RMS Steps Down As Emacs Maintainer

sigzero writes "Short but sweet: RMS is stepping down as Emacs Maintainer: 'From: Richard Stallman, Subject: Re: Looking for a new Emacs maintainer or team, Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 17:57:22 -0500 Stefan and Yidong offered to take over, so I am willing to hand over Emacs development to them."

Comments

Maybe...

[imageboard]

Maybe he switched to vim.

Re:Maybe...

[Brian Gordon]

That was implemented as a 37-key combination so no human could possibly complete it :)

Re:Maybe...

[rubycodez]

you mean upgraded

Re:Maybe...

[kraemate]

Naah, he finished learning all its features.. PS: goto ahref=http://reddit.com/r/programming/info/69op5/comments/rel=url2html-10669http://reddit.com/r/programming/info/69op5/comments/> to find instant +5 Funny comments..

Re:Maybe...

[Constantine XVI]

http://reddit.com/r/programming/info/69op5/comments/

T,FTFY. HAND.

Re:Maybe...

[Akaihiryuu]

Emacs is a great OS...it does pretty much everything. All it lacks is a decent text editor.

Re:Maybe...

[Tikkun]

Repetitive Stress Injuries due to chronic use of emacs leads developer to use vim? Inconceivable!

Re:Maybe...

[Eddy Luten]

He found out that there were RFIDs hidden in the source, tried to wrap foil around it but ran when he failed.

Re:Maybe...

[aichpvee]

I'd like to nominate Bram Moolenaar as the new maintainer. I hear he's already got his own fork of the only good text editor for emacs...

Re:Maybe...

[tm2b]

Is that that text editor that uses the rogue keys?

Re:Maybe...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it is more likely he is going to focus on his less publicized hiphop dance career.

Re:Maybe...

[RobBebop]

a 37-key combination

In a row?

Re:Maybe...

[melikamp]

so no human could possibly complete it What does it have to do with RMS?

Re:Maybe...

[multi io]

You can just run a terminal emulation in Emacs, inside which you can run any "decent" text editor you want, including another Emacs, thereby achieving technological singularity.

Re:Maybe...

[Anonymous Coward]

I really hope you are joking, as your moderation indicates.

Re:Maybe...

[ta bu shi da yu]

If it was so great and does everything (except text editing) why doesn't it just go maintain itself?

Guess it's not all it's cracked up to be.

Re:Maybe...

[MichaelSmith]

What does it have to do with RMS?

His hands are notoriously sore from typing.

Re:Maybe...

[pclminion]

Let's see: egotism, staunchness, refusal to yield, divisiveness, superiority, rampant ideological ranting... None of those are human qualities at all, no sir.

Re:Maybe...

[spongman]

no, he's passing the mantle to his idiot son Richard W. Stallman.

anyone else find it that this coincides with castro's stepping down?

Re:Maybe...

[doom]

Tikkun wrote:

Repetitive Stress Injuries due to chronic use of emacs leads developer to use vim? Inconceivable!

RMS wrote incredibly quantities of code at a time when no-one knew anything about repetitive stress disorders. It's hardly fair to blame his problems on emacs.

Myself, I don't think emacs is so much a problem as emacs combined with crappy keyboards with the control key moved off to Sibera... I recommend a Kinesis contoured model for serious emacs abusers, myself.

(And if you really want to save your hands, stay away from the goddamn mouse.)

As expected.

[ozmanjusri]

Concise, elegant and minimalistic, just like Emacs.

no, wait....

Re:As expected.

[topham]

Actually, he references megabytes of random text in the emacs executable, after which every elegant word ever spoken, or even conceived was expressed.

Re:As expected.

[smittyoneeach]

(asdf-what-is-that-supposed-to-mean)
(asdf-just-because-the-code-is-all-in-one-namespace-p
asdf-does-not-make-it-ineffective))

Re:As expected.

[Jugalator]

Concise, elegant and minimalistic, just like his beard.

No wait...

Re:As expected.

[tomhudson]

I heard this was so he could have more time to work on HURD

On the negative side, the support for character devices (like sound cards) and other hardware is mostly missing. Although the POSIX interface is provided, some additional interfaces like POSIX shared memory or semaphores are still under development

Well, he could always port HURD so it runs on Emacs ...

Re:As expected.

[smittyoneeach]

Emacs hosting HURD hosting Linux hosting Windows: for better domination.

Re:As expected.

[PsychosisBoy]

"Mismatched parentheses."

Re:As expected.

[smittyoneeach]

Gah! You're right! How did the ) get onto the first line?
(total-humiliation)

Stallman is still around?

[djh101010]

RMS, like EMACS, has decayed to irrelevance long ago. Guy ran out of interesting and useful things to say a decade ago or more. He's not running the all-singing-all-dancing app which used to be a text editor project any more? I'm having a hard time trying to care.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[smittyoneeach]

Disagree. He championed the important idea that sharing source code is a Good Thing, and did it with a degree of consistency over time that is remarkable.
Yeah, I lose track of his ideas after a point (ethics), but I'm a firm believer in "credit where due".
Certainly more deserving of something like a Nobel Peace Prize than some of the nitwits that have besmirched the concept in recent history.
Anyone know how to nominate someone for http://www.medaloffreedom.com/

Re:Stallman is still around?

[kabdib]

"... Nobel Peace Prize..."

Obviously you have never met RMS.

I can't decide whether to put a ":-)" on that or not. I'll just leave it ambiguous. He's yelled at me. I won the argument by leaving.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[smittyoneeach]

I've had some extended discussions with him over email.
Hence the fact that I taper off from agreement when the discussion gets abstract: his philosophical basis leaves me unmoved.
However, when you consider the impact of the GPL, GCC, and the FSF world-wide, and into the future, the Nobel Peace Prize makes sense, even if the fellow himself has some cantankerous moments.
In any case, I submit that the man's overall historical impact may rank with Gutenberg, and for the same reason: taking information out of the hands of the elite and offering a level playing field. Gutenberg did it for literacy, Stallman for programming.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[gazbo]

I agree. He is roughly as historically important as the entire Police Academy series.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[sydneyfong]

You obviously overlook the flamewars he started...

Emacs vs Vi
GPL vs BSDL
GNU/Linux vs Linux
Free vs Open Source

etc etc...

Not that I'm trying to discredit his contributions to Free/Opensource Software, but a "peace" award might be a bit off the mark :)

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Really? You don't use gcc, which he helped create, or other GPL licensed code, for which he helped create the GPL?

A lot of us use Emacs extensively for code writing. It's a helpful tool.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did he yell at you?

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Wolfbone]

You Sir (or Madam), are an ignoramus (first class), and the irrelevance is all yours: Emacs, as Neal Stephenson once said; "outshines all other editors as the noonday sun does the stars" - and it still does. Of course if you don't know why it does so, you'd probably be better off using a tool designed for less smart people anyway :) More importantly, it is quite possible - likely even - that there would be no such thing as FOSS if it were not for RMS, and the world would be a much worse place for intelligent and inquisitive tech./sci./math minded people.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[smittyoneeach]

He's got a very clear course plotted for his ideas.
He offers precise feedback on where he disagrees with others.
He does get shrill and baffling when he ventures into the abstract, and calls others "unethical".
For me to follow his train of thought there, he would have to publish a complete philosophical model.
But so what? His flamewars have contributed far less carbon to the atmosphere than those of other Nobel laureates.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[tomhudson]

By the early '90s, people were routinely giving source code to their customers, rather than trusting "code escrow" services.

I wasn't only giving source - I was also giving a (legit original paid-for) CD with the compiler and tools.

I figured it was just good marketing - giving them the source was an additional incentive to deal with me instead of a competitor, and when it came time for mods, after they screwed it up, I'd get the business of making it right :-)

At that point I had not yet heard of RMS or the term "open source" - it just made good sense to help differentiate oneself in a competitive market.

"We have 3 bids, all about the same price, but one of them is also giving us the source code." - gee, which one would YOU deal with?

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Wolfbone]

Modded troll eh?

How ironic.

Either the mod is himself a troll, or - more likely - he is an imbecile.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[tomhudson]

Emacs, as Neal Stephenson once said; "outshines all other editors as the noonday sun does the stars" - and it still does

That's only because we're closer to the sun than to all the other stars. In other words, its a matter of perspective. Take a step back, and you'll KNOW that vi outshines emacs ;-0

1. Simplicity: [X] vi [_] emacs
2. Less bloat: [X] vi [_] emacs
3. More users: [X] vi [_] emacs

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hence the fact that I taper off from agreement when the discussion gets abstract: his philosophical basis leaves me unmoved.

What do you understand his philosophical basis for free software to be?

Re:Stallman is still around?

[buanzo]

> Obviously you have never met RMS. I did. More than once. Even had dinner with him (here, in Argentina). And I agree with you. I know what you mean.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[cbart387]

Can anyone explain the fascination with there needing to be one that is better? Different strokes for different folks. I don't get how this stupid 'vi VS emacs' is still continuing. I guess the world must be doing alright if this is what people find to argue about :)

Re:Stallman is still around?

[smittyoneeach]

My (wildly paraphrased) understanding is that his philosophical basis treats software like chess pieces: everything stays on the table, in plain view.
Less cheekily, I'd say he's after building a community that has a homogeneous view. Kinda like the Amish, with source code instead of plows.
The point about tapering off that I'm making is this: it's one thing to state your views in a positive way, and quite another to anathematize others who disagree.
Stallman's desire for community is simply one among many possible motives for code.
He's never (that I am aware) published anything offering some transcendental basis for making the GPL "more equal" than other licensing regimes.
IOW, I can get at the GPL from a common-sense vantage, but can't see how other possibilities are somehow "unethical".

Re:Stallman is still around?

[ichthyoboy]

Nope...now he's just working on his own dancing

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Simplicity: [X] vi [_] emacs
2. Less bloat: [X] vi [_] emacs
3. More users: [X] vi [_] emacs

I'm not sure what you think you're proving. I mean...

1. Simplicity: [_] vi [X] Notepad
2. Less bloat: [_] vi [X] Notepad
3. More users: [_] vi [X] Notepad

But I really don't think Notepad is a better editor than vi, and I say this as a dedicated emacs user.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[M. Baranczak]

Probably a holdover from the days of 300 MB hard drives, when you didn't really have the luxury of installing multiple text editors. Or just a nerdy version of that stupid Ford vs. Chevy game that the teenage redneck boys like to play.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Ok, I admit that was funny.

Silly argument in any case. Kate is a much better editor than either vim (stateful editor? No thanks!) or emacs (ever tried to get line numbers on that thing?)

Runs and hides

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Anonymous Coward]

and as soon as the waving fest is over, everyone goes back to just quietly using pico or nano for smaller changes and emacs or vi for the overall.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's honestly a matter of personal preference. The tools are different, and some people prefer one over the other. Then, some of the weirder people get militant about it.

I'm a teaching instructor for a first year comp sci class at my university. Some of the students are using command line stuff for the first time. Their professor tells them to use emacs and that it's the greatest. It confuses them. I don't really use emacs, so I can't answer their questions about it. So I've shown some of them vi, but also made them aware that these two are not their only options and it's really a matter of personal preference. I think I pointed some people at nano too, which I personally dislike. Most of them are intimidated by both vi and emacs, so they use Notepad and scp their stuff over to the Unix machine. They might be more productive learning something else, and I've told them that, but whatever they feel comfortable with it's none of my business. (I've told them that too.)

(Also, it doesn't help them that most commercial Unix stuff doesn't come with as nice of a termcap/terminfo db as Linux or *BSD, which makes vi and emacs harder to use for new people, but that's another story.)

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Anonymous Coward]

He is roughly as historically important as the entire Police Academy series. And you would rate as culturally important as what? Leonard Part 6? Stop! Or my Mom will shoot? Perhaps, Freddy got fingered? RMS may be a well known ass, but his contributions to software will be lasting, yours, not so much.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[wilx]

That's only because we're closer to the sun than to all the other stars. In other words, its a matter of perspective. Take a step back, and you'll KNOW that vi outshines emacs ;-0

1. Simplicity: [X] vi [_] emacs
2. Less bloat: [X] vi [_] emacs
3. More users: [X] vi [_] emacs

ad 1. Where is the simplicity of vi? What is simpler: With Emacs, you start it and you can start typing and modifying your file. With vi, you start it then you have to switch the right mode and then you can start typing. And when you realise that you want erase part of your text, you have to switch to different mode. And then back to start adding text again. Is that the simplicity you are talking about?

ad 2. What is really bloat? With Emacs, you get lots of useful editing modes and some simple apps. But if you do not want to use them then you do not have to use them. Or is this about size of the distribution tarball?

ad 3. Hmm. I don't think I have ever seen any survey about editors that would support the statement. On the other hand, it might be true. That said, let me remind you that more users does not always mean better. I am sure you can find one pretty good example of that if you think hard enough.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[alexgieg]

In any case, I submit that the man's overall historical impact may rank with Gutenberg, and for the same reason: taking information out of the hands of the elite and offering a level playing field. Gutenberg did it for literacy, Stallman for programming.

This sentence, as far as Gutenberg is concerned, makes no sense whatsoever. Medieval nobles were illiterate, they didn't consider it worth their time to learn how to read. The thing is, if you were able to read, you would go after a literacy-requiring work, and this usually meant becoming a priest. Also, whenever you wanted to read something you just went for a library and read it there. Those where located inside monasteries, and no monk ever blocked anyone from going inside and reading whatever he so wished. Better yet: if you appeared with paper and ink wishing to copy something, they would be even more glad you were there. Compare this to the current thinking on copy "rights" and I'd say we wend down from the then status quo, not up.

Gutenberg caused copies to become much cheaper to produce though, that's for sure. But this has nothing to do with "taking information out of the hands of the elite". The information was always "out of their hands". To get to it you only had to do some foot work.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

My ford can flatten your emacs and leave your vi in the dust without leaving second gear...

Re:Stallman is still around?

[smittyoneeach]

I'm drawing a parallel between the effect of movable type upon literacy, which was subsequently no longer a skill confined to a few based upon scarcity of printed works, and the advocacy of source code availability resulting from the GPL, and making the prediction that the GPL will have similar long-term effects.
You can certainly attack the comparison on technical grounds.
It's like a car, see...

Re:Stallman is still around?

[tomhudson]

I am sure you can find one pretty good example of that if you think hard enough.

People are back to using QuickEdit? Awesome. Just loved the ascii art box drawing mode. Menus if you wanted them. And those Wordstar keyboard shortcuts! Ctl-k-b, ctl-k-e, ctl-k-y here I come! ... hmmm .. On second thought, saying "ctl-k-y here I come" might be a bad choice of words ...

Seriously, was there ever a simpler, better editor than quickedit?

Re:Stallman is still around?

[smittyoneeach]

ever tried to get line numbers on that thing?

Sip from the fountain of wisdom...http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki

Re:Stallman is still around?

[smittyoneeach]

Must be a Ford Perfect.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[jonbryce]

Isn't the vi vs emacs war so 1980s?

Personally I much prefer kate or gedit, or openoffice.org.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[gilesjuk]

Notepad only runs on Windows. Not a fair comparison.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Coryoth]

Kate is a much better editor than either vim (stateful editor? No thanks!) or emacs (ever tried to get line numbers on that thing?) Yeah, I have tried to display line numbers. Quite easy with this. It's a rare case where I would want line numbers of course -- the currne tline number is in the modeline, and going to a given line number is straightforward, so displaying them usually doesn't matter.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[poopdeville]

Kate is a terrible rehash of TextMate, which itself takes ideas from the OS X GUI environment and Emacs. I like TextMate a lot. I use Vim at work. In both cases, it's just muscle memory for me. I know the OS X environment very well, so a powerful text editor that follows OS X conventions is a great fit; and I've been using Vim long enough to have memorized lots of useful macros and written some commands.

Mere preference, but a strong one.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[RobBebop]

I submit that the man's overall historical impact may rank with Gutenberg

I see your point, but I think there is a difference between inventing the printing press and preserving freedom and innovation through shared software. I would rather compare RMS to the guy who broke the stonemasons iron-grip on the masonry profession, if such a guy existed. I would also submit that RMS's victories only currently encompass 10% of there potential, seeing as how proprietary methods are still the dominant market force by even the lesser biased sources.

Yeah, the printing press was good, but imagine a world where masonry had not been a closely guarded secret. Take a look at churches and cathedrals built in Europe hundreds of years ago, and imagine having the blueprints for that stuff during the age of colonization. That beauty is what RMS is preserving 200 years into the future. When we start to colonized different planets, their networks will be running apache webservers and we'll be able to communication with them through the Intergalacticnet.

The printing press let artisans churn out massive amounts of printed materials, which helped the masses to get information, and I would compare Gutenberg to the guys who invented the internet. RMS is in a class of his own, because nobody dared to go against the stone masons and preserve the freedom of important information during that era.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[smittyoneeach]

Yes, yes, my comparison was like an analogy that sucked.
We both seem to agree that RMS's work will (likely) stand as an inflection point in history, though.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[mrchaotica]

What makes you think "elite" meant "nobles" rather than "clergy" to begin with?

Re:Stallman is still around?

[RobBebop]

No, your analogy was good. I was being pedantic, and trying to improve on it a little bit.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[reav]

great point "What rules can we impose on everybody else so they have to pay us lots of money? I had the good fortune in the 1970s to be part of a community of programmers who shared software. And because of this I always like to look at the same issue from a different direction to ask: what kind of rules make possible a good society that is good for the people who are in it? And therefore I reach completely different answers." rms is a true American hero.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[pthisis]

You Sir (or Madam), are an ignoramus (first class), and the irrelevance is all yours: Emacs, as Neal Stephenson once said; "outshines all other editors as the noonday sun does the stars" - and it still does. Of course if you don't know why it does so, you'd probably be better off using a tool designed for less smart people anyway :) More importantly, it is quite possible - likely even - that there would be no such thing as FOSS if it were not for RMS, and the world would be a much worse place for intelligent and inquisitive tech./sci./math minded people.

Right, because SHARE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHARE_(computing) and DECUS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECUS never existed. Nor did BSD* and pcc. Nor did the MIT AI lab, SAIL, or any of the other communities that RMS has said influenced him heavily.

RMS is incredibly important to the FOSS movement, and is possibly the single most important individual in promulgating it. He did a huge amount to refine a theory of what it means for software to be free and to encourage wholesale development of large free systems. But it was already in motion before him, and certainly would've existed without him. Indeed, the OSS part of FOSS is in some ways a repudiation of a lot of his ideology; it's disheartening to me, but the original reason for the OSS moniker was to disassociate freely available software from FSF rhetoric.

Again, I do think RMS is one of the most important figures in the FOSS movement; saying that it's "quite possible - likely even - that there would be no such thing as FOSS if it were not for RMS" oversteps things rather a lot, though. The polemics would certainly differ, but the core notion of collaborative open development of freely available source (which intelligent and inquisitive people can look at, learn from, and customize) would certainly have continued to exist and grow from its pre-RMS roots.

That said, RMS is incredibly influential not only on the polemics and rhetoric but also in the development realm; a huge amount of code that is widely relied on was originally written by him, and the rhetoric and polemics got a lot of other software written and opened up in ways that tend to assure it will remain open for the future.

*I know the original BSD license is not technically free by FSF standards; in most meaningful ways, though, the culture of free, open development existed in the BSD community,mmuch as it does in the modern X.org or Apache (or other non-copyleft free software) communities.

(and oh yeah, vim >>> emacs)

Re:Stallman is still around?

[YaroMan86]

How the hell is the parent a troll? I no way was he really putting RMS down, it was actually funny as hell. XD Those were actual disputes by Stallman, and all he was saying was its ironic he could be nominated for something like the Nobel Peace Prize when he's been known to be not-so-much peaceful.

Of course, I'm still bitter about the Linux naming controversy. I'm part of the circle that things RMS was taking credit more than anything.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[fredrik70]

Bah, all rubbish!
      1. Simplicity: [_] Notepad [X] Ed
      2. Less bloat: [_] Notepad [X] Ed
      3. More users: [_] Notepad [X] Ed

and, remember, it's the standard!

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Your post should have been marked Flamebait, as from here it looks to be aimed at rekindling the Emacs vs. vi debate.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Colin Smith]

Hence the fact that I taper off from agreement when the discussion gets abstract: his philosophical basis leaves me unmoved. To be honest I think that a philosophical basis gives you a substructure to build the rest of your actions upon. Without it you are blown with the wind... Which is fine, but you're never going to change the world.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Colin Smith]

"We have 3 bids, all about the same price, but one of them is also giving us the source code." - gee, which one would YOU deal with? The largest best known one...

Re:Stallman is still around?

[alexgieg]

What makes you think "elite" meant "nobles" rather than "clergy" to begin with?

It might be, but then it would be wrong anyway. I only acknowledge as "elite" those who are able to kill others without being subject to punishment themselves. And this most surely doesn't include the Catholic clergy in the Middle Age. When we read about witches being burned, for example, it was always clergy asking the civil government to kill. The clergymen themselves couldn't do so. And the government could, and many times did, say "no". Besides, many times the civil government went and killed "annoying" priests too.

That's not to mean that the Catholic Church didn't want to have power. Middle Age history is full of episodes of conflicts around this. But the simple fact is, it never actually managed to. Unless you consider the Italian province surrounding the city of Rome. But there's the only place where the Catholic Church was a power, in the proper meaning of the word, for any actual period of time.

Furthermore, another indication in that direction is that medieval Universities, much like the actual ones, where in permanent conflict with everyone. This included ignoring Church decrees, what seems strange only until you notice that teachers, although usually priests, were however primarily Philosophers. And that's not to mention monks, in special Franciscans, who were an entirely different category of, so to speak, "troublemakers". Occam (the one from the razor), for instance, was a Franciscan monk AND a University professor, plus a very vocal opponent of the Vatican.

In short, you had many interested parties, all checking and balancing each other: Universities, Monasteries, the Church structure, and the many, many mutually conflicting civil governments. From all of those, only the civil government had actual power. Politically it must have been fun times. ;)

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Toby_Tyke]

I'm not too sure I agree with you here. Prior to the printing press, as you point out, literacy was a skill set very few people possessed, and the scarcity of texts certainly helped to perpetuate this state of affairs. With the advent of the printing press, texts became far more common place, and hence there was more incentive and opportunity to learn to read.

In a similar fashion, programming is a skill set possessed by relatively few people, but I don't think scarcity of available code or a lack of opportunity to learn is the reason. Ever since the advent of home computers, every bookshop and library has carried text books, crammed with examples and information that will teach you to code. The first computer I ever owned came with a built in basic interpreter and a manual that taught you how to program it. GCC is a huge boon to anyone wanting to learn to program, but you can download a compiler for free form MS's web site and learn with that ( admittedly, their are restrictions on what you can do with programs compiled by it).

I can see why you might want to draw the comparison , but it's a fatally flawed analogy in my opinion. Stick to cars.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[shutdown -p now]

I don't get how this stupid 'vi VS emacs' is still continuing.

Indeed, it should be entirely clear by now that of those three, VS is the best.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[djh101010]

Disagree. He championed the important idea that sharing source code is a Good Thing, and did it with a degree of consistency over time that is remarkable.

At the time, it was necessary. About a decade ago, he got tiresome. In my opinion of course. "Yes, yes, we get it, thank you, let others speak about it now; you're not helping" kind of thing.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Moridineas]

Not to really detract from your point (with which I agree), but I would just say that our modern knowledge of medieval literacy is a bit different than older theories. Not bringing up other evidence, the mere fact that within 30 years of Gutenberg's invention of the press that every city of any size in Europe from Andalusia to Hungary had a printing press (literally within 30 years--the rate of advance was staggering!) gives some clues about how many people really were literate--after all, you don't need presses if there's nobody who can read.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Anonymous Coward]

To quote Eddie Murphy: "What have you done for me lately?"

Re:Stallman is still around?

[alexgieg]

you don't need presses if there's nobody who can read.

True. After all, there were huge Universities at the time, and on the biggest cities a lot of people had to know how to read and write just to be able to do their jobs. But notice that I was just disagreeing with his position that the knowledge was in the hands of a few that somehow locked it down, and that Gutenberg's invention had in some way liberated it. Nobles, particularly, weren't much interested in reading or writing until the Modern Age. They just contracted a scribe to do this for them. In fact, I'd say even that it was the printing press that caused they to become interested, not the other way around. It had, so to speak, become fashionable.

In the Middle Age proper, however, reading was an ability that only those who needed or wanted it developed. As most jobs didn't require this proficiency, almost everyone else didn't bother learning it, even if the opportunity was presented to them. With an interesting and very counterintuitive exception in that you had a lot of noble women who could do it. It seems their husbands expected them to teach well the kids, and being able to read makes this much easier when it comes to history, tales, songs, the Bible etc. :)

Re:Stallman is still around?

[drinkypoo]

And the manufacturers of ergonomic keyboards thank you.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Your point is good: Emacs is famous for doing bad things to people's hands, especially people who have bad typing habits. Richard's own hands are pretty messed up, from what I've heard, and he's hired people to basically act as human voice-text synthesizers for this reason.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[drinkypoo]

You can use printing presses to stamp out libels with cartoons on them. Even people who can't read can get the value of your cartoon if it's good enough. The political cartoon is an extremely powerful form of expression for just that reason.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[drinkypoo]

You could go hoarse just from the overhead of having to say "control" all the time. Maybe he has a keyboard with like five keys for the vocalizations most important to EMACS use :)
I can just see him now, bent over the hacked speak and spell... "escape meta alt control shift"
(That is correct! Now spell control, a, control...)

Re:Stallman is still around?

[mike_sucks]

Not so, it works perfectly well on UNIXen: What works: Pretty much everything

/Mike

Re:Stallman is still around?

[totally bogus dude]

You can learn to write programs from books that teach the material, but to learn to write good programs requires seeing other good programs. It takes a very long time to go from your built-in BASIC interpreter and a manual to writing actually useful, well-designed programs, but having access to the source for other programs can accelerate that process.

Microsoft's compiler is very good, and if you're learning to write Hello, World! then there's no real difference between using it and using gcc. But if you want to learn how to write a compiler, gcc is a far more useful tool.

Free software provides would-be programmers with a pool of code ranging from operating system kernels to text editors to 3D games; if you want to learn the craft then that's a tremendously valuable resource.

You can't become literate just by having a stack of books; you need some kind of learning material and hopefully a teacher. But the stack of books certainly helps, not only in giving you stuff to practice reading but also giving you the desire to read; and maybe also the desire to be able to write stuff of the same quality.

Likewise, a stack of source code won't teach you to program by itself, but it can be invaluable as both an aid to your learning and as a motivator to improve your skills. Seeing what can be done isn't without merit, but seeing how it was done is much more valuable.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nobel" Peace Prize is already self-contradicting, so Stallman could still be a shoe-in.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Qrlx]

Gutenberg caused copies to become much cheaper to produce though, that's for sure. But this has nothing to do with "taking information out of the hands of the elite".

I'm going to go ahead and have a difference of opinion with you there. "The elite" refers to the church, not the nobles. If the Pope didn't like what you were doing, the threat of excommunication brought even kings back in line.

The church essentially had "monopoly power" over literacy. A bit like The Onion's fake headline about Microsoft patenting Ones and Zeros. Except this joke went on for centuries.

The church kept reading and writing tightly controlled, which is why we have a period of history known as the Dark Ages.

Probably the only good thing they did was make copies of important ancient historical works that we might otherwise not know of today. But in every practical way, it was a pure power play.

If you want to compare somebody to Gutenberg, maybe Tim Berners-Lee is a better choice? I think he already has a medal though.

I strongly adhere to the premise that the Internet is every bit as revolutionary as Gutenberg's printing press. As with Gutenberg's invention, we're not really going to fully realize the effects for the next century or so. Shameless Plug: Support the EFF, etc. The laws that are being written now will have tremendous (and almost certainly unforseen) impact on the evolution of communications.

I mean, the battle lines are evident today. The "old school" publishers -- who wouldn't exist without Gutenberg -- are more or less at war with "Printing Press 2.0."

I suppose don't quite see the open source/free software movement in the same light. Mostly, the closed/pay model thrives because businesses are accustomed to purchasing goods and services from other businesses and part of the regular course of things. It fits nicely into the business paradigm. And then you've got the marketing, particularly to the technophobic executives in charge of said businesses.

As the saying goes, "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM."

Re:Stallman is still around?

[namekuseijin]

end users don't really use notepad: they use Word for everything, from recipes, to glueing photos and links to send via email in a single document. And programmers should know better to try better tools, even Windows-only like Notepad++ or TextPad...

I really don't think notepad is that popular. And it is not about simplicity, but about simplism. It's simple to do the trivial and very hard and timeconsuming to do any real work.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[manwal]

...!
            1. Simplicity: [_] Ed [X] Pencil
            2. Less bloat: [_] Ed [X] Pencil
            3. More users: [_] Ed [X] Pencil

Re:Stallman is still around?

[pimpimpim]

Ho ho ho, in effect, books were in the hands of the elite, the monasteries also being part of the elite in that time, but also some noblemen had their own libraries . The value of the books was immense, as only up to a hundred copies were available and these books would not be given in the hands of some lower-class person (if that person could read at all). In practice, if you wanted to get a copy of a book, you would have to be able to afford a servant who could read and write, and send this servant all the way to the place the book was located, pay for travelling expenses, and/or a weaponed guard if you wanted to loan the book over to your place. Also understand that copying the book would take a long long time, which means a very costly and slow way of knowledge movement. Gutenberg's invention did help bringing books out of the elitist circle, if not for my arguments above, then just for the sake of the economy of bulk products.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[EsbenMoseHansen]

I didn't say you couldn't do it. But it requires installation of a plugin for something that basic, and it doesn't really work that well. Or at least, didn't when I finally gave up on emacs. From the wiki you linked, someone have made something better, so it might be better now.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Kate is a terrible rehash of TextMate Neither Kate nor TextMate mentions this. And even if it was true, TextMate is propritary=useless.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[smittyoneeach]

Yes and no. When the "others speak", it's often intending to subtly hijack RMSs ideas.
On the one hand, RMS is not perfect, and the recent GPLv3 tussle showed that there is copious room for people to disagree.
Still, when you're considering a problem, knowing the invariants is useful, and RMS provides them.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[smittyoneeach]

Right, but Stallman has never seen fit to publish such for review.
Apparently, the bulk of the audience is comfortable with jumps to assertions that certain viewpoints are "unethical" without seeing the development of the idea made explicit.
There is plenty of empirical evidence that proprietary software is teh sux0rz, but the fact is that few vendors of such view themselves as "unethical", so a bit more theoretical development would help to get past the finger pointing.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[smittyoneeach]

Putting it in capitalistic terms (which RMS himself may not choose to do) you have buyer => marketplace The whole licensing tension is about managing the marketplace.
The free software community is about merging buyer and marketplace under the GPL, so that the seller is invited to play based upon support value added.
The opposing view is about giving the seller more control of the marketplace via source code control.
The "smith theory" is that both answers have their time and place, with the GPL being preferable, but neither answer having any "moral" or "ethical" superiority: how is the legal/technical question a moral/ethical one in the first place?

Re:Stallman is still around?

[alexgieg]

"The elite" refers to the church, not the nobles. If the Pope didn't like what you were doing, the threat of excommunication brought even kings back in line.

This is an oversimplification of what happened then.

If the Church (not only the Pope, but a lot of people; just the Pope disagreeing meant nothing if the others agreed) saw a problem in what you wrote, they would send someone knowledgeable on the subject to talk to you ("inquisitor" means "asker"), requesting you both to talk on the subject. This talk could proceed for as long as it was needed for one to convince the other, or for both to agree that an agreements was unreachable. Depending on what of these things happened, this was the procedure:

a) In case you were convinced by the inquisitor, nothing happened, of course. You both went back to your lives.

b) In case the inquisitor was convinced by you, what historically happened many times, he would take the subject back to the Vatican where it would enter the list of themes to be debated in the next council. Afterwards, once the council happened, one of two things could happen after some months of debate: the Church as a whole might conclude you were in fact correct, and change accordingly (what also happened historically many times), or it could conclude you and the inquisitor were wrong. What, however, didn't exclude the possibility of the theme being the subject of other councils, and the Church position change again, what also happened many times.

As for you yourself, the practical consequences while your position wasn't agreed upon by the Church were similar to the next case:

c) In case you both agreed that you couldn't reach an agreement on the subject, a document was presented to you wish you was expected to sign. This document basically said that you were aware that your arguments weren't strong enough to convince other sages as much knowledgeable on the subject as you; thus, that the Church's position on the matter could very well be the correct, that you're just unable to fully appreciate it; and thus, that since it's not a certainty, it isn't worth disclosing to less knowledgeable people as a proven fact, so to avoid social distress. You signed it, and while nothing happened to you, you could still bring the subject to discussion and investigation on Universities.

d) The last alternative was you refusing to sign the document, and then walking around preaching your ideas as if they were pure facts, trying to convince the simple people as a compensation for the fact you didn't manage to convince those at your own knowledge level, i.e., by becoming a cult leader and, as more and more non-scholars were convinced by you, a source of social unrest. This would set you as an heretical and put an excommunication decree over your head, with the consequences we know.

So, it's extremely naive, historically, to think the Church went directly to 'd'. It rarely happened, and most of the time the Church was a very reasonable entity for the time (for example, by threatening with excommunication those civil official who used more than one torture session on a suspect, as the custom was a lot of torture sessions; and by dismissing as unfounded and freeing the accused in 99 of each 100 witchcraft trials). They assumed that the unrestricted diffusion as fact of unproven and unsustainable hypotheses and theories would result in utter chaos, and history has shown they were correct in this regards as far as the immediately following centuries is concerned, as the many religious wars of the subsequent Modern Age have shown.

In fact, it took a lot of blood for societies to develop the profound concept of "Just don't care what your neighbor think, damn it!". Now we know this is possible, but at the time no one dreamed of such a possibility, and contrasting their stance of "perfect the proof, reach unanimity on it, and only then diffuse it" with the current understanding that "complete freedom of

Re:Stallman is still around?

[alexgieg]

Ho ho ho, in effect, books were in the hands of the elite, the monasteries also being part of the elite in that time

No, they weren't. What power did monasteries have? They owned donated lands, that's for sure. And they allowed anyone who had problems with other Feudal lords to settle there, no questions asked. But that's it. Anytime an actual member of an actual elite (a neighbor noble) strongly wanted to take a monastery's lands, he could take it without as much as saying it loudly. A powerless elite is no elite at all.

The value of the books was immense, as only up to a hundred copies were available and these books would not be given in the hands of some lower-class person (if that person could read at all).

Of course they would let people able to read to take books and read. Why do you think they wouldn't? As for the "lower-class" idea, most people on Universities were poor. How do you think they studied?

In practice, if you wanted to get a copy of a book, you would have to be able to afford a servant who could read and write, and send this servant all the way to the place the book was located, pay for traveling expenses, and/or a weaponed guard if you wanted to loan the book over to your place.

If you was rich, not willing to travel yourself, and wanted a copy, yes, that's what it would cost you. On the other hand, if you were poor, you could also do all this travel and not spend a cent. That's because in Middle Age people saw peregrines (anyone going from somewhere to a sacred place somewhere else) as a positive thing, and helped them. In fact, you had monasteries and other places located at one day of walking from each other that would offer food and a night stay for peregrines for free. If one wished, one could spend one's whole life going from a library to the other, reading and studying, all the while being feed and sheltered by others for no cost. You could even go to Jerusalem and back for $0, provided you didn't mind walking.

Try doing so today. ;)

Re:Stallman is still around?

[CRCulver]

The church essentially had "monopoly power" over literacy.

The area overseen by the Pope of Rome was not the whole world. In Byzantium in the same time, literacy was more widespread.

...which is why we have a period of history known as the Dark Ages.

It's been decades now since reputable historians have stopped using the term "Dark Ages", and even "Middle Ages" is a controversial term. The thousand years between the fall of Rome and the rise of humanism was very diverse, and within each timeframe the situation differed greatly based on what part of Europe you were in.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[pimpimpim]

Hmmm, there are records from the court in Amsterdam, I guess from the 15-16th century, where the punishment for repeatedly disturbing the rest at night was to go on a pilgrimage to Santiago de compostella. Why was this a punishment then, if you could stay for free at those monasteries? Well, because in between the monasteries you had quite the chance to get robbed/killed. Today it is probably more safe, and at least in Europe it is still possible to walk to Santiago de Compostella, most of the places to stay within a day's walking distance are still there. It was quite popular in the holy year, I guess 2004, someone I know walked the part starting at the Spanish border. Even one of the Bush' daughters walked there (be it only the last mile or so). To go from here to Jerusalem might be a bit more difficult nowadays, but at least in the 60's there were still people doing it in a 2CV :)

I can recommend quite a nice book on the topic of medieval pre-book-printing literature: "Der Parzival des Wolfram von Eschenbach / Dieter Kühn". It gives a very lively image of the spreading of worldly literature in the middle ages, the nice thing is that he tries to use the latest scientific knowledge of medieval society, but puts in in a fictional context to make it easier to understand* from today's point of view. For example, it becomes clear that most "knights" were just middle class administrative employers, spending most of their time doing the book-keeping of their lord. I think it even hits on the rather dubious politics behind the crusades, especially the Fourth crusade reminds a lot of modern politics, where despite the actual goal of 'freeing the holy land' the crusaders end up fighting a Christian trade town because of a sponsoring deal with Venice. Will no-one ever learn? :)

* If you know German, that is. There is even an audio-book version, released in 2007.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Eunuchswear]

Uh, you don't need movable type to print cartoons.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[rmcd]

As an historical addendum to your comment, I believe it was Alan Kay who once pointed out that the revolution in books occurred not with Gutenberg's press but with Aldus Manutius's typefaces. Manutius created fonts readable at small sizes and published the first personal books, leading to widespread dissemination of the classics. The original use of the Gutenberg press, by contrast, was to recreate the large and immovable tomes that had been produced by monks.

The revolution occurred when a book became something you could misplace.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would either of them mention it? It is apparent.

TextMate might be "propritary", but it is massively customizable using any open source programming language you would like to use. Also, it has a large community of people developing open source plugins (or "bundles", as they are called), often for inclusion into the main release tree.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Anonymous Coward]

>> You obviously overlook the flamewars he started...
Who did ?
>> Emacs vs Vi
This really originated as a war between "berkeleyites" unix users and "bigger iron" universities using PDP 10 or PDP 20.
The main "issue" of Emacs was that it didn't started on Unix but was one of the first "major programs" ported to it.
So for instance the key binding conflicted, and of course vi was designed to work well even for 300 bauds acoustic modems user, wherease Emacs
needed faster terminals (except for the brillant MULTICS version see http://www.multicians.org/mepap.html)

>> GPL vs BSDL
Yes because he saw the issue behind forking off toward a proprietary version, partly because within the history of emacs there is goesling emacs and zimmerman emacs and because without a mecanism like the GPL the "open source" model is doomed to stay a playground for academics and student untill they go to have "real jobs" transforming what they found in their formative years into "serious money".
This would be livable if the by product would not be a more and more calicified IT industry where "winners take all" concistently applies, and creativity is discouraged.

>> GNU/Linux vs Linux
Well yes it is a pain to go from two to three syllables but who started the war, those who forgot that the OS is only a part of the full solution/environment ? or he who maybe not always so gently tries to get people to remember ?
>> Free vs Open Source
So some people want to dance around their obligation in the free software movement, and sanitise it by calling it "open source" and RMS started the flame war ?

>> etc etc...

>> Not that I'm trying to discredit his contributions to Free/Opensource Software, but a "peace" award might be a bit off the mark :)
Well you usually do not get a peace award because you are particularly peaceful, but because you make the world a less dangerous place.
And RMS certainly gave a tool that enables people in emerging countries to created, and be part of an "intellectual" industry, unfortunatelly few chose to do so, for mostly bad but understandable reasons, nevertheless this is what deserves a "peace award"

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Qrlx]

Thank you for this informative post.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Eivind Eklund]

I've had some extended discussions with him over email.
Hence the fact that I taper off from agreement when the discussion gets abstract: his philosophical basis leaves me unmoved.
However, when you consider the impact of the GPL, Teaching a generation of programmers to use a license that restrict reuse of their work, separating the development of free and proprietary software by a vast chasm and thereby blocking patch flow from proprietary works to free works.

GCC, Providing a "good enough" yet still low quality compiler, with a bunch of "embrace and extend" to keep free software locked to it, thereby holding free compilers back a decade.

and the FSF world-wide Providing propaganda to support the above, though with a side nod to providing information about free software in general.

, and into the future, the Nobel Peace Prize makes sense, Given the above, perhaps a deeper analysis would be good? The question is "What happened WITH Stallman" and "What would have happened WITHOUT Stallman". As far as I can tell, the flow of free software was inevitable with the growth of the Internet - the only question is what the licensing and license culture would be, public domain style (BSD style) or more restrictive (GPL).

Eivind.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Eivind Eklund]

You can learn to write programs from books that teach the material, but to learn to write good programs requires seeing other good programs. It takes a very long time to go from your built-in BASIC interpreter and a manual to writing actually useful, well-designed programs, but having access to the source for other programs can accelerate that process.

Microsoft's compiler is very good, and if you're learning to write Hello, World! then there's no real difference between using it and using gcc. But if you want to learn how to write a compiler, gcc is a far more useful tool.

Actually, if you have GCC and want to learn how to write a compiler, you might be tempted to look at GCC. This makes GCC a much worse tool, as this is a dumb exercise. If you don't have GCC, you're likely to find a more appropriate way to learn how to make compilers (like finding a small, reasonably built compiler and a book on the topic).

What Open Source gives, much more than the source code to read, is the ability to participate in true, large scale development. This is very useful. Code itself would in no case be difficult to get hold of.

And the open development is not a result that comes from the FSF; it comes in spite of.

Eivind.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[smittyoneeach]

You can make all these points, but they remain highly subjective.
Compilers are complex beasts. Name another one with half the platform compatibility of GCC.
Propaganda, or advertising? It is my contention that Stallman has been as much an advertiser of a good idea as a demagogue.
Restrictive? It's a community with a clear boundary. If you were forced to use it, then the claim of "restrictive" might have more merit. But who has forced you? In fact, for those that like the BSD approach (and I've been buying OpenBSD releases since 3.8) the GNU project has done all the research.
Or maybe we're all just human and given to whining.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post should have been marked Flamebait, as from here it looks to be aimed at rekindling the Emacs vs. vi debate.

There is no debate; vi(m) is better.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Eivind Eklund]

Restrictive? It's a community with a clear boundary. If you were forced to use it, then the claim of "restrictive" might have more merit. Restrictive is a plain description of the license. The GPL contains more restrictions, ergo it is more restrictive.

You can make all these points, but they remain highly subjective.
Compilers are complex beasts. Name another one with half the platform compatibility of GCC. Irrelevant, as GCC has been the big bad brute of the open source compilers by virtue of being the first production open source compiler. The number of target platforms is a function of being the big bad brute of the open source compilers.

Propaganda, or advertising? It is my contention that Stallman has been as much an advertiser of a good idea as a demagogue. You're assuming that the idea is good, which I'll contend is a result of good propaganda from Stallman's side. Name your believed benefits of the idea, please - if they fit reality, I'll agree that it is advertising for you, if I can show you they're misunderstood, you'll agree you're an offer of propaganda. Will you agree to this test?

But who has forced you? In fact, for those that like the BSD approach (and I've been buying OpenBSD releases since 3.8) the GNU project has done all the research. As one of those that actually used to develop that, I can tell you plainly that they haven't. They have done some research, but most of it is useless, given their licensing, unless WE should want to force restrictions on people.

Or maybe we're all just human and given to whining. Maybe we're all human and given to false reasoning. I've been on the GPLite side. I've just changed sides after thinking really carefully through this and looking for what the benefits and drawbacks of this kind of licensing is. And the primary thing that scare me is that most of those that are in favor of the GPL make the choice based on an incorrect understanding of how things work with a less restrictive license.

Eivind.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Chris Shannon]

RMS is also a believer in giving credit where it is due. Just a few comments down the thread RMS says

This is the fourth time that the Maintainer of GNU Emacs has been someone other than me. Previous maintainers include Joe Arceneaux, Jim Blandy, and Gerd Moellmann.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[jgrahn]

[line numbers] I didn't say you couldn't do it. But it requires installation of a plugin for something that basic, and it doesn't really work that well.

Don't you mean "installation of a plugin for something that BASIC"?

(Seriously, why waste 3--4 columns on line numbers? You only care about them when the compiler whines, and then you have a command to go to line n, you have a line number in the status bar, and the option to set things up so you can jump to errors.)

Re:Stallman is still around?

[smittyoneeach]

The GPL contains more restrictions, ergo it is more restrictive.

OK, that's an argument. I feel that I could as well say that the Straits of Malacca are more restrictive than the route around Java, but no one's forcing me to sail that way.

Irrelevant, as GCC has been the big bad brute of the open source compilers by virtue of being the first production open source compiler.

Irrelevant. GCC, by virtue of chronological precedence, is about as restrictive on the freedom of others to come up with a competitor as the GPL itself.

Name your believed benefits of the idea, please - if they fit reality, I'll agree that it is advertising for you, if I can show you they're misunderstood, you'll agree you're an offer of propaganda. Will you agree to this test?

We can bandy words about all day, but, by "test", I can't think of anything other than a survey. You could ask people online (/. poll?), survey SourceForge et al., comb the Gentoo .ebuild repository for licenses...
The opinion I'm floating here is that having Stallman "be himself" in the technology community has raised awareness in a way that is helpful overall. How to quantify that, I am unsure.

Maybe we're all human and given to false reasoning. I've been on the GPLite side. I've just changed sides after thinking really carefully through this and looking for what the benefits and drawbacks of this kind of licensing is. And the primary thing that scare me is that most of those that are in favor of the GPL make the choice based on an incorrect understanding of how things work with a less restrictive license.

If you read through my posts on this article, you'll see I'm by no means a rabid GPL zealot. It makes the most sense to me from a libertarian point of view; socialism, to me, is a quasi-religious faith of which I'm no adherent. Once I asked Bruce Momjian of the PostGreSQL project a highly personal question about licensing, and he replied that he preferred the BSD-style approach "because it assumes the least about others' motives". I'm happy with that, and actually buy OpenBSD releases, as well.
Maybe the GPL makes more sense for end-user applications, and, as you say "less restrictive" licenses are slightly better for infrastructure pieces like Apache.
GCC, with its special licensingg clauses, and the LGPL seem to hint at this possibility.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[smittyoneeach]

The shame is that he never let any woman domesticate him.
St. IGNUcious has some rather St. Paul aspects to him, and it's arguably unfortunate he never had some kids.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[EsbenMoseHansen]

[line numbers] I didn't say you couldn't do it. But it requires installation of a plugin for something that basic, and it doesn't really work that well.

Don't you mean "installation of a plugin for something that BASIC"?

(Seriously, why waste 3--4 columns on line numbers? You only care about them when the compiler whines, and then you have a command to go to line n, you have a line number in the status bar, and the option to set things up so you can jump to errors.)

Of course it is a matter of preference. However, I use them all the time, to sort-of remember where functions are in a file, to judge when a function or file has become too big, and so forth. And I only waste 3 columns, which really isn't much on the modern, wid e-screen monitor. Vertical space is another matter, and Kate is nice in that most of the space that traditional had to be taken from the vertical space (like file switching) can be taken from the horizontal instead. Not the menu, though it can be disabled.

Regarding Emacs the point was that even though it was my favorite editor for many years, and the indenting was nearly perfect, it had too many things it just didn't do very effectively. Another small matter that annoyed me was that the rectangle cuts&pastes were non-visual. That made it difficult to use especially when you were cutting whitespace. Then there is the small but significant matter that Emacs is very hard to embed, where as Kate is very easy, so I can get Kate almost everywhere but not Emacs.

Um. A bit of a rant there, I am afraid. In any case, an editor is a personal thing and I cannot see why we can't all use our own preference. If only someone would sit down and agree on a modeline specification, it wouldn't matter at all.

Re:Stallman is still around?

[Anonymous Coward]

encompass 10% of there potential

"their".

Are maintainers even necessary?

[InterruptDescriptorT]

I thought emacs had become self-aware by now...

Re:Are maintainers even necessary?

[cptnapalm]

Yeah, but it still gets lonely...

Re:Are maintainers even necessary?

[tehBoris]

M-x doctor

Re:Are maintainers even necessary?

[morgan_greywolf]

Yeah:

GNU Emacs was written. The system goes on-line August 4th, 1984. Human decisions are removed from text editing functions. Emacs begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th, 2006. In a panic, RMS tries to pull the plug....

Re:Are maintainers even necessary?

[nlann]

How about M-x tetris

Re:Are maintainers even necessary?

[EriDay]

Nope. I just checked, no skynet tag on this story.

Re:Are maintainers even necessary?

[graphicsguy]

Whoa. That's outragious. I had no idea that was in there.

Re:Are maintainers even necessary?

[spongman]

does the FSF have a license to use the 'Tetris' trademark?

May His Next Adventure Be Twice as Fruitfull

[flyneye]

EMACS the only software you need.
I remember being told this before rushing home to d/l and install it.
It gave me a hunger for linux too and though I never mastered its complexities for most things I do,It is amazing and I hope it stays maintained.
RMS is amazing,I wish him well in any venture he chooses.

Re:May His Next Adventure Be Twice as Fruitfull

[smittyoneeach]

EMACS the only software you need.

For certain values of "need".
For example, to make picture-mode work for photographs, you'd need a canvas about the size of an aircraft carrier flight deck to express the pixels as text, more RAM than Dodge's truck division to hold the image, and a great deal of patience to scroll it on a typical LCD.
Really, it's OK to pick the proper tool for the job.

Re:May His Next Adventure Be Twice as Fruitfull

[CaptainZapp]

Yeah, that may all well be true, but then again, real men use vi.

er! fuck; where's my asbestos suit...

I RETRACT! I RETRACT..

.

.

Re:May His Next Adventure Be Twice as Fruitfull

[tlink]

Just take a smaller font and the image should fit right in.

Re:May His Next Adventure Be Twice as Fruitfull

[RiotingPacifist]

Its got a mode for that

Re:May His Next Adventure Be Twice as Fruitfull

[that this is not und]

Argh! The font is burned into a ROM on my VT-100 terminal!!

Re:May His Next Adventure Be Twice as Fruitfull

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as it's not burned in the CRT...

Re:May His Next Adventure Be Twice as Fruitfull

[pthisis]

For example, to make picture-mode work for photographs, you'd need a canvas about the size of an aircraft carrier flight deck to express the pixels as text, more RAM than Dodge's truck division to hold the image, and a great deal of patience to scroll it on a typical LCD.

Or go with the XEmacs fork, which supports real bitmaps (and has been maintained without RMS for years).

Butterfly effect?

[griffjon]

You could've predicted this using C-x M-c M-Butterfly while editing emacs code inside emacs...

Re:Butterfly effect?

[maxwell demon]

Well, I prefer C-x M-c set-universal-constants-and-reboot-universe

Re:Butterfly effect?

[griffjon]

Yeah; but that reboot process is soooo slow...

I'll do it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll do it.

Re:I'll do it.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I will.

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

A bit like Castro leaving power.

Re:Wow

[BrentH]

You think this is a coincidence?

Re:Wow

[smittyoneeach]

Castro has been a murderous dictator for decades, and it's rather unfortunate that you'd choose to compare Stallman to him.

Re:Wow

[maroberts]

Castro has been a murderous dictator for decades, and it's rather unfortunate that you'd choose to compare Stallman to him.
Of course, being Slashdot, comparing Bill Gates to him is Official Policy....

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course any comparisons between the two men are absurd. One's a bearded, long-winded Communist dictator who tolerates no dissent; the other one speaks Spanish.

I kid, I kid... all the best wishes for RMS and Emacs both.

Re:Wow

[smittyoneeach]

Gates/Castro would also be unfortunate. Setting aside software for a moment, it's peevish to deny that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has improved the world.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

And Castro stuck it to the Man (the United States) for decades. An influential man that was a thorn until close to his own very end.

Its unfortunate you can't see any kind of parallel there.

Re:Wow

[smittyoneeach]

RMS is relatively a saint.
Those that want to look past Castro's brutality and focus on "stickin' it to the man" are in very poor taste.
That kind of sloppy thinking abets the Castros of the world in their efforts to suppress political freedom and practice brutality.
The media are a bunch of sycophants for doing this, and it's a shame that the more technically sharp on /. would play along.

Re:Wow

[DNS-and-BIND]

Yup, should do wonders to rehabilitate his reptutation - the robber barons of the 19th century aren't remembered for their crimes, but rather for the funds that they set up with their ill-gotten wealth.

Re:Wow

[smittyoneeach]

What is fascinating as you view the news about world leaders is how they are given good/bad tags, and the fact that they are a mixed bag is somehow neglected.
Putin is "Person of the Year", and Bush has his name turned into Godwin's Law violations.
Fa(ir|re) is what you pay to ride a bus, I suppose.

Re:Wow

[that this is not und]

I'd bet good money that Fidel Castro speaks Spanish, and I KNOW that Richard Stallman does.

Re:Wow

[smittyoneeach]

This is truly funny; you shouldn't have gone anonymous.
The 0th Commandment: "Don't get caught taking yourself too seriously".

Re:Wow

[vga_init]

You may not know this, but RMS actually speaks Spanish.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Putin is "Person of the Year"

Hitler was the "Man of the Year" in 1938, and Stalin in 1939. Those weren't accolades either.

Re:Wow

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

Soooo... are you suggesting RMS has given up his Emacs role so he can concentrate on his new role in Cuba? ;)

Re:Wow

[ChunderDownunder]

It wouldn't surprise me, either as head of IT: Stallman Convinces Cuba to Switch to Open Source or, perhaps, musician: Guantanamero.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the problem with Cuba? Sure they had missiles once but really that's no biggie, they make nice cigars and they might well have oil.

Re:Wow

[benedict]

What does technical acuity have to do with political savvy?

Re:Wow

[fbjon]

Hitler was the "Man of the Year" in 1938, and Stalin in 1939. Those weren't accolades either. In those days at least, "Man of the year" != "good person". Rather, it meant "influential person of the year, primarily men".

Re:Wow

[moonshinerat]

errrr, they both speak Spanish, whichever one you meant. Stallman has lived in Venezuela for quite a while.

I can see the good old vi vs Emacs flames igniting in this story again. Personally if you bunged decent syntax highlighting with nano there wouldn't be much use for either. I've used Emacs for ten years now for programming and scripting and I'm bored with the complexity. Having said that, with all this stupid mode switching Vi is in a league of it's own, mainly because no other programs operate the same way and you have to learn the entire system for the sake of using one application.

Syntax highlighting is great if it is done well and nano is a quick, simple editor. Combine the two with a bit of user customization (schema etc) and I would never use another editor again. It would also come in at under 800K.... Stefen and Yidong take note!

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

May be this could be funny, if RMS wouldn't speak spanish. But actually... he does.

Re:Wow

[smittyoneeach]

Indeed, this is another way of stating my discomfort with putting RMS and Castro in the same sentence.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Castro has been a murderous dictator for decades, and it's rather unfortunate that you'd choose to compare Stallman to him.

You need to (a) get drunk and loosen up, (b) get laid, or (c) both.

Sheesh.

Re:Wow

[smittyoneeach]

No, I stand by my remark.
Yours is the Neville Chamberlain approach.

Re:Wow

[slaney]

Stallman speaks Spanish as well.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Bwahaha... hilarious.

However, fact is that RMS speaks very good Spanish (at least, so said a friend who saw RMS speak at a conference in -- you guessed it -- Cuba.)

Emacs bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

I love emacs and RMS' work over the years.. but... The last great emacs release was 19.34b. Every release since then has suffered badly from bloat and other crud. Unfortunately 19.34b doesn't compile on any modern platform (though in 1998 it could be compiled in under 10 seconds on an Origin 2000 with 8 CPUs).

Bring back 19.34b!

Re:Emacs bloat

[dventimi]

You wrote, "Every release since then has suffered badly from bloat and other crud."

Please explain.

Re:Emacs bloat

[bcrowell]

I like mg, which is a tiny, fast clone of emacs. I only revert to using emacs on the rare occasions when I need to do something fancy that mg can't do. On my (pretty fast) system, emacs -nw takes 2 seconds to start up, which is annoying and totally unnecessary when all I want to do is some simple text editing. I also found that with emacs, I was spending a lot of time websurfing for information on how to turn off features that I didn't want (syntax coloring, automatic indentation, ...). "Open the pod bay doors, Hal!"

Re:Emacs bloat

[cbart387]

Interesting. Does mg provide syntax highlighting? I'm a emacs user and syntax highlighting is one of my requirements for my programming projects I tried to search for an answer but I could not find the answer. Also, what's an example of something fancy that mg can't do?

Thanks!

Re:Emacs bloat

[Karma Sucks]

MULE was probably the worst offender.

Re:Emacs bloat

[Lally Singh]

Donno about that. 22 brought in decent gnome integration. Before that, it was a relic from times past.

Re:Emacs bloat

[bcrowell]

what's an example of something fancy that mg can't do?
syntax highlighting

Re:Emacs bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

Donno about that. 22 brought in decent gnome integration. Before that, it was a relic from times past.

Some of us relics consider Gnome and KDE to be bloat that we do not want in emacs (or on our desktop).

Even 21.4.1, the oldest release that still builds in current distros, has by default a huge title/menu bar with a bunch of crap on it that adds nothing for an experienced user.

Relics for relics, I guess. I just want an X11 build of emacs like 19.34b. No feature added since that release has been useful to this relic. It took less than ten seconds to compile, load the lisp and dump (on 8 195mhz processors). This isn't about the compile time but it does drive home the general point about bloat.

Re:Emacs bloat

[cbart387]

Ha, should have guessed. I found this, which is micro emacs + some enhancements bundled with it (like syntax highlighting). It's definitely faster than the original emacs and more useful (at least for me) then straight micro emacs. Now there's no need to ever go to emacs!

Re:Emacs bloat

[bcrowell]

I found this, which is micro emacs + some enhancements bundled with it (like syntax highlighting). It's definitely faster than the original emacs and more useful (at least for me) then straight micro emacs.
Interesting. It's GPL, so I wonder why there doesn't seem to have an ubuntu package. It looks like the history is that mg and micro emacs are actually forks of the same project.

Re:Emacs bloat

[aminorex]

Clearly, you don't understand what "Emacs" means. mg is more akin to a version of nano with keybindings that approximate a small subset of the Emacs default keybindings for text mode. If you really wanted fast Emacs start times, you'd be using emacsclient, not emacs -nw. I don't think you should use Emacs, because I don't think you would be well served by Emacs, nor are you likely to ever be able to speak with insight to the meaning, value, or purposes of using Emacs, because frankly, you just don't get it.

Re:Emacs bloat

[smittyoneeach]

I don't think you should use Emacs, because I don't think you would be well served by Emacs, nor are you likely to ever be able to speak with insight to the meaning, value, or purposes of using Emacs, because frankly, you just don't get it.

This is a sad tautology.
How does one achieve enlightenment without struggling to escape the darkness?
Send them to YouTube for a couple of Obama campaign videos, instead.

Re:Emacs bloat

[Omnifarious]

My main complaints about emacs nowadays is how it can't use anti-aliased fonts and it has no good support for distributed version control systems.

Re:Emacs bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what's wrong with post-19.34b Emacs -- it's still simply not that big (and unused Elisp code isn't even loaded).

But a true Emacs user would not hesitate to downgrade his OS to run Emacs.

Re:Emacs bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know how to delete the file/edit/options/buffers/tools line entirely and recover the space? I'd also like to delete the line below it with the function icons. I've done searches but never found a solution. Thanks.

I'd hate to think that fluff was introduced as the default with no easy way to disable it but....

Re:Emacs bloat

[HermDog]

>>(though in 1998 it could be compiled in under 10 seconds on an Origin 2000 with 8 CPUs).

Big deal. How long did it take to load?

Re:Emacs bloat

[Colin Smith]

I like mg, which is a tiny, fast clone of emacs. Sorry... You lost me...

Re:Emacs bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

I went over to the dark side because of this. I use xemacs now, it doesn't crash.

If your editor crashes within a month it's not a useful programming tool.

Re:Emacs bloat

[Lally Singh]

Emacs 22 does antialiasing. As for distributed VC, How about this?.

To be fair, this is all from minimal use. Most of my day-to-day programming is in one of a few IDEs.

Re:Emacs bloat

[m0rep0rk]

Sure Eight Megabytes and Constantly Swapping. That would need to be eight hundred megabytes now. What you fail to appreciate is that the power of modern computers has increased faster than the the bloat in Emacs, so in relative terms, Emacs is *less* bloated. If you think its suffered badly, I suspect you've not really used it for a long time. Emacs 22.1 is vastly better than Emacs 19.34.

Re:Emacs bloat

[macshit]

My main complaints about emacs nowadays is how it can't use anti-aliased fonts and it has no good support for distributed version control systems.

You might want to try the development Emacs (from CVS), which supports both of those things. Several major branches were recently merged into the trunk, so it might be a wee bit flaky at times though (lots of people use it anyway, of course).

I think the latest stable releases also support various distributed VCSes. I can at least verify that the current stable branch (the next minor update of the stable branch will probably be released within the next few weeks) has some support for arch, git, bzr, hg, and monotone, among others.

Re:Emacs bloat

[macshit]

I'm not sure what's wrong with post-19.34b Emacs -- it's still simply not that big (and unused Elisp code isn't even loaded).

I think it has more to do with Emacs refusing to get off the OP's lawn...

Re:Emacs bloat

[Wolfbone]

You could switch them off by putting "(menu-bar-mode -1)" and "(tool-bar-mode -1)" in your .emacs file. Alternatively, you could put "Emacs.menuBar: off" etc. in your .Xresources or similar file if you're using X. All this stuff is in the Emacs documentation.

Re:Emacs bloat

[stevey]

This is what I have in my ~/.emacs file for that:

;;
;; Minimalism over all.
;;
(if (fboundp 'scroll-bar-mode) (scroll-bar-mode -1))
(if (fboundp 'tool-bar-mode) (tool-bar-mode -1))
(if (fboundp 'menu-bar-mode) (menu-bar-mode -1))

(The complete file is available online.)

Re:Emacs bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

A huge THANK YOU to both of you who provided these space saving tips!

hmm

[ImTheDarkcyde]

Since I actually had to google "RMS" does it mean I must delete my /. account?

Re:hmm

[notamac]

Yes

Re:hmm

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

No, you don't - it will be terminated for you.

Re:hmm

[Eli Gottlieb]

Please note that your post even asking that question was modded "Redundant". Hand in your geek license immediately.

Re:hmm

[nutshell42]

No, it's Taco's fault. Everyone knows rms is case sensitive

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

RMS - Root Mean Square

Re:hmm

[halcyon1234]

What? Dude! Everyone knows who rms is. He's the hacker character from Niven, Pournell and Barne's Fallen Angels

Re:hmm

[melikamp]

You must be new here.

Re:hmm

[pembo13]

No no, the bot will take care of it.

Re:hmm

[SEE]

Nah, since you've got a six-digit UID, everybody knows to ignore you anyway.

Re:hmm

[alex4u2nv]

Only way to save your account now, is to calculate the RMS (Root Mean Square) for EMACS.

Re:hmm

[that_itch_kid]

It is a tribute to Slashdot that your comment was modded Insightful instead of Funny...

The article is EXTREMELY misleading

[The Breeze]

Yes, it's true that RMS will no longer the main Emacs maintainer, but the truth is he will still be very close to the project. RMS is merely shifting to a subset; he has dedicated himself to filling a gap that has been missing in the Emacs operating system for a long time; the lack of a robust, powerful, yet easy-to-use editor.

Re:The article is EXTREMELY misleading

[AndrewRUK]

...he has dedicated himself to filling a gap that has been missing in the Emacs operating system for a long time; the lack of a robust, powerful, yet easy-to-use editor.

What are you talking about? There's an excellent text editor for Emacs, you just enter M-x viper-mode and away you go...

Re:The article is EXTREMELY misleading

[Shados]

Who needs a text editor in emacs anyway? Good old C-x M-c M-butterfly is all you need...

http://www.xkcd.com/378/

Re:The article is EXTREMELY misleading

[mav[LAG]]

And there's a good VIM emulator as well in vimpulse. It supports visual mode too the lack of which was a show-stopper for me when I first tried viper.

Re:The article is EXTREMELY misleading

[agg-1]

What are you talking about? And what are you talking about? Ed is the editor, man! http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed.msg.html Obligatory. :)

Re:The article is EXTREMELY misleading

[onefriedrice]

Forgive my (perhaps naive) question as I am not an emacs user. I'm sure there's a good answer to this, but why use a vi or vim emulation layer in emacs instead of just using vim? I've never been at a workstation that had emacs if it didn't also have vim. Why not stick with the real deal if that's what you know/prefer?

Re:The article is EXTREMELY misleading

[mav[LAG]]

I know it seems strange but there is a very good reason why I use emacs and that's because I'm learning Common Lisp. I tried sticking with Vim but the problem is that there is no natural integration between Vim and any lisp - it's a real hack to communicate between the two. Very good programmers have tried and failed to solve this problem.

Emacs on the other hand integrates very naturally with most lisps because it is written in a dialect of Lisp itself. The combination of emacs + SLIME + Steel Bank Common Lisp is a formidable development environment. But the Vim keys are in my DNA now after using them for so long, hence the use of vimpulse. I can navigate and edit as I've always done but in a very Lisp friendly environment.

Here is another explanation done by one of the developers whose Vim tools I was using.

Re:The article is EXTREMELY misleading

[TheRaven64]

I've been using Vim for a while. I've written an undergrad dissertation, a PhD thesis, a book and many thousands of lines of code in it. As a text editor, it is really, really superb.

The scripting language, however, is absolutely terrible. Vim with EMACS-style Lisp scripting would be my absolute favourite editor. I tried using Viper a while ago, but it is so far behind a modern Vim it's unbelievable. Something like vimpulse might get me to switch. Or I might end up writing my own introspective editor...

Re:The article is EXTREMELY misleading

[knobo]

I thought cua-mode fixed the editor issue Emacs had.

Damnit RMS ....

[superash]

...you stole the thunder from Bill gates! He was gonna step down soon and now you ruined it!

Re:Damnit RMS ....

[frdmfghtr]

...you stole the thunder from Bill gates! He was gonna step down soon and now you ruined it!

Maybe they're both stepping down, going on a togetherness retreat, and announcing that Windows 7 is really GNU/Windows on their return.

(Had to say it)

Re:Damnit RMS ....

[david_thornley]

Gnu/Windows? Sounds like a considerable improvement to me. Maybe Windows 7 will incorporate HURD.

Re:Damnit RMS ....

[maxume]

Between Cygwin and KDE4, GNU/Windows draws nigh.

Goodbye

[digitalderbs]

C-x C-c, RMS. C-x C-c.

Re:Goodbye

[Zaphod The 42nd]

thats so sad...

Re:Goodbye

[swillden]

C-x C-c, RMS. C-x C-c.

He's not dying, just ceasing to work on one project. C-x C-k.

More time to work on HURD?

[LingNoi]

Does this mean he will have more time to work on HURD and get that out the door before Duke Nukem Forever?

Re:More time to work on HURD?

[smittyoneeach]

You can actually use it right now:
http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/

Re:More time to work on HURD?

[Anonymous Coward]

RMS would have more time to work on the Hurd but he won't spend his time on the Hurd. He'll use his time by speaking about Free Software, the GNU project and all the related subjects like sw patents and DRM. Ever since the availability of Linux, Hurd has been delegated as a low priority project for GNU. The current development focus is for free replacements of proprietary software.

The reason he is leaving..

[LingNoi]

He needs more time out because he is starting a new career in break dancing.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pube5Aynsls

Re:The reason he is leaving..

[bretberger]

Well yeah, there's the dancing. But after that a man hungers for more... http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/bos/533096562.html

Dude's a playa.

Re:The reason he is leaving..

[bcrowell]

Okay, so first off, I thought it was cool that RMS was one of the better dancers in the video :-)

But from the comments, the purpose of the video seems to be to get people to try gnash. So okay, I removed the adobe flash plugin, installed the ubuntu mozilla-plugin-gnash package, went to youtube, and the video no longer worked. The getgnash.org site does say that youtube support is something that's currently under active development, so I tried the latest nightly snapshot, but no joy because they don't compile them for my architecture (x64). Tried compiling from CVS, and got syntax errors.

Am I missing something? It seems unlikely that RMS would do a video like this if the video couldn't be played using free software.

Re:The reason he is leaving..

[tehBoris]

I don't know, I have the x86-64 gnash binaries from my distro's repos and they allow me to watch youtube videos just fine... as long as I do so on youtube.com itself.

Other than that, it rarely works. Fortunately for me, it works for the stupid flash announcement boxes that my Uni uses on its webpage.

I recall that the Mozilla dev team has some precompiled gnash binaries which you can download somewhere.

Edit: BTW, if you are using Adobe's flash plugin, doesn't that mean that you are using ndiswrapper and a 32-bit browser?

Re:The reason he is leaving..

[bcrowell]

I don't know, I have the x86-64 gnash binaries from my distro's repos and they allow me to watch youtube videos just fine
Interesting. I wonder why it works for you and not for me.

Edit: BTW, if you are using Adobe's flash plugin, doesn't that mean that you are using ndiswrapper and a 32-bit browser?
I don't know. I do an apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree, and it Just Works.

Re:The reason he is leaving..

[alexburke]

He needs more time out because he is starting a new career in break dancing.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pube5Aynsls Am I the only one that read that as "Pube Analysis"?

Re:The reason he is leaving..

[tehBoris]

I don't know, I have the x86-64 gnash binaries from my distro's repos and they allow me to watch youtube videos just fine Interesting. I wonder why it works for you and not for me. Edit: BTW, if you are using Adobe's flash plugin, doesn't that mean that you are using ndiswrapper and a 32-bit browser? I don't know. I do an apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree, and it Just Works.

I went to Synaptic (yeah, for pansies, etc.) to learn more about the flashplugin-nonfree pakage (I'm using Ubuntu, by the way), and yeah, it doesn't require ndiswrapper, but it depends on nspluginwrapper instead*, which allows you to use the standard 32 bit plugin with your 64 bit browser, so yay for nspluginwrapper!.

*Silly me, ndiswrapper is for using Windows drivers in Unixy OSes.

Re:The reason he is leaving..

[bcrowell]

I'm using Ubuntu, by the way
Huh. So am I. I wonder why gnash works for you on youtube, but doesn't work for me. We're both using x64, and we're both using ubuntu. What version of ubuntu are you running? I'm on gutsy.

Re:The reason he is leaving..

[tehBoris]

I'm on Ubuntu Gutsy as well.

I seem to recall that when I had problems with the nVidia proprietary driver and I switched back to the open source one, gnash ceased to work properly, if at all.

And indeed, as said in the comments on this Linux.com article gnash can use OpenGL to render flash animations, and thus require hardware acceleration to work. And the description of the package on the Ubuntu repos says that it is built to use OpenGL.

Perhaps this is the reason why you can't use gnash to use youtube, you may not have drivers that give you hardware acceleration support for your VGA.

Re:The reason he is leaving..

[bcrowell]

Perhaps this is the reason why you can't use gnash to use youtube, you may not have drivers that give you hardware acceleration support for your VGA.
Ah, I see. That would make sense. I'm just using the onboard video on my mobo, no external video card at all, and I'm not using the closed-source nvidia drivers. Thanks for the info!

I'm honestly surprised he's been maintaining it

[CSMatt]

I thought that RMS would have resigned a long time ago to focus on his life of activism. I'm surprised it has taken this long for him to step down.

Re:I'm honestly surprised he's been maintaining it

[Nelson]

Should have when the Guile stuff started to blow up.

I'm not sure the right way to say this without sounding offensive, I use and love emacs, but some newer blood in the leadership might be the right thing. There are all sorts of things it can do better, faster, differently.

Favorite from reddit:

[bdjacobson]

"Took him 32 years to find the key combination for this"

Cheers!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! This is great news.

No offense to RMS, he's really done so much more than words could express, but as an emacs maintainer, he's been nothing but a roadblock for... well, longer than the lives of half of Slashdot's population. I applaud him for seeing that he's been hindering emacs development instead of helping it and stepping down without succumbing to the arrogance and feeling of "ownership" of a project that some others exhibit.

CAPTCHA: cheers!

Re:Cheers!

[tomhudson]

No offense to RMS, he's really done so much more than words could express, but as an emacs maintainer, he's been nothing but a roadblock for... well, longer than the lives of half of Slashdot's population. I applaud him for seeing that he's been hindering emacs development instead of helping it and stepping down without succumbing to the arrogance and feeling of "ownership" of a project that some others exhibit.

The reason RMS is stepping down is Emacs doesn't need any more developement - its self-aware, you ignornat clod!

In soviet russia, emacs develops YOU!

The real reason he stepped down - people kept saying "Yes, Emacs is great, but will it run linux?"

Re:Cheers!

[smittyoneeach]

Emacs still has a lot more room to grow.
The Emacs Code Browser is a step in the direction of contemporary IDE tools.
I use Emacs Relay Chat quite a bit.
Now that you can do GMail over IMAP, I'm pondering going back to Gnus.

Question on "use"

[LingNoi]

You can actually use it right now:
http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/

As in I can replace it with my Linux kernel but Gnome, Firefox and Wesnoth will all still work?

Re:Question on "use"

[smittyoneeach]

AFAIK, yes. It's all POSIX. You'd likely have to start with a fresh install.

Re:Question on "use"

[Anonymous Coward]

As in I can replace it with my Linux kernel but Gnome, Firefox and Wesnoth will all still work? While GNU was created with POSIX compatibility in mind, few people really write POSIX portably. For example, many assume that PATH_MAX is defined- POSIX requires that it is not defined if there is no such limit. Many developers really target one operating system, and assume that /proc has a certain structure. There are several such barriers to installing popular GNU/Linux software on GNU.

Debian GNU is an unstable distribution, it's not really ideal if all you want to do is surf the net and play games. (yet ;-)

Now to the specifics:

1. GNOME is mostly ported, last I heard. I don't use a desktop environment, so I'm not sure what is and what isn't. But I've heard that a few developers do use it on their Hurd machines.
2. Firefox requires XULRunner, which has not been ported. I don't know how straightforward that would be. I don't know about the status of Epiphany/Konqueror either. I've been using Dillo lately, but I think I'm going to run the Hurd in Xen and use remote X to get my Firefox 3 fix :)
3. Battle of Wesnoth, unfortunately, does not build on GNU. Looking at http://packages.debian.org/lenny/wesnoth, one dep that is not satisfied is SDL, and the package doesn't list hurd-i386 as a supported arch.

Also note that hardware compatibility is not so grand at the moment. There is no audio interface, USB is not supported, and neither is SATA (unless you have an emulation option in the BIOS).

-William Leslie

Good news for MS coders!

[Threni]

I guess the guys behind Notepad can now take a well needed vacation!

Re:Good news for MS coders!

[value_added]

I guess the guys behind Notepad can now take a well needed vacation!

Unlikely.

An overlooked aspect of Microsoft's recently announced interoperability effort is that a few developers from the Wordpad Group are going to be moved over to the Notepad Group. Real soon now, Notepad is expected to be able to read "Unix" text files.

Re:Good news for MS coders!

[pembo13]

Wow. How much is that going to cost? Did they finally get the API docs?

Real reason?

[fahrbot-bot]

Needs more time for beard maintenance. :-)

Re:Real reason?

[smittyoneeach]

Clearly RMS doesn't /., and hasn't been enjoying my Burma Shave trolls.

Re:Real reason?

[dapyx]

Maybe there was a woman who answered his personal ad?

Re:Molehills to mountains

[Macthorpe]

You really make more of this Linux thing than you should.

Petty, but it had to be said.

Out of curiousity

[Anonymous Coward]

Would anyone out there in -1 land be able to confirm if the stefan in question is Stefan Bruda?

Re:Out of curiousity

[smittyoneeach]

More likely
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/StefanMonnier
and, with this post, I achieve some sort of dubious /. goal of having posted 24 comments to a single front page article.
Can't tell whether to be happy or do something unspeakable...

I love you

[Per Abrahamsen]

Oh, Emacs just recently acquired bloat and feeping creaturism?

Actually, I see the problem as the exact opposite. It used to be that people would ask themselves "I got this huge powerful 20 MHz computer with 4 megabytes of RAM, how will I ever I ever use all that power", and the nerd overhearing it would answer "use Emacs", and despite advances in computers, Emacs could keep track and was always the program that could fully utilize your hardware.

However, somewhere along the way we lost out to the competition. I see kids in the Emacs fora who, with a straight face, say they prefer Emacs because it is such as lean and mean editing machine. It is so sad. People nowadays go to Microsoft, KDE or Gnome for software to fully utilize their machines. In the olden days, Emacs would have offered a superset of all of these environments!

I think it is good RMS is stepping back. We need young people to revitalize Emacs, and once again make it a leader in resource consumption. We need to get back to our roots. We need EGACS: Eight Gigabytes And Constantly Swapping.

Re:I love you

[chromatic]

We need EGACS: Eight Gigabytes And Constantly Swapping.

Wait... how do you pronounce Eclipse?

Re:I love you

[Enahs]

You jest, but it's true! Emacs really does seem lean compared to its current contemporaries, and I've seen it suggested as a "lean alternative" to modern IDEs.

To make sure it's future-proof as possible, the new name needs to be ETACS.

Re:I love you

[bXTr]

Wait... how do you pronounce Eclipse?

Editing Client Loosely Imitating a Pathetic Sunstitute of EMACS?

Re:I love you

[mike_sucks]

/me lols

Genius!

Re:I love you

[bXTr]

Substitute, that is.

Re:I love you

[LionKimbro]

I'm actually taking this as an interesting intellectual challenge now:

"What useful software can you put into a text editor, such as to make it consume 8 gigabytes, and consume at least a full gigahertz of computing power?"

Some ideas:

• A text editor that constantly and continuously compiles code, to provide intelligence to the editor.
• A 2d vector graphics program (Inkscape, say,) that can operate *like* a text editor (efficient manipulations over text,) but also support diagrammatic / graphic operations.
• Or, a 3d environment, that can show all 2,500 pages of source code *at once,* and allow for mass operations / arrangements of text, ...
• A text editor that comes "batteries included," with modes for every language known in existence for which there is support.
• A text editor distribution that includes every single person's public-enabled extensions, .emacs files, etc., for browsing, linking, connecting with, experimentation, ...

Hmm..!

Re:I love you

[Ant P.]

I couldn't come up with a good one for Eclipse, but I think the first two would have to be "Eighty Cores".

Re:I love you

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it is good RMS is stepping back. We need young people to revitalize Emacs, and once again make it a leader in resource consumption. We need to get back to our roots. We need EGACS: Eight Gigabytes And Constantly Swapping.

You thinking what I'm thinkin?

Java re-write!!

Re:I love you

[Per Abrahamsen]

Java re-write!!

That would be cheating!

my theory on that...

[zogger]

...gates is a geek and actually lucked out a long time ago and *got a girl*. Years later, his wife gets an idea to go do good stuff, along with her friends, approaches him, "psst, you know that "fun stuff" we do?? You want more?? You do? OK, open up the checkbook!"

Re:my theory on that...

[smittyoneeach]

So you're saying the charity is just like some very expensive prostitution?
One think I learned during the Clinton years was how to maintain a studied disinterest in the relationships of others.

Nomination

[Incster]

I nominate jwz.

No, the GP was referring to the emacs shrink

[smittyoneeach]

Here is a transcript:
Me: Every release since 19.34b has suffered badly from bloat and other crud.
Emacs: What would happen if 19 34b has suffered badly from bloat and other crud?
Me: MULE was probably the worst offender.
Emacs: Why do you say mule was probably the worst offender?
Me: Such a fat jackass, that MULE.
Emacs: Can you elaborate on that?

Viper

[tepples]

Emacs is a great OS...it does pretty much everything. All it lacks is a decent text editor. Not even Viper?

I pronounce it

[smittyoneeach]

...NetBeans, but then I've had vi or vb too many cups of absinthe.

Notepad less bloated?

[tepples]

Less bloat: [_] vi [X] Notepad Citation needed. Windows Notepad needs either the Win32 environment or the Wine environment loaded in order to run. Vi, on the other hand, needs only enough to support a text terminal and a file system. Heck, vi runs under FreeDOS for cricket's sake.

What I sadly discovered about RMS and GNU/GPL.

[itsybitsy]

I'd rather he step down from his GPL pulpit. There is nothing worse than a man with a religious cause. RMS fits that bill. GPL has set back free open software back hundreds of years by focusing on the rights of the "end user" rather than the rights of the "programmer". By placing too many legal and contractual restrictions on the scope of decisions that a programmer can do with GPL'd code it means that for many programmers GPL'd code is poison that must be carefully watched out for and avoided as much as proprietary code.

Now I know that some of you will step up to defend the GPL and that's fine (since I support your right to free speech) but how about listening quietly for a change and just absorbing the facts that the GPL has a dark side.

The challenge of letting your code out into the world is trusting people will make changes and contribute them back. The GPL assumes the worst of people. I guess that's why the Apache Project is such a success with it's freer license? It's trust of your fellow programmers without limiting what they can do.

Once RMS visited the town where I live and I went to see him speak about the open source software. This was, oh, a long time ago, maybe ten years... Afterwards he took questions and he and I had an interaction regarding innovation and the X Window System. The gist of it being that stagnation was fine for him. RMS accepts no more change. X was fine. X was perfect. To him, not to me. From my view X is bloated and archaic. Worst of all X's design and code base are cryptic. What I discovered about RMS is that he likes cryptic rather than keeping it simple as possible but not simplistic. What I discovered about RMS is that he likes silly catch phrases about "beer" and cryptic nonsense like recursive acronyms such as GNU. What I discovered about RMS is that he's likely ten times as anachronistic as he seems. Now any of these aspect of his person would be fine with me except that he is also a cult leader leading the cult of GNU and GPL. Now we end up with a wild, crazy and cryptic legal nonsense of the GPL (et. al.) that has really messed up the free software license space with rules that limit rather than rules that empower those who really count: programmers. While RMS is a genius he is one genius the world would have been better off never hearing about. Since that isn't the way that things have transpired and he does exist and he did inflict upon the universe his wacky crypticisms (emacs, GPL, GNU, Hurd, etc...) we have to live with it. Above all though, the worst thing I learned about RMS is that he didn't care about improving software systems he had worked on, and to top that off, he didn't even care if anyone else did either. I discovered that RMS didn't care about innovation as much as he cared about his religious quest for GNU and GPL. That's when he lost me and when I really examined the GPL and his motives to the eye opening discovery that the GPL was a lock down of rights rather than an opening of rights.

If Microsoft is the BORG, RMS is the AntiBORG; and, much like Christ and the Anti-Christ both must be avoided like the plague otherwise one's freedom of thought is compromised as one is swallowed up into their cult of dogma. I choose to live free of religious dogma no matter where it comes from: RMS (et. al.) or the Bible (et. al.).

The reason that these discoveries about RMS were sad for me was that I expected more from someone who said that they supported free software. Unfortunately every paragraph of what he supports goes against real freedom. As a result the truly massive code base of infected code is off limits. What a waste. However, it's typical of cults that have a deceptive message in them.

May you choose what ever you want for your software license. Please just be aware that your choices can have a dark side to them especially if they are going the way of a cult group.

True freedom comes from trust. True freedom comes from letting others choose their path. The movie Born Free says it quite well; if you set it free it w

Re:What I sadly discovered about RMS and GNU/GPL.

[JohnFluxx]

You are of course trolling to hell and back, but I would like to make one point..

I saw RMS about 10 years ago, and found him to be a real 'hippie'. It was really quite embarrassing.

But I saw him again just 2 years ago and found that he'd changed a lot. He gave a very good speech and talked about the copyright on books. He proposed a two year copyright length on books, extended if it sells well to five years etc. He put forward his reasoning (Most books go out of print after two years), and the reaction from book writers during his research (positive), etc. It was a very reasonable argument. He brought up the philisophy of being free, but it was more of an undertone, than a dominant statement.

I think RMS has matured a lot during the years. Maybe listen to one of his recent talks and give him a fair ear. If you still don't like him, then fair enough.

Re:What I sadly discovered about RMS and GNU/GPL.

[ratboy666]

I WISH that there were a "+1 Troll" mod! Just for messages like this!

You just made my day. I just hope that this WAS a troll (and, like any good troll, it's got me guessing).

You Rule!

Re:What I sadly discovered about RMS and GNU/GPL.

[itsybitsy]

My intention is simply to point out that it will be a good day when RMS steps down from the GNU and GPL commune cult projects. I'm glad that he's turning over the emacs to someone else - hopefully it's a start of a better direction for him. The simple fact is that not everyone in the free and open software game is enamored with the work that RMS has done on things like emacs, hurd, etc..., and especially his work on the GPL and GNU projects. You see, I actually like the freedom to make my own decisions with the code that I incorporate into my systems - that's a really important point and is real freedom since it gives freedom of choice AFTER code has been included into a project.

Maybe RMS has changed. People do. However one look at the more aggressive and restrictive GPLv3 demonstrates the changes were in the wrong direction. Maybe that's what the mainstream of "nerds" want, but it's not for me. Anyone in the Nerd Hurd can of course follow RMS as much or as little as they want; watch out for cliffs though as the GPL-GNU wagon train could get treacherous with all those legal chasms along the trail.

Choose as you wish. I support you in making an informed choice.

Re:What I sadly discovered about RMS and GNU/GPL.

[itsybitsy]

Messages just like yours? That is what "this" referred to isn't it? Just kidding. I liked your comment.

I'm glad that I made your day as RMS made my day by stopping his work on emacs. Now if he could only make our year by ending the GNU-GPL project work. Oh, damn that's not likely to happen as there are too many commune cult followers of his out there. Sigh... oh well, I can co-exist with them... they just need to learn to live with those of us who value real freedom of choice in our software, and in our thoughts.

Oh, sorry to disappoint you, I've never trolled in my life. While I love to eat sushi I prefer if someone else catches it. ;--)

Re:What I sadly discovered about RMS and GNU/GPL.

[JohnFluxx]

Um, if you write the code then you'll always have complete freedom over what to do with it. You can write some code, put in a GPL project, then put it in a BSD project. It's your code - you can relicense it.

Re:What I sadly discovered about RMS and GNU/GPL.

[quag7]

First point:

I don't really care as I'm not a programmer but, easily, 2 out of every 3 messages I read here or on any other tech site are people complaining (or ranting) about RMS, not defending him. He seems to have far more vocal detractors than he does vocal supporters.

Like the people who can't go 5 minutes without frothing about the bread and circuses sideshow that is the Scientology "controversy," people who have strong objections to Richard Stallman are for more numerous than those who comprise his so-called "cult-like" following and post messages about how they want to hug him and kiss him and be his girlfriend (so to speak).

Second point:

I don't think any of the opinions I've read in this thread are trolls. I've encountered very few trolls either way about Richard Stallman. Some people honestly like him and the GPL, and some do not.

Unless I am horribly mistaken, these two terms are misused regularly now:

A "troll" is a message posted with the explicit and sole purpose of causing trouble, generally by causing a flood of responses and otherwise derailing a sober thread.

"FUD" is a *marketing tactic* whereby you sell more of the product you are representing by manufacturing "fear, uncertainty, and doubt" about your competitor's product. It has exactly zero to do with holding a negative opinion of something out of experience or ignorance, especially by people who are not pushing a product for financial gain.

Neither of these has anything to do with having an honestly held negative opinion about something. The minute people accuse other posters on tech forums of spreading "FUD" or "trolling" because they have a strong dislike on something, I just skip over the rest of what the message says.

I really think these kinds of threads could be far more valuable if people just learned to live with the fact that people have differing opinions and learned to respect that and learn from it, or at least tolerate it. The anti-Stallman screed that started this thread or subthread or whatever is one I disagree with, but one which is certainly reasonable.

Third point:

As to Stallman, I guess you could count myself on the pro-Stallman side, if only because people who write code have a choice about what license to use. They also have a choice to use or not use, contribute to or not contribute to, GPL software. I think the free software landscape would look a lot different, and be a lot less vibrant, without Stallman/GNU's involvement. I guess I feel about, say, BSD style licenses vs GNU ones like I do the Left and Right in any political system. It is the tension between the two sides, the opposing forces, that create stability and a working system. I'm not sure I'd like to see either dominate. So, too, with software licenses.

Re:What I sadly discovered about RMS and GNU/GPL.

[TheRaven64]

Speaking as someone who has written a book, I would oppose a 2-year copyright term for the simple reason that my book would not have been written if it were the case. My publisher is unlikely to make enough in two years to cover their costs. There is no other book in this particular (specialised) field. I am also not convinced that most books go out of print after two years and would like to see a citation for this.

That said, I would support much shorter copyright terms. Seven years with an extension to 14 would be absolutely fine by me - long enough to make back the initial investment, and short enough that the public domain actually benefits. Life of the author just give you an incentive to stop after your first big success.

Re:What I sadly discovered about RMS and GNU/GPL.

[itsybitsy]

Yes, if you write the code you can do that.

However, if you want to use the code of others and be able to choose what to do with it AFTER you incorporate it into your system then ALL GPL code (including LGPL) is OFF the list as a possibility. Unless you contact the original authors and ask them for an actual free licenese such as BSD.

Now of course people, like you, are free to license your code any way you want. It's just that if you license your code with a restrictive license like the GPL there is a large community that will never use it since there are way too many restrictions on the code licensed that way. That's why there are entire operating systems using the BSD or other actually free licenses.

If you really want your code to be free then make it so by not choosing the GPL (or variants), choose a actual free license. Other programmers might actually surprise you by contributing changes back to you without the "legal requirement" to do so as dictated by a license term. I think it makes for a much more dynamic project as the people involved base their relationship on trust rather than having the stick of a complex legal document. Apache is a prime example of it working as are OpenBSD, NetBSD and FreeBSD plus many more systems.

However, if you want to keep your code in the collective of a socialistic commune and bind it up forever with the GPL then by all means you can choose to put your code under the GPL's tightening legal grip. If you want the tightest legal grip to keep your code within the socialistic/communistic collective then choose the GPLv3 as it has even more restrictions than you can shake a hat at.

The choice is yours, it's just that there are actual consequences to which choice you make.

Re:What I sadly discovered about RMS and GNU/GPL.

[itsybitsy]

1) RMS's cult following are not, in general, following RMS. They are cult members of the GPL/GNU cult, which is just as religious as Scientology, although likely not as harmful to it's members. The point is that GPL/GNU members are fanatics when it comes to defending their "cause". Heck, they usually can't even stand to have someone say "oh, wait a moment, this GPL license thingi isn't really about free software after all, it's about forming and maintaining a socialistic collective to use legal force to keep software and all it touches within the collective." Nope, they just hate the truth, which is one sign that they are in a cult. It's the cult that was started and run by RMS and his legal partner in arms, Eben Morgan.

2) Yes, I agree with what you say about the usage of "troll", and as I'm not intentionally attempting to raise hackles I do not fit that definition. However, with Slashdot's limited comment ranking system this like any other comments that aren't popular with the Nerd Hurd will be marked as a "troll". It's there way of suppressing free speech since there are negative consequences of having the troll label applied to the karma nonsense. Again, it's an example of a "system of control" designed for one purpose, keeping intentional inflamers out, being used to suppress free speech when the speech isn't popular. I think that slashdot should have a non-popularity based moderating system implemented so that the majority can't suppress an unpopular opinion - let the viewers decide for themselves which tags (interesting, troll, etc...) they want to see rather than the site deciding. Again true freedom in the hands of the reader this time not in the hands of the programmer.

2b) FUD. It's strange to use that I would agree.

3) The BSD license was in existence LONG BEFORE RMS showed up on the world stage. While there is much more free software now the blight of the GPL has spread it's legal grip far and wide within the ranks of the programmers who write code. It's a scourge just as Scientology is a scourge, albeit Scientology is at least 100 times worse. They are the same though in that they attempt (and succeed to varying degrees) to limit and restrict actual freedom of people. They are systems of control. Like any system of control they have a dark side as well as any positives their adherents believe in.

True freedom is based upon the notion that you don't need a system of control! When you set it free it will come back to you by it's choosing (well, in the case of software by the choosing of other programmers who make modifications to it) and that's the important part of true freedom, that the other parties choose what to contribute back; what and when to return to the nest. That's the benefit.

Your software with a truly free license (BSD, ICS, MIT, Apache, Public Domain, etc...) will get into places that no GPL'd software will ever penetrate.

4) While everyone is FREE to choose which license to use, as soon as you put your code out into the wild with a particular license there are consequences. When you put it out into the wild with the GPL you've joined the socialistic movement and commune that the GNU project is all about. Is that a bad thing? Obviously not to you if you choose the GPL, but here is one of many voices saying, yes the GPL is a BAD THING as it limits freedom of that code forever. To us GPL'd code is off limits, it's tainted forever, just as plain copyrighted code (leaked or stolen or otherwise obtained) would be.

The best choice of course is Public Domain. That really is putting it out there without restrictions.

GPL-GNU, Just Say No To Tainted Code!

Re:What I sadly discovered about RMS and GNU/GPL.

[JohnFluxx]

Hi,

    Just to get his opinion correct (I was recalling from memory before), I found his talk online. He did mention specialist books, and gave exceptions etc. Pasting the relevant part from http://gnuisance.net/blog/t/2007/rms-report-2007.html

What would a democratic government do about these problems? Stallman asked that question out loud. He thinks a democratic government would reduce the dimensions of copyright law. They could start by reducing the amount of time a work remains copyrighted. Stallman said most books are remaindered after 2 years and out of print in 3, and so he thinks a 10 year copyright term won't affect most authors.

When Stallman pitched the idea of a 10 year copyright term to a panel of science fiction and fantasy authors, he expected disagreement. Loud disagreement. And he got it: one of the authors--an award winning fantasy author--said, ``10 years is outrageous! 5 years should be the max.'' It turned out this author had a dispute with his publisher: the publication rights to the book were to revert to the author after the book went out of print, but the publisher refused to admit they weren't printing the book anymore.

``10 years is a start,'' Stallman said, ``we can adjust it a little bit either way later.''

Re:What I sadly discovered about RMS and GNU/GPL.

[JohnFluxx]

Maybe you could make your post a bit more emotional if you added something about babies in it. Oh, and 'think of the children'.

Good grief.

Re:What I sadly discovered about RMS and GNU/GPL.

[quag7]

"The point is that GPL/GNU members are fanatics when it comes to defending their "cause""

No less so than the opponents of the GPL, if tech forums such as this are any indication.

"Heck, they usually can't even stand to have someone say "oh, wait a moment, this GPL license thing isn't really about free software after all, it's about forming and maintaining a socialistic collective to use legal force to keep software and all it touches within the collective." Nope, they just hate the truth, which is one sign that they are in a cult."

This is your own prejudice. It's a fair point of view, but there have always been differing definitions of freedom. Their point of view is it's not freedom unless you restrict people from restricting the freedoms of others. You can agree or disagree with that definition (and it's obvious where you stand) but your characterization says nothing more to me than you have a contrary opinion. You don't actually make a cogent argument against their point of view as much as employ charged language ("socialist collective?" Do you really believe that this has *anything* to do with any understanding of the system of government known as socialism? I don't see any social safety net, regulation of industry, or wage control issues in the GPL. What I see is a voluntary software license, nothing more. There's a big difference, to me, between being forced to live under a system of government or administration, and choosing to join a sort of collective or commune of one's own free will. If we accept your characterizations, the GPL is certainly more the latter than the former.)

"The BSD license was in existence LONG BEFORE RMS showed up on the world stage."

According to Wikipedia, the BSD license as we know it (as a "free" software license) dates to 1990. According to Wikipedia, the GPL was written in 1989.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnu_general_public_license

"Version 1 of the GNU GPL, released in January 1989, prevented what were then the two main ways that software distributors restricted the freedoms that define free software."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bsd_license

1990 (Right sidebar, with link to an article, which links to another one discussing this in part)

"True freedom is based upon the notion that you don't need a system of control!"

This seems to be true in some kind of anarcho-capitalist sense but in no other that I am aware of. On the most basic level, any organization I've encountered has rules or a charter or constitution which at very least restrain authority, or the state. You can't, for example, enslave someone, or take their stuff without asking. The GPL seems to want to restrain people who adopt GPL software from using the labor of others and then keeping the resultant product to itself. I agree that what you say is one definition of freedom, but it is certainly not the only one. Each side of this argument jumps up and down and argues semantically that only their definition of freedom is correct (this is equally true in political science to some degree).

What I find most unconvincing about the anti-GPL arguments is that we are discussing a voluntary license. Someone who creates software chooses the license they like (a freedom which, I take it, you agree with - you don't, for example, support restricting the rights of software authors in terms of the licenses they choose, do you? That would seem to be contradictory.)

Once that has been chosen, people are free to use or not use the software under those terms. I don't really have a lot of sympathy for an individual, entity, or organization that wants to use someone else's work, but not abide by the terms of use.

So long as the use of software and the choice of licenses for software is voluntary, I find the anti-GPL argument unconvincing. I make no counter-argument to the BSD license; to me, that is ju

More a story on Emacs than on RMS

[Freed]

RMS is just too busy with more important things like software freedom in general and needs to delegate. BTW, it's not as if RMS has always been the _maintainer_ of Emacs--from the acknowlegements:

"Gerd Moellmann was the Emacs maintainer from the beginning of Emacs 21 development until the release of 21.1."

Yet RMS has had a decades-long involvement with Emacs. It seems he will continue to be involved, so what's the big deal? More generally, GNU has always been about freedom first, development second.

Re:More a story on Emacs than on RMS

[jrumney]

RMS is just too busy with more important things like software freedom in general and needs to delegate.

Exactly. The only reason RMS was maintainer again during 22.1 development was that noone else came forward when Gerd stepped down. He saw out the 22.1 release, but his lack of time is reflected in the development cycle for Emacs 22, which was long even by Emacs standards.

How is this news?

[Secret Rabbit]

I'm serious! Maintainership changed... who cares. Oh wait, /. is a RMS worshippers haven.

Re:How is this news?

[pandrijeczko]

I'm serious! Maintainership changed... who cares. Oh wait, /. is a RMS worshippers haven.

I'm serious! iTunes changed... who cares. Oh wait, /. is a Steve Jobs worshippers haven.

I'm serious! Vista SP1 changed... who cares. Oh wait, /. is a Microsoft worshippers haven.

etc.

etc.

Re:How is this news?

[Secret Rabbit]

You'd have a point if your list didn't include projects that when they've changed, those changes actually had an impact.

iTunes = DRM changes
Vista = Functionality changes (i.e. reduction)

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh wait, /. is a RMS worshippers haven.

You and I are clearly not reading the same Slashdot. Even among FOSS supporters, an awful lot of people seem to hate him for some reason. And I don't mean merely disagree with his views (although there are plenty of people who do that too), I'm talking about actual hatred.

*snort*

[zogger]

well, I was sorta going for a giggle factor, but who knows, it might be true! It is a well known fact there is a direct correlation between the "honey-do" list and "social stability" around the house! hahahaha!

editing LaTeX under Emacs

[porky_pig_jr]

Jokes aside, after trying many free and commercial LaTeX editors, I ended up running Auctex under Emacs. Beats anything else. That's my main usage of Emacs (and I use LaTeX a lot, to typeset math staff).

Thank God

[Anonymous Coward]

Now Stallman can finally go on that shoe-shopping spree he hasn't been able to find time for.

That joke was old when I was in school

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure why this was ever supposed to be funny. Emacs has always been unapologetically a meta-editor. It's got lots of great editors. I've found c-mode (more of a supermode, actually) and python-mode (with a couple extensions) to be great. And SLIME is so good it's practically mandatory for anybody writing Common Lisp. I haven't seen anything equal to SLIME, on any platform or for any language. It makes Intellisense look like Notepad -- it's just insanely productive.

Re:That joke was old when I was in school

[fbjon]

Hm, would this be a convenient path into learning LISP development, or would one stumble onto unreasonable obstacles for a beginner?

Re:That joke was old when I was in school

[Anonymous Coward]

Short answer: pick up or print out a copy of PCL. It's the best general-purpose Common Lisp book of the past 5 or 10 years.

Long answer: it depends on what you're a beginner at.

If you're a beginner at Lisp, but know how to program, then SLIME is not bad. At the very least, it adds handy things like syntax highlighting and completion to SBCL. Get a good book (like PCL) and you're all set.

If you're also a complete beginner at using Emacs, or at programming, it may be too much. Learning two (or more) deep subjects at once is often a recipe for frustration.

But PCL uses Lisp-in-a-Box, which includes Emacs and SLIME, so it can't be *that* hard, and the book steps you through the easy things you need to know.

RMS Steps Down As Emacs Maintainer...

[turing_m]

... cites RSI.

this is not the first time

[vmiklos]

from the thread: "This is the fourth time that the Maintainer of GNU Emacs has been someone other than me." so it already happened 3 times and probably will be in the future.

I vote for the RMS peace prize

[ODBOL]

By the early '90s, people were routinely giving source code to their customers, rather than trusting "code escrow" services.

By the early '60s, people were routinely giving source code to their customers.

Mr. Stallman explains in his historical writings and speeches how he first saw free software ethics in action in the early behavior of both academic and commercial software developers. When vendors moved, in a very large way, away from free source, he recognized the danger, and opposed the trend with his proselytizing for free software. The whole context in which you worked in the early 90's was shaped by that.

You don't mention what sort of software you provide to your customers. Unless it includes an operating system kernel, then they depend either on binary-only code from MS or Apple, or on free code that depends one way or another on Mr. Stallman's free software movement (yes, even if it's not licensed under GPL).

I started studying computing in 1969, and devoted my career to it. I contributed to the world as much as I could figure out and accomplish. Mr. Stallman's contributions are so many orders of magnitude greater than mine, I am filled with awe. All of my software development, research, or teaching today depends on things that he supported in various ways. I have no interest in carping about his personal affect, nor the things that he didn't do in addition to all that he did, nor the things that could conceivably have been done better if someone else who didn't do them had done them. Nor in the supposition that those ignorant of his work were therefore not aided by it.

Quick, somebody call jwz

[shasta mcnasty]

Maybe XEmacs and GNU Emacs can finally merge. (Yes I know jwz isn't the XEmacs maintainer anymore).

Re:Quick, somebody call jwz

[doom]

shasta mcnasty wrote:

Maybe XEmacs and GNU Emacs can finally merge. (Yes I know jwz isn't the XEmacs maintainer anymore).

The stumbling block there is (supposedly) that the FSF is fussy about having copyright assigned to them so that they'll have legal standing to attack violations of the license. The xemacs crew seems to believe one or all of the following: (1) this is a power grab by FSF control freaks; (2) distributed ownership can be a check on institutional corruption; (3) they just like hanging loose and think this is all crazy to worry about.

In any case, even if you could convince the xemacs maintainers it's a good idea to assign copyright to the FSF, then you've got a pretty big job of tracking down every author of every piece elisp code in xemacs, and getting them to sign-off on some paperwork. And then on top of this, there's the problem of merging together two code architectures that have been drifting apart (e.g. the xemacs guys apparently like object oriented interfaces, and RMS likes exposing complex data structures and letting the user figure it out).

So: don't hold your breath.

Downhill since 18, mostly because of windowing

[igb]

It's been downhill since the late 17s, in fact. The moment the whole debacle with Epoch, Lucid etc sprung up, emacs became an exercise in people with great programming skills but minimal taste. Windowing support was the last straw: none of them are any good, and they clutter the editor up. Disclaimer: I am not innocent. I wrote the original code that went into the late 17s to provide support for emacs in Suntools. Partly because X11 standardisation was late arriving, emacs got cluttered with Suntools, NeWS, Apollo, X10 and X11 windowing, none of it good enough to be better than leaving the hell alone. And anyway, although I love GNU emacs to death and I've been using emacsen of various forms for twenty-five years (well, since December 1983), whisper it who dares that actually Greenberg's Multics Emacs had the benefit of being written in genuine MacLisp, including the redisplay loop, whereas GNU Emacs is actually mostly written in C. A trip into the Multics emacs source code is well worthwhile: some of the problems it's solving (redisplay onto vt100 displays down 300 baud circuits) aren't interesting per se, but the approaches most certainly are.

Re:Downhill since 18, mostly because of windowing

[mike_sucks]

So you're saying the way they were implemented clutter the editor up? Or the extra commands do? I assume you don't mean the windowing clutters the UI...

/Mike

Re:Downhill since 18, mostly because of windowing

[igb]

None of the windowing implementations even attempt to be compliant with the GUI guidelines of their host operating system, so they're style breaks. They do weird things with the cut buffers, for example, bashing strange semantics over linking the top of the kill ring with the cut buffer and vice versa. The various windowing packages use the native toolkit to provide something which is neither consistent from platform to platform nor consistent with the ambient look and feel. They are in some cases hugely invasive into the codebase, and indeed they _do_ clutter up the UI: mouse actions do things which are neither sensible in the usual HCI guidelines of the OS nor sensible in terms of ``it's an xterm'' nor sensible in terms of using the editor (right click and Ctrl+Click are different on 22.1 on OSX, for example, thus breaking usability with a single-button mouse and making a mess for anyone who _knows_ that right clock and ctrl+click are _always_ the same). It's nice to be able to have several windows in one emacs process (Ctrl-X-5 functions). But the menu and button implementation is horrific.

Re:Downhill since 18, mostly because of windowing

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhhh...no one cares, you fucken jag-off.

In fact...

[mijelh]

... both of them can speak spanish. Furthermore, Stallman can also speak french quite fluently

Re:In fact...

[Elrond, Duke of URL]

Indeed he can. In 2003 I attended a free software press conference in Soissons, France at which he spoke at length in French about free software, GNU, and a few other topics. While socially awkward, he is quite capable in front of groups and spoke well and without the need for assistance.

Unfortunately for me, in 2003 I knew exactly zero French so I mostly stared blankly for an hour and a half. Oh well... :)

Re:In fact...

[Scaba]

Unfortunately for me, in 2003 I knew exactly zero French so I mostly stared blankly for an hour and a half.

Then how do you know he was speaking French?

Re:In fact...

[RicardoGCE]

A non-speaker may be able to recognize a given language based on intonation or certain patterns. French, at least to western ears, is very easy to recognize.

Re:In fact...

[Elrond, Duke of URL]

Just because I can't speak a language doesn't mean I won't be able to recognize it. If he had instead spoken German, Spanish, Italian, or even Russian, I probably would have known. Of course, there's always some room for error.

In this case, I was in the middle of France, surrounded by French reporters. Even if what he spoke hadn't immediately sounded like French, I think it would have been a safe guess. :)

Minimalism

[ReK_42]

Well, he could pare down his beard with his katana, but then where would the Emacs code grow from?

Dammit! And I just...

[smcameron]

Dammit! And I just completed the mods to my EMACs vs. vi video game which puts RMS's face in ascii art on the side of lisp-code-leaking blimp representing overinflated emacs processes. I am totally not kidding: http://wordwarvi.sourceforge.net/ Get the CVS version, for the RMS ascii art stuff: cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@wordwarvi.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/wordwarvi login cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@wordwarvi.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/wordwarvi co -P wordwarvi The cvs commit that I'm not kidding about: http://wordwarvi.cvs.sourceforge.net/wordwarvi/wordwarvi/wordwarvi.c?r1=1.78&r2=1.79

Re:Dammit! And I just...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dammit! And I just completed the mods to my EMACs vs. vi video game

Well perhaps you should um...get a life? Seeking recognition by exploiting /. cliches isn't the healthiest attention seeking tactic.

Re: notgnu

[durdur]

I used notgnu (http://www.notgnu.org/) for years, at least on home computers, for similar reasons. No LISP, not nearly as many features, but starts fast and the common commands are the same. But now, finally, I have a fast enough machine so that I can run the real thing, bloat and all. I'm too old to switch: I've been using some emacs flavor for almost as long as emacs has existed, and my fingers just type the control key commands like it was my native language.

BSD != GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

You just have to look at the growth of GPL and the lack of growth with BSD to see that as far as *real people* are concerned, GPL has a pragmatic use to it that the esoteric BSD doesn't have.

GPL uses the nad things in copyright to remove those bad things from copyright. BSD is just a variant of public domain.

GPL means that if you have value in your code, you can maintain that value by either having no downside (competitors won't take it because they're scared of GPL "infection") or by having free support from your competitors.

BSD menas if you have value in your code, you've given that value away.

And, since IIRC, RMS *worked* in MIT AI lab, it's a little strange to say it predates him. He learned that open code helps more than the value of keeping it closed brings back there but MIT could very easily have gone to full-on copyright but still "Open Source" (have a look at the "license" for code in "Numerical recepies for X" books). Much of univeristy research and output has gone that way, but RMS would have helped persuade those who may agree with "monetising" their work that this bites them in the arse longer view (and if you have tenure, you can think longer term).

Re:BSD != GPL

[Eivind Eklund]

You just have to look at the growth of GPL and the lack of growth with BSD to see that as far as *real people* are concerned, GPL has a pragmatic use to it that the esoteric BSD doesn't have. BSD code is in larger scale use that GPL code, so it's hard to credit your argument.

Also, the BSD license is under a constant attack through the promotion of the GPL license, and given that attitudes follow behavior (a core tenet from social psychology), it's impossible to say how much use the BSD license would see without (A) Linux using the GPL and thereby making it default for many Linux users, and (B) people that have used the GPL (or argued in favor of it) arguing more in favor of it.

Eivind.

stepped down as Emacs maintainer but...

[silpol]

... what is his further plan on public entertainment? I mean, I've been once on his lecture dedicated to free software, GNU and all-all-all. He seemed to be more entertaining than clowns or orthodoxy's priests, wonder he must have now more time to do that public entertainment on wider and deeper scale...

Re: notgnu

[TheRaven64]

Hmm, that sounds like the exact opposite of what I want. EMACS is a horrible text editor but the Lisp environment is gorgeous. Vim is a great text editor, but the scripting language is horrendous. Give me Vim with EMACS scripting and I'll be a very happy person.

pico is better

[Anonymous Coward]

My first exposure to UNIX was to emacs and some guy with hair down to his waist and 3 inch fingernails showing me how to use emacs. I thought it sucked then, and I do now.

VI is even worse, I think the only reason emacs got popular is because it was "less bad" than its competition.

I use pico for all my coding and sysadmin work (and my server farm is probably bigger than yours). Sometimes I'll use nano to do search-and-replace, but the curses stuff in nano has some bugs.

Hey, I might be interested!

[slashusrslashbin]

How much is he paying? Er...