Free Software Foundation Turns 25 183
An anonymous reader writes "On this day, 25 years ago, Richard Stallman created the Free Software Foundation. He had been the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Artificial Intelligence Lab. Tired of seeing software that he and others had written appropriated (without acknowledgment or compensation) by disreputable software companies and then told to pay for software they had written, Stallman took action, creating the foundation. The original license was written by Stallman. Stallman had subsequently written a large number of GNU tools, but the license was his most important contribution."
What about emacs (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What about emacs (Score:5, Funny)
Nah, vi is better.
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Pico!
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Everybody knows Ed is the-...
Ah fsck it...
Re:What about emacs (Score:5, Funny)
Only emacs users go to Hell. All other sins are forgiveable.
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Only emacs users go to Hell. All other sins are forgiveable.
Funny you should say that. I’d have thought they were being punished enough in this life.
Re:What about emacs (Score:5, Insightful)
GPL is cool but I think emacs was his greatest accomplishment. At least technical accomplishment.
Whoever modded this flamebait needs to have their privileges revoked. I'm not sure I agree with the parent post, but Emacs is unquestionably a substantial contribution in its own right, as is the GCC.
Flamebait is not a synonym for disagree.
Re:What about emacs (Score:5, Insightful)
You'll note that the negative moderation was balanced against at least 4 other positive moderations. The moderation system was built on the assumption that some people will moderate poorly but most will moderate appropriately. So Slashdot is working as it's supposed to. You can relax now.
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Correct, flamebait is a mod for posts which seem to be deliberately crafted to stir up meaningless debates. Like the Emacs vs Vi debate (which is no debate at all, they both suck).
What is there to be said in reply to 'emacs was his greatest accomplishment'? Only posts of the sort of the first reply, 'Nah, vi is better'. I can easily see how someone thought it was just there to stir up an argument, and for that 'flamebait' is entirely appropriate.
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nicolas.kassis didn't mention vi. He said that emacs was a great accomplishment. Any emacs vs vi implication is in your head.
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The first person to reply did so to state that Vi is better than Emacs. It's not in my head, it actually happened.
OP may not have intended to start that flamewar, but it's an entirely reasonable postion for 1 of the 5 people who moderated the post to think that he did.
Maybe he had a serious point and wanted to see if he could start a small flamewar, we don't know, but there's something about the construction of the post which feels a little 'off' for starting a discussion. For instance, he gives no reasons
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I think that Campagnolo bicycle components are fantastic. Flame away.
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I doubt the moderator was disagreeing over emacs. They are probably only vaguely familiar with the running vi vs. emacs jokes and thinks it's about starting a real fight. Hence the "Flamebait" mod.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
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GPL is cool but I think emacs was his greatest accomplishment. At least technical accomplishment.
Whoever modded this flamebait needs to have their privileges revoked.
Are you saying that any mention of either vi or emacs isn’t flamebait? Here? On Slashdot?
Re:What about emacs (Score:5, Insightful)
Only a tiny percentage of people use Emacs.
Programers have the option of Vi, Eclipse.org, Netbeans, XCode, Notepad++, and any number of other free as in speech or beer IDEs.
Think of all the software that is available under the GPL including Linux.
Then think of all the software written using GCC.
While I do not agree with RMS's extremist dogmatic view that all software should be free, I tend to believe there is room for both models. I also really dislike his devoted followers.
But I will say this about him.
GPL was important in influenced a lot of people including myself to write and contribute free software. Emacs while I do not use it is a very powerful editor/ide/os/religion. GCC is wonderful and I use it often. And about the man himself. I wrote him an email once and he actually took the time to respond to me. I didn't agree with him but he was polite and passonate in his view point. I will say that my opinion of RMS is he is a gentalman that I respect but have an honest difference in opinion with.
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Well you may be differences but the rabid RMS followers feel that selling software is immoral. The really bad ones will the use it to justify piracy or if you must violation of the authors distribution license. Then try to pretend that they are being noble when they simply want Left4Dead but don't want to pay for it.
My opinion is that GPL is great but that people still have the right to not release their code under it.
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My opinion is that GPL is great but that people still have the right to not release their code under it.
That is also Stallman's opinion. What is your disagreement with him?
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That all closed source software is "immoral"
I see it as a way to finance development.
It costs money to develop software. Not all software development by the "customize and support" methode that a lot of open source projects can use.
I feel their is room for both Open Source and Closed. RMS doesn't.
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That all closed source software is "immoral"
Yes, he does believe that.
I agree with you on that, but it doesn't lower my opinion of Stallman. Important ideas often require extremists to push them. More "reasonable" people won't make the effort required.
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I found most extremists to be more harmful than helpful. Let's take examples of two extremists.
They are extremist FOSS supporters.
One writes coded for for a FOSS project and helps people when they have issues with Open Software.
The other gets on Slashdot and posts about how evil closed source is and then hits pirates bay for the latest movies and video games.
The problem is that the first is rare while the second are as common a cockroaches and just as pleasant.
I can take devoted but polite which in my deali
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the rabid RMS followers feel that selling software is immoral. The really bad ones will the use it to justify piracy or if you must violation of the authors distribution license. Then try to pretend that they are being noble when they simply want Left4Dead but don't want to pay for it.
I don't believe that followers of RMS have this point of view. If I am to take the phrase "rabid" to mean someone who evangelically endorses RMS's position without questioning it (I suppose that's what you mean), then I have a very hard time imagining someone who could possibly endorse what you say.
The most "rabid" of RMS's "followers" routinely purge their computers of software that isn't free. They won't even use Adobe flash and instead use free software alternatives that don't work as well. They use o
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You have never seen someone that pirates in the name of RMS?
Wow you must not read Slashdot much.
If you really believe that you should only use FOSS then be my guest. I personally believe that is impossible in the modern world. At some point if you drive a car, use a microwave, or watch TV you will use and or own closed source code.
Most users even ones that program do not fix bugs.
I have a few times but even for me it is rare that I will have the time to do more than make a bug report. Just like you do with
Re:What about emacs (Score:5, Insightful)
Technical accomplishments pale in comparison to cultural accomplishments.
Are you really arguing that emacs is a greater accomplishment than the entire open source software movement? GPL is what made OSS possible, without license the software would have been stolen before it could get off its feet. That's exactly what prompted the GPL in the first place - Stallman and his MIT buddies were writing software that vendors were picking up, incorporating into their own products, and then forcing Stallman and his buddies to pay for in the next iteration.
Re:What about emacs (Score:5, Insightful)
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as a way to screw them for taking code
Perhaps that was a motive. But if it is, should it be characterized that way? You might as well say that people who don't buy movies are "screwing" movie producers. Even if they never watch movies-- never pirate them, go to theaters, or even see them while visiting friends. Or that the police are "screwing" criminals whenever they make an arrest. If anyone writes useful software and gives it away, some business "opportunity" is "lost". That's crazy thinking, based on a fundamentally unsound business m
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I say Emacs could be a bigger accomplishment then GNU.
Sure he is more popular because of the GNU. But the GNU probably couldn't be proven without Emacs and the fact the RMS could sell copies of Emacs under the GNU.
Also emacs was full featured enough to be incorporated in many different OS's giving the GNU a wider appeal.
The basic rule of thumb 25 years ago. If it is free then it is crap. EMacs was free and full featured.
RMS Success fell on EMacs. If he decided a different license he would still be well kn
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Dear Richard, (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you.
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I agree. Thanks, Mr. Stallman and all the good people at the FSF and FSF Europe.
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Seconded. Happy Birthday FSF!
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Yep, thank you RMS! You made the world a better place.
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I join my voice to the chorus. Thank you!
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Yes, thank you Richard Stallman. Thank you for the GPL, for GCC and for your continued advocacy for the rights of the user.
Re:Dear Richard, (Score:4, Funny)
the license? really? (Score:2)
I'd have voted for GCC instead, but whatever.
Re:the license? really? (Score:5, Insightful)
GCC would not have mattered one lick without the license.
Really, it's just a C compiler. It's important, but rudimentary. Anybody with sufficient programming skills can write one for a given machine (and they do). The license was the stroke of genius. GCC only exists in its current form because of the license. Without it GCC would be just another compiler in the dustbin of history.
The real important contribution was the counter-culture he started, and that was only able to survive the extremely proprietary world of computers because of the license.
I don't even like Stallman (I think he's an asshole, frankly), but that's clearly one thing he got very right. It was a brilliant move to use the same copyright laws that were used to steal his (and his compatriates') software in order to ensure their software would be free to use by everyone forever.
In other words, open source software - GCC included - would likely not exist today without the GPL.
Re:the license? really? (Score:5, Insightful)
The BSDs would exist without the GPL. Of course, getting to use GCC helps. Of all the things that RMS is responsible for, GCC is the only one I really use in any meaningful way. I think the majority of GPL software that I use isn't actually GNU or sponsored by the FSF, it just happens to be GPL. But the majority of my platform isn't GPL:
- FreeBSD is BSD licensed
- Apache is Apache (basically BSD) licensed
- PostreSQL uses a modified BSD-style license
- Perl is dual licensed with either the Artistic License or the GPL, depending on which you want to accept
- BIND is BSD licensed
I'm not particularly reliant on any GPL-based software other than GCC. That is the crux of my argument. Don't confuse "open source" with "free software" with the GPL.
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Yes. The BSD license was a consequence of being the product of a public university, receiving federal funds to work on projects. Even without the GPL, I suspect it is highly likely that the BSD license would have been created as-is anyway.
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An early version of the BSD license was already in use before the GPLv1 was released. Granted, since then, there have been many modifications of it, including what's often referred to as the "Modified BSD License" that removes the advertising requirement.
Re:the license? really? (Score:5, Insightful)
He may or may not be an asshole, but it is his attitude what made this possible. Without the attitude nothing would have happend.
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I don't even like Stallman (I think he's an asshole, frankly), but that's clearly one thing he got very right. ... open source software - GCC included - would likely not exist today without the GPL.
If you start such a movement and doing so frustrate self-interested grabbers of all kinds, you are naturally going to be the target of abuse and personal attacks on such a scale that you may have, or you may need to already have, a thick skin to merely survive.
But your post does underline the significance of the accomplishment, so I concur.
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When I was in early high school, I attended a workshop for bright kids where each of us wrote a compiler. During a week. Not knowing anything about writing compilers beforehand, just being teached the basics of yacc and stuff on the go. Of course, these compilers had hardly any optimization, but they produced working code.
Stallman didn't have yacc, but he was an experienced programmer with full access to relevant books -- all the theory relevant was already widely known by then. And coding a LALR parser
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The difference is that most people weren't so uptight if some company took the open code and incorporated it.
I think GNU was a bigger step than FSF, and less nutty. It was the "why are we relying on commercial unix when we could just make our own" moment. They did a lot of good work on
Hrmph (Score:5, Funny)
The real question... (Score:5, Funny)
Which came first, the Foundation or the Beard?
Re:The real question... (Score:4, Funny)
Which came first, the Foundation or the Beard?
BEER!
The GPL is the most important.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Open Source movement owes its existence to it. Many a intellectual property lawsuit has been decided by it.
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The GPL is the most important license or legal construction In the history of computing. Easily. It's not even close.
No. Whoever invented the EULA and figured out that software should be licensed instead of sold was a far more important legal construction. That move changed the entire industry to such an extent that almost no software is sold these days. The GPL is only modestly important compared to that monumental legal change.
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A great part of the work for the Dark Side was done by a single individual as well. Please read about the big campaign led by our beloved Bill and his "Open Letter to Hobbyists" [wikipedia.org].
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He wanted people not to pirate his software. How is that "the Dark Side"?
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License yes, legal construction... well, I don't know it really applies but the whole construction that practically all copyrighted software is licensed, unlike a copyrighted book that is sold is probably the single most important legal clusterfuck ever. If your car manufacturer told you what roads you can drive on, what gas stations to tank at, where to get it serviced while forbidding you to use other spare parts, welding the hood down, refusing to let you sell it and has a kill switch there'd be arevolut
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The GPL is the most beneficial license or legal construction In the history of computing.
RealityMaster above may be right - the limited, non-transferable EULA is terribly important right now; the GPL is a sane[r] alternative. Don't ask me about the "freer" BSD license - I haven't made my mind up about that.
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Don't ask me about the "freer" BSD license - I haven't made my mind up about that.
Food for your thoughts then...
The BSD license is primarily concerned with the freedom of software developers and distributors while the GPL's primary concern is the freedom of the end user, Which group you think is more important will probably determine which license you favor.
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Everyone's an end user, some end users are developers, some end users are distributors, all developers are end users.*
Seems straightforward to me.
*Unless you programmed your computer from scratch with switches, Altair style.
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Director of the AI Lab? (Score:5, Insightful)
Citation, please? I think he worked there and was probably their most famous programmer. But besides that I don't think he held an executive position at that lab.
Re:Director of the AI Lab? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Director of the AI Lab? (Score:5, Funny)
Never heard of any of those guys. Stallman wins.
Re:Director of the AI Lab? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, he is their most famous hacker now, in 2010. The context of the discussion is 1985. At that time, he was not their most famous hacker.
Re:Director of the AI Lab? (Score:4, Informative)
I disagree (Score:5, Funny)
His most important contribution is GNU Hurd - it's the gift that keeps on giving.
I feel like... (Score:5, Funny)
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GCC (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a hard time believing that anything RMS is even partially responsible for is anywhere near as important as GCC, from its humble beginnings as a replacement for CC on UNIX to its present juggernaut Compiler Collection.
Thanks Richard for leaving your fingerprints on all of my object files! GCC is the awesome.
Re:GCC (Score:5, Insightful)
GCC would not be important today at all without the license, because it would be proprietary software, therefore the license trumps it in my opinion. They are kinda two faces of the same coin though. Without GCC, the GPL probably would have never taken off at all.
So he's got two huge contributions, a lot of big ones (Linux was just GNU with Torvald's kernel at first), and then a bunch of crazy wacko rants.
Without the license, GCC would have been closed (Score:5, Insightful)
GCC is what it is because of the license. Without the license, it would just be another compiler most likely closed or restricted in some way. That it isn't is because of the license, not because of the code.
To what do you attribute the Wright brothers plane? The internal combustion engine or the dream to fly? Without the engine there could have been a plane driven by say a rocket, but without the dream their would never have been a plane.
It can be very hard to truly comprehend just how big Stallman's contribution has been. Freedom is very hard to grasp, if you are used to it.
In another response to the story about net neutrality I linked the internet to the press and the contribution to freedom that this tech has made. But what is that contribution? The art of reproducing text quickly OR the power of the written word? The capability of human beings to pass on their thoughts to others without ever meeting them?
Just as the chattering monkey became more human by being able to write down speech, and then more free by being able reproduce it easily and even free'er(?) by being able to transmit what he had for breakfast around the globe (oh okay so it ain't all good), the GNU, FSF etc have given us a degree of freedom that once we couldn't imagine and now can't imagine being without.
The oldies MIGHT remember machines on which you paid for every single second of access. In which hardware was not owned but leased. Only the very powerful could own a computer and making it doing anything useful cost even more.
Today, I can own a computer far more powerful, own it completly and use countless pieces of software for free. Not saying I have to, but I can and the fact that I can already means that those who wish to control software/hardware and freedom are restricted in doing so. Good luck MS with their ActiveX and attempts to stop the internet. IE did NOT manage to make the web an MS experience. Can you imagine what MS would have been like if they had IBM mainframe style control of the IBM compatible? If there never had been a Compaq, never had been a Dr-DOS? It would have been the Apple from Hell.
Trying to explain this alternate reality would be like trying to explain the holocaust (godwin can kiss my hairy butt) in a universe were said holocaust never happened. We escape the complete control of our PC's by IBM, so how can we imagine what the world would have been like with IBM in control?
And of course Stallman didn't do it all alone. But he has been the most central figure who has stood firm for 25 years. He and everyone else who has helped create the idea of software not as an owned and controlled resource has made the world we live in today. How could countless websites have gotten started without free Apache, free Perl/PHP/Python/etc, free databases yes even free OS'es?
But isn't MS software as easily available? Yes, BUT and this is a HUGE BUT, without IBM loosing control over the PC, MS would also never have been. MS, the closed source control freak company owes it existence to "free" software/hardware. Proof? No MS on mainframes.
So yes. GCC is awesome, but it is a minor tool, the AK47 of the freedom movement. It is the fight, not the weapons that matter. The decleration of independe vs the guarilla tactics. The refusal to obey seperation laws rather then choosing a seat in a bus.
And to those who think free software is not comparable. It isn't. But lack of freedom in small areas can mean the lack of freedom is far larger areas. Wouldn't it be convenient for those who want to control freedom, if printing presses could only be bought with identification? If a website could only be setup with a real ID?
So thank you Richard Stallman. I would never have the courage to do what you did, but the world is a better place cause you did it. Not perfect, but better. Just that the rest of us must remember that if we take it all for granted, we might loose it all. DMCA, Trusted Computing etc are real treaths and they do NOT go away just because we managed to stop them once.
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GCC was created by the FSF and was always open source. I think you've overlooked the most important attribute - it's free as in beer.
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It's not a license giving freedom that's important, it's a license retaining freedom.
Yes, new-BSD, Apache 2.0, public domain - all of these licenses have fewer restrictions than the GPL. But amongst the restrictions they lack is one preventing the addition of further restrictions. So the freedom they give you includes the freedom to take your hard written source, build programs from it, and sell it back to you without giving you those changes.
GPL takes away your freedom to share programs without also sharin
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I have a hard time believing that anything RMS is even partially responsible for is anywhere near as important as GCC, from its humble beginnings as a replacement for CC on UNIX to its present juggernaut Compiler Collection.
There is an important symbiotic relationship between the GPL and the GCC. (And also with other "free" software tools, but the GCC is a good poster child.) One explanation came up in a number of projects that I worked on at Digital back in the 1980s and early 1990s. The question kept c
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Happy birthday to you, (Score:5, Funny)
Happy birthday, dear Richard,
Happy bir- COPYRIGHT VIOLATION DETECTED - TRANSMISSION TERMINATED [wikipedia.org]
Re:Happy birthday to you, (Score:4, Interesting)
According to the wikipedia article you linked, Wendy Williams owes $700 to WB when she & her audience sang the song. Meanwhile in Canada WB and other members of the CRIA owe nearly a billion dollars for using songs on "best of" albums without paying the original artists.
"One law for the commoners; one law for the masters."
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Shouldn't that be "Happy birthday to GNU?"
Uhm, no! (Score:5, Informative)
He was a system administrator, not the director of the lab! Minsky, Papert, et al didn't report to him...
Re:Uhm, no! (Score:5, Informative)
That doesn't seem right either - I thought the driving issue was the need to pay a fee to access driver software to modify it to use a product they already bought (I think it was a printer) - as I recall the issue was that software licenses were getting in the way of him doing the work he needed to do. He wasn't against paying for needed software, but in this case (his "tipping point"), but he was being required to pay to fix software he'd already paid for since the the manufacturer wouldn't/couldn't make it work.
Re:Uhm, no! (Score:4, Interesting)
That's what I remember reading here in Chapter 1: For Want of a Printer [oreilly.com].
Stallman had subsequently written a large number of GNU tools, but the license was his most important contribution.
Says the vi user who never wrote a line of code in his life! ;-)
Happy b-day! (Score:4, Funny)
Now get rid of Stallman and I will actively support you.
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Now get rid of Stallman and I will actively support you.
Haha, just like Apple needed to get rid of Steve Jobs in order to grow...
Get used to it, the guy has his character and it is part of the deal.
You need to have a thick skin when you go out and entertain to slay dragons.
Dogma (Score:5, Insightful)
Bethany: What is Stallman like?
Rufus: He likes to listen to people talk. I remember the old days when we were sittin' around the computer lab. You know, whenever we were goin' on about unimportant shit, He'd always have a smile on his face. His only real beef with programmers is the shit that gets carried out His name. Wars. Bigotry. Mobile Operating Systems. The big one though, is the factioning of the distros. He said, "Linux got it all wrong by takin' a good idea and building a belief structure out of it."
Bethany: So you're saying that having beliefs is a bad thing?
Rufus: I just think it's better to have an idea. You can change an idea; changing a belief is trickier. People die for it, people kill for it. The whole of Free software is in jeopardy right now because of the Open Source belief system in this software as a service bullshit. RedHat and SuSE, whether they know it or not, are exploiting that belief, and if they're successful, you, me, all of this ends in a heartbeat. All over a belief.
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I at the very least owe you a coke.
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I am really getting tired of this half-assed theory of this being a 'belief' and the implications thereoff, and subsequent appeal to reasonableness.
You just hear these assertions, never substantiated by anything but inuendo and anecdotes.
In any movement of this scale, you will have debates about its orientation, tactics, strategy, etc.
And you will have people who will think strongly about this. So what?...
Just repeating a lie, aren't you?
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Twenty-five years later... (Score:4, Interesting)
I am running Gnu-Linux on an NSLU2, a DNS-323, and a SheevaPlug. I have a free compiler on these devices.
On another computer, I just downloaded MingW and Lighttpd (source and binary) last night.
I remember when "free software" usually meant crippleware, and there was no way a poor kid eager to write code could get a compiler for free.
Thanks for your vision, RMS. You changed culture and you helped the future.
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Who wrote this claptrap? (Score:5, Informative)
Tired of seeing software that he and others had written appropriated (without acknowledgment or compensation) by disreputable software companies and then told to pay for software they had written, Stallman took action, creating the foundation.
What a terrible mis-representation of RMS's motivations. The EFF wasn't founded because RMS thought his software being "stolen" - it was created because he was locked out of fixing bugs in software on equipment in the lab where he worked. Read the first chapter of Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software. -- For Want of a Printer [faifzilla.org] for a description of that seminal moment.
Thank you richard. (Score:2)
How's the printer? (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks to RMS for all his (often colourful) advocacy. But has it done him any good - has he managed to get access to the driver for his labs Xerox 9700 yet?
Over dramatization (Score:2, Informative)
The anonymous contributor needs to get a better grip on reality.
The software in question was mostly written by programmers who were MIT staff members and students. MIT held the copyright on the software that they developed. MIT subsequently licensed the softwa
Re:And it never would have amounted to anything... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. The GNU tools were already being used to augment commercial Unixen and as a foundation for bootstrapping the development environments of alternate hardware platforms like video game consoles. Free Software was already making it's mark before Linux came along. Many of us were exposed to the GNU tools first and then to Linux later.
Re:And it never would have amounted to anything... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Honestly, what Linux injected was the development strategy. The whole Cathedral and Bazaar thing. Before Linux, it was considered a good idea to limit the number of people working on a project. I, myself, volunteered to work on the Hurd long before I had heard of Linux. I had done a project in an OS course on Mach and wanted to play with it some more, so I wrote to the development team and they rejected me without even seeing what I could do. Many of the development source repositories for various thin
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The next time you consume some of Hollywood's "product", you will likely be taking advantage of his legacy.
Re:shouldn't it be... (Score:4, Funny)
(gnu is not unix)
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What has the Free (as in Freedom) Software Foundation got to do with the State owning the means of production on behalf of the workers, authoritarian government and the elimination of dissent?