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

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

[HuguesT]

I can see everybody trolling on the GNU/Linux issue, but really seriously Stallman stands for a *lot* more than that. Without him:

- no Free Software Foundation. no GNU! at all!
- no Emacs
- no GCC
- no GDB
- no GNU/Make

Very likely there would be no Linux and no *free* BSD either. We would be using SCO and BSDI!

I don't care about the GNU/blabla name myself but his contribution, both technical and philosophical, is simply enormous. In years to come people will compare who in the early years of the personal computer made the most impact, between Bill Gates and RMS. For now the jury is still out, but I know which one I respect most and whose software I use!

Happy birthay RMS, many return! -- and thanks for not letting compromise dilute your message. May the hordes understand you some day.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

THANK YOU!!!!!!

Finally somebody who realizes that even if you don't care for RMS personally, Open Source may not even be here today without him. The whole unwashed slashdot mob really makes me angry sometimes. RMS has made more contributions to the whole Open Source movement, both in code, money, time, pholsophy and conviction than perhaps anybody else on the planet. If you don't like him, fine, but please respect what he has done.

On the other hand reading the comments, I can't help but think that most people who have posted are 5th grade class clowns that don't understand anything that happens in the world other than what day they get their allowance.

"Happy birthay RMS, many return! -- and thanks for not letting compromise dilute your message. May the hordes understand you some day." - I couldn't agree more. Cheers!

The benefits of the GPL

[jtotheh]

I was trying to find the current hiding place of the cygwin utilities one day at work and I thought for a minute they had been pulled from the "market" - then I thought, "wait a minute, that software is protected by the GPL, they couldn't do that!" --- so I kept googling and found them. That realization was sort of a GNU/Zen moment for me.

Thanks to RMS for charting a solution through the horrors of software patents and such.

Re:GNU/Linux, fah!

[kien]

Stallman wrote the GNU general puplic licence. That is a great legal invention.

I don't know if "invention" is the right word to use; I would tend to say "Stallman's most clever hack ever was a hack on legal code, not computer code" and I'm not even sure if that's accurate. But I do agree with the spirit of your post: the GPL has done wonders for the freedom of computer users.

I just got back home after attending the FSF Associate Membership meeting at MIT yesterday. Eben Moglen mentioned in his presentation that he has never once had to go to court to defend GPL'ed software. The thing that had most of us chuckling throughout his presentation was what he attributed this success to: TACT! ;)

RMS is certainly eccentric, but history is full of eccentric leaders and I believe that history will be kind to this one.

Happy Birthday, RMS!

--K.