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Stallman Clarifies Position RE:Gnome & .Net 299

Posted by Hemos from the making-things-clear dept.
RMS ? has sent The Register an email in which he corrects their 'inaccurate' representation of his stance on the GNOME & .NET issue. He states, "I am pretty sure something was garbled in the quotation which has me asking Miguel to 'explain himself to us', because those words would be explicitly confrontational, and I did not have any wish to do that."
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Stallman Clarifies Position RE:Gnome & .Net More

Stallman Clarifies Position RE:Gnome & .Net

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  • oh, never. (Score:5, Funny)

    by magicslax ( 532351 ) <frank_salim@ya h o o . c om> on Sunday February 10, 2002 @03:00PM (#2982976)
    RMS "explicitly confrontational?" Surely you jest!
    ;-)
    • OMG... you garbled the quotation again! He did not wish to do that... [at that time :)]

    • Re:oh, never. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by jcast ( 461910 )
      He does try very hard to get along with people. True, he doesn't like people mis-representing him or his work as something else, or as directed towards somebody else's goals.(1) He does seem confrontational, at times; that's because he's under so much societal/cultural pressure to accept Linux/Open Source/etc. (all of which he views as representing different viewpoints than his, and refuses to endorse on those grounds). He has to resist that pressure to stay true to his principles, and so he sometimes appears confrontational. If ``GNU/Linux'' were used by the majority of users/reporters, Linus would probably seem confrontational sometimes, too.

      (1) I don't care if you think GNU/Linux is RMS's software or not; that's the way he sees it, and you have to understand that to understand him. There is a genuine difference of opinion here between Linus and RMS.
  • those words would be explicitly confrontational, and I did not have any wish to do that.

    Uhm, RMS...since when do you not wish to be confrontational? Your whole approach is confrontational.

    • Re:RMS? Confrontational??!! Naw! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Methinks you are mis-judging him. I had my attitude about RMS corrected at The Bazzar.

      One of the 'linux columists' (aka he had web site where everything is rosy in the Linux world, everything would be running linux, etc la) was standing next to RMS. RMS said 'I need to get my ID badge' and the 'journalist' said "Badges? You are RMS, you don't need no stinking badges" RMS then put him in his place by explaining there was no need to be confontational with the security guard who was just going to do his job and ask for a badge.

      RMS is passionate about his GNU thing. And, he's willing to be confrontational about the GNU thing.

  • The snowball effect.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Cruciform ( 42896 ) on Sunday February 10, 2002 @03:05PM (#2983001) Homepage
    Wow, this is turning into a ping-pong match.

    You have to wonder how much relevant information is lost before a story makes it to press these days. Partial quotes, reassembled sentences, poor fact checking. This is meant to address the media in general, not this article specifically.

    We need a newspaper/website that quotes people word for word rather than just the highlights, and always sends two reporters to cover a job separately. Not that it will ever happen but I bet we'd have a considerably different view of world events if it happened.
    • I've said from day one that The Register cannot be trusted. They are fanatics and 90% of the time they get the story wrong or sensationalize it to the point that it is completely wrong. I still don't understand why slashdot links to anything on The Register. They have proven time and time again that the stories posted on their site don't reflect fact. I think slashdot links to them becuase most of the time the stroke the ego of the open source/linux zealots.
      • Yeah, I don't even read the Register any more... The only time I end up there is to follow links to articles which usually end up being refuted by someone mentioned in them. Heh.

      • I've said from day one that The Register cannot be trusted.

        Right. Additionally, The Register puts what amounts to a disclaimer right there at the top of every page they serve.

        See where it says "Biting the hand that feeds IT"? Who do you think they are referring to? They are referring to *everybody* in IT, even the open source community and small-time computer geeks like me.

        That being said, I actually like the Register, mostly because they don't hesitate to smack stupid people and ideas down in their articles, which is funny. They have never claimed to be "professional" jouralists. If something newsworthy happens, I usually find out about it on The Register or Slashdot (same diff) and then get the truth from several other (aggregate) sources.
        • The Register, On Friday he repeated his desire to base future GNOME development on the .NET APIs using work from his Mono project.
          ".NET is a fantastic technology upgrade for GNOME from Microsoft," he said.
          see [theregister.co.uk] for the full text. The above appears at the bottom, following the link, Miguel de Icaza [gnome.org] says things
          GNOME is not adopting Mono or .NET
          and
          Decisions in the GNOME world are done by active contributors and module maintainers. I have given my maintainership status on every module I maintained to other members of the GNOME team as I got more involved with Ximian and later on with Mono.
          So effectively I have no "maintainer" control.
          so it appears to me that the register might be trying to stir up trouble where it doesn't exist, or they don't know the difference between Ximian/Mono and Gnome. Also I didn't find any of the quotes on the page they linked and I looked hard. oh wait maybe a covert team of monkey-boy hackers from Ximian cracked the gnome mail archives and removed the incriminating page for Miguel!

      • Being a UK tech-rag, it's not surprising that their style of journalism is the way it is. But, if you were going to throw such accusations at the Reg, I would also not discount sites such as NewsForge, Slashdot (which is much worst), CNN, WashingtonPost, FT, etc.

        They all sensationalize. If you don't have enough wit to see the difference between the FUD, you have no business reading it anyway.

        I personally find entertainment in reading the Reg, even if things are not always accurate. The editors are sharp, and they at least can spell. If you want facts, go read the kernel CVS logs.
        • Absolutely! Ever since I found a Reg article linked from /. years ago, I've been a faithful reader. Sure they print crap from time to time, but it's not difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff. And they make their biases well-known.

          The Reg is worth reading even just for the giggles and laughs from the sub-headlines.

          -Paul Komarek

    • Re:The snowball effect.... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rlowe69 ( 74867 ) <ryanlowe_AThotmailDOTcom> on Sunday February 10, 2002 @05:59PM (#2983753) Homepage
      ... Partial quotes, reassembled sentences, poor fact checking ...

      Uh, I believe you forgot botched translations. :)

      Seriously though, when we start dealing with International issues (and free software and open source software are become increasingly International) we need reliable translation, not some reporter using the Altavista babel fish. This whole misunderstanding could have been avoided if:

      1. The reported got his facts straight and asked the right questions in the first place.
      2. A rather suggestive translation wasn't posted by The Register (whether they were given this information by another party is not an issue, they should have checked their sources - including talking directly to Stallman!).

      Is that really too much to ask from The Press??
  • is the road of destruction. Icaza is either a fool or a sellout for getting in bed with Microsoft.
    • Although not very politely expressed, I must
      say I agree with you on this.
      de Icaza could have made this very differently,
      and saved him much trouble - and the GNOME project
      hasn't a good reputation either, in relation to
      e.g. KDE.

      Anyways, he might have been better a Microsoft(R)
      employee.

  • Straight from the horse's mouth.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gingko ( 195226 ) on Sunday February 10, 2002 @03:16PM (#2983046)
    The very existence of GNOME is the direct result of our ideals of freedom, precisely what the open source movement was founded in 1998 to reject.

    So open source rejects your ideals of freedom, and has done since its foundation?

    Someone better notify the press :)

    Henry

    • Re:Straight from the horse's mouth.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Evan927 ( 15553 ) <.gro.lacinonac. .ta. .nave.> on Sunday February 10, 2002 @03:28PM (#2983100) Homepage Journal
      Yes. Open source rejects his ideals of freedom. This is not new, nor should it surprise you. It's very simple. Free Software has 4 requirements. You can read these here: http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

      Open source software does not meet all 4.

      • Okay, I'll call you out. Which of RMS's four freedoms is not present in any OSI-approved license [opensource.org]?
        -russ

        • Re:Okay, I'll call you out. (Score:4, Informative)

          by luge ( 4808 ) <<gro.yugeit> <ta> <todhsals>> on Sunday February 10, 2002 @05:49PM (#2983717) Homepage
          I do see what you mean, Russ, but I have to call you out too, because you're wrong :)


          Freedom #3; freedom to redistribute with modifications. See, for example, the SISSL, which is accepted by OSI but does not allow one to redistribute changes that aren't compatible with the standards setting body. [See section 3.1 [opensource.org].] Or the revocation clause in the APSL [opensource.org], which is one of the three reasons [fsf.org] the APSL isn't free.


          All of that said... the point you're trying to make, Russ, is a sound one- the basic OSI philosophy is not incompatible with that of the FSF. But the FSF's philosophy is a superset of the OSI's- it isn't just 'see the source', which the OSI cares about, it also includes 'have freedom to use the source once you've seen it'- which the OSI doesn't care about, and which is why RMS dislikes them so much.


          [up front: I'm a Ximian employee; I don't think that makes any difference to this point but I don't want to be accused of hiding it in an article about Miguel.]

          • I think you mean "FSF's philosophy is a subset of the OSI's", i.e. it's more restrictive. Then again, we haven't defined "philosophy", and we all know what happens when you don't take enough care defining sets properly. ;-)

            -Paul Komarek
      • I think that it is important that a variety of licensing schemes, and I think that developers' should be free to choose the licenses for their code so long as they are not taking code from other projects.

        Freedom is freedom is diversity of opinion. I think that if the BSD or GPL licenses died out, I think that it would be a sad day.

    • Re:Straight from the horse's mouth.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Shiny Metal S. ( 544229 ) on Sunday February 10, 2002 @04:13PM (#2983273) Homepage
      So open source rejects your ideals of freedom, and has done since its foundation? Someone better notify the press :)
      The first priority of the Free Software Foundation [gnu.org] since the beginning in 1985 was always the freedom [gnu.org]. Open Source Initiative [opensource.org] came to existence in 1998 mosltly because the freedom related to the term "free software" was not very convenient. The OSI [opensource.org] has chosen to use term "open source" instead of "free software", because it's easier to persuade corporations to use "open source software" than "free software", focusing on technical rather than ethical aspects. But the main priority of FSF [gnu.org] was not to make the GNU [gnu.org] more popular, but to make people aware of the freedom [gnu.org] they should have, while the GNU sotfware [gnu.org] was only a tool for that purpose.

      The Jargon Lexicon open source definition [tuxedo.org]:

      open source n.

      [common; also adj. `open-source'] Term coined in March 1998 following the Mozilla release to describe software distributed in source under licenses guaranteeing anybody rights to freely use, modify, and redistribute, the code. The intent was to be able to sell the hackers' ways of doing software to industry and the mainstream by avoiding the negative connotations (to suits) of the term "free software". For discussion of the follow-on tactics and their consequences, see the Open Source Initiative site.

      From Why "Free Software" is better than "Open Source" [gnu.org]:

      In 1998, some of the people in the free software community began using the term "open source software" instead of "free software" to describe what they do.

      While free software by any other name would give you the same freedom, it makes a big difference which name we use: different words convey different ideas. The term "open source" quickly became associated with a different approach, a different philosophy, different values, and even a different criterion for which licenses are acceptable. The Free Software movement and the Open Source movement are today effectively separate movements, although we can and do work together on practical projects.

      This article describes why using the term ``open source'' does not solve any problems, and in fact creates some. These are the reasons why it is better to stick with "free software."

      (...) [gnu.org]

  • so unlike him (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by bay43270 ( 267213 )
    "...those words would be explicitly confrontational, and I did not have any wish to do that."

    right... rms has never been known to be confrontational. ;)
  • I actually have a few issues to address regarding the Register's report...

    First, I would like to raise the question of exactly where it is that I can view de Icaza's comments.

    "Miguel de Icaza has issued his own clarification, here, which also amounts to 'move along folks, there's nothing to see'."

    Unfortunately, however, the good people at the Register neglected to actually link the here in that statement! Anyone have any ideas???

    Next, I move to a quote the Register supplies from de Icaza regarding the .NET framework -
    ".NET is a fantastic technology upgrade for GNOME from Microsoft,"

    Perhaps it's just me, perhaps it is the fault of the translation, but in this quote it sounds to me as if de Icaza is portraying Microsoft as having graciously created the .NET technology specifically for GNOME. As we all know, that is far from the case... While this involves a quite obvious conflict of interest for M$ as a corporation (industry acceptance of .NET -vs- inadvertently providing Linux w/ new technology), I wouldn't say that M$ has been overly cooperative!!!

    And finally, I point to the final line of the article referencing comments by de Icaza -
    "In the interview, he praised many aspects of .NET including SmartClients and the new Microsoft security model. ®"

    Please...someone say it ain't so!!! Is this individual actually praising the evil empire's security model? Has he been smoking dope!!! I think I'll just forget that I saw that and move on as if nothing ever happened...

    • Re:Missing Link & more... (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      And finally, I point to the final line of the article referencing comments by de Icaza -
      ?In the interview, he praised many aspects of .NET including SmartClients and the new Microsoft security model. ®?

      Please?someone say it ain?t so!!! Is this individual actually praising the evil empire?s security model? Has he been smoking dope!!! I think I?ll just forget that I saw that and move on as if nothing ever happened?
      Well, yes, of course he praised the new Microsoft security model, it's a great piece of work, and Linux (and other) platforms would benefit immensely from an implementation of it.

      Of course, the reason he did this is because he is very bright, aware of all the technical issues and has spent a lot of time actually writing code and managing projects. I would suggest that the reason you don't like this technology is that none of these apply to you.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • For one, the new model includes some features that Linux/UNIX don't readily support - and has some features that are very interesting. Basically, the ACL's are still around - which is nice and all. But most interestingly applications are run with permissions - and not just in the sense of the running as a user. Specific fine-grained controls are possible (though I am unclear as to if they are currently implemented.. I haven't found them yet!) that detail which resources the application has permissions to access - regardless of user context.

        This is not quite correct. See for instance here [olemiss.edu] or look up capabilites and unix and posix in google (you may have to search a bit). Or surf here [kernel.org] to learn that linux also has capabilities. This is also NAMI (not a microsoft innovation).

      • all the .NET SDK docs are on-line at msdn.microsoft.com
      • For one, the new model includes some features that Linux/UNIX don't readily support - and has some features that are very interesting.

        In theory, the NT/Win2K/XP kernel already have very nice security features that UNIX doesn't support. In practice, we have Universal Plug&Play.

        We shall see how well the new .NET security works in the real world. Complexity is the enemy of security. I hope that they make the .NET security API easier comprehend and use than the NT API, but I'm not very optimistic.

    • Re:Missing Link & more... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by omega9 ( 138280 ) on Sunday February 10, 2002 @04:07PM (#2983247)
      the Register neglected to actually link the here in that statement!

      I believe "here" was meant as "here at The Register", so it's a small matter of going to The Register [theregister.co.uk]'s front door and doing a search for "Icaza". You'll probably be most interested in the three [theregister.co.uk] most [theregister.co.uk] recent [theregister.co.uk] articles. If you still can't find the connections, just look a little harder.

      Icaza is portraying Microsoft as having graciously created the .NET technology specifically for GNOME

      Oh, don't be such a drama queen. You, me, and everyone else here know that's just silly and obviously unrealistic. Put your tinfoil hat back on and take some deep breathes.

      Is this individual actually praising the evil empire's security model?

      You can say a lot of horrible stuff about Microsoft, and in most cases they will deserve it. But just accept for a moment a difference between a security model and a security implementation. While it could easily be argued that their model may not be the best, Microsoft has generally had a bad history of implementing security. If the same model were given to a bunch of Linux zealots and a bunch of Microsoft suits, though both based on the same foundation, I think we can agree that our prized zealots would pull through with a better implementation. So, for me at least, it not that bad of a sin to praise their security model. I just wish they would follow through a little better.

      On an OT note: If you really want to throw up, read this [christianity.com]. Direct quote - "The recent release of Windows XP illustrates the concept of intelligent design. If Windows XP points to Bill Gates, how much more do the marvelous complexities of DNA point directly to God, the great Intelligent Designer?"
      • If the same model were given to a bunch of Linux zealots and a bunch of Microsoft suits, though both based on the same foundation, I think we can agree that our prized zealots would pull through with a better implementation.

        But the MS version would have pretty GUIs and the Linux version would have command-line programs and conf files.

        Seriously, though, the suits at MS aren't the ones who write the software, the programmers do. If they are pushed in the wrong direction by management's priorities it doesn't perforce mean that they're bad coders.

  • Ah Well (Score:2, Insightful)

    by technomancerX ( 86975 )
    I thought for a moment that the mutual admiration society between RMS and Icazza was finally coming to an end...

    I do have to admit that the "Oh, I didn't really mean Gnome should be based on .NET" was amusing, though. The email making that statement and then describing why it would be a good idea anyways was great.

    Ah well, Ximian will get to write one program and sell to the Windows and Linux markets, which is the entire point of Mono to begin with. (Anthing else is just justification for this common sense business decision.)

    • The email described why something significantly less extreme (Gnome should support .NET software, and new software should be written with .NET) is a good idea. Of course, he talks about this for Gnome 3 or 4, which are a long way off-- by that time .NET will be either totally gone, forked by Mono (as UNIX is forked by Linux), or so totally standardized that nobody can change it.

      Personally, I think that the idea of a common VM, both language and platform independent, providing runtime services (e.g., memory allocation/garbage collection) and safety (e.g., bounds checking) is a good idea. I think that .NET in particular is somewhat weaker because it was invented by Microsoft, and it is evidentally not sufficiently language-independent to be a suitable target for most languages people would like to use (C++ and python in particular, not to mention Smalltalk, Lisp, or many less common ones).

  • At least some good came out of this (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ttyRazor ( 20815 ) on Sunday February 10, 2002 @03:31PM (#2983116)
    Miguel's response to this controversy appeased a lot of my concerns about what they actually want do do with Mono, and especially his apparent admiration for Microsoft's stuff (he likes .Net, but still thinks everything that came before it is garbage). While I still disagree with his fetish for next-gen APIs over designing an actual desktop (which KDE seems much farther along with), at least he doesn't appear to be selling out to M$ as readily as it first seemed.
    • I will interestedly watch how Microsoft gets
      many C-ash for the non-ECMA-standartized classes
      and the Mono (and dotGNU, eventually) developers
      can't keep up with this, and so M$ gets much
      out of their (actually working) .NET/Win32 and
      probably for Win64.
      Then they start selling .NET/Linux (or .NET/Posix,
      anyone?) and it actually sells. Closed-source,
      of course. Being able to run Mono apps, too.

      Look at what the WINE people have done since nearly
      one decade, they start with the Win3.1 API IIRC,
      and they aren't at 1.0 yet.
      The more recent (2000-2002) WINE don't even run on
      OpenBSD, as they need some proprietary kernel stuff
      and depend on ELF being the executable format.
    • Microsoft people have ALWAYS liked 'this year's model' but thought everything that came before it is garbage.

      This is NOT different from the MS rank and file. It is, instead, a perfect mimicking of their attitudes. In three years, when .NET is dead and they are pushing something 'new and revolutionary and completely different', if he's true to type he will like the new thing and think .NET is garbage...

      ...why not skip ahead and think it's garbage now, and save a lot of trouble?

  • He was misquoted, and he straightened it out. It is amazing how many letters I have read in magazines from RMS, because they violated the gpl, or called gnu/linux linux, or whatever. I've gotta hand it to him, he doesnt take bull from anyone..

  • What we're dealing with is a total lack of respect (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Komodo ( 7029 ) on Sunday February 10, 2002 @04:25PM (#2983330) Homepage
    It's no big secret that I don't like Stallman.... however, he's had some good ideas and he gave us the GPL, one of the most useful pieces of software of the last 20 years (yes, contracts are software too!)

    So why is it that he continually manages to irritate so many people? I think the answer is, you have to think a lot like RMS in order to understand what he's saying... particularly on the first try. As a result, he's prone to miscommunication. He appears confrontational because he frequently speaks his mind in a way that's going to get misinterpreted by everyone else. So is it our fault for not understanding his 'great mind'?

    I don't think so. Richard, if you'd just have some respect for other people's 'user interfaces', you'd have a lot fewer problems, and do the community a whole world of good. RMS is not 'intuitive' or 'user friendly' for most of the world. Understanding how people communicate is critical to building effective interfaces to software. It's even more critical as a tool of persuasion. The Free Software community, like it or not, has a public face now, and you're it. Do you really want to keep hurting the community you built?
    • Don't forget the tendency of this community to interpret everything he says in as negative a way as possible.

      If he disagrees with something, everyone starts screaming about he's a ranting ideologue who's bent on coercing everyone to follow his ideals. It doesn't matter how he phrases it, it's immediately translated by the anti-RMS crowd into some kind of insane crusade against whatever he's talking about.

      Look at the current incident. Someone asks him a question that's based on faulty assumptions. He points out that the questioner might have some of his facts wrong, then says if they were right he'd disagree with it. Instantly the anti-RMS crowd comes out en masse, shrieking.

      What's next? RMS order soup with his dinner, and we get the slashdot headline "RMS blasts salad as entree choice"?

      I'm not sure why there's such a huge anti-RMS movement in the free software/open source communities. I have some theories though:

      1. Stallman has the audacity not to uncritically support everything everyone else does in the open source arena.

      2. He represents an older generation of programmers who did the real pioneering stuff, and young programmers today have self-esteem problems with recognizing anyone older than themselves.

      3. They don't like his political views.
  • Once again, The Register screws up and misrepresents the truth as some sensationalistic trash. Why am I not surprised? They can't just sit back and admit they made a mistake putting up that article and try to blame it on some other tech site. And they go on to try and demonize Miguel de Icaza a bit more at the bottom! Come on guys, what ever happened to fact checking and journalistic integrity? You wrote the article, you didn't check your facts, you were in the wrong. Admit it.

    Hah. The day The Register posts an honest retraction and admits they made a mistake without trying to weasel out of it is the day satan drives to work in a snowplow.

    I honestly can't believe the amount of crap Miguel gets, based on The Register's blatant misreporting of the truth. It's time people stopped going after leaders like Miguel and after the people who profiteer from turning the community on itself.

    All opinions expressed are opinions. Duh.

    • Wow...you really have a low opinion of the Reg, which to me sounds ridiculous. Yes, they do have sensationalist (and very funny at times) headlines. But one of their mottos is: "Integrity, we've heard of it." And if you don't read the Reg with a little bit of your tongue in your cheek then you are missing the point and you are missing out.

      However, I'd also like to point out that in the original article, they did mention exactly where they got their information: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23939.html [theregister.co.uk] ...from the Brazilian site Hotbits. And it seems to me that a journalist can do no better in reporting the truth than if he/she uses the unadulterated words of someone - RMS's full letter - to respond to their (the Reg's) statements about that person. How could they get closer to admitting that they were wrong other than saying explicitly "we were wrong" !? How is that weaseling out? They are the ones who posted the damn letter!!!! And what the hell at the bottom below RMS's letter consists of demonizing Miguel de Icaza? Here's the text below the letter, read it carefully:

      We've been promised a tape and a transcript of the Porto Alegre Q and A.

      Miguel de Icaza has issued his own clarification, here, which also amounts to "move along folks, there's nothing to see".

      On Friday he repeated his desire to base future GNOME development on the .NET APIs using work from his Mono project.

      ".NET is a fantastic technology upgrade for GNOME from Microsoft," he said.

      In the interview, he praised many aspects of .NET including SmartClients and the new Microsoft security model. ®

      And again, if you go back to this piece: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23939.html [theregister.co.uk] it really seems that they are defending Miguel rather than demonizing. It seems that most of the demonizing of Miguel (and RMS) goes on on Slashdot.

      Now, really...what the hell are you talking about?

  • Ad Hominem attacks on Richard Stallman (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Aron S-T ( 3012 ) on Sunday February 10, 2002 @04:33PM (#2983374) Homepage
    It continues to amaze me over and over, how uninformed people attack Richard Stallman not substantively, but personally - attacking the way he looks, the way he talks, but never substantively refuting what he says. It amazes me even more, how these ad hominem attacks get up-modded. Apparently there is a lot of hatred out there for people of principle.

    Well let's first get some facts straight. No one who uses GNU/Linux or any of the related free or open source software built on the Gnu/Linux platform would be enjoying the use of this stuff if it wasn't for Richard Stallman. In the mid-80s when he decided to rebuild Unix from scratch, all my geek and hacker friends who were Unix users at the time, thought he was totally nuts (just like a good part of the /. "community"). But it was precisely his unyielding, principled approach to software development that made the GNU project succeed in the end, despite the odds.

    Linus Torvald, a great programmer and a man worthy of praise, finished up what Stallman had started. But he was standing on the shoulder of a giant. If Richard Stallman feels that the OS should be called GNU/Linux he is 100% justified, whether or not its an ego issue as many here contend, or an issue of principle, as he does. Either way, as the man who made it happen, he has the right to make that demand. Whether you honor it or not is your choice. But insulting him while you continue to use the fruits of his labor is worse than hypocrisy - its theft.

    There is not one, not one person, in the free software or open source world who has contributed more to the existance of this stuff than Richard Stallman. So at the very least, he deserves the gratitude of anyone who uses this software, for whatever reason they might use it.

    To say that Richard Stallman's radical ideas are a hindrance to the acceptance of non-proprietary alternatives is absurd. This is the guy who invented the whole concept, this is the man who made it happen. It's precisely because he is fanatical and unyielding that this movement came into being. All those willing to compromise would never have stayed the course he did.

    That doesn't mean you have to accept his point of view. I personally think that in the commercial world, there is a place for BSD-style licenses, and unlike Richard Stallman I don't think these are immoral.

    Nonetheless I feel tremendous gratitude for what he has done and continues to do, I respect and admire his principled approach to his work and his life. I strongly resent the ungrateful, spiteful, empty-headed sniping that gets thrown his way in this forum. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!

    • Re:Ad Hominem attacks on Richard Stallman (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Arandir ( 19206 ) on Sunday February 10, 2002 @05:29PM (#2983649) Homepage Journal
      There are thousands of us that argue against the dialectics of RMS. Maybe you're just reading Slashdot at too low a threshold, and seeing at the ACs trying to get their jabs in.

      For someone on the other side of the fence from GNU, there is great temptation to prod him. His legendary stubborness is outmatched only by the fragility of his ego. He acts as if any dispute against his ideas is a direct personal assault. He can't stand to be wrong, and will never admit it if proven.

      This is the guy who invented the whole concept, this is the man who made it happen.

      Bullshit. He may have invented the concept of copyleft, but he certainly did not invent the concept of free software.
      • ...only because it was previously taken completely for granted, and not valued at all. The assumption was that people would share their information. Then, over a conflict between two different manufacturers of LISP machines, this assumption was obliterated- the field of battle was the MIT AI lab, the primary source of Stallman's original concept of 'free software' practice, which was destroyed.

        The people hired by the companies were required to not share information with the competing company. They had no reason to question this. When new hackers came on the scene they were simply bought up by one or the other of the companies. The AI lab became empty, no hacking going on, no information being shared with others. It died. It was killed.

        Stallman was racked with grief- and in the end, went out and codified a system by which free software COULD NOT be destroyed in that manner, using copyright to REQUIRE that the value of sharing be placed above the value of protecting a company's intellectual property. Rather than it being a personal value that could be easily swept aside, it became a licensing matter that can't legally be swept aside, establishing a body of work that is permanently 'shared' among participants in the concept of 'free software'.

        THAT is what RMS invented. Before him, it was subject to human frailties, and as such it got steamrollered, because of 'tragedy of the commons' type difficulties. Non-GPL type free software doesn't scale: as it gains in importance, other interests eventually destroy the freeness. Only GPL-type free software can scale to where it is worth vast sums of money while preserving its information sharing fully. Even BSD licensing begins to lose information sharing as it becomes incorporated into proprietary work...

        • Non-GPL type free software doesn't scale: as it gains in importance, other interests eventually destroy the freeness.

          Let's see now, we have Apache, Sendmail, Perl, Python, *BSD, XFree86, etc. All of which of scaled quite well, and none of which have been destroyed. The only problematic one of the bunch is XFree86, whose problems arose from a closed process and not a closed code base. Even with multiple companies forking off proprietary versions of X11, it still remains free. Last I checked, only one of those proprietary versions is still around, inextricably tied to proprietary hardware. On the other side of the spectrum you have Apache who can rightfully claim to be the poster boy of Free Software.

          Only GPL-type free software can scale to where it is worth vast sums of money while preserving its information sharing fully.

          I don't know of ANY Free Software that is worth vast sums of money. Some companies selling Free Software may be worth vast sums of money, but the software itself is still free as in beer. When those rumours started circulating that Redhat was being bought by AOL/TW, I checked and saw that it was still $1.99 at Cheapbytes.

          ---

          I would really like to hear the side of those LISP hackers that joined the proprietary companies. They seem to get left out of all the stories. Did copyleft force them to give stuff back, or did they just merely stop using the MIT stuff?
          • I'm not sure (and am not going to check), but I think that all of the successful non-GPL software you mention meets the Free Software definition proposed by FSF, and doesn't take advantage of the less-restrictive Open Source definition from OSI. I think that's very interesting.

            -Paul Komarek
      • Brilliant. Someone questions why people always attack Stallman with ad hominens and they don't argue his points. So Arandir replies that he always argues "against the dialectics of RMS". The rest of his message explains how RMS is stubborn and egotistical.

        Well, you sure proved Aron S-T wrong!
        • Just how is the use of the word "dialectics" an ad hominen attack? From Merriam-Webster's:


          Main Entry: di*a*lec*tic
          Pronunciation: "dI-&-'lek-tik
          Function: noun
          Etymology: Middle English dialetik, from Middle French dialetique, from Latin dialectica, from Greek dialektikE, from feminine of dialektikos of conversation, from dialektos
          Date: 14th century
          1 : LOGIC 1a(1)
          2 a : discussion and reasoning by dialogue as a method of intellectual investigation; specifically : the Socratic techniques of exposing false beliefs and eliciting truth b : the Platonic investigation of the eternal ideas
          3 : the logic of fallacy
          4 a : the Hegelian process of change in which a concept or its realization passes over into and is preserved and fulfilled by its opposite; also : the critical investigation of this process b (1) usually plural but singular or plural in construction : development through the stages of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis in accordance with the laws of dialectical materialism (2) : the investigation of this process (3) : the theoretical application of this process especially in the social sciences
          5 usually plural but singular or plural in construction a : any systematic reasoning, exposition, or argument that juxtaposes opposed or contradictory ideas and usually seeks to resolve their conflict b : an intellectual exchange of ideas
          6 : the dialectical tension or opposition between two interacting forces or elements


          Using the term "dialectics" seems downright appropriate!
          • It would not be accurate to describe your attack on Stallman as an attack on his dialectics. Rather, it is a personal attack.

      • Re:Ad Hominem attacks on Richard Stallman (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Aron S-T ( 3012 ) on Monday February 11, 2002 @12:08AM (#2985007) Homepage
        You yourself say, that your temptation to "prod" him, is a result of characteristics of his personality that you don't like. His personality is irrelevant to the the truth or falsity of his position, and should never be the subject of discussion.

        Moreover, I didn't complain about legitimate discussions about the principles of free software. I said that I myself don't agree with all of Stallman's positions.

        The point is:

        a. keep his personality and habits out of the discussion
        b. even if you disagree with him, at the very least give him your respect and thanks.

        His contribution was not just the invention of the copyleft, which you might argue (wrongly in my opinion) is just of philosophical value. His contribution was extremely practical too, by any standard. Without GNU Emacs and the GCC, and all the GNU utilities, GNU/Linux would never have happened, even if Linus had not decided to use the copyleft license. Moreover, while I admit I am no expert on this, as far as I am aware, the various BSDs also used the GCC. So even if he does nothing else for the rest of his life, we all owe him a huge debt of gratitude.
    • Richard Stallman has a wife. This means he must have had a girlfriend earlier. Therefore, he should be an inspiration to all geeks out there.
    • I'm a great big Stallman fan. And I'm always interested in hearing the comments of those who hate him so vehemently. Perhaps the attacks on him are off the mark, but I still want them to break my threshold. And moderation is *supposed* to be blind to the opinions of the poster.
    • It continues to amaze me over and over how often Richard Stallman is refuted substantively, and yet people such as this poster continue to ignore this and focus solely on the personal attacks.

      What would be the point of responding to you if you don't read the arguments?

    • Re:Ad Hominem attacks on Richard Stallman (Score:4, Funny)

      by ReadParse ( 38517 ) <john&funnycow,com> on Sunday February 10, 2002 @08:25PM (#2984279) Homepage
      I agree wholeheartedly, but GNU/Linux has never exactly rolled off the tongue. This is why I recommend a new name for the OS-soon-to-be-formerly-known-as-Linux, made up of a combination of the names of the two people primarily responsible for it's creation:

      Stalman + Linux =
      "Stalin"

      This line intentionally left blank

  • Key issues still slipping by (Score:5, Insightful)

    by alext ( 29323 ) on Sunday February 10, 2002 @04:51PM (#2983465)
    Anybody else think it's odd how both De Icaza and RMS are ignoring some key (I would say the key) issues? Neither has explicitly stated that
    • GNU/Linux/GNOME does need a cross-(hardware)-platform distribution capability equivalent to Dotnet and Java packages, otherwise uptake of apps for consumer devices will be seriously impeded. (My manager is not about to break out the C compiler in order to get a project mgmt app on his PDA)
    • There's a deep potential linkage between the right kind of Intermediate Language and Open Source. Just as it's possible to decompile Java classes and alter them today, with a GNU IL the distributed form could be semantically equivalent to the source, therefore you could only ever distribute open source
    • There are a lot of VMs being developed already - Java, Perl/Parrot, Python, Scheme etc. In fact, RMS has Guile and GNOME has Sawfish's LISP engine. Wouldn't people's efforts be better directed at consolidating some of these?
    • Lastly, though I despair of ever getting this point across to Miguel-ites, it is quite legitimate to covet some features of Dotnet and seek to offer them on Linux. These benefits, however, fall far short of what would be needed to justify a project to produce a complete clone of the platform on Linux - Miguel-ites are simply dumping their critical faculties and going into hero-worship mode to the detriment of GNOME and open source in general.

    • Re:Key issues still slipping by (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nebby ( 11637 ) on Sunday February 10, 2002 @06:39PM (#2983891) Homepage

      Miguel-ites are simply dumping their critical faculties and going into hero-worship mode to the detriment of GNOME and open source in general.

      Not really, they are making the (justifiable) descision to rely upon billions of dollars and several years of Microsoft R&D to do the thinking for them.

      I say it's a smart move, if they can get away with it.
      • Don't forget that the "Microsoft Bob" OS and "Clippy" were results of the same "billions of dollars and several years of Microsoft R&D". Go search computer science archives for the academic output of Microsoft's R&D 'machine'. Then do the same with IBM.

        Also, does MS really spend billions on R&D? I'd expect not. I'd be surprised if they cleared a half-billion on R&D. Note that programming and engineering are not traditionally part of R&D.

        -Paul Komarek

  • Uhh, Mr. Stallman.... (Score:3)

    by Eil ( 82413 ) on Sunday February 10, 2002 @07:44PM (#2984156) Homepage Journal

    "A free replacement for Visual Basic which works with GNOME would be a major step forward; any capable team that wants to launch this project should please contact gnu@gnu.org." --RMS

    Psst, Mr. Stallman sir, you've already got one: GNOME Basic [gnome.org].

  • Read what Miguel de Icaza had to say about it. (Score:4, Informative)

    by capedgirardeau ( 531367 ) on Sunday February 10, 2002 @11:50PM (#2984916)
    Miguel de Icaza wrote all about his plans and his response to RMS in an email with the subject: Mono and GNOME. The long reply. [gnome.org]

    Go read what he as to say about the .NET Framework, Mono and GNOME.

    He also replys directly to the RMS controversy.

  • "...A free replacement for Visual Basic which works with GNOME would be a major step forward; any capable team that wants to launch this project should please contact gnu@gnu.org." [RMS}

    Ya. I was having my cup of coffee this morning and thinking, "Man, it's been a long time since I've been infected with a solid high quality virus. I should go install W2k."

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