Re: [Sheflug] RMS Talk

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

On Fri, 03 Nov 2000, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> Vaguely related to free software philosophy and personalities.
> 
> >>>>> "Timothy" == Timothy Baldwin <csyteb [at] comp.leeds.ac.uk> writes:
> 
>     Timothy> Another possible reason is ignorance of the FSM within
>     Timothy> left wing parties, 5 of the 6 SWP members I have
>     Timothy> discussed the FSM with, were not aware if it's existence,
>     Timothy> or of GNU/Linux.
> 
> Could be.  A coalition of the FSM and left wing politics is an obvious
> thing to try.  I suspect it won't mix well, but I have no claim to
> expertise here.

I suspect parts of the OSM may cause problems may problems with complex
pro-capitalist arguments, but not as big as problem as Zionists. (The SWP
supports the  palestinian uprising.) That's certainly no excuse for not trying.

> 
> On the other hand, the OSM obviously mixes really well with what we
> Yanks call "libertarianism" and most Britons call "liberal," if I am
> correctly informed.  Cf. Eric Raymond (aka ESR).
> 
>     Timothy> RMS is not at all revolutionary,
> 
>     >> He is with respect to free software.
> 
>     Timothy> I was largely thinking of his tactics, AFAIK he has not
>     Timothy> even hinted at the use of strike action against the
>     Timothy> makers of propiretry software, for example.
> 
> Was Gandhi a revolutionary?  Of course.  Did he strike?  Only hunger
> strikes.  What do you think rms is doing when he refuses to use any of
> the goodies that come "for free" with MS Windows?

I stand corrected, IIRC rms did sugest the use of industral action, that
computer programmers refuse to work on non-free software. Unfortunately I can't
find that statement at the moment.

>     Timothy> I suspect the fact that the FSM is largely made up of
>     Timothy> software professionals is due to it's failure to mount a
>     Timothy> serious political campaign, which would win support from
>     Timothy> people who are not computer experts.

To clarify,  support includes political support.

> Read the GNU Manifesto again.  People who are not computer experts are
> of _no_ concern to the FSM. 

Done, it clearly states that users (including non-programmers) are a concern of
RMS.

> The FSM is not about the Quake-playing
> non-participants.  It is about my "right" to read _your_ code, improve
> it, and pass that improved application along to Will, including source.

And the distribution of unmodified copies.

But my point was that people would support the FSM, as they would support
people work in sweatshops, even if they did not realise that support them would
benefit themselves.

> It is the OSM that cares about non-programmers directly.  The FSM only
> points out that benefits from free software are likely to spill over
> to non-programmers.

The difference, as far as tell from material published by the FSF, is that the
OSM cares about code quality, and the FSM care about freedom. Futhermore in
disscussion between me and rms, he did not object to me to trying to gain
support for the FSM from the Socialist Worker's Party.

> In fact, rms has personally asked me _not_ to
> study the advantages of free software to non-programmers (because it
> can have nothing to do with the ethics of free software).
> 
>     Timothy> Which rather makes a folly of their boycott of Amazon
>     Timothy> (due to it small size).
> 
> The motivation for the boycott is not necessarily to change Amazon.

I can't imagine any other purpose for a boycott, someone please enlighten me.

>     >> The GNU system using the Linux kernel is a wild success,
>     >> though, and campaigning for "credit where credit is due" is
>     >> pretty easy.
> 
>     Timothy> But that is not going to get the message to the person in
>     Timothy> the street, or the leaders of the Serbian revolution.

My point concerning the leaders of the Serbian revolution, is that should it
progress to becoming a socialist revolution (likely) and copyright is
abolished, they may be unaware of the importance of copyleft, and therfore fail
to defend it. But one must be aware that socialist revolutions are conducted
democratically.

>     >> 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> Does that apply to all organisations?
> 
> I don't know.  I know he makes basically all the decisions at the FSF,
> and ran the GCC and Emacs projects with iron control, precipitating
> long-lived forks in both projects.  He writes most of the propaganda
> on gnu.org.  He is _the_ spokesman for the FSM; pretty much everybody
> else with much prominence, from Don Knuth to ESR to Bruce Perens to
> Tim O'Reilly to Linus Torvalds is either associated with the OSI or
> very independent of any organization.
> 
> I've never heard of a project where rms participated actively where he
> played second fiddle.

It seems that rms is acting like a dictator, though I would not go as far as
discribing him as the Stalin of the FSM at the momment. He certainly isn't
hostile to the SWP (see above) (Stalin would have been).

>     >> Could be.  But IBM in particular is getting involved in open
>     >> source for many purely profit-oriented reasons.
> 
>     Timothy> I was referring to why they would want to associate
>     Timothy> themselves with the FSM instead of the OSM.
> 
> Are you kidding?  They don't have any choice about the license; it has
> to be GPL.  The FSF is the obvious place to assign S/390. 

Linus Torvalds? Linux International?
(Rethorical questions, BTW)

> But IBM is
> a major player in Apache, and has recently released the IBM Classes
> for Unicode as free software, which is _not_ FSF-assigned.  I don't
> see anything but pragmatism there.
> 
> In fact, I don't know of any major company which makes a point of
> cozying up to the FSM to the exclusion of the OSM.

I may have mis-interperted your original statement, my agurement still
strands should this actually happen.
 
>     Timothy> As long as capitalism exists. That is why to abolish
>     Timothy> proprietary software we have to overthrow capitalism (and
>     Timothy> replace it with socialism). Now that computers exist free
>     Timothy> software is a part of socialism.
> 
> It's the other way around, I'm afraid.

[Confused] I the made point both ways.

-- 
Timothy Baldwin
Member of the SWP (1 year, UK, Leeds District)
Opinions expressed within are likely to be those of the SWP.
Vote Socialist Alliance!  Victory to the Serbian revolution!

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