free software resistance

 the cost of computing freedom is eternal vigilance

### stallman-was-wrong *originally posted:* dec 2024 this isnt a hate page, though you may think it is. i invite you to consider the fact that i spent years passionately defending richard stallman. at the same time, i said repeatedly, i would have no problem with critiques of stallman that were honest. i know that "open source" exists to astroturf the free software movement. im not a fan. i wish people would call it anything else: libre software, free computing, not open source. "what about ethical source?" no, thats something different. im not talking about something different than free software, im talking about what you call free software. i think "ethical source" is incredibly flawed in how the concept is put together, but thats not what this is about. lets get one thing straight: i think the fsd is important. i would extend it, slightly, but i wouldnt get rid of it. im not a fan of the osd, which is incredibly (needlessly) complicated and based on the dfsg, which is pointless. im also sceptical of the fsdg, and the ryf criteria. but the fsd? its almost perfect. if nothing is perfect, im happy to talk about its flaws- they go back to kant and hegel, the latter of whom couldve predicted many of todays problems with free software. but id rather fix free software than get rid of it. there was a time, it was a while ago, when i thought mjg (you know him or you dont) was the de facto leader of the anti-stallman movement. i spent literally years trying to find the leader. i dont think there is one. but hey, i could be wrong. its true that anyone can be wrong, and most people will be sometimes. not everyone achieves guru status, or has followers that get upset every time someone corrects their personal hero. stallman WAS a personal hero. it took years to move past that. it took years to sympathise with his critics. it took years to see his worst flaws. and part of the reason is that ive spent years talking about (and still believe) that open source has done everything it possibly can to discredit the entire free software movement. the whole thing. open source is such a cloying, corporate, shameless bit of capitalist propaganda. i wish stallman was anti-capitalist. call it the first thing on the list. but first, about mjg: hes not the person who has it out the most for stallman. you may say "oh no, its devault." and maybe youre right. devault, to be sure, is an open source shill who uses ALL of the old bullshit open source talking points from 1998 onwards. i cant stand him. i dont fault him for being against stallman though, because his arguments against stallman are extremely well documented and cited and organised. if your argument is impeccable, it doesnt matter that youre a shill the rest of the time. so im happy to say that impeccable arguments are rare. i dont think devaults critique of stallman is unique to, nor originates from, devault. he may be passionate about it, his motives may be questionable. his arguments against stallman are impeccable. but heres the thing- you can absolutely ignore devault, take him out of the equation if it pleases you, and focus on people who ARE NOT shills for open source. and your conclusion wont change, in my opinion, if you are as unbiased as possible. youll just find too many people making arguments that are too good for why stallman shouldnt be leading the movement he created. thats not an easy conclusion for some people to come to. it wasnt an easy conclusion for me. but im happy to talk about how i got there. im not the only stallman defender to change their position- leah rowe spent a long time defending stallman. i was disappointed when they stopped doing so. ive seen many attacks from people loyal to stallman, and i dont forgive those people for the way they absolutely discriminated against leah. and those people are a perfect example of the cesspool that stallman has let his movement turn into. though i wont tell you its ALL bad. its pretty bad- every time a good person leaves, it gets worse. i was unhappy when kat left. and mako. i was unhappy with john sullivan. and jeremy allison. and the guy that wrote nano. and felix reda- the pirate party came out against stallman, and i said i would join the ninja party! you should know, because its true, that no matter what you think of mjg or his critiques of stallman, hes not the person some people make him out to be. im not trying to convince you at all, im just telling you. i spent years scrutinising him- FOR NOTHING. hes really not actually hateful towards stallman. and the things he says about stallman really arent unfair. stallman definitely believes in a better world than this one- for the most part. when hes in a different pair of shoes, he can admit mistakes- sometimes. the two worst things that ever happened to stallman were free software and open source. free software to be sure, was a mixed bag and i think its very important. its more important than open source- open source and enshittification almost go hand in hand. cory doctorow (who does, and should get props for the word and the logic behind it) wont tell you this, but open source is the enshittification of free software. and capitalism is the enshittification of everything good. im fine if doctorow tells you that "enshittification" is more specific than capitalism, just like its fine if stallman tells you that coding and programming are two different things. even my girlfriend says coding and programming are two different things- but we both recognise that people are going to call both things "coding" and neither of us care that much about it. but one thing that would make the world a better place is if it depended less on "illuminaries" to get good shit done. illuminaries are a huge liability, both to a movement and to to the illuminary. this is not a call for people to be more mundane- stallman should strive to be his best self, you should strive to be your own. but a society organised around single points of failure is foolish. free software shouldnt depend on a man in his 70s, but stallman never created adequate replacements. this is a major flaw in free software- its MUCH too dependent on a single person. lets start numbering these: ### 1. its a shame that stallmans not anti-capitalist. ### 2. free software should NEVER depend on a single person, let alone a single person in their 70s. its never unfair to say that stallman has no real successors, i was saying it when i still defended him- ive written hundreds of articles for someone who used to say he should have successors, but that person has gone back and forth on it. by the way, im not going to talk much (if at all) about any of the things that literally thousands of people have signed saying what THEIR problem with stallman is. its been a point of focus for years, and i have little to add to those accusations- but ill make an exception for the website that defends him, because i linked to it at the top of my website for quite a while. instead, im going to focus on what stallman got wrong about computing, and what he got wrong as the head of the fsf- and a movement to make computing libre. im also going to talk, as point three, (or five as it turned out) about what an ally is. and i dont want to hear any complaints about that, because people claim that stallman is an ally. if you claim something thats half-true, and youre an honest person, youll listen to (new) arguments why what you said is half-true. i say new arguments, because nothing requires you to rehash things a million times unless you really want to. but first i want to say because it was part of point 2, that the more a movement REALLY depends on a single person, the more vital it is that the single person doesnt make mistakes. when stallman is wrong, it REALLY matters, as everything involving free software was built around him. open source has fought that, because free software used to pose a real threat to monopolies. theyve co-opted free software on behalf of monopolies, and free software is no longer the same threat it was. but thats something stallman was wrong about too: ### 3. stallman, who did recognise that open source is a problem, underplayed and seriously underestimated that problem. if not for point 2, point 3 and maybe all the other points would matter LESS than they do now. but PROPONENTS of stallman will talk about the interchangeability and inseparability of stallman and free software (even i used to do so) and thats not a feature- its a bug! if free software wasnt SO HEAVILY dependent on stallman, a lot of these problems would have less impact. but just like trusting microsoft is accepting a single point of failure for so many things you do with your computer, letting stallman remain the centre of the free software universe makes stallman himself a single point of failure for the movement. and that point of failure has already failed. it failed years ago. i dont think its improved substantially since 2011. ### 4. stallman doesnt even get some of the concepts that made free software possible. whether you recognise that stallmans "ethics" of software freedom are kantian and deontological, or that hegel discussed the same limitations they would have in the 21st century before stallman was even born (make no mistake, hegel was an awful person by today standards- and he was played by esr in this incarnation) or just if you believe in the unix philosophy, stallman BORROWED a lot of ideas. which isnt a crime- im sure youve never made a cool thing with your computer without borrowing or building on lots of existing ideas. its often better if you do. but that doesnt mean he understood or properly represented those ideas. open source borrowed stallmans whole career, and deliberately misunderstands the ideas, in a dishonest way. the way stallman represents free culture, free hardware, and the trans community, is neither honest- nor smart. ### 5. self-appointed allies- are not. he should know that because open source is a perfect example, but stallman is no ally to the trans community. seriously, fuck that guy. you dont get to wave your ally flag while the community spends years begging the closest thing you have to higher-ups to DO SOMETHING about you, and a few pick-me members wont ever change this. the thing about allies is- allies HELP. allies dont UNDERMINE. and when the community tells stallman hes undermining everything the work for, stallman just says "no im not" like he knows better. fuck that guy. but you know whos worse? oh, this page isnt about him. but the fsf board fucking SUCKS. stallman is a textbook example of how NOT to ally. because its hurting something, and demanding that it be called help. its worse, but kind of like when: ### 6. stallman gets free hardware and free culture VERY, very wrong. not that stallman has contributed zero to free culture. maybe its zero (less than that) when everything is tallied. but sticking with point 4 for a moment, stallman neither understands, nor admits, the limitations inherent to his (deontological) ethical system which actually creates a huge strategic problem for the future of the movement. its NOT that deontological ethics are useless or that free software cant be based on them. its only that doing so IS GUARANTEED (since the days of kant himself) to create some issues that MUST be addressed, and can only be addressed with compromises that deontological ethics (left to their own devices) will dismiss. and you can keep EVERY goal of free software (which open source never really did, and has not since) but there WILL be SOME ebb and flow, or the whole thing will collapse. which it did, but thats okay- we are still in denial a decade later. thats fine i guess, whatever. and while i dont think the unix philosophy is an ABSOLUTE REQUIREMENT for LITERALLY EVERYTHING, it did have certain advantages which made gnu possible. except for the kernel. ### 7. hurd was one of stallmans best and (mostly) worst ideas, which cost the gnu project dearly. if theres anything on this list stallman knows hes wrong about, i think he knows he was wrong to choose hurd. he wouldnt admit it, and he wouldnt put it that way- he says they werent competing with anyone. well thats not true, the movement wasnt really "oh well, if it works it works- if not, so what?" i mean thats a double standard, a half truth- whenever people want to "take away" something from free software its the biggest deal in the world- the rest of the time, we can pretend that its completely fine for a kernel to take 40 years to develop. i mean yeah, maybe if linux hadnt shown up we couldve gotten hurd working in only TWO decades. or maybe not. it allowed SOME kernel (but it was linux) to steal the spotlight and SUBVERT credit in the way that only a douchebag like torvalds could do on behalf of... basically microsoft and google. i despise linus torvalds, and his kernel. but hurd is an utter piece of shit with very lofty ambitions. it was NOT a good design to HINGE the free software movement on- and it failed both technically and strategically. the impact of this mistake is completely underestimated. he USED a bsd kernel! he couldve used a USEFUL bsd kernel. and he could STILL use a bsd kernel, because linux has done ENOUGH harm to gnu. but i mean hey, its too late for gnu anyway. ### 8. a FOR-PROFIT was trusted with the gnu crown jewels. holy shitballs. FUCK. itll be another decade before people say that gnu has had a gun to its head since the day fucking red hat was entrusted with Fucking Everything. thats it, thats the end of the gnu project. but it wouldnt matter- it really wouldnt, if the unix philosophy meant fuck all to richard stallman. 9. only joking, that was #4. i mean we can joke and say that trusting a major corporation IS unix philosophy (cause bell, right?) but thats not what people mean by unix philosophy. i mean its pointless (but technically preferable) to have a freedom 3 if the only people capable of forking the software are the ones trying to destroy it anyway, but whatever. ### 9. speaking of single points of failure, putting every egg in one gnu basket... really stupid. after a few decades there COULD be TWO gnu projects. mightve helped actually. but yknow: ### 10. the organisation is NOT the movement, and the movement is too beholden to the organisation, to its detriment. at least theyre working on that. i mean the movement, not the organisation. the organisation is fucked. seriously, would you sacrifice free software to save the fsf? because the fsf would, if they havent already. ### 11. stallman hasnt learned (much) from his (worst) mistakes, and he wont. theres a website devoted to helping stallman avoid accountability- i used to link to it. ive talked to people who wrote for it. i was also asked to write for it. initially i thought it was a good thing, but ive come to see it as a way to protect stallman from both unfair and (mostly) fair accusations. ive said i have no problem with critiques of stallman that are honest, and the same goes for defences- but i dont think the defences of stallman on that website are very good. you would expect them to be one-sided, and they are, but the whole thing is too one-sided. i would say some of stallmans biggest critics are more fair. people like to say theres no way to fix being cancelled, and thats true sometimes. i dont think stallman will ever learn, whether it could save him or not. it could just be a fun way to add a point, like when captain kirk says "youve failed to correct the error- youve made TWO errors!" and some of that can apply to shatner as well i think. but its worth mentioning, because people have tried so hard, year after year, to get him to understand things and work on them. and occasionally some progress is made, but there are too many mistakes being made by someone who is too likely to cling to those mistakes, when the movement is too dependent on him. that last one of course, is something we can fix by walking away from leadership that has cost too much for too long. it may seem (often does, to many people, seem) daft to just walk away from the guy who invented a thing you consider important. but at some point it really does make sense, if only to see if it can be improved further. when there are too many problems with staying. even if twice as many people do stay, one really has to ask if this is as good as it could ever be, after as many as a third have walked away. if n-thousand signed the letter against him, and about 2n-thousand signed the letter for him that followed, then (while ignoring that nearly all of the organisations that signed were on the "against" side) its not absurd to say that stallmans maybe lost 1/3 of his "flock", even if some were always shills for open source. im happy to blame open source for creating division, but the more people who walk away and say why theyre doing it, when does that stop being unimportant enough, that we can say there might be merit in hoping an alternative is viable? sure, a good alternative would be hard to find. but is it even allowed to exist? is free software a monopoly? the way leah rowe has been treated, the way openbsd has been treated, i think free software acts like a monopoly. the only exception i know of is the way that it lets open source stab free software (and everyone who stands for free software) in the back, year after year. it does that, because it knows open source is too big to stop now (but not too big to fight- the fsf is cowardly) so the fsf holds its worst enemies (like microsoft) to one standard, and goes after critics like leah instead. i find this not just toxic, but stupid and unjustifiable. license: 0-clause bsd ``` # 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 # # Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any # purpose with or without fee is hereby granted. # # THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES # WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF # MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. 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