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Richard Stallman’s rider

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Re: Richard Stallman’s rider

#121

Post by sunchild »

heyrhett wrote: post #7

All of his demands are either directly related to his health or the moral causes that he champions. He is specific and verbose. Some of these things might seem strange to people who are younger than 50 years old, and aren't flown around the world to give hundreds of talks. I think that this demonstrates the value of a clear and verbose contract.

Actually, from my perspective as a contracts lawyer, this rider is far from what I would call clear. Like the GPL, it's a helpful document, and cheerfully neurotic, but it leaves lots of room for dispute and confusion. Specificity != clarity.

Likewise, verbosity is not an indicator of a good contract. To the contrary.

Re: Richard Stallman’s rider

#123

Post by chwahoo »

LeafStorm wrote: post #89

Some of the things in the rider are definitely odd, but the only one that I would really consider unreasonable is the "GNU/Linux" thing. Yes, I know that the GNU project has done a lot of work for Linux, but on the other hand there are a lot of Linux distros that do not use an all-GNU userland anymore.

I wonder what the "least-GNU" distro is at this point. Are there any that use LLVM/clang and uclibc, for example?

Re: Richard Stallman’s rider

#124

Post by pwaring »

gonzo wrote: post #112

Whatever you do, do NOT let him stay in the home of someone you respect or like. I've done it twice, and both parties ended up literally burning the sheets, and wouldn't discuss further what had happened.

Bit late, I've already done that. :) Although I don't remember hearing any horror stories, other than an amusing anecdote about how his ultra-free netbook wouldn't connect to the wireless, whereas the proprietary Macbook worked perfectly...

http://www.ukuug.org/newsletter/17.2/#repor_paul_

Re: Richard Stallman’s rider

#126

Post by Udo »

sunchild wrote: post #121
heyrhett wrote: post #7

All of his demands are either directly related to his health or the moral causes that he champions. He is specific and verbose. Some of these things might seem strange to people who are younger than 50 years old, and aren't flown around the world to give hundreds of talks. I think that this demonstrates the value of a clear and verbose contract.

Actually, from my perspective as a contracts lawyer, this rider is far from what I would call clear. Like the GPL, it's a helpful document, and cheerfully neurotic, but it leaves lots of room for dispute and confusion. Specificity != clarity. Likewise, verbosity is not an indicator of a good contract. To the contrary.

That might be because as a lawyer you're biased to prefer form over intent. I'm sorry if this sounds nasty, it's not supposed to be though. People are different. GNU/Stallman goes to great lengths to describe where he is coming from so the reader can understand what the motivations behind his points are.

It's not supposed to be a watertight contract between two parties with opposing agendas who are trying to outmaneuver each other at a soulless semantics game. Instead, the rider is supposed to enable people who already have friendly intentions to understand (and interpolate!) what is important to their guest.

Re: Richard Stallman’s rider

#127

Post by rgbrgb »

derleth wrote: post #90
stickfigure wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing is left to ambiguity? A supply of tea with milk and sugar would be nice. If it is tea I really like, I like it without milk and sugar. With milk and sugar, any kind of tea is fine. I always bring tea bags with me, so if we use my tea bags, I will certainly like that tea without milk or sugar. Really, I think he's just screwing with us. Douglas Adams would be proud.

How is that even somewhat ambiguous? Personal and, perhaps, skirting the outer edge of what a remarkably parochial person might regard as quirky, but he laid out a drink preference specific enough someone has a shopping list and doesn't have to guess. Which is what a rider is for. You don't even need to buy him tea; he explicitly says he always brings his own with him.

Well actually he does say that a supply of tea would be nice. I'm assuming he is not talking about his own supply.

Re: Richard Stallman’s rider

#128

Post by boyter »

metabrew wrote: post #105
BrandonM wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I found interesting on reading the 'rider' is that he still refers to the GNU operating system as though it is in daily use. I've yet to see a HURD based system do anything useful in production but half the world wide web seems to run on Linux these days. Of course linux is 'merely a kernel'. Considering that glib, libc, gcc, emacs, the vast majority of the Unix utilities, bash, grub, autoconf, make, readline,…

I think I have more KDE code on my computer than GNU code. Both are undeniably useful, but no one is insisting on calling it KDE/Linux.

You do http://pedrocr.net/text/how-much-gnu-in-gnu-linux

However since GNU software is the foundation on which most of the system is built you can argue that it has a much greater importance.

"Measuring software productivity by lines of code is like measuring progress on an airplane by how much it weighs"

Re: Richard Stallman’s rider

#129

Post by pjscott »

metabrew wrote: post #105
BrandonM wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I found interesting on reading the 'rider' is that he still refers to the GNU operating system as though it is in daily use. I've yet to see a HURD based system do anything useful in production but half the world wide web seems to run on Linux these days. Of course linux is 'merely a kernel'. Considering that glib, libc, gcc, emacs, the vast majority of the Unix utilities, bash, grub, autoconf, make, readline,…

I think I have more KDE code on my computer than GNU code. Both are undeniably useful, but no one is insisting on calling it KDE/Linux.

GNU is, essentially, a clone of Unix except for the kernel, which is supplied by Linux. Calling your computer a GNU system is about as accurate as calling it a Unix system. Calling it a KDE computer is also technically accurate.

You could also form stacks, like KDE/GNU/Linux, or go all the way and just draw a directed graph of the major software dependencies. This isn't a serious proposal, but I would be kind of pleased if someone actually did this.

Re: Richard Stallman’s rider

#130

Post by hcayce »

Homunculiheaded wrote: post #102
joshaidan wrote: post #30

My funniest memory of Richard Stallman is once he was invited to give the commencement speech at my local university, Lakehead University. He was pretty oblivious to the fact he was at a graduation, and not at any point in his speech did he address the students and their future. All he talked about was free software, how copyright was bad, and that the university should be using free software. Most of the students we…

I've both planned some fairly large events with speakers and worked closely with well known but 'eccentric' personalities similar rms. It's really a mixed bag as to who is to blame. On the one had the committee coming up with this should have done some research (and asked themselves "why hasn't rms done any convocations before?"). I've known organizations entertaining the idea of rms as a keynote, and it almost immed…

It's really a mixed bag as to who is to blame. On the one had the committee coming up with this should have done some research (and asked themselves "why hasn't rms done any convocations before?"). I've known organizations entertaining the idea of rms as a keynote, and it almost immediately gets shot down by anyone how has actually watched him speak.

Yeah. It seems like ordering squid at a restaurant: if you order squid or someone orders it for you, you shouldn't complain that you don't like seafood. And you can't really blame the squid.

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