The GNU Manifesto Turns Thirty

An anonymous reader writes: It was March, 1985 when Richard M. Stallman published the GNU Manifesto in Dr. Dobb's Journal of Software Tools. Thirty years on, The New Yorker has an article commemorating its creation and looking at how it has shaped software in the meantime. "Though proprietary and open-source software publishers might appear at the moment to have the upper hand, Stallman's influence with developers (among whom he is known simply by his initials, 'rms') remains immense. When I asked around about him, many people spoke of him as one might of a beloved but eccentric and prickly uncle. They would roll their eyes a bit, then hasten to add, as more than one did, 'But he's right about most things.' I told Stallman that I'd spoken with several developers who venerate his work, and who had even said that without it the course of their lives might have been altered. But they don't seem to do what you say, I observed; they all have iPhones. 'I don't understand that either,' he said. 'If they don't realize that they need to defend their freedom, soon they won't have any.'"

Comments

Convenience

[ledow]

Convenience trumps ideals more often than not.

Though I consider myself an open-source programmer, and an open-source advocate, it's not for the same reasons as Stallman. It's not because of some fantastical ideal (even though I'm right behind things like Freedom of Information Acts etc. I consider them an entirely separate matter, and FoI kind of implies open-source at the highest ends of government, but we have neither FoI nor OS at those points anyway), it's because it makes things easier and my code isn't in any way "precious" that I need to lock it away.

So when I go on forums, I apply my "IT guy" persona to things and thus you get automatic sharing anyway. How do you fix that problem? How did you configure that system to do that? What software did you use? Where's the script you wrote to do X? We share this information in the same way that we share code, and IT is quite an open profession in my experience. I can ring up old colleagues and get scripts and documentation that cost them HOURS of work sent over and nobody will make a big fuss about it. In fact, they're usually happy to help and the agreement is reciprocal anyway.

That, to me, is the essence of open-source, not some cataclysmic Big Brother event stopper. The fact is that, where it matters, we never have had the code, or even the data, or even acknowledgement of the existence of the data anyway. And it's perfectly possible to run any system without reliance on a particular company and with auditable source and for free. The "dream" has been achieved but now people want to move the goalposts.

I agree that we shouldn't rest on our laurels, but OS by its nature develops on its own anyway. The guys with iPhones? Maybe they like using iPhones and there's no OS equivalent that works how they want? Or maybe they are aware of the contradiction but want a fashion item. The beauty is that their choice is just that - theirs.

The options are out there. They could run Android, even a "clean" non-Google version, at any point. The goal should be for the option to exist, not to FORCE everyone onto open-source against their will. To me, that just reeks of the same problem we were trying to avoid.

And the options exist, therefore we're done.

Re:Convenience

[sg_oneill]

You mean MineeUSA? Thats who we're talking about right? The guy who publically stated that he wants those who "harm" pedophiles killed? The guy who rants on about how women should be raped and then forced to marry their rapist? The guy who constantly sent death threats to members of the debian womens group?

This is your evidence that SJWs have killed open source? The face that an open rape advocate got banned from a womens group.

Good work retard!

Re:Convenience

[Raumkraut]

Though I consider myself an open-source programmer, and an open-source advocate, it's not for the same reasons as Stallman.

FYI, Stallman would never describe himself as an "open-source advocate".

"Open Source" is a software-development methodology - that software is better if more people can access the source code. The primary concern is toward the interests of developers.
"Free Software", as advocated by RMS, is a philosophical position - that everyone should have certain rights over the software they use. The primary concern is toward the interests of the end-user.

I believe that RMS takes the position that Free Software is a moral and ethical issue: That it is immoral and unethical to deny a person knowledge of, and control over, the software which they use. At an extreme, consider what rights people today have to so much as audit the code in their car, their insulin pump, or their implanted heart defibrillator (spoiler: they have no such rights).

Re:Convenience

[Marginal Coward]

"Free Software", as advocated by RMS, is a philosophical position - that everyone should have certain rights over the software they use. The primary concern is toward the interests of the end-user.

In contrast, I've always thought that the primary concern was towards the interests of the software. Think of the software you write as something you want to grow and evolve beyond what you can do for it yourself. The GPL with Copyleft nicely serves your (parental) interests as the author, and the interests of the software as an entity in its own right to grow and evolve.

Now, consider the interests of the end user. The user would want maximum freedom - to use it, to change it, to distribute the source code, or to distribute or sell it in either source or compiled form. However, if he distributes it in compiled form, he maximizes his own interests, but not the interests of the original author and the interests of the software as an entity to grow and evolve.

There's an old saying, "Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man's nose begins." For example, we restrict the freedom of criminals by putting them in jail in order to allow those who might be their victims to live more freely. So, freedom is a balance. It's important to recognize that although "Free Software" maximizes a particular type of freedom, it limits freedom of other types. It represents a particular vision of Utopia that not everyone shares.

Re:Convenience

[TuringTest]

Convenience trumps ideals more often than not.

Ideals are not there to achieve convenience. They exist to steer us away from convenience, to avoid short-term gains that would push us into some long term dead-ends.

So ideals are not useful because we live by them on a day to day basis, but because they warn us when we deviate too far from them. Of course, having a few idealists that *do* live by their principles is a useful reminder for the rest of us that agree with them, but are nonetheless swayed by convenience.

Re:Convenience

[Marginal Coward]

There certainly are pros and cons to various FLOSS licenses, and as you illustrate, the GPL/copyleft licenses serve a particular need. What bugs me about "Free Software" as an idealogy is that it's supposed to be about preserving our "freedom". We can all be in favor of, in the abstract, so that's a pretty strong selling point (and therefore, BTW, a pretty good source of demagoguery by RMS.) But when it becomes concrete, we need to think a little harder about exactly which sorts of freedom are gained and lost in each case.

In my own case, I've used a lot of small pieces of dusty old Fortran code that I've transliterated into C, compiled, and sold as part of a proprietary software product. The licensing terms of the Fortran code are unclear because it was published in the 1970s in IEEE journal papers before anybody worried about what the license terms of such things might be. I assume the authors published it for people to use however they like, including in the way that I use it. In my own case, I enjoy the freedom to transform such code and sell it as part of a proprietary product. And the people who are free to buy the product evidently think they're getting a fair deal or they wouldn't buy it.

One particular function I need was once translated by someone else from Fortran to C and then licensed under the GPL, so I couldn't use it. It's unclear to me if the person who did that had any legal basis for doing so because the original Fortran code had no license. In any case, I translated my own version to C independently and moved on using that. Later, the other person's code was relicensed under the LGPL, so I could then use it. But it was too late.

I've run into many such cases where I was not "free" to use GPL code in the way I wanted, and the people who buy my product therefore were not "free" to use it either. However, at least they were free to create their own complex application out of the various GPL-licensed pieces that I couldn't provide to them myself. I doubt that anyone has done so.

Re:Convenience

[breech1]

I see very little ever coming from RMS that does not imply or pertain to open-source.

That's because there's close relationships between "free (as in freedom) software" and "open-source." Neither is a proper sub-set of the other though.

If you have certain rights over the software, we're out of the field of proprietary, out of the field of freeware, out of every category EXCEPT open-source. The freedoms he wants are only given by open-source.

NO! The freedoms he wants are not given by open-source. RMS is incredibly consistent about the freedoms he values: he wants to be able to modify any software in any way he sees fit and have those changes made available for others. That implies having access to the source *and* distributing changes to the source. Open source does not guarantee this as you can make changes to the source code and keep the changes to yourself. (This leads into long and drawn out discussions on GPL vs BSD and other licenses.)

If you want to say that RMS's position is pedantic, that's fine. Just understand that RMS has slightly different values than open source advocates and he works to keep those values. RMS views open source as dangerous to the freedom to have all changes made available because open source does not make any guarantee about it. Others, like ESR, aren't quite as concerned about that as long as some version of the source is available. Thus, you get open source. Free and open source software are not exactly the same thing though.

Re:Convenience

[drinkypoo]

I think you define "open source software" as "the source code is visible". I think open source is not quite that. Open source implies the public development of software.

Nope. Though Wikipedia credits the OSI for inventing the term, its use in computer software predates the supposed event by years. Guess which camp controls that Wikipedia article?

Open Source means that if you get the binary, you get the source code. That's it, period, end of story. It had that meaning before the OSI was even dreamt of. There are specific licenses which have specific language which grants you, the licensor, certain rights. Some of these are OSI-approved licenses, but they are not the only open source licenses. Thankfully, OSI's counsel advised them not to attempt to trademark the generic term "Open Source" way back in the way-back when they might have successfully achieved such a thing, and we are all still free to believe whatever we want to believe.

Re:Convenience

[Raumkraut]

If you lock yourself into using only things that are 100% free (as in speech), how are you more free than someone who has a choice of 100% of all the offerings available?

If you "lock yourself into" using something, you are necessarily less free than someone who doesn't. The difference is that by definition you cannot "lock yourself into" truly Free things, as you are always Free to unlock yourself, should you choose to.

However, becoming reliant on, or merely handing over your information to, a third-party black-box service effectively means that you can never be totally free of that third-party's influence.

Re:Convenience

[TuringTest]

There's a frequent misunderstanding when people talk about freedom with respect to the GPL. The concept of "freedom" is itself not well defined, and historically there are at least two competing and somewhat opposing definitions, "positive" freedom (which is about maximizing the amount of things people are able to do) and "negative" freedom (not interfering with things that others want to do). The GPL is primarily concerned about the former, and your complaints are about the latter.

The goal of the GPL is that everybody can use the software for any purpose, and learn how any changes and modifications work; this is seen as a requirement to increase the amount of things that can be done with the software, guaranteeing that it can be adapted to any hardware or platform, with no commercial secrets getting in the way.

In order to achieve this goal, the GPL doesn't come "free" (as in "gratis", i.e. no cost): it has a cost that you must pay if you want to use it; but for anyone willing to pay it, there are no further restrictions imposed by anyone, for any modified version. In your case you *could* have merged your application code with the GPL library* for any purpose**, but you should be willing to pay the cost, which is to release your own source code when you republish the software. So, your negative freedom is reduced (you are forbidden from keeping your version of the software hidden and publish just the binaries), but the positive freedom of the system is increased - overall there are more people who know how to use your modifications and adapt them for other uses, which couldn't happen if you kept your modifications secret.

The expectation is that by adding contributions from many users to the pool of knowledge, the whole society sees an increase in the amount of possibilities to use the software ("positive freedom"); it's the same principle that motivated the patent system in the Renaissance. The "release what you know" cost is intended to publish knowledge that otherwise would not be shared, and thus cumulatively improve the whole system. Now, there are valid concerns that the upfront cost may instead work as a disincentive to participate in the system (both with patents and copyleft software), but that argument doesn't make less free.

* Assuming the original license and copyright law allowed it. (This is why the FSF recommends using only GPL-compatible licenses).
**(Including selling it, although with FLOSS software this typically only works once for each release).

Why So Important

[rtb61]

The core principle of any democracy is knowledge must be free. Democracy ceases to be such when knowledge is priced beyond the reach of majority and they are forced to vote based upon ignorance. Computers are the best tool in making knowledge accessible and as such should never be priced out of easy access to the majority. Every citizen should have the right to readily access all the knowledge they want, in order to make informed decision about their democracy. Not selected highlights, not edited with secrecy, not distorted by lies but factual, validated information backed with explanations and when required, taught by suitably qualified professionals. Denial of information about the society they form a part of, in order to manipulate their consent, is autocracy by ignorance.

Re: Why So Important

[Bert64]

The problem is that the world is just too complex, that even the few of us who want to understand and make informed decisions cannot be experts on everything...

Yes he's right

[aaaaaaargh!]

He's right about most of the things he says, and that's also the reason why there are so many haters.

If you look closely at the opponents of the free software movement you'll find out that most of them have no good arguments at all (except lame ad hominem attempts). Or they use weak fake arguments they do not believe in themselves, because they are (i) working for a large company dealing with proprietary software, or (ii) are disgruntled independent developers who really really would like to use some GNU libraries but at the same time refuse to respect to the licence.

Re:Yes he's right

[serviscope_minor]

He's right about most of the things he says, and that's also the reason why there are so many haters.

He also pulls no punches when it comes to saying uncomfortable unpleasant things. It's even worse that some of those have come to pass.

Anyway, I also predict this thread will be full of wild claims about RMS many of which are flat-out untrue and demonstrably so. Because almost every thread involving RMS winds up that way.

Re:Yes he's right

[Richard_at_work]

Theres a difference between being *right* and *having people agree with you*.

Re:Yes he's right

[david_thornley]

And yet Linux distros are among the most-used OSes today, and those are mostly based on a GPLed kernel and a whole lot of Gnu software. Basic software development tools are now mostly free (you can do pretty much anything with Visual Studio Express, for example, just not as easily as with versions you pay for). He inspired the Open Source movement, which is a lot more politically acceptable. Comparing the pre-RMS world and now, I'd say he did cause an earthshaking revolution.

Reality

[jellomizer]

Stop blaming those other people for all the issues in the world, because they are blaming you right back. The idea that utopia can happen if people do it exactly my way, is not realizing the diversity in people and their particular needs.

Just because RMS is right about a lot of thing doesn't mean he is always right. The same with everyone.
Open source has its place, but it is also the cause for many of these outsourced jobs. As it gives people in poorer areas acces to advanced computing software, so they can apply and say they have such skills and then undercut people who live in a higher income area.
It is nice to be good and Nobel, but you still have bills to pay, not everyone can work at a not for profit, government, or educational institution and do what they train for. They need to work in the corporate world, to keep this job that pays the bill you need to be sure the company stayed in business, so you make software that they attend to sell closed source.
Because...
1. The software is easy to use so there is no money in consulting services.
2. Access to the Internet means there isn't much money in distributing your software.
3. The software fills a niche that is important but doesn't get enough attention to survive on good will.
4. You need to work with other vendors who has patented code, or closed licenses. But they are vital to the overall product.

It is not that open source is bad, it has its place mainly in infrastructure based systems OS, Web Servers, Web Browers, Office products, Developer tools. But once you get into general purpose it gets much harder

Re:Reality

[AmiMoJo]

As it gives people in poorer areas acces to advanced computing software, so they can apply and say they have such skills and then undercut people who live in a higher income area.

I thought that CS was the ultimate meritocracy, hence all attempts to increase the number of women and minorities in the workforce are just scams. Or are you saying that actually you resent anything that might provide you with competition in the job market?

Beside which, any increased competition is more than offset by the new business (and thus jobs) created by open source. Look at Android, how many people directly or indirectly benefited from that? Android is of course built on top of Linux, and uses many open source components and tools. A big part of its success is because it is open source, and because you can develop for it with free open source IDEs and compilers.

Imagine where we would be without open source. Imagine what the internet would be like if every single machine connected to it has to have a Windows or Cisco licence. Do you think there would be more or less jobs in that case? How do you think our freedom would be if we were reliant on proprietary, closed source software for everything?

Re: Reality

[david_thornley]

I've seen no evidence that Stallman is a hypocrite. As far as I can tell, he acts on his beliefs, and is willing to undergo a lot of inconvenience. Gore talks about global warming, and burns fossil fuels. Stallman believes proprietary software is evil, and will put up with a really crappy laptop because it's all free software.

New Yorker and open source

[grahamlee]

I was pleasantly surprised by the New Yorker's coverage of the shift from "free software" to "open source", which while less detailed (unsurprisingly) than other sources such as Free as in Freedom 2.0 also presented it simply as a thing that has happened, rather than either of the extremes that are usually applied: it's the worst affront ever to software freedom, or as the liberation of programmers from the crazy extreme ideology of RMS. Personally I'm more interested in free software than in open source: the source code is a means to an end, not an end in itself. But it's good to see that view handled as a view and the events (and responses to them) presented, without turning the story into a justification or rationalisation of the view. BTW, still waiting for that planned Chaosnet support...

Developers _are_doing it

[nut]

A lot of software developers are doing what RMS says a lot of time. It's just that almost noone does it all the time.

It's clearly evident from the amount of GNU and GPL software out there that wasn't written by RMS that people are following his ideas. And that those ideas have succeeded, simply by the success of that same software in the marketplace.

It's not a failure of the ideal when developers of open source also write proprietary software to pay the bills.

Re:Developers _are_doing it

[meta-monkey]

You are exactly correct. This is what's going to happen to Android. It's got a GPL kernel, sure, but everything else up the stack is less-free the further you go. The libraries and runtime are BSD-like and the user apps are mostly closed. And they're continuously replacing modules with code with permissive licenses. Next they're going to start closing them. Sure, you can still have the source code from Android 5.0, but by the time they're on Android 7.0 that stuff is woefully out of date and they will have intentionally changed APIs so anyone trying to create open replacements has to constantly jump through hoops to keep up. Eventually it'll just be a giant closed blob on top of a free kernel.

Permissive licenses are a trap.

A Story of Free Software

[Anonymous Coward]

When I first encountered GNU it was in the age of Windows 3.1 and 386 processors. I had just received a shareware utility program which included GNU tar as part of the distribution. I read the GNU General Public License of GNU tar and it impressed me because it was refreshing to see a program license that not only gave me unlimited usage of the program (GNU tar, not the shareware utility) but also gave me the right to study the source code, modify the source, and then redistribute the program. All the other programs that I've noted at the time had various usage and distribution restrictions in their licenses and GNU tar was outstanding in this regard. I was not a programmer at the time but I understood the utility in being guaranteed the right to modify the software.

The next time I encountered GNU was during a Stallman lecture about his free software movement. He taught us that proprietary software is anti-social and harmful to our freedom. How could my beloved software (that has served me well for such a long time) harm my freedom? The idea that I could have total freedom in my computing were implanted as a result of that lecture but I was too addicted to the software I was using to do anything meaningful afterwards. His GNU system that he wrote for the express purpose of escaping from the world of proprietary software was too much of hassle to bother with; I was quite comfortable with my system that ran Windows 98.

As time moved on, I had to use and manage all sorts of software in my job and in my personal life. I started to notice the points that Stallman had indicated: proprietary software intends to divide society by restricting users from sharing the software while simultaneously encouraging users to adopt the software, users are locked into a single source of help if the software needs fixing and users are helpless to help oneself, the users' computing belongs to the owners of the software which means it's quite possible that the owners of the software put their own interests before the user by putting in a backdoor to protect their interest.

Time and time again, Stallman had proven to me that I chose a life where my own computing did not actually belong to me. When I realized this, I knew that I had to start migrating my computing into the world of free software. It's been many years and it's cost me a lot of money and today, I am proud to say that 100% of my personal computing and the vast majority of computing in my businesses actually does belong to me. Thanks Mr Stallman, the cost was expensive but your activism taught me of a life where I don't need to bound to the rules imposed by proprietary software and by association, you've also given me the passion to consider the wider topics of society, politics and freedom.

Personal freedom trumps software freedom

[Viol8]

And if I have personal freedom I can choose to buy and use an iPhone if I want (I don't, but not for the same reason as RMS).

While much of what he says is right wrt software, unfortunately he has a bad dose of myopia or tunnel vision, call if what you like, about the wider world and how software interacts with it at the personal and societal level.

Re:Personal freedom trumps software freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

Stallman doesn't believe that having an option implies having freedom. Stallman believes that freedom is a matter of self-control and your choice to accept your iphone means that you've chosen to let Apple control your life in your phone. You may have paid for your iphone but Apple controls it and you are forbidden to control your iphone.

Stallman doesn't have the myopia that you think he has. He knows fully well that wide world uses proprietary software and people are happy with their choice of software. What he's doing is to teach society that a life of proprietary software means that we live subject to the will of other people. Stallman cannot (and does not) force people to dump proprietary software. He teaches what he knows and hopes that some people will agree that self-control and social solidarity are things worth advocating.

Re:Personal freedom trumps software freedom

[UnknownSoldier]

> in most countries you aren't allowed to [do] absolutely anything you please with it. So what? Its just a phone.

And where does it end?

Printers and their DRM ink cartridges?

Game Consoles?

TVs?

Computers?

Cars?

It is _already_ illegal to _inspect_ some of the things you "own" due to the greedy and immoral DMCA.

When you can't even charge the _battery_ this is _already_ going TOO FAR.

* https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...

Re:Personal freedom trumps software freedom

[UnknownSoldier]

Ah, so we should toss the baby out with the bathwater simply because you dislike _his_ work flow. Riiight.

/sarcasm I guess no one else got the memo that we ALL should follow _your_ divine workflow and use _only_ the software that you "bless" as being "valid". Who die and made you king again?

Philosophy doesn't depend on technology. It is about how it can/should be used.

It would behoove you to study history.

"The easiest form of parochialism to fall into is to assume that we are smarter than the past generations, that our thinking is necessarily more sophisticated. This may be true in science and technology, but not necessarily so in wisdom."

Macaulay on dangers of Copyright in 1841

Re:I don't always agree with him...

[gnasher719]

...but you have to give him points for consistency and not giving the first damn what *anyone* thinks of him.

What does Stallman do for a living? Travel around, make speeches about free software, and get paid for it. He has to say what he says, or nobody will pay him anymore.

Re:A long, long time ago

[silentcoder]

I must second that. I have actually met RMS face to face over a period of several days more than 14 years ago now. We've had email contact on and off ever since as I have worked on various free software projects, especially where I had ethical questions. To give an example I wondered whether I should include software such as lame in a distro I was maintaining. As I was in a country where software patents aren't legal I had no restrictions preventing me - but I worried it could make the fully free distro I was working on inaccessible to others, so I asked his opinion. For the record it was: "Include them, don't let the publishers have more power than they do by obeying bad laws my country has that yours doesn't".

I must agree - I have always found him reasonable, measured and incredible rational about all things.

Re:He's not always right.

[silentcoder]

Yes, to see the proof of your claim just look at the cooking industry. Recipes cannot be copyrighted (they are explicitly excluded from copyright protection under international law). Which is why there are no chefs. Oh wait sorry, it's why all the chefs keep their recipes strictly secret and only provided finished food and none of them ever publishes a cookbook... oh wait.

For the nitpickers: yes a cookbook can be copyrighted but the recipes inside it cannot, you are always free to copy one, modify it, use it and even put it in your own cookbook modified or not.

Software is a lot more like a chefs recipes than it is like an authors book.

Re:He's not always right.

[Sique]

First of all: Software has a special place in the world. Software is a distilled form of knowing how to do things. Software is a way to actually store work: You do the work once and then use it again and again without further effort. Software itself doesn't degrade, it just might lose its uses. Software can be endlessly replicated with an effort that is minuscle compared to the effort necessary to create it in the first place. Once in the world, software is not a scarce good.

And yes, it is your choice what do do with the software you write yourself. No one will ever tell you different, except your employer. It is also your choice to smoke, to tell racist jokes, to not ask for help, to let your house rot away and to spend all your money on blackjack and hookers. Richard M. Stallman has no rights to your software at all.

But you too have no right to other people's software, because they have the same rights to do with their software as they like. If you want to get access to it, you have to play nice. You can spend huge amounts of money, which is the market economy way of doing things. But why? Software per se is no scarce good. The only reason you would have to spend huge amounts of money for a good that is easily replicated again and again is because other people don't play nice too.

Richard M. Stallman set up some rules how to play nice when it comes to software. You are not required to play nice. But then expect others not to be nice to you too.

Re:Any asteroid prospectors yet?

[AmiMoJo]

Well done, you managed to find the one (not entirely serious) off hand comment that seems a bit extreme in a manifesto that was, at the time, way out there. The very fact that the rest of it is pretty much taken for granted now shows just how visionary and plain right Stallman was.

These days no-one would dream of claiming that people won't work on OS for free, or that commercial companies wouldn't contribute. No-one would question the value of having OS software exist, or the high quality it can achieve, or that it is essential to our freedom in an age of NSA/GCHQ spying. You might not agree on a philosophical level but you can't really deny that this is a document that changed the world and the nature of computing, and was able to define how OS would develop over the next three decades.

Imagining a world without RMS

[Marginal Coward]

The impact of RMS and his "GNU Manifesto" have been undeniably powerful, but I wonder what the software world would look like if there had never been an RMS. I'm certain that we would still have something like "open source" software. There would still be something like the MIT-style permissive licenses. There would still be a BSD version of Linux. Heck, a college kid from Finland might even still have created his own UNIX kernel, and maybe somebody would have pulled together all the pieces of a UNIX-style ecosystem to create a second UNIX-clone operating system that users were able to contribute to and modify.

Next, someone else might even have invented something like "Copyleft", wherein copyright law is actually used, jujitsu-style, to preserve the ability to copy rather than to limit it. Now, that's a pretty clever idea, but surely someone would have thought of it.

Maybe these things would have happened slower - much as light bulbs and cars might have happened slower without Edison and Ford, but would undoubtedly have happened.

That said, would Communism have happened without "The Communist Manifesto?" I'm not so sure. No idealogy can exist without its ideologue.

Re:Any asteroid prospectors yet?

[gnujoshua]

I think those kinds of whimsical discussions of a post-scarcity society are the kind of thing you might expect to hear in the MIT AI lab in the 1980s, which is where RMS was working at the time he wrote the GNU Manifesto. I've been volunteering for or working with the FSF for over a decade now and I have never been part of serious convesations in which we discussed preparing for a post-scarcity society or repairing robots. I kind of wish we did. We are always focused on the short term and practical goals that matter today or this year. It is kind of grinding. So, it is refreshing to lighten up a bit and think in terms of how the work we are doing today might be helpful to the **very** long term goals of humanity, even if it is just whimiscal conjecture and for fun.

I am grateful

[mrflash818]

Without him, I probably wouldn't have had the career I was able to have, nor enjoy the Debian distribution I currently enjoy every day.

I am grateful.

Re:Placating consumerism leads to loss of freedom.

[ledow]

And how does freedom NOT include the choice to use proprietary software if you want? You can be as free as you like, except when you make THIS choice? Great.

Implying that "Free", meaning liberated, means YOU CAN'T USE THAT for something is completely hypocritical. Thus his concept of "freedom" does not extend anywhere near my concept of freedom at all... and is merely a subset.

Richard Stallman is, in this opinion, "less free" than the average person. Sorry, but that's just stupid.

Given that, I'd rather not associate his name with my concept of "open" because he's more restrictive than I, or most open source programmers, choose to be.

You can have any colour you like, said Henry Ford, as long as it's black.