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James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

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Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#101

Post by kragen »

tobias3 wrote: post #95
craigsmansion wrote: post #27

> I found these two guys who ran this little company called Unipress, it was literally two guys in a garage, and I said, "Look, this needs to be free for universities and not ridiculous for everybody else." Gosling sold them Gosling emacs. Before that he apparently "distributed it freely with no copyright notice." Although Gosling wrote Gosling Emacs, it was based on the plans he and Richard Stallman had developed fo…

I found this copy of what seems to be the source code: https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/emacs-history/blob/sources/... It has copyright notices everywhere (not that this matters). And following notice in Installation: Please remember that Emacs is copyrighted. You are free to use Emacs internally, but you are not free to redistribute it. If someone is interested in obtaining a copy of Emacs, refer them to me: So you…

Yes, many proprietary Unix programs were distributed as source code so that you could compile them on your Unix system; this was especially important before shared libraries.

It wouldn't be surprising if Gosling had at some point added copyright notices to the source code, and certainly the version Stallman was using had Gosling's copyright notices. There's a separate question of whether there was a version released without copyright notices.

Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#102

Post by lliamander »

senderista wrote: post #82
lliamander wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had to abandon some of my favorite tools when I left university. Tools, or libraries? The distinction I'm making here is between code that gets distributed with the final product, and code that only runs on your machine or just internally in the corporate network. I can understand a company not wanting to intermix GPL code with proprietary code that is shipped to customers, but not being able to use GPL software…

When I was at Amazon we were forbidden from using any GPLv3/AGPL software, including recent versions of GCC and Emacs (there was a special exception for Linux).

O_o

My sympathies. I've been able to use Emacs in every corporate setting I've worked in.

Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#104

Post by bch »

saagarjha wrote: post #36
lliamander wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't learn emacs because it's GPL, or because of who wrote it. Learn emacs because it's a great tool.

Learning great tools that aren’t under the GPL may leak to lock-in and pain in the future.

Like vi? X11? Apache httpd? GPL is great, but not the only license that worthwhile software is written in...

Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#105

Post by kragen »

ryanobjc wrote: post #51
djsumdog wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has been a lot on RMS recently with his various resignations, but this seems to be an older issue that's been known for a while. I am against call-out culture in general (people should be evaluated on their whole and not be told to resign over singular events) -- and there is stuff we can debate about RMS's behavior over time and everything -- but I have a feeling this issue is independent. If we're talking abo…

You think RMS isn't being evaluated on his whole? The accusations are various, serious, and have been out of sight and out of mind until now. The problem with calls to "evaluate people on their whole" is that it allows people to get away with serious crimes only to be forgiven because they did something nice later on. People have a moral problem with this.

Stallman has not been even accused of serious crimes, as far as I know, let alone gotten away with them. He's been accused of being an insensitive jerk and hitting on women in ways that made them uncomfortable. Both of these accusations are definitely true in some cases.

Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#106

Post by bbanyc »

strenholme wrote: post #77
kelnos wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A copyright notice is not required for copyright; by default in the US, everything copyrightable is copyrighted unless it comes with a public domain notice. If there's no license attached, or no agreement somewhere, then you do not have legal right to redistribute someone else's work, even if they gave it to you freely. Gosling was perfectly within his rights to sell gosemacs to Unipress (though note that Gosling nev…

That only started to be true in 1988, when the US adopted the Berne Convention with its copyright law. In 1981 or 1983, anything without an explicit copyright declaration was considered public domain.

I'm looking at the Gosmacs source right now, and just above the skull-and-bones warning it says "Copyright (c) 1981,1980 James Gosling"

If nothing else, Gosling had a valid copyright. Mind you, there were no license terms on any file and it was distributed as source code.

Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#107

Post by saagarjha »

bch wrote: post #104
saagarjha wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning great tools that aren’t under the GPL may leak to lock-in and pain in the future.

Like vi? X11? Apache httpd? GPL is great, but not the only license that worthwhile software is written in...

There's a couple of licenses that have generally been OK; GPL isn't necessarily the only one that secures this particular guarantee.

Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#108

Post by squarefoot »

nl wrote: post #91

It's worth noting the historical context of this: Gosling and Stallman have always been rivals. One of the reasons it took so long for Java to be open sourced was because Gosling was so adamantly against it - in part because of his hatred of Stallman. Stallman started the whole open source movement in part because he thought it was wrong that Gosling could put restrictions on distribution of Emacs.

Upvoted, not because I may agree or not with your post (I lack the necessary knowledge to comment on it) but because it encourages further discussion and merely downvoting it without giving any sound reason is plain stupid.

May I ask to those who know more to share their knowledge instead of acting as trigger happy cowboys? Thanks.

Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#109

Post by squarefoot »

Hitton wrote: post #85

This sounds quite damning and makes me reconsider Stallman's character. Nevertheless it's an account of only one party, which has to be also considered. Dunno why people who were against RMS didn't try to argument with this instead innocuous Epstein comments.

Because the Epstein comments, although just comments, were made on a subject a lot more sensitive to the eyes of general public; in this time and place once you're hit on that subject you're labeled for life.

If the purpose was to discredit RMS in order to get rid of him and affect negatively all Free Software principles, that was the way to go. Had someone used the Emacs argument, he could have replied either with details in his defense (if he had any) or alternatively tell about the number of GPL violations a lot of companies commit when they literally steal software written by volunteers for their profit without giving nothing in return, violations he and others at GNU/FSF contributed for decades to fight against, making the whole accusation of stealing Emacs code, even if proved true, next to ridicule in comparison.

I'm not saying he is being attacked on purpose by people with a hidden agenda, however the timing and the number of simultaneous attacks by multiple directions doesn't sound normal.

Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#110

Post by senderista »

catalogia wrote: post #93
senderista wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was at Amazon we were forbidden from using any GPLv3/AGPL software, including recent versions of GCC and Emacs (there was a special exception for Linux).

I never saw nor heard of that rule being applied against developers using Emacs. And of course there wouldn't be a special excemption for Linux; Linux wouldn't need to be exempted from a ban on a license it doesn't have.

I'm not sure how much it was enforced, but apparently unlike you, I took the time to read the Open Source Policy, and I stand by what I wrote as of 2014. Why don't you do the same before you downvote?

PS Why don't you check which version of GCC is currently used in Brazil? It was years out of date when I was there for the reasons I described.

PPS I was wrong about Linux being licensed under GPLv3: it is GPLv2. I apologize for not checking that before I posted.

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