Blogging Pioneer Dave Winer: Pleading for Richard Stallman

Guest Editorial Team

2021-05-18 23:51:31 UTC
Modified: 2021-05-18 23:51:31 UTC

Reprinted from the original

I feel so sad about what's happening to Stallman.#
He's 68. I know what that's like, I'm 65. #
He has fixed his whole existence on a single idea that software should be free. Not free of charge, but free to use and to adapt. It's not that far from the kind of openness I believe in, that I believe is an ethical responsiblity for developers. #
It's useful to have a person like Stallman around, consistently marking an extreme view. It's like knowing there's a North Star, you may not be going to it, exactly, but knowing where it is makes it possible to go other places. And some people agree with Stallman in total, and to them he's their leader.#
Now, if you step back and look at what's being said about him, basically people don't like things he says or the questions he asks. I read these things completely factoring out the non-factual stuff, where they tell you what his questions mean in some pure sense, when what they're really saying is what these questions mean to them. To a reasonable person imho they're just questions. Some people don't argue with questions, they just ask them. For the people who attack him, it's the opposite, their questions are accusations. #
I think Stallman is actually a naive innocent, almost child-like harmless person. That's based on years of observing him, being connected through communities. Maybe he did terrible things I don't know about. But maybe you have too. Is this how we're going to coexist? All of us worrying about who's going to make a credible case for destroying each others' lives? This isn't about Stallman, it's about your sense of justice and how far it extends, and how unfair that is for the rest of us who fear being judged by you. #
PS: A quote from a 1994 blog post: "I try not to get offended on principle." I was quoting someone else, but I've remembered that. Just because I should be offended, doesn't mean, if I'm not actually offended, that I have to pretend I was. #
PPS: If you still think Stallman should be destroyed, go see Lives of Others, a wonderful film about intellectuals in East Germany during the Cold War. #

Massive Cuts Inside Microsoft (the Media Does Not Talk About That): It is in many ways like IBM a decade ago
IRC's Growing Popularity in 2026: No company controls or profits from IRC, it is in the Commons
Links 01/11/2026: Malaysian Media Perishing, France Belatedly Identifies Social Control Media as Weaponised Yellow Press: Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/11/2026: "Trick-or-Treating seems to be dead, at least in our neighborhood"; BaseFree Numerical System and Human Emacs: Links for the day
Links 01/11/2026: Digital Ninimalism and "Palantir Cofounder Announces Cruel Plan to Breed Thousands of Lab Monkeys for Medical Experiments": Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 31, 2026: IRC logs for Saturday, October 31, 2026
Gemini Links 31/10/2026: MangoWM, Qutebrowser and Codeberg, Plugh: Links for the day
In US Government Sites, GNU/Linux Measured at New All-Time High of 7% (or About 10% Across Desktops/Laptops Alone): There's no doubt GNU/Linux is growing
Intel Has Just Lost in One Single Day Over 150 Billion Dollars in 'Value' (Market Cap), Intel is Also Over 50 Billion Dollars in Debt: This really says a lot about Wall Street and the slop bubble, doesn't it?
They Hate Him Because He's Effective: Effective voices invite more aggressive censorship attempts
Audience Growing in Spite of the Deluge of Webslop: We probably benefit from the rejection of LLM slop
The Munich FUD Tactics (Microsoft Modus Operandi): Microsoft-Connected Sites Claim Denmark Failed With Free Software, But That's Not What Actually Happened: With Microsoft, it almost always boils down to politics
Links 31/10/2026: John Romero Comeback After Being Shafted by Microsoft, Google Faces Criminal Probe Over Deforestation in Finland: Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/10/2026: Rambling on Self-hosting and Ad Video Screens Don’t Make Money: Links for the day
Can't Trust Big Banks, Let's Try 'Bros' Instead?: But let's blame "North Korea"
"AI" as Surrogate for Debt and Distraction From Computing (Bots Described as "Agents" and/or Any Form of "Intelligence" is More Like a Religion): We're letting people without even college degrees game the "market" (Wall Street) by lying to it
Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXV - Election Integrity at a Time of Back Doors and Very Severe Bugs in UEFI: How dare British media comment on insurrection following a US election?
"The Judge Accepted That Mrs Schestowitz Had Been the Subject of a Vicious Campaign of Online Harassment": That's consistent with how they men treat women
Gemini Links 31/10/2026: Hallowe'en and "Thinking About People": Links for the day
Links 31/10/2026: The Hinge on Apple's Constantly Breaking New Foldable iPhone Was "Built With Slop", Slop Causes Cash Squeeze GAFAM: Links for the day
Amazon's Debt Skyrockets by Almost 100 Billion Dollars in 9 Months: On top of that there is additional (secret, kept stealth by accounting tricks) debt
Google Illegally Destroyed a Quarter Million Trees Without a Permit for a Hypothetical Project That Might be Cancelled, Debt Has Soared by 30 Billion Dollars in 3 Months ($10 Billions Borrowed Per Month): Google is bleeding from slop
Slavery at Microsoft: illegal if true
Many People "Left" Red Hat This Month, Including Yesterday: We already saw this with SUSE
Gemini Links 31/10/2026: "Where I Draw the Line With" Slop Plagiarism and "Nobody Cares That You're Leaving Proton" (Over Slop): Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 30, 2026: IRC logs for Friday, October 30, 2026
Links 30/10/2026: "Over 41,000 DHS Employee Records Leaked Online" and Concerns Over Radicalism in France: Links for the day
Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXIV - It's an Inherently American Issue and American Elections Are at Risk From Restricted ('Secure') Boot and LLM Chatbots (Disinformation at Scale): We'll focus a lot on US elections in the coming days
Birss Replaces Vos in UK's High Court, LLM Slop Plagiarism a Contentious Issue: Only days ago we mentioned Sir Geoffrey Vos in relation to lobbying for LLM slop
"Early Retirement" (Silent Layoffs) for Everybody Except the Executives: Some will stick around even past 70
Despite the Mass Layoffs Microsoft's Debt Soared by 5.1 Billion Dollars in Just 3 Months: This is why Microsoft asks 60,000 workers to leave
Gemini Links 30/10/2026: Solar MiniBBS, Kubernetes With FreeBSD, "Sysadmin Day": Links for the day
Microsoft Layoffs Far Worse Than the Media Tells (Microsoft Spin Laundered as "Reporting"): Some people are made to "retire" and sign an NDA to make it seem like a happy ending and mostly consensual retreat
Links 30/10/2026: Google Crashes on Slop Disappointment and GAFAM's "Data Center Blitz Is Burning Through Cash and Scaring Wall St.": Links for the day
Fake 'Articles' in The Register MS Concerning "AI": We don't suppose The Register MS will be around for much longer after this bubble pops
What Linus Torvalds Told Me Two Decades Ago: It seems like he was eager to distinguish himself from the "elders" of FSF [...] For anything "revolutionary" to happen in the sciences one must accept the risk of living in poverty like Tesla (the person, not the right-wing fanatics) and Torvalds isn't too old to "cause a stir"
GNU/Linux as a Free Software Platform is More GNU (and GPL) Than Linux: GNU predates Linux by nearly a decades and it was born to tackle injustices
Who Or What Are Security Professionals/Experts?: Companies like GAFAM are willing to tolerate cheaters because those companies themselves are cheats
Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXIII - What Garrett Did Puts Elections at Risk (Also in His Own Country, Where a Dictator Trusts Only Machines That 'Support' Him): UEFI 'security' is only as trustworthy as its ferocious boosters
Gemini Links 30/10/2026: RIP Patrick Stewart and Amp Integration: Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 29, 2026: IRC logs for Thursday, October 29, 2026

Blogging Pioneer Dave Winer: Pleading for Richard Stallman

Recent Techrights' Posts