>I don’t know how to make a screenshot, because I normally use my computer in text-mode. I have X and GNOME installed, but I use them only occasionally.
I find it weird that the man is such a visionary in concept, but such a Luddite in actual day-to-day. Elsewhere, I've seen him explain that he still "views" most webpages by cURL'ing them and printing them to paper.
He walks the walk and talks the talk. People may think he’s backwards or annoying but he’s consistently maintained his philosophy that software should be free. The fact that he has to use absurd measures to consume what everyone else does is a statement about the limitations of free software not a statement about his workflow preferences.
He is just a professional contrarian. We are lucky he went against big software corporations and his contributions to Open Source licenses are groundbreaking.
But many others managed to provide screenshots while using free software.
He, a great man in many other ways, he is also backwards and annoying.
>If you can find a host for me that has a friendly parrot, I will be very very glad. If you can find someone who has a friendly parrot I can visit with, that will be nice too.
>DON'T buy a parrot figuring that it will be a fun surprise for me. To acquire a parrot is a major decision: it is likely to outlive you. If you don't know how to treat the parrot, it could be emotionally scarred and spend many decades feeling frightened and unhappy. If you buy a captured wild parrot, you will promote a cruel and devastating practice, and the parrot will be emotionally scarred before you get it. Meeting that sad animal is not an agreeable surprise.
>Richard Stallman's rider has been a cause of amusement, bemusement and
confusion for many conference and lecture organisers who have hosted him.
It has even drawn the attention of the press[0].
>But what is the story behind this complex beast? When were certain clauses
added, and why? We hope that with enough data regarding when modifications
were made, we may be able to shed some light on the why's.
>A parrot once had sex with me. I did not recognize the act as sex until it was explained to me afterward, but being stroked on the hand by his soft belly feathers was so pleasurable that I yearn for another chance. I have a photo of that act; should I go to prison for it?
This answer would require to explain the whole free software ideology. If you want to know more, just type Richard Stallman on Youtube to see one of his talks.
It's good to live strictly by a philosophy, and I admire anyone who does this. I can't say I agree with Stallman's philosophy, because it places too high of an importance on communist principles which are inherently flawed and unjust.
There is nothing evil about closed-source software or proprietary licenses. Yes, it can be abused by greedy people, as can pretty much anything including water. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that all software must be open source as a step in humanity reaching its ultimate goal of perfection.
My reasons are whatever the Catholic Church's reasons are.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church has a little more to say about it[1]:
> (2425) The Church has rejected the totalitarian and atheistic ideologies associated in modem times with "communism" or "socialism." She has likewise refused to accept, in the practice of "capitalism," individualism and the absolute primacy of the law of the marketplace over human labor. Regulating the economy solely by centralized planning perverts the basis of social bonds; regulating it solely by the law of the marketplace fails social justice, for "there are many human needs which cannot be satisfied by the market." Reasonable regulation of the marketplace and economic initiatives, in keeping with a just hierarchy of values and a view to the common good, is to be commended.
My pleasure, I always enjoy sharing what I firmly to be the truth. I guess that's a pretty common attitude here on HN, but I seem to be the only one who believes that truth is found in the Catholic Church.
I'm sure it can be a kind of lonely around here for Catholics. For what it's worth, while I'm no longer conventionally religious, and while even in my religious days the Catholics were considered to barely qualify for heaven (Evangelicals being Evangelicals), I've come to have a somewhat more nuanced perspective on 'you guys'.
And I definitely think having views like yours over here is a benefit to the 'community'.
Yeah, about the only bit there that gets me is the printing. But I'd be a happy camper if more webpages could be effectively used with `curl <url> | less`.
I also realize that it's difficult to make the kinds of social media inspired experiences™ that most consumers expect nowadays without some curl-breaking beast like React or Vue, and that most websites nowadays see themselves as an entertainment medium more often than they do a simple conduit for the transfer of information. I am beginning to think that that, too, speaks to what RMS is on about.
I was recently setting up my machine and figured I'd try 'mutt', the terminal mail reader. It's a pain to install and isn't great for HTML emails, but it sure is blazing fast and allows me to create custom macros that are really useful. Maybe if I stick with it, it'll be faster than GMail. But then again, after I set up some filters, my volume of email to look at in GMail was pretty low, so the performance advantages of 'mutt' are not as important now. It feels super cool though. We can't underestimate the aesthetic value of cool terminals.
He is free to compute as he desires. He has worked a lifetime for that freedom. As for a luddite, he has enabled generations to forge new wild techno paths.. So literally the opposite of a luddite.
He is not paranoid, he's just setting an example of how the life's 'ought to' be without unnecessary corporate intervention. & I'd argue that he is doing so at a great personal cost so I am thankful to him for being as such, I do wish that he'd be a bit more creative in avoiding censorship/tracking in his day-to-day life.
Quite the opposite; he likely does this because he is very mindful of what "viewing a webpage" actually entails and how much he is willing to identify himself. See "How I use the Internet" https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html
>I don’t know how to make a screenshot, because I normally use my computer in text-mode. I have X and GNOME installed, but I use them only occasionally.
I find it weird that the man is such a visionary in concept, but such a Luddite in actual day-to-day. Elsewhere, I've seen him explain that he still "views" most webpages by cURL'ing them and printing them to paper.