81–90 of 340 posts
All you really need to do is consider what Steve Jobs would have said about RMS if he were still here when RMS is no longer. At worst, he'd say nothing, at best, he'd say something that would have touched you and made you think deeply about what the two men had in common despite their deep differences.
I upvoted this, but meant to downvote it.
Go ahead... fork it. Then what happens? Will you travel the world tirelessly promoting free software, speaking at universities and other events for very little money? Will you maintain a job board, mailing list, hardware database, software directory, year after year? Will you find lawyers to donate hundreds of hours to write and revise licenses? Will you hire lobbyists to fight software patents? Will you tirelessly f…
And never mind code. This basher is a complete nobody who seems to profit from open source more than contribute. It's not like the heads of several major FSF projects are banding a revolt. The sinister anti-Stallman/GNU sentiment on HN is reaching incredibly high levels. Luckily it's mostly nobodies like this big mouth bozo.
Calling someone a "nobody" and a "big mouth bozo" is uncalled for.
I 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…
And?
It's rms. He's the biggest nerd in the world. Nerds are expected to be horrendously, gratuitously crass, offensive and insensitive of people's emotions.
This is like being mad that the sky is blue. Pointless outrage.
OS X would not be possible without RMS. You have to remember that Stallman was around before Jobs' day -- he was performing real work at MIT when Apple was initially conceptualized. Stallman therefore is apparently less vulnerable to the reality distortion field and does not unduly offer oblations to a guy who was obsessed with shininess at the expense of hacker culture. Jobs went to lengths on many products to preve…
This isn't about OS X. This is about Stallman being effective as the leader of the FSF, which apparently he feels entitles him to say any damn thing he wants, regardless of how tasteless it is. That's not the mark of a leader. That's the mark of a self-inflated ass.
People totally go overboard wrt Steve Jobs, as they do his company, Apple. RMS comes from a time when computers were generally open for tinkering, and Apple strove to make its products impenetrable lest Jobs' pain-stakingly "perfected" designs be gaudied up by consumers. From the original Mac which didn't have expansion slots to today's iDevices that don't allow the consumer to do so much as change the battery, Apple has a long history of tight lock down.
Do you not see how an old-school hacker could be disgruntled by that philosophy? The beliefs and experience of that group runs deep enough that they are not hoodwinked into deifying Steve Jobs because the iMac is the sleekest desktop computer around.
OS X would not be possible without RMS. You have to remember that Stallman was around before Jobs' day -- he was performing real work at MIT when Apple was initially conceptualized. Stallman therefore is apparently less vulnerable to the reality distortion field and does not unduly offer oblations to a guy who was obsessed with shininess at the expense of hacker culture. Jobs went to lengths on many products to preve…
This isn't about OS X. This is about Stallman being effective as the leader of the FSF, which apparently he feels entitles him to say any damn thing he wants, regardless of how tasteless it is. That's not the mark of a leader. That's the mark of a self-inflated ass.
Which is clearly not the case. Stallman specifically says that Jobs did not deserve to die and he's not glad that Jobs died.
The OP could have just said that Stallman is not the right person to be the leader FSF because he's often politically incorrect. That's debatable, but understandable.
If you want an advocacy organization with a better ear for public sensibilities and business, that's what the Open Source Initiative was designed for, wasn't it? Why not join them instead of starting yet another organization?
No. OSI was Eric's attempt to hijack the work of RMS. Eric is no better than, and in many ways, much worse than, RMS.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an atheist, I think it's pretty clear from your post that hatred and bigotry is alive and well outside of religion. You know what else is typical in religion, including Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, etc.? Tolerance, love, and generosity. If you don't know religious people who are the epitome of these qualities and find strength to exhibit them from their religion, you are living in a bubble.
> "Tolerance, love, and generosity. If you don't know religious people who are the epitome of these qualities and find strength to exhibit them from their religion, you are living in a bubble." Certainly there are many people of all cultures and religions who are tolerant, loving and generous. But mostly to those of their own culture/religion. As for living in bubbles, that is _precisely_ the purpose of culture/relig…
The 20th century is evidence enough that man is capable of resorting to the worst possible barbarism without invoking deities as justification, plenty of other excuses are readily available. Going by death count, political purges in officially atheist communist nations took the cake... by far. Ethnicity was a distant second behind politics, and religion a distant third.
> Of course I consider most "-ism"s to be religions too.
Communism, solipsism, humanism, socialism, nihilism? If the majority of philosophical and political beliefs, even those with a stated opposition to religion, are now redefined to be religion, then "religious belief" is no longer a subset of "belief", and you've expanded the categorical definition of that word to be useless at anything other than proving yourself correct.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And never mind code. This basher is a complete nobody who seems to profit from open source more than contribute. It's not like the heads of several major FSF projects are banding a revolt. The sinister anti-Stallman/GNU sentiment on HN is reaching incredibly high levels. Luckily it's mostly nobodies like this big mouth bozo.
While you do have a point, I disagree strongly with the way you've expressed it. There is no need for name-calling and personal attacks on this board. Calling someone a "nobody" and a "big mouth bozo" is uncalled for.
> I’m really tired of having to make excuses for Stallman
> when he goes off half-cocked like this, which is why I’m
> no longer a FSF member.Earlier quoted context omitted.
I upvoted this, but meant to downvote it.
I upvoted you to encourage you to tell us why you downvoted it.
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 and the assumption that because Apple products make him feel good, Steve Jobs would never say something rude after a colleague died.
None of these people know Jobs and yet they assume he's some super great dude. Making such assumptions about the CEO's personal character based on your affinity for the products of that CEO's company is very juvenile, yet it's irritatingly common.