Re: [Sheflug] RMS Talk

[Timothy Baldwin <nospam [at] comp.leeds.ac.uk>]

On Sat, 28 Oct 2000, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> >>>>> "Perry" == Perry Ismangil <ismangil [at] acm.org> writes:

[snip]

> 
>     Perry> Strangely, the guy from FSF was nowhere near as evangelical
>     Perry> as RMS. Oh, he talked about ethics, philosophy, principles,
>     Perry> but it came across as rather bland.
> 
> That's probably because even among the fringe of free software
> advocates Richard is unique.  He's the Abbie Hoffman (_Steal This
> Book_) of the network society.  He definitely does not believe in
> property rights in software, and is not at all sure about intellectual
> property in general.

There is an awful lot of space to the left of RMS, and I am rather puzzled by
the inactivity of left-wing political parties over free software.

> When Linus talks about World Domination Now! he means via technical
> superiority.  OTOH, Richard is the Lenin at the top of a network of
> revolutionary cells, and intends to accomplish his goals via political
> and/or legal action.

RMS is not at all revolutionary, his politics are similar to Tony Benn,
or Ralph Nader. Also cells are not a method of revolutionary organization.
Secondly, at least in the UK, the free software movement has not done much
campaigning on the ground. 

I fact some time ago RMS explicitly stated that he did not want to get rid
of capitalism, and made a remark to that effect in the lecture, this is
despite what he wrote in the last two paragraphs of the GNU Manifesto which are
a description of socialism. Were the FSF at any of the major anti-capitalist
protests?

> Richard believes that "more options" can mean "less freedom", unless
> _all_ options are free.  That is, using a Debian system plus
> (commercial) Netscape leaves you with _less personal freedom_ than
> using a Debian system without Netscape gives you.  Not something an
> economist can easily sympathize with, I'll tell you.

Nor me either, having Netscape installed on your system does not take away
any freedoms that you have if you did not have Netscape installed.

> Richard carefully calculates every action with respect to political
> effect.

He does not seem very good at it, why, for instance, did he not have any
stickers promoting the principals of free software at the lecture? (they were
all advertising GNU/Linux)

> When XEmacs came out with integrated "Mule" multilingual
> capability, he immediately dropped all his well-founded technical and
> legal objections---which he had stood by for _ten_ years---and merged
> Mule into the mainline GNU Emacs _without_ getting a copyright
> assignment to the FSF.  Richard claims that he has legal papers for
> Mule (true, but they are not an assignment and were an option in the
> current form all along) and that it simply was time for this
> technology (but his technical objection that Mule does not understand
> Unicode was more valid in 1998 than it was in 1993, and Mule still
> does not understand Unicode).  I see no way to interpret this other
> than the need to avoid conceding a dominating edge to the leading
> competitor to the FSF's flagship product.

Which does not do much to help the cause of free software, and may
actually hinder it by causing the FSF to be seen as the enemy by some of it's
would be supporters.

If another organization were to copy the FSF policy of requiring copyrights to
be assigned to it, it would create serious problems.

>     Perry> I see nothing wrong with that. Despite what RMS says about
>     Perry> OSM, in the end I personally believe that both OSM and FSM
>     Perry> are a good thing for the software community as a whole.
> 
> I disagree.  The Free Software Movement, as defined by RMS's
> leadership, has about outlived its usefulness.  It has accomplished
> its goal, and in spades: not one, but at least two full-fledged free
> software platforms (the original BSD people admit being inspired by
> RMS and the GNU Project, although they disagreed on means == license).

But the free software movement has failed to eradicate propriority software, 
and is subject various attacks which at has failed to mount a serious defence
to.

> All I ask is that it drop its emphasis on the "purity" definition of
> freedom, and rather emphasize the "choice" definition, but RMS will
> never do that, I think.

I wouldn't count on RMS mataining this position, there has been a large swing
to the left amongst general population, the so-called "Seattle effect".

> >>>>> "Richard" == Richard  <richard [at] sheflug.co.uk> writes:

>     Richard> I have noticed that there are times when the Open Source
>     Richard> people were more acceptable to business users.  Although,
>     Richard> in a situation where the FSF is now the steward of the
>     Richard> copyrights for the Linux S/390 platform it could well be
>     Richard> the case that things will change.
> 
> I don't think so.  That was a _very_ OSM kind of thing to do.  Very
> few in the OSM (except ESR) object to the FSM, nor the FSF, as such;
> it's RMS they can't work with, and that only at the philosophical/
> political level.

Not surprising, he is a supporter of Ralph Nader after all. ESR on the other
hand completely supports the free market.

> But IBM is not going to assign copyright in its
> improvements to Apache or XFree86 to the FSF; it's going to assign
> them to the project foundations.  If you're going to assign a
> copyright in GPLed software, what's the logical place to go to?  Not
> Linus, who had to be dragged kicking and screaming to apply for a
> trademark on "Linux"!  This 
> 
> And it's not the "Linux S/390 platform" that they own the copyrights
> to, either.  It is the (relatively small) set of patches and new files
> that allow the (huge) body of Linux code (very little of which is FSF
> assigned) to be used to create a Linux S/390 platform.  It's a great
> symbolic gesture, good press for both IBM and the FSF, and basically
> meaningless in practical terms.

Major corporations are panicking at moment (due to the growing anti-capitalist
movement) are trying their best to look like to good guys.

[snip]

>     Richard> I find RMS to be a breath of fresh air.  I've spent most
>     Richard> of my life dealing with business people and engineers and
>     Richard> scientists who spend something like £500M without
>     Richard> blinking or even thinking.  The idea that a complete
>     Richard> project could be assembled and made to work without too
>     Richard> much formality does appeal to me.

Indeed, the GNU project, Linux and the IETF are favorite examples of mine when
come to arguments about creativity and scientific progress under socialism.

> That was genius on RMS's part, although he has yet to learn the lesson
> that he taught the rest of us---he still doesn't believe in an open
> development model.  He thinks distributed "cathedral" development is
> good enough.

He has also failed to learn that the beahviour we see in Microsoft is
an inevitable feature of capitalism, or even accept Naomi Klein's
opinion that said beahviour is inherit is multi-nationals. (According to some
surveys the majority of the population dislike capitalism.)

-- 
Timothy Baldwin 
Member of Leeds SWP
Vote Socialist Alliance!  Victory to the Serbian revolution!
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