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GNU Grep and Sed Maintainer Quits: RMS and FSF Harming GNU Project
In a scathing rant posted to a GNU project mailing list, the maintainer of grep and sed announced that he was quitting the GNU project over technical and administrative disagreements. Chief among them: He believes RMS is detrimental to the project by slowing down technical innovation (the example used was RMS's distaste for C++, not exactly a strong point against RMS). Additionally, he noted that the FSF is not doing enough to help GNU "Projects such as gnash are bound to have constant funding problems despite being (and having been for years) in the FSF's list of high priority projects.". Finally: "Attaching the GNU label to one's program has absolutely no
attractiveness anymore. People expect GNU to be as slow as an elephant,
rather than as slick as a gazelle, and perhaps they are right. Projects
such as LLVM achieve a great momentum by building on the slowness of
GNU's decision processes, and companies such as Apple get praise even
if they are only embracing these projects to avoid problems with GPLv3."
The author is quick to note that he has no philosophical disagreements with GNU or the FSF.
lol AIX who uses that shit
Wow... Here it's claimed that... RMS's worst flaw... Is his software design preferences?! And that is why copyFREE software is gradually leapfrogging copyLEFT?! Nonsense! That's like saying Hitler's worst flaw was his vegetarianism!
I hate to see bad people attacked for wrong reasons, because it distracts the eye of history from their actual faults. In reality RMS is intelligent, charismatic, and does not have an oft-alleged hygiene problem. He might not be an accomplished programmer, but some of his lispy software design ideas did at one time have merit, though history has shown them to be less than ideal. C++ does contradict the UNIX philosophy of developing myriads of small tools, although it might be a valid option for huge projects like compilers and Web browsers (until a better C-killer language, like D or Go, is fully baked). Free software should handle such aesthetic disagreements amicably, through forking and choice. Vi / Emacs / Eclipse users can be friends, yadda yadda yadda...
RMS's real flaw is his fanatical socialist / anti-capitalist politics, and that is precisely the philosophy from which radical copyLEFT has emerged!
RMS's vision stands against the software philosophy of the free market, where copyfree and proprietary software exist in a symbiotic relationship, resulting in a more financially-solvent, more competitive, more innovative, and more advanced software industry world-wide. He thinks all businesses are evil, and that everything, starting with software development, should be funded by the state - presumably with him in charge.
RMS and his supporters are horrendously hypocritical in their stance on "intellectual property rights". GPL relies on illegitimate government force far more than major software corporations do, because the latter mostly function through explicit contracts (SaaS, hardware bundling, support contracts, education / certification contracts, etc). GPL, on the other hand, is purely an "implicit contract", which, in a rational world, would have no more validity than sticking a post-it note on your forehead that says "by seeing me you are legally bound to kiss me"!
The practical consequences of copyLEFT have been horrendous, not just for the software industry at large but for the growth of free software as well. CopyLEFT is inherently antagonistic and legally unpredictable, which gives the business world good reasons to avoid it. Billions have been wasted rewriting the same code (at times in roundabout ways) just to avoid copyLEFT restrictions! Since copyFREE code equalizes the playing field, the fact that so much open source software was poisoned by copyLEFT has benefited the strongest player in the market, which is Microsoft - whose dominance would have been greater still without the copyFREE software that has been utilized by its competitors like Apple, thus restoring a more competitive environment.
--libman