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Comment by notyourday | Hacker News Reader

Look, I like RMS. I casually know him. We had dinner a few times, mostly with other people at the table. He is very interesting to talk to.

It pains me to say it but he is a Luddite. He would be quite happy in the world of late 1980s because that's where him and his quaint way of technology, society and progress fits in swimmingly. And maybe he is right.

But here's the thing: he simply outsourced his need for modern communications to others -- he does not call restaurants to make reservations, his hosts do. He does not use GPS and maps -- drivers that his hosts use do. He does not need to use a banking app/deal with payments/scheduling/etc that are needed for him to appear at conferences -- those that invite him do.

I wish I could have a life like that. Probably a lot of us would. All the advantages and none of the inconveniences.

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> It pains me to say it but he is a Luddite.

A Luddite would argue that the technology (NB: not the implementation or design but the very concept) takes something away from quality, morality, and/or spirituality of life. Thus, Luddite Stallman would refuse any help from anyone using any kind of handheld communication device including walkie talkies, free software laptops over wireless access points, etc.

Stallman is instead a surprisingly pragmatic free software advocate. He ignores software which runs as if it were low-level hardware circuitry (and says very little about hardware since it can't be produced with anything near zero marginal cost). Plus he qualifies his stance against cellphones as a symbolic stance against mass surveillance.

I don't see any difference between that symbolic stance and, say, a celebrity who tries to have a zero-carbon footprint in their abode. The inconvenience in cost is obviously in service of the benefit of raising awareness, which he does every time he's asked about how he gets around in the world without a cellphone. Not everyone gets royalties from TV drama to pay for a fancy house and not everyone can outsource their schedule to friends aren't serious criticisms of symbolic stances.

Edit: WRT pragmatism-- I'll be interested to see if FSF approve the Purism Phone. It's got a proprietary baseband OS but that can be turned off...

Luddites were not against the technology. They were against a specific kind technology that in their view harmed them and a society in whole.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-rea...

In this sense, calling Stallman a Luddite is a compliment and recognition of the validity of his point of view.

Luddites rose up against the abusive practices of businesses which happened to involve new technology. Similarly, FSF is warning about abusive practices of today's businesses involving technology.

Luddites also lost. We use the tech they rallied against and they are gone. And we are also better for it than we were before that tech was actively used.

Why are you trying to coerce the commonly accepted meaning of Luddite back into the original historical meaning?

If the OP were for some reason referring to the original meaning, why would OP have prefaced it with "it pains me to say this, but?" Comparing Stallman to people who objected to particular technologies on moral grounds would be mundane and not require an apology.

I am the OP.

It pains me to say that RMS is a Luddite. In a correct, historical meaning of the word -- to him technology should go a specific way. Just like it was to Luddites. Society disagreed. Just like it disagreed with Luddites. Luddites were loud ( in the context of those that listened to them ). He is loud ( in the context of those who listen to him). Luddites were wrong, largely because they just picked a hill to die on and they died on that hill. He is going to end up the same way. And it pains me to say that.

> But here's the thing: he simply outsourced his need for modern communications to others -- he does not call restaurants to make reservations, his hosts do. He does not use GPS and maps -- drivers that his hosts use do. He does not need to use a banking app/deal with payments/scheduling/etc that are needed for him to appear at conferences -- those that invite him do.

Unfortunately we've ended up in this sort of world where this is necessary, because it's impractical for people to exist where non-free software is widely used by everyone. Another example of something similar would be Facebook: I don't have an account, but I indirectly benefit from it by knowing people who do and share that information with me. But this is only required because people expect Facebook to be a valid way to communicate with everyone, so there's really no way out of this until everyone leaves…

I think it's one of those situations where he has the ability to wax poetic from his ivory tower simply because he doesn't have to exist in the real world in terms of technology.

If he had to exist in the real world, he would find it a lot harder to stick to those principles.

I think it's also that his entire livelihood depends on him continuing to do so.

It's the problem with leaning into a niche viewpoint. You have to continue to lean harder and harder into that viewpoint as the times change in order to keep the people who also believe in that viewpoint supporting you.

I genuinely think the FSF/RMS level hate of non-free software will continue to die out as everyone starts to die/retire from public eye. Whether or not that's a good thing overall is not something I'm going to touch, but it seems like there's not enough being this aggressive to keep this viewpoint sustainable.

It doesn't.

RMS could very likely retire today, find himself a nice seaside property, get himself a parrot, and sit outside in the sun in his pants and hack on emacs to his heart's content.

The only genuinely weird thing about RMS is that he doesn't do exactly that.

He continues to do so because he has to because of who he is. It is his calling. Zealots (and zealotry is not always wrong) have to do what they do. The same is true of artists. They don't continue to create late into life because they need to monetarily, they do because that is what they do.

I'm not sure that this makes a great case for him ceasing his endless fight to change "the real world in terms of technology" to reflect a vision that would allow everyone the choice to live as he does. It's quite literally the only thing he's known for, and all he'll be remembered for by most people.

I'm fairly sure that a hypothetically retired RMS would have no problem calling a restaurant, over a landline or hopefully a freedom-respecting mobile device.

Also that, should he go for a drive, maybe to a folk-dancing festival, he would use GPS and maps, maybe the paper variety.

As for the people inviting him to speak at a conference taking care of his scheduling and accommodation, I think that's fairly common and polite.

> I wish I could have a life like that.

By and large, you can. Whether you actually want to is another matter.

> should he go for a drive

Almost every modern car has similar tracking capabilities to cell phones. And they're jam-packed full of microcontrollers running proprietary firmware, and computers running proprietary software.

Fair enough, but one doesn't need to have a modern car, and even if you do, one model is enough: you just buy that one.

At least some of the microcontrollers in cars are the kind of thing that need to be extra tamper proof. There are some niche applications where safety trumps freedom. If a device has a computer in it solely for the purpose of controlling the functionality of the device's primary function, then the priorities really become different.

(a) he does not do it

(b) it is not really possible for those whom he wants to "empower" to live like it is 1980s while maintaining life as it is needed in 2019.

This is why he rubs people the wrong way when he peddles his philosophy as something that is possible in practice. Do I, a person who is pretty happy playing with computers, writing code, sometimes helping others with their technological issues or helping them to leverage technology to do something that they do more efficiently, care if my phone can't trigger Netflix playback on a Chromecast? Not at all, I will just look at one of the fifty something projects that I have in a state of a mess and work on something for fun. Will my wife have the same opinion if she can't watch "Mindhunter" because we are FSF only household and Chromecast is made by a tracking company? Yeah, now we know why his companion is a parrot.

> (b) it is not really possible for those whom he wants to "empower" to live like it is 1980s while maintaining life as it is needed in 2019.

You say that as if it is a law of nature, rather than specifically and intentionally caused by people he has made a life's work of railing against.

He would rather it be effortless for you to live like he does, and spends all of his time on that problem. On what planet is that somehow hypocritical, except to the people who are his targets, and create entire business plans around preventing people from living like Stallman?

Watching Netflix via a surveillance device or watching VHS rips of old shows is a false dichotomy.

rms wants people to live in 2019 but with free software.

As in, with more free software, not just software from the 80s.

> Watching Netflix via a surveillance device or watching VHS rips of old shows is a false dichotomy

My wife does not care about "how" or "why". She wants to have a show from Netflix on our TV downstairs with one to two clicks. I want her to be happy because happy wife means happy life.

"Free" + unhappy wife < non-"free" + happy wife.

FSF's obsession with 100% "free" got us Hurd which in 2019 looks like it is from 1994.

> rms wants people to live in 2019 but with free software.

In order for that to work, society as we know it would need to be structured completely different. Who is going to build all this free software? How will they get paid?

And before you mumble on about "you can get paid for free software", show me how it is done on the scale required to build a netflix or a facebook. Who will build a device as elegant as an iphone with free software? How will it get funded.

Again, for it to work, you'd have to restructure the whole world from the ground up. That ain't gonna happen. I'm not even sure it would be desirable....

> Yeah, now we know why his companion is a parrot.

To what end would you write something like that?

Also, as far as I know he likes staying with people who have a parrot, but asks people explicitly not to give him a parrot because he's often travelling and couldn't properly care for it. I doubt he has a parrot.

Rhetorical device. The same kind of a device him and FSF use when they call auto-complete a "key logger"

> it is not really possible for those whom he wants to "empower" to live like it is 1980s while maintaining life as it is needed in 2019.

You're confusing wants and needs. We need food, shelter and water; we want up-to-the-minute traffic maps in our pockets.

> This is why he rubs people the wrong way when he peddles his philosophy as something that is possible in practice.

He practices it, therefor it is possible in practice! QED

I happen to be like you: I'm willing to put up with a few violations of my freedoms in order to get features I want. But I chafe at them, because I know that they aren't essential: there's no legitimate reason for the DRM in TVs and computers nowadays; there's no legitimate reason for devices I own to refuse my commands.

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