He has done some great stuff, that doesn't excuse his faults. Basically him being the leader of the free software movement reminds me of the old line about being promoted to the level of greatest incompetence. When people talk about him stepping down they mean as president of the FSF. They want to see the organization focus on being useful rather than being ideological because they think the ideological stance rather marginalizes the movement. I know when I come into contact with free software 9 out of 10 times the FSF isn't involved.

If you dont care about free software (with rms'es definition), why do you want FSF to function differet? Why would you care? Why would FSF and rms chage their direction towards what you value as 'software freedom'?

I already have it is called free software. Look at the founding of any movement from Alan Kay and Object Oriented programming to Christ and Christianity, founding a movement allows you to push the world in a given direction. It doesn't make you king who gets to lord over every last thought of members of the movement.

Why do I care if the FSF is practical or ideological? Simple I believe in free software and think it could be so much more. However when FSF goes off on its ideological jaunts, it hurts free software. When ESR and RMS had their little spat that lead to the creation of OSI it hurt the movement. When the president of the FSF leaves little notes about how the world is better place because someone is dead it hurts the movement. I don't care what the FSF does so long as it quits trying to kill free software.

I too thought the Bad Vista campaign was in horribly taste and ineffective. Hell, it wasn't too horribly accurate either from what I remember.

Any activist group that has ever made a difference in history has had leaders who were able to accept their minor differences and fight together for the greater good (until the fight was won, at least)

RMS is entirely incapable of separating main points from side issues. This makes it impossible for him to make peace with people who are, in fact, on his side. How can you expect someone like that to ever gain the amount of support needed to really push a globally relevant point forward? The world of software isn't a village council.

This man might have been a great programmer, but as an activist, he's a joke.

Activists raise consciouness of an issue, and he seems to be doing that quite fine - who else is fighting the same fight with the effectiveness he is? If he weren't around... where are the public figures making his argument and getting press inches?

Also, minor differences he's capable of - he's apparently given up on the hurd kernel due to the linux kernel being top dog, despite not fully approving of it.

Are you sure? Afaik, he's only reaching us, insiders. If you want to convince a non-nerd about using free software, would you dare using material that RMS produced? Would you show them a recording of him speaking?

> Also, minor differences he's capable of - he's apparently given up on the hurd kernel due to the linux kernel being top dog, despite not fully approving of it.

That's super fucking nobody-cares-about-that-shit minor. Really. Which kernel you use is not what free software is about.

Regarding the dead comment itself, I have absolutely no idea why the comment below is dead - it simply says he's popular, then uses Jobs' own words about misfits and troublemakers to defend the man. Apparently HN has interpreted this as "misfits and troublemakers you like", which kinda runs counter to the context of the paragraph. RMS fits almost everything in the comment.

The fact that that comment is dead - polite, informative, insightful - is just further evidence that the moderation system on HN needs an overhaul.

By what yardstick? The Free Software movement is known by people in the software industry the world over. Stallman and the movement are hugely popular in the developing world... he's a pretty big deal in India, for example.

Thing is, he doesn't do the PR thing. The guy is honest with himself and with the world. I respect and admire that.

"Here's to the Crazy Ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world - are the ones who DO!"

1) http://blog.mypapit.net/2005/06/richard-stallman-admits-his-... 2) http://tfcny.fdncenter.org/990_pdf_archive/042/042888848/042...

I am grateful for the work the FSF has done in the past, but I’m also grateful for the work Steve Jobs has done.

Fanatical and extremist views lead to misery for the owner of the views and for those they effect. It doesn’t matter if the views are religious, political or just software licenses.

I don’t believe you need to defend RMS - I can separate the ideas from the man. However the FSF has just had it’s reputation burnt severely and if they want to have any useful contribution towards the ongoing debate about how best to move the industry forward they should reconsider the ir public image.

That is if they want to increase their support and not end up a fringe group.

I’m a great fan of open source software and have been for the last 23 years but let’s be clear - the producer of software always has the right to choose what license they have, that is their freedom and that was the freedom that Steve Jobs like many others chose. Sometimes the license was open source (Darwin, WebKit etc.) sometime it wasn’t, he chose, that was his freedom as the producer of the work. Freedom is such a loaded word but how often do we stop to see the freedom of other people not just our own when we cry it’s name.

When people cannot see the freedoms of others but only talk about their own freedom, be suspicious. Because their agenda is the most important thing to them, not the wellbeing of others.

I wish a long life to RMS, to the FSF and to open source itself. I would like to see a very quick end to a world view that is filled with contempt and hate for other people which is poisoning all three.

In his own words, he said "Nobody deserves to have to die". He said these words on his own blog, and separated the ideas of Jobs (glad to see gone) from the man of Jobs (not glad to see gone), just like you yourself claim to about RMS. He didn't go out to another publication or stand on the FSF soapbox. He mentioned those words on his personal blog. This whole 'burnt reputation' has little to do with what he actually said, and more to do with people intentionally misreading it and being wilfully offended.

Also, philosophically speaking, it can be quite normal for the death of a human being to not be sad. (let alone any being, quit gilding the lily - most humans don't feel sad about meat animals, let alone fish in general or lower order animals)

If you've known anyone who has had to suffer a long, lingering, painful death, the actual occurence of their death can be an escape from sadness, a relief, even peaceful.

End of story?

The issue is what critical thinkers would recognize as an equivocation fallacy: It's one thing to classify certain software as 'free' according to a particular definition. It's another thing to attribute a moral judgment to something by using a certain term such as 'free'.

Objection number 1 is about Stallman's use of the word 'free' in the second sense. Your response is about the use of the word 'free' is the first sense. Therefore, you either misunderstood the critics, or you're deliberately erecting a straw man.

My guess is on the first interpretation: "Please, feel free to use any proprietary software you want." is the opposite of what the Free Software movement is all about: One should not use proprietary software! It's evil, according to Stallman.

I agree with them, and yet I eat meat, especially when my mother / girlfriend cooks it for me. Are vegetarians going to moral-judge me? Some of them might; Others would just see me as "strong" enough to resist meat.

With most politicians, the more you listen to them the more inconsistencies you will find. rms, however, is remarkably consistent and is unrelentingly principled.

I wish I were only one-tenth as principled as rms. Then I can reject meat and only use Free software. Alas, I'm not, so... rms can moral-judge me and I won't mind.

I don't think that prevents me from being a support of either causes, however.

I didn't say that Stallman has no principles, or that he is inconsistent. For me, there's just one main question: Is his conclusion -- that all software should be free software -- rational?

To be rational, a conclusion should follow logically from true premises and at least one fundamental moral principle. It's been a while since I studied Stallman's writings, but back then, I fail to find any sound argument. It was mostly just logical fallacies. Since I doubt, he changed his arguments, this probably still holds true. If so, this is a sufficient reason for me to not support his cause.

Granted, there may be a utilitarian point regarding Jobs' work to advance closed platforms, and his death meaning he won't be able to do so any longer, but to spit on his grave? Absolutely uncalled for.

We should expect more from our leaders.

My condolences if you knew Mr Jobs personally, but really, spat on his grave? Stallman did nothing of the sort.

What Stallman did was address the practical change for free software that Steve Jobs removal from leadership at Apple would make. That's it. The manner of removal RMS notes as undeserved.

...

>you dont have the right to change the meaning of term for the sake of argument.

So we should have the right to improve software, but not to improve the definition of words (or to use them the way that most people typically do)? Time to fight back against this tyrany and start the Free Language Foundation.

RMS did huge amounts of damage with his "EMACS virgins" joke to women in computing, and has never apologised.

At the end of the day, I believe the days he is a help to the open source movement are over. He is now a major hinderance.

However, I'm going to repeat something I've said before (and I think before on HN as well): I did not celebrate the death of Saddam and Osama, and I'm sure as hell not going to start with Steve Jobs.

I did not agree with every one of his business decisions, but I think he was an interesting guy. He did things no one else did, and he made a few enemies doing it.

I know a lot of people will shoot me down for saying this, but a large part of RMS's beef with Apple is Apple used BSD licensed software according to the BSD license. They didn't have to give back to the community, the license doesn't require it... but they did.

RMS largely hates BSD licenses because they don't require further code to be Free, and you know what? No one cares. If a company thinks they can wade into a market that already has a major competitor (the code they're "ripping off"), then let them.

So yeah, RMS is the destroyer of public relations for FSF, and hes a bastard beyond measure. But when RMS dies (in the next 20-30 years), I'm not going to celebrate his death, I'm going to remember what he did that was right and try to learn from that.

The golden rule of society is "don't be a douchebag", and it would be great if everyone followed that rule even if they follow none of the rest.

Honestly, you are missing, or dismissing, important points - e.g. normal humans need software and devices and they can actually use - and the ad hominem arguments in the latter half of your post are completely out of line here on HN. If you want to have a discussion we can have a discussion but you have failed to start a good one on the right foot.

Yes I do. Github being is so successful these days is proof that FOSS matters. FOSS is not only about kernels, compilers and emacs. Those things were just the start.

Being able to use a fully open stack from the bootloader to the javascript library and be as productive as with closed platforms means a lot, and it owes not only to FSF's activism, but also to the software community.

Rails wasn't born out of the desire of spreading ~free software~ ideals. It was born out of the desire of changing the world of web development. And why is it open source, then? Because it was the best option, and still is. A community was born around it and the results are as good (or better) than anything a company could make just by hiring.

Today, with things like GitHub, the barriers to free software are pretty much gone. Everyone can contribute. This is infinitely better than Stallman's 'cathedral'. I can not only look at, thinker and modify somebody else's code: I can effectively give back to the creators in a matter of seconds, and then, suddenly, I become one of the creators myself.

Seriously, your post full of fallacies.

Everyone is free to criticize Stallman on this point. Don't try to invalidate their criticism just because they haven't written a GCC or an Emacs.

So, yes, I am part of free software, but I don't want anything to do with FSF or Stallman. I want to win this open vs closed fight by fighting with my code. Not by pissing on someone's grave.

Also, rms did not piss on his grave. He respectfully said that he's happy that Steve Jobs couldnt affect the computer world anymore.

RMS has done a lot in the past to make my life as a developer much better. Some irony, typing this on my MacBook: I think that we are going to lose a lot of freedoms in the future: controlled computer hardware, loss of open media, loss of open internet, ...., the list goes on...

Logically, we should all be throwing our support behing FSF, EFF, some of the few rational political movements supporting personal freedom, etc. because once the tipping point is reached where we lose freedoms, it is likely we will not get them back.

I am an older hacker (60) and you may disagree with me and my world view, but just take a look at history to see cases when people did not stand up for their rights and lost them.

So, a tip of the hat to RMS, and thanks to him.