Very narrow minded in my option. There's a reason why people prefer an iPad over a Lemote Yeelong. There is more to life than principles. I do respect his opinion but if he would like to continue to make a difference in the open software community he could stop spending so much time in email and concentrate on technology advancements and how to promote open source.
Richard Stallman's Computer Setup
71–80 of 262 posts
Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't take this the wrong way but I personally feel that the GPL is not a free software license, I feel it's a community software license. BSD is a free software license, BSD code is truly yours, you want to create a proprietary fork you can do it, you want to create a GPLed fork you can do it, you want to expand the BSD code base you can do it. One thing I really love about BSD licensed code is that I feel like I ow…
>you want to create a proprietary fork you can do it Why should you be allowed to take away the Freedoms of others? The one thing the GPL restricts is your Freedom to restrict the Freedom of others. That's the foundation of copyleft: your rights stop where mine begin, and that includes being granted the four Freedoms of software as defined by the FSF. In an ideal world, we would not need the GPL. Everyone would have…
> Why should you be allowed to take away the Freedoms of others?
No one's freedom is being taken away when you create a proprietary fork. They are not forced to use your software, and the original is still intact. You do not automatically have a right to someone else's creation.
I don't mind paying for software, and I don't mind if they don't let me see their code the same way I don't mind when my local restaurant doesn't let me inspect their kitchen just because I want to.
Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup
#73Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
What limitations does the GPL license place on a web startup? AGPL, yes, but GPL?
If you ever license a product to another company (ie. GitHub FI), you have to be GPL compliant.
And during an acquisition GPL'ed software dependencies is at the very least a yellow flag to be fully investigated....
Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
He probably e-mails his assistant to do it, just like he speaks out against cell phones but will just ask to borrow someone else's. http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/10/27/rms-cell-phones Edit: according to http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html he does use normal web browsers from time to time and even has a Twitter account for posting comments on websites. For text articles, his script probably just runs s…
RMS said he would ask someone nearby for a phone, not necessarily a cell phone. Landline phones don't use software, they're a microphone connected to some wires. But you can't exactly carry one around with you. Not sure why John Gruber cares about this, but...
These days, if you ask someone for a phone and you are more than a few feet away from a landline, you're asking for a cell phone. To say otherwise is being disingenuous.
To me, it demonstrates a far less altruistic motivations.
Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup
#76You have to give the guy some credit; Stallman believes in the free software movement, fights for it, and refuses to compromise his rights or values.
Richard Stallman is to software what Jean-Paul Sartres was to philosophy during his time and still now. JPS like RMS was living through his convictions and ideas to the point of refusing the Nobel prize because it would have tinted his motivations. RMS would do the same without any questions. Don't get them wrong: these people are not fanatic, they are just living and breathing a cause they started for a good reason.…
> RMS would [refuse a Nobel] without any questions.
Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
As the FSF would point out, the free software movement is different from open source. If there was no free software movement, or a prohibition on GPL'ed software, then Google could have used other open source tools (eg, *BSD) instead. One serious concern in the FSF seems to be that a large, programmer-centric company like Google could rewrite most free software, should the license not be compatible with the business…
> As the FSF would point out, the free software movement is different from open source. They point this out and it's philosophically true, but are there actually any licenses that meet the definition of "open source" but not the definition of "free software" (or vise versa)? All of the ones that people actually use (GPL, LGPL, BSD, MIT, ISC, and Apache, I think that basically covers it) appear to pass both DFSG and O…
Going through the list of licenses which the FSF considers not-free but which are listed on opensource.org as "open source": NASA Open Source Agreement 1.3 (NASA 1.3), Reciprocal Public License (RPL 1.5). I'm hard pressed to think of something which can be considered free software but not open source.
My point though is that you commingled the free software movement with open source efforts. Google etc. could have implemented what they needed from various open source projects which existed at the time but were not part of the free software development.
The major exception, of course, being gcc. It's only now with LLVM that gcc has a serious open source alternative. (I assign that term carefully; LLVM is not part of the free software movement.)
Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can't (technically) use GPL'd code inside your iOS application. Web startups don't generally build iOS apps, they build web apps. > GPL is not the greatest license, that's why they created LGPL (to remove some of its stupid restrictions) and even that wasn't enough... Enough for whom? Microsoft? I know it's hard to believe, but some people do not have "allow companies to benefit from my work without giving back…
The iOS example was just to name one of many limitations of using GPL code. > Enough for whom? Microsoft? No, for developers themselves. Dynamic vs. static linking mess etc. > ...some people do not have "allow companies to benefit from my work without giving back anything in return" as their top priority. But in reality, that doesn't happen a lot - to name a few on top of my head: Webkit, PostgreSQL, Minix, LaTeX, Mo…
> The iOS example was just to name one of many limitations of using GPL code.
And is utterly irrelevant to the question that was asked.
> No, for developers themselves. Dynamic vs. static linking mess etc.
What mess? The requirements of the LGPL are clear, and in most cases quite trivial to meet.
> But in reality, that doesn't happen a lot - to name a few on top of my head: Webkit, PostgreSQL, Minix, LaTeX, Mozilla's softwares (to some extent), Apache and MIT's softwares and many other applications (and PHP, Python and Lua if I'm not mistaken).
All you've done is name some projects that happen to use non-GPL licenses in whole or part. You don't think companies take their output and use them in their own products without contributing back?
I have to ask, do you actually work in the software industry? Because it's not just common, it's pretty much universal to take liberally-licensed code, use it in a proprietary product, and give nothing back to anyone. Can you come up with companies that do contribute at least something back? Sure, but they're not the majority.
> It's like giving others a choice to be a bad guy or a good guy. In many cases, given the choice, people would contribute back to the community.
Actually, it's stating that they can use certain code under certain conditions. This, too, is universal, but more often the condition is "give me a bunch of money, don't tell anyone what's in the box, and if you become successful, give me a bunch more money".
Somehow, some set of people like yourself have found it in themselves to be offended by the notion that people might want to bargain with something other than currency.
Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup
#79Wonder if this netbook has open source hard disk firmware?
Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup
#80Are there really no other fully free systems available on the market by now?