RMS Turns 50

gnuhead writes "RMS is turning 50 on the 16th, according to this post in the FSF India mailing list. Some of the members have decided to give a birthday gift to RMS by celebrating March 16th to April 15th as 'GNU/Linux' month, and having a 'It's GNU/Linux dammit!' email sig. for this month. Happy birthday RMS!!!"

Comments

But his biography says his b-day is the 18th

[abe ferlman]

"I was devastated by the fear, but I couldn't imagine what to do and didn't have the guts to go demonstrate," recalls Stallman, whose March 18th birthday earned him a dreaded low number in the draft lottery when the federal government finally eliminated college deferments in 1971."

Taken from the Free as in Freedom, which you can read here.

I remembered this because I thought I shared a birthday with RMS. Perhaps I was wrong after all.

Re:But his biography says his b-day is the 18th

[Galvatron]

Yes, exactly. Now they only let you defer until the end of your current semester.

Re:not gnu

[nomadic]

Good lord that's almost completely wrong. Wow, good job there.

Re:not gnu

[lyle_hanson]

They tried to develop a complete system for years, and made relatively little progress. Torvalds saved the day.

Little progress? If you're running linux, chances are a huge proportion of the software on your system is GNU or derived from GNU software. Torvalds wrote a kernel and surrounded it with a GNU system.

Re:not gnu

[sybarite]

Show the guy some respect.

How much of your favorite distribution is from FSF/GNU? He devised the GPL without which Linux wouldn't be where it is today. He doesn't ask people to use the term GNU\Linux out of ego, but to remind them about the ideals of Free Software. Read this book and give it some thought: Free as in Freedom

Re:Why not the FSF/Emacs/GCC/GDB month?

[ArtDent]

RMS has made more contributions to the whole Open Source movement...

Actually, I rather suspect that RMS would say his contributions were made to the Free Software movement.

I agree with your sentiment: that we all owe RMS a great deal of respect. But part of that respect could include having a basic understanding of his movement and philosophies, even if we prefer competing, though related, ones.

Re:Why not the FSF/Emacs/GCC/GDB month?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stallman would of course rake you over the coals for daring to use the hated term "open source," which was created to try to distance the movement from his manifest insanity.

Re:GNU/Linux, fah!

[john_lewmanny]

I dont belive you're being fair. FSF was there a long time before Linux (and I mean the kernel) come out. I wouldn't call their work "contributions to the Linux movement".

And about "renaming Linux" (to GNU/Linux)... you should distinguish the kernel, that is Linux, from the whole OS, which is usually called Linux but some feel that it would be better called GNU/Linux.

Remember that Linus started Linux because he wanted to run GNU software in a x86 without having to pay for a non-free OS/kernel. As Linus himself said in the famous Tanenbaum-Torvalds debate:

If the GNU kernel had been ready last spring, I'd not have bothered to even start my project: the fact is that it wasn't and still isn't. Linux wins heavily on points of being available now.

Re:GNU/Linux, fah!

[NaDrew]

Almost everything you buy has the manufacturers logo permanently emblazoned on it. I'm looking around and my computer, my calculator, my speakers, phone, watch, wallet, mugs, mp3 player, books cds, movies, etc,etc,etc all have manufacturer/creator logos/names on them.

Once you purchase something and it's yours, you are of course free to remove whatever branding the manufacturer's hyperactive marketing department has seen fit to excrete on it.
As I am not intimately familiar with the terms under which Linux distributions include the GNU tools, under what conditions could the FSF require that GNU be part of the OS name? Or alternatively, under what conditions could a distribution maker remove the GNU tools or the GNU name from those tools?
If the FSF wants the OS to be known as GNU/Linux, perhaps the license under which the GNU tools are provided could include a clause stating such. If they have not and are merely suggesting this terminology, it can be ignored.

Re:not gnu

[john_lewmanny]

The book can be found online here.

It's really worth reading. RMS's biography. Give it a try.

Re:Gosh..

[Michael Wardle]

For a few insights into this rebellion against control, read Free as in Freedom and Why GNU su does not support the wheel group.

Free Software, not Open Source

[epsalon]

RMS has nothing to do with the "Open Source" movement. RMS's movement is called "Free Software", or GNU. More information is available on the GNU site.

Re:Someone should start a BSD C/C++ compiler proje

[Jimmy_B]

My background is math, not CS, but I'm led to believe that writing a compiler (or at least the core of one) is a standard thing to do for undergrad CS students... some enterprising hacker should write a bare-bones C compiler and release it under the BSD license. It seems to me that if it were well-designed, plenty of hackers would be glad to help out with the optimizer, writing backends for other CPUs, etc... and perhaps after a few years, the compiler would be solid enough for the *BSDs to switch to as their default compiler.

Write a C compiler is easy. Writing a C++ compiler is hard. Writing an *optimizing* compiler is very, very hard. gcc may not produce the fastest code for any one processor, but it supports just about every processor you can name, and then some (for example, TI calculators; see my sig), and it optimizes well for all of them. And why should hackers choose to leave gcc for some upstart compiler? It would need some remarkable technical merits, and a BSD license only debatably counts as a merit at all.

Re:GNU/Linux, fah!

[pr0t3uS]

Of course no one forces you to call it GNU/Linux. By referring to Linux as GNU/Linux you express your respect toward the movement and the tools that made Linux what it is today. It is the same as calling your father, teacher or an older person "SIR".

Also GNU may not mean anything to you because when RMS started you were eighther not born yet or was unable to understand anything heavier than Snowhite. According to your info you recently graduated so from your point of view Microsoft was 'allways there'. From my point of view (i got my PhD in 1979) Microsoft looks like this.

Stallman may look strange to you but he is not stranger than Einstein or Mozart. Yes, i am comparing him to Einstein and Mozart because in my eyes he is a genius who changed our lives for the better.

Have a wonderfull day Richard. Your work is still deeply appreciated an respected by many people alltho it may not be so obvious by the number of 'RMS bashing' posts.

Not GNU/Linux for me

[The Apostrophe Guy]

For me, it's not GNU/Linux, it's RedHat Linux.

GNU did not realise that there was desperate need for a unix-like kernel on x86. They then made another mistake by not supplying a ready-to-go distribution when one called linux appeared.

From my point of view, GNU supply me with a (very good) set of bin utils that I rarely use. The KDE project supplies me with a lot more stuff I do use. But most importantly; RedHat supplied me with the means to get the whole thing up and running when I was a noob.

Re:GNU/Linux, fah!

[Asic Eng]

You have a point about the libraries, but I don't see the compiler angle at all.

If I interpret the license correctly, code generated by gcc is not considered a derivative work of it. A derivative work would only be generated by modifying the source code of the compiler itself. The way I read it, the GNU license doesn't reserve naming rights either, no matter whether a work is derivative or not.

GNU deserves lots of credit, but they should stand by their license, and respect it. They freely made the decision to give up their naming rights, now they should accept that they don't have them anymore.

Re:GNU/Linux, fah!

[MCZapf]

I can see your point about showing respect. I certainly respect and appreciate the GNU project. The only thing I object to is Mr. Stallman's insistence that we should use "GNU/Linux." As I said, I feel the most he should do is suggest the GNU/Linux moniker, and if people want to show respect by using it, then fine. It means much more if they aren't bullied into it.

Personally I feel the phrase "GNU/Linux" is unwieldy and unnecessary. As others have pointed out, GNU/Linux/Xfree/etc. is probably a better way to refer to most Linux distributions. But we don't refer to every single component, because we already know they are there.

Yes, I know that the Linux kernel is built (mostly) with GNU compilers, and the other basic utilties in Linux distributions are from the GNU project. RMS can remind us of this all he wants, and it won't bother me. I think it's perfectly fair for GNU to get credit for that. It's just his grab for attention that seems over-the-line to me.

BTW, I'm not sure why you brought up Microsoft, but that is a funny picture.

Re:Goddamn GNU/Linux people

[ocelotbob]

Well, Intel's compiler's free for noncommercial use, and as such, would be free for this project; I wouldn't be providing the compiler with the distribution, wouldn't be charging from it, but would tell people how to get a copy of Intel's compiler, GCC, or another compiler. My whole interest in the project is as an educational project/politial statement; to learn the art of porting software, and to tell RMS that he and the GNU project are not as important as they think they are, and that if they piss enough people off, there are free alternatives to the GNU toolset that people can and will migrate to. Yes, they do have some tradeoffs, but alternatives exist nonetheless.

Right now. the biggest issue with alternative compilers seems to be the handling of inline assembly code. Most compilers do it, it's just that their methods are different. If I had enough time, I may even consider looking at that code, see if I can convert at least some of the assembly to use the style compilers such as Watcom's expects.