5 ms·

I saw him speak at Rice University a few years back and he really left a bad impression on me. At the heart of his message there are some good ideas - but his

I saw him speak at Rice University a few years back and he really left a bad impression on me. At the heart of his message there are some good ideas - but his insistence on people saying GNU with Linux made him seem childish and bitter. He also went over the time and didn't take any questions. By about the 1.5 hour mark large number of people were walking out during the talk. He mocked one of them. There appeared to be no end in sight. Around the hour 45 minute mark it was just getting rambling and incoherent and I also walked out. There is a place for free software, but I certainly wouldn't want Richard Stallman as a spokesman for my cause.

starnix17 16y ago
Not much to my comment, but I saw him speak in 2009 at Temple University and I was left feeling the exact same way.
Sukotto 16y ago
My impression of him is that he's so extreme and scary that he makes the more moderate people look good. I have not hear him speak ... I'm only going by this sort of second-hand anecdote of which yours is fairly typical.
Bjoern 16y ago
While I agree that his tone is wrong and he has problems of getting his message across, try to see it from his perspective. I have the feeling that he is very bitter about this because he cares so (or too) deeply. Free Software is his pet project and he put so much effort into it. Every time people misuse the terms "Linux" and "GNU" it is a reminder for him what went wrong in the past and that people in his view seem to take GNU for granted.
- rwl 16y ago
  I don't think this is a fair assessment. RMS's insistence on "GNU/Linux" isn't about bitter or wistful emotions. It's about the fact that people accept names very easily as names, but then have a tendency to accept the meanings and values those names imply just as uncritically. GNU is a project specifically aimed at creating a free operating system. So if you call it GNU, you will associate the idea of that operating system with freedom. Linux is not a project that gives the idea of software freedom top priority; it ships non-free code. Yes, some of the reasoning behind "GNU/Linux" is to give credit where credit is due. But I think it's mostly about the power of a name in getting people to accept ideas, which is why the FSF also campaigns to re-label DRM ("digital restrictions management"), the Kindle ("Swindle"), the iPod ("iScrod" -- I heard RMS say this at a talk at Berkeley), and so on. These names may sound silly, but that's just the point: the fact that they sound silly highlights the assumptions and expectations people have about the things they refer to. The FSF is out to change the forces which maintain the status quo. You can't do that without getting people to reflect on the assumptions they're making about the current situation. And one of the best ways to incite that reflection is to insist that people use names that present different values.
sp332 16y ago
GNU is Stallman's life work. Linux is headed up by Linus Torvalds. They're different things, with different communities of developers, different leaders, different goals. I'm not completely defending Stallman's overreaction, but it must be hard to see your magnum opus drop to 0% mindshare under the shadow of a smaller project.
- crux 16y ago
  And yet anybody who has spent any time learning about or working with Linux understands how fundamentally important the GNU tools are. If, a long time ago, he had been more gracious and not essentially made a joke out of the fact that the OS is called Linux much more than it's called GNU, I could easily imagine a present where he is seen as one of the fundamental co-creators of the operating system most commonly called 'Linux'—or, to be honest, Ubuntu—rather than a crank who will hunt you down if you don't say the word 'slash' out loud. GNU's mindshare is only so lousy because they're so famous for a silly insistence on an inconvenient and irrelevant nomenclature.
  - prodigal_erik 16y ago
    In my experience most people who have heard of Linus at all think he's some amazing genius who wrote the whole thing in a cave with a box of scraps. Very few realize his contribution was the capstone to a much bigger project dating back to his childhood, which created his license and most of his tools for the exact purpose of doing what he did with them.
chanux 16y ago
I saw him talking at Sri Lanka Institute of Technology (SLIIT), Sri Lanka in 1997 and he was a lot different than what you say your experience is. He answered the questions from audience and it was really a fun event. He was steady about his views about "GNU" and "Linux" but he wasn't harsh by any means. Anyway I always expect him to be the way I saw him because the moment he start to be sloppy about his ideas, the same people who name him as an extremist will say "see, even the president of FSF, the oh-so-holy leader of `free software thing` is sloppy about his own idea".

starnix17 16y ago

Not much to my comment, but I saw him speak in 2009 at Temple University and I was left feeling the exact same way.

Sukotto 16y ago

My impression of him is that he's so extreme and scary that he makes the more moderate people look good. I have not hear him speak ... I'm only going by this sort of second-hand anecdote of which yours is fairly typical.

Bjoern 16y ago

While I agree that his tone is wrong and he has problems of getting his message across, try to see it from his perspective. I have the feeling that he is very bitter about this because he cares so (or too) deeply. Free Software is his pet project and he put so much effort into it. Every time people misuse the terms "Linux" and "GNU" it is a reminder for him what went wrong in the past and that people in his view seem to take GNU for granted.

rwl 16y ago
I don't think this is a fair assessment. RMS's insistence on "GNU/Linux" isn't about bitter or wistful emotions. It's about the fact that people accept names very easily as names, but then have a tendency to accept the meanings and values those names imply just as uncritically. GNU is a project specifically aimed at creating a free operating system. So if you call it GNU, you will associate the idea of that operating system with freedom. Linux is not a project that gives the idea of software freedom top priority; it ships non-free code. Yes, some of the reasoning behind "GNU/Linux" is to give credit where credit is due. But I think it's mostly about the power of a name in getting people to accept ideas, which is why the FSF also campaigns to re-label DRM ("digital restrictions management"), the Kindle ("Swindle"), the iPod ("iScrod" -- I heard RMS say this at a talk at Berkeley), and so on. These names may sound silly, but that's just the point: the fact that they sound silly highlights the assumptions and expectations people have about the things they refer to. The FSF is out to change the forces which maintain the status quo. You can't do that without getting people to reflect on the assumptions they're making about the current situation. And one of the best ways to incite that reflection is to insist that people use names that present different values.

sp332 16y ago

GNU is Stallman's life work. Linux is headed up by Linus Torvalds. They're different things, with different communities of developers, different leaders, different goals. I'm not completely defending Stallman's overreaction, but it must be hard to see your magnum opus drop to 0% mindshare under the shadow of a smaller project.

crux 16y ago
And yet anybody who has spent any time learning about or working with Linux understands how fundamentally important the GNU tools are. If, a long time ago, he had been more gracious and not essentially made a joke out of the fact that the OS is called Linux much more than it's called GNU, I could easily imagine a present where he is seen as one of the fundamental co-creators of the operating system most commonly called 'Linux'—or, to be honest, Ubuntu—rather than a crank who will hunt you down if you don't say the word 'slash' out loud. GNU's mindshare is only so lousy because they're so famous for a silly insistence on an inconvenient and irrelevant nomenclature.
- prodigal_erik 16y ago
  In my experience most people who have heard of Linus at all think he's some amazing genius who wrote the whole thing in a cave with a box of scraps. Very few realize his contribution was the capstone to a much bigger project dating back to his childhood, which created his license and most of his tools for the exact purpose of doing what he did with them.

chanux 16y ago

I saw him talking at Sri Lanka Institute of Technology (SLIIT), Sri Lanka in 1997 and he was a lot different than what you say your experience is. He answered the questions from audience and it was really a fun event. He was steady about his views about "GNU" and "Linux" but he wasn't harsh by any means. Anyway I always expect him to be the way I saw him because the moment he start to be sloppy about his ideas, the same people who name him as an extremist will say "see, even the president of FSF, the oh-so-holy leader of `free software thing` is sloppy about his own idea".