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Long after Steve Jobs is relegated to the dustbin of Past Industrialists and Apple has regressed to the mean, Stallmans work will still be moving both technolog

Long after Steve Jobs is relegated to the dustbin of Past Industrialists and Apple has regressed to the mean, Stallmans work will still be moving both technology and our society forward in ways that are meaningful and positive.

rimantas 14y ago
Sorry, but that is utter bullshit. Somehow Stallman's importance is somewhere in foggy future with a lot of handwaving and FUD. The real relevance of his ideas is already in the past. I won't be surprised a bit if at the time you are talking about most OSS will be under MIT/BSD type licenses not GPL.
- jacquesm 14y ago
  Strong disagree. GPL licensed software is powering an ever increasing fraction of all devices. Far more than I would have ever believed in only a decade ago. There are some interesting network effects at work here. Th e more GPL'd software there is out there the bigger the chunk you have to write yourself (or pay someone to write) would have to be if you want to forego it. Hence Linksys and Android. Those would have never gotten as far as they did without the GPL's software underneath their externally visible features as a foundation to build on. Linux on the desktop may never happen, but linux in your pocket is pretty much a foregone conclusion at this point.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Internet killed GPL. AGPL tried to win the Inernet, and the corporations dodged it.
    - rhizome 14y ago
      The internet killed the GPL? Tell that to my home servers.
    - freyrs3 14y ago
      Most of the internet runs on a kernel that is GPL'd.
  - millstone 14y ago
    Android could have based itself on a BSD, or even xnu, and done just fine.
  - millstone 14y ago
    Android could have based itself on a BSD, or even xnu, and done just fine.
  - zmmmmm 14y ago
    Android is an interesting example. Google did use a linux kernel but threw out everything GPL they possibly could above that, to the point of writing their own libc. So I wouldn't really call it an example of GPL winning. It's equally an example of how it was necessary to throw away piles of code because it was GPL's and couldn't be used in commercially compatible way.
    - rhizome 14y ago
      The GPL was never intended to eliminate NIH Syndrome.
- g8oz 14y ago
  Digital rights/freedoms is becoming more of an issue not less. That makes Stallman more relevant every day.
chipotle_coyote 14y ago
"The dustbin of Past Industrialists" includes Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, R.J. Reynolds, Eli Whitney, and a fair number of others who are in our history books, whose names have entered the common vernacular, or both. I'm playing Devil's Advocate here, but it's still a serious question: is the reason we don't hear about the Stallmans of their eras in similar fashions because there simply weren't any, or because as it turns out, it's not the successful industrialists who end up in the dustbin, historically speaking? I don't mean to downplay Stallman's contributions, and as maddening as I frequently find him I think he makes some very important points. The software world needs people like him. But I honestly think anyone who imagines that Stallman is going to be a household name in 70 years while Steve Jobs and Bill Gates will be forgotten is engaging in a hell of a lot of wishful thinking. I do hope Stallman is remembered then (and ideally favorably), but Jobs and Gates undoubtedly will be. (As an aside, I think it's somewhat interesting that Jobs is the current decade's boogeyman, while Gates was the last decade's. Maybe this is because they're both deserving of it, but I suspect it has a whole lot more to do with "tall poppy syndrome" than we care to admit.)
- e12e 14y ago
  I think Diesel might be a bit more along the lines of Stallman, than Ford. IIRC he wanted to make sure the Diesel engine remained an open design -- a design that was made to use biofuel -- for the betterment of mankind, basically. Then someone threw him in the English channel (or so it would seem), and we got gasoline engines.

rimantas 14y ago

Sorry, but that is utter bullshit. Somehow Stallman's importance is somewhere in foggy future with a lot of handwaving and FUD. The real relevance of his ideas is already in the past. I won't be surprised a bit if at the time you are talking about most OSS will be under MIT/BSD type licenses not GPL.

jacquesm 14y ago
Strong disagree. GPL licensed software is powering an ever increasing fraction of all devices. Far more than I would have ever believed in only a decade ago. There are some interesting network effects at work here. Th e more GPL'd software there is out there the bigger the chunk you have to write yourself (or pay someone to write) would have to be if you want to forego it. Hence Linksys and Android. Those would have never gotten as far as they did without the GPL's software underneath their externally visible features as a foundation to build on. Linux on the desktop may never happen, but linux in your pocket is pretty much a foregone conclusion at this point.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Internet killed GPL. AGPL tried to win the Inernet, and the corporations dodged it.
  - rhizome 14y ago
    The internet killed the GPL? Tell that to my home servers.
  - freyrs3 14y ago
    Most of the internet runs on a kernel that is GPL'd.
- millstone 14y ago
  Android could have based itself on a BSD, or even xnu, and done just fine.
- millstone 14y ago
  Android could have based itself on a BSD, or even xnu, and done just fine.
- zmmmmm 14y ago
  Android is an interesting example. Google did use a linux kernel but threw out everything GPL they possibly could above that, to the point of writing their own libc. So I wouldn't really call it an example of GPL winning. It's equally an example of how it was necessary to throw away piles of code because it was GPL's and couldn't be used in commercially compatible way.
  - rhizome 14y ago
    The GPL was never intended to eliminate NIH Syndrome.
g8oz 14y ago
Digital rights/freedoms is becoming more of an issue not less. That makes Stallman more relevant every day.

chipotle_coyote 14y ago

"The dustbin of Past Industrialists" includes Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, R.J. Reynolds, Eli Whitney, and a fair number of others who are in our history books, whose names have entered the common vernacular, or both. I'm playing Devil's Advocate here, but it's still a serious question: is the reason we don't hear about the Stallmans of their eras in similar fashions because there simply weren't any, or because as it turns out, it's not the successful industrialists who end up in the dustbin, historically speaking? I don't mean to downplay Stallman's contributions, and as maddening as I frequently find him I think he makes some very important points. The software world needs people like him. But I honestly think anyone who imagines that Stallman is going to be a household name in 70 years while Steve Jobs and Bill Gates will be forgotten is engaging in a hell of a lot of wishful thinking. I do hope Stallman is remembered then (and ideally favorably), but Jobs and Gates undoubtedly will be. (As an aside, I think it's somewhat interesting that Jobs is the current decade's boogeyman, while Gates was the last decade's. Maybe this is because they're both deserving of it, but I suspect it has a whole lot more to do with "tall poppy syndrome" than we care to admit.)

e12e 14y ago
I think Diesel might be a bit more along the lines of Stallman, than Ford. IIRC he wanted to make sure the Diesel engine remained an open design -- a design that was made to use biofuel -- for the betterment of mankind, basically. Then someone threw him in the English channel (or so it would seem), and we got gasoline engines.