linux – things twice

St Stallman: A Hero of the Highest Order

“I’m not God — I’m just a saint.”

Richard M. Stallman

The Phoenix > News Features > Tilting at Windows

Richard M. Stallman is a legendary figure without whom the world would have looked very different, and one of those few whose initials — RMS — is a concept, on a par with JFK and LBJ.

Within certain circles, that is. Outside of those circles, most people have never heard of him.

Back in the 70s he was a super-hacker at MIT, deeply involved in and committed to the creative movement where program code was shared freely, making everyone involved better coders thanks to the community.

In the 80s, when the commercial potential in computers and software started to rear its ugly head and most of the good hackers left for commercial companies, RMS stayed true to his ideals and laid the foundation of GNU (a recursive acronym for “GNU not Unix”) which later merged with the Linux kernel.

Bruce Perens, another open source legend, is cited in the article as claiming that RMS’s contribution to the world of software is worth $1 trillion. (Which tools or formulae he uses to determine the monetary value of something which is patently and fundamentally free, eludes me, but at least it makes for a good headline.)

Anyway, RMS happens to be one of my idols, but enough proselytizing. If you want to know more, read the article or go to his site, stallman.org.

What I wanted to comment upon in the lengthy profile was this quote:

“What we need,” he says, “is enough people not to be outright cowards, and we can win.”

“We can win”

Now, RMS may have an IQ “up in the range where trying to measure it starts to get silly,” in the words of Eric J Raymond, yet another colourful open source profile. But this is where Stallman is wrong. “We can win”. Yeah, sure.

He is wrong, but I don’t hold that against him. There are different ways of being wrong, and RMS is wrong in the right way.

It’s quite simple: if “we” are the people who fight the influence of corporate power and who acknowledge and resist the drive towards that power: the power over people and people’s minds that comes from controlling the economy, then “we” can never win as long as software has any importance in and influence over people’s lives.

There are plenty of people runnning around and saying “We can win”, sometimes with the addition “…, if only [we had more people | someone would give us what we deserve | the government wasn’t such a bunch of corrupt idiots | etc.]”; sometimes with the implied meaning “We demand to win!” — and sometimes without any ostensible substance at all.

There have also been apocalyptic prophets around, foreboding the collapse of the system, for as long as there has been a system that can collapse; and moralists calling for change and repentance for as long as there has been anything to change and repent. Lunatics. The ones who end up in the margins of Monty Python movies. The ones who have no message except doomsday and moralism, and (as “we” tend to suspect) who take pleasure in pricking our bad conscience once in a while.

Stallman is different, and that’s why he can be completely wrong and it’s still quite ok.

The Harry Potter boycott

First of all: he knows what he’s talking about, he is intelligent and well-argued. Even when he is pushing ridiculous cases it is virtually impossible not to agree with him.

His boycott of J. K. Rowling is a case in point: by mistake, fourteen copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince had been sold from a Canadian supermarket a couple of days before the official release date. Oh horror! Rowling and her publishers used the copyright and trade secret legislation as a lever and manged to have a court order issued which prevented these fourteen buyers from reading their own books.

One lawyer stated: “There is no human right to read.” That is a statement with some heavy ramifications, some of them pointing quite directly to nazi-Germany, but even there, the limitations imposed on the public had to do with which books it was legal to acquire, not with limiting your right to read a book it was legal to own. Stallman drily comments:

Any official, judge, or legislator who is not outraged by this position does not deserve to be in office.

And he promptly launched his own Harry Potter boycott, urging others to do the same. He would only lift the boycott under certain conditions:

On what conditions should we end this boycott? Forgiveness is called for when someone recognizes what he did wrong and acts accordingly. I think we should forgive Rowling (or her publisher) when she (it)

Recognizes that this injunction was wrong.

Promises not to do anything like it again.

Calls for changes in the law so that nobody can get such an injunction again, and to establish a clear and firm “human right to read”.

I’m sure Rowling and her publisher have spent many sleepless nights worrying about the consequences of this boycott. They must also certainly have felt it as a blow to their wallets. Yeah, right.

The boycott appears as slightly ridiculous — not because Stallman is wrong regarding the substance of his argument, but because it is presented in all earnesty.

But that’s also where it transcends the ridiculous and turns back on the reader (this reader in any case): the initial giggle over little David taking on J.K. Goliath Inc. easily turns into hysteric laughter (literarily speaking; don’t worry — I’m not turning mad), because it is so right and yet so impossible.

It is hysterical (literally, but again literarily) to pick a fight with the big corporations, because of course money doesn’t talk, it swears, buys presidencies, twists the law, and protects itself. But Stallman’s pathetic little boycott highlights the difference between lawful and just, between power and right.

Not utopism

And the saint is he who disregards power because he is right. Who can look the forces of the secular machinery squarely in the eye, because he has principles of a higher order to fall back on.

This brings us to the second reason why he is wrong in an acceptable way: he has integrity and commitment — he actually lives by his own principles, and thereby, in his own weird way, demonstrates that it is possible. He doesn’t have a mobile phone; he doesn’t browse the web but downloads the html pages with wget and reads them in his email reader; his only computer is an uncomfortably small Chinese netbook, not because it’s best, but because it can run with a non-proprietary BIOS.

To most of us, his way seems exaggerated and crazy, like a dinosaur from the paleolithic eighties. Some of the open source prophets even hold that his stubborn inflexible attitude is detrimental to the cause. These are the ones who’d like to see open source as a strong contender in the marketplace rather than as a beacon for freedom.

Stallman’s position is the latter, and nobody upholds it more strongly than him.

What about us cowards?

Why aren’t we all like St Stallman, then? Surely, that would make the world a better place to be, if we weren’t such outright cowards? Better not only for those we help, but in the end for ourselves as well, since we win the aggregated help of the rest of humankind (in addition to the warm glow of complacency, should we harbour such emotions in such a wonderful world).

It has to do with many things, but cowardice is not one of them.

It has more to do with the Prisoners’s Dilemma: the simplified description, in the form of a game-theoretical scenario, of situations where acting egoistically will always be the most favourable option, regardless of what the other “players” do, even though it would be more favourable for all if everybody acted un-egoistically.

Pollution, global warming, equal distribution of goods — these are all real-world examples of the prisoners’ dilemma: for me (and you) the sacrifices involved in living an eco-friendly life through and through are high, and the benefits will only come once everyone changes their lifestyle — which is to say: never, since the sacrifices involved … etc.

Now that we’re in the religious sphere, here’s what my wife, who is a church minister, once said on the matter, in a sermon on one of the texts where the crowds in Galilee persecuted Jesus in their boats to hear some Truth:

Here’s a truth: “Every two seconds, a child dies of hunger.” And we can’t hear it, because if we really could hear the full extent of that statement, we would all have rushed out of our churches, gotten into our boats and rowed, not in order to persecute God as we’d like him to be, but to live by the words that God’s will is not done with bibles and good intentions, but with bread and by creating a society where nobody is left in the ditch. But we can’t.

We can’t, because when moral obligation, the quest for redemption, or just an overwhelming empathy enters the prisoners’ dilemma, there is a chance that insanity lies just around the corner.

What “we” really need

So, not wanting to give up the benefits of a better proprietary program in favour of a less functional free one is not cowardice. It’s the other way around: hacking away on a sub-par computer in impractical ways because one’s principles dictates it, is to show courage — but a courage verging on stupidity because it’s a lost battle. It’s the stuff epic legends are made of, but in the real world David very rarely beats Goliath.

And yet, “we”– the rest of us who aren’t saints — probably need them, not for their actions but for the stories. We need those epic legends: the Joan of Arc, the bunch who went out Saving Private Ryan, the loners and lunatics who go to battle against all odds and hopes.

What “we” need is someone who is willing (or compelled; for us it doesn’t matter which) to fight that fight, even though we know that it can’t be won. We know that — they hopefully know it too, although it’s hard to tell, because part of the fight is to believe in victory.

We need someone to remind us that even though it is not human-kindly possible for all of us to do what’s best, it is possible, at least for one of those human beings who make up society, to act in such a way. One is enough to make a difference if that one is everyone.

Or to put in differently: we need the actions that define and move the outer limits of the discourse: that define what it is possible to do or think. That’s what Jesus, Joan of Arc and RMS have in common.

The fallen saint

At the end of the article, Stallman is quoted with a modified version of his statement:

“If we fight,” he says, “at least there’s a chance we might win.”

Perhaps he isn’t a saint after all, just a windmill-fighting madman. But that’s fine, I can live with it. Quijote is a myth-making character too.

“The Learned Helplessness of Windows”

LinuxPlanet – Opinions – The Learned Helplessness of Windows – Where are the Pliers?

I don’t think I’ve written a single dedicated pro-linux post on this blog so far — not because I don’t think that way, but because I haven’t really had anything I have needed to communicate about, beyond the obvious.

This article from LinuxPlanet, however (in two parts 1 | 2), is the best presentation I’ve seen in a long time of the fundamental problem with Windows.

The post is “based on a true story”, as it’s called: Woman has a jammed garage door. Friendly Neighbour comes by and offers to fix it if she gets him a pair of pliers.

She told me her husband was not at all mechanically talented and she was even worse. Her husband had told her they were probably safer with no tools in the house than running the risk of trying to fix something themselves.

Best not keep any tools around. Better call the maitainance guy and pay him a couple of hundred instead. Better safe than sorry. No pliers in the house.

I don’t know what is worst in this story: the extra expense of having to pay someone who charges indecent amounts of money every time something needs to be done, or the self-imposed mutilation, the “Learned helplessness”?

What made me react to this particular article, was the level on which it operates: pliers. Pliers (image by Dori, courtesy of Linux Planet It’s not about operating a steam drill or a chainsaw. Sure enough: Linux provides you with tools to bring down the house if you want to, but as an average user you’re not even likely to know that you have them, and you don’t have to use them (unlike what the persistent myth about Linux keeps telling us). But a pair of pliers, a screwdriver, a hammer…

The post reminded me of a column I read, I think in the now defunct Tux Magazine. The author had been asked to name the main reason why he used Linux. Sitting down and thinking it through, he came to the realization that it was not because it’s free, even though that’s nice; not because of the politico-ideological aspects of open source as an instance of freedom of speech; not necessarily because it’s always better than Windows or Mac (which it sometimes is, sometimes not); but because he had control of his computer.

My sentiments exactly. I spend several hours a day in front of this beast. I interact with the world around me through it — it’s an extension of my body. The best thing about linux is that it gives me the possibility to control it on a day-to-day basis, and the tools to do so. If I break a leg, I’m glad there are doctors around to take care of that. But thankfully I don’t have to go to the barbershop if I need a shave, or call a carpenter if I want to hang some pictures on the wall.

I’ve got pliers, and I know how to use them.

One Laptop Per Child

When I first heard about the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project I thought, “Dream on. Nice idea, perhaps a tad imperialistic despite its good intentions, but more than a tad unrealistic — it’ll never happen anyway, so not to worry. Nice dream, but dream on.”

The idea was this: a laptop, designed to be simple, rough, directly usable, under any conditions, even in areas with no reliable power supply, and so cheap that it could be sold in underdeveloped countries and finally let them in on the digital revolution, and powerful enough not to be simply a toy. The precondition was that enough orders were placed, so initially 1 million laptops per order (i.e. per country) was the minimum. This, in turn, would bring the price down to $100. So for a measly sum of 100 million dollars — hardly a week’s worth of mortgage to banks in the West, I assume — a whole population would be given all the chances that a computer can offer.

And there was more: the mesh networking on which the laptop is based allows any laptop to be connected to any other OLPC laptop in the area. So with just one laptop connected in, say, Zaire, the whole million of other OLPC kids would be online, in a gigantic, organic network, covering and connecting countries, continents, heck, the whole world.

OK. Nice dream, but dream on.

Or so I thought. But with increasing, incredulous astonishment I’ve gradually been led to believe that it may not be just a dream.

Every time I read a report on the progress of the project or a review of the product, my hair rises in excitement. Literally. I think “This is too good to be true.” “This is mind-boggling in its implications, it couldn’t happen, but it does!”

Several countries have already signed up. The fourth beta version has brought the speed up (which was a major objection in earlier versions). Most reviews are overwhelmingly positive (including the one written by someone in the target group, a 12-year-old).

The laptop will not cost $100 but $200, but what they have managed to put together at that price seems incredible. But true. Up to twelve hours battery life, supplemented by a mechanical generator and a solar cell panel; the mesh network; a case which must appeal to kids (perhaps even to some adults); a sound selection of Linux-based software; a one-button peek into the internals of software where the user can make changes directly (and restore them if something goes wrong) in order to stimulate the understanding of the internals of computers — I want a laptop like that! And had I been living in North America I could have, through the Give 1 Get 1 program.

What’s most fantastic about the OLPC program is that . . .

No, wait — what’s most fantastic is probably that millions of children in underdeveloped countries will be given a chance they didn’t have before, opening up opportunities to get a better life.

But other than that, what’s most fantastic about the OLPC program is that it shows that it is still possible to be visionary, to get a wildly unrealistic idea and follow it through to realization, and — if it works out like it seems to — to change the world for the better.

KDE help — give me a break!

I use KDE, the most usable Linux desktop environment. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I love KDE, but I couldn’t live without it either.

Except on those certain days, that is. When I want to look up something in a help file. This is one of those days.

Frankly, and no offense, but the help system in KDE is disastrous. I should have known by now — I’ve virtually stopped even considering pressing Shift-F1 a long time ago. Mainly because it annoys me no end.

(Edit: In fact, it’s so long ago that I’d forgotten it’s ctrl-F1. Shift happens, as they say.)

I will pass lightly over the fact that many programs don’t have proper documentation. Disclaimers such as “under construction”, “this part needs to be written. Volunteers?” and the like — I don’t mind them, it’s an honest matter that time is scarcer than ideas.

I will also merely mention that to find things in the “Khelpcenter” can be an ordeal in itself. Loads of categories to search through, some of which are ordered alphabetically. And I’ve never been able to search the help files en bloc. There is an option to build a search index of all the application manuals, but every time I’ve tried it, on several different systems (Ubuntu, Mepis, Archlinux, etc.) and with many different versions of KDE, I always get the error message “htdig failed”. A google search reveals that I’m not the only one, but it’s been unresolved for so long that I’ve stopped considering it.

But even when it’s there, it’s usually less than useful. They must have some kind of help file template at KDE central derived from a statistical analysis of most frequent entries in Windows help files. Pages upon pages of things like “File -> Open… (Ctrl+O): Search the file system to open an existing file.” OK, I suppose it needs to be there, but surely there are more important things to spend time and diskspace on?

This mass of trivialities becomes close to ridiculous when compared to the advice one can get elsewhere. I once had the pleasure of asking a non-trivial question at the mailing list of one of the KDE apps. I was greeted with the traditional RTFM (Read The F.\{3,6} Manual), and a list of eleven pointers to places in the manual where my question was answered. Only it wasn’t. Some of them were references to other, developer oriented KDE applications which could be used to accomplish the task in a roundabout manner, others were of the general, non-informative kind above, and others again were of the kind “write a script to do it”. (The whole answer — and the ensuing discussion — was soaked with sulky consternation that I had suggested a Windows program did this better and easier. Proof of point, if I ever needed one.)

In other words: what’s lacking is the middle ground between trivialities and programmers’ tricks. Here, there is something to learn from vim, the uber-geek editor par excellence. I once tried to make a syntax highlighting scheme for Kate, the advanced KDE editor. Nothing fancy, I just wanted to be able to start a line with “;” and make them appear in red to use them as headers in text files. I managed in the end, but it took me forever and a while. Compare it with vim, where it’s done with a couple of lines of easily understandable code.

That‘s user-friendly: it enables me to do what I want to and assumes I am smart enough to understand it, as long as I’m willing to follow some links in the manual and read some very precise but clear instructions. An average KDE help file doesn’t: it tells me what I already know (that I can open a file with ctrl-O), and some things I can’t really use (that this can be done if I’m a programmer), but I don’t get the steps in between, which is where most “users” will be, after all.

Phew. I just needed to get that off my chest. Feel much better now. Think I’ll go and make a syntax colouring scheme.