned yes… but staying on probably wasn’t an option. This seems like it was probably laid down as resign or get fired.
It’s also worth pointing out that while the articles are pretty much contextless… people that know of him have 30-40 years of context on him and his wayward ideas…. outside of software he gets things very wrong pretty often and his purely academic life has probably exacerbated that.
What is really tragic about all the events is to, once more, find out that despite all the many errors, the many tragic events throughout history and their unpredictable consequences, and despite all the alerts on place, even intelligent people fall for conjectures and quick response.
How many of us were misinterpreted on one occasion or another? How many cases we know where the result was unfair?
I suggest you all to have another read (please, read also the response comments related to the original post):
https://lwn.net/Articles/799566/
Just to recall the unfolding:
– distortion of words/events by groups to better fit their agenda/interests: checked;
– unwillingness of others to research more before jumping to conclusions: checked;
– falling to account to the imprecise nature of human interactions: checked;
– imbalanced response to complex cases without duo process: checked.
I don’t know RMS personally, and it is clear that he lacks the social skills currently needed to a prominent position, but I can’t agree that he deserves the outcome of this, at least, not before a way to explain his views properly without the pressure of a witch hunt just to placate the enraged puritans and their moral panic and mass hysteria.
So, all things on scale, what can we take as lessons from this? To me it is one more case of mob lynching mentality, one more case where injustice may be served a priori, one more case where we let what is really important in society to be ignored: examination of facts and connections before serving justice.
I will not pretend that things were better on past, they weren’t, and that is precisely what makes me uncomfortable, the fact that we put almost all effort on punishment and neglect the educational aspects, that we prefer to condemn instead of forgive and that we set uncountable humans to a path of agony for the rest of their life with little chance for them to heal.
Last, there is the silence of the accusers, like if it was possible to just pretend that nothing happened and it is just better to forget the whole thing instead of apologizing, and expect whoever was unjustifiably hurt to do the same. We can ask for forgiveness, but it should not, and does not, mean forgetfulness.
Hi Thom.
After the yesterdays article, i had a strong feeling, you will try to find some further evidence, against RMS, justifying the original article. RMS resigned from FSF and MIT, an era has finished. RMS is not a young man anymore, this would happen sooner or later. But i sincerely doubt, he deserved to go in such way.
Therefore now we have come down to RMS being guilty of trying to defend his (dead) friend name, some suggesting he should rather shut up and be politically correct, and RMS therefore not being particularly charming around women. Unfortunately majority doesn’t care about that anymore. You, the media, already persuaded the majority, basically insinuating RMS is a pedophile and a child and woman rapist. I was particularity saddened, that such uncritical article made its way on OSAlert. These days i only read a select number of news site, on a daily basis, removing OSAlert from such list made me realize, on just how bad news media landscape is these days.
In addition, if MIT has a problem, with women being unequal to men, i sincerely doubt RMS was the reason and a solution to such problem.
I’ll just throw in my useless words here. Not in defense by any means about the pedophile thing as I find it wrong myself, but not all cultures on the current planet Earth hold to the same standards in that regard. I’m not here to say who is right about it or who is wrong about it (personally I think people should keep it in their pants until they’re 25 when they might actually be adult about it if it results in spawn!) But that’s not even the details of how messed up this is, since it sounded like Epstein was playing pimp to many professors at MIT, so it’s not like RMS was simply saying that he thinks it was the Pimp Daddy Epstein who did the coercion, and not the professor in question.
But of course the media will just read part of what he was saying, interpret it as ‘oh, you got to go, fucker!’ and that’s that. It’s the sad fucked up world we live in currently where you can barely even speak what you mean when you’re a white straight male. Trigger Nation! I think RMS stepping down isn’t going to change anything at MIT. FSF, not sure about, doesn’t seem to be the same set of crusty old men working there.
Hey, maybe he can finally finish the Hurd kernel!
leech,
Why? He has already written a fully modular operating operating system. All it needs is a good text editor.
Best comment of the month!
This type of reporting from OS News is very very disappointing to see. OS News is not expected to be a platform for Thomas Bushnell’s personal vengeance towards RMS. I also had opportunity to work with him, so did many of my friends male and female. His behavior has caused us difficulties, but he never ever attacked or assaulted any one. His temper tantrums have caused us inconvenience. None of that justifies baseless allegations against him.
BTW, this very same ‘us’ shall talk about tolerance towards difficult behavior, inclusion and neurodiversity
Bushnell’s commentary wasn’t overly harsh… it was pretty even keeled actually…. you must remember people that have acutally worked with him have had decades in many cases to cool off and basically put out thier final take on him…
The fact is that he is more of an inconvenience and pain in the ass than he’s worth… perhaps he didn’t deserve public shaming but you also cant say he deserves to keep his job at MIT either…. a complete waste of money to keep him on when he doesn’t really contribute software anymore, and is mostly just an annoyance and in this case bad PR for the college.
I say good riddance. Richard Stallman is entitled to his disgusting, terrible opinions but that doesn’t mean that he is entitled to a job or a platform.
While he may have done much for free software, open source, and computer science in the past, opinions such as his are a terrible problem. At the least, they serve to stifle voices that may have even more to contribute, and they work to perpetuate a repulsive part of STEM and society that should have no more space in good public discourse.
I had been an admirer of his work, opinions, and legacy until his hideous views were brought to light. That he has been sharing these publicly for decades shows that I hadn’t taken the time to research him well enough.
He can go now. We need to be better than this for a just society to flourish. Selam Jie Gano should be celebrated for her bravery in exposing the truth and bringing attention to his long-running misogyny. (And worse.)
As for OSAlert covering this, I think it’s entirely appropriate. Thank you, Thom.
While I mostly agree… I think the opinions are the exact thing you cant fire him for, on the other hand, being annoying, temperamental, flamish, or generally making bad PR for the college or what have you though could all be good reasons for firing.
Part of his problem is that he attempts to apply idealistic views to things other than software… such as politics, or in this case he applied some naive idealistic views to social interactions between minors and adults… while completely ignoring many realities such as mental development, capacity to consent etc… ignoring the fact that adults being attracted to children is wrong and completely inappropriate because of those very reasons as well.
It’s also worth noting that the GPL is an idealistic license in it of itself and when properly enforced… software projects have ground to a halt while developers where in court… while on the other hand BSD/MIT licenses tend to avoid that occuring because, while someone could take your code and not contibute back… you never lose time on the legalities of it… which is a *much* more practical and realistic view. MIT licenses according to github leading GPL anyway in popularity.
Another problem we see is Linux kernel patent groups… while great for the Linux kernel… they don’t help FOSS at large.. since they only protect other linux vendors not BSD or what have you vendors…. it becomes a sort of evil lock in!?
“It’s also worth noting that the GPL is an idealistic license in it of itself and when properly enforced… software projects have ground to a halt while developers where in court…”
I think there is some truth in this, although I suspect a large chunk of the problem, such as it is, isn’t copyleft per se, but the requirement to disclose source in particular. i.e. I think problems have often involved disclosure of source, and these would have been avoided if something like the CC BY-SA had been the dominant free-software licence.
With copyleft, I think disclosure of source would often happen as a matter of course. If the binary can be distributed freely, then there may be little to gain from keeping the source closed, besides the full burden of development costs. But even so, if and when source did remain closed, although reverse engineering software may be a large problem, I think it’s one that’s amenable to distributed collaboration–i.e. it’s the sort of problem that open source projects would be well suited to tackle.
Copyleft, though, has, I think, been instrumental in the rise of free software. I think this is a major part of the reason that GNU/Linux has been so successful, while BSD code has been most widest distributed as part of commercial software.
All that said, though, with the rise of software as a service, I think the ground is shifting, and even the GPL will no longer be enough, other than for OSes, to prevent free software being cannibalised, and something like the AGPL will be increasingly necessary.
The entirety of GPL is a devious marketing scam to supplant a (relatively ethical/honest) “pay for what you use” model with a highly deceitful set of hidden surcharges on things associated with the software (e.g. hardware, service contracts, …), where suckers see “free” and don’t realize they’re paying, where people who don’t even use/want the software end up paying too; and where the basic principles of capitalistic competition are undermined.
For an example; 75% of Linux development is funded by companies (Redhat, Intel, IBM, Google, …), and this money does not appear out of thin air – these companies all increase the amount you pay for their products and services to cover the cost of Linux development.
“Open source companies gather to gripe: Cloud giants sell our code as a service – and we get the square root of nothing”
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/20/open_source_companies_cloud/
“75% of Linux development is funded by companies (Redhat, Intel, IBM, Google, …), and this money does not appear out of thin air – these companies all increase the amount you pay for their products and services to cover the cost of Linux development.”
So apparently Red Hat, Intel, IBM, and Google think cooperating on the development of Linux has a more favourable cost/benefit outcome for them than alternative options, but you know better?
Brendan,
That’s not even wrong. Most GPL software do not have specific hardware requirements, and no service contracts at all. None of those are mentioned as requirements as part of the GPL licence itself. In fact, I’d say this was an outright lie and makes you worse than the so-called journalist who couldn’t read. You can’t complain about sensationalism when you’re even worse at it.
No. If you don’t use the software, you literally cannot be paying for it. There are tons of GPL software in the Linux distro I have installed that I have never paid for. Hell, the GPL distribution restrictions don’t even come in unless you distribute a modified version of the software.
“If you don’t use the software, you literally cannot be paying for it.”
I think he was saying that if you, for example, buy something from a company that puts resources into Linux development, then you are funding Linux development by proxy. (Of course, by the same token, if you buy something from a company that pays for MS Windows licences, you are funding MS Windows development by proxy, but he doesn’t seem to have an issue with that.)
Brendan,
In fact, GPL prevents this situation. If a commercial company sells you a product, including GPL software, they have to tell you where to get it. A customer can then choose to analyse whether it was worth it to pay for software they could have gotten elsewhere. If the software in question was modified, the seller has to give the source for the modified software, and once again the customer can make an educated decision.
BSD-like licenced software provides NO such guarantees and you DO pay more for software you don’t use and other hidden costs that you accuse the GPL of.
Capitalistic competition is not undermined by the GPL. On the contrary, every product and service out there marketed as free (as in beer) have the cost of expensive hardware, or the data hoarding and other hidden costs that you accuse GPL of. Even more telling is that every company built on open source is slowly trying to ditch GPL software with BSD-like replacements. You can’t hide data hoarding and privacy invasion in code that you are not legally obligated to release, whereas the “really free” business friendly licences allows them the freedom to screw you over.
So now, your argument ends up looking like the fear-mongering, outright lying, bullshit that it is.
Freedom that allows you the freedom to screw people over is not freedom at all. And the GPL tries to limit the ways you can screw people over.
Fix:
james_gnz,
That’s not what he said in the first paragraph. That first paragraph was a much broader accusation, and the second paragraph was just a limited example.
But even in that example, that argument is really just bullshit of the highest order. I mean, just think about what he’s saying:
Without Linux, none of those companies have anything (in the Linux area) to sell to begin with. Redhat, definitely nothing to sell without Linux. IBM – an emerging market for them: they definitely can’t sell any Linux solutions if Linux didn’t exist. Google – almost all their stuff runs on Linux and wouldn’t have developed as quickly as it did with a closed solution.
In short – they make money from things they got for free. They don’t need to “cover the cost of Linux development” because they demonstrate that their Linux development brings them money. In fact, out of all the open source development they are involved in, only Linux is the self-sustaining activity. Just look at all those other software they release to open source with BSD-like licences. They make no money, or technological progress, from it.
I really really don’t understand why he thought that was a rational argument to make. It’s bullshit.
In fact,
What about the non-GPL open source software that is also funded by Intel, IBM/Redhat and Google. If he accuses Linux, being GPL of creating hidden costs because it forces those companies to have to pay for development, then what about the hidden costs of developing BSD-like software that don’t make any money for them and really do have to be covered by increasing the price?
Funny you should mention Intel, because we know that MINIX is probably the most widely distributed OS because of its hidden use on hardware. I didn’t opt in for that software. Yet, I’m paying for it, both in terms of hardware, and the compromised security of having a closed blob that no one outside of Intel can verify the safety, but that countless bad actors only have to find any small weakness.
He really didn’t think through his example. This is what you get when hatred for something, in this case the GPL, is entirely irrational.
Um, what?
IBM had/has AIX, HP had HP UX, SGI had IRIX, Sun had SunOS/Solaris, … ; and most of these companies do/did service contracts.
However; you can’t charge a fair price for a fair day’s work when an asshole is charging $0 for the same work (and hiding the true cost behind everyone’s back); so all of these companies (and all of these operating systems) have been severely diminished (and in some cases, ceased to exist entirely), and Linux (after using anti-competitive practices to ruin competitors) is now filling the void it created by ruining competitors.
Imagine if I sold electricity for “free” (and covered the cost by tricking appliance and equipment manufacturers into charging you more for every electrical appliance/machine/whatever you buy, so that at the end of the day you’re actually paying more); and every other company that sold electricity died because nobody wants to pay for electricity any more. Wouldn’t that be a nice way to use anti-competitive practices to ruin competitors? I could add some propaganda (“Electricity wants to be free!”) and take advantage of the charity of volunteers/suckers donating electricity into my scam, abuse an army of freeloaders to make it popular and turn it into a pseudo religion; then sit back and watch fools like you say “Free electricity is creating entirely new markets that never existed before” (even though they did), and “Appliance manufacturers are all making profit designing products and services around the free electricity platform” (even though they were making profit before too), without realizing that what I’ve really done is prevented you from having a viable choice in where you get electricity, prevented you from having any kind of warranty, prevented research into alternatives, and ruined a thriving industry.
“IBM had/has AIX, HP had HP UX, SGI had IRIX, Sun had SunOS/Solaris, … ; and most of these companies do/did service contracts.”
And each of these companies shouldered the full cost of development of their system to get the freedom to tailor it to their needs. With Linux, they can share development costs, and still get the freedom to tailor it to their needs. And they can still do service contracts. If it wasn’t a better cost/benefit outcome for them, they wouldn’t do it.
“Imagine if I sold electricity for ‘free’ (and covered the cost by tricking appliance and equipment manufacturers into charging you more for every electrical appliance/machine/whatever you buy, so that at the end of the day you’re actually paying more);”
Good luck with that, but I think you’ll find they won’t buy into your scheme if there’s no benefit to them.
Here’s the thing: With an OS, you don’t have to make a separate one for each user. You can make just one, and an unlimited number of users can use it. This is not the case with electricity. With electricity, if you make only enough for one user, then only one user can use it. If more users want to use it, you have to make more.
Here’s the thing: With every single product or service, you don’t have to have consumer choice. You can just have a single monopoly that an unlimited number of users are forced to use whether they like it or not; and have no competition between providers, and have none of the benefits of competition. You can also make everything “free” – e.g. government controlled monopolies, where citizens are rewarded for work they do for the government with “free” products and services.
Of course this isn’t how healthy capitalism is meant to work.
“You can also make everything ‘free’ – e.g. government controlled monopolies,”
It sounds to me like your fundamental issue with free software is that you view copyright as a natural right which copyleft licences take away. I think you’ve got it backwards. Software, like other works, are essentially arrangements of things–arrangements of bits on a disk, or words on a page, etc. I think people have a right to own disks and pages, but I don’t think people have a right to own how they are arranged. IMHO, I have a right to arrange my real property any way I see fit.
Copyright wasn’t originally viewed as a natural right. The full title of first modern copyright act (which is generally known as the Statute of Anne, or the Copyright Act 1710), was “An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of Copies, during the Times therein mentioned”. As per the title, the purpose of the act was “the encouragement of learning”, and the government-granted exclusive right of copying was intended as the means to achieve that.
Similarly the relevant clause in the US Constitution assumes for Congress the right “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” The purpose is “to promote the progress of science and useful arts”, and the means is a government-granted exclusive right of copying.
I think there are limits to where the government should poke it’s nose, and, IMHO, it has no business telling me what I can and can’t do in my own home. Copyleft, in my view, is essentially an attempt to reverse copyright–to give back the rights that government took away. And copyright, in my view, has largely been a failure.
Microsoft gained dominance by writing software quickly, not well. MS Windows doesn’t make the best use of hardware, but people use it so they can exchanging MS Word documents, etc. They have to run Windows because everyone else is running Windows. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle that prevents competition.
OTOH, Linux can be forked and improved, and is now run on all of the world’s top 500 supercomputers, because people who run supercomputers don’t need to exchange MS Word documents (or LibreOffice documents or anything)–they write custom software, and they care about what will run it well, and make best use of their hardware, regardless of what anyone else is using, and it turns out, that’s Linux. If you’ve got the freedom of choice, why would you choose something other than the best?
To add to this:
A while back, my sister was looking at getting a computer for her kids, and my advice was get a cheap one. The specs keep going up, so it’s no investment, and for what they’ll want to use it for, a cheap one will work just fine. She found a cheap one with 2GB of memory, and asked if that would do, and I, foolishly, said yes, that’ll be fine.
I still had an old PC lying around with 1GB of memory, running (albeit slowly) Linux (it was a wedding gift, a good one at the time), and I thought, twice as much memory, it’s got to be better, even on MS Windows, but boy was I wrong. No joke, the thing spent all night installing updates, downloaded over fibre. It wasn’t the Internet connection slowing it down, I can promise you. It was completely unusable. It crawled to the point that you couldn’t be sure whether it had locked up.
I put Linux on it and it runs (still being used, although she got another one so her kids have one each). It’s not as fast as a newer or more expensive PC, of course, but it’s fast enough to deliver in accordance with a modern child’s attention span, which is to say it’s fit for purpose.
Now think about this: What is that extra memory used for? What do you get for it? Does it make it faster on better hardware? No, the supercomputers demonstrate that. Does it make it prettier? Well, maybe to an extent. I installed a plain XFCE desktop, where I could have installed a fancier one. (I had the choice.) But bear in mind that I also had Linux running on a PC with half as much memory.
Most of the extra memory is wasted on poorly written code. What people get for it, the reason they choose Windows over Linux, is Windows compatibility. This is something which Windows requires no overhead for, by definition. Linux has the WINE project, but it’s always ~10 years behind the current Windows API. The main business model for Windows at this point is based on breaking compatibility.
Or think about this:
Microsoft would have loved to have had Windows dominate the top supercomputers. They were trying to bad-mouth Linux, and Linux was running rings around them. It was an embarrassment. Picture a pro football team being beaten by a college team, year after year. They had the money. Bill Gates was the world’s richest man. They had market dominance. If capitalism was at work here, and capitalism rewards the best, then they ought to have been the best. And they failed, miserably. There are two possibilities. Either capitalism wasn’t at work, or capitalism kind of sucks. Which do you believe?
Someone out there is going to consider your opinions “disgusting” and “terrible”. By their standards, taking your position, that means you’re not entitled to a job or a platform.
Where someone’s views are irrelevant to their work (or other situation), their work (or other situation) should not be dependent on what others think of those views.
Were I to agree with you –
That’s why I don’t think you “can go now”, despite your expressed position that third party views on personal opinions should mean someone shouldn’t have a job.
You want to be “better than this”? Stop poking your nose into things that aren’t your business, basically. Be more liberal. Let people be their own thing and expect others to let you be you.
Does anybody else find the use of RMS initials a little disturbing if not foreboding, given the history of triple initial big evil doers like mass murderers and bombers? I suppose using RS would be just as inappropriate! It’s a no win really, and I appreciate rms has always been RMS!
I suppose we will all know Trump’s done when people start writing the John!
” It is time for the free software community to leave adolescence and move to adulthood, and this requires leaving childish tantrums, abusive language, and toxic environments behind.”
Yes, Linus, that includes you. Free software doesn’t get the respect it deserves, mainly because the people benhind it don’t show that respect themselves. Childish tantums, tiffs between developers, unnecessary swearing and targeted abuse seem to dominate many open source projects. Until the people behind these projects can show some respect for their common man, the common man won’t show respect to open-source.
“Childish tantums, tiffs between developers, unnecessary swearing and targeted abuse seem to dominate many open source projects.”
To be fair, my understanding is that Linus is improving in this regard, and I’m not sure it’s generally been better in closed source projects (think Bill Gates and Steve Jobs)–it’s just not out in the open in those cases.
Closed source projects have HR departments and marketing teams to isolate the developers from the consumers. Open source doesn’t have this luxury.
If you’re always on show and anyone can look at you at any time, you best be damned sure you’re on your best behaviour. When you’re in a closed office with no-one looking in, you can go as apeshit as you like. People don’t care about what they can’t know or see, but if they can see it, they’ll take a great interest in it. Especially if it’s a bunch of grown men behaving like 5 year olds.
And so the osnews / Thom Holwerda framing attack on a guy that worked hard but got the wrong opinion, and was forced out without grace, continues. The hate is strong in Thom.
He could also try not to defend his pedophile friend, excuse pedophilia, or have a decades-long well-documented history of misogynist behaviour, but sure, it’s all the fault of some unknown rando nobody like me. I sure made him do all those things.
Have those “decades-long well-documented history of misogynist behaviour” materialised in a court ruling against RMS?
I think that judging is an extremelly difficult task. In any civilized country, the task of judging is assigned to highly skilled professionals – aka judges – who work full-time evaluating evidences and interpreting the law.
So what we have here? Despite its outstanding merits and achievements, despite not breaking the law, RMS is condemned in a parallel pseudo-trial – not an actual one carried out by professionals and under the usual constitutional guaranties – and, consequently, fired. Fired just because he is not mister Wonderful and its opinions are disliked by some lobbies.
Post deleted by Thon Holwerda in 5, 4, 3 …
If you think he’s all fine and wonderful, then i’m sure you’ll be quite pleased to find RMS banging your 17 year old daughter.
I guess that you have understood nothing, or refuse to do it.
This is not about the perceptions about the personality of RMS. This is not about what you or John Doe can, based on those perceptions, think about RMS might do.
This is about actual FACTS. As far as I know, there is not a single court ruling against RMS.
When I hear people like you, I feel that we are in an involution that is taking us some centuries back. We are going back to times in which people who was seen as strange because they deviated from ‘the norm’ was accused of being heretic or a witch.
After a fake trial, one that was a joke in terms of justice and self-confessions were gotten under severe torture, the alleged heretic or witch was sent to prison or burn at stake.
The RMS case is similar. First, his opinions and rude manners make him being marked as strange; second, he is accused of heretic; after that, a fake trial is carried out by self-proclaimed judges that in many cases do not even have a grade in Law; and finally a civil murder is committed.
Facts? Who on earth cares about them?
Come on, pedophilia? She was 17 (if I got that right), that is no pedophilia.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/pedophilia
In Holland it would even be legal (from 16 onwards).
I’m convinced that Stallman is a weird guy, uneasy in most normal social situations. But he didn’t rape anyone, based on the information you provided. This public outrage and the result — resignation — goes way too far IMHO.
Also…
“She wasn’t underage. The age of consent was 16 at the time there. It was raised to 18 later, in the Child Protection Act of 2002.”
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20995628
wtf
Hi Thom,
there are two issues here:
1. Mr. Stallman’s character and statements, well summarized by Thomas Bushnell.
2. The actions of the media, including yourself: slandering Mr. Stallman by attributing to him statements he did not make, and alleging that he defended child rape, which is not true.
The fact that (1) is probably true does not make (2) in any way acceptable. It is the moral equivalent of planting evidence and will give ammunition to dismiss the real issues in (1).
It is ironic that by your action (2) you are disgracing, in the eyes of many, this news website, not unlike Stallman and Minsky disgracing MIT.
I think the crucial point in Bushnell’s text is this:
RMS treated the problem as being “let’s make sure we don’t criticize Minsky unfairly”, when the problem was actually, “how can we come to terms with a history of MIT’s institutional neglect of its responsibilities toward women and its apparent complicity with Epstein’s crimes”. While it is true we should not treat Minsky unfairly, it was not — and is not — a pressing concern, and by making it his concern, RMS signaled clearly that it was much more important to him than the question of the institution’s patterns of problematic coddling of bad behavior.
Emphasis mine
Defending a friend should not be more important than respecting others and obeying the law. In Brazil we have an unfortunate saying that can be translated to “Anything to our friends, The Law to our enemies”. No one should be above the law.
One is more responsible for friends than for anonymous others. And no one should, on a personal level, assume to represent the Law. We have a State for that, and Judges.
This thread was probably a mistake and should be locked. All the good done by open source free software developers will be tarnished forever by a few stupid acts and comments of a high profile individual. That appears to be the way it works in the USA, trial by media and through association, it is the image projected to the world by the US and Canadian based media moguls! It’s not about guilt or innocence, not about intent versus perception, it’s all about judgement!
That is the estate that determines rule in the USA, the 4th Estate! America was a Ferrari in world economics and democracy, the media has parked it in the gutter, and then given the keys to a Donald!
Dude, that’s how it works everywhere, with everyone, at all times, past, present, and future. Nothing you do will matter if people don’t like you, and people won’t like you if you’re a creepy old sex pest who can’t hold himself back from “WELL ACKSHUALLY”-ing any time someone complains about shitty behaviour.
Root Mean Squared (RMS) will never be the same again. Kindergarteners wil grow up in a world where people think you need Richard Stallman to determine the DC power equivalent voltage of an AC current. On a more serious note, I hope they grow up in a better world. We are going through a lot right now with exposés and political reversals. I hope and belive it will trigger a change and I suspect it will be those kindergarteners who will get it right. We are too invested in the mess for now. We are losing our heroes and being forced to take extreme sides with no middle. As Yeats said …
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
The world is truly a much better place since he felt the despair to write those words exactly 100 years ago. And we had to go through holocausts and near nuclear armageddon.
Iapx432,
I’m old enough to not be sure about most things on society. In the end of seventies, it was looking like the world could be a better place, despite what happened on previous decade and through half of it. Then, came the eighties and things started to get worst by it’s middle because of a new conservative push; that time unions were the problem and the mass fall for it. On nineties things improved globally, it looked like we really could enter a new phase on human societies. The new century saw many improvements on world stage, even though on USA there was a fool at government with warmongers as advisors, not a good decade for USA and countries affected by the stupid chosen decisions. It seemed like we could get better on current round but, alas, ultra right and the fools that follow them are all over the place again, this time at full force and displaying their full ignorance. Worst, even when exposed, many keeps believing on them.
What is more, this kind of pattern repeats itself throughout history. I’m starting to think that we are getting close to the limit of the intellect development the median of the societies can achieve and, as so, we will keep repeating similar mistakes we did on past.
Can AI help us on future? Let’s hope it does.
acobar,
The thing is GDP is sky high due to efficiency gains providing through modern industry, we should be experiencing an unprecedented golden age.. Alas the lower classes have not been advancing because those at the top are reaping all the gains for themselves. Fewer and fewer keep taking a much larger share just because they can at everyone else’s expense. After enough generations given enough inaction, we may end up in the robber-barron economy again where a few families at the top control everything.
Why would it? I think it’s about to make things much worse with job redundancies. And although in principal AI can be put to use in solving the world’s socio-economic problems, it doesn’t really take AI to see the problem anyways, economists already know the problems, but the incentives are perverse. Who wants to work for the lower classes and their diminishing shares when it’s so much more profitable to work for the wealthy? There’s little doubt AI is going to be employed in the same way to advance the cause of those pulling the levers. It’s one of the huge ironies that while people don’t like or trust government, a healthy democratic government is literally the last bastion against the tyranny of the top. Those who cast their votes in order to minimize government power (as innocent as their intentions are) inevitably accelerate our path to tyranny. We have one such tyrant aggressively dismantling government from within, meanwhile the pawns of ignorance cheer and we’ll all be witness to the increasing grip the utlra wealthy have over our lives.
Alfman,
I’m already a pessimist guy, why do you need to make it all more depressing?
I pulled AI as a last resort. Regretfully, I agree with you. The way I see it, things will get a lot worse before they start to get better. Well, perhaps, hopefully, not in Canada, or Western and North Europe, or Australia, or New Zealand, but on such an individualist mentality carefully construct by right wings on USA society, I can’t see how the employees will get a fair piece of the pie if not by a gigantic social unrest (hopefully, not).
To make things even worse, the American alt-right movement is making inroads on many countries, mixing together nationalism, xenophobia, fascism, misanthropy, religious extremism and radical individualism, all glued by disdain to facts, under a “conservative” flag.
It is like we are having a mix of “dark ages” with “puritanism age” “revelation” co-opting large number of dumb individuals and, thanks to Internet, we all have to hear their ignoble voices and messages. This is surreal, even more when I recollect all the excitement I had when the Internet started to popularize, and the promises of “enlightenment” it brought.
acobar,
Sorry, I need to work on that. We need to have a chat over some pints
You know, as we look back on the tides of history, it’s all too easy to think those were different people and those things won’t happen to us, but we’re unsettlingly close to similar dark times. I keep wanting to think reasonable people will not allow it to become so bad, but why do we ever allow things to get bad? In my mind every collapse is caused by a power imbalance and deteriorating conditions for the commoners. Those steering the ship (probably) don’t want it all to crash and burn, but such greed man, why?
“Brendan
Um, what?
IBM had/has AIX, HP had HP UX, SGI had IRIX, Sun had SunOS/Solaris, … ; and most of these companies do/did service contracts.
However; you can’t charge a fair price for a fair day’s work when an asshole is charging $0 for the same work (and hiding the true cost behind everyone’s back); so all of these companies (and all of these operating systems) have been severely diminished (and in some cases, ceased to exist entirely), and Linux (after using anti-competitive practices to ruin competitors) is now filling the void it created by ruining competitors.”
EX-SCO shareholder/employee?