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RMS Accused Of Attempting Glibc Hostile Takeover

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the things-are-never-dull dept.

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.

3 of 887 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Stallman.... by jorbettis · · Score: 5, Informative

    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


    --

    Jordan Bettis

    ``Wherever you go, there's another stupid sigfile quote.''
  2. Re:GNU is Not UNIX or Linux. but Linux needs ' GNU by Chester+K · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --

    NO CARRIER
  3. Steering Committee an improvement so far (IMHO) by Adam+J.+Richter · · Score: 5, Informative


    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.