Hello everyone,

I am forwarding a letter I sent to Richard Stallman below because it
contains information on why cryptocurrency is important for free
software development, and changes everything.


-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Re: Bitcoin Donation to FSF
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2021 18:19:53 +0200
From: Amir Taaki <amir@???>
To: rms@???
CC: Harry Halpin <harry@???>, jaromil@???,
aimee@???

Hello Stallman,

I was thinking which video platform is good for you, and tried a few of
them. There are a few p2p video software, but nothing yet that has
gained traction or a sizable audience.

About the top 5 stories attacking you. The nature of discourse on the
internet has fundamentally changed. Whereas before we used to get
information from news media, and then discussion boards, these days the
nature of discourse is more transient. My knowledge of everything
happening comes from friends, or social media.

But look, I read all the names in the open letter against you. They are
mostly Americans and I barely recognized any of them. The letter
supporting you has much more organic support. I recognize several names
in that letter. And all the people close to me like Harry Halpin,
Jaromil, Aimee Maree, ... all fully support you.

Your legacy is all over the internet and can never be deleted. This
organized attack against you cannot touch your legacy.

These corrupt "opensource" corporations try to paint you as an
extremist. The truth is they are corrupted, and corruption is so
prolific that it is normalized (especially in American society). They
feel personally attacked by your message that compromise with non-free
proprietary software is WRONG. They are compromised and the problem.
They hate you because you speak truth to power.

The truth is you are not an extremist so much as a prophet.

I'm less worried about these corrupt "opensource" corporations and their
culture war to push out people who don't comply with their opinions. The
bigger concern is the interests they are unconsciously working on behalf
for. Many of these people work for Microsoft, Google, or Facebook. When
you say this is morally wrong, they hate you because of their own moral
corruption. And they pretend to be morally superior, but you represent a
stand against big tech technological slavery. Hypocrisy.

I admire your strong commitment to freedom and autonomy, which Americans
often confuse with lack of limits or restrictions, so they can justify
earning profit to the detriment to society (by working for big tech on
surveillance or censorship oriented technology). That's why they hate
you. You and your followers (like me) stand in their way.

That's why this open letter against you signed by the big "opensource"
corporations is an organized coup against you. But the real organic
community supports you and this is blatantly obvious to everyone.

So I would say to you: do not waste your time trying to fight them. Be
you, and keep confidently preaching your message. They are trying to
kill the messenger so they can continue about their evil-enabling business.

Now I want to talk to you about the cryptocurrency movement.

The biggest problem for the free technology movement, is a lack of
resources that has classically stopped us having products that are as
polished or feature complete as proprietary alternatives.

In the past software vendors would silo off their technology to prevent
users from accessing it, so they could sell them their product and so
create a dependency.

This model has now moved towards finding new ways to instrumentalize
users. For example harvesting user data and monetizing users as a
product. In this system, the users are absolutely enslaved in
technological systems they have no control over.

So we need an alternative business model that does not monetize the
users through surveillance and control, and selling that data for
advertising revenue.

Anonymous cryptocurrency is a very exciting alternative avenue for a new
paradigm of funding free technology on the internet.

1. Zero-Knowledge proofs are a new technique that allows us to create
any general algorithm which is anonymous. This means users can use a
software application which respects their privacy without having to give
their details away to software services on the internet (typically used
to coordinate users).

2. Paying for services you use in a special asset (token) issued for
that project. The ability to issue tokens, which are kind of like shares
in a project and owning them gives you some ability to for example, vote
on proposals (termed governance), or operate some service. For example,
Harry's project is an improvement over Tor (anonymous mixnet). Currently
Tor is based off volunteers running nodes and donations (from government
and corporations that are often hostile to freedom). Because of this Tor
cannot have enough operators to ensure their network is running
efficiently or pay high-quality developers without making compromises
with possibly-hostile interests.

Nym (Harry's project) on the other hand, allows you to pay NYM tokens
for using the network. Operators gain a small payment which for many
users adds up to real value and can be exchanged for other currencies
such as Bitcoin or USD. It incentivises people to make the Nym network
and project grow, improve and become competitive with proprietary
alternatives.

This is an exciting development to fund free software projects, and
create a new paradigm of computing which is collaborative and enabling
user freedom respecting their autonomy and anonymity.

3. Tokenization of value. NFTs (Non Fungible Tokens) are huge right now.
An artist can put a piece of work they created on the internet which
anybody can "buy" or "sell". Of course anybody can see these artworks
and copy them for free, but there is only a single owner of the work in
much the same way somebody owns the original copy of a painting.

This way, derivative works are not limited, but somebody has the option
to "become the owner" of a work. And although it might seem to not mean
anything, many NFTs are going for several million dollars, especially
from notable artists.

These ideas are not fully complete yet and we are still exploring them,
but mark my words that cryptocurrency innovation is a decisive victory
for tokenization of value that has so far been missing from the free
software movement: how do we as software creators capture back some of
the value we are contributing to the society, so we can expand our
organization and spread our philosophy.

There are some aspects of the cryptocurrency movement that are
decisively unfree. Bitcoin has been used as a tool of the surveillance
state and there are those that would defend its lack of anonymity due to
its ability to contribute to state and corporate surveillance. However,
there is a deep reverance within the industry to the ideals of free
software. This is enabling powerful new concepts and mechanisms to
evolve, that we believe will play a fundamental role in reconfiguring
our technological destinies.

On 4/1/21 4:21 AM, Richard Stallman wrote:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

>
> > Richard, you are the biggest inspiration for all of us, and all us of
> > are publicly supporting you. If you check the rms-support-letter, I was
> > one of the first to sign :) and I got all my friends to sign as well.
>
> Thank you very much.
>
> * Here is something you might be able to figure out for me.
>
> Many stories are being used to attack me now.
> Can you try to figure out which 5 stories seem to be
> most important in inspiring hosility?
>
> I could write or say something addressed to them.
>
> (The number 5 is arbitrary.)
>
> * Here is another thing,
>
> Can you find a platform for posting video that we can upload to
> without running nonfree JS code?
>
>
>
>