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I think you're right that the huge inroads free software has made contributes to a declining feeling of urgency in the community at large. I'm a huge fan of his
by trotsky 14y ago
I think you're right that the huge inroads free software has made contributes to a declining feeling of urgency in the community at large. I'm a huge fan of his but admit to the same general feeling most of the time.
The depth of his impact and contributions is really only obvious with the benefit of hindsight, though. Even among relative friends, it would be hard to find a time in that evolution that people weren't questioning similar issues of net future benefit, practicality and the reliance on strict dogma at the expense of practical compromise.
Based on that I'm inclined to believe his vision is as vital as ever and that the traits that at times make him and the FSF hard to work or deal with could very easily be the same ones that lead to long term benefits.
- brudgers 14y agoThe GNUist vision was developed before the web. It doesn't really address the situation where computers are networked. If you send a message to my computer, and my computer sends a response (or no response), how does that relationship justify your access to the source code of my computer even under the most liberal interpretation of GNUist principals? Assuming of course that software on my computer is not GNUist. And even if it were GNUist, should I be required to notify you of that with each transaction to make you aware that you may modify the code with which you are interacting? I'll skip the logical extension of GNUist thought to the point where you can modify GNUist code on my computer. GNU was designed around single computer, multiple users. But today's world is single user, multiple computers. The pressing problems of that world are different than those from the days of dumb terminals even if those problems are a result of the success of the dumb terminal era solutions.