Perhaps, though what Stallman has done is far more insulting than I could ever bring myself to be. de Icaza has been and by all indications will continue to be a worthwhile and productive contributor to the free software world, and to repay that by stating that he is a traitor is unspeakably insulting, not to mention embarrassing to the free software community as a whole.

That said, your point is well-received. I do not like ad hominem attacks, and I probably could have found a better way to say some of the things that I said in my post. I do not regret my words, despite them being the result of a white-hot lividity; it is throughly angering and disheartening that a person who has been an instrumental key figure in giving the world the freedom of free software could turn around and say/do something which flies in the face of all the good that has been done. It is not only counterproductive, it is wrong on a fundamental level. It would be no worse for Stallman to announce that the BSD operating system family is to be condemned because too much freedom makes a system not free enough.

As far as the cornerstones of freedom are concerned, I cannot cite you a source. This has been a long-standing belief of mine. I tend to think a great deal about freedom and its associated costs—of course we all know that freedom itself is not free, it comes with great cost. One of the costs freedom has is that we must seek to become less ignorant than we already are, and we must use our gained knowledge to be able to make decisions about the direction that we go in the future. If we do not do the former, we cannot do the latter, and thus we cannot truly be free. Of course, there are many more factors to what freedom is than these. But I cannot think of any aspect of freedom that does not first come without knowledge and its subsequent application.

A simplistic example: Two otherwise unrelated individuals are born to “poor” families. One decides that (s)he does not wish to pursue an education and accept whatever comes his/her way; the other refuses to accept this situation which has been handed to him/her by default, and seeks to improve the situation itself. Did the former really exercise freedom? Yes, to a limited degree. But the former also has restricted from him- or herself the freedom to make many choices that the latter individual opened up by deciding to become educated and attempt to beat the situation passed down to both of them.

The latter individual may never become rich or “successful”, but that is okay. We all know that there are few if any guarantees in this life. Certainly, however, we cannot ever make it to the place we want in life, nor get what we want out of it, if we do not first make the choice to become educated (even if self-taught!) and be able to go from there to use that education to avail ourselves of better choices. So, it seems logical to me to describe both education and choice as cornerstones of freedom, because they serve perhaps the most significant roles in the process of freedom’s discovery and use. They of course also carry with them a significant cost, one that many would rather ignore for various reasons. Many would rather say “I am not free; I am what life has permitted me to be,” and blame circumstance or some other irrational thing for why they have gone nowhere—and not seek out the knowledge or give a commitment to changing it. “Gee, it would be nice,” some would say, “to be able to have a better life.” Of course it would be nice, and this is precisely why some people are willing to pay the cost to gain the freedom and ability to exercise it to get to where they want.

Of course, it is a matter of priorities, and I digress. I have—and do—spend a lot of time thinking about freedom. Both in general and as it pertains to the world of computing. It is among the most important of topics to me for (I think) somewhat apparent reason.

Thanks for the comments!

@Lefty: I won’t let Stallman drive me away from calling what I do “free software”, because that is what it is that I do. I don’t accept his extremist agenda, though. He’s become something of an insane old man. I can’t accept someone who’s ideals have morphed to include “pushing free software at proprietary software shops” as treacherous behavior.

@Matt: I said that he has “become something of an insane old man,” not “Stallman is an insane old man.” Methinks you do need to practice your attention to detail a bit more than you do already. His behavior and condemnation of a person who has done, is doing, and continues to do a large amount of excellent work for our community certainly calls Stallman’s thought processes into question, because they do not align with the ideas of freedom that he is so proud to claim.

It seems that he has become more about where the software comes from than what freedoms the software divests to its users. That sort of behavior, while proof positive of neither insanity nor senility, certainly does nothing to help the cause, and it makes him look like he doesn’t care about his original goals anymore. Maybe because he’s achieved so much, he figures that he can get away with it. Do you really think that calling someone a traitor is not a form of proverbial damnation? If we are to follow Stallman’s idea that de Icaza is indeed a traitor, then yes, Stallman might as well have said, “I damn thee to the sewers from whence comes proprietary software,” and I suppose that the followers of St. Ignucius would accept that and move on.

I do not, and for his wretched treatment of a respectable advocate of freedom, both in choice and in software, what I said, whilst emotional, was, and is merited, and I stand behind it. Such behavior is intolerable, unacceptable, and frankly, counterproductive if his real goals match his stated ones of freedom.

Now, unless you’d like to formally accuse Martin Owens of being a liar about the response he received from Stallman in reply to his own question (which, by the way, does not belong here–I’d suggest you take that up with Owens directly; if you want to make accusations, be man enough to do it to the alleged directly), there is nothing more to discuss on this issue. Certainly not with you. Baseless accusations are unwelcome here, and I highly frown upon defense of reprehensible behavior, as well.