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There is no system but GNU, and Linux is one of its kernels. ...

Warning: taking the Church of Emacs (or any church) too seriously may be hazardous to your health.

Saint IGNUcius, the Church of Emacs

Happens every the time, he says something, people go WTF he's nuts, you put smash two neurons and realize he's absolutely right, but still call him crazy. Then repeat without learning your lesson.

No, sometimes I think he's actually nuts.

Well i won't hassle you too much about your sarcasm about Stallman (hopefully other people have done that :) - suffice to say that he is a man of principle and there is much to admired about him. Here - read his home page - http://www.stallman.org/.

Sometimes the "real" world is what we make of it; and Stallman is really trying to make it a better place in the long run.

Good luck!

Evidently Mr. Stallman never left 1997:

http://www.stallman.org/

I'm sure its completely standardized to every standard know to mankind but it sucks.

Ah, not familiar with the un-kept-beard-and-poor-hygiene stereotype of UNIX/Free Software geeks? Well here's a crash course in the frighteningly real basis. ;)

Stuff like this is only news when real reformers like RMS get cabinet appointments.

I thought we were supposed to keep religion out of government?

Logical programmers don't need religions. We can celebrate Grav-mass - a day for "the existence of comprehensible physical laws", which we celebrate by poorly sticking fruit onto a tree :-)

This bout of marketing hype matters less than matters of real substance. Obama, Gates talks are real cause for concern. Obama's platform had nice words about openness, let's hope the dog was wagging the tail in those talks. The conversation should have gone something like, "Gates, you are on notice." Others, worry about even larger platform shifts. It is too early to tell how things will really go.

I probably used the present tense incorrectly. Here he mentions that he made his living from consulting work for the second half of the eighties (I guess he was available for consulting work if you needed stuff done in the code he maintained):
http://www.stallman.org/articles/texas.html
Here's an interview with him from the time:
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/byte-interview.html

I seem to remember to have read about him doing consulting work in the nineties, too, but I cannot give a link and might be wrong. In any case, I once read about or heard quoted what he can charge, and it was a whole lot of money ($1000 per hour? Something like that, I think, but my memory is hazy). That, the MacArthur grant [1], and his priorities (which he made very clear) make me doubt that he ever was jealous about Mozilla's profits.

[1] http://tech.mit.edu/V110/N30/rms.30n.html

http://www.stallman.org/saint.html

McCain and Obama both voted for Senator Leahy's "PRO-IP" bill, which calls for seizing people's computers for sharing.
Don't vote for them!

http://www.defectivebydesign.org/stop-revised-riaa-ip-enforcement-bill-s3325

It still has new and extremely broad provisions for seizing property like computers and servers. Such powers are notoriously abused to go on fishing expeditions, and since servers are often shared, people who are not even the targets of investigation will be hurt in the process.

Open Source is full of guys with huge egos, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I don't see any difference between Linus and say, RMS.

For starters, RMS has a Halo.

Close, but I don't think Rick Astley knows how to code.

Ok ok you got me. But he's not an Admiral. He's Saint IGNUcius of the Church of Emacs.

Richard is a world class prick who cares about one single thing only, free software.

Parent is clearly trolling -- http://www.stallman.org/ has plenty of non-software things that Stallman clearly cares about.

The pirates use the proceeds from armed robbery to bribe the commoners into supporting the return to power of a king who has been off fighting a religious war?

Yes, Saint IGNUcius.

In catholisism, you prove your faith by abstaining from sex (unless for procreation). In GNU religion, you abstain from using non-free software.

That's a clever paralell, but it's a straw man argument. If you look hard enough you can find similarities between any two (arbitrary) things but it doesn't necessarily make them the same. For example, does wearing a white t-shirt make you a certified member of the KKK because the KKK wears white? No, it doesn't.

What could make the GNU project seem like a bunch of religious fanatics is their unwillingness to compromise even an inch of their freedoms. This makes anyone of an opposing viewpoint feel powerless, especially if they want to benefit from free (libre) software but do not wish to abide by it's rules. That's how "open source" got started - they compromised. I can't speak for the GNU project but I believe their determination stems from the fact that it's easy to give up freedoms and very difficult to win them back. Bad jokes like Church of Emacs and Saint IGNUcius certainly doesn't improve matters, but the free software philosophy is tangible and, unlike religion, it doesn't require blind faith nor does it have deities. GNU is NOT a religion.

- BSD, Creative Commons licenses, and other licenses are geek versions of The Koran, Buddhist literature, or the Tanakh. These documents go against god (RMS)'s word and those who use them should have their Code assimilated by the GPL.

I realize I probably shouldn't take this post too seriously, but last I checked, RMS and the FSF are just fine with a lot of non-GNU licenses. That includes the modern BSD license, the X11 license, and a bunch of others. Some, like the old BSD one aren't liked for practical reasons, but it really isn't the crazy GNU only thing some people want to make it sound like. In fact, there are a whole bunch of things on RMS' personal site (stallman.org) that are Create Common licensed.

It's the Born again Bourne Again shell. Now with more Saint IGNUcius

There, fixed that for you.

RMS expresses his opinion of such things all the time.

Look, Dude. When you're talking about RMS and FSF there's no such thing as too many links.

I simply cannot trust MS.

That's too bad.

I love Open Source. I use a lot of Open Source software in Windows. And not only that, I run Linux as well (more often than Windows in fact).

Microsoft has a lot of good people working in Open Source.

I'm not saying MS has not been bad because they most certainly have. But that doesn't mean things aren't changing.

Microsoft is learning that participating in Open Source will benefit everyone, including Microsoft.

No, we won't see Windows under released under an Open Source license, but that doesn't preclued MS from contributing to Open Source software.

Despite what the big hairy guy says, there is room in this world for both open and "closed" source software.

RMS would be amazing as he is only interested in software

Actually, that is not true. While he does serve as president of the FSF and spends most of his time on software activism, his personal home page reveals his involvement and activism in many progressive causes.

Unchecked state power is a danger to everyone. The FBI's court filings to prevent DNA statistical studies are transparently self serving. Imagine if they got their wish and had everyone in their database. Million of innocent people would be subjected to unreasonable suspicions. Such plans should be abandoned and all efforts made to release people who were wrongly convicted, something that DNA testing seems to be good for. Great injustice has been done because the state granted itself the power to punish based on what it considered reasonable extrapolation instead of truth backed up by real data. It reminds me of witch trials.

Prison violence proves that surrendering your rights to the state does not make you safe. All kinds of state wards have suffered all kinds of abuse in direct proportion to the control and trust guardians are given. It is nearly impossible to administer justice in a place where no one is trusted but abuse must always be checked for and discouraged. This is one of the reasons state supported torture is so horrible. A cruel state that is more interested in punishment and revenge than it is in justice and protection will abuse guilty and innocent people alike. The ultimate abuse, however, remains the loss of life.

You have seen this photo of Richard Stallman, after his canonization as Saint IGNUcius?

http://www.stallman.org/saintignucius.jpg

From http://www.stallman.org/

"Richard Stallman" is just my mundane name; you can call me "rms"

He lets people refer to him as RMS.
Something tells me he has quite liberal views on the matters of proper protocol and titles.

Its not like he referred to Bill Gates as Billgatus of Borg. You know... as Slashdot still does?

More:

Quotes from Richard Matthew Stallman:

"Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, that you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone."

"Fighting software patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria."

"Free software' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, think of 'free' as in 'free speech,' not as in 'free beer'."

More quotes:

"People get the government their behavior deserves. People deserve better than that."

"Odious ideas are not entitled to hide from criticism behind the human shield of their believers' feelings."

"Injustice is happening now; suffering is happening now. We have choices to make now. To insist on absolute certainty before starting to apply ethics to life decisions is a way of choosing to be amoral." (Slashdot interview, 1 May 2000)

The radio frequency identification, or RFID, is an inherently flawed idea. It is a technological solution to a social problem that it created. It is a threat to our security, our privacy, our freedom, and now also our health! And this is not a just conspiracy theory. Some of the most respectable members of our society are protesting against RFID technology, including Bruce Schneier and even Richard Stallman. My only question is, how much more insult to our intelligence can we take as a society before we start actively protesting? Our freedom, our privacy, our health and our dignity is being taken from us and all we can do is complain on the Internet? Where are the protesting groups? Where are the outraged people desperate to change the situation? Where are the angry mobs? What else are we going to let them take away from us before we stop talking and start acting?

I am not Richard Stallman, but the comparison is flattering.

Shut the fuck up, twitter.

Software patents are one small but important piece of the IP Empire which demands universally oppressive laws.

• Silencing protest before it happens and then pushing protesters aside where they are not heard and can be abused, arrested and tortured. Need work? Apply here!
• Subordination of local law to US corporate interests.
• Globally depressed wages
• Dangerous genetic modifications and ecological ruin.
• And now, all your Email are belong to US. Why not? we treat everyone like criminals here.
• We should not forget free flow of slave labor for US agriculture. It might be claimed that no US Citizen would take the kind of work mega farms import Mexican citizens to do, but why not pay those people US wages and treat them as immigrants rather than keep them locked up?

The list goes on and on but it has one common theme, your rights mean nothing, shut up and get back to work for the man.

Those of you who think you can make a buck off a police state would do well to remember learn the fate of Fritz Thyssen. He was an industrialist and early supporter of Adolf Hitler, in part financed by Prescott Bush. He made plenty of money re arming Germany and he approved of racial purity laws. By the time he realized the Nazis believed all of the crazy things they said, it was too late for him to do anything about it. He was thrown into a concentration camp and was lucky to survive the wars he did not approve of. If you don't think the Neocons are just as crazy as the Nazis you have not been listening to them long enough.

I don't mean to break it to you, but there is a god of (free and) open source software, and Stallman is a/one of the saint(s)... you can read more about it here; http://www.stallman.org/saint.html

"I have seen video so violent that it repelled me. (Some of it was sexual, some was not it's a minor detail.) I hope to avoid seeing any more of it, but I condemn this attempt to censor it.

The Clown regime is planning to prohibit the mere possession of "extreme pornography". The excuse is that one man who liked violent pornography committed crime.

It is true that victims of real violence suffer. (Never mind that in making movies of violence, typically nobody is actually hurt.) The true oppressive spirit of this law starts to show in the prohibition of images of sex with corpses. Are we supposed to believe that corpses can suffer? Or are some cruel prudes trying to impose their prejudices by force?

The prohibition on images of sex with animals is also wrong. Some animals like sex with humansmale dophins are quite enthusiastic, and male dogs seem to like it too. Should you be imprisoned for taking pictures when a dog humps your leg? The parrot that made love to me in the Jurong Bird Park did so of his own free will. (I would never have dared to ask.) Is this photo going to be a crime? Will I be saved only because it is not obvious just what the parrot is doing to me?

The crimes committed by the occasional pervert are nothing against the crimes committed by B'liar in Iraq. So if they want to prohibit video that inspires violence, it would make more sense to go after war movies." - RMS http://www.stallman.org/archives/2008-mar-jun.html#30 April 2008

this article makes you wonder, where would GNU be without RMS's beard? http://www.stallman.org/image001.jpg Samson would have written one helluva programming language...

Any discussion of facial hair and geekery is empty without mention of RMS.

Get the word out and vote. Real change comes from knowledge. The Republicans are going to be run out of Washington on a rail but that won't matter if their replacements don't enforce the Bill of Rights. Vote for people who get it at every level of government, regardless of party affiliation. Write the representatives you already have and tell them what you think. People like RMS already have political action notes. Join or form your own civic group to get the word out and organize effective rights defense. There will always be people who attack your rights because it makes their lives easier but everyone is always better off when rights are protected. Make noise and the right kinds of things have a chance of happening.

Only RMS can detect this. You can find one here.

That's a very nice summary of the Atlantic article you found.

Isn't it odd that I would not know about something that you think I wrote, especially when you look at all of the effort that obviously went into it? Don't you think that I would have simply linked to the article if I were those other people? Here's a clue, lots of people read Richard Stallman's political notes.

The level of effort you ACs exhibit without learning anything is amazing. Do you keep a database of all the things you think twitter writes or do you just keep all of it in your obsessively hateful little mind? Do you read every comment of every discusion looking for new versions of twitter? Why is it that the love expressed in my writing does not sink into your soul?

The right link. Sorry about that.

I don't think it is unreasonable to give lower priority to large data transfers, when the net is loaded, as long as that is done fairly for all large data transfers.

He seems to agree. This surprised me but it seems that equipment can do this fairly.

Don't forget the AA's a 1 gig line to every home, and almost everyone would get their music/video through the internet. And without strong enforcement, p2p piracy would dominate. That may be the big holdup, the telcos are not going to update the infrastructure until we can enforce things like the DMCA and put anyone who does not recognize "Intellectual Property" as real property in prison. Hopefully the next administration will listen to people like Laurence Lessig ) and Richard Stallman

Government emails are public records and it's against the law to destroy them the same way it's against the law to destroy any other public record. It is NOT standard practice to destroy email at the state, local and federal level. There's also evidence Bush and friends used a separate, private email system at commercial ISP to avoid being snooped on the way he is snooping on everyone else. The only thing that's consistent here is Bush telling a lie.

Next thing he'll tell you is that Sadam hid his email with WMD.

The original term for this "Homeland Defense" monstrosity was "Total Information Awareness" and it was well underway before 9/11. It's so repulsive and unAmerican that the US Congress overwhelmingly ordered it shut down. Bush moved it to the NSA instead, so it is doing just fine.

Be advised that the terrorists who run this program think they have the right to detain and torture people without charge. When they are finished beating you they dump you in a foreign country where you might be murdered or starve before you can get back home.

The stove pipes have been torn down. There is no division between government and private networks and data. Comcast's defiance of the FCC is an illusion because other elements in the government want Comcast to censor the net. It's the next logical step: awareness, control, dominance. Independent minded bloggers and a free internet threatened the Manufactured Consent model of US policy making.

The US is moving to a censored and controlled network faster than you think.

Why shouldn't they? I live near Sarnath, India - a place full with Tibetans. They do peaceful marches in Delhi sometimes. They don't get reported in newspapers too...

The reality is that they have listened to Dalai Lama for so long, and it has bought NOTHING to them. Until now there Chinese "neighbors" were also poor, but now Tibetans see that religion is not helping and they need to take materialism seriously. It is a revolution for them - something that will fail no doubt, because people in power, both western and Chinese, are basking in profit.

And by the way, "Hollywood" is not "West". This sort of thinking is childish and nothing else. There is no mention of Taiwan in movies, but its existence in itself is proof of western interference.

The simple reality is that Taiwan is manufacturing, while Tibet is just a mostly sparse barren plateau. While you want to paint it as rivalry, it is mostly something mentioned already here.

but you won't find those opinions reflected in broadcast news. Try fitting this or this into the "just like the tories" box. Want to bet neither of those two bloggers ever show up in blews? Blews, like broadcast media before it, represents nothing but the will of it's corporate masters. Readers are spoon fed shallow "stories" and false choices that drive public policy in favor of those pulling the strings.

That's why we have to focus on freedom as RMS teaches. If the only reason we use GNU is for the technology or nerdiness, at some point someone working against the community will release a product which will encompass the various technical advantages of it, and at that point many of those who use GNU merely for the technology will find themselves enslaved to proprietary software again. We should use GNU because we want to be free, not only for its superior technology. By focusing on freedom, we make sure that no one will ever be able to attack our community.

Its pretty clear that he envies Stallman's superior beard.

http://www.stallman.org/image001.jpg

All hail the 4th member of ZZ Top!