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Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

alexeymk.com

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Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#101

Post by jonhendry »

doki_pen wrote: post #85
schrototo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... proofs were lacking on both sides ... religious fundamentalists (either christians or muslims). These are equally ridiculous statements. We know who did it, we know how they did it, we know why they did it. People just can't accept that enormous events can have relatively simple causes.

It's ridiculous to think that there is no possibility that there were people who could have prevented it, but choose not to.

To the extent this is a possibility, it's more likely they didn't know exactly what 'it' was going to be, and were expecting something comparatively minor.

Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#103

Post by Sukotto »

mbateman wrote: post #29

Just a quick thought from skimming this thread: It seems like there are two issues, radicalism and eccentricity. Saying that the government may have caused 9/11 is eccentric. It's crazy and "radical" in an uninteresting way, and most intelligent people will ignore it. But the idea that one shouldn't use Google docs if one values freedom is radical. I think RMS is completely and totally wrong, but the radicalism or ap…

I believe that radicals are the most influential when they contrast against (and serve as a warning about ignoring) the moderates.

Imho, the problem the FSF has is that they don't have a MLK to Stallman's Malcolm X.

Eben Moglen? maybe? Is he active anymore?

Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#104

Post by cookiecaper »

nddrylliog wrote: post #65
emilsedgh wrote: post #8

A few points i would like to remind everyone who criticizes rms. 1) rms is a radical guy. You cannot change that. He fights for what he thinks is right. He is not the kind of person you can ask to censor himself. If he thinks u.s goverment is to blame for 9/11, no matter how saying it in a lecture seems childish, he will say it. If you invite rms for a lecture, he is coming with his radicalism. That is to be expected…

> he [...] wrote gcc it's a fair assumption to believe that most or his code was rewritten (hey, since gcc 1.x we've had several major versions, plus the egcs merger, etc.) this can't be outlined strongly enough.

Why does it matter? Of course software goes through some major changes over the course of several years. That doesn't mean he shouldn't be credited with launching the project, including providing its early codebase. The fact that something is more advanced now doesn't mean it was a trivial piece of software in the first place -- you have to have some pretty serious chops to end up with even early versions of gcc.

Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#105

Post by cookiecaper »

cgray4 wrote: post #78
yahelc wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like he's referred to frequently as 'Dr. Stallman', including on gnu.org. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%22Dr....

Yuck.

While I know that the regular practice is to refrain from calling recipients of honorary doctorates "doctor", I think that in some cases it's reasonable. Stallman is definitely more deserving of the title than many "real" Dr.s that you'd find.

Maybe universities need a new class of degree called "honorary doctorate and we mean it for this guy".

Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#106

Post by btilly »

blhack wrote: post #99
andywood wrote: post #61

I dislike the idea that every single leader in the world must only conduct themselves according to Dale Carnegie, as it were. There is an over-abundance of people doing just that, and judging from this post and many of the comments, a lot of people seem to want others to conform to that sort of uniform "persuasive" behavior. I'm not saying it isn't effective, but surely not everybody needs to do that. Isn't there roo…

Of course there is, but I think in some ways it hurts RMS, and it hurts the image of the FSF. A good friend of mine (a fellow hacker, actually a much much better hacker than me) and I were talking about Richard Stallman the other day. The guy deserves an enormous amount of credit for his contributions to humanity. Think about what happened as a result of GCC. Think of how many things were enabled because of that. Rig…

George Bernard Shaw put it very well many years ago, The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

If RMS were more reasonable, it would be easier to recognize him for his accomplishments. However he'd be less likely to have those accomplishments.

Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#107

Post by Karzyn »

blhack wrote: post #97
8877workgold wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over 20 years ago, I attained the PROFESSIONAL ENGINEER's License and have volunteered in many VOLUNTEER ORGANIZATIONS. These include 'open source' and the A.S.M.E. Which DIRECTLY AFFECTS YOU. How? The Supreme Court Case - called Hydrolevel showed that the voluntary organization was 'corrupt' and 'friendly relations' and even 'cult of PERSONALITY' played a part. every time your car or plane does NOT crash and you are…

The lighter text does a really awesome job of highlighting the spam (so we can skip it). It would be really great if there was a threshold where the entire comment was just collapsed (reddit does this, and it looks really nice) /just a thought

You can collapse threads with the hckr news extension (http://hckrnews.com/about.html).

Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#108

Post by yxhuvud »

Sukotto wrote: post #103
mbateman wrote: post #29

Just a quick thought from skimming this thread: It seems like there are two issues, radicalism and eccentricity. Saying that the government may have caused 9/11 is eccentric. It's crazy and "radical" in an uninteresting way, and most intelligent people will ignore it. But the idea that one shouldn't use Google docs if one values freedom is radical. I think RMS is completely and totally wrong, but the radicalism or ap…

I believe that radicals are the most influential when they contrast against (and serve as a warning about ignoring) the moderates. Imho, the problem the FSF has is that they don't have a MLK to Stallman's Malcolm X. Eben Moglen? maybe? Is he active anymore?

But on the other hand, if we instead choose licences and the GPL as Malcolm X, then there definitely is a MLK in BSD.

Do the BSD and BSDish licences have any front people the same way GPL do in Stallman?

Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

#109

Post by flomo »

emilsedgh wrote: post #22
dget wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that he's become less practical and more radical over time, though. When asked, he doesn't program very much any more, devoting his time instead to championing free software in an idea that some (such as Alexey) would argue isn't practical.

Actually, rms 'won' his initial battle, which was having a free operating system. Now there are thousands of people helping free softwares to improve. He would be just another programmer if he keeps coding. What im trying to say is, if he doesnt code anymore, its probably because he doesnt think that would be a necessary contribution anymore. Or maybe he is simply tired of coding :)

> He would be just another programmer if he keeps coding.

Wouldn't that be better than being just a gadfly? At least that's my impression; RMS will appear on some group or maillist, drop a bomb, tell everyone they're doing it wrong, and then disappear while the flamewar blazes, accomplishing nothing constructive in the process.

And, in this community, everyone's status is based primarily on their programming, including Richard Stallman's.

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