RMS Accused Of Attempting Glibc Hostile Takeover

Bram Stolk sent a bit in thats been floating around lately where Ulrich Drepper, glibc maintainer announces the new version, and sidetracks to discuss an an RMS takeover attempt and how he feels about it. He raises several good points and I tend to agree with him. The FSF has done, and continues to do so much good, but more and more tension continues to grow between the extreme free speech faction and the more moderate folks. People have asked my opinion, and I'll just leave it by saying I don't prefix "Linux" with those 3 little letters and a slash even tho I've been asked.

Comments

Re:Stallman....

[jorbettis]

Well, it's not about stallman's ego, it's about making people realize that there is more to Free Software than the apolitical views of Linus.

BTW, here's a quote from one of Stallman's speeches (it was very well recieved):

When I do this, some people think it's because I want my ego to be fed. Of course, it's not like I'm asking you to call it Stallmanix.

-- Richard Stallman on GNU/Linux

Presumption of Innocence

[mdavids]

"Stallman recently tried what I would call a hostile takeover of the glibc development. He tried to conspire behind my back and persuade the other main developers to take control so that in the end he is in control and can dictate whatever pleases him."

How? Why?

"The morale of this is that people will hopefully realize what a control freak and raging manic Stallman is."

Because you say so? I think I'll reserve judgement until I hear something more than "He just is, okay!"

This $&%$& demands everything to be labeled in a way which credits him and he does not stop before making completely wrong statements like "its variant".

Aha! So that's what it's all about. I find it surprising that someone working on "the GNU C library" as it's called in these release notes, should take exception to the idea that it's supposed to be a part of the GNU operating system.

Calling the operating system GNU/Linux, GNU/Hurd or whatever is not egotism (or not just egotism, anyway). It's an accurate description of what the system is. Look at, for instance, reviews calling openUNIX "Linux without Linux". That just sounds absurd, unless you know that the first "Linux" actually means "GNU".

I find this completely unacceptable and can assure everybody that I consider none of the code I contributed to glibc (which is quite a lot) to be as part of the GNU project and so a major part of what Stallman claims credit for is simply going away.

Does not play well with others. End of story.

Call it GNU/Linux if you like...

[cperciva]

... but also make sure you refer to Microsoft BSD/Windows.

Giving credit where credit is due is one thing, but trying to give everyone credit in the name is just going to lead to horribly long names.

Re:GNU is Not UNIX or Linux. but Linux needs ' GNU

[Chester K]

Never mind that when I purchase or download a Linux version 70% or more of the included software is GNU. Right?

Being under the GPL is not the same as being GNU. I've written stuff and released it under the GPL and I'll be damned if anyone is going to tell me that the FSF deserves naming credit for my software.

Steering Committee an improvement so far (IMHO)

[Adam J. Richter]

The basic idealogical dispute is that previously it was illegal to link glibc with proprietary software linked by non-GNU compilers due to a special "modified GPL" in the libio section of the GNU C Library. The change that the steering committee (who are developers like Roland McGrath, not just "Stallman") made was primiarily to convert that code to LGPL. Ulrich was the one being an idealogue about it. In this case, the steering committee was the group that was actually trying to get the right thing done for the users.

The glibc-2.2.4 announcement advised everyone to switch to it. What the announcement did not mention is that if you try to configure glibc-2.2.4, you discover that it does not want to build under gcc-3. The steering committee is pushing for a fast release of glibc-2.2.5 which will not have this problem.

So far, the steering committee seems to be a very positive influence. In the past, people were giving up hope on glibc due to its bloat, arcaneness, and legal issues. The SC seems much more focused on what users want.

By the way, let me say that Ulrich Drepper has made many contributions to glibc and I hope he will continue to be involved as a contributor.