4 ms·

My opinion of him isn't too high. He likes to brandy himself about as some sort of hacker hero, but in truth, he's not really contributed much to OSS. Combine

by wheels 18y ago

My opinion of him isn't too high. He likes to brandy himself about as some sort of hacker hero, but in truth, he's not really contributed much to OSS. Combined with him standing up a packed audience at my college without even bothering to call and cancel, and general nutjobery (see his rants about guns or mysticism) I'm somewhat less than a fan. We need wackos like Stallman. He's a little south of sanity, but damn, he's slung a lot of code and really changed the landscape of technology with his idealism.

graywh 18y ago
Now I'm confused. Are you talking about RMS or ESR?
- abstractbill 18y ago
  He's saying (and I tend to agree) that RMS is the useful kind of nutjob/wacko, while ESR is not.
omouse 18y ago
Stallman is wacko for being an idealist and sticking to his principles?
- wheels 18y ago
  Pretty much. Most influential wackos tend to be single minded about some ideological point. Sometimes that gets them a peace prize, other times it involves invading neighboring countries. ;-) I've talked to him. It's amusing. And inspiring. And a little frustrating. At least as of a couple years ago he'd still interrupt you every single time you said "Linux" to stick a "GNU" in there.
mroman 18y ago
ESR has contributed plenty of code: http://www.catb.org/~esr/software.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/software.html Why do you refer to Stallman as a wacko? Why do you accuse him of being insane? I would love to read the opinion of someone trained in human mental health care insofar as Stallman's mental health is concerned.
- corentin 18y ago
  He's not clinically insane; it's just that he "doesn't have people skills"...
- wheels 18y ago
  > http://www.catb.org/~esr/software.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/software.html That's a long list, but most of them are toys, scripts or quick hacks. Even the ones that almost look significant at first glance -- i.e. bogofilter or sed -- not so much. His version of bogofilter was 900 lines of code and his version of sed 1700. I'd guess that the total amount of code that he's written that gets packaged for a standard Linux distribution is maybe 5k LOC. That's being generous, honestly. And that's what I find disingenuous when he's busy talking about his prolific OSS background. The comments about Stallman's sanity weren't meant to be taken literally. I assumed that was obvious.
  - mroman 18y ago
    Ok, you don't think that's much code/of very high quality/of much usefulness . . . very well, I now respectfully ask you to tell us how much/of what quality/how useful code YOU have contributed.
iuguy 18y ago
> My opinion of him isn't too high. He likes to brandy himself about as some sort of hacker hero, but in truth, he's not really contributed much to OSS. OSS ESR has been involved in or founded: Fetchmail, GPSd, CML2, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Jargon File, Terminfo/Termcap, VC Mode/GUB in Emacs (ESR is the second biggest lisp contributor to Emacs after RMS), Contribs to Gnuplot, Gnome, Python, Groff and Nethack, GNU Toolkit SED, Hexdump, gif2png, Bogofilter, Countless Howtos at the LDP With the exception of the above, you're right he's not contributed much to OSS. I'm not saying ESR's not a polarising person (I've met both ESR and RMS, both can be black and white people) but he has contributed a lot to OSS.
- wheels 18y ago
  As noted below, his versions (or contributions) to most of those software projects were all pretty trivial. And listing "projects" like hexdump is kind of cute -- it's 211 lines of code. The one claim that stood out there -- the one that gave a really testable statement that would have surprised me if true was, "ESR is the second biggest lisp contributor to Emacs after RMS". I thought, hey, there'd be a surprise, so I decided to run cvstat on the emacs lisp subdir: - RMS contributed the 2nd most code to Emacs' Lisp with 217542 lines of changes. - ESR contributed the 39th most code to Emacs' Lisp with 6367 lines of changes. The reason that I don't like the guy so much is because he claims to speak for a movement, that by his own prognostication is a meritocracy, and I don't feel like he has the credibility for that. Combined with the fact that I think a lot of what he says is bozo-riffic, I'd prefer him step back from his self-appointed spokesman position.
- blogsworth 18y ago
  i.e. nothing substantial in the past half-decade

by wheels 18y ago

graywh 18y ago

Now I'm confused. Are you talking about RMS or ESR?

abstractbill 18y ago
He's saying (and I tend to agree) that RMS is the useful kind of nutjob/wacko, while ESR is not.

omouse 18y ago

Stallman is wacko for being an idealist and sticking to his principles?

wheels 18y ago
Pretty much. Most influential wackos tend to be single minded about some ideological point. Sometimes that gets them a peace prize, other times it involves invading neighboring countries. ;-) I've talked to him. It's amusing. And inspiring. And a little frustrating. At least as of a couple years ago he'd still interrupt you every single time you said "Linux" to stick a "GNU" in there.

mroman 18y ago

ESR has contributed plenty of code: http://www.catb.org/~esr/software.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/software.html Why do you refer to Stallman as a wacko? Why do you accuse him of being insane? I would love to read the opinion of someone trained in human mental health care insofar as Stallman's mental health is concerned.

corentin 18y ago
He's not clinically insane; it's just that he "doesn't have people skills"...
wheels 18y ago
> http://www.catb.org/~esr/software.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/software.html That's a long list, but most of them are toys, scripts or quick hacks. Even the ones that almost look significant at first glance -- i.e. bogofilter or sed -- not so much. His version of bogofilter was 900 lines of code and his version of sed 1700. I'd guess that the total amount of code that he's written that gets packaged for a standard Linux distribution is maybe 5k LOC. That's being generous, honestly. And that's what I find disingenuous when he's busy talking about his prolific OSS background. The comments about Stallman's sanity weren't meant to be taken literally. I assumed that was obvious.
- mroman 18y ago
  Ok, you don't think that's much code/of very high quality/of much usefulness . . . very well, I now respectfully ask you to tell us how much/of what quality/how useful code YOU have contributed.

iuguy 18y ago

> My opinion of him isn't too high. He likes to brandy himself about as some sort of hacker hero, but in truth, he's not really contributed much to OSS. OSS ESR has been involved in or founded: Fetchmail, GPSd, CML2, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Jargon File, Terminfo/Termcap, VC Mode/GUB in Emacs (ESR is the second biggest lisp contributor to Emacs after RMS), Contribs to Gnuplot, Gnome, Python, Groff and Nethack, GNU Toolkit SED, Hexdump, gif2png, Bogofilter, Countless Howtos at the LDP With the exception of the above, you're right he's not contributed much to OSS. I'm not saying ESR's not a polarising person (I've met both ESR and RMS, both can be black and white people) but he has contributed a lot to OSS.

wheels 18y ago
As noted below, his versions (or contributions) to most of those software projects were all pretty trivial. And listing "projects" like hexdump is kind of cute -- it's 211 lines of code. The one claim that stood out there -- the one that gave a really testable statement that would have surprised me if true was, "ESR is the second biggest lisp contributor to Emacs after RMS". I thought, hey, there'd be a surprise, so I decided to run cvstat on the emacs lisp subdir: - RMS contributed the 2nd most code to Emacs' Lisp with 217542 lines of changes. - ESR contributed the 39th most code to Emacs' Lisp with 6367 lines of changes. The reason that I don't like the guy so much is because he claims to speak for a movement, that by his own prognostication is a meritocracy, and I don't feel like he has the credibility for that. Combined with the fact that I think a lot of what he says is bozo-riffic, I'd prefer him step back from his self-appointed spokesman position.
blogsworth 18y ago
i.e. nothing substantial in the past half-decade