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The Free Software Foundation: 30 Years In
An anonymous reader writes: The Free Software Foundation was founded in 1985. To paint a picture of what computing was like back then, the Amiga 1000 was released, C++ was becoming a dominant language, Aldus PageMaker was announced, and networking was just starting to grow. Oh, and that year Careless Whisper by Wham! was a major hit. Things have changed a lot in 30 years. Back in 1985 the FSF was primarily focused on building free pieces of software that were primarily useful to nerdy computer people. These days we have software, services, social networks, and more to consider. In this in-depth interview, FSF executive director John Sullivan discusses the most prominent risks to software freedom today, Richard M. Stallman, and more.
C++ was only 2 years old in 1985, and hardly anyone had heard of it. It was nowhere close to "becoming dominant."
Microsoft and Borland didn't introduce C++ compilers until after 1990, which is when it really took off.
C++ wasn't becoming a dominant language in 1985. That didn't happen until the IDEs supported it about 5 years later. Turbo C became Turbo C++ and then Borland C++. Microsoft was recommending Glockenspiel until they could get their own support done. 1990 really.
Was there, got the T-Shirt.
In 1985 C++ was not becoming a dominant language. C was certainly high on the list of "dominating" languages, but so was ASM (often C and assembly language for critical sections were used together) and so was Pascal, Modula-2, COBOL, Fortran, Lisp, etc, etc, etc and a bunch of languages (some still very much in use today), but C++... C++ was a newcomer and far from becoming dominant. It might be accurate to say that C++ was gaining support. It might be accurate to say that C++ was encouraging or spurring on the acceptance of the OOP paradigm (whatever that is), but no... I don't think that C++ was beginning to dominate anything at all at that point in time.
Stallman should have made a viable business, not a giant soapbox.
RedHat would disagree with you
Well, since Stallman would disagree with Redhat, Debian, Slackware, and anyone else that makes it easy to install "nonfree" software from distribution-supported repositories, I don't think that Stallman is in-agreement with how the Open Source movement has gone.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
In 1985 there was a revolt against copy protected software, people would not buy it. Now Digital Restrictions Malware is everywhere, most people have turned into cattle that will buy whatever the corporations are selling. Call DRM what it really is "Digital Restrictions Malware"
Stallman was always a PRAGMATIST, not an IDEALIST.
emacs and gcc were written to run on HPUX and Solaris long before linux existed
he knows full well that he will never achieve his ultimate goal of free software everywhere, but he has to push his agenda
Most people are idiots about non-free binary blobs. Your cards and motherboard are all filled with binary code, whether it's burned in at the factory or loaded at runtime is a moot point.
Stallman has no problem with binary blobs as long as they cannot be updated without the user's consent, and as long as they cannot be used to abuse the user, e.g., by providing a backdoor or otherwise altering the rest of the system. In his own words:
He's wrong, though. There is a technical obstacle to creating an Android phone with his desired characteristics: THERE'S NO MONEY TO DO IT; as said before, it's a damn shame Stallman never created a viable business to fund his ideas. Instead, he has always relied on fools who don't comprehend what he's saying.
FSF has definitely made the world a better place by given users choices, but also, ironically, by improving quality of proprietary software. I would hate to think how buggy SSL would be if every vendor rolled their own copy. If they could agree on a protocol standard at all without a mature free software stack that is.
But I wonder if nowadays software is really the most important thing that needs to be made more free as in freedom. How about free culture (copyrights that expire in time to share your favouring movies with grandkids)? Free food (planting seeds without Monsanto permission)? Free medicine (generic drugs would save millions of lives worldwide)? Free immigration/religion/politics?
Wish we had folks like RMS to achieve concrete progress in these causes.
Yup, the real actual threat of global thermonuclear war has turned into an idiot in a train who has his guns taken off him by some passengers.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Not every venture is a publicly owned business that is legally obligated to increase "shareholder value".
It takes money to pay for a sufficiently persuasive soapbox. That's why a viable business is valuable.
Software is worthless if you don't have the hardware to run it on; Stallman never appreciated the impending doom of closed hardware.
Or ... he realized that his own expertise was software and did as much as he possibly could to further software freedom, certainly more than any of us could have obligated him to do, working on his own dream of libre/freedom software by using the information age's infinite ability to distribute free software at nearly zero cost. He then, at some point, had to let someone else worry about the hardware, someone whose particular talents are in that direction, perhaps hoping that the growing free software movement would create a demand for equally free hardware on which to run it.
Unless you really took a look at the complexity of modern systems and expected a single man to radically change ALL of it... no, at some point you have to do what you're good at and encourage other like-minded people to do the same with their own skills.
GNU = GNU Not Unix.
While he made products for the Unix environment, his Goal is to get rid of the Closed Unix systems and make an Open Source Unix like system. GNU/Hurd was his attempt, however Linux was able to get something out faster, and the GNU community jumped on that to fulfill the Vision of GNU. Hence why they like to call it GNU/Linux. The GNU Not Unix Code clone of Unix, that happens to be based of the Linux Kernel not the HURD Microkernel.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Part of the reason why Cloud/SaaS/Remote Hosted/Time Shared software has gotten popularity, was due to working around restrictions in Open Source systems, such as the Anti-TiVo addition.
Huh? How so? The only way this claim would be valid is if large amounts of FOSS software had actually adopted GPLv3. To date, not that much has, and certainly nothing really important. Linux is GPLv2 and always will be (it's impossible to get all the contributors to agree to a license change), PostgreSQL is BSD-licensed, Apache has the BSD-like Apache license, etc.
The reason cloud/SaaS crap has gotten popular is simple: 1) software makers like it because it gives them a continuous revenue stream, so they just have to lock in the users and then they'll get monthly fees forever, and 2) these software makers target things that FOSS simply doesn't address very much or at all, such as specialized business software. Even Windows (OS) is trying to move to a SaaS model, and Adobe's been doing it for a while; it's all about being beneficial for the software companies. Users only do it because either they have little choice if they want to use that software, or they like the "low" monthly payments (and are too stupid to do basic math and realize they're paying more in the long run)., or they're running a business and thanks to wacky business accounting, it's easier to get the company to buy into a monthly service ad infinitum rather than shell out a higher one-time purchase fee (which is the same logic that makes businesses opt to lease expensive equipment rather than buy it, even though it costs them a lot more over time, but they don't care because it makes the short-term balance sheets look better and works better with taxes because they can deduct the expense instead of having to take depreciation).
Anyway, point is, FOSS licensing has absolutely nothing to do with the popularity of SaaS and cloud services; that's completely ridiculous.
Stallman got to the point where the only Linux distributions he would endorse were tiny, obscure completely-free ones that were almost unusable before accounting for the lack of "nonfree" software.
That is not pragmatic.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.