Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

RMS Calls to Liberate Cyberspace

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the waving-the-magic-wand dept.

Henri Poole writes "In an interview with Groklaw's Sean Daly at GPLv3 Conference in Barcelona, RMS talks with passion about the dangers of DRM. From the article: 'the point is, we shouldn't be passive victims! We should decide that it will not happen! And the way we decide that is by activism. We have to do everything possible to make sure that those products are rejected, that they fail, that they give bad reputations to whoever makes them.' He closed the interview with a far reaching goal for the Free Software Movement: 'the goal is to liberate everyone in cyberspace.'"

1 of 578 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The people who criticise Richard Stallman... by dbIII · · Score: 1, Redundant
    The people who criticise Richard Stallman are those who are afraid of his message.
    That "you're for us or against us" view is a little simplisitic isn't it? We don't need some hero to follow blindly, we need people with good ideas (like RMS) and follow those ideas after some thought. I for one think the GPL is a very good idea BUT don't let people onto computers I am responsible for unless they type a password or some other method of authentication - and I don't take kindly to random unidentified strangers wandering about my workplace - thus I don't agree with RMS on every issue.

    The GPL is something I like after looking at it. Forcing a draft GPLv3 via the backdoor into linux is one thing I don't like - wait until it's finished and then see if people like it. Renaming linux distributions as LiGnuX then gnu/linux after the first idea was rejeceted as being irrelevant and a stupid name I disagree with - but obviously others don't. There is a gnu/linux out there - it is "Debian Gnu/Linux" because the people who went to the effort of putting together a distribution liked the name for whatever reason. RMS has a lot to do with the GPL, did major work on gcc and laid the foundations for the emacs editor to be written (and had some significant influence on it later) plus many of the gnu tools - but he is not involved in linux. The renaming has led many people to think it is a gnu project - so I feel free to criticize Mr Stallman without belonging to any of the three catagories listed above. There is a point where it just looks like MIT staff room politics overflowed into the open software arena and the credit for "other bugger's efforts" comes into play.