Re: [Sheflug] RMS Talk

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <nospam [at] sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>]

>>>>> "Timothy" == Timothy Baldwin <csyteb [at] comp.leeds.ac.uk> writes:

    Timothy> On Sat, 28 Oct 2000, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

    Timothy> There is an awful lot of space to the left of RMS, and I

This is true, in general.

    Timothy> am rather puzzled by the inactivity of left-wing
    Timothy> political parties over free software.

Most free software advocates I know are either apolitical or basically
entrepreneurial.  Most left-wingers I know are generally Luddite,
anti-IT in particular, because of the Big Brother aspects ("computers?
you mean the things the NSA/MI-5/Echelon uses to keep files on us
with?")

That is NOT intended to be an explanation.  It's a correlation, and
limited to my acquaintences.

    Timothy> RMS is not at all revolutionary,

He is with respect to free software.  His contention about Netscape
and freedom (see below) is not something to dismiss with "I don't see
it that way" because it is the _core_ of his philosophy about free
software.

    Timothy> his politics are similar to Tony Benn, or Ralph Nader.

In general, yes.  But we're discussing software, where he is far more
radical than I understand Tony Benn to be, and certainly far more
radical than Nader.

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

That's right.  He only actively advocates _destruction_ of property in
software, and _severe limitation_ in technological IP, especially in
software.  He's quite able to see that the collapse of the Soviet
political system was related to its economic system.

He's also quite aware that trying to use free software's political
capital to oppose globalization, etc, would cause a revulsion among
software professionals, who stand to benefit enormously from it (and
in general are more sophisticated about it).  So he will personally
speak out against NAFTA etc, and in favor of some of the economically
stupider activities of the EU (eg, the CAP)---but he doesn't push the
FSM in that direction.

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

RMS's argument is that if you have only Debian installed on your
system, you are free to give a copy of all of it, including source, to
anyone.  If you add Netscape, you have lost the freedom to give away
certain pieces of your system.

This makes no sense as arithmetic in physics, of course.  I don't like
it as ethical arithmetic, either, but I can't say with confidence that
it is "nonsense."

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

I don't think anybody in software, with the exception of a few
non-programmer entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, believes that property
rights in intellectual capital are God-given.  As is _explicitly_
stated in the U.S. Constitution, and other such fundamental laws,
intellectual property is a _creation_ of the government "for the
purpose of furthering the development of the useful arts."  It's hard
to come up with good stickers to argue against such pragmatism, which
already is at best a compromise among principles.

The GNU system using the Linux kernel is a wild success, though, and
campaigning for "credit where credit is due" is pretty easy.

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

I'm not sure about that.  RMS has been extremely unwilling to make
treaties for mutual protection with for-profit corporations.  (I am
told that Sun made such an offer vis-a-vis XEmacs, but was refused.  I
don't completely trust the people who told me that, though, because
they hate RMS.)  I imagine he would be offended if someone found it
necessary to found YA-FSF.  But as long as the charter was as firm as
the FSF's, I think he probably _would_ be willing to "cross-license"
GPL software.

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

Sorry, I switched points of view on you.  No, the FSM (as led by RMS)
has not accomplished its primary goal of eradicating proprietary
software.  But I don't think continuing that effort would be useful.
I think it useless to try; it is probably impossible to outlaw
proprietary software, and the economic motivation for it will always
be with us, making it politically impossible to do so.

Where the FSM has been useful is in ensuring that a complete free
software system is available.  That task is done, and I don't think
emphasis on purity will help to maintain or develop it further, or
extend it to new areas.  What needs to be done now is to fight against
software patents and other further strengthening of IP that are not
needed, and to educate customers on the economic benefits of open
source to them so that they will demand it.  But these activities are
equally high on the agenda of the OSM.

    Timothy> there has been a large swing to the left amongst general
    Timothy> population, the so-called "Seattle effect".

The "Seattle effect" IMHO doesn't represent a general swing to the
left.  It represents (1) the way dramatic decreases in communication
and transportation costs make it easier to organize 100,000 or so
dedicated single-issue demonstrators, and (2) the great debating
advantage that the single-issue advocates derive from not needing to
care about anything other than their single issue.  (Eg, there were
pro-wildlife advocates and anti-protectionism advocates both
demonstrating against the WTO in Seattle.  Of course, they wanted
exactly opposite changes in the WTO's policy on trade barriers to fish
caught with technology that has been banned in most Western nations.
But they didn't say that; they just said "Down with the WTO!")

    >> it's RMS they can't work with, and that only at the
    >> philosophical/ political level.

    Timothy> Not surprising, he is a supporter of Ralph Nader after
    Timothy> all.

That's not the political level I meant; it's intraorganizational.  Ie,
RMS's need to fully control anything he manages, and inability to
compromise.

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

Could be.  But IBM in particular is getting involved in open source
for many purely profit-oriented reasons.  It has some intellectual
property that it doesn't consider to be a real competitive advantage
if kept private (the S/390 port, parts of the Apache webserver, and
the IBM classes for Unicode), and it has come to the realization that
open source is a viable option for making sure that this code is
developed and added to in a way that IBM can continue to benefit from
it.  At much lower cost.

At least that's what IBM employees who participate in the FSB mailing
lists have said.  Other reasons include making employees who are FS
advocates much happier, and PR.  But it's the bottom line that made
the bosses sit up and take notice.  "TCO is much lower when somebody
else owns it!" they discovered.

As for "growing anti-capitalist movement", that may be true in Europe.
But for every new European socialist, two new capitalists arise in
Shanghai---and we haven't mentioned Taipei, Beijing, Seoul, or Saigon.
Heck, even in Tokyo suddenly we are creating _real_ entrepreneurs.
And in the U.S., it's pretty clear that capitalism, in some form, has
extremely firm support throughout the population.  People just want
their particular employers to treat them better.

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

Yup.  Linux and the IETF are organizations of individual
entrepreneurs, and display extreme creativity.  The GNU Project, being
run by a single dogmatic individual, produces immense amounts of crap
code (including a "hello" program that supports at least 4 options).

A convincing demonstration of socialism on lunch break.  :-)

    >> 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.

    Timothy> He has also failed to learn that the beahviour we see in

Ask him.  He supports capitalism because it's the least bad of economic
systems, even including Microsoft.  He doesn't _like_ it at all.

    Timothy> Microsoft is an inevitable feature of capitalism, or even
    Timothy> accept Naomi Klein's opinion that said beahviour is
    Timothy> inherit is multi-nationals.

Naomi Klein is an uneducated fool who does not understand the issues
she writes about.  She mouths plausible conclusions, many of which
were first presented by Marx and Lenin, but without understanding
their theories and certainly without understanding the theories of
those she opposes.  Reading Naomi Klein was one of the most profitless
evenings I've spent in the last 5 years.

Sure, I oppose her, but I can't pay her the respect of understanding
her theory because she has nothing coherent on offer.  Merely a list
of symptoms that I dislike, too.

    Timothy> (According to some surveys the majority of the population
    Timothy> dislike capitalism.)

That's not surprising given that they rarely understand what it is.
There are plenty of good reasons for disliking capitalism.
Unfortunately, none of them have obvious solutions once carefully
analyzed.

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