Stats for nerds
6recommend
30mentions
22people
2008–2026years
27% recommend73% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Richard Stallman's "Right to Read" is worth reading again, because it portrays a very similar scenario.
- Richard Stallman's "Right to Read" from 1999 is worth another read.
- Richard Stallman's "Right to Read" is disturbingly prescient, as usual.
- > And only "authorized" persons can download IDEs and dev tools.
Just in case someone hasn't read it yet, I have to post a link to this classic short story: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html (The Right to Read, by Richard Stallman).
(The bogeyman back then was copyright infringement, nowadays it's as you mentioned security and/or privacy.)
- For those who haven't had a chance to read it yet, Richard Stallman's "The Right to Read" from 1997:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
There are some striking thematic parallels with the current state of automotive technology -- in particular Tesla.
- "The Right to Read" by Richard Stallman[1] is certainly not a novel, but it is a short bit of fiction about cybercrime (or rather, what would happen if certain day-to-day developer activities were made criminal) and is certainly worth the <20 minutes that it takes to read.
I seem to recall that it received a bit of hysterical "oh that could never happen" reaction when it was released but I can't seem to find a source for that recollection. It may have mostly been a reaction that was generated by the somewhat emotive backlash that tends to appear whenever Stallman makes a statement about "freedom" though, and the story certainly is allegorical, so anyone who disagreed with him may have posted about it online and skewed the discussion in that direction. I can't recall much about the specific reaction at the time (it was more than 10 years ago now) though so much of the above is really just poorly-informed speculation on my part.
It is, unfortunately, disappointingly prescient and it's something that I think everyone working in the tech industry should read, regardless of whether they think they agree with RMS's views on software freedom and intellectual property.
[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
Edit: I just re-read it and my initial estimate of "<20 minutes" was way off. I had forgotten just how short the story actually was, so perhaps my recollection about the reaction to the allegory isn't entirely accurate either. Nonetheless, I'm leaving this comment here as witness to the fallibility of my memory.
