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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 su

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.
puppetmanbeast 16y ago
"When we started developing the Hurd, there was no free kernel. Our motive was to get a free kernel. Since we now have a free kernel that works, namely Linux[-libre], it's no longer essential to develop the Hurd. We are continuing to work on it for two reasons: 1) It has a more powerful design and that will provide some advantages. 2) It would be a GNU kernel, from the GNU Project." -Richard Stallman P.S. It's obvious you have less than a 4th grade education on both software and linguistics. "Free" means "Freedom" only one definition out of like 10, in every dictionary, defines it as "free of cost". Stallman wants (and now has), the freedom to edit source code of all software he uses, he also wants everyone to have access to gain the same freedom if they so want to obtain it. And your whole iPhone argument is completely ridiculous, Android has more power (and now equal market share) because of its underlying OS tools are Free Software. An iPhone out of the box can't do very much, you add apps to get more functionality. You do know that someone has to develop those apps, right? Having more of the platform liberated allows for developers to take more advantage of the platform, meaning more apps, more advanced apps, and easier proliferation of those apps and features across different hardware. Also, an Android phone will be the first to be quad-core powered. Know how hard Apple would have to work to get that to work on an iPhone? Yeah, a whole primary kernel module rewrite, and a $900+ price tag.
- rimantas 16y ago
  > Android has more power (and now equal market share) because > of its underlying OS tools are Free Software. Uhm? Xcode is free, and it compiles my iOS apps with GCC… go figure. And somewhere there is LLVM in the works, and Apple supposedly had some say in making it happen. And the there is WebKit somewhere in the picture. > An iPhone out of the box can't do very much, you add apps to > get more functionality. Android does everything without apps? Interesting. > meaning more apps, more advanced apps, and easier > proliferation of those apps and features across different > hardware. Last I heard there was no shortage in quality apps for iOS. How far is iPhone apps market lagging behind that of Android? How about possibility for developers to sell apps on Android market compared to that of App Store? Last I checked I still could not neither sell nor buy apps on AM in my country. Are you really thinking that Android market share is equal to iOS because it is open? Not because there are more than one manufacturer and more than three devices they make with android? How open is Android when it gets to under control of carriers? Where do you get source code for Google navigation app, or Google Voice?

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.

puppetmanbeast 16y ago

"When we started developing the Hurd, there was no free kernel. Our motive was to get a free kernel. Since we now have a free kernel that works, namely Linux[-libre], it's no longer essential to develop the Hurd. We are continuing to work on it for two reasons: 1) It has a more powerful design and that will provide some advantages. 2) It would be a GNU kernel, from the GNU Project." -Richard Stallman P.S. It's obvious you have less than a 4th grade education on both software and linguistics. "Free" means "Freedom" only one definition out of like 10, in every dictionary, defines it as "free of cost". Stallman wants (and now has), the freedom to edit source code of all software he uses, he also wants everyone to have access to gain the same freedom if they so want to obtain it. And your whole iPhone argument is completely ridiculous, Android has more power (and now equal market share) because of its underlying OS tools are Free Software. An iPhone out of the box can't do very much, you add apps to get more functionality. You do know that someone has to develop those apps, right? Having more of the platform liberated allows for developers to take more advantage of the platform, meaning more apps, more advanced apps, and easier proliferation of those apps and features across different hardware. Also, an Android phone will be the first to be quad-core powered. Know how hard Apple would have to work to get that to work on an iPhone? Yeah, a whole primary kernel module rewrite, and a $900+ price tag.

rimantas 16y ago
> Android has more power (and now equal market share) because > of its underlying OS tools are Free Software. Uhm? Xcode is free, and it compiles my iOS apps with GCC… go figure. And somewhere there is LLVM in the works, and Apple supposedly had some say in making it happen. And the there is WebKit somewhere in the picture. > An iPhone out of the box can't do very much, you add apps to > get more functionality. Android does everything without apps? Interesting. > meaning more apps, more advanced apps, and easier > proliferation of those apps and features across different > hardware. Last I heard there was no shortage in quality apps for iOS. How far is iPhone apps market lagging behind that of Android? How about possibility for developers to sell apps on Android market compared to that of App Store? Last I checked I still could not neither sell nor buy apps on AM in my country. Are you really thinking that Android market share is equal to iOS because it is open? Not because there are more than one manufacturer and more than three devices they make with android? How open is Android when it gets to under control of carriers? Where do you get source code for Google navigation app, or Google Voice?