Re: Steven P. Jobs 1955-2011: Here's to the crazy one who inspired us all...

[Richard Stallman]

    As the founder of the GNU project and the Free Software
    Foundation, when you make comments like this in public, it
    reflects on all of us who contribute to these projects.

I stand by what I said.  It is a very important point and one
that was being denied by the orgy of praise of Jobs.

If it made you feel bad, I regret that.  But I will not keep silent
out of fear of disapproval.

    I notice that you put iTunes in the same category as the App
    Store.  Perhaps you should recall that the iTunes Music Store was
    instrumental getting the entire music industry to abandon DRM.

I wish that were true.  According to Eben Moglen, the record companies
concluded that their contract with Apple was screwing them, so they
started bypassing Apple by selling music without DRM in other places.
Only then did Apple drop DRM on music.

iTunes continues to use DRM on other kinds of media.

    What else did Steve Jobs make cool?  I can think of a few things
    that immediately come to mind:

I am not convinced those are true.  Some of these things were going
to happen in any case, and the only question was who would do them.

More fundamentally, I don't think mere technical advances are very
important compared with attacks on our freedom.  We need to focus on
those attacks.  We must not let ourselves be won over to praise
something that threatens our freedom because of something secondary.


When I die, you'll be free to write my obituary any way you like.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
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