If you don't like personal, blog-style reporting, you might want to skip this item. A few days ago, during a speech at Software Freedom Day in Boston, Richard Stallman has, at least in my book, crossed a line that I thought he would never cross.
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Member since:2005-07-24
Member since:2005-07-06
um. they're two entirely different things, so no, it's not quibbling. if steven's argument had been that being a free software fundamentalist, *correctly defined* - i.e. simply believing it's fundamentally bad to use or create non-free software - was a bad thing, then that'd be OK. I'd disagree with him, but it's a perfectly legitimate viewpoint.
Equally, if he'd said that being a free software evangelist was a bad thing, then again, I'd disagree, but he would be correctly presenting a perfectly valid point of view. No problem.
However, he didn't do either of those things. He tried to use the emotional connotations that are often attached to the term 'fundamentalist' in today's political climate to denigrate evangelism. Which, as I said, is fundamentally flawed argumentation. I don't hate the guy, or anything. I'm just pointing out that what he said was not actually _valid_, not just that I don't agree with it.
Member since:2005-07-06
And where did I do that? I'll save the effort of looking - I didn't:
Note the topic - Stallman himself, and not the FSF. And note that the FSF isn't even mentioned - in fact, it appears that you were the first to bring up the FSF in this particular thread.
Member since:
2005-07-06
they are indeed orthogonal, and you could reasonably describe RMS and the FSF's official position as fundamentalist (for instance, a 'fundamentalist' free software supporter might consider it intrinsically harmful to use non-free software - which is RMS's and the FSF's official position - while a 'moderate' free software supporter may consider it only temporarily regrettable). This is, however, not important in context. The post I was referring to unilaterally redefined evangelism as fundamentalism and then tried to use the emotional power of the word 'fundamentalism' to portray free software evangelism as a bad thing, which is just bad argumentation however you look at it.