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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 organization

by 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.

by 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.