Anyone who knows Stallman knows that terminology is very important to him.
Someone published a petition against excessive copyright enforcement policies. When explaining their motivation, they wrote "It's not because we're crypto-pirates looking to steal digital content." Stallman pointed out that "That's what happens when you use the enemy's propaganda terms: you start making foolish concessions." The petition's authors were talking about sharing music, so why did they call this "stealing"? And why did they call people who do this "pirates"? They might have intended these words to be ironic, but the target of the petition are politicians who really do believe that sharing is stealing, so those words won't be interpreted as irony. Instead, the petition's authors validated and agreed with these terms. They gratuitously conceded that sharers are thieves. Their message was:
So, what's the point in writing
There was no need to make this concession. It's probably doesn't even represent their opinion, but they said it anyway. They just didn't think about what their words meant.
In 2003, I travelled a few thousand miles to go to FSF's first annual membership meeting. Richard gave a presentation. I had been thinking for quite some time about what I'd like to ask him, and I found a question that I thought was important and for which the answer would help me get involved in the free software movement: What books do you recommend?
He flustered as if it was a silly question, and then replied "1984" as if joking. He obviously wasn't completely joking, it's a good book, but since then I've kept my eyes open for better recommendations from him.
February 2010, at the end of a discussion on emacs-devel about why "ecosystem" shouldn't be used to describe society, he said "I recommend people read Lakoff's articles about how the words used to frame issues affect politics."
He must be talking about it's George Lakoff, who wrote a small book on Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate.
In his political notes, Richard often links to articles by Uri Avnery.
In an interview, Richard says that the science fiction books of Greg Egan are all very good or great. Richard very rarely gives individuals such general praise, so that's notable. On the subject of science fiction, I seem to remember Richard saying it might help foster idealism because it makes the reader think of the future - how it could be better or worse. I'll have to try to find a link to where he said that.
These are just notes on what I'll ask him next time we meet - preferably in a recorded interview.
See quotes.html#rms.
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