<story><title>Reasons Not to Use Google (2015)</title><url>https://stallman.org/google.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>xook</author><text>Obvious privacy issues aside, Stallman has always come off - to me - as someone who doesn&amp;#x27;t really see the bigger picture. I thank him for taking a stance against corruption, but there is a line between practical and impractical.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know him personally, but his being top wheel of the FSF has skewed his reality. I cannot remember where I heard it, but I believe he is quoted (heavily paraphrasing here) along the lines of, &amp;quot;I may be fighting a losing fight, but it&amp;#x27;s all I can do, and I won&amp;#x27;t stop until I&amp;#x27;m dead.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Practicality is the ultimate deciding factor at its core. Practicality decides whether you use a GPL-based license or the Apache license. Practicality decides whether you choose to avoid a website because of non-free Javascript. Practicality decides whether you can eat that muffin and switch gears on the road, and so on. It is a bit like using secure services and utilizing OpSec. Where do &lt;i&gt;you&lt;/i&gt; draw the line between convenience and security? Where does it stop being practical and where does it matter to stick to a principle?&lt;p&gt;Maybe he is just aging, and his brain is in an infinite loop. As I said, I do not know the man myself. But not having a clear focus of how life is for a majority of people can be a huge factor.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kristopolous</author><text>No need to be polite. Extremist weirdos are behind essentially all important, groundbreaking, awesome things.&lt;p&gt;A well mannered &amp;quot;normal&amp;quot; person would have never written the GPL and would have tolerated software that didn&amp;#x27;t match their politics.&lt;p&gt;The fringe provides a mandatory function in  steering the cultural ship.&lt;p&gt;Early advocates for things like minimum wages or child labor laws were Molotov cocktail throwing anarchists. Early women suffragists were equally way out there - even by quite permissive modern standards.&lt;p&gt;Subversives are necessary in order to subvert and often make the world a better place.</text></comment>
<story><title>Reasons Not to Use Google (2015)</title><url>https://stallman.org/google.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>xook</author><text>Obvious privacy issues aside, Stallman has always come off - to me - as someone who doesn&amp;#x27;t really see the bigger picture. I thank him for taking a stance against corruption, but there is a line between practical and impractical.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know him personally, but his being top wheel of the FSF has skewed his reality. I cannot remember where I heard it, but I believe he is quoted (heavily paraphrasing here) along the lines of, &amp;quot;I may be fighting a losing fight, but it&amp;#x27;s all I can do, and I won&amp;#x27;t stop until I&amp;#x27;m dead.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Practicality is the ultimate deciding factor at its core. Practicality decides whether you use a GPL-based license or the Apache license. Practicality decides whether you choose to avoid a website because of non-free Javascript. Practicality decides whether you can eat that muffin and switch gears on the road, and so on. It is a bit like using secure services and utilizing OpSec. Where do &lt;i&gt;you&lt;/i&gt; draw the line between convenience and security? Where does it stop being practical and where does it matter to stick to a principle?&lt;p&gt;Maybe he is just aging, and his brain is in an infinite loop. As I said, I do not know the man myself. But not having a clear focus of how life is for a majority of people can be a huge factor.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fattire</author><text>In a way, &amp;quot;practicality&amp;quot; is the place you arrive at only after considering more extreme, principled points of view.  So if his role is to present one philosophical approach to technology, and you decide it&amp;#x27;s too extreme, at least it was there to make wherever you arrived informed and well-considered.&lt;p&gt;And certainly for many-- even if they don&amp;#x27;t embrace his positions with full-throated absolutism, maybe they&amp;#x27;ll be floating a little more in the direction of his idealisim than it would have without him having him there.  And if so, and clearly his principled influence has been influential (and considerably so) for decades, that&amp;#x27;s a good thing, right?&lt;p&gt;What would the would look like without his constant &amp;quot;impractical&amp;quot; point of view...?  Very different, and more scary, I think.</text></comment>