Reddit has 25 questions with Richard Stallman!
Very good reading, even with a couple of poor questions.
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Reddit has 25 questions with Richard Stallman!
Very good reading, even with a couple of poor questions.
Comments are closed.
#1 by Brandon on August 2, 2010 - 8:28 am
As much as I appreciate Mr. Stallman and all the work he has done to promote free software I don’t like his assertions that everything must be free. He wants the free speech and the free beer. Only in a Utopian society will that work or wont as the case is. I whole heartily support the FSF and open source, but programmers need to eat.
There is a market for closed source software; one such case is video games. As one of the questions stated video games are consumed and then tossed aside way too fast for the open source market to work.
Lastly, all tech books must be free? Tech books don’t make the knowledge proprietary, They just put it in a neat and easy to understand format.
Great man, but he is too black and white.
#2 by Jason on August 2, 2010 - 10:10 am
Brandon,
Thanks for the comments!
The First Thing
RMS does not and has never made the assertion that “everything must be free”.
In fact, in the very responses in the article he says:
The referenced essay “Selling Free Software”, explicitly addresses this in more detail:
RMS is very interested in “Free Speech”. “Free Beer”, not so much.
I think this is a common misunderstanding because people tend to explain Free Software / Open Source using the old standby “Free as in speech and Free as in beer”, which is accurate enough for many situations, but is not accurate enough for real explanation.
Another thing
Here’s another thing that I notice a lot in critcism of RMS:
You said this:
But, RMS said this:
There is a world of difference between asserting that something should be so, and something must be so.
(Also, note that RMS is talking about textbooks, not “tech books”. That’s a bit of difference that might change the argument.)
It is a common tactic of RMS critics (of which I am not accusing you personally of being) to misrepresent RMS by pretending he “demands” or “insists” or talks about how things “must be”, with the intent of both angering the reader (no one likes to be told what to do) and painting RMS as an out-of-touch zealot.
Side Note
RMS is not the only one who thinks textbooks should be free. There is a story in the New York Times today, in fact, about Scott McNealy (ex-Sun CEO) and his efforts to bring free textbooks and course material to the mainstream.
So, free textbooks are not exactly some radical idea that only that wacky RMS could have thought up.
In Summation
I have often said that most criticism of RMS is actually criticising a misrepresentation of his position. This is not because I think RMS is infallible or beyond criticism, but because I honestly can not recall the last time I read something taking issue with RMS that did not factually distort something RMS said.
#3 by nautical on August 4, 2010 - 5:18 am
What he said
But to address “As one of the questions stated video games are consumed and then tossed aside way too fast for the open source market to work. ” specifically
The FSF sees a difference between software and data. Software *should* be free, data is usually nice to have available under a free license. Now sometimes data can behave like software and software like data, but in most games there’s usually a clear enough distinction between those to refer to them as the game-engine and the game-data.
It’s not unthinkable that a game studio would put out the engine as free software and sell the engine+data (the game) for a normal price. Or maybe even that game studios collaborate on the engine and compete with creativity in game-play and artwork.
What’s more is that game software is not deemed as important as say, a word processor. Ideally all software should be free, but having a word processor available under a free license to combat the lockin effect of a popular proprietary wordprocessor is more important to the free software world than being able to have a modern up to date 3d shooter.
So proprietary games are not good, but not as harmful as other kinds of software.
As a last remark. When the FSF got an opportunity to accelerate modern free software games they did their part. If I remember correctly they pledged the largest sum by far in the Free Ryzom effort. So I think they do feel gaming is important enough to pursue it when the opportunity arises, but not important enough to actively campaign for.
#4 by Brandon on August 3, 2010 - 8:20 am
After re-reading about this topic I have a better overall understanding. Which is nice since I was misinformed and didn’t fully grasp the idea. Thanks for pointing that out.
#5 by Jason on August 3, 2010 - 9:46 am
Cool!