6 ms·

RMS is an idealist. Torvalds is more of a pragmatist. Quote from Linus: There are "extremists" in the free software world, but that's one major reason why I d

RMS is an idealist. Torvalds is more of a pragmatist. Quote from Linus: There are "extremists" in the free software world, but that's one major reason why I don't call what I do "free software" any more. I don't want to be associated with the people for whom it's about exclusion and hatred. And another one Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested. 99% of that I run tends to be open source, but that's my choice, dammit.

svlla 16y ago
idealist or totalitarian?
bane 16y ago
RMS is an idealist. Torvalds is more of a pragmatist. and pragmatists ship.
- lambda 16y ago
  Emacs never shipped? GCC? GNU Make? glibc? GNU binutils? Bash? GNOME? The only really significant project from GNU that never shipped was the kernel. And Hurd wasn't RMS's project; it was just the project that got the GNU label. He shipped plenty of code in his day.
  - maxharris 16y ago
    But what a critical thing that kernel is! With Stallman running the show, you'd still be waiting for HURD. No Tivo, no Android, no drivers, routers, etc. (I suppose they'd all be running FreeBSD, though. But the point remains - it wouldn't be Stallman that did it, and that really pisses him off.) Also, can you really think of him honestly as the driving force behind GNOME? He had something to do with initiating it over the Qt licensing tiff, but I don't think he did a hell of a lot else for it. Edit: Software isn't "free" if only experts can use it, or if what it does is a decade behind the current technological standard. And what usability there is in "free" software is more than offset by being years behind commercial software in features. Take, for example, my iPhone. It has zero learning curve, yet it is loaded with awesome advanced features. I'm actually free to enjoy my life by virtue of having such convenient, well-designed software and hardware that I never have to futz with. Retina display? Front and back-facing camera? HDR photos? Video recording/chat? Music whenever I want, with controls on my earbuds? Awesome battery life? Slim design so it fits in my pockets? It's all there, and I've had it for eight months. I have the freedom to enjoy all this great stuff with an iPhone, but none of that freedom if I limit myself to the tiny world of "free" software. But GNU acolytes say that this isn't the kind of freedom they mean. What then, do they mean? Why does Apple (or to a lesser extent, Google, Microsoft, etc.) have these kinds of features, but GNU does not? I think the difference is that I'm talking about enjoyment and freedom in reality, not RMS's Platonist/ascetic make-believe world.
    - lambda 16y ago
      No Tivo: why would I care? I've never used a Tivo, and wouldn't, since they don't give me the freedom to install the software I want on my own device. No Android: you do realize that Android still depends on GCC for all native code compilation, right? And uses the Linux kernel, licensed under the GPL, a GNU license? As does Tivo? And many of the free drivers we have we only have because of the GPL that the kernel is licensed under, giving leverage to convince companies to release the code to the drivers that allow us to use their hardware. Why do you think it would upset RMS to use code that he didn't write or wasn't involved in? He uses plenty such code all the time. What he cares about are freedom (and getting people to respect freedom, rather than releasing source code for other reasons such as to allow companies to work together without respecting the freedom of the end user), and the GNU project getting credit for work that it has done. I find that a lot of people ascribe motives to him that I have never witnessed. He is single minded and obstinate, but it is pretty much always in support of software freedom and the projects that he runs to promote software freedom, nothing more than that. Yes, HURD never shipped. Who really cares? What does that have to do with whether RMS can ship code? He's shipped plenty of code; one single failure, of a project that wasn't even his (yes, it was the GNU project's official kernel, but he never worked on it), when it happened that there was already an appropriately licensed kernel that could be used (Linux), does not mean that he can't ship code. And no, GNOME was not his in the sense that he wrote any of it, but it is part of the GNU project, which he started. Several of the other things that I listed he never worked on directly, but they are part of the GNU project. My point was not just about what code RMS has personally shipped (which includes Emacs and GCC), but also about code shipped by the GNU project (like GNOME, Bash, binutils, make, glibc, and so on). And heck, the whole concept of free software, software that respects users' freedom, was something that he originally named, articulated, and advocated for, and has been the strongest defender of ever since. So yes, RMS has shipped plenty of code. Linus has too. They've both done wonderful work. What I appreciate about RMS is that he continues to fight for user freedom. There are some of his tactics that I disagree with (the whole "GNU/Linux" thing is a losing battle, even if I see where he's coming from, his insistence on recommending against distros that even have "contrib" or "ports" repositories which contain non-free software, etc), but on the whole, I find that his work is valuable as corporations and governments try to foist more and more software and services upon us that leave them in control, not us.
  - bane 16y ago
    I think my point still stands. RMS pragmatically knew that the kernel was the hardest part of his Free OS and built most of the rest of the software first -- and shipped it -- on unFree systems. Linus similarly pragmatically saw that most the odds and ends needed to make an OS useful were done, they just needed a kernel, so he built it and shipped it. Since then? RMS has gotten religion in the worst way and hasn't shipped pretty much anything in decades. He's used his notion of Freedom to constrain what he is capable of (restricting his own Freedom, by another definition of the word, "free from confinement") -- demonstrating by his own example a world filled with users unable to operate in the modern world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman Stallman's only computer is a Lemote Yeeloong netbook (using the same company's Loongson processor) which he chose because it can run with 100% free software even at the BIOS level, stating "freedom is my priority. I've campaigned for freedom since 1983, and I am not going to surrender that freedom for the sake of a more convenient computer." http://lwn.net/Articles/262570/ http://lwn.net/Articles/262570/ For personal reasons, I do not browse the web from my computer. (I also have not net connection much of the time.) To look at page I send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me. It is very efficient use of my time, but it is slow in real time. http://cdevroe.com/notes/stallman-email/ http://cdevroe.com/notes/stallman-email/ Most of the time I do not have an Internet connection. Once or twice or maybe three times a day I connect and transfer mail in and out. Before sending mail, I always review and revise the outgoing messages. That gives me a chance to catch mistakes and faux pas. Far from saying this is bizarre behavior, he's merely demonstrating a consistent life with respect to Free (liberty) software. This helpful demonstration shows why a life under this philosophy, the idealist, not the pragmatist, is not Free (from confinement) at all -- it's horribly limiting and doesn't really accomplish much in terms of shipping anything. In other words, Stallman has provided a perfect exemplar of life before and after his idealistic Freedom and he accomplished a great more before.
maxharris 16y ago
Linus is an idealist, not a pramatist. Making the best OS possible is an ideal. Shipping is an ideal. Unlike Stallman, Linus' ideals are superior because they're good in theory and practice, whereas Stallman's ideas aren't even good in theory (unless you already subscribe to a very narrow belief system similar to his). Evidence (LKML Wed, 23 Apr 2003): "The GPL requires you to give out sources to the kernel, but it doesn't limit what you can _do_ with the kernel. On the whole, this is just another example of why rms calls me "just an engineer" and thinks I have no ideals. [ Personally, I see it as a virtue - trying to make the world a slightly better place _without_ trying to impose your moral values on other people. You do whatever the h*ll rings your bell, I'm just an engineer who wants to make the best OS possible. ]"

svlla 16y ago

idealist or totalitarian?

bane 16y ago

RMS is an idealist. Torvalds is more of a pragmatist. and pragmatists ship.

lambda 16y ago
Emacs never shipped? GCC? GNU Make? glibc? GNU binutils? Bash? GNOME? The only really significant project from GNU that never shipped was the kernel. And Hurd wasn't RMS's project; it was just the project that got the GNU label. He shipped plenty of code in his day.
- maxharris 16y ago
  But what a critical thing that kernel is! With Stallman running the show, you'd still be waiting for HURD. No Tivo, no Android, no drivers, routers, etc. (I suppose they'd all be running FreeBSD, though. But the point remains - it wouldn't be Stallman that did it, and that really pisses him off.) Also, can you really think of him honestly as the driving force behind GNOME? He had something to do with initiating it over the Qt licensing tiff, but I don't think he did a hell of a lot else for it. Edit: Software isn't "free" if only experts can use it, or if what it does is a decade behind the current technological standard. And what usability there is in "free" software is more than offset by being years behind commercial software in features. Take, for example, my iPhone. It has zero learning curve, yet it is loaded with awesome advanced features. I'm actually free to enjoy my life by virtue of having such convenient, well-designed software and hardware that I never have to futz with. Retina display? Front and back-facing camera? HDR photos? Video recording/chat? Music whenever I want, with controls on my earbuds? Awesome battery life? Slim design so it fits in my pockets? It's all there, and I've had it for eight months. I have the freedom to enjoy all this great stuff with an iPhone, but none of that freedom if I limit myself to the tiny world of "free" software. But GNU acolytes say that this isn't the kind of freedom they mean. What then, do they mean? Why does Apple (or to a lesser extent, Google, Microsoft, etc.) have these kinds of features, but GNU does not? I think the difference is that I'm talking about enjoyment and freedom in reality, not RMS's Platonist/ascetic make-believe world.
  - lambda 16y ago
    No Tivo: why would I care? I've never used a Tivo, and wouldn't, since they don't give me the freedom to install the software I want on my own device. No Android: you do realize that Android still depends on GCC for all native code compilation, right? And uses the Linux kernel, licensed under the GPL, a GNU license? As does Tivo? And many of the free drivers we have we only have because of the GPL that the kernel is licensed under, giving leverage to convince companies to release the code to the drivers that allow us to use their hardware. Why do you think it would upset RMS to use code that he didn't write or wasn't involved in? He uses plenty such code all the time. What he cares about are freedom (and getting people to respect freedom, rather than releasing source code for other reasons such as to allow companies to work together without respecting the freedom of the end user), and the GNU project getting credit for work that it has done. I find that a lot of people ascribe motives to him that I have never witnessed. He is single minded and obstinate, but it is pretty much always in support of software freedom and the projects that he runs to promote software freedom, nothing more than that. Yes, HURD never shipped. Who really cares? What does that have to do with whether RMS can ship code? He's shipped plenty of code; one single failure, of a project that wasn't even his (yes, it was the GNU project's official kernel, but he never worked on it), when it happened that there was already an appropriately licensed kernel that could be used (Linux), does not mean that he can't ship code. And no, GNOME was not his in the sense that he wrote any of it, but it is part of the GNU project, which he started. Several of the other things that I listed he never worked on directly, but they are part of the GNU project. My point was not just about what code RMS has personally shipped (which includes Emacs and GCC), but also about code shipped by the GNU project (like GNOME, Bash, binutils, make, glibc, and so on). And heck, the whole concept of free software, software that respects users' freedom, was something that he originally named, articulated, and advocated for, and has been the strongest defender of ever since. So yes, RMS has shipped plenty of code. Linus has too. They've both done wonderful work. What I appreciate about RMS is that he continues to fight for user freedom. There are some of his tactics that I disagree with (the whole "GNU/Linux" thing is a losing battle, even if I see where he's coming from, his insistence on recommending against distros that even have "contrib" or "ports" repositories which contain non-free software, etc), but on the whole, I find that his work is valuable as corporations and governments try to foist more and more software and services upon us that leave them in control, not us.
- bane 16y ago
  I think my point still stands. RMS pragmatically knew that the kernel was the hardest part of his Free OS and built most of the rest of the software first -- and shipped it -- on unFree systems. Linus similarly pragmatically saw that most the odds and ends needed to make an OS useful were done, they just needed a kernel, so he built it and shipped it. Since then? RMS has gotten religion in the worst way and hasn't shipped pretty much anything in decades. He's used his notion of Freedom to constrain what he is capable of (restricting his own Freedom, by another definition of the word, "free from confinement") -- demonstrating by his own example a world filled with users unable to operate in the modern world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman Stallman's only computer is a Lemote Yeeloong netbook (using the same company's Loongson processor) which he chose because it can run with 100% free software even at the BIOS level, stating "freedom is my priority. I've campaigned for freedom since 1983, and I am not going to surrender that freedom for the sake of a more convenient computer." http://lwn.net/Articles/262570/ http://lwn.net/Articles/262570/ For personal reasons, I do not browse the web from my computer. (I also have not net connection much of the time.) To look at page I send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me. It is very efficient use of my time, but it is slow in real time. http://cdevroe.com/notes/stallman-email/ http://cdevroe.com/notes/stallman-email/ Most of the time I do not have an Internet connection. Once or twice or maybe three times a day I connect and transfer mail in and out. Before sending mail, I always review and revise the outgoing messages. That gives me a chance to catch mistakes and faux pas. Far from saying this is bizarre behavior, he's merely demonstrating a consistent life with respect to Free (liberty) software. This helpful demonstration shows why a life under this philosophy, the idealist, not the pragmatist, is not Free (from confinement) at all -- it's horribly limiting and doesn't really accomplish much in terms of shipping anything. In other words, Stallman has provided a perfect exemplar of life before and after his idealistic Freedom and he accomplished a great more before.

maxharris 16y ago

Linus is an idealist, not a pramatist. Making the best OS possible is an ideal. Shipping is an ideal. Unlike Stallman, Linus' ideals are superior because they're good in theory and practice, whereas Stallman's ideas aren't even good in theory (unless you already subscribe to a very narrow belief system similar to his). Evidence (LKML Wed, 23 Apr 2003): "The GPL requires you to give out sources to the kernel, but it doesn't limit what you can _do_ with the kernel. On the whole, this is just another example of why rms calls me "just an engineer" and thinks I have no ideals. [ Personally, I see it as a virtue - trying to make the world a slightly better place _without_ trying to impose your moral values on other people. You do whatever the h*ll rings your bell, I'm just an engineer who wants to make the best OS possible. ]"