41 ms·

RMS basically invented Open Source, and I believe he is allowed to say whatever he wants! So what is he think that Miguel De Icaza is a traitor to HIS ideals!

by systems 17y ago

RMS basically invented Open Source, and I believe he is allowed to say whatever he wants! So what is he think that Miguel De Icaza is a traitor to HIS ideals! It's his opinion! And, when you speak with friends, don't you ever accuse and attack anyone for something he did or said! Why isn't RMS allowed to speak his mind, and speak freely! I believe people are too harsh on RMS and love to portrait him as psycho, weird and eccentric to the level that allow them to discredit him. RMS is a guy of principles, let him be!

aw3c2 17y ago
We badly need someone like Stallman to stay true to free and open-source principles. Without someone radically keeping to his visions, everything blurs to mediocrity.
- davidw 17y ago
  Agree completely. But there are ways and ways of going about that. He should stick to talking about software though, ("don't use Mono") rather than attacking people ("guy who wrote zillions of lines of free code is a 'traitor'").
- ErrantX 17y ago
  yes, but also no. Zealots tend to do a lot of damage to projects - especially FOSS projects. And it's hard not to class Stallman as a zealot.
lucumo 17y ago
> Why isn't RMS allowed to speak his mind, and speak freely! Nobody forbids him to speak his mind. They just think he's a jackass for making that remark. I agree. And that's my opinion and I do believe I have the same right to express that as he does.
ananthrk 17y ago
A honest question. How is Mono going against the principles of Open Source software? Just by the association of Microsoft or am I missing something? Edit: Just noticed that Icaza also accepted to be part of MS's open source labs.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  Mono's situation regarding Microsoft's patents is murky at best. While nobody can tell exactly what patents Mono risks violating, nobody seems to be able to clear it entirely.
  - ananthrk 17y ago
    But didn't Novell enter into an agreement regarding Mono such that they are not sued for such (hypothetical) patents? Will that not (automatically) cover anyone using Mono?
    - rbanffy 17y ago
      No. The agreements cover only Novell and their users.
bad_user 17y ago
> RMS basically invented Open Source You didn't just say that!! What really invented "Open Source" was the arrival of the Internet. There have always been people wanting to share their work freely, the Internet making that possible and cheap. Heck, researches on ARPANET collaborated openly to build the Internet. And the first open-source Unix kernel to run on top of x86 wasn't Gnu or Linux, it was 386BSD. RMS didn't invent the people's desire to share. People have been doing that long before RMS was born ;)
- rbanffy 17y ago
  What RMS did invent is a clever license that allowed companies to contribute to open-source projects with no risk of their contributions being taken by their competitors. That made the ecosystem serious.
  - bad_user 17y ago
    > What RMS did invent is a clever license that allowed companies to contribute to open-source projects with no risk of their contributions being taken by their competitors. Actually the first big donation to open-source by a corporation is Netscape's Mozilla. It was distributed under their own license (MPL) following the definition of "open-source" ... a definition set forth because the term "free software" had ideological connotations. Of course the FSF did valuable legal work prior to that, and they had a model to follow when defining what "open-source" is, but it was innevitable anyway. The "open source" movement is not RMS's. Linux may have never been so popular without the work of Miguel, or without the folks at the Apache Foundation, or without Netscape's contribution, or without the contribution of so many others. People have different goals, motivators and ideals. We will never get rid of proprietary software unless a business model is born that is better than selling copies of software. And that won't happen soon. So instead of spreading the "free software virus" by brute force and activism, why not invite the corporations to contribute, such that at least the development tools and platforms become more open? And that's exactly what people like Miguel are doing. I mean, I've worked on a couple of smallish projects in dotNet, and the landscape outside Microsoft is a waistland ... the majority of third party tools and libraries are proprietary. But more and more open-source tools are starting to come out of the Mono community or from CodePlex. The dotNet community is really warming up to "open-source". And I think that's really something.

by systems 17y ago

aw3c2 17y ago

We badly need someone like Stallman to stay true to free and open-source principles. Without someone radically keeping to his visions, everything blurs to mediocrity.

davidw 17y ago
Agree completely. But there are ways and ways of going about that. He should stick to talking about software though, ("don't use Mono") rather than attacking people ("guy who wrote zillions of lines of free code is a 'traitor'").
ErrantX 17y ago
yes, but also no. Zealots tend to do a lot of damage to projects - especially FOSS projects. And it's hard not to class Stallman as a zealot.

lucumo 17y ago

> Why isn't RMS allowed to speak his mind, and speak freely! Nobody forbids him to speak his mind. They just think he's a jackass for making that remark. I agree. And that's my opinion and I do believe I have the same right to express that as he does.

ananthrk 17y ago

A honest question. How is Mono going against the principles of Open Source software? Just by the association of Microsoft or am I missing something? Edit: Just noticed that Icaza also accepted to be part of MS's open source labs.

rbanffy 17y ago
Mono's situation regarding Microsoft's patents is murky at best. While nobody can tell exactly what patents Mono risks violating, nobody seems to be able to clear it entirely.
- ananthrk 17y ago
  But didn't Novell enter into an agreement regarding Mono such that they are not sued for such (hypothetical) patents? Will that not (automatically) cover anyone using Mono?
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    No. The agreements cover only Novell and their users.

bad_user 17y ago

> RMS basically invented Open Source You didn't just say that!! What really invented "Open Source" was the arrival of the Internet. There have always been people wanting to share their work freely, the Internet making that possible and cheap. Heck, researches on ARPANET collaborated openly to build the Internet. And the first open-source Unix kernel to run on top of x86 wasn't Gnu or Linux, it was 386BSD. RMS didn't invent the people's desire to share. People have been doing that long before RMS was born ;)

rbanffy 17y ago
What RMS did invent is a clever license that allowed companies to contribute to open-source projects with no risk of their contributions being taken by their competitors. That made the ecosystem serious.
- bad_user 17y ago
  > What RMS did invent is a clever license that allowed companies to contribute to open-source projects with no risk of their contributions being taken by their competitors. Actually the first big donation to open-source by a corporation is Netscape's Mozilla. It was distributed under their own license (MPL) following the definition of "open-source" ... a definition set forth because the term "free software" had ideological connotations. Of course the FSF did valuable legal work prior to that, and they had a model to follow when defining what "open-source" is, but it was innevitable anyway. The "open source" movement is not RMS's. Linux may have never been so popular without the work of Miguel, or without the folks at the Apache Foundation, or without Netscape's contribution, or without the contribution of so many others. People have different goals, motivators and ideals. We will never get rid of proprietary software unless a business model is born that is better than selling copies of software. And that won't happen soon. So instead of spreading the "free software virus" by brute force and activism, why not invite the corporations to contribute, such that at least the development tools and platforms become more open? And that's exactly what people like Miguel are doing. I mean, I've worked on a couple of smallish projects in dotNet, and the landscape outside Microsoft is a waistland ... the majority of third party tools and libraries are proprietary. But more and more open-source tools are starting to come out of the Mono community or from CodePlex. The dotNet community is really warming up to "open-source". And I think that's really something.