Don't forget Stallman saw the destruction of his beloved Hacker Culture of Sharing and Academic Discourse eroded and broken by the LISP machine debacle and the change to a closed anti-sharing approach of UNIX by the newly privatised Bell in the 1980s.
And it was a proprietary printer driver which initiated his epiphany that in a world governed by proprietary software the user would have no freedom or a freedom that could be taken from them so no right to freedom. RMS could easily have made the modification to the driver he wanted but he was not allowed the source code.
From this he invented his four essential freedoms [1] manifesto and the GPL which allowed developers to develop with out fear of the closing of their contributions behind paywalls.
In the early 1990s the Linux kernel flourished with its GPL license ensuring it remained a bastion of freedom.
As Stallman advocates for a future where users have maximum freedom then proprietary software is opposed to that.
If I use Photoshop over GIMP and write tutorials and encourage others to use Photoshop then the world is a little less free for those users in the sense of the four essential freedoms [1]
By this definition proprietary software is opposed to Stallman's vision and insiduously so.
To oppose the freedom of others is in RMS's eyes not a good act, thus it can be rightly called evil in that context and IMHO he is not wrong in this.
Proprietary software 'may' not steal your freedom today but it can lock away your contributions and data tomorrow and one has no recourse - Stallman having lived through this wishes to oppose it and fight for the right to Freedom for us all and forever.
His is a glorious vision and he is not wrong, without free software competing with it, proprietary software would likely offer much less freedom and can and has taken what freedom it offered away !
We will live in an increasingly computerised and robotised society. We must choose : will we only have tenuous freedom exchanged for conveniences and mind-candy, rescindable freedoms only for some given by the whim of corporations; or will we work together on GNU and other Free projects and live as Free peoples of the solar system ?
Don't forget Stallman saw the destruction of his beloved Hacker Culture of Sharing and Academic Discourse eroded and broken by the LISP machine debacle and the change to a closed anti-sharing approach of UNIX by the newly privatised Bell in the 1980s.
And it was a proprietary printer driver which initiated his epiphany that in a world governed by proprietary software the user would have no freedom or a freedom that could be taken from them so no right to freedom. RMS could easily have made the modification to the driver he wanted but he was not allowed the source code.
From this he invented his four essential freedoms [1] manifesto and the GPL which allowed developers to develop with out fear of the closing of their contributions behind paywalls.
In the early 1990s the Linux kernel flourished with its GPL license ensuring it remained a bastion of freedom.
As Stallman advocates for a future where users have maximum freedom then proprietary software is opposed to that.
If I use Photoshop over GIMP and write tutorials and encourage others to use Photoshop then the world is a little less free for those users in the sense of the four essential freedoms [1]
By this definition proprietary software is opposed to Stallman's vision and insiduously so.
To oppose the freedom of others is in RMS's eyes not a good act, thus it can be rightly called evil in that context and IMHO he is not wrong in this.
Proprietary software 'may' not steal your freedom today but it can lock away your contributions and data tomorrow and one has no recourse - Stallman having lived through this wishes to oppose it and fight for the right to Freedom for us all and forever.
His is a glorious vision and he is not wrong, without free software competing with it, proprietary software would likely offer much less freedom and can and has taken what freedom it offered away !
We will live in an increasingly computerised and robotised society. We must choose : will we only have tenuous freedom exchanged for conveniences and mind-candy, rescindable freedoms only for some given by the whim of corporations; or will we work together on GNU and other Free projects and live as Free peoples of the solar system ?
Free as in Liberty, Egality, & Community.
[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html
Oh ye of little faith, history has so far found that :
https://stallmanwasright.reddit.com