[Gllug] Talk by Richard Stallman in London, 12 Feb

[Alex Hudson]

On Sun, 2002-01-27 at 11:23, Richard Cottrill wrote:
> To NOT pitch to one's audience is to be unable to
> communicate effectively. In this case RMS did not communicate effectively.
> If he assumes that everyone wants to hear about him and his opinions rather
> then about the free software movement then frankly it suggests that not only
> does he have a problem communicating; but also that he's a touch
> egotistical.

I didn't say he doesn't pitch to an audience. When he talks, he
generally makes stuff relevant to his audience - I doubt he talks about
the RIP bill elsewhere to the same length he does here - but to suggest
that he should take on the etiquettes and mannerisms of his audience in
some faux method-acting manner is silly. Who cares if he wanted to take
his shoes off? When you attend a lecture/talk (by anyone), you sit and
listen. Some people are better than others at giving talks, but by and
large the listener only gets out what they put in. 

> This was not a talk of people going to listen to RMS, this was a group of
> people who wanted to hear about free software from the horse's mouth.

Explain the difference, please. Everything you've mentioned has been
directly related to free software. 

> very open minded. If the nature of RMS says a lot (and the person certainly
> does) then it screams very loudly and clearly "DO NOT LET THIS MAN INTO YOUR
> OFFICE!!!".

Maybe so. I doubt very much that RMS will make a good business case for
free software; that's not the point of what he talks about. RMS doesn't
represent free software, he represents the FSF and the GNU project. He
talks about the importance of free software, and how the FSF and GNU
contribute. If listening to him speak put you off contributing to GNU,
fair enough. If it stops you contributing to free software, then I don't
think that's anything other than ignorance.

> The problem was really when RMS stepped from "You should be free to copy any
> software you have without paying for it" to "You should copy any software
> you have without paying for it [; it's morally reprehensible to refuse]". I
> remind you that it was not one comment; he went on at some length.

I really still don't see what you think is so wrong about that point of
view. I personally believe it's morally reprehensible to refuse to share
software too. You seem to believe that this logically means I must
pirate software - a complete straw man argument. I don't have any
proprietary software at home; hence I am able to live in good ethical
conscience without having to pirate software. 

> I do not think anything productive will come from this discussion; it
> strikes me that you see 'respect for RMS' as being equivalent to 'RMS is
> infallible'.

Not at all; I don't see any evidence supporting this from what I've said
either. I _do_ believe his is possibly the most misquoted and
misunderstood people I've met. A good example is the recent 'We can put
an end to Word attachments' essay. Of all the responses I saw to this,
at least 50% were along the lines of 'okay RMS, but this is the real
world and Word is a standard format, wake up and smell the coffee'. The
slightly more coherent people argued that he should advocate people
using free software to generate their Word docs. 

If this had been _anyone_ else other than RMS, I truly believe it would
have been received completely differently. I would be surprised if most
of the people who commented negatively about the article would accept
HTML email attachments, I would be amazed if they accepted Word
attachments. The hypocrisy of some of these people astounded me.

The whole 'RMS advocates piracy' argument strikes me as being along
these lines. If you believe in free software, then you believe that you
should be able to share software with anyone. RMS advocates copying
software, yes, and to be able to do that legally it really needs to be
free software. Take it as what it is; RMS is RMS, and I really doubt he
was arguing for a society where proprietary software was copied around
freely: there is no freedom in that model.

Cheers,

Alex.

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