[Discuss] Free Hardware

Nancy Ouyang nancy.ouyang at gmail.com
Fri Mar 20 12:26:48 UTC 2015 

oh oops
>
> ! And I wouldn't want to loose our
> collective energy and precious time in personal discussions.
>
5) sadly turns out building a community invariably involves a lot of energy
and time spent on personal discussions :)

~~~
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 8:21 AM, Nancy Ouyang <nancy.ouyang at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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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