[Discuss] Free Hardware
Nancy Ouyang
nancy.ouyang at gmail.com
Fri Mar 20 12:21:48 UTC 2015
1) well, i'll report back / try to catch him in person if he ignores my
email
2) man, i'm just not really worried about showing rms my respect, i doubt
he is in want or need of it.
occasionally i feel like setting things on fire and that results in me
calling people (who I think can take it) names, i'm not really sure about a
good fix for that. maybe i need to drink more grapefruit juice.
i'm much more concerned about jane doe newcomers who might think i would be
equally publicly critical of them (ergo, developing a toxic / neckbeard
atmosphere)
~~~
narwhaledu.com, educational robots <http://gfycat.com/ExcitableLeanAkitainu>
[[<(._.)>]] my personal blog <http://www.orangenarwhals.com>,
orangenarwhals
arvados.org (open source software for provenance, reproducing, and scaling
your analyses)
On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 8:11 AM, Wouter Tebbens <wouter at freeknowledge.eu>
wrote:
> Hi Nancy,
>
> On 03/20/2015 12:48 PM, Nancy Ouyang wrote:
> > 1) Hmph, well I'm kind of an optimistic person, so I'll reach out to rms
> > anyway.
> you should, but don't expect him to embrace the open source hardware
> term ;-)
>
> > 2) I respect rms for his contributions to the related but distinct free
> > software movement that inspires oshw, but i am absolutely going to
> > criticize him for not doing his research when he is branching out to
> > another field (albeit one inspired by his work).
> of course, that's great to point out any failures in his article
>
> [cut]
>
> > Ideally, it'd be tailored to the person, since people interpret things
> > depending on their own life stories and their various levels of
> > self-confidence, and there are absolute thresholds, like it's never okay
> > to send someone death or rape threats, and it's generally bad to
> > criticize a person's character instead of his actions. But I am
> > 99.999999% sure rms is not going to end up in tears because some no-name
> > person (me) called him a crank or a jerk (which, admittedly, is not Best
> > Practices, but sometimes happens when I feel particularly batpoop angry
> > and aggressive) and especially not that I told him to show he did his
> > research.
> calling somebody names isn't generally a good thing, and doesn't show
> much respect, which you said to hold for him under 1) ;-)
>
> > 3) Actually, since rms uses the term "we" in the article, maybe we need
> > to reach out to FSF in addition to Wired. Does OSHWA talk to FSF?
>
> > 4) p.s. err, wouter & folks, i'd prefer if you stopped using the vague
> > 'some' and just called me out if that's what you intended... personally,
> > i'm not going to hate you for calling me out, but it's hard to respond
> > to vaguely directed criticism
> You took it personally, so I answer you personally in this mail.
>
> But for the rest of it, please don't take it personally, I value your
> and others' contributions to this list! And I wouldn't want to loose our
> collective energy and precious time in personal discussions.
>
> best regards,
>
> Wouter
>
> >
> >
> > ~~~
> > narwhaledu.com <http://narwhaledu.com>, educational robots
> > <http://gfycat.com/ExcitableLeanAkitainu> [[<(._.)>]] my personal blog
> > <http://www.orangenarwhals.com>, orangenarwhals
> > arvados.org <http://arvados.org> (open source software for provenance,
> > reproducing, and scaling your analyses)
> >
> > On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 6:38 AM, Wouter Tebbens <wouter at freeknowledge.eu
> > <mailto:wouter at freeknowledge.eu>> wrote:
> >
> >
> > On 03/19/2015 06:12 PM, Matt Maier wrote:
> > > They're giving him airtime because he's Richard Stallman
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman
> > >
> > > He started GNU, the concept of copyleft, and the Free Software
> > > Foundation.
> > Exactly, for those great contributions he merits a little more
> > respectful treatment than some give him on this list.
> >
> > > He talks a lot about the distinction between free software
> > > and open source software, and his argument that free software is a
> moral
> > > imperative. Every now and then people ask him to extend his
> argument to
> > > hardware and this article is interesting because it looks like his
> > > perspective has evolved a bit.
> > We don't need to exactly agree with RMS's view and way of putting
> > things, but it sure does help to keep clear where the open movement
> > comes from, and that from an outside perspective, be it free/libre or
> > open, we all advocate for commons-based peer produced forms of
> > knowledge, in our case of hardware designs. That's our shared vision,
> > and even if we can dispute about it, Richard is part of that vision,
> for
> > many many years already.
> >
> > Of course the morale/ethics perspective is harder to accept for many,
> > and focusing on the pragmatic side of having designs that allow
> people
> > to use, make, modify, distribute and sell is very valuable as well,
> and
> > more easily accepted in general. At the end, maybe it is two sides of
> > the same coin.
> >
> > But I think it is very valuable that we have people like Richard
> > insisting on the ethical side. At the end adoption in part depends on
> > people valuing the ethical in combination with the pragmatical. Take
> > renewable energy, early adopters mainly cared about a sustainable
> > future, even if that would cost them money and time to solve
> > impracticalities (that was for ethical reasons mainly). Now it is
> going
> > mainstream and people adopt it (also) for economic reasons
> > (pragmatical).
> > >
> > > It seems unlikely that he'd reach out to the open source hardware
> > > community because he doesn't think open source hardware is really
> > > relevant to what he's doing (free software).
> > Richard wasn't happy when people rebranded Free Software into Open
> > Source Software and has fought about this for years. He will always
> take
> > the opportunity to clarify why he disagrees with the term "open
> source"
> > and why he values "freedom" as defining criterion. For many people
> new
> > to this discussion, that provides insights. For others who already
> have
> > heard it, it may be tiring. But take him for who he is and don't try
> to
> > convince him of adopting the OSHW term, that won't work ;-)
> >
> > best,
> >
> > Wouter
> > >
> > > On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 9:52 AM, Nancy Ouyang <
> nancy.ouyang at gmail.com <mailto:nancy.ouyang at gmail.com>
> > > <mailto:nancy.ouyang at gmail.com <mailto:nancy.ouyang at gmail.com>>>
> wrote:
> > >
> > > Why... why is WIRED giving airtime to this rms crank who can't
> even
> > > be bothered to reach out to the entire open source hardware
> > > community on this list (prior art, please) or mention the hard
> work
> > > done by OSHWA / Alicia Gibbs / other folks?
> > >
> > > --Nancy, semi-seriously, I realize rms is a Big Deal, but
> really?
> > > Wired is going to promulgate rms on this "free hardware" term
> when
> > > we've already standardized around open source hardware? I hope
> at
> > > least this wasn't published in the print magazine, or else I'm
> going
> > > to start picking a fight with rms and that's going to be a
> drastic
> > > waste of everyone's time, lol.
> > >
> > >
> > >
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