I have been following Richard Stallman for years and, last year, I had the pleasure of getting to know him in person, at [the anniversary for the 40 years GNU] (https://www.gnu.org/gnu40/). His, by some individuals, "special character" is for me a wall that can hide many of his wonderful characteristics.
His statements for the Epstain scandal,disturbed, and rightly so, the free software community.
One of the great achievements of the women's emancipation movement, [MeeToo] (https://wikiless.org/wiki/MeToo_movement?lang=en), is his ability to invade all social areas and fields. In computer science and, to some extent, in the free software community, this was necessary, as it is a place where women are underrepresented.
When Stallman published his apology I asked my partner, Alexandra, a specialist in special education - a University graduate with two master degrees in the field, to help me understand how autistic persons perceive social rules.
I was thus informed of the difference in the thinking and social interaction of autistic individuals1. Integrating Stallman's comment to the above sphere, I can understand the different context and personally covered by his apology.
However, without these "special characteristics" I doubt that he could see what no other person saw in his day - the growing influence of large companies on computer science and the gradual restrictions in the freedom of both programmers and users through the enforcement of [non free software] (https://www.gnu.org/priority/priority.html).
It was this awareness that led him to build the free [GNU operating system] (https://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html), although he never, until now, got the corresponding recognition. But without Stallman, the GNU/Linux system would never exist and our only meaningful option would be between Windows and MacOS2. While all the gold first batch of MIT hackers worked in the major IT companies, he chose to devote his life to software freedom.
Big tech never forgave him about this choice. So Stallman's comment gave the opportunity to a number of infernal friends of the free software movement and Stallman himself, to launch an unprecedented attack. Stallman was always very radical about IT companies, so the opportunity for them did not go to waste.
Since 1998, in order to depolitize the free software movement, the "commercially friendly" "[open source] (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html)" was established as a competing term to free software.
In fact, it was one of these companies, RedHat (subdivision of IBM), [sponsors of the term open source] (https://opensource.com/), which moved externally aggressively both against Stallman and the Free Software Foundation. RedHat even took the [extremely controversial and dangerous decision] (https://lwn.net/Articles/935592), to forbid free access to the source code to everyone, thus undermining even the minimum requirements that the Open Source camp had established.
Technology is no longer in the age of innocence, nor in the 1980s, nor the flourishing of GNU/Linux at the beginning of the century. The world has become agressive and technology plays a huge role in this. The messages are [already known] (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-23123964) for years.
Today the aggressive commercial charge of "artificial intelligence" creates [tremendous concerns about ethical issues that arise] (https://totsipaki.net/gitweb/published.git/tree/refs/heads/master:/AI_MythvsReallity). As far as I am concerned and as long as my knowledge of this particular man is valid, in this ungrateful world, we need more like Richard Stallman.
Notes:
Extremely interesting about Stallman's biography is the book "Free as in Freedom (2.0): Richard Stallman and the Free Software Revolution".
Also, it is worth hearing:
Stallman's interview about the issue of reproduction, personally I found the story with his mother very touching.
the [short quote] ( https://totsipaki.net/bepasty/ VpXuUFHe) about the differences between "better" and free software.
his speech about what free software is.
- Apart from me and, even from the professionals of the special education, the most responsible for to explain their understanding of social rules, are the autistic individuals and activists themselves, after all, struggle with vigor for their voices to be heard.↩
- Perhaps even "BSD's". My reservations about them, however, are not the subject of this article.↩