Comment by xook | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xook | Hacker News Reader

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Obvious privacy issues aside, Stallman has always come off - to me - as someone who doesn't really see the bigger picture. I thank him for taking a stance against corruption, but there is a line between practical and impractical.

I don't know him personally, but his being top wheel of the FSF has skewed his reality. I cannot remember where I heard it, but I believe he is quoted (heavily paraphrasing here) along the lines of, "I may be fighting a losing fight, but it's all I can do, and I won't stop until I'm dead."

Practicality is the ultimate deciding factor at its core. Practicality decides whether you use a GPL-based license or the Apache license. Practicality decides whether you choose to avoid a website because of non-free Javascript. Practicality decides whether you can eat that muffin and switch gears on the road, and so on. It is a bit like using secure services and utilizing OpSec. Where do you draw the line between convenience and security? Where does it stop being practical and where does it matter to stick to a principle?

Maybe he is just aging, and his brain is in an infinite loop. As I said, I do not know the man myself. But not having a clear focus of how life is for a majority of people can be a huge factor.

No need to be polite. Extremist weirdos are behind essentially all important, groundbreaking, awesome things.

A well mannered "normal" person would have never written the GPL and would have tolerated software that didn't match their politics.

The fringe provides a mandatory function in steering the cultural ship.

Early advocates for things like minimum wages or child labor laws were Molotov cocktail throwing anarchists. Early women suffragists were equally way out there - even by quite permissive modern standards.

Subversives are necessary in order to subvert and often make the world a better place.

"The reasonable man adapts to the world, while the unreasonable man tries to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

He's a reasonable man trying to change the world though. He's more a Mandela, King or Chomsky than a Trump or a Hitler. Sometimes people try to change the world to be a better place. It's unreasonable not to.

really, do reasonable people do absolutely nothing to adapt the world to themselves? The reasonable person isn't able to think well that is messed up and I would like it to change, or hmm, I think this could be improved a bit. The history of small innovations in things (as opposed to the more impressive big and rare innovations) would indicate that yes, reasonable people do try to adapt the world to themselves to some extent. Because to never attempt to adapt the world to oneself would mean not just that one was unreasonable, but maybe also that one was not even human.

Judging by the experiments in both far-left and far-right governments in the 20th Century, we can be quite grateful that for the most part we have had leaders who are grateful to tinker at the edges.

THANK YOU! I keep having to tell people I don't even enjoy my views, I radicalize to mediate all to the center. It unnerves people. Haha.

I think a fundamental portion of civil society is owning the notion that you must strive for the rights of those you like and love least. One day you might be on their side of the railroad tracks and finally get their angst.

Hugo Black or Edgar Gardner Murphy were molotov coctail throwing anarchists? Well, the more we know...

You have to go back to the 1800s. The Haymarket riot, Thibodaux massacre, Homestead strike, Great railroad strike, Pullman strike, Colorado labor wars, West Virginia coal wars were about wages and labor.

The era of nonviolent Ghandi-style protest hadn't begun so violent worker insurrection was a common element. The railroad strike, for instance, had over 100 workers killed and people feared a bloody worker-run revolution like the Paris Commune of 1871.

The Civil War, which was largely about labor, was recent so the idea of a 2nd labor war wasn't implausible.

A president was assassinated by a unionist steel worker. Wall Street and the LA Times, an anti-union paper at the time, was bombed. Clandestine bombs were sent to dozens of industrialists and anti labor congresspeople.

The modern equivalent would be if Obama was killed, Fox News and 740 Park Avenue was bombed, and the Koch brothers had to dodge constant assassination plots by various "fight for $15" people. The 1900-era version of that actually happened.

So the struggle for the minimum wage wasn't just the whim of a supreme court justice or the musings of armchair intellectuals, it was a bloody multi generational insurrection by syndicalists, unionists, anarchists, and marxists.

Even leading up to the 1938 ruling you had the memorial day massacre, hilo massacre, martial law being declared during teamster strikes, and machine gun companies being called to fight with the national guard, all within 2 years of the Wagner Act.

The history of progressive politics is both older than the 20th Century and broader than the United States.

Henri Tolain, George Odger, Keir Hardie, Robert Owen, George Loveless, Giuseppe Mazzini, Benoît Malon or Lloyd Jones and basically most of the early labour right activists were respected members of the society. Even the anarchists of the time like Paul Brousse, Élisée Reclus, César De Paepe, Peter Kropotkin or Tito Zanardelli led relatively normal life, they weren't really "extremist weirdos" apart from having progressive ideas.

Obvious privacy issues aside, Stallman has always come off - to me - as someone who doesn't really see the bigger picture.

That depends heavily on the definition of "bigger picture". You seem to think practicality is most important, while for someone like rms, the bigger picture is in the realm of ethics and human rights.

That said, everyone's entitled to their own opinion.

In the context of Stallman's views, I mean. FOSS is important, but if writing a successful proprietary program keeps someone out of debt then it is a necessary evil.

There are many other variables that would have to apply, I know. But for the sake of argument it is just focusing on the conventional problem of (paying for) everyday living.

In a way, "practicality" is the place you arrive at only after considering more extreme, principled points of view. So if his role is to present one philosophical approach to technology, and you decide it's too extreme, at least it was there to make wherever you arrived informed and well-considered.

And certainly for many-- even if they don't embrace his positions with full-throated absolutism, maybe they'll be floating a little more in the direction of his idealisim than it would have without him having him there. And if so, and clearly his principled influence has been influential (and considerably so) for decades, that's a good thing, right?

What would the would look like without his constant "impractical" point of view...? Very different, and more scary, I think.

I believe that you technically have your definition of "seeing the bigger picture" backwards. The ones that are driven like water around only practicalities do not see the larger landscape of issues. Richard Stallman does, he is constantly considering many more factors than a typical person with each decision that he makes.

It sounds like you're assuming that people who choose practicality do not see other issues. I can assure you that I constantly see lots of issues: technical, social, economic, etc. And mostly I'm choosing a practical way through, picking specifically what to oppose and when. We all have filters on what we'll actively fight for. But it would be wrong to assume only people fighting for/against X see issues related to X.

Now what exactly you see as the "bigger picture" mat depend on your opinions about the subject...

No, that is not the case. I specifically said "The ones that are driven like water around only practicalities do not see the larger landscape of issues." That does not include folks like you that inform themselves of the issues and then make a decision that balances practicalities with principles. Well I ultimately agree with your comment - "We all have filters on what we'll actively fight for", I don't believe that many people are properly informed.

I would like to add that I think Richard Stallman is doing the following:

1: Setting an idealistic example by living what he preaches 2: Dedicating his life to making a world where choosing Free Software is as practical as choosing Proprietary software via the GNU project and the Free Software Foundation.

Eh, we need the idealists in the world. If not it'd be a much more boring and fractured place.

> Stallman has always come off - to me - as someone who doesn't really see the bigger picture.

This is pretty clearly a completely incorrect statement. Everything Stallman says is bigger picture. All your arguments are about the details.

The problem with relying on "pure practicality" is that one may come dangerously close to opportunism and psychopathy. There are ideas which may be super-practical, yet plainly evil. At risk of being rage-downvoted: it's chilling to think of, but many of Hitler's methods and ideas were quite practical. For some, narrow part of population.

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