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James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

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Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#61

Post by TheNorthman »

peterkelly wrote: post #43
TheNorthman wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anyway he can get the stolen items back though? He should either go to the police and request them to help him get the stolen items back. Or maybe talk to his insurance company, they might help to compensate him for the loss. But a helpful idea; if they've stolen something and then put copies of that on a website that is freely accessible, I would suggest just copying it, so that both him and they have the s…

It might surprise you to know that many people believe in, and is codified in law in most countries, the concept of intellectual property: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property In fact it is this very idea, and the notion that an author of a work should be able to dictate the terms under which it may be distributed, that underlies the concept of copyleft on which the GNU General Public License is based.…

Morality differs from legality, a distinction you yourself make late in your comment. It's also a distinction that renders the first two-thirds of your comment pointless.

Yes, I am aware of, so called, intellectual property. I can only assume you knew that I was aware of it. So what is your point?

Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#62

Post by kragen »

trn wrote: post #56
lliamander wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fen Labalme did confirm Stallman's claim, but could not find the email; remember this is in the days of backups on 9-track tapes. Ah, good to know, thanks! > This is true in a very limited way, but by itself it is a very misleading partial truth. Stallman gave Gosling credit for Gosmacs, not for EMACS. > Stallman had been working on EMACS on ITS on the PDP-10 for years before Gosling started writing his version, bu…

Multics Emacs was the second Emacs to be implemented in Lisp, not the first. The first was Lisp Machine Emacs, known as EINE, (EINE Is Not Emacs) from 1977, while Multics Emacs is from 1978. (See also rms’ acknowledgement in the footnotes of the transcript of his speech to the International Lisp Conference of 28-OCT-2002.)

Thank you for the corrections!

Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#64

Post by djsumdog »

saul_goodman wrote: post #37
smcl wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold up, is there something wrong with: 1. the #metoo movement 2. the idea that someone would want to tell their side of a famous story ? Even ignoring the above (though I hope you're not insinuating some issue with #1) this is a few minutes, roughly halfway through ~6 hours of video. It's not like Gosling has set out to make a hit-piece on RMS

Uh, yes, there is something very wrong with #1. Certainly exposing bad actors is good. But making all men the enemy is even worse and that's what that movement turned into. And anyone who thinks this RMS story is casually coming up now by random chance is naive. Stallman is under active attacked and the storm has not finished raging. You can disagree on whether it's deserved, but it's VERY old news that was done with…

Heidi Matthews's is a Canadian law professor who's done interviews with several different podcasts about all the issues with the #metoo movement. I highly recommend listening to her.

On the surface, bringing attention to sexual abuse is not bad and it is important to bring out how much of it exists. At the same time, prosecution requires evidence and it's very difficult to prove these types of crimes. Many people prominent in the metoo movement want legislative changes, which are quite worrisome.

RMS is an interesting case. He is a weird one. He's idealistic, in some cases to a fault. The guy refuses to buy AmTrak tickets because he can't buy them in cash and doesn't want to be tracked. I can admire is idealism in some ways, even thought it is a bit extreme.

He also has rubbed a number of women the wrong way, is a kinda weird dude, and has a lot of controversial political opinions. I do agree his words from the original e-mails were twisted in most of the call outs for him to be removed. It may have still been a stupid thing to say, but there is discussion and then there's like "You need to go," and the later is happening a lot right now and it's pretty distributing.

It has a chilling effect and it's going to make more people afraid to say anything. I highly recommend the book The Coddling of the American Mind, which goes into depth on this new emergent call-out culture in academia today.

Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#65

Post by buckminster »

devicetray0 wrote: post #24
sp332 wrote: post #2

There's a transcript https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20... This part starts at the bottom of page 29. Edit: I suspect the professor mentioned there is Mike Shamos and the transcript misspelled his name. http://euro.ecom.cmu.edu/shamos.html

Thanks for posting that... Here's the core piece: > And then Stallman freaks and he gets a copy of my source code, does a whole lot of editing. He doesn't actually-- You know, he edits, like, almost all of the copyright headers, but he doesn't edit all of them and he only kind of thinly edits it and then he re-releases it as GNU Emacs. And then IBM and Digital Equipment pick that up and start distributing it. So thes…

And right after that Gosling describes how he did much the same thing with Wirth's pascal compiler! He thinks that's OK because there was no copyright notice attached.

Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#66

Post by watwut »

saul_goodman wrote: post #37
smcl wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold up, is there something wrong with: 1. the #metoo movement 2. the idea that someone would want to tell their side of a famous story ? Even ignoring the above (though I hope you're not insinuating some issue with #1) this is a few minutes, roughly halfway through ~6 hours of video. It's not like Gosling has set out to make a hit-piece on RMS

Uh, yes, there is something very wrong with #1. Certainly exposing bad actors is good. But making all men the enemy is even worse and that's what that movement turned into. And anyone who thinks this RMS story is casually coming up now by random chance is naive. Stallman is under active attacked and the storm has not finished raging. You can disagree on whether it's deserved, but it's VERY old news that was done with…

I think that what happens is that when people were wronged in the past, they don't get amnesia. They talk about it when topic becomes relevant or associated.

People have memory.

When people were wronged a lot in the past, they remember it bitterly a lot. Which again, makes them even more likely to recall it and talk about it when those who wronged them are talked about and suddenly not untouchable.

Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#67

Post by AlexCoventry »

Isamu wrote: post #29
tjr wrote: post #20

From a 2002 Stallman lecture: There was no free software Emacs editor that ran on Unix. I did, however, have a friend who had participated in developing Gosling's Emacs. Gosling had given him, by email, permission to distribute his own version. He proposed to me that I use that version. Then I discovered that Gosling's Emacs did not have a real Lisp. It had a programming language that was known as ‘mocklisp’, which l…

>I concluded I couldn't use it and had to replace it all Which happened over time. He used it as a starting point, replaced some important parts first and gradually rewrote everything. This took some time. Meanwhile the partial rewrite was being distributed. It's not a black-and-white story of theft versus clean rewrite. Also I don't recall Gosling Emacs having any license terms included with the code ... and I studi…

Google Cache, since jwz is re-directing that link, now. :-)

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:G9nZNd...

Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#68

Post by smcl »

saul_goodman wrote: post #37
smcl wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold up, is there something wrong with: 1. the #metoo movement 2. the idea that someone would want to tell their side of a famous story ? Even ignoring the above (though I hope you're not insinuating some issue with #1) this is a few minutes, roughly halfway through ~6 hours of video. It's not like Gosling has set out to make a hit-piece on RMS

Uh, yes, there is something very wrong with #1. Certainly exposing bad actors is good. But making all men the enemy is even worse and that's what that movement turned into. And anyone who thinks this RMS story is casually coming up now by random chance is naive. Stallman is under active attacked and the storm has not finished raging. You can disagree on whether it's deserved, but it's VERY old news that was done with…

We're not going to see eye to eye on #1 - it is most certainly not about making all men the enemy. I suggest you ask the women in your life about it and take extra care to listen to what they have to say.

Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#69

Post by Sniffnoy »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #67
Isamu wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I concluded I couldn't use it and had to replace it all Which happened over time. He used it as a starting point, replaced some important parts first and gradually rewrote everything. This took some time. Meanwhile the partial rewrite was being distributed. It's not a black-and-white story of theft versus clean rewrite. Also I don't recall Gosling Emacs having any license terms included with the code ... and I studi…

Google Cache, since jwz is re-directing that link, now. :-) https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:G9nZNd...

It's not him redirecting that link; he redirects all links from HN by checking the Referer. If you copy and paste the URL it works fine.

Re: James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video]

#70

Post by cptskippy »

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…

They were discussing University licenses and legal battles that lead Gosling to include a license in his source for Emacs.

> Gosling: But then then there was at one point I kinda realized at one point um I was ither I was ither going to be Mr. Emacs for the rest of my life or graduate. I couldn't actually do both um so I decided I wanted to graduate.

> Interviewer: So then but your display algorithm got incorporated by Richard Stallman into GNU Emacs?

> Gosling: Well Actually it was more than that. He just took all the source code.

> Interviewer: oh ok

> Gosling: Right? It was.. It started out as all of the source code and he just edited the copyright notices.

> Interviewer: Really? So he just essentially stole your program?

> Gosling: Yeah so um

> Interviewer: And claimed it as his own?

> Gosling: Yeah

At this point Gosling reiterates his revelation about either graduating or remaining "Mr. Emacs" and the explains how he went around to "all the usual suspects" at MIT and UCLA asking if anyone wanted to take up maintenance of Emacs. Everyone turned him down, including Stallman who Gosling said responded with a "frothing hell no" and explained that Stallman's position was that Unix was the spawn of the devil.

Gosling then discusses University licenses, litigation, IP, and opensource as reasons why he decided to license Emacs and ask for letters acknowledging the license from people he distributed the source code to.

Gosling then explains how the license for Emacs ended up with two guys in a garage but never actually says that he sold it to them, just that Emacs should remain free for universities. He explained how when Stallman found out about the license transfer, Stallman freaked out. Gosling then expresses some remorse he felt for the two guys in a garage because Stallman proceeded to release GNU Emacs and, despite legal victories against DEC and IBM, the two guys were force to abandon Emacs because they had no legal recourse against Stallman.

The interviewer then asked why no one went after Stallman and Gosling explained that Stallman was essentially homeless and you gain nothing from suing a homeless man. Gosling was trying to explain delicately and uncomfortably that Stallman had different views on economic models when the interviewer then took a jib at Stallman's hygiene. Gosling, who is already visibly uncomfortable discussing the topic, deflected by saying that they had different opinions and that Gosling preferred to have food on the table and a roof over his head.

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