[Discuss] Free Hardware

Matt Maier blueback09 at gmail.com
Fri Mar 20 14:19:37 UTC 2015


On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 5:21 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.
>

It shouldn't take effort to address people in a baseline respectful way. If
you stick to ideas instead of personal value it's easy to bypass the person
and just hash out the ideas. That way you save yourself the effort of
coming up with rationalizations for why it's okay to relieve your tension
by calling strangers names or where exactly the dividing line is between
someone it's "okay" to abuse and someone who's "not ready" for it yet. Just
because it's the most intuitive way to express yourself doesn't mean it's a
good idea.

Also...Stallman's insistence that people should use free licenses for
software (and now for hardware designs) is not a bad thing. There isn't all
that much difference between free and open source licenses. What does it
matter if he just states "use free licenses" and then moves on with his
life? The whole article, including byline and license, was less than 1400
words. No, he didn't mention OSHWA but he also didn't mention the FSF or
CERN. A description of the community, or a history lesson, wasn't the point
of the (short) article.

If you want to exert energy on something it's better to be agreeable and
constructive. Instead of arguing that it's okay to call someone names and
attack them for not writing about what you want to read about do the
opposite. Stallman wrote a short article about a specific topic. If you're
going to contact him, why not ask him questions that extend the topic in
another direction and write your own article for your community? For all
you know he'll be happy to let you use his answers in your article and you
might even like his answers. Stranger things have happened.


>
> 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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>> >     >
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