Everything Else

He was at loyola university giving a speech on the four freedoms of software, and bashed linus a bit. Said that the broad ga-noo capabilities that the FSF needed most was hardware reverse-engineering and campaigning against malware such as windows and other drm mechanisms embedded in 'open source'; said he disliked 'open source' people as they were traitors to the ideals of the free software foundation in that they compromised and sold out.

I guess it was somewhat interesting. I kinda wished he gave a lecture on lisp bytecode, but it was sorta-interesting.

discuss: richard stallman

You'll find his picture in the dictionary next to "Unwarranted Self-Importance."

Self-Important. Agree. Unwarranted. Disagree.

I do not know if RMS has made any relevant code contributions to a recent FOSS project and we can debate Hippy Idealist vs. Corporate Suit till the cows and the shareholders come home, but I would suggest that from a historical viewpoint few programmers have had a comperable impact on their field.

I don't think RMS has any significance now or 30 years back. He just took Karl Marx's ideology and applied it to the software realm. Before you cry out about Linux or GNU, he is just a figurehead for GNU, and Linux is the primary creation of Torvalds, of course.

Had he not invented GNU, and thus GCC, bash etc wouldn't exist, then we would be using BSD instead of Linux for our main free Unix-like OS, something I have zero issues with. We would have another open source cc instead, probably something based on the old BSD toolchain. The fact is that he is a zealot who sticks so closely to his ideals that he would rather use a crippled software that is inferior and under GPL ( IE, screen ) vs a superior BSD licensed software such as TMUX

We need people like Stallman. People that irritate, people that have a clear message. People that stand their ground, no matter what the odds are.

Which is not to say that I agree with everything what Stallman says. On the contrary. His lack of ability to acknowledge other peoples work is one thing I really can't stand.

Nevertheless, he challenges the current way we deal with software. And this is a good thing. Because if you really think that our current mental state how we think about software and the implications by software as codified rules are beyond improvement ..., well then you really must have been living behind the moon in the last few years.

He doesn't like Linux yet in the 24 years he's had in which to make the Mach kernel better than Linux, what has he done? Nothing. And that's really the problem, too much whining about non-free and open source and too little competing with them in the open marketplace. Build a better mouse trap Richard!

tomvos wrote: His lack of ability to acknowledge other peoples work is one thing I really can't stand.

I find his insistence on "GNU/Linux" funny. Have you ever noticed how many tools in a typical GNU installation are taken from BSD? I doubt he would like to call his toolset "BSD/GNU".

GCC is another thing. It actually originated as someone else's Pascal compiler. It had good Modula-2 support until the GNU developers (of which Stallman was just one) deprecated it.

I am glad RMS is out there and I am glad I am not sitting next to him.

ClassicHasClass wrote: I am glad RMS is out there and I am glad I am not sitting next to him.

He would criticize your use of OS X, development of Classilla and TenFourFox based upon their license not being GPLv3, berate your non free hardware and AJX usage and narcissistically claim you are inferior to him. All in the span of just 5 minutes.

I'll take the words out of hamei's mouth, condense them a little, then point out that Richard Stallman is an insane scraggly-haired motherf***er.

TeamBlackFox wrote: He would criticize your use of OS X, development of Classilla and TenFourFox based upon their license not being GPLv3, berate your non free hardware and AJX usage and narcissistically claim you are inferior to him. All in the span of just 5 minutes.

Bah, that's small potatoes. You're not really in trouble until he starts singing .

commodorejohn wrote:

TeamBlackFox wrote: He would criticize your use of OS X, development of Classilla and TenFourFox based upon their license not being GPLv3, berate your non free hardware and AJX usage and narcissistically claim you are inferior to him. All in the span of just 5 minutes.

Bah, that's small potatoes. You're not really in trouble until he starts singing .

I think I've told this story before but back in the days when we all had Indigo2s on our desks we used to telnet around and play annoying sounds on each other's workstations. You could open the mixer and as soon as the person you were pranking turned it down you could turn it back up again. Well I was playing that song on my buddy Greg's workstation and the guy in the cube next to him walked in and pulled the power plug out of the wall! For anyone who's never heard it, yes, it is that annoying...

You can have the rest of my sandwich now. I won't need it.

ClassicHasClass wrote: I am glad RMS is out there and I am glad I am not sitting next to him.

Yes, he should go out more often and get some tan!

tomvos wrote: We need people like Stallman. People that irritate, people that have a clear message. People that stand their ground, no matter what the odds are.

Which is not to say that I agree with everything what Stallman says. On the contrary. His lack of ability to acknowledge other peoples work is one thing I really can't stand.

Nevertheless, he challenges the current way we deal with software. And this is a good thing. Because if you really think that our current mental state how we think about software and the implications by software as codified rules are beyond improvement ..., well then you really must have been living behind the moon in the last few years.

I do agree with that in many respects.. the problem is I think he just does nothing to sell his message well. When you come across as being so militant and strongly opinionated in your beliefs it just turns people off from listening to you. Couple that with, frankly, the rather crazy looking appearance and the average person who has no knowledge about free software and so forth will basically cross the road to avoid him and his message.

Yes you certainly have to admire the power of his convictions! Unless he's got a hidden bunker deep in the bowels of the MIT AI lab, where he's running Androids and iPhones and Windows 10 and OSX-whatever-the-latest is.

And what is up with him and Alan Cox looking so much like twin sons of different mothers?!

Yes Stallman may be a weirdo, but unlike some of the weirdos in this site, he has a fairly extensive technical track record and has substantially influenced (in a positive way) the field; at the very least he helped large amounts of people (like me) have access to tools like EMACS and gcc. And for that I'd buy him a drink anytime, even if our approaches regarding personal hygiene disagree significantly.

However RMS controversial is - he'll always remain a major figure among true hackers. Re-read ESR's comments on him in The Art of UNIX Programming .

vishnu wrote: Unless he's got a hidden bunker deep in the bowels of the MIT AI lab, where he's running Androids and iPhones and Windows 10 ...

but lately he's been spotted with a Twinkie on his breath ?

I have to wonder about youse guys tho ... how can you not love Richard Stallman ? I mean jeeze ...





same forehead, nose, eyes ... I don't know what to say. You guys have no taste ! Richard, you be da man !

And now, since yi wan is the magic number (betcha the emperor had more fun doing 10,000 girls but you take what you can get) it's time to leave the red earth and let someone else have a turn. Via con dios, desperados. If you need something send up some fireworks, I'll be chatting up chang e, trying to get a piece of the slanty stuff.

R-ten-K wrote: Yes Stallman may be a weirdo, but unlike some of the weirdos in this site, he has a fairly extensive technical track record and has substantially influenced (in a positive way) the field; at the very least he helped large amounts of people (like me) have access to tools like EMACS and gcc. And for that I'd buy him a drink anytime, even if our approaches regarding personal hygiene disagree significantly.

I would agree with that. Having Emacs early in 1982 at DEC made it my #1 goto editor, although EDT was still hella-good at the time.

We had him in give his 'speech/views' at EMC in, idk, late 80's sometime? He initially went on, and on about a printer some company had given them (MIT Lab I think) for free for some reason, and he found it so morally offending that they weren't also given access to the source code to make some integration changes or arbitrary improvements, that he made some kind of eternal-vow-to-forsake-software-of-the-non-open-variety-forevermore-so-help-me-RP05-disk-platter-on-my-head-cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die. I sat in the front row, dead center, and made skeptical faces at him. Nobody was changed in any significant way from his visit; except we lost a couple hours of work. Alan Cox on the other hand was a pleasure to meet with some years later.

The problem with RMS and his ilk is that they stand in the way of progress. We should be working with paradigms and a systems unrecognizable to anyone from the early age of computation; ENIAC say, but with that being faster, bigger and cheaper, those folks woud easily recognize. In fact, they would probably laugh at our rules against self modifying code; weaklings they would chide us. It's still basically fixed width serially exected binary word/vectors. iPad's way cool though. I can't believe how bad all the WinCE/Windows Mobile 6.1 hardware/software I had was when I dragged it all out for recycle lasst weekend.