RMS on SCO, Distributions, DRM 711
Letter writes "Open for Business has an interview with GNU founder and free software zealot Richard M. Stallman (RMS) discussing the SCO situation, the single RMS-approved free Linux distribution and DRM in the Linux kernel. RMS also describes non-free software as a 'predatory social system that keeps people in a state of domination and division.'"
zealot? (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:su with wheel group (Score:5, Informative)
auth required pam_wheel.so group=wheel
It's not there by default, but you can add it yourself, so it's a non-issue.Slashdotted (Score:4, Informative)
August 13, 2003, 22:51:30 EDT
In September of 1983, a computer programmer working in the Massachusetts Institute for Technology AI Lab announced a plan that was the antithesis of the proprietary software concept that had come to dominate the industry. The plan detailed the creation of a UNIX replacement that would be entirely free, not as in the cost of the product, but as in freedom. That announcement would eventually catapult its author, Richard M. Stallman, into someone known and respected around the world and, perhaps more amazingly, a person that companies such as Apple and Netscape would alter their plans because of.
Stallman is not your average advocate of a particular cause. Nearly two decades after the announcement of his GNU System, he has stayed firm on his positions and has founded and guided the Free Software Foundation into an organization capable of promoting and managing the GNU System, a set of components that form more of what is often mistakenly known simply as "Linux" than the Linux kernel itself does. That might be somewhat unusual in today's society where causes popular today quickly become forgotten in tomorrow's priorities, but there is something even more unusual about Stallman. He is always open and available to those who drop him an e-mail, and not just the media, but also the the individual user or developer. This is not because he has nothing to do -- Stallman is a busy globetrotter constantly doing whatever it takes to promote the philosophy of free software. In his characteristic form, he was kind enough to agree to an encore interview with Open for Business' Timothy R. Butler.
Timothy R. Butler: IBM announced this week that part of its countersuit against SCO is based on SCO's violation of the GPL (by distributing the GPL'ed Linux kernel while demanding licensing fees for it). What are your thoughts on this?
Richard M. Stallman: I have not thought about it very specifically because I have not seen the details of their claims. My general feeling is that I'm glad IBM has found a way to counterattack SCO.
TRB: Does the fact that, as is often pointed out, the GPL has not yet been tested in court concern you?
RMS: No wise person looks forward to a major battle, even if he expects to win it. Rather than being concerned that we have not yet tested the GPL in court, I'm encouraged by the fact that we have been successful for years in enforcing the GPL without needing to go to court. Many companies have looked at the odds and decided not to gamble on overturning the GPL. That's not the same as proof, but it is reassuring.
TRB: In an article you wrote for ZDNet about the SCO lawsuit and related matters, you said, "Linux itself is no longer essential: the GNU system became popular in conjunction with Linux, but today it also runs with two BSD kernels and the GNU kernel." Does this mean that you see Linux as unimportant to the future of GNU, or simply something that the Free Software community can live without if need be?
Stallman: "Freedom to redistribute and change software is a human right that must be protected."
RMS: The kernel Linux is still important for using the GNU system, and we should hardly abandon it without a fight. At the same time, it is good to have alternatives.
TRB: Bruce Perens has proposed the idea of incorporating a mutual defense clause into Free Software licenses. He suggests that if you attempt to sue a Free Software developer, that the litigator would have their license to use any software with the defense clause automatically terminate. Is this a good idea?
RMS: Some kind of mutual defense clause might be a good idea, but designing what it should say is a difficult problem. It needs to be strong enough to protect the community from a serious threat, but not so intimidating as to cause those who don't like it to fork all our important software. The problem is complicated by the fact that most users have not yet ceased to consider Windows a viabl
Re:zealot? (Score:4, Informative)
: eagerness and ardent interest in pursuit of something : FERVOR
synonym see PASSION
eagerness, ardent interest, fervor, passion... Yeah, those all fit pretty well
Also, note that fanatic probably doesn't mean what you're thinking...
: marked by excessive enthusiasm and often intense uncritical devotion
Again, excessive enthusiasm fits pretty well. The intense devotion is probably critical rather than uncritical, but I'd say zealot is a pretty good fit.
Re:su with wheel group (Score:3, Informative)
$ info su (RH8)
-uso.
Re:You learn something everyday. (Score:2, Informative)
Article Text from SLASHDOTted site (Score:3, Informative)
GNU Questions: RMS on SCO, Distributions, DRM
Date: August 13, 2003, 22:51:30 EDT Topic: Free Software
In September of 1983, a computer programmer working in the Massachusetts Institute for Technology AI Lab announced a plan that was the antithesis of the proprietary software concept that had come to dominate the industry. The plan detailed the creation of a UNIX replacement that would be entirely free, not as in the cost of the product, but as in freedom. That announcement would eventually catapult its author, Richard M. Stallman, into someone known and respected around the world and, perhaps more amazingly, a person that companies such as Apple and Netscape would alter their plans because of.
Stallman is not your average advocate of a particular cause. Nearly two decades after the announcement of his GNU System, he has stayed firm on his positions and has founded and guided the Free Software Foundation into an organization capable of promoting and managing the GNU System, a set of components that form more of what is often mistakenly known simply as "Linux" than the Linux kernel itself does. That might be somewhat unusual in today's society where causes popular today quickly become forgotten in tomorrow's priorities, but there is something even more unusual about Stallman. He is always open and available to those who drop him an e-mail, and not just the media, but also the the individual user or developer. This is not because he has nothing to do -- Stallman is a busy globetrotter constantly doing whatever it takes to promote the philosophy of free software. In his characteristic form, he was kind enough to agree to an encore interview with Open for Business' Timothy R. Butler.
Timothy R. Butler: IBM announced this week that part of its countersuit against SCO is based on SCO's violation of the GPL (by distributing the GPL'ed Linux kernel while demanding licensing fees for it). What are your thoughts on this?
Richard M. Stallman: I have not thought about it very specifically because I have not seen the details of their claims. My general feeling is that I'm glad IBM has found a way to counterattack SCO.
TRB: Does the fact that, as is often pointed out, the GPL has not yet been tested in court concern you?
RMS: No wise person looks forward to a major battle, even if he expects to win it. Rather than being concerned that we have not yet tested the GPL in court, I'm encouraged by the fact that we have been successful for years in enforcing the GPL without needing to go to court. Many companies have looked at the odds and decided not to gamble on overturning the GPL. That's not the same as proof, but it is reassuring.
TRB: In an article you wrote for ZDNet about the SCO lawsuit and related matters, you said, "Linux itself is no longer essential: the GNU system became popular in conjunction with Linux, but today it also runs with two BSD kernels and the GNU kernel." Does this mean that you see Linux as unimportant to the future of GNU, or simply something that the Free Software community can live without if need be?
Stallman: "Freedom to redistribute and change software is a human right that must be protected." RMS: The kernel Linux is still important for using the GNU system, and we should hardly abandon it without a fight. At the same time, it is good to have alternatives.
TRB: Bruce Perens has proposed the idea of incorporating a mutual defense clause into Free Software licenses. He suggests that if you attempt to sue a Free Software developer, that the litigator would have their license to use any software with the defense clause automatically terminate. Is this a good idea?
RMS: Some kind of mutual defense clause might be a good idea, but designing what it should say is a difficult problem. It needs to be strong enough to protect the community from a serious threat, but not so intimidating as to cause those who don'
TUBGIRL LINK IN PARENT DO NOT CLICK (Score:1, Informative)
Someone's missing the point, but not us... (Score:4, Informative)
No, I don't think we do. You keep implying that we don't see RMS's philosophical point, and that we think he's making some claim about "free-as-in-RMS" software being better than "non-free" software. I assure you, we (or at least I) understand his arguments perfectly; we (I) just disagree with them.
The problem is that most of us aren't going to accept that free-as-in-RMS software is a good thing if it can't produce better products than the current commercial (or other, free-as-in-beer) offerings. He claims that non-free stuff is inherently evil, IP has to go, etc. But unfortunately, if free-as-in-RMS doesn't come up with the goods, I see no reason to agree with him. As long as that's the case, clearly the commercial software world, current IP laws and other targets of RMShate do offer an advantage to the community as a whole, so why should we give them up just to match his code of ethics?
Re:You learn something everyday. (Score:2, Informative)
For what its worth, the monks in De Yuste (same province) make one hell of a fine beer - very unusual for Spaniards!!
This is exactly what he said... (Score:1, Informative)
Why GNU su does not support the `wheel' group
(This section is by Richard Stallman.)
Sometimes a few of the users try to hold total power over all the rest. For example, in 1984, a few users at the MIT AI lab decided to seize power by changing the operator password on the Twenex system and keeping it secret from everyone else. (I was able to thwart this coup and give power back to the users by patching the kernel, but I wouldn't know how to do that in Unix.)
However, occasionally the rulers do tell someone. Under the usual su mechanism, once someone learns the root password who sympathizes with the ordinary users, he or she can tell the rest. The "wheel group" feature would make this impossible, and thus cement the power of the rulers.
I'm on the side of the masses, not that of the rulers. If you are used to supporting the bosses and sysadmins in whatever they do, you might find this idea strange at first.
Re:ftp.gnu.org (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Debian not recommended (Score:2, Informative)
So it's more of of nudge, I'd say, than an "awful stab"...
--TRR
Re:Debian not recommended (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately yes. Translation of invariant sections is definitly not allowed.
> The FSF said that [...] it was OK to translate
> it if the meaning didn't change
They said it was okay to "alter its form", not translate it. They could be referring to formatting etc.
> So I guess the same should aply to these
> invariant sections
Allowing translation requires that you trust the translator. If I write an off-topic section at the end of a book that gives my opinions of something, I don't want M$ to have the option of translating it. I wouldn't trust their translator.
My problem is that if I write a GFDL'd document, someone else can add content and add an invariant section. They benefit fully from my work but I can't benefit from their work unless I include the section titled "Proprietary Software Rules!!", or "Why I Like To Sniff Knickers".
Invariant sections should be unalterable but removable.
Ciaran O'Riordan
Re:Debian not recommended (Score:5, Informative)
Being a Debian maintainer myself, I'm of course absolutely delighted to see a lot of people here in Extremadura to use a Debian-derived distribution, but I have mixed feelings about the fact that it's advertised as a free-software-only distribution when it's not completely true.
Mod parent up!!! (Score:2, Informative)
If I write a manual, a company can update it and add their invariant section. If I later decide to add the new material from the company to my copy of the manual, I have to add their invariant section, despite being the author of most of the content.
I agree with your assessment. I call it a poison pill.
There are other problems. You can't excerpt text into a derived work without including the text of the license; Not just have the license as a separate file, but the actual license text must be included, and it's pretty long. Imagine trying to make a reference card ou of that.
Another thing that annoys me is when the main documentation for a GPL'ed work is licensed under the GFDL. Anyone who forks the project cannot cut and paste text between his version of the code and manual. The licenses are incompatible. Now consider that all the FSF manuals are under this license! Yuck.
Re:ftp.gnu.org (Score:2, Informative)
The compromise occured from a local shell account, and not from the ftp daemon.
From ftp://ftp.gnu.org/MISSING-FILES.README:
Local shell access to the FTP server for GNU maintainers has been withdrawn pending completion of our certification activities. Further arrangements for GNU maintainer access to the FTP archives will be announced upon completion of the certification activity.
Read Hemingway travel and get unignorant then. (Score:3, Informative)
GNU/LinEx is a debian subset (Score:1, Informative)
Only took a single google [google.com] search to find this out.
Re:I just lost a lot of respect for him. (Score:1, Informative)
Where did he say that? FSF routinely makes small compromises against their policies to support the long-term goal of liberty for users. Why else would they have ever promulgated the LGPL?
Re:The government of Extramadura???? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:zealot? (Score:3, Informative)
I run a small free software project. Nothing makes me feel better about working on it than emails from happy users. They increase my productivity indirectly by giving me a sense of achievment. I also welcome *polite* bug reports, feature requests etc as they help make the project better. But flame mails? What possible purpose could they serve other than to make me angry and reduce my motivation to spend my free time coding?