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Interview With Richard Stallman
An anonymous reader writes "KernelTrap has a fascinating and lengthy interview with Richard Stallman who founded the GNU Project in 1984, and the Free Software Foundation in 1985. He also originally authored a number of well known and highly used development tools, including the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), the GNU symbolic debugger (GDB) and GNU Emacs.
The interview covers a wide range of topics, from rms's early years, to his current role in the Free Software Foundation. He discusses the current state of GNU/Hurd, the problems with non-free software, and much more."
It's just a fact that people don't care about the ideological bents of folks like Stallan. Maybe he's ahead of his time or something, but right now, his ideas just aren't viable. People don't care about open source and the market will slowly squeeze it out because the loss of things like GNU/Linux distros and MythTV and whatnot just aren't important as far the market is concerned. Open source can't survive in this market because nobody of consequence really wants it to.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Please read for insight on why people like the FSF and OSI are bad for us:
Why Open Source Software is Bad for the Software Development Industry
Introduction
This paper will discuss Open Source Software (OSS) and its detrimental effect on the software industry. In particular, OSS devalues the software market and thus has a direct impact on the value of the individual software developer, the traditional software development vendor, and also reduces the innovation of the software development industry by limiting the amount of capital that can be spent on research and development.
Open Source Software
Open Source Software (OSS) is defined as a software product where access to the full source code is available to anyone, and includes the right to modify and redistribute the source code. OSS has had a long history in the software industry, however has been mostly limited to software to service the technical community. Recently, OSS has made inroads in the commercial, non-technical areas. Today, Open Source variants of common software packages such as word processors, web browsers, databases, and graphics toolsets are available from a variety of sources.
The Negative Impact of OSS
The impact of OSS is felt throughout the software development industry. Such software is widely distributed via the Internet and is usually made available for zero, or near zero, cost to the end user. The net result is a devaluation of software in financial terms and a loss of valuable revenue streams which drive research and development and innovation in the software development industry.
Many OSS packages are simply designed to be "drop-in" replacements of the corresponding closed source applications and simply copy the "look and feel" and the interface elements of the closed source equivalents. Although these replacement packages do not typically offer the feature set of their closed source counterparts, they usually are regarded as "good enough" by most end-users due to their low acquisition costs. This low (usually zero) cost simply drives down the market value of all applications in that class. This seems to be a good thing for the end user, as it reduces the near term capital outlay to acquire functional software packages, however it has a much more dire effect on the long-term viability of the software industry.
OSS alternatives usually appear after a successful commercial package appears on the market. These OSS copies will leverage the results of the large R&D investments made by the closed source vendors, and eliminates or severely reduces the need for the OSS producers to make similar investments in R&D. Even if the OSS copy does not provide the full functionality of the closed source offering, it will typically offer "good enough" value to the end user with low-end needs. This serves to eliminate any revenue potential for that segment of the market. You can see the effect of this most prominently in the web server area. Since there is at least one OSS web server package freely available, most users can choose to deploy an OSS variant of the software instead of choosing a closed source shrink-wrapped software package. This has served to eliminate many commercial closed source companies from the web server market. Those few that remain either have very deep funding from some other source, or serve very specialized segments of the market where an OSS alternative has not appeared yet. The long-term effect of this pressure on the low end of the market is to severely reduce the revenue necessary to produce new innovative products. Since these OSS offerings are also typically direct copies of the closed source product, no new innovation occurs and the segment will stagnate. This effect has already been seen in the database and web server areas where OSS has made significant inroads. In particular, the OSS "Apache" web server has captured majority share of both the low-end and high-end of the market segment. This has resulted in very little innovation
"so I won't be so indespensible..."
"we [GNU] will support linux as long as it remains popular..."
Um, I'm sure even after Hurd is out and working GCC developers won't say "oh, mission accomplish, linux support removed".
I'm also sure most OSS developers aren't tied to the FSF. People may work on GCC but they don't work for FSF [at least in their minds].
That and many people develop OSS without a thought towards the FSF, GNU or the bloody GPL.
He thinks he is the saviour of free software? Sure he's started some wonderful projects that are VERY useful today [e.g. GCC and GDB] but he's not "irreplaceble". I mean look at GCC change logs. How many commits are due to RMS? He could [...] die tommorow and the world will keep spinning. OSS will keep being developed.
The guy is nothing but a hippie throwback trying to cling to his fame from the past. Get a hair cut you bum!
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
JA: In talking about GNU Linux...
Richard Stallman: I prefer to pronounce it GNU-slash-Linux, or GNU-plus-Linux. The reason is that when you say GNU-Linux it is very much prone to suggest a misleading interpretation. After all, we have GNU Emacs which is the version of Emacs which was developed for GNU. If you say "GNU Linux", people will think it means a version of Linux that was developed for GNU. Which is not the fact.
JA: You're trying to point out instead that it's a combination of the two.
Richard Stallman: Exactly. It's GNU plus Linux together.
JA: Which makes up the GNU+Linux operating system that everyone uses.
Richard Stallman: Exactly.
I am a goat fucker!" -Richard Stallman, 1994
A bit of MIT/LCS lore here.
RMS used to live on the 7th floor of LCS. That's where he used to have his office before he resigned in protest over the commercialization of something or another. But they let him keep his office, and he lives there, because he refuses to have an apartment. (Given the rent rates in Cambridge, the assholeness of most landlords, I don't blame him. Rather than live in my office, I chose to move to Texas, and the change in rent rates and lack of state income tax resulted in an immediate %25 pay raise. RMS doesn't have that option because we have the death penalty for people like him down here.)
Anyway, RMS has or had a number or geek chick groupies. I wouldn't call any of the ones I've seen "hot", really -- well except for this one little psycho jewish undergrad from NYC. He would sleep with them on the sofa in his office. That's why he got kicked out off floor 7, and down to the 3 floor, is that the cleaning staff complained about pulling used condoms out from behind the sofas. No joke. You can use this information for trolling if you wish, but it's all true.
RMS has a phobia of water that prevents him from showering. This is part of this post I know from first hand experience, because I myself have observed him taking a sponge bath in the 3d floor mens room in LCS. Apparently once he had a girlfriend who he was totally in love with, and she convinced him to take one shower a week. It was a traumatic experience for him each time.
RMS also has a phobia of spider plants. When RMS starts bothering a grad student and going to his office and talking to him constantly and getting him to spend all his time writing free software, the grad student will complain to someone on the floor, and they'll let them in on the secrete -- get a spider plant in your office. The next time RMS drops by, his eyes will bulge a little and he'll say " Umm. . . I wanted to talk to you about hacking some elisp code . . . why don't you stop by my office sometime ?" and make a hasty exit.
One of his more nasty habits is picking huge flakes of dandruff out of his hair while talking to you. At least he doesn't eat them, like some people I know.
Now, I know everyone loves to make fun of RMS, and I'm feeding that a bit here, so I'd just like to say that I think he really is a genius, on the order of Socrates (another filthy slob who couldn't keep a normal living arrangement, and lived in a barrel) or Ghandi or Ezekiel. Everything he has ever said to me, while sounding naive and idealistic and stupid at the time, turned out to later be correct.
The only thing I fear in his philosophy is his interest in reducing population growth. Everyone else I know of who was obsessed with that "problem" turned out to have facist or totolitarian tendencies, and I think that the problem will solve itself as more and more of the world moves into a middle class type existence.
But on everything else, bitter experiences have taught me he is right. I will not use any non-GPLd or lGPLd software, and I look forward to being able to buy only "open" hardware. I would like to see software patents completely eliminated, and with the development of digitial communication, I see no reason why shouldn't simply repeal all of Title 17 and do away with all copyrights. They just aren't needed. I expect to spend much of my life being paid to write software, and I just don't see copyrights has helping me in anyway.
You might consider your "freedom" to look at my source code a fundamental one. That's fine. Nudists consider their freedom to walk around naked a fundamental one as well. I'm sure other fringe groups have other fundamental freedoms they'd like to hoist on me to Show Me The Truth.
However, your freedom to call me an evil construct lacking a soul begins and ends with my right to write software and sell it for the highest price the market will bear. That is my freedom.
The very idea that you can stand there and equate your concept of freedom as applied to computer software to things like freedom of speech, freedom of association or the freedom to make a religious choice (ideas that people have fought and died for over the centuries) is insulting at best and retarded at worst. I recognize your right to write software and give it away the same way I recognize your right to pass gas or bake cookies. But please don't insult my intelligence by implying I'm going to burn in hell (and yes, that's how you sound) because I happen to sell software for $19.99 a pop.
You and everyone else (Stallman included) in the "join us or die" crowd sound so damn petulant and ridiculous preaching the evils of Microsoft (as if they were the only company in the planet that produces commercial software), quoting Ghandi and asking everyone "how evil do you feel today?" as if being able to type "make & make install" into a terminal somehow granted you a masters in philosophy, theology and politics. No shit, sometimes I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Your grammar is horrible. Are you retarded?
I don't see why this guy is such an icon for so many geeks. He seems unsympathetic and makes outrageous black & white statements. I think he gives Linux a bad name.
You're an idiot.
I miss the 90s. I really do miss the times when GNU+Linux wasn't "hip" and "cool" and was restricted to that niche of serious computer scientists, hackers and tinkerers who never saw the light of day. Whenever I mention Linux now I get verbally assaulted with inane banter by lusers who, 10 years ago, would be clamoring over the "coming innovation" of Windows '95. Often times, an idiot tries impressing me by telling me how awfully hard it was for him to install Fedora Core, but that he succeded and still hasn't wiped it from his disk to go back to masturbating over Windows XP. Likely expecting some newfound sense of respect for him from me, he does listen to me recalling six years ago, when I had forced my own Slackware-derived distro to boot up on an IBM PS/2 m55 (2.9 MB of RAM, 60mb ESDI harddrive on MCA, Microchannel architecture, 386+387 16mhz). Then he looks down on the ground, and promptly leaves, never again making eye contact with me and ridding me of his stupidity...