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and the more we forget how much RMS did. People lose respect to him, I even heard people saying: "and what did he write? Emacs? nobody use that sh*t", the fact

by igorgue 17y ago

and the more we forget how much RMS did. People lose respect to him, I even heard people saying: "and what did he write? Emacs? nobody use that sh*t", the fact is, a lot of todays innovation is built on top of Stallman's work.

jacquesm 17y ago
That's a logical fallacy. It doesn't matter how much he did, if he says or does stuff today that doesn't hold water he should be called on it. If all the software that deIcaza and Stallman helped produce would be removed from your average Ubuntu box it would probably not get into booting, let alone do something useful. That doesn't give either of them the right to pretend to speak for everybody or to try to carve up the world of software in to camps.
axod 17y ago
I'd say that it's very likely that if he hadn't done it, others would have. (I'm firmly in the "This man is completely insane" camp).
- jacquesm 17y ago
  I'm not convinced of that. I think that to some extent it was RMSs traumatic early career experiences that set him on the path of extreme inspiration that drove the development of some of the most impressive amounts of code by a single individual. It takes real conviction to literally dedicate your life to projects like this, and RMS has that to spare. He's not insane, he is just the opposite of politically correct, and while that can be charming in a person that is not the perceived spokesperson of a large community when you are you'd do well to moderate your language. If you don't it costs because it gives your opponents plenty of opportunity to claim the moral high ground. The funny thing here is that if RMS really wishes to see closed source vs open source as a battlefield then his way of going about waging the war aids the enemy by giving them a couple of really good opportunities to get him bad PR. I don't think that's smart.
  - donaq 17y ago
    All the same, here's a quote about him (lifted from wikipedia) that I agree with. There's something comforting about Stallman's intransigence. Win or lose, Stallman will never give up. He'll be the stubbornest mule on the farm until the day he dies. Call it fixity of purpose, or just plain cussedness, his single-minded commitment and brutal honesty are refreshing in a world of spin-meisters and multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns. —Leonard, Andrew, Salon.com
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      There's plenty of good about Stallman, no doubt. But you can be the stubbornest mule on the farm without being insulting. And I find name-calling and posturing to be in conflict with 'brutal honesty'.
  - axod 17y ago
    The fact is though most people don't care about open source vs closed source. And they never will. No one side will ever win. Comparing closed source with slavery is pretty insane though.
donaq 17y ago
Precisely, but my respect for him isn't even because of hacking ability or the software that he wrote. It's because of his ideology and his willingness to dedicate his life to it so that other people may have freedom. Hackers nowadays take free software for granted, but without rms, it may well never have happened. If we (developers who rely on open source software) can afford to compromise and parlay with the enemy now (and make no mistake, before rms got pissed at the path software development was taking and took it upon himself to start a one-man war on behalf of all of us, proprietary software was an enemy), it is because the movement has gained sufficient momentum and become too strong to destroy. I mean, imagine the reaction of a pragmatic person to the decline of the hacker culture at MIT's AI lab, where it all started. Shrug, move on to whichever job paid the highest/offered the most interesting work, continue living life. If every hacker were pragmatic, then open source would never have gotten started. It took someone who was willing to do it when it didn't make sense to do it to get the entire movement started. I think rms was not only important, he, or someone like him was necessary at the time. He was the snowflake that started the avalanche. Come the moment, come the man, as they say, and rms was that man. Oh well, I doubt I will convince anyone who is unable or unwilling to imagine how difficult it is to give up personal advancement for the sake of others that rms deserves respect, if not gratitude, but there it is. I think it needed to be said. On a tangential note, is anyone else going to FOSS.my 2009 at KL? If so, are you planning to attack rms as a ninja? :)
- cschwarm 17y ago
  > Hackers nowadays take free software for granted, but without rms, it may well never have happened. Maybe, but this does not mean that Open Source would not have happend. Project Gutenberg, for example, was already started in 1971 to to archive and digitize cultural works. The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) started in 1977. The GNU project, however, started in 1983. In other words, the idea of sharing copyrighted works such as literature and software was known before Stallman. Basically, Stallman was quite late in the game. Additionally, other attempts to freely distribute code started after the GNU project, but independently of Stallmans ideas. For example, the Apache project, IIRC. Overall, it's save to say that we'd have some sort of Open Source movement, due to earlier examples of code sharing and independent attempts, even if Stallman would not have done what he did. Maybe, we'd even have a "better" Open Source movement. Also, the ability to have an ideology does not deserve respect, per se. There were quite a few people with ideologies who made millions of people suffer.

by igorgue 17y ago

jacquesm 17y ago

That's a logical fallacy. It doesn't matter how much he did, if he says or does stuff today that doesn't hold water he should be called on it. If all the software that deIcaza and Stallman helped produce would be removed from your average Ubuntu box it would probably not get into booting, let alone do something useful. That doesn't give either of them the right to pretend to speak for everybody or to try to carve up the world of software in to camps.

axod 17y ago

I'd say that it's very likely that if he hadn't done it, others would have. (I'm firmly in the "This man is completely insane" camp).

jacquesm 17y ago
I'm not convinced of that. I think that to some extent it was RMSs traumatic early career experiences that set him on the path of extreme inspiration that drove the development of some of the most impressive amounts of code by a single individual. It takes real conviction to literally dedicate your life to projects like this, and RMS has that to spare. He's not insane, he is just the opposite of politically correct, and while that can be charming in a person that is not the perceived spokesperson of a large community when you are you'd do well to moderate your language. If you don't it costs because it gives your opponents plenty of opportunity to claim the moral high ground. The funny thing here is that if RMS really wishes to see closed source vs open source as a battlefield then his way of going about waging the war aids the enemy by giving them a couple of really good opportunities to get him bad PR. I don't think that's smart.
- donaq 17y ago
  All the same, here's a quote about him (lifted from wikipedia) that I agree with. There's something comforting about Stallman's intransigence. Win or lose, Stallman will never give up. He'll be the stubbornest mule on the farm until the day he dies. Call it fixity of purpose, or just plain cussedness, his single-minded commitment and brutal honesty are refreshing in a world of spin-meisters and multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns. —Leonard, Andrew, Salon.com
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    There's plenty of good about Stallman, no doubt. But you can be the stubbornest mule on the farm without being insulting. And I find name-calling and posturing to be in conflict with 'brutal honesty'.
- axod 17y ago
  The fact is though most people don't care about open source vs closed source. And they never will. No one side will ever win. Comparing closed source with slavery is pretty insane though.

donaq 17y ago

Precisely, but my respect for him isn't even because of hacking ability or the software that he wrote. It's because of his ideology and his willingness to dedicate his life to it so that other people may have freedom. Hackers nowadays take free software for granted, but without rms, it may well never have happened. If we (developers who rely on open source software) can afford to compromise and parlay with the enemy now (and make no mistake, before rms got pissed at the path software development was taking and took it upon himself to start a one-man war on behalf of all of us, proprietary software was an enemy), it is because the movement has gained sufficient momentum and become too strong to destroy. I mean, imagine the reaction of a pragmatic person to the decline of the hacker culture at MIT's AI lab, where it all started. Shrug, move on to whichever job paid the highest/offered the most interesting work, continue living life. If every hacker were pragmatic, then open source would never have gotten started. It took someone who was willing to do it when it didn't make sense to do it to get the entire movement started. I think rms was not only important, he, or someone like him was necessary at the time. He was the snowflake that started the avalanche. Come the moment, come the man, as they say, and rms was that man. Oh well, I doubt I will convince anyone who is unable or unwilling to imagine how difficult it is to give up personal advancement for the sake of others that rms deserves respect, if not gratitude, but there it is. I think it needed to be said. On a tangential note, is anyone else going to FOSS.my 2009 at KL? If so, are you planning to attack rms as a ninja? :)

cschwarm 17y ago
> Hackers nowadays take free software for granted, but without rms, it may well never have happened. Maybe, but this does not mean that Open Source would not have happend. Project Gutenberg, for example, was already started in 1971 to to archive and digitize cultural works. The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) started in 1977. The GNU project, however, started in 1983. In other words, the idea of sharing copyrighted works such as literature and software was known before Stallman. Basically, Stallman was quite late in the game. Additionally, other attempts to freely distribute code started after the GNU project, but independently of Stallmans ideas. For example, the Apache project, IIRC. Overall, it's save to say that we'd have some sort of Open Source movement, due to earlier examples of code sharing and independent attempts, even if Stallman would not have done what he did. Maybe, we'd even have a "better" Open Source movement. Also, the ability to have an ideology does not deserve respect, per se. There were quite a few people with ideologies who made millions of people suffer.