10 ms·

A few points i would like to remind everyone who criticizes rms. 1) rms is a radical guy. You cannot change that. He fights for what he thinks is right. He is

A few points i would like to remind everyone who criticizes rms. 1) rms is a radical guy. You cannot change that. He fights for what he thinks is right. He is not the kind of person you can ask to censor himself. If he thinks u.s goverment is to blame for 9/11, no matter how saying it in a lecture seems childish, he will say it. If you invite rms for a lecture, he is coming with his radicalism. That is to be expected. You cannot invite rms and expect steve jobs. 2) rms is a practical guy. stop acting like he's a mad man who knows nothing. He started GNU, wrote emacs, glibc, gcc and probably others. He created the concept of free software and wrote a license as good as GPL to defend it. He also managed to gather a community around this very crazy idea of free software. 3) rms doesnt want people only to use free software. he wants people to value their freedom, and as a result of that, use free software. It doesnt really matter if whole world uses android instead of ios. The point is, these days, most people involved in open source community, do not even care about free software and the freedom it offers. Most people are interested in technological advancements or affects of an open source project on market. None of them are concerns for rms. And, what i said above is just what i interpreted from his actions and are not facts.

patrickaljord 16y ago
> If he thinks u.s goverment is to blame for 9/11, no matter how saying it in a lecture seems childish, he will say it. By the way he doesn't believe that. Last time I read about his opinion on the subject he said that proofs were lacking on both sides (truther and non-truther) but that it was probably the work of religious fundamentalists (either christians or muslims).
- mbateman 16y ago
  I'm not sure that agnosticism on this issue is much less crazy, but okay.
- schrototo 16y ago
  > ... proofs were lacking on both sides ... religious fundamentalists (either christians or muslims). These are equally ridiculous statements. We know who did it, we know how they did it, we know why they did it. People just can't accept that enormous events can have relatively simple causes.
  - doki_pen 16y ago
    It's ridiculous to think that there is no possibility that there were people who could have prevented it, but choose not to.
    - jonhendry 16y ago
      To the extent this is a possibility, it's more likely they didn't know exactly what 'it' was going to be, and were expecting something comparatively minor.
    - schrototo 16y ago
      "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
      - 5l 16y ago
        Even better, when ignorant, don't attribute it to anything.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      While I think the intelligence agencies were just incompetent to identify the proper threat, perhaps for lack of an adequately warped imagination (911 was a game changer in the rules of plane highjacking - nobody ever used a passenger plane as a missile before), I don't think anyone allowed it to happen on purpose. However, the president and his associates certainly saw the opportunity and ran with it. The damage done will take decades to undo.
      - Joeri 16y ago
        "911 was a game changer in the rules of plane highjacking - nobody ever used a passenger plane as a missile before" True for civilian planes, but it stretches the imagination a little too far that the US military could discount planes as missiles, given the precedent of pearl harbor.
        16y ago
- fuzzmeister 16y ago
  Saying 9/11 was the work of Christian fundamentalists seems nearly as bizarre as claiming it was the work of the government. Neither has any grounding in fact.
  - patrickaljord 16y ago
    What he said is that if the government was behind it it would probably be the christian fundamentalists.
    - sukuriant 16y ago
      Citation needed. You and many, many others need to start providing citations for these claims of what "he said." If you heard it, there's probably a citation somewhere about it.
- singular 16y ago
  To be honest, if he believes that 'proofs are lacking on both sides' then I've just lost quite a significant amount of respect for the man. If the 'truthers' are correct then many hundreds, if not thousands, of people decided to conspire to murder thousands of innocent civilians and, somehow, managed to prevent any leaking of this whatsoever. On this basis alone, the idea that 9/11 was a conspiracy is insane, before we get to the fact that, as with all other conspiracy theories, there is just no evidence whatsoever (though the 'truthers' require an unattainable standard of proof from reasonable people, despite requiring none for their own beliefs) then the idea that there is 'no proof' on either side is equally unhinged. If you can't think clearly on something so clear and obvious then it really draws into question your reliability on any subject, especially if you are 'preaching' on the subject. I'm sorry, you just have to draw the line when you're talking about the murder of thousands of innocent people. Seriously.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - rdouble 16y ago
    If you can't think clearly on something so clear and obvious then it really draws into question your reliability on any subject, especially if you are 'preaching' on the subject. I agree with your other point. However, the point I quoted is often brought up in these sorts of discussions and is totally wrong. Great minds throughout history have believed all sorts of crazy and incorrect shit at the same time they were doing great work.
  - muyuu 16y ago
    That always happens with people who voice their opinions on everything. There is always going to be a deal breaker. We all have extremely conflicting opinions with others. You have to consider every issue and not the man so much. He's the way he is. I agree with him in many points. In some very impopular issues I agree with him (not the "inside job" thing though). What I wouldn't do is come out in lectures with that kind of stuff. Political correctness is sadly a need when you stamp your real name on something. Now, I think the FSF is right about basically every single point it's active on. That's what matters to me. I agree it's approach might be sometimes lacking, and I think RMS himself should step down and go back to writing software. Which is why I donate to the EFF instead, and I think it's pretty awesome.
estel 16y ago
What I feel, and what I suspect many others feel also, is that however much this might be true, it's the way that RMS presents these views to the public that instantly marginalises him and the FSF. Were he to choose not to mention 9/11 conspiracy theories, or to not act in a way that marginalises the movement; it's quite likely that it would alienate fewer people and be generally more successful. It's great to have a leader who is genuinely passionate about what he's doing, but for others who might agree with much of what he says, it can be disheartening to see so many turned away by some of the rhetoric.
dget 16y ago
It seems that he's become less practical and more radical over time, though. When asked, he doesn't program very much any more, devoting his time instead to championing free software in an idea that some (such as Alexey) would argue isn't practical.
- emilsedgh 16y ago
  Actually, rms 'won' his initial battle, which was having a free operating system. Now there are thousands of people helping free softwares to improve. He would be just another programmer if he keeps coding. What im trying to say is, if he doesnt code anymore, its probably because he doesnt think that would be a necessary contribution anymore. Or maybe he is simply tired of coding :)
  - prodigal_erik 16y ago
    He did have chronic hand pain for a while: http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch09.html#15416 http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch09.html#15416
    - sitkack 16y ago
      Emacs had nothing to do with it.
  - flomo 16y ago
    > He would be just another programmer if he keeps coding. Wouldn't that be better than being just a gadfly? At least that's my impression; RMS will appear on some group or maillist, drop a bomb, tell everyone they're doing it wrong, and then disappear while the flamewar blazes, accomplishing nothing constructive in the process. And, in this community, everyone's status is based primarily on their programming, including Richard Stallman's.
    - nkassis 16y ago
      His status has been earned. RMS did incredible programming work in the 70s,80s that I think entitles him to make comments (even if they are wrong).
eliasmacpherson 16y ago
"even if you believe that the government had nothing to do with the attacks of September 2001," - could well be blaming foreign policy of previous governments, not theorising about conspiracies. I always wonder why conspiracy theory has become such a loaded phrase, people conspire in secret, other people theorise about it, I don't really see the problem.
- lukifer 16y ago
  Curiously enough, if there were secret cabal(s) running the world, it would clearly be in their interest to marginalize "conspiracy theories". Either way, it's classic a priori.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- wil2k 16y ago
  I agree re. the loaded phrase. The official story is a conspiracy (theory) too. The only thing that's different between the various explanations is who the /conspirators/ are. But there's no doubt that on that day a group of people acted to follow an agenda they had planned together, one that was against the U.S.
kabdib 16y ago
I like Emacs; I've been using it for 30+ years and I thank RMS for inspiring the commercial Emacs clone I use today. Pretty much everything else he's done: Whatever. My personal interactions with RMS have drawn me to the conclusion that he's just a smart asshole, and a little crazy. Steve Jobs is like that, too. The difference is, I would jump at a chance to work with Jobs.
- bostonpete 16y ago
  I'm curious -- what is considered a commercial Emacs clone?
  - kabdib 16y ago
    There are a few commercial clones. I use Epsilon (by Lugaru Software) because I think it's faster and behaves more reasonably on Windows than Gnu Emacs, and I'm used to it. That said, I'm sure that Gnu Emacs is fine.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      Just curious (big emacs fan here), but define "reasonably". I have used Emacs under Windows and I have to agree it's a bit too surprising at times.
    - bostonpete 16y ago
      I was intrigued until I saw the $250 price tag. Yikes... http://www.lugaru.com/to-order.html http://www.lugaru.com/to-order.html
vorg 16y ago
> The point is, these days, most people involved in open source community, do not even care about free software and the freedom it offers. Being involved in open source seems to be mainly a thing to put on the CV. And often, people who start or run an "open source" software product are co-directors of a consulting company, or else employees bound by non-compete clauses, charge out as much as possible for as little as possible supporting "special client addons", get other people (e.g Google SOC) to pay for as much of their product development as possible, spend a lot of effort gaming search engine results to score high in popularity rankings, and suddenly change their product API's to keep away other developers who won't sign onerous involvement contracts with them.
- zaphar 16y ago
  Full Disclosure: I work for Google. The opinions stated here are my own. I respectfully disagree. Often the consulting company is a very valid way to pay for the development of the Open Source Software. It's a practical way to do OSS and still make a living. That in no way detracts from the usefulness of the Open Source development Model or the freedom of that software. Google's SOC is primarily a way find and incent good developers. It helps to expand the pool of hirable talent. In our Chicago office we've hired our fair share of former GSOC alumni. We don't limit the applications to any class of project so while some of the work may indeed be useful to us commercially, a lot of it isn't. As far as gaming search engine results and changing api's I'm not even sure where you're going with that one? I'm sure you have valid examples of badly done open source but painting the whole class of software with that same brush is a mistake.
nddrylliog 16y ago
> he [...] wrote gcc it's a fair assumption to believe that most or his code was rewritten (hey, since gcc 1.x we've had several major versions, plus the egcs merger, etc.) this can't be outlined strongly enough.
- cookiecaper 16y ago
  Why does it matter? Of course software goes through some major changes over the course of several years. That doesn't mean he shouldn't be credited with launching the project, including providing its early codebase. The fact that something is more advanced now doesn't mean it was a trivial piece of software in the first place -- you have to have some pretty serious chops to end up with even early versions of gcc.
planckscnst 16y ago
The author (and his those who agree with him) are not asking Stallman to censor himself. On the contrary, they are asking him to express himself more effectively.
iuguy 16y ago
I agree with your first point, however: > 2) rms is a practical guy. stop acting like he's a mad man who knows nothing. He started GNU, wrote emacs, glibc, gcc and probably others. He created the concept of free software and wrote a license as good as GPL to defend it. He created the concept of 'Free' (note the capital F) software as his definition of free. People were sharing source code beforehand. The source to Unix was available under licence, there were plenty of tools available (ISTR TECO, EMACS' predecessor being open source for example) with source. I can create a definition of something that distorts other peoples' views of the truth and misappropriate it as my own. Secondly, he wrote all of those things as part of his GNU OS, which he never finished. As someone who's written hobby OSes before I can understand that GNU was a massive undertaking, but he's not the only guy ever to write an OS and deserves no more kudos for it than the BSD guys or any other OS developers. He is not some magical wizard of software freedom. > 3) rms doesnt want people only to use free software. This[1] article by a certain Richard Stallman on gnu.org begs to differ. Maybe it's a different Richard Stallman? [1] - http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/schools.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/schools.html
- faboo 16y ago
  I think the meaning of point three was a bit lost in the grammar. Yes, RMS has (very clearly) stated that the only software a person should use is software that is free. However, I think emilsedgh's point is that RMS _first_ wants people to value freedom, and use only free software as a result - as opposed to using free software because, for instance, it is (generally) cheap.
  - iuguy 16y ago
    I can only speak of personal experience (and having spent time with RMS twice in total, several years apart that's not a lot). My experience of him was that publicly he wants people to value free software, but it's a means to an end. I don't actually have a problem with about 60% of what he has to say on the matter. Open source software fuels innovation and as long as people can still fund further innovation I'm happy with that. However, what I object to is the idea that only FSF-papal-blessed software constitutes free software. If I want to release my software under a BSD licence, it's not free software because RMS doesn't think it is. That's my problem with him, at least professionally speaking. On a personal note I don't think we'd get along - primarily because (and credit to him) that entire argument is pretty much his life (as far as anyone can say from meeting him twice). Now I could be completely wrong about all of this, and maybe RMS is a pragmatic standup guy and I just got the wrong impression, but even Theo De Raadt had a sense of humour.
yuhong 16y ago
On RMS and Steve Jobs, I once suggested Ryan Tate to forward this series of emails to Steve Jobs: http://gawker.com/#!5539717/steve-jobs-offers-world-freedom-from-porn http://gawker.com/#!5539717/steve-jobs-offers-world-freedom-...
billmcneale 16y ago
I was with you until you said he's a "practical guy". He's not. No radical people are practical, it goes with the job of being radical. rms wants you to write code for free, give it away for free and never ask for any money if anyone uses it. It's anything but practical. It's not even realistic. He was lucky to be at the right place and the right time where this kind of delusional ideology could actually work (because nobody had this idea before him). Good for him, and he's reaping the benefit of getting there first (basically living off speaker fees). But he totally fails to realize that nobody else can do this. I respect what he did for the software industry, but personally, I think he's a lunatic, a bit like your crazy grandpa that you quietly wheel over in the kitchen when there are guests so he doesn't make them run away.
- angus77 16y ago
  <quote>rms wants you to write code for free, give it away for free and never ask for any money if anyone uses it.</quote> Given that Stallman used to charge $200 for tapes of Emacs, I gotta wonder how you come to this conclusion.
  - billmcneale 16y ago
    That was then. Now, he finds this kind of practice criminal. I know: I once asked him a similar question after one of his talks (the kind where he plays the flute). He just finds the concept of charging for software repugnant.
    - angus77 16y ago
      Could we get a citation? This is the absolute first I've heard someone claim that Stallman's actual said such a thing (aside from people who are obviously just making things up).

patrickaljord 16y ago

> If he thinks u.s goverment is to blame for 9/11, no matter how saying it in a lecture seems childish, he will say it. By the way he doesn't believe that. Last time I read about his opinion on the subject he said that proofs were lacking on both sides (truther and non-truther) but that it was probably the work of religious fundamentalists (either christians or muslims).

mbateman 16y ago
I'm not sure that agnosticism on this issue is much less crazy, but okay.
schrototo 16y ago
> ... proofs were lacking on both sides ... religious fundamentalists (either christians or muslims). These are equally ridiculous statements. We know who did it, we know how they did it, we know why they did it. People just can't accept that enormous events can have relatively simple causes.
- doki_pen 16y ago
  It's ridiculous to think that there is no possibility that there were people who could have prevented it, but choose not to.
  - jonhendry 16y ago
    To the extent this is a possibility, it's more likely they didn't know exactly what 'it' was going to be, and were expecting something comparatively minor.
  - schrototo 16y ago
    "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
    - 5l 16y ago
      Even better, when ignorant, don't attribute it to anything.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    While I think the intelligence agencies were just incompetent to identify the proper threat, perhaps for lack of an adequately warped imagination (911 was a game changer in the rules of plane highjacking - nobody ever used a passenger plane as a missile before), I don't think anyone allowed it to happen on purpose. However, the president and his associates certainly saw the opportunity and ran with it. The damage done will take decades to undo.
    - Joeri 16y ago
      "911 was a game changer in the rules of plane highjacking - nobody ever used a passenger plane as a missile before" True for civilian planes, but it stretches the imagination a little too far that the US military could discount planes as missiles, given the precedent of pearl harbor.
      - 16y ago
fuzzmeister 16y ago
Saying 9/11 was the work of Christian fundamentalists seems nearly as bizarre as claiming it was the work of the government. Neither has any grounding in fact.
- patrickaljord 16y ago
  What he said is that if the government was behind it it would probably be the christian fundamentalists.
  - sukuriant 16y ago
    Citation needed. You and many, many others need to start providing citations for these claims of what "he said." If you heard it, there's probably a citation somewhere about it.
singular 16y ago
To be honest, if he believes that 'proofs are lacking on both sides' then I've just lost quite a significant amount of respect for the man. If the 'truthers' are correct then many hundreds, if not thousands, of people decided to conspire to murder thousands of innocent civilians and, somehow, managed to prevent any leaking of this whatsoever. On this basis alone, the idea that 9/11 was a conspiracy is insane, before we get to the fact that, as with all other conspiracy theories, there is just no evidence whatsoever (though the 'truthers' require an unattainable standard of proof from reasonable people, despite requiring none for their own beliefs) then the idea that there is 'no proof' on either side is equally unhinged. If you can't think clearly on something so clear and obvious then it really draws into question your reliability on any subject, especially if you are 'preaching' on the subject. I'm sorry, you just have to draw the line when you're talking about the murder of thousands of innocent people. Seriously.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- rdouble 16y ago
  If you can't think clearly on something so clear and obvious then it really draws into question your reliability on any subject, especially if you are 'preaching' on the subject. I agree with your other point. However, the point I quoted is often brought up in these sorts of discussions and is totally wrong. Great minds throughout history have believed all sorts of crazy and incorrect shit at the same time they were doing great work.
- muyuu 16y ago
  That always happens with people who voice their opinions on everything. There is always going to be a deal breaker. We all have extremely conflicting opinions with others. You have to consider every issue and not the man so much. He's the way he is. I agree with him in many points. In some very impopular issues I agree with him (not the "inside job" thing though). What I wouldn't do is come out in lectures with that kind of stuff. Political correctness is sadly a need when you stamp your real name on something. Now, I think the FSF is right about basically every single point it's active on. That's what matters to me. I agree it's approach might be sometimes lacking, and I think RMS himself should step down and go back to writing software. Which is why I donate to the EFF instead, and I think it's pretty awesome.

estel 16y ago

What I feel, and what I suspect many others feel also, is that however much this might be true, it's the way that RMS presents these views to the public that instantly marginalises him and the FSF. Were he to choose not to mention 9/11 conspiracy theories, or to not act in a way that marginalises the movement; it's quite likely that it would alienate fewer people and be generally more successful. It's great to have a leader who is genuinely passionate about what he's doing, but for others who might agree with much of what he says, it can be disheartening to see so many turned away by some of the rhetoric.

dget 16y ago

It seems that he's become less practical and more radical over time, though. When asked, he doesn't program very much any more, devoting his time instead to championing free software in an idea that some (such as Alexey) would argue isn't practical.

emilsedgh 16y ago
Actually, rms 'won' his initial battle, which was having a free operating system. Now there are thousands of people helping free softwares to improve. He would be just another programmer if he keeps coding. What im trying to say is, if he doesnt code anymore, its probably because he doesnt think that would be a necessary contribution anymore. Or maybe he is simply tired of coding :)
- prodigal_erik 16y ago
  He did have chronic hand pain for a while: http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch09.html#15416 http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch09.html#15416
  - sitkack 16y ago
    Emacs had nothing to do with it.
- flomo 16y ago
  > He would be just another programmer if he keeps coding. Wouldn't that be better than being just a gadfly? At least that's my impression; RMS will appear on some group or maillist, drop a bomb, tell everyone they're doing it wrong, and then disappear while the flamewar blazes, accomplishing nothing constructive in the process. And, in this community, everyone's status is based primarily on their programming, including Richard Stallman's.
  - nkassis 16y ago
    His status has been earned. RMS did incredible programming work in the 70s,80s that I think entitles him to make comments (even if they are wrong).

eliasmacpherson 16y ago

"even if you believe that the government had nothing to do with the attacks of September 2001," - could well be blaming foreign policy of previous governments, not theorising about conspiracies. I always wonder why conspiracy theory has become such a loaded phrase, people conspire in secret, other people theorise about it, I don't really see the problem.

lukifer 16y ago
Curiously enough, if there were secret cabal(s) running the world, it would clearly be in their interest to marginalize "conspiracy theories". Either way, it's classic a priori.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
wil2k 16y ago
I agree re. the loaded phrase. The official story is a conspiracy (theory) too. The only thing that's different between the various explanations is who the /conspirators/ are. But there's no doubt that on that day a group of people acted to follow an agenda they had planned together, one that was against the U.S.

kabdib 16y ago

I like Emacs; I've been using it for 30+ years and I thank RMS for inspiring the commercial Emacs clone I use today. Pretty much everything else he's done: Whatever. My personal interactions with RMS have drawn me to the conclusion that he's just a smart asshole, and a little crazy. Steve Jobs is like that, too. The difference is, I would jump at a chance to work with Jobs.

bostonpete 16y ago
I'm curious -- what is considered a commercial Emacs clone?
- kabdib 16y ago
  There are a few commercial clones. I use Epsilon (by Lugaru Software) because I think it's faster and behaves more reasonably on Windows than Gnu Emacs, and I'm used to it. That said, I'm sure that Gnu Emacs is fine.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    Just curious (big emacs fan here), but define "reasonably". I have used Emacs under Windows and I have to agree it's a bit too surprising at times.
  - bostonpete 16y ago
    I was intrigued until I saw the $250 price tag. Yikes... http://www.lugaru.com/to-order.html http://www.lugaru.com/to-order.html

vorg 16y ago

> The point is, these days, most people involved in open source community, do not even care about free software and the freedom it offers. Being involved in open source seems to be mainly a thing to put on the CV. And often, people who start or run an "open source" software product are co-directors of a consulting company, or else employees bound by non-compete clauses, charge out as much as possible for as little as possible supporting "special client addons", get other people (e.g Google SOC) to pay for as much of their product development as possible, spend a lot of effort gaming search engine results to score high in popularity rankings, and suddenly change their product API's to keep away other developers who won't sign onerous involvement contracts with them.

zaphar 16y ago
Full Disclosure: I work for Google. The opinions stated here are my own. I respectfully disagree. Often the consulting company is a very valid way to pay for the development of the Open Source Software. It's a practical way to do OSS and still make a living. That in no way detracts from the usefulness of the Open Source development Model or the freedom of that software. Google's SOC is primarily a way find and incent good developers. It helps to expand the pool of hirable talent. In our Chicago office we've hired our fair share of former GSOC alumni. We don't limit the applications to any class of project so while some of the work may indeed be useful to us commercially, a lot of it isn't. As far as gaming search engine results and changing api's I'm not even sure where you're going with that one? I'm sure you have valid examples of badly done open source but painting the whole class of software with that same brush is a mistake.

nddrylliog 16y ago

> he [...] wrote gcc it's a fair assumption to believe that most or his code was rewritten (hey, since gcc 1.x we've had several major versions, plus the egcs merger, etc.) this can't be outlined strongly enough.

cookiecaper 16y ago
Why does it matter? Of course software goes through some major changes over the course of several years. That doesn't mean he shouldn't be credited with launching the project, including providing its early codebase. The fact that something is more advanced now doesn't mean it was a trivial piece of software in the first place -- you have to have some pretty serious chops to end up with even early versions of gcc.

planckscnst 16y ago

The author (and his those who agree with him) are not asking Stallman to censor himself. On the contrary, they are asking him to express himself more effectively.

iuguy 16y ago

I agree with your first point, however: > 2) rms is a practical guy. stop acting like he's a mad man who knows nothing. He started GNU, wrote emacs, glibc, gcc and probably others. He created the concept of free software and wrote a license as good as GPL to defend it. He created the concept of 'Free' (note the capital F) software as his definition of free. People were sharing source code beforehand. The source to Unix was available under licence, there were plenty of tools available (ISTR TECO, EMACS' predecessor being open source for example) with source. I can create a definition of something that distorts other peoples' views of the truth and misappropriate it as my own. Secondly, he wrote all of those things as part of his GNU OS, which he never finished. As someone who's written hobby OSes before I can understand that GNU was a massive undertaking, but he's not the only guy ever to write an OS and deserves no more kudos for it than the BSD guys or any other OS developers. He is not some magical wizard of software freedom. > 3) rms doesnt want people only to use free software. This[1] article by a certain Richard Stallman on gnu.org begs to differ. Maybe it's a different Richard Stallman? [1] - http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/schools.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/schools.html

faboo 16y ago
I think the meaning of point three was a bit lost in the grammar. Yes, RMS has (very clearly) stated that the only software a person should use is software that is free. However, I think emilsedgh's point is that RMS _first_ wants people to value freedom, and use only free software as a result - as opposed to using free software because, for instance, it is (generally) cheap.
- iuguy 16y ago
  I can only speak of personal experience (and having spent time with RMS twice in total, several years apart that's not a lot). My experience of him was that publicly he wants people to value free software, but it's a means to an end. I don't actually have a problem with about 60% of what he has to say on the matter. Open source software fuels innovation and as long as people can still fund further innovation I'm happy with that. However, what I object to is the idea that only FSF-papal-blessed software constitutes free software. If I want to release my software under a BSD licence, it's not free software because RMS doesn't think it is. That's my problem with him, at least professionally speaking. On a personal note I don't think we'd get along - primarily because (and credit to him) that entire argument is pretty much his life (as far as anyone can say from meeting him twice). Now I could be completely wrong about all of this, and maybe RMS is a pragmatic standup guy and I just got the wrong impression, but even Theo De Raadt had a sense of humour.

yuhong 16y ago

On RMS and Steve Jobs, I once suggested Ryan Tate to forward this series of emails to Steve Jobs: http://gawker.com/#!5539717/steve-jobs-offers-world-freedom-from-porn http://gawker.com/#!5539717/steve-jobs-offers-world-freedom-...

billmcneale 16y ago

I was with you until you said he's a "practical guy". He's not. No radical people are practical, it goes with the job of being radical. rms wants you to write code for free, give it away for free and never ask for any money if anyone uses it. It's anything but practical. It's not even realistic. He was lucky to be at the right place and the right time where this kind of delusional ideology could actually work (because nobody had this idea before him). Good for him, and he's reaping the benefit of getting there first (basically living off speaker fees). But he totally fails to realize that nobody else can do this. I respect what he did for the software industry, but personally, I think he's a lunatic, a bit like your crazy grandpa that you quietly wheel over in the kitchen when there are guests so he doesn't make them run away.

angus77 16y ago
<quote>rms wants you to write code for free, give it away for free and never ask for any money if anyone uses it.</quote> Given that Stallman used to charge $200 for tapes of Emacs, I gotta wonder how you come to this conclusion.
- billmcneale 16y ago
  That was then. Now, he finds this kind of practice criminal. I know: I once asked him a similar question after one of his talks (the kind where he plays the flute). He just finds the concept of charging for software repugnant.
  - angus77 16y ago
    Could we get a citation? This is the absolute first I've heard someone claim that Stallman's actual said such a thing (aside from people who are obviously just making things up).