30 ms·

Time to fork the FSF

345 points by pjhyett 15y ago

zalew 15y ago
so... it's perfectly ok to publish tons of linkbaits about 'how steve jobs changed my life' even if they are vague and repetitive boring opinions, but nobody can state his negative views on this occasion. gimme a break. death is sad, but it's good that there are people who had decided to stay out of this bubble.
- ineedtosleep 15y ago
  If it wasn't obvious from the past few days, HN is that bubble. If you don't like the circle jerking about Steve Jobs, come back in a week or two.
  - zalew 15y ago
    the first day I saw this http://i.imgur.com/xlNGD.png http://i.imgur.com/xlNGD.png, today I took the risk to click HN and was very surprised the frontpage doesn't look like that. when you've heard the news, it's not news anymore.
- andrewljohnson 15y ago
  Here, I'll let someone with much more eloquence than me explain to you why Stallman's diatribe is poorly wrought. If Stallman had to make a statement emphasizing his dislike of Jobs' influence, he could still have done so respectfully. Consider this; "I didn't share Steve Jobs' vision of computing, and I wish he'd chosen to embrace free software. I'm very sorry that he's gone and we've lost the opportunity to have that conversation. My sympathies are with his family at this time." There's no need to pretend that Stallman liked Jobs, but his post is contemptible. http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2011/10/why-fsf-founder-richard-stallm.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2011/10/why-fsf-found...
  - zalew 15y ago
    most of "I also must deliver you the news that Steve is dead, because you obviously didn't hear it in ALL THE NEWS OF THE WORLD" posts are also poorly wrought or could be tldr'd to 'I like my ipod', and those which aren't (mainstream blogs) look like a template written a long time ago. most of them are just linkbaits and karmawhoring. > he could still have done so respectfully and the rest of bloggers respectfully chace self-promotion and ad revenue by reposting stuff that has already been said. well, RMS gave them the occasion to continue this nonsense, but at least his view is original.
  - _delirium 15y ago
    It was posted on his personal "politics" mini-blog, which consists of basically nothing but 2-3-line annoyed and not very nuanced statements on various topics. People who read it expect what they get there, and most people don't read it. Here's an example the quality of political cartoons you can also expect...: http://stallman.org/images/cartoon-6.jpg http://stallman.org/images/cartoon-6.jpg As can be seen from the Update to that linked article, I think a big part of the problem is that these Web 2.0 "journalists" don't read, so in a game of telephone it's been turned into "FSF head Richard Stallman issues press release saying Jobs sux". If we're going to do that, you could manufacture about 300 scandals from his blog; "FSF head Richard Stallman equates U.S. President to Saddam Hussein!", etc. Maybe it's still contemptible as it stands, but I think people are either missing or deliberately ignoring the context when evaluating it. I take his "politics" ticker as closer to an IRC chat than a place for carefully thought out statements (that's what his Essays are for). I like that in geek culture we don't have this weird demand for people to be 24/7 ensconced in a professional PR-oriented persona, like a CEO or politician, but allow people like RMS, ESR, and Theo de Raadt to have crazy personal opinions. (Heck, Jobs had some pretty offensive and harmful opinions about science and alternative medicine, and we allowed that.) Honestly I'm more offended by this level of shameless profiteering with Steve-Jobs-death linkbait. Huffington Post, for example, shat out 188 separate Steve-Jobs-death posts within 24 hours: http://exploreto.tumblr.com/post/11114571981/huffingtonpost-com-188-articles-on-steve-jobs-death http://exploreto.tumblr.com/post/11114571981/huffingtonpost-...
    - sabat 15y ago
- ugh 15y ago
  Stallman is not some random blogger.
- spacemanaki 15y ago
  Mike Daisey in the NY Times was far, far more eloquent and actually in some ways, even more bitingly critical of Jobs than Stallman: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/opinion/jobs-looked-to-the-future.html?_r=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/opinion/jobs-looked-to-the... But he was also basically respectful.
  - divtxt 15y ago
    EDIT: Already it's own post now: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3084961 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3084961 Wow! Easily the best Steve Jobs article I've read this week! For me, this paragraph captures it all: I spoke with a man whose right hand was permanently curled into a claw from being smashed in a metal press at Foxconn, where he worked assembling Apple laptops and iPads. I showed him my iPad, and he gasped because he’d never seen one turned on. He stroked the screen and marveled at the icons sliding back and forth, the Apple attention to detail in every pixel. He told my translator, “It’s a kind of magic.”
    - deleted 15y ago
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bcrescimanno 15y ago
I tweeted earlier that I see RMS as the Fred Phelps (Westboro Baptist Church) of Free Software. He may not have started out this way; but these days he's completely single issue. If you're not doing free software 100% his way; you not only disagree with him but you are actually evil. Not just free software; but free software as RMS defines it(see GNU/Linux) or you're wrong. He's so blinded by his own zealotry that I'd argue that beyond the inner, hard-core "free software circle, he's seen as much of an embarrassment to the notion of free software as Phelps and Westboro are likely seen by other Christians. I've felt this way a long time about RMS; his comment about Steve Jobs's death was uncalled for--but it really was well-within character. Just like Phelps and Westboro are expected to show up at soldier's funerals to protest, we've come to expect this type of shit from RMS--and I agree with the OP that it's time to stop just accepting it. [Edit] I want to state that RMS, like everyone, is fully entitled to his opinion and that opinion carries no more or less weight than my own. Moreover, you're completely entitled to agree with him. What I do have a problem with is what the OP described: he doesn't belong at the head of a major organization, nor does he belong at the apex of the free software movement. Beyond my earlier described "inner circle," in the past several years, he's done more to tarnish the image of the free software community than to help it.
- learc83 15y ago
  While I don't always agree with RMS, I think he truly believes everything he says. I don't think the same of Fred Phelps. I long ago reached the conclusion that he tries to say the most inflammatory thing possible wether he really believes it or not. I have no idea why, but I believe he has some other agenda than just the condemnation of homosexuality. I've even almost seriously entertained the idea that he is a closet extreme atheist out to discredit theists.
  - drzaiusapelord 15y ago
    Naww, he's just a zealot. The history of religion is the history of zealotry, as well as oppression and violence. Funny how you think he must be an atheist, when he fits the religious zealot profile to a 't.' Phelps fits the character of so many religious leaders who have millions of followers and millions of dollars. Phelps' big issue is that he's poor at monetizing his crazy, unlike other successful bigots like Falwell and Graham. I'm sick of the conspiracy theories that he must be some kind of secret agent. Bigotry and hatred is typical in religion, especially for homosexuals. Theists need to call him an atheist or a con man to make them feel better about being theists and following the philosophy of 1st century madmen.
abrimo 15y ago
I've attended one of Stallman's talks and it was more of a comedy than anything else. I don't actually take him seriously, he did some great work in the past but the world has moved on.
josephg 15y ago
I'm aware of Stallman's advocacy on free software issues, but (completely honest question), what else does the Free Software Foundation do ? Software is at a point where its basically impossible to make anything useful without opensource software. Proprietary code is a minority in my stack both as a developer and as a user. Proprietary software is often good before opensource software is good, but consistently opensource implementations eventually outpace their proprietary counterparts. We saw this trend first with UNIX -> Linux. Today, just reading this webpage I'm using Chrome (Chromium + WebKit) which communicates via POSIX to the BSD network stack in my kernel (Darwin). The browser has been compiled with either GCC or LLVM. Hackernews is probably hosted on nginx / apache behind varnish or something, running on linux. In short, I feel like the opensource movement has already won. Aside from RMS's crusade against software patents, how is the FSF still relevant?
- tlrobinson 15y ago
  They've won that battle, but not the war. Servers, databases, frameworks, languages, etc are often open source, but the majority of applications are not.
  - drzaiusapelord 15y ago
    That's the problem, you're the problem if you refuse to accept that the best solution is going to be the freedom for people to sell commercial closed software as well as use open software. The idea that this is a war is exactly why RMS is wrong. The idea that we must win it and we must make everyone use the new hot open license is wrong. The idea should be to encourage people to use open licenses, and to promote the good of open licenses, not declare war on everything and become some bitter asshole neckbeard when you see guys like Jobs doing well with a slightly different approach. The FSF doesn't do much. They're little more than negative campaigners "Windows 7 Sins" etc. I'm not sure what its purpose or real world effect is other than to scare middle management from FOSS as much as possible. Stick vs Carrot. FSF is all stick and people have noticed.
    - Produce 15y ago
aaronbrethorst 15y ago
Emacs Virgin thing: http://opensourcetogo.blogspot.com/2009/07/emailing-richard-stallman.html http://opensourcetogo.blogspot.com/2009/07/emailing-richard-...
- groovy2shoes 15y ago
  This is the first I've heard of this incident, and I find the comments on that post shocking. That so many people can take RMS's side on that issue is appalling.
RexRollman 15y ago
After reading this, all I can say is that some people are too sensitive.
- daedhel 15y ago
  Or are opportunistic assholes who capitalize on any occasion.
BigCanOfTuna 15y ago
Crass and insensitive but in line with everything I've ever heard him profess to believe. He's never strayed from his goal in making great software available to millions of people around the world, and he's never given a shit why it shouldn't or couldn't be done his way...damn, that sounds familiar.
- leot 15y ago
  Yes, but RMS is simply wrong, here. Jobs has put great software into more hands than RMS ever did. Jobs might well have (indirectly) had an even more positive influence on FOSS by spreading BSD. (I'm not saying that there isn't a ton of FOSS out there in lots of hands -- but RMS isn't responsible for its being there in the same way Jobs is responsible. Jobs is responsible for the iPhone. RMS isn't responsible for Android.)
  - saurik 15y ago
    (BSD != "Free" => Mac OS X != "Open". Jobs "spreading BSD" is therefore irrelevant, and probably explains the downvotes you are receiving, if you or anyone else are at all curious.)
  - cookiecaper 15y ago
    RMS makes no comment about "great software" in the post. He says that Jobs "made computers as a jail 'cool'" (paraphrase), and I think to a great extent that's true -- Apple has always been the most aggressively locked-down computer maker. Although OS X uses several open-source internals and although Apple even maintains some of these (including very important ones, like CUPS and X), they are still in some ways the most "locked down" computer (and consumer electronic) maker out there.
    - leot 15y ago
      RMS is wrong insofar as he believes that FOSS exclusively will result in more people having better software than if there is FOSS + ~FOSS.
dbbo 15y ago
At the risk of getting repetitive: I think rms was speaking strictly from a utilitarian perspective-- that is, Jobs' absence is overall a good thing for the FOSS movement (even though that might not actually be true, unless Cook is more committed to FOSS than Jobs). I can see how some find his statement tactless, but I'm not offended by it because Jobs was not an important person in my life. That doesn't mean that his life had no value, but his life wasn't more valuable to me than the life of any of the thousands of people who die every day from preventable causes. I honestly don't understand why so many people claim to be sad because Jobs is gone. Why did they feel so connected to a CEO? Steve Jobs was not your uncle. You have no rational reason to be upset over his death, and especially over what a coot like rms says about him. If you're upset enough to "fork the FSF" you're probably suffering from some illusory feeling of connectedness towards Jobs. I don't agree with a lot of what the FSF says, but one single comment made by one single guy is not going to make me turn my back on the whole organization. I will no longer be reading Larry's blog if he thinks this kind of flighty and ostentatious display of disapproval is warranted.
- desireco42 15y ago
  +1 (I especially agree with last part where you question forking FSF)
  - desireco42 15y ago
    I am really proud of this downvotes I got for supporting free software :)
    - prodigal_erik 15y ago
      "+1 agree" without adding new ideas is very poorly received on HN, no matter what the topic, because we can't afford to have everyone doing that. Just upvote.
- deleted 15y ago
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- EiZei 15y ago
deleted 15y ago
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- deleted 15y ago
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_delirium 15y ago
If you want an advocacy organization with a better ear for public sensibilities and business, that's what the Open Source Initiative was designed for, wasn't it? Why not join them instead of starting yet another organization?
- gonzo 15y ago
  No. OSI was Eric's attempt to hijack the work of RMS. Eric is no better than, and in many ways, much worse than, RMS.
  - kragen 15y ago
    That's more or less how Stallman saw it, but the other dozen or so free-software luminaries that Raymond brought onboard from the beginning didn't see it that way. Stallman was literally the only one on the original Cc: list that opposed the new "open source" movement.
brendoncrawford 15y ago
Go ahead... fork it. Then what happens? Will you travel the world tirelessly promoting free software, speaking at universities and other events for very little money? Will you maintain a job board, mailing list, hardware database, software directory, year after year? Will you find lawyers to donate hundreds of hours to write and revise licenses? Will you hire lobbyists to fight software patents? Will you tirelessly fight the RIAA, day after day? When you've done all these things, sign me up.
- chrisballinger 15y ago
  Will you grow a beard that big?
- alecco 15y ago
  And never mind code. This basher is a complete nobody who seems to profit from open source more than contribute. It's not like the heads of several major FSF projects are banding a revolt. The sinister anti-Stallman/GNU sentiment on HN is reaching incredibly high levels. Luckily it's mostly nobodies like this big mouth bozo.
  - drivingmenuts 15y ago
    I think Stallman has earned some negative sentiment with that statement. As he is so closely identified with the FSF, regardless of intent, it's inevitable that there would be spillover. It's not the mission, it's the man we have a problem with. Yes, he's done a lot for Free Software and software in general, most of it good. He has taught us a lot and probably learned a few things. The next thing he needs to learn is when to keep some of his thoughts to himself. His statement, in no way, advances the cause of Free Software.
  - potatolicious 15y ago
    While you do have a point, I disagree strongly with the way you've expressed it. There is no need for name-calling and personal attacks on this board. Calling someone a "nobody" and a "big mouth bozo" is uncalled for.
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sgentle 15y ago
I don't get it, personally. Yes, Stallman's a loon - although as an aside I think that every good movement needs its loons. Who's going to say "you know what? I believe in Free Software so much that I will use nothing else, and publicly and harshly declare that anyone doing otherwise is a moron and a traitor to the future of humanity"? Anyone who is willing to sacrifice the usefulness of the last 30 years of proprietary tech to make a point has to be a bit barmy. But who else will make that point? All progress depends on unreasonable men. And I agree that it would be helpful to have a moderate voice in Free Software. I use a Mac - sorry, it's really nice to use and I code a lot. I like my Kindle - sorry, it's better than the others and I read a lot. I live and work with proprietary software, but I believe in Free Software too. WebKit is popular because of Apple and Google. OS X is the most popular BSD, and the most popular consumer Unix. Non-free and free can and have worked together to mutual benefit. Is there anyone out there who can help me walk that line? If Larry is proposing to make that organisation, I would welcome it with open arms. But what of this Jobs nonsense? Are we so timid and flammable that we can't handle a complex opinion that we don't agree with? Can you not accept that Jobs was a great leader who didn't deserve to die, but that he left a scary, proprietary footprint all over the mobile and tablet space? "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." is an opinion I don't agree with, but I don't think it's ludicrous, tactless and heartless. Not everyone has to respect the things I respect, and feelings don't suddenly trump debate because of death. Jobs is one of the hacker community's sacred cows, and we wouldn't accept this level of sanctification on any other topic. I'm sure when Bill Gates or the Dalai Lama dies, there will be posts saying "let's not forget that Windows Vista was awful and religion is the other opiate of Tibet" Will they cause the same outcry?
- jpadvo 15y ago
  The issue is not at all with his opinion. It is that he expressed it in a horrendously, gratuitously crass and offensive way. Here is a transliteration into humane language of what he said: "My heart goes out to Steve Jobs' family in their time of grief. And my heart also goes to the millions of people who looked up to him as an icon and inspiration. But we need to not get so carried away honoring the dead that we forget the damage that Jobs' work had on the Free Software movement. His pioneered the software walled garden, which destroys freedom and choice. And he targeted it at people who would not understand what they were sacrificing by giving up their freedoms. We can only hope that his successors make Apple a more free company, or failing that, are not as effective at spreading it as he was." Wasn't that better? And it communicated substantively the same thing, but without all the name calling and the seeming glee over the death of another human. Disclaimer: I typed this on my Macbook Air. Edit: One more thing to add. Saying "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone" is tripe. Being gone is a euphemism for being dead. The reason we mourn when a loved one dies is precisely because that means they are gone. Maybe RMS sees a subtle distinction between death and gone-ness in his head. But I promise you that people in grief see absolutely no distinction between the death and the loss of the person they mourn.
gfodor 15y ago
All you really need to do is consider what Steve Jobs would have said about RMS if he were still here when RMS is no longer. At worst, he'd say nothing, at best, he'd say something that would have touched you and made you think deeply about what the two men had in common despite their deep differences.
- cookiecaper 15y ago
  I upvoted this, but meant to downvote it.
  - jwhite 15y ago
    I upvoted you to encourage you to tell us why you downvoted it.
    - cookiecaper 15y ago
      I downvoted it because it's incredibly presumptive. OP posits that "at worst, [Jobs] would have said nothing..." apparently on nothing but his assumption that Steve Jobs would never do a controversial thing, or a thing that the OP thought was tasteless. Unless OP is a close friend of Steve Jobs and knew him well on a personal level, this is completely baseless speculation based on OP's general good feelings for Apple and the assumption that because Apple products make him feel good, Steve Jobs would never say something rude after a colleague died. None of these people know Jobs and yet they assume he's some super great dude. Making such assumptions about the CEO's personal character based on your affinity for the products of that CEO's company is very juvenile, yet it's irritatingly common.
      - gfodor 15y ago
        Its not hard to imagine that Jobs would react much the way most of his own rivals have reacted, the way normal decent human beings do, with class and respect. My post was less about guessing something about Steve Jobs's character and more about letting readers reflect upon just how abnormal and deranged RMS's comments are compared to any others.
24bit 15y ago
Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world - are the ones who do!
- sabat 15y ago
  Note that this does not begin, "Here's the the assholes, the heartless, the tactless, the people who think they are above the rest of humankind, who always know better than everyone else, who must teach us how to think." RMS has done some admirable things, but he's in dire need of some mental help. Seriously.
spitfire 15y ago
In the marketplace of ideas Stallman has a simple remedy for his woes with Apple. Make better software than them. Go on Richard, I dare you to.
- Produce 15y ago
  He already does. The only difference in the perceived quality is the learning curve. Learn the *nix way and you will be enlightened. Learn the Apple way and you will remain ignorant (but have lots of time for shopping, cos math is so boring, right?).
  - rimantas 15y ago
    Apple way? You mean the one where OS is unix? The one which comes with perl, php, python, ruby, etc? The one which comes with fee Grapher app?
    - Produce 15y ago
      That's like saying that Android preaches the nix way because it runs a Linux kernel. This is obviously false since the interface presented to the user pushes a completely different way of working and thinking. Using any of the listed software requires knowing what you're doing. It's the same situation on Linux and Windows, you can install PHP or Python all the same and need the equivalent amount of knowledge to do so. If you seriously can't see the 'Apple way' then take another look at their whole business model, which is making things simple enough for people with little training to use. The nix way consists of understanding how the system works, which is in direct opposition to the Apple way.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
  - 2muchcoffeeman 15y ago
    I love the Apple way. Gave me lots of extra time to pursue other interests. Remember, you rely on a lot of people who aren't good at computers but have other skills.
keyist 15y ago
RMS has the FSF and Defective By Design sites as soapboxes if he wished to gain more attention from Jobs's death. This was a post on his political notes page. He did nothing to publicize it. He didn't post to aggregators or tweet to ask for upvotes (technically it was posted on his Identi.ca account which is linked to his political notes feed, but it got no special treatment). If some major sites hadn't picked up on it and provided the publicity, most readers would never know. So RMS wrote a politically incorrect opinion on his personal page. Can we move on now?
- aquayellow 15y ago
  And please don't think of forking the FSF because RMS made fun of Steve Jobs if that is what people think he did.
- ori_b 15y ago
  When you're a public figure, you have no personal pages. If it's public, it's part of your image.
  - v21 15y ago
    But there's still a distinction between RMS and the FSF.
- deleted 15y ago
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- ugh 15y ago
  Hey, you seem to be as clueless about communication as he is.
  - Tichy 15y ago
    What I find more interesting: are you as good at hacking as rms? Or is being better at communication the only thing you can take pride in? I suspect that might be behind all the ranting.
ubasu 15y ago
Relevant pg essay? http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
cookiecaper 15y ago
OS X would not be possible without RMS. You have to remember that Stallman was around before Jobs' day -- he was performing real work at MIT when Apple was initially conceptualized. Stallman therefore is apparently less vulnerable to the reality distortion field and does not unduly offer oblations to a guy who was obsessed with shininess at the expense of hacker culture. Jobs went to lengths on many products to prevent tinkering in an age when computing was still very open and very academic, because Jobs didn't want any little peons messing up his perfect devices. Hence Stallman's quip that Jobs made computers as a jail cool. If you think about this statement from Stallman's perspective it really makes a lot of sense, and I think it is ridiculous that the Steve Jobs hero worship pervades so deeply as to not recognize that Jobs was a control freak even after Apple products were sold and in the possession of customers, and that some people, particular contemporaries of Stallman's stripe, may not have been fond of that. I doubt that the release of the iPhone really did much to persuade that set of people.
- drivingmenuts 15y ago
  This isn't about OS X. This is about Stallman being effective as the leader of the FSF, which apparently he feels entitles him to say any damn thing he wants, regardless of how tasteless it is. That's not the mark of a leader. That's the mark of a self-inflated ass.
  - cookiecaper 15y ago
    I didn't find it tasteless. Is it really such a criminal thing to say that you are glad Jobs's influence is gone? Can't reasonable people disagree on that point? People totally go overboard wrt Steve Jobs, as they do his company, Apple. RMS comes from a time when computers were generally open for tinkering, and Apple strove to make its products impenetrable lest Jobs' pain-stakingly "perfected" designs be gaudied up by consumers. From the original Mac which didn't have expansion slots to today's iDevices that don't allow the consumer to do so much as change the battery, Apple has a long history of tight lock down. Do you not see how an old-school hacker could be disgruntled by that philosophy? The beliefs and experience of that group runs deep enough that they are not hoodwinked into deifying Steve Jobs because the iMac is the sleekest desktop computer around.
kragen 15y ago
Other related thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3085417 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3085417
coldnose 15y ago
And today is the day /usr/bin/gcc changes from "deprecated" to "deleted". I'm glad something finally pushed me over that hump. http://clang.llvm.org/ http://clang.llvm.org/
daedhel 15y ago
So it's time to fork the FSF because this guy does not agree with one comment RMS did? How is this not overreacting in the first place...
- vacri 15y ago
  To be fair, the author does state it's a 'straw that broke the camel's back' scenario; the punctuation at the end of a long line of disliked behaviour, not just one comment.
tzury 15y ago
I fully understand this Larry, and think FSF would have been doing much better if there was someone else at its cockpit. RMS is a fanatic about free software, like ultra religious people are to their religion. For instance, for me, being free, means, at first and above all, being free to choose. Being able to install proprietary nVidia driver which does not crash my linux box every half a day, and have this driver built and available for me in my linux distro repository. Years ago, RMS was a guest of honor in IBM Tel Aviv. These were the days, Linux was something left-field, obscure, that no one wanted to know or hear about it. There were hundreds of developers in the hall who came to hear about the "Gnu/Linux thing" from the Freedom Guru. All of a sudden, in the middle of his lecture, out of any imaginable context, RMS took of his left shoe, and then the sack, and start rubbing his toes with his fingers while preaching about free software. Yes, imagine that, a man is playing with his barefoot on a stage, would you remember anything he said? Would you listen to anything he has to say? Or would your brain being busy understanding and categorizing the extraordinary show you are in? (Those were not the days of youtube and smartphone, I bet if that would have been happening these days, this was the most viewed video on youtube amongst hackers.) It is sad, but successful open source project does not seemed to get along with RMS at all, see Ubuntu/Canonical as a good example.
mrb 15y ago
I think RMS's statement is completely misinterpreted. Don't forget the first part of the sentence: "I'm not glad he's dead", which literally means RMS is not glad that Jobs died! "I'm glad he's gone" is only a complaint towards Jobs' influence on personal computing. You may disagree with RMS (I certainly do), and it is certainly an inappropriate comment to make at this time, but this is nothing to make a drama of RMS' comment... Geez people!
Uhhrrr 15y ago
I have to flag this for being utterly asinine. If you're really a "free software guy", RMS's statement should not even partially raise an eyebrow.
nohat 15y ago
RMS and Jobs seem very similar to me. Both were monomaniacal perfectionists. Both were undiplomatic and unwilling to compromise or cater to unbelievers.
nouname 15y ago
oh, this larry is just a moaner and hypocrite. i do not even want to comment it in full. go on, cry more, little piece of shit, nobody cares
fmadot 15y ago
I won't say I am supporting RMS or not. Actually I think Jobs was a man with great talent, but I don't like him. I think most of you overreacted on "I'm not glad he's dead, I'm glad he's gone". RMS expressed clearly that he don't agree with the achievements that Jobs reached in his short life. This is a personal opinion. You can't force everyone to agree with what Jobs has done. After all RMS said "I'm not glad he's gone." That's enough. I think there is nothing to argue for.
skrebbel 15y ago
I'm sorry, but - what a nutcase. Silently accepts Stallman's years of nasty comments, cynical attitudes, world-wide conspiracy theories and downright condescension all through. Then Stallman says something unfriendly about god^H^H^H Jobs, and he resigns. Oh, come on.
poink 15y ago
This is kind of like wanting a "toned down" PETA. People don't devote their lives to marginalized causes without either having or picking up a twinge of zealotry. If you want those people to stand up for causes you mutually believe in, you have to take the bad with the good. RMS might not be the best possible Free Software advocate, but I'm glad someone's doing it, and nobody else seems to be volunteering for the job.
- ceejayoz 15y ago
  > This is kind of like wanting a "toned down" PETA. Is that so horrible a thing? It seems to me groups like the Humane Society have done a lot more for animal welfare than PETA.
chanon 15y ago
I agree with this comment by "tom robinson" in the blog post: To those saying you agree with what RMS wrote: that’s fine, but irrelevant. As a spokesman for FSF he shouldn’t be pandering to his already devout followers, he should be trying to convince others that the ideals of the FSF are worth pursuing, and he’s been doing an absolutely TERRIBLE job of that lately. Silly campaigns of immature puns, lashing out at people who don’t say “GNU/Linux”, insulting a recently deceased man who much of the world admires, and making otherwise inappropriate remarks on a regular basis is an excellent way to alienate the people you’re trying to win over. How have these tactics been working out for FSF? I don’t have stats, but anecdotally most new open source projects I come across have rejected the GPL licenses for BSD, MIT, Apache, etc. Now imagine what FSF could accomplish if they had a spokesman with the skills of Steve Jobs
tommorris 15y ago
Wait, isn't there a whole stack of organisations that support FLOSS or the same sort of values as openness that the FSF support other than the FSF already? Off the top of my head: Apache Software Foundation, OSI, GNOME Foundation, Linux Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, Python Software Foundation, Open Knowledge Foundation, Software Freedom Law Center, Software in the Public Interest, Wikimedia Foundation. If you feel like you want to throw money, power or sexual favours to the open source community, there are plenty of ways to do it that don't involve RMS or the FSF. Or you could just find some free/open source script or app or library you use and like and chuck the creator $20 and a nice email saying "I really like your code, go buy yourself a pizza and a beer on me".
jsilence 15y ago
In other news: Autistic Reporter: Train Thankfully Unharmed In Crash That Killed One Man http://www.theonion.com/video/autistic-reporter-train-thankfully-unharmed-in-cra,20098/ http://www.theonion.com/video/autistic-reporter-train-thankf...
jwr 15y ago
RMS deserves praise for starting the Free Software movement, but he has been a liability to it for quite some time now. Leaders that start movements are not always fit to lead them when movements grow. And before you protest — have you met the man in person? If you haven't, you won't understand.
chanux 15y ago
Jobs loved what he did and believed in it. RMS certainly is same. I respect Jobs for `the inspiration` while I respect RMS for what `he offered to the world`.
Tichy 15y ago
I have never heard of Larry, so my guess would be: chance that Larry will found and lead the FFSF (Forked Free Software Foundation) = 0%
AmazingBytecode 15y ago
I support open source on a pragmatic level as a way for people to share code so that they no longer have to "re-invent the wheel". Because of this I feel like it's petty and counter-productive for the FSF to refuse to share their "free" software with people because of the way that those people want to use the software. Truly free software should be released to the public without limitations on how and where it should be used. To clarify: I know that my preferred model ignores the scummy/greedy tendencies of people to leech off work that others have done. However, I'd like for people to think of open source software as a gift given with no strings attached.
piyush_ranjan 15y ago
He has no taste at all.
mkup 15y ago
I think RMS is doing perfect trolling to get more attention to his GNU/FSF/commie stuff. The net effect is the people talking about RMS, about FSF and GNU. More people get to know about this stuff, more people get involved. Just a little trolling replaces zillions of bucks spent on advertising, PR etc. Commies don't have money to pay, so they must troll. --- Just don't spread this hype and don't feed the troll.
- wazoox 15y ago
  > GNU/FSF/commie stuff. Bingo, you've just made some tasteless, insulting passing remark. Some sort of reverse-Godwin point. So much for not feeding the trolls.
fletcher 15y ago
What Stallman said is just, analytically speaking: 1) I don't like when people die. 2) But this happened to Steve Jobs, unfortunately. 3) However from my point of view he was doing so much damage to the world of software that this is a good thing. Not the fact he died but the fact that we no longer have his influence. Note: I don't agree. But I don't think it should be a problem to say the above. It is like if you are the leader of a movement against the practice of killing whales, and there is one guy that kills 100,000 whales every year. If he dies you can legitimately say: "I'm sorry he died, but this is a good thing for whales". He used the wrong words, the wrong time, and so forth, but the concept is nothing of extraordinary from his point of view. It is important to have the freedom of saying what we want.
- gurkendoktor 15y ago
  Nobody wants to take this freedom away, but it hurts the cause he is supposed to advance, and that's what the posting is saying. I can't see how mentioning human life and software licensing in the same sentence is ever a good idea if there is a chance that interested non-nerds are reading up on your ideals.
motters 15y ago
Although Stallman didn't use a great deal of tact in his statement I agree with his concern overall. Software should serve the user in accordance with the ideal of individual empowerment with technology and not become a sort of jail controlled by a central authority that you have to struggle to break out of. The problem of impersonal computing is by no means isolated to Apple though.
- narag 15y ago
  Although Stallman didn't use a great deal of tact in his statement I agree with his concern overall. That seems oddly similar to my tl;dr from the article: "Although I agree with his concern overall, Stallman didn't use a great deal of tact in his statement".
thu 15y ago
Stallman didn't say he's glad Steve Jobs died. I understand he's glad that Steve's influence on computing stop, as that influence is driving computing in a closed ecosystem. You can take it in a non-emotional way. A is, in your opinion, a bad thing. If A stops, you're glad. If A stops because of a sad B event, you can be both glad for A to end, and sad for B to occur.
Fice 15y ago
As I said already, today's hacker culture is crippled. So called "hackers" here have lost their principles, forgotten the value of freedom, worship the wrong idols. How come an entrepreneur be a hero much more important than any of the researchers who pioneered the modern computer technology? How can the man who worked against the values and principles of the hacker ethic be an idol for so many hackers? There is no real hacker community here on HN, only a flock of spineless ship.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  The title "Hacker News" is a lure designed to draw more people in. It would be best if this place went back to it's old and far more honest name "Startup News".
- suivix 15y ago
  I see HN as a more mature version of http://www.reddit.com/r/technology http://www.reddit.com/r/technology, but with a heavy slant towards discussions about startups. In fact I frequently see the same articles referenced in both places.
Sandman 15y ago
While most of the commenters here discuss what Stallman said and what he actualy meant, whether it was distasteful or not, and whether Jobs was a modern day messiah who single-handedly changed the world we live in or just a smart business man with a very good sense of choosing the right people to create the products that he envisioned, I'd like to take a minute to think about what is actually proposed in this article - the forking of FSF. It's quite obvious from the article that the reason the author suggests something like that is not because his views on software freedom somehow differ than those of Stallman, but because he has issues with Stallman himself, or more precisely, with his publicly expressed opinions. He feels that they hurt FSF and free software in general. Isn't then the solution to the problem to, through some electoral process, replace Stallman and put a new figure at the head of FSF? Somebody more tactful, more careful about how they say what they mean (if that's truly the kind of a person memebers of FSF would like to see in charge)? Starting a new foundation with exactly the same goals as FSF, just because you don't like Stallman's public statements, seems pointless to me.
loup-vaillant 15y ago
This is a common pattern: (i) someone famous dies, (ii) someone else says something bad about that celebrity, (iii) everyone else is scandalized. Thou shalt not bash the dead. Now, I don't think Stallman's lines were gratuitously offensive. He was merely clear and concise. He spent no word on niceness, but he spent no word on rudeness either. And by the way, he is factually correct: Jobs was "the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed [among other things] to sever fools from their freedom" (or, if not the pioneer, at least the most effective apologist). Now should he have just shut up? Probably not. Every one now is praising Jobs, and that may trigger even more sales for the iPhone and the iPad. Praise Jobs, and soon you will praise Apple's most locked down products. At least a word of caution is needed. Now I do understand that Stallman knows next to nothing about how not to trigger bad feelings. I do understand that he should work on that. But please, don't be offended by something that most probably wasn't intended to be offensive.
Jarred 15y ago
I agree with forking the FSF, but not just having someone whose nice is necessary. It needs to be led by someone who gives a damn about user experience. This is an issue with not all open source applications, but many. It is getting better, but I still prefer Windows or OS X to using Gnome, KDE. I've never needed to use any of the bundled software with Ubuntu (except the settings apps, gedit, and Firefox). It can't just be about open-source alternatives, because most people don't care if something is open or closed source, they care if it gets the job done well.
maximusprime 15y ago
Best way to deal with extreme fundamentalists is to ignore them. He's a joke.
sharmajai 15y ago
Fuck you RMS. I have been and still am a staunch believer in open source, but when I read comments like this from the person who's motto once was that everybody writing software should contribute the source back to the community, not because it delivers better software (due to the more eyeballs resulting in fewer bugs), but because it results in moving software forward quickly by virtue of helping each other out, I agree with the OP, it's time for a change. Let me tell you something, free software or not, it was Steve Jobs, who told us what forward direction for software actually means, first by making GUI mainstream, then by making capacitive touch mainstream, and lastly by defining what a tablet form factor should and should not be. If you think Steve's products hamper your freedom, I can argue the exact opposite, it was Steve who taught us ways to make technology more accessible by making groundbreaking innovations in user interfaces, which enables the non geeks of the world to use computers in the first place, I am pretty sure those users will feel more trapped in the command line interface that you envisioned for them, than they feel by not having access to the source of the painting app they have fun playing with on their ipad. So if you cannot come out the frog hole that you have created for yourself, and give credit where it's due, then maybe you should shut the fuck up.
- DanBC 15y ago
  >If you think Steve's products hamper your freedom Try and explain how to boot a MacBookPro from USB stick to someone, and compare that to booting almost any other computer. Or explain how to dual boot a Mac with OSX and Linux, vs anything else with Windows and Linux.
  - astrodust 15y ago
    Try and explain how to restore a MacBook from back-ups over the phone to a frantic parent who's just lost their hard drive. I did that. It took two minutes. It worked flawlessly. Sometimes to gain more command over your technology you have to give up some theoretical freedom, but that's freedom you'd never have been able to exercise. An F-16 pilot would find the controls in a typical car so disappointing. Where's the lever to adjust the fuel/air mixture? The GPS waypoints? The brake bias dial? The air pressure indicator? The temperature of the tires? All of these things are theoretically important to driving, but they're not of any concern to someone simply trying to get from point A to point B. That's all most people using computers are trying to do.
BasDirks 15y ago
Stallman is a degenerate.
epo 15y ago
RMS is clearly on the autistic spectrum, probably far enough on it to be regarded as having a 'learning difficulty' in the rather twee PC UK-ism. There is IMHO, an interesting litmus test where people who share his monomaniacal obsession, or think it 'reasonable', probably have the same issue.
- DanBC 15y ago
  UK (at least, England, I have no idea what Wales or Scotland do) "Learning disability" is related to IQ. Autism and Asperger's syndrome do sometimes lead to a "Special Educational Need" (SEN). This isn't just language; there's some access to medical services stuff involved.
  - epo 15y ago
    Thanks for that correction.
goodweeds 15y ago
If it were RMS who had died, I wonder what Steve Jobs would have said.
tbourdon 15y ago
Much worse will be written about RMS when he dies and many will applaud what is written, never mind their contributions to technology had the same scale of impact on society... It's all in the perspective.
endgame 15y ago
Oh, give it a rest already. rms was actually pretty tactful. Did people actually read what he wrote? > Nobody deserves to have to die - not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing.
the_mat 15y ago
Many of the comments following that story are deranged, and I mean that in the strongest sense of the word. "Software extremists" like that really exist? There are people who honestly think Steve Jobs was evil? And most disturbingly, there are people who will flat out bash on the reputation of someone who so recently died? Wow. Just wow.
5hoom 15y ago
Stallman & Jobs are both giant figures in the tech world to anyone who knows their history. I would also imagine that anyone who has followed Richard Stallman over the years would be surprised if he hadn't made a statement like this. He is an outspoken & tireless champion of an incredibly worthy cause he believes is greater than himself (and c'mon, the guys hacking skills are legendary). Steve Jobs was a uniquely amazing entrepreneur & visionary leader. His impact on the way people everywhere use technology is both profound & undeniable. Both men are worthy of the deepest respect IMHO, even if their goals were in conflict.
mtraven 15y ago
Didn't this fork happen quite some time ago? http://www.opensource.org/ http://www.opensource.org/ And for pretty much the exact same reasons being given now? Although some of the people behind that are almost as embarrassing to be associated with as RMS.
December 15y ago
I'm so tired of political correctness and "sexism" posts. At times half of this site seems to consist of posts made by people offended by something.

345 points by pjhyett 15y ago

zalew 15y ago

so... it's perfectly ok to publish tons of linkbaits about 'how steve jobs changed my life' even if they are vague and repetitive boring opinions, but nobody can state his negative views on this occasion. gimme a break. death is sad, but it's good that there are people who had decided to stay out of this bubble.

ineedtosleep 15y ago
If it wasn't obvious from the past few days, HN is that bubble. If you don't like the circle jerking about Steve Jobs, come back in a week or two.
- zalew 15y ago
  the first day I saw this http://i.imgur.com/xlNGD.png http://i.imgur.com/xlNGD.png, today I took the risk to click HN and was very surprised the frontpage doesn't look like that. when you've heard the news, it's not news anymore.
andrewljohnson 15y ago
Here, I'll let someone with much more eloquence than me explain to you why Stallman's diatribe is poorly wrought. If Stallman had to make a statement emphasizing his dislike of Jobs' influence, he could still have done so respectfully. Consider this; "I didn't share Steve Jobs' vision of computing, and I wish he'd chosen to embrace free software. I'm very sorry that he's gone and we've lost the opportunity to have that conversation. My sympathies are with his family at this time." There's no need to pretend that Stallman liked Jobs, but his post is contemptible. http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2011/10/why-fsf-founder-richard-stallm.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2011/10/why-fsf-found...
- zalew 15y ago
  most of "I also must deliver you the news that Steve is dead, because you obviously didn't hear it in ALL THE NEWS OF THE WORLD" posts are also poorly wrought or could be tldr'd to 'I like my ipod', and those which aren't (mainstream blogs) look like a template written a long time ago. most of them are just linkbaits and karmawhoring. > he could still have done so respectfully and the rest of bloggers respectfully chace self-promotion and ad revenue by reposting stuff that has already been said. well, RMS gave them the occasion to continue this nonsense, but at least his view is original.
- _delirium 15y ago
  It was posted on his personal "politics" mini-blog, which consists of basically nothing but 2-3-line annoyed and not very nuanced statements on various topics. People who read it expect what they get there, and most people don't read it. Here's an example the quality of political cartoons you can also expect...: http://stallman.org/images/cartoon-6.jpg http://stallman.org/images/cartoon-6.jpg As can be seen from the Update to that linked article, I think a big part of the problem is that these Web 2.0 "journalists" don't read, so in a game of telephone it's been turned into "FSF head Richard Stallman issues press release saying Jobs sux". If we're going to do that, you could manufacture about 300 scandals from his blog; "FSF head Richard Stallman equates U.S. President to Saddam Hussein!", etc. Maybe it's still contemptible as it stands, but I think people are either missing or deliberately ignoring the context when evaluating it. I take his "politics" ticker as closer to an IRC chat than a place for carefully thought out statements (that's what his Essays are for). I like that in geek culture we don't have this weird demand for people to be 24/7 ensconced in a professional PR-oriented persona, like a CEO or politician, but allow people like RMS, ESR, and Theo de Raadt to have crazy personal opinions. (Heck, Jobs had some pretty offensive and harmful opinions about science and alternative medicine, and we allowed that.) Honestly I'm more offended by this level of shameless profiteering with Steve-Jobs-death linkbait. Huffington Post, for example, shat out 188 separate Steve-Jobs-death posts within 24 hours: http://exploreto.tumblr.com/post/11114571981/huffingtonpost-com-188-articles-on-steve-jobs-death http://exploreto.tumblr.com/post/11114571981/huffingtonpost-...
  - sabat 15y ago
ugh 15y ago
Stallman is not some random blogger.
spacemanaki 15y ago
Mike Daisey in the NY Times was far, far more eloquent and actually in some ways, even more bitingly critical of Jobs than Stallman: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/opinion/jobs-looked-to-the-future.html?_r=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/opinion/jobs-looked-to-the... But he was also basically respectful.
- divtxt 15y ago
  EDIT: Already it's own post now: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3084961 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3084961 Wow! Easily the best Steve Jobs article I've read this week! For me, this paragraph captures it all: I spoke with a man whose right hand was permanently curled into a claw from being smashed in a metal press at Foxconn, where he worked assembling Apple laptops and iPads. I showed him my iPad, and he gasped because he’d never seen one turned on. He stroked the screen and marveled at the icons sliding back and forth, the Apple attention to detail in every pixel. He told my translator, “It’s a kind of magic.”
  - deleted 15y ago
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bcrescimanno 15y ago

I tweeted earlier that I see RMS as the Fred Phelps (Westboro Baptist Church) of Free Software. He may not have started out this way; but these days he's completely single issue. If you're not doing free software 100% his way; you not only disagree with him but you are actually evil. Not just free software; but free software as RMS defines it(see GNU/Linux) or you're wrong. He's so blinded by his own zealotry that I'd argue that beyond the inner, hard-core "free software circle, he's seen as much of an embarrassment to the notion of free software as Phelps and Westboro are likely seen by other Christians. I've felt this way a long time about RMS; his comment about Steve Jobs's death was uncalled for--but it really was well-within character. Just like Phelps and Westboro are expected to show up at soldier's funerals to protest, we've come to expect this type of shit from RMS--and I agree with the OP that it's time to stop just accepting it. [Edit] I want to state that RMS, like everyone, is fully entitled to his opinion and that opinion carries no more or less weight than my own. Moreover, you're completely entitled to agree with him. What I do have a problem with is what the OP described: he doesn't belong at the head of a major organization, nor does he belong at the apex of the free software movement. Beyond my earlier described "inner circle," in the past several years, he's done more to tarnish the image of the free software community than to help it.

learc83 15y ago
While I don't always agree with RMS, I think he truly believes everything he says. I don't think the same of Fred Phelps. I long ago reached the conclusion that he tries to say the most inflammatory thing possible wether he really believes it or not. I have no idea why, but I believe he has some other agenda than just the condemnation of homosexuality. I've even almost seriously entertained the idea that he is a closet extreme atheist out to discredit theists.
- drzaiusapelord 15y ago
  Naww, he's just a zealot. The history of religion is the history of zealotry, as well as oppression and violence. Funny how you think he must be an atheist, when he fits the religious zealot profile to a 't.' Phelps fits the character of so many religious leaders who have millions of followers and millions of dollars. Phelps' big issue is that he's poor at monetizing his crazy, unlike other successful bigots like Falwell and Graham. I'm sick of the conspiracy theories that he must be some kind of secret agent. Bigotry and hatred is typical in religion, especially for homosexuals. Theists need to call him an atheist or a con man to make them feel better about being theists and following the philosophy of 1st century madmen.

abrimo 15y ago

I've attended one of Stallman's talks and it was more of a comedy than anything else. I don't actually take him seriously, he did some great work in the past but the world has moved on.

josephg 15y ago

I'm aware of Stallman's advocacy on free software issues, but (completely honest question), what else does the Free Software Foundation do ? Software is at a point where its basically impossible to make anything useful without opensource software. Proprietary code is a minority in my stack both as a developer and as a user. Proprietary software is often good before opensource software is good, but consistently opensource implementations eventually outpace their proprietary counterparts. We saw this trend first with UNIX -> Linux. Today, just reading this webpage I'm using Chrome (Chromium + WebKit) which communicates via POSIX to the BSD network stack in my kernel (Darwin). The browser has been compiled with either GCC or LLVM. Hackernews is probably hosted on nginx / apache behind varnish or something, running on linux. In short, I feel like the opensource movement has already won. Aside from RMS's crusade against software patents, how is the FSF still relevant?

tlrobinson 15y ago
They've won that battle, but not the war. Servers, databases, frameworks, languages, etc are often open source, but the majority of applications are not.
- drzaiusapelord 15y ago
  That's the problem, you're the problem if you refuse to accept that the best solution is going to be the freedom for people to sell commercial closed software as well as use open software. The idea that this is a war is exactly why RMS is wrong. The idea that we must win it and we must make everyone use the new hot open license is wrong. The idea should be to encourage people to use open licenses, and to promote the good of open licenses, not declare war on everything and become some bitter asshole neckbeard when you see guys like Jobs doing well with a slightly different approach. The FSF doesn't do much. They're little more than negative campaigners "Windows 7 Sins" etc. I'm not sure what its purpose or real world effect is other than to scare middle management from FOSS as much as possible. Stick vs Carrot. FSF is all stick and people have noticed.
  - Produce 15y ago

aaronbrethorst 15y ago

Emacs Virgin thing: http://opensourcetogo.blogspot.com/2009/07/emailing-richard-stallman.html http://opensourcetogo.blogspot.com/2009/07/emailing-richard-...

groovy2shoes 15y ago
This is the first I've heard of this incident, and I find the comments on that post shocking. That so many people can take RMS's side on that issue is appalling.

RexRollman 15y ago

After reading this, all I can say is that some people are too sensitive.

daedhel 15y ago
Or are opportunistic assholes who capitalize on any occasion.

BigCanOfTuna 15y ago

Crass and insensitive but in line with everything I've ever heard him profess to believe. He's never strayed from his goal in making great software available to millions of people around the world, and he's never given a shit why it shouldn't or couldn't be done his way...damn, that sounds familiar.

leot 15y ago
Yes, but RMS is simply wrong, here. Jobs has put great software into more hands than RMS ever did. Jobs might well have (indirectly) had an even more positive influence on FOSS by spreading BSD. (I'm not saying that there isn't a ton of FOSS out there in lots of hands -- but RMS isn't responsible for its being there in the same way Jobs is responsible. Jobs is responsible for the iPhone. RMS isn't responsible for Android.)
- saurik 15y ago
  (BSD != "Free" => Mac OS X != "Open". Jobs "spreading BSD" is therefore irrelevant, and probably explains the downvotes you are receiving, if you or anyone else are at all curious.)
- cookiecaper 15y ago
  RMS makes no comment about "great software" in the post. He says that Jobs "made computers as a jail 'cool'" (paraphrase), and I think to a great extent that's true -- Apple has always been the most aggressively locked-down computer maker. Although OS X uses several open-source internals and although Apple even maintains some of these (including very important ones, like CUPS and X), they are still in some ways the most "locked down" computer (and consumer electronic) maker out there.
  - leot 15y ago
    RMS is wrong insofar as he believes that FOSS exclusively will result in more people having better software than if there is FOSS + ~FOSS.

dbbo 15y ago

At the risk of getting repetitive: I think rms was speaking strictly from a utilitarian perspective-- that is, Jobs' absence is overall a good thing for the FOSS movement (even though that might not actually be true, unless Cook is more committed to FOSS than Jobs). I can see how some find his statement tactless, but I'm not offended by it because Jobs was not an important person in my life. That doesn't mean that his life had no value, but his life wasn't more valuable to me than the life of any of the thousands of people who die every day from preventable causes. I honestly don't understand why so many people claim to be sad because Jobs is gone. Why did they feel so connected to a CEO? Steve Jobs was not your uncle. You have no rational reason to be upset over his death, and especially over what a coot like rms says about him. If you're upset enough to "fork the FSF" you're probably suffering from some illusory feeling of connectedness towards Jobs. I don't agree with a lot of what the FSF says, but one single comment made by one single guy is not going to make me turn my back on the whole organization. I will no longer be reading Larry's blog if he thinks this kind of flighty and ostentatious display of disapproval is warranted.

desireco42 15y ago
+1 (I especially agree with last part where you question forking FSF)
- desireco42 15y ago
  I am really proud of this downvotes I got for supporting free software :)
  - prodigal_erik 15y ago
    "+1 agree" without adding new ideas is very poorly received on HN, no matter what the topic, because we can't afford to have everyone doing that. Just upvote.
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_delirium 15y ago

If you want an advocacy organization with a better ear for public sensibilities and business, that's what the Open Source Initiative was designed for, wasn't it? Why not join them instead of starting yet another organization?

gonzo 15y ago
No. OSI was Eric's attempt to hijack the work of RMS. Eric is no better than, and in many ways, much worse than, RMS.
- kragen 15y ago
  That's more or less how Stallman saw it, but the other dozen or so free-software luminaries that Raymond brought onboard from the beginning didn't see it that way. Stallman was literally the only one on the original Cc: list that opposed the new "open source" movement.

brendoncrawford 15y ago

Go ahead... fork it. Then what happens? Will you travel the world tirelessly promoting free software, speaking at universities and other events for very little money? Will you maintain a job board, mailing list, hardware database, software directory, year after year? Will you find lawyers to donate hundreds of hours to write and revise licenses? Will you hire lobbyists to fight software patents? Will you tirelessly fight the RIAA, day after day? When you've done all these things, sign me up.

chrisballinger 15y ago
Will you grow a beard that big?
alecco 15y ago
And never mind code. This basher is a complete nobody who seems to profit from open source more than contribute. It's not like the heads of several major FSF projects are banding a revolt. The sinister anti-Stallman/GNU sentiment on HN is reaching incredibly high levels. Luckily it's mostly nobodies like this big mouth bozo.
- drivingmenuts 15y ago
  I think Stallman has earned some negative sentiment with that statement. As he is so closely identified with the FSF, regardless of intent, it's inevitable that there would be spillover. It's not the mission, it's the man we have a problem with. Yes, he's done a lot for Free Software and software in general, most of it good. He has taught us a lot and probably learned a few things. The next thing he needs to learn is when to keep some of his thoughts to himself. His statement, in no way, advances the cause of Free Software.
- potatolicious 15y ago
  While you do have a point, I disagree strongly with the way you've expressed it. There is no need for name-calling and personal attacks on this board. Calling someone a "nobody" and a "big mouth bozo" is uncalled for.

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sgentle 15y ago

I don't get it, personally. Yes, Stallman's a loon - although as an aside I think that every good movement needs its loons. Who's going to say "you know what? I believe in Free Software so much that I will use nothing else, and publicly and harshly declare that anyone doing otherwise is a moron and a traitor to the future of humanity"? Anyone who is willing to sacrifice the usefulness of the last 30 years of proprietary tech to make a point has to be a bit barmy. But who else will make that point? All progress depends on unreasonable men. And I agree that it would be helpful to have a moderate voice in Free Software. I use a Mac - sorry, it's really nice to use and I code a lot. I like my Kindle - sorry, it's better than the others and I read a lot. I live and work with proprietary software, but I believe in Free Software too. WebKit is popular because of Apple and Google. OS X is the most popular BSD, and the most popular consumer Unix. Non-free and free can and have worked together to mutual benefit. Is there anyone out there who can help me walk that line? If Larry is proposing to make that organisation, I would welcome it with open arms. But what of this Jobs nonsense? Are we so timid and flammable that we can't handle a complex opinion that we don't agree with? Can you not accept that Jobs was a great leader who didn't deserve to die, but that he left a scary, proprietary footprint all over the mobile and tablet space? "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." is an opinion I don't agree with, but I don't think it's ludicrous, tactless and heartless. Not everyone has to respect the things I respect, and feelings don't suddenly trump debate because of death. Jobs is one of the hacker community's sacred cows, and we wouldn't accept this level of sanctification on any other topic. I'm sure when Bill Gates or the Dalai Lama dies, there will be posts saying "let's not forget that Windows Vista was awful and religion is the other opiate of Tibet" Will they cause the same outcry?

jpadvo 15y ago
The issue is not at all with his opinion. It is that he expressed it in a horrendously, gratuitously crass and offensive way. Here is a transliteration into humane language of what he said: "My heart goes out to Steve Jobs' family in their time of grief. And my heart also goes to the millions of people who looked up to him as an icon and inspiration. But we need to not get so carried away honoring the dead that we forget the damage that Jobs' work had on the Free Software movement. His pioneered the software walled garden, which destroys freedom and choice. And he targeted it at people who would not understand what they were sacrificing by giving up their freedoms. We can only hope that his successors make Apple a more free company, or failing that, are not as effective at spreading it as he was." Wasn't that better? And it communicated substantively the same thing, but without all the name calling and the seeming glee over the death of another human. Disclaimer: I typed this on my Macbook Air. Edit: One more thing to add. Saying "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone" is tripe. Being gone is a euphemism for being dead. The reason we mourn when a loved one dies is precisely because that means they are gone. Maybe RMS sees a subtle distinction between death and gone-ness in his head. But I promise you that people in grief see absolutely no distinction between the death and the loss of the person they mourn.

gfodor 15y ago

All you really need to do is consider what Steve Jobs would have said about RMS if he were still here when RMS is no longer. At worst, he'd say nothing, at best, he'd say something that would have touched you and made you think deeply about what the two men had in common despite their deep differences.

cookiecaper 15y ago
I upvoted this, but meant to downvote it.
- jwhite 15y ago
  I upvoted you to encourage you to tell us why you downvoted it.
  - cookiecaper 15y ago
    I downvoted it because it's incredibly presumptive. OP posits that "at worst, [Jobs] would have said nothing..." apparently on nothing but his assumption that Steve Jobs would never do a controversial thing, or a thing that the OP thought was tasteless. Unless OP is a close friend of Steve Jobs and knew him well on a personal level, this is completely baseless speculation based on OP's general good feelings for Apple and the assumption that because Apple products make him feel good, Steve Jobs would never say something rude after a colleague died. None of these people know Jobs and yet they assume he's some super great dude. Making such assumptions about the CEO's personal character based on your affinity for the products of that CEO's company is very juvenile, yet it's irritatingly common.
    - gfodor 15y ago
      Its not hard to imagine that Jobs would react much the way most of his own rivals have reacted, the way normal decent human beings do, with class and respect. My post was less about guessing something about Steve Jobs's character and more about letting readers reflect upon just how abnormal and deranged RMS's comments are compared to any others.

24bit 15y ago

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world - are the ones who do!

sabat 15y ago
Note that this does not begin, "Here's the the assholes, the heartless, the tactless, the people who think they are above the rest of humankind, who always know better than everyone else, who must teach us how to think." RMS has done some admirable things, but he's in dire need of some mental help. Seriously.

spitfire 15y ago

In the marketplace of ideas Stallman has a simple remedy for his woes with Apple. Make better software than them. Go on Richard, I dare you to.

Produce 15y ago
He already does. The only difference in the perceived quality is the learning curve. Learn the *nix way and you will be enlightened. Learn the Apple way and you will remain ignorant (but have lots of time for shopping, cos math is so boring, right?).
- rimantas 15y ago
  Apple way? You mean the one where OS is unix? The one which comes with perl, php, python, ruby, etc? The one which comes with fee Grapher app?
  - Produce 15y ago
    That's like saying that Android preaches the nix way because it runs a Linux kernel. This is obviously false since the interface presented to the user pushes a completely different way of working and thinking. Using any of the listed software requires knowing what you're doing. It's the same situation on Linux and Windows, you can install PHP or Python all the same and need the equivalent amount of knowledge to do so. If you seriously can't see the 'Apple way' then take another look at their whole business model, which is making things simple enough for people with little training to use. The nix way consists of understanding how the system works, which is in direct opposition to the Apple way.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- 2muchcoffeeman 15y ago
  I love the Apple way. Gave me lots of extra time to pursue other interests. Remember, you rely on a lot of people who aren't good at computers but have other skills.

keyist 15y ago

RMS has the FSF and Defective By Design sites as soapboxes if he wished to gain more attention from Jobs's death. This was a post on his political notes page. He did nothing to publicize it. He didn't post to aggregators or tweet to ask for upvotes (technically it was posted on his Identi.ca account which is linked to his political notes feed, but it got no special treatment). If some major sites hadn't picked up on it and provided the publicity, most readers would never know. So RMS wrote a politically incorrect opinion on his personal page. Can we move on now?

aquayellow 15y ago
And please don't think of forking the FSF because RMS made fun of Steve Jobs if that is what people think he did.
ori_b 15y ago
When you're a public figure, you have no personal pages. If it's public, it's part of your image.
- v21 15y ago
  But there's still a distinction between RMS and the FSF.
deleted 15y ago
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ugh 15y ago
Hey, you seem to be as clueless about communication as he is.
- Tichy 15y ago
  What I find more interesting: are you as good at hacking as rms? Or is being better at communication the only thing you can take pride in? I suspect that might be behind all the ranting.

ubasu 15y ago

Relevant pg essay? http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

cookiecaper 15y ago

OS X would not be possible without RMS. You have to remember that Stallman was around before Jobs' day -- he was performing real work at MIT when Apple was initially conceptualized. Stallman therefore is apparently less vulnerable to the reality distortion field and does not unduly offer oblations to a guy who was obsessed with shininess at the expense of hacker culture. Jobs went to lengths on many products to prevent tinkering in an age when computing was still very open and very academic, because Jobs didn't want any little peons messing up his perfect devices. Hence Stallman's quip that Jobs made computers as a jail cool. If you think about this statement from Stallman's perspective it really makes a lot of sense, and I think it is ridiculous that the Steve Jobs hero worship pervades so deeply as to not recognize that Jobs was a control freak even after Apple products were sold and in the possession of customers, and that some people, particular contemporaries of Stallman's stripe, may not have been fond of that. I doubt that the release of the iPhone really did much to persuade that set of people.

drivingmenuts 15y ago
This isn't about OS X. This is about Stallman being effective as the leader of the FSF, which apparently he feels entitles him to say any damn thing he wants, regardless of how tasteless it is. That's not the mark of a leader. That's the mark of a self-inflated ass.
- cookiecaper 15y ago
  I didn't find it tasteless. Is it really such a criminal thing to say that you are glad Jobs's influence is gone? Can't reasonable people disagree on that point? People totally go overboard wrt Steve Jobs, as they do his company, Apple. RMS comes from a time when computers were generally open for tinkering, and Apple strove to make its products impenetrable lest Jobs' pain-stakingly "perfected" designs be gaudied up by consumers. From the original Mac which didn't have expansion slots to today's iDevices that don't allow the consumer to do so much as change the battery, Apple has a long history of tight lock down. Do you not see how an old-school hacker could be disgruntled by that philosophy? The beliefs and experience of that group runs deep enough that they are not hoodwinked into deifying Steve Jobs because the iMac is the sleekest desktop computer around.

kragen 15y ago

Other related thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3085417 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3085417

coldnose 15y ago

And today is the day /usr/bin/gcc changes from "deprecated" to "deleted". I'm glad something finally pushed me over that hump. http://clang.llvm.org/ http://clang.llvm.org/

daedhel 15y ago

So it's time to fork the FSF because this guy does not agree with one comment RMS did? How is this not overreacting in the first place...

vacri 15y ago
To be fair, the author does state it's a 'straw that broke the camel's back' scenario; the punctuation at the end of a long line of disliked behaviour, not just one comment.

tzury 15y ago

I fully understand this Larry, and think FSF would have been doing much better if there was someone else at its cockpit. RMS is a fanatic about free software, like ultra religious people are to their religion. For instance, for me, being free, means, at first and above all, being free to choose. Being able to install proprietary nVidia driver which does not crash my linux box every half a day, and have this driver built and available for me in my linux distro repository. Years ago, RMS was a guest of honor in IBM Tel Aviv. These were the days, Linux was something left-field, obscure, that no one wanted to know or hear about it. There were hundreds of developers in the hall who came to hear about the "Gnu/Linux thing" from the Freedom Guru. All of a sudden, in the middle of his lecture, out of any imaginable context, RMS took of his left shoe, and then the sack, and start rubbing his toes with his fingers while preaching about free software. Yes, imagine that, a man is playing with his barefoot on a stage, would you remember anything he said? Would you listen to anything he has to say? Or would your brain being busy understanding and categorizing the extraordinary show you are in? (Those were not the days of youtube and smartphone, I bet if that would have been happening these days, this was the most viewed video on youtube amongst hackers.) It is sad, but successful open source project does not seemed to get along with RMS at all, see Ubuntu/Canonical as a good example.

mrb 15y ago

I think RMS's statement is completely misinterpreted. Don't forget the first part of the sentence: "I'm not glad he's dead", which literally means RMS is not glad that Jobs died! "I'm glad he's gone" is only a complaint towards Jobs' influence on personal computing. You may disagree with RMS (I certainly do), and it is certainly an inappropriate comment to make at this time, but this is nothing to make a drama of RMS' comment... Geez people!

Uhhrrr 15y ago

I have to flag this for being utterly asinine. If you're really a "free software guy", RMS's statement should not even partially raise an eyebrow.

nohat 15y ago

RMS and Jobs seem very similar to me. Both were monomaniacal perfectionists. Both were undiplomatic and unwilling to compromise or cater to unbelievers.

nouname 15y ago

oh, this larry is just a moaner and hypocrite. i do not even want to comment it in full. go on, cry more, little piece of shit, nobody cares

fmadot 15y ago

I won't say I am supporting RMS or not. Actually I think Jobs was a man with great talent, but I don't like him. I think most of you overreacted on "I'm not glad he's dead, I'm glad he's gone". RMS expressed clearly that he don't agree with the achievements that Jobs reached in his short life. This is a personal opinion. You can't force everyone to agree with what Jobs has done. After all RMS said "I'm not glad he's gone." That's enough. I think there is nothing to argue for.

skrebbel 15y ago

I'm sorry, but - what a nutcase. Silently accepts Stallman's years of nasty comments, cynical attitudes, world-wide conspiracy theories and downright condescension all through. Then Stallman says something unfriendly about god^H^H^H Jobs, and he resigns. Oh, come on.

poink 15y ago

This is kind of like wanting a "toned down" PETA. People don't devote their lives to marginalized causes without either having or picking up a twinge of zealotry. If you want those people to stand up for causes you mutually believe in, you have to take the bad with the good. RMS might not be the best possible Free Software advocate, but I'm glad someone's doing it, and nobody else seems to be volunteering for the job.

ceejayoz 15y ago
> This is kind of like wanting a "toned down" PETA. Is that so horrible a thing? It seems to me groups like the Humane Society have done a lot more for animal welfare than PETA.

chanon 15y ago

I agree with this comment by "tom robinson" in the blog post: To those saying you agree with what RMS wrote: that’s fine, but irrelevant. As a spokesman for FSF he shouldn’t be pandering to his already devout followers, he should be trying to convince others that the ideals of the FSF are worth pursuing, and he’s been doing an absolutely TERRIBLE job of that lately. Silly campaigns of immature puns, lashing out at people who don’t say “GNU/Linux”, insulting a recently deceased man who much of the world admires, and making otherwise inappropriate remarks on a regular basis is an excellent way to alienate the people you’re trying to win over. How have these tactics been working out for FSF? I don’t have stats, but anecdotally most new open source projects I come across have rejected the GPL licenses for BSD, MIT, Apache, etc. Now imagine what FSF could accomplish if they had a spokesman with the skills of Steve Jobs

tommorris 15y ago

Wait, isn't there a whole stack of organisations that support FLOSS or the same sort of values as openness that the FSF support other than the FSF already? Off the top of my head: Apache Software Foundation, OSI, GNOME Foundation, Linux Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, Python Software Foundation, Open Knowledge Foundation, Software Freedom Law Center, Software in the Public Interest, Wikimedia Foundation. If you feel like you want to throw money, power or sexual favours to the open source community, there are plenty of ways to do it that don't involve RMS or the FSF. Or you could just find some free/open source script or app or library you use and like and chuck the creator $20 and a nice email saying "I really like your code, go buy yourself a pizza and a beer on me".

jsilence 15y ago

In other news: Autistic Reporter: Train Thankfully Unharmed In Crash That Killed One Man http://www.theonion.com/video/autistic-reporter-train-thankfully-unharmed-in-cra,20098/ http://www.theonion.com/video/autistic-reporter-train-thankf...

jwr 15y ago

RMS deserves praise for starting the Free Software movement, but he has been a liability to it for quite some time now. Leaders that start movements are not always fit to lead them when movements grow. And before you protest — have you met the man in person? If you haven't, you won't understand.

chanux 15y ago

Jobs loved what he did and believed in it. RMS certainly is same. I respect Jobs for `the inspiration` while I respect RMS for what `he offered to the world`.

Tichy 15y ago

I have never heard of Larry, so my guess would be: chance that Larry will found and lead the FFSF (Forked Free Software Foundation) = 0%

AmazingBytecode 15y ago

I support open source on a pragmatic level as a way for people to share code so that they no longer have to "re-invent the wheel". Because of this I feel like it's petty and counter-productive for the FSF to refuse to share their "free" software with people because of the way that those people want to use the software. Truly free software should be released to the public without limitations on how and where it should be used. To clarify: I know that my preferred model ignores the scummy/greedy tendencies of people to leech off work that others have done. However, I'd like for people to think of open source software as a gift given with no strings attached.

piyush_ranjan 15y ago

He has no taste at all.

mkup 15y ago

I think RMS is doing perfect trolling to get more attention to his GNU/FSF/commie stuff. The net effect is the people talking about RMS, about FSF and GNU. More people get to know about this stuff, more people get involved. Just a little trolling replaces zillions of bucks spent on advertising, PR etc. Commies don't have money to pay, so they must troll. --- Just don't spread this hype and don't feed the troll.

wazoox 15y ago
> GNU/FSF/commie stuff. Bingo, you've just made some tasteless, insulting passing remark. Some sort of reverse-Godwin point. So much for not feeding the trolls.

fletcher 15y ago

What Stallman said is just, analytically speaking: 1) I don't like when people die. 2) But this happened to Steve Jobs, unfortunately. 3) However from my point of view he was doing so much damage to the world of software that this is a good thing. Not the fact he died but the fact that we no longer have his influence. Note: I don't agree. But I don't think it should be a problem to say the above. It is like if you are the leader of a movement against the practice of killing whales, and there is one guy that kills 100,000 whales every year. If he dies you can legitimately say: "I'm sorry he died, but this is a good thing for whales". He used the wrong words, the wrong time, and so forth, but the concept is nothing of extraordinary from his point of view. It is important to have the freedom of saying what we want.

gurkendoktor 15y ago
Nobody wants to take this freedom away, but it hurts the cause he is supposed to advance, and that's what the posting is saying. I can't see how mentioning human life and software licensing in the same sentence is ever a good idea if there is a chance that interested non-nerds are reading up on your ideals.

motters 15y ago

Although Stallman didn't use a great deal of tact in his statement I agree with his concern overall. Software should serve the user in accordance with the ideal of individual empowerment with technology and not become a sort of jail controlled by a central authority that you have to struggle to break out of. The problem of impersonal computing is by no means isolated to Apple though.

narag 15y ago
Although Stallman didn't use a great deal of tact in his statement I agree with his concern overall. That seems oddly similar to my tl;dr from the article: "Although I agree with his concern overall, Stallman didn't use a great deal of tact in his statement".

thu 15y ago

Stallman didn't say he's glad Steve Jobs died. I understand he's glad that Steve's influence on computing stop, as that influence is driving computing in a closed ecosystem. You can take it in a non-emotional way. A is, in your opinion, a bad thing. If A stops, you're glad. If A stops because of a sad B event, you can be both glad for A to end, and sad for B to occur.

Fice 15y ago

As I said already, today's hacker culture is crippled. So called "hackers" here have lost their principles, forgotten the value of freedom, worship the wrong idols. How come an entrepreneur be a hero much more important than any of the researchers who pioneered the modern computer technology? How can the man who worked against the values and principles of the hacker ethic be an idol for so many hackers? There is no real hacker community here on HN, only a flock of spineless ship.

burgerbrain 15y ago
The title "Hacker News" is a lure designed to draw more people in. It would be best if this place went back to it's old and far more honest name "Startup News".
suivix 15y ago
I see HN as a more mature version of http://www.reddit.com/r/technology http://www.reddit.com/r/technology, but with a heavy slant towards discussions about startups. In fact I frequently see the same articles referenced in both places.

Sandman 15y ago

While most of the commenters here discuss what Stallman said and what he actualy meant, whether it was distasteful or not, and whether Jobs was a modern day messiah who single-handedly changed the world we live in or just a smart business man with a very good sense of choosing the right people to create the products that he envisioned, I'd like to take a minute to think about what is actually proposed in this article - the forking of FSF. It's quite obvious from the article that the reason the author suggests something like that is not because his views on software freedom somehow differ than those of Stallman, but because he has issues with Stallman himself, or more precisely, with his publicly expressed opinions. He feels that they hurt FSF and free software in general. Isn't then the solution to the problem to, through some electoral process, replace Stallman and put a new figure at the head of FSF? Somebody more tactful, more careful about how they say what they mean (if that's truly the kind of a person memebers of FSF would like to see in charge)? Starting a new foundation with exactly the same goals as FSF, just because you don't like Stallman's public statements, seems pointless to me.

loup-vaillant 15y ago

This is a common pattern: (i) someone famous dies, (ii) someone else says something bad about that celebrity, (iii) everyone else is scandalized. Thou shalt not bash the dead. Now, I don't think Stallman's lines were gratuitously offensive. He was merely clear and concise. He spent no word on niceness, but he spent no word on rudeness either. And by the way, he is factually correct: Jobs was "the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed [among other things] to sever fools from their freedom" (or, if not the pioneer, at least the most effective apologist). Now should he have just shut up? Probably not. Every one now is praising Jobs, and that may trigger even more sales for the iPhone and the iPad. Praise Jobs, and soon you will praise Apple's most locked down products. At least a word of caution is needed. Now I do understand that Stallman knows next to nothing about how not to trigger bad feelings. I do understand that he should work on that. But please, don't be offended by something that most probably wasn't intended to be offensive.

Jarred 15y ago

I agree with forking the FSF, but not just having someone whose nice is necessary. It needs to be led by someone who gives a damn about user experience. This is an issue with not all open source applications, but many. It is getting better, but I still prefer Windows or OS X to using Gnome, KDE. I've never needed to use any of the bundled software with Ubuntu (except the settings apps, gedit, and Firefox). It can't just be about open-source alternatives, because most people don't care if something is open or closed source, they care if it gets the job done well.

maximusprime 15y ago

Best way to deal with extreme fundamentalists is to ignore them. He's a joke.

sharmajai 15y ago

Fuck you RMS. I have been and still am a staunch believer in open source, but when I read comments like this from the person who's motto once was that everybody writing software should contribute the source back to the community, not because it delivers better software (due to the more eyeballs resulting in fewer bugs), but because it results in moving software forward quickly by virtue of helping each other out, I agree with the OP, it's time for a change. Let me tell you something, free software or not, it was Steve Jobs, who told us what forward direction for software actually means, first by making GUI mainstream, then by making capacitive touch mainstream, and lastly by defining what a tablet form factor should and should not be. If you think Steve's products hamper your freedom, I can argue the exact opposite, it was Steve who taught us ways to make technology more accessible by making groundbreaking innovations in user interfaces, which enables the non geeks of the world to use computers in the first place, I am pretty sure those users will feel more trapped in the command line interface that you envisioned for them, than they feel by not having access to the source of the painting app they have fun playing with on their ipad. So if you cannot come out the frog hole that you have created for yourself, and give credit where it's due, then maybe you should shut the fuck up.

DanBC 15y ago
>If you think Steve's products hamper your freedom Try and explain how to boot a MacBookPro from USB stick to someone, and compare that to booting almost any other computer. Or explain how to dual boot a Mac with OSX and Linux, vs anything else with Windows and Linux.
- astrodust 15y ago
  Try and explain how to restore a MacBook from back-ups over the phone to a frantic parent who's just lost their hard drive. I did that. It took two minutes. It worked flawlessly. Sometimes to gain more command over your technology you have to give up some theoretical freedom, but that's freedom you'd never have been able to exercise. An F-16 pilot would find the controls in a typical car so disappointing. Where's the lever to adjust the fuel/air mixture? The GPS waypoints? The brake bias dial? The air pressure indicator? The temperature of the tires? All of these things are theoretically important to driving, but they're not of any concern to someone simply trying to get from point A to point B. That's all most people using computers are trying to do.

BasDirks 15y ago

Stallman is a degenerate.

epo 15y ago

RMS is clearly on the autistic spectrum, probably far enough on it to be regarded as having a 'learning difficulty' in the rather twee PC UK-ism. There is IMHO, an interesting litmus test where people who share his monomaniacal obsession, or think it 'reasonable', probably have the same issue.

DanBC 15y ago
UK (at least, England, I have no idea what Wales or Scotland do) "Learning disability" is related to IQ. Autism and Asperger's syndrome do sometimes lead to a "Special Educational Need" (SEN). This isn't just language; there's some access to medical services stuff involved.
- epo 15y ago
  Thanks for that correction.

goodweeds 15y ago

If it were RMS who had died, I wonder what Steve Jobs would have said.

tbourdon 15y ago

Much worse will be written about RMS when he dies and many will applaud what is written, never mind their contributions to technology had the same scale of impact on society... It's all in the perspective.

endgame 15y ago

Oh, give it a rest already. rms was actually pretty tactful. Did people actually read what he wrote? > Nobody deserves to have to die - not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing.

the_mat 15y ago

Many of the comments following that story are deranged, and I mean that in the strongest sense of the word. "Software extremists" like that really exist? There are people who honestly think Steve Jobs was evil? And most disturbingly, there are people who will flat out bash on the reputation of someone who so recently died? Wow. Just wow.

5hoom 15y ago

Stallman & Jobs are both giant figures in the tech world to anyone who knows their history. I would also imagine that anyone who has followed Richard Stallman over the years would be surprised if he hadn't made a statement like this. He is an outspoken & tireless champion of an incredibly worthy cause he believes is greater than himself (and c'mon, the guys hacking skills are legendary). Steve Jobs was a uniquely amazing entrepreneur & visionary leader. His impact on the way people everywhere use technology is both profound & undeniable. Both men are worthy of the deepest respect IMHO, even if their goals were in conflict.

mtraven 15y ago

Didn't this fork happen quite some time ago? http://www.opensource.org/ http://www.opensource.org/ And for pretty much the exact same reasons being given now? Although some of the people behind that are almost as embarrassing to be associated with as RMS.

December 15y ago

I'm so tired of political correctness and "sexism" posts. At times half of this site seems to consist of posts made by people offended by something.