This is an intriguing theory. But I find it difficult to believe that RMS is playing such a deep game when so much of his communication unrelated to free software principals -- e.g. his contract rider [1] -- comes across to so many people as tone-deaf.

[1] https://groups.google.com/a/mysociety.org/forum/#!msg/mysoci...

Exactly. I respect RMS, and his position that proprietary software is immoral, but I also know that position won't be shared by many (maybe even most) of the people who care about free software.

> People using free software criticizing RMS as an extremist.

I agree with these views, but it doesn't mean that I don't respect him.

The thing is, RMS is also a free software extremist in ways. He uses free software exclusively. Hard to imagine living that way. At some point you will have to interact with Windows in our modern world, or interact with other proprietary software.

That said, I use Trisquel[0] as my daily driver and have no issues, but I also own a workstation with Windows 11 installed for programming and general computing. The software available for Windows is fantastic and many vendors target Windows and treat Linux as a second class citizen, so I'm forced to use Windows just to interact with our modern world.

So in a sense I'm enjoying the best of both worlds and not letting the free software ideology rule me.

[0] https://trisquel.info/

As far as I'm concerned, that is by design. Even though he is fairly well known, rms is not the pope of Free Software as some seem to think. He's just a guy. You can email him if you want to, if you have questions.

He has some very specific ideas about software. He writes essays about that and tries to explain the thought process behind his ideas. You can read those and agree or disagree with these thoughts or not.

I think "strong pragmatic realist leaders and organizations" would be harmful to Free Software, because people swayed by such things can ultimately be swayed in the opposite direction once even stronger leaders and organisations with even better marketing pop up.

So no, there is no "crazy train helmed by rms" as you, and a lot of others, like to believe. rms is not the one standing in the way of the global victory of "open source." What does stand in the way is dilution and corruption from within. And I think, in that regard, rms could be considered a "leader", and the Free Software movement, and even Open Source by proxy, is lucky to have him.

He's been around for some years now. He's had the time to formulate his thought on matters. It's okay to not know what exactly he said/wrote, but it's not okay to just make up stuff you thought he might say based on your own biases.

What he actually wrote, is: "Over the years, many companies have contributed to free software development. Some of these companies primarily developed non-free software, but the two activities were separate; thus, we could ignore their non-free products, and work with them on free software projects. Then we could honestly thank them afterward for their free software contributions, without talking about the rest of what they did." Which is a far cry from what you assumed he might have had to say about it.

Conversely, I believe RMS is one of the last people in anything related to open source that can prevent a full corporate takeover of Linux.

He may be the most passionate, but the most passionate advocates for an issue are rarely those who actually make any progress on that issue. The passion itself is off-putting when one is in the direct focus of it, but it inspires others to actually do the work and make the progress.

RMS specifically is so off-putting that it is one of the first things his advocates say about him. His passionate views on free software, as well as everything else, are routinely dismissed entirely by anyone other than his closest adherents. It's hard to see how he can have any reasonable impact on any corporations that might try to "take over" Linux.

Was that when RPI ACM brought him in to speak? I recall he spent a while complaining about Linus letting binary blobs into the kernel. Then in the Q&A, he got trolled by someone claiming a music sample business was being undercut by CC-licensed competitors. RMS didn't handle that well.

In my opinion, RMS is actually very pragmatic, meaning he's willing to do almost anything to further the goal. He only appears radical because he has uncommon ideas about what the goal is and what furthers it. His radicality varies according to pragmatic considerations. He'll give his blessing to BSD-style licenses in a case like this, and he'll hold out against GCC plugins for years when he thinks that furthers freedom.

From a purely principled point of view, Free Software advocates might want to weaken copyright for software. RMS hasn't put much effort into that, because it would weaken the GPL. It would also be harder for Free software to compete if all software could be distributed free and legally. So he rarely attacks copyright in general, for pragmatic reasons.

Quick nitpick: if you think RMS haven't milked the "free software" cow enough, you're probably delusional. Its basically his lifestyle.

The answer is obvious based on your own personal principles, or based on RMS's stated principles?

>The only issue could only ever arises if he claimed "Free Software is more important than human lives"

He claimed that it is categorically not good to use non-Free software, with one exception for using non-Free software to develop a replacement for that software; and that "we must resist stretching [that exception] any further": https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/is-ever-good-use-nonfree-prog...

No it's not that simple. Because the other side of this is that we are talking about Free Software because of him, indluding his personality. Few people would stand up for this thankless job. Few people would have created and promoted the GPL.

We are taling about RMS because some people decided to attack him unfairly. There may be people better suited for the job. But that is a different argument from the one you made.

You can say that again. I believe he's pretty far on Asperger's?

I view RMS as one pole of the philosophical spectrum of free software (the other being entirely proprietary). An uncompromising absolutist, his views can't survive contact with the real world intact, but they can influence the landscape as he exerts pressure on it.

And he has proven visionary and right time and time again.

I don't agree with many things he says, but I do appreciate the direction he's pulled the industry in. For that, he has my continued respect.

Do you have a source for this? His writings and talks are extensive and I have not seen an instance where he makes this argument. He's said evil and not evil, moral and immoral, but I've never seen him make a constitutional argument. I've never seen him lobby to even make proprietary software illegal.

> So my question is twofold: do we believe that FOSS is a right

Would this right to Free Software be absolute where our other rights are not? Let's say we made Free Software a constitutional right. What about Germany? What about Japan? Would we outlaw the use of nonfree software from those countries? Why stop at software? What about copyright and patents? Isn't in immoral to not copy and share a textbook with someone? To try to only solve this at the level of rights it ignores the sociological and economic solutions and impacts as well.

> where do we draw the line between dedicating our lives to fighting for FOSS, and only using it when its completely convenient.

So to be in favor of Free Software I have to dedicate my life to it? If that's the case then I draw the line at the very beginning. I'm not dedicating my life to Free Software, or even to software for that matter. If you mean am I willing to give FOSS the first look and even ignore some of its warts to use it over proprietary software? Then I do that almost 100% of the time. Am I going to to release any software I have control over under a free license? I do that 100% of the time. I jump through A LOT of hoops to try to use as much FOSS as possible. But... I enable DRM in Firefox and install ffmpeg and nonfree codecs so I can watch streams instead of using Chrome. I use Steam on Linux and use Proton instead of just installing Windows. My life _could_ be a lot simpler if I didn't try to support FOSS as much as possible.

Also, there has been a lot of really cool and really interesting work done in FOSS since the FSF. Like I said my job is almost entirely based on and around FOSS. If you would've told me that in 1998 when I first installed Red Hat for the first time I wouldn't have believed you. I would've hoped it would've been true, but it seemed like a dream. There are so many interesting ideas around FOSS. To focus on the narrow definition and work of just the FSF is a mistake.

This presents an interesting (to RMS) quandary. I take it as a given that he prioritizes the freedom of software over its technical merits (as discussed in other threads). But, even just from the freedom perspective: LLVM increases the amount of proprietary software produced, and also increases the amount of free software produced. Does RMS consider this a worthwhile trade-off? Or does he think that less software overall, and less free software in particular, is favorable to more free software existing and also some proprietary software.

A political software project that produces software furthering his political views about software.

> You like the software, but dislike the politics

I like the software & the software politics. rms's opinion on other political matters is irrelevant to the FSF or GNU. I find some of his non-software political views spot-on, and others completely abhorrent. I have no problem supporting the FSF if it limits itself to its remit; I cannot support it if it exceeds it and ventures into other territory.

Arguably the reason you're using the term "free software" is because of RMS' incessant chastising. The only thing as relentless as RMS are the forces that continually eat away at the central thesis of his movement--the necessity for users to have access to the source code of the software they use as requisite for software freedom.

Does the movement need RMS going forward? I don't know. I'm not even sure it can stay as strong as it is, regardless of his participation. I have more certainty, however, that it wouldn't be as successful as it was and currently is without him. His conflation of the utilitarian and political character of software was rather unique. Even today the vast majority of people find the comparison either impractical, trite, or otherwise inapposite. Comparable concepts, like Lessig's "code is law", aren't quite the same and in any event haven't had the staying power.

I used to feel the same way quite a long time ago before I sat back and asked myself "what is the root cause of my distaste for his method of communicating his ideals?" I found that it was because I hadn't fully grasped his views on an emotional level. This argument that "even though RMS was right, the way he said it was reason not to listen to him" falls back to an appeal to emotion -- the fact he has very strong convictions is not relevant to the discussion of whether his arguments are valid.

But to explain why he is so absolutist, look at things from his point of view. From his view, all proprietary software is an injustice with no exceptions. Any attempt to take away user freedom is similarly an injustice. Now, if you fully accepted that view, how would you act as RMS? Would you make concessions on your sense of morality and ethics? Personally, I wouldn't and I don't.

> In the case of DRM, many people have been talking about this problem for a long time.

And RMS has been talking about the more general problem of user freedom since the very beginning. Not sure what your point here is. RMS is the single reason why we have the free software movement, and that movement came from a philosophical view that is fundamentally inseparable from the other pro-user-freedom sub-movements.

> Steam, the #1 platform, doesn't enforce DRM.

That's blatantly false. steam_api.dll implements DRM.

> Who do you fault for alternatives not developing/not catching on in the ebooks/video world? Consumers for making the wrong choices? Companies for not trying hard enough? Governments for not regulating consumer rights?

Governments pandering to publishers for several decades in strengthening the power of copyright through WIPO and similar treaties. Those publishers then had an enormous amount of power over artists. Combine this with the propaganda campaign by those publishers of "intellectual property"[1] to indoctrinate people into thinking that the ethics of property are at all applicable to things that aren't property.

So, at the end of the day, it's the fault of publishers making the government write laws that then unfairly strengthens the publishers' grip on the industry (where the industry is basically any artistic industry), and then using that control to convince the public that the status-quo is entirely justified and not unethical.

By the way, publishers mistreat artists all the time. So literally the only people that benefit from this system is publishers, not the people who actually make the things that you enjoy.

[1]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html

Which is completely irrelevant to what you quoted.

> He goes around telling programmers that they should give their code for free

So I take it you have never looked at his writing or heart him speak, and only repeat fifth-hand earsay? Because if there's one thing RMS does not do it's tell people they should "give their code for free". RMS has (and talks about) issues with freedom-less software, not with paid software.

> and he belittles anyone who doesn't follow his advice.

Meanwhile you call him and his ideals "dangerous" and "offensive" for what you imagine are disagreements with your position?

The thing is that RMS doesn't want to accomplish something in the generic sense, he wants to accomplish something in the specific sense (and that something is "reduce, and ideally eliminate, the production and distribution of non-free software").

People get frustrated that RMS's actions are incompatible with the specific things they want to acheive, which are often superficially similar goals to RMS's, but different -- very commonly, something like "promote the continued development and distribution of free software", either in general or some particular piece of free software.

This isn't really so much ideology getting in the way of shared goals -- its not that RMS lets his ideals for means get in the way of achieving shared goals -- its a fundamental conflict of goals preventing cooperation.