Re: [OFFTOPIC] RMS and reactions to him

Horst von Brand
2003-01-15T16:30:11Z

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Mark Mielke <mark@mark.mielke.cc> said:

[...]

> In actual fact, I don't want RMS to stop. I believe that his religious
> attachment to his ideals has allowed a sort of 'grand unification' of
> compatible beliefs. RMS didn't invent freedom. But he, and his
> organization, do an excellent job of representing freedom (even if they
> try to [re]define it to suit their agenda...).

Please do remember that most of the horrors seen last century (and much
before that too) were the result of people that genuinely believed they
somehow owned the truth, and if the world did not conform to their visions,
much the worse for the world. That you might be somewhat in agreement to
some narrow religious vision doesn't mean your sort of deviationism will be
tolerated in any form if they happen to succeed.

One of the things that attract me to the OSS movement is the tolerance and
openness (as shown by the existence of an open-for-all forum like this, for
instance).

[...]

> But, he shouldn't have to be. In the linux-devel newsgroups, the
> opinion that Linus was a pawn in RMS's master plan needs to be
> squashed. Not only is it completely false, but it is disrespectful to
> every contributor of Linux up unto this point. RMS's master plan takes
> it for granted that a large number of skilled people have
> compatible-enough beliefs. He assumes that this means that they *are*
> his people, and not that they are willing to collaborate with his
> movement.

There are people around who are _against_ GPL on quite valid grounds,
prefering BSD licence, Artistic, Knuth's "do as you wish, don´t distribute
changed versions", what have you. Others just think GPL is a nice form of a
(legally binding) licence that usefully preserves certain rights for the
writers and their licencees, and wouldn't care less for the "free software
everything" ideas that come with it. Then there are those who prefer to
pick and choose a license on a case by case basis. They aren't all "willing
to cooperate" on anything, each one has their own agenda (Bazaar, not
cathedral, remember?). OSS is much, much larger than FSF.

Also remember that all the previous attempts at creating a meaningful
community failed (BSD, FSF, X11, etc never got really anywhere on their
own). The whole thing started going with Linux (the kernel). The
development model was later applied to (by then) moribund FSF efforts, like
gcc (remember the EGCS fiasco?), and gave them (new) life.

> Some of us don't mind getting a little mud on ourselves to stand up
> for what we believe in. Passionate outbursts? Damn right. :-) It means
> we have a heart beating inside our chests.

Amen.
--
Dr. Horst H. von Brand User #22616 counter.li.org
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Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria +56 32 654239
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