For a man of such strong opinions, you seem to have a poor grasp of Stallman's philosophy. He's against SaaS, and would refuse to use a hosted service. He doesn't object to charging a fee for software. The user must merely be free to use it after the purchase. Yes, people are ready to sacrifice some freedom in return for convenience. That in itself does not prove him wrong. Cellphones are tracking devices. The "cloud" does allow for wholesale surveillance. In light of recent revelations, his warnings seem to be more prescient than ever.
i object to the characterisation of such opinions as strong.
they are not strong, they are weak. weak for their justification, weak for their referencing and weak for the world view which informs them.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out things like cell phones being tracking devices and the cloud facilitating surveillance.
First we all knew it would happen, then we found out it was happening, and now we're saying thank god for Stallman or we'd have never known and lets be sure to listen to him from now on? Stallman's idea of freedom doesn't work unless everyone gets involved. We live in the real world here and we know that isn't happening. He needs to live and let live a little.
You've got that part very confused. Nobody is saying "thank god for Stallman or we'd have never known" - what people are saying is "Stallman was right - these tracking devices and cloud services are harmful to freedom and we should find better solutions". There may not be better solutions though, but the message is still very clear over which is harmful and what a solution might look like.
So are you saying that we should just accept everything as it is now? That way things will never change and probably only get worse.
There are however people that don't accept everything that's going on in the world and will fight for change. And they DO make change, ever heard about GNU/Linux?
