[kragen]

People value Stallman’s opinions on these matters so highly because he has a remarkable history of being right about them ten or fifteen years before it becomes clear to everyone else that he was right, and he takes the risk of saying what he sees even when it will offend people. In fact, that’s why he’s famous; he’s certainly a good hacker, but the world has quite a number of good hackers who aren’t famous because they didn’t notice the political and social aspects of what they were doing the way Stallman did.

I am not going to bother to rebut your examples in detail, but I will say that I seriously doubt that you were present when Facebook decided on its names policy or that you have much access to information about what effects it has had, and you seem to think companies didn’t exist before 1995.

[MCRed]

Can you give an example?

For instance, I was aware of Stallman in the 1980s, read his writings back then, didn't think they were correct, and the future he predicted has not come to be. Yes there are some of us who are that old. Specifically, he said that without the virility of his license, there would be no free/open source software and that all software would be locked down and proprietary.

The entire open source movement is a disproof of stallman's position from that period.

He has repeatedly claimed that companies won't contribute to open source, and so you have to force them to with the GNU license, and yet history has disproven this one.

Given that this is pretty much the central tenant of his ideology, and it has been markedly disproven over the past 30 years, I too wonder why people listen to him.

[joeyspn]

Here's a funny one: Stallman came to my uni to give a speech to CompSci alumni 10 years ago, and he told the audience that he didn't own a cellphone, cos phones were being used to track people. He also talked about the backdoors in several OS's. Everybody was laughing at his words. We're talking 10 years ago.

Few months ago remembering this speech with old uni mates we talked about how damn right that excentric man was. He saw it coming, and tried to warn everybody... Maybe he's a bit of an "extremist", but he certainly has a point.

[_nedR]

This, exactly.

Stallman is taking a stand here. We might think that he is a dangerous extremist for his actions and stances (Not using proprietary software, mobile phones, javascript-enabled websites). But what he is actually doing is sacrificing his life to make his points (which are for the most part completely valid). I would guess, even he knows that most of his ideals are impractical in today's world, but he is walking the walk and planting the flag firmly, saying this is "How thing should be".

The difference between a crackpot and a visionary is that what the visionary says make more sense as time passes. IMO, Stallman's track record is infallible in this regard.

[jcrawfordor]

As someone who interacted closely with RMS for several days recently, I think I should set the record straight on one important fact. RMS absolutely uses cellphones. He just doesn't own one himself. Instead, he borrows the phones of the people around him, and his assistant collects those people's phone numbers in order to call him.

What this says about his philosophy probably depends significantly on how irritating you find it.

That said, it's worth noting that it's certainly not that he doesn't care about the privacy of others. I had to pull him away from lecturing innocent bystanders about paying at the grocery store with CCs.

[vinceguidry]

This reminds me of that article that made the rounds a little while back about the Amish. How they absolutely use technology, they just have a different perspective on it than we do. It strikes me that Stallman does the same for principles. What we think his principles are is not the same way he considers them.

I have his book, and his practicality has always struck me, juxtaposed against his idealism, it just looks really strange. You don't expect to see him doing certain things. But then you ask him about it and he's got a perfectly reasonable explanation. I've read so many stories about people that have interacted with him in precisely that way.

Both Stallman and the Amish take a very long view. Every decision they make carries the entire weight of the future and must be considered in that light. They both fight against the constant march of modernity. They are institution builders.

[cheatsheet]

As a person who is only one person, society only changes when one person can reveal or demonstrate to others the concepts that form the ground of the argument.

Otherwise it's just crap stuffed up in your own head.

For him, it is more irritating to live in a world that thinks it is okay to regularly violate people through crossing boundaries of what they consider personal information. For you, it is more irritating to go into a public space and have to deal with other people's opinions.

Everyone is fine with things as long as things are perfect for them. But you can't just wear blinders over your eyes when other people are obviously suffering, and just because you can't empathize with why those people are suffering doesn't make their suffering any less deserving or worthy of understanding, lest you expect the world to treat your suffering in the same cold, disconnected, blinded manner.

I'm sorry he embarrassed you, he would probably embarrass me too in the day to day minutia. But I absolutely stand by him mentally, because I believe and value the world he believes in and values. In theory everything is honky-dory. In practice, society and the individual actually has to deal with problems as they exist. Otherwise they fester and turn into more difficult problems that take a long, long time to understand - some of which are very very difficult to understand after enough time has passed and enough damage has been done.

I can't tell you how much I as a programmer and computer scientist, how much I have benefited from the movement that came from Richard Stallman. I can't tell you how much my mind has benefited from it. I don't care that his actions contradict his core philosophy. They are attempts at connecting a gap between theory and real life.

If the source of code was as privatized and closed as some kinds of knowledge can be, I'd be nothing. I consider it a privilege to share an existence with a person who has helped shaped the world in that way, no matter how annoying or crotchety or irritating he may become. There is always a difference between the ideal a person represents and the person they are. It comes at a high cost to be a public figure, but some people see the value of the world they want to create for everyone to be worth more than that - and maybe that's what the people around him who allow him to use their cellphones see too.

[jcrawfordor]

I don't really see where you're getting your opinion on me here.

The thing I found irritating was RMS constantly borrowing my phone (and having to help him use it each time...). He can have whatever opinions he wants.

[tedunangst]

I guess the question is, what would happen if everybody actually listened to RMS and stopped using cell phones?

[jessaustin]

This is not a valid way of judging RMS or his claims. He isn't complaining about the concept of a technology that allows people to talk while on the go. Rather, he is complaining about the specific implementation of mobile tech with which we're currently saddled.

To answer seriously, however, the largest effect of reduced cell phone use would be that automobiles would be much safer, for their passengers and for everyone else.

[ericfontaine]

as jessaustin remarked, "[RMS] is complaining about the specific implementation of mobile tech with which we're currently saddled."

Listening to RMS would mean that if you do carry a mobile device, that it would use entirely free software including all drivers and bootloaders, that it only communicates with other hardware running entirely free software (i.e. only basetowers or wifi routers running free software), and that all the internet services accessed ran entirely free software (e.g. private email servers instead of gmail, pump.io & GNU social instead of twitter & facebook, mediagoblin instead of youtube, wikipedia, yacy or some other free software for search, etc.

[hobarrera]

It'd probably inconvenience him because he wouldn't be able to borrow one from people next to him.

[_ak]

Of course phones were used to track people 10 years ago. And it wasn't even a secret. Location-based services were the hot shit back then for mobile carriers (at least in Europe).

Making that to be a big conspiracy to infringe upon everybody's freedom and privacy is what makes Stallman's position so ridiculous. It always sounds like the rambling of a technophobic. No, that's not entirely true. Like the rambling of an old man who wants computing and technology in general to be exactly like it was in the 70's when he was sharing a mainframe with his pals at uni, and who can't think of anything more innovative than that.

[Daishiman]

> Of course phones were used to track people 10 years ago. And it wasn't even a secret. Location-based services were the hot shit back then for mobile carriers (at least in Europe).

Bullshit; I remember trying to instill the same point to techies 7 years ago and a majority of technically competent people would say that, while possible, is not certain.

Hindsight is 20-20.

[tajen]

Even today, very few people accept to believe that the NSA actually leverages their technology to do mass tracking. Few people have an idea of the scale of their operations actually. Most of them now think they have the gear, but that they only leverage it in state investigations.

[bootload]

> Of course phones were used to track people 10 years ago\

"In 1996, a detailed description of ECHELON was provided by New Zealand journalist Nicky Hager in his 1996 book "Secret Power – New Zealand's Role in the International Spy Network""*

This was common knowledge in the 90's ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

[waterlesscloud]

Sometime around 1996 or so I went to the National Cryptologic Museum, which is adjacent to NSA headquarters. There was a guy with a little folding table outside the museum selling cellphones for some reason. At the time I joked that you'd think that would have to be the absolute worst place to sell cell phones since anyone leaving what is essentially the NSA museum would know better than to buy a cell phone there. They could eavesdrop and track everything!

It was a joke, of course, but it anchors in my head that I was certainly aware of the vulnerabilities of the technology at the time.

Off topic digression - I was there with a couple friends, we were all scruffy looking 20 somethings. In the parking lot, a middle aged man approached us and if we were being recruited by the NSA. A reasonable guess, I suppose, given how we looked and where we were. Anyway, he then proceeded to go on a rant about how we should never work for them or it would destroy our lives and we'd regret it. It's strange this guy went to Ft Meade to hang out in a parking lot and tell people not to work for the NSA.

The museum itself is definitely worth a visit if you're in DC. It's a short drive outside the city.

https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/museum/

[_ak]

If your mobile carrier offered a product to find the nearest gas station/hospital/supermarket 10 years ago (at least mine in Austria did), then of course it worked like that. At least in Austria and Germany, media regularly mentions police being able to locate people's phones by sending "silent text messages". That also uses the same principle. How else? People that knew about such tools and features, but did not realize that this obviously can be abused, how ignorant must they have been?

[mikeash]

There's quite a difference between "we can know where you are if needed" and "we track where everyone is at all times, and provide this information to the authorities."

We're at the point now where we pretty much assume that the former implies the latter. It was not always thus.

[lotsofmangos]

It is a radio that ids itself with local towers. How would you build a cellphone that you could not track easily?

[kragen]

It could use an ephemeral device ID and make its paging-channel connection back to its home network via a Tor-like mix network. I know that sounds like goofy sci-fi talk, but you can actually do this today with free software on Wi-Fi: run TCP-only Mumble over Tor to connect to your Mumble server, and periodically generate a new random MAC address (like Apple’s new phones do) and set up a new Tor circuit.

What’s left is how to pay for the Wi-Fi access anonymously, if people aren’t willing to share it with you for free. If your wireless network access is all done through a centralized company, like a cellphone carrier, you could easily use one of the Chaumian centralized-issuer digital cash schemes from the 1990s: the “bank” is your cellphone company, and they sign a “blinded” form of a bunch of “coins”, which you later sign over to wireless base stations in exchange for bandwidth. The protocol assures that the base station can confirm that the coin hasn’t been double-spent and that it’s properly signed by the bank, but the base station and bank together cannot figure out which coin it was.

[maxerickson]

Yeah, in 2000, after a car accident, I was surprised that the 911 dispatcher couldn't locate me using my cell phone.

I guess people are talking about 2 different things though, one discussion is about the implications of a radio (you and others are talking about this) and the other is about government capacity to gather the information revealed by using a cell phone.

[emiliobumachar]

Everything about mass survaillance shifted from "stuff of crackpot conspiracy theories" to "retroactivelly obvious all along".

[jessaustin]

It's as if the useful idiots haven't even noticed that their rhetoric today contradicts entirely their rhetoric from five years ago.

[jsmthrowaway]

I get annoyed by this because Stallman wasn't exactly predicting a hurricane, here. It's like making a conclusion about Ukraine. Nobody can prove it, but most people infer. Certainly since 641A and other even older signals those who pay attention received, the possibility of total surveillance was plainly apparent. The people who laughed it off were merely banking on the morality of government, but it was not a surprise at all that such things were technically possible. Those who paid attention already knew. Just no proof.

He was not some oracle of technical insight that nobody else had or shared. Many people made such claims long before he did. His free software ideals put him in a very good position to be retroactively proven right about surveillance, because the people who are super into free software and the people who practice real opsec end up looking fairly similar.

I'm not minimizing that he was right, just countering that we all were. And we failed to deliver the message and/or trusted in our government a bit too much. 641A should have been the catalyst. The EFF continues on it to this day. It took Snowden and the proof to get there, and we are still not there. I don't think we even know where the hell "there" is.

Another important thing to remember is had we listened, nothing would have changed. Us heeding Stallman and others wasn't the problem, it was a state actor perpetrating while making it nearly impossible to know about it. It makes us kumbaya a bit, maybe democracy could have fixed it, but all of us were (and are) almost entirely powerless in representative government. Even Joe Biden said as much on VICE the other night, just about a different topic.

Surveillance was going to happen. It was a done deal. The terrorists beat us the second those aircraft hit, because terror has driven us every minute since.

[drinchev]

> It's like making a conclusion about Ukraine

I totally don't agree. Every Ukrainian can tell you what actually is happening. Media on the other hand are different story. They pretend some things aren't real and other are real ( depending on the country's origin opinion ).

I'm not gonna pretend I know exactly what is happening there, but I know a lot, a lot of Ukrainians ( here in Berlin ) that most certainly can tell you the story in a sustainable way that matches all the dots.

I don't want to sacrifice those hundreds of people on that Malaysian airplane that vanished, because "nobody knows what is happening". Sorry.

For the other part of your comment I mostly agree.

P.S. I don't want to do politics in HN, that's why I didn't write my opinion.

[jsmthrowaway]

Right. You actually supported my point. The Ukraine thing was an aside and I don't want to open it up (much like you), but as you say, most Ukrainians can say what is happening. But can they prove it? The media aspect corresponds to the proof of the thing. I think short of a signature on an order to shoot down the airliner, there will always be just enough doubt to keep the nearly obvious conclusion at arm's length.

We said the same thing in different ways, because surveillance was almost identical. We all knew. We could explain it, probably even whiteboard it. But we had no way to show the world in 30 seconds without any ambiguity. Snowden gave us that. The government records your phone calls. Here's the unequivocal proof. Bam. Now you have peoples' attention, and it's turning out not even that is enough.

Neither of us are sacrificing anyone, rest assured.

[Finbel]

"Many people made such claims long before he did." Could you give an example?

I also think it's dangerous to say that we shouldn't act because we are almost entirely powerless in representative government. Same argument could have been made against civil rights and suffrage movements throughout history.

[j42]

Interestingly, though, those movements very much relied on their cohesiveness around a single, fundamental grievance.

Eventually they reached a 'cultural' tipping point and that brought about cascades of change.

Currently the field looks a bit different, as there's been an exponential growth in both the quantity of information, and the effectiveness of its delivery (via the media, technology) at lower costs.

This is, of course, not an argument in favor of inaction... I just think we should be wary of the fact that it's now a lot easier for capital to change culture (by way of advertising and private-interest media) than it is for culture to rally around a sustained idea long enough to produce legislative change.

(And remember a lot of these forces work in both directions, however I do believe the biggest benefits of technologies' reach will always be concentrated among those with capital)

[jsmthrowaway]

I think it requires a bare minimum of effort to enumerate the scores of commentators who predicted the surveillance state and the need for opsec, because it's in the bedrock of the computer security community itself. One needed only attend DEFCON, especially after 641A, to hear enough about surveillance and countersurveillance to last a lifetime.

Hippies, free software, counterculture, copyleft, cypherpunks. All of that shares the same DNA. Stallman represents that culture sharpened to a point, and it's been the basic tenet of all of it that government does not have our best interest at heart. Cypherpunks exist, arguably, because of it. That'd be the example I'd offer, perhaps even that consumer cryptography itself exists.

I also didn't say that. You added a bit. I disagree with the addition.

[Finbel]

I'm really confused here... you said "Many people made such claims long before he did." and I asked for an example. I didn't ask what movements he's a representative of and I don't know whether anyone who attended DEFCON heard about it. All I wonder is if their is one clear example of someone who made such claims long before he did?

What did I attribute that you didn't say? I assume you refer to "to say that we shouldn't act because we are almost entirely powerless in representative government" and I can see what you mean but what point was you making when stating that we're almost entirely powerless in representative government if not argue against taking action?

[bobofettfett]

Every one in tech thought 10years ago there are backdoors everywhere - well there were backdoors everywhere 20 years ago. And everyone thought government agencies use phones for tracking. The public opinion might have been different, but in tech circles this was and is mainstream.

[chestnut-tree]

"...in tech circles this was and is mainstream."

Things are different now. Take online tracking and privacy for example; many people in the tech community are perfectly fine with the online tracking carried out by Google and Facebook. They consider it relatively benign and useful. Some people (many?) are even happy to defend these companies over their tracking practices, are after all they are private companies, not government agencies.

The degree of tracking by these companies is unprecendented and often it's not even anonymous. Google, for example, has an entire OS that tracks you by default. It's tied to your identity, so it's not anonymous. If you have a Google or Facebook account, these companies probably already know more about your online behaviour than you know yourself.

At some point in the future, Google and Facebook may well be able to track you from cradle to grave. Does that sound far-fetched? Perhaps. Even now, Google's push into education means they hoard vast quatities of data about the online behaviour of students.

Even if you trust these companies, why is it considered perfectly acceptable for them to track you to such a relentless degree?

I can understand how the general public may be unaware of the privacy implications of such pervasive online tracking, but what excuse does the tech community have for not highlighting these issues and their privacy implications? Most of the reaction from the tech community over online tracking is equivalent to a "yeah, so what?" shrug of the shoulders.

[icebraining]

I thought so too, but the outrage on HN over Snowden's revelations showed otherwise. Many people here were baffled.

[MCRed]

Except that we knew all this 20 years ago. He's not really extremist at all. I guess he is just good at finding audiences that aren't up to speed.

[funkyy]

Sounds like Nostradamus.

He said few things and based on his reputation people since hundreds of years take anything important that happens and bend it to fit his prophecies. 10 years ago me and my friends were well aware that police etc can listen to your mobile phones - I don't see big deal here. And none of my friends were that much in to computers or security.

[krapp]

Richard Stallman does have a lot of good ideas. But he also seems distrustful of anything that isn't entirely built on free software, and of anything at all to do with governments or corporations, and I think he gets praised for some keen insight when, really, anyone paranoid about the modern world and the government would have been just as insightful, although maybe not as literate. You shouldn't get credit for hitting a bullseye if you spray the target with an uzi.

[paulsecwhatt]

https://stallman.org/pearlharbor.html

Indeed. If only we had had Stallman right before Pearl Harbor, I'm sure he could have published a manifesto, saving everyone from the obviously impending doom and most importantly maintaining their FREEDOM!

[jeswin]

> Specifically, he said that without the virility of his license, there would be no free/open source software and that all software would be locked down and proprietary.

If I were to guess, without GPL the Open Source movement may have looked very different. It might seem that GPL isn't essential today, but it may have been when the FOSS was learning to walk. Again, I don't see GPL as diminishing in importance, we'll probably see a resurgence in GPL as we start caring more about freedom.

[pionar]

> If I were to guess, without GPL the Open Source movement may have looked very different.

One could argue the other way, that the GPL seriously hindered the movement until more permissive licenses started becoming favored (like the Apache license).

[fit2rule]

Stallman predicted the total surveillance state, and warned of the very dire circumstances it put us all in.

[wanda]

I think the total surveillance state was a prediction made decades before Stallman. Or are we just ignoring acience fiction authors and philosophers?

[fit2rule]

They certainly warned us, and Stallman has picked up the light to be shone on these dark territories from others before him, but who in the contemporary era has done as much as Stallman to educate the public as to the dangers of the usurpation of technology by nefarious agencies?

I don't understand the need to denigrate Stallman for these deeds - what purpose does it serve to extinguish this light?

[MCRed]

Basically, everyone working on it has done more than Stallman. All stallman does is post rants and demand adoration. He hasn't actually done anything. Well, he has opposed a lot of tools that would help protect against the surveillance state because they didn't fit his ideology.

[fit2rule]

I believe your point of view is highly naive, and very seriously deficient in intelligence. Stallman has worked tireless to enlighten younger generations of technologists on the issues of privacy and security in the dawning intelligence age. He is no cult figure - but who can you name who has done as much as he has to bring these issues to the table when, instead, quite viciously, the powers-at-large would rather it all be swept aside? Be careful that you are not becoming the very thing you are resisting, in this argument. Stallman is not the only figure out there working on this - thank the stars - but he has definitely been a leader of opinion on the issue of free speech, free technology, and just use of technology to allow peace - where many, many more would rather be using it all for war and oppression.

Perhaps you don't actually know enough about Stallman to be forming an intelligent opinion, yet. Here, educate yourself on his works: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman

He's done a few GNU things you might not be familiar with. Things which have had a massive impact on the way technology has been made available to the masses. Without Stallman, there would be even more walled gardens by now, and fewer generations of new technologists, aware of their technological freedom to contribute to society in an open and free manner, out there in the world at large.

Please, reconsider your naive and ill-formed opinion. It does you no good.

[MCRed]

Have you ever heard of George Orwell?

It's like you guys go to some sort of indoctrination camp and become members of a cult.

[fit2rule]

What an offensive thing to say. Of course I've heard of Orwell.

So?

What is it about you which predisposes you to reject someone just because "they weren't the first"? It is you exhibiting cult-like behaviour in this case, if all you can do to denigrate and negate Stallman is say "but, but .. he wasn't the first" and assault his character as if he is some sort of ripoff artist.

So what? Orwell is dead, and rapidly becoming irrelevant in the younger generations. Whereas the still-alive and relevant Stallman has tirelessly fought to educate people on the misuse of technology by nefarious, anonymous actors, in a grand and increasingly dangerous fiasco. Your desire to negate Stallman as a personality would have only one effect: to remove a significant barrier for the rising super-surveillance state.

What are your intentions in doing so, precisely? You wish to see what Stallman fears, and which is enslaving us all, come to pass?

[emilsedgh]

The entire open source movement is a disproof of stallman's position from that period.

Open Source movement did not happen in vacuum. It was a direct followup to 'Free Software' movement.

He has repeatedly claimed that companies won't contribute to open source, and so you have to force them to with the GNU license, and yet history has disproven this one.

You do know that the Linux Kernel, among the most important software projects in the world (if not the most important one) uses GPL and the Linus himself knows that as a direct result of using GPL, right?

Of course, the bazaar model makes Open Source very attractive to companies and many do open source their work. However, the bazaar model happened and the companies where enlightened about it because Free Software Movement happened. Bazaar model was a consequence to that.

[MCRed]

> Open Source movement did not happen in vacuum. It was a direct followup to 'Free Software' movement.

I was there, buddy.

The Open Source movement existed before GNU. The homebrew computer club and magazines and BBSes of the day all involved people sharing their source code with each other without a license in most cases, or explicitly in the public domain. The FSF GNU license was a reaction to this, to try and shut it down.

How old were you in the 1976-1986 period? Were you there?

The whole "FSF created open source!" is post-hoc ergo propter-hoc rationalization to grandstand and justify his campaign.

> You do know that the Linux Kernel, among the most important software projects in the world

Oh, no, I've never heard of Linux. Do tell!

Seriously, I was there. I was doing open source between GNU even existed. It was how things started out-- with hobbyists sharing code.

[kragen]

I was there too, and what you're saying is false almost from beginning to end, with only a few tidbits of truth mixed in to make it plausible.

Yes, of course lots of people were sharing their code before GNU. I mean, that's why SHARE was founded, and why it was called SHARE, back in 1955. The novelty was the proprietary software movement, with moves like IBM ceasing to ship source code, Micro-Soft claiming a copyright on their BASIC implementation, and James Gosling implicitly threatening to sue Stallman for using code from Gosmacs ("the great Emacs copyright debate"), which he'd previously shared without any explicit license.

That's what the FSF was a reaction to and an attempt to shut down — not people sharing software without a license, but the attempts of pirates like Gosling and Gates to privatize it. Richard totally deserves credit for starting a movement to preserve what had previously just been the normal way that people did things, once it came under attack.

But none of this was "Open Source", which is a marketing term for free software that Chris Peterson suggested at a meeting on February 3, 1998. (I wasn't there, but I know a bunch of people who were.) In a non-public but widely Cced email within the next few days, Eric Raymond tried to recruit all the prominent free software developers to the new campaign; Stallman and Deutsch, as I recall, refused in fairly strong terms.

[maxerickson]

BSD doesn't owe any of its origination to GNU, and it is impossible to say what it would look like if GNU never happened.

(The point being, capital letter Open Source as a movement owes something to Free Software, the notion of sharing liberally licensed source code does not)

[kragen]

Actually, Keith Bostic has gone on record saying that the reason he started trying to strip out the AT&T bits from the BSD kernel was because he was inspired by GNU, and wanted to see if the BSD kernel could work as a kernel for GNU. Maybe in Open Sources, I don't remember.

[maxerickson]

I wrote the comment thinking that the BSD releases in the early 1980s had been released under the 'BSD License', I even did some amount of checking (I can't remember what evidence in particular made me decide to post). I see from looking more carefully this time around that the ~1980 license from Berkeley was not the same thing as the later one.

[kragen]

Well, it's also true that the liberalization of the later versions of the BSD license (removing the advertising clause) was at least in part a result of FSF pressure. But that wasn’t what I meant. I had thought that the early BSD releases were under the four-clause BSD license — but you needed the AT&T Unix source code to compile them.

However, this turns out not to be the whole story at all. I tried rooting around in http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=4BSD without any success at finding a 4BSD license. http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/kirkmck.htm... has Kirk McKusick’s recollection of the history of the licensing; up to at least 4.3BSD-Tahoe in 1988 it’s talking about “site licenses” rather than free-software licenses, and all the recipients needed AT&T licenses as well. It wasn't until the NET-1 release ("the networking tape") in 1989 that what we know as the BSD license existed, and it wasn’t until the NET-2 tapes in 1991 — largely impelled by Bostic — that there was anything like a complete free BSD OS.

http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch09.html talks about how Bostic credits Stallman with inspiring him to care about software freedom.

[quanticle]

Stallman predicted the rise of e-readers and the problems that would arise from DRM protected e-books.

[apetrovic]

What exactly is a "problem"?

I don't live in US. Ordering books online and shipping them to my house used to be slow and expensive process. Now I can buy books from Amazon, for a half the price than printed books (3x the price if I account the shipping). Yeah, I can't read that book on anything except Kindle (device or Kindle app). But I know what I'm buying, and I'm ok with that. I enjoy the option to have my books synchronized over my Kindle, iPhone and iPad. It's fantastic when I'm on vacation, in some other country, and I can buy the e-book immediately, instead of dragging around lots of paper books (as I used to do).

And I pay for all of that with DRM. I'm ok with that. If the book is such important to me I'll buy the paper version.

That's the problem with Stallman, and all radicals. Everything is black and white for them. Without DRM e-readers e-books would never exists. Stallman thinks that it's ok, it's better to not have e-books if there's DRM. I don't think so. I like to have an option. I don't have any "problems" Stallman predicted.

[bjelkeman-again]

> Without DRM e-readers e-books would never exists

That is a strawman. Three are certsinly booksellers who never went near DRM and argue strongly against DRM.

Exempel: http://www.baenebooks.com

[apetrovic]

No, singling out one sentence from my answer and attacking it is a strawman.

But ok, to correct myself: without DRM ebooks would never exists at this scale and people would never buy ebooks readers at this scale and read ebooks at this scale.

Ten years ago ebook reader was a niche, used only by geeks. Today, thanks to aggressive Amazon pricing and (DRM-ed) ebooks, it's a common item. And popularity of ebook readers (namely - Kindle) started some new things: I love SF, and last year I bought a lot $1.99 books from self-publishing authors who would probably never find a place to publish their books without widely available ebook readers (read: Kindle). So, to return to original question - what are such a burning "problems" that Stallman predicted?

[bjelkeman-again]

Agree, that is a better argument. But I think devices such as the iPad would have been released regardless of whether it contained iBooks with DRM or not. Answering your question, I think that Stallman is partially right, but not always, but then who is?

[msabalau]

And such sellers and their customers can leverage the well designed e-readers that exist because Kobu and Amazon have business models supported mostly by the sales of DRM'd books.

[paulsecwhatt]

This. Exactly.

I'm sure Stallman absolutely HATES services such as Spotify. However the as I mentioned in the parent comment, the world is not black and white, and thus viable solutions will always be in a middle-ground.

Nothing he could ever say would bring me from playing music with ridiculous ease in Spotify to downloading "free" ogg files and playing them in GNU Mediagoblin, or something similar.

As a side note: the FSF complains liberally about different "evil" products using javascript on their "giving guide". Stallman himself asks us not to "mistreat" family by giving them non-free gifts. Yet they themselves use javascript for analytics. Proving how ridiculous some of these practices are.

https://www.fsf.org/givingguide/2014/

[dllthomas]

They complain there about proprietary javascript. The FSF has no beef with JS - it's just another kind of software. The FSF has a beef with proprietary software, which shouldn't be surprising. For analytics they use non-proprietary javascript (piwik). They elsewhere recommend precisely that, if you're going to be gathering analytics - they talk about their use of it here: https://www.fsf.org/about/free-software-foundation-privacy-p...

[cozzyd]

Instead of Spotify, I just listen to http://www.gnu.org/music/free-software-song.ogg on repeat

[hnnewguy]

>But I know what I'm buying, and I'm ok with that.

Apparently you don't, because you aren't really buying anything. You're licensing it. You don't own a thing in your Amazon library. They can, and have, taken books "back" based on user-agreement violations.

Yes, it's convenient for you to have all your books, synced, in one place. But there are negative implications of having all that information controlled.

[apetrovic]

Ok, I know what I'm renting and I'm ok with that. I pay less money to have quick access to books I like. If in some time in future Amazon suddenly became evil and deletes all my books from my library (let's for the sake of the argument forget that I actually have a backup for all these books), I'll... I actually will not give a fuck. I'll just stop using Amazon for anything. And buy (or rent) these books I want to read again on some other place.

*

Yeah, I understand that Stallman and his flock is greatly concerned with possible "negative implications" of DRM-ed ebooks, mobile phones, non-GPL software and whatnot. But I'm 44 years old, I don't need help to decide what is good for me and what is not, and I actually enjoy living in the future, with mobile phones, ebooks and everything else. I enjoy having (and making) a choice instead of avoiding everything that can have "negative implications" or isn't "free" (by Stallman's standards).

[dandelion_lover]

Thank you for the presenting your opinion in details. I see your point. What I do not like in this approach is that I find it to be similar with "I have nothing to hide" argument (see also the comments below).

You personally may not have any (unexpected) bad consequences because of such choice. But please look at the analogy. Giving to a three-letter agency a possibility to collect and store all private information about you, gives them an incredible power over the population as a whole, taking away the democracy from all the people. Looks like a tragedy of commons, by the way.

Giving to a commercial company a possibility to own all your books, gives them a power to do whatever they want including censorship and maybe manipulating people.

tl;dr: you personally may not have any side effects, but the community as a whole will.

[throwawaykf05]

"Predict"? There were patents that describe e-readers and DRM before Stallman wrote "Right to read", and we all know how innovative patents really are, right? Here's an example: https://www.google.com/patents/US5715403

[tome]

> virility of his license

Ah, that was a typo for "virality". I was scratching me head there for a minute.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virility http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_phenomenon

[facepalm]

Superfish, of recent times. Google it (Superfish Lenovo since you seem to have missed it).

[ta0967]

i suggest that anyone who is malinformed enough to believe MCRed's perversions of RMS's positions goes and reads the stuff themselves. i'll just say that the world is full of people who are "that old" and full of it.

[yuhong]

Not always true, especially back in the early days.

[cwyers]

Stallman's work has enabled a vision almost exactly the opposite of what he wanted - the gratis nature of free software has been a far greater impact than the libre. It's enabled cloud computing by making OS and software licenses scale out affordably, letting everyone leverage low-cost commodity hardware in the place of big iron. In terms of libre, though, the closed-source PCs that ran Windows that Stallman still wars so vigorously against are far more free-as-in-freedom than the cloud computers running mostly "free software." Same with all the Android phones that run a GPL'd kernel but are far more locked down than Windows. The Affero license and the anti-Tivoization clauses have been shutting the barn door after the horses have left. The free-software movement has been pivotal in providing lots of free software in the gratis sense, and that free software has enabled a far less libre computing paradigm than what came before. So you'll excuse me if I am unsure what his remarkable history of being right has been.

[xrjn]

That's a very interesting point that you're making. Especially when you look at recent events with critical infrastructure software, and the numerous people who were surprised to see how underfunded those developers were. After the paltry sums donated to some of these small projects from companies that make billions thanks in part to their software, one has to wonder how much they value open source software's intrinsic libre value, or just the pure monetary value.

[lotsofmangos]

Predicting trends and successfully influencing trends are two different things. However, the free software movement has been one of the most successful experiments in mass communism in history.

[golergka]

> I am not going to bother to rebut your examples

Well, this kind of attitude tells more about your argument than the rest of the comment.