What do you think of Richard Stallman?

His comments about women are inexcusable, but the fact he convinced Linus to adopt GPL is paying dividends to billions of people globally, and most of us don't know it.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/mbm74x/computer-scientist-richard-stallman-resigns-from-mit-over-epstein-comments

Smart guy. Not a good person. Don't idolize people

Net positive to the world by a lot.

His fight for software freedom was essential for shaping technology in the last couple of decades. Basically any software today is based on open source directly or indirectly.

Don't listen to him about child psychology though

You have to separate:

1. Stallman the person
2. Stallman the programmer
3. Stallman the philosopher

he was right about the computer stuff

First, don't listen to his opinions on anything that isn't about comouters and software. He doesn't have a good track record there.

Do pay attention to his takes on technology and freedom, there's a lot of food for though there.

I was at one of his talks recently, and he's definitely and eccentric fellow. When it comes to free software he's a die hard extremist, and I have a feeling he knows and to a certain extent he does that on purpose. Case in point, he mentioned how he refused hearing aids and would similarly refuse a pacemaker as there are none running on free software.

As such, that's how I take his ideas about free software: a good philosophy taken to the extreme to showcase what'd be possible if we went all in on that, and the dangers of not doing it. Definitely not something that can work for everyone, or a realistic pathway to a world of free software.

I do think, however, that someone like him is fundamental to advance the cause of free software, even if no one takes him literally and emulates his way of life.

I'm not gonna refuse a life saving treatment or device because it runs on propriety software, but I am willing to sacrifice some convenience to use a free software alternative when available.

It's GNU Richard Stallman, not Richard Stallman.

Lol the OP is literally GNU?

I prefer to call it Linux, not GNU/Linux.

RMS is a weirdo but generally a well meaning one, and many of his points are being proven correct. I'd rather have him around than not

I'm a woman, and have talked to him via email 2-3 times in the last 20 years. While I've met Torvalds, Jobs, and others in the industry when I was living in the Bay Area and working as a tech journalist, I never got to meet RMS -- only via email. I think he has social issues, maybe he's on the autistic side or something similar. I don't think he understands clearly some of the things he's saying when it comes to social stuff. He doesn't get a pass, but at the same time, he's a bit different as an individual, so that needs to be taken into account. When it comes to software, his heart is in the right place, and in fact, if it was me, I'd be even more strict (or more "Free" -- depends how you see it), with GPL.

I've watched one YouTube video of a talk he did and thought he was an odd duck with a lot of good ideas.

What stuck with me the most was "use free software, and be ready for it to lack convenience".

I'm sorry if struggling (if that's the right word) with that right now, because I'm interested in switching to OsmAnd instead of Google maps for navigation, but there's no traffic or road closure info. There's also no Android Auto option, as far as I'm aware.

I don't know who that is.

He's a cutie <3 <3 <3 https://rms.sexy/

I like the memes, but I don't know a lot about the person.

I think he may have been right.

Why does what I think matter to anyone ? I follow him on Mastodon and agree with most of his comments.

@rms@mastodon.xyz

Don't think I've ever agreed with anyone all the time though.

I haven’t learned much about him, but my impression is he’s made some pretty heinous statements about his personal views, but he’s done some useful things for FOSS. I don’t have a strong desire to learn more, tbh

Unironically one of the greatest people in the technology space of the last 40 years, in the sense of accomplishments and impact on the world. I'm talking specifically about the free software movement, copyleft, and the GNU GPL. The world would be a much worse place without those accomplishments. The fact that a lot of his life's work is erroneously attributed to the kernel guy doesn't change that.

As a thinker, absolutely brilliant and unfortunately misunderstood. He espouses radical ideas about the relation of users to the technology they use that are still relevant to issues of today (e.g. enshittification, planned obsolescence, surveillance capitalism, and so on). It goes far beyond "you can look at source code to see if there's bugs or spyware in it." There's a reason "Stallman was right" is a meme.

As a leader and a figurehead I'm not convinced he's as effective. Regardless of the coordinated smear campaign from a few years ago (in which it was erroneously said "he defended Jeffrey Epstein" or "he blamed Epstein's victim" or some such), he has demonstrated behaviors that alienate people and people who have worked for/with him (e.g. FSF employees and GNU maintainers) have said he is not a good boss. His comment about "voluntary pedophilia" is inexcusable, even though he has said he no longer stands by it. The Epstein association was fabricated from a quote taken out of context, but I don't think it was wise to even join that discussion. The glibc manual abort() joke incident from 2018 is probably what convinced me of this - not so much that the joke is bad (humor is subjective) but that multiple developers objected to it and said it made them uncomfortable, yet he "pulled rank" and insisted it be left in (although as of now it seems to be absent). I believe his intentions were good (the "joke" isn't actually about abortion as such, but rather the US government "global gag rule" suppressing discussions of such) but forcing it in against the protests of the community was inappropriate in my opinion.

Overall despite the above I feel he's done more good than harm to the world, however, I'm not sure how much more good he can do in his position. I feel like the term "Stallmanism" would be an apt term for his thought but because of the above I feel leery associating myself with the guy.

For those who don't know much about him, I recommend watching the movie Revolution OS. It does a good job showing what he was working towards.

Love him. His one hot take, which was completely misconstrued by the Twitter mafia, doesn't take away from the fact that he's been right for 50 years straight.

We'd still be in the IT stone ages without him. If you don't believe me just look at the software they used to charge money for in the 1990's.

Microsoft would have likely taken over the Web Server market just as they had the Desktop market, without him. The internet would be a fraction of the size it is now.

I wish his license had allowed for more equitable distribution of profits. It's a crying shame companies can build billion dollar enterprises off of open source software and not pay devs a penny. It's a problem that continues to hobble libre open source software all the way into today. But he's stated he's not a socialist so I can't hold that against him too much.

Nice, try RMS, I mean gnu

One of my greatest idols since I was a preteen. Learning about him and his existence made me confident that there was a future for people like me.

How he has been treated in the last few years has been making me feel a lot less optimistic about the future of humanity. :(

He is one of the people ever in the open-source movement.

Politically, I don't like him. He had a critical influence in the beginning of the Free Software movement, and its failure can be easily identified in the core ideas that put the freedom of the software before the freedom of the people. The fact he cared more about software than people is reflected in pretty much anything he did.

On a personal level, he seems an insufferable asshole with enough power to get away with toxic behavior. Luckily, I never had to interact with him, but his visibility for sure didn't help marginalizing toxic egomaniacs in IT communities. Being neurodivergent is not an excuse for being an asshole. He's the last remnant of an age that hopefully is over.

He's a flawed character with, unconventional ideas about Jeffery Epstein and the nature of his crimes. Nevertheless, his ideas about Free Software undoubtedly changed the landscape of computing for the better.

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He's neat :)

Good programmer, shitty politician ;-)

Only man I've ever seen pick shit from between his toes and eat it while having a philosophical discussion about FOSS.

10/10 agree with the ideology and think he's an amazing programmer 0/10 agree with his culinary recommendations

https://piped.video/watch?v=Rhj8sh1uiDY&t=11

Pointless hasn't been the same since he left. Xander looks so lonely

He's a living meme who wrote some amazing software back in his day.

Good ideas regarding tech, guy seems like a complete freak though.

https://stallman.org/

I like him. He is basically the kind of nerd I have often hung out with.

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"I am not a woman, therefore I am not affected by his comments! Conclusion: good guy!" — far too many people in this thread

Dude also has some........ """interesting""" opinions on the legalization of CP.

All you gotta do is contribute to FOSS and you're a hero?

Some of y'all dumb as hell.

Is that a code name for a glory hole hookup?