Stallman on Jobs

Here are some thoughts on Steve Jobs’ death written by Richard Stallman, the free software advocate, programmer, guru. As a side note, Stallman is against many things, he is also against centralized services of any kind, including Google and Facebook. Instead, he advocates services such as Diaspora that give users complete control of their data and services, and are completely decentralized. Since all Internet services are inherently distributed, all requests could get propagated between users’ “rented” services that carry Diaspora decentralized nodes, and by way of constant propagation, they reach their destination. Services such as email already get propagated between many big nodes, Diaspora aims a future where every single person’s service can act as a delegator.

Back to Jobs: The hacker culture always hated the closed nature of iPod and iPhone. They hacked it many times, and continue to do so because when people purchase a device, they believe they have purchased the right to do whatever they want to their device, and when they are blocked, they get really pissed. I tend to agree with their view. In any case, here are Stallman’s views [link]:

Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.

As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, “I’m not glad he’s dead, but I’m glad he’s gone.” Nobody deserves to have to die - not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs’ malign influence on people’s computing.

Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective.