I won't say I am supporting RMS or not. Actually I think Jobs was a man with great talent, but I don't like him. I think most of you overreacted on "I'm not glad he's dead, I'm glad he's gone". RMS expressed clearly that he don't agree with the achievements that Jobs reached in his short life. This is a personal opinion. You can't force everyone to agree with what Jobs has done. After all RMS said "I'm not glad he's gone." That's enough. I think there is nothing to argue for.
Time to fork the FSF
111–120 of 340 posts
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#112I don't get it, personally. Yes, Stallman's a loon - although as an aside I think that every good movement needs its loons. Who's going to say "you know what? I believe in Free Software so much that I will use nothing else, and publicly and harshly declare that anyone doing otherwise is a moron and a traitor to the future of humanity"? Anyone who is willing to sacrifice the usefulness of the last 30 years of propriet…
I am not everyone, but I believe that people deserve a little respect when they pass, even if they antagonized you in life.
There are perhaps exceptions in those who are essentially disgraces to the human race, but in general... Death is the one thing that binds us all. We all share the same destination. Have a little class. Even Gates had something nice to say, and I'm sure if Gates passed first, Jobs would have had something as well.
Death is not a time for bitterness.
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#113RMS has the FSF and Defective By Design sites as soapboxes if he wished to gain more attention from Jobs's death. This was a post on his political notes page. He did nothing to publicize it. He didn't post to aggregators or tweet to ask for upvotes (technically it was posted on his Identi.ca account which is linked to his political notes feed, but it got no special treatment). If some major sites hadn't picked up on…
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Re: Time to fork the FSF
#114I don't get it, personally. Yes, Stallman's a loon - although as an aside I think that every good movement needs its loons. Who's going to say "you know what? I believe in Free Software so much that I will use nothing else, and publicly and harshly declare that anyone doing otherwise is a moron and a traitor to the future of humanity"? Anyone who is willing to sacrifice the usefulness of the last 30 years of propriet…
The issue is not at all with his opinion. It is that he expressed it in a horrendously, gratuitously crass and offensive way. Here is a transliteration into humane language of what he said: "My heart goes out to Steve Jobs' family in their time of grief. And my heart also goes to the millions of people who looked up to him as an icon and inspiration. But we need to not get so carried away honoring the dead that we fo…
>Maybe RMS sees a subtle distinction between death and gone-ness in his head. But I promise you that people in grief see absolutely no distinction between the death and the loss of the person they mourn.
It is not legitimate for the mass of HN to be "in grief" because of Steve Jobs's death. You may be sad, but certainly no grieving period should be necessary for strangers.
Stallman was not overtly disrespectful imo, and there's a solid distinction between "gone" and "dead". "Gone" can mean retired just as well as it could mean dead -- the point is that that person is no longer influential in the circles they were affecting.
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#115I'm aware of Stallman's advocacy on free software issues, but (completely honest question), what else does the Free Software Foundation do ? Software is at a point where its basically impossible to make anything useful without opensource software. Proprietary code is a minority in my stack both as a developer and as a user. Proprietary software is often good before opensource software is good, but consistently openso…
Be careful about conflating the Free Software Foundation with the Open Source Initiative. Free software is about distributing source code for moral reasons, while open source is about distributing source code for utilitarian reasons.
I think you're right; if open source hasn't won, it's doing pretty well. But as far as the FSF is concerned that's doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. The FSF isn't going to declare victory until they bring everybody around to their moral point of view.
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#116I don't get it, personally. Yes, Stallman's a loon - although as an aside I think that every good movement needs its loons. Who's going to say "you know what? I believe in Free Software so much that I will use nothing else, and publicly and harshly declare that anyone doing otherwise is a moron and a traitor to the future of humanity"? Anyone who is willing to sacrifice the usefulness of the last 30 years of propriet…
Loon is NOT an adjective that you can apply to Stallman. loon n 1: a worthless lazy fellow He is certainly not that. He founded the GNU project. Authored the GPL. Wrote dozens of open source applications. And overall contributed a lot to free software. Choose your words carefully!
I always thought loon was a shortened term for "lunatic". Not that I'm calling RMS one.
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#117I don't get it, personally. Yes, Stallman's a loon - although as an aside I think that every good movement needs its loons. Who's going to say "you know what? I believe in Free Software so much that I will use nothing else, and publicly and harshly declare that anyone doing otherwise is a moron and a traitor to the future of humanity"? Anyone who is willing to sacrifice the usefulness of the last 30 years of propriet…
How long can you justify Stallman's behavior as Stallman being Stallman before you recognize the damage it does to the movement?
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but RMS is simply wrong, here. Jobs has put great software into more hands than RMS ever did. Jobs might well have (indirectly) had an even more positive influence on FOSS by spreading BSD. (I'm not saying that there isn't a ton of FOSS out there in lots of hands -- but RMS isn't responsible for its being there in the same way Jobs is responsible. Jobs is responsible for the iPhone. RMS isn't responsible for And…
Jobs has put great software into more hands than RMS ever did. You do realize that Apple has been dependent on GCC to build its products for most of Jobs' second tenure, don't you? Some of that is code that RMS personally wrote. The GPL license that, again, RMS personally wrote covers the kernel of the Android system. "Great software" that's in "more hands" than Jobs' devices. Jobs was a slick businessman like Gates.…
You do realize that Apple has been dependent on GCC to build its products for most of Jobs' second tenure, don't you? Some of that is code that RMS personally wrote.
They've also been the most significant backer of a successful replacement for GCC.
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
I upvoted you to encourage you to tell us why you downvoted it.
I downvoted it because it's incredibly presumptive. OP posits that "at worst, [Jobs] would have said nothing..." apparently on nothing but his assumption that Steve Jobs would never do a controversial thing, or a thing that the OP thought was tasteless. Unless OP is a close friend of Steve Jobs and knew him well on a personal level, this is completely baseless speculation based on OP's general good feelings for Apple…
Its not hard to imagine that Jobs would react much the way most of his own rivals have reacted, the way normal decent human beings do, with class and respect. My post was less about guessing something about Steve Jobs's character and more about letting readers reflect upon just how abnormal and deranged RMS's comments are compared to any others.
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#120I'm sorry, but - what a nutcase. Silently accepts Stallman's years of nasty comments, cynical attitudes, world-wide conspiracy theories and downright condescension all through. Then Stallman says something unfriendly about god^H^H^H Jobs, and he resigns. Oh, come on.