Eric Raymond: Why I think RMS is a fanatic, and why that matters

We need people like RMS. He marks one side of the Overton Window framing the debate on freedom and software.<p>(Overton window: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window</a> )<p>This doesn't mean he's <i>right</i> but what he does is <i>necessary</i>. If he didn't exist we'd need to invent him (or someone like him).<p>(Oh, and he is indeed a fanatic, but of the pacifist variety -- not the kind who's interested in killing people to enforce his views -- and therefore worth debating with.)

"The problem with it is the same problem with messianic religions in general; for people who are not flipped into true-believer mode by any given one, it will come off as at best creepy and insular, at worst nutty and potentially dangerous (and this remains true even for people attached to a different messianic religion)."<p>I fit into neither of the caricatures of either a 'true believer' or someone scared of RMS. I see him as someone who truly believes in something and has stood by it no matter what. His 'fanatical' language of evil etc. is because he truly believes those things to be evil. I've always used the GPL for licensing my open source code specifically because it ensures that it stays open and that improvements are given back. On one occasion I've been persuaded to use another license so that $CORP could use the code (<a href="http://gmsl.sf.net/" rel="nofollow">http://gmsl.sf.net/</a>) internally and I see that the non-fanatical position helped $CORP but I'm not sure it helped the greater cause of open source.

RMS is what he is because, what he is.<p>You can't change such people, you won't be able to. And they won't change, And they must not change. If people like him, don't live like he does- Its impossible to take on entities like Microsoft and Apple single handedly.<p>Although you can argue that ideas from Free software were there ahead and during RMS's times. You can never debate that he gave it a sense of cause, activism with passion and enthusiasm never seen before. This man, made Free Software a purpose in his life. He never gives up, never compromises, his passion and intensity never wanes. He just seems to find infinite energy to go on and on.<p>Don't get me wrong. We are not just dealing Steve Jobs grade material here. He is more than Steve Jobs. This guy wrote some of the most widely used programs on earth today. And of supreme quality. He designed them, wrote them and marketed them. He is also the author of the most widely used license in software history. He is a prolific organizer, and executor.<p>He also holds strong views on political issues. Although he is often aggressive. I have never heard him do cheap talk or bad mouth some one, criticize, hate and bash them pointlessly without facts, or because of their ethnic origin, faith, belief or way of life.<p>But I see ESR as a epitome of hyperbole, bad mouthing, hating people because of their belief, faith and their way of life. Advocating violence. Yet his contributions towards are hardly few. I don't know of the last time he made a big contribution. And I don't even know if he has ever contributed something signification. All I know is has a high Blog noise to work ratio. Has written books based on some one else's work. And now feels qualified in the world to take on anybody and comment on them. People like ESR generally don't get taken seriously.

I have a hunch that RMS will be of great interest to historians, probably more so than Steve Jobs in the long run.<p>The overall GNU/Linux/OSS movement/project is the only thing I can think of where a work of such magnitude has been carried out on a global scale and has not been orchestrated by a single entity such as a government of corporation.<p>Something that has been tested on this scale and succeeded as well as it has is likely to be spread to other areas of life. Once Stallman dies , he will be remembered much more fondly than we think of him now and it would not surprise me if he became the inspiration for some future ruler or political movement.

Mmm... generally speaking, I'm an ESR fan, but I think he's a bit wrong (and a bit right here. What I mean is, yes, RMS almost certainly is a fanatic. I doubt RMS himself would disagree with that characterization (although I don't know him and have never asked him; so it's just a hunch). But, the question is, is RMS <i>harmful</i> to the F/OSS culture (to the extent that one can talk about any sort of homogeneous "F/OSS culture")? On this point, I'm unconvinced.<p>In fact, I'll argue that, whether despite his fanaticism or because of it, RMS has been - and remains - a positive influence on the F/OSS world. No, his position and his rantings aren't for <i>everyone</i> but they are for <i>some</i> and to the <i>some</i> who are deeply inspired by his actions, the "RMS as messianic figure" thing is probably very valuable. And considering their are fanatics on the "opposing team" (if you will), like certain people who refer to the GPL as communist, I believe a certain measure of fanaticism is good, in terms of counter-balancing the opposing fanaticism.<p>The mainstream of culture itself will likely always hang somewhere in the middle. But one has to wonder where things would wind up without Stallman and the FSF proselytizing so strenuously for Free Software.

"You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil system never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good person will resist an evil system with his or her whole soul." -Mahatma Gandhi<p>Copied and pasted from stallman.org. I understand the rationale of ESR and many others, but RMS is trying to move the centrepoint of the discussion as far as he can, and to do that he must "resist with his whole soul". Compromise is for others.

I went ahead and donated to the FSF after reading this article instead of venting here on HN. You lose, ESR. :)<p><a href="https://my.fsf.org/donate/" rel="nofollow">https://my.fsf.org/donate/</a>

I find it funny ESR thinks he or 'Open Source' have made much progress; I would have thought the existence of patent trolls - things fanatics like RMS have been warning about for literally decades and been mocked as fanatics for just as long - would force even the most obtuse to acknowledge their foresight. Guess not.

An argument between RMS and ESR over who's the bigger fanatic is not likely to produce very enlightening results...

<i>I had long since concluded that the Free Software Foundation’s moralistic rhetoric was serving us badly.</i><p>Which "us" is this exactly? ESR presumes too much.

Eric Raymond's working definition of a fanatic is, "Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim".<p>RMS is to me the exact antithesis of this definition. He has always had a complete focus on his end objective and everything he does is geared towards it (and scraping out a meagre living so he can continue it). One could argue that the path he has chosen to his objective is incorrect but to say that he is now acting having lost sight of his objective is wrong.<p>RMS to me has always been very conscious of his ethical position and has been pragmatic to the extent that being so does not put him in the position of being a complete hypocrite. For example, his position of the use of the LGPL. This has never seemed to be to be the behaviour of a fanatic of any variety.<p>I think offering the suggestion that religious language is detrimental to his message is perfectly reasonable. I have always viewed RMS real audience as hackers, and since the hacker culture is one of using religious language tongue-in-cheek I think the language fits the audience.

The problem with the 'Open Source' movement is that it stopped the free software revolution in its tracks by opening up a third way that relieved the pressure that was building up on corporations by the growing mountain of GPL code. That ultimately has allowed corporations to coopt the work of the volunteer community and turn around and attack us with even more locked down proprietary code such as the iPhone.

This post repeats a very weak argument over and over: RMS uses messianic language which alienates potential allies. Ok. But do you think strict adherence to the principles of the FSF are good? This piece doesn't even address the core issues of RMS's position, and just accuses him of phrasing his point poorly.

Aside from this being a good candidate for the dictionary definition of the kettle and pot idiom the problem with RMS is that whilst I agree with him wholeheartedly on almost all software issues I would never use him to convince any of my non-tech friends of anything because I think they wouldn't be able to get over his eccentricities. And some of these are just... unique. Which is a pity because his ideas and essays are well thought out and interesting.<p>I don't agree with the complaint about bringing in moral arguments in what he sees as a purely technical issue. Every human endeavour can be viewed from a moral standpoint and it's a perfectly valid perspective and doesn't exclude others.

<i>The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.</i><p>George Bernard Shaw - Maxims for Revolutionists - <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/26107/pg26107.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/26107/pg26107.html</a><p>In my opinion Eric argues against his point simply by making it.

I found ESR's comment interesting: "&#62;In setting this stance, we push the Overton window further to our side, allowing pragmatists to be able to say, “We’re not extremists, like Stallman” and gain more credibility.<p>This is actually reasonable. I’ve used Stallman this way myself – he more or less begs for it. But I don’t think you’re answering the usual intent of the claim “the moral viewpoint is essential”, which has nothing to do with anything as cold-blooded as gaming the Overton window and everything to do with deep-seated convictions in the speaker."

I think that ESR should employ a more radical license for his programs: the "do what the fuck you want to" public license.<p>If RMS want to dress like St Ignacious, do what the fuck you want.<p>If RMS wants to be the new Che Guevara, do what the fuck you want, man.<p>ESR is libertarian, and libertarianism is all about deploying that kind of license in your personal life.<p>RMS is not a fanatic. He's passionate, and I like his passion and his cause.<p>I don't think that engineering pragmatism is politically neutral. Sure, you can write a fine piece of software, but Who controls the software? For me, that's the crucial question, and I think is a very pragmatic question, indeed.

esr has long become open source's Colonel Kurz. Being stuck somewhere in his own little piece of the cyber jungle, together with those who adhere to his peculiar view of life.<p>Some might know him from his work "the Cathedral and the Bazaar", or know him as contributor to "Battle for Wesnoth". And some might even know him for his contributions to GNU (yes, really! open up the documentation to various utilities some time, and his name will be there). The problem with esr is however, his fanaticism. Where rms speaks of software, he speaks of software and its impact on society only. Whether this is done in the most effective way is open to debate. To expound on the rest of his personal political ideas, he uses his homepage. In general he makes a clear distinction between his general political stance (which everyone has one), and his ideas on software (where he can speak authoritatively).<p>esr's views are "all in". You are either part of "the tribe" and accept him as your "silverback gorilla" alpha-male, or you're <i>wrong</i>. He's been using his notoriety as a hacker to create visibility for his ideas on other aspects of life, creating, imo, a position of false authority for himself.<p>You can agree or disagree with rms. But irrespective of the way he presents his ideas on software, they stand on their own, they stand up to scrutiny, and can be defended by and discussed in terms of logical arguments; meaning you are free to agree or disagree with the body of ideas behind free sofware and radically differ (from rms) in any other aspect of life.<p>Pitting esr's and rms's ideas on free sofware as "two sides of the same coin", needs a coin in a very non-euclidian universe.<p>In short. esr's influence on opensource dwindled over the years, alienating readers because of tying in his views on software with his strong political beliefs. rms's influence on free software has remained strong, not because of his persona (some might say, "in spite" of), but because they are sound and selfcontaining, and don't require people to "buy into" ideas on other aspects of life that are not strictly software related.

"There is too much at stake for me to be diplomatically dishonest about this – it did immense damage to the cause of openness, and I had to spend a good many years remediating that damage."<p>Exactly what is at stake in Raymond's communication of his opinion about Stallman? If the answer is "nothing", is it worth pointing out how flawed his analysis is?

Moralists and fanatics are principally concerned with issues of ideological purity...often to the point of being willing to sacrifice tremendous parts of society in pursuit of this purity -- even as their own slice of the pie gets smaller and smaller and even when pursuit of the practical would move the world towards their ideal much more effectively.<p><i>Every</i> so often an event will happen where an ideological purist's rhetoric is true, and this arms them for years of ideological advocacy and warfare...while day-to-day practicalities are dismissed and pass them by. Sure, one could spend 16 hours a day praying at the alter of a particular path, but then there's no time to eat.<p>Interestingly, highly intelligent ideologues often (not always) follow an interesting path of massive and early creativity and productivity, while trailing off quickly into years of chasing imaginary rabbits down imaginary holes -- when simply continuing to produce would have done a better job of getting their point across.<p>RMS is like this. Early on he produced absolutely amazing stuff at an astonishing rate -- pieces of software which are still being actively used and developed decades later. Many developers would give their left arm to have achieved this.<p>And then it suddenly stops. The creative outpouring and concrete contributions to the material world suddenly end and he focuses his energies almost entirely in ideological purity.<p>It's akin in some ways to Newton's deeper dive into Alchemy or Savonarola's switch from medical school to religion.<p>Don't forget, Savonarola, despite his desire to pitch the Western world back into the Dark Ages, also fought corruption and exploitation of the poor -- he was right <i>some</i> of the time.<p>The recent news of Stallman's laptop's theft makes me even sadder because of his ideological purity, the chances of him finding a replacement, and getting back to just making stuff are even further away.

We live in a free society, and Stallman is free to have an opinion, and to interpret things strictly or loosely.<p>He is a fanatic or an extremist? Absolutely. But he continues to attract interest, and his contributions to society are real and significant.<p>Society needs fanatics. We need someone to question that moral righteousness of things like copyright, or to set a boundary for the meaning of "open source". If he's personally difficult for Mr. Raymond to deal with, so what? How would the world improve if everyone sat around getting along with each other?<p>Raymond's post is self-serving, and more about reminding us about how important he is while criticizing someone else.

I find it often quite sad if people are called upon to change their behavior for public relations reasons. In many cases I feel people are asked to undermine their integrity.<p>I say screw public relations, stand up for what you believe is right! If free software needs a more agreeable head figure, why don't they hire Paris Hilton or whomever?

It was RMS in the beginning - he built the foundations: the software (GCC, the GNU-project, Emacs), the philosophy and the values (his essays and interviews), the organisation (FSF), the copyleft legal rights (GPL).<p>ESR wouldn't be as recognizable as he is if he had chosen to opine on something less important and influential than RMS and his contribution.

RMS is not a fanatic. People portray him as a fanatic. Is Gandhi a fanatic? But, it would be easy to portray him as a fanatic, as an enemy to corporations. We need more people like RMS.

ESR's quote of Santayana is not illuminating. He might have quoted Bernard Gert, who wrote that a fanatic is someone who violates a moral rule to follow a moral ideal. A religious fanatic violates a moral rule to follow a religious command. I am unaware that RMS is violating moral rules in the name of free software.

<i>One of my commenters reports that he showed my essay on evaluating the harm from closed-source software to Richard Stallman, who became upset by it.</i><p>Anybody have a link to this comment? I couldn't find it.<p>[EDIT] After an hour nobody claims to have found it. Is there a real comment, or is ESR just fantasizing about RMS caring what ESR writes?

&#62; <i>There are some advantages to this strategy. It taps into old, powerful emotional responses in human beings – the same responses that give messianic religions their power. As a way of recruiting a small hard core of dedicated followers it’s tough to beat, and sometimes – if you’re, say, the Gautama Buddha or Jesus or Mahavira – you can make it scale up. But I described it as a trap for a reason – most such attempts do not scale, remaining tiny marginal cults.</i><p>Is fanatism working for RMS? Well, the German Pirate Party regularly top 10% in the polls, which is rather better than you'd expect from a "tiny marginal cult", so one has to conclude that it is working.

On a slightly related note, ESR is the mascot for my new static blog generating tool: <a href="https://bitbucket.org/anthonyb/shithead" rel="nofollow">https://bitbucket.org/anthonyb/shithead</a> ;)

tl;dr Eric explains reasonably well why he thinks RMS is a fanatic, but fails utterly to explain why his opinion (on that or any other subject) matters.

What do you call it when the crank accuses the crank?

The pure pragmatism of Torvalds and the "I won't use it unless it's 100% free software" attitude of RMS are both valid viewpoints. In practice most of us mere mortals accept some state of affairs in between those two poles.<p>Ignoring software freedom as an issue would IMHO be a major mistake given the overall direction in which contemporary society is going. In broad terms I think RMS was right in the sense that as software becomes ever more deeply embedded into all aspects of life, who owns and controls that software, and the ability to audit it, becomes an important question. Theoretically, in the long run it may not be possible to have a free society without some amount of free software infrastructure.

I am biased (I've dealt with both ESR and RMS, and had a much more personable time with the former), but I think this is one of the better things ESR has written, and it nails all of my major issues with RMS (almost: I know it gets made fun of a lot but I really find his personal hygiene utterly contemptible).

In my book, a fanatic is someone who unleashes diatribes on people with whom he/she is pretty much in the same camp, apart from minor differences that outsiders don't even understand. I am reminded of "The Life of Brian" and the People's Front of Judea vs. the Judean People's Front.

I find this debate so very tedious. From a libertarian perspective, RMS's arguments are just utter bs. He's basically saying two independent parties have no right to enter into a contract that involves keeping secrets. That's what happens when you agree to a EULA. If you don't like the contract, don't accept it.<p>People have no more right to "free software" in the RMS absolutist sense than they have right to free beer, free lunch, or free anything. (And yes, I know the 'free as in speech' slogan, but my point is that I have a right to enter into a contract, or offer someone a contract that limits their rights to share certain information I want to protect.) The fact that the thing in question is information rather than something more 'real' doesn't change the morality of the situation one bit -- it's merely a practical consideration, that bits are easy to copy, and cars and lunch are not.

ESR needs to up his pageviews? That time of the year again? Same old "discussion" he tries to have since nsome 10 years. No new arguments, just warming up his sentiments again. RMS has ignored this for years and s should we :-)

I'd say he is very passionate but not sure fanatic is accurate.

Calling someone a "fanatic" and pointing out the fact that they don't fit in or that they make some people uncomfortable or angry does not in fact make them wrong. Raymond has no actual argument, so it comes across as a petty personal attack on RMS.