Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 22:49:48 +0530 (IST) From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: On "intelligent people" and "dangers to BSD" Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.20.0003172221550.1530-100000@theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in> In-Reply-To: <4.2.2.20000317090329.041ccde0@localhost>
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> Those who respect Stallman appear to respect the PR image which > has been carefully spun for him by ESR and others. Those who know > the history of the FSF and the GPL understand that they are the > result of a petty grudge. RMS is not a "Satan," but he IS a pathetic > figure in that he has spent the past 16 years trying to get back > at some co-workers who left the MIT AI Lab to start companies. > Sort of like an obsessed former spouse stalking an "ex" and > vowing revenge. It's sad, not Satanic. But people need to > know what really happened to see this. If they read Stallman's > propaganda, or listen to the Linuxoids talk about him, they won't. Those who respect Stallman respect his work. No amount of propaganda would have earned him respect without the hard code that came with it. Whether he had a disagreement with coworkers is hardly relevant: one may as well argue against supporting OpenBSD because it started as a split from NetBSD. > Linux isn't "shoddy," though it is of lower quality than the BSDs, > IMHO. As for the agenda behind the GPL: the story DOES deserve > to be told, because not becoming part of Stallman's agenda is > a strong motivation to use the BSDs instead. No one likes to be > used, and if one embraces the GPL then one IS being used to > further Stallman's personal aims. Not at all. Linux users are thinking people, they know to what extent to agree with Stallman's ideology and to what extent not to. If they agree with him entirely, that's up to them. Some do and some don't. In any case, it is useful to have extremists like him around. If it hadn't been for the popularity of linux and the vocality of "free software" supporters, X11R6.4 may not have been free software today, Qt would almost certainly have been under a more restrictive licence, and none of the recent open source announcements would have taken place. Stallman isn't directly to be credited for all of this, but the GPL's appeal to a lot of people certainly is responsible for the wide "free software" sentiment today. Take also the ongoing discussion here about whether BSDI will have a lot of binary-only drivers under NDA to the detriment of FreeBSD. A lot of linux people will argue that the GPL protects against that sort of thing. I'm not saying they're right, only that they may want to use the GPL for good reasons of their own, without being in any way part of Stallman's "agenda". The GPL is a tool: it is not under the control of its creator. And hardly any end-users will be concerned about ideological issues of license. Arguments about license are the worst way to promote an OS, except for commercial developers to whom the fewer restrictions of BSD may really matter. BSD has enough other strengths to boast about without bringing Stallman's alleged hidden agenda into it and turning off people who may otherwise be quite open-minded about trying BSD. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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