Richard Stallman Proclaims Don't Follow Linus Torvalds

StonyandCher writes "Here is an interview with Richard Stallman about a range of free software topics including GPLv3 and comment on the Microsoft patent issue. Stallman has a go at Linus Torvalds even suggesting that if people want to keep their freedom they better not follow Torvalds. From the interview 'Stallman: The fact that Torvalds says "open source" instead of "free software" shows where he is coming from. I wrote the GNU GPL to defend freedom for all users of all versions of a program. I developed version 3 to do that job better and protect against new threats. Torvalds says he rejects this goal; that's probably why he doesn't appreciate GPL version 3. I respect his right to express his views, even though I think they are foolish. However, if you don't want to lose your freedom, you had better not follow him.'"

Comments

No surprise

[redelm]

RMS has always been a purist/zealot. He has been angry at Linus for years for not pursuing NVidia to release source for their graphics module. It arguably is a derivative work of the GPL kernel. NVidia stub is already released, but the GPU driver is a binary lump. RMS is especially angry because this is exactly the situation he faced with the Xerox printer driver that caused him to start the FSF and GPL.

Linus belongs much more closely to the "Open Source" movement [ESR] than to "Free Software" [RMS]. Although I hesitate to classify Linus in any way. He does his own thing.

Re:No surprise

[Chandon Seldon]

While Stallman would like to bully companies into throwing open their source on anything that might touch his precious GNU project, its not realistic. If you want companies to write drivers for their hardware and ensure compatability, you have to give them the option to keep their secrets secret. Otherwise you'll just scare them off and hurt yourself in the process.

That's an interesting claim, but it happens to be false.

Most hardware companies sell hardware and want people to buy it. That means that they want their customers to be able to use it. Providing specifications (and editable driver code) makes the hardware maximally useful to the customer - thus selling the most units of the hardware. Usually the hardware interfaces are actually standardized, so keeping them secret is absurd.

You can see this in practice by looking at what hardware is supported by the Linux kernel today. Almost all hardware is supported by drivers embedded in the kernel itself. The only significant exceptions to that are high end 3D video cards, wireless network cards, and software modems. For 3D cards, one of the two vendors in the world just came to their senses and realized that hiding interface details just costs them sales for no good reason. For wireless cards and software modems, the excuse is legal constraints.

That leaves nVidia as the only company in the entire world that may legitimately be thinking like you are. My guess is that they aren't thinking like that - they're probably just being lazy and don't want to pay their lawyers to evaluate the exact legal situation of the various patent licenses that they have that may restrict what information they can publicly release.

Re:Hey Stallman, how's Hurd coming along?

[morgan_greywolf]

The Hurd is slow in coming due to the extreme lack of developers. There's what? 17 registered developers on Savannah? Compared to how many Linux kernel hackers out there? Despite the previous lack of motivation in developing a kernel, The Hurd has made great strides despite relatively small developer base.

Hurd's not the most important thing

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

The free software movement already has many working kernels. Getting Hurd working is not the most important thing RMS could work on.

His job is to make sure that the free software movement will last - make sure people value it and protect it.

Here's a transcript of one of his talks, and there's more where that came from.

He already did: BitKeeper

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

This wouldn't be a change. Linus already used and advertised BitKeeper, which was completely proprietary software.

Relicensing the Linux kernel quite possible, if they want to.

...but this isn't a v2 vs v3 debate. Linus has never supported the idea that the freedoms to help yourself and to cooperate with others are valuable.

Re:And what's the last code Stallman wrote?

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

He's still the maintainer of Emacs.

In his programming hey-day, he wrote GCC, GDB, half of GNU Make, and some other packages.

Know anyone else who's written a compiler which today builds 4Gb software archives?

Truly free license: WTFPL

[wizards_eye]

Why do we still have this battle of which license is most free? The only truly free license is the WTFPL:
http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/

Re:Okay.

[cching]

So how am I going to 'lose' my software freedom by 'following' Linus? Presumably you will lose that freedom because the GPLv2 doesn't address patent protection, but GPLv3 does. What that means is someone could come along, get some GPLv2 software, redistribute it and get all the benefits inherent in that and then sue the people they redistributed to for patent infringement (or, better yet, sue those that didn't buy the software from them, sound familiar at all?). This limits the freedom of the people who are sued because they accepted GPLv2 software, but now they possibly can't use that software in a free way (i.e. they need to pay for patent protection). Agree with v3 or not, RMS is right about how v2 limits freedom more than v3.

Re:Software's the same, the philosophies different

[david_thornley]

Open source is all about the source. That's it. It's about having the source be open for modification, and nothing else. This means that it encompasses both free software (in that free software is, by definition, open source) and other, ironically, more free licenses like the BSD and the Apache license.

Your definition of "open source" conflicts with the Open Source Initiative's; their definition of "open source" is almost exactly the FSF definition of "free software". The philosophies of the OSI and FSF vary, although less than it appears; the marketing the two groups use is very different (and the OSI marketing is much more effective). The OSI was an offshoot of the free software movement, designed to sell the idea of free software under another name with different slogans.

Not to mention that the Free Software Foundation lists the BSD and Apache licenses as free software licenses, and went to some trouble to make sure that GPLv3 was compatible with the latest Apache license. The FSF would prefer you used GPLv3 or later for most projects, just as Theo and Bill Gates would prefer you used BSD, but they hardly insist on it. They take an uncompromising position against software with non-free licenses, but they're cool with BSD and Apache licenses. In fact, they suggest backing off from GPLv3 for certain purposes.

While the FSF is ideologically inflexible, it's tactically quite flexible. GPLv3 was hammered out with a good deal of public input, which effected a lot of change between drafts of the license. Their issue with BSD is not that it isn't free, but that it doesn't protect freedom as effectively as GPLv3.

Re:The comment reflects Stallman's inner thoughts.

[Chandon Seldon]

That's why Linus' productive output surpasses Stallman's by a factor 1000.

The hell? Not only is that irrelevant, it's also blatantly wrong. If you try to build a GNU/Linux system without Stallman's code you'll have just as much trouble as if you tried to do it without Linus's code - and the number of lines of involved code actually written by each is probably pretty similar.

Re:Definitely different goals

[WilliamSChips]

The problem with the GPL3 (IMHO) is that it does exactly the same thing all the EULAs and conditional licenses of people like Microsoft employ. No it hasn't. The restrictions on the GPL3 are only on distributors just as they've always been.

Re:Winning friends and influencing people...

[gameboyhippo]

I use to have the same beliefs as Stallman as well (except that I'm a Christian and shampoo my hair). But then I realized that sometimes its easier to be pragmatic. After all, why should I only use Open Office when Microsoft Office is a clearly better product?

Re:its all about hurd

[Intron]

Options menu => Multilanguage => font/fontset menu

Then save options to make it permanent. Why? Are you still using some emacs variant from 1970?