Title text: The heartfelt tune it plays is CC licensed, and you can get it from my seed on JoinDiaspora.net whenever that project gets going.
Transcript
2003:
[Cueball approaches a bearded fellow.]
Cueball: Did you get my essay?
Bearded Fellow: Yeah, it was good! But it was a .doc; You should really use a more open-
Cueball: Give it a rest already. Maybe we just want to live our lives and use software that works, not get wrapped up in your stupid nerd turf wars.
Bearded Fellow: I just want people to care about the infrastructures we’re building and who-
Cueball: No, you just want to feel smugly superior. You have no sense of perspective and are probably autistic.
2010:
Cueball: Oh my God! We handed control of our social world to Facebook and they’re DOING EVIL STUFF!
Bearded Fellow: Do you see this?
[Inset, the bearded fellow rubs his index and middle fingers against his thumb.]
Bearded Fellow: It’s the world’s tiniest open-source violin.
One thing I’ve learned over the years: the scruffier looking the IT guy, the more they should be listened to.
They don’t bear the moniker “greybeard” without reason
I thought that was because they shout a lot.
Richard Stallman is rarely wrong
Except when he eats something from his foot.
Or talks about paedophilia…
RMS on June 28th, 2003
RMS on June 5th, 2006
RMS on Jan 4th, 2013
That said, when he’s talking about the potential dangers of proprietary software, he’s usually bang on.
I went from “he was probably defending pedophiles not acting on it” to “HOLY FUCK” real fast…
Taking RMS’s word as law outside of dev space is like asking Michael Jordan to solve all the geopolitical conflicts in the middle east. Why the fuck would you think he knows anything about that?
…I mean if Michael Jordon went around saying “we should just like, carpet bomb the place and take over” I think people would also be pretty horrified
We’re just too pedestrian to get it.