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Stallman Clarifies Position RE:Gnome & .Net
RMS ? has sent The Register an email in which he corrects their 'inaccurate' representation of his stance on the GNOME & .NET issue. He states, "I am pretty sure something was garbled in the quotation which has me asking Miguel to 'explain himself to us', because those words would be
explicitly confrontational, and I did not have any wish to do that."
Wow, this is turning into a ping-pong match.
You have to wonder how much relevant information is lost before a story makes it to press these days. Partial quotes, reassembled sentences, poor fact checking. This is meant to address the media in general, not this article specifically.
We need a newspaper/website that quotes people word for word rather than just the highlights, and always sends two reporters to cover a job separately. Not that it will ever happen but I bet we'd have a considerably different view of world events if it happened.
RMS has never been confrontational. But he has always stood his ground.
Unfortunately many "nutbags" seem unable to understand the difference.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Open source software does not meet all 4.
Do the obvious to e-mail me.
Miguel's response to this controversy appeased a lot of my concerns about what they actually want do do with Mono, and especially his apparent admiration for Microsoft's stuff (he likes .Net, but still thinks everything that came before it is garbage). While I still disagree with his fetish for next-gen APIs over designing an actual desktop (which KDE seems much farther along with), at least he doesn't appear to be selling out to M$ as readily as it first seemed.
It continues to amaze me over and over, how uninformed people attack Richard Stallman not substantively, but personally - attacking the way he looks, the way he talks, but never substantively refuting what he says. It amazes me even more, how these ad hominem attacks get up-modded. Apparently there is a lot of hatred out there for people of principle.
/. "community"). But it was precisely his unyielding, principled approach to software development that made the GNU project succeed in the end, despite the odds.
Well let's first get some facts straight. No one who uses GNU/Linux or any of the related free or open source software built on the Gnu/Linux platform would be enjoying the use of this stuff if it wasn't for Richard Stallman. In the mid-80s when he decided to rebuild Unix from scratch, all my geek and hacker friends who were Unix users at the time, thought he was totally nuts (just like a good part of the
Linus Torvald, a great programmer and a man worthy of praise, finished up what Stallman had started. But he was standing on the shoulder of a giant. If Richard Stallman feels that the OS should be called GNU/Linux he is 100% justified, whether or not its an ego issue as many here contend, or an issue of principle, as he does. Either way, as the man who made it happen, he has the right to make that demand. Whether you honor it or not is your choice. But insulting him while you continue to use the fruits of his labor is worse than hypocrisy - its theft.
There is not one, not one person, in the free software or open source world who has contributed more to the existance of this stuff than Richard Stallman. So at the very least, he deserves the gratitude of anyone who uses this software, for whatever reason they might use it.
To say that Richard Stallman's radical ideas are a hindrance to the acceptance of non-proprietary alternatives is absurd. This is the guy who invented the whole concept, this is the man who made it happen. It's precisely because he is fanatical and unyielding that this movement came into being. All those willing to compromise would never have stayed the course he did.
That doesn't mean you have to accept his point of view. I personally think that in the commercial world, there is a place for BSD-style licenses, and unlike Richard Stallman I don't think these are immoral.
Nonetheless I feel tremendous gratitude for what he has done and continues to do, I respect and admire his principled approach to his work and his life. I strongly resent the ungrateful, spiteful, empty-headed sniping that gets thrown his way in this forum. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!
Don't forget the tendency of this community to interpret everything he says in as negative a way as possible.
If he disagrees with something, everyone starts screaming about he's a ranting ideologue who's bent on coercing everyone to follow his ideals. It doesn't matter how he phrases it, it's immediately translated by the anti-RMS crowd into some kind of insane crusade against whatever he's talking about.
Look at the current incident. Someone asks him a question that's based on faulty assumptions. He points out that the questioner might have some of his facts wrong, then says if they were right he'd disagree with it. Instantly the anti-RMS crowd comes out en masse, shrieking.
What's next? RMS order soup with his dinner, and we get the slashdot headline "RMS blasts salad as entree choice"?
I'm not sure why there's such a huge anti-RMS movement in the free software/open source communities. I have some theories though:
1. Stallman has the audacity not to uncritically support everything everyone else does in the open source arena.
2. He represents an older generation of programmers who did the real pioneering stuff, and young programmers today have self-esteem problems with recognizing anyone older than themselves.
3. They don't like his political views.
Using the term "free software" doesn't give power to anyone.
I refer to his personal power and ego.
Put it this way: As you point out, there are a lot of licenses that Stallman doesn't go out of this way to discredit, even though they are not what he would consider ideal.
So why does he go out of his way to disparage Open Source whenever he can, even though the definitions of Free Software and Open Source are virtually identical? It's because it's not just a competitor license, it's a competitor organization.
Stallman knows that he will be marginalized if the Open Source organization gains any ground. If Stallman were really as "agnostic" about these things, as long as the software was free, he would recognize the Open Source organization as a partner in his goals that happens to just come at it from a different angle.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
What, 'not having to pay for software'? 'intensive capitalization'? 'taking over the desktop'? 'getting into the Fortune 500 IT budgets'?
I'm sorry, but if you claim 'the definitions of free software and open source are virtually identical' it only proves:
Wanting to have your pet software project draw on the pool of OSS-friendly developers so it can be more competitive is NOT the same thing as understanding what free software is about.
Viewing the FSF as a 'competitor organisation' is a really lousy way of understanding it...
The fact is, Richard Stallman has had 'an organization with similar goals' obliterate all he cared about before. It happened to him over the MIT AI lab, with LISP machine companies, all dedicated to making terrific products, but destroying the ground they fought over.
To the extent that 'the Open Source organization' wishes to make _its_ strictly pragmatic approach convert people from the more idealistic and rigorous approach favored by Stallman, he is absolutely right to disparage it: it is susceptible to a form of attack (or entropy?) that Free Software is not. By placing practical considerations like ability to compete and gain mindshare in a marketplace ahead of the value of keeping information circulating free of controls, it contains the seeds of its own destruction. Stallman has SEEN the failure of cooperation when money and power got involved, in the era of LISP machines. Why would he be less vigilant now, with even larger numbers of people involved and even more powerful commercial interests involved?
If Stallman were 'agnostic', I for one wouldn't pay attention to him. The Open Source people who are results-before-principles, I don't listen to either. Principles exist for a REASON, and Stallman is admirably consistent in his defence of them, which is why the guy has my loyalty- because I have his. The open source guys would sell me out in a nanosecond for more marketshare, foolishly believing THAT to be the prize, and making up reasons why it is better so.
Sincerity is no guarantee of correctness.
I'm sticking with Stallman, and he'll be 'marginalised' over my dead body and along with all MY code, thank you. Whatever gives you the notion that he's the only one with passionately held beliefs about the flow vs. restriction of information?