Slashdot Mirror
Stallman Claims Linux Trademark Doesn't Matter
Tontoman writes "ZDNet UK reports on an interview with Richard Stallman with the Sydney Morning Herald. From the article: '"Free software means you're free to run it, study it, change it, redistribute it, and distribute modified versions the way cooks do with recipes. What names you're allowed to call a program is a side issue." The Linux trademark became an issue last month after a lawyer acting on behalf of Linux creator Linus Torvalds wrote to 90 Australian companies asking that they sign a statutory declaration waiving exclusive rights to the trademark's use.'"
Yes, the names are just words as are "Richard Stallman". In future, I will refer to him as "Irrelevant Goat Man".
Richard Stallman is just whining and being an attention starved brat, it's what he does. Linux moves to protect his big fat asset, namely....the Linux trademark, and here comes Stallman with his, "Hey, news people, the issue isn't the Linux trademark! It's that it's not called GNU to give me credit!" The only real news is how Stallman can possibly get so much attention with that whining he does.
The fact is, GNU was going nowhere without Linus' kernel. And it was, in fact, made complete with it. HURD (the intended GNU OS) is still a pipe dream because Stallman couldn't write a kernel if you paid him. Without the Linux kernel, that nice juicy GNU core is....well...pretty much nothing.
The facts are, that Linux was a kernel project without the rest of the OS, and GNU was....an incomplete OS. The two coming together didn't put one over another. Didn't make the OS GNU and not Linux, nor the OS Linux and not GNU, it made GNU/Linux which everyone just calls Linux for short. Which is no big deal. Except to Stallman, who feels he must take credit for everything.
A common statement is that "Linux is just the kernel" but that's not quite true. It's also a "brand name" that companies slap on their products, and it's also a shorthand term used by users of GNU/Linux (who do know there's plenty of GNU in there). And personally, I don't care if Stallman doesn't like it.
Actually, he's being a bit deceitful. He wants GNU in the name to give himself credit and perhaps those who worked on GNU before the kernel. Me thinks it's more self-serving, though.
I'm not trolling or anything, but I wouldn't include GNU when talking about the operating system simply because many people I talk to who are somewhat into the computer industry relate it almost instantly to the GNAA, who everyone knows can come off as offensive at first. If they're is a trolling organization that spun off the name linux, we'd have a problem. But why add (or put back) something to the name if it just causes more problems?
"Do you have some proof of this, or are you just making up facts ?"
What kind of proof do you want? Go talk to some developers of minor and/or irrelivant GPL software sometime. I forked a GPL program written by such a person a little while ago actually.
"Hmm. Picking GPL lets people redistribute and modify my software, but keeps them from preventing me from merging those changes back to the my version and keeps various companies from ripping off my work. It has also been used by lots of people for a long time, and was written by an actual lawyer who actually knows what the law says, so it is unlikely to have nasty surprises hidden in it. Yep, sounds good to me."
You completely missed the point. How many pieces of software out there have been GPL'd despite the fact that they have no value, and nobody would ever make a proprietary fork of it? How can a company "rip you off" when your software isn't worth anything to begin with? I didn't say the GPL wasn't good, or that it shouldn't be used. I simply said its main feature doesn't matter for lots of software, and people use it anyways, making their software less useful. Sometimes people actually just want to let other people use their software, but pick the GPL not knowing about less restrictive licenses. Scary, evil, proprietary software boogeymen aren't always relevant. If you think your software is worth money, and want to protect against having companies make money off of it, or if you are part of the GNU cult, then maybe the GPL is right for your project. But that doesn't mean its a good license for everything, and that everyone should just blindly GPL all their code.
And as I briefly mentioned in my original post, thinking that the GPL only screws closed source users of your software is ignorant. Take for instance pike, a programming language released under the GPL, LGPL and MPL. Random bits of code that have no monetary value, but are licensed under the GPL cannot be used in pike, and the developers have to waste time writing replacements, or trying to track down the authors of the long since abandoned code to ask for a different license. The people writing these random GPL things are hurting open source developers. If their goal was to try to make everything in the world GPL like RMS, then that's fine, its exactly what the author wanted. But in lots of cases the developer simply wanted to make their code available to other people, and in that case their needs would probably have been better served by a different license.
"Why should Stallman care about how usefull some library is to people who license their programs under non-GPL-compatible licenses ? They are his competitors - one might even say enemies, considering his stated worldview. Why should he want to make it easier for his enemies to fight against him ?"
That's my point. The whole reason readline is GPLd is not to be provide free software to people, but to push his agenda. That's fine, its his choice. But developers who don't share his views and only want to provide free software end up pushing his agenda too, accidently, simply by GPLing their various and sundry minor code bits. And notice, all that GPLing readline has done is made it so people wrote a free replacement.
"Really ? What words has he redefined, exactly speaking ? What were their old and what are their new meanings ?"
He is still trying to redefine free. In english it has two meanings, without cost which isn't relevant here. And the second meaning is the state of being free as in freedom. He has chosen to try to make free mean "having my particular restrictive license". Obviously freedom is the lack of restrictions, so the GPL does not provide freedom.
"People usually argue against opinions and worldviews that conflict with theirs, especially if they are actively trying to promote theirs. One might even say that it is impossible to promote one worldview without arguing against those it conflicts with."
You don't have to be an ass and trash everything e