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?

[Theatetus]

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

Yeah, that Iliad was a laugh riot...

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.

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

[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

[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.

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

[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

[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: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.

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.

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?

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"

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.

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:Let me be the first to say

[general_re]

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

Actually, that was already said here...

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: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: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: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: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.

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.

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 ?

[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'.

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.