Alexey Komissarouk

> But I suggest that the world would be much better if everyone went even 50% RMS.

I disagree. Stallman infuriates and disappoints just as much as he inspires. He often comes off as rambling and intransigent. Years ago I found an open letter to him that I found reasonable[1]. Near the end, the writer considers how Stallman’s way of presenting an argument is harmful to his goal:

> Dr. Stallman, I have a tremendous amount of respect for your contributions to GNU, emacs and gdb amongst others. You are a man of considerable intellect and programming ability. That said, I nor the people that I spoke with about your talk found you to be a particularly charismatic or persuasive speaker. The only people that seemed convinced by your speech were the ones who had already been leaning towards your point of view to start with. Several friends of mine who had not heard of the FSF before left half way through because they were so put off by some of conspiratorial rhetoric above.

Stallman’s reply was a single line:

> I am skeptical of advice from people who disagree with what I stand for.

Stallman isn’t a paragon or righteousness. He’s a rambling human with as many biases and unreasonable obsessions as the next person. He makes me question if he really wants to change the behaviour of the masses, or if he just wants to mock and deride what he doesn’t like. If he’s going for the former, he’s doing an awful job; you don’t convince people to change their views with aggressiveness and…

Well, you do make a point.

My original comment would've been funny to anyone having seen him give a speech in French. But it wasn't really helpful indeed. The open letter from Alexey, though was helpful http://alexeymk.com/dear-dr-stallman-the-aftermath - but it's not like Richie is going to listen anyway (his response was a pirouette, and not subtle at that: http://alexeymk.com/dear-dr-stallman-the-aftermath)

Oh, also, for people downvoting me purely because I'm touching their idol, fuck you. Fanaticism is harmful and I have no sympathy for it. Of all the people you could've chosen to adore, he's really not the best choice. Some of his ideas about freedom are interesting, indeed, but the man himself is the opposite of tolerance, doesn't listen to anyone, and is generally a wreck to manage (truth be told: when he comes to give conference, he has at least one person dedicated to "managing" him. I understand celebrities have that treatment but he's unnecessarily picky about things like temperature, air flow, etc., etc. You should really see his list of conditions..) When he came to Geneva in a panel of speakers he kept interrupting everyone, eating pretty much anything while he spoke and correcting people everytime they said "closed source" instead of "proprietary"... he's done a lot of good to the software community but maybe it's just time he retires?

No, what you have done is to post on a discussion board a request for a technical co-founder. What you clearly have not done is perform a search on that discussion board for previous cases where people have asked for technical co-founders, or people have posted articles about why it's hard to find technical co-founders, or articles about why asking for a technical co-founder is bound to fail.

Here, click this:

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=technical%20cofounder&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story

Here are some results, and therefore some things you should read before asking for a technical co-founder:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5769824

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3236955

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3844177

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8959377

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2332349

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1820495

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3952751

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2714304

These are the discussions here. For just some of the articles themselves, here:

http://humbledmba.com/please-please-please-stop-asking-how-to-find

http://www.hailpixel.com/articles/technical-cofounders

http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/15/stop-looking-for-a-technical-co-founder/

http://alexeymk.com/finding-a-technical-co-founder-slides/

That's actually something we did notice a couple of times! Depending your audience, ad-blockers could be causing your data to be missing a significant amount of your visitors. With Zaraz loading those tools on "Cloud Load", i.e., server-to-server, you might end up seeing those visitors again. Also, because everything gets loaded so fast, you do get information from visits that previously didn't make it before the page was closed. This could be a little confusing at the beginning - you might see a higher bounce rate for example, but it's not because more people are bouncing, it's because now you actually know about it. @AlexeyMK wrote a very nice piece explaining this: http://alexeymk.com/2020/07/14/lies-damn-list-and-front-end-tracking.html

My problem with Stallman is not the the work he's done. He's absolutely a genius and has been right too many times to count. My problem is he's been consistently undermining the FOSS movement by alienating anyone not already in the know. His inability and down right refusal to draw any sort of connection between the average computer user and his point of view makes the idea that he's working towards free software "for everyone" a hard pill to swallow.

Case and point: http://alexeymk.com/dear-dr-stallman-the-aftermath/

That is pretty darn helpful. Thanks Greg! You should write it up yourself, though: it's your knowledge, wouldn't be right having me take it.

FWIW, my posts on sponsorship:

Getting Awesome Sponsors (for college hackathons): http://alexeymk.com/hosting-hackathons/index.html

Getting Your Money's Worth as a Sponsor: http://alexeymk.com/61608156/index.html