Slashdot Mirror
RMS Talks Net Neutrality, Patents, and More
alphadogg writes "According to Richard Stallman, godfather of the free software movement, Facebook is a "monstrous surveillance engine," tech companies working for patent reform aren't going nearly far enough, and parents must lobby their children's schools to keep data private and provide free software alternatives. The free software guru touched on a host of topics in his keynote Saturday at the LibrePlanet conference, a Free Software Foundation gathering at the Scala Center at MIT.
From TFS: According to RMS, Facebook is a "monstrous surveillance engine,"
Frankly, I think he's being excessively kind on Facebook there and that's the last thing I would have expected from him!
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Stalman has done a lot, but sometimes his ideas get in the way of actual software. Hurd? after decades still not shipped. gcc? Got out of hand until it got taken over by egcs.
That makes no sense. His idea was to have a 100% free unix. They started working on the hurd. Then Linux came along and it was under an acceptable license, so RMS declared that the problem was solved, GNU had the kernel it wanted and so developing one was no longer a priority.
Likewise ECGS (Experimental GNU Compiler System) was a fork of GCC it proved substantially better, so the FSF abandoned the mainline and adopted the superior fork.
In other words, I think both examples you've given of RMS getting in the way are actually examples of exactly the opposite.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
There was free software before him (BSD, etc) and will be free software after him.
RMS did not invent free software. But he was the first to espouse the philosophy of free software, and argue that it was an ethical and moral issue. He also made huge practical contributions. If you run Linux, you are likely using a lot more code written by RMS than by Linus.