Dr. Andy Farnell's Latest Article About Software Freedom and Richard Stallman
Dr. Farnell has just published this very good article about why Dr. Stallman is being picked on. From the article:
Software Freedom was no small success. Although Stallman must share the glory with many other fighters, like Eric Raymond , Bruce Perens and Linus Torvalds, it became a movement and changed the world. The dotcom boom would not have happened without Free Software. Silicon Valley would not have happened without Free Software. Without those millions of hackers who wrote code "by the people, for the people", inspired by Richard Stallman, we'd have none of it.He's been awarded multiple honorary PhDs and a page-long list of prizes in computing, joining the Internet Hall of Fame alongside visionaries like Aaron Swartz, Jimmy Wales, and John Perry Barlow. For decades he's relentlessly spread a message of Software Freedom, sticking firmly to deeply help philosophical beliefs. Stallman is a Diogenes or Socrates, a modern legend. He's been a constant gadfly on the backs of lesser, selfish individuals and corporations who want to misappropriate public technology, hide it away, and use it for private power and controlling the masses.
Every day most of us use some software somehow attributable to Stallman's efforts. The entire US tech economy is built on Free Open Source Software like GNU/Linux which powers all the servers. Despite these facts, he is made a pariah.
The broligarchs really HATE Stallman. They really do. He represents an immutable error written into the code of their reality. How can this ugly looking, poor, unkempt, disagreeable old man stand up for all they want to destroy? How dare he use so few words and a twinkly smile to succinctly nail all their moral failings!? How dare he not even take himself seriously?
So, in retaliation Richard Stallman is made the brunt of a concerted campaign of trolling, ridicule, lies and fomenting betrayal. Every awkward thing he says is taken out of context and amplified by a bamboozled mob of misinformed pundits, mercenary denouncers and various useful idiots. For years they've been paid or whipped-up by troublemakers to spread insinuation, specious accusations and childish attacks on Stallman's (imperfect, like all of us) character.