RMS Views on Linux, Java, DRM and Opensource

An anonymous reader writes "All About Linux is running a transcript of a recent talk given by Richard Stallman at the Australian National University. Stallman discussed various issues facing GNU like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Digital Rights Management, about why one should not install sun's java on your computer, his views on Opensource as well as why he thinks people should address Linux distribution as GNU/Linux."

Comments

Again?

[MoxCamel]

There's a lot to admire about RMS, but I gotta say if you've heard one RMS speech, you've pretty much heard (hurd?) 'em all.

Mox

Re:Again?

[gooman]

Really! I mean how are we supposed to know if this article is a dupe or not?

Re:Again?

[qortra]

This is modded funny, but it really is true.

I think that the most passionate advocates for change throughout history use this kind of repitition quite a bit. Of course, check through your RMS history, and you'll find that it works time and time again. Check out RMS v. Trolltech (about QT licensing), or RMS v. X/Open ("The Open Group" now). And when he wins, he drops it. Also, you can expect him to consistantly push those ideals that he thinks are worthy. Hell, I'd be dissapointed if he didn't.

Plus, he adapts over time, constantly targeting key issues; DMCA, which really shouldn't have diminished in relevance as much as it has in the last 6 years, and now DRM which I believe to be key obstacle to a free future. It's unfortunate that the first point in the article is the GNU name issue, which I believe to be the least important of those the article mentions. I guess it's hard when a speech is transcribed to an article. In a speech the first point is usually the most trivial (you just use it to get the crowd warmed up), whereas in an article, half the people (and about 90% of the /. crowd) don't read past even the first screen of material.

Re:Again?

[IntergalacticWalrus]

But what about Theo?

We should put RMS, ESR and TdR in a ring and make them fight each other. I'd pay good money for that. Oh, and the judge would be Linus.

Re:Again?

[Ethan Allison]

I'm not trashing anyone's ideals, if that means what I think it does. I believe every OS is good and bad in some way and that every OS has its day in the sun. At least I'm not pulling a Steve Ballmer on everything that isn't open source.

How about you post your opinion on the whole situation? Maybe then we can have an intelligent discussion like the mature people we are.

Re:Again?

[Theatetus]

Something true can't be funny? Has Homer lived in vain?

Yeah, that Iliad was a laugh riot...

Re:Again?

[Pharmboy]

I don't get involved in the internal politics of GNU/Linux, but Linux was only a few lines of code before it went GNU/GPL and it attracted most of the coding talent since then because of it was GNU/GPL.

In 1990, GNU was already organized and had a fair amount of software in development and in use, including emacs and gcc. In 1990, Linus was a student learning on Minix and had not written a single line of kernel code.

I find RMS to be more preachy than he needs to be, but like you, I agree that is he is still right on the issues. GNU is just as important as Linus when it comes to Linux and the acceptance it now has, and it does seem fair to give credit where credit is due.

Re:Again?

[Pharmboy]

BTW, who does not give credit to gnu ??

Every vendor who labels their products as "Linux" when there is as much GNU software in the distribution as Linux kernel, or more. I think that is his point. I don't think it is about being "famous" but rather that Linux should do more than be better than Microsoft, it should promote the idea of software Freedom, and that is the entire reason GNU exists. Again, I don't get political about it, but he does have a valid point.

Just as you have "Microsoft Windows" (as opposed to XWindows) you have GNU/Linux. I might not say "GNU/Linux" when I converse, but if i am advertising a product for sale, it seems logical to add the GNU, since at the very least, all the software in that "box" was compiled on the GNU CC compiler and is chock full of other GNU software.

What Linus does is extremely valuable, no doubt, and I am even glad he is neutral about the politics himself. But without the GNU components (and other components not related to the Linux kernel), all you would have is a kernel that boots and sits there and does nothing else. So yea, I think RMS has a point. I've also said RMS looks like Jerry Garcia after an all-nighter and is a bit preachy for my tastes, but he is still right on this point.

Re:Again?

[Slithe]

If a distro gave credit to all the software in the name of the operating system (i.e. distribution), we would have distros with names such as: RedHat GNU/MIT/Trolltech/Apache_foundation/AT&T/Berkeley/ Linux.

GNU/Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like people to answer their phones "Hoy hoy" instead of "Hello," but I'm afraid I've already lost that battle as well.

Re:GNU/Linux

[popeguilty]

In the early days of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell wanted people to greet each other with an exchange of: Caller: "Ahoy!" Callee: "Ahoy hoy!" Mr. Burns does it, if you're a Simpsons fan.

Re:GNU/Linux

[TheGratefulNet]

I heard it was 'ahoy ahoy'. the way the phone company FIRST thought that it would make sense to answer the phone. yes, like greeting a ship.

(with you, you can 'get' the monty burns/simpsons joke. he's old enough to 'remember' when the phone was first invented).

Re:GNU/Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Only littel dick goat fuckers such as yourself post anonymously.


Not at all. We sheep shaggers post anonymously too.

Re:GNU/Linux

[Lanboy]

Has the nature of this debate changed in the last 5 years? I find it funny that RMS who has dedicated so much for freedom is so determined to tell others how to think. It seems a bit propertarian. RMS protecting his trademarks and all that.

Sure without Linux we would be using GCC on sun boxes, but this would be known by what percentage of even the IT community? If sun didn't charge $500 for a compiler I would have used thiers instead. Probably to compile expect on TCL or some other GPL distributed application, but ignore that, it hurts my position on this rant.

What other operating systems are named after the tools that built them or the apps that run on them, even if most of thier functionality comes from them?

This is the stubborn pedantry of a tenured accademic.

Maybe since so many GNU developers were brought into the fold by a stable operating system we should have to call our compilers "Linux driven GCC compiller" or we could type "grep-reverse-engineered-from-att-code" to do global regex searches.

Typed on my Mozilla/Windows system because thats what we use at work.

Re:GNU/Linux

[ltbarcly]

I find it funny that RMS who has dedicated so much for freedom is so determined to tell others how to think.

Recommend to others how to think.

Re:GNU/Linux

[10Ghz]

There would be no GNU/Linux without GNU, but GNU tools would still be running everywhere on the planet on every *nix every built in place of those provided by Sun, IBM, HP etc.

So, do we have GNU/Solaris? GNU/AIX? GNU/HP-UX? No? Then why GNU/Linux?

Re:GNU/Linux

[TheRaven64]

GNU started as a project to produce the userland tools for unix operating systems

Actually, the GNU project intended to produce a complete UNIX-like OS. The kernel, however, was developed quite slowly. I suspect the main reason for this is that they chose a very ambitious design, which significantly reduced the number of people who were competent to work on it.

BSD came after GNU, iirc

The first BSD release was in 1977. The GNU project was founded in 1984. Of course, the first BSD releases were patch-sets for the official UNIX code, so they don't count as complete systems. It wasn't until 1983 (only a year before the GNU project began) that there was a release of BSD UNIX that was a full OS. Almost a decade later, GNU/Linux was released in a more-or-less useable form.

Is it just me ?

[Tiger4]

Or is Stallman just a brilliant guy with some signs of lunacy? I'm pleased as hell that he has led the charge for Free Software and cracked the gates of proprietary software wide open. The only other significant movement I ever saw in that area was from the US Government itself, and they go co-opted pretty fast.

But RMS seems to not be "with it" when it comes to actually closing the deal on the revolution. Computers taht really are by the people, for the people. Cryptic jibberish is OK, as long as it is Free cryptic jibberish.

Or maybe I'm just missing something. Its OK, it happens a lot.

Re:Is it just me ?

[eln]

Stallman is the very embodiment of the Free Software ideal in its purest form, or at least he strives to be. Unfortunately, he is also the embodiment of why virtually any philosophy, when taken to its logical extreme, is unworkable, and usually a little nutty.

Stallman probably deserves more credit than he gets among most Linux users for basically founding the Free Software movement, but his relevance to what the movement has become since then is fading.

Re:Is it just me ?

[napir]

Some might say that he's a lunatic with some signs of brilliance.

Re:Is it just me ?

[Anonymous Coward]

But RMS seems to not be "with it" when it comes to actually closing the deal on the revolution.

Closing what deal? You seem to be spouting gibberish.

Nothing in your message makes any sense. Stallman's effort towards software freedom are needed more than ever these days -- or do you really think we are all suddenly about to enter a sunlit upland with Trusted Computing about to put a DRM Big Brother chip in every computing device (and make lots of Free software un-Free in the process), software patents and abusive copyright legislation?

You know even if Stallman can be a first-class prick in public sometimes... I can only admire the sheer intellectual force behind his decades long drive to protect openness and freedom. We need him, and people like him to watch out for the future. God knows useless shitehawks like you aren't going to do it.

Re:Is it just me ?

[Frumious Wombat]

Like many visionaries, he's bound by the vision he had in the 1980s. (other visionaries have their own decades). Expectations of usability, and manner of interaction, have changed since then, but since RMS has found a system that worked for him then, and continues to work for him now, making it pretty and easy just isn't on his agenda. Thankfully others, having different visions, are working on the "computers for people, not for other computers" side of the problem. Those range from the obvious (GNOME/KDE/OpenStep) to the less so (OpenCroquet). He may sound extreme, but it's better than the days of the $1000 compiler or code it in assembly choice, and he should get credit for those days being mostly behind us. (and if you remember, MASM wasn't cheap either)

I suspect that if his original vision had been realized, you wouldn't be running GNU/Linux or GNU/Hurd, but rather GNU/Emacs for your OS, editor, mail program, web-browser, recipe file, etc. The dominant scripting language would be Lisp, all running snazzy tty graphics.

Give the man a few cheers, at least. He provided the early tools, and gathered disciples who extended those tools to an entire userspace. They gathered disciples, and implemented a pretty good user environment, to the point where large corporations were willing to spend real money on open code. He's living his ideal, and everyone else gets to live in a pragmatic lesser ideal, but at least they're reminded that there is somewhere further they could go.

I agree with him about the (*&#$# Word files, btw. I can't get my local environment to send me text, RTF, or even PDF. Everything is accursed Word, Excel or Powerpoint, in email. It's an institutional virus, and I think they need a good dose of Richard.

Re:Is it just me ?

[PenGun]

Nope it's just that he's much smarter than you. With high intelligence comes vision denied the stupid ... understand ???

    PenGun
  Do What Now ??? ... Standards and Practices !

Re:Is it just me ?

[qortra]

What do you mean, "unworkable"? Obviously, Stallman is pushing an ideal. I don't think anybody (including RMS) expects that one day, we'll suddenly find ourselves in an FSF utopia where advocates of software restriction have been totally repressed. However, RMS is the one that keeps us grounded, all the time! Consider the KDE fiasco. I would probably consider this to be "recent" ('99ish?). Because of pressure from RMS, qt was opened up in a copyleft license. And still, he continues to push forward to defend his ideal (just as he should) from subtle invasions by various groups including Macromedia, Nvidia, ATI, and Sun. Do you really think that the GNU ideal will survive if they (we?) totally get it get overrun by closed software? He isn't going to affect change with softcore stances.

People said he was crazy back when he really did change the world, and it's no different now, except that now the people calling him crazy are so called "open source" advocates and individual developers that consider him to be more of a nuisance. They also call him a lunatic because he's constantly advocating the same things, but that, to me, is the sign of a dedicated man. I wonder if people got tired of MLKjr talking about racial equalization, or Gandhi talking about passive resistance? Clearly, the naming convention of GNU distributions is not a human rights issue, but RMS knows how battles are won, and repitition is key

You give him credit, but I think he deserves even more than you're giving him. He's relevant today, and he ought to be respected because (not inspite of) his unwavering devotion to his ideals.

BTW, I don't agree with Stallman on all his entire philosophy, but he is consistant, and that too should be respected.

Re:Is it just me ?

[Brandybuck]

Consider the KDE fiasco.

I consider it well. It tells me a lot about the motives of RMS and the FSF. When Qt was "free to use", it wasn't good enough. When the KDE Free Qt Foundation guaranteed that Qt would always be free to use, it wasn't good enough. When Qt was released under an approved Open Source license, it wasn't good enough. Even when it was finally released under the GPL, RMS STILL DEMANDED AN APOLOGY!

Re:Is it just me ?

[MarkJenkins]

I see, I thought you were talking about the transition away from the non-free FreeQt license, when you were really talking about the transition from QPL to GPL; my bad.

The switch from FreeQt to QPL was much more important then the later switch to the GPL. I mistakenly believed that RMS's involvement, ended at this point, but I was wrong.

The difference with respect to X is this, RMS and others felt the QPL was causing some serious practical problems for the free software community, hence effort was expended to asking Trolltech to switch. Ironically, RMS was involved in the QPL debate to help with a practical problem, whereas suggesting a licensing change for X would be more about the general philosophy of copyleft. ( Why Copyleft?, What is Copyleft.)

The "I'm not even going to bother to talk to them I'm just going to insult them from afar with very emotive language until they use my own personal license" approach

Well, apparently he did talk to them. I have not seen any insults in any of his posts on the issue.

Re:Is it just me ?

[rohan972]

Perhpas a quote from "The Satanic Verses" taken from this page: http://justzipit.blogspot.com/ would explain it best.

Any new idea is asked two questions. The first is asked when its weak: WHAT KIND OF AN IDEA ARE YOU? Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accommodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive; or are you the cussed, bloody-minded, ramrod-backed type of damnfool notion that would rather break than sway with the breeze? The kind that will almost certainly, ninety-nine times out of hundred, be smashed to bits; but, the 100th time, will change the world. ...... [the second questions is] WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU WIN? ...

Idealists don't understand compromisers, compromisers don't understand idealists. Idealists don't live very harmoniously in the world, compromisers don't change the world. Stallman decided to go for change. You say rigidity and stubborness, others say integrity and persistence. I think it's one of those cases where 'it takes all types'.

You have to feel for the guy

[dedazo]

He has a vision and he has spent a considerable amount of time and effort to realize that vision. I respect that. It's fine to criticize Microsoft. Everyone expects that anyway. I'll even give him Sun and this whole "Java is evil" spiel.

But the more he goes around criticizing other concepts (open source) and other people who make his world possible (Torvalds), if not perfect, the more he will alienate them and the farther away his dream will be. It's impossible for Stallman to realize his vision on his own. He needs Sun and Java and Torvalds and ESR and Red Hat and everyone else. At this rate however... calling Linus insufficiently political is not going to win him any more fans. And more fans is exactly what he needs.

Re:You have to feel for the guy

[Soko]

Actually, RMS is more a John The Baptist than a saint - railing against the establishment, morally pure, living in the desert eating naught but locusts and honey and using over the top, fire and brimstone sermons to try and draw the masses towards salvation. And abso-fucking-loutley batshit crazy.

He is however, necessary if we are to make it to the promised land. ;-)

Soko

Re:You have to feel for the guy

[killjoe]

"But the more he goes around criticizing other concepts (open source) and other people who make his world possible (Torvalds), if not perfect, the more he will alienate them and the farther away his dream will be."

What an utter bunch of crap this is. So if one disagrees with something Linus does or says what is he supposed to do? Is he not allowed to say that he disagrees with the most holy linus? Linus is not a god, nobody is a god. It's perfectly allowable nay encouraged to speak your mind when you think somebody is doing the wrong thing. That's the way "open source" works.

RMS doesn't call people names, he isn't rude. He does not act like the slashdot hordes who insist on calling him a hippie, freak, smelly, unwashed etc. He talks about his ideas, he carefully explains where his ideals are different and contrasting to other peoples ideas. I have never heard him call anybody names though which is a lot more then you can say about his critics.

"He needs Sun and Java and Torvalds and ESR and Red Hat and everyone else. "

He does? Did you mean that you do? You need them because you want a free operating system that does the things he needs. I don't think he is thinking like you. I don't think he thinks he needs those people.

"t this rate however... calling Linus insufficiently political is not going to win him any more fans. And more fans is exactly what he needs."

GASP!. He called linus insufficiently political!. I bet Linus will never speak to him again.

Thank god Linus is not fragile as you make him out to be. I bet Linus is perfectly capable of being called "insufficiently political" without holding grudges.

Re:You have to feel for the guy

[sydb]

Absolutely nothing. Where does Stallman say you shouldn't be paid money for writing software? Hint: nowhere.

Re:You have to feel for the guy

[zuvembi]

RMS's biggest contribution in recent years to the software community is in being seen a nutbar. We need him out there in left field to make people who are slightly off center to look more reasonable. People see Richard out there frothing and it makes other people like Bruce Perens look eminently reasonable.

"We need radical activism so that the moderates aren't ignored as a fringe element." - Tooker Gomberg

Re:You have to feel for the guy

[0racle]

No. Stalman has been making money for over a decade writing very little software, but going around on grant money to make these closed software is evil and the devil and your going to hell for using it speeches.

Re:You have to feel for the guy

[jmorris42]

> He needs Sun and Java...

Why? Care to explain why the Free Software world needs Java? The FSF is working on cloning it solely because ignorant people built up a lot of otherwise Free infrastructure on Java either not knowing it wasn't Free or not caring. Much like the early days of KDE where they just didn't care about QT being closed source, forcing RedHat to put up the money to help the FSF launch GNOME so as to avert a disaster. And now we have RedHat and the FSF working to clean up other people's mess over the Java fiasco.

Java (and .NET/mono for that matter) are totally unneeded in the Free world, we get write once run anywhere from autoconf/automake not some crappy bytecode emulator for closed binaries.

Just to be clear, I'm dissing Java the platform and mono the platform, not Java and C# the languages. Both are perfectly acceptable languages for those into the OO thing. Me, I'm a total neolithic curmudgeon who is still unconvinced of the utility of OO. Find me a non-trivial OO program that isn't several times the size in code, runtime image, cpu cycles and development time compared to an equivalent procedural program. And as for code reuse, a C library is about the ultimate in that department.

What I'd like to see is a new procedural language taking most of C except replacing the zero terminated strings with something sane and including a garbage collecting string library. Fix some of the other bits that made sense in the dark ages of limited ram/cpu but leave the essence intact.

Re:You have to feel for the guy

[dedazo]

Is he not allowed to say that he disagrees with the most holy linus?

He's allowed to say whatever the hell he wants to say. As do I and you. I was merely expressing my opinion that these outbursts hurt him and his cause more than they help him. That's all.

Did you mean that you do?

No, not really. Without things like Java and advanced graphics drivers and real applications his vision is bust, because "the GNU system" can't expand and grow and take away market from Sun and Microsoft and everyone else. Or what exactly is his goal then? To just bitch about everything?

The beauty is that he actually blames Sun and Linus and everyone else for the inabilities of the people who follow him to provide alternatives to these "dirty" versions of Really Useful Things That Everyone Would Really Like To Have. Otherwise these wouldn't be issues to him at all. Perhaps you don't understand the importance of Java. I think he does.

I bet Linus will never speak to him again.

I bet he's pretty fed up with Stallman's constant broadsides, but I'm pretty sure he's perfectly capable of deciding if he's going to "speak" to Stallman or not.

Re:You have to feel for the guy

[killjoe]

"He's allowed to say whatever the hell he wants to say. As do I and you. I was merely expressing my opinion that these outbursts hurt him and his cause more than they help him. That's all."

Right. Your opinion is that he should not speak his mind and keep his opinion to himself lest he insult the most holy linus (and redhat and sun).

"No, not really. Without things like Java and advanced graphics drivers and real applications his vision is bust, because "the GNU system" can't expand and grow and take away market from Sun and Microsoft and everyone else. Or what exactly is his goal then? To just bitch about everything?"

His goal is not to take away market from Sun and MS. His goal has nothing to do with markets or products. Maybe you should read the GNU manifesto and spend some time at the FSF web site and find out what their goals are.

"The beauty is that he actually blames Sun and Linus and everyone else for the inabilities of the people who follow him to provide alternatives to these "dirty" versions of Really Useful Things That Everyone Would Really Like To Have."

Yes and monkeys regularly fly out of your butt and the moon is made out of green cheese. Why don't you provide a link to something he has said when you make an outragous statement like that. I bet he has never lied about what linus has said whereas you seem to feel perfectly content to lie about what he has said.

"I bet he's pretty fed up with Stallman's constant broadsides, but I'm pretty sure he's perfectly capable of deciding if he's going to "speak" to Stallman or not."

I am impressed by your ability to channel linus and read his mind.

Re:You have to feel for the guy

[mOdQuArK!]

While that's true, the net effect of the GPL is to drive the cost of software down to zero.

The net effect of the GPL is to cause software development to be economically effective only as a _service_, rather than as a product. If you want to keep getting paid, you can't rest on your laurels - you have to keep coding. And in a truly capitalism-based market, this is as it should be.

Re:You have to feel for the guy

[johnMG]

> People see Richard out there frothing [snip]

I've been to a GNU/Linux users group meeting where was gave a talk. There wasn't any "frothing". He came across as a genuine guy who gives his work away free (under the GPL) and suggests that you might do the same. He also points out why he thinks DRM, software patents, etc., are bad.

That's pretty much it. Well, that and the Saint Ignucius bit. It's probably time to drop that one, though it still gets a *few* chuckles from the crowd I suppose.

I'll tell you one last thing though -- RMS has got some high quality grey matter. When I saw him, he gave the whole talk (had to be over an hour) without any notes or anything. He seemed to stay on target the whole time (no "umm"'s either). It was like watching some lisp program recurse into subtopics and sub-subtopics, and then unwind itself to continue on whichever topic was next until the end of the talk. Pretty impressive.

Re:You have to feel for the guy

[labratuk]

While that's true, the net effect of the GPL is to drive the cost of software down to zero.

Rubbish. It drives the cost of software down to its value. Like everything should be in a free market. i.e. not using tricks like vendor lockin to artificially reduce developer efficiency, inflate prices and encourace incumbancy.

Re:You have to feel for the guy

[kv9]

especially secure, stable, line-of-business, database-driven applications that don't require a masters degree in engineering and a hacker tatoo to pull off.

correct me if i'm wrong, but shouldn't the people that write these amazing-line-of-sight-enterprise-ready-kung-fu-cri tical apps actually *know* what the fuck they are doing? you make it sound like it's a bad thing to be skilled.

GNU/Old

[isorox]

why he thinks people should address Linux distribution as GNU/Linux.

It never gets old does it?

Re:GNU/Old

[Spy der Mann]

It never gets old does it?

GNO, it doesn't.

Will somebody please, please please...

[Glasswire]

...build a GNU-free Linux distro so we can tell RMS that not all Linux is GNU/Linux, thereby making the word Linux by itself an acceptable word :-)
Surely this is possible.

Re:Will somebody please, please please...

[McGiraf]

Well, go ahead and try, then maybe you will understand why RMS insist on the GNU/Linux name.

Re:Will somebody please, please please...

[jonwil]

And just how do you propose to get the behemoth that is the Linux Kernel compiling with something other than GCC???

Re:Will somebody please, please please...

[orasio]

Ok. I just started.
While you are waiting, please call the GNU/Linux system by it's real name, thre GNU system with the Linux Kernel.
Like the OS/X System, with the mach kernel, or the Windows XP System, with kernel32

Re:Will somebody please, please please...

[stony3k]

You're right, and if you RTFA, you'll see that he says the exact same thing. He says that the work of the FSF is not yet done, and the more people who read about GNU and are attracted by the philosphy the better. So since GNU software is a significant part of Linux (the OS not the kernel), he feels that they deserve the free advertising.

I tend to agree, if only because the "Free software" movement is still in its infancy - there's a long road ahead. If the fight gad been won, then the naming issue would be trivial indeed.

Re:Will somebody please, please please...

[Al Dimond]

There's a difference between the name GNU/Linux and, say, OSX/Mach. The difference is that in the case of OSX the project to create an operating system was Apple's. They used the Mach kernel in that pursuit, as they used many other pieces of F/OSS. The operating system was Apple's and they called it OS/X.

The GNU/Linux story is much more complicated. The project to create an OS was definitely GNU's. However, the marriage between GNU and Linux was the doing of the Linux developers (at least as I understand it). So would it then come under the naming of Linux or GNU? There is ambiguity. Then the distributors came in, and there's this silly question of semantics: were they trying to create their own operating systems, or to distribute existing software? What's the difference?

GNU's project to create a Free operating system was and is important. I believe that a continuation of GNU's goals of freedom has resulted in the system that I use, know and love. But it's also a continuation of Linux's goals, those of creating the best operating system possible. So I call my operating system GNU/Linux, because it gives credit to both of these ideas. The two sets of ideas, complementary and often at odds with eachother. I'd only mention the distributor (or "meta-distributor", as I'm a Gentoo user) if someone was asking me about things relavent to package distribution or system configuration. Some people would be well, frankly, to list their operating system as KDE/GNU/Linux or Gnome/Linux (as Gnome/GNU would be redundant) because those projects bring a third set of goals to the table that strongly influences the experience of their users (by this I mean users of the full desktop environments and not so much those that merely benefit from the many quality apps made possible by those projects).

So I guess if an OSX user thinks that the goals and ideas of the Mach project aren't getting their due for doing the dirty work for Apple's operating system, that user would be fine by me to call the whole thing OSX/Mach. I don't think that what Mac users are presented with on a daily basis is the same kind of synthesis that GNU/Linux folk are.

Re:Will somebody please, please please...

[Tim C]

GCC doesn't count in the context of producing a GNU-free distro? You do realise what that G stands for, right?

What RMS does not get

[DrRobert]

is that in order to truly spread the "philosophy" the product must succeed on its own without the "philosophy" attached. When the product succeeds because it is a good product then the philosophy will inherently spread. That is why it is good to call it Linux and not GNU/Linux. That way people will buy into just because its good and not because it is a physical manifestation of RMS's philosophy. This is analagous to all those people who bought American cars in teh 70-80's even though they were crap because they philosophically thought it was important to buy American cars. Therefore the product got worse and worse. He gets it exactly wrong by saying that it must be called GNU/Linux to spread the philosphy. I'm not looking for a philosophy; I'm looking for an OS.

Re:What RMS does not get

[DeepHurtn!]

What's true for you is not true for everybody. For example, I switched to a GNU/Linux OS precisely because of the philosophy. I'm not a power user, or a coder, or anything like that, and Windows was "Good Enough" for me, just as it is for the overwhelming majority of consumers out there. I took the leap almost two years ago because the GNU philosophy resonated with me. I think that the values behind the FSF crucially important to encouraging the use of Free software.

For example, take the ODF. I haven't gotten *anywhere* promoting its use (to friends, family, other grad students, etc.) based on its technical merits -- .doc is certainly fine for people. It's when I start talking about GNUish stuff like the right to read that people start paying attention.

Now, obviously, the softare promoted by the philosophy does need to be good. I'm just saying that I think you're being a little overhasty dismissing the power that the GNU philosophy can have in encouraging adoption.

Re:What RMS does not get

[Stalyn]

You don't get it. The OSS philosophy is the product. The various OSS projects like Linux, gcc, etc are direct results of this philosophy. The philosophy itself leads to success.

If you try to sell the projects first without the philosophy, business will think they are two different things. They will try to seperate the philosophy(what they don't like) from the project(what they like). Then you will have removed the very thing that made the project a success in the first place. No we should sell the philosophy first, because without it in essence what is the difference between open-source and proprietary software?

Re:What RMS does not get

[DeepHurtn!]

It will take practical people.

Very true, and I think we agree. I just feel that there are a lot of people out there would be very receptive to the philosophical arguments for Free softare, and that this gets downplayed too much. For example, I believe that to someone who isn't a pretty hardcore computer user, the freedom aspect is a lot easier to explain -- and more relevant! -- than the benefits of a UNIXy architecture.

Also, as a side note, it's not like rms is *completely* unconcerned with practicalities. He wrote a lot of code to get the whole GNU ball rolling.

Re:What RMS does not get

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

1) opensource existed before Stallman, and it will exist after. Stallman didn't invent it. It existed in BSD, and Linus has stated that if BSD hadn't been encumbered at the time by the lawsuit, he probably woudn't have bothered with Linux.

2) at one time Linus did call the whole thing Linux. This was a long time ago, when there was essentially just one distro (his) and it was mostly kernel and command line things, low end things that he liked to hack on. Only when it grew past (though it was very very early in it's lifetime) that did Linux refer to just the kernel.

Not everyone that added code to Linux (term refers to kernel or OS, your choice) or even GNU products believe in The Movement. Some people jsut wanted a free UNIX clone.

Linux vs GNU/Linux

[AuMatar]

This is the best explanation of why he does that yet, IMO. I've always been a little confused and thought he just wanted more credit, which seemed petty. But by pointing out that its basicly advertisement of the GNU philosophy and Free Software makes a lot more sense. I'm not sure if I'm going to join him in doing so, but I'm a lot more likely to now.

Oh, and I know people are going to flame his last Q&A. I thought it was funny. Shows he doesn't need to take himself seriously all the time.

"Recent"?

[D. Book]

The speech the article extracts from was delivered at ANU back in 2004. I believe that was his last visit to Australia (he also spoke at UNSW). There are numerous, more recent speeches by RMS available in audio and video format on the same subjects, and I don't see why this one makes news.

Re:Let me be the first to say

[Linker3000]

"Booooooo!" was probably first said many tens of thousands of years ago so you've missed that one.

You probably need to make up a new word - for example, let me be the first to say "Ghaslespruthmeep"

Old boy out for another canter

[FishandChips]

It seems the usual Stallman stuff we've heard before with some bitter-sounding remarks about Linus Torvalds thrown in. It makes one wonder whether Stallman is really motivated by a massive grudge against Torvalds for stealing his thunder all those years ago. Creepier still is a comment later on - "I don't criticise and condemn people just because they don't stand up for free software strongly as I do" - which is completely undermined by what he has said earlier about Torvalds.

By now a great number of highly talented people have contributed a lot to Linux. It's rather revealing that only one of them hogs the limelight and witters on about "the community" all the time. Your community but not necessarily mine, RMS. The fact that I use GNU/Linux gives you no right to speak on my behalf.

RMS Gives His Views....

[pandrijeczko]

...despite being three days late for April Fools Day.

RMS is absolutely correct.

[RLiegh]

However, that and two bucks will get you a cup of coffee. People value what they value; if they aren't rioting in the streets after finding out that our conntry is spying on them and sending people to syria for torture, then they most certainly aren't going to give one half of one shit that word documents cannot be universally read.

Once again, RMS demonstrates that being right isn't the only thing; hell, in this age, being right isn't (worth) any thing.

GNU/Linux flamefest

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

1) calling all software licenses equal is not Microsoft's position. They don't particularly like GPL, and wish they could stamp it out. They don't mind BSD license so much, they still ship with BSD code (some command line tools), had a BSD network stack for a while (NT 3.5 days or so, been ripped out completely in favor of MS code), and AD authentication is from MITs Kerberos, with some extensions.

2) Calling it "like Microsoft" is just an emotional attack. If he said "Linux thinks all licenses are valid" then he'd have to come up with a reason why this shouldn't happen. I've never bought his arguments.

3) "wrong to ever violate them". Stalman makes it sound like this is bad, but never gives reasons why. Can i violate GPL and he'd be happy?

In a way i wish RMS would stop talking about GNU/Linux and get back to the HURD. Instead of a decades old OS with various security patches on top of it to work in a networked world, have some ideas for a truly clean OS. Port stuff to it. WHy in this day in age do most machines have this all powerful root (or Administrator) user? Build in sub-permissioning from Day 1, don't add on later and wait for thigns to break. Why does a bug in glibc put my whole computer at risk? Why cant we re-engineer things to have message passing and isolated address spaces for libraries? Is the inefficiency of message passing vs. direct method calls going to kill a user who really just wants to be on the net safely? Use the HURD as a research project, get new ideas out into the OS world, where it's stagnating now.

Re:Yeah but...

[Tim Browse]

my house has some Argos furniture in it but that doesn't make it a bloody Argos house, does it?

No, it makes it Chav Central.

(I kid! I have an Argos bookshelf - don't tell anyone!)

Re:Yeah but...

[thejeek]

It's a fair cop - I've some bookshelves and a bed. No Burburry though, honest.

Re:Let me be the first to say

[general_re]

...let me be the first to say "Ghaslespruthmeep"

Actually, that was already said here...

GNU/Java

[chrisbtoo]

I'm actually coming round to his POV on the GNU/Linux thing (X/Linux, KDE/Linux notwithstanding) - GNU was there first, they do still have a way to go, and "Linux distros" do use a lot of GNU stuff. OTOH, of course, there's nothing in the GPL that says you have to call the software a particular name, so he's kinda SOL on that.

Reading his reasoning behind the "Java trap" makes me chuckle, though. His main argument there seems to be that the Free Software implementations can't keep up with the proprietary ones, and therefore people should stop using the proprietary implementations. Surely the whole reason they're behind is that they waited until the Java gained traction before starting up on a Free version. If it hadn't had that traction, then it wouldn't have been worth doing a Free implementation in the first place.

Re:He Needs...

[mpapet]

He needs Sun and Java and Torvalds and ESR and Red Hat and everyone else

No. Emphatically no. It's the other way around. The corps desperately need him. Most of them tried it the proprietary way for years and lost to Microsoft.

The best analogy I can give regarding a future with RMS serving the corps is an Animal Farm reference. The animals are running the humans off the farm right now. The animals are excited, no animals go into the house on pride. But pretty soon, the Pigs (red hat, et al) will be moving into the house. (I would argue they've already started) After that, they'll declare, "two legs good, 4 legs bad."

A corporation is imbued with extra freedoms beyond what individuals get in the U.S. in order to return a profit to its shareholders. Distorting RMS's message to serve that end is approved by shareholders.

RMS needs no corporation.

Re:Java bashing...

[killjoe]

You don't want RMS to compromise. You want him to abandon his ideals and vision. For what exactly?

Sun has very onerous provisions on their java licensing which prevents inclusion of the JDK in a lot of Linux distributions. Why is this good for java? Why is it good for you (the java programmer) that I have to jump trough fifty hoops to install a JDK or a JRE before I can even run your program? Why is it good for you that the java implementation on my linux box is two years out of date and is slow?

How would RMS compromise to make all that better for you? How could Sun compromise to make that better?

Re:Laws need to change

[Directrix1]

Here let me put your psuedo future into real nerd context here:

# tar -xzvf communism.tar.gz ; cd communism
# ./configure ; make ; make install
# communist-artist-music-search *
communist-artist-music-search: This program is just a stub until all those artists start making music for free.
# cd ..
# tar -xzvf riaa.tar.gz ; cd riaa
# ./configure ; make ; make install
# riaa-artist-music-search "Karl Jenkins"
riaa-artist-music-search: Please specify credit card number.
# riaa-artist-music-search "Karl Jenkins" 98766542358979
riaa-artist-music-search: All available albums by artist "Karl Jenkins" have been destroyed in the DRM music server fire of 2006.
# rm -R ~/.musical_heritage ~/.musical_history
# rm -R ~/.human_knowledge

Re:Laws need to change

[guildsolutions]

For thousands of years music was played for enjoyment and not for profit. I personally know quite a few people who are rather talented musically, but who wouldnt ever try to earn millions upon millions of dollars each year to sell their music.

You've got it backwards

[JoeBuck]

RMS's tools made Linux possible, not the other way around. Linux uses the GNU C compiler, GNU C library, and GNU make, together with the GNU assembler and linker. RMS had a hand in all of those, either as a developer or as a fund-raiser or both. Linux also, of course, uses RMS's license.

True, RMS failed to produce a kernel, and the main reason he failed in my view is that instead of copying a proven design, he tried (and failed) to design something unprecedented. Linus succeeded because, unlike the GNU project, he copied a proven design (a monolithic Unix kernel). But Linus is not the only available source of kernels.

If Linus had never come along, RMS would be running GNU tools on top of a BSD kernel and telling everyone why it should be called GNU/BSD. The free BSD kernels were under a legal cloud until 1994, which is what gave Linux time to take off. Of course, Linus' impressive skills as a developer and architect allowed Linux to come from behind and dominate. But we would have gotten to where we are without him, because so many in both GNU-land and BSD-land were committed to the vision of an entirely free operating system.

Designing something completely new usually doesn't work. Other than Emacs, the rest of the GNU tools are re-implementations of designs from elsewhere, and so is the Linux kernel. That's not bad, by the way, as in both cases the copies are superior to the originals.

Celibacy

[the.Ceph]

To become a saint in the church of Emacs does not require celibacy.
And strangely enough if this rule changed not a single one of the saints would notice a difference.

Dupe!

[dbIII]

more recent speeches by RMS available

Don't worry - it's RMS we are talking about, so those speeches are all dupes anyway.

Re:Yep... this is why...

[aCapitalist]

If I hadn't just burned my mod points, I would mod up MSfanboi just to piss you off further. You want people banned for being a "msfanboi". Screw you and the fascist horse you rode in on.

Re:Yeah but...

[jmorris42]

> The GNU project built the GNU operating system and combined with the Linux kernel, it
> makes the GNU/Linux operating system. It's really not a bad idea, you know.

No, GNU never built an operating system. They built a lot of really useful parts but have never assembled them into an operating system. On the day they do that final part we will at last have GNU. Not GNU/Linux, GNU. The FSF could have taken the freely redistributable Linux kernel and integrated it into a finished GNU, they chose not to. Only a year or so after Linux became popular the BSD kernel emerged from it's legal dispute. The FSF could have used it to complete GNU, they chose not to do so. The FSF could have done whatever it took to get HURD to a 1.0 version and thus completed GNU, again they chose differently.

Instead dozens of independent organizations (RedHat, Slackware, Debian, SUSE, Yggdrasil, etc, most now defunct) took all of the parts (including a non-GNU libc for the first several years) and did the hard work of integrating all the various parts (including a buttload of stuff that didn't come from the FSF, like X) and made a family of related operating systems. None of these are GNU. RedHat is not GNU. Debian was under the auspices of the FSF for a couple of years but still both parties chose NOT to call it GNU instead of Debian. But had they wished to co-brand it would have been GNU/Debian, Debian GNU or GNU/Debian Linux, but calling it Debian GNU/Linux is an incorrect usage of Mr. Torvalds trademark (even if not registered as a legal trademark at the time). Merging GNU and Linux with a / implies they are related however Linux is not under the auspices of the GNU project or the FSF.

> I'll give two reasons... one, as RMS states, Linus is not especially sympathetic to
> the free software movement - this means people hearing 'Linux' never get to hear about
> free software.

Tough noogies. Linus isn't the one who chooses the names of distributions any more than RMS can. RedHat could call their product RedHat OS, or could have paid for the trademark and certification testing and called it RedHat UNIX. Or anything else they wanted to. It was THEIR choice (subject to Linus's agreement regarding his trademark rights to the term 'linux') what to name their product. Same with Debian or SUSE. Just as a guess I'd say they all include "Linux" in their name because they feel customers will associate it in a positive way, something that wouldn't be true with GNU as only the already converted know much about it.

We owe him, but he is crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

We owe RMS a huge debt because he single-handedly kickstarted the free software movement. Linus gave us Linux... but he used GNU C compiler to do it. And the Linux kernel isn't very useful unless you have a shell like GNU bash, and you need command line tools like ls, cp, mv... all GNU provided. Thank you, RMS.

But sorry, RMS, you are crazy and I hope your dearest wishes do not come true. RMS believes the only acceptable licenses are the ones he wrote; if he had the power, he would make it illegal to ship software under a proprietary licence. (How do I know this? Eric Raymond publicly challenged RMS about it and RMS did not respond, and I believe it was because ESR was right and RMS didn't want to say it out loud. Google for the words "Freedom Zero" to get the context of all this.)

Somebody asked RMS how can software writers make enough money to live. RMS said that he would be in favor of a "free software tax" to pay the salaries of people writing free software. If it was illegal to ship software under a proprietary licence then maybe you would need something like this, but I do NOT want government involved in deciding who gets to write what software for pay. The free market is better.

Only RMS could think that government paying of salaries to selected software writers is more free than people deciding what software to write and what licence to ship under.

Actually that's an important point. RMS wants to maximise freedom for the USERS even at the expense of the PROGRAMMERS. He is willing to constrain the freedom of a programmer, because he wants all software to come with source code.

The worst thing about RMS is that he doesn't care about anything else as much as his particular ideal for free software. Of all the Linux distros out there, you would think he would recommend Debian GNU/Linux, right? The only major distro that actually puts "GNU/" in their name?

http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

But in an interview he recommended some obscure Linux called Extremadura or something like that, because he had read somewhere that they only provided GPL software.

http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2003/08/msg029 01.html

If you set up a default Debian system, you will only have free software; Debian's "main" servers have nothing RMS would not approve. But Debian has for years had a server called "nonfree" where you could get things like Netscape Navigator. If you know what you are doing, you can set your Debian system to pull packages from "nonfree", and for this crime, RMS snubbed Debian in favor of the other one. And it turned out that the onther one isn't actually freeer than Debian; RMS had heard it was so, but it wasn't, really.

It's sad that RMS can't even say something nice about Debian, the closest thing the world has seen to what RMS says he wants, because they aren't PERFECT and if they aren't PERFECT they aren't good enough for RMS.

RMS, thank you for kick-starting the free software movement. Thank you for GCC, EMACS, and the other GNU utilities. But you are crazy.

Re:We owe him, but he is crazy

[MarkJenkins]

And the Linux kernel isn't very useful unless you have a shell like GNU bash, and you need command line tools like ls, cp, mv... all GNU provided. Thank you, RMS.

Don't forget the GNU C Library. This is a massive project, and it plays a very key role in allowing GNU to be a Unix replacement.

Somebody asked RMS how can software writers make enough money to live. RMS said that he would be in favor of a "free software tax" to pay the salaries of people writing free software.

How recently? If I recall correctly, this is an suggestion that dates back to the earlier years of the GNU project. It was used as an example (amongst many) that there are other ways to fund software development.

The tax approach is an ugly one, but I would still find it preferable to living in a proprietary world. Fortunately the free world has since demonstrated that it can flourish without this idea.

Actually that's an important point. RMS wants to maximise freedom for the USERS even at the expense of the PROGRAMMERS.

I would prefer not to live in a society that provides special powers for small group of people at the expense of the whole.

He is willing to constrain the freedom of a programmer,

If we abolish copyright on software, programmers will not have lost a freedom, a privilege/power will have been taken away. As for the 'freedom to withhold source', it is a freedom I'm willing to part with, just as I'm willing to part with the freedom to kill another human being. (I'm not saying I value the former restriction more so then the later) Every society has at least some restrictions on individual freedom for the benefit of everyone, the debate is on which ones. A freedom is not inherently a good thing, there are always costs to weight against the benefits. RMS engages in some pretty thoughtful cost-benifit analysis in Why Software Should Not Have Owners and Why Software Should Be Free.

That being said, we probably don't need a law requiring source distribution, abolishing software copyright would probably be sufficient. The cultural change accompanying this could turn source distribution into a social norm requiring no government enforcement.

because he wants all software to come with source code.

He wants a lot more then that! You should be able to make changes to that source code. You should be able to share those changes with others, which benefits them and it can benefit you if the others make and share an additional change that builds on your own.

There's more. Given a universal information processing machine, some bytes that make that universal information machine do something useful, and a friend who would like a copy, most normally socialized people will utilize the copying capability that this machine excels at. In cyberspace this kind of behavior is as natural as breathing is in the real world. RMS thinks it should be legal.

Also restricting the use of a program with a restriction like 'educational use only' or 'company with less then or equal to 5 employees only' is unacceptable too.

But in an interview he recommended some obscure Linux called Extremadura or something like that, because he had read somewhere that they only provided GPL software.

No, he would of read (incorectly) that they only provided free software.

Net effect of the GPL:

[hummassa]

is to drive the cost of software not towards zero, but towards the true cost of coding it. Software costs nothing to copy; it only costs to code. So, why charge people per copy? Just charge all users for the effort to code it. If the users don't shell $$$ for it, it does not get done. You eliminate a lot of aberrations like Microsoft itself: it shells out $ 50.000 for developing MS-DOS, charges its users 10 million; then it shells out 500.000 for developing MS-Word, charges its uses 30 million; and so on. Feel free to ignore me.

Vista Flames

[twitter]

I've never bought his arguments.

That's because he does not sell them. If it makes you feel better, make a donation or join the FSF.

Can i violate GPL and he'd be happy?

No.

The point of said, "violations," is to help your neighbor. Your obligations to people around you should always outweigh your obligation to Bill Gates and other greed heads. Public libraries are founded on this principle. Sharing and co-operation are good for everyone. Information, unlike all physical goods, has always been free to share. It is only recently that the US has made sharing information a crime. The laws do this are simply wrong.

Some people, who can't seem to finish their own OS after five years, would love to do what you suggest, so they can better screw their users. The laws they made, which keep them in business, prevent it. Microsoft is going to have to code or legislate themselves out of their GPL troubles. Their coding efforts appear to have failed.

OpenBSD: "Only one remote hole in the default install, in more than 8 years!"

Microsoft: Only one OS release in five years!

Free Software: Billions and Billions served.

Self centered

[Julian Morrison]

The "GNU/Linux" thing has always stuck me as self-centered. I mean, sure it's both GNU and Linux, but... A name is not a chemical formula out of which a thing's structure can be parsed. Otherwise my OS would be something more like OnceKnoppix SortaDebianTesting Gnu/Linux/bitsOfBSD/Xorg/KDE/SunJava/OpenOffice.or g... and it wouldn't stop there. Heck I could just dump a list of my apt packages, their repository and version, but even that would be incomplete as it would miss out historical influences since purged.

At which point does a name come to encompass the totality of elapsed events since absolute tick zero?

I'll continue calling it "Linux" or maybe "Debian testing", because that's good enough and does nobody any special favours.

Freedom to name....

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Surey if the spirit is true freedom then I should be able to use it without having to GNU/everything? Why should RMS feel he has naming rights on Linux boxes? There is nothing in the GPL (the agreement) suggesting we GNU/ everything.

Stop this before it gets silly: "Announcing the GNU/Linux/Bell/GSM/Nokia 3477 phone that connects to the the DARPA/Al Gore/Internet for CERN/web browsing. The unit features a 400MHz Turing/von Neumann/Babbage/CPU and has a Faraday/battery providing 5 days of typical usage...."

Re:Freedom to name....

[10Ghz]

let me use LaTeX/X/Linux/GNU as an example--is that neither LaTeX or X is an operating system and was never intended to be.

Well, I use KDE (feel free to substitute KDE for some other GUI in your case). And to me, as an user, KDE plays a lot bigger role than GNU-tools do. I use KDE-apps directly, they are the tools I use to carry out my tasks. So would't it be fair to call the system KDE/Linux then? And since I use GUI, I need X, so it's KDE/X/Linux. And let's give GNU part of the credit as well, so it's KDE/GNU/X/Linux.

You are propably saying that my example is dumb. But is it? Why should we include GNU in the name of the system, but not KDE (for example)? You say that the system would be un-usable without GNU. Well, I could say that it would be un-usable without KDE and X, so surely they should be included as well? Why include GNU, and exclude the others? Because it would sound dumb? Well, I think that GNU/Linux sounds dumb.

Intel's free compiler?

[AHumbleOpinion]

And just how do you propose to get the behemoth that is the Linux Kernel compiling with something other than GCC???

Intel's free compiler? Yes, not portable, but for 99.9% of Linux users so what. And if Linux doesn't build due to unsupported gcc'ism well them fire up vi and change the code, don't use emacs though, that would unethical in this context. ;-)

I guess the worst sin against the emacs church...

[carlos92]

...is publishing an article about RMS's talk and linking to a page showing his video in Macromedia Flash!

The guy must be rolling over in his grave!

What? He's not dead yet? He sure will wish he were dead when he finds out!

Not true, he has four speeches, they are:

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

• The dangers of software patents (transcript)
• GNU/Linux and the free software movement (his general talk)
• Copyright verses community in the age of computer networks
• GPLv3 (transcript)

There is also a page on GNU.org for audio recordings of (mostly) Richard's talks.