this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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I understand the movement and I'm all for it, but not for the way he typically sells his ideas and inappropriate behaviors. He behaves like an extremest environmentalist that pushes for a world where we would all be living live caveman instead of providing solutions that actually matter / make sense / keep progress rolling.
What inappropriate behaviors? How is living without proprietary software living like a caveman? Most people can easily remove most proprietary programs from their computers and take back control over their own devices if they only cared. I don't understand why you would want software developers and corporations to have so much power over us.
I don't want "software developers and corporations to have so much power over us", what I want is for people to be reasonable. The fact that companies like Facebook, Apple, Google etc can do what they do is simply a political issue and a total lack of regulation (or application of regulation that exists for everything else) in the digital space.
As we all know open-source can thrive alongside the interests of big companies and those same companies can keep innovating and pushing for better and more as long as they play fairly by keeping open standards / solutions and being actively monitored by govt agencies for abuse.
What Stallman offers is a view of the world would totally stall corporate sponsored open-source / innovation and a total hypocrisy that is very close to the extremist environmental BS we see nowadays. The truth is that he wouldn't be able to live his life without being directly or indirectly in touch with closed source software / solutions that he dislikes so much.
What we need is to regulate certain things and above all police big tech companies until they start to play nicely.
Except he does. He uses an entirely Free Software GNU/Linux distro (I think Triquel). His laptop even has a libre BIOS. He doesn't use a mobile phone, because they are tracking devices (but libre operating systems for phones do exist). He doesn't even use websites that have proprietary JavaScript.
You don't have to live like him, but it is clear to see the world would be a better place without spyware and if we could control our devices. Thanks to him we have operating systems that are fully Free Software. Many people don't run proprietary software on their computers. I don't understand why you are pretending it's impossible. I'm typing this comment from a fully libre operating system.
Open Source is a corporate term created to avoid talking about freedom and ethics. But your solution is to keep letting companies write proprietary software and the government is supposed to make sure it's safe and ethical? So then we have to trust the government, which doesn't always have our best interest in mind (remember NSA?). Would you use encryption if the algorithm was secret and controlled only by the government? The reason why we know encryption is secure is because anyone can try to verify how it works and try to break it.
Regulate them how? We could just ban proprietary software. Or at least educate people to not use it. Problem solved. This solution was invented by Richard Stallman over 30 years ago. It solves most of humanity's problems with software. It makes it super easy to remove any spyware, DRM, planned obsolescence (in software). It makes our computers safer. It would even make cars and airplanes safer if they ran on Free Software.
Yeah of-course. He doesn't use money because banknote were designed with proprietary software. He doesn't use private nor public transportation because they all run on proprietary software and better yet he doesn't even have any clothes because well... you guessed it, proprietary on the supply chain. He can't even go to a hospital because medical equipment are the worst when it comes to free software.
Do you realize how your previous logic (as his) doesn't work?
You've to trust the govt at some point, it plays an important part on keeping society functioning. It isn't perfect as we all know but we've democracies and some kind of accountability in order to keep things somehow acceptable.
Again I'm not saying his core beliefs aren't good, I'm saying the way he things they should be achieved and the delivery is bad.
He doesn't run proprietary software himself. If other people use it, that is their problem. There is nothing we can do about it other than educating them. All the things you have mentioned could easily work with Free Software. So if everyone wanted to stop using proprietary software, we could replace it with free alternatives (or develop new ones if needed). There is nothing impossible about this.
I don't think it's a good idea to blindly trust the government. We need to have public oversight. Besides, there is no place for trust in computer security. If you have to have trust in some system, it is not secure.