Posted on 03/31/2007 10:02:49 AM PDT by ShadowAce
IB4GE
In Before Golden Eagle?
I doubt he's interested in how free software actually happens. Sometimes I think he believes it's secretly funded by Leonid Brezhnev. ;-)
He'll be around. Just give a bit of time. His personal crusade to stamp out the evils of Linux won't let him stay away.
Hmmm. Something else to note, a portion of the value of the bannered contributions also belong to the blue swath contributors in that they are not the bannered entities, but made contributions to the bannered effort.
So that's RMS? Geez... who'd a thunk it?
Few Linux folks who know about RMS consider him a saint. It's just as unfortunate that the free (speech, beer, whatever) software movement has a whacko self-absorbed figurehead, as that the proprietary software movement has a whacko self-absorbed figurehead (that would be the legendary chair-throwing monkeyboy Ballmer).
I am grateful for the early work RMS did, in particular the gcc compiler, because that made possible a lot of technical work that I did in the 90's. For that matter, anyone who uses any of the modern BSD UNIXes, MacOS-X, and others, is indebted to RMS and the gcc developers.
However, RMS has become a religious nut-case, and like all religious nut-cases, he's lost touch with what it's really about. He cares now only for his own glorification. Witness how he's screwing GPLv3 into a corner.
Look, I work as Director of SysAdmin for a company that writes and sells proprietary software; I use and maintain servers running Windows, NetBSD, Solaris, Linux, and MacOS; and I love and hate them all because nothing is perfect. I support users running all of the above plus Vista. If I were a religious nut-case, I'd be out of a job.
I happen to be writing this on my home Linux box, but my WinXP box alongside is crunching on a task and my Mac Mini is downloading some updates. I use what works best for the task. Free software often (but not always) does it best.
So I don't think you're playing fair, to paint all GNU, much less all GNU/Linux or other free software boosters as leftists. Many of us are simply folks who don't think that Microsoft et al -- despite their overwhelming market success -- are doing the best job out there, and we'd like to try to do better ourselves. You're welcome to judge the results as inferior -- it's a free country. I prefer to have a mix, since that way I can do anything I need to do, on at least one of these boxes.
the guy really is a fruit i would prefer that linux go to the BSD license model. secretly i think even Linus wants to kick his sissy ass.
I don't think it's any secret. Linus is a much more reasonable and pragmatic individual, and Stallman's excess of dogma obviously pisses him off. He's said as much, a number of times, on the record in print. It's not a religious war -- it's a disagreement on what's important, between a nutcase and a practical man.
I don't, I just state simple facts like Stallman is a green party whacko and Torvalds came from a family of well known communists and sit back and watch those act like I criticized their family instead of admitting the obvious. They may not all be leftists but when they attack me for questioning those like Stallman who are, you certainly have to wonder.
It's not all political. But it's unfortunate that the software development world has so many people who take themselves so seriously (whether on the free side or the proprietary side).
When I started programming in 1970, nobody thought about communal software -- the closest we came was trading sections of our card decks.
I wrote a bunch of apps and utilities in assembly for my KIM-1 in 1976-1978, some of which wound up getting passed around in the various Users Groups of that era. I grew up believing, as most did then, that software was the "free" component of computers -- that you paid for the hardware, and the software was cooperatively developed to run on it. It was, of course, a simpler time...
Bill Gates's vision for a company that sold only software changed all that, for most people, for better or worse who knows.
It's unfortunate that Microsoft did not evolve that original business model over time -- instead of still flogging NT in 2007, they might have gotten the more truly visionary, even revolutionary things done, that Gates was talking about 15-20 years ago. But that would have required opening up, because no one company can do those big things alone. Microsoft consumes but does not cooperate.
It's not leftist to cooperate. An awful lot of excellent products (both computer-related and otherwise) developed over the years through cooperation between capitalist companies. It doesn't mean they don't compete, even fiercely -- but sometimes it makes good business sense to play well with others, because a rising tide lifts all the boats.
Microsoft presently stands alone today, but when they fall, as they inevitably must, no one will step out to catch them. Much as I look forward to that (because I don't think their monopoly is a good thing for software), I shudder to think what will rise from those ashes.
People are quick to point the finger at Microsoft instead of ever admit the issues with Linux, but there have been choices other than Microsoft since before Linux existed. I myself used SCO Unix back in the early 90's, and there have been many other versions of Unix available from US companies such as Apple Computer's OSX operating system since that time. Now we're supposed to use some foreign copy of Unix, with funky names like "Ubuntu", instead of American originals like Apple? Forget it, at least when it comes to me.
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Yep, my first home Unix box was an AT&T 3B2/300 running SysV, in 1985. I've used AppleII machines, DEC PDP-8, -11, VAX11/780, Flex-09 (6809), you name it. Linux is only the latest of a long line of non-Microsoft OSes.
Hell, I remember when Microsoft was a Unix company (XENIX, before they sold it to Santa Cruz).
> ... and there have been many other versions of Unix available from US companies such as Apple Computer's OSX operating system since that time. Now we're supposed to use some foreign copy of Unix, with funky names like "Ubuntu", instead of American originals like Apple? Forget it, at least when it comes to me.
Yes, but don't forget that Apple's OSX is a legitimate modern-BSD derivative, and as such is 100% dependent on RMS's gcc compiler. I happen to think OSX is the best-of-breed among all the UNIX/Linux variants, in most respects, especially security and the GUI.
But we should acknowledge that OS-X as a product would never have existed were it not for Stallman's excellent, free -- and more important, portable -- compiler. That's just giving credit where due; it doesn't affect my dislike for him later becoming a righteous, counter-productive, asshole.
Incidentally, I run RedHat and Fedora Core Linux, not "Ubuntu". Nothing against the latter technically, but it sounds too close to "Obama" for my tastes. ;-)
What the devil are youse talkin about ? I'm a flunky, not a lackey!!!!
I agree with that, and I could almost support them with all the foreign versions of Linux out there, but since they allow the Chinese to legally rename their "Red Hat" software to "Red Flag", free of charge, I find it pretty difficult. "Ubuntu", "Red Flag", Cuba and North Korea standardizing on it, too many questions and way too few answers.
Allowed? Nah, I just don't think they (Red Hat) could have stopped the Chinese from punning on the name, legally or otherwise. Shoot, a company with Microsoft's resources couldn't have prevented that -- consider the percentage of Chinese Windows that is pirated, maybe 95%? The Chinese do what they damn please (which pisses me off, but that and a buck get me a cup of coffee).
Besides, although "Red Flag" is loosely based on the Red Hat Enterprise distro, it isn't merely "Red Hat" with the name changed. It's yet another distro, and differs in the same way that most Linux distros differ from one another, which is to say, not a hell of a lot. They claim it's improved from Red Hat, but every Linux distro claims it's the best.
Two things about the Chinese distro annoy the hell out of me. One is that the desktop looks way too much like WinXP's or Win2K's desktop. Granted, desktops all have a lot in common... The other is their logo of the penguin Tux marching with the ChiCom red flag. I have not read an interview with Torvalds in which he is asked about that (I think the Tux penguin is trademarked and owned by him), but given his family, he probably went along (again, he probably couldn't have done much about it anyway).
I happen to like the goofy penguin logo, and I'm not happy about the association with the ChiCom flag.
Anyway, I don't fault Red Hat for the Chinese name -- I don't think they could have done squat about it.
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