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>Expecting Stallman to make life easier for commercial vendors is like expecting PETA to recommend a good foie gras farm. That's not what they do. He threw ope

>Expecting Stallman to make life easier for commercial vendors is like expecting PETA to recommend a good foie gras farm. That's not what they do. He threw open-source developers under the bus in the process. As a result approximately nobody writes GCC plugins, open source or otherwise.

kstrauser 2y ago
Alternatively, if you join a Stallman-led Free Software project and hope he'll accept your ideas for making life easier for proprietary vendors, you're gonna have a bad time. I mean, the GNU Emacs FAQ for MS Windows (https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/efaq-w32.html#Why-Emacs-on-Windows https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/efaq-w32...) says: > It is not our goal to “help Windows users” by making text editing on Windows more convenient. We aim to replace proprietary software, not to enhance it. So why support GNU Emacs on Windows? > We hope that the experience of using GNU Emacs on Windows will give programmers a taste of freedom, and that this will later inspire them to move to a free operating system such as GNU/Linux. That is the main valid reason to support free applications on nonfree operating systems. RMS has been exceedingly clear about his views for decades. At this point it's hard to be surprised that he’ll make a pro-Free Software decision every time, without fail. That doesn't mean you have to agree with his decisions, of course! But to be shocked or disappointed by them is a sign of not understanding his platform.
- School-Cotton 2y ago
  But the person you're responding to never said he was shocked or disappointed by the views; he just said the views are bad/counterproductive.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    But they're only bad/counterproductive when assessed against their own goals. They're a lot more reasonable if you assess them against Stallman's, where you could say "yeah, these actions kept GCC from becoming a handy tool for proprietary interests who don't want to share their work back with us".
  - Keyframe 2y ago
    I found out the older I get the more sense rms makes.
    - kstrauser 2y ago
      On the subject of software freedom, I hate how accurately prophetic he is. RMS: Here’s how they'll get ya! Me: Nice, but that'd never happen. Vendor: Here’s how we got ya! Me: Dammit. Seriously, he must have a working crystal ball. Now, my agreement with him starts and ends on that subject. He says plenty of other things I wholly disagree with. But his warnings about proprietary software lock-in? Every. Single. Time.
      - Keyframe 2y ago
        for the record, I meant software freedoms and sometimes technical stuff only!
- johnisgood 2y ago
  I mean, I think he is right. If everyone stopped supporting Windows, it would have long died out in favor of easy-to-install Linux distributions... probably.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - codedokode 2y ago
    In reality though Microsoft just added a WSL; not bad: Linux code can run on Windows now. Also, if you want Windows to die you need to work with OEMs: I assume that most users simply use whatever OS is pre-installed.
    - johnisgood 2y ago
      I agree.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      As gray dog around the prairie, had Microsoft actually been serious with POSIX subsystem on Windows NT/2000, instead of some marketing material and low level effort, GNU/Linux adoption would never taken off, at least not at a level that would have mattered. With OS X on one side, and POSIX subsystem on Windows NT/2000 side, everyone would be doing their UNIX like workflows without thinking once to try out GNU/Linux. At my university we only cared about Linux on its early days, Slackware 2.0 days, because naturally we couldn't have DG/UX at home, and that POSIX support was really unusable beyond toy examples.

kstrauser 2y ago

Alternatively, if you join a Stallman-led Free Software project and hope he'll accept your ideas for making life easier for proprietary vendors, you're gonna have a bad time. I mean, the GNU Emacs FAQ for MS Windows (https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/efaq-w32.html#Why-Emacs-on-Windows https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/efaq-w32...) says: > It is not our goal to “help Windows users” by making text editing on Windows more convenient. We aim to replace proprietary software, not to enhance it. So why support GNU Emacs on Windows? > We hope that the experience of using GNU Emacs on Windows will give programmers a taste of freedom, and that this will later inspire them to move to a free operating system such as GNU/Linux. That is the main valid reason to support free applications on nonfree operating systems. RMS has been exceedingly clear about his views for decades. At this point it's hard to be surprised that he’ll make a pro-Free Software decision every time, without fail. That doesn't mean you have to agree with his decisions, of course! But to be shocked or disappointed by them is a sign of not understanding his platform.

School-Cotton 2y ago
But the person you're responding to never said he was shocked or disappointed by the views; he just said the views are bad/counterproductive.
- kstrauser 2y ago
  But they're only bad/counterproductive when assessed against their own goals. They're a lot more reasonable if you assess them against Stallman's, where you could say "yeah, these actions kept GCC from becoming a handy tool for proprietary interests who don't want to share their work back with us".
- Keyframe 2y ago
  I found out the older I get the more sense rms makes.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    On the subject of software freedom, I hate how accurately prophetic he is. RMS: Here’s how they'll get ya! Me: Nice, but that'd never happen. Vendor: Here’s how we got ya! Me: Dammit. Seriously, he must have a working crystal ball. Now, my agreement with him starts and ends on that subject. He says plenty of other things I wholly disagree with. But his warnings about proprietary software lock-in? Every. Single. Time.
    - Keyframe 2y ago
      for the record, I meant software freedoms and sometimes technical stuff only!
johnisgood 2y ago
I mean, I think he is right. If everyone stopped supporting Windows, it would have long died out in favor of easy-to-install Linux distributions... probably.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- codedokode 2y ago
  In reality though Microsoft just added a WSL; not bad: Linux code can run on Windows now. Also, if you want Windows to die you need to work with OEMs: I assume that most users simply use whatever OS is pre-installed.
  - johnisgood 2y ago
    I agree.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    As gray dog around the prairie, had Microsoft actually been serious with POSIX subsystem on Windows NT/2000, instead of some marketing material and low level effort, GNU/Linux adoption would never taken off, at least not at a level that would have mattered. With OS X on one side, and POSIX subsystem on Windows NT/2000 side, everyone would be doing their UNIX like workflows without thinking once to try out GNU/Linux. At my university we only cared about Linux on its early days, Slackware 2.0 days, because naturally we couldn't have DG/UX at home, and that POSIX support was really unusable beyond toy examples.