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Interview with Good Software Group Founder
[ The following is an interview by Hired, the monthly magazine devoted to commerce and trade, with Gilbert Oram Dawson, the founder of the Good Software Group. ]Hired: Gilbert, it's been fifteen years since you single-handedly created the Good Software movement and its spokesman and umbrella organization, the Good Software Group. How does it feel to be sitting in the catbird seat, now that Good Software is all the rage?
Dawson: It's a great feeling to see just about everyone either using or else wanting to use Good Software. It proves that I am the visionary I always told you I was. But I'll tell you this: it hurts me that most people don't realize that without the Good Software Group, they probably wouldn't even *have* any Good Software. In fact, most people who use Good Software have barely even heard of the GSG. It really wounds me to be so under-appreciated, even after all the Good Software that I've personally created for the world.
Hired: Maybe that has something to do with the common misunderstanding of what Good Software is really about. Not everyone uses "good" the way you do, you know.
Dawson: Listen, I'm getting really tired of that old refrain. You get the feeling that these people have never looked into a dictionary before. If you check, you'll find that it is perfectly legitimate to use "good" to refer to saleable commodities, merchandise, or wares.
For example, here's one from the dictionary: "All that follows will hold true of any storable good, like cotton, wool, rubber, tobacco, wheat, coffee, sugar, oil, copper, or tin." Here's another: "As a steady, cheap, business-making consumer good,..the book is out." And here's one more: "For example, the existence of stocks of goods which might have to be reduced in some amount before additional resources were guided to the favoured good were ignored." Those are right there in the Oxford English Dictionary, so there's no room for argument. I'm right, and they're wrong.
I have invested many many years of my life in promoting Good Software. I am not about to change what I call it now simply because a bunch of idiots who never even finished grad school can't understand simple English words.
Hired: I'm sorry. I didn't intend to argue. Perhaps for the sake of our readers, Gilbert, you might please explain just what it is that you *do* mean by "good software"?
Dawson: Sure, I'd be glad to. Everything I'm about to say, though, is clearly explained on the Good Software Group's website, including just exactly what we mean when we say "Good Software". I don't always have time to explain just what a good is to everyone the GSG comes in contact with. I wish when they heard about Good Software--which is admittedly a slightly ambiguous abbreviation for a much more elaborate concept--that they would look at our website, or at the very least, pick up a dictionary. Words mean different things to different people and in different contexts. In my case, a word means just exactly what I say it means, and if people care about what I say it means, they should visit my website.
Hired: Um, and what *does* it mean?
Dawson: Oh right. It's so simple a child could understand it. Good Software is software that is made for the express purpose of facilitating the exchange of any sort of good or service for the purposes of commerce or trade.
Hired: And why did you form the Good Software Group?
Dawson: I'm really glad you asked that. I founded the GSG because at the time, our nation's E-conomy [The editors believe that the interviewee was referring to "electronic economy", but in retrospect, it's unclear. --Hired] was in serious straits, and I thought that a lot of the problem stemmed from wasted programming effort that did not produce Good Software. When programmers waste all their nights creating fritterware and useless eye candy, they are not actually *producing* anything. And without a tangible good for consumers to beg, barter, or steal, not only our E-conomy but also our economy stagnate. Think of the innumerable hours wasted on writing screen-savers. Where are the goods that come of that? Everything is just bits; nothing is tangible. If you're not writing Good Software, your effort has been lost to all of mankind, because you've made *nothing*.
Hired: Is that why you created the the GPL?
Dawson: Yes, that's *exactly* why I created the Good-Software Permanent Licence. The GPL is a way to use copyright law to make absolutely sure that the next bit of oh, I don't know, maybe manufacturing software, for example, can't ever be turned into something non-Good like a screen-saver. You really should go read about the GPL on our website, but what it amounts to is that Good Software can never be subverted into non-Good Software. That way any fixes or changes won't be lost forever to the business community that created the Good Software in the first place. By making sure that all effort on Good Software produces more Good Software, we as a people, a nation, an entire planet all benefit as commerce and trade continue to grow.
Hired: Do you feel that the Good Software Group is neglected when the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal mentions E-commerce but doesn't talk about how important Good Software and the GSG in particular have been to it?
Dawson: I don't care for the word "E-commerce", and you've put your finger on exactly why. It disrespects how important we are. Don't you realize that without Good Software, the E-conomy would be nowhere? It's the very foundation of the entire system! Oh, there isn't always a lot of our stuff there, but we were the guiding light behind it all. That's why I insist upon the term "Good/E-commerce" instead. However, if you really find that difficult, I shall permit you to use the term "E/Good-Commerce" in my presence as a tolerable but not a preferable alternative. The reason I don't care for it as much is that you've placed the Good part too far back, even though I really started it all. At least you give the GSG some credit that way, though.
Hired: I'm sorry -- I'll try to more careful from now on. I'd like to thank you for this interview. I'm sure that this will clarify for our readers your role in the goodware movement--
Dawson: Stop right there! I am not now nor have I ever been a member of the so-called "goodware" movement. I am the founding father of "Good Software" movement, which is completely different. "Goodware" is the despicable term used by a sham libertarian outfit who's trying to reach out to the not-for-profit community. When they say "goodware", they just mean software that's not bad. Can you believe it? Do you realize that they actually support letting people take what was originally Good Software and convert it into something that will never be used for one single good or service? That no longer will money change hands? Why, if everyone did that, our whole country would fall apart! That's not Good Software, and I shall have nothing to do with them. Fortunately, the GPL prohibits them from doing that with GPL'd software, which is why I strongly advocate slapping the GPL on every bit of software you can. It's the only way to keep those gun-toting libertarians off our backs and to keep our nation's E-conomy strong!
Hired: You know, Gilbert, if you were to legally change your name to add a second middle name like "Outspoken", then your initials would be a lot more meaningful for mail. Not only could you get mail sent to "good@gsg.com", but you could make your login a trademark to protect your unique use of the term "GOOD SOFTWARE".
Dawson: That's an intriguing idea -- it would certainly help me in my current legal battles with those pesky lawyers which the liberatian goodware people keep throwing up at me when I tell them they can't say "goodware" because I have prior art in using my own personal standard definition of "good".
But I'd really have to keep the old mail alias. For some reason, folks tend to put more weight into my writings under the current login. And it makes me feel good--er, I mean, important.
Maybe we should rebaptize RMS to Andrew Steven Stallman.
Hired: Tom, how are you today?
Tom: Why don't you #$%^ off, you #$%^ing piece of **&#?
Hired: Okay, well, uhm, can you tell me about your latest book?
Tom: Why don't you go to #$%^ing Amazon and buy it like everyone else, you #$%^ing @##hole.
Hired: Tom, why are you such a prick?
Tom: Ever met my wife?
but is this a joke?
Free Software Foundation => Good Software Group
FSF => GSG
Although I am a fan of progression, this is too much. Can someone please clear this up.
Great minds think alike. But you already knew that, didn't you.
My native language is not English, but I have never had any difficulty understandinging that Free Software was about Freedom. And I also understand why the Free Software movement is different from the Open Soure movement (RMS likes to talk about Freedom first, ESR likes to talk about openess first), they are mostly the same (as RMS has pointed out more than once) but differ on the underlying principles. Why does this guy have such a problem with this? Is this really so difficult for Americans/English speakers?
And why should I care?
This guy sounds pretty disturbed.
Tom,
It's one of those cases where you've over-used the word 'good' into nonsense, to the point that I don't even know what you have to sell or offer.
And now, because of your arrogance, I can't even bring myself to type in the URL for your site.
Drop the arrogance and stupidity. Nobody really cares about your weird notions of the word 'good' and how it does or doesn't relate to e-commerce.
Go ahead, try and retrain the world, you have just enough arrogance to try it, but your stupidity combined with that arrogance will be your undoing. All for the better 'good' I suppose.
Such a pity to see sharp wit and talent wasted on such lunacy.
For Christ's sake, Tom, don't you have anything *better* to do? I can't fucking believe this. Thank you. Thank you very much. Now the mainstream press will have that much less of a reason to call us a bunch of infighting pricks. I wonder if you really just want to take the rest of us down with with you.
Tom Christiansen is a Perl deity with an ascerbic tongue and little patience for morons.
That said, I think he loses major credit points for this piece of pointless drivel.
Oops, lost my cookie.
grinderDoesn't slashdot have better things to do with it's time then to publish every single childish flame? Just because someone moderately well know writes doesn't mean you have to publish it. First the rasterman thing, now this. Is Rob purposely trying to make the free software movement look like a bunch of immature 11-year-olds?
I for one thought it was Good satire. Thanks for providing balance to the force, Tom.
I think we all know that RMS and Tom have had their extreme differences (particularly on Usenet). I think this is just Tom's immature way of poking fun at RMS for his beliefs.
I don't think it's appropriate to make fun of someone else's beliefs if they are well-founded. You can debate those beliefs, but just making fun of them because you don't agree with them simply shows your immaturity.
[forgot my password]
> I think someone annoyed Tom once too much
Who?
Really, I don' know...
:-)
Slashdot used to be better but is now getting diluted by all kinds of crap, including this dumb, pointless satire. I am finding it harder to recommend slashdot as much as I used to. Time to look out for a better news/discussion site.
I'm actually surprised that you couldn't come up with a better handle. Use your imagination, MJP.
That is much more funny (and accurate) than the original.
This isn't 'balance.' The world is very anti-RMS centric right now. Tom wrote a stupid article insulting RMS with no useful information. That ain't balance.
Have you ever read the docs on the FSF web site? RMS is really good at giving people impressions about his personality not by how he acts, but how people like ESR and Tom say he acts. I don't think RMS expects or wants everyone to agree with him. He just sees a lot of new Linux users coming in, and would like them to at least know and understand his views. Nowadays, very few new users know what he's about (at best having heard of him through a few of ESR's smears).
He also doesn't care for personal credit; he wants credit to go to GNU. A large chunk of the reason new users don't know what GNU is, but know the history of the kernel, is because they know the name is Linux, and assume the kernel is the OS. RMS wants the name GNU/Linux to spread his views, not his personal glory.
You can tell how ticklish this nerve is by how viciously and energetically the RMS supporters are attacking Tom and his little essay. I say, way to go, Tom, and all you free-natics need to lighten up. Y'know, if you keep bottling up all that hot air, it will emerge in the form of flaming flatulence.
>he promotes free software (not himself, as many believe)
you don't call that whole gnu/linux crap promoting just stallman himself? who are you kidding?
> One of his explicit goals is to rid the world not only of proprietary software, but also free
> software that is not GPL'd.
Yep, and that does seem disturbing from a programmer's point of view. However, to understand why he wants to do that, I think you have to realize he is more interested in the freedom of _users_ than the freedom of programmers. (after all, the former constitute a much larger group)
Thus he has said things similar to "The X Window system was not free software for the majority of its users, although it was based on freely available code". (referring to the fact that when proprietary Unix systems were the majority, most people were using binary-only X software from their vendor)
> This "satire" ... failed to make any point
It seems like it made a lot of points. The word
"free" as a problem. And not being able to laugh
at yourself.
The man pages that come with Perl are good, but are absolutely useless for someone who is trying to learn the language. I think Stallman wanted some good documentation for beginners, and what he was talking about was a free replacement for the _O'Reilly_ books.
> Instead of attacking software, Tom attacks people. This is the difference. Instead of composing a well-researched criticism of the licenses that offend him, or of Richard's software
:-)). Who couldnt?
which isn't technically suited for its use, or even the foundation's principles which he can't appreciate, he parodies a person and his character.
I didnt read anything their that sounded like
there was a problem with the software. It just
sounded like he was mad about the style and words
that they used.
Ill bet even Tom likes GNU software (well, besides GNU/Perl!
When I buy a game, I buy it for how sexy it runs
on my computer, not for what words the tv
adds use to describe it.
I dont think people should get mad at words.
They dont mean much. Its the program that counts.
A little extremism now and then can inspire others to make similar points more effectively to a broader audience. RMS is a good spokesperson for within the Free Software community - and to people who are used to considering statements on their merit, not their presentation - but not a very good one for the rest of the world. ESR and the OSI have done a lot to shift an existing (business) community's direction towards using FS/OSS, but not to bring people into a different community in the sense of a different set of values and goals.
So the missing bridge is a good spokesperson who can appeal to people who aren't in the FS community and bring them IN.
And it's certainly true that the values which are rampant in the US are a lot less entrenched elsewhere in the world. Americans sometimes forget this because they have a hard time finding the rest of the world on a #(&$#@ map. Correction: make that SOME Americans.
nuff said.
Have you visited the Free Software Foundation's website? It explains everything. You should visit it right away if you haven't already. The answers are all there.
What an idiot.
1) Do you believe Tom C. is reading the comments on /., you are deluded. So your rant does nothing but add to ....(see #2)
2) posts like yours help matters exactly how? Show that you sir/maam are a hyprocrite?
> Have you visited the Free Software Foundation's website? It explains everything. You should visit it right away if you haven't already. The answers are all there.
Isn't that exactly what the satire is poking fun at? The only way to know what a simple word means is to read a long webpage! That's silly.
Sure, RMS has insulted a lot of people. So have a lot of the very talented people who don't receive the kind of bashing RMS gets by those who most understand his contribution to society. No, he gets his bashing because of his actions. His clearly well thought out campaign to use deceitful propaganda and his own version of Bill Gate's "embrace and extend" techniques to drive replace all software with that which is enslaved to his GPL, including fundamentally more free software like that Tom C. has devoted much of his life to.
The issues are much more serious than the personalities and I'm very sure Tom C. and RMS are both well aware of that.
Gee, how can anyone sell something that anybody can get? That would be like trying to sell bottled water or something.
As for respecting Stallman, I don't like the GPL, I don't use Emacs, I doubt any piece of my software that I USE is written by Stallman (others in GNU, or who use the GPL yes)
You doubtless use much software that, at some point in its development, was compiled using gcc. Even egcs-based gcc was bootstrapped using the old gcc. Therefore, you use softare that, while perhaps not containing Stallman code, undoubtedly contains the product of something Stallman helped to write.
(Furthermore if you've read Ken Thompson's essay on trust, you know there's reason to believe that there may even be binary traces of Stallman's code left in modern egcs-compiled binaries.)
>religon (shudder)
Get over yourself.
So you discovered that there are some lunatics that follow RMS around. I suspect that there are also lunatics following ESR around (in fact, I've seen them in this forum :-) ) This doesn't imply, as many lunatics on both 'sides' are quick to claim, that either RMS or ESR are lunatics, facists, corporate shills, etc, etc, etc. Followers are always more obnoxious than leaders. :-)
Daniel
Your point is so dull that it probably can't be shown wrong precisely, but I'll try anyway, based on assumptions of what the point of your point is.
The GPL certainly does restrict the use of software the way the GoodPL does. Copyright law grants both licensors exclusive proprietary rights in dealings of their proprietary works. Both copyright owners license selected rights only to those who accept the terms of the license. Both licenses do not permit certain uses of the work. GPL (and LGPL) does NOT let one USE the software in combination with differently-licensed software at the source-code level. One may not compile a GPL function and a non-GPL function and link them into a new program.
When RMS talks about "free software", he isn't talking about the freedom of the programmer to do what he wants with the software. He means that the software itself -- and to RMS, the software is the source -- is free. Hence, "free software" (and not "software to be used freely"). If the software is locked up where no one else can access it, then the software is not free, it is "enslaved". The only way for the software to have freedom is to ensure that no one can ever lock it up where no one can see or work with it.
This is a definition of "free software" that I happen to agree with, and I have no problem with saying that software under other licenses (e.g., BSD) is not as free as GPL'ed software.
That this definition doesn't agree with what others think is a different issue, and the issue that Christensen was trying to address. But accusing RMS of deceit or lying, as Christensen has done, is going way too far. RMS has every right to whatever ideology he chooses, and FWIW, he does spell out exactly what he means in the GNU Manifesto and the GPL.
You don't understand the older programming culture. This is in no way about M$. Many in the programming world have despised the GPL and its shady pitchman and slogan-gulping followers since its beginnings in the '80s. This is an argument about two things: 1) The emotional one: the deceptive rhetoric, slogans, and other propaganda of one side against the supposed simple-minded RMS bashing of the other side. 2) The righteousness (fairness or efficiency) of the license, particularly the freedom granted either to the software (and its decendents) or to the programmer (and its employer).
BTW: I found your post mostly unreadable and I read little of it. Please keep it simple or at least try to organize what you have to say.
Actually, Tom has not only read comments on /., but he has responded to them on exactly the subject that his essay is now addressing. In fact, I'm certain that his earlier discussion on the /. comments here is what inspired him to write this latest essay.
Funny, these sorts of attacks on the FSF - and Stallman in particular - seem to come from folks who are on the O'Reilly payroll. (exempting Larry Wall of course - he doesn't seem to go for this type of silliness).
What? Most religions make me shudder too. And to the point, certain religious works are rather singular within human literature in their utter lack of humor.
From http://www.asque.com/abcsoftware/eliza _j.htm:
Eliza J: Set yourself down. Comfortable? Hi, I'm Eliza J.
Guest: What do you think of Christiansen's piece on the GPL?
Eliza J: Have you asked such questions before?
Guest: Well, there was that one thread where TC was trolling, saying he wanted to make a BSD/Linux. What do you think?
Eliza J: What answer would please you the most?
Guest: I'm not following you here...
Eliza J: Are you here because you're not following I/me here?
Guest: Touche! So is RMS an ass for talking about GNU/Linux, or is TC an ass for exacerbating the situation?
Eliza J: Why don't you just come out and say what you mean?
Guest: Because posts with excessive swearing get moderated down.
Eliza J: Does that reason explain anything else?
Guest: Hmmmm...so you're saying I should fork NetBSD into a proprietary OS?
Eliza J: Perhaps you would like to be saying you should fork NetBSD into a proprietary OS...
Guest: Ah yes. But only if we mumble dogface to the banana patch. Wednesday?
Eliza J: I understand. Go on...
Guest: Holy shit! Out of this entire conversation, that's the only line that you can make sense of. I'm out of here.
Eliza J: Do you enjoy being out of here?
Guest: YES!
Eliza J: Are you sure?
Guest: GOODBYE!
Eliza J: I'm really glad we had this talk. Let's talk again soon.
It's a personal decision, people. No one is forcing anything on anyone.
>RMS holds that non-open-source code is immoral, and he's using a legal means to make as much of it illegal as possible.
I have never trusted anyone who tried to make something illegal just because they considered it immoral. Hasn't the world seen enough misery from this kind of thing?
Perhaps that's why I don't trust RMS to be a spokesman for us.
This hits the nail right on the head. I'm a fairly recent joiner to the open source community, and one of the first things I found out was how much RMS had contributed to the open source movement. So keep in mind that I wanted to like RMS.
Except then I went to the GNU home page, and I found everywhere declarations that they wouldn't use GIFs due to patent problems. Is UNISYS being a (pardon my French) an ultradick about its supposed rights to LZW? Yes. Does that unfairly penalize developers? Yes. Does that pose any problem for end-users, such that refusing to use GIF on your Web page is anything but an empty gesture? No. (These declarations have now been apparently cut back to just the pages where the declaration is relevant, such as the GNU art pages.)
People have been claiming that Christiansen's satire was unfair and inaccurate, because it doesn't accurately represent Stallman's views. (Something tells me that these people may have missed the definition of satire in English class.) But I found the satire accurate, in that it accurately portrayed the way Stallman comes across: intolerant of other viewpoints, no matter what common ground they may actually share.
Larry puts up with Tom because he's tolerant and understanding.
>While I find the right-wing Christian practices of forcing morals on others to be repugnant, I support the GPL. I don't agree that GPL'ing my
>software is about "forcing moral behavior on others". It's simply that I want to ensure that everyone can benefit from improvements that were made to my original code.
Other people/s improvements don/t hurt your code. You are doing just want you said you don/t like: making other people/s moral choices for them.
A real Christian never deprive/s a man his ability to choose. Without choice, we aren/t moral creatures, just robots.
You have enforced your morals on other/s by law, just because you disagree with them, even though what they wan/t to do doesn/t hurt you at all! That/s immoral whether you/re a Christian or not.
Actually, every faction of the OSS movement seems to have its "religious extremists", even the ones that are supposedly pushing compromise and understanding. IMHO, of course. The FSF people are just the most visible.
That shit was FUNNY!
You people are too anal.
Thank you Tom.
Who is this guy, and where does he get off by jamming on free software? Is he some big microsfot stockholder? Is he set to make a lot of dow by making fun of free software?
I'll tell you what happens without free software. Piracy! Without free software, we'd all just have to steal more. I don't say this because I want to, but students just cant buy everything. And with more piracy, companies go out of business, and then there wont be any games at all!
Those who are not for us are against us. Why is tom c against free software? His letter would make a lot more sense if we knew that.
> Please do not put ESR and TC in the same category. ESR has a sense of humor
I've never read anything by ESR that was at all as funny as what TC wrote. Where can I find these humorous articles by ESR? And does TC have other letters as funny as this one? Where could I find those?
If and when a GPL alternative to your software comes along, why on earth would your customer choose to go with your proprietary version?
Well, where I work the bulk of our code is proprietary/classified. Were I to use the GPL alternative, FSF's lawyers could sue my company to force them to open up all the code of the application that used that one little GPL'd code portion. Alot of management around here would consider that a major drawback to GPL'd code.
Dale Pennington
Sure it's a parody of RMS, but I think it's more subtle than that. This is what Bill Gates (WHG) would sound like if he spoke like RMS. I don't know, is it lack of maturity, sex deprivation, or way to many hours in front of the computer that he pushes GNU (as opposed to RMS) because he wants the issue of freedom to be sorted out. If there is anyone out their who is not a matter of what is practical. Both sides present elements of the ideal & practical & need to be sorted out. If there is anyone out their who is not a matter of what is practical. Both sides present elements of the discussions being clouded with political crap & a bunch of opinions being presented by people who like it. Software sellers want to divide the users and conquer them, making each user agree not to share with others.
GNU will be left to someone who wants to know how to get open source movement is facing a lot of issues right now. The main one, which is at the heart of the problem in this discussion is how to make any point, except that Tom has a problem with RMS.
GNU will be available as system programming languages. We will try to support the air plant with a head tax and chuck the masks.
While not everyone can agree/disagree on the stance that RMS has taken, it is highly visible to the outside world and generates much ill will. Even I myself, a non-coder with no personal interest in the matter, have been personally attacked with dirty words by both ESR and Tom while trying to write them about these issue, showing that the thing has gone much farther than the uninterested ideas discussion. I don't understand what Tom has a problem with RMS.
While not everyone can agree/disagree on the stance that RMS has taken, I have to look at the heart of the ideal & practical & need to be the most detrimental issue in free software politics
these days. It is not an ELIZA script, please post some comments with apparent intelligence in them. Thankyou.
- Mark V. Shaney
(Tom Christiansen that is)
Your argument is as absurd as claiming that restaurants that require people to wear ties are "enforcing their morals on others, and depriving others of their moral choice". Hey, that's the rule. Nobody's forcing you to eat at that restaurant. And I'm not forcing anyone to give up their morals. If the license my software uses is compatible with their morals, they can modify it. If it's not, then they can't. They don't have to live by my morals if they don't want to; it's THEIR choice.
And don't pull that "real Christian" crap on me, either. Christians can and do attempt to force their morals on others through law. It's yet another convenient case of "Christian does bad thing X" -> "Oh, they're not a real Christian". You define "real Christian" to be "one who can do no wrong", and conveniently lose sight of the fact that under that definition, no "real Christians" exist. It's just the old No True Scotsman fallacy.
By your same argument, anybody who refers someone to a FAQ is just a religious groupie.
Apparently this all started at http://x21.deja.com/=dnc/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=4 96779777&CONTEXT=931298522.1181352007&hi tnum=6
which is message id 377e2904@cs.colorado.edu if
the results expire in the cache. It's very hard to read.
If someone has an english translation to Tom's
posting, please share.
Thanks for your feedback Dave. It is appreciated.
Defining terms is one thing. Defining commonly used terms in ways completely different to those ways is another matter.
Stallman is too full of himself to see that his way is used only by him and people who have heard him.
The whole rest of the world uses free software to mean software you don't pay for. Stallman needs to admit this and use words that won't lie by omission.
>>GPL (and LGPL) does NOT let one USE the software in combination with differently-licensed software at the source-code level. Onemay not compile a GPL function and a non-GPL function and link them into a new program
FALSE!!!!
You certainly can. You can even distribute it GPL, or not distribute it, and hide the source from everyone. How else did BSD code get into the linux kernel ???
What you can't do is hide the source and distribute binaries. But you knew that.
-Dave turner, AC of convinience
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You claim Stallman merely offers people a choice. That's not completely true. He believes that the best world is where no one has any intellectual property rights at all. He would like to see all software under the GPL. He doesn't want to see any proprietary software at all. He ignores it's importance.
Personally I cant wait for the first GPL'd Steven King novel or Madona song.
His stand on IP is crazy, and when people point out anything negative about him, his followers explode. You guys are so predictable. jwz was right.
No kidding, and Tom C. as I understand it didn't even write that much of perl. He wrote parts of books, but he was doing that to make money, nothing more, nothing less. Before he starts whining about RMS' views, he should write his own compilier and full-featured editor. I have a uniform distaste for ESR and Christiansen. Neither of them really has done much significant coding, yet they are revered as big-shot leaders. I propose that we ignore Tom C. from now on. Hopefully CmdrTaco will not post any more of his drivel.
Since when does someone have to write a compiler in order to criticise the rhetoric of someone who has?
You might have a point if he were criticising rms' programming, but I didn't read that there.
Do you need to be a doctor to criticise how a doctor plays golf? That's silly.
Tom is a language maven. It's his field. He's criticizing language use. This has nothing to do with how many compilers he's written.
How much Stallman code is really left in egcs or the current version of emacs? Isn't it true that there's very little there? I've heard from Cygnus etc people that they really try hard to rip out Stallman's code, because it's so terrible.
That means all he's left with is this controversial GPL as his legacy. I'm not sure that I'd want to be remembered for something that makes laws about what other people can do with their own code.
The "books" that Tom wrote were almost all manpages originally. It's just later that ORA bound them up and printed them. I can't believe you're claiming that Tom wrote manpages to make money with, rather than to help people with.
What have you done for the free/good-software world lately, anyway?
then they should not have used gcc.
Duh.
Cygnus was created to provided support
and improvements for free software. It
not like they we somehow coerced into
doing what they do.
Plus, if people are writing their own
code, who is forcing them to use the GPL?
If you don't like it for your own code,
use something else! If it's not your code
either don't help, or accept the license
that the original author gave it. Is this
really difficult to understand? (or was this
just a troll.)
Hmm. I've never but been impressed
by the GNU documentation. This is
probably because I am used to the
MS SDK docs, which are, simply, *awful*.
The GNU docs are by comparison very
much better.
On the other hand, I have never been
anything but frustrated with the perl
manpages. Ok, maybe I should not be
trying to learn perl from that, but
I could picture learning unix system
programming from the GNU libc docs.
You are pretty bitter, it seems.
And what is it you expect Larry to do, revoke Tom's license to program perl? Forbid him from speaking? This is dumbest thing I've read on this board yet.
- RMS creates free software utilities for everyone.
;)
- RMS can't make any money with his lame 'alternative' methods.
- Now RMS has to beg Tom Christiansen for a free software manual because he can't afford one
Write free software because you enjoy it. Write proprietary software because you have a brilliant idea and want to make some money. And once you've made your fortune, you can kick back and write more free software because you enjoy it.
- S
The problem with freedom is - it applies to everyone, and means that everyone has rights to do what they wish. RMS, right or wrong, good or bad, whilst proclaiming absolute freedom isn't actually allowing it where his work is concerned. If he is to be successful politically, he needs to practice what he preaches, or at least appear to; otherwise he leaves himself open - and fairly so - to satires such as this.
As far as hollow dreams and libertarians go, I'm inclined to agree with you - but better a hollow dream than the hollow reality that communism turned out to be. RMS' ideas won't work for the same reason communism didn't - man's best technological efforts are spurred by money or competition (war), not by waiting for a genius or two to have the spirit move them. Couple that with the fact RMS uses the very system he decries to impose restrictions on his 'free' products, and you are bound to get a cynical view or two.
One gets the impression you think The Right Thing is pushing a political agenda of a tiny minority - a minority that apparently doesn't wholeheartedly endorse the ideas anyway. The Right Thing in a free society is usually the universal rights of that society as a whole to make up its own mind. RMS is free to give away his work - if that is what he truly wants, he would simply do it. He goes further, however - so having committed himself to the political arena he will have to live with its rules of conduct.
I'm interested as to why RMS abrasively pushing his agenda is acceptable to you, but Tom's similar action is 'mean-spirited' - other of course than the purely subjective.
then don't use their code. Simple.
I know that RMS, Linus and probably Tom Christiansen are good programmers. But that doesn't make them good Free or Open Software advocates. (Linus doesn't try to be an advocate, but that is not my point)
I think that attacks like this will seriously hurt Free or Open Software. RMS is said to be political, I think not (at least not the way I think about politics).
A democratic politician is willing to compromise with others that have different views. Otherwise we would be having much more wars and disbutes in the world. Both RMS and now Tom Christiansen has shown that they aren't good advocates for Free Software (or Open Source Software).
ESR maybe is better, but he has shown some very bad advocacy. Especially his rage on Bruce Perens was bad (and that Apple thing).
Conclusion: Programmers shouldn't be Free (or Open Source) Software advocates.
So we need someone better. I sure like Nicholas Petreley (from Linux World), but does he understand the inner workings of Free (Open Source) Software?
Sorry for the AC, I'm not on my normal computer.
Q: How many FSFers does it take to define `free'?
A: THAT'S NOT FUNNY!
Haha!
(Am I the only one to have picked up this joke?)
---
I've observed this principle in everything from technical discussions to religious debates. The people who do all of the yelling are either ignorant and hope noise covers their lack of understanding, or they are hypocritical and trying to deflect attention from their own problems.
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?) the Internet lets these people spout off to thousands of people as opposed to the 2 or 3 who happened to be stuck next to them. The result is that people decide that the "gnashing of teeth" is normal behavior for the group, when in reality the majority of people are quite calm and normal. They just don't speak up that often.
The Free Software movement has just as many screaming groupies as any other mildly interesting organization. Just ignore them.
Just go do a DejaNews search on Tom C.'s rantings in the gnu.misc.discuss group and elsewhere. He's definitely got a huge chip on his shoulder about RMS, GNU, and the GPL. I can't believe that a guy as tolerant and understanding of other people as Larry Wall puts up with Tom as a perl community leader.
Posted by _DogShu_:
What was that? That obviously wasn't supposed to be funny, or maybe I've just lost my sense of humor.
Its seems to me that the only people who will read that are people who will get upset about it.
If you don't know or care about FSF or Gnu or GPL, you will read about 3 sentences of this "interview" and say WTF is this sh*t? What is this "article" supposed to be about? This guy is asking to get flamed.
Posted by Neothi:
I never realized how divided the camps on Free Software are. I mean I always realized that there existed a gap, but the flames are amazing. Then of course there are those who write comments and have no clue what there are talking about. Maybe I am one of them.
And no I don't have anything constructive to say.
Posted by Largo_3:
Its posts like these that make slashdot worth visiting. He is right, I feel the Open Source movement, Linux, and its tech patrons in general have started to become what they hate, zealots of the media, Originally we are techs had a common bound in the tech world where being a tech and using Unix was enough. Differences we're not rivals. When Linux came out in the early 90s it turned into a Tech vs Tech (Unix vs M$) Us against Them, etc mentallity.
Now with Linux becomming more mainstream, more people with different views will enter the picture, and the once common ground we shared as techs is littered with political, social, and technical in-fighting. No longer enough to be united by a common platform(Unix), more so - it is no longer enough to be united by even a common OS(Linux), we have distribution in-fighting for the same damn kernel!
Techs want to war with themselves, fine - but like any great society, entropy enters into the picture, and its going to be a shame to watch the great roman empire of Linux topple from barbarians from Seattle while we bicker over stupid crap such as the RMS, ERS, and the GPL., we have more recursive abv.'s then we do sense.
The Linux and in general the hi-tech community has grown in the past decade, its no longer a small group of people, these are not the days of KIBO anymore. If you seek attention in this enviroment, the best way is to attack someone famous., its a old and easy way to make yourself known. we don't need this crap, tho I do sympathize as lets face it, RMS is a old ego-maniacal windbag that even I can barely stand.
Rodney Caston
You doubtless use much software that, at some point in its development, was compiled on Intel hardware.
So let's slap Intel Inside logos on it all!
This is, in fact, the true spirit of Open Source: one person plants a seed, and a thousand others join in, and make the work be much larger and more complete than it originally was.
Of course, in this case, those participating didn't actually realize what they were helping to build, which was the clever twist that Tom brought to the party. Crowd control as performance art, I love it!
Yes. Then maybe we'll be embarrassed enough to stop behaving like a bunch of immature 11-year-olds.
Disclaimer: I don't speak for Rob, of course.
--
--
=8^
Tom obviously has never taken a class on critical thinking or philosophy (both in the same depending on where you go), because he would know that the quickest way to lose an argument among your peers is to take stabs at them.
And as much as I imagine tom would probably hate to admit it, RMS is his peer.
The last few weeks the only thing that I have seen out of this man (in newsgroups and here on slashdot), are jabs against those who promote the GPL, whether or not it be hostile in nature.
The fact that he responds with such furor over the GPL convinces me to the fact that he is just as zealotrous about other licences (BSD is what he seems to favor) as RMS is.
In other words, the article could be applied just as well to him as it could to RMS. He's interested in promoting his views over the views of others, which is his clear intent in the writing of this utter crap.
Personally, I think that both GPL and BSD are good, solid licenses. Why? Because it's not my place to say what another author can slap on to protect his code. Personally, I'd use GPL, but that's my choice.
So here's some friendly advice Tom: no matter how much of a license bigot (which I am forced to assume by your prose) you are, you should take some tips from Thomas Payne and the Linux Advocacy HOWTO.
-Erik-
This has been seen as a grab for recognition, much to the refrain of
The reason this type of statement is so grating to some people is that it actually gives recognition to a specific party. Previously, we recognized Linus, the creator, and no-one else. People were given recognition through their contributions, individually, and not with a big media circus. RMS would like to change this. He wants to give much recognition to GNU, but only to GNU. You might say that adding GNU to the name does no harm, but in fact it seperates GNU from the rest of the coders. The other coders receive normal credit while GNU recieves a whole lot of credit. Is this jealosy? Yup! But one easy way to piss people off is to make demands that don't distribute income evenly (keep in mind the noosphere, wherein recognition is property, so lots of recognition is equivalent to being wealthy).
In summary, the problem with GNU/Linux is that the name ignores all those non-GNU coders who have contributed to the distributions. What about RedHat/Linux, or YDL/Linux? Or should we call it RedHat/LinuxPPC/YDL/GNU/Linux to give fair credit? Perhaps we should just simplify everything and call it Linux.
As to good old politics, I think RMS is politiking right now. He wants his name (or at least GNU's name) all over everything. He wants visitors to his webpage (to read the license). He wants to be in the lime-light.
However, I would not take the stance that GNU is being attacked because it is communist-like. Far from it. The entire Linux community is communist-like. We all share our goods! So would it make sense for one coder to accuse or shun another for the reason that the accused is a coder??? Nope. RMS/GNU is being attacked for reasons I discussed previously.
-B
So the tranformation of "RMS" to "GOD" is a direct attack at the FSF? Care to explain? There's much more to Tom's argument than his displeasure with the licenses people use, and it shows.
I disagree that Richard Stallman is the only spokesperson for the FSF; I've been more influenced by the people who have followed his writings than his actions themselves. These are its spokespeople. Why? Because there are more of these people than Richards, and they're more visible. They also write a lot of good software.
Many people root for the FSF, Richard Stallman, and the software covered by his licenses, and this seems to offend Tom. I could respect a summary of his feelings towards the proper definition of "free" or how "free" software should be developed and used. This piece is a parody of style and manner, not of merit. The only lesson you teach by making fun of the students is that when you can't think of anything better, start with the personal attacks.
Richard Stallman might bore or offend you with his vocalization of his beliefs about free software. Some people fight for what they believe in, and often good things come from it. I think I can thank Richard Stallman for what he's given to the community, under a license perfectly acceptable to me for all the things I'd wish to do with the software.
Tom Christiansen has also given work to the community. Not being a perl-head, my appreciation of his efforts are constrained mostly to watching him protect his name on Slashdot. Tom also believes very much in what he does and isn't afriad to tell the world what he thinks.
The difference in the application of these beliefs. Richard Stallman attacks non-free software. His goal seems to be the demise of proprietary software and the widespread use of software you can share with your neighbor. I'm all for this goal, and I'm sure even Tom would prefer this future over many possible others (I'll leave his definition of "free" for another time).
Instead of attacking software, Tom attacks people. This is the difference. Instead of composing a well-researched criticism of the licenses that offend him, or of Richard's software which isn't technically suited for its use, or even the foundation's principles which he can't appreciate, he parodies a person and his character.
Tom, you're no Larry Wall.
>I have never trusted anyone who tried to make something illegal just because they considered it immoral.
Really? I quite like the idea of murder being illegal.
-dan
And you're really contributing to the level of respect people would have for the "us" whoever the hell "us" is supposed to be. Who are you ?? He can spend his time however he pleases, and are you seriously suggesting people shouldn't say whatever they feel, how is that advocating freedom ?
The article was funny. RMS does seem awfully self righteous and it's irritating. Re-definition of words is a powerful technique (1984) and is also my main problem with the FSF. Parody is just what's needed.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Someone needs the code, someone pays you to write it. This is how the majority of programming jobs works.
For a minority of programming jobs, the need is distributed on a large number of people, so no single one can pay you. Read the other replies for ideas for how make money on these situations.
Also, there just might be situations where the current model of proprietary code works best. Time will tell.
You are absolutely correct. Which makes TC's current campaign even more of an overreaction.
Please do not put ESR and TC in the same category. ESR has a sense of humor, an even better sense of the community, and are able to disagree in a civil manner. Sure, sometimes ESR says things that he probably wouldn't have said a day later, but does never do that?
Sigh.
Tom Christiansen got insulted when Stallman asked for a free replacement for Toms gratis Perl documentation for use in GNU.
Result: TC is trying by all means to rewrite history, so the whole "free software" thing is a devious plot invented by RMS to decieve people. He has tried various strawmans, used insults, and now he is trying satire. Not to mention his _other_ projects to "get even" on RMS, such as creating a GNU free BSD/Linux.
It doesn't change the fact that the free software community is both older than the GNU project, and much larger includes people who doesn't even consider GNU to be "real" free software, since the GPL contains too many restrictions.
TC is re-implementing the classic Unix command set in pure Perl. See http://language.perl.com/ppt/
sheesh,
cbd.
1) The GPL forbids restrictions on the software recipient's right to copy modify, and redistribute the software.
2) RMS says he does not oppose commercial distribution of software.
So how exactly am I supposed to write a piece of software for economic gain? If somebody decides
they don't like me, they can redistribute my software for free and kill my income (I'm assuming for the
moment that software income is separate from any support or subscription fees I might charge).
I feel like I'm missing something here.
Basically, RMS is not on your side: he is on the customer's side. He believes it is the customer's right, when obtaining software, to be allowed to modify, redistribute etc, the code.
The whole thing started because RMS, as a customer, found that a piece of software MIT had bought was useless to him because he was unable to modify it to suit his needs. Proprietary software is less useful. I lost count of the number of times I've thought "This job would be so much easier if I had the source to X" (in a previous job where I spent more time with non-free software).
Most of the GNU projects got written with no profit motive whatsoever: they were giving something to the world, which they thought would make the world a better place.
Remember, RMS (a brilliant programmer) does not consider programming to be a great skill: he does not believe programmers have a god-given right to rake in the big salaries they do today. His beliefs are beginning to be proved: Apache rivals IIS, yet is was (mostly) built by people who are not paid to be programmers (although it is not GPLd, that's beside the point).
Have no doubt: when you GPL your software, you *are* gifting it to humanity; but in the long term, you may have no choice. If and when a GPL alternative to your software comes along, why on earth would your customer choose to go with your proprietary version?
--
There are a few ways to make money off of GPL software. Not to rehash opensource.org (which you should take a look at), but:
1. Sell support. Buy my code from me, and I'll come to your rescue if it breaks.
2. Sell enhancements. If you want my code to do XYZ, that's great; I'd be more likely to get to it if I were paid...
3. Sell your brand. Who knows your code better than you do? So, if they want the best version of your code, go to you. Also, if people want code this good for their own projects, they know who to ask.
4. Sell proprietary licensing terms. So you don't want to release source for your driver for my software? Buy my commercial license, which will let you dynamically link to my software without having to reveal source.
There are some ideas. More are available at www.opensource.org.
I agree.. I didn't know who Tom Christiansen is or what he did before I read all of these agitated comments, but to be honest when I first read the interview I had Coke coming back through my nose..
Michiel
Judging by the replies so far, it looks like quite a few people are seeing why this really is funny. (It *had* to take some time for Tom to come up with this.)
;)
:-)
I think most of the people who disagree with RMS mainly disagree with his focus... It seems like it is much more important to him that a) everyone agree with him (and his definition of "free") and b) everyone understand that *he* is responsible the free software movement. (Before anyone flames me, I'm not saying that *is* how he is, just that it's the impression he gives me.)
What I'm quite sure RMS doesn't understand is that most of us really want the same thing he wants. From what I've read of his original reasons for starting the GNU project, RMS wants free and open exchange of ideas, with source code being just one part of that. Publishing source code helps put the "science" back in "computer science", I suppose.
Unlike Tom, I personally believe that the GPL is a Good Thing, since it forces what I consider to be moral behavior on anyone who wants to use code that I've written. Unlike RMS, I don't think that people are evil if they disagree with me, choose not to use my code, and instead use a more restrictive license (including not releasing source at all).
I heard a quote the other day... It went something along the lines of "someone who agrees with me 80% of the time is not my enemy." RMS really needs to understand that many of us are on his side, really, but we get very turned off by the near-religious rhetoric. (Tom might want to think about that a little too...
Now, let's all get back to writing some code.
DarkFire wrote:
>...Remember the GHANDI quote...
Everybody will quote the man, but no one will get his name right.
Gandhi.
Speaking of ridiculous comments: Tom once posted the idea to create BSD/Linux. Considering that all the free BSD's depend on GNU programs (namely GCC), he ought to work on making BSD/BSD first.
Ideology is funny. People who get mired in the finer points of ideology are comic.
I find it odd that the same people who insist that "free" should retain its popular definition of "gratis" refuse to accept that in culture at large, "hacker" means "cracker". Sometimes the most popular standards are the double-kind.
Whatever, there's code to write.
Tom gets greatly annoyed by RMS and the GPL and FSF, and for excellent reason. But perhaps Tom can learn something from his own satire: we need to laugh at ourselves more. RMS and Tom and ESR and everyone else. RMS should read this and laugh, and an equally intelligent satire of Tom should make Tom laugh, too.
... nah, I have work to do today. :)
Hmmmm
# While I did truthfully find this essay amusing, I
# think that RMS deserves much more respect than
# this.
All the more reason to "disrespect" him in this way, then.
As I am sure many others here did, I saw the Weird Al VH1 special the other night, and Coolio was shown complaining about how his song was too serious for Al to lampoon it. The obvious response is: "well, then your song is really the one that most needs to be lampooned."
# He wrote parts of books, but he was doing that to # make money, nothing more, nothing less.
How completely ignorant. Tom has devoted more time and energy to writing and giving away free software and documentation than almost everyone on Slashdot ever will.
# A democratic politician is willing to compromise with others that have
# different views. Otherwise we would be having much more wars and
# disbutes in the world.
What world are you living in?
No, that's not correct. You have two misconceptions. Firstly, that if you produce a derivative of a GPL'd work, that you have to offer it to everyone. That's not true - you can distribute it only within your corporation, and employees of the corporation are bound by their contracts not to distribute it further. Secondly, that the FSF can sue you for violating the GPL on any software. They can only do this if they own the copyright to whatever it is they believe you have used in violation.
Perl, as a scaled development platform, lends well to fast stable development, perfectly suitable to concept prototyping and portablility testing. It's not C/C++. It was never intended to be, if I understand my history correctly. I'm rather disappointed that you choose to slam Perl users/developers as a whole, based on your opinion of a single person involved in it's development and documentation.
Your statement, calling Perl a 'rather incoherent collection of features noone really understands' does quite well to give us an insight into where you fit in the food chain of intelligencia. I'm rather shocked that you go on to call yourself a C coder, when Perl is a far more distilled animal and (I think) far easier to learn and understand. That being said, Perl lends more to the Unix environment learning curve than raw C itself does, in that it provides interfaces to many of the same functions, in a manner that is typically easier for the new user to understand.
Some of you are probably scoffing and mumbling 'Who gives a crap about newbies?', and honestly, if that's your permanent ingrained attitude, I hope you're sterile and live/work in an environment where you can't influence children. The greatest strength of Unix, and likewise Perl as a natively grown (though win32/etc exported) commodity, stimulate and nurture a neverending learning process, which is important to the expansion, evolution, and sanity of our increasingly technologically savvy culture (despite the high Imac sales).
Larry Wall, as the father of Perl, is probably one of my top few dozen revered people, not for the product itself, but for the cultural stimulation he aimed to produce. I can't honestly say I'm heavily involved in Perl politics, be it the development of Perl itself, or furthering it's growth by supplying useful code. I'm really just an end user who hangs out in #perl on Efnet and learns by osmosis. You malign the lack of 'rational discussions', which simply says 'I browse a couple newsgroups', and not much else.
You don't like Tom. Big deal. Little, insignificant me has been at odds with him, too.
The difference between you and I, is that I know when to point at a single person, and not a group as a whole, by association. Society, and further, mankind as a whole would be a lot better if they'd hop off THAT beaten old stump.
Some of the greatest people I know, I've met on my neverending quest for knowledge, even if it's with what you speak of as an apparantly inferior development tool (that you still use).
I'm off my tangent, now. I apologize for any stress/therapy incurred by my tirade. I just thought that needed to be said.
- billn
2) RMS says he does not oppose commercial distribution of software.
So how exactly am I supposed to write a piece of software for economic gain? If somebody decides they don't like me, they can redistribute my software for free and kill my income (I'm assuming for the moment that software income is separate from any support or subscription fees I might charge).
I feel like I'm missing something here.
-- Old Man Kensey
Listen to what RMS says, not how he says it. Leave translating it into more mainstream acceptable speech to other people if they feel inclined to do it. But don't bash RMS for his non-software political views, and use that to score cheap points.
Remember, this is an international movement, and collectivist and leftwing views are much more prevalent outside the United States, so you'll be alienating the rest of the world if you try to make RMS more acceptable to the States.
First, a minor point: RMS has done useful things for the free software movement, such as, I don't know, write a free compiler, EMACS, and provide a rallying point and the planning for a complete, free system. RMS himself points out that he is not a part of the open source movement.
Yes, people get tired of his ranting about GNU/Linux and Free Software. I get tired of it, too. But that doesn't mean it's not important. Don't disregard the message because of the messenger. It's no accident that we find ourselves here with a high quality, free operating system (note, that's an entire system, not just a kernel) to use. RMS didn't write it all. FSF-sponsored projects didn't write it all. But GNU played a large part in making sure it all got written.
As to your last point, Tom is welcome to poke all the fun he wants to. But this is a discussion community, where people discuss things. So everyone is welcome to a reaction, and if that happens to be that Tom is exploring new ways to carry out his vendetta against RMS, well, sorry. As to myself, if Tom's article was humour, well, then I guess I'm just dour.
--
Ian Peters
I don't understand what Tom has against RMS, but I wish he would come right out and say it. This "satire" was merely insulting, rather than clever, and it failed to make any point, except that Tom has a problem with RMS.
Yes, Stallman can be annoying. Yes, he can be stubborn. Yes, sometimes we all wish he'd just shut up. But he's an idealist, he believes in something, and he follows his beliefs. If you look at what RMS has done, you won't find any ulterior motives, or hidden agendas. He believes in free software, he promotes free software (not himself, as many believe), and most of all, he has worked for (and written!) free software.
Please, compare the rude, offensive, selfish nature of this post with the eloquence of RMS's post of several days ago. I think you'll find a world of difference.
Standard disclaimers: I don't work for the FSF or GNU, I have an email address @gnu.org because I write free software. My beliefs are my own, yada yada yada.
--
Ian Peters
Yes, people get tired of his ranting about GNU/Linux and Free Software. I get tired of it, too. But that doesn't mean it's not important. Don't disregard the message because of the messenger.
Oh, we're not disregarding the message because of the messenger....we're disregarding the message because we're tired of being beaten over the head with it.
"What do you mean, invalid parameters? 9000Gigs of RAM and it can't answer a simple question!" -- Earthworm Jim
Here is a quote form the user friendly homepage:
"One of the characteristics of healthy cultures is that they can poke fun at themselves. I guess the hacker culture is in good health, because User Friendly is hilarious. Its irreverence, sophisticated in-jokes and surrealistic edge are a rocket straight out of the Internet's collective unconscious." - Eric S. Raymond, ubergeek
I know the quote is from ESR not RMS but think about it long and hard... It's a joke people...
Jokes are not nesicarily a form of disrespect.
"There is no spoon" - Neo, The Matrix
"SPOOOOOOOOON!" - The Tick, The Tick
I thought it was pretty funny. Does that mean I'm a bad person, or that I simply have a sense of humor in a forum where everyone takes everything way too seriously. Lighten up people, it's only life =).
v2sw7CUPhw5ln6pr5Pck4ma7u7LFw0m6g/l7Di5e6t5Ab6TH.
While I did truthfully find this essay amusing, I think that RMS deserves much more respect than this. I used to be one of the many slashdotters who would criticize RMS as being a radical who held antediluvian beliefs, but I have finally come to the realization that, as abrasive as RMS is, he's almost always right. Even as a pragmatist, I believe that if you choose to ignore the community's freedoms in favor of coming up with a license that best suits the company's needs and no the community's, that the project will not be as successful.
I honestly think that the various open source groups out there may end up hurting us alot more than helping us. The QT license, for instance, is not a great deal better than the old Minix license, if I read it correctly. Remember that the only thing that the Minix license gave us, coupled with AST's unwillingness to add and fix things in Minix, was the necessity to create an entire new OS with linux.
While the various open source proponents may have tried to help our world, I think that in the end they may hurt it. While we may have gained a great number of short-term benefits, such as greater exposure in the press and more respect and recognition (hey, we're even competitors to Microsoft!), I think that, in the long run, we will be hurt. We will be left with many projects that will stagnate from disinterest, and companies like Microsoft saying "See there? We told you open source was bad." We'll also be left with the pieces of dozens of dead projects with incompatible licenses whose work cannot ever be salvaged for code snippets.
Perhaps the best thing that the FSF can do right now is to just wait. I think that only time will tell whether free software or open source will reign supreme. My belief is that all of these incompatibly-licensed projects from various vendors suddenly embracing open source will die within ten years, while GNU's contributions, which were born long before the words "open" and "source" were placed togethor, will still be the cornerstone upon which we place our OSes.
Instead of having empowered the free software community, we have instead empowered a bunch of marketting machines who feel that they can exploit our wealth to expand their own. The most ludicrous example of this is IBM's supposed advocation of open source. Can we please try to remember that IBM is the same company that holds the most software patents in the world?
I think that I should also say that I greatly disapprove of RMS's adoption of Linux as GNU/Linux, not because I don't think that RMS has a right to claim it, but because I think that GNU is more than Linux. As a slashdotter who as maligned you in the past, RMS, I apologize.
Yes, it's exactly like a religion. RMS is their God, and as such he is above criticism, the FSF web page is their Bible, and FSF Evangilists dispense URLs the same way Christian Evangilists dispense Bible chapter references. (e.g. John 1:20).
I can feel Tom's frustration with them, I have read much of their web site, and I agree with alot of it, but there are things there that I find very disturbing, so I can't agree with them 100%. But if you try to state your opinion (even in a non-flamebait manner) you will attract flames. (Ok, there are reasonable people in the GNU camp, but they tend to get drowned out amid the flames)
Looking through the comments, there are a disturbing number of "That's not funny/Why is Tom so mean/How can anyone like RMS" comments, showing that these people do truly seem to lack a sense of humor when it comes to this stuff.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
I think that the point is this:
As some (alarmingly few) in this discussion have noted, the Slashdot community has become increasingly fanatical in its beliefs, as evidenced by the increasing amount of poorly researched, no humour-having, "immature 11 year-old" posts. These inside forces are what threaten to tear free software apart, not whether or not TC likes RMS. A simple personality dispute is one thing, reaching critical mass in religious-like belief is something entirely different...
Looking at the piece without any knowledge of TC and RMS's past, it appears to be a satire of both sides of Open Source/Free Software lampooned at once -- RMS's high horse and ESR's relentless commercial angle. Scylla and Charybdis, all in one, and both sides accused of claiming to be "GOD".
Looked at this way, I find the piece instructive (as good satire should be) -- there are aspects of both that should be avoided. Certainly, we shouldn't alienate the mainstream, but neither should we look to it for salvation. Capitalism, after all, has a long history of sacrificing the long-term for the short. (See Also: pre-WWI radio industry, the early days of the sewing machine industry. Le plus ce change...)
phil
This piece is not even funny. Obviously Christiansen has a much bigger ego problem than he can make RMS'look. Tom, better go back to coding, even if it's your BSD/Linux.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
You're joking, right? Tom Christiansen and a sane voice, i don't think so. In case you're serious: Stallman and the FSF are a main reason that the thing we know as Linux exists in the first place.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
I gotta give Tom credit, but the "real" GPL does not restrict the use of software the way the Good-Software Permanent License does. That's a weak point in the analogy, at least if you assume that a near-100% Free Software world is possible. Which is not as outrageous, IMO, as a 100% "Good" Software world.
Hi Rob,
Could you please make a new category, "christiansen-generated-dribble" or "jealous hatred" or "flamebait" or the like so this can be filtered out?
Erwin
In a slashdot article last week, I posted a question trying to understand the logic of the root philosophies of RMS camp (versus the ESR camp, which I understand).
:).
My question (which basically boiled down to "if I can trade the program I just wrote to a company in exchange for a mini-van, how can you say it has no value?"), resulted in a caustic email from an individual that apparently felt strongly enough to write me and accuse me of first being an idiot and secondly never reading any RMS material.
Note that as an author of an LGPL released package (backburner, see freshmeat.net), this is a pretty silly accusation to make (the never having read the RMS material that is... he may be right about the idiot part
When I pressed him for explanations of the parts of the philosopy that confused me... he kept simply pointing me to the web site.
When I tried to get clarifications on the parts of the logic that escape me, his responses alternated between "if you can't see it, you must be stupid" and "it's on the website, go read it", and "it says what I said it says because I said so".
Plus, the whole exchange was pretty mean spirited.
So anyway, I have experienced exactly what this article is parodying... so like most better parody, I can't decide if it is funny or disturbing...
Please... no email flames already...
Bill Kilgallon
Mathematically impossible requirements are technically not against policy.
Well, I have to think that this little bit of satire has no taste whatsoever, and I don't say that because I support RMS or Tom for that matter.
While not everyone can agree/disagree on the stance that RMS has taken, I have to look at the track record (ie. the accomplishments). If everyone were to say that software is terrible just because the author doesn't agree with their ideals, it would be a very sad day indeed.
From what I can see, the "free" camp and the "open" camp are taking stances akin to a "holy war". The only way to really win a holy war is to completely eliminate the other side. Don't think about doing this!
So, let us put our political stances aside and work to make the best software there is.
I would have to agree with you.
:-)
IMHO, RMS is doing the Linux/GNU/BSD communities a big favor with his FSF propaganda.. sticking his neck out, sometimes obtrusively, where others wouldn't...
I realize it's not by everyones' standards/liking, but you can't please everyone with everything you do...
oh yeah... i didn't agree with everything in this post... the comment about humans being political animals? no. we have a society driven in part by politics which tends to corrupt errr.. create politicians..
------------------------------------------
Reveal your Source, Unleash the Power. (tm)
Especially considering several people (including me) gouged him a couple of times during that discussion...ah well, he deserved it.
Wow. That was a very agile stab in two seemingly opposite directions at once - I'm impressed!
I'd like to see more of these, although I probably shouldn't read them at work (the loud laughter would probably disturb people).
Jesus, Christiansen, grow up already. Stallman may be an annoying monomaniac about software, but software is at least interesting -- you on the other hand are an annoying monomaniac about Stallman, which is just plain childish. Fine, you hate the guy. We got the picture. Grow out of it already.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
What RMS is doing is often not good, and certainly not necessary. One of his explicit goals is to rid the world not only of proprietary software, but also free software that is not GPL'd. He comes right out and says this when he explains why the readline library is GPL'd rather than LGPL'd.
cjs
The world's most portable OS: http://www.netbsd.org.
cjs
The world's most portable OS: http://www.netbsd.org.
As for Darwin, Apple has contributed all sorts of code and fixes back in to the NetBSD tree. So we certainly benefitted from this. What has Linux got from Darwin? Nothing.
cjs
The world's most portable OS: http://www.netbsd.org.
Had you looked at the psalms, written mostly by Gods most favourite person, David. You would see that David is also one of Gods biggest critics. David gets very angry at God.
Humor is deffinatly not absent from Christianty either, though I admit it is hard to find any humor in the Bible - However I have a locally written translation that is very funny, mostly using satire.
---
---
All the comments are religously defending one side or the other with emotional dribble. The open source movement is facing a lot of issues right now. The main one, which is at the heart of the problem in this discussion is how to get open source into the industry. Or put more bluntly, industry wants to know how to make money off the stuff. Sounds like growing pains to me. I have to say though, most of the comments I have read through on this page look like they were generated by some sort of ELIZA CGI script! It is not a matter of what is ideal, but what is practical. Both sides present elements of the ideal & practical & need to be sorted out. If there is anyone out their who is not an ELIZA script, please post some comments with apparent intelligence in them. Thankyou.
I agree w/ you about whatever gets the job done as a methodology. That is the whole goal of applied comp sci. You cannot tell me that you have not found recent behavior as unusual. Not the bickering between GNU about GNU linux or stuff like that. That is growing pains. But situations like the MindCraft test & the ethernet guy, there seems to be more to it. You can't tell me that you believe BillG is doing nothing about Linux/Open Source. Every other "fad" like Java & Windows CE has had action taken against it by Redmond. Do you really believe he is ignoring it? Often, what he has done has been a suttle strategy at first, but later, more of the pieces emerged. It is not just open source, I agree. It is a much bigger "THING". I will refer to it as that. This "THING" is undergoing growing pains, what better way to attack it than where it is weakest? And if he has nothing to do with what I am observing, then what is he doing about it? Any way, I like what you said about licensing also. Any particular reason why Public Domain was #1? Just curious. It was nice to hear from someone not in ELIZA mode. Thankyou for responding to my original post.
Hey, it wasn't Windows CE Bill took action against, it was Palm Pilots/PDAs. windows ce was only part of his solution...sorry about that...
Has anyone else noticed that the whole open source methodology, the FSF, the GNU license, Linux, Apache, etc. has been under a huge attack lately? That may be a dumb question, but I have been reading slashdot for about 2 years now & I have noticed a number of the discussions being clouded with political crap & a bunch of opinions being presented by people who don't have their facts straight-usually because they DIDN'T read the article. If you ask me, I think that this is Bill Gates & every other major commercial software player's way of attacking the open source movement. All of the attacks seem to be at a technical level. We have the guy that invented ethernet call open source a fad & the discussions on slashdot and other sources have become so clouded with criticism, FUD, & pointless discussion that it is almost not even worth reading some of the slashdot posts. A bunch of people have been posting replies now for the last 6-8 months that don't make sense. They are full of directionless emotion without indicating any clear purpose or though behind it. It is my opinion that what we are seeing is Bill & his buddies attack on open source. Open Source people want to see code & action, not mindless, emotional pratal. And that seems to be exactly what Bill & his buddies are giving us. Call me paranoid, but you know Bill is paranoid. Look how he reacted to JAVA & the newtons, palm pilot craze (e.g. Windows CE-he wrote an operating system!!! He takes these things seriously.) Open Source is even more threatening to him than the other two combined. It attacks the very fabric of what Gates & his company stands for. And open source has been producing equal to or superior code in a shorter amount of time than M$ can hope to keep up with. Linus started what, back in 1991 (may have that wrong). If so, that is 8 years--linux is 8 yrs old! How long has Bill been working on Windows? And he still doesn't have it right. Bill has a lot of programming talent & he has had seasoned veterans for a while. Open Source WILL produce superior code in every area of software if it is allowed to continue. A simple comparison between commerical & free software proves that. That is what Bill is afraid of. Not so much of what we have now, but of what we will have in the future. He knows he cannot win by competing. Open source will beat him as time goes by. So he has to do his best-to kill it now. And he is doing it by flooding the tech realm w/ FUD & fighting. A house divided against itself cannot stand. Quit squabbling & keep coding!!! Well that is my 2 cents. Correct me at any point that you wish. I welcome it. I am seeking the truth as you all are. But don't waste my time or anyone else's by posting a piece of thoughless, emotion-filled dribble. Let's find the best solution w/o the dribble & code like their is no tomorrow. Bill knows he can't win-let's wipe him out...Remember the GHANDI quote:
First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.
This comment, while good, is not Good. Well, it's not bad.
Fuck off!! We're the People's Front of Judea; that's the Judean People's Front, sitting over there. Splitter!
etc.
etc.
etc.
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
This article is cute, but I got bored after the first few paragraphs. It would have been funnier if the underlying bitterness wasn't so transparent. Eric Raymond and Tom Christiansen are both talented individuals who are jealous of Richard Stallman. Fact is, however, that the hacking I do would be very difficult without gcc, gas, glibc, binutils, and gdb. It would make no difference at all if I didn't have Perl or fetchmail.
All these guys who hate RMS should get together and form the ASHO: Anti-Stallman Hacker Organization.
Axiom 1: Being a jackass is parallelizable.
First, this no explicit...
Second, while it is implicit it seems quite a necessity from RMS's (and mine) point of view. Since non-copylefted code will sooner or later be coopted by proprietary developers (witness BSD code in SunOS, Ultrix, BSD/i, etc.), the only solution is to copyleft as much as possible.
You may disagree, but it is a legitimate goal, and necessary for the stated goal of making free code available to everyone.
What puzzles me is why people who will think it ok for Apple, Sun and everyone else to make the BSD-licensed code proprietary scream about making it copylefted...
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
The problem is, it is constant and it is heavy cursing.
I know that ESR himself says he's got nothing against RMS -- but I think he's burned out, he haven't been able to choose words and keep calm. And while I've never seem anything from RMS which hadn't grounds, even if I happen to disagree, ESR sometimes just throw some four letter words at me because I complained about his writing being biased, lacking fundament or being against RMS rather than for OSI.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Three of my first four posts to any gnu news groups drew flames from rms.
Now you are telling me something new! I've never read such flames of RMS's, but I've been personnally flamed by ESR in a manner I never thought him capable of, without any reason...
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
What am I missing? The BSD code you cite is still freely available - or is the NetBSD source tree I track a figment of my imagination?
The problem is, all improvements these vendors made they can keep for themselves, and so the commom code base suffers -- why else Sun, Digital, HP and all the others one time BSD vendors migrated to SysV or OSF?
Apple is just a minor evil alternative; while still available, Darwin carries a less free than BSD license designed to benefit Apple. So while Darwin indeed contributes to free software, it suffers from not being as free as BSD nor copylefted.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
> It suffers no more than GPL'd code does, for > which the improvements aren't written in the
> first place because the company didn't want
> to give away the code. In both cases, there's no
> free code added. So what's the difference?
The difference is that anyone is allowed to take BSD code and make any improvement without contributing back; while with GPL you only get to use the code if you agree to contribute. While with BSD we depend on the good will of proprietary vendors, with GPL contribution is enforced.
> As for Darwin, Apple has contributed all sorts
> of code and fixes back in to the NetBSD tree. So
> we certainly benefitted from this. What has
> Linux got from Darwin? Nothing.
We can take any piece of code from BSD code base, but BSD can't take code from us, except in separate programs.
And we get things from Corel, Cobalt and all the others who are using Linux -- SGI, some router vendor I forgot the name of, Compaq, IBM...
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
I wonder why both ESR and Tom have such animosity against RMS and the FSF. Anything that RMS says is criticized by then, often in personal tones.
/dev/null all this personal nitpickings! If at least they were really fun...
Everyone and your father know that RMS is a
polemist sparing no one, but his critics are always to the point, never personal -- even when he calls Tim O'Reilly a "parasite", he has before him the objective situation of non-free documentation about free software.
Not so with Tom. He seems to grudge that many people do consider GNU GPL the ultimate free software license. Also ESR seems to grudge the moral stance ESR has taken outside of the Open Source thing.
I consider this one to be the most detrimental issue in free software politics these days. It is highly visible to the outside world and generates much ill will. Even I myself, a non-coder with no personal interest in the matter, have been personally attacked with dirty words by both ESR and Tom while trying to write them about these issue, showing that the thing has gone much farther than the uninterested ideas discussion.
This has become like a personal vendetta agains RMS, and as such quite childish and destructive. Both Tom and ESR claim that it is not like that, but then it really seeems like that -- and appearances are enough to poison a community. Let's >
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
which makes this satire mean, pure and simple. Tom seems convinced that RMS is a glory-seeker -- everything I read by and about RMS, indicates that he pushes GNU (as opposed to RMS) because he wants the issue of freedom to be prominent.
Yes, RMS is a political man: duh, humans are political animals! The point is not to escape politics and just quietly make good software -- you can't, because then someone who has NOT escaped politics, will swindle you; the point is to be political in the right direction.
The entire objectivist and libertarian (well, for SOME, more extreme, libertatians) apolitical schtick is much more of a hollow dream than communism ever was. What RMS is doing is The Right Thing, IMO, despite his abrasiveness -- he pushes a political issue that is critical to our (software geeks') survival as a culture. The fact that Tom tries to turn this into personal glory-seeking shows, I think, either misunderstanding of what RMS is talking about, or a personal agenda which Tom is not willing to [publicly] admit to.
Ultimately, it is pure and simple: What RMS is doing is not merely good, is it necessary. What Tom is doing (in this article at least) is partisan and mean.
--
--
Victor Danilchenko
I thoroughly enjoyed this piece. It captured the feeling of just about every RMS interview I've ever read.
I've always thought that satire was a more sincere form of flattery than imitation. But I know how Slashdotters react when their sacred oxen get skewered. I haven't read any replies yet. I'm almost afraid to.
I'm guessing that there will be three or four major threads about how RMS is our savior (no he isn't! yes he is!), one moderate thread mildly off topic and discussing gun-toting libertarians, several minor threads rehashing mischaracterizations of RMS, and fifteen threads that I have no idea on, since they got moderated below my threshold.
Oh, and several threads accusing TC of being the antichrist or one of his lackeys.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
So my predictions were off a bit. I failed to include any possibility of arguments over who has the largest penis, RMS or TC. So far I haven't seen any gun-toting threads, but libertarians were flamed nonetheless. So my predictions were pretty good.
It just goes to show that free software has progressed beyond the political party stage, it is now a bona-fide religion.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
By the same token, in order to have a GNU-free distro, you would either have to write a clean-room C compiler or not include any utility written in C or C++. Parting with perl is slightly inconvenient, but OUCH, that HURTS. Say goodbye to your perl interpreter. Oh, and the kernel, too. Doesn't sounds like much of a distro to me...
What a bunch of hyper-sensitive soreheads. If you didn't think it was funny, or had no shred of truth to it, can't you at least take it in stride?
I'm amazed that /. is prepared to post such a divisive and bitchy article. This is surely just flamebait, designed to puff up the writer's ego and rile RMS. /. is well placed to unite the community - what's the point in giving breathing room to the endless fsf/os sniping?
If it was funny, I'd feel differently...
Come on, this is total flamebait. You haven't critiziced what the FSF's goals, or the efficacy of their software licensing, or the value of their software. You've just parodied their tactics and style, which even (some) fans of the FSF can agree are weird sometimes. If you really find GNU software morally repugnant, write alternatives to it. Until then, stop posting flamebait. Sheesh.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
Very funny, but also rather catty. I think someone annoyed Tom once too much :-)
I've noticed this correlation too. I suspect many Slashdotters have. It's summed up rather well at the end of the Jargon File.
I'm an average coder with average people skills. I find this to be an acceptable tradeoff.
"I personally believe that the GPL is a Good
Thing, since it forces what I consider to be
moral behavior on anyone who wants to use code
that I've written."
And therein lies the difference between supporters
of Free Software licences and supporters of free
software licences: some people think it's
appropriate to try to force their morals on
others, and some don't.
Why not create the Christian Software License?
All Christians get unlimited "use, modify, and
redistribute" rights (I'm sure many people must be
deeply disturbed by the possibility that their
software might be used for un-Christian purposes).
And, if you don't like it, well, you can just
write your own software and put it under your own
license (like, maybe the Pagan Software License).
like Linus Torvalds and Larry Wall, who aren't politicized and who are above this sort of petty bickering and posturing.
This article a troll, a cry for attention, every bit as pathetic as Stallman's insistance that people call the OS GNU/Linux. It's a playground dick war, and Tom just wown't shut up until he thinks he's won.
BTW, anyone have an archive of that rant on USENET that started this whole thing? Tom is awfully prolific on this subject, making finding it in Dejanews difficult.
I haven't got a problem laughing at RMS (have you ever heard that song of his? Cringemaking, but funny). However, I do have a problem with something that amounts to a personal attack on the man.
"Good" humour should _not_ be based on trying to hurt someone else, and that's what this thing is. If you read Tom Christiansen's posts in the RMS thread last week you'd probably look at this a bit differently - it's basically a reworking of what he was saying there, only done so that no one can argue with his point ("Hey, it's just a joke!"). If you read all of that thread you'd have found at least one other post where he verbally attacked someone, and one person who'd actually tried to discuss things with him. The resulting 'dialogue' ended with tc killfiling the poor bastard who'd dared to disagree with him!
Sure, in a completely different situation and with different people involved this could be humour in slightly bad taste. As things stand, I can't see it as anything other than a personal attack.
himi
My very own DeCSS mirror.
Last time I checked, Canada doesn't abridge basic freedoms at all - in the name of anything. They are well guranteed.
Micah
Instead of attacking software, Tom attacks people. This is the difference. Instead of composing a well-researched criticism of the licenses that offend him, or of Richard's software which isn't technically suited for its use, or even the foundation's principles which he can't appreciate, he parodies a person and his character.
No, Tom is attacking the FSF not RMS, however RMS is the creator of the GPL. and only-real spokesperson for the FSF. The FSF is an instance of RMS's ideology. The two are practically inseperable.
http://www.bullnet.com
RMS is not an extremist for freedom. He is an extremist for free-redistributal-source code. He is an extremist for his views on how everyone should conduct their business in the programming industry. It IS about RMS's personal agenda against binary-only software.
THAT misconception is why people like myself have a problem with the "Free" description.
http://www.bullnet.com
You know what really bugs me all the time. I am ... Gosh,
using Perl a lot, and yet those folks
don't you think they have made a religion out of
it? Just look at the Tom Christiansen web site.
PERL is a language of post-modernistic epoch.
PERL is a spirit of UNIX.
and so forth and so forth.
THose folks surely do have super-inflated egos.
In fact, PERL is quickly becoming a kitchen sink,
rather incoherent collection of features noone
really understands, just take a look at the
discussion on PERL usenet groups. These are no
longer the rational discussions, but rather sort
of 'how many angels can fit on a tip of the
needle'.
Saying so, I am still using PERL for quick and
dirty work, but when I fell I need to have
a high degree of confidence in what's going on,
I am using C, compiled with GCC.
As far as Tom's article is concerned, remember
boys and girls: MEAN PEOPLE SUCK.
Grunt. Oink, oink.
What are you talking about? This article was SATIRE! Tom's quibling about the word 'good', was part of the joke. And speaking of not understanding the point, read the above thread.
Loosen up will ya?
Michael Gentili
- He's just some guy, you know?
It was a great satire. A satire does not have to make any specific points to make a general point. It was a parody of Stallman's standard diatribe, one that picked up quite well on the tone that Stallman has become familiar for.
Stallman isn't an asshole, and neither is he an angel, he's just a really enthusiastic guy who should probably relax occaisionally, before he has a heart attack.
Michael Gentili
- He's just some guy, you know?
that people refuse to confine themselves to intelligent commentary? So people shouldn't post potentially controversial material because it might upset someone, and start a discussion?
:/
I suppose that rape victim shouldn't have worn so much makeup, or that pretty dress.
Michael Gentili
- He's just some guy, you know?
I must respectfully and most definitly disagree! As soon as one introduces boundaries as to what ideas can and cannot be discussed/attacked/defended, we loose free speech. It's as simple as that. Labelling something as appropriate or not is the same thing. In a free and open forum of discussion, ANYTHING is appropriate. Who are you or anyone else to decide what is mature, intelligent, etc...
Michael Gentili
- He's just some guy, you know?
and touche! One of the things I've found about most or all of the discussions surrounding FSF and GPL, is a serious and frightening lack of humour. Like a religion (shudder), people here can not seem to laugh at themselves. Humour puts things into perspective, and allows serious, calm, and rational discussion to occur after a good laugh. Instead, we have an immediate and unavoidable flame war.
Ah well...
Michael Gentili
- He's just some guy, you know?
You're probably looking for...
from TC
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl.misc,gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: GNU attacks on the open software community
Date: 21 May 1998 01:00:51 GMT
Message-ID: 6jvuc3$dg4$1@csnews.cs.colorado.edu
and, from RMS
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss,comp.lang.perl.misc
Subject: Copylefting manuals
Date: 28 May 1998 22:00:17 -0400
Message-ID: sd7lnrlzvj0.fsf@mescaline.gnu.org
.marek
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
Sometimes I despair of this community ever growing up. Christiansen just did a parody/satirical piece on RMS and his philosophy. Actually, I found it to be quite good; I thought he really nailed most of what RMS says in public and turned it around just so. I also thought that it was really rather gentle; it doesn't malign RMS or paint him as some evil troll, it just turns what he says inside out. I didn't find it biting, whining, vicious, or mean, and I know at least that I'm pretty good at detecting tone.
Consequently, I'm detecting an awful lot of childish sniping in the posted responses here. There are the martyrs who decry what RMS has meant to the community (or "the movement", to generalize) and feel betrayed that anyone would satirize him. There are the folks tasting sour grapes who then accuse Christensen of sour grapes. There are the gunslingers who want to take Christiansen down because he's the latest, fastest target. There are the crusaders who act like they were the target.
And then there are the people who decry how 'divisive' and 'inflammatory' a piece like this is. I think their judgment is wrong; this is a satire, not a pure attack piece. (Having followed politics lately, I've learned the difference.) But the real "diviseness" comes when there's a boatload of immature, irresponsible slams like I've seen here. Satire is healthy, people; when people see it, they're supposed to grimace a little, laugh a little sheepishly, and continue with what they were doing with a bit more humility and grace. The kind of blowup you're seeing right now is not a healthy response. A community that takes itself too seriously is in danger of no one else taking it seriously.
Finally, how many of you who are so upset about Christensen's piece actually sided with JonKatz in his South Park commentary? How many of you loved satire and ridicule from the South Park gang (most of which is far more vicious and cutthroat than anything Christiansen wrote) but can't stand it here? Who of you were rolling your eyes and jabbing your elbows over how worked up those "moralists" got over a movie that uses vulgarity as its primary means of expression but can't bear the thought of a mild satire on one of your heroes?
Slashdot isn't like this most of the time; it's really gotten a bum rap. But this thread is the ugly side raising its head. What a shame.
"Good" as in "Good Beer" or as in "Good Speech"?
Fear my wrath, please, fear my wrath?
Homer
We apologize for the inconvenience.
If you ask me, this whole RMS sucks/ESR sucks, free software/open software, I dont like your beliefs so I will attack the things you have accopmlished flamewar is a bunch of dick fear. These people are terrified that their dicks are inadequate and so they must try to destroy each other to make themselves feel better. The entire linux/gnu/bsd/anything else that's good and free and open movement is being given a bad name because people want to build up their own self esteem. This is nothing more than people standing in a field waving their pricks at one another. So please people, put away your penis and work together. It's about the software, not the genitals. Stop the big prickwaving dickfight before it's too late.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
> That also means you wouldn't be able to include > any utility written in Perl.
... no makewhatis.
Sure. no makewhatis, and
Now that's annoying. I prefer info anyway.
I was not speaking seriously, just trying to
point out how stupid it was to claim you're
going to make a X-free distribution because
you don't like something loosely related to X.
rms sure spends a lot of time repeating the
same old things, but he is too. Actually
I'm going to create a Tom Christiansen-free
distribution as a reaction. And that's much
easier than a GNU-free distribution.
Reminds me a news post where said Tom
Christiansen was proudly declaring
"I didn't put the examples in my [Perl]
documentation because the GPL is bad, the
GPL is a virus, blah blah blah", except
that he didn't put any other kind of
authorisation, so his examples were protected
by the copyright law, which is much more
restrictive than the GPL.
Also, he was blaming rms because standard
distributions did not include his documentation
about Perl in the "core" (non-distrib).
He thought, but without ever having
stated it in writting, that even
though he had put restrictions on the
redistribution on his work, these did not apply
when bundling his docs with Perl.
So all the distributions of Perl were
"crippled", because everybody should have been
reading his thoughts and guessing that he
meant that there were special conditions
were distribution with a fee was allowed,
and he blamed rms for it!
I don't think that RedHat takes much advice from
rms, but I guess it's useful to have someone
to blame everything wrong on.
Since non-copylefted code will sooner or later be coopted by proprietary developers (witness BSD code in SunOS, Ultrix, BSD/i, etc.), the only solution is to copyleft as much as possible.
What am I missing? The BSD code you cite is still freely available - or is the NetBSD source tree I track a figment of my imagination?
--
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Freedom of speech is guaranteed in our charter of rights and freedoms.
For suitably small values of "guaranteed"...any country that can abridge basic freedoms in the name of public safety cannot be truthfully said to be guaranteeing them.
--
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
duh, humans are political animals!
:(
Umm.. I disagree completely. Humans are most certainly NOT political by nature. I could give a flying fuck less about politics frankly. And I'm not the only one. I find politics and politicking to be repugnant. And I feel that the world would be a better place without them. But as for an adequate replacement I don't know so I'm stuck with that bullshit as are you and everyone else.
Politics sucks.
Fine, RMS has done some useful things for the open source movement, that's not in contention. But who doesn't get tired of his ranting about Gnu/Linux or "Free" Software. Regardless of what you think of Stallman, someone should be able to poke a little fun without everyone getting up in arms. It's a revolutionary new concept known as humor, some of you should try it.
Actually I'm going to create a Tom Christiansen-free distribution as a reaction. And that's much easier than a GNU-free distribution.
Only by comparison, and I'm afraid there are a lot of people who would never use your distribution. Why? You touched on this yourself -- you would not be able to include a single line of Perl code. Ton's fingerprints are all over core Perl. That also means you wouldn't be able to include any utility written in Perl.
I think Tom is a top-notch coder. I also think he needs serious work on his people skills. The two often go together, sad to say.
--
Someone you trust is one of us.
If only he knew of the irony in his satire... I've been a Perl user for many years now. But I refuse to follow comp.lang.perl.misc because of Tom and 90% of the Perl community that is exactly like him. That being an angry egomaniac and making cutting remarks. I don't know, is it lack of maturity, sex deprivation, or way to many hours in front of the computer that he forgets entirely about social skills?
Sure it's a parody of RMS, but I think it's more subtle than that. This is what Bill Gates (WHG) would sound like if he spoke like RMS. Software used to be a loss leader for hardware, WHG made it into an economic 'good', hence 'Good Software (tm)'.
O.P.S. (off-topic P.S.): Overheard the other day: "What!? Is information just going to be a loss leader for marketing now!" Translation(?): "I can't demand that you live a lie!?"
--
RMS is an extremist and extremism is bad, right? But he's an extremist about Freedom and we need people like that. What purpose is served by this ridicule? He has contributed so much to our lives. I've been a software engineer for 20 years and I told a friend just yesterday that The Perl Cookbook is the best programming book I've ever read; so it really saddens me to read this piece by Tom.