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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday August 30 2017, @07:54PM   Printer-friendly
from the must-read dept.

An Indian site, YourStory, has an unusually broad ranging interview with Richard Stallman. While much of the background and goals will already be familiar to SN readers, the interview is interesting not only for its scope but also that India is starting to take an interest in these matters.

To know Richard Stallman is to know the true meaning of freedom. He's the man behind the GNU project and the free software movement, and the subject of our Techie Tuesdays this week.

This is not a usual story. After multiple attempts to get in touch for an interaction with Richard Stallman, I got a response which prepared me well for what's coming next. I'm sharing the same with you to prepare you for what's coming next.

I'm willing to do the interview — if you can put yourself into philosophical and political mindset that is totally different from the one that the other articles are rooted in.

The general mindset of your articles is to admire success. Both business success, and engineering success. My values disagree fundamentally with that. In my view, proprietary software is an injustice; it is wrongdoing. People should be _ashamed_ of making proprietary software, _especially_ if it is successful. (If nobody uses the proprietary program, at least it has not really wronged anyone.) Thus, most of the projects you consider good, I consider bad.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @10:51PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @10:51PM (#561797)

    That's some outlook on life you have.
    Old hippie? Buddhist? Socialist parents?

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 1) by ants_in_pants on Thursday August 31 2017, @12:09AM (5 children)

    by ants_in_pants (6665) on Thursday August 31 2017, @12:09AM (#561859)

    Why is it so interesting? I just think that it's a lot easier to alleviate suffering than it is to make someone perfectly content, and the net benefit is the same.

    --
    -Love, ants_in_pants
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @01:27AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @01:27AM (#561903)

      I'm not challenging your positions.
      I'm just wondering how you got to where you are philosophically.

      I'm the most outspoken Socialist in this joint;
      the son of a career military officer, raised in a smallish town in The South, no less.
      I've always questioned authority/the status quo.

      Moving to (more Progressive) California seemed a natural direction for me.
      Discovering Pacifica Radio here made that like finding my natural habitat.
      Similar deal for the World Socialist Web Site, more recently.

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 2) by shortscreen on Thursday August 31 2017, @05:08AM (3 children)

      by shortscreen (2252) on Thursday August 31 2017, @05:08AM (#561968) Journal

      I think you are setting a pretty low bar. How much misery or suffering would there be if everyone were dead?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @05:47AM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @05:47AM (#561978)

        There'd be quite a bit misery and suffering in getting everyone there.

        • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday August 31 2017, @08:37AM (1 child)

          by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday August 31 2017, @08:37AM (#562016) Journal

          Imagine you had the ability to create a planet-wide killer wave that moves at the speed of light and immediately destroys every molecule it passes. When applying that, nobody will even notice that he is killed; people (and everything else) will just suddenly stop existing. Application of that killer wave to the planet would obviously end all suffering, but would cause zero suffering on its own. Would you therefore advocate its application?

          --
          The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
          • (Score: 1) by ants_in_pants on Thursday August 31 2017, @05:10PM

            by ants_in_pants (6665) on Thursday August 31 2017, @05:10PM (#562193)

            I wouldn't violate everyone's autonomy that way. Obviously you can't only apply that one maxim and solve all ethical problems.

            --
            -Love, ants_in_pants