True, but...

Something like that.

Fighting for Freedom is mostly synonymous with Fighting against Oppression (unless your goal
is to impliment your own version of oppression).

If your fighting your fighting against something. How you choose your attack is probably more
along the lines of what you guys were talking about. The tactics; Offensive vs Defensive,
Negative vs Positive... That sort of thing.

If you disagree with the tactics used then it's quite likely possible that your goals are not
the same at all. Unless you think the other person is making a mistake on their tactics. 

RMS is nothing if not consistent. His problem is a communication one.. he doesn't understand
how to get the other person to think along the same lines as he does. His thinking is
orthogonal to many other people's thought proccesses and he can't quite adjust his message to
re-route the other person's thinking. 

Then it doesn't help that many people are going to simply approach him with a aggressive
attitude due to this quasi-celeberity status.. They already made up their minds what he was
going to do and say long long before they actually talk to him. 

The combination is not pretty.

RMS: I want to talk to about "A".
OP: Your wrong about "a", nutter.
RMS: I am not talking about "a", I am talking about "A"
OP: Well, what about 'a->b'? I can't beleive you'd be that dense.
RMS: 'a->b' doesn't enter into it, it's not about 'a', it's about 'A'. 'A' is what I am
talking about and that's all.
OP: WTF? Go screw yourself.


I seen the it happen a lot about Free software versus programmers get paid. People assume that
it's impossible to effectively make a living without restricting access to the software they
make. Supply and Demand is a fundamental market concept and it's difficult to see how people
make money by allowing unlimited/clonable/redistributeble supply.

RMS's position seems to be that while he sees no problem with programmers charging money for
working that is a entirely secondary issue to software freedom. To him Freedom is more
important then profit, even though profit is good. So therefore money and supply/demand is a
entirely secondary issue. 

Once the other person understands his position then that should be about it for the
conversation if the person stedfastly disagrees with that assumption. For many people money is
easily more important then freedom, especially when they view that freedom as insigificant,
illusionary, or they disagree with RMS's definitions of 'Freedom' in a fudmental way. 

Once everybody gets to that point then that should be it. Unfortunately it rarely gets to that
point before it disolves into flames.


Now on the other hand I've seen people point out other times when RMS deserved to get flamed,
but his bad behavior in the past is something else entirely. :)