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GNU is Not Unix

Interview with Good Software Group Founder 257

Posted by CmdrTaco from the its-satire-people dept.
The always non-political Tom Christiansen has written in with a nice little satire piece that you might want to read. I'll spare my own commentary on the piece.
[ The following is an interview by Hired, the monthly magazine devoted to commerce and trade, with Gilbert Oram Dawson, the founder of the Good Software Group. ]
Hired: Gilbert, it's been fifteen years since you single-handedly created the Good Software movement and its spokesman and umbrella organization, the Good Software Group. How does it feel to be sitting in the catbird seat, now that Good Software is all the rage?

Dawson: It's a great feeling to see just about everyone either using or else wanting to use Good Software. It proves that I am the visionary I always told you I was. But I'll tell you this: it hurts me that most people don't realize that without the Good Software Group, they probably wouldn't even *have* any Good Software. In fact, most people who use Good Software have barely even heard of the GSG. It really wounds me to be so under-appreciated, even after all the Good Software that I've personally created for the world.

Hired: Maybe that has something to do with the common misunderstanding of what Good Software is really about. Not everyone uses "good" the way you do, you know.

Dawson: Listen, I'm getting really tired of that old refrain. You get the feeling that these people have never looked into a dictionary before. If you check, you'll find that it is perfectly legitimate to use "good" to refer to saleable commodities, merchandise, or wares.

For example, here's one from the dictionary: "All that follows will hold true of any storable good, like cotton, wool, rubber, tobacco, wheat, coffee, sugar, oil, copper, or tin." Here's another: "As a steady, cheap, business-making consumer good,..the book is out." And here's one more: "For example, the existence of stocks of goods which might have to be reduced in some amount before additional resources were guided to the favoured good were ignored." Those are right there in the Oxford English Dictionary, so there's no room for argument. I'm right, and they're wrong.

I have invested many many years of my life in promoting Good Software. I am not about to change what I call it now simply because a bunch of idiots who never even finished grad school can't understand simple English words.

Hired: I'm sorry. I didn't intend to argue. Perhaps for the sake of our readers, Gilbert, you might please explain just what it is that you *do* mean by "good software"?

Dawson: Sure, I'd be glad to. Everything I'm about to say, though, is clearly explained on the Good Software Group's website, including just exactly what we mean when we say "Good Software". I don't always have time to explain just what a good is to everyone the GSG comes in contact with. I wish when they heard about Good Software--which is admittedly a slightly ambiguous abbreviation for a much more elaborate concept--that they would look at our website, or at the very least, pick up a dictionary. Words mean different things to different people and in different contexts. In my case, a word means just exactly what I say it means, and if people care about what I say it means, they should visit my website.

Hired: Um, and what *does* it mean?

Dawson: Oh right. It's so simple a child could understand it. Good Software is software that is made for the express purpose of facilitating the exchange of any sort of good or service for the purposes of commerce or trade.

Hired: And why did you form the Good Software Group?

Dawson: I'm really glad you asked that. I founded the GSG because at the time, our nation's E-conomy [The editors believe that the interviewee was referring to "electronic economy", but in retrospect, it's unclear. --Hired] was in serious straits, and I thought that a lot of the problem stemmed from wasted programming effort that did not produce Good Software. When programmers waste all their nights creating fritterware and useless eye candy, they are not actually *producing* anything. And without a tangible good for consumers to beg, barter, or steal, not only our E-conomy but also our economy stagnate. Think of the innumerable hours wasted on writing screen-savers. Where are the goods that come of that? Everything is just bits; nothing is tangible. If you're not writing Good Software, your effort has been lost to all of mankind, because you've made *nothing*.

Hired: Is that why you created the the GPL?

Dawson: Yes, that's *exactly* why I created the Good-Software Permanent Licence. The GPL is a way to use copyright law to make absolutely sure that the next bit of oh, I don't know, maybe manufacturing software, for example, can't ever be turned into something non-Good like a screen-saver. You really should go read about the GPL on our website, but what it amounts to is that Good Software can never be subverted into non-Good Software. That way any fixes or changes won't be lost forever to the business community that created the Good Software in the first place. By making sure that all effort on Good Software produces more Good Software, we as a people, a nation, an entire planet all benefit as commerce and trade continue to grow.

Hired: Do you feel that the Good Software Group is neglected when the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal mentions E-commerce but doesn't talk about how important Good Software and the GSG in particular have been to it?

Dawson: I don't care for the word "E-commerce", and you've put your finger on exactly why. It disrespects how important we are. Don't you realize that without Good Software, the E-conomy would be nowhere? It's the very foundation of the entire system! Oh, there isn't always a lot of our stuff there, but we were the guiding light behind it all. That's why I insist upon the term "Good/E-commerce" instead. However, if you really find that difficult, I shall permit you to use the term "E/Good-Commerce" in my presence as a tolerable but not a preferable alternative. The reason I don't care for it as much is that you've placed the Good part too far back, even though I really started it all. At least you give the GSG some credit that way, though.

Hired: I'm sorry -- I'll try to more careful from now on. I'd like to thank you for this interview. I'm sure that this will clarify for our readers your role in the goodware movement--

Dawson: Stop right there! I am not now nor have I ever been a member of the so-called "goodware" movement. I am the founding father of "Good Software" movement, which is completely different. "Goodware" is the despicable term used by a sham libertarian outfit who's trying to reach out to the not-for-profit community. When they say "goodware", they just mean software that's not bad. Can you believe it? Do you realize that they actually support letting people take what was originally Good Software and convert it into something that will never be used for one single good or service? That no longer will money change hands? Why, if everyone did that, our whole country would fall apart! That's not Good Software, and I shall have nothing to do with them. Fortunately, the GPL prohibits them from doing that with GPL'd software, which is why I strongly advocate slapping the GPL on every bit of software you can. It's the only way to keep those gun-toting libertarians off our backs and to keep our nation's E-conomy strong!

Hired: You know, Gilbert, if you were to legally change your name to add a second middle name like "Outspoken", then your initials would be a lot more meaningful for mail. Not only could you get mail sent to "good@gsg.com", but you could make your login a trademark to protect your unique use of the term "GOOD SOFTWARE".

Dawson: That's an intriguing idea -- it would certainly help me in my current legal battles with those pesky lawyers which the liberatian goodware people keep throwing up at me when I tell them they can't say "goodware" because I have prior art in using my own personal standard definition of "good".

But I'd really have to keep the old mail alias. For some reason, folks tend to put more weight into my writings under the current login. And it makes me feel good--er, I mean, important.
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Interview with Good Software Group Founder More

Interview with Good Software Group Founder

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  • I know that RMS, Linus and probably Tom Christiansen are good programmers. But that doesn't make them good Free or Open Software advocates. (Linus doesn't try to be an advocate, but that is not my point)

    I think that attacks like this will seriously hurt Free or Open Software. RMS is said to be political, I think not (at least not the way I think about politics).

    A democratic politician is willing to compromise with others that have different views. Otherwise we would be having much more wars and disbutes in the world. Both RMS and now Tom Christiansen has shown that they aren't good advocates for Free Software (or Open Source Software).

    ESR maybe is better, but he has shown some very bad advocacy. Especially his rage on Bruce Perens was bad (and that Apple thing).

    Conclusion: Programmers shouldn't be Free (or Open Source) Software advocates.

    So we need someone better. I sure like Nicholas Petreley (from Linux World), but does he understand the inner workings of Free (Open Source) Software?

    Sorry for the AC, I'm not on my normal computer.

  • Fear of Funniness (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06, 1999 @04:29AM (#1817200)
    Q: How many FSFers does it take to define `free'?
    A: THAT'S NOT FUNNY!
  • At least he had the gall to put his name behind it, unlike some people.

    link [epipo.com]

  • (Furthermore if you've read Ken Thompson's essay on trust, you know there's reason to believe that there may even be binary traces of Stallman's code left in modern egcs-compiled binaries.)

    Haha!

    (Am I the only one to have picked up this joke?)

    ---

  • Moral of the Story. (Score:5)

    by volsung ( 378 ) <stan@mtrr.org> on Tuesday July 06, 1999 @04:38AM (#1817203)
    The people who scream the loudest are the ones you should listen to the least.

    I've observed this principle in everything from technical discussions to religious debates. The people who do all of the yelling are either ignorant and hope noise covers their lack of understanding, or they are hypocritical and trying to deflect attention from their own problems.

    Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?) the Internet lets these people spout off to thousands of people as opposed to the 2 or 3 who happened to be stuck next to them. The result is that people decide that the "gnashing of teeth" is normal behavior for the group, when in reality the majority of people are quite calm and normal. They just don't speak up that often.

    The Free Software movement has just as many screaming groupies as any other mildly interesting organization. Just ignore them.

  • Hehe. That's the real Tom we all know and love.
  • Just go do a DejaNews search on Tom C.'s rantings in the gnu.misc.discuss group and elsewhere. He's definitely got a huge chip on his shoulder about RMS, GNU, and the GPL. I can't believe that a guy as tolerant and understanding of other people as Larry Wall puts up with Tom as a perl community leader.
  • Hehe! You're the only one who caught that! I was wondering who would nail it.

  • ? (Score:1)

    by gavinhall ( 33 )
    Posted by _DogShu_:

    What was that? That obviously wasn't supposed to be funny, or maybe I've just lost my sense of humor.
    Its seems to me that the only people who will read that are people who will get upset about it.
    If you don't know or care about FSF or Gnu or GPL, you will read about 3 sentences of this "interview" and say WTF is this sh*t? What is this "article" supposed to be about? This guy is asking to get flamed.
  • Posted by Neothi:

    I never realized how divided the camps on Free Software are. I mean I always realized that there existed a gap, but the flames are amazing. Then of course there are those who write comments and have no clue what there are talking about. Maybe I am one of them.

    And no I don't have anything constructive to say.
  • Posted by Largo_3:

    Its posts like these that make slashdot worth visiting. He is right, I feel the Open Source movement, Linux, and its tech patrons in general have started to become what they hate, zealots of the media, Originally we are techs had a common bound in the tech world where being a tech and using Unix was enough. Differences we're not rivals. When Linux came out in the early 90s it turned into a Tech vs Tech (Unix vs M$) Us against Them, etc mentallity.

    Now with Linux becomming more mainstream, more people with different views will enter the picture, and the once common ground we shared as techs is littered with political, social, and technical in-fighting. No longer enough to be united by a common platform(Unix), more so - it is no longer enough to be united by even a common OS(Linux), we have distribution in-fighting for the same damn kernel!

    Techs want to war with themselves, fine - but like any great society, entropy enters into the picture, and its going to be a shame to watch the great roman empire of Linux topple from barbarians from Seattle while we bicker over stupid crap such as the RMS, ERS, and the GPL., we have more recursive abv.'s then we do sense.

    The Linux and in general the hi-tech community has grown in the past decade, its no longer a small group of people, these are not the days of KIBO anymore. If you seek attention in this enviroment, the best way is to attack someone famous., its a old and easy way to make yourself known. we don't need this crap, tho I do sympathize as lets face it, RMS is a old ego-maniacal windbag that even I can barely stand.

    Rodney Caston

  • You doubtless use much software that, at some point in its development, was compiled using gcc.

    You doubtless use much software that, at some point in its development, was compiled on Intel hardware.

    So let's slap Intel Inside logos on it all!

  • Well I thought Tom's story was funny -- not hilarious, but worth a chuckle. But the really funny part was the oh-so-predictable responses.

    This is, in fact, the true spirit of Open Source: one person plants a seed, and a thousand others join in, and make the work be much larger and more complete than it originally was.

    Of course, in this case, those participating didn't actually realize what they were helping to build, which was the clever twist that Tom brought to the party. Crowd control as performance art, I love it!

  • Yes (Score:2)

    by pingouin ( 783 )
    Is Rob purposely trying to make the free software movement look like a bunch of immature 11-year-olds?

    Yes. Then maybe we'll be embarrassed enough to stop behaving like a bunch of immature 11-year-olds.

    Disclaimer: I don't speak for Rob, of course.

    --

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The reason Tom, and others, are taking a critical approach toward RMS is that RMS has the terrible stereotype of the respondant in the interview. Recently, RMS (through GNU) declared that Linux was not Linux. Linux had so much contribution from GNU that it would from that day forth be called GNU/Linux.

    This has been seen as a grab for recognition, much to the refrain of

    "I don't care for the word "E-commerce", and you've put your finger on exactly why. It disrespects how important we are. Don't you realize that without Good Software, the E-conomy would be nowhere?"

    The reason this type of statement is so grating to some people is that it actually gives recognition to a specific party. Previously, we recognized Linus, the creator, and no-one else. People were given recognition through their contributions, individually, and not with a big media circus. RMS would like to change this. He wants to give much recognition to GNU, but only to GNU. You might say that adding GNU to the name does no harm, but in fact it seperates GNU from the rest of the coders. The other coders receive normal credit while GNU recieves a whole lot of credit. Is this jealosy? Yup! But one easy way to piss people off is to make demands that don't distribute income evenly (keep in mind the noosphere, wherein recognition is property, so lots of recognition is equivalent to being wealthy).

    In summary, the problem with GNU/Linux is that the name ignores all those non-GNU coders who have contributed to the distributions. What about RedHat/Linux, or YDL/Linux? Or should we call it RedHat/LinuxPPC/YDL/GNU/Linux to give fair credit? Perhaps we should just simplify everything and call it Linux.

    As to good old politics, I think RMS is politiking right now. He wants his name (or at least GNU's name) all over everything. He wants visitors to his webpage (to read the license). He wants to be in the lime-light.

    However, I would not take the stance that GNU is being attacked because it is communist-like. Far from it. The entire Linux community is communist-like. We all share our goods! So would it make sense for one coder to accuse or shun another for the reason that the accused is a coder??? Nope. RMS/GNU is being attacked for reasons I discussed previously.

    -B

  • So the tranformation of "RMS" to "GOD" is a direct attack at the FSF? Care to explain? There's much more to Tom's argument than his displeasure with the licenses people use, and it shows.

    I disagree that Richard Stallman is the only spokesperson for the FSF; I've been more influenced by the people who have followed his writings than his actions themselves. These are its spokespeople. Why? Because there are more of these people than Richards, and they're more visible. They also write a lot of good software.

    Many people root for the FSF, Richard Stallman, and the software covered by his licenses, and this seems to offend Tom. I could respect a summary of his feelings towards the proper definition of "free" or how "free" software should be developed and used. This piece is a parody of style and manner, not of merit. The only lesson you teach by making fun of the students is that when you can't think of anything better, start with the personal attacks.
  • Richard Stallman might bore or offend you with his vocalization of his beliefs about free software. Some people fight for what they believe in, and often good things come from it. I think I can thank Richard Stallman for what he's given to the community, under a license perfectly acceptable to me for all the things I'd wish to do with the software.

    Tom Christiansen has also given work to the community. Not being a perl-head, my appreciation of his efforts are constrained mostly to watching him protect his name on Slashdot. Tom also believes very much in what he does and isn't afriad to tell the world what he thinks.

    The difference in the application of these beliefs. Richard Stallman attacks non-free software. His goal seems to be the demise of proprietary software and the widespread use of software you can share with your neighbor. I'm all for this goal, and I'm sure even Tom would prefer this future over many possible others (I'll leave his definition of "free" for another time).

    Instead of attacking software, Tom attacks people. This is the difference. Instead of composing a well-researched criticism of the licenses that offend him, or of Richard's software which isn't technically suited for its use, or even the foundation's principles which he can't appreciate, he parodies a person and his character.

    Tom, you're no Larry Wall.
  • >I have never trusted anyone who tried to make something illegal just because they considered it immoral.

    Really? I quite like the idea of murder being illegal.

    -dan
  • And you're really contributing to the level of respect people would have for the "us" whoever the hell "us" is supposed to be. Who are you ?? He can spend his time however he pleases, and are you seriously suggesting people shouldn't say whatever they feel, how is that advocating freedom ?

    The article was funny. RMS does seem awfully self righteous and it's irritating. Re-definition of words is a powerful technique (1984) and is also my main problem with the FSF. Parody is just what's needed.

  • Someone needs the code, someone pays you to write it. This is how the majority of programming jobs works.

    For a minority of programming jobs, the need is distributed on a large number of people, so no single one can pay you. Read the other replies for ideas for how make money on these situations.

    Also, there just might be situations where the current model of proprietary code works best. Time will tell.
  • You are absolutely correct. Which makes TC's current campaign even more of an overreaction.
  • Please do not put ESR and TC in the same category. ESR has a sense of humor, an even better sense of the community, and are able to disagree in a civil manner. Sure, sometimes ESR says things that he probably wouldn't have said a day later, but does never do that?

  • Childish. (Score:3)

    by Per Abrahamsen ( 1397 ) on Tuesday July 06, 1999 @04:36AM (#1817222) Homepage
    Sigh.

    Tom Christiansen got insulted when Stallman asked for a free replacement for Toms gratis Perl documentation for use in GNU.

    Result: TC is trying by all means to rewrite history, so the whole "free software" thing is a devious plot invented by RMS to decieve people. He has tried various strawmans, used insults, and now he is trying satire. Not to mention his _other_ projects to "get even" on RMS, such as creating a GNU free BSD/Linux.

    It doesn't change the fact that the free software community is both older than the GNU project, and much larger includes people who doesn't even consider GNU to be "real" free software, since the GPL contains too many restrictions.
  • TC is re-implementing the classic Unix command set in pure Perl. See http://language.perl.com/ppt/ [perl.com]
  • At this point Christiansen seems more a part of the problem than anything else. Doesn't he have some work to do? Tom, if you've got lots of free time to use bashing the FSF, let us know -- I'm sure lots of Slashdotters could give you some actually meaningful projects to work on.

    sheesh,
    cbd.

  • # And if you don't like it,
    # don't read it.

    Uh... how can I tell I don't like it until I've read it? And after that, should I be silent about what I've read, unless I agree?

    I didn't think that was the point of all this discussion. Maybe I'm wrong; if so, I apologize for my insolence.

    cbd.


  • 1) The GPL forbids restrictions on the software recipient's right to copy modify, and redistribute the software.

    2) RMS says he does not oppose commercial distribution of software.

    So how exactly am I supposed to write a piece of software for economic gain? If somebody decides
    they don't like me, they can redistribute my software for free and kill my income (I'm assuming for the
    moment that software income is separate from any support or subscription fees I might charge).

    I feel like I'm missing something here.

    Basically, RMS is not on your side: he is on the customer's side. He believes it is the customer's right, when obtaining software, to be allowed to modify, redistribute etc, the code.

    The whole thing started because RMS, as a customer, found that a piece of software MIT had bought was useless to him because he was unable to modify it to suit his needs. Proprietary software is less useful. I lost count of the number of times I've thought "This job would be so much easier if I had the source to X" (in a previous job where I spent more time with non-free software).

    Most of the GNU projects got written with no profit motive whatsoever: they were giving something to the world, which they thought would make the world a better place.

    Remember, RMS (a brilliant programmer) does not consider programming to be a great skill: he does not believe programmers have a god-given right to rake in the big salaries they do today. His beliefs are beginning to be proved: Apache rivals IIS, yet is was (mostly) built by people who are not paid to be programmers (although it is not GPLd, that's beside the point).

    Have no doubt: when you GPL your software, you *are* gifting it to humanity; but in the long term, you may have no choice. If and when a GPL alternative to your software comes along, why on earth would your customer choose to go with your proprietary version?
    --
  • There are a few ways to make money off of GPL software. Not to rehash opensource.org (which you should take a look at), but:

    1. Sell support. Buy my code from me, and I'll come to your rescue if it breaks.

    2. Sell enhancements. If you want my code to do XYZ, that's great; I'd be more likely to get to it if I were paid...

    3. Sell your brand. Who knows your code better than you do? So, if they want the best version of your code, go to you. Also, if people want code this good for their own projects, they know who to ask.

    4. Sell proprietary licensing terms. So you don't want to release source for your driver for my software? Buy my commercial license, which will let you dynamically link to my software without having to reveal source.

    There are some ideas. More are available at www.opensource.org.
  • I agree.. I didn't know who Tom Christiansen is or what he did before I read all of these agitated comments, but to be honest when I first read the interview I had Coke coming back through my nose..

    Michiel
  • Judging by the replies so far, it looks like quite a few people are seeing why this really is funny. (It *had* to take some time for Tom to come up with this.)

    I think most of the people who disagree with RMS mainly disagree with his focus... It seems like it is much more important to him that a) everyone agree with him (and his definition of "free") and b) everyone understand that *he* is responsible the free software movement. (Before anyone flames me, I'm not saying that *is* how he is, just that it's the impression he gives me.)

    What I'm quite sure RMS doesn't understand is that most of us really want the same thing he wants. From what I've read of his original reasons for starting the GNU project, RMS wants free and open exchange of ideas, with source code being just one part of that. Publishing source code helps put the "science" back in "computer science", I suppose.

    Unlike Tom, I personally believe that the GPL is a Good Thing, since it forces what I consider to be moral behavior on anyone who wants to use code that I've written. Unlike RMS, I don't think that people are evil if they disagree with me, choose not to use my code, and instead use a more restrictive license (including not releasing source at all).

    I heard a quote the other day... It went something along the lines of "someone who agrees with me 80% of the time is not my enemy." RMS really needs to understand that many of us are on his side, really, but we get very turned off by the near-religious rhetoric. (Tom might want to think about that a little too... ;)

    Now, let's all get back to writing some code. :-)
  • DarkFire wrote:
    >...Remember the GHANDI quote...

    Everybody will quote the man, but no one will get his name right.

    Gandhi.

  • Speaking of ridiculous comments: Tom once posted the idea to create BSD/Linux. Considering that all the free BSD's depend on GNU programs (namely GCC), he ought to work on making BSD/BSD first.
  • Ideology is funny. People who get mired in the finer points of ideology are comic.

    I find it odd that the same people who insist that "free" should retain its popular definition of "gratis" refuse to accept that in culture at large, "hacker" means "cracker". Sometimes the most popular standards are the double-kind.

    Whatever, there's code to write.
  • >Tom Christiansen got insulted when Stallman asked
    >for a free replacement for Toms gratis Perl
    >documentation for use in GNU.

    That's because the documentation that comes with Perl already is free, by even Stallman's definition. Stallman has actually accepted this as true, but now complains about the quality of the documentation (which is better than any other major GPL'd software project's docs that I've seen).

    There are a few docs in the Perl docset that are NOT "free" according to Stallman, but these are only tutorials and FAQs. Everything else is "free" in both senses of the word.
  • Why the hell should you care how Tom spends his time? And if you don't like it, don't read it.
  • Tom gets greatly annoyed by RMS and the GPL and FSF, and for excellent reason. But perhaps Tom can learn something from his own satire: we need to laugh at ourselves more. RMS and Tom and ESR and everyone else. RMS should read this and laugh, and an equally intelligent satire of Tom should make Tom laugh, too.

    Hmmmm ... nah, I have work to do today. :)
  • # The man pages that come with Perl are good, but are absolutely useless
    # for someone who is trying to learn the language.

    That's your opinion. I learned the language primarily from the man pages. That's not to say there isn't room for more free docs. The greatest need is for a good free Perl tutorial, which is being worked on.

    # I think Stallman wanted
    # some good documentation for beginners, and what he was talking about was
    # a free replacement for the _O'Reilly_ books.

    Well, then the man pages are perfect, since they are both free and constitute the majority of the best-selling ORA book, "Progamming Perl". That is, the Camel book is taken almost entirely from the man pages. Of course, the man pages can use some work ... but they are getting work. Tom and others have been working hard at cleaning them up. perl5.005_57 (recent development release) had some major cleaning up and fixing. And these changes will remain free and will be used in the next edition of the ORA Camel book.
  • *shrug* On the one hand it is an overreaction. On the other, it is good to have "extremists" around. Much as I dislike RMS' politics, I think it is great that he espouses them. His ideas, right or wrong, are fascincating. Similarly, it is good to have people attack his ideas, even if they go overboard. 'sall good, as long as we are honest, as long as we are a bit mellow. We all just need to be a bit laid back about the whole thing. Tom is not too laid back, but we need to be laid back about what he does and says, as we need to be laid back about what RMS does and says.
  • # Funny, but I've found most perl documentation to
    # be guilty of providing correct but largely
    # useless (or at least opaque) answers.

    That makes no sense to me. Are you saying that where you look up the behavior of substr(), it launches into a discussion about the weather patterns of the Denver area? If it gives the behavior of substr(), it is hard for me to see how that is useless.
  • # While I did truthfully find this essay amusing, I
    # think that RMS deserves much more respect than
    # this.

    All the more reason to "disrespect" him in this way, then.

    As I am sure many others here did, I saw the Weird Al VH1 special the other night, and Coolio was shown complaining about how his song was too serious for Al to lampoon it. The obvious response is: "well, then your song is really the one that most needs to be lampooned."
  • # Why is tom c against free software?

    I don't want to start a war here, but the simple fact is that for some common definitions of "free", Tom is MORE interested in providing free software than RMS is.
  • # He wrote parts of books, but he was doing that to # make money, nothing more, nothing less.

    How completely ignorant. Tom has devoted more time and energy to writing and giving away free software and documentation than almost everyone on Slashdot ever will.
  • # A democratic politician is willing to compromise with others that have
    # different views. Otherwise we would be having much more wars and
    # disbutes in the world.

    What world are you living in?
  • # Slashdot used to be better but is now getting diluted by all kinds of
    # crap, including this dumb, pointless satire. I am finding it harder to
    # recommend slashdot as much as I used to. Time to look out for a better
    # news/discussion site.

    I have no problem with intelligent satire like this. I just wish Slashdot would lay off the silly stuff about South Park, Satr Wars, and school shootings.
  • No, that's not correct. You have two misconceptions. Firstly, that if you produce a derivative of a GPL'd work, that you have to offer it to everyone. That's not true - you can distribute it only within your corporation, and employees of the corporation are bound by their contracts not to distribute it further. Secondly, that the FSF can sue you for violating the GPL on any software. They can only do this if they own the copyright to whatever it is they believe you have used in violation.
  • In riposte, I offer this tangent from the current thread;

    Perl, as a scaled development platform, lends well to fast stable development, perfectly suitable to concept prototyping and portablility testing. It's not C/C++. It was never intended to be, if I understand my history correctly. I'm rather disappointed that you choose to slam Perl users/developers as a whole, based on your opinion of a single person involved in it's development and documentation.


    Your statement, calling Perl a 'rather incoherent collection of features noone really understands' does quite well to give us an insight into where you fit in the food chain of intelligencia. I'm rather shocked that you go on to call yourself a C coder, when Perl is a far more distilled animal and (I think) far easier to learn and understand. That being said, Perl lends more to the Unix environment learning curve than raw C itself does, in that it provides interfaces to many of the same functions, in a manner that is typically easier for the new user to understand.


    Some of you are probably scoffing and mumbling 'Who gives a crap about newbies?', and honestly, if that's your permanent ingrained attitude, I hope you're sterile and live/work in an environment where you can't influence children. The greatest strength of Unix, and likewise Perl as a natively grown (though win32/etc exported) commodity, stimulate and nurture a neverending learning process, which is important to the expansion, evolution, and sanity of our increasingly technologically savvy culture (despite the high Imac sales).


    Larry Wall, as the father of Perl, is probably one of my top few dozen revered people, not for the product itself, but for the cultural stimulation he aimed to produce. I can't honestly say I'm heavily involved in Perl politics, be it the development of Perl itself, or furthering it's growth by supplying useful code. I'm really just an end user who hangs out in #perl on Efnet and learns by osmosis. You malign the lack of 'rational discussions', which simply says 'I browse a couple newsgroups', and not much else.


    You don't like Tom. Big deal. Little, insignificant me has been at odds with him, too.
    The difference between you and I, is that I know when to point at a single person, and not a group as a whole, by association. Society, and further, mankind as a whole would be a lot better if they'd hop off THAT beaten old stump.


    Some of the greatest people I know, I've met on my neverending quest for knowledge, even if it's with what you speak of as an apparantly inferior development tool (that you still use).


    I'm off my tangent, now. I apologize for any stress/therapy incurred by my tirade. I just thought that needed to be said.

  • 1) The GPL forbids restrictions on the software recipient's right to copy modify, and redistribute the software.

    2) RMS says he does not oppose commercial distribution of software.

    So how exactly am I supposed to write a piece of software for economic gain? If somebody decides they don't like me, they can redistribute my software for free and kill my income (I'm assuming for the moment that software income is separate from any support or subscription fees I might charge).

    I feel like I'm missing something here.

  • Too many people, and in particular a growing number in the mainstream media, are criticising the FSF because it's perceived as left wing or collectivist. Whether they're doing it because they want to fight collectivism in all its forms, or, like ESR, doing it because they don't want the community to be (in their eyes) tarnished by association with the FSF, it's still damaging.

    Listen to what RMS says, not how he says it. Leave translating it into more mainstream acceptable speech to other people if they feel inclined to do it. But don't bash RMS for his non-software political views, and use that to score cheap points.

    Remember, this is an international movement, and collectivist and leftwing views are much more prevalent outside the United States, so you'll be alienating the rest of the world if you try to make RMS more acceptable to the States.

  • Tom Christiansen got insulted when Stallman asked for a free replacement for Toms gratis Perl documentation for use in GNU.

    Thanks for the history. I'd been wondering what Tom has against RMS.

    It doesn't change the fact that the free software community is both older than the GNU project, and much larger includes people who doesn't even consider GNU to be "real" free software, since the GPL contains too many restrictions.

    True. And I'm sure that if Tom had tried debating the issues themselves, he would have gotten a more positive response (hopefully!) than the one he is getting. You don't have to agree with Stallman; many folks don't! But I think the man deserves more respect, at least, than many in the community, and especially Tom, have been giving him.

    --
    Ian Peters
  • First, a minor point: RMS has done useful things for the free software movement, such as, I don't know, write a free compiler, EMACS, and provide a rallying point and the planning for a complete, free system. RMS himself points out that he is not a part of the open source movement.

    Yes, people get tired of his ranting about GNU/Linux and Free Software. I get tired of it, too. But that doesn't mean it's not important. Don't disregard the message because of the messenger. It's no accident that we find ourselves here with a high quality, free operating system (note, that's an entire system, not just a kernel) to use. RMS didn't write it all. FSF-sponsored projects didn't write it all. But GNU played a large part in making sure it all got written.

    As to your last point, Tom is welcome to poke all the fun he wants to. But this is a discussion community, where people discuss things. So everyone is welcome to a reaction, and if that happens to be that Tom is exploring new ways to carry out his vendetta against RMS, well, sorry. As to myself, if Tom's article was humour, well, then I guess I'm just dour.

    --
    Ian Peters

  • What a poor satire (Score:3)

    by itp ( 6424 ) on Tuesday July 06, 1999 @04:38AM (#1817250)
    I don't understand what Tom has against RMS, but I wish he would come right out and say it. This "satire" was merely insulting, rather than clever, and it failed to make any point, except that Tom has a problem with RMS.

    Yes, Stallman can be annoying. Yes, he can be stubborn. Yes, sometimes we all wish he'd just shut up. But he's an idealist, he believes in something, and he follows his beliefs. If you look at what RMS has done, you won't find any ulterior motives, or hidden agendas. He believes in free software, he promotes free software (not himself, as many believe), and most of all, he has worked for (and written!) free software.

    Please, compare the rude, offensive, selfish nature of this post with the eloquence of RMS's post of several days ago. I think you'll find a world of difference.

    Standard disclaimers: I don't work for the FSF or GNU, I have an email address @gnu.org because I write free software. My beliefs are my own, yada yada yada.

    --
    Ian Peters
  • Yes, people get tired of his ranting about GNU/Linux and Free Software. I get tired of it, too. But that doesn't mean it's not important. Don't disregard the message because of the messenger.

    Oh, we're not disregarding the message because of the messenger....we're disregarding the message because we're tired of being beaten over the head with it.
  • Here is a quote form the user friendly homepage:

    "One of the characteristics of healthy cultures is that they can poke fun at themselves. I guess the hacker culture is in good health, because User Friendly is hilarious. Its irreverence, sophisticated in-jokes and surrealistic edge are a rocket straight out of the Internet's collective unconscious." - Eric S. Raymond, ubergeek

    I know the quote is from ESR not RMS but think about it long and hard... It's a joke people...

    Jokes are not nesicarily a form of disrespect.


    "There is no spoon" - Neo, The Matrix
    "SPOOOOOOOOON!" - The Tick, The Tick

  • Why Larry puts up with Tom?

    Because he is tolerant and understanding.

  • I thought it was pretty funny. Does that mean I'm a bad person, or that I simply have a sense of humor in a forum where everyone takes everything way too seriously. Lighten up people, it's only life =).
  • While I did truthfully find this essay amusing, I think that RMS deserves much more respect than this. I used to be one of the many slashdotters who would criticize RMS as being a radical who held antediluvian beliefs, but I have finally come to the realization that, as abrasive as RMS is, he's almost always right. Even as a pragmatist, I believe that if you choose to ignore the community's freedoms in favor of coming up with a license that best suits the company's needs and no the community's, that the project will not be as successful.

    I honestly think that the various open source groups out there may end up hurting us alot more than helping us. The QT license, for instance, is not a great deal better than the old Minix license, if I read it correctly. Remember that the only thing that the Minix license gave us, coupled with AST's unwillingness to add and fix things in Minix, was the necessity to create an entire new OS with linux.

    While the various open source proponents may have tried to help our world, I think that in the end they may hurt it. While we may have gained a great number of short-term benefits, such as greater exposure in the press and more respect and recognition (hey, we're even competitors to Microsoft!), I think that, in the long run, we will be hurt. We will be left with many projects that will stagnate from disinterest, and companies like Microsoft saying "See there? We told you open source was bad." We'll also be left with the pieces of dozens of dead projects with incompatible licenses whose work cannot ever be salvaged for code snippets.

    Perhaps the best thing that the FSF can do right now is to just wait. I think that only time will tell whether free software or open source will reign supreme. My belief is that all of these incompatibly-licensed projects from various vendors suddenly embracing open source will die within ten years, while GNU's contributions, which were born long before the words "open" and "source" were placed togethor, will still be the cornerstone upon which we place our OSes.

    Instead of having empowered the free software community, we have instead empowered a bunch of marketting machines who feel that they can exploit our wealth to expand their own. The most ludicrous example of this is IBM's supposed advocation of open source. Can we please try to remember that IBM is the same company that holds the most software patents in the world?

    I think that I should also say that I greatly disapprove of RMS's adoption of Linux as GNU/Linux, not because I don't think that RMS has a right to claim it, but because I think that GNU is more than Linux. As a slashdotter who as maligned you in the past, RMS, I apologize.
  • I found this piece of satire to be right on the mark. It reflects how silly RMS and the FSF can be at times.

    It also shows what a poor name Free Software is when 95% of the people think "Free beer" not "Free speech" when they hear it. It sometimes seems that FSF people spend more energy explaining the meaning than they do coding
  • Yes, it's exactly like a religion. RMS is their God, and as such he is above criticism, the FSF web page is their Bible, and FSF Evangilists dispense URLs the same way Christian Evangilists dispense Bible chapter references. (e.g. John 1:20).

    I can feel Tom's frustration with them, I have read much of their web site, and I agree with alot of it, but there are things there that I find very disturbing, so I can't agree with them 100%. But if you try to state your opinion (even in a non-flamebait manner) you will attract flames. (Ok, there are reasonable people in the GNU camp, but they tend to get drowned out amid the flames)

    Looking through the comments, there are a disturbing number of "That's not funny/Why is Tom so mean/How can anyone like RMS" comments, showing that these people do truly seem to lack a sense of humor when it comes to this stuff.
  • I think that the point is this:

    As some (alarmingly few) in this discussion have noted, the Slashdot community has become increasingly fanatical in its beliefs, as evidenced by the increasing amount of poorly researched, no humour-having, "immature 11 year-old" posts. These inside forces are what threaten to tear free software apart, not whether or not TC likes RMS. A simple personality dispute is one thing, reaching critical mass in religious-like belief is something entirely different...
  • At least, it seems that way to me. Look at the substance of the commentary -- "good software", the way its described above, is exclusively used for commerce and business.

    Looking at the piece without any knowledge of TC and RMS's past, it appears to be a satire of both sides of Open Source/Free Software lampooned at once -- RMS's high horse and ESR's relentless commercial angle. Scylla and Charybdis, all in one, and both sides accused of claiming to be "GOD".

    Looked at this way, I find the piece instructive (as good satire should be) -- there are aspects of both that should be avoided. Certainly, we shouldn't alienate the mainstream, but neither should we look to it for salvation. Capitalism, after all, has a long history of sacrificing the long-term for the short. (See Also: pre-WWI radio industry, the early days of the sewing machine industry. Le plus ce change...)

    phil

  • This piece is not even funny. Obviously Christiansen has a much bigger ego problem than he can make RMS'look. Tom, better go back to coding, even if it's your BSD/Linux.
  • You're joking, right? Tom Christiansen and a sane voice, i don't think so. In case you're serious: Stallman and the FSF are a main reason that the thing we know as Linux exists in the first place.

  • I gotta give Tom credit, but the "real" GPL does not restrict the use of software the way the Good-Software Permanent License does. That's a weak point in the analogy, at least if you assume that a near-100% Free Software world is possible. Which is not as outrageous, IMO, as a 100% "Good" Software world.

  • Free Software Foundation => Good Software Group
    FSF => GSG
    Richard Stallman => Gilbert Oram Dawson
    Wired => Hired
    Free Software => Good Software
    "free" as in free speech => "good" as in goods and services
    General Public License => Good-Software Permanent License
    GPL restrictions on distribution => restrictions on use
    GNU/Linux => Good/E-Commerce
  • No, you are confusing use with distribution. That is where the GNU GPL differs from Tom's GoodPL and Microsoft's EULAs. Without a license for Word, you are not allowed to run, install, or make any use of it whatsoever. Similarly, you cannot incorporate GoodPL'd software in a screensaver, even for private use. GPL'd software, on the other hand, may be linked, combined, and used in any way imaginable, as long as you don't distribute it as part of a non-free program.
  • Hi Rob,

    Could you please make a new category, "christiansen-generated-dribble" or "jealous hatred" or "flamebait" or the like so this can be filtered out?

    Erwin
  • Tom is coming at it from the other side. Him , and others in the BSD/Artistic license schools believe that the GPL is *not* free, and that RMS is abusing the word "FREE". There have been several long and heated flamewars in comp.os.linux.advocacy, in fact this article originated one of them (ie it was posted to the group)

  • I recently experienced what he has satired (Score:3)

    by killbill ( 10058 ) on Tuesday July 06, 1999 @04:17AM (#1817267) Homepage
    In a slashdot article last week, I posted a question trying to understand the logic of the root philosophies of RMS camp (versus the ESR camp, which I understand).

    My question (which basically boiled down to "if I can trade the program I just wrote to a company in exchange for a mini-van, how can you say it has no value?"), resulted in a caustic email from an individual that apparently felt strongly enough to write me and accuse me of first being an idiot and secondly never reading any RMS material.

    Note that as an author of an LGPL released package (backburner, see freshmeat.net), this is a pretty silly accusation to make (the never having read the RMS material that is... he may be right about the idiot part :).

    When I pressed him for explanations of the parts of the philosopy that confused me... he kept simply pointing me to the web site.

    When I tried to get clarifications on the parts of the logic that escape me, his responses alternated between "if you can't see it, you must be stupid" and "it's on the website, go read it", and "it says what I said it says because I said so".

    Plus, the whole exchange was pretty mean spirited.

    So anyway, I have experienced exactly what this article is parodying... so like most better parody, I can't decide if it is funny or disturbing...

    Please... no email flames already...

    Bill Kilgallon
  • Well, I have to think that this little bit of satire has no taste whatsoever, and I don't say that because I support RMS or Tom for that matter.

    While not everyone can agree/disagree on the stance that RMS has taken, I have to look at the track record (ie. the accomplishments). If everyone were to say that software is terrible just because the author doesn't agree with their ideals, it would be a very sad day indeed.

    From what I can see, the "free" camp and the "open" camp are taking stances akin to a "holy war". The only way to really win a holy war is to completely eliminate the other side. Don't think about doing this!

    So, let us put our political stances aside and work to make the best software there is.

  • Agreed. (Score:1)

    by sp- ( 11321 )
    I would have to agree with you.
    IMHO, RMS is doing the Linux/GNU/BSD communities a big favor with his FSF propaganda.. sticking his neck out, sometimes obtrusively, where others wouldn't...
    I realize it's not by everyones' standards/liking, but you can't please everyone with everything you do...
    oh yeah... i didn't agree with everything in this post... the comment about humans being political animals? no. we have a society driven in part by politics which tends to corrupt errr.. create politicians..
    :-)

    ------------------------------------------
    Reveal your Source, Unleash the Power. (tm)
  • Especially considering several people (including me) gouged [slashdot.org] him a couple of times during that discussion...ah well, he deserved it.



  • Wow. That was a very agile stab in two seemingly opposite directions at once - I'm impressed!

    I'd like to see more of these, although I probably shouldn't read them at work (the loud laughter would probably disturb people).

  • Jesus, Christiansen, grow up already. Stallman may be an annoying monomaniac about software, but software is at least interesting -- you on the other hand are an annoying monomaniac about Stallman, which is just plain childish. Fine, you hate the guy. We got the picture. Grow out of it already.


    "Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"

  • What RMS is doing is often not good, and certainly not necessary. One of his explicit goals is to rid the world not only of proprietary software, but also free software that is not GPL'd. He comes right out and says this when he explains why the readline library is GPL'd rather than LGPL'd.

    cjs

  • I think you have to realize he is more interested in the freedom of _users_ than the freedom of programmers.
    Hm. That makes what he does make a bit more sense, I suppose, though I find it difficult to understand why he's more concerned with users' freedom than programmers'. After all, the vast majority of users couldn't give a d--- whether or not the program source is available. And, in fact, sometimes users are better served by closed-source systems; it's better to have a closed-source piece of software that does what you want than no software at all. And there are situations where closed-source works better economically for the entity making the software.

    cjs

  • The problem is, all improvements these vendors made they can keep for themselves, and so the commom code base suffers
    It suffers no more than GPL'd code does, for which the improvements aren't written in the first place because the company didn't want to give away the code. In both cases, there's no free code added. So what's the difference?

    As for Darwin, Apple has contributed all sorts of code and fixes back in to the NetBSD tree. So we certainly benefitted from this. What has Linux got from Darwin? Nothing.

    cjs

  • It appears from your comments that you have never read the Bible.

    Had you looked at the psalms, written mostly by Gods most favourite person, David. You would see that David is also one of Gods biggest critics. David gets very angry at God.

    Humor is deffinatly not absent from Christianty either, though I admit it is hard to find any humor in the Bible - However I have a locally written translation that is very funny, mostly using satire.

    ---

  • All the comments are religously defending one side or the other with emotional dribble. The open source movement is facing a lot of issues right now. The main one, which is at the heart of the problem in this discussion is how to get open source into the industry. Or put more bluntly, industry wants to know how to make money off the stuff. Sounds like growing pains to me. I have to say though, most of the comments I have read through on this page look like they were generated by some sort of ELIZA CGI script! It is not a matter of what is ideal, but what is practical. Both sides present elements of the ideal & practical & need to be sorted out. If there is anyone out their who is not an ELIZA script, please post some comments with apparent intelligence in them. Thankyou.
  • I agree w/ you about whatever gets the job done as a methodology. That is the whole goal of applied comp sci. You cannot tell me that you have not found recent behavior as unusual. Not the bickering between GNU about GNU linux or stuff like that. That is growing pains. But situations like the MindCraft test & the ethernet guy, there seems to be more to it. You can't tell me that you believe BillG is doing nothing about Linux/Open Source. Every other "fad" like Java & Windows CE has had action taken against it by Redmond. Do you really believe he is ignoring it? Often, what he has done has been a suttle strategy at first, but later, more of the pieces emerged. It is not just open source, I agree. It is a much bigger "THING". I will refer to it as that. This "THING" is undergoing growing pains, what better way to attack it than where it is weakest? And if he has nothing to do with what I am observing, then what is he doing about it? Any way, I like what you said about licensing also. Any particular reason why Public Domain was #1? Just curious. It was nice to hear from someone not in ELIZA mode. Thankyou for responding to my original post.
  • Hey, it wasn't Windows CE Bill took action against, it was Palm Pilots/PDAs. windows ce was only part of his solution...sorry about that...
  • Has anyone else noticed that the whole open source methodology, the FSF, the GNU license, Linux, Apache, etc. has been under a huge attack lately? That may be a dumb question, but I have been reading slashdot for about 2 years now & I have noticed a number of the discussions being clouded with political crap & a bunch of opinions being presented by people who don't have their facts straight-usually because they DIDN'T read the article. If you ask me, I think that this is Bill Gates & every other major commercial software player's way of attacking the open source movement. All of the attacks seem to be at a technical level. We have the guy that invented ethernet call open source a fad & the discussions on slashdot and other sources have become so clouded with criticism, FUD, & pointless discussion that it is almost not even worth reading some of the slashdot posts. A bunch of people have been posting replies now for the last 6-8 months that don't make sense. They are full of directionless emotion without indicating any clear purpose or though behind it. It is my opinion that what we are seeing is Bill & his buddies attack on open source. Open Source people want to see code & action, not mindless, emotional pratal. And that seems to be exactly what Bill & his buddies are giving us. Call me paranoid, but you know Bill is paranoid. Look how he reacted to JAVA & the newtons, palm pilot craze (e.g. Windows CE-he wrote an operating system!!! He takes these things seriously.) Open Source is even more threatening to him than the other two combined. It attacks the very fabric of what Gates & his company stands for. And open source has been producing equal to or superior code in a shorter amount of time than M$ can hope to keep up with. Linus started what, back in 1991 (may have that wrong). If so, that is 8 years--linux is 8 yrs old! How long has Bill been working on Windows? And he still doesn't have it right. Bill has a lot of programming talent & he has had seasoned veterans for a while. Open Source WILL produce superior code in every area of software if it is allowed to continue. A simple comparison between commerical & free software proves that. That is what Bill is afraid of. Not so much of what we have now, but of what we will have in the future. He knows he cannot win by competing. Open source will beat him as time goes by. So he has to do his best-to kill it now. And he is doing it by flooding the tech realm w/ FUD & fighting. A house divided against itself cannot stand. Quit squabbling & keep coding!!! Well that is my 2 cents. Correct me at any point that you wish. I welcome it. I am seeking the truth as you all are. But don't waste my time or anyone else's by posting a piece of thoughless, emotion-filled dribble. Let's find the best solution w/o the dribble & code like their is no tomorrow. Bill knows he can't win-let's wipe him out...Remember the GHANDI quote:

    First they ignore you.
    Then they laugh at you.
    Then they fight you.
    Then you win.
  • This comment, while good, is not Good. Well, it's not bad.
  • Re-definition of words is powerful and sometimes problematic, as you said.

    But the FSF has never tried to redefine words. The fact remains that no other word in the English language means "free" in the sense that RMS means it except for the word "free" itself, which has other meanings as well. It is completely reasonable for RMS to define how he is using that word since it is not immediately obvious unless you've already heard the speech on it.

    It's childish to make fun of RMS for defining his terms. Everyone ought to define what they're talking about if it's not obvious. And due to a particular inadequacy in the English language, RMS must provide an explanation. When I have seen him speak he has been very concise on this point.
  • can you recommend a better word? If you could (in English, you will find that you cannot), Stallman would probably jump at the chance to not have to explain what freedom is to everyone he meets.

    "the whole rest of the [English speaking] world" uses the word free in several contexts as well. He never "lies by omission," that's the whole point of him explaining his terms. If he *didn't* explain the terms, his speeches might be misleading.
  • Fuck off!! We're the People's Front of Judea; that's the Judean People's Front, sitting over there. Splitter!

    etc.

    etc.

    etc.
  • This article is cute, but I got bored after the first few paragraphs. It would have been funnier if the underlying bitterness wasn't so transparent. Eric Raymond and Tom Christiansen are both talented individuals who are jealous of Richard Stallman. Fact is, however, that the hacking I do would be very difficult without gcc, gas, glibc, binutils, and gdb. It would make no difference at all if I didn't have Perl or fetchmail.
  • All these guys who hate RMS should get together and form the ASHO: Anti-Stallman Hacker Organization.
  • Axiom 1: Being a jackass is parallelizable.
  • Are you enlightened already?

    Just in case it is not so yet, let me try to clarify it: the GNU GPL, the FSF or even RMS are not saying you code has no value; it is just that this value should be not artificially augmented by restricting the user's freedom to copy, modify and redistribute.

    This is why the GPL does not forbid you to sell anything, but requires you to make the source code available to your buyer under the same conditions you received it itself. This doesn't prevent you from having an alternate (proprietary) licensing scheme for code of which you are the sole author.

  • Why such animosity? (Score:3)

    by leandrod ( 17766 ) <l@dutras . o rg> on Tuesday July 06, 1999 @05:03AM (#1817295) Homepage Journal
    I wonder why both ESR and Tom have such animosity against RMS and the FSF. Anything that RMS says is criticized by then, often in personal tones.

    Everyone and your father know that RMS is a
    polemist sparing no one, but his critics are always to the point, never personal -- even when he calls Tim O'Reilly a "parasite", he has before him the objective situation of non-free documentation about free software.

    Not so with Tom. He seems to grudge that many people do consider GNU GPL the ultimate free software license. Also ESR seems to grudge the moral stance ESR has taken outside of the Open Source thing.

    I consider this one to be the most detrimental issue in free software politics these days. It is highly visible to the outside world and generates much ill will. Even I myself, a non-coder with no personal interest in the matter, have been personally attacked with dirty words by both ESR and Tom while trying to write them about these issue, showing that the thing has gone much farther than the uninterested ideas discussion.

    This has become like a personal vendetta agains RMS, and as such quite childish and destructive. Both Tom and ESR claim that it is not like that, but then it really seeems like that -- and appearances are enough to poison a community. Let's > /dev/null all this personal nitpickings! If at least they were really fun...

  • which makes this satire mean, pure and simple. Tom seems convinced that RMS is a glory-seeker -- everything I read by and about RMS, indicates that he pushes GNU (as opposed to RMS) because he wants the issue of freedom to be prominent.

    Yes, RMS is a political man: duh, humans are political animals! The point is not to escape politics and just quietly make good software -- you can't, because then someone who has NOT escaped politics, will swindle you; the point is to be political in the right direction.

    The entire objectivist and libertarian (well, for SOME, more extreme, libertatians) apolitical schtick is much more of a hollow dream than communism ever was. What RMS is doing is The Right Thing, IMO, despite his abrasiveness -- he pushes a political issue that is critical to our (software geeks') survival as a culture. The fact that Tom tries to turn this into personal glory-seeking shows, I think, either misunderstanding of what RMS is talking about, or a personal agenda which Tom is not willing to [publicly] admit to.

    Ultimately, it is pure and simple: What RMS is doing is not merely good, is it necessary. What Tom is doing (in this article at least) is partisan and mean.

    --

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • As a satire, I found it poor also - more spoof-ish than satire, but a valiant attempt all the same.
    _Anything_ worth standing up for can stand up to satire, especially such as this. I love satire, ESPECIALLY when it's directed against something I particularly like, beacuse then I can see the flaws better to be able to defend the thing as a whole. To elaborate: If I like something, I want to truly understand it, but once I like it, I am clouded slightly to it's faults and someone else's satire (or spoof, depending) is easily the best vehicle. If you disagree with Tom, be happy, you better understand the other side's point of view, and much more clearly than if they had just come out and said it. And if you agree, then be happy that someone has the guts to write something beneficial to both.

    The real appeal, however, in this article, is in the bigger picture, rather than the points it makes. It exposes the bickering that exists on /., and further. If Tom decides to take 20 minutes and read all the fire-laden posts here, he would laugh himself silly, and for our sakes I hope he does. If this is what a satire (a poor one at that) does to inflame the warring factions, what will happen if someone says something _deliberately_ inflammatory. Like the miniscule print subtitle says: It's-satire-people.

    I'm a Canadian - but I still believe in the 1st amendment.

    Micah McCurdy
  • Too many people, and in particular a growing number in the mainstream media, are criticising the FSF because it's perceived as left wing or collectivist. Whether they're doing it because they want to fight collectivism in all its forms, or, like ESR, doing it because they don't want the community to be (in their eyes) tarnished by association with the FSF, it's still damaging.

    I can't speak for anyone else but I criticize the FSF for the exact same reason Tom is in the above article. The GPL is not a free software license, it's an mandatory-open-source-copyable-usable or gratis license. There are much free'er licenses out there that don't prance around proclaiming how free they are.

    On a side note - I've seen quite a few contentious posts from Tom, however he's always been pleasant in email as has everyone else on gnu.misc.discuss.

    If RMS wants to be heard and wants to accomplish his goals then HE needs to work on his delivery instead of asking us to ignore it. People who are a little more moderate and reasonable like Linus and ESR are more successful in their communications for a reason. It's not about collectivism, it's about being reasonable.
  • and touche! One of the things I've found about most or all of the discussions surrounding FSF and GPL, is a serious and frightening lack of humour. Like a religion (shudder), people here can not seem to laugh at themselves. Humour puts things into perspective, and allows serious, calm, and rational discussion to occur after a good laugh. Instead, we have an immediate and unavoidable flame war.

    Ah well...
  • If you ask me, this whole RMS sucks/ESR sucks, free software/open software, I dont like your beliefs so I will attack the things you have accopmlished flamewar is a bunch of dick fear. These people are terrified that their dicks are inadequate and so they must try to destroy each other to make themselves feel better. The entire linux/gnu/bsd/anything else that's good and free and open movement is being given a bad name because people want to build up their own self esteem. This is nothing more than people standing in a field waving their pricks at one another. So please people, put away your penis and work together. It's about the software, not the genitals. Stop the big prickwaving dickfight before it's too late.


    Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
  • rms sure spends a lot of time repeating the
    same old things, but he is too. Actually
    I'm going to create a Tom Christiansen-free
    distribution as a reaction. And that's much
    easier than a GNU-free distribution.

    Reminds me a news post where said Tom
    Christiansen was proudly declaring
    "I didn't put the examples in my [Perl]
    documentation because the GPL is bad, the
    GPL is a virus, blah blah blah", except
    that he didn't put any other kind of
    authorisation, so his examples were protected
    by the copyright law, which is much more
    restrictive than the GPL.

    Also, he was blaming rms because standard
    distributions did not include his documentation
    about Perl in the "core" (non-distrib).
    He thought, but without ever having
    stated it in writting, that even
    though he had put restrictions on the
    redistribution on his work, these did not apply
    when bundling his docs with Perl.
    So all the distributions of Perl were
    "crippled", because everybody should have been
    reading his thoughts and guessing that he
    meant that there were special conditions
    were distribution with a fee was allowed,
    and he blamed rms for it!

    I don't think that RedHat takes much advice from
    rms, but I guess it's useful to have someone
    to blame everything wrong on.

  • At least somebody said it... (Score:3)

    by _Nad_ ( 60490 ) on Tuesday July 06, 1999 @04:40AM (#1817366)
    Fine, RMS has done some useful things for the open source movement, that's not in contention. But who doesn't get tired of his ranting about Gnu/Linux or "Free" Software. Regardless of what you think of Stallman, someone should be able to poke a little fun without everyone getting up in arms. It's a revolutionary new concept known as humor, some of you should try it.

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