Slashdot Mirror


20th Anniversary of RMS's Original GNU Post

An anonymous reader writes "Sep 27, 2003 is the 20th anniversary of Stallman's original Usenet post describing his vision of GNU. Good time for reflecting over GNU's successes and failures, about how it has changed our world."

10 of 526 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Back to the software. by bigjocker · · Score: 4, Informative

    GNU is not about software. GNU is about choice.

    The GNU project is 100% political, it's not about creating a clone of the 'ls' command, is about setting the foundations to a Free Software world.

    Hail RMS, for he has done what few of us could have, he has dedicated his life to provide us qith a choice, be it a choice from IBM, UNIX or Microsoft. it's a choice for freedom, and a lot of us, who have made the choice, live and subsist now thanks to it.

    --
    Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
  2. Re:I remember the good old days... by KillerHamster · · Score: 4, Informative
  3. Re:RMS married? Gay? In a relationship? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    See for yourself... in his personal ad

  4. From the 1993 issue of Wired by MegaHamsterX · · Score: 2, Informative

    RMS Interview in Wired

    Here is a link to RMS when he appeared on The ScreenSavers

  5. Re:Great example... by kfg · · Score: 2, Informative

    Which is why the word radical itself has been demonized.

    The current mode of attack seems to be being formed into a trident.

    One prong is trying to force GPLed code either into the public domain or claim it as propriatary (SCO's attack). The middle prong will replace it with the BSD license which allows propriatizing open code. The third prong is trying to pretend that fully propriatary code is actually Open Source ( a weird combo of MS and Sun).

    I've been trying to imagine a more extreme position than Microsoft's "our fair share is 100%," but I can't.

    May you live in interesting times.

    KFG

  6. Re:Great example... by jazman_777 · · Score: 2, Informative
    ...of how incredible ideas, while adding enormous value, can also be bogged down and lessened when attached to extremist views or politics.

    Uh, the original idea _was_ political, as he says right here. Excerpt: "This operating system was launched to be about politics, starting with its announcement 20 years ago this month"

    --
    Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
  7. Re:Arpa? by epsalon · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually, the ARPA domain is alive and kicking, mostly the subdomain IN-ADDR.ARPA which is used for reverse DNS resolutions.

  8. Re:Thanks by quigonn · · Score: 2, Informative

    No, there are a few more:
    http://www.iana.org/arpa-dom/

    But today, .arpa means "Address and Routing Parameter Area".

    --
    A monkey is doing the real work for me.
  9. just for clarification by dh003i · · Score: 2, Informative

    But that doesn't mean they were social rejects lacking the ability to communicate concepts to their fellow man without bristling every person they met. It doesn't mean they espoused ideologies with technology and tried to use their innovations as a way to force normative concepts and judgements down people's throats as payment for their work. They didn't loudly shout people down who didn't adhere to their preferred terminology for certain concepts and tried to engage them in discussion

    RMS is neither a social reject nor is he incapable of communicating clearly. And the last time I checked, RMS wasn't shouting loudly at anyone about terminology. He's simply repeated something which he thinks is true. No-one has to read it, and surely old-timers have all read it already. But the world of Free Software haven't, and should be educated about such things.

    The simple fact is that RMS is right. People are afraid to talk about freedom, or anything so controversial.

  10. Re:Start of a tragedy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    But much software RMS has written is useful even to businesses(mainly thinking of gcc) and for that he should be thanked.

    Just in case you weren't trolling him, do you realise that Brett's single most enduring grudge against RMS is because he released GCC as free software? Brett thinks of himself as something of a compiler writer and apparently feels that the world owed him a living doing whatever he wants to do. He blames RMS for destroying the market for his precious C compiler writing skills. Seriously. There's years of obessive grudge keeping built on top of that but that's what it's all about.

    If you were trolling him then sorry to have spoiled your joke with all the detail.