I used to think Stallman was an abrasive fanatic but now I think otherwise. The reason he makes me uncomfortable is because he highlights the compromises I have made. I think this is part of the reason why some people react so negatively and emotionally to him. He vocally refuses to use non-free software and this, in my humble opinion at least, makes him a constant reminder of how many of us sacrifice security and freedom (as he defines it) for usability and ease of use.
Imagine if someone told you "If it weren't for Abraham Lincoln, half the population would still be living in slavery today." You'd laugh in their face.
I'm not smart enough to understand your comment. Are you saying that free software would have inevitably come to exist with or without Stallman? If you are, I'd say the burden of proof is on you.
Stallman rose to the occasion as the defender of the "old way". He did not "invent" free software, whatever that means. (He did invent the Copyleft license, but there are many other licenses of free software besides Copyleft.)
Or maybe I should have just capitalized "free."
IBM, of course, had been charging money for software for decades prior to that.
Being tired of being told something and that something being untrue, are two completely different things.
>Imagine if someone told you "If it weren't for Abraham Lincoln, half the population would still be living in slavery today." You'd laugh in their face.
Only if I was one of those guys that are ignorant about the importance of the particular human subject in history.
Anecdotal data points to support my view: The most hateful comments against Stallman usually appear in highly technical forums - I have yet to see that amount of negativism in the comment sections of main-stream media articles about him. Most technical people, I think, know very well what free software is, and how, generally, it helps us getting stuff done. You would be hard pressed to find a programmer nowadays who has never used any free software for his or her programs. Even if they "only" used Eclipse to write proprietary enterprise code.
Yet, some technical people are - it seems - completely against free software, and completely against RMS. But consider:
They wouldn't rally against Stallman if they didn't care about free software at all ("Ah, that freedom guy again, how cares"). They wouldn't rally against him, if they thought that free software was completely stupid ("Ah, that freedom guy again, well that whole free software thing will be going down the drain, anyway"). No, the only real reason to say something against Stallman is if you are supportive of free software as an idea - but think that he spoils it.
If you think about that, then the people writing the most hateful comments (minus the trolls, of course) are the ones that support, and care about, the idea the most. And with that conclusion I can accept these comments, knowing that the idea of free software still has supporters, and still has people caring. Caring so much, in fact, that they even feel they have to insult a human being to get their point across - because it's obviously _that_ important. More important than Stallman.
I also have some anecdotes of why their fear of Stallman "spoiling" the idea is ungrounded: None of my non-technical friends know Stallman. None. Not one. Some do know Linus Torvalds "wrote Linux", some run Ubuntu on their laptops, and some know what open source means - but nobody of them thinks RMS is the sole speaker of the free software movement, as it were. I believe that even if they'd ever read an interview with him they would still be able to separate the idea of free software from the person Richard Stallman.
[1] I mean "many" here more in the sense of loudness, not necessarily of quantity - on the internet, nobody knows you're holding forty-two anti-Stallman accounts.
In my view, because he has influence based on credibility that he does not deserve any more, and because he exerts that influence in ways that do not benefit free software.
Look at your stack. How much of the software in it are you paying for, and how much is RMS's zealotry paying for? Did you contribute anything yourself to that stack? I think you should send RMS a paycheck and some hemp, to keep doing what he's doing.
pedantic point. a lot of open source isn't Free in RMS's terms, but he does promote the whole open source movement as a whole, despite being to the left of some of it.
You are wrong.
"I do not advocate open source [...]" - Richard Stallman
See: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/09/15/rms_why_open_source_...
What I meant to say is that he doesn't endorse non-Free OSS. But he does end up "promoting" it however (not purposefully), DESPITE being stricter/more to the left than it.
I guess rather than promote I should have said help or aid. If he didn't do what he did the open source movement wouldn't be as strong. He's insane and too left, but his being there helps the whole floss movement, even the parts he disagrees with on principle.
You're making a assertion with no evidence or argument, and using it as a premise to dismiss a rhetorical question.
That's what RMS is basically saying.
I find a lot of rms's essays interesting and I regularly use a lot of GNU software, especially emacs. Still, rms is often divisive and counterproductive. We must call it "GNU/Linux"? We must use one of a handful of "totally free distros" instead of even distros like Fedora and Debian? Stallman played a vital early role, but no role was necessary.
If GNU never existed, we wouldn't have emacs/gcc/etc., but there are alternatives and those alternatives would have become more developed over time.[1] Linux would have used the BSD programs instead of the GNU programs or they would have written their own.
(In fact, if Linus never invented Linux, there would still be FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. These are all, as far as I know, less dependent on GNU applications (if at all) and many people in the BSD communities see the GPL as restrictive.[2])
If the FSF never was founded, we wouldn't have the GPL and we might not have gotten copyleft at all, but we would still have BSD, MIT, Apache, etc., licenses. "Free software" is an ideology that is largely dependent on Stallman, but "open source" software is inevitable because of the benefits it provides society.
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While one particular philosophy of freedom and computing were largely driven by rms's writings, the practical benefits of sharing source under a free license are not at all dependent on some broad philosophical goal. It's just more profitable for businesses to not have to pay for software (while at the same time not being "pirates"), to have access to the source code (for patches, even if the upstream refuses them), and so on. I find it hard to imagine a company with lots of servers like Google existing if they had to pay Windows or UNIX license fees (especially if the competitive pressure from Linux and BSD never existed). Software like Apache's httpd would have existed even if rms never wrote anything, in my opinion.
Companies don't care about the freedoms that rms cares about. They care about making money. It just so happens that you make more money in the long run[3] if you don't get forced into overly restrictive terms by a vendor who then locks you into their proprietary technology, continually increasing fees and restrictions over time. Open source software gets major contributions by people who are paid to do this by big corporations who would rather do this than pay for closed source software. It just so happens that the terms allow end users, startups, and so on to benefit from the big businesses who are ultimately acting in their own best interests. If rms had his way, this virtuous circle might not have come about because rms is very much opposed to any sort of compromise at all.[4]
Stallman is the opposite of this sort of pragmatism that is common in the "open source" world. To rms, one ought to act ethically, and anyone who does not do so is essentially evil. At one point, he said that you didn't have to make software for money, you could just be a waiter. (I can't find the source, but it stuck with me.) The implicit assumption behind this statement is that free software is inherently not profitable in the world where Internet distribution makes charging for distribution of free software impractical. In rms's mind, something like GNU would exist even if one could not make money off of it, had to get a day job, and development had to be sponsored by big not-for-profit organizations like the FSF.
It's noble to be this committed to a philosophy, but fortunately the world does not exist as the "worst case scenario" that rms prepared for. The rest of the FOSS world has largely moved beyond this mentality. Companies like IBM and Red Hat sponsor development for, and make money off of, "Linux and open source". They use those terms instead of "GNU/Linux and free software" because the latter are ideologically loaded, and hence have the potential to hurt their businesses by scaring away potential customers.[5] The people who wanted FOSS in the 1990s got creative and found ways[6] to get massive amounts of cash to sponsor their development so that they could get paid to do what they love. Apparently, you can make software without charging directly for copies.[7]
So I can see other reasons why people active in FOSS would want to not be associated with rms: his complete hostility toward "open source", major Linux distributions, the common use of the term "Linux" instead of "GNU/Linux", the complete lack of the ability to compromise, focus on philosophy and politics over code, etc. If people associate all of the open source movement like rms[8], it could scare away some who would otherwise contribute and help make the world a better place. The useful contributions rms made was his source code (such as GNU emacs) and he did make many useful contributions in the past, but if his ideologies scare off someone from making major source code contributions, then now he's being counterproductive. It doesn't matter how notable his name/initials are if he's making a very public mistake. In the end, all that matters in the FOSS world is the source code.
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[0] FOSS means "Free and Open Source Software" and is a compromise term between "free software" fanatics and those who prefer the term "open source". All three terms are largely equivalent in meaning, but have different ideologies attached.
[1] I think one of the appeals of FOSS is that there is no one leader, no one ideology, no one organization or company, and so on. There is not even just one program for any given niche, there tends to be at least two. Often the alternatives to a given program are inferior in some way, but if the major program they are alternative to never existed, they probably would have been made more capable or forked at some point. (Or another program would have been written from scratch to fill the niche.)
[2] Even the so-called "permissive" licenses are restrictive when compared to the WTFPL. :-P
[3] It's not surprising that contemporary big businesses care about profit. It is surprising that some pay attention to their long run interests! :-P
[4] If you don't believe me (and this very article that's being linked to implies the same thing), see the GPLv3 controversy and also note that the Linux kernel is still under the GPLv2.
[5] If you're making money, the term "free software" is misleading. Also, the term is not unambiguous in English: Google it and you'll find a lot of freeware. It would also be confusing for a company like Red Hat to "charge for free software". "Freedom Software" probably would have made more sense than "free software".
[6] One of the compromises they made was dropping "free software" for "open source" and rms never forgave them.
[7] The ease of distribution and copying that broadband Internet provides should encourage other industries to find ways to make money without charging for copies, as well. Music, movies, books, and so on, probably have ways to make money without the traditional "charging for copies" model. Also note that if you do not charge for individual copies of your software, making all or most of your source code available under an open source license is probably a great cost-reducing technique that just about everyone should use. Sites like reddit have source code available on Github, and they benefit from it because the value for reddit is the domain "reddit.com" and the posts located there, not the software that runs it.
[8] Very few people would want to live in as pure of a free software environment as rms does. I personally don't know how he can get any work done on a tiny netbook. I use two 1080p 24 inch monitors.
#1: it's too hard to say whether the free software movement would have evolved without RMS. We do know that Linux was able to bootstrap from GNU which was founded some 7 years earlier and without that, it probably wouldn't have taken off the way it did. By the time Linus came around, the only thing missing from GNU was its kernel. The Berkeley people got bogged down with the BSDi lawsuit, and you might ask yourself how that happened if their license was so freedom preserving. If it wasn't for that, I imagine that BSD would be in the place linux is now.
#2: People say it's divisive not to have one way of thinking about open source, but why this need to do it one way only? Surely there is a place for the GPL for some projects, and RMS isn't forcing anyone to GPL their software. The FSF counts lots of other licences as GNU-compatible.
RMS just wants people to understand that if they license their software restrictively they're not doing the hacker community any great service, even if they claim otherwise.
#3: "To rms, one ought to act ethically, and anyone who does not do so is essentially evil." That's not just RMS who thinks that. You're going to have a hard time justifying why unethical people who harm others are essentially good. You make it seem like it's radical to stand on the side of ethical behavior. Maybe it is.
Hypothetical speculation of how history would have turned out if certain details were changed a little bit are hard to argue because they're hypothetical and thus a realm of opinion. There does not exist an actual alternate universe in which a given event never happened that we can just observe to see how things worked out differently.
I think that where we're heading in software is inevitable. Yes, RMS contributed to it early on and yes, things might have taken off more slowly without the FSF and GNU, but in 100 years, I think we'll have won no matter what. This is an opinion. There's no empirical way to evaluate it. I think the nature of easy copying via the Internet has created a sort of inevitable force, like gravity, and that fighting it is ultimately futile. Am I right? We'll see how things are in 2112.
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> Surely there is a place for the GPL for some projects, and RMS isn't forcing anyone to GPL their software.
If you think that proprietary software is evil instead of just bad, then yes, the GPL is good for some things because it is "freedom-preserving". I could easily imagine an alternate reality in which Mac OS X used a BSD-licensed Linux kernel.
It could also be argued, for the sake of argument, that the GPL is ultimately a bad thing. It requires copyleft, sharing with the same license, and about half of FOSS has been "infected".[1] Very few projects do the copyright assignment that the FSF does. If there is a currently unseen issue with the GPL, it would be very hard to get every single contributor who owns copyright to switch every major project from the GPL. If you say "GPL v2 or later" or "GPL v3 or later" in your software's license, you are dependent on one organization for your "upgrade path" of licenses. An advantage that the permissive licenses have is that there isn't one major permissive license: there are lots of them. It's a more diverse ecosystem, without one point of possible future failure and without any dependency on one organization.
> RMS just wants people to understand that if they license their software restrictively they're not doing the hacker community any great service, even if they claim otherwise.
Those companies are not doing themselves a great service, either. The big proprietary software companies will realize this eventually, or like the big media companies who are so resistant to change, they'll go out of business in the long run. Reinventing the wheel is expensive, time consuming, and there's no guarantee you'll get the best programmers on board. You'll also get stuck into other vendors' lock-ins unless you're a very big company like Microsoft, so you'll lose more than you'll gain by going with closed source, non-free software.
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> You make it seem like it's radical to stand on the side of ethical behavior. Maybe it is.
It's not radical to focus on doing ethical behavior (or maybe it is, but it's not the radical thing I'm talking about). I do admire him for his courageous ability to take an ethical stand against all odds. I just don't think it's the most productive way to achieve to his goals.
If you want all software to be free, then you need to convince companies making software to make it free. If you can't do that, then you need to make your own company and put those older companies out of business. There's only so many things that an organization or individual not making any money can do. In the world as it is, money matters. Maybe that's not how things should work, and maybe all software should be made by the FSF, but very radical structural changes are probably never going to happen.
People went with "open source" not because they hate freedom or rms, but because they needed to "sell" the concept to companies like IBM.
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ESR thinks that open source makes good business sense since open source is better than closed source. Computing is something that extends our ability to get things done, but isn't an end in itself. We need to be pragmatic about what businesses want, and how the business world works in order to perform our role of helping people do business.
RMS doesn't care so much about what the business world wants or the fact that open-source is indeed better.
He sees hacking and computing as one of the greatest achievments of mankind. Because it's a great achievement of mankind (like writing, or alphabets, or language itself) he thinks that it should be made available to everyone, and never closed off. In other words, for the people who live in it, spending their lives working on it and in it, software is culture. It's not just an application that you use like a word processor. And in the hacker culture, there needs to be a free flow of ideas like there is in the scientific community.
This is reflected in the different licenses. The GPL "restricts" people from trying to close off one of the greatest achievements of human kind for the sake of some people who want to earn some more money off of it. The BSD-style licenses consider themselves more practical in that they allow for better commercial exploitation by eventually imposing restrictions. This is why Apple is so heavily involved in converting FreeBSD away from GPL code Currently I think it's about 50% GPL and OpenBSD is more like 60%. They plan to replace the GPL code with BSD licensed code so they don't have to contribute to the project eventually.
Clearly some code isn't the equivalent of Shakespearean drama, and it won't matter that humanity is deprived of it. Microsoft word comes to mind. But for the really amazing software, the software that involves the cutting edge free flowing of ideas, and I would argue that the linux kernel falls into this category, GPL gives it the ability to serve as a lasting monument to human ingenuity, as well as a way of transmitting culture. It's no coincidence that the linux kernel powers nearly all web servers, smartphones and supercomputers.
And unix was originally written on a machine with less than 144 kilobytes of RAM using a teletypewriter...
What amazing contributions to the world's software have these enormous screens allowed you to make?
> What amazing contributions to the world's software have these enormous screens allowed you to make?
A tool is a tool, and is different than a person. When it comes to programming, the person is more important than the tool, but the tool does affect the person. You can theoretically do roughly the same work on any computer with any equivalent application, but certain computers and editors allow you to do such work more quickly.
Just because you can do something using the "wrong tools" doesn't mean that you should. Most of the original Unix was written using ed, too.[1] That doesn't mean that ed ought to be used today unless it is the tool that happens to make you the most productive. A real hacker using ed can program better than a newbie with a modern editor, obviously. That doesn't mean that real hackers should use ed.
ed was used out of necessity. So were teletypes and 144 KB of RAM. Good hackers could still do work with such tools. However, they themselves think that they're more productive with modern tools or else the hackers who used ed back in the day would still be using ed.
I actually do use ed for some quick/light editing because it doesn't get in the way. It's the perfect editor if you never make any mistakes. When you do make mistakes, something like emacs is immensely more useful because of all the ways you can correct your program from within the editor. If I used ed for everything, I would probably have to write dozens of helper scripts (in sh, of course!) to help me edit my source code. In something like emacs, those scripts have already been written and integrated into the editor and this is a good thing. After all, one should not reinvent the wheel unnecessarily.
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I hope you understand what I was getting at in my analogy to ed. You can make amazing contributions using any weak tool, and you can make no contribution at all using a strong tool. This doesn't mean that one should willingly use weak tools unless they have a pretty good reason to do so. People did great things on weak tools in the old days because they had no other choice, not because those tools somehow make someone great. Using ed isn't going to allow me to create the next great operating system.
You can have a powerful computer, or lots of screen space and have those tools be wasted, obviously. The specs of your hardware do not make you more capable of a programmer. On the other hand, to willingly suffer weak tools for ideology shows that rms puts his ideology ahead of his hacking. Otherwise, he would have a setup that is designed to optimize hacking productivity, so that he could do more things in less time. Sure, he could hack great things using just about any device with a Unix terminal and a keyboard, but he could hack in a more productive manner using proper tools.
Using roughly equivalent tools is a matter of taste (e.g. vi and emacs), but he's using a rather weak machine simply out of a desire to have a totally 'free' machine. Ironically, he's limiting his own freedom of choice in hardware for what he believes is total software freedom.
rms is a great hacker. In the domain of programming, he's better, smarter, and more experienced than me. That being said, his uncompromising commitment to his ideology is not getting in the way of me, it's getting in the way of him. There are other groups that inconvenience themselves greatly due to their philosophical beliefs. For instance, the Amish. They don't harm me or even affect me, but they do miss out on a lot of cool stuff by shunning technology. I probably can't persuade someone who is already Amish to go get an awesome smartphone, but if the Amish were actively evangelizing, I would try to discourage other people from giving up the conveniences of modern technology.
Perhaps I should ask what amazing contributions to the world's software rms has done in the last decade as opposed to, say, the 1980s?
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#2: RMS seems to have stopped hacking software, so his computing requirements seem to be limited to what's necessary to produce his writing. He also seems to be getting support and service from other people's computers/servers and other people. I'm not sure that any average person would want or be able to do things exactly like him. Since he is trying to be a role model, he should model something that everyone could do and would want to do.
#3: Instinctively I want to say you're probably right that hackers should use the best tools available, and most of them do. However, I've known too many Russian/Finnish hackers who grew up with computers like clones of the sinclair zx80 who would surely not have been as awesome had they started off on supercomputers. Something about the easy availability of resources and lack of simplicity seems to spoil some of the fun. This is why I think so many hackers are drawn to simpler devices like ardunio or embedded microcontrollers.
I'm not sure it's powerful enough to handle one 1080p external screen. It's certainly not powerful enough to handle two. (My desktop can't handle three with its current graphics card and driver.)
I also think that you need X for multi-monitor setups. When I Ctrl+Alt+F2 (C-M-F2 if you are used to emacs) for a console, it just mirrors the screens. Even if you could get it to not mirror, I'm not sure what meaningful advantage you would get over just tiling lots of terminals in a very basic window manager.
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> RMS seems to have stopped hacking software, so his computing requirements seem to be limited to what's necessary to produce his writing. He also seems to be getting support and service from other people's computers/servers and other people. I'm not sure that any average person would want or be able to do things exactly like him.
Yes. Maybe I'm subconsciously being overly critical because he chose to stop hacking and start writing philosophy. Different people obviously have different needs, and those needs are best served by different devices.
That being said, he seems to use his netbook because he has no other choice, not because he wants to. Perhaps the Free Software Foundation (FSF) should spin off a Free Hardware Foundation (FHF) if he wants devices that can run GNU/Linux (as he puts it) without needing any sort of proprietary firmware at all. It seems unhackerish (if that's a word) to just accept circumstances rather than to try to build your way out of them. I'd gladly use a FHF motherboard/CPU for the next box I build if they were decent -- and if they existed!
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> However, I've known too many Russian/Finnish hackers who grew up with computers like clones of the sinclair zx80 who would surely not have been as awesome had they started off on supercomputers. Something about the easy availability of resources and lack of simplicity seems to spoil some of the fun.
Yes. I hate it when classes "teach" programming with IDEs that think (and code) for you. I took a class that required the use of Eclipse, so I went ahead and coded in emacs anyway. It's very vital to build up things like muscle memory (from basic editors that don't get in your way) and resourcefulness (from poor hardware) if you want to get good at programming. It's easier to learn a good concept out of necessity than just because you've been told that it's good.
That being said, once you've learned how to do something hard, if you don't want to do it again you shouldn't have to. The best environments for learning might not be the same as the best environments for use once you know what you're doing. (Although I would, in my biased opinion, think that something like emacs comes close. It doesn't get in your way or try to think for you like a "modern" IDE, and yet it has lots of depth if you know the right commands or download the right extensions. It seems to encourage learning to obtain more functionality, rather than just having menus upon menus. I'm not opposed in principle to IDEs, but none of them seem to have sane, minimalist defaults. It's a sad state of modern software where an example of bloat in the 1980s is now an example of minimalism today.)
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> This is why I think so many hackers are drawn to simpler devices like ardunio or embedded microcontrollers.
It's also just fun to build things. I'm looking forward to the Raspberry Pi. I don't know what I'm going to do with it when I get it, but I'm sure I'll find some use for hardware that inexpensive.
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P.S. I hope I'm not giving the impression that I hate rms. I wouldn't be so picky here if I thought that his end goal wasn't worth achieving.
As I mentioned above, they do exist: http://orsoc.se/127/langswitch_lang/en/
Even the bus architecture is open and the processor itself can be debugged or modified. As other people have mentioned, there is coreboot (coreboot.org) for a number of other platforms.
Hm, is it just me or doesn't that sound like the agenda RMS is trying to push down everyone else's throat regarding their choices in personal computing?
It's just annoyance. Richard Stallman is a person of influence, but only in a narrow community. So I don't think he is dangerous. He's a person of great accomplishment, and has contributed a huge amount to the world. The idea of open source and free software does cut against the grain of the dominant corporate-state power structure in the US and that's great.
I am personally concerned with the abuses of power that happen (by the powerful, all over the world). But it's not black and white. The unlawful surveillance of US citizens by our Gov't is disturbing. It's not as disturbing as launching unfounded wars on the other side of the world, but still disturbing. To the extent that Richard Stallman is fighting against the use of technology to increase the illegal use of Gov't power, then I get it.
Somehow though, and I can't put my finger on it, I don't think it's the technology per se that is at the root of this type of activity. Modern computing technology is certainly being co-opted to this use. But the tensions that underly the behavior are more fundamental to the issues of power and state. At the highest levels of power, it is just damn hard to enforce any kind of law, as their is no enforcement mechanism. The gov't is just not going to let people do whatever they want in regards to technology and how it is used. We have to accept this, and fight to keep that power from being abused. An absolute stance along the lines of a super strong right to privacy obscures what is at stake. The line will never be drawn to that extreme, so I wish for a more nuanced discussion. FWIW:)
He's judgmental towards those who don't share them, though. Maybe that's what you mean when you say he's conformist?
Technology is not all there is to oppression, for sure, but he's doing his part as a programmer to prevent it.
The creation of the GNU movement, and subsequently of the FSF stems from a personal grief: the demise of the MIT AI lab during the Lisp machines wars. You can read more about it here:
It's a tricky question about personal ethics and judgement. Is it possible for someone to have personal ethics that don't implicitly include the concept that everyone should share them? I'm not sure.
Anyhow, yes I am referring to the RMS's judgmentalness in my (what I meant to be ironic) reference to "conformist."
My understanding of the meaning of "conformism" is that it refers to the use of emotional, social, and behavioral methods that a dominant group use to coerce others who think, act differently than they want them to. RMS's ideas of morality are very much addressed towards the behavior of others and how he thinks people "should" act. The irony is that if many people adopted the ethics of RMS, I am positing that this would create a very conformist society (at least in regards to the proper use of technology).
The MIT Labs story is illustrative. The other protagonists in the story did not act how Stallman wanted them to, and hurt him (and others too). If others act in ways that hurt you or others, I can see how you can choose to define their behavior unethical. But you could also say they just behaved in ways that you didn't like, and hurt you.
Everyone has their own idea of ethics, and where various lines are drawn about moral/amoral/immoral.
It's interesting to see the down votes I am getting. I was starting to feel upset, but I guess it's just part of the method of discussion here? A short of shorthand to disagree? It's true I am a newbie to the Hacker News site, so if I am out of bounds on the discussion I apologize.
Not a native speaker. I thought it was a suitable synonym for "ruin" (Stallman's term).
'the demise of the Hacker culture at the MIT AI Lab.'
I also don't agree with him, and think he's a jerk for calling people like me unethical for writing non-free software (even though I often contribute my time to writing and improving free software, and live my life in a very ethical and honorable fashion), but honestly, if that was the only thing I wouldn't care so much. Like you said, there are loads of people that believe all sorts of kooky things out there, and life is too short to get bent out of shape over things like that. But man, using terms like he does to paint himself in the light he does really really rubs me the wrong way, and the fact people in my industry stand for it pisses me right off.
> His movement has consciously coopted the word [freedom]
> for ... something ... less important
You can talk to people and drive around in your car. You feel you need to use things that track you, but it's not true. You choose to.
There is a difference.
Now, I wouldn't call the ability to use facebook or twitter a "freedom" either, but I think not restricting their usage is also something that is more important then the "freedom" the FSF is fighting for
But no one is talking about restricting their usage anyway. Stallman has taken direct action by refusing to use them (modulo using twitter for authentication) and is encouraging others to do the same. There are no restrictive laws on the table.
Why is he so threatening? It's not like you have to share a studio apartment with the guy. Have any complainers contributed 1/10th as much to the public good? Highly unlikely. The sickest individuals are those who angrily rail against the unconventional in my opinion.
I, for one welcome rms and nonconformists in general. Life is a lot more interesting and fruitful with them around. I appreciate my free operating system thank you, and don't pass judgements on what he does in the privacy of his own home (or blog).
Watch the revolution os doc and you'll see these geeks are quite likeable, sometimes funny, and nothing to be afraid of.