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| Authored by: FreeChief on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 11:34 AM EDT |
| He writes under the headline "sex, software, and firearms". He says Richard
Stallman offends some people. Some people are offended by putting sex and
firearms together. So what? Why did I bother to hit the reply button? There's
nothing worth saying about this. It doesn't matter what he
thinks.
— Programmer in Chief
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 12:05 PM EDT |
I wouldn't agree that RMS has forgotten his aim. He just has the awkward
position of having been in the position to lead something massive, and not being
a very good celebrity (just right).
Isn't ESR the guy who coined "Open Source"?
Haven't RMS and him been at loggerheads ever since Netscape turned into
Mozzila?
Yes, RMS is generally right about what's important. Yes, ESR is better at
getting PHBs to accept that what's right is actually good for them. Yes, RMS
may not be the easiest person to talk to. Yes, guns are important. No, we
aren't going to see improvement in anything really important in our lifetime.
Can't we all just get along?[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: jbb on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 12:19 PM EDT |
| ESR has a much smaller vision of the world than RMS. Unfortunately ESR has no
comprehension of this limitation so he assumes any mismatch between his own
world-view and that of RMS means RMS is wrong.
---
Our job is to
remind ourselves that there are more contexts
than the one we’re in now — the one that we think is reality.
-- Alan Kay [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: tiger99 on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 01:08 PM EDT |
| The world needs a proportion of highly intelligent people to be fanatics.
Without such uncompromising people, the oppressive and ultimately destructive
influence of mindless corporations like M$ would do a lot more harm than it
does, amongst other things. Fanatics, or zealots, do not necessarily have all
the social skills of average people, but more than make up for that by what they
achieve for society as a whole. I don't agree with everything RMS says and
does, but I do totally respect his uncompromising stand on software freedom,
which almost directly benefits billions of people. How many everyday things,
used worldwide. only work the way they do, i.e. being fully interoperable,
because the GPL kept the source from being butchered and manipulated into the
core of some fiendishly non-standard proprietary thing? The "OSS" licenses, BSD
etc, do not protect the originators of the code, or the public at large, from
exploitation by mindless mega-corporations. The GPL does. It happens to need
fanatics of a slightly different sort to enforce it too. I know very little
about the Busybox developers, for instance, but they also, by taking a firm
stand against copyright violation, have also benefitted the entire world. If
we did not have people fanaticaly defending freedom, where would we be? Serfs of
M$, or even worse, SCO? [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: betajet on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 02:01 PM EDT |
| Winston Churchill once defined a fanatic as "someone who cannot change his mind,
and cannot change the subject". I think RMS matches this definition
pretty well. I also think RMS is usually right, and I'm very grateful for what
he's done. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: MadTom1999 on Tuesday, June 12 2012 @ 07:56 AM EDT |
First you realise RMS is lunatic
Then you realise he's a fanatic
Then you laugh
And realise he was right all along
I generally find it is easier to believe RMS rather than spend 10 years trying
to prove him wrong and failing and then adopting his POV. I am very very glad he
is a fanatic.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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- +1 - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 01:28 PM EDT
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| Authored by: old joe on Sunday, June 17 2012 @ 06:26 AM EDT |
RMS is unreasonable.
Just remember that only unreasonable people have ever changed the world.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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