"They are profiting from the free labour of thousands of generous programmers. This seems like exploitation, a loop hole in the GPL, and it just doesn't seem right."
This is not exploitation. Read your dictionary. Nobody was forced to give their software to Redhat, the FSF or anywhere else. Besides which, Redhat is not making money on other people's software, they're making it by selling manuals and support and hoodwinking big corporations. If you don't want your software being sold for money by others, then don't make it free software.
It is free beer. RMS is just trying to get you to think beyond the narrow "freeware" scope when you think of free software.
But I think your problem is coming from the word "free" itself. It implies that software that's not "free" is "anti-free", and this is totally wrong. I really diskliked one of RMS recent statements that using proprietary software is like submitting yourself to slavery.
Am I a slave because I read a copyrighted novel? No! Is a shareware programmer a slave-owner? Again, No!
The confusion comes from the fact that free software is somewhere between proprietary and public domain software. Open Source is a much more acurate term in this sense, but still covers software that's not "free". We need a new term for free software. How about "open license" or just plain "copyleft."
You definition of left-wing is different than mine, and assumes a one-dimensional political spectrum. But I digress...
Of course the military should be able to fully benefit from free software. It wouldn't be free otherwise! Would you deny soldiers the rights of free speech, worship and association? Look at that last one a moment. Because I have the right to associate or not with the military I cannot deny them the same right to associate or not with anyone else.
Free software follows the free-market economic model perfectly. Now, I might have a gripe with centrally controlled capitalist economies, but at least they're better than centrally controlled socialist economies. And if you don't have centralized control, you end up with free-market capitalism, linux, GNU, perl, apache, etc.
He may be thinking of Debian as it exists on a CD-ROM, and not the mythical Debian that only contains free software. One not initiated into the intricacies of double-speak may take the FSF at it's word and conclude that not everything in Debian is free. We all know that the/contrib and/nonfree directories aren't *really* in Debian at all.
Very good interview. It's definitely one of his best.
But not one mention of GNU/Linux. Instead it's referred to "The GNU System." He's dropped the word Linux altogether. I thought that the real GNU system was supposed to use the Hurd kernel. Will Debian 2.2 be called "Debian GNU System?"
I'm starting to think that Richard actually hates Linus so much that any word that sounds like Linus is repugnant to him. Either that, or this is another hoax.
After the dissing of Redhat, I'm almost afraid to admit that I use Mandrake!
His two basic arguments voiced against Redhat were that it was easy to install and that typical Redhat users logged in as root.
As for point one, why isn't he still running Slackware?!? Time is valuable. I would much rather spend a mere half hour on installation than days on untarring and compiling 500 packages. But then, I've installed Redhat, Debian, and SuSE, and I found that Debian wasn't any harder than the others (except that there was no 'back' button).
As for users logging on as root, how is that Redhat's fault? If you would just RTFM you would see that Redhat tells users quite often NOT to log in as root. Even "Linux for Dummies" tells it's readers to create a user account first thing. If he's pissed at people logging on as root, blame the idiots at fault, not Redhat.
I finally got the last of the article and finished reading it. I found his theme that only government can free us repugnant. So I sent an email off to the author, and am also posting it here. --- I found your article quite interesting and informative.
However, the wealth of factual information is diluted by political ideology.
First of all, I entirely agree with you that the government needs open standards for its purchasing. You have no argument with me there. Taxpayer money should not be used to support one corporation against another. However, the conclusions throughout pointed to government as our savior against the rapacious corporations.
Although the government funded much of the early work on the internet and other computing innovations, the actual work was done by individuals. The government's role was to concentrate funds for the research. If the government did not concentrate funds (and the public didn't expect them to) it is extremely probable that some other institution would have.
As to the notion that it was government that brought us open software (and the implication that it will be the government that will return it to us), I only need to look at your article to refute it. Linux, apache, sendmail, Samba, etc., etc. None of them are government projects. They existed long before the Microsoft anti-trust trial.
The proper role of the government with regards to software is to keep out. Neither promote one thing, or discourage another. The problem is solving itself right now without the need for government assistance. There's always going to be speed bumps on the highway of history, but if every time we encounter them, we stop to level them out, we'll never get anywhere.
Hard to believe that this article praised the government for doing all this stuff, when in fact, it was done by individuals like Englebart, and at universities like MIT and Stanford. All the government did was to concentrate funds. If the government weren't in the business of "concentrating funds", some other institution would. They don't today, of course, because the common perception is that it's the government's job. Twisted circle.
The author should have taken a long walk in the countryside before writing this article. He was very angry at something, but it was hard to discern what. I was almost ready to hit the back button and ignore him when he finally reached the point he was trying to make.
Read beyond the anger. He does have something important to say hidden deep within.
We use SAP at my work. The suit types adore it. The engineers hate it. From what I understand, this is true everywhere it is used.
Every seen a grown hacker cry while using SAP? I have, and it's not a pretty site. It's a twist on FIFO. First in, first to be lost in a bewildering query mechanism.
It's only a matter of time before HP, Compag, Dell, etc., come to an understanding of Linux. When they do, you will see these manufacturers preloading their own custom distributions.
It's quite a stretch to lump those items under the term "operating system." These are tools, not OS components. And the typical user would do quite fine without them.
Just because Xfree was "adopted" by GNU doesn't make it GNU. Just what does this adoption process entail. Is it simply a matter of GNU wanting something, then deciding it's theirs?
Perhaps Linux could adopt GNU, then it would be okay to just call it Linux.
I do hope that Eric stays on, and that the buttwipes who've been ragging on him shutup. But if he leaves, I have two nominations. They might not meet every one of Eric's qualifications, but I think they'd do a great job.
Larry Wall would be my first choice (highly respected in hackerdom), closely followed by Mark Andreessen (highly respected in corporatedom).
I'm utterly amazed that an university would offer such a class. A junior college or trade school, sure. Was it a night class, extension class?
When I was in university (back when the dinosaurs roamed), CS101 was actual programming in pascal. You know, quicksorts, recursion, linked lists, passing by reference... The next class switched to using C on the UNIX, and we were expected to know both by the time our first assignments were due. The only C book available or the original K&R. UNIX documentation consisted of the man pages. Classes would start with 500 students and finish with 100 at the end of the quarter. Subsequent classes were on advanced algorithms, assembly, compiler design, etc. There were no DOS classes (windows wasn't around yet). There was a BASIC class for the benefit of non-technical majors, but they still had to learn how to program.
This is technology, not art. If it's mediocre, we toss it aside. If it good, we incrementally improve it. If it's fantastic, we don't improve it. Unix and C/C++ work well, so we incrementally improve them. We don't toss them out simply because they are old.
This article mentioned that several times that free software refutes the time-honored belief that "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch." This is very wrong. Free lunches don't exist, and never will.
It's a common misconception among non-economists that prices equates to money. Free software does have a price, but it's not measured in dollars, marks or yen.
Richard certainly got paid for creating Emacs. Linus got paid for Linux. Larry got paid for Perl. And they got paid full worth according to the value of their software. But they didn't get paid with money, they got paid with respect, adulation and other valuable intangibles.
Once again, Bill Gate's lapdog is barking at the postman. The letter the postman is delivering is "your time is up."
There is absolutely nothing in this article that remotely compares RH to M$. RedHat's certification program uses Redhat...so what! Caldera considers RedHat a competitor...so what! RedHat is taking a wait-and-see approach to a linux standard...so what!
Looks like windows!!! Maybe I'm using a different KDE than you (or a different windows than you). You do realize that you can customize KDE?
You can have a panel+task bar, panel by itself, big, medium and large panel, menus at the top ala mac, win vs motif styled widgets, advance themes, etc, etc.
Everything windows has was ripped off from someone else. By saying it looks like windows, you are in fact saying that it looks like warp/mac/cde. The first time I installed and started KDE, by first thought was, "cooll - looks like WPS".
Umm, it's been more than 15 years. Unless of course, you define free software in the narrow terms of GNU only. What about BSD, K&R C, etc. This is like saying Christianity didn't begin until the council of Nicea!
KDE people DONT want to take the G out of anything. God forbid we would insult your greligion and gbeliefs. The last thing Linux (sorry, Gnulix) needs is political correctness. You can always determine a man's irrational beliefs by what offends him.
The media already has a migraine thinking about free software. The only way they can prevent total confusion is to focus on the commercial aspects of the Linux movement.
If the media were ever to grasp the concept of a free distribution as well, their heads would explode.
Just how much of Linux is GNU? What exactly is an operating system? Emacs is not part of the OS . Neither is gcc (although ist's incredibly usefull). Neither is bash because I can use any other shell in it's place. Basically, if you can remove something without breaking the OS, it's not part of the OS. (In keeping with this definition, I assert that windows95 is merely a bad command-line version of DOS).
What's left in the core that we can truly call GNU? A few libraries. A few tremendously important libraries. So in one sense, RMS has a point. However, If I write a program with the GNU libraries that becomes incredibly popular, will I also have to call it GNU just because RMS wants me to? GNU is tools. Pure and simple.
The Linux community is not ignoring Richard. We respect and admire him for his accomplishments. GNU is acknowledged throughout Linux. A newbie would have to be blind not to quickly realize that GNU had a large part to play.
This controversy is a form of political correctness, an attempt to use language to further an ideology (FSFism).
The last time I read the GPL, it had no legal requirements on naming. Perhaps RMS should change the GPL to include a clause requiring people to use the term "GNU" in their program titles. "GNU/Linux" is not the accurate term because it infers that Linux is part of the GNU project. More accurate would be "Linux with GNU, and X, and PERL, and Sendmail, etc, etc.
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"They are profiting from the free labour of thousands of generous programmers. This seems like exploitation, a loop hole in the GPL, and it just doesn't seem right."
This is not exploitation. Read your dictionary. Nobody was forced to give their software to Redhat, the FSF or anywhere else. Besides which, Redhat is not making money on other people's software, they're making it by selling manuals and support and hoodwinking big corporations. If you don't want your software being sold for money by others, then don't make it free software.
It is free beer. RMS is just trying to get you to think beyond the narrow "freeware" scope when you think of free software.
But I think your problem is coming from the word "free" itself. It implies that software that's not "free" is "anti-free", and this is totally wrong. I really diskliked one of RMS recent statements that using proprietary software is like submitting yourself to slavery.
Am I a slave because I read a copyrighted novel? No! Is a shareware programmer a slave-owner? Again, No!
The confusion comes from the fact that free software is somewhere between proprietary and public domain software. Open Source is a much more acurate term in this sense, but still covers software that's not "free". We need a new term for free software. How about "open license" or just plain "copyleft."
You definition of left-wing is different than mine, and assumes a one-dimensional political spectrum. But I digress...
Of course the military should be able to fully benefit from free software. It wouldn't be free otherwise! Would you deny soldiers the rights of free speech, worship and association? Look at that last one a moment. Because I have the right to associate or not with the military I cannot deny them the same right to associate or not with anyone else.
Think "free association, not free beer."
What if hackers finally had enough of this crap and they all went on strike?
Free software follows the free-market economic model perfectly. Now, I might have a gripe with centrally controlled capitalist economies, but at least they're better than centrally controlled socialist economies. And if you don't have centralized control, you end up with free-market capitalism, linux, GNU, perl, apache, etc.
He may be thinking of Debian as it exists on a CD-ROM, and not the mythical Debian that only contains free software. One not initiated into the intricacies of double-speak may take the FSF at it's word and conclude that not everything in Debian is free. We all know that the /contrib and /nonfree directories aren't *really* in Debian at all.
Very good interview. It's definitely one of his best.
But not one mention of GNU/Linux. Instead it's referred to "The GNU System." He's dropped the word Linux altogether. I thought that the real GNU system was supposed to use the Hurd kernel. Will Debian 2.2 be called "Debian GNU System?"
I'm starting to think that Richard actually hates Linus so much that any word that sounds like Linus is repugnant to him. Either that, or this is another hoax.
After the dissing of Redhat, I'm almost afraid to admit that I use Mandrake!
His two basic arguments voiced against Redhat were that it was easy to install and that typical Redhat users logged in as root.
As for point one, why isn't he still running Slackware?!? Time is valuable. I would much rather spend a mere half hour on installation than days on untarring and compiling 500 packages. But then, I've installed Redhat, Debian, and SuSE, and I found that Debian wasn't any harder than the others (except that there was no 'back' button).
As for users logging on as root, how is that Redhat's fault? If you would just RTFM you would see that Redhat tells users quite often NOT to log in as root. Even "Linux for Dummies" tells it's readers to create a user account first thing. If he's pissed at people logging on as root, blame the idiots at fault, not Redhat.
I finally got the last of the article and finished reading it. I found his theme that only government can free us repugnant. So I sent an email off to the author, and am also posting it here.
---
I found your article quite interesting and informative.
However, the wealth of factual information is diluted by political ideology.
First of all, I entirely agree with you that the government needs open standards
for its purchasing. You have no argument with me there. Taxpayer money
should not be used to support one corporation against another. However, the
conclusions throughout pointed to government as our savior against the rapacious
corporations.
Although the government funded much of the early work on the internet and other
computing innovations, the actual work was done by individuals. The government's
role was to concentrate funds for the research. If the government did not
concentrate funds (and the public didn't expect them to) it is extremely probable
that some other institution would have.
As to the notion that it was government that brought us open software (and the
implication that it will be the government that will return it to us), I only need
to look at your article to refute it. Linux, apache, sendmail, Samba, etc., etc.
None of them are government projects. They existed long before the Microsoft
anti-trust trial.
The proper role of the government with regards to software is to keep out. Neither
promote one thing, or discourage another. The problem is solving itself right now
without the need for government assistance. There's always going to be speed bumps
on the highway of history, but if every time we encounter them, we stop to level
them out, we'll never get anywhere.
--
David Johnson
Hard to believe that this article praised the government for doing all this stuff, when in fact, it was done by individuals like Englebart, and at universities like MIT and Stanford. All the government did was to concentrate funds. If the government weren't in the business of "concentrating funds", some other institution would. They don't today, of course, because the common perception is that it's the government's job. Twisted circle.
The author should have taken a long walk in the countryside before writing this article. He was very angry at something, but it was hard to discern what. I was almost ready to hit the back button and ignore him when he finally reached the point he was trying to make.
Read beyond the anger. He does have something important to say hidden deep within.
We use SAP at my work. The suit types adore it. The engineers hate it. From what I understand, this is true everywhere it is used.
Every seen a grown hacker cry while using SAP? I have, and it's not a pretty site. It's a twist on FIFO. First in, first to be lost in a bewildering query mechanism.
It's only a matter of time before HP, Compag, Dell, etc., come to an understanding of Linux. When they do, you will see these manufacturers preloading their own custom distributions.
It's quite a stretch to lump those items under the term "operating system." These are tools, not OS components. And the typical user would do quite fine without them.
Just because Xfree was "adopted" by GNU doesn't make it GNU. Just what does this adoption process entail. Is it simply a matter of GNU wanting something, then deciding it's theirs?
Perhaps Linux could adopt GNU, then it would be okay to just call it Linux.
I do hope that Eric stays on, and that the buttwipes who've been ragging on him shutup. But if he leaves, I have two nominations. They might not meet every one of Eric's qualifications, but I think they'd do a great job.
Larry Wall would be my first choice (highly respected in hackerdom), closely followed by Mark Andreessen (highly respected in corporatedom).
I'm utterly amazed that an university would offer such a class. A junior college or trade school, sure. Was it a night class, extension class?
When I was in university (back when the dinosaurs roamed), CS101 was actual programming in pascal. You know, quicksorts, recursion, linked lists, passing by reference... The next class switched to using C on the UNIX, and we were expected to know both by the time our first assignments were due. The only C book available or the original K&R. UNIX documentation consisted of the man pages. Classes would start with 500 students and finish with 100 at the end of the quarter. Subsequent classes were on advanced algorithms, assembly, compiler design, etc. There were no DOS classes (windows wasn't around yet). There was a BASIC class for the benefit of non-technical majors, but they still had to learn how to program.
This is technology, not art. If it's mediocre, we toss it aside. If it good, we incrementally improve it. If it's fantastic, we don't improve it. Unix and C/C++ work well, so we incrementally improve them. We don't toss them out simply because they are old.
Do we need a new OS or language every year?
This article mentioned that several times that free software refutes the time-honored belief that "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch." This is very wrong. Free lunches don't exist, and never will.
It's a common misconception among non-economists that prices equates to money. Free software does have a price, but it's not measured in dollars, marks or yen.
Richard certainly got paid for creating Emacs. Linus got paid for Linux. Larry got paid for Perl. And they got paid full worth according to the value of their software. But they didn't get paid with money, they got paid with respect, adulation and other valuable intangibles.
Once again, Bill Gate's lapdog is barking at the postman. The letter the postman is delivering is "your time is up."
There is absolutely nothing in this article that remotely compares RH to M$. RedHat's certification program uses Redhat...so what! Caldera considers RedHat a competitor...so what! RedHat is taking a wait-and-see approach to a linux standard...so what!
Looks like windows!!! Maybe I'm using a different KDE than you (or a different windows than you). You do realize that you can customize KDE?
You can have a panel+task bar, panel by itself, big, medium and large panel, menus at the top ala mac, win vs motif styled widgets, advance themes, etc, etc.
Everything windows has was ripped off from someone else. By saying it looks like windows, you are in fact saying that it looks like warp/mac/cde. The first time I installed and started KDE, by first thought was, "cooll - looks like WPS".
Umm, it's been more than 15 years. Unless of course, you define free software in the narrow terms of GNU only. What about BSD, K&R C, etc. This is like saying Christianity didn't begin until the council of Nicea!
Nice try, Richard, but it doesn't wash.
Touchy, touchy, touchy!
KDE people DONT want to take the G out of anything. God forbid we would insult your greligion and gbeliefs. The last thing Linux (sorry, Gnulix) needs is political correctness. You can always determine a man's irrational beliefs by what offends him.
The media already has a migraine thinking about free software. The only way they can prevent total confusion is to focus on the commercial aspects of the Linux movement.
If the media were ever to grasp the concept of a free distribution as well, their heads would explode.
Just how much of Linux is GNU? What exactly is an operating system? Emacs is not part of the OS . Neither is gcc (although ist's incredibly usefull). Neither is bash because I can use any other shell in it's place. Basically, if you can remove something without breaking the OS, it's not part of the OS. (In keeping with this definition, I assert that windows95 is merely a bad command-line version of DOS).
What's left in the core that we can truly call GNU? A few libraries. A few tremendously important libraries. So in one sense, RMS has a point. However, If I write a program with the GNU libraries that becomes incredibly popular, will I also have to call it GNU just because RMS wants me to? GNU is tools. Pure and simple.
The Linux community is not ignoring Richard. We respect and admire him for his accomplishments. GNU is acknowledged throughout Linux. A newbie would have to be blind not to quickly realize that GNU had a large part to play.
This controversy is a form of political correctness, an attempt to use language to further an ideology (FSFism).
The last time I read the GPL, it had no legal requirements on naming. Perhaps RMS should change the GPL to include a clause requiring people to use the term "GNU" in their program titles. "GNU/Linux" is not the accurate term because it infers that Linux is part of the GNU project. More accurate would be "Linux with GNU, and X, and PERL, and Sendmail, etc, etc.