He has not been hugely successful. He has failed outright at making users care about their software freedoms, which is why it's so easy to take them away from them. The users are the ones who care least about free software, mostly because they see every day how inferior it is to closed software. From the perspective of the average user, apple's stuff is far superior to the "free" stuff. This makes users interpret free in its worst meaning: free as in cheap, free as in low value.

And this is my real beef with stallman's brand of free. His freedom is a narrow-minded ideology, abstracted from what freedom means in the real world. In the real world the only freedom I care about is the freedom to spend my time the way I want. From that perspective, jobs did a lot to make me free, because the switch from linux to apple "freed" more of my time than it cost me.

It's also interesting to think that apple, in supporting webkit and web technology, helped make HTML5 happen, a movement that enables more user freedom than ever before. Even the ITMS, that bastion of evil, is just another web app selling DRM-free music.

I respect what stallman is trying to do, and strongly agree with it. I just think his tactics are dead-wrong.

You're overloading the word free, a common rhetorical confusion that invariably appears in discussions of this nature. You're not really saying that Apple gave you more freedom; you're saying it gave you more time. That's a legitimate point, but you shouldn't pretend that that's the same thing as "freedom" in any sense remotely resembling what Stallman or foob care about. As such, you clearly don't "strongly agree" with what Stallman is trying to do; he wants software to be something anyone can tinker with, modify and redistribute. Apple wants to give you the "best possible computing experience", which it can only do for you as long as you're in total agreement with Apple over what that means.

By the way, Apple machines are a huge timesink for me whenever I try to use them, precisely because I can't customize the things in the UI that drive me batty (namely, the global menu and the dock, two elements of the OSX UI that Apple holds sacrosanct). I'm orders of magnitude more productive on a machine I've set up to work the way I want than one that I haven't. So of what use to me is Apple's brand of "freedom"? Contrast it to Stallman's, which allows me to tear open a piece of software to see what it's doing or modify its behavior. I know which one I'd rather have.

Actually, it sounds like either machine is a huge time sink for you. Apple machines because you have to deal with how they're set up and your dream OS because you have to spend a bunch of time tweaking everything to be how you want it. For those of us who find the Apple OSX way just fine, we don't have that time sink.

No, it doesn't sound like that. There are many things I like to tweak that make me more productive. Tweaking those things is time-consuming, but once it's done, I never have to waste time on it again. This default window manager sucks? Let me spend a day to throw it out and install awesome. I find myself doing the same things over and over again in Emacs? Let me write and store a macro for it. And you know what the really cool part is? _I can do these things!_. And I usually end up learning something useful about the system.

Now you may find Apple OS X perfect and that's great for you. But what if Apple makes some change tomorrow that bugs the crap out of you? Everytime you encounter that "shitty" detail, a little part of you will get irritated and want to take a hammer to your laptop. Or maybe these things don't bother you. I, however, won't live with something like that.

This is one of the 'worst' qualities of him and his cause. He, and others, seem so thoroughly convinced they've stumbled upon a perfect understanding of what the world needs and don't have the ability to humour themselves with the possibility that maybe others (Apple, Microsoft, ..) are onto something good.

I've noticed that with many of these 'causes' they have a good ideology yet simply lack any actual teaching skills in order to get it across to others especially those who would apparently most benefit from it.

If something is inherently good/true it will stand by it's own characteristics and not need others who prove them though often they need others to teach others. Also, if the masses choose something 'bad' then that is what they receive.

That sounds pretty naive. At many points in history, what we now consider good and true were by no means widely accepted and had to be actively fought for. I'm pretty sure many people thought slavery was a good thing at one time and that women were inferior to men.

People discover truth and until they do they often act in ways that do not align with truth hence, slavery and so on. Some people still think slavery is good and that women are inferior to men.

Actually vast majority of people can never tell the difference between perceived truth and the actual truth.

if we lived in an apple dominated space even the web browser risks being banned and i m sure some of the end users you mention would applaud it.

people like rms are there to wake us from short sighted dreams.

You utterly and completely don't get it. Web apps take away users' freedom by keeping everything but the interface on a locked-down server.

Reasoning like yours is why rms is more relevant now than ever.

I don't know, I wouldn't bet on it. The sw I use the most daily are Vim, bash, python, chrome. Free stuff.

I you say I am not representative, let's check my mother, she uses chrome, that's all. Free stuff.

What percentage of HN readers develop non-free software for a living, or for part of their living?

So it hits a nerve, I think. And I am consistently drawn to Stallman threads on HN because people's reaction to this is so interesting.

And yet RMS was and continues to be a sort of software demi-god to me. I'm an atheist, but I'm expressing it with religious terms, so I don't use those terms lightly. RMS really is what I look up to and strive to achieve. No, I don't want to be him, but yes I do wish to match his philosophical purity.

So when I say I think that people who knock on RMS because of their profession are in error, I'm also not speaking lightly.

However we couldn't develop our software without GNU software tools. Personally I support Stallman. He probably thinks what we are doing is morally wrong, so be it, I still support him because I think his ideas and philosophy changed computing world for the better. It doesn't have to be black and white and can be in between.

We have GNU/Linux -- probably the best, server OS in the world. And it is FREE. Think about that. If anyone remembers what big Unix vendors would charge for it, you'd see how huge it is.

Yeah Stallman is an extremist but I think every movement needs its extremists to push forwards. The ideals of the extremists are probably never realized fully but because they are there, the whole movement (including the moderate positions) moves forward.

I think topic is still open for debate.

The other example is Windows. For years and years it was known as a horribly unstable OS despite the fact that most of the failures were caused by poorly written 3rd party software. By locking things down more, Apple makes it harder for 3rd parties to make them look bad.

fair point about apple benefiting from their restricted ecosystem, though note again that it's directly at the expense of their users' freedoms.

How would you feel if the car manufacturer attached locks to the hood of your car? Apple went one step ahead and did the equivalent of requiring to approve all accessories and anything to enhance your car.

I may not agree with his conclusions, but I can understand his reasoning and that there is a method behind his (alleged) madness.

I might be considerably less upset if there were both "cars with locks on their hoods" and "regular cars without locks on their hoods" and if I was offered the choice between them.

It's quite possible to support the choice between FOSS and commercial software, and think that FOSS is a great thing for people to develop, without deciding that people whole build closed-source software are "immoral". Don't like it? Don't buy it.

I know this is a bit disingenuous and there are corner cases where it's hard to avoid closed-source. There are even a few cases where no amount of consumer choice (even, say, someone who avoids smartphones and 'cool gadgets') will allow you to escape closed source (e.g. government services available as closed-source software only or working only on platforms where you have to use closed source). The point still stands, broadly.

So enjoy your freedom of choice, for now, but I remember a time when Microsoft was so strong that alternatives to Windows seemed destined to die.

And alternatives would have died, if Microsoft had their way with Trusted Computing ... and personally I could see Microsoft banning Firefox because "it duplicates existing functionality". But hey, Apple is cool, right?

Why would I care? I don't know anything about what's under the hood and I don't want to. You know what would be great about them locking the hood? If they do that they can't expect me to do maintenance things like pouring in oil, windshield wiper fluid or any of that stuff.

The more "freedom" you have on a computer the more maintenance you have to do. Linux is the most "free" OS and it also takes the most effort to administrate. Every second I spend administering a computer is a second I'm spending on something I don't care about and doesn't get me any closer to what my business is about.

Congratulations, you just bought and installed Redhat Linux. Have problems configuring your software, call them up and they will be happy to help you. They are great, actually

But then someone wants to fix their car but they don't have the money to pay a mechanic. Instead they have all the time they need, so they can read through manuals and try to fix things themselves.

Congratulations, you just downloaded, installed and configured CentOS. Have fun playing with it, tearing its guts out, recompiling its kernel and doing whatever you want with it.

Now you are focused on features. "Oh look, super user friendly interface! Never have to open the hood of my car". That is great! What about anti-features. Now that you can't open the hood of your car. One or two car manufacturers can start installing tracking systems that report your position, record all your conversations, all your phone calls, etc. Why? Well because maybe they were approached by the FBI or because they decided they could sell all this as marketing info to third parties.

Now only that, there was legislation proposed to make it actually illegal to open the hood of your car. Think about that. You bought it, you open the hood, and police come to your door to arrest your for it.

I don't think this analogy fits because there are open devices and people don't buy them. You don't buy them.

Then people point to the Pinto and say, "See no one is buying it! No one cares about openness!" The real conclusion is the there are relatively few people that are willing to go extremely out of their way to remain on the side of open-ness. If there were two products that could compete at the same level, people may skew towards the open one.

In fact, the law usually goes in the other direction: it's illegal for manufacturers to actively put in some kinds of restrictions, like first-party-only replacement parts or only-serviceable-by-manufacturer vehicles. Putting a lock on the hood, if it's intended to prevent third-party servicing, is probably illegal in the first place.

I would drop my Apple household if I could have a free environment that worked as seamlessly as my Apple environment, not just for me but for my wife and kids as well.

I am making a tradeoff between free (though I don't believe a free phone exists, no matter how open Google claims they are) and easy. I'm willing to make that tradeoff. Calling me immoral (RMS, not you :) is insulting.

That said, I am grateful for everything RMS has accomplished ideologically. I use emacs daily, but more important, things like GNU/Linux exist thanks to his work. I just want nothing to do with him.

Their system could be just as usable if they gave you the root password. They could have provided the App Store by default, as a seal of approval, and let the users get their software from elsewhere as well. The garden is still walled, but you have a door for when you want out.

Now without this App Store exclusivity, they probably wouldn't have been able to squeeze 30% out of the developers. But it wouldn't have affected usability.

You can always buy a product from someone else, or make your own if you think there is a demand that isn't being filled.

Don't say "if you don't like it, don't buy it". Choice is not enough. Most people are just incapable of doing informed decision about privacy. Heck, even I used GMail until two years ago. Plus, even if they are so capable, there is a tragedy of the commons here: if you surrender your data, it could be crossed-reference with the other's, and it may end up affecting even those who didn't surrender their data (GMail is an obvious example: they collect data about whoever writes to their users, even when they host their own mail server). This is way, way more serious than your comment suggests.

It certainly is. The implementation from apple would be more complicated and more risky.

"Choice is not enough. Most people are just incapable of doing informed decision about privacy."

Um, we aren't talking about privacy, but if choice isn't enough then what exactly are you recommending?

Choice: to some extent, it is about privacy: Apple knows exactly what Apps you purchase. Anyway, I recommend regulation. First, the owner of any device whatsoever should be allowed to do whatever he wants with it, provided it wasn't illegal in the first place. We should also allow reverse engineering (doing it as well as publishing the results), even when it involves the discovery of "protections" such as cryptographic keys.

General-purpose computer system (which may include the OS) should be subjected to a more drastic regulation: as soon as there is any way to add or change functionality (mere firmware bug-fixes don't count), then the end user should be allowed and given the means to do it, at no additional cost, with no artificial restriction. Among other things, that would outlaw the monopoly that the App store currently enjoy over non jail-broken iPhones, and the restrictions Blizzard put over the creation of user-made maps for Starcraft 2 (they host the maps, and have discretion to delete them if they don't like it). Note: I don't mean to outlaw proprietary programs and OSes. But a program that is a tiny bit open should be at least that open to the end user.

The privacy side of things is more complicated, but boils down to one thing: private shenanigans should be kept private, end of story. E-mail is private. Chatting is private (even in a chat room with 10 or so people). Visiting a web site is private (between you and the web site owner). Restricted publications ("friends only") probably should be considered private as well. Servers who host private shenanigans should not be allowed to: log them, look at them (even if it is "just a machine"), aggregate them (except maybe in a reliably anonymous way, which is very hard to do). Well, you see the trend. Note that GMail, Facebook, and probably Blogger, in their current form, should totally be outlawed (heck, it applies to nearly all mail providers out there).

Note that privacy violations aren't less serious if they are performed by machines only. I don't care that "only machines" looked at my e-mail before sending me that specific ad. They still influenced me by using my private information.

I completely disagree, but I don't feel like spending 30 minutes writing a good explanation.

So many tech people complain about this issue, yet none have succeeded in making one. If so many people are sure there is a need that isn't being fulfilled, then why don't they fill the need?

Interestingly cars are increasingly heading in this direction. The level of on-board electronics is raising the bar significantly on exactly who has the ability and equipment to service or fix a car. Even something as simple as resetting the service indicators often requires specialist equipment in newer models.

We must not allow cult leaders and their status in judging value added to the world with their work. Come to think of it, what is the new thing that Steve Jobs bought to the world. Surely he bought the iPhone/iPad or the iPod. But none of that was something that didn't exist before. Phones, music players et al have been there for a century now. If the gloss and entertainment value of Apple products is the measure of Steve Jobs's success. The status of iPhone in this world is nothing bigger than video games. Those are just cool-to-have gadgets of our time. iPhone hasn't changed anything in the primary paradigm. People used still send emails, communicate and get entertained in the same ways they did before iPhone. iPhone just enabled that to happen in a easier way. But we have other things to learn from Steve Jobs, which have little to do with larger implications on Software on the longer run. He is role model for totally different set of tasks.

On the other hand, here we have RMS. Who has a proven record for fighting for something that will decide how we will use and control what we buy or build over the foreseeable future. He is also a giant who has enabled, developed and helped developed FOSS software that is helping running thousands of dollars of business today.

Richard Matthew Stallman is trying to show us the moon, but some of us are busy pointing mistakes in his finger

Complaining that the iPad is "unethical" is like offering to replace my "unethical" Subaru with an "ethical" Model T. At the foot of the Rockies. In a snowstorm. While grizzly bears close in. I'm gonna worry about the unhackability of my transmission with the sun shining. Yeah, the Model T might be fundamentally the same, but the differences in execution make for entirely different tools.

Now, I would rather deal with the grizzlies than belong to the guys making the Subarus. I don't want to belong to anyone. But the open source stacks and market competition will catch up. Free enterprise and free people won't let Apple keep those margins and powers for itself. I don't see why I shouldn't leave the grizzlies behind today, while starting work on building my FOSS Four Wheeler. Why not use the closed capabilities today while extending open to meet them tomorrow?

I do respect RMS, and I'm grateful for and dependent on free software. But the RMS posting lacked generosity. He and his would be much better off recognizing the enormous utility gains provided by a great many closed systems. I find it hard to imagine that Jobs' focus on the user's needs and perspective isn't a crucial contribution to the development of technology. It wouldn't kill people to recognize that some of this stuff has shown the way to new visions. And it wouldn't kill RMS to notice that Jobs had a passion and vision for technology as _human_ tools.

So if RMS is showing us the moon, he should probably notice that Jobs et al have put a couple of satellites into orbit.

During a question & answer session somewhere, someone asked him a question about videogames. The questioner mentioned that the best games are just not free software. Stallman's answer was that the person should "adjust their tastes" and play free software games.

Adjust their tastes?

That is plenty more restrictive than using non-free software. I'll proudly wear "digital handcuffs" than sit in Stallman's oppressive, disrespecting, dogmatic ideological prison cell.

I appreciate what RMS has done for free software, but as soon as I learned that he thinks his interests are more important for me than my own, I decided it might be time to develop my own Stallman-libre philosophy on FOSS.

My biggest gripe with Jobs was his "I know what's best for you" mentality.

Your criticisms of Stallman can equally be applied to Jobs. The user has to 'adjust their tastes' - to take on part of the Apple ecosystem means you have to take on all of it. Like gaming? Not on Apple. The user has to 'adjust their tastes' and play a limited subset of available games. Oppressive and disrespecting? Apple tried to make it illegal to jailbreak your own phone!

Steve Jobs is not quite topical to what I said.

I don't think of what RMS does as oppression, but more as 'toughlove'. Not for everyone, sure, but I think it's mischaracterised as oppression. He's more interested in having you be principled than using his products, and only his products.

If you can argue with logic that your viewpoint does not conflict with his axioms, I'm sure he would find it agreeable. It's not oppression, since there is no compulsion, but RMS tries his darndest to promote what he sees is right, and he seeks to have a logical reasoning behind everything.

Jobs was very, very much about doing things 'my way or the highway'. He was very much against people using options he didn't sanction.

EDIT: To be clearer, Jobs' rhetoric is "we offer an alternative", but the actions of Apple under Jobs was very much about crushing ideological opponents, much like RMS would like to do.

This isn't rocket science.

Stallman desires to take away my choice to create (and implicitly, to use) software that doesn't meet his ideological vision of "Free" software. I reject that desire in toto; I do not presume to tell other developers of software what restrictions they may place upon software they right, just as I reject their attempts to do the same to me.

(Stallman's inability to fulfill his desire does not exculpate him from the moral failure of that desire.)

I wouldn't call him hypocritical, though. I think he's wrong about some things, but he goes to great lengths to make his life consistent with his ideology with no regard to practicality.

>> I wouldn't call him hypocritical, though. I think he's wrong about some things, but he goes to great lengths to make his life consistent with his ideology with no regard to practicality.

Macbook Air with no DVD drive. Some people thought Jobs was wrong, because it had no regard for practicality.

We all make sacrifices for freedom, whether it is traveling overseas, or opening a bank account, but playing video games seems such a silly one.

Personally I'm not a huge fan of RMS. I agree with a lot of what he says, but at the same time I cannot agree with the way he presents it. There are two reasons why I am a member of The Linux Foundation, and not the FSF, and their names are Richard Stallman and Matt Lee. Though I feel very strong about the motives and ideology of FSF, I simply cannot condone their way of presenting them. I personally feel that RMS does as least as much to harm their goal as to aid it, and I find ML to be horribly hypocritical. No matter how much a disagree with how their do tings, I would never disrespect them as human being. But sometimes it feels like I'm alone in the world. Everybody else either adores them, or tries their darndest to disrespect them.

This is in no way unique to HN. I see it everywhere. Even in the media (here in Norway). Last time RMS talked here, all of the important IT-related media where represented. (And I noticed immediately that they were more concerned with their beers than actually listening). The articles the day after were horrible. RMS had talked about some really far out there, fairly absurd stuff, and some really smart, realistic stuff. Every single media gave their best effort to make RMS look like a loon. _None_ of the smart, realistic stuff was mentioned, even with a single word, anywhere. An they had twisted the far out stuff, to look even worse. One of them seemed even to either not have listened to a word, or was simply making stuff up. RMS said at least 6 times specifically: "I'm not talking about Micropayments, I'm talking about making pay what you like/can easier", "Don't confuse this with micropayments", etc. Yet this journalist managed to write a half an article about all of the stuff RMS had "said" about micropayments.

Compare Stallman with Torvalds, who seems to be much more pragmatic and willing to listen to people who may have different views, and seems to be much more popular as a result.

That's what I respect most about him. His message has never changed. He's truly a man of his convictions. Like him or not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

The message of Torvalds is "use the best available to you" while the message of Stallman is "use the least restrictive available to you, and accept no substitutes"

Stallman's ideology is, at the end, just about preventing hiccups...

Oh, his contributions have been (and still are) invaluable. He is the mastermind behind the FSF movement, not to mention that he has written some amazing pieces of software, by himself. I am writing this with Emacs.

But, as a spokesman, I think he falls short on several areas. The movement really needs someone with more charisma, diplomacy, empathy and tact.

Granted, it is not his fault that noone seem to want the job.

> or really, really likes parrots.

Hey, speak for yourself. If there ever was something that really touched me, that was it. I couldn't see the human being behind the persona before.

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

With numerous paraphrases.

The historical trend has been the other way around: as societies have become more free in general, they have also become safer in general. I would much rather live in the liberty of the United States, where I enjoy a crime-free neighborhood, than in the one-party dictatorship of China in the 1980s, where I saw more fights among strangers in public in three weeks in three different cities than I have seen in an entire lifetime traveling all over the United States.

See Steven Pinker's new book

http://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence/dp/0...

for more about increasing safety of human societies over time (when the long-term trend has also plainly been in the direction of greater individual liberty for all aspects of human behavior).

The problem is that many restrictions on freedom can give the illusion of security, and too many people are willing to sacrifice their own and others freedom for those warm fuzzies.

Only one deserves punishment.

Personally, I find his political views on free software to be interesting only because they illuminate a fascinating personality. Coming from anyone else, they'd be discarded as irrational drivel. But from Stallman, they become an insight into a peculiar and interesting man.

He made some quite important things twenty or thirthy years ago that are still useful or relevant nowadays. So what? It doesn't entitle him to be a pretentious, hypocritical "I know what's best for you" moron.

I'm sorry for the rudeness, but enough with the cult of personality, please.

"Jobs made some quite important things twenty or thirthy years ago that are still useful or relevant nowadays. So what? It doesn't entitle him to be a pretentious, hypocritical "I know what's best for you" moron. I'm sorry for the rudeness, but enough with the cult of personality, please."

Unfortunately he's gone, and we won't be able to tell.

Stallman is much more respectful and polite to a person who was neither of them to many.

So many see Steve Jobs as just a success story, fitting so well to the "american dream". They miss the fact that his success comes in expense of our freedoms.

To all who rant about Stallman's statements. Is it really so important to be politically correct (act according to taboo's, be pretentious, neutral or even just trendy), instead of being sincere and tell the raw truth as it is?

I think the iPad and iPhone platforms will inevitably become more open as time goes on, and I think the next phase requires it (an awful lot of the apps are completely underwhelming compared to the possibilities of the devices), and as far as their computers go, they're sufficiently open enough for me to do what I want to do (which is linux based web app development and sysadmin type work).

As mentioned in other comments, Jobs did champion the iTunes Store as DRM free, and he got that in the end.

Regardless of Stallman's contributions, the whole point of "free software" is no longer relevant. Not even for software enthusiasts -- those who care just use open source.

This canard is completely irrelevant. Free software creates a free market for the maintenance, distribution, support, and modification of software. Users of free software might not make the modifications themselves, but they can hire anyone they want to do perform the modifications. (And, with a popular project, they often won't have to, because someone else has already done so. See, for example, git.)

My point was that the social movement for software freedom is not going anywhere. These are two different things.

According to Stallman, using GPL helps to achieve "software freedom". But many people use it as a tool for achieving their own (project, community, commercial, etc) goals and don't care about Stallman's social movement. See Linus Torvalds for example.

Lately Jaguar recalled 18000 cars because of a potentially lethal firmware bug. I'm pretty sure a common, generalized open-source automotive embedded platform would be a huge enhancement in all respects.

> Regardless of Stallman's contributions, the whole point of "free software" is no longer relevant.

On the contrary. At times when our governments are moving away from democracy and computer software are always more important tools of control and enforcement, Free Software is more critically relevant every day.

Today, Stallman's and FSF's real political and social influence is miniscule.

FSF had some impressive achievements in the 90s, but they failed to utilize the social capital efficiently and couldn't catch up with rapid ecosystem changes (e.g. software and computer programming becoming mainstream).

An example of this is tivoization clause in GPLv3 which is a nuisance for businesses and contributes to marginalization of the license.

I don't think it to be minuscule among programmers and hackers.

> An example of this is tivoization clause in GPLv3 which is a nuisance for businesses and contributes to marginalization of the license.

I don't see what makes the tivoization clause a nuisance for business. I think it's a misconception, like the idea that software patents are good for anybody but lawyers and trolls.

Sir Winston Churchill.

Some questions for discussion:

1. How do we make a software distribution system that simultaneously keeps malware off but allows developers and users liberty without a third party policing the content? (Without crippling the apps to a basic denominator like HTML does). Also, discouraging piracy is another goal.What do you do about the developers who abuse the liberty and do things to mislead the gullible users or kill battery life needlessly? Social reputation for apps?

2. How do we encourage innovation in technology(which sometimes takes massive investments of time and money) and design while simultaneously encouraging the reuse of code and ability to fix and tinker with things for yourself and others and all this while preserving the experience for the majority of users(who are not technically inclined at all)?

3.How do we workaround the fact that most people do not and will never have an interest in the technical workings of devices and asking them to research things and make an optimal choice of their own is too much to ask, should a company or central authority make that choice for them?

The above are some of the points that Jobs and Stallman were on the opposite poles of. But it's easier to discuss, "hahaha, he hates parrots" and "what a jerk, parking in handicapped spaces" rather than having a real discussion about these tough issues.

And malware creators with much more technical knowledge will try to mislead them about the choices.

Maybe say the central authority gets to make the choices on a day-to-day basis, but with a two month lead time, you can decide to switch to another authority for your device, and all apps that are happy with the new authority still work.

You would have to trust that the central authority doesn't sabotage your ability to switch with your existing data and apps intact, and this would be hard to verify in advance if DRM prevented you from seeing what code was running on the device.

Android lets you install alternative marketplaces. In effect, the user now has to trust only a couple of marketplaces and this should help keep away malware while preserving freedom.

> 3. How do we workaround the fact that most people do not and will never have an interest in the technical workings of devices

Regulation :-( Ford is not allowed by law to build cars that can only be serviced by Ford. It should be the same for computing devices.

Whilst I understand your point, that's not an apples-apples comparison. A car needs to be serviced, in order to remain road-worthy and safe. A computer, ideally, does not (even more so for smartphones, as they stand now).

I am glad to see that Apple has stopped using GCC and moved to LLVM - a project it helped create. I'm tired of hearing "Free" software advocates use the fact that people use "Free" software as a justification for claiming that these same are hypocrites for selling software (even though they are complying with the terms.)

The thing that keeps GPLed software out of the App Store is the terms of the GPL, not Apple. Yet, Stallman attacks Apple for this...

Apple hired Chris Lattner, who started LLVM when he was a graduate student at UIUC. It may be funding development now, but it wasn't "Apple's" innovation. Apple's primary reason for funding LLVM development was likely to be able to integrate their proprietary software more closely with the compiler, something that GCC is designed to discourage.

The GPL and the Apple store EULA are incompatible. Considering that the GPL has been around for decades, the incompatibility can be considered intentional.

Your accusation contains the truth of the matter. No "Free software" is actually free. The F stands for Fascism. Stallman gets to dictate who uses it and who doesn't without regard to what the GPL actually says.

At least, thats how it operates.

Notice how, Apple using and supporting free software has resulted no end in dishonest accusations from you and others in this thread?

This is why I will have nothing to do with your "movement" and oppose it at every turn.

Copyright laws are reality. Free software is pragmatically protected by copyright. Misappropriation of copyrighted works is considered "theft"/"stealing" by the groups with which Apple chooses to associate and for which Apple forces restrictive DRM on end users.

So what if Lattner wasn't working at Apple? Apple's not a person, it's a corporation; LLVM's not a person, it's a library. Apple funding LLVM now means a great deal more than you're giving credit for.

> Apple's primary reason for funding LLVM development was likely to be able to integrate their proprietary software more closely with the compiler, something that GCC is designed to discourage.

And that is a technical failing of GCC, kept in for ideological purposes. Yet somehow LLVM remains open source, Clang remains open source, and the half-proprietary system of XCode has something far greater than GCC will probably ever have.

In the end, Stallman just happens to be one of the guys who contributed to the GNU system. Personally, I'm confident that something similar would have come along with or without him and the GPL (in fact, you mentioned the BSD license that was applied to many components used in NeXT). People implement many parts of these kinds of systems in undergraduate college courses- they're not exactly new discoveries.

"There is plenty of GPL software available legally on Apple devices, particularly Macs. On iOS devices the conflict is the EULA only. The approval process has nothing to do with it. GNU/Linux distributions have approval processes too. More about how the EULA conflicts with the GPL: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-...

Apple didn't write the GPL.

And at this point, I'm reminded once again, never to debate facts with people advancing an ideology. You can have the last word.

It seems perfectly reasonable to me for a software author to say: I give this app away for free, and you can redistribute it, but you can't attach an EULA to my app if you do. If you, for some reason, are so pigheaded that you insist on adding no-reverse-engineering conditions to my app, which has no actual effect because the damn thing is open-source anyway, I'd blame you for the pointless ideological policy.

There's a box where you can paste in your own EULA during the upload process.

This makes the FSF advocates position completely asinine. Which is why I have difficulty taking any of them seriously. They don't even respect their own license, so why should I?

(Don't worry, I simply don't use GPL code, and don't release any code under the GPL.)

Yes, because it is that EULA that takes away our freedoms, not the GPL.

You can blame the GPL for being uncompromising in this respect, but the GPL came first. They could've made the EULA compatible if that was a priority. Google managed to, after all.

For many people, being forbidden to use a piece of hardware that you legally own in whatever way you want is an unacceptable intrusion on personal freedom.

There is a line to be drawn somewhere and different people may reasonably argue for drawing it at different places.

Because goverments like making up new rules and regulations.

Show me where, in Apple's EULA, it forbids GPLed code.

As for Apple's EULA and it's GPL conflict, the EULA sets a limit on how many devices you can install the program where GPL explicitly grants you the right to make any number of copies of said program. This makes the Apple's EULA and GPL incompatible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USL_v._BSDi

The complaint I recall was when Apple was violating the KHTML license for a while before releasing their source properly.