Talk:Richard Stallman/Archive 8

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Parents and religious affiliation

I have deleted a reference to his parents and to their religious affiliation. Putting his parents religious heritage in the first sentence of a biography of a programmer whose work isn't related to his parent's identity or faith clutters up the basic story with less relevant details. If his self-description as an atheist of Jewish heritage merits inclusion, it should probably be included in a section on his overall philosophy. --Cshirky 16:02, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. I think the early biography is the perfect place for putting his parents and his early religious beliefs, seeing as they, y'know, are pretty important to his being born and his early development. What section is more fit for putting them in than the early portion of his biography? --Gwern (contribs) 17:03 21 February 2007 (GMT)

• Yeah, Gwern is quite right! Don't forget, either, a brief explanation of the laws of genetics (which played an undoubtedly major role in Stallman being born like he is, and not some other way), or mating habits of young human beings (without which his parents would have never actually come to give birth to him), or medicine and pediatrics (which no doubt shaped the events surrounding his birth), and... why not? if the first paragraph has some space left, add a short overview of national and international politics at the moment of his birth. Gwern, your question of "where else to put them" is a loaded question, because it implies it has to be put somewhere. Believe it or not, sometimes religious affiliation of parents can be irrelevant for a biography. Moreover, Cshirky already answered that question: he proposes to mention it in a section about his philosophy. — Isilanes 14:34, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

You think the names of his parents should be put in the philosophy section? I suspect you are committing the fallacy of misinterpretation... --Gwern (contribs) 23:32 22 February 2007 (GMT)

• I couldn't find this "fallacy of misinterpretation", but maybe you are accusing me of using a strawman argument. This is, namely, the fallacy you use when implying I mean to move the mention to Stallman's parents' names to the philosophy section, when what I mean is that any mention to his or his parents' religious beliefs should be moved there, if included at all. — Isilanes 09:21, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes; when someone obnoxiously starts to throw around fallacies, I like to make up names so they might understand how annoying it is. I still don't see how mention of how his parents raised him (which is to say, in what religion) is not relevant for the biography section and should be lumped in with his current beliefs; one is historical data on his youth, and the other is more current and general. --Gwern (contribs) 18:19 23 February 2007 (GMT)

• First, I didn't "throw around fallacies", but rather accusations of using fallacies, which you didn't disprove. Second, I didn't make the accusations to annoy you (which I'd rather not to, believe me), but to point out the invalidity of your arguments. Third, I didn't make up the names or definitions of the fallacies I mention... I even give wikilinks so anyone can see if they apply to your speech. Don't worry, if they do not apply, people will see it, and I will be considered the dumbass I probably am. About the actual subject of the discussion, I think I can't contribute much more than my (already stated) opinion. However, if people agree with Gwern, I'll consider it perfectly well, too. — Isilanes 23:21, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Someone launched WikiProject Free Software

WikiProject Free Software has been set up. It has many people listing themselves as participants, but it seems to still need some leadership and some action to develop the project and to build momentum. Some people from here might be able to help. Suggestions can be found (and made) on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Free_Software. Gronky 15:18, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

unbalanced

This must be one of the least balanced articles on wikipedia.

Not even a trace of negative, other views of how things can be ? Come on, let's be open to balancing and including the negative just as well as the positive.

His (GNU) isn't the only religion to follow ... 213.118.142.27 23:20, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Be bold - find the reliable sources that have criticism of Stallman and add them in. Ttiotsw 06:14, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

His "tone deaf" personality

His best-known original composition, the Free Software Song, has attracted praise from his admirers as well as derision from those who consider it emblematic of what they consider to be his inflexible, tone-deaf personality.

Can someone rephrase this? What is a "tone-deaf personality"? I guess it's meaningless and the author was just strainging to make a music pun. Great for a blog entry. Useless for an encyclopedia. How is a song emblematic of an inflexible personality? Gronky 10:41, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

How is a song emblematic of RMS's personality? It's not! I propose that we remove that section. Sounds petty, coming from an encyclopedia with as much calibur and impact as Wikipedia. Dylan Knight Rogers 00:51, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Terminology section needs fixing: proposal

The terminology section is growing and growing and it's just a reprint of the "Words to avoid" webpage. IMO, it would be better to go back to listing the main three terms that Richard dwells on (free software, GNU/Linux, intellectual property), and then a discussion of the commonalities between all the terms that he dislikes - why those terms? What're the trends? The goals? And what has made him so resolute about this issue? Comments sought. Gronky 14:08, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

His influence on OpenOffice's use of Java

It's worth mentioning his work on raising awareness and getting a solution for OpenOffice's use of features only available in Sun's non-free Java. Some info and refs are here: OpenOffice.org#Java_controversy. And GNOME (and Harmony) is another piece of software activism. Maybe Gnash too. Gronky 05:26, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Not "citation needed" tags (2007-04-10)

I've added cites for "citation needed" sentences that I could, and have removed the others. Some of the removed sentences should be easy to re-add if anyone feels they are important enough to dig up a citation for them. If other claims need citations, please add tags so I and others can find cites or remove those claims. Gronky 13:56, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

2007-08-12: FWIW, after adding more references in response to request tags, the article is again clear of all "citation needed" tags. Thanks to those who have added the {{fact}} tags! Gronky 20:42, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

What about the katana?

Call me crazy, but I think there should be something in the article about the katana. :-) 69.110.6.69 06:19, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Your link no longer works, but I know what you mean, and yes. :) See here: http://xkcd.com/225/ Someone gave him a katana just in case. 24.218.46.235 20:15, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

A mini-rant about cites

See WP:VERIFY.

This article contained the formerly uncited statement "Stallman is a Green Party supporter." I added the fact tag requesting a cite for this. On 15 May 2007 Rtc removed this fact tag, commenting, "Removed fact, since the "Support the Green Party" heading at the very top of his home page is really highly visible."

Now that I look on his home page, I see that that's true, and I've added a link to it as a cite, but when I requested a cite for this I did not know that that was where I should look for this information. Providing the source is the point of having cites. The idea is not to make the reader guess, work, or search -- if you know that the source is "X", just cite it.

Comments from Rtc or anyone else are welcome. -- 201.50.253.154 15:26, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

You're right. Sometimes not everyone knows the procedures or reasons for doing things, so sometimes bad things get done, but Wikipedia counterbalances by letting anyone fix the mistake, and hopefully the person who made the mistake will learn when the mistake is fixed. So lessons like this are usually learned without anyone having to write rants. Gronky 19:37, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't usually write rants. However, I thought that this was a good example of this problem, so I posted in order to expedite the "hopefully the person who made the mistake will learn" process -- as well wishing to bring this to the attention of others who didn't make this mistake but might be tempted to make it in their future edits. I really think that Wikipedians need to be a lot more conscientious about cites, in general. -- 201.50.253.154 21:18, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Why wasn't a good edit summary enough education for this user? Lentower 00:17, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Why didn't you just post the rant to the User's talk page? Lentower 00:17, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, this discussion might be getting more screen time than it really merits, and I'd like to try to taper it off, but to answer your question here -- Because, as I said, IMHO neglecting to include good cites is an extremely common problem with the Wikipedia, so my intention was not so much to say, "Private message to so-and-so, please be careful about this", but rather, "General message to all Wikipedians, please be careful about this." That's all. :-) -- 201.50.253.154 19:00, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Ok, that's one lesson that people might need some nudging on, but new contributors also have to be educated on preserving the collective calm :-) That requires finding the least confrontational way of of sending messages, and delaying confrontation until other techniques (including waiting) have not worked. Editing Wikipedia can lead to very stressful discussions, and that's unavoidable in a project that people are serious about. It's unavoidable, but minimisable. Gronky 15:50, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Stallman's plant-phobia

I had put that RMS is afraid of plants, and it was deleted because it was uncited. I had her that he was from a former employee of his, and then I asked him myself, and he said yes, he was afraid of any kind of plants with tendrils. However, the only website I can find that that documents this is blocked by my company as "tasteless", so I can't get to the site, and wonder how the heck to document this. I'd like to cite "personal conversation" which works in peer-reviewed journal articles, which I imagine should be to a higher standard than wikipedia.

As far as I know, Wikipedia doesn't accept personal conversation has a reliable source. Journals have a screening process - they screen who can write in them, and editors screen what has been written. Wikipedia doesn't have these mechanisms, so the cite criteria have to be different.

Maybe the lack of notes about this in the massive amount of material online about Stallman indicates that this trivia is not noteworthy? Gronky 23:38, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

on tour

Does RMS ever go on speaking tours? if so, where can you find out this info? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.71.65.29 (talk • contribs)

It really doesn't have much to do with this article (I suppose we could add it but is it that important?) but his future talks are at http://www.fsf.org/events/rms-speeches.html (also subscribable via mailto:info-gnu-events-subscribe@gnu.org or news:gmane.org.fsf.events.announce). If you want him to go somewhere, I guess you can email him. —Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley _{talk contrib} 12:13, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

"When Brian Reid in 1979 placed "time bombs" in Scribe to restrict unlicensed access to the software.."

"When Brian Reid in 1979 placed "time bombs" in Scribe to restrict unlicensed access to the software, Stallman proclaimed that "the prospect of charging money for software was a crime against humanity.""

This 'quote' seems a little odd to me. The reference doesn't show Stallman actually saying this, as the Wikipedia quote made me think; it is Reid's recollection of what Stallman said, so I think a direct quote is preferable (and is odd since RMS made lots of money through selling GNU tools in the 80s). The full quote is,

"Such rude behavior was reflected against other, unsettling developments in the hacker community. Brian Reid's 1979 decision to embed "time bombs" in Scribe, making it possible for Unilogic to limit unpaid user access to the software, was a dark omen to Stallman. "He considered it the most Nazi thing he ever saw in his life," recalls Reid. Despite going on to later Internet fame as the cocreator of the Usenet alt heirarchy, Reid says he still has yet to live down that 1979 decision, at least in Stallman's eyes. "He said that all software should be free and the prospect of charging money for software was a crime against humanity."8"

from http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch06.html

Be bold in your editing, but try to avoid replacing a quote with a longer quote. This ancient is not important enough for a whole paragraph. Gronky 13:50, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

2006 Award at Linuxworld?

After having watched Revolution OS, and then visiting this page, I notice that the award RMS wins in Revolution OS at Linuxworld 2006 (The Linus Torvalds/Community something-something award) doesn't appear in the Awards-section. Can someone find out exactly which award this is, and add it to the list?
- Lasse Havelund ^{(p) (t)} 22:06, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

GNU/Linux link broken

The GNU/Linux link under GNU project is broken. Should it point to the GNU/Linux article?

Fixed, thanks. (I removed the link; internal links "anchors" cannot be relied upon) Gronky 09:11, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

RMS not missing

From freenode wallops

[Fri Aug 17 00:43:13 CEST 2007] !RichiH! Hi all. As you will surely have heard, there was a major earthquake in Peru. It seems Richard 'RMS' Stallmann was travelling from Lima to Chimbote with Mario Ramos on August 15th and no one has heard from him since. If you have any information, please email rms-assist@gnu.org or poke us in #freenode. Also, if you happen to live in South or Central America, please consider donating blood [...]

--rtc 23:20, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I added "not" to the title. RMS has since posted to the emacs-devel mailing list. Gronky 10:41, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

It's good to know he's okay. -- Derek Ross | Talk 03:55, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Question

Was Richard Stallman enrolled as a Ph.D candidate in M.I.T, or was he aiming for as Master's or what? --213.202.182.23 23:52, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

What - no criticism section?

No criticism section?! I would imagine every software engineer worth his salt hates him, I mean meow meow meow meow meow

Many software engineers love Stallman, for providing and inspiring some of the best software development tools ever. Criticism that meets WP criteria (see the talk header above), including citations from secondary sources, etc. would be OK. Lentower 17:23, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Personal Life

Section's paragraphs read like bulleted lists of unrelated items. Needs to be cleaned up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.211.140.173 (talk) 03:53, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

ATI section needs trimming

For all the things the guy has done, one instance (of many) when he held a protest placard at an event is not a big deal - not by a long shot. This deserves a sentence at most. --Gronky 18:12, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Chris Cunningham 10:24, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

"Terminology" section

While it's true that Stallman coined most of these, they're really GNU/FSF's baby at this point. They aren't quite at the level of "famous sayings" or such, so don't really belong in a bio (which is full to bulging with arbitrary bits of data already). Anyone fancy moving it to the FSF article? Chris Cunningham 10:42, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure how (or if) it would fit into the FSF or GNU pages, but it clearly shouldn't still be on this page. That section already has some nice paragraphs, so there's no need to keep the filler parts that are just reprints of what is on the gnu.org words-to-avoid page. Here it is below for when someone wants to move it somewhere else. --Gronky 13:13, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

---

In an essay, "Words to avoid" posted on the GNU Web site, he suggests the following:

• "Software idea patents" rather than the more common "software patents", arguing that the latter gives the wrong impression that the patent covers an entire piece of software.
• "(UFO) Uniform Fee Only" as a replacement for "(RAND) Reasonable and Non Discriminatory Licensing" arguing that a mandatory royalty of any amount discriminates against free software because distributors of free software cannot count the number of copies in existence. This concern is shared by much of the free software and open source communities, but Stallman's term is not widely used.
• Avoiding "piracy" for the act of copying information, arguing that "piracy" has always designated the act of robbery or plunder at sea, and that the term is misused by corporations to lend a greater importance to the act of copying software or other intangible things.
• "Corrupt discs" or "Fake CDs" to describe digital audio compact discs which employ Copy Control or other similar technology to prevent copying, arguing that they break the Red Book standard and noting that recently such discs are printed without the Compact Disc logo.
• "Treacherous Computing" rather than "Trusted Computing", which limits the freedoms of users by denying them the ability to control their computers.
• "Website Revision System (WRS)" as a replacement for "Content management system (CMS)" arguing that:

The term “content management” takes the prize for vacuity. Neither word has any specific meaning; “content” means “some sort of information”, and “management” in this context means “doing something with it”. So a “content management system” is a system for doing something to some sort of information.

• Stallman refers to "Digital Restrictions Management" (DRM) rather than "Digital Rights Management", because DRM is designed to limit what the user can do, not grant the user more rights. He also suggests calling it "handcuffware", a term which has not caught on in English. The Free Software Foundation has started the "Defective by Design" campaign in response to these issues.

---

Todo out of date

Many parts are ancient and it generally isn't a useful guideline to current tasks imo. Anyone really mind if I wipe this and let it grow from scratch again? Chris Cunningham 10:43, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Many parts of what are ancient? The article or the talk page? --W2bh (talk) 12:18, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, misread the message title. --W2bh (talk) 12:19, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I've removed all the well-meaning but ultimately directionless calls to scan the article for various policy issues. These can be brought up in reviews, but aren't useful in the todo box. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 16:18, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Technical Inaccuracy

Re:

When MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) installed a password control system in 1977, Stallman found a way to decrypt the passwords and sent users messages containing their decoded password (to demonstrate that they were not increasing security, but only hindering free access to each other's software and discouraging sharing it), with a suggestion to change it to the empty string (that is, no password) instead, to restore this free access

I see this has made it to Wikipedia...

He didn't actually do exactly this, though I've seen him on video describing it thus. I'm the guy who wrote the password control system! The passwords are hashed in a way that loses information. (Not actually encrypted). I've always figured he did one of two things -- either did things the (slightly) hard way, and searched for a password that would hash to the same thing, or simply recorded the unhashed password the user entered. He'd made it print out on the system console at one point.

To be fair, searching for the password would stand a good chance of finding the actual password the user gave.

This was never intended to be security -- no such thing on ITS anyway. The only reason for hashing them at all was so that snoopy people wouldn't discover what people used for their passwords, which often tend to be personal! So this hack was not a breakdown in security, but a rather juvenile (IMHO) mass (but small) invasion of privacy.

Note that null passwords WERE allowed, even after this hack. Lots of people just logged in as RMS...

Stahlman has publicly attributed this password facility to the "evil administrators" seeking control, and pressuring the hackers, etc... Nothing could be further from the truth. At the time, we were deluged with a huge influx of users from the network -- "unauthorized" users for lack of a better word, but they weren't unwelcome, overall, and accounts were given out freely. But there were a few people who were unwilling to be good citizens -- playing games, for example, when the system was already extremely overloaded with people trying to complete their thesis, etc. Or deleting other people's files. Remember, the system was wide open, and fragile, dependent entirely on the good behavior of all participants.

Things finally reached a point where keeping things from melting down was taking entirely too much time from many of us, myself included, and people's work was being seriously impeded. This was the minimum step we could take that would keep things from degenerating into chaos.

The password system simply allowed us to encourage people to not be anonymous (which helped to encourage more of a sense of community), and to impede (but not block) people intent on causing harm. We gave out accounts to just about all comers, including numerous kids, people just wanting to learn, etc. Some people, after having their accounts revoked for behaving badly, came back later with new identities and better behavior, which was fine with us.

RMS viewed all this through his own set of filters and his own unique set of moral absolutes, leading to major rage. Somehow people for whom the machines were being provided being able to use them didn't fit on his radar, but anybody should be allowed to connect anonymously from anywhere, and do whatever they wanted, no matter the impact on others. And anybody who disagreed was evil, to be opposed by any means at hand.

By the way, a point about copying all the features that we at Symbolics did into the MIT sources. I'd say it's more or less true. But the way the article is written makes it sound like either a superhuman feat (and thus unbelievable), or that we were a bunch of slackers at Symbolics!

Neither was true. He had several advantages -- he could take a lot of shortcuts, for example -- less complete functionality, less testing. Notably, he didn't have to spend the time thinking out how things should work! He could just copy functionality. He didn't have to discuss and agree with anyone either. That, and being both skilled and driven, he could move pretty fast. He even improved on our approach in a number of cases.

It'd be nice if the article were worded in a way that was more clear that the attempt was simultaneously quite real, somewhat imperfect, and yet impressive.

Note that one could question whether these comments quite fit the talk page guidelines, but I hope it's worthwhile communicating it to the editors. Feel free to delete my comments when they serve no useful purpose, or possibly move them to the article on ITS if they serve a purpose there...

Bob Kerns (talk) 07:41, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I've made some simple changes to the sections in question to take these concerns into account. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 22:38, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Speeches

This is what Wikiquote is for, and it's bad form to have subsections in extlinks. Can they all be moved across? Chris Cunningham 11:43, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

After 20 years of public speaking, Stallman there are only four topics that he's spoken repeatedly on. So those four links are as concise as possible a summary of his whole software freedom philosophy. On Wikiquote, there are tens or more than a hundred links, which is quite different. The subsection header can be deleted, but I don't see why. --Gronky 11:55, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Here's a better idea: turn the "terminology" section into "public speaking", and restructure it around the speeches. Better to use them as references than just tack them on as external links. Chris Cunningham 12:07, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Except that in this case they are not references to prove some particular point, they are whole documents that explain concepts too large to describe completely in the article. --Gronky 12:13, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Then give them articles. That's how encyclopedias work. I dare say that they already have articles. A well-written article should not simply punt important works to some external website to explain. Chris Cunningham 13:13, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

The concepts probably do have articles, but this is about Stallman's personal take on the issues. His examples, his reasons, his logic, his methods. Actually, when something is relevant but is too long to go into an article, that's exactly what external links are for. --Gronky 13:22, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

This is lazy. I can't believe we've got three paragraphs about the tragic early end to his folk dancing career, but we can't actually write about the four things which actually define him as an advocate. I'm gladly nuke large parts of the article to incorporate that kind of thing. Chris Cunningham 15:26, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the speeches, if they are needed, should be included as references rather than external links. This is the type of thing that would most likely be flagged if the article ever went to Featured Article review. The article already has a rambling and anecdotal flavor, and this makes it worse. We don't need to record every single incident that happened in any of his policy-related activities. His examples, his reasons, his logic, his methods are things that people can use Google for. His speech on the issue of GPLv3, if it is needed at all, might be linked from GNU General Public License, where his arguments in favor of version 3 are discussed in the text of the article. EdJohnston 19:24, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Direct links to speeches: is everyone following the issue?

There is a small-scale edit war about some direct external links to Stallman speeches. Can someone who regularly follows this page explain things from scratch? I don't see the need for the links, personally, but a better explanation might slow down the reverting by various parties. EdJohnston 17:38, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

It's hardly an "edit war" as such: User:Gronky, as is his wont, occasionally restores sections of previously-prepared text with little apparent consideration for article history, or indeed whether the content he's adding is already included on the page in exactly the same format. When this happens, I remove the duplicate section and leave a descriptive edit comment. In this case, however, User:ViolentCrime has apparently decided that this is a content dispute. No, I don't know why either.

I expect this has already died down. Chris Cunningham 17:54, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

What exactly is the problem with having a seperate section for the speeches? Why are you edit warring over this? If the duplication bbothers you, remove it from the Output section, where iti is buried. ViolentCrime 18:20, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Mayhaps, having asked me to come to the talk page, you could participate in it yourself. Nobody's edit warring; a couple of editors made good-faith reverts without bothering to check the full picture, is all. Chris Cunningham 18:24, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

What is it that you are responding to, if not my participation? You have made 5 reverts to the same section in a little over 24 hours, so you are clearly edit warring over this. In addition, you are more than a bit uncivil in your tone. If it is the duplication that bothers you, why can't we have a seprate section for the speeches, and remove the same copy in the output section? ViolentCrime 18:47, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I haven't followed this in a while. My recollection is that I argued that with four links, the article could give readers access to the most concise summary of Stallman's whole software freedom philosophy. FWIW, I still think they should be there, in the external links section, not buried. --Gronky 00:30, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Contributions to ghostscript

"The Halloween Documents", Microsoft Confidential (Vinod Valloppillil, Aug 11, 1998) cites Stallman as the creator of GhostScript. The 3 major applications threatening Microsoft. according to Microsoft, were Emacs, GCC, and GhostScript. GhostScript is a key element, if not at least predecessor to CUPS. I think it is worth adding to the Emacs, GCC, and Gnu Debugger "list" in the opening paragraphs.

199.80.154.88 17:34, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

I think they may just be wrong about that. The Ghostscript article and various hits[1][2] seem to suggest that Deutsch wrote/writes it, and Stallman merely convinced him to release all future versions under the GPL. --Gwern (contribs) 18:16 26 October 2007 (GMT)

Ghostscript#History. Chris Cunningham 18:42, 26 October 2007 (UTC)