I kinda suspect the rider functions at least partly as an acid test so that he only gets invited to give talks for groups that really really wanna hear RMS speak.
It probably requires that trait to rise above the noise and have your ideas heard. Same with Gates and Jobs and Ellison etc.
I think Wozniak and Allen would have just been part of the unknown crowd of smart guys doing some good stuff in computers if they hadn’t partnered with a person with the other personality type.
His comment on the rider has been that he gets more speaking requests than he can fulfill, so he is able to be picky about it. Writing it up and posting it saves the trouble of having to send it out new each time to every LUG and UUG that thinks it would be fun to have him out for a talk.
I’m sure other people who frequently are invited (and paid) for speaking engagements have similar riders. Well, maybe not similar but equivalent, in that they specify first or business class, and a certain quality of hotel room, and no green M&Ms, or whatever. I think complaining about the existence of a travel rider is short sighted, but making fun of the quirks and details of the rider is fair game.
And his certainly is quirky. How hard is it to just say: *Do not make breakfast plans for me, but I do like a cup of tea in the morning, often with milk and sugar. I would also like Pepsi to be available. *That comes off not sounding like a weirdo, just somebody who is making his desires known.
Instead, his statement about Pepsi is much longer and frankly sounds a bit ridiculous. “If I am quite sleepy, I would like two cans or small bottles of non-diet Pepsi. (I dislike the taste of coke, and of all diet soda; also, there is an international boycott of the Coca Cola company for killing union organizers in Colombia and Guatemala; see killercoke.org.) However, if I am not very sleepy, I won’t want Pepsi, because it is better if I don’t drink so much sugar.” How is anyone else going to know if he’s sleepy? As you said, just specify that some cans of regular Pepsi be provided.
To nitpick a bit, I would dispute that issuing software with a license is “subversion” of copyright. It’s an option that copyright law offers to creators. It’s using copyright, not subverting it.
Usually copyright is used to prevent the copying of a work. In this case copyright is being used to make sure that copying of a work is always allowed. That is the subversion, and it does rely on copyright to enforce those requirements. The option copyright law allows is to create a contract, or license, under which permissions are granted. In this case the license granted is the opposite of what is typical.
It also may be important to note that the goal of RMS is to eliminate all copyright, so that you can do anything you want with any work you have. The GPL is merely the viral agent to prevent Free works from being made non-Free in a system where copyright does exist. So making copyright stronger also strengthens the GPL, and weakening or eliminating copyrights nullifies the GPL, but achieves RMS’ larger goal.
Sure, but copyright is a statement on who has the ‘right’ to make a ‘copy’. Just because most people set the slider to ‘me alone’ or ‘me + people who pay me money’ doesn’t mean that choosing the ‘everyone and their kid brother’ option is subverting anymore than you’re subverting your stereo when you set the volume to 0.
It’s a license that grants a licensee the right to make copies, subject to conditions. That is exactly what a copyright license does. It’s not subversive in the least.
That sentence is self-contradictory.
No, it’s not the “opposite” of what’s typical. It has some unusual terms, but none of them subvert copyright. They use copyright.
Now, theoretically, if every creator in the world were to decide they could dispense with copyright protections, that might lead to the repealing of copyright protections generally, but the existence of the GPL is neither necessary nor sufficient to bring about that result.
Copyright law and the GPL coexist quite comfortably. The GPL reinforces rather than subverts the mechanisms of copyright law, and neither does it conflict with the intent and goals of copyright law, which is to allow a creator to have certain exclusive rights over a work, and the freedom to choose how or how not to exercise those rights.
I would agree.
But, I would also note that you would only need to change a few words to rewrite this paragraph to be about Karl Marx.
Surprisingly, people whose great idea in life is to give everything away for free, are not all there and may have other and worse thoughts - like murder of everyone who disobeys and free child porn.
Except neither of them ever argued that everything should be given away for free. Oh, and neither advocated for free child porn or punishing anyone who disobeys. RMS argued that child porn should be legal, but never did he say it should be free. And you are conflating Marxism with Communism.
So everything you’ve said is at least a slight perversion of what actually happened–all to promote the idea that anyone who has issues with capitalism is likely mentally deranged.
It’s not really “free” in that sense, either. There are specific things that I’m prohibited from doing with the software (and its accompanying information) after I receive it. If I pass it along to anyone I have to include the source code, and I can’t change the license.
Exactly, it’s a copyright license.
If I think I can improve the code, I can make changes to it and pass it along to other people. If they like the changes, they’ll pass them on (maybe adding changes of their own). In this way, the code spreads, evolves, and improves.
Why can’t the license evolve in the same way? Software code and a copyright license are just different types of instructions; text which attempts to codify and direct real-world actions. If I think I can improve the license, I should be able to change it and pass it along, and it will evolve just as the code does. Why does the movement for “free” software stop at just the software?
Why can’t you? Because the owner of the copyright says you can’t. Ask the owner for a license that is along the lines of what you want to do, and maybe you’ll get it. Or start distributing works under your evolving license yourself.
Because Stallman doesn’t want you to be able to do whatever you want with the software, he wants you to be able to do whatever he wants. The GPL v2 is quite restrictive in many ways and v3 even more so.
I once was publishing a piece of open source software under the BSD license. I got a few messages from FSF people suggesting that I change to GPL. I naively did so, then got a bunch of complaints from users who now couldn’t use my software as they had previously, due to the terms of the “GNU Public Virus” as one complaintant referred to it, since including GPL software in your software “infects” it and changes what you can do with the rest of the software. I think that if it weren’t for Stallman’s intransigence, a more reasonable license could have been crafted which didn’t restrict the use of free software as much as GPL does.
Yep, that’s perfectly consistent with copyright law. He’s not undermining copyright at all.
Yes, the GPL restricts what can be done with software. What I see here is the very typical complaint against the GPL of, “this prevents me from taking Free software and making it not-Free.” Yes, it absolutely does that. That is the idea. Arguing that is something wrong with the GPL is missing the whole point of the GPL. Either that, or it’s semantic debate over what “free” means.
Of course the GPL isn’t appropriate for all software. The authors have to decide what they want, do they want BSD, MIT, GPL, Affero GPL, public domain, something they roll on their own? All of those have different affects on how their software will be used and distributed. I’ve only ever released software under a modified BSD, because that’s what best fit my intentions with the software.
Really, the GPL’s only restriction is that it doesn’t let you lock up your changes and still distribute the software. If you don’t like it, write your own software, don’t complain that the software being given to you for free can’t be used against the way the authors wish.
… the author’s wish being the central concern of what? Copyright. Copyleft is copyright.
This argument is a pointless exercise in semantics. Can you guys just drop it?
Does it? If I write a bit of code called (for tradition’s sake) “foo,” and put it into the public domain, then Microsoft comes along, takes “foo,” adds “bar” to it, and sells it for millions of dollars - well, my “foo” code is still free to whoever wants it. Microsoft hasn’t taken something free and made it not-free, they took something free, and used it to make something else that is not free.
Is anyone complaining about that? They’re just pointing that Stallman’s idea isn’t really that different from traditional copyright, it’s just that he’s attaching different strings than “pay me” to the copyright.