It isn’t freedom to have to choose for Richard Stallman’s world view. It isn’t ‘freedom’ to be called immoral just because you choose another ethic. It isn’t freedom when a single person or group with a single view on morality tries to forbid you something based on just their point of view.
For example, Stallman has repeatedly said about Trusted Computing (which he in a childish way apparently calls Treacherous Computing) that it ‘should be illegal’ (that’s a quote from official FSF and GNU pages). I also recall Stallman trying to forbid blog posts about proprietary software (it was about VMWare) on planet-gnome (original thread here).
Richard Stallman and some of his followers don’t seem to understand that it isn’t necessarily moral to impose your world view, about morality, on everybody else by claiming, for example, that the other’s view ‘should be illegal’ or ‘is immoral’ (these are terms that he and some of his followers frequently use).
Firstly something should be only illegal when all procedures for making a new law in a country have been followed. In most democratic countries that means getting a majority in parliament but also getting advise from your country’s judges and from experts in the field who’ll be affected by your new law. So not just by listening and following a guy like Richard Stallman blindly. This is why I was very much against a rule for planet-gnome to forbid posts about proprietary software that uses GNOME: nor the majority of GNOME foundation members nor all experts in the field who’d be affected by that new law nor all the maintainers of planet-gnome (its judges) followed Richard’s opinion.
In this new situation it also isn’t only Richard Stallman who should be blindly followed. Ubuntu needs to take into account all stakeholders and not just Stallman and his followers.
Secondly is morality defined by a person’s own views and for a huge part by that person’s culture. ‘How we ought to live’ is (also) a question at the individual level. Not per definition answered by Richard Stallman alone. Although, sure, it can be one’s choice to strictly copy Richard’s morals. Morality is not necessarily a single option nor is it necessarily written in a single book.
For me it’s not fine when your morality includes enforcing others to copy exactly your morals. To put it in a way that Richard’s strict followers might understand: for me morality isn’t like the GPL; agreeing to some of Stallman’s morals does not mean having to puristic copy them all.
Hi! Can you please provide any links to where RMS has claimed that Trusted Computing or proprietary software should be illegal?
> It isn’t freedom to be called immoral because you choose another ethic.
So, if I believe that say, child abuse, or slavery, or human trafficking is immoral, I can’t call the perpetrators immoral because I’d be infringing on their “freedom”? Obviously not, because *they* are infringing on other’s freedoms when they do those acts.
And so are proprietary software developers, in rms’ view. The fact that you disagree doesn’t make it any different.
> Richard Stallman and some of his followers don’t seem to understand that
> it isn’t necessarily moral to impose your world view, about morality, on everybody
> else by claiming, for example, that the other’s view ‘should be illegal’ or ‘is immoral’
I’ll leave the illegal until the claim is shown. As for immorality, I find it fascinating that you don’t see the dissonance of calling “not necessarily moral” the act of calling immoral.
Calling someone immoral is not imposing anytihng.
> For me it’s not fine when your morality includes enforcing others
> to copy exactly your morals.
For me it’s not fine to falsely accuse others of enforcing others to copy their morals.
By the way, no hate involved here ;) I just like arguing passionately. If you think I’m gone overboard and you don’t like my post, feel free to block it and reply by email instead, or just ignore it.
> Hi! Can you please provide any links to where RMS has claimed that
> Trusted Computing or proprietary software should be illegal?”
Sure, link to transcript hosted by FSFE.org: “Stallman: I think Treacherous Computing should be illegal.”
> So, if I believe that say, child abuse, or slavery, or human trafficking
> is immoral, I can’t call the perpetrators immoral because I’d be infringing
> on their “freedom”? Obviously not, because *they* are infringing on other’s
> freedoms when they do those acts.
Child abuse, slavery and human trafficking are all in most / all countries illegal activities and also culture in most countries defines all three to be immoral (even very immoral). So it’s quite easy to call those perpetrators immoral for those tree criminal offences. I also pointed out that morality is also defined by a person’s own views. So you can call the perpetrators immoral in your own view, too. Richard Stallman, however, often says that others *are* immoral, certain actions (like developing proprietary software) *are* immoral or things *should be* illegal. He doesn’t always just that it’s ‘his opinion that’ others are immoral. That’s not always how he phrases his words when it’s about other’s morality. It’s my opinion that he should always have added that it’s just his opinion.
> For me it’s not fine to falsely accuse others of enforcing others to
> copy their morals
So you say that Richard Stallman doesn’t try to enforce others to copy his morals? I gave a few examples where he did that in the blog article and I gave you the link to where RMS claimed that Trusted Computing should be illegal.
ps. I think your reply-comment was fine and not overboard.
Heya Philip, I believe that people expressing their beliefs should not need to prepend “in my opinion” to every thing they say. So, it seems we are disagreeing on that, which is pretty orthogonal to the entire morality discussion. Even in the “treacherous computing should be illegal” quote, Richard does precede that with “I think” (which is the equivalent of “in my opinion”, in my opinion :)), so he should get a pass even by your standards.
In the same manner, I see no reason for you to call him out on this, because you are doing the same thing he is. (But really, I think it’s fine for you to share your opinion, just like it’s fine for him to share his; he might use stronger language than you or me, but whenever we are expressing our opinions, we usually want people to support them or point out fallacies so we can reconsider them).
He is extreme probably thinking that this will lead to the best results or that it’s the only way to go (but note how he didn’t stick to those principles early on when there was no kernel to run the GNU software on; basically, he seems a bit dishonest about this: because what free software can do today is sufficient for him, he demands that it should be sufficient for everyone else as well).
Note how I haven’t preceded this with “in my opinion”, but I fully expect that to be implied by anyone reading it. :)
Ok fair enough. I have nothing to add :-)
> Sure, link to transcript hosted by FSFE.org: “Stallman: I think
> Treacherous Computing should be illegal.”
Oh, OK, I wasn’t aware of it. Though that’s only about Trusted Computing, not proprietary software or the search lens that Ubuntu implemented recently.
> Child abuse, slavery and human trafficking are all in most / all
> countries illegal activities and also culture in most countries
> defines all three to be immoral (even very immoral). So it’s
> quite easy to call those perpetrators immoral for those tree
> criminal offences
The illegalization and cultural shunning of such practices is a fairly recent event in our history; in fact, there are still seven countries where stoning as a punishment is *law*. Are you saying that it’d be wrong for a citizen of such a country/culture to call stoning immoral?
> Richard Stallman, however, often says that others *are* immoral,
> certain actions (like developing proprietary software) *are*
> immoral or things *should be* illegal. He doesn’t always just
> that it’s ‘his opinion that’ others are immoral. That’s not
> always how he phrases his words when it’s about other’s morality.
> It’s my opinion that he should always have added that it’s just
> his opinion.
When Muhammad Ali said “Hating people because of their color is wrong”, do you feel that it was wrong of him to not have prefixed it with “In my opinion, (…)” ?
That it is one’s opinion is implicit, and I think it’s completely unreasonable to expect people to explicitly state it.
> So you say that Richard Stallman doesn’t try to enforce others to
> copy his morals? I gave a few examples where he did that in the
> blog article and I gave you the link to where RMS claimed that
> Trusted Computing should be illegal.
The blog article was about a policy of Gnome that is part of the _GNU_ project, that happens to be a Free Software project that he founded, and which happens to have goals that are incompatible with the promotion of proprietary software.
It’s no more pushing his morals than a forum of a black community is pushing their morals by banning white supremacists from posting there.
I think you have a point with Trusted Computing; I disagree with rms there, as I think people should be able to lock themselves in if they want to. That said, I see no evidence that he wants to bypass the democratic system and enact it against the majority’s opinion, so I think that your point about not “following Stalllman blindly” is a bit of a strawman.
> Oh, OK, I wasn’t aware of it. Though that’s only about Trusted
> Computing, not proprietary software or the search lens that
> Ubuntu implemented recently.
Yes, you wrote ‘or’ and didn’t even mention Ubuntu in your original question. I already wrote what I think Ubuntu should do in the blog article, so I guess that’s already answered?
> When Muhammad Ali said [CUT]
So just a short note that this isn’t about Muhammad Ali nor about people’s color, race or hating somebody for it. So I’m not going to answer this as I think it’s not relevant.
[CUT]
The last part of your reply-comment is also about supremacists and this and that and bla bla that has very few relevance to what we are discussing here. So I’m also ignoring that.
> I think you have a point with Trusted Computing; I disagree with rms
> there, as I think people should be able to lock themselves in if they
> want to.
Right.
> That said, I see no evidence that he wants to bypass the
> democratic system and enact it against the majority’s opinion, so
> I think that your point about not “following Stalllman blindly” is a
> bit of a strawman.
Sure. I didn’t claim that Richard Stallman is actively trying to force his opinions into law (of some country). I do think that if he’d be empowered to do so, that he’d turn his opinions into law without following the normal procedures. But that is what I think and that hasn’t happened yet (either only because he’s not empowered politically, or also because he wouldn’t do it – which is what I don’t believe). In other words: I wouldn’t trust Richard Stallman politically.
That’s, for me, the very definition of extremism: when you want to enforce your own view on others.
Extremism is always dangerous. Extremism don’t think, they base their opinion only on they own opinion or, worst, on someone else opinion (argument ad autoritam which is, according to Samuel Clemens, the worst sin of a man ;-) ).
Extremism means that you can’t hear others opinion, react, build a stronger opinion. You are just frozen forever.
Which is exactly the case for RMS. I witnessed him being very rude and shockingly aggressive to someone once at FOSDEM.
If you want to make the world a better place, first learn to be kind to others and at least never be the agressor. RMS is not even able to do that so I consider that anything he’s saying about how to make the world better is pointless.
Right, I share your opinion on this, Ploum. I have nothing to add and thanks for clarifying it even better than I did with that reference to argument ad autoritam.
> That’s, for me, the very definition of extremism: when you want to
> enforce your own view on others.
This definition is unusable. When you vote in elections, that is clear attempt to impose your values upon others. Or when lobbying for a change of law. You could call Lawrence Lessig a jihadist at this point.
> Extremism means that you can’t hear others opinion, react, build a
> stronger opinion. You are just frozen forever.
Just because opinion doesn’t change doesn’t mean it is extremism.
P.S. I wonder if RMS considers most other people extremists, who cant think, because they don’t see how non-free software harms others? I personally consider those, who don’t care if the goods they buy are made by slave labour, immoral and extremist, if they don’t see problems with buying such goods.
Well, he often calls those people immoral. Take for example this text:
“Some New York programmers fell into the lawful but socially destructive practice of proprietary software”
“Despite these prevalent evils, never in my life have I seen anyone try to condemn all New Yorkers on the basis of the wrongs that only some have committed. I have not seen anyone assume that all the citizens of New York are guilty of murder, violence, robbery, perjury, or writing proprietary software.”
“Our community is self-selected for at least partial rejection of one unethical practice, proprietary software, but even that doesn’t guarantee perfection. The presence of a few wrongdoers among many millions is no surprise—and no excuse for guilt by association.”
To me at least it’s clear that he does see most other people as extremists who can’t think because they don’t see how non-free software harms others. I conclude that from what he wrote and said.
It is also a very fine line between not really expecting something to be illegal and yet comparing it with murder, violence, robbery and perjury. as those are all illegal activities in his country.
> This definition is unusable. When you vote in elections, that is
> clear attempt to impose your values upon others. Or when lobbying
> for a change of law. You could call Lawrence Lessig a jihadist at
> this point.
It seems you simplify democracy to some dictatorship of the majority. This point of view is exactly what causes the current trouble in Egypt. Of course a true democracy is not a dictatorship of the majority. Since democracies justify them self by the human rights, they are bound to them. This also means that each law made by the majority still has to consider and respect the _needs_ of minorities. That even mature democracies have issues to follow that basic rule can be seen for instance in how western states protect Christian holidays and rest days (Sunday), but entirely ignore the preferences of Muslims, Jews or Atheists.
Exactly. Dictatorship of the majority is in my opinion again utilitarianism, which I don’t think is a well calibrated moral compass.
The simple truth is that ‘no one’ cares about this stuff. Most things in ones life are closed-source, from your shampoo to your car, your sunglasses.. Billions of people spend hours a week on Facebook. It’s closed. 0,001% care, so even though RMS has the right to voice his opinion, bringing morality into the topic is a far-stretch.
People who love fashion will endlessly mull over any little detail. People who love photography mull about every single technical aspect in a camera. People who love gossip will endlessly mull over some little aspect of someones life. And so on. And there’s nothing wrong with this, just don’t make a crusade out of it unless it is really necessary for the wellbeing of human kind, like the folks in Brazil and India who ignore patents and produce cheap HIV treatment medication. In software and hardware.. Apple makes great products which people love to use. So what if it is a closed platform? Your IKEA discount card won’t give you bonus on other furniture stores either.
I don’t really agree, if that is what you are trying to say, that because very few people care that something should not be said or done (and/or that you should not have an opinion about it, that it is moral, etc, etc). So if that’s your argument for people like Richard Stallman not to speak, I’d disagree. It’s not a valid argument in my opinion as it’s a utilitarian view, and as you know is there a lot of criticisms on utilitarianism as a moral philosophy.
I’m not really against his perception of morality, I’m against him imposing his view on others based on his personal perception. I personally think academic titles are immoral since they have little correlation with ones qualitative knowledge and intelligence. But I don’t try to outlaw academic titles based on my personal perception.
I agree with you on Richard imposing his view on others based on his personal perception.
While I don’t agree with RMS I do feel your post confuse a lot of issues. First of all don’t confuse morality with the law, or law with morality. Just because something is illegal doesn’t mean its immoral or just because something is legal doesn’t mean its moral.
Cheating on your wife is legal for instance, but very few would argue its moral.
What is moral is subjective by definition and I don’t think RMS or anyone else need to specify that something is moral or immoral ‘in their opinion’ as what is moral or immoral is an opinion by definition.
In fact could could argue that it is the very essence of freedom to be able to call someone immoral for not agreeing with you and the other person being able to respond to that claim. Or do you think we should make it illegal to claim anyone else viewpoint is wrong or invalid and thus restrict peoples freedom to do so? :)
Ah, no, indeed. I don’t think we should make it illegal to claim anyone else’s viewpoint is wrong or invalid :-). I generally agree with you that I should not confuse morality with laws and that my blog post might be confusing about that. Note that cheating on your wife is not legal in all countries (although I disagree with making that illegal). I guess because this example goes in all directions, you made a perfect example indeed. Thanks!
> It isn’t freedom to be called immoral because you choose another ethic.
Sometime ago I read a nice quote, unfortunate I can’t remember the author:
“Freedom is the right to express your view even if others disagree” I couldn’t agree more. So yes, being able to call someone immoral because I believe it is against (my) ethics is freedom.
I’m not saying that it should be illegal to express your view even if others disagree.
… is “childish” you lot’s new favorite word? It used to be “slick” if I’m not mistaken… or it could have been “sleek”.
*sigh*
And anyway, where did you people go to school?
“It isn’t freedom to be called immoral because you choose another ethic…”
It damn well is, if your ‘nother ethic is immoral XD
See?
Please keep that quote of me in the context of “It isn’t freedom to have to choose for Richard Stallman’s world view” as it was intended to be. ‘Freedom’ here was used in the meaning FSF and GNU use for the word ‘freedom’. ‘Freedom’s’ ambiguity isn’t helping, meh.
For me the FSF & GNU ‘freedom’ is not a real freedom if it means that in the end Richard Stallman alone can decide whether my actions are moral or immoral. ‘Freedom’ is freedom for me when ‘me’ too gets a say in my own moral values. According to Richard Stallman I’m immoral when I write proprietary code. So I disagree with his ethics. That’s my point.
De Facto it is right now the case at FSF and GNU that Richard’s words end up being what some of his followers see as defining moral and immoral. Sure De Jure this might not really be the case.
> It isn’t freedom to be called immoral because you choose another
> ethic. It isn’t freedom when a single person or group with a
> single view on morality tries to forbid you something based on
> just their point of view.
So when do we outlaw something (e.g. theft) or at least consider that immoral (e.g. lying)? Normally, if we can demonstrate harm, we gain at least moral high ground. Does RMS show harm in non-free software? Is his reasoning false or unreasonable? I believe he does fair job by explaining the reasoning, so he is entitled to call non-free software immoral.
Moving on… is RMS imposing anything? Did he took laptop from someone and removed all non-free software form it? Or simply stating something is considered “imposing” now?
> Firstly something should be only illegal when all procedures for
> making a new law in a country have been followed.
Did I miss something and RMS is a dictator somewhere?
> Ubuntu needs to take into account all stakeholders and not just
> Stallman and his followers.
RMS is claiming that Ubuntu policy is harming users in general. If you go to slashdot and read comments on the topic, most of them go like “RMS is cracy, but I agree with him on this point”, so he isn’t alone on this one.
> In this new situation it also isn’t only Richard Stallman who
> should be blindly followed.
If you noticed, he doesn’t say “Follow me, because I am sent here by God”, and I haven’t seen him say “Follow me, because…”. More along line “Follow free software principles, because…”.
Also here: Fair enough. I have nothing to add :-)
RMS’ beliefs in morality are all founded on the idea that robbing someone else of freedom is immoral. In the case of Ubuntu, the freedom being robbed is the freedom to install and use an operating system without having it share potentially private information. It’s a feature that you can disable, but having it on by default will very likely send Canonical information that the user may not have wanted to send.
In any case, RMS’ definition of freedom is the correct one: freedom means that you aren’t under anybody else’s power. “Freedom to use whatever OS you want” and “freedom from being called immoral” are *not* the correct use of the word. The former is an instance of liberty, and the latter is an instance of being butthurt.
Whether you subscribe to RMS’ ethics fully, partially, or not at all is your choice, but he has every right to call Canonical’s actions immoral.
He has that right. Sure. Not all blogs are about wanting to say that somebody does not have some right. This one isn’t.
With freedom being ambiguous in meaning, there can not be a correct definition of freedom. Only a definition of freedom that fits in a certain context. In the context of FSF & GNU’s meaning of freedom I don’t think that Richard Stallman’s ‘freedom’ is really freedom. I already explained it in the blog article and in a few reply-comments why I think that. The word ‘freedom’ in the blog article is used in that context.
In FSF & GNU’s ‘freedom’ I am under Stallman’s power. When he and his philosophy would allow me to define certain moral values myself and if he would allow disagreement to a certain extend, then his philosophy on morality would be more ‘free’ in my opinion (for example Buddhism and/or most religions allow to a certain extend your own moral values and disagreement). I for example disagree that writing proprietary software is immoral. He writes explicitly that it is immoral and/or unethical. I wouldn’t feel free in a society where writing proprietary software is immoral. In my definition of ‘freedom’ I need to feel free to be free.
In current society and my culture’s moral values I’m free to use the GPL and I’m free to write proprietary software. Current society and my culture’s moral values are better than Stallman’s because of that.
Richard can’t forbid people to run ubuntu. if he sets out the reasons why it is a bad idea, and people agree with him, he may persuade them to do so. And if those reasons are rooted in how we should treat each other as human beings, it makes sense that any rebuttal to his reasons be made in moral terms.
Not many people do that, because I think they don’t like the words it forces from them.
Let’s hear it then. Monetizing search on the personal computer makes sense because hey it’s not worth that much money anyway, and we’re not doing evil things with the data we collect. we like the convenience that monetizing search offers, and the lack of privacy is completely justified, because users are paid back by a nice experience and some links to products that they might even buy. in short, the privacy of the user isn’t worth much in terms of money, but hey we really like the money, and hopefully they like the experience.
Even if Richard could somehow forbid people to run ubuntu, i don’t think he would. Obviously people like Richard and Eben Moglen would rather people understand why they think the privacy of users is worth more than that.
I think you dislike that Richard is persuasive. So let’s hear more moral rebuttals.
I dislike Richard telling people that you can’t (shouldn’t) monetize search because the application is surrounded by some Free Software (btw. not all of it is Free Software and more importantly not all of it is written by his organisation(s), not even the majority of it – apparently many people don’t know or don’t understand this). The GPL license doesn’t forbid such use and it’s not because he wrote the license that people must listen when he starts giving lectures on a implied extra moral code to use alongside the license. Unless that extra moral code is written as a requirement when using the license (the GPL defines some moral-ish rules, and afaik does Ubuntu follow those for the GPL software that it ships). Software developers primarily use the license because of the license, and not necessarily because of Stallman’s extra moral codes. If people want to write software where its users must strictly follow the by Stallman defined extra moral code of tomorrow, then write and use a new license (or start a church, or something – perhaps learn from the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster).
I actually see that increasingly open source software developers are moving away from the GPL because of Stallman’s lecturing and insistence on extra moral codes.
To me, part of computing “freedom” is the right to choose what software to run. All software has tradeoffs — if trading in some of my “rights” is an option, it’s my right to choose it — not Stallman’s.
Correct. Just like it is my right to write proprietary software, free software, open source software, whatever and yet I don’t have to life in a society that calls me immoral or unethical. I wouldn’t want to life in Stallman’s society where he compares the moral wrongness of writing proprietary software with murder, violence, robbery and perjury (read the text).
Wow. Just wow. He doesn’t seem to live in this planet.