Date: Sat, 05 May 2001 19:49:27 -0500 From: "G. Adam Stanislav" <adam@whizkidtech.net> To: chat@FreeBSD.ORG, Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> Subject: Re: Is Brett Glass to easy on RMS? Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.20010505194927.00875100@mail85.pair.com> In-Reply-To: <15092.29277.382007.991164@guru.mired.org>
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At 16:36 05-05-2001 -0500, Mike Meyer wrote: >If you think Brett is taking it easy on RMS, the GPL and the FSF, >please speak up. It's all relative. But I think Brett makes some very good points about RMS. RMS has made considerable damage to programmers everywhere. Unfortunately, it is the kind of damage that is quite irreversible. Then again, RMS could not have caused the damage had he not found myriads of followers among programmers, of all people. That was because generally programmers were disgusted with the developments in the industry about two decades ago. Sort of reminds me of Czechoslovakia in 1948: While we Slovaks voted against Communism, most Czechs voted for it and it destroyed them. The reason (as a Czech lady of my parents generation explained) was that the Czechs had suffered under the Nazi occupation, and Communists seemed great when compared to the Nazi. Once they realized they were just two faces of the same coin, it was too late. I view RMS as the other face of the same coin of Microsoft and other greedy software companies (there were quite a few of them a decade and two ago before MS beat most of them). He may have seemed like the savior in the 1980's. Alas, he was (and continues to be) just as destructive as the greedy bunch, and it is now close to impossible to undo the damage he has made. For what it's worth, I think RMS is *worse* than MS and company: At least people like Bill Gates are motivated by greed which, while sad, is nothing unusual in the Capitalist society. Whatever damage they do to the computer industry is only a byproduct of their greed. RMS, on the other hand, has no other goal in mind than the destruction of the programming profession: The better you are at it, the more he wants to destroy you. In his case it is not a byproduct, it is the product. (Mind you, I'm not defending Gates, just saying that in a way I can see him as the lesser evil when compared with RMS.) On the other hand, the discussion is going on forever, so I generally stopped reading it. I certainly do not want to get pulled into this discussion: Just answering your question. Adam --- http://phonecowboy.com/registrar/twist/ finds a good domain for you and checks for its existence. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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