Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Richard Stallman on The Setup

richard.stallman.usesthis.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 106 posts

Re: Richard Stallman on The Setup

#71

Post by nzmsv »

elblanco wrote: post #55
weavejester wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often it's the people that refuse to compromise that make the world a better place. Do you think Martin Luther King should have compromised on his vision of racial equality? Whilst the civil rights movement is obviously far more important than the free software movement, the idea that ideals should not be compromised is at the core of both. Unlike, say, the BSD license, the GPL is a license that allows for no comprom…

I refuse to call it GNU/Linux. By pure lines of source it should be called X.org/Linux.

Why X.org? Even if you ignore the fact that it is an XFree86 fork, there are plenty of Linux systems with no X at all. In fact, that would be most of them, since there are certainly more Linux servers than desktops out there. Now add the embedded systems, and desktop installs are a drop in the bucket. Also, a number of GNU tools predate the Linux kernel.

Re: Richard Stallman on The Setup

#72

Post by nzmsv »

telemachos wrote: post #52
djm wrote: post #36

First time I've come across the setup. Here are some interviews with a few other HN regulars: http://paul.graham.usesthis.com/ http://aaron.swartz.usesthis.com/ _why is listed on their mainpage too but his interview seems to have been removed

_why's link works fine: http://_why.usesthis.com/ Drawn and quirky (or precious, depending on your taste or mood) as normal for _why.

Hmmm. I think this depends on your DNS provider. This link is broken for me: I think my ISP does not like hostnames starting with underscores.

Re: Richard Stallman on The Setup

#73

Post by pingswept »

pohl wrote: post #70
pingswept wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not compromise and call them principles, just this once? Principles, dogma-- what's the difference, really?

Because if you compromise they're not principals...ok, bad joke. Mod me down.

I'll mod you up for the joke, but down because it was the same as the one I made.

Re: Richard Stallman on The Setup

#74

Post by Mz »

I really am not familiar with this man, but comments about his unwillingness to compromise and questioning his sanity make me think of this quote:

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw

Re: Richard Stallman on The Setup

#75

Post by elblanco »

elblanco wrote: post #55
weavejester wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often it's the people that refuse to compromise that make the world a better place. Do you think Martin Luther King should have compromised on his vision of racial equality? Whilst the civil rights movement is obviously far more important than the free software movement, the idea that ideals should not be compromised is at the core of both. Unlike, say, the BSD license, the GPL is a license that allows for no comprom…

I refuse to call it GNU/Linux. By pure lines of source it should be called X.org/Linux.

Apparently HN is refusing to let me reply to you. So I'm doing it here.

The point of saying X.org/Linux is that I could form some ridiculous argument that would require a completely different naming convention. Why don't we call all cars Benz/Cars since Karl Benz holds much of the work that makes cars go? Or all helicopters Da Vinci/Helicopters? Because it's silliness.

Calling something GNU/Linux is silly nonsense RMS designed so he could get his beard stroked. If you notice he's never suggested the following:

-Linux (powered by GNU)

-Linux-GNU

-Linux/GNU

-Linux - With GNU utilities

-Linux - powered by GNU and Xfree86/X.org and the Mozilla foundation.

-Linux/GNU/Xfree86|X.org/Mozilla

- etc.

He's suggested only GNU/Linux. Notice GNU is in front (to remind us all how wonderful GNU is) and the '/' indicates it's interchangeable. Like "do you want ham and/or cheese on your sandwich?". Only GNU != Linux, the two are not interchangeable. The GNU Hurd is a failure. But I bet I could cobble together a GNU free Linux distro for the most part today, even rewriting most of the utilities in a couple weeks, and probably completely in a couple of years once LLVM gets up and going.

He wanted to co-opt the relative success that Linux became by formulating an argument such that the only resolution in his mind was to call it GNU/Linux. And instead of building his own system, he built a bunch of the crap for a completed system, then spent the rest of his years dwelling in Emacs and emailing himself wget harvests of websites because for "personal reasons".

Really, outside of maybe the compiler toolchain (which is looking to have a short lifespan in the face of LLVM and associated front ends like Clang, are any of the utilities that hard to replicate? (quick answer no, I had to build most of the GNU toolkit from scratch for a single OS course assignment in my undergrad, including a shell, everybody had to do that, it's pretty easy). I'm sorry, but a few dozen utilities like 'ls' and 'cat' don't allow somebody to co-opt somebody else's hard work.

Re: Richard Stallman on The Setup

#76

Post by elblanco »

weavejester wrote: post #49
axod wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Richard Stallman refusing to use a webbrowser making the world a better place? :/ It's just taking ideals to extremes for the sake of it.

As far as I'm aware, Stallman isn't refusing to use a web browser for ideological reasons. It's because: "Most of the time I do not have an Internet connection." Besides, I seem to recall he uses Emacs/W3 for viewing web pages (offline, downloaded via wget).

> Most of the time I do not have an Internet connection.

He should get it then and join us all in the 21st century.

Re: Richard Stallman on The Setup

#77

Post by elblanco »

dagw wrote: post #67
axod wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "To look at page I send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me." You have to admit that sounds slightly quirky? I assumed it was an attempt to maintain that his personal PC is free from any closed source software, since it's not even rendering websites, it's just receiving email. Sorry, but to me it sounds like either someone who is so into ideals that they're cutting off their nose to spite…

According to the interview he only has an internet connection two or three times a day at most. In that sort of scenario his set up kind of makes sense. If I only had short bursts of internet connections during the day I'd probably also set up a system where I could queue up URLs to be automatically downloaded for offline reading next time I had a connection.

You're missing the point. why does he have such limited connectivity?

Re: Richard Stallman on The Setup

#78

Post by elblanco »

Luyt wrote: post #31
kqr2 wrote: post #18

RMS had actually switched to an OLPC XO laptop but then dropped it: http://www.bostonreview.net/BR33.6/stallman.php Does anyone know of a US distributor for the Yeeloong netbook?

+1, that is an interesting article. I read he dropped the OLPC because it allowed running Windows on it. He expects the OLPC to turn millions of children into Windows users, and compares Windows to an addictive drug, and Microsoft to a drugs dealer supplying kids with a cheap first 'fix'. Also, Windows will not run on his Lemote laptop.

I will personally buy a Yeelong netbook and install Windows on it just so RMS has no computer to use at all if that's how he swings.

Re: Richard Stallman on The Setup

#80

Post by gruseom »

pg wrote: post #60
krobertson wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you go up to any person on the street today and ask who Bill Gates is, they'll more than likely know who. You average person would have no idea who Richard Stallman. If your average person doesn't know who he is today, I doubt that'll change to being more noteworthy in 500 years.

The first part is true, but in general the second part is false; in general, there is a big difference between the people who are most famous in their lifetimes and those who are most famous later from that period.

Exactly so. George Brandes was orders of magnitude more famous than Nietzsche in the 1890s. There are countless such examples.
Post reply on HN