Rant about RMS

Jza · Post by **Jza** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 11:40 am

dlz wrote:RMS just seemed to repeat himself over and over again, no matter what the question was. If anything, I have to applaud the TLLTS team for not snapping at him sooner. While I understand his cause is great, his militant attitude toward everything isn't going to win him (or his cause) many friends.

I almost felt like he was insulted when he was asked to explain things, almost like he was insulted that not everyone understood exactly what he meant.

Well I think the other way around, I think that Dann and the rest of TLLTS sounded they were negotiating the 4 freedoms. Kind of in a tone of 'if we do this is ok?', specially when it came to DVD playback and all that.

You might think that RMS is militant, but really, he is just there to explain what GPL is about. If you want him to agree on something that don't go according to the GPL and it's principal, he simply wont agree.

He perfectly hit the point where he mentioned, Free software goal is not to make a popular disro. And I think thats when most of TLLTS and people thought he was extreme. But since the GPL is a licencse or a contract that is already out there, why should we negotiate on it, even if he agree, it wont make the GPL change.

Is like if you are arguing with an law guy and said, well it is ok if I steal, but then I turn it back.. well what about if I just borrow it but dont tell the guy until I took it. Cmon' man, why you want to convince the sky is really purple when is not.

On a different know, I think most of the chance to talk with RMS was wasted, I mean TLLTS could have spend more time talking about FSF, and how to contribute to FSF, who to talk to, what are the main priorities and what can new GNU people do.

Vogateer · Post by **Vogateer** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 12:18 pm

People think Richard Stallman is rude because that's how he behaves. He doesn't make any effort to show respect to people. Like I said earlier, if he wants to point out an assumption inherent in a question, and disagree with it, that's fine, but condescendingly telling people they're confused about every fourth question, and consistently interrupting the TLLTS team, then complaining about being interrupted, that's inconsiderate and hypocritical. He was mostly logical, yes. Coldly so. Though I believe he was inconsistent when he stated that Tivo had effectively gotten around the GPL, while not acknowledging that his ideas effectively render any software restriction or DRM meaningless.

Linc could have been more diplomatic as well, but I'm not about to put all the blame on him for getting a bit emotional about being interrupted pretty often and not being allowed to finish his question before being labeled one of the confused. Linc merely was pointing out that according to RMS's ideals most professional software developers are immoral, but RMS didn't seem willing to state that explicitly. RMS is willing to accept a world where the vast majority of moral programmers can't make money for programming, which is the result when you follow his logic to its conclusion, but that does point out how different a world we would live in, were the vast majority of software hackers would only able to program in their spare time.

Jza · Post by **Jza** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 1:30 pm

Vogateer wrote:Linc merely was pointing out that according to RMS's ideals most professional software developers are immoral, but RMS didn't seem willing to state that explicitly.

He never said they were immoral, he said it was unethical. He never said that most programmers were unethical, but that programmers that create closed software is unethical. Whenever that that's 90% of the programmer population is not really his concern.

If you think that proprietary is unethical, you are nothing more or less than what he stated.

Making free software and not making money has nothing to do with each other. Again Linc and most people here, has the belief that you cant make money making free software which is not true.

It is incredible that many people still have this belief, specially that listen to this show. There are many ways to make money:
- Sell your software
- Give trainning to use your software
- Write a book about your software
- Do consulting on your product as a service

Free software is not about being open project (available to everyone to download), nor is to be free (no monetary value), nor about that everything on top of it most also be without monetary value.

Post by **Patrick** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 1:31 pm

Jza wrote:On a different know, I think most of the chance to talk with RMS was wasted, I mean TLLTS could have spend more time talking about FSF, and how to contribute to FSF, who to talk to, what are the main priorities and what can new GNU people do.

With all due respect, I disagree. GPLv3 is the hot topic of the day and that's what most people wanted to hear about (myself included). The last time we interviewed him we talked quite a bit about the FSF and GNU project.

dlz · Post by **dlz** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 1:31 pm

I have to agree with Vogateer. He seems cold and the fact that he insists everyone is confused is not going to win any friends. This is a confusing matter, and explaining it by insulting the person asking questions isn't going to help. I thought the entire interview was just painful, and almost completely because of RMS. I really can't blame the guys for getting a little uppity when he just answers everything with 'You're wrong, you're confused!' instead of answering in a friendly manner.

I wish the interview could have covered other areas and discussed the FSF and whatnot a bit more, but I feel RMS was more at fault than Linc.

And his attitude of basically 'if you can't make a living with free software, do something else' just killed me. I have a family to feed. I love free / OSS, but I still have to survive. I do mostly IT work, and own my own PC shop, but that attitude just killed me. I'm probably qualified to wash dishes otherwise.

Post by **Patrick** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 1:34 pm

dlz wrote:And his attitude of basically 'if you can't make a living with free software, do something else' just killed me. I have a family to feed. I love free / OSS, but I still have to survive. I do mostly IT work..

I'm in the same boat my friend. I would love to make a living doing nothing but F/OSS but it's not doable for me at this time.
"AM I EVIL, YES I AM!!"

Jza · Post by **Jza** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 1:35 pm

Patrick wrote:
dlz wrote:And his attitude of basically 'if you can't make a living with free software, do something else' just killed me. I have a family to feed. I love free / OSS, but I still have to survive. I do mostly IT work..
I'm in the same boat my friend. I would love to make a living doing nothing but F/OSS but it's not doable for me at this time.
"AM I EVIL, YES I AM!!"

Who is prohibiting you to sell your F/OSS software?

dlz · Post by **dlz** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 1:46 pm

No one is stopping us from selling the software, except the first person that is free to redistribute and just gives it out to everyone. Why would anyone else purchase it at this point unless we have a real reason for support? I'd love to make a living with just F/OSS software, but I can't afford to lose my house first.

I some day hope to be financially fit enough to develop for a F/OSS project, but I just can't afford it now. I've been using Linux for around 13 years now, and wish I could give back to the community more.

Vogateer · Post by **Vogateer** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 1:47 pm

Jza wrote:
Vogateer wrote:Linc merely was pointing out that according to RMS's ideals most professional software developers are immoral, but RMS didn't seem willing to state that explicitly.
He never said they were immoral, he said it was unethical. He never said that most programmers were unethical, but that programmers that create closed software is unethical. Whenever that that's 90% of the programmer population is not really his concern.

If you think that proprietary is unethical, you are nothing more or less than what he stated.

APA:
unethical. (n.d.). WordNet® 2.0. Retrieved November 03, 2006, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=unethical

2: not adhering to ethical or moral principles; "base and unpatriotic motives"; "a base, degrading way of life"; "cheating is dishonorable"; "they considered colonialism immoral"; "unethical practices in handling public funds" [syn: base, dishonorable, dishonourable, immoral]

You are splitting hairs awfully thin to suggest that immoral and unethical are not synonyms and completely noninterchangeable.

Jza wrote: Making free software and not making money has nothing to do with each other. Again Linc and most people here, has the belief that you cant make money making free software which is not true.

It is incredible that many people still have this belief, specially that listen to this show. There are many ways to make money:
- Sell your software
- Give trainning to use your software
- Write a book about your software
- Do consulting on your product as a service

Free software is not about being open project (available to everyone to download), nor is to be free (no monetary value), nor about that everything on top of it most also be without monetary value.

Yes, that was Richard's argument, which we understood. Don't start acting like Stallman now and start behaving condescendingly towards us.

Just playing with you.

But seriously, the problem is not that we don't understand, although Stallman would obviously argue otherwise, but that we understand him fully and are able to look at the logical conclusion of his attitude, which is that very few people will be able to make a living by programming. If you're spending your time doing something other than programming most of the day, the quality will never be as good as it is when a person specializes in programming and is able to make money doing so. It is just the point that Stallman doesn't care about quality near as much as he cares about software adhering to his principles.

That's fine. Many of us disagree with him, and many of us here probably care more about the quality of the software we use than we care about adhering to Stallman's principles. The ideas of Free Software are wonderful, but we realize that there are consequences to treating these ideas as rigid, dogmatic doctrine.

Jza · Post by **Jza** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 1:54 pm

If you're spending your time doing something other than programming most of the day, the quality will never be as good as it is when a person specializes in programming and is able to make money doing so. It is just the point that Stallman doesn't care about quality near as much as he cares about software adhering to his principles.

How is that different between closed or free software? You can programm all the time, and still sell ur software and earn hard cash. So where exactly did the license make a difference?

Shawn S · Post by **Shawn S** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 2:14 pm

If you want the opinion of someone who tries to see things from both sides, I honestly have to say that, while the interview was somewhat interesting, rms really didn't give me a good impression.

He's got the passion and drive to actually make things happens, but he just doesn't come off as having much in the way of people skills. Between his breaking through everyone's questions as if they were little kids that didn't have a clue, and his rude, almost hostile attitude towards anything that doesn't comply with his ideals, it was almost like listening to one of those people who try to push their religion on everyone. It just really brought down the interview in my eyes.

Now, while I honestly don't completely agree with his views, he made some good points. Maybe later on you guys can get him back and make it some sort of FOSS and FLOSS roundtable\Battle Royale with some of the most passionate people of the Free Software and Open Software worlds. I honestly would like to hear something like that.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 2:53 pm

Patrick wrote:"Am I EVIL, Yes I AM!"

Probably more like: "I'm bad, I'm bad, really really bad!"

In case you havn't heard the song Bad it's by Michael Jackson.

Vogateer · Post by **Vogateer** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 3:31 pm

Jza wrote:
If you're spending your time doing something other than programming most of the day, the quality will never be as good as it is when a person specializes in programming and is able to make money doing so. It is just the point that Stallman doesn't care about quality near as much as he cares about software adhering to his principles.
How is that different between closed or free software? You can programm all the time, and still sell ur software and earn hard cash. So where exactly did the license make a difference?

For this one, we can once again bring back Stallman's word effective, which he used in his argument against Tivo. I've seen no examples of programmers making money selling software under the GPL. Once you distribute it to one person, nobody else has to pay for it, and the vast majority of people do not pay for Free Software, therefore you can't effectively sell free software. You can ask for donations, and some people do for part time work, but I've yet to hear about even one full time programmer who makes money "selling" free software. Even if there are very few of them, I believe that the vast majority of programmers couldn't make this model work and still put food on the table.

Once again, if you use Stallman's effectiveness line of logic that he used against Tivo, you arrive at this conclusion: You can sell free software, but as far as I can tell, you can't effectively sell free software to make a living, therefore you can't program full time selling free software.

Obviously I could be wrong on this, but it would be nice to see some examples of people selling free software and making a living on only selling free software.

Jza · Post by **Jza** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 3:42 pm

Vogateer wrote:I've seen no examples of programmers making money selling software under the GPL.

How many programmers have you seen failing selling software under GPL?

Vogateer · Post by **Vogateer** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 3:45 pm

I've read about a few, though honestly I can't remember their names right now. There was a guy who tried to make some sort of firewall software, and he was pretty bitter about not making money selling that free software.

So, do you have any examples of someone who has made money selling free software, or are you going to continue dodging the obvious fact that the reason so very few even try to sell free software is because it isn't feasible.