Re: OT: Stallman visit

[Kalum / Grendel <kalum delrom ro>]

On  Thu, 26 Jul 2001, Steve Pardee commented thusly,

> Grendel,
>
> If you want to go on and license your code for fair or even extortive
> prices, that is perfectly in accord with the Linux model.  You might not
> make too many friends, but that is your choice.  Richard Stallman might
> be a little eccentric, but we need a staunch foil to the coercive types
> like Bill Gates who are pro-actively quashing innovation.

We have another example one IMHO who is more understanding and a better
more "practical" person than RMS, and he is Linus Torvalds.

>Would you
> prefer to be in Mr. Gates camp?  Stallman is a hero in my eyes.  Just a
> thought.

RMS is one of the most brilliant compiler authors and has made a massive
influence to the way of software developement by way of the GPL. But also
we must understand that some of his ideas are not practical, just like
pure communism is not and never will be practical. Just for a example the
ideas of communism are indeed humane and laudible and benefit society but
they never can be longlasting or practical, which is why there are no
"pure" communist states in existance that are doing well, all have more or
less open economys.

Likewise RMS has good ideas, but they must be flexible, for example his
insistance that any software that is to be run on the HURD should be free
is absurd and is counter productive to the Free software cause.

A inescapable fact is that Money is the key to everything in our society,
it is a overiding need of every human (that is sane or wants to live), and
any idea that goes against the idea of making money is unlikely to last
long or make much impact just like communism. If linus insisted that his
OS is about freedom and that all software run on it should eb free, then
it wont have even got 1 thousandth of the users it has now.

I am not a Gates fan, but lets give him (gates) his due too, Microsoft has
done a laudible job in bringing computing to the mases, Gates vision of "a
computer in every home" is as important and has had a significant impact
on he 20th centuary as RMS's Free software vision, but Gates fell into the
trap of finance (we all flal to it sooner or later ;)) which made the
statement to be "a computer in every home running windoze" which is why we
suffer ;)

Best Wishes,
Grendel


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