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Comment by pwg | Hacker News Reader

This post really brings into focus just how right Richard Stallman was when he penned "The Right to Read":

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

Indeed. But don't expect the sort of person whose battle cry w/re to RS is "But he's so unkempt!" to acknowledge that he tends to be correct.

Do you think that if stallman cut his hair and put on a suit his message would be better received?

Yes. At the very least he would be less easily dismissed.

I very much agree with his ideals, but his insistence on living completely outside the system diminishes his effectiveness in changing it.

Yes, no question about it.

(I used to think this didn't matter, either. Turns out that I'm far more pleasant to be around if I don't have a beard. So I haven't had one in 20 years).

Welcome to the world of effective interpersonal interaction. We're primates, get used to it :-)

No. Well dressed and much more groomed people has warned about obvious threat in similar areas, and has also been equally ignored.

Its the problem of the frog and the slowly heating pot. The changes a just slow enough that one can get used to the abuse. It will get worse. There is a ton of stuff companies could be doing to increase revenue by abusing their customers. When companies can view sold units as "theirs" to control, there is little limit.

Car manufacturers really are the next area where I expect to see some heavy changes really soon. Insurance companies really want data, and the manufactures can easy supply it like how fast someone drives, and where they go. In Sweden, this already almost happen in the form of an "voluntary" app. Driving in privacy mode will soon include a heavty cost depending on which insurance company you buy from. On the monopolistic side, there is nothing really stopping car manufacturers to put DRM into the gas tank, so to only "approved" gas sellers (those that pay the car manufacture) that has the right to sell gas. DRM is already in place for parts, so its not that a big step.

The U.S. has pretty decent laws surrounding car parts. The manufacturers are adding custom data to their vehicles, but the whole right to repair battle was already fought back in the 90s, the independents won (with odb ii coming out of it).

The main reason Stallman isn't mainstream is not his physical appearance, but his refusal to compromise with potential allies on even minor details. Not to mention a truckload of NIH on the part of the FSF, although you could argue this is another side of the same coin.

If I look at the sky and it's blue and I tell you that it's blue but you're convinced that it's yellow, should I compromise and agree henceforth to tell people that the sky is green or some shade of yellow?

If the cost of winning certain potential allies to your cause would amount to the complete subversion and hollowing out of your cause, maybe it's better to forge ahead without those allies. If your vision is correct, some of them may come around to the correct position, your position, as time goes on. Or maybe not.

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