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Richard Stallman's Dissenting View of Steve Jobs
Garabito writes "Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, has posted his not-so-fond memories of Steve Jobs on his personal site, saying, 'As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Nobody deserves to have to die — not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing.' His statement has spurred reaction from the community; some even asking to the Free Software movement to find a new voice."
Look, I know no one likes to speak ill of the dead and all, but geez, last week's lovefest got WAY WAY WAY out of hand. Jobs was an important figure, no doubt, but the over-the-top platitudes were often more humorous and bizarre than heartfelt or touching. There were "expert" commentators on CNN calling Jobs the "most important person in the history of technology" with straight faces. People who didn't even KNOW the guy were crying like their daddy had just died. At one point I think I saw Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper make a teary-eyed pledge to throw themselves on his funeral pyre.
I doubt Jesus' apostles were as upset after the crucifixion as some of the supposedly objective "experts" and "journalists" I saw last week. It's not like I expected them to get into the more negative and tawdry aspects of his past with his body still warm, but I didn't expect such unabashed hero-worship and hagiography either. It was just shameful.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
He specifically states he was not happy to see Jobs die.
I see you trollin'.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
It's interesting that persons promoting freedom want to restrict what other people do.
Because we'd clearly be most free, when there are absolutely no restrictions on what people do. For example, if you stop me from assaulting you, then I'm clearly not free at all am I?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Yes, RMS has done some great things.
But he needs to GET THE FUCK OVER HIMSELF.
His is not the only viable vision.
MOST PEOPLE JUST WANT THEIR TOY TO FUCKING WORK AND DON'T CARE.
Sorry about the shouting, but it's well-deserved IMO.
Stallman wants exactly one thing: visbility for FOSS. He doesn't care about anything else. So if he has to make some pseudo-controversial statement about a generally well-liked public figure in order to get some air time, he will. Personally, I elect to pay him little attention.
My other sig is clever.
Meh. Stalman only cares about "sustainable" freedom. Apple, and Jobs, were NO champions of that cause. We all know the very good things about Apple, but Stalman keeps in mind the BAD things, such as extreme vendor lock-in, anti-privacy instances, market lock-in (closed app-store, anyone), extreme censorship against FLOSS, hostile behavior towards other companies and hostile behavior towards competing products...
We are already screwed if people take Stalman as the corporate image of Linux. But that doesn't mean the guy is wrong.
Jobs and his company are based entirely on control of other people's property. You can't put the OS on your own hardware, you can't run your own apps on the iPod Touch / iPhone without hacking it, you can't use products which directly compete with Apple's offering on either either (heh). Are you all forgetting iTunes prior to the catalogue being converted to DRM-free MP3s?
Horrible people can do good things just as good people can do horrible things, and a lot of the things Jobs did in computing were horrible. Pretty, and king of usability, but all a thing veneer on something fundamentally malign.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I'm not exactly fan of Apple, but Richard Stallman has no merits to basically say he's glad Steve Jobs is dead.
There is no merit (see what I did there? In case you didn't, I used the word correctly) to the assertion that someone who has said they are not glad someone is dead is glad that they are dead. I am not glad that Jobs died either, but I am glad he won't be at the helm of Apple Computer, Inc.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Richard Stallman has no merits to basically say he's glad Steve Jobs is dead.
He didn't say that. He said, 'I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone.'
Linux geeks ... are happy to see people die.
He did not say that. He said, 'I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone.'
apart from the a few geeks, people in the real world really don't care about his views or what he is trying to promote.
Maybe you don't know what web site this is.
Ubuntu has tried to fix that with Linux, but it's still far from Mac OSX or even Windows. ... I'm not exactly fan of Apple
Again, I think you're not on the right web site, and you probably really are an Apple fan.
You don't have to have liked him, but you could have at least shown some respect rather than making the GNU (And by association, Linux, even though we hate you) community look like tools, instead of just yourself as you usually do.
that makes me glad that I do not have a television. It is easy to ignore the stupid on the internet. There is plenty of stupid on the internet, but it is easy to ignore it.
... but I agree with stallman. Jobs figured out that you can make aesthetically pleasing stuff and make a lot of profit off simplifying hardware design for everyday people BUT this has a negative effect on those who actually use computers and computing devices as something beyond a toaster or glorified television. Jobs just turned computing devices into consumer items. The downside is that his companies success with walled gardens is giving a lot of other companies and developers the same idea of creating walled gardens where you never own anything, can't modify it, etc. A kind of kind of feudalistic computing.
I've watched gaming go downhill over the last 10 years with the rise shit like world of warcraft showing everyone the path to walled garden land because there are enough stupid people who don't give a shit about gaming that will just take it up the ass because they aren't passionate about games. So we get things like Starcraft 2 chained to online, no LAN, we get permanent online DRM being pushed and crap like onlive. At this point I really want to burn down the software industry. I remember a time when blizzard wasn't as evil as it is today and you actually were treated like a customer rather then a magpie with a wallet.
In the same way, people who work in computing, and do computing and are passionate about computing need freedom from corporate tyranny to innovate. Each generation of tinkering kids becomes the next set of developers/entrepreneurs/innovators. To lock everything behind a walled garden just creates a big mess and ensures solutions are suffocated or co-opted for someones personal greed with a net negative for humanity as a whole.
All great innovations are built upon mountains of others that came before them, locking them down is just a surefire way to suffocate progress.
Flamebait? If my comment is flamebait, then this whole story is flamebait, and it should never have reached the main page. Moderation by Apple shill, or Big Media shill? You decide.
Either way, I can afford the karma.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It got a bit pathetic with people running around talking about how Steve Jobs invented the mouse, the personal computer, the smartphone, the media player, the tablet, and practically sliced bread. The guy was an excellent product designer with a good eye for where the market was going to go next. He was no more instrumental in shaping 21st century society than any other fashion designer. And yay, he was yet another ruthless capitalist, yawn!
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Stallman is an asshole.
With that out of the way, he speaks true. I abandoned everything Apple for exactly the reasons he pointed out and I hope, as Stallman does, that Apple will become less anally retentive in the future.
Stallman is that guy who takes his job way to seriously. He loses touch with reality, he loses friends, his only friends are those with the same goals, but he even dismisses them for not being as committed as he is. In the end Stallman does the real work needed by the FOSS movement, he benefits the movement greatly, however he's like the overnight shift in a 24 hour production facility. Often the very best workers are on the overnight shift, not because you don't want the secrets to their efficiency accidentally leaked to someone passing through, but because the most talented people are often such eccentric weirdo's you only want the results of their work seen, not the workers themselves.
That last article condemning Stallman was just completely out of tune with the man himself. He wasn't hateful towards Job's himself, Stallman has a goal in mind and he wont rest until it's accomplished. He will never accomplish it. His goal of all software being 100% open source, patent free, and free in every way will never happen, and it's one of the places I differ with him. I support someones right to make money off of software, I do agree FOSS is the way to go and I do think even closed source software should eventually become open, but I do support someone closing source for a time to make a profit, and this is where I disagree with Stallman, who I see as an Old Testament Prophet of the Open Code.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Just because Jobs was innovative, popular and successful doesn't mean he was a saint. Considering his closed hardware platforms, Jobs showed us that his views were perhaps even more the antithesis of the FOSS movement than those of Mr. Bill.
Stallman wants people to provide software in the way he and his flock want it provided. How people use it is irrelevant. His point is that in an open ecosystem, people can choose to use software however they like, whether it's by connecting to monolithic vertically integrated software stacks or by striking out on their own. Apple didn't provide the choice; if you wanted Apple UI, you had to buy into Apple's whole product line, because you had no other options, particularly on their mobile devices.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
Not only is there wisdom in knowing precisely what to say, there is also wisdom in knowing when not to say it.
The time to make the statement is while it is relevant. You wait until the initial storm dies down, and then you start your own. And it is critical that we receive this message — not you and I, maybe, but as many of the wide-eyed legions of Apple as can be reached. Because what Apple represents is precisely the same thing that Microsoft or Sony represents: a dearth of choice. Stallman might be an egotistical ass, but he is certainly the foremost champion of the rights of the user. Some programmers don't like that, so they don't like the GPL, and they don't like Free Software. They call it a virus and they would prefer to stamp it out rather than have to deal with something so confusing.
Other people can make the same point in a month, and a year, and reach other audiences, but this point needs to be made now and it needs to be made well. Stallman has done both.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Stallman does, and always has, define freedom as that which most benefits him. He is or was a programmer and he demands the freedom to program and modify the software and devices he uses. Which is great for him.
But how can the freedom to choose not include the freedom for people to choose an Apple style 'walled garden'? I am absolutely certain that Stallman doesn't know what I want better than I do.
Further, if you don't buy any Apple products, how can you be effected by Apple? Apart from your not being able to buy a tablet that apes an ipad in countries that don't allow products to ape one another. Also other than getting angry enough to click reply on every Apple/Jobs story.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
I would agree with most of the people who are upset with RMS over this if it weren't for the way in which the media overreacted to Jobs' passing. I know it's typical to focus on the positive aspects of a person's life after they die, but the media rose Steve Jobs to the level of a god. They focused on his revival of Apple while ignoring the fact that he had a big part in its original downward spiral. They exalted Jobs' focus on good design principles while ignoring the fact that he created a corporate culture of trying to sue all of the competition out of the market. They trumpeted the success of the iPhone and iPad while ignoring the walled gardens they created. It's not my place to say whether or not Jobs' presence in the market was a net positive or negative, but I think it's fair for the media to cover both sides of a person's life as long as it is done with tact.
Richard Stallman is unfortunate. Being correct but not politically correct is a tough equation.
What's Jobs guilty of? Making products that people want to buy, at prices they want to pay. Leading a company (or really a bunch of companies) that did some outstanding engineering that led to some incredible products that people really want to buy at prices that were on the high side, but people still willingly paid them. You (and the free software movement in general), with the help of the Unholy St. IGNUcius, of the Church of Emacs, are welcome to try to produce a product that people like better. However, if Emacs is any indication, I think you have a ways to go.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
I made a joke on Facebook when Steve Jobs died. Something about how God was mad at him because iPhone 4S was just a minor upgrade to iPhone 4, rather than the long-awaited iPhone 5, etc etc. Some of the flames I got were seriously crazy; one girl compared Steve Jobs dying to *her two miscarriages*. I couldn't believe it.
I'm sorry Steve Jobs is dead. Really. He was a human being, and he had hopes, dreams, feelings and ambitions just like the rest of us.
But to put Steve Jobs in the same league as people like Alan Turing, or Ada Lovelace, or Charles Babbage seems... very wrong. He was imperfect in life, like all of us, and remains imperfect in death. He was just a man. 150,000 other people I hadn't met died that day too, but nobody gave a shit about them. 150,000 people I've never met died today too. If I broke down crying and sobbing for each and every one of them, I'd be a wreck.
We as a society idolize the dead. I don't believe in extolling the virtues of the recently deceased. Given a long enough time the life expectancy of all Humans drops to 0; we all die some time, and when my time comes I would much, much rather people tell the truth about me and maybe even have a bit of a laugh, even at my expense. It's not like I'm going to care, I'll be dead.
I find it completely disrespectful that people think the best way to remember and "respect" someone who's recently died is to gloss over their flaws and essentially tell lies about how grand they were.
When I die I just want people to remember the truth about me, whatever that was, not some kind of warped 1984-ish false memory of a person who never was.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
he was a greedy businessman that ran a multi-national corporation...
Apple contracts to build a laptop in the far east for $100 using slave labor, and manipulated currencies
Then Apple Caymans, who owes no taxes of any kind, is a corp controlled by Apple USA. Apple Caymans then buys the laptop for $100 from the far east and sells it to Apple USA for $1000. The $900 profit is all profit, they pay no taxes on it.
Apple USA retails the laptop for $1100 for a $100 profit that they pay some US corporate income tax on.
So as you see, of the true $1000 profit on the laptop, they are only paying US taxes on $100 of it.
This applies to everything imported, drills, tools, electronics, everything.
This is just another reason why US based manufacturers are screwed by the world market. They have to pay full US taxes on their full profits, the other businesses don't.
it is the globalst/multi-national businesses like this that makes exorbitant profits while the USA hemorrhages jobs to third-world state owned sweatshops, they have no loyalty to anyone except making as much money as possible at the expense of everything else, even their own countrymen, fuck globalism, i hope it crashes, i would gladly do without all that "made in china" dreck to see a level playing field in the economy again
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
But how can the freedom to choose not include the freedom for people to choose an Apple style 'walled garden'?
Some "freedoms" which involve the sacrifice of a particular freedom are not permitted. For example, you are not allowed to sell yourself into slavery. Whether you think that walled gardens are heinous enough to merit such disapproval or not is a personal thing. Many persons considered slavery to be quite acceptable - for others.
Further, if you don't buy any Apple products, how can you be effected by Apple?
In much the same way as properly paid workers are affected by a slave labor force. Some occupations are thus priced out of the market, as they can't compete with subsistence-level workers (there would be openings in other occupations, such as slave driver). Becoming locked into a walled garden is generally a one-way trip, so the walled garden tends to expand to the detriment of the open market. You appear to think that this is harmless; it is not, largely due to the degree of control and squelching of competition that occurs in Apple's walled garden.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
All due respect to the deceased, and his family. But that company is/was horrible from an ethical standpoint. They say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, but they put a lot of people out of business for trivial copycatting. From the cookie shop in NY ( if I recall) being sued for making iPhone cookies, to the carpenter sued for making decorative wooden iPhone plaques. I don't know if any of those cases made it to court, but that's not the point. They sued the living hell out of anybody that even looked at them wrong without permission. Not to mention the ongoing suits against the rest of the technology world, so many lawsuits open right now I cant even recall. Jobs was a huge proponent of defending his copyrights, but he very often took it WAY to far. For example, attempting to enforce patents on touch screen gestures? Really? I actually like a lot of Apple hardware, they certainly have their place in the industry, but they will never be more than a niche marketing firm until they pull their heads out of their asses. RIP jobs, despite all his failings as a ethical human being he was a brilliant marketeer and business man. I give respect where respect is due but otherwise; while am certainly not happy that he is dead, I AM glad that there is now somebody else at the Apples helm. Hopefully Mr Cook, has a bit more common sense with the company going forward.
I've never been able to understand why these periodic "Stallman says something many people don't like" stories always involve so much strawmanning and apparent confusion. Like him or not, Stallman has been highly consistent for decades in his take on all things software freedom.
Shockingly enough, he isn't a big fan of the man who built what is perhaps the most powerful walled-garden presently in operation... I don't understand why that is a surprise...
You tell a kid whose parent died that you're not glad the parent is dead, but you're glad they're gone. See how well that works for you.
1. Attempt to view porn on iPhone app
Two methods:
1a. open mobile browser
1b. surf to pr0n page
--or--
1a. import favorite pr0n flicks into iTunes via one of dozens of video codec convertors
1b. view pr0n movie on iPhone
This isn't exactly rocket science, and amazingly, aside from the "import to iTunes" step, is exactly like any other phone on the planet.
Or are you just mad that you can't buy T&A in their store?
(...who the hell actually pays for the stuff these days anyway?)
-sent from my crappy Blackberry curve.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Stallman's worst defect (other than his nonconformist appearance and manner -- which are both fine by me, but not great qualities in a spokesman) is his faith in the general intelligence of the world at large.
He leaves things unsaid, because he assumes that the audience is paying proper attention, and reading between the lines.
Case in point:
Stallman's ideal vision of a world where every user is a programmer that reprograms their devices at will isn't happening for too many reasons to list
You don't need to be a programmer to program a computer. My boss isn't a programmer, yet he can program a computer simply by paying me money and telling me what to do. My mum isn't a programmer, but she can program a computer by asking me a favour. Stallman assumes people realise that.
If i think somebody is a complete tosser and Ive made my views public when asked should I change my stance when asked directly and make a liar of myself just because they are dead?
if your not going to like what you know I will say dont ask and I wont say.
Stallman is the anti-Jobs in many ways. But they"re both brilliant, driven, uncompromising geniuses. And to say that Stallman hasn't had as much impact on the world as Jobs is wrong on it's face, in my opinion. I reckon more devices have Linux installed than any Apple OS. How many startups would have been crushed by server OS costs without GNU/Linux as an option, even just by driving down the price of competitors? How many pieces of software that started as hobby hacking wouldn't exist with a free C compiler? App store? Linux had this years before the iPhone? Safari's engine started in KDE. Mac interface descended from X. Super-computing, internet plumbing, all dominated by Linux and GNU for a reason. Then there's Android.
If you don't like him, Stallman gives you plenty of ammunition. The same could be said about Jobs (personal emails to disgruntled users?) He spoke his mind, and a lot of people may not like what he said. In his mind, the world of software is a secret war for the freedom of billions of people. He believes proprietary software is a precursor to real live Soviet style oppression. He thinks Jobs is/was creating the world that appeared in the iconic 1984 Mac commercial. And if he believes that, blunting his words would be a disservice to history and posterity.
Steve Jobs was one to the most powerful on the planet. He's gonna have enemies. He knew that and didn't much care. I doubt his family is surfing Stallman's website looking for an epitaph.
As for the spokesman thing, I don't see RMS as that. He's the visionary. He's supposed to be unbending, uncompromising, theory based. He's not supposed to sugercoat. He's a coder, not a CEO.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
I've never been able to understand why these periodic "Stallman says something many people don't like" stories always involve so much strawmanning and apparent confusion.
I see that as beyond obvious, if not necessarily simple: Stallman is the head of a "dangerous" (read: influential) movement which confronts people's sensibilities and challenges the status quo. A lot of people have significant personal and economic investments which are threatened by the movement that Stallman represents, and as its figurehead he must be discredited or his words must be considered and both financial empires and carefully crafted illusions designed to permit ongoing behavior harmful to society and self will disintegrate.
Shockingly enough, he isn't a big fan of the man who built what is perhaps the most powerful walled-garden presently in operation... I don't understand why that is a surprise...
Yeah, it's almost like he's interested in Software Freedom or something.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
import favorite pr0n flicks into iTunes
Why do people think this shit is acceptable?
No, The problem is that software is not in the same league as human rights and freedoms. Software choices don't kill or enslave people. Individuals developers have always had the right to publish their work any way they want regardless of any licensing. Stallman has been consistent but the problem is he has been a consistent asshole who thinks he is saving the world with his software development model. Of course he already has the financial resources that enable him to totally ignore how his theories effect those actually working for a living.
Becoming locked into a walled garden is generally a one-way trip, so the walled garden tends to expand to the detriment of the open market.
No, I have an Apple phone and an Apple laptop, my servers run BSD. I have a DVR that runs Linux. The day a non-Apple phone or laptop, or non BSD server OS, or non-Linux running DVR, becomes available that suits my needs better than what I have, I'll use them instead.
Tell me specifically how the degree of control and squelching of competition specific to Apple's walled garden affects things outside the walled garden. Tell me about something with enough scale to justify you being able to deny my freedom to choose Apple.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
Do you know who makes that profit? Shareholders. Jobs paid himself $1 a year. Apple is widely-held stock, and its owners include pension funds and individual stockholders like myself. Where else do you think individual wealth comes from, pots of gold that people take from leprechauns? It is amazing to me how many people do not understand who really owns and benefits from corporate profits and growth. The purpose of a corporation is to make shareholders like me money, not to be a jobs program. I'm a small investor - and one of those "countrymen" you refer to - and I've held Apple for almost 20 years and it's made me financially secure.
I don't understand people who bitch about their jobs and being "wage slaves," then hate on those who find a way to make money outside of a paycheck, like investing in successful companies like Apple.
And of course Apple outsources it's labor. If it manufactured iPhones in California they'd cost $2500.
The funny thing is, though, that Steve Jobs is not a parent to anyone here. He is a complete stranger, but has been elevated to such a messiah like stature that people that didn't even know him outside of his press releases literally went out of their way to buy fucking flowers and leave them at the Apple Store.
I think the lack of perspective most of these mourners display is the most discouraging thing. I read a few "Man, that sucks" comments and didn't have a problem, but when people call him the most important man of our time I get a little incredulous. The man made consumer goods for crying out loud, and what did he pioneer? Devices that look nice? It's bad enough when people say idiotic things like "Steve Jobs invented the personal computer/tablet/pda/smartphone/internet/{insert any modern convenience here}" but now that he's gone people are actually comparing him to Edison or Tesla in their grief. It's embarrassing to those of us with a brain.
The big difference is that Apple is a private entity and is controlling what can and can't be sold via a store that they own. They do not control what you can buy in other stores, as would a government.
If you dislike what is available in Apple's store or you have some philosophical disagreement with the way they do things, you are free to buy some other device.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
Jobs wasn't a great innovator in technology, but he was a pretty great salesman and marketer. One of his greatest marketing campaigns was convincing people that he was some sort of fantastic technological innovator.
His second great achievement was having a pretty plastic shell designed for a bucket of computer innards and then charging double over the nearest competing product, and actually making sales.
Third, he recognized the power of good design in both the interface and the a fore mentioned pretty plastic shell. While I've listed this third, it is probably his greatest, longest lasting, and closest to technical innovation. Apple, as a company, really gets design. It shows in every single one of their products, and often times has won out over functionality. I wish more companies got design at the same fundamental level, but integrated it better with function.
Fourth, Steve Jobs managed to get a whole generation to believe that they were thinking differently by purchasing the same computer.
Sorry but patenting rounded corners, then suing suing Samsung is certainly a scam. And Apple has been doing that sort of thing for decades.
Apple can do whatever they want with their commercial store. But I wish Jobs never thought of the concept of walled garden applied to computing. Walled gardens are harmful and people should not line up to get confined into them. If Jobs had stopped innovating when he got windows and mouses on the screens and desks of everybody (even if much of it was because he scared MS so much they had to copy what he got from Xerox) I would say he made a big contribution to humankind. He also basically invented the modern smartphone, so he was twice as great as many other famous inventors. But the innovation of the walled garden ruined it all. No computer scientist or engineer or programmer should welcome a cage being put around his/her favorite tool.
But how can the freedom to choose not include the freedom for people to choose an Apple style 'walled garden'? I am absolutely certain that Stallman doesn't know what I want better than I do.
I don't believe Stallman would dispute your freedom to make that choice.
He would just regret that you have done so.
He would also contend that most people sleepwalk into that choice without knowing the ins and outs of the factors.
I wish people didn't eat at McDonald's, or drink Starbucks coffee, but I prefer to live in a world where choices that seem suboptimal to me are possible for other people to make.
Mainly because I know the choice police would eventually get around to taking away something I like.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
But to put Steve Jobs in the same league as people like Alan Turing, or Ada Lovelace, or Charles Babbage seems... very wrong.
Why? You don't know any more about Turing, Lovelace or Babbage than you do about Jobs. You're engaging in the same sort of hero worship you seem to be railing against. All of them did important work on different pieces of the technology puzzle. You might be more interested in the work of Turing (which is fine) but that doesn't make him more or less worthy of admiration. Jobs couldn't do what Turing did and Turing couldn't have done what Jobs did. Most of us only have the vaguest third-person idea of what sort of people they were so we can only really judge them by their works.
The one trolling was Stallman. He was, , ""I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone."
So, a massive cerebral hemorrhage, a bullet to the head that left him a vegetable, a mental degenerate disease, or even something that just left him physically too debilitated to continue to do his, job, would have been fine with Stallman. Read the entirety of what he wrote, and you'll see that there's no other interpretation.
Stallman is no longer relevant, and his latest whining just underlines that.
What planet are you from?
Stallman didn't make Linux possible, BSD did. Are you suggesting no other compilers or debuggers existed?
Stallman didn't make MacOS possible. Again, BSD did. Safari doesn't use any of Stallman's code, and if LGPL didn't exist (a license Stallman wasn't a fan of), another would have been used.
Stallman's contributions are gdb, hot air, and beard grease and the only reason gcc/gdb became popular is the same reason UNIX became popular: it was available. Apple doesn't even use gcc anymore and its days may be numbered.
Steve Jobs wanted to make a computer for everyone, Stallman couldn't give a damn how difficult they are to use so long they use his license.
HURD:0 Apple:Billions
The only reason you've been modded up is because of FSF zealots who have nothing better to do than troll slashdot. If people rated your post on the facts you would get a -5 flaimbait
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life