[tokyobreakfast]

It's easy to be right when you live outside the boundaries of reality.

E.g. he won't (didn't?) own a mobile phone, but is okay with borrowing someone else's. He won't use Wi-Fi where he has to log in but would happily borrow someone else's.

It's not being right; it's shifting responsibility in exchange for his own personal convenience.

[psoundy]

It's called 'setting an example'.

One might disagree with value of the example being set, but I'm not sure I would characterize his choices as in any way convenient for him.

[kelnos]

It's not setting an example if you shift responsibility to someone else.

Setting an example would be just doing without the things he doesn't agree with. Need to make a call but only other people's cell phones are available? Well, you don't make the call. Need wifi but no open networks are available? Well, you don't get wifi. Is this even more inconvenient than the already-inconvenient use of other people's cell phones or wifi logins? Absolutely. But it's actually sticking to your principles.

[codyb]

It's not the _cellphone_ that Stallman has an issue with lol

[tokyobreakfast]

They he should do without.

Live like the Amish in 2026 (though I assume they have phones now).

It's not setting an example. We have a word for it and it's called being a mooch.

The attitude is consistent with that famous video where RMS explains that he's "never installed GNU/Linux" because he could just ask someone else to do it for him, and suggest others should do the same.

For that matter, why own a car if we can borrow someone else's? Especially with license plate readers and traffic cameras everywhere, who wants to be tracked? Let your friend be tracked instead. That is the level of logic here.

[zelphirkalt]

First people call him "outside the boundaries of reality" then demand he lives like Amish... Look who is removed from reality now. How would he even work for the FSF's goals, if he were to follow silly advice like that? Apparently, whatever he does, he can't do right by every naysayer's standards. What many people miss is, that even Stallman admits, that you don't have to go cold turkey free/libre only, but it is already a step in the right direction to do what you can, accepting an inconvenience in exchange. Many people will rather bury their head in the sand than to accept any inconvenience at all.

[sph]

> It's easy to be right when you live outside the boundaries of reality.

This does not make any sense at all.

[swed420]

It does if they're looking for any excuse to ignore something unpleasant, such as the cognitive dissonance of an internal moral failure.

[codyb]

But if everyone acted like Stallman then solutions that have gone away such as public payphones would come back due to their requirement.

He doesn't give a crap if a random phone record of his appears in a random haystack, and that's kind of the point isn't it? It's the aggregated, crawlable stores that are the threat

There may be other issues with Stallman, but that behavior doesn't strike me as particularly inconsistent

[tamimio]

> it's shifting responsibility in exchange for his own personal convenience.

And? That’s actually one of the strategies to counter any risk, if you can’t avoid it or mitigate it, you transfer it.

[kelnos]

For someone who claims to take a principled stance on these sorts of things, it feels very unprincipled to leverage the risk that others take in e.g. carrying a cell phone.

Consider that there are two components here: one is that Stallman is uncomfortable with the risk of carrying a tracking device (aka cell phone) around with him. The other is that he wants to make it known that people shouldn't carry cell phones because of that tracking; part of his platform is advocating for and against things like this.

If he was merely worried about the risk, and was just out to protect himself, then using someone else's cell phone (which would be at hand regardless of whether or not he used it) would be a perfectly reasonable, pragmatic thing to do. Transferring the risk, as you say.

But using someone else's cell phone is a violation of the principle. How can I take his advocacy seriously if he freely admits that we need cell phones out in the world, otherwise it's even too inconvenient for him to go about his business?

[bondarchuk]

He does leverage the risk that others take, but those others are also the people who collectively build society so as to require taking that risk. It's kind of tit-for-tat in a way.

>How can I take his advocacy seriously

You could just listen to what he has to say and consider whether or not it's true. His personal behaviour at the end of the day has little bearing on that. "He doesn't even do XYZ therefore I won't believe him" feels more like a rationalization one comes up with because one doesn't want to believe him in the first place.