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Richard Stallman Audio Interview at Wired
MacRonin writes: "Richard Stallman interview Value Your Freedom at Wired." The RMS [?] interview clocks in at 21 minutes, talking about User Liberation, Amazon Boycotts, Hackers Crackers Pirates, and "Advice to Users." The last one kinda sounds like a William S. Burroughs [?] bit.
I was also impressed with how Stallman held it together in the face of semi-informed reporters. I had expected Stallman to rip the reporters apart when they said Linux was not GNU (I can see how rms can become irrate with the fame of Linux but the obscurity of GNU/FSF).
The real silver bullet to good programs is caffeine; lots and lots of caffeine! *twitch, twitch*
Whether you agree with this or not is another matter entirely, but it's clearly his reasoned view, and I doubt it's going to change now.
You obviously haven't spent very much time using proprietary Unices. For example, HP-UX's sed(1) doesn't seem to have been significantly updated since about 1983. Beleagured sysadmins like myself usually just say "fuck this" and install the GNU tools.
The gmake dependencies are there, but only with automake, not autoconf by itself. Really, gmake dependencies are the only real problem that I've ever encountered out of your list.
I honestly haven't had any problems with GNU shell scripts on any systems with a POSIX-compliant shell. (There are some Unices still floating around with a /bin/sh that is not fully POSIX-compliant). You're more likely to get bitten by differences in the supporting tools.
People who write shell scripts on GNU platforms do get sloppy with portability, yes, but that's not specific to GNU platforms.
Whoa whoa whoa... now that's just patently false. I mean, just consider the fact that the GNU tools ship for a large number of platforms without the GNU library (e.g. FreeBSD, Win32, even VMS ... eep!).
Even that aside, I've personally built and installed the vast majority of the GNU tools on a stock HP-UX 10.20 system. Everything seems to work fine, and the only caveat was that I needed to build and install GNU make first to build some packages that used automake.
So, no offense, but at least based on my own experience, I'd have to say that the claim that GNU tools are all dependent on the GNU C library is complete bullshit.
DNA just wants to be free...
Big C or little c, RMS is closer to anarcho-syndicalism which in case you're curious doesn't say that there should be no laws and no order and everyone should do whatever they want. No it says that basically that there should not be large organizational entities be they governments or corporations that hold all of the power and the ability to divest themselves of that power. What you people are complaining about - "This is not freedom since I can't do what I want..." are implying what T. Jefferson a while back "...total freedom implies near total anarchy..." We've gone over this people. Make the code available to all for no charge. Distribute your changes into the distribution. Make money on the service, the documentation, the support. Hell even car dealerships understand this; make almost nothing on the vehicle and most of the profit comes through the serivice and parts desks. What is so freakin hard to understand?
Wow! I thought that I was running a operating system called "Linux" on my home PCs, and that I got this software installed without paying any money to the developers (I've paid CheapBytes and InfoMagic for CDs, but nothing to Red Hat or other distributors). Thanks to AviN, I now know that I was hallucinating: since the developers did not make money, the product does not exist in the first place.
CmdrTaco, it looks like we've been called on our joke. Thanks to AviN's impeccable logic, it's clear that we're making everything up: the alleged subject matter of this web site does not exist. Thankfully, you sold out in time.
Now that the whole thing will collapse, you can take a much-deserved vacation.
I guess there wasn't much of a choice. It's either MP3 or RealAudio, and they picked the less evil one.
(slightly on topic)
I work with someone who was in a band, one with a major label contract, and they got totally fscked over; I was in a band for many years, too, and while we never got a contract, we released a few records on our own and toured and gigged all over the country. Same end result; we're both working on debugging a piece of code.
Maybe thats why I am into free software. The one thing I wanted, when I was in a band, was to have control over my business. Yet I knew, in the back of my mind, that at one point I would have to make the haul to LA or NYC and pitch myself, and my band, as a product. I'd have to talk about sales figures, fan base, and marketability (and boy were we some ugly dudes. I'd have to sell myself to a huge company, since they controlled the means of production and promotion (other than working for less than minimum wage, at triple the hours, which is all we ever managed). I see the two as intrinsicly linked, or at the very least strongly related. MP3 and Napster is a threat not to the musicians, who will make money on tours and web-based merchandising, but on the profits of the media conglomerate. Free Software is a threat to companies that are firmly entrenched in old-school thought. Hell, Microsoft relies on brick-and-mortar, a lot (along with corrupt deals...)
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
Sorry, I would tend to disagree with both of you - GNU tools are, if I recall correctly, distributed free under the GPL. If I use GNU-emacs to write the Great American Novel, does that mean that the FSF is entitled to take credit for my efforts? Who created the Mona Lisa - da Vinci, or the merchant who made his paint brush? Maybe the folks who built my browser should be able to take credit for these comments, eh?
The FSF makes a number of excellent tools available to the computing community worldwide; I won't argue that in the least. The idea that the FSF should be allowed to take (or share) credit for work done with those tools is ridiculous. The FSF gave away their tools under the GPL; if RMS wanted credit given to the FSF for software built using those tools, he should have added a BSD-style advertising clause. He didn't, though, and the constant litany of "GNU/Linux! It's GNU/Linux!" out of the FSF is starting to sound less like an argument for credit and more like whining for attention.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
No, no, no, it's Stallman that can go fuck himself. :-) Sorry. I couldn't resist. At least we should be glad that he didn't start singing "The Free Software Song" (gee, "thanks," Jamie Zawinski) in the middle of the interview.
I have to disagree here. Bezos ' letter does condede that patents can indeed be harmful to innovation, but offers no reason for why his patents should stand, other than to say "I don't believe it would be right for us to [relinquish those patents]... even though the vast majority of our competitive advantage will continue to come not from patents, but from raising the bar on things like service, price, and selection." Note that Bezos could have argued that 1-Click (or any of the other patents which Amazon holds) were sufficiently innovative and distinctive to merit their own patents: he did not.
Stallman's criticism is that Bezos cannot (and, as nearly as I can tell, did not) argue that his patent was acquired for purely defensive reasons. A defensive patent is never used to launch a lawsuit. Protecting your business investment is one thing: suing someone is quite another.
The difference is that the power tools are not included in your shelf, but the GNU tools are included in every Linux distribution.
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
I should have clarified. They didn't change ls, grep, more or anything like that. But they did change libc. And they did take stuff and "tune" it for Linux. But the biggest contributors to the LinuxOS as an OS were the distributions. And they used software from a variety of sources, not just GNU. Take out the stuff from BSD and none of the Linux distros will work.
The point is, no one took an existing GNU System and dropped the Linux kernel inside. That's because there was no GNU System at that time.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Remove all the GNU tools and libraries from a stock Linux system, and you'll be lucky if you can get as far as a single-user shell, let alone /sbin/init.
/sbin/init, let alone a boot.
Remove all the BSD code from a stock Linux system, including the much touted Debian GNU/Linux, and you'll be lucky if you can get as far as a
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
BSD uses its own libc. The GNU libc is only needed to compile some GNU software, or running under Linux compatibility mode.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
What makes GNU tools the defacto standard when none of the other equivalents use their "extensions"? If they were the standard, the others would add those additional options.
Example, the GNU automake/autoconf generates makefiles that are only usable with gmake. Example, shell scripts from GNU are invariably designed for bash and not generic sh. Example, most GNU software requires the extensions in glibc, and will not work with any other C library. GNU could easily make their stuff work seamlessly with any Unix whatsoever, but they choose not to. Microsoft could learn quite a bit from the FSF when it comes to embrace and extend.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Gee... What knucklehead moderated this down as a "troll"? Please read the moderator guidelines before you click on that magic button.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
"GNU" means "GNU's Not Unix". GNU is a project started by RMS and the FSF to create a 100% free operating system. The GPL was just one of the licenses they used for GNU software.
Placing software under the GPL license does not make the software GNU! Aaaargh!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Today, companies can pay their employees through revenues A, B and C. But your proposal says that companies can only pay their employees from revenue streams B and C. An elementary analysis says that the average wages of developers must either decrease. I have no problems with Free Software. I have a major problem when Free Software is mandated.
Speaking of the support option, I wonder how long it will be until there is a hue and cry for Free Support Software? As a user, it is just as onerous to pay $100 for Software and $50 for support, as it is to pay $0 for Software and $150 for support. More onerous, actually, since I might require more support incidents.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
As a die hard property-rights libertarian I'll let you know that if the notion of property disappears through voluntary means, I will have no quarrel with it. However, I have yet to see any mechanism that can do this that doesn't involve involuntary means.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
From the article: The result, although commonly referred to as "Linux," is the GNU System
When is RMS going to shrug off this delusion of his? It was Linus and Company that fixed the GNU software to run under Linux, not the other way around. It's pretty arrogant to incorporate Linus' fixes into GNU then demand that Linux be called GNU as a result.
Take all the non-GNU stuff out of Redhat, SuSE or Debian, but keep the kernel, and see if it will even boot, let alone be usable.
Linux does not require the vast majority of GNU software. 95% of userland can be cleanly replaced by non-GNU alternatives. In fact, the only things required from GNU are glibc and gcc. It's pretty uppity to require users of a compiler and library to call their results GNU.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
The GNU tools are included with every *BSD as well. Should we now be saying GNU/FreeBSD?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
The BSD ls is not GNU ls. Nothing in their core userland is from GNU.
But what are you really saying? That the existance of GNU ls in Linux requires that the whole be called GNU/Linux? That's just stupid.
Even RMS has publically stated that mere use of the GNU tools, even using *all* of them, does not require an OS to be called GNU. His argument is different, in that he considers Redhat, SuSE, Slackware to *ACTUALLY BE* the GNU System. But his argument only makes sense if distributions took the existing GNU System and swapped out the unworking kernel with Linux. This is not what happened.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
If people starting calling it "GNU/Linux", it would not be Open Source getting publicity, it would be only GNU and GNU alone getting the extra attention.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
"You have missed a crucial philosophical point: For everyone to have "freedom", you as an individual must give up a little of your "freedom".
Freedom is the absense of restrictions, true. But you fail to fully comprehend what that means. Freedom is not that condition where anyone can do whatever they want. That is known as nihilism. Rather, it is that condition where anyone can do whatever they want, so long as they do not restrict others from doing the same. The common saying that "your freedom ends where my nose begins" fails to note that your striking my nose restricts my freedom.
Unfortunately, too many people get all muddled headed about software. Despite recent abuses to IP law, the fact remains that software is property. Freedom means that I can't restrict what you do with your code just as you can't restrict what I do with mine. When RMS talks about software freedoms, he is really referring to permissions. Certainly GPLd software gives out more permissions than the Microsoft EULA does, but that makes no difference to freedom one way or another. Closed source software is every bit as free as open source, in reference to to owners of the software. No one's rights or properties are being restricted by closed source software.
If you choose to open the code to everyone, you should be empowered to do that. If you choose to close the source, you should have just as much right to do so.
Bingo! Now you got it!
BSD style protect is still "free" but doesn't offer the right kind of "freedom".
Oops. You just lost it again. You need to get off of the notion that software licenses have anything to do with freedom. Saying that the BSDL doesn't have the "right kind of freedom" is just plain inflammatory.
"em>This [BSD] has the important implication that someday, the project may pull all of the code to close source"
Not at all! What hat did you pull this out of. Once you have given the users the permission to do whatever they want with your software, you can't take it back. No way, no how. Sure, future releases might be closed source, but there's no way that affects the present. Why is it that GPL advocates always fear a BSD author might possibly close their source up in the future, but they never worry about GPL authors doing the same?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Programmers want to earn a living programming. They don't want to earn a living waiting on tables (Mr. Stallman's proposal) then program in the evenings. In order to earn a living through programming, one must be paid by an employer or client. In order for that money to pay you to exist in the first place, there have to be profits somewhere. I've worked for companies that didn't make profits. It's not a joyful feeling to wonder whether you'll get paid this week or not.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
How long do we have to keep acknowledging him? Every Linux manual credits FSF, GNU and RMS on the first or second page. LWCE made him man or the year. One distro even calls itself GNU/Linux. What more does he want?
What will it take for him to stop screaming at reporters who inadvertantly mutter "Linux" in his presence? (you would think that reporters attempting to interview him would be acknowledgment enough).
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
How is MP3 in any way evil? (outside of the RIAA compound of course).
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And exactly which ls do you think you'll be using? To the best of my knowledge, and I may be wrong here, but the only freely available copies of most of the software that is considered "standard" is the GNU versions. The *BSDs use GNU tools, and all the proprietary vendors (Sun, Digital, HP-UX, IBM, SGI, BSDI, etc) have their own proprietary versions of the tools. So, which tools are these?
darren
Cthulhu for President!
(darren)
I think you may be right. But I don't think he'd be peeved if it was Alan Cox or Bruce Perens, instead of Linus. Linus is firmly in the "Open Source" camp and speaks of open source as a design methodology, not as a political philosophy. The FSF is (rightly) bothered that the public only hear that "Open Source is better", not that "Free Software is a right". When a technically brilliant piece of non-free software comes along, people may fail to see the danger.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
I run both FreeBSD and Linux. The main difference (other than filesystem layout) is that the [bin|file]utils are different. BSD `ls` is diffferent from GNU `ls`, etc.
/lib, and /[s]bin is all cleverly statically linked). To me this is the important point. The utils aren't important enough to justify calling a system after them, although RMS has told me he thinks so. A system has three components:
*BSD still relies on `gcc` just as much as Linux, and AFAIK also uses the GNU libraries. (Although *BSD lacks
1) A kernel
2) A compiler and libraries
3) utilities
(1) is non-FSF code under Linux & *BSD. (2) is FSF code under both Linux & *BSD. (3) is FSF under linux and not under *BSD. IMHO, it's just not a big enough difference. Utilities are in no way as critical/important as kernel or compiler. Maybe they might tip the balance, but it's close.
For a Linux rescue distro, I'd shun the loaded GNUutils and go for some nice asm versions.
- Linux was created independently of the FSF
- the Linux developers used FSF tools
are mutually contradictory. I would tend to agree with this point.Also, while the Linux kernel itself is not part of GNU, I would be surprised if there's any Linux distribution out there that doesn't include a boatload of GNU software in key supporting roles.
So while the Linux kernel is not a part of GNU as such, I don't think that rms is out of line expecting that Linux and Linux distributions acknowledge the debt they owe to GNU and the FSF. Without FSF tools, Linux never would have progressed beyond the "obscure hobbyists' amusement" stage.
-y
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for slashdot.sig (129323052 bytes).
I realized that the possible number of responses was rather small. However, since it was clearly still on the site (via a Slashbox), I had some hope that I might get an answer from one of the Slashdot Ubergeeks.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
> Freedom means you can do whatever you want
> and this is clearly something else.
Somewhere in his novel "Annals of Klepsis" R. A. Lafferty asserts:
The ultimate freedom imaginable is the freedom to own slaves.
and it appears that this is the radical sort of "freedom" to which you refer. You apparently would like to be free to grab someone else's source code, modify or extend it, and then resell it as a proprietary, binaries-only product, so you could gather profits, those profits enforced by copyright law.
Well, that certainly is an extreme form of "freedom." Another similarly extreme form of "freedom" would be if I could readily stroll into the bank vault and stuff my pockets, and if I could shoot any pesky bank guard dead who tried to interfere with my getaway. Or if I were free, when I happened to see an attractive woman walking down the sidewalk, to grab her and...well, you get the point. Alluring as the word "freedom" may be, the whole notion of private property - your private property, that is - is a denial of my "freedom" to grab your goods and make them mine. Do you propose, then, in the tradition of Proudhon and Pol Pot, that society should purge itself of the notion of property altogether?
Your Franklin quote is irrelevant. Franklin was derogating the notion of a citizen signing away a freedom which he himself currently possesses for security's sake. But no one gives up any freedom at all when he gets hold of someone else's software licensed under GPL, because it isn't his software to start with, so since it was in no way his property to start with - since his original share of ownership of that GPL'd code was zero - he has absolutely no rights to lose. Neither does anyone who comes up with an original program lose any freedom whatsoever if he decides to license it under GPL, because his choice of how to license his original work is entirely a free one.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Stallman's insistence on seeing the word "gnu" all over the place is rather cloying. But what does the phrase "GNU software" mean, exactly? As far as I can tell, the term "GNU software" would have to mean "software licensed under the GNU Public License". Well, as we all know, Mr. Torvalds's Linux kernel happens to be licensed under GPL, for which generous act we are all grateful.
So if I interpret the phrase "GNU software" correctly, then your statement
Take all the non-GNU stuff out of Redhat, SuSE or Debian, but keep the kernel...
makes no sense at all.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
> forcing free-software = no living.
Good heavens, did I miss something? Have RMS and his gang seized the U.S. government in a coup d'etat, and are they now dismantling the entire country's commercial software industry by police force?
Just who is forcing you to release any program you write as "free-software"? For that matter, has "free-software" made such inroads into the profitability of the commercial software industry that that industry is threatened by bankruptcy? Is Microsoft becoming insolvent? Has NASDAQ crashed?
If you want to talk about a bunch that is destroying the opportunity of small entrepreneurs to get a foothold in the commercial software business, then lets talk about Microsoft and their notorious competition-crushing business tactics. Certainly Microsoft has done more to wipe out the software small-businessman than the FSF ever has.
Incidentally, this isn't because Bill Gates is uniquely evil (he might be, but that would be irrelevant) or any such nonsense as that. It is just a natural tendency in any capitalist economy, in the absence of government controls to the contrary, that power in any field of business should tend to concentrate in any company with the biggest market share, thus making that market share even bigger, and so on in a feedback loop that leads inevitably to monopoly. Read all about it in Marx's Capital - don't worry, it's just a book, it won't hypnotize you or bite you or anything like that...
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
No, no, no! What is with you people? Can't you at all grasp the idea of the possibility of human interactions which are not driven solely by the profit motive? Here Stallman goes on and on about software sans profits, and despite all his talking you still think the validity of the whole concept must be measured in terms of money profits.
Stallman's idea has nothing to do with any programmers making a profit, much less making a profit for distributors. Stallman's idea is that, by licensing their works under "copyleft," his unique subversion of the copyright laws, people can make a large and dynamically self-sustaining body of programs, all including full source code, so that computer users wouldn't have to be bound and restricted by proprietary licensing schemes.
No, a real test of Stallman's ideas would be to see if a bunch of volunteer developers could actually create a solid, high-quality operating system, complete with useful applications, the whole mess being under the GPL. And by golly, so they have, so I guess Stallman's idea was valid after all. It's called Linux, or if you want to be linguistically complusive about it, GNU/Linux.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
> I want to become filthy-rich from a program
> that I will design and sell, with no-source, and on
> whatever OS i choose.
Forget about it. Microsoft will squash you like a bug.
> If I create a killer app for linux, "the
> public domain" owns it, not me.
You don't say? Well, I guess that means I can put a copy of WordPerfect 8 for Linux on an ftp site somewhere, because according to my expert lawyer (you) it has now entered the public domain. Won't Cowpland be pissed? Tough luck, Cowpland!
> the US was built on capitalism, and the only
> thing open-source will do is destroy it.
Capitalism sucks, and I think it would be just great if open-source software would somehow magically wipe capitalism out or at least club it down a bit, but of course that's not going to happen.
> Read up on your history kids, and pay close
> attention to china and russia.
If you had read your history, focusing particularly on the nineteenth century when capitalism developed, you'd never have posted such nonsense. But do pay attention to Russia, especially now that they have traded in their sinister old postwar gangster socialism for an even worse gangster capitalism.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
> I really hope this is just the ignorance of the
> journalist and not RMS trying to take
> credit for Linux.
Its neither. RMS is saying something somewhat
differnt. He is saying yes, linux is NOT a GNU
project. However, Linux is also NOT an OS.
very simple... Linux is not an OS without tools.
The GNU tools are not an OS withotu a kernel.
Just about every linux dist is Linux kernel+GNU
tools + other (some BSD tools, etc etc). However
the main base tools tend to be mostly GNU (ls,
cp tar etc). So... why does the kernel deserve
all the credit in the name? GNU/Linux seems alot
more apropriate.
> RMS needs to lighten his stance against Amazon.
I disagree... not just because I hate software
patents and think this one is REALLY obvious...
not only that but I swear I saw a website with
"1 click ordering" quite a while before I ever
even heard of "amazon.com".
All in all...his argument (bezos) boiled down to
"Barnes and Nobel copies everything we did, so
we had to stop them". Yea so? You see a good idea
...you use it. People are on this "innovation"
kick lately...its the big buzzword if your not
innovating its "bad". Hey...good ideas exist...
you see a good idea...you use it. Nothing wrong
with that in my book. Noone is criticizing car
manafacturers for "not innovating" because they
all make round wheels for their cars.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I have to agree here...
I mean, I am listening to the MP3s now (off local
copies that I saved). Its cool. I LIKE being able
to listen to mp3s of the interview...however...
it SHOULD be text also. Sometimes I much prefer
to read, that way I can skip around better etc.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Well...
The argument is (and I believe) that what you are
asking for is the freedom to restric others.
You want to be able to take the free software
and then make it into something else...and then
restrict what others can do with it.
Thats not really a freedom. Thats a restriction
on the freedom of others.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
The site could market itself to the hearing-impaired, but would likely find more users such as myself who just plain prefer their information as text.
(What would be the intellectual property rules on this? If the audio is freely available, would an automated (or manual) translation be allowed? I think back to the CNN (or was it Time) instant transcripts for the first portion of the OJ trial ... as a new transcript of a freely-available audio item, they were allowed. Whatever service it was stopped presenting them for an unknown reason about halfway through the trial, but did not remove the earlier listings.)
By "everyone" I assume you mean "all programmers", given that the discussion is about software development. Programming is a difficult skill. Not everyone can do it. It takes a lot of effort to become a proficient programmer, regardless if you are self-educated or taught in a classroom.
The ability to write code is substantially less common and harder to obtain than, say, the ability to flip burgers -- this makes the code-writer's time more valuable than the burger-flipper's. The coder has also made a much larger investment in training than the burger fliper -- this investment must be compensated.
If writing code was as easy as flipping burgers, you could justify paying programmers minimum wage. Thankfully, programming is substantially more difficult, and as a result, commands a much higher wage.
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
This isn't actually so radical or new -- look at the database server market: Oracle, Sybase, etc make MUCH more money on tech support contracts & systems integration work than they do on actually selling licences for their flagship products. In the server market, where Linux is really viable, the REAL money comes from annual support/maintenance agreements, and this has been true for years. By not charging for the basic software, the company isn't giving up a whole lot of $$$ -- and this loss is (at least in theory) offset by the lower cost of developing open-source software.
However, not all programs are sufficiently complex to require tech support - particuarly in the application market. I don't think you really could make money providing tech support for somthing like a web browser or an e-mail client. Even somthing like an office suite would be difficult to support using this model.
I like the Open Source / Free Software model for a lot of reasons. I'm working on some programs that I'd like to be able to release open-source; however, I am reluctant to do so without figuring out some way to make my investment of time & effort pay off, either directly or indirectly. The ego satisfaction of contributing somthing to the community would be real nice... but ego gratification dosn't pay the mortgage or put food on the table. Selling T-Shirts & stuffed penguins isn't an option; if I wanted to sell souvineers for a living I wouldn't have busted my ass getting an engineering degree.
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Stallman *is* a crackpot, IMHO, but not because he's wrong. It's because he's too radical for most people's tastes.
It seems to be an axiomatic thing about politics, most visibly demonstrated by the behavior of the US Republican party under Clinton: the more the moderates rule the roost, the more extreme the standard bearers of the wings become. Linus Torvalds has created a system that uses the GPL to its fullest advantage, yet repudiates the ivory-tower extremism of the FSF: give it away or sell it, just don't think you can own it. Companies like RedHat and SuSE are proving that this can work.
The problem is that this leaves Richard Stallman on the fringe, no longer in control of the philosophical movement he created. So he does the human thing: he backlashes. He tries to force the GNU/Linux issue. He rails against the corporatization of Linux, forgetting that commercial acceptance is critical to its future. He slams the open source movement because it doesn't do things the GNU way (check out his comments about APSL, for example). He has even demoted the Library GPL to Lesser GPL.
It would be wrong to say that rms doesn't have a point. But I'm not one of those people who agree with the phrase "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice" -- extremism is always a vice as it a) does not allow for the possibility of redefining a position if such proves to be necessary and b) tends to turn off those who you most have to reach -- those darned moderates again. Stallman is an extremist, and therefore (by *my* definition anyway, and that subjectivity should be very much acknowledged here) a crackpot.
In any case, I've often felt that rms likes to play the same embrace-and-extend game as Microsoft with no purpose other than to lock people into GNU. I've felt that way for a long time, ever since I read the part of the GCC manual that talks about the purpose of other compilers being to compile GCC. The creation of GUILE is another example; IMHO its only reasons for existence are that a) Stallman is not fond of tcl/tk and b) Stallman is a scheme junkie. Not because another tool was needed, but because *rms wants it that way*. The Apple boycott of years past is another thing -- the FSF was punishing AU/X and MacOS users for Apple's behavior, no matter that the Mac people might have as much to contribute as anyone else. In their own way, the FSF is no different from the commercial establishment they're fighting; it's like Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates. The question is not whether one is worse than the other, it's a matter of who's holding the hammer at the moment.
Actually, just as an exercise I'd like to see someone create a diminished-GNU linux distro. I don't think it would be especially popular, since GNU programs tend to be the best in their class, but someone should try it on principle. The FSF to me has long resembled a child who comes to a party with a game idea, but then wants to take it and go home when other kids start adding rules, the kicker being that they've already given it away! (Though at least the gcc->egcs->gcc split-countersplit indicates they're smart enough to know when there's a better way sometimes...)
Do I think open-source is a good thing? Yer damn straight. It's made a penguin-lover out of this longtime Machead. Do I think rms should be honored for creating and managing the GNU project? Yes. The movement came before him and will outlast him, but he's the philosophical nexus. But do I think his behavior is a bit outlandish because of his unyielding philosophical positions?
Oh, yeah.
See, as I said, Linus has set the precedent for a kinder, gentler open source movement. IMHO it's time for rms to get in line and debate with some flexibility or just shut up and keep writing good software.
/Brian
I, as an Open Source advocate who happens to be deaf, am personally insulted that RMS would choose to make his works unfree by making sure that only the majority (i.e. the hearing folks and their powerful lobby groups) could hear what he had to say.
/. feels like making the text of this interview available, I would be sure to read it.
It is this spirit of forked-tongue hypocrisy which so typically characterizes the prominent members of the Open Source movement and the FSF. Out of one side of his mouth, RMS chants his "Free for all" mantra, while he hypocritically insures that the message he is transmitting is not, in fact, free for all.
If somebody out there on
Thank you.
PS: I am also blind, but can feel my floppy drive moving. Please post your response in the form of a Base64-encoded dd image of a 3.5" floppy disk formatted with ext2fs in such a way as to cause the movement of the disk heads (while reading the first file of the first directory)to yield your message in Morse Code.
--
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Under copyright law, the 'default' license is not the public domain. The default license is no license at all -- which is to say, no freedom at all. If I write some code and give or sell you a copy, and I don't tell you specifically that you may copy it and distribute it, then you may not. If you do, you are violating copyright. That is what it means to say that I hold the 'copy-right' (the right to copy) to my work -- you do not, simply because you own a copy of it, have the right to make more copies and distribute them. Only I have that right.
In that context, GPL is significantly freer for you -- it grants you the right to distribute my work (and your derivative work of my work) under certain conditions. When I license my code to you under the GPL, I grant you rights you would not otherwise have -- specifically, the right to copy and distribute it in certain ways. Compared to not being allowed to distribute it at all (the situation normal copyright leaves you in) you have gained significant freedom.
You might suggest that I put my work in the public domain instead, thus permitting anyone to do whatever they want with it. The problem with that is that I want to make sure that anyone who gets a copy of my code -- or any derivative work of my code -- will be able to make further derivatives of it. Under copyright laws, after all, I have certain control over derivative works of my work, and I want to use that control to best ensure the freedom of users of those works. I do this by placing my work under GPL (or a similar license).
By putting my work under GPL, I am not restricting your freedom, because if I did not license it to you, you would have no freedom with regard to it at all, at all. I am not "restricting your freedom in order to ensure someone else's freedom". I am granting both you and the "someone else" freedoms neither of you would otherwise have.
Again, recall the default situation of no license. If I give you a copy of my code without giving you permission to produce derivative works, and you make a derivative work and distribute it, you are violating copyright, just as much as if you ripped a few dozen copies of Windows 2000 and sold them on the streets of New York City. By giving you permission to produce derivative works, I am expanding your freedom -- and by making sure that your derivative works are also free, I am expanding the freedom of their users as well. You have lost nothing; you and the rest of the world have both gained.
Sure, an occasional recording of the free software song might be fun (at least for some), but I like the Web as a primarily-text medium.
Audio postings to slashdot, anyone? ;-(
FreeBSD isn't a distribution of the GNU system, it's an entirely different system that happens to come with GNU tools extra.
/sbin/init.
If you removed all the GNU tools from a stock FreeBSD installation, it would still boot and basically everything would work.
All current Linux distributions are GNU systems, however. The core system around the kernel is all GNU software.
Remove all the GNU tools and libraries from a stock Linux system, and you'll be lucky if you can get as far as a single-user shell, let alone
Now, Tom Christianson (the Perl guy) had the idea a while back of creating a GNU distribution, but using the FreeBSD kernel. That would be a GNU system, and for that particular system, the GNU/FreeBSD moniker would be appropriate (although I doubt that was his intent).
Alternatively, if you replaced the GNU tools of a Linux distribution with the FreeBSD tools and libraries (after making appropriate changes to accomodate the kernel differences), you'd have something that you could justifiably call FreeBSD/Linux (that would be a much more constructive use of Tom's time, I think).
See how it works?
DNA just wants to be free...
Funny. The fact that the FSF wants acknowledgment of the work they've done, and the fact that the following is posted on their website as part of their argument for free software, seems contradictory:
That's from Why Software Should Be Free, by Richard Stallman, Copyright (C) 1998 Free Software Foundation, Inc. [emphasis mine]
I have no problem with them wanting credit for their work, but then they should remove that argument from their website. Of course, doing that would leave a huge hole in their whole argument for free software, so instead they choose to ignore their own hypocrisy.
Want absolute, unarguable, 100% philosophically pure freedom? Release your work to the Public Domain. Why bother with licenses at all? After all, a license is just some kind of restriction.
The system that exists to protect intellectual property, I'm sure, has a noble intent. However, we've seen it abused by business types with the morals of your favorite voracious predator. These people have no appreciation for the hack; they make no considerations towards technical improvement. All they want is financial gain and this is often achieved by hording knowledge. Progress suffers because of this attitude.
The GPL is a hack of the whole license system. It uses the license to, in effect, eliminate a lot of the abuse that licensing allows. But by its very definition, such a license will involve some kind of limitations on what one can do.
It'd be nice if we could live within an environment that allowed total freedom. But history has proven that such anarchy ends up with the rule being "might is right". We all know Corporate might has almost forced this rule into being again. We hardly need to strengthen this situation with a call for a return to anarchy.
In terms of this "debt" do you mean besides those of us HOWTO authors who send any book profits to the FSF, or the coders that contribute back to GNU software? Perhaps you mean the people that use Linux, GNU, and Open Source Software in the same breath and gave GNU the popularity it deserves. Let's face it, GNU helped Linux with software, but Linux made GNU popular.
My personal opinion is that RMS is peeved that Linus is the Open Source poster child and not him. Which is probably a valid point, but shouldn't cause him to be this mean towards us Linux users.
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
It should be obvious that someone like Stallman would be against the Amazon patents. The attempt to patent an e-commerce technique goes against everything he, as well as other followers of GNU, believe in. ;)
The only thing I don't agree with is his defense of free music, and his attack on the music industry. Of course, the reason why I don't agree with this is that at the university I attend, the T-lines become totally saturated during the daytime by people downloading the latest crap by the Backstreet Boys, etc. on Napster. Considering I listen to hardcore/punk/emo, I'd wouldn't bother me too much (at least in terms of bandwidth) if MP3s weren't so readily available.
In all seriousness, I do agree with Stallman; anyone who grew up in the 80s knows that the music industry used to put inserts on Cassette Tapes that said "Home Cassette Copying is Ruining the Music Industry". These are also the same people that put a damper on DAT. And yet, the industry is still around. What Stallman says needs to be heard...
By analogy, that would mean that if I (having no association with the FSF) wrote a book using EMACS & GROFF (FSF tools), RMS and the FSF could claim credit for helping to write that book. Sorry, I don't buy it.
The GNU tools have been ported to just about every OS known to man. I run gawk, sed, and a bunch of other gnu tools on my NT box -- does this make it "GNU NT"? Gnu has created a bunch of really good, portable tools and released them under the GPL. Linus & crew didn't have to use the GNU tools. They could have re-invented the wheel & rewrote them all from scratch, or used the BSD versions. Instead they chose to honor the spirit of the GPL and take some existing open-source code, build on it, and release it back to the community. The FSF has achieved great things in it's own right -- without GCC, there would be no Linux, Apache, etc. But it is no more right for RMS to claim credit for Linux than it would be for a teacher to claim credit for a student's work. The student's work may be built on the foundation of the teacher laid; but that is true with all things. All progress is built on the achievements of those who came before us.
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Linux != GNU. The article states that Linux is the end result of the GNU project's efforts to create a unix-like OS. Linux was created independently of the FSF - the Linux developers used FSF tools and released it under the GPL. I really hope this is just the ignorance of the journalist and not RMS trying to take credit for Linux.
[IMHO]RMS needs to lighten his stance against Amazon. I think Jeff Bezos's reply to Tim O'Reilly's open letter did a good job of explaning why Amazon had to get the patents it did. Software patents are a Very Bad Thing, I agree; but until the system is fixed they are a fact of life that we have to live with. At least Jeff has acknowledged that the patent system is broken and is advocating change. As bad as the Amazon patents are, just imagine how much worse things would be if Barnes & Noble (or Micro~1) beat them to the punch. Let's see if Jeff keeps his word before we fly off the handle. There are a lot of other companies that are misusing software patents to a much worse degree than Amazon -- why not boycott them instead?
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
GNP - GNP is Not Pizza.
Let's take a some dough, eat it alot and get to know it's properties and then make our own dough recipe. I'll work and that. Someone else can work on a recipe for sauce and cheese, etc. Once it gets to the point where we have lots of people supporting our pizza project, let's start a holy crusade against all other food.
Anyone who doesn't eat our Foodix will be told they are eating inferiour food and because of that, they don't deserve the space they occupy.
Soon Foodix will be the latest buzzword and it will have all started right here!!!
OK, OK, I'm going to feed the troll.
The freedom part of the GPL is that everyone else gets the same rights as you. The source was made available to you, so you have to make it available to others (if you distribute binaries).
No, it's not totally free. IRL, you can do pretty much whatever you like inside your house, but once you get out on the street there are things you can't do (drive as fast as you like, on the wrong side of the road, etc.). These limitations are placed on you to protect the freedom (and life) of others. Likewise, the GPL puts restrictions on you to protect others' access to free software.
Total freedom, IMHO, disappeared the day the second sentient being was born on this planet. Freedom is as much about everyone's freedom as it is about yours.
Oh, and Franklin was talking about essential freedoms. He probably wouldn't include software, even if you could explain it to him.
--
E_NOSIG
I remember the good old days when the Internet just had words on it. Now I can't get what Stallman has to say without turning my sound system on. Why would anyone make available the sounds of an interview, when it would be far more efficient and easier for everyone to access as text?
Is Wired too lazy to transcribe or did I miss a link to the text version?