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RMS on SCO, Distributions, DRM
Letter writes "Open for Business has an interview with GNU founder and free software zealot Richard M. Stallman (RMS) discussing the SCO situation, the single RMS-approved free Linux distribution and DRM in the Linux kernel. RMS also describes non-free software as a 'predatory social system that keeps people in a state of domination and division.'"
That sounds like an awful stab in the back for Debian for the level of devotion and dedication the project has always shown for Free Software ideals.
Beware, Nugget is watching... See?
From the RMS perspective, this makes perfect sense. One of his charms, if you will, is that he does not deviate from his ideals, even when it offends a large group. Free is free, and anythoing that compromises that is less than perfect.
Like any other outspoken issue-perfectionist, this grates on those who are less tough about that issue. But make no bones about it, he would be less respected in the end if he compromised.
So be it.
Soli Deo Gloria
- RMS comes out in support of trademarks and a company's right to protect its trademark (in this case Mandrake)
- On the issue of mutual defense clauses in licenses, RMS thinks they're a good idea in theory but suggests people considering adopting them be careful not to alienate users
Some "zealot."RMS has always struck me as being a fairly opinioned person who wants to stick to his principles. I see that as good in someone. I don't always agree with everything he says, but it's absurd how much abuse he takes for saying what he thinks. Suggesting that The OS That Includes A Linux Kernel And The GNU UserLand be named after both shouldn't, in my view, no matter how obnoxious some find it, result in the Z label.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
After reading this article, which I found quite interesting, I did come to a rather shocking conclusion. Although RMS is obviously a very talented and intelligent individual, he seems hellbent on enforcing his ethics and morals on others.
He refuses to have anything to do with anyone who even has the slightest relationship with a non-free program. In effect he and his cohorts are effective enforcing their beliefs on others or cutting them completely off from their organization.
How can you promote "free software" when you don't promote the "freedom to choose". Personally I think a person or company should be allowed to use free as well as non-free software together without reprimand from RMS and his organization.
It's better to use some free software then no free software, and RMS is effectively limiting his friends and support by enforcing his views on them. Maybe he needs to learn to respect that some people might want to go down a middle ground, and the results of doing that can be great neverless. For example, OS X, a brilliant combination of free as well as proprietary software.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
What about non-free material goods? Does that also create a "...predatory social system that keeps people in a state of domination and division."?
Does RMS even understand physics? It takes "work" to change random states of bits into useful tools and information. Work doesn't come free. Working a material good out of rock, wood, sand, etc, and working bits out of random noise, turns out to be equivalent.
People who do "work" probably are more deserving of the prizes. The betterment of one's self should always be our higher goal. Be contructive, not destructive. Lend a helping hand to those who are trying, but don't offer any favors to those who are not. In the end, everyone gets their just rewards.
Just my 2 cents.
Are future submissions always going to have some sort of character assasination buzzwords attached to them as well?
For example. "Bill Gates noted closed source zealot and pro-monopolist met with shareholders today."
Hmm, doesn't seem right does it? Leave the defamation to commenters, we do a plently well on our own thanks.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
It is one thing to put amazing amounts of energy and discipline into one's work, as the Debian developers have done. It is something else to foresee the battle between free and commercial software, as RMS did, and try to plan a course through this battle.
RMS is pedantic, painfully self-righteous, and needs a shave. But he is one of the greatest thinkers of our time, a genius, and a mind to be treasured and revered.
As a programmer and the developer of many free applications, RMS is for me a hero, someone who has anticipated many of the problems I would face in protecting the viability of my work.
He once refused to accept a t-shirt with our team's logo on it, but he's a great man nonetheless.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
You completely miss the RMS's point, and the difference between FREE and OPEN. (This is of course a simplification.)
RMS's stanbd point is that non-free software is inherently a bad thing; doesn't matter if it's "superior" in terms of functionality or quality - it's inherently a bad thing.
Open software says Open software will, inherently, evolve into the best software - lowest bugs, best functionality etc etc - but whilst there is better non-Open software it's ok to use until Open catches up.
That difference in view point is something very few people, it seems, who ramble on the subject and about RMS, understand.
RMS has always, and I suspect always will be, completely consistent in his view point. The only variable has been peoples (lack) of understanding that RMS/FSF != Open software. Edward
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Okay, RMS might do a lot of spouting off of his political/social/moral views, but let's not forget...
This guy is a real bad-ass programmer. He wrote Emacs and GCC, among other things. I would say those programs have stood the test of time and now are critical to the productivity of developers (yes, many use vi, but many use Emacs). How much less free/opensource software would there be today without those two programs?
For that matter, how much less software overall would there be without gcc and Emacs? I used to work at a proprietary software company and all of our Solaris and Linux development were done with gcc, gdb, Emacs, gprof, bash, perl...
My bicyles
The problem with that, of course, is that GPL'd software isn't really free (as in speech). It's just a different set of requirements governing distribution and modification, and it relies just as much on copyright law for protection as any closed source, commercial product.
If some code were completely free, then anyone could take it, compile it, change it, give away the results in any form they wanted, incorporate into a paid-for product with or without the source, or otherwise do as they wished.
The GPL is a great way for people with a shared philosophy to gain mutual benefit from their labours. I have absolutely nothing against that, or their right to protect their agreement via the legal system should that become necessary. If they produce software that is better than commercial alternatives, and choose to give it away, good for them. If not, well, we users can always choose to spend our money buying an alternative we prefer.
But please, calling this "free software" is just as much a misleading propaganda term as calling copyright infringement "intellectual property theft". It's about time a better term was coined.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I admire RMS but I think he's a little nuts for insisting that for a Linux distribution to be acceptable to him, it must not even include the option of non-free software in the basic install.
I agree. I think RMS would call me apolitical because my primary reason for being involved in open source is that I think it is a better development model. However, there is a deeply political side of me that has a vision and political agenda behind my support of open source. It is in no way as one-sided or as focused as RMS, but I can see where he is coming from.
IMO, I think that the real battle of our lifetime is the battle over proprietary vs open systems and information. This goes beyond computing and affects everything from our food supplies to our software. The problems include companies such as Microsoft holding the rights to the filesystems that are the lifeblood of companies and companies such as Monsanto holding the patent rights to foods which could become the lifeblood of countries. It is also about the CTEA and fighting against perpetual copyright of our cultural icons.
The thing is, though, copyright has its place if it is not overextended. And I am so confident in this that I don't even care that much whether a distro recommends non-free packages. As long as customers start to see the difference. That is important. In fact, it is GOOD IMO, that Mandrake, RedHat, etc. offer commercial software with their distros because it shows the contrast and can help people see why free software is important. On this point, I disagree with RMS.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
What's even more humorous is having people who are zealots themselves about their own beliefs levy that insult at the FSF.
I don't agree with the FSF on a number of points. I take exception, however, at the unwarranted insults I've seen directed at them. Especially since the majority of the hecklers I've seen here on Slashdot have never contributed a line of open-source code in their lives.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Looks as if you have problems understanding ethics and/or philosophy. That is ok, you keep on Lightwaving and leave ethics and philosophy to those understand it.
This might help: your thinking may be free within a system, but your still bounded by that system.
You may view your thinking within Lightwave as free, but only as far as Lightwave will allow you to go. You own the Lightwave software, but who controls the Lightwave software? Beyond what has been built into the software, you have no control. So now your used to the Lightwave program, price goes up, what do you do? Go find another proprietary software package or pay up? Either way, your options have been limited severly. You may never understand RMS, but don't criticize one who fights to break down barriers for all of us.
Question everything.
The actual interview is already slashdotted, but from the discussion it seems that he reserves his endorsement for the "GNU/Linex" distribution (Linex's site also seems to be down at the moment -- collateral slashdotting?), because it doesn't even provide the option of installing "non-Free" packages. This is just nuts -- it's clear to me why RMS uses the word "Free" instead of "free" at this point: because the meaning of "Free" (and I defy anyone to give a consistent definition of the way that RMS uses the term, aside from "Whatever RMS thinks it should mean at the moment") has shifted so far from what any reasonable person would expect the word "free" to mean.
(As an aside it's funny to see people denouncing michael for describing RMS as a zealot. For goodness sake FSF-guys, michael is on your side. That kinda attitude doesn't bode well for how this comment will be moderated, I suspect.)
No ethical compromise is possible with such a thing - some evil is all evil - that's why he won't support even "conveniance" non-free software or those that associate with it.
I see his point but I still don't know where I, as a programmer, am supposed to earn my mortgage payments. Telling me to become a marketing droid is not a reasonable answer.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
You may view your thinking within Lightwave as free, but only as far as Lightwave will allow you to go.
It's a good thing I know how to use Maya and 3D Studio Max, then.
So now your used to the Lightwave program, price goes up, what do you do? Go find another proprietary software package or pay up?
I may switch, I may buy the newest version. Depends on what the exact circumstances are, but get this -- neither option is revolting to me.
This may be difficult to understand, but I have no desire to code my own graphics or mathematics site of applications. Nor do I wish to spend time manually adding features to what I already use. With respect to such programs, I am an end user; I am willing to learn the most popular software tools in my field -- there are several different non-free programs out there that I can learn and develop a wide range of skills with. And guess what? They're actually good enough for their intended purpose.
When was the last time you heard someone complaining about Maya's or Mathcad's lack of features? Or them hindering productivity? You don't hear such complaints because the programs, while proprietary and non-free, are (1) fantastic at what they do and (2) if one weren't to someone's taste, there are plenty of other choices. Don't like Mathcad? Try Maple, Mathematica, MATLAB. You'll have to pay, but there's a reason those programs are priced as they are -- they work well, they took effort, and they're the best.
The coolest voice ever.
Many DO consider him fanatical. He is the antithesis of common sense and practicality.
He believes in ideals to the point that they become inapplicable to the real world, and so becomes as limiting as the commercial world he so despises. That's the reason some people tend to dislike what he has to say, because of its fundamental contradictory nature. He preaches against limitation and yet imposes it.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Does anyone have any good links about this? It sounds like a scary crackpot idea, so of course I'm curious about it. If my interpretation of it based on the article is remotely correct it seems hypocritical of RMS/Perens to even consider this, as it would be a major freedom limiter. If I can't sue someone who actually did steal something from me for fear of losing my right to use a large amount of software out there, I don't have much freedom do I?
This is not the greatest sig in the world, this is just a tribute.
Especially since the majority of the hecklers I've seen here on Slashdot have never contributed a line of open-source code in their lives.
You're right. You must become a programmer first before you get that special "Critical Guy" ID card that lets you interject your opinion about the operating system you use on your own computer. Linux and anything involved is only for programmers, and only they are allowed to discuss and decide its future. All matters are only open to a small cross-section of the community.
Come on, that's silly.
"Sufferin' succotash."
It's interesting you should say that when, after years of following RMS in
the news, it appears to me that, in the long run, RMS is correct more often than
his hecklers.
Seriously, who thinks that OSS would be in a stronger position now if the GPL
had never been written?
*sigh* back to work...
But unfortunately, if free-as-in-RMS doesn't come up with the goods, I see no reason to agree with him.
<br><br>
Then you see no reason to agree with him at all. You don't truly agree if you're only compelled by the practical benefits. You should look at their arguments and ask yourself whether or not you think that non-free software is truly unethical. If not, you're in the open source camp.
But the GPL does compel me to behave in certain ways if I use the "free" code. That's my point. As your dictionary definition suggests, free implies a lack of compulsion, and yet this "free" code carries extra requirements with it.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The free software movement is like a group of people who decided to become vegetarian out of ethical concerns about animal rights. Not everybody thinks like them and they're practical enough to understand that. But suppose a Free Vegetable Movement starts a foundation to make vegetarian utensils, publish vegetarian cookbooks and so forth, and get a lot of followers. If non-vegetarians now start also using the recipes, that's fine with them. There's even a splinter "open vegetable movement" of people who don't care about the animal rights issues but have discovered the benefits of eating more vegetables (such as having fewer heart attacks). The OVM may have mixed meat/vegetable diets but the FVM doesn't want to have anything to do with that.
What's happening in these threads sounds to me like non-vegetarians somehow claiming the vegetarian foundation is foolishly restricting people's options because it won't link to restaurants that serve meat dishes, and no longer recommends a particular cookbook with good vegetarian recipes, because that cookbook also has meat dishes and there's now finally a comparably good cookbook which is 100% vegetarian. IMO it would be crazy for the veg foundation to do anything else, given its values. All you can decide is that its values are not your values. Asking them to turn against their very principles by also presenting the "meat option" is ridiculous (do you also ask your xtian church to present the "satan option"?). They did a lot of work making their cookbooks and recipes what they are, and the changes you're asking for show that you're trying to impose your values on them, not the other way around.
I'm not kidding.
Look at the world of software today and trace how much impact he has had. Emacs, gcc, gdb. The GPL. The idea that people can give away what they want, and other people (or the same people) can charge money for making distros and providing support.
Entire companies operate now in the intellectual eco-sphere that Stallman invented.
To be sure, several other people have also had an impact bigger than Stallman's. So what? Out of the millions of people who have spent their careers working with computers, he's easily in the top 0.1% of impact -- of people who made the world more like the way they want it.
That's practical.
That's right. Either fix the problems, contribute the new features or quit your bitching. That's the whole point of open source. You wanna "interject your opinion about the operating system you use on your computer" without being able to fix the problems, go run Windows.
In all seriousness, I think RMS has a good concept. Free software is a great idea. However, implementing free software would require changing the thoughts of every person in the entire world so they see that free software is a good thing. Take the following, for example:
TRB: One difficult thing for end users is proprietary codecs and plugins. Two examples that seem especially prevalent are Macromedia Flash and Real Networks' RealMedia files. Without these technologies, a lot of interesting content becomes unavailable. What do you think the short-term solution for this problem is?
RMS: I think we should modify browsers to encourage and help users to send messages of complaint to those sites, to pressure them to change.
Why? Media-types think flash and real media are a great technology. RMS is suggesting taking a step backward through this suggestion. What purpose could it possibly serve? Unless you can change the mindset of the folk at Real and Macromedia, you're stuck. Comply and remain interoperable or just don't view it.
By this same argument, folk should quit using Quicktime, WMV and WMA. Does anyone see thing happening anytime soon? I think not. People will go where their technology takes them, be it a Mac, Windows, *nix or *BSD user.
The key, at this point, isn't to subjugate the masses and foisting Linux on them. It's to make Linux interoperable with the other operating systems first. After Linux has gained, say, 50% of the market, then Linux can make demands. As it stands, if every Linux user were to send a letter of complaint to every site that used Flash, RealMedia, Quicktime or WM*s, people will probably more or less laugh. What purpose does it serve to suggest alternatives when there is no reason for said people to switch?
Linux is great. But it isn't so great that it will inspire change in the mind of everyone in the world. At least, not yet. ;)
People do tend to misunderstand what is really ment by how the people who are critical of open source icons aren't programmers.
Given a random sample of Linux users you'll find a large number of people who have in fact contributed code. Rob Mulda who has admitted to being not the best programmer let alone one of the smarter Linux users has contributed code.
I've contributed code. A lot of people have.
So when a whole group of people in what is admittedly a very programmer orented community in some cases even hostile to non-programmers turns up a whole group of critics who can't code you get to wondering if they are part of the community at all.
The point being made here is that RMSes critics are on the outside they aren't involved and don't know much more than what they are told by individuals who are themselfs quite hostile to Linux. Often the very programmers RMS is critical of.
I'd be simpathetic but I've seen the code they write and I wrote better programms when I was a kid bored at the store with only a Vic20 on demo to keep me entetrained and I'd walk off with my game still running for other kids to play.
You'd be right if programmers were a rare commodity on the Linux community or if only a select few of the open source critics were non-programmers it would not make sense to doupt the critics. But the truth is most of the Linux community are active contributers and the critics aren't.
Like the comment "Don't be critical of Microsoft untill you've writen an os". You realise only a tiny handful of people have actually done that? I find it most telling that of those who have writen an operating system I'm probably the most forgiving of Microsoft.
(Yes.. I wrote an operating system all on my own and it sucked)
I don't actually exist.
Yes, that's correct. Animal rights people are happy to learn that vegetarian diets lead to fewer heart attacks, but they'd urge you to stay vegetarian even if it were established that that caused more heart attacks. Of course you're entitled to not take their advice, but asking them to start recommending non-vegetarian diets will take a much deeper and more fundamental argument than "you're not giving people enough options".
Take, for instance, IBM. IBM wants to make money selling rack after rack of servers. Now, they need a good OS to run on these servers, or else people won't want them. So they want Linux.
Now, people buying servers want an OS they know they can get compatible software with, etc, etc (see the whole Oracle approved distro debacle). So they have an incentive to support (i.e. give money to) a popular distro (i.e. RedHat) so RedHat doesn't go tits up and leave them searching for something else.
And that doesn't even get into bundling proprietary software with the known free software.
So, basically you can make money selling something that's available for free by selling your brand. Sure, people could buy the systems bare and install software themselves, because it's free, but then IBM can just put support terms in their contract saying stuff like 'you need to have bought x.x version from us, or we laugh in your face', because they can make more money by selling a complete package.
It's all about branding and package, dude. Step into the new millenium. Just like it doesn't matter if you're a popular artist getting jacked by your record company, if you can sell your cool/sexy/creepy old man image to Pepsi. There is nothing left to sell except your own mark of quality and authenticity. Which can't be taken away from you even if people copy you/your software.
I think that the things that RMS says and does contradict a lot of what he stands for. If you wish to provide software that is open and free completely so that others may use and abuse this software in virtually any way conceivable, you should be willing to accept that people are really going to do it. Its like the US Army. They fight for freedom, and one of those freedoms is to dislike USA. They may or may not like it, but by fighting to allow people to feel they way they want to feel, to experience "freedom", is to accept the fact that some people will use this "freedom" to do things that the fighters disagree with, but are not necessarily wrong. Free really is free, and if you want to promote it, you shouldn't be prejudiced against those that take it at face value and use it to its fullest. I think its pretty funny that he was speaking out against debian in one of his answers, then revealed that he himself uses debian followed by a convenient excuse as to why he doesn't use GNU/LinEx (The availability of GNU/LinEx is a recent development). I know that if I was a FSF zealot I would not be using a system that I do not agree with. I also don't see why RMS felt it necessary to point out that Ximian has a product that is "non-free". There was no place in the discussion to bring u and deliberately put down Ximian the way he did. RMS is hypocritical and I think he is just as bad as everyone he speaks so harshly about. Using Debian because there is no "free" alternative is no excuse, at least according to him. And that is only a fraction. Anyway, this is just my annoyed 2c after reading his interview (and the one linked off of it).
// Ziekke
According to this Wired story on the distribution, Extremadura GNU/Linux is a Debian GNU/Linux install.
/etc/apt/sources.list configuration file.
I'm calling you out, Richard Stallman. You claim that the GNU project website will not link to the Debian project because the Debian project provides for the description and download of non-Free Software. Yet, you can recommend a Debian install?
Most certainly Extremadura Linux contains the standard dpkg/apt facilities. Just like with a standard Debian install, a user must explicitly specify that he or she would like access to the seperate repository which contains non-Free Software, in order to access these repositories with the apt system. This is done either at install (in the case of a standard Debian GNU/Linux install), or after install by modifying the
The default of a Debian GNU/Linux install is to provide for the installation of only software which is Free Software.
Extremadura GNU/Linux no doubt provides in its package management system to describe non-Free Software, and to provide for the download and installation of non-Free Software. These are the same reasons that you have stated you will not link to the Debian project from the GNU project website.
Mr. Stallman, how dare you take a stab like this at the Debian project.
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
Funny, RMS says the opposite...
Apparently, GNU without Linux can still run on three kernels!
Remove GNU from Linux and you don't have much left... Sure, you've got yourself a kernel, so what?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
In our overly-litigious society, the risks of offering a warranty on software are huge so the prices are absurd. That's why almost all software is offered "as-is", whether free or proprietary.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Is it just me or is RMS mega-preachy? It seems that I would have to spend my days flipping (veggie) burgers or something and just do coding for free on my spare time to avoid being a servant of the prince of darkness, from his POV. Did I just misread him or are only hardware guys allowed to sell any products according to him?
but he runs Deb on his laptop because it was "the best at the time." what fucking bullshit. if it's so important to you, switch distros right-fucking-now.
Look I have more issues with RMS than most, but I think you are going one step too far. It's not like he would have anything from the debian release that is not free on his machine. It's like,... building a house, at the time you built it the company you bought the wood from sold both old growth and plantation wood products. They didn't actively promote old growth wood, but they would get it if a customer demanded that particular wood, so they were the best "ethical" provider available at the time. However you only used plantation wood products in your house so you complied with your ethics. And now, if you were building again, there is this new company that offers no old growth wood at all, so you could use them even more comfortably, indeed you might recommend them at the expense of the former company. The situation with Debian and LinEx seems the same to me so there is no reason to switch distros for him in order to remain consistent with his stated ethical position.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
Writing and supporting in-house applications.
That is the way most programmers earn a living.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
but what you describe is not 'power' as such but 'influence'. 'power' is associated with violence, self interests or interests of a segrageted group - be it political, economical, racial etc. RMS and FSF do not fit that description. the group whos interests the fsf protects are everyone - some people might not understand that they are (some people on ms's payroll, for example..) but they are non the less.
I most definetly think that in 10, 50, 100 years RMS will be viewed as one of the most influencial people of the late 20th century, and early 21st.
of coarse it depends who has control (or the power) over the 'ministries of truth' of the time.
> It is clearly not the minimum required to let
> people use what you produce
Allowing people to use what you produce is simple, protecting your freedom and preserving it for others is the hard task that the GPL trys to solve.
The jungle is "freeer" than the city because I have the freedom to kill. In a society, we trade certain freedoms for other benefits, we trade the freedom to kill for the benefit of a safer living environment. When a freedom is of little use to use, we will trade it lightly.
The GPL restricts people from making proprietary versions. Since making proprietary versions is not important to free software developers, most choose to trade this freedom for the benefit of preserving the freedom of the code they release.
This is the basis of copyleft. The GNU GPL is the cornerstone of the GNU project. The success of the GNU project shows how solid it is.
> The whole point of it is the infectiousness
The GNU GPL is a sharing agreement. "Here's 7.8billion lines of code, you can use it if you like but you have to share any relevent parts of your code". No one gets sent to Guantanamo bay for saying No.
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