Richard Stallman restricts speech.. he forces people to pay money to hear him. For example companies will pay him money if he comes on cruise ships to talk. Richard Stallman will not speak on cruise ships about software unless he is paid. This is restriction of speech. By charging people money for your speech, you are restricting it. In an ideal GNU Free Speech license, speech would be open and free. By open and free, I mean open and free... not free in cost, but open and free in speech. And in order for speech to be open and free in speech, it needs to not be restricted.. and what is a form of restriction?
A form of restriction is charging hefty fees to speak or consult.. which is exactly what Richard Stallman does. Instead, Richard Stallman should be recording his speech and consulting on audio tapes and allowing anyone to copy it freely.. he should not be charging money and restricting speech by holding back and only allowing certain companies to hear him speak on cruise ships.
Pay Day
The reality is that GNU software programmers want to make money some way.. so instead of restricting the source code, they restrict the speech. They charge money for their speech. Ideally, friends would not charge money for every conversation you had with them.. i.e. your best friends don't charge money. Ideal friendships don't involve exchange of money just for a discussion. But Richard Stallman charges money for discussion! Someone should start a new GNU Free Speech license that does not permit people to hold back information when asked questions. Richard Stallman holds back information and will not speak unless he is paid.. especially on cruise ships.
You see, people in the know, like myself, understand the GNU nonsense. GNU software is not free.. it is just restrictive in some other manner. If someone gives away the sources he ends up severely restricting other parts of the transaction.
Imagine you pay a software vendor $250 for shareware.. and you call them up for technical support.. You say.. "I PAID YOU 250 AND THIS SOFTWARE HAS A PROBLEM, CAN YOU HELP ME?". The technical support people say yes of course.. because after all you paid them money and they want to help you. In GNU software you download it free, but if you call up technical support they say "WE CHARGE $250 FOR CONSULTING" on cruise ships.
GNU Software can even be more prone to consulting restriction than other software. Why? Because if a GNU software author needs to put bread on the table, he cannot give away too much free consulting about the software (free speech and free conversation). Whereas if you've already paid some money for software you can hold this against the vendor. However, I will say that a lot of software comes with free consulting from mailing lists and newsgroups.. no matter how much you paid for the software.. free or not. So total cost of software can come down with GNU software still, even if the whole GNU philosophy is a bunch of nonsense. i.e. just because the GNU is broken, doesn't mean we shouldn't use free software (prefer BSD/MIT though).. because other software and other proprietary scams are just as bad or many times worse than free software. Such as Borland/CodeGear's latest nonsense about not allowing people to own the software... they must pay rent for the software. Ironically, cPanel, one of the most popular softwares that runs on Linux.. is a rental fee payment software too.
A lot of people at the end of reading this article will probably say:
but GNU software is about free speech, not cost
If that is what you are thinking right now, then you have missed my point entirely. The point of this article is exactly that! GNU software is supposed to be about free speech.. but it is not. GNU software causes the author to restrict the speech. Since the source code is free speech, the actual speech (documentation, constulting, books) is restricted and not free. Most often if someone has to put bread on the table; the GNU Speech about the software has to be restricted in some way in order to do that. It's recursively funny that GNU restricts speech on cruise ships by demanding hefty payments, when GNU was supposed to be about free speech! Hypocrisy indeed. Restrict speech, for free speech. Hey, he's only trying to make a living. Do not discuss his paycheck, that affects his bottom line. Quiet now, shush.
Don't Always Assume Source Freedom
Restricting consulting can be more unethical than restricting source code. If 96 percent of software users need consulting and help about their software, and only 4 percent care about the sources, then restricting the consulting is more unethical than restricting the source itself.
Therefore, we can not assume that it is about source code freedom only. A GNU software may be more restrictive than a shareware based software for the end user. If one restricts the consulting on the GNU software (must pay hourly fee), this can be much more unethical than if the shareware gives away unlimited consulting and only charges a one time fee for the binary.
The problem with GNU freedom is it always assumes our lives are based on purely source code freedom. The reality is 99 percent of software users care less about the molecules, atoms, and ions, and source that run their software. This is why even shareware or crippleware can be free-er from an end user's perspective than GNU software. If I whip out my credit card and pay for some shareware, and it works, and heck it even has a plugin system, then I am free to do as I need and do not require the sources. Most users do not modify sources anyway, even experienced users mostly never modify sources of the original app! At most, people write plugins for software and leave the original sources as is. Stallman would never understand this though since he lives in a little fairy world.
In some cases, the end user gets free consulting and ethical free speech included with the GNU software at no extra charge, making it just as good or better than the shareware. I am not claiming that GNU software is always worse than other software. I'm just saying that GNU freedom is a load of crock and is meaningless.. since the term freedom cannot be defined. GNU freedom defines freedom, and one cannot define freedom even if they are a God. So GNU is automatically void.
One can still hold a gun to a customer's head with GNU software and say:
If you need assistance with the software from us, you are to pay us for consulting and words that come from our mouths that are not open. We will not record this consulting for you and we will not allow you to make copies of the consulting on audio tapes.
Here is the FTP link with all the sources and no build instructions and no documentation and no help. We are unethical and force only the sources upon you.
We will not assist you if you are on a cruise ship, unless you pay us your left arm. We only go to hotels on land with McDonalds restaurants near by. Good luck.
Poor Old Stallman
In fact, I feel sorry for Richard Stallman because I know what he is trying to do with his license and I know what he is intending with it. He just isn't as smart as me.. he doesn't look in the mirror at himself and analyze what he is doing. Many people who get paid for their living will very often ignore any issue that affects their paycheck.
Don't for example expect a GNU software author to start giving away unrestricted speech and consulting and help about his software, even though GNU license should permit and demand this.. if it was ideal GNU. Don't expect that.. no.. because remember, people form their lives around their paychecks.. and if you bother someone's paycheck or you speak up about it, or you disturb their paycheck, you are in deep trouble.
I speak truth, Richard speaks nonsense. I am smarter than him. But I understand what he wanted/meant to happen with GNU about the whole free speech thing, even though it never will. According to the law of death and life.. where life requires some great forms of restriction for survival, GNU fantasy won't come true.. freedom will simply be misunderstood by people, which is exactly why GNU software is so popular. GNU software is popular because GNU software authors are simply not intelligent enough to understand the big picture.
GNU software is popular because Richard Stallman showed up. Woody Allen says 80 percent of life is just showing up. No one else did, so now we have this misleading GNU software license that no one understands, except me. The GNU software license is what I call a white lie. It is a lie, but it is not really a horrible lie.. for example if I tell you that I feel good at the age of 90, then I am telling a white lie.. but it is a good white lie because it allows me to think positive and I may live longer. So go on now, keep on telling people that GNU software is about freedom, and freedom of speech.. it is a nice white lie to live.. and it won't do you too much harm. Living the GNU white lie can be less harmful to you than looking at the truth. If you truly believe in your own bullshit, you may live longer than if you sit around worrying about the actual truth.
In case you come up with some nonsensical argument such as
consulting on cruise ships is protected intellectual property and
cannot be open. Software is different. It just is. It has to be free
whereas consulting can have hefty restrictions on it
Then you've missed the point, you are a hypocrite, and you are a complete retard. Consulting can be taped on digital audio and replicated even easier than software. An example are the open courseware university MIT courses on youtube. Cruise ships don't have policies against digital cameras and microphones during lectures (and if they were against them, then Stallman would have to find a different place to give truly free copy-able speeches). The idea that software is just different and freedom doesn't apply to consulting is nonsense. And with 3D hardware printing technology in the future, hardware should be open and free too - and then you will have nothing left to charge money for - all businesses will go broke.
See also:
Demand-Tim-Oreilly-To-Open-Source-Books
GNG is Not GNU - Free Software is a scam
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