3 ms·

What is bringing people together - RMS-style "we're here to code" or progressive "everything is politics"?

• vsdawn 6y ago
  Indeed "we're here to code" is the winner. Anything else just turns software into high school popularity contests, and there are thousands of other organizations who cater to that.
  • geofft 6y ago
    It's kind of incredible that the position of "we're here to code" is being attributed to RMS. He strenuously fought against that position for so long. It's why he objected to accepting the term "open source," even though the open source movement was producing free software and vice versa. It's why he designed GCC in a way to make it hard to add proprietary add-ons and rejected changes to make it more modular, a change that would have fit better with a "we're here to code" mindset (and, in the end, a change that left it vulnerable to competition from LLVM). It's why he cares so much about using the term "GNU/Linux" instead of "Linux" - if we're just here to code, who cares about naming? It's why he advocates strong copyleft, even though weaker licenses are also acceptable for free software. See, for instance, https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html : > Proprietary software developers, seeking to deny the free competition an important advantage, will try to convince authors not to contribute libraries to the GPL-covered collection. For example, they may appeal to the ego, promising “more users for this library” if we let them use the code in proprietary software products. Popularity is tempting, and it is easy for a library developer to rationalize the idea that boosting the popularity of that one library is what the community needs above all. If the GNU philosophy were "we're here to code," then that argument would be convincing. (And indeed there are and were many people taking a "we're here to code" view - DJB, for instance, who insisted that he didn't copyright his software and it didn't need a license and all talk of licensing was a distraction; people who put their software on GitHub without a license; people who use GitHub and other non-free services instead of taking a principled stand against them; etc. Stallman's activism stood in opposition to all of those views.)
    • mantas 6y ago
      Code licensing is an essential part of coding.
• dragonwriter 6y ago
  > RMS-style "we're here to code" or progressive "everything is politics" Richard Stallman is definitely an “everything is politics” type. If he ever was on the “we’re here to code” side, it was before he ran into the issues that led him to found the FSF, which is also an everything-is-politics organization. You might prefer an aloof, privileged “we’re here to code” attitude, but projecting that onto Richard Stallman of all people is ludicrous.
  • mantas 6y ago
    When you got to pick sides and there's no nuance left, RMS is less politics than cancel culture.
    • dragonwriter 6y ago
      > When you got to pick sides and there's no nuance left That's exactly RMS’s perennial position. The only difference between him and the most extreme trigger-happy advocate of some specific narrow position on gender or racial politics is the subject area on which Stallman focusses.
      • mantas 6y ago
        Yes. And I'd rather keep those subjects separate. Let's talk code extremism in code world and other circles can keep their extremists. Otherwise any subject would be fragmented to no end. Just think if open source activists would refuse to participate in (non-programming) political activities because invite was made with M$ Word.
        • joshuamorton 6y ago
          Rms does essentially that.