Stallman's reply? "You should not be making those games, it is unethical."

To say that is non-constructive would be an understatement; it's just shutting down any conversation and exploration and how we can improve things. There are a whole bunch of things one can think of: release the code but keep the assets (graphics, sound, music, etc.) proprietary, release under some sort of "source available" license, keep the core rendering parts proprietary SO/DLLs and release the rest as free software, and maybe a few other things. All of that would be a huge improvement over "100% closed".

But Stallman isn't open to any of that, and because the FSF is still very much Stallman's organisation, neither is the FSF. For at least 20 years the FSF has done nothing except preaching to the choir, and certainly hasn't actually made many significant meaningful every-day improvements. In the above situation the game dev essentially asked was "what is the best way to make my software more free?" and all he got was a rather insulting and condensing shutdown of that conversation before it could even take off.

[1]: I don't have the source for that right now; I think it was somewhere on YouTube. It may have been an interview with Lunduke, but I'm not sure.

I thought this was a really interesting model.

Maybe it wouldn't work so well with singleplayer games. However, there's a similar example with the sprite editor / animation software Aseprite, which is open source but you have to compile it yourself, so it's cheaper for most people (in terms of time and effort) to just buy it for $15.

Now sadly no longer on the Apple App Store

I guess that is what happens over time at the walled garden: You don't pay, you don't play

[1] http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason-rohrer/

update: gotta go scrounge for my box of old iPod touches with dead batteries if they have the games as local iTunes sync no longer works.

Jason Rohrer's game One Hour One Life has a few community spin-offs, which is also really interesting. There are also blatant clones, of course, but it seems to be a worthwhile tradeoff on the whole.

https://dev.aseprite.org/2016/09/01/new-source-code-license/

Still, the latest version is on GitHub? But it's only for "personal use" according to the EULA (and not making your own fork for example).

https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite

Imagine if someone asked you for help and said "I don't see how to free my slaves while making a living, paying my rent, paying for my children's education". Would you tell them "You shouldn't have slaves, it's unethical" or would you try to help them find a way to run their business with fewer slaves, but still some?

Try to imagine something that you find unethical but some others do not: burqas, abortion, war, public schools, private schools, eating meat, rolling coal or whatever it may be.

If you start from the position that such a thing is unethical, you can't enter an argument with someone who asks you "how should I do X to make you happy?", because you simply won't be happy if this gets done at all.

That means in this case it doesn't make sense to complain and argue about his answer to the developer, as his answer makes perfect sense given his premises. If you want to disagree with his advice, you have to disagree with his moral position on proprietary software and argue about that.

Expecting Stallman to help someone make money with proprietary software is like expecting a vegan advocate to help someone kill cows more humanely.

Note that I'm not expressing an agreement or disagreement with Stallman's worldview, only that his answer is exactly what follows from his worldview, and you should argue about that and not about the answer.

You did exactly that.

> The point is that Stallman does not find proprietary software bad for the user, he finds it morally wrong.

I truly hope that you are wrong and Stallman does not believe proprietary software to be an evil on par with slavery.

You may want to reread my original post carefully.

> I truly hope that you are wrong and Stallman does not believe proprietary software to be an evil on par with slavery.

I can't claim to know the internal ranking of evil things in Stallman's mind, but nonfree software is very clearly beyond the line of unjustifiable evil for him.

"While we can distinguish various nonfree distribution schemes in terms of how far they fall short of being free, we consider them all equally unethical.", from https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

> Stallman: "we consider them all equally unethical."

This is my whole point in a nutshell; unethical and evil are NOT synonymous words and you keep treating them that way. Wage theft is unethical and should be criminal. Slavery is evil.

Many vegans are actually doing exactly that: enacting laws to improve the living conditions of animals. In the Netherlands we have the "party for the animals" in parliament for that. While their long-term goal is the elimination of meat, they also realize this is not realistic/practical in the short-term for various reasons. In the meanwhile they've been fairly successful in putting the topic of animal suffering on the agenda, making meaningful proposals to improve things, and hopefully coming closer to the long-term goals

I happen to be vegan (well, mostly anyway). Yes, you have the "extreme" vegans you might encounter on occasion, which me and my vegan friends tend to dislike as well, but most are significantly more pragmatic than you might think. It's just that you hear less from them as they're not as "loud".

If a farmer was to walk up to me and ask me "how can I improve the welfare of my animals in my factory farm?" then I'd do my best to make meaningful improvements, even though I think factory farming in general is unethical.

Now, back to Free Software: in broad lines I agree with Stallman, but just find his approach unhelpful, and I don't think that can just be hand-waved away with "but [he thinks] it's unethical".

However, in my opinion, this game developer interested in doing the right thing is the kind of person the FSF and Stallman should focus on and work on finding solutions for, because they could make a difference and even move part of the industry to free software. Telling such people they are not doing the right thing without giving any trail is not going to achieve much and could even repel them. That's counter productive.

One could say that the concerned developer should instead think themself of a solution. That's partly true. I think they should if they are really concerned. However, the whole goal of the FSF is to move the world to free software. They should work to provide trails to such people, because they have all the incentive to do so, even more than the concerned developer. They should provide a welcoming climate so such developer want to join (even more).

I think Stallman should be prepared to give a kind, low effort answer to such a "basic" question. It can be low effort because sometimes the question is low effort too, or even a bit ill-intended and yes, the developer should do their homework. But a nice, positive answer could make things change and engage people.

(I say "basic", but that does not mean the problem is easy. I think it's hard.)

Two things don't have to be exactly as bad as each other to be analogous circumstances.

You are supposed to apply to same chain of logical reasoning to the two situations.

Just expressing faux outrage with a "How dare you compare these two things" isn't actually defeating the argument in any way.

Using extreme ethical examples to justify a statement is how Godwin’s Law came about, way back in the 90s. It’s a well known tactic to make one’s own position sound reasonable, by implying that anyone is still arguing with you may as well be saying the Nazis weren’t so bad.

It’s a good rule of thumb that rather than making a logical argument, you are in fact bringing a rational discussion to an end by invoking slavery, Hitler, or other incontrovertible evil. They are not in any meaningful sense useful analogies for most discussions.

The guy wasn’t bringing up anything like slavery. Therefore Stallman’s response is quite likely unexpected to most people.

This misunderstanding tends to be caused by (1) treating the rhetorical device literally rather than as an (intentionally exaggerated) analogy, and (2) - as in this case - by assuming that the argument being made is trying to draw some moral equivalence between the analogy and the original example. It isn't.

I wasn't making any point about whether Stallman is right or wrong on that, I was just pointing out that people are attacking the wrong part of his argument. If you disagree with him you should attack his base belief that proprietary software is unethical.

> Unless you have a low opinion of Stallman, why would you expect him to be so dismissive of the day-to-day concerns of someone who wants to support a family?

When have you ever seen Stallman be pragmatic instead of idealist about anything regarding proprietary software?

> When have you ever seen Stallman be pragmatic instead of idealist

Pragmatism vs idealism isn’t the point. My question was why would you expect someone you haven’t met to be an asshole, if you didn’t already think they were an asshole?

I would expect the same if I asked any particularly idealistic vegan how to eat meat with less impact. The idealistic vegan will just tell me to not eat any meat.

Also, in no way is any of what I said contingent on Stallman being an asshole, but it also surprises me that someone thinks finding Stallman to be an asshole at all surprising. He is a man of strong convictions that won't budge, and it's easy to find many anecdotes where people paint him as assholish.

I’ve been to events supporting a cause. They are full of people who, in support of their passionate convictions, try to help and persuade people to join them without reducing personal dilemmas to simplistic answers.

It makes me wonder: if strong convictions don’t cause or correlate to how you treat people, is there another explanation for why it’s so easy to find such anecdotes?

Wow. There is a continuum from good behaviour to unethical behaviour to evil.

To conflate and compare and equivalate unethical behaviours like theft with true evils like slavery or murder is beyond unhelpful.

I don't see how proprietary has even been established as unethical let alone a evil equivalent to slavery.

Please stop making this argument on Stallman's behalf.

I'm not saying those behaviors are all equally bad. I'm saying they are all bad, with an unspecified amount of evilness. I wouldn't help anyone do any of them. I won't help someone steal, even if I think murder is more wrong than it, because stealing is already wrong.

For Stallman, nonfree software is also wrong. You can argue with that, but you can't expect him to help someone write nonfree software and still hold that view.

Society has moved on in the decades since Stallman started (for better or for worse), and we need to figure out a way to stay true to their vision around software and bringing new people on board with the free software movement. Having such extremist comments when someone is trying to figure out how to make their game opensource without breaking agreements for other parts they rely on isn't going to get anyone anywhere.

RMS' heart is mostly in the right place, but he's a fanatic who is 100% out of touch with the real world.

The same way anyone who think selling metamphetamines to vulnerable people and kids is unethical and wrong, then you should not do it and find another income to feed your family.

Nobody is put a gun to the temple and forced to write proprietary software to make a living. There are myriads of other jobs.

For most part of his life he was living in his office at the university, technically homeless. After that period he lived in a home designated by MIT, possible because they got tired of the building code violation of having a professor living in his office.

I understand he's forgone the amount of wealth he could have accumulated by just working in the software industry in the name of his cause, and that is laudable. However he thinks everyone should do this despite the greater burden they'd have to shoulder. All the people he tells shouldn't be making non free software so they can support themselves and their families are not going to be given free lodging by MIT.

However your comment above said he lived comfortably off the income of his own celebrity. We would have to twist the word income here for a bit to cover this kind of situation. The comfortably part is also a bit questionable, but I guess living at the office can be comfortable to some people. The description just didn't fit the situation that well, which is why I wrote the above comment.

Yes, by working on unfree software, an occupation which he uncompromisingly condemns. Programmers working exclusively on free software would be earning much, much less on average.

You mentioned exclusively, that's true that you might have to write custom, closed code for customers at many of those companies. But that's still better than exclusively working on non free software.

All of the open source companies/people that come to mind are not selling libre software, they are all selling some kind of service - support contracts, managed hosting, etc - or they embraced some kind of freemium/"open core" model (so they are really selling non-free software), or they are funded by charitable donations and sometimes public grants, often by having some large non-free companies being sponsors (Linus Torvalds is paid this way for example, through sponsorship money from the who-is-who of the non-free corporate world distributed through the Linux Foundation).

It doesn't sound complicated to me to understand that you can sell games whose code is open source but the 3d models, graphics, levels building and artwork aren't. Customer would still retain all free software liberties, be able to port the game to other platforms and the dev studios would still get paid.

So yes, although your observations are not wrong, they do not apply universally.

> Nevertheless, more than 6000 of these individuals choose to help fund the project to the tune of between $150k and $210k a year.

How is this not covered by the posters comment about it not being a business but a charity if you rely on people paying more than they need to?

If that's your definition, then sure.

That's not my definition.

I would have just answered that the best way to develop free software games is to not be forced to rely on copyright in order to get paid. Get paid to work on it, rather than get paid after work has already been done. If one has to rely on copyright to get paid, a CC BY-NC license might be the best choice, as then the author still have exclusivity to put the game on stores. An other choice is a contractual trigger where once the author is not interested in exclusivity they they will release the code.

This is probably one of the best critiques of his approach (and by extention the FSF) I've read. Very true, and it is a tremendous waste.

An idea that's inapplicable to reality even in principle is worthless.

There's no reason you cannot make a living by simply creating a payment method where you get the game + code. Yes, people will copy it. FAR from all people will. In the game add a pay/subscribe/support button. Frankly, I suspect you'll get more money; the game will be spread further and people will be willing to pay. You can even create a "bug bounty" program, where people can pay for bug fixes. Alternatively, have people "pre-pay" for new releases and send the code. There's plenty of alternatives.

That said, I do understand the view, but take a step back..

Stallman's point is that it's unethical to have closed source code running on your hardware. Effectively, you cannot understand, manipulate, update the underlying code. If I purchase a book, I can modify it. If I buy a car I can modify it. If I buy a song, I can modify it. Why can I not modify the software I purchased?

In terms of meaningful improvements, everyone considers licensing. Every company I've ever worked at, every code base, every project is evaluated, etc. It's taken seriously, something that was not done prior to the FSF. I'm currently writing this comment on hardware I can modify, with software I can modify. I don't even have closed sourced video drivers.. So I really don't see your point.

Here you are. Discussing and arguing.

Good on you.

Made me imagine one of those xkcd:

Me: here is the code.

RMS: what? this is the compiled software.

Me: but the code is there in assembly.

RMS: that's unethical, give me the source code.

Me: ok, here, the source right before compilation.

RMS: this is obfuscated code, still unethical.

Me: granted, here it goes without obfuscation.

RMS: no, wait, the code is so micro-optimized it's no easy to understand, that's not open enough, and, unethical.

Me: ugh but I didn't save the unoptimized version, I just kept optimizing until it got this way.

RMS: look if we can't understand it we won't be able to inspect it, so this is still unethical.

Me: fine, I refactored the code.

RMS: it's undocumented, how are most people going to understand it, imagine a whole operating system undocumented, just, unethical!

Yet GNU and FSF aren't everything RMS is, so he has his own personal website. I would assume you've learned about his views on having children there.

The Free Software Foundation was founded in 1985. From there since Free Software has only lost ground. I don't think Stallman would agree that "lack of pragmatism" is really what's stopping things from changing for better.

Or maybe the FSF has absolutely miserably failed at actually getting their message out there?

The Right to Repair movement has been more successful; there's quite a bit of overlap between the concept of Free Software and Right To Repair: both are fundamentally about "I can do to the machine I bought whatever I want!" And it seems both the public and lawmakers are receptive to this argument. Right to Repair hasn't been as successful as I'd like (yet), but a lot more successful than Free Software. It seems to me that part of the blame squarely lies with FSF's inability to actually communicate their message effectively. Open Source has been more successful either.

I never like this kind of externalizing of issues and blame other people/corporations/governments because it's just not helpful. Even if you're 100% correct about all of that, you can't change what other people/organisations do where you have no influence, but you can influence what you do, so it's almost always better to think about "what can I/we do better?" rather than "what can they do better?"

I don't think FSF communication really has that much of an impact on the success. Even if the average person understands the benefit to free software it just doesn't impact them in the same way that right to repair does and that will result in them not really caring about it.

Some practical scenarios:

- The game Guacamelee crashes at 30 minutes in to the game for me and quite a lot of other people, but I can't fix it or download an "unofficial patch" (how many games have reverse-engineered unofficial patches btw?).

- I happened to have bought Hyperlight Drifer on GOG.com today; it seems okay, but the controls are horrible to the point of being almost unplayable. Pretty sure someone would have fixed it if they could.

- Back in the day KPN (Dutch AT&T) gave everyone a wireless dongle with their internet, but the driver was bugged and after a certain Windows update it would cause BSODs, and I had to sell a lot of new wireless dongles because of that.

- How many people and organisations would have preferred running Windows XP/7 instead of more or less forcibly updating to 8/10 because Microsoft no longer maintained it?

- How many people wished they could get a version of Windows 10 that doesn't forcibly reboot on updates?

And many more. These are all things a regular person could take advantage of, and very concrete advantages for a regular person, and not all that different from "right to repair".

A big point of Free Software really is about "right to repair"; a lot of people really do want their software to do something different or is broken beyond repair, but there is no way anyone can actually make it work any different. Chances are that if you're struggling with $problemX someone else is too, and already released a fix for it. Or, especially in a corporate environment, you can hire someone.

The FSF takes a very high-level philosophical/academic views of things, as well as a very programmer-centric view, but it doesn't need to be like this.

None of the issues you brought up are necessaries in the same way right to repair can be. Right to repair can save people thousands of dollars while the examples you provided are more of nice to have sorts of things.

Don't get me wrong. I am very much in favor of free software and I think if people understood it they would like it as well. I just don't think they would really care about it anywhere near the same level as right to repair.

>The game Guacamelee crashes at 30 minutes in to the game for me and quite a lot of other people, but I can't fix it or download an "unofficial patch" (how many games have reverse-engineered unofficial patches btw?).

A lot of games have mods. These games are proprietary and the mods often are as well. Look at a game like Skyrim. There is literally a mod called the Unofficial Patch. It fixes a lot of the issues with the game. I think most people care about mod capabilities not an actual open source game. If all games had mods people would be content.

>I happened to have bought Hyperlight Drifer on GOG.com today; it seems okay, but the controls are horrible to the point of being almost unplayable. Pretty sure someone would have fixed it if they could.

How many people play games that don't have remappable controls? That seems like such a niche issue that it wouldn't impact the average person I was referring to.

>Back in the day KPN (Dutch AT&T) gave everyone a wireless dongle with their internet, but the driver was bugged and after a certain Windows update it would cause BSODs, and I had to sell a lot of new wireless dongles because of that.

I don't think this is really a big issue anymore. More and more people don't even have computers and when they do, they have wifi card built in. Again not appealing to the average person (in the present day).

>How many people and organisations would have preferred running Windows XP/7 instead of more or less forcibly updating to 8/10 because Microsoft no longer maintained it?

While this is probably the best one you brought up, I don't think you would have enough people maintain older versions of something as complex as an OS and this would create a massively insecure situation for users of it. I think this would do a lot to harm the free software movement.

>How many people wished they could get a version of Windows 10 that doesn't forcibly reboot on updates?

I think Microsoft already fixed this? There are also third party software that can fix this without modification to the OS.

Regardless, let's say that was not the case. If it was something desirable I have no doubt that it would have been trivial for Microsoft to implement. This means Microsoft would be choosing not to implement it. Windows being free software would do nothing to get this change implemented as Microsoft would not accept the pull request.

People would have to fork Windows to add this in. Given Window's habit of reverting settings the fork couldn't just change a setting and provide the ISO. This means they would have to continually provide updates. I have no reason to think Microsoft would collaborate with Windows fork maintainers so we would have slower updates assuming the forks actually update regularly.

When the forks inventively take too long to patch there would be security issues resulting in the negative press from security issues.

Linux and associated software are made by open source people for open source people. If Microsoft turned Windows into free software I just don't think they would make it convenient for people forking it since they would still want people to pay for Windows.

I understand these were just random ideas you thought of, but only one seemed like something the average person would actually care about and it could very likely turn into negative press for free software.

I think the fact you had to through out so many different items and still not find things that could appeal to the majority of users is the problem. When it comes to right to repair it is simple. Phones and cars. Large numbers of people have one or both of them and would like to be able to repair them instead of getting a new one.

I fully agree the FSF should get better at communication, but I think the issue is not their failure at communicating well but that the issue just doesn't really impact as many people.

In contrast, right to repair does not require abandoning the entire framework of copyright. In fact, it barely touches it. Furthermore, Louis Rossman is way better at explaining the problems with anti-repair bullshit than RMS is at explaining the harms of proprietary software.

[0] Yes I know GPL relies upon copyright to work. That was the backup plan - if we can't force all software to be Free we can at least keep our own software from being locked down.

I do think copyright reform has favored individual expression recently, and I don't see this changing.

I used computers in 1985. To suggest that the free software movement has only lost ground since then is completely absurd. Has it gone anywhere nearly as far as Stallman and others hoped it would? No. Has it gone much further than anyone who was around in 1985 to watch this being born thought it would go? Absolutely.

Are you joking? This was before my time, but there once was a time when you would not only have to pay for development tools, but pay for them seperately. Want a compiler? $500, please. Want something like Bison? Fork a few hundred. Want an assembler? Another few hundred. etc.

There have been setbacks, and it does look like the tide is turning towards everything becoming closed again but it's untrue to say that Free Software has "only lost ground" since 1985 -hell, GCC didn't even come out until what, 1987, 1988 or so?

Right, but to most people, that's still an extreme position. Because again, like 99.99% of games are non-free, and especially the way he phrased it is gonna come across as a crank.

Stallman strikes me very much as the kind of person who communicates poorly, in an inflammatory way, and gives zero shits how much this bothers anyone else.

Which for a random individual is probably fine, or at least tolerable, but is less good when you're the face of a movement.

In exactly which way is Stallman being inflammatory here?

Nothing you say addresses that.

I use plenty of proprietary software, but I also know it’s bad for me. Like someone who enjoys alcohol, I think the benefits are worth the negative effects, but whenever I can get the same benefits from free software, I prefer them. I keep one computer around that runs only free software, and it’s great. It’s a decade old, but gains on desktop software performance in the last decade have been slow.

Even Stallman gives one reason to use proprietary software: to make a free version of it. I’ll offer a liberal interpretation of that rule: most people work in technology need to use a wide variety of proprietary software to understand trends and developments in software paradigms, even if they are not directly copying it while using it.

And my prediction: one day, all software will become free. All proprietary software is only temporarily restricted. Future computers will be able to reverse-engineer any existing program and create code that is functionally identical. That still makes it harmful, but that harm will eventually end. We just have the responsibility to make better laws in the future. Most important is preserving political freedom, and software freedom will eventually follow.

If it has to be interpreted, it is poorly communicated.

In a way, it is a form of society-wide bargaining. Ask for everything, get something. Ask for something, get nothing. Start big, end up small; start small, end up nowhere.

He could definitely benefit from coming across as more pleasant and affable, though.

So no, the world just moved proprietary software to the cloud with parts spun-off and GPLed on paper.

That is just plain not true. If it were, that would be fantastic. Unfortunately that's only part of Stallman's message, and a good portion of the rest of it is either simply unworkable or batshit insane.

To quote David Schlesinger after RMS got up on stage and talked about how "women who have not been introduced to emacs are emacs virgins and 'relieving them of their virginity is a sacred duty of all members of the church of emacs'", Stallman continues to embarrass us all

I took him out to dinner once, my wife and I, and had a lovely evening talking mostly about his childhood experiences.

He was extremely respectful to the staff at the restaurant I recall. Going out of his way to compliment them on the food.

That at some point he said: "women who have not been introduced to emacs...sacred duty of all members of the church of emacs" is entirely possible. We all have said stupid things. Out of context especially, had these things been recorded, we would be ashamed.

To use that quote to define RMS is a gross insult, intellectually fraudulent, it is a political attack.

I do think it is important to play nice in politics. So if you have criticisms of RMS' stand on software, make them.

This sort of thing is insulting to all of us who do our best to imperfectly maintain standards of debate

Before I commented I tried to find the source, interesting digressions ensued, but nothing that suggests this is typical.

Also I mentioned I have been following him for a long time (nearly three decades, golly). I have never heard those sorts of words pass his lips.

So I accuse you of telling a lie here. It is not uncommon to make up stories and exaggerate faults of those you politically oppose. Still lies

>I have never heard those sorts of words pass his lips. >So I accuse you of telling a lie here. It is not uncommon to make up stories and exaggerate faults of those you politically oppose. Still lies

You must not be listening very hard. Making comments like these is even part of his wikipedia page as he had to set down from the FSF and MIT for a while for similar comments

That's the issue. Stallman's technical contributions and early political contributions were both foundational and heroic. That does not negate the fact that for the better part of two decades he's been a constant embarrassment that continuously degrades the movement in the eyes of anyone who hasn't developed a tolerance for him. Evangelizing free software was comparatively easy in the days when peoples' reaction to his name was "Haha, that guy who ate stuff off his foot on stage? Wild." It's gotten considerably harder now that the reaction is "wait, the guy who wrote those pedophile emails and harasses women at conferences?"

I'm tired of trying to advocate for free software when just the name "Free Software Foundation" is a conversational liability.

https://geekfeminism.fandom.com/wiki/EMACS_virgins_joke

There are references too.

No it has not.

I exclusively use Free Software outside my working life (for my sins, developing iOS software with Swift. A bit like Linux in 1997 - it mostly works)

I mean, we live in a world powered by Free Software, so, I don't know, really. If anything, corporation were kinda successful making money out of free software, but that's another can of worms.

That's not true, it gained ground for a long time after that. "Free" as in freedom software, by Stallman's definition, probably peaked in the early 2000s.

And I would say that the losses mostly started happening when the FSF stopped producing software that people wanted to use. They effectively ignored the entire internet revolution.

Personally, I used to think that Stalmman was a crank. And as time passed, and as I watched some of his prophecies come true and as I noted ways in my own life in which my own devices became harder to use, and my own data became harder to store and retrieve in the ways that I wanted to - I began to change my mind.

Without that irascible, loud-mouthed, doom-sandwich-board-wearing maniac... who else would exist at the intersection of "knows enough to know what he's talking about to speak with authority" and "has nothing left to lose"?

My advice to anyone reading this is to not be so quick to "solution" on his behalf, or to reason against his ideas, in advocacy of a more "moderate" approach.

We're almost there with our phones. At least on Android one can install 3rd party apps.

So I think RMS is spot on.

I like to own my device. Write, compile, and install software of my choosing on it, without some company getting into the way of that.

Companies want to control and monetize every possible use of our devices. We can't let that happen unchecked.

The again, in reality I take a less idealistic stance:

- I accept that the BIOS, drivers for the graphics card and the wifi chip are - for the time being - proprietary.

- For everything else I see absolutely no reason why I should use any closed source software.

- My OS is open source, all applications are open source, all games I (occasionally) play are open source.

It may be useful to listen to a person who sounds unrealistic, but also proved to be right on some pretty important issues, like DRM and the cloud.

It does not mean we should immediately switch away from anything proprietary. But it does mean it's worth being aware.

If you really think so, I’d argue that his hardline position is then justified.

To me Stallman doesn’t have any specific unfair advantage over anyone who would get on their soapboax and preach for a different approach. You or me could make blogposts and go talk to conferences, and rally people around a different approach. If we were to gain traction, there is no hidden lever for Stallman to pull that throws us in dark cave and nobody hears from us ever.

What gives Stallman his influence is that pragmatic approaches have at most kept the status quo, at worse allowed way more encroachment on our software and devices ownership. Even if we don’t reach the 100% free ideal, setting the goal at “a bit freer than now” won’t help in my opinion.

More and more the “realistic” approach feels close to accepting cops have some amount of violent abuse, because non abusing cops make 90% of the workforce and we better be in friendly terms with them to make things progress, right ?

Stallman can't/won't even defend the GPL in court; others have had to organize outside the FSF to do so because the FSF is only interested in stroking its beards.

In my opinion, if Stallman is an hermit that only serves as an anchoring for other people to move toward the right direction, I'd argue it's plenty enough.

Now I don't know much about the FSF finances and what we should really be expecting from it.

In my opinion, this is one of the problems with Stallman's "moral authority" approach to the FSF. I would very much like to hear about these cases where a game's source is libre licensed but not it's content and see what Stallman actually has to say about it.

Not for nothing, but there are many network/online games that have both source and content libre licensed. Here are a few:

* Teeworlds - https://www.teeworlds.com/

* Minetest - https://www.minetest.net/

* Battle for Wesnoth - https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth

I'm sure there are many others of note but those are just the few that I have at least some passing familiarity with.

[0] https://stallman.org/#thanks

[1] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/

Someone who thinks eating sick animals (most meat products) is unethical, isn't going to compromise their personal values just because you're treating them to a meal at the local steakhouse.

The other stuff seems kinda BS.

This is wrong and disastrous. We need mostly pragmatism, may be a tiny bit of free-spirit and idealism.

Talking to gamers about the evils of paid proprietary software and hardware should be relatively easy. But because Stallman is so fundamentally incapable of reading the room, and so exceptionally talented at alienating people, he manages to put out something that gamers look at, laugh, maybe make a meme or two out of, and then forget about.

> but the problem is that Richard Stallman is one of the most influential and respected members of the movement

Stallman hasn't been influential in at least two decades. He's so extremist that anyone actually interested in getting shit done has ignored him. He is completely lacking in perspective-taking, empathy, viewing anyone as anything approaching a peer, or even managing just to not talk at/down to them. He openly pities everyone, thinks us all stupid fools.

I think there was limited respect for Stallman's original concepts and his vision. But in the decades since, he's generated little to no work product, and mostly come off as jealous and bitter.

Any mainstream-open-source-community respect he had, he lost much of when all the stories about him being a serial sexual harasser (if not borderline predator) came out, and then his comments about underage sex...which to make the matter even worse, he's been nothing but petulant and defensive about.

Stallman is not a statesman, a diplomat, ambassador, or a leader. He's just an ideological zealot who has held back the open software movement by refusing to acknowledge his skill set, demeanor, and behavior are not suitable for representing and advancing the open source movement, and that if he truly cared about said movement, he would have long since changed his methods or let someone else take a whirl.

Some folks see him as a genius, but all I see is man who has spent over four decades yelling (largely) the same thing from the top of a mountain, thinking that one day everyone will suddenly see the genius and wisdom of his grand plan. Who lacks the self-awareness to recognize his lack of effectiveness, and the selflessness to step aside and let someone else try carrying the mantle.

As a product manager he has done a poor job. For years he prevented GCC from moving to a simpler more modular architecture because he said that would make it easier to build non-free software on top of it. In the meantime Clang implemented this modular architecture and started taking market share from GCC. Years later GCC moved to a modular architecture anyway because Stallman finally blessed it. At the same time he prevented emacs from officially embracing better integration with Clang and Clang style compilers that provide a richer debugging and syntax checking experience. He did this because GCC didn't support the same experience. Eventually (after years) emacs did integrate with Clang and GCC style syntax facilities.

He made similar stalling moves preventing the adoption of git for emacs (and other FSF projects). First he pushed Arch, the he forced repositories to migrate to BZR after git had clearly won the version control battle (I'm fuzzy, but emacs moved to BZR around 2009-2011). Finally he conceded and emacs moved to git in 2014. After emacs migrated to git he used the emacs mailing list asking for simple git support that he would have understood if he hadn't remained purposefully ignorant about the VCS.

The FSF still revolves around Stallman and he hasn't done much work to find and promote a successor to himself to lead the organization. He is a poor steward of his own movement.

There were also his comments about Minsky and Epstein. He is entitled to his opinions, but as a leader of an important org with such stringent beliefs, delving into other topics was a distraction for the org. Being a leader requires focus and direction, inviting controversy with comments on unrelated current events is the opposite of focus.

In total I think that a lot of Stallman's actions have more to do with his ego and self importance than advancing the free software movement.

You're likely aware, but I wanted to take this opportunity to surface that a lot of the coverage of his comments on Minsky and Epstein was misleading if not malicious.

Notably, articles from Vice and The Daily Beast accused him of defending Epstein and asserting that victims were willing, and both of those accusations are false, as can be reasonably discerned from careful reading of the quotes that appear in the articles themselves. Rather, Stallman defended Minsky and said that victims probably appeared to Minsky to be willing even if they were being coerced out of his sight.

In addition to any judgement we're applying over his choice of whether to talk about it in the first place, we should be sure we're judging him for what he said (which I do believe deserves criticism) and not for what some people want to pretend he said.

RMS isn't preventing you (or anybody else) from doing so.

And it's being done. There's even groups such as the OSI.

it literally sounds like a religious cult at this point. When I was growing up I had a friend from an actual cult and the family literally had their own invented board games (which were terrible) purged of all kinds of "immoral" references because they weren't allowed to touch anything out of mainstream culture.

Whenver I see this depluralizing behavior as if non-free software causes some sort of metaphysical corruption I have to think back to this.