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Often it's the people that refuse to compromise that make the world a better place. Do you think Martin Luther King should have compromised on his vision of rac

Often it's the people that refuse to compromise that make the world a better place. Do you think Martin Luther King should have compromised on his vision of racial equality? Whilst the civil rights movement is obviously far more important than the free software movement, the idea that ideals should not be compromised is at the core of both. Unlike, say, the BSD license, the GPL is a license that allows for no compromise. If you want to distribute modifications, you must also distribute the source. It's this ideology that made the more pragmatic open-source movement possible in the first place.

axod 17y ago
How is Richard Stallman refusing to use a webbrowser making the world a better place? :/ It's just taking ideals to extremes for the sake of it.
- notauser 17y ago
  Because there are (a lot of) people on the close-everything side of the debate it's essential to have at least a few people arguing that everything is opened so that the eventual compromise is somewhere in the middle.
- weavejester 17y ago
  As far as I'm aware, Stallman isn't refusing to use a web browser for ideological reasons. It's because: "Most of the time I do not have an Internet connection." Besides, I seem to recall he uses Emacs/W3 for viewing web pages (offline, downloaded via wget).
  - axod 17y ago
    >> "To look at page I send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me." You have to admit that sounds slightly quirky? I assumed it was an attempt to maintain that his personal PC is free from any closed source software, since it's not even rendering websites, it's just receiving email. Sorry, but to me it sounds like either someone who is so into ideals that they're cutting off their nose to spite their face, or someone who has simply failed to keep up with changes in technology.
    - ptomato 17y ago
      No, I'm pretty sure that is an attempt to remain mostly-distraction free and not waste time on the internet. There are (several) entirely open source/free browsers he would use if that was the issue.
      - axod 17y ago
        The internet does have some useful productive things on it as well as time wasting devices :/ For a start it's pretty useful for documentation.
        bingaman 17y ago
        That's what wget -r is for. Pretty sure Stallman isn't going to show up in this thread ;)
    - dagw 17y ago
      According to the interview he only has an internet connection two or three times a day at most. In that sort of scenario his set up kind of makes sense. If I only had short bursts of internet connections during the day I'd probably also set up a system where I could queue up URLs to be automatically downloaded for offline reading next time I had a connection.
      - elblanco 17y ago
        You're missing the point. why does he have such limited connectivity?
        dagw 17y ago
        Whatever the reason I doubt it has anything to do with closed software or his free software philosophy. There are plenty of completely Free ways to get online. Perhaps he lives in a place where you can't get broadband, and only bothers to dial up a couple of times a day. Or perhaps he simply doesn't want a permanent Internet connection because he doesn't feel a need for it. Actually there have been at least a couple of threads about working without internet on a some of the RV/nomad threads here, and based on those I'm considering trying pulling the plug on my internet connection for 4 hours at a time when working to see what it will do be my ability to focus on the task at hand and not get distracted by hacker news. Perhaps Stallman has a similar approach.
  - elblanco 17y ago
    > Most of the time I do not have an Internet connection. He should get it then and join us all in the 21st century.
elblanco 17y ago
I refuse to call it GNU/Linux. By pure lines of source it should be called X.org/Linux.
- nzmsv 17y ago
  Why X.org? Even if you ignore the fact that it is an XFree86 fork, there are plenty of Linux systems with no X at all. In fact, that would be most of them, since there are certainly more Linux servers than desktops out there. Now add the embedded systems, and desktop installs are a drop in the bucket. Also, a number of GNU tools predate the Linux kernel.
- elblanco 17y ago
  Apparently HN is refusing to let me reply to you. So I'm doing it here. The point of saying X.org/Linux is that I could form some ridiculous argument that would require a completely different naming convention. Why don't we call all cars Benz/Cars since Karl Benz holds much of the work that makes cars go? Or all helicopters Da Vinci/Helicopters? Because it's silliness. Calling something GNU/Linux is silly nonsense RMS designed so he could get his beard stroked. If you notice he's never suggested the following: -Linux (powered by GNU) -Linux-GNU -Linux/GNU -Linux - With GNU utilities -Linux - powered by GNU and Xfree86/X.org and the Mozilla foundation. -Linux/GNU/Xfree86|X.org/Mozilla - etc. He's suggested only GNU/Linux. Notice GNU is in front (to remind us all how wonderful GNU is) and the '/' indicates it's interchangeable. Like "do you want ham and/or cheese on your sandwich?". Only GNU != Linux, the two are not interchangeable. The GNU Hurd is a failure. But I bet I could cobble together a GNU free Linux distro for the most part today, even rewriting most of the utilities in a couple weeks, and probably completely in a couple of years once LLVM gets up and going. He wanted to co-opt the relative success that Linux became by formulating an argument such that the only resolution in his mind was to call it GNU/Linux. And instead of building his own system, he built a bunch of the crap for a completed system, then spent the rest of his years dwelling in Emacs and emailing himself wget harvests of websites because for "personal reasons". Really, outside of maybe the compiler toolchain (which is looking to have a short lifespan in the face of LLVM and associated front ends like Clang, are any of the utilities that hard to replicate? (quick answer no, I had to build most of the GNU toolkit from scratch for a single OS course assignment in my undergrad, including a shell, everybody had to do that, it's pretty easy). I'm sorry, but a few dozen utilities like 'ls' and 'cat' don't allow somebody to co-opt somebody else's hard work.

axod 17y ago

How is Richard Stallman refusing to use a webbrowser making the world a better place? :/ It's just taking ideals to extremes for the sake of it.

notauser 17y ago
Because there are (a lot of) people on the close-everything side of the debate it's essential to have at least a few people arguing that everything is opened so that the eventual compromise is somewhere in the middle.
weavejester 17y ago
As far as I'm aware, Stallman isn't refusing to use a web browser for ideological reasons. It's because: "Most of the time I do not have an Internet connection." Besides, I seem to recall he uses Emacs/W3 for viewing web pages (offline, downloaded via wget).
- axod 17y ago
  >> "To look at page I send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me." You have to admit that sounds slightly quirky? I assumed it was an attempt to maintain that his personal PC is free from any closed source software, since it's not even rendering websites, it's just receiving email. Sorry, but to me it sounds like either someone who is so into ideals that they're cutting off their nose to spite their face, or someone who has simply failed to keep up with changes in technology.
  - ptomato 17y ago
    No, I'm pretty sure that is an attempt to remain mostly-distraction free and not waste time on the internet. There are (several) entirely open source/free browsers he would use if that was the issue.
    - axod 17y ago
      The internet does have some useful productive things on it as well as time wasting devices :/ For a start it's pretty useful for documentation.
      - bingaman 17y ago
        That's what wget -r is for. Pretty sure Stallman isn't going to show up in this thread ;)
  - dagw 17y ago
    According to the interview he only has an internet connection two or three times a day at most. In that sort of scenario his set up kind of makes sense. If I only had short bursts of internet connections during the day I'd probably also set up a system where I could queue up URLs to be automatically downloaded for offline reading next time I had a connection.
    - elblanco 17y ago
      You're missing the point. why does he have such limited connectivity?
      - dagw 17y ago
        Whatever the reason I doubt it has anything to do with closed software or his free software philosophy. There are plenty of completely Free ways to get online. Perhaps he lives in a place where you can't get broadband, and only bothers to dial up a couple of times a day. Or perhaps he simply doesn't want a permanent Internet connection because he doesn't feel a need for it. Actually there have been at least a couple of threads about working without internet on a some of the RV/nomad threads here, and based on those I'm considering trying pulling the plug on my internet connection for 4 hours at a time when working to see what it will do be my ability to focus on the task at hand and not get distracted by hacker news. Perhaps Stallman has a similar approach.
- elblanco 17y ago
  > Most of the time I do not have an Internet connection. He should get it then and join us all in the 21st century.

elblanco 17y ago

I refuse to call it GNU/Linux. By pure lines of source it should be called X.org/Linux.

nzmsv 17y ago
Why X.org? Even if you ignore the fact that it is an XFree86 fork, there are plenty of Linux systems with no X at all. In fact, that would be most of them, since there are certainly more Linux servers than desktops out there. Now add the embedded systems, and desktop installs are a drop in the bucket. Also, a number of GNU tools predate the Linux kernel.
elblanco 17y ago
Apparently HN is refusing to let me reply to you. So I'm doing it here. The point of saying X.org/Linux is that I could form some ridiculous argument that would require a completely different naming convention. Why don't we call all cars Benz/Cars since Karl Benz holds much of the work that makes cars go? Or all helicopters Da Vinci/Helicopters? Because it's silliness. Calling something GNU/Linux is silly nonsense RMS designed so he could get his beard stroked. If you notice he's never suggested the following: -Linux (powered by GNU) -Linux-GNU -Linux/GNU -Linux - With GNU utilities -Linux - powered by GNU and Xfree86/X.org and the Mozilla foundation. -Linux/GNU/Xfree86|X.org/Mozilla - etc. He's suggested only GNU/Linux. Notice GNU is in front (to remind us all how wonderful GNU is) and the '/' indicates it's interchangeable. Like "do you want ham and/or cheese on your sandwich?". Only GNU != Linux, the two are not interchangeable. The GNU Hurd is a failure. But I bet I could cobble together a GNU free Linux distro for the most part today, even rewriting most of the utilities in a couple weeks, and probably completely in a couple of years once LLVM gets up and going. He wanted to co-opt the relative success that Linux became by formulating an argument such that the only resolution in his mind was to call it GNU/Linux. And instead of building his own system, he built a bunch of the crap for a completed system, then spent the rest of his years dwelling in Emacs and emailing himself wget harvests of websites because for "personal reasons". Really, outside of maybe the compiler toolchain (which is looking to have a short lifespan in the face of LLVM and associated front ends like Clang, are any of the utilities that hard to replicate? (quick answer no, I had to build most of the GNU toolkit from scratch for a single OS course assignment in my undergrad, including a shell, everybody had to do that, it's pretty easy). I'm sorry, but a few dozen utilities like 'ls' and 'cat' don't allow somebody to co-opt somebody else's hard work.