4 ms·

I consider Guy Steele Jr. to be one of the greatest programmers of all time. And when he praises Stallman that way, you begin to grasp just how brilliant Stallm

I consider Guy Steele Jr. to be one of the greatest programmers of all time. And when he praises Stallman that way, you begin to grasp just how brilliant Stallman must be. Plus 10 hours of Steele and Stallman coding together, what a thing of beauty those 100 lines of pretty-print would be.

vinceguidry 12y ago
I didn't realize just how crazy smart he was until I started reading Free as in Freedom and read the accounts of how other impressive early programmers viewed him. Even among these guys, he stood out. Sometimes I think, "what a shame it is that he had to stop coding!" Then I think of how the world might have turned out without the FSF and the GNU project and I shudder. Stallman was exactly what the world needed, exactly when the world needed him. Now that the glory days are gone, the GNU project has matured, and there are other competing mindsets and communities, Stallman's looked at as this crazy hack activist and that's a shame. Nobody can be all things to all people. And the things he says are still right, still prescient, and still timely, if a bit antiquated. Anyone reading this, if you can donate to or join the FSF, please do. Everything you love about computing today ultimately rests on Stallman's hard work. https://crm.fsf.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=14 https://crm.fsf.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=1...
- zafiro17 12y ago
  I agree with you. I just yesterday wrote this over at SoylentNews.org (the community spin-off of Slashdot that split when Slashdot imposed its new interface on us): http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=4458&cid=108238 http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=4458&cid=108238 Unfortunately, Stallman is going to have the supremely unsatisfactory pleasure of going to the grave after a lifetime of scorn and abuse at the hands of nerds - only to be proven right. It's pathetic that the nerd community never misses an opportunity on sites like this one to pick fun at his grooming habits, his relentlessly consistent stand on issues, and his fixation on purity of position even at the expense of convenience or ease of coding (or even talking). But the trends show the things he worried about are slowly becoming reality and despite having foreseen it, he will die having failed to prevent it. But the rest of us, we will go to the grave knowing we persecuted a guy who was actually right. Hopefully a lot of us will feel ashamed. More likely we will be "enjoying" life in our little walled gardens, trying to finish reading our books before they expire and are revoked, and sharing tips on software piracy sites that allow us to use our computers for limited purposes without the tracking authorities finding out. Hope he has a good laugh from the afterlife. Hopefully he'll be drinking a pint of stout with Dennis Ritchie and Alan Turing and watching us struggle. He's a very clever guy; wish the majority of us would recognize it.
- bronson 12y ago
  > Everything you love about computing today ultimately rests on Stallman's hard work. Absolutely, demonstrably, false. Stallman has contributed greatly, yes, but please don't overstate it. It calls into question the other things you said.
  - vinceguidry 12y ago
    I don't think you quite understand just how important the ideological battle over software creation was back in the 80s and how that shaped the world we have today. There was no open source or free software movement and everybody seemed perfectly willing to let the business guys handle those difficult questions. Without the GNU Public License, every single business making software would have had to re-invent the wheel from scratch. Imagine if every TV maker and router maker had to re-create busybox. It would have been way worse without GNU. Even though most of the companies that use GNU software rarely contribute back, the world is infinitely better for having it, and it wouldn't have ever existed if it weren't for Stallman's prescience in creating a way for software to remain free legally. That way did not exist before Stallman invented it and would probably still not exist today if he hadn't done the monumental work of inventing and evangelizing it. All open source licenses owe their very existence to the GPL. Without Stallman, the idea of free software would have likely taken another fifty years to coalesce, if not longer. I'm not overstating his contributions to the world, if anything I'm understating it.
    - johan_larson 12y ago
      "Without the GNU Public License, every single business making software would have had to re-invent the wheel from scratch. Imagine if every TV maker and router maker had to re-create busybox. It would have been way worse without GNU." I think that's overstating the case. Without the open source movement, there would still be components available for sale that people could build on. For example, over in relational database land, we would still have Oracle, DB2, and SQL Server -- the big high-end offerings. What we wouldn't have are PostgreSQL and MySQL, the free low-end offerings. MS Access, or something like it, just might be your best bet if your needs were modest but your wallet was light. It would be a world where the components you use to build your system cost real money, and of course there would be fewer options overall.
- daveloyall 12y ago
  I didn't realize how crazy smart he is until I attended a couple of LibrePlanets (FSF annual conference). I have a vivid memory of a young hacker's face, full of pain and confusion. Stallman was belittling him for taking too much time fiddling with his smart phone camera--you know, the kind that has only an onscreen shutter button... The kid had traveled across the country to snap a photo with the folk hero of his culture. I watched the faces of his keepers/coworkers, too. Their lips were tight, they said nothing. They are no slouches! They aren't socially inept. Yet, yet... they tolerate him, even while keeping him away from starry eyed kids as much as possible. For the greater good. I heard again and again that he's a genius. That the little trick he pulled with that now famous software license has irrevocably changed the world for the better. I get the impression that to this day, he protects the FSF from making mistakes that would eventually land it in history's dustbin. He's a strategist. (Or tactician? I'm not clear on the distinction. I'm no genius...) NB: I'm not talking about simple mistakes; I'm saying that what they are trying to achieve is really hard. Stallman has a second sight for how systems plus inputs will unfold (oh, the parent post used the word prescient--good word!) and he saw something terrible in our future, so he has dedicated his life to changing it. But he's still a world-class asshole. Does anybody else have his talent? And maybe a little charisma? Or at least compassion?
  - Scuds 12y ago
    > But he's still a world-class asshole. There's bits about him berating Tim O'Reilly for charging for the books his company publishes. Here's the famous rider for his speeches: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/pipermail/developers-public/2011-October/007647.html https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/pipermail/developer... He's a fine leader for the FSF, but not a frontman.
    - daveloyall 12y ago
      The leader and frontman can be a different person? Is the Free Software movement a 'grassroots' movement?
  - BugBrother 12y ago
    rms is probably a bit on the autist spectrum and can be less than sensitive to others' viewpoint, but so am (probably) I and many other computer guys. Stallman have made the world a much better place. Even without counting Emacs and gcc.
leoc 12y ago
That "mind-meld" must the be canonical pair-programming session.

vinceguidry 12y ago

I didn't realize just how crazy smart he was until I started reading Free as in Freedom and read the accounts of how other impressive early programmers viewed him. Even among these guys, he stood out. Sometimes I think, "what a shame it is that he had to stop coding!" Then I think of how the world might have turned out without the FSF and the GNU project and I shudder. Stallman was exactly what the world needed, exactly when the world needed him. Now that the glory days are gone, the GNU project has matured, and there are other competing mindsets and communities, Stallman's looked at as this crazy hack activist and that's a shame. Nobody can be all things to all people. And the things he says are still right, still prescient, and still timely, if a bit antiquated. Anyone reading this, if you can donate to or join the FSF, please do. Everything you love about computing today ultimately rests on Stallman's hard work. https://crm.fsf.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=14 https://crm.fsf.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=1...

zafiro17 12y ago
I agree with you. I just yesterday wrote this over at SoylentNews.org (the community spin-off of Slashdot that split when Slashdot imposed its new interface on us): http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=4458&cid=108238 http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=4458&cid=108238 Unfortunately, Stallman is going to have the supremely unsatisfactory pleasure of going to the grave after a lifetime of scorn and abuse at the hands of nerds - only to be proven right. It's pathetic that the nerd community never misses an opportunity on sites like this one to pick fun at his grooming habits, his relentlessly consistent stand on issues, and his fixation on purity of position even at the expense of convenience or ease of coding (or even talking). But the trends show the things he worried about are slowly becoming reality and despite having foreseen it, he will die having failed to prevent it. But the rest of us, we will go to the grave knowing we persecuted a guy who was actually right. Hopefully a lot of us will feel ashamed. More likely we will be "enjoying" life in our little walled gardens, trying to finish reading our books before they expire and are revoked, and sharing tips on software piracy sites that allow us to use our computers for limited purposes without the tracking authorities finding out. Hope he has a good laugh from the afterlife. Hopefully he'll be drinking a pint of stout with Dennis Ritchie and Alan Turing and watching us struggle. He's a very clever guy; wish the majority of us would recognize it.
bronson 12y ago
> Everything you love about computing today ultimately rests on Stallman's hard work. Absolutely, demonstrably, false. Stallman has contributed greatly, yes, but please don't overstate it. It calls into question the other things you said.
- vinceguidry 12y ago
  I don't think you quite understand just how important the ideological battle over software creation was back in the 80s and how that shaped the world we have today. There was no open source or free software movement and everybody seemed perfectly willing to let the business guys handle those difficult questions. Without the GNU Public License, every single business making software would have had to re-invent the wheel from scratch. Imagine if every TV maker and router maker had to re-create busybox. It would have been way worse without GNU. Even though most of the companies that use GNU software rarely contribute back, the world is infinitely better for having it, and it wouldn't have ever existed if it weren't for Stallman's prescience in creating a way for software to remain free legally. That way did not exist before Stallman invented it and would probably still not exist today if he hadn't done the monumental work of inventing and evangelizing it. All open source licenses owe their very existence to the GPL. Without Stallman, the idea of free software would have likely taken another fifty years to coalesce, if not longer. I'm not overstating his contributions to the world, if anything I'm understating it.
  - johan_larson 12y ago
    "Without the GNU Public License, every single business making software would have had to re-invent the wheel from scratch. Imagine if every TV maker and router maker had to re-create busybox. It would have been way worse without GNU." I think that's overstating the case. Without the open source movement, there would still be components available for sale that people could build on. For example, over in relational database land, we would still have Oracle, DB2, and SQL Server -- the big high-end offerings. What we wouldn't have are PostgreSQL and MySQL, the free low-end offerings. MS Access, or something like it, just might be your best bet if your needs were modest but your wallet was light. It would be a world where the components you use to build your system cost real money, and of course there would be fewer options overall.
daveloyall 12y ago
I didn't realize how crazy smart he is until I attended a couple of LibrePlanets (FSF annual conference). I have a vivid memory of a young hacker's face, full of pain and confusion. Stallman was belittling him for taking too much time fiddling with his smart phone camera--you know, the kind that has only an onscreen shutter button... The kid had traveled across the country to snap a photo with the folk hero of his culture. I watched the faces of his keepers/coworkers, too. Their lips were tight, they said nothing. They are no slouches! They aren't socially inept. Yet, yet... they tolerate him, even while keeping him away from starry eyed kids as much as possible. For the greater good. I heard again and again that he's a genius. That the little trick he pulled with that now famous software license has irrevocably changed the world for the better. I get the impression that to this day, he protects the FSF from making mistakes that would eventually land it in history's dustbin. He's a strategist. (Or tactician? I'm not clear on the distinction. I'm no genius...) NB: I'm not talking about simple mistakes; I'm saying that what they are trying to achieve is really hard. Stallman has a second sight for how systems plus inputs will unfold (oh, the parent post used the word prescient--good word!) and he saw something terrible in our future, so he has dedicated his life to changing it. But he's still a world-class asshole. Does anybody else have his talent? And maybe a little charisma? Or at least compassion?
- Scuds 12y ago
  > But he's still a world-class asshole. There's bits about him berating Tim O'Reilly for charging for the books his company publishes. Here's the famous rider for his speeches: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/pipermail/developers-public/2011-October/007647.html https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/pipermail/developer... He's a fine leader for the FSF, but not a frontman.
  - daveloyall 12y ago
    The leader and frontman can be a different person? Is the Free Software movement a 'grassroots' movement?
- BugBrother 12y ago
  rms is probably a bit on the autist spectrum and can be less than sensitive to others' viewpoint, but so am (probably) I and many other computer guys. Stallman have made the world a much better place. Even without counting Emacs and gcc.

leoc 12y ago

That "mind-meld" must the be canonical pair-programming session.