RMS Responds To Allchin's Comments

Thanks to Dan Gillmor for pointing out RMS' response to the commentary from Microsoft's Allchin recently. The comments are pretty normal for RMS - the delineation between Open Source and the Free Software Movement, and what the differences are, as well as his non-opinion of "intellectual property". I've been notified that this response was a draft of RMS' - we'll update it with the final when it's ready.

Comments

Re:no examples of innovation

[X]

I have no idea why "user-facing" has to get thrown in there (like it's not innovation if it's not facing the user), but let's go with it.

• X/Windows was a pretty innovative concept of a cross-platform network GUI
• I think PEX was one of the first 3D network GUI's.
• The Zephyr instant messaging service predates AIM
• Almost any software written before the 70's
• Nethack
• Xconq (one of the first turn-based strategy games)
• The first NNTP/News readers
• The first e-mail clients
• The first web browser (CERN's line-mode browser)
• The first SNMP viewers
• I could be wrong, but I believe Andrew was one of the first systems that allowed live object embedding in a document editor
• Fractal renderer's. ;-)
• Then there's the whole TeX typesetting system
• Network chess clients
• PGP
• The first telnet client
• The first ftp client
• The first secure remote shell
• The first gopher client
• While it wasn't the first compiler, gcc was pretty innovative
• Many of the GNU and BSD implementations of those little services that come with Unix tend to be significant improvements over what was part of the original proprietary Unix services.

Excercise for the reader: try to make a comperable list of innovations that Microsoft has made. ;-)

A really imporant point here is that the growth and improvement of Unix during the 70's is directly attributable to it being made "free" software and then incorporating free patches.

Now, I think what Allchin was focusing on was all the "GUI innovations" which have been done by proprietary software vendors. Now, most of those GUI innovations occured somewhere between the mid 80's to mid 90's. Guess what, that just happens to coincide with the times when proprietary software was most dominant in the industry. It stands to reason that most of the innovations from that time would be embodied by proprietary software.

The bottom line is that the "GUI" era far from covers the bulk of innovation in the computer industry. More importantly, I'd argue that the amount of effort necessary to come up with innovations like "menu bars" is not comperable to say coming up with quicksort.

Re:Comments RE Kerberos

[Nugget94M]

You are wrong. :)

Everything you need to know in order to fully understand the RFC-complaint changes that microsoft made to their Kerberos implementation can be freely found online or in the MSDN materials. A good place to start would be here.

The changes microsoft made were to make kerberos understand the more flexible security model and ACL scheme in Win2K, and are not at all an attempt to embrace and extend. If you're running Win2K, the changes are crucial. If you're not running Win2K the changes are irrelevant, so they're not going to entice people to migrate away from the MIT implementation.

Re:And people wonder why RMS hasn't gotten anywher

[Omnifarious]

I could leave it at that, but RMS is so condescending it makes me retch:

"I have no opinion 'intellectual property rights,' and if you are thoughtful you will have none either."

Just because he's against them doesn't mean he has to presume that we'd agree with that position. And to frame our disagreement in the language of thoughtfulness/thoughtlessness insults the hours of philosophical and moral debate we have invested in arriving at our own conclusions, be they contrary to his or not.

This is a misreading of what he said. He did not say he was against them. He said he had no opinion at all on them because the whole term is too encompassing for one opinion to cover all the things the term covers. He's right beyond a shadow of a doubt here.

I would say this one attempt to misread what he said casts a great deal of doubt on your ability to make even the vaguest stab at objectively judging his opinions.

I will agree with you that he trotted out the whole 'Open Source' vs. 'Free Software' thing again, and it wasn't particularily relevant in this case. A few of the things he said are relevant though.

I'd like a big serving of EVIDENCE and PROOF pls

[spectecjr]

He mentioned their decision to embrace and extend Kerberos in Win2000. I thought that this was a particularly good choice because it showed:

An example of free software so innovative that Microsoft wanted to use it (scratch the "Free Software stifles innovation")
How a BSD-style license, which Microsoft advocated, let them take it and
How Microsoft then turned around and screwed the people who had written the software in the first place by deliberately destroying interoperability


I'd like a large serving of evidence and proof please.

Having hacked around the binaries of the MS Kerberos implementation, I can find no evidence that they've used any of the MIT implementation of Kerberos.

So what makes RMS so sure that it is using their source code? After all, the spec is out there online for anyone to implement for free. Why does he think they didn't do that?

Pretty strong claims to be making in public. Well, here's one in return -- Richard M. Stallman, You are a LIAR -- Back Up Your Claims.

Heck, I'll even challenge him to a one-legged arse kicking contest if he's interested.

Simon

What Salient Points?

[Carnage4Life]

I'm reading his responses, and they're not the responses of someone who wants to engage Allchin in a dialogue about Allchin's salient points.

What salient points do you want RMS to discuss?

START CONVERSATION

Microsoft: We'd like to embrace and extend GPL software but the GPL prevents this.

RMS: That's the point.

END CONVERSATION.

As RMS never grows tired of stating, he is a representative of the Free Software Movement which is about freedom at all costs, while most people including yourself are members of the Open Source movement which is willing to compromise with closed source developers.

They're the responses of someone who's been spouting the same party line for the last twenty years and who will gladly and graciously take any opportunity to do the same anew. This isn't a criticism of the free software movement.

Yes, it is. You're so called tired party line is the ethos of the Free Software Movement. People like you and ESR are members of the Open Source Movement which RMS keeps pointing out in the article (did you read it all?), he is not a part off. The Free Software Movement is not about compromise it is about "Give me freedom, or give me death".


Finagle's First Law

Re:And people wonder why RMS hasn't gotten anywher

[borud]

I think Richard Stallman is being very helpful. For almost two decades, people have gotten his message wrong and he has patiently corrected them and tried to explain what he means. Still, journalists and the majority of the open source hang-arounds have no idea what Stallman is all about. They haven't even bothered to read the GPL and think about what it _means_, and they certainly have spent no time learning the difference between what RMS says and what ESR says.

Richard Stallman has to repeat his message because people are too daft to understand it. that Allchin doesn't get it is not very surprising, but that the open source hangarounds don't get it is downright disappointing.

if I were RMS, I'm not sure I would be so patient. I would probably blow up every now and then, when people don't bother to make the mental effort to understand exactly what he is talking about.

Comments RE Kerberos

[rgmoore]

One very nice aspect of Stallman's commentary is that he provided a solid example of Microsoft's behavior relative to Free Software. He mentioned their decision to embrace and extend Kerberos in Win2000. I thought that this was a particularly good choice because it showed:

1. An example of free software so innovative that Microsoft wanted to use it (scratch the "Free Software stifles innovation")
2. How a BSD-style license, which Microsoft advocated, let them take it and
3. How Microsoft then turned around and screwed the people who had written the software in the first place by deliberately destroying interoperability

Having a nice solid example is a big step up from the generic rantings so popular on slashdot. Instead of "Microsoft wants a license that lets them swipe free software for their own ends", Stallman has shown that Microsoft has used more permissive licenses to swipe free software and screw existing users.

Re:And people wonder why RMS hasn't gotten anywher

[rgmoore]

I could leave it at that, but RMS is so condescending it makes me retch:

"I have no opinion 'intellectual property rights,' and if you are thoughtful you will have none either."

Did you actually read what he said, or were you just looking for a nice quote that you could use out of context to give you an excuse to say something nasty about him? If you had a shred of honesty you would have noted that the full context was:

I have no opinion "intellectual property rights," and if you are thoughtful you will have none either. That term is a catch-all, covering copyrights, patents, trademarks, and other disparate legal systems; they are so different, in the laws and in their effects, that any statement about all of them at once is almost surely foolish. To think intelligently about copyrights, patents or trademarks, you must think about them separately.

He's not saying that he's against IP rights generally but that they're such a diverse issue that treating them as a monolithic concept is stupid. I'd say that's a very fair comment and shows that he has probably thought about the issue a lot more than most talking heads who blather about the necessity of protecting intellectual property in the media.

Re:RMS strikes again!

[Twistor]

My problem with this is that GNU claims ownership of other peoples' projects. RMS has always said his intention was to develop a GNU operating system and he started with the tools and would then develop the kernel (I find this unbelieveable, I mean, who wouldn't start with the kernel).

...well actually it is believable, and, you make the mistake of assuming that the outcome of the linux development was foreseen:

to use the "Rebel Code" book mentioned elsewhere on yesterday's /.:

p.42:

"Though unwilling to release Linux, he [Linus Torvalds] was ready to mention its existence. On Sunday, 25 August 1991, under the subject line "What would you most like to see in minix?" he wrote in the comp.os.minix newsgroup:

...I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since April..."

It was the Linux development process that was revolutionary... Linus released early and often, kept the other developers directly involved, inviting folks to freely add in anything they wanted (sometimes reworking the entire kernel rather than just bolting a feature on), and to fix bugs, etc. No other project (free or otherwise) moved/moves as quickly (even the long wait for 2.4 was not even close to "long" when compared to other project's dev. cycles, only "long" when compared to other Linux kernel releases...)

About the absence of a kernel for GNU, RMS was working (though not like Linus!) on the Hurd kernel at the time Linux was starting (again, the process was what made the difference... Linux kernel beat Hurd kernel because Linux was done first-- and done very well.)

Again, from Rebel Code:

p.44:

"Linus also pointed out something that would have been obvious to any hacker of the time, but which has become obscured as Linux has become more widely known. 'Sadly,' he writes, 'a kernel'-- which is what Linux is and always has been-- 'by itself gets you nowhere. To get a working system you need a shell, compilers, a library, etc.' He then pointed out that 'most of the tools used with linux are GNU software and are under the GNU copyleft,' an early indication of the symbiosis of the two systems."

RMS started his kernel last because he first wanted tools that worked (or could be easily ported) on his machine, tools that you need to do any programming... his machine chip (and its assembly instuction set, and it's OS (!)) was already settled, so it made sense to battle AT&T (and Tanenbaum, for that matter) by first writing the tools that would allow a kernel to be written later.

What do you think Open Source IS?!

[Cat Mara]

Almost nothing you cite is open source. Almost everything you cite is the work of private initiatives or corporate consortiums.

<takes deep breath; exhales loudly> What's this got to do with anything? What part of "open source" don't you get? The source code of these programs is openly available and open to modify! Hence: Open. Source. Hello?! McFly?!

I figure you've got this mental image of "open source" as being the product of the übergeeky, hunched over their machines into the small hours, surrounded by a debris of fast food wrappers and mouldy styrofoam coffee cups. Open Source has nothing to do with this stereotype.

That these programs were developed by "private initiatives" and "corporate consortiums" (sic) is irrelevant. Whether these programs were written by the weird on extreme coffee jags or by 9-to-5 MIS minions in suits is irrelevant. Whether these developments were funded by large corporations or done on one's own dollar is irrelevant. The point is, they've made the source code publically available. These "corporate consortiums" have given something back to the community. They have put their money where their mouths are for open standards. They have not locked up their source code behind NDAs and attempted to pervert open protocols and justified this antisocial behaviour by claiming the right to "innovate" like Microsoft have done. These organisations should be applauded for their public spirit, not sneered at.

I like the GPL

[einhverfr]

I feel that if I make money from some one else's work, I owe them something in return, period. This is essential of any constructively capitalist entity, for without it, any positive values of capitalism are quickly lost.

For this reason, I find it dispicable that companies, such as Microsoft, Sun, etc. would take an open source piece of software and release a proprietary version, often without even providing credit to the original developers. THis practice is plagerism, plain and simple and is a far greater threat to intellectual property than the GPL. But it is legal without the protection of the GPL.

Copyright laws do not exist to make Bill Gates, Steve Balmer, Jim Allchin, Larry Elison, and others as much money as possible. They exist for the purpose of encouraging expression of ideas. When code is copyrightten and kept secret, this is a serious misuse of copyright law and in some ways threatens the entire system. (Patents are another story.)

The GPL is about returning copyright law to its original intent-- the intent to share expression, and this ideal, I believe is one of the things that RMS referrs to in his article.

The software industry is still in its infancy, and this is why companies like Microsoft continu to profit on the upgrade cycle and why cusotmers continue to buy the products. Very profitable but not very sustainable.

RMSBOT

[Catharsis]

Has anyone considered the possibility that RMS might just be an email bot with a web spider hooked up?

I mean, how hard could it be?

Grep the file for "Linux" and if there's X amount of "Linux"es in a certain context, fire off a slightly randomized rant about proper use of GNU/Linux.

Check for certain key words in any discussion FSF or open source, and then fire off a rant.

It couldn't be *that* hard.

Hell, I'm surprised there's no perl script out on the net which lets you auto-create an RMS response to any given statement.

If you release it under the GNU license (wait... he likes the GNU license, right?) he could even use it himself (assuming he exists at all) and save himself all *KINDS* of effort...

Hey, RMSBOT?
I am pro open source Linux, because it should be FREE as in beer, not free as in french revolution.

I like beer. I don't like guillotines.

pvh