RMS Views on Linux, Java, DRM and Opensource 546
An anonymous reader writes "All About Linux is running a transcript of a recent talk given by Richard Stallman at the Australian National University. Stallman discussed various issues facing GNU like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Digital Rights Management, about why one should not install sun's java on your computer, his views on Opensource as well as why he thinks people should address Linux distribution as GNU/Linux."
Is it just me ? (Score:3, Insightful)
But RMS seems to not be "with it" when it comes to actually closing the deal on the revolution. Computers taht really are by the people, for the people. Cryptic jibberish is OK, as long as it is Free cryptic jibberish.
Or maybe I'm just missing something. Its OK, it happens a lot.
Re:Is it just me ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Stallman probably deserves more credit than he gets among most Linux users for basically founding the Free Software movement, but his relevance to what the movement has become since then is fading.
What RMS does not get (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You have to feel for the guy (Score:5, Insightful)
He is however, necessary if we are to make it to the promised land.
Soko
Re:Will somebody please, please please... (Score:2, Insightful)
Linux vs GNU/Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and I know people are going to flame his last Q&A. I thought it was funny. Shows he doesn't need to take himself seriously all the time.
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:4, Insightful)
You probably need to make up a new word - for example, let me be the first to say "Ghaslespruthmeep"
Re:Is it just me ? (Score:3, Insightful)
But RMS seems to not be "with it" when it comes to actually closing the deal on the revolution.
Closing what deal? You seem to be spouting gibberish.
Nothing in your message makes any sense. Stallman's effort towards software freedom are needed more than ever these days -- or do you really think we are all suddenly about to enter a sunlit upland with Trusted Computing about to put a DRM Big Brother chip in every computing device (and make lots of Free software un-Free in the process), software patents and abusive copyright legislation?
You know even if Stallman can be a first-class prick in public sometimes... I can only admire the sheer intellectual force behind his decades long drive to protect openness and freedom. We need him, and people like him to watch out for the future. God knows useless shitehawks like you aren't going to do it.
Re:Is it just me ? (Score:3, Insightful)
I suspect that if his original vision had been realized, you wouldn't be running GNU/Linux or GNU/Hurd, but rather GNU/Emacs for your OS, editor, mail program, web-browser, recipe file, etc. The dominant scripting language would be Lisp, all running snazzy tty graphics.
Give the man a few cheers, at least. He provided the early tools, and gathered disciples who extended those tools to an entire userspace. They gathered disciples, and implemented a pretty good user environment, to the point where large corporations were willing to spend real money on open code. He's living his ideal, and everyone else gets to live in a pragmatic lesser ideal, but at least they're reminded that there is somewhere further they could go.
I agree with him about the (*&#$# Word files, btw. I can't get my local environment to send me text, RTF, or even PDF. Everything is accursed Word, Excel or Powerpoint, in email. It's an institutional virus, and I think they need a good dose of Richard.
GNU/Linux flamefest (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Calling it "like Microsoft" is just an emotional attack. If he said "Linux thinks all licenses are valid" then he'd have to come up with a reason why this shouldn't happen. I've never bought his arguments.
3) "wrong to ever violate them". Stalman makes it sound like this is bad, but never gives reasons why. Can i violate GPL and he'd be happy?
In a way i wish RMS would stop talking about GNU/Linux and get back to the HURD. Instead of a decades old OS with various security patches on top of it to work in a networked world, have some ideas for a truly clean OS. Port stuff to it. WHy in this day in age do most machines have this all powerful root (or Administrator) user? Build in sub-permissioning from Day 1, don't add on later and wait for thigns to break. Why does a bug in glibc put my whole computer at risk? Why cant we re-engineer things to have message passing and isolated address spaces for libraries? Is the inefficiency of message passing vs. direct method calls going to kill a user who really just wants to be on the net safely? Use the HURD as a research project, get new ideas out into the OS world, where it's stagnating now.
Re:What RMS does not get (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, take the ODF. I haven't gotten *anywhere* promoting its use (to friends, family, other grad students, etc.) based on its technical merits -- .doc is certainly fine for people. It's when I start talking about GNUish stuff like the right to read that people start paying attention.
Now, obviously, the softare promoted by the philosophy does need to be good. I'm just saying that I think you're being a little overhasty dismissing the power that the GNU philosophy can have in encouraging adoption.
Re:Is it just me ? (Score:2, Insightful)
PenGun
Do What Now ???
Re:Is it just me ? (Score:5, Insightful)
People said he was crazy back when he really did change the world, and it's no different now, except that now the people calling him crazy are so called "open source" advocates and individual developers that consider him to be more of a nuisance. They also call him a lunatic because he's constantly advocating the same things, but that, to me, is the sign of a dedicated man. I wonder if people got tired of MLKjr talking about racial equalization, or Gandhi talking about passive resistance? Clearly, the naming convention of GNU distributions is not a human rights issue, but RMS knows how battles are won, and repitition is key
You give him credit, but I think he deserves even more than you're giving him. He's relevant today, and he ought to be respected because (not inspite of) his unwavering devotion to his ideals.
BTW, I don't agree with Stallman on all his entire philosophy, but he is consistant, and that too should be respected.
Re:Will somebody please, please please... (Score:5, Insightful)
GNU/Java (Score:3, Insightful)
Reading his reasoning behind the "Java trap" makes me chuckle, though. His main argument there seems to be that the Free Software implementations can't keep up with the proprietary ones, and therefore people should stop using the proprietary implementations. Surely the whole reason they're behind is that they waited until the Java gained traction before starting up on a Free version. If it hadn't had that traction, then it wouldn't have been worth doing a Free implementation in the first place.
Re:He Needs... (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Emphatically no. It's the other way around. The corps desperately need him. Most of them tried it the proprietary way for years and lost to Microsoft.
The best analogy I can give regarding a future with RMS serving the corps is an Animal Farm reference. The animals are running the humans off the farm right now. The animals are excited, no animals go into the house on pride. But pretty soon, the Pigs (red hat, et al) will be moving into the house. (I would argue they've already started) After that, they'll declare, "two legs good, 4 legs bad."
A corporation is imbued with extra freedoms beyond what individuals get in the U.S. in order to return a profit to its shareholders. Distorting RMS's message to serve that end is approved by shareholders.
RMS needs no corporation.
Re:Will somebody please, please please... (Score:5, Insightful)
While you are waiting, please call the GNU/Linux system by it's real name, thre GNU system with the Linux Kernel.
Like the OS/X System, with the mach kernel, or the Windows XP System, with kernel32
Re:You have to feel for the guy (Score:5, Insightful)
What an utter bunch of crap this is. So if one disagrees with something Linus does or says what is he supposed to do? Is he not allowed to say that he disagrees with the most holy linus? Linus is not a god, nobody is a god. It's perfectly allowable nay encouraged to speak your mind when you think somebody is doing the wrong thing. That's the way "open source" works.
RMS doesn't call people names, he isn't rude. He does not act like the slashdot hordes who insist on calling him a hippie, freak, smelly, unwashed etc. He talks about his ideas, he carefully explains where his ideals are different and contrasting to other peoples ideas. I have never heard him call anybody names though which is a lot more then you can say about his critics.
"He needs Sun and Java and Torvalds and ESR and Red Hat and everyone else. "
He does? Did you mean that you do? You need them because you want a free operating system that does the things he needs. I don't think he is thinking like you. I don't think he thinks he needs those people.
"t this rate however... calling Linus insufficiently political is not going to win him any more fans. And more fans is exactly what he needs."
GASP!. He called linus insufficiently political!. I bet Linus will never speak to him again.
Thank god Linus is not fragile as you make him out to be. I bet Linus is perfectly capable of being called "insufficiently political" without holding grudges.
Re:You have to feel for the guy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Java bashing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sun has very onerous provisions on their java licensing which prevents inclusion of the JDK in a lot of Linux distributions. Why is this good for java? Why is it good for you (the java programmer) that I have to jump trough fifty hoops to install a JDK or a JRE before I can even run your program? Why is it good for you that the java implementation on my linux box is two years out of date and is slow?
How would RMS compromise to make all that better for you? How could Sun compromise to make that better?
Re:Laws need to change (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You have to feel for the guy (Score:3, Insightful)
"We need radical activism so that the moderates aren't ignored as a fringe element." - Tooker Gomberg
Re:You have to feel for the guy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You have to feel for the guy (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? Care to explain why the Free Software world needs Java? The FSF is working on cloning it solely because ignorant people built up a lot of otherwise Free infrastructure on Java either not knowing it wasn't Free or not caring. Much like the early days of KDE where they just didn't care about QT being closed source, forcing RedHat to put up the money to help the FSF launch GNOME so as to avert a disaster. And now we have RedHat and the FSF working to clean up other people's mess over the Java fiasco.
Java (and
Just to be clear, I'm dissing Java the platform and mono the platform, not Java and C# the languages. Both are perfectly acceptable languages for those into the OO thing. Me, I'm a total neolithic curmudgeon who is still unconvinced of the utility of OO. Find me a non-trivial OO program that isn't several times the size in code, runtime image, cpu cycles and development time compared to an equivalent procedural program. And as for code reuse, a C library is about the ultimate in that department.
What I'd like to see is a new procedural language taking most of C except replacing the zero terminated strings with something sane and including a garbage collecting string library. Fix some of the other bits that made sense in the dark ages of limited ram/cpu but leave the essence intact.
Re:What RMS does not get (Score:5, Insightful)
If you try to sell the projects first without the philosophy, business will think they are two different things. They will try to seperate the philosophy(what they don't like) from the project(what they like). Then you will have removed the very thing that made the project a success in the first place. No we should sell the philosophy first, because without it in essence what is the difference between open-source and proprietary software?
Re:You have to feel for the guy (Score:2, Insightful)
He's allowed to say whatever the hell he wants to say. As do I and you. I was merely expressing my opinion that these outbursts hurt him and his cause more than they help him. That's all.
Did you mean that you do?
No, not really. Without things like Java and advanced graphics drivers and real applications his vision is bust, because "the GNU system" can't expand and grow and take away market from Sun and Microsoft and everyone else. Or what exactly is his goal then? To just bitch about everything?
The beauty is that he actually blames Sun and Linus and everyone else for the inabilities of the people who follow him to provide alternatives to these "dirty" versions of Really Useful Things That Everyone Would Really Like To Have. Otherwise these wouldn't be issues to him at all. Perhaps you don't understand the importance of Java. I think he does.
I bet Linus will never speak to him again.
I bet he's pretty fed up with Stallman's constant broadsides [gnu.org], but I'm pretty sure he's perfectly capable of deciding if he's going to "speak" to Stallman or not.
Re:Yep... this is why... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What RMS does not get (Score:3, Insightful)
2) at one time Linus did call the whole thing Linux. This was a long time ago, when there was essentially just one distro (his) and it was mostly kernel and command line things, low end things that he liked to hack on. Only when it grew past (though it was very very early in it's lifetime) that did Linux refer to just the kernel.
Not everyone that added code to Linux (term refers to kernel or OS, your choice) or even GNU products believe in The Movement. Some people jsut wanted a free UNIX clone.
Re:You have to feel for the guy (Score:5, Insightful)
The net effect of the GPL is to cause software development to be economically effective only as a _service_, rather than as a product. If you want to keep getting paid, you can't rest on your laurels - you have to keep coding. And in a truly capitalism-based market, this is as it should be.
Net effect of the GPL: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:GNU/Linux (Score:2, Insightful)
There would be no Linux with only GNU. We'd probably still be waiting for the perfect Hurd OS to come around. Just because GNU jumped on the Linux bandwagon and contributed their stuff doesn't give them the right to rename Torvalds' project. If they wanted rights in exchange for contributing their code to Linux, perhaps open sourcing it wasn't the way to go.
As it is, Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, says it's named "Linux", and Richard Stallman and GNU really don't have much say in the matter. GNU failed to get an OS out the door and joined Linux. Get over it.
I know the RMS fans will mark me flame-bait, but trying to co-opt the project of someone who was able to accomplish what you couldn't really bugs me.
Vista Flames (Score:3, Insightful)
That's because he does not sell them. If it makes you feel better, make a donation or join the FSF [fsf.org].
Can i violate GPL and he'd be happy?
No.
The point of said, "violations," is to help your neighbor. Your obligations to people around you should always outweigh your obligation to Bill Gates and other greed heads. Public libraries are founded on this principle. Sharing and co-operation are good for everyone. Information, unlike all physical goods, has always been free to share. It is only recently that the US has made sharing information a crime. The laws do this are simply wrong.
Some people, who can't seem to finish their own OS after five years, would love to do what you suggest, so they can better screw their users. The laws they made, which keep them in business, prevent it. Microsoft is going to have to code or legislate themselves out of their GPL troubles. Their coding efforts appear to have failed.
OpenBSD: "Only one remote hole in the default install, in more than 8 years!"
Microsoft: Only one OS release in five years!
Free Software: Billions and Billions served.
Self centered (Score:3, Insightful)
At which point does a name come to encompass the totality of elapsed events since absolute tick zero?
I'll continue calling it "Linux" or maybe "Debian testing", because that's good enough and does nobody any special favours.
Freedom to name.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Stop this before it gets silly: "Announcing the GNU/Linux/Bell/GSM/Nokia 3477 phone that connects to the the DARPA/Al Gore/Internet for CERN/web browsing. The unit features a 400MHz Turing/von Neumann/Babbage/CPU and has a Faraday/battery providing 5 days of typical usage...."
I guess the worst sin against the emacs church... (Score:2, Insightful)
The guy must be rolling over in his grave!
What? He's not dead yet? He sure will wish he were dead when he finds out!
Re:GNU/Linux (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure without Linux we would be using GCC on sun boxes, but this would be known by what percentage of even the IT community? If sun didn't charge $500 for a compiler I would have used thiers instead. Probably to compile expect on TCL or some other GPL distributed application, but ignore that, it hurts my position on this rant.
What other operating systems are named after the tools that built them or the apps that run on them, even if most of thier functionality comes from them?
This is the stubborn pedantry of a tenured accademic.
Maybe since so many GNU developers were brought into the fold by a stable operating system we should have to call our compilers "Linux driven GCC compiller" or we could type "grep-reverse-engineered-from-att-code" to do global regex searches.
Typed on my Mozilla/Windows system because thats what we use at work.
Re:You have to feel for the guy (Score:3, Insightful)
Rubbish. It drives the cost of software down to its value. Like everything should be in a free market. i.e. not using tricks like vendor lockin to artificially reduce developer efficiency, inflate prices and encourace incumbancy.
Re:You have to feel for the guy (Score:3, Insightful)
correct me if i'm wrong, but shouldn't the people that write these amazing-line-of-sight-enterprise-ready-kung-fu-cri tical apps actually *know* what the fuck they are doing? you make it sound like it's a bad thing to be skilled.
Re:Again? (Score:2, Insightful)
How about you post your opinion on the whole situation? Maybe then we can have an intelligent discussion like the mature people we are.
Re:You have to feel for the guy (Score:1, Insightful)
Nonsense. In capitalism, profit is the goal, not innovation or competition. And selling copies of software as a product is brilliant in terms of generating profit. That's why it's still such a prevalent model -- because there is huge financial incentive behind it!
Re:Will somebody please, please please... (Score:3, Insightful)
The GNU/Linux story is much more complicated. The project to create an OS was definitely GNU's. However, the marriage between GNU and Linux was the doing of the Linux developers (at least as I understand it). So would it then come under the naming of Linux or GNU? There is ambiguity. Then the distributors came in, and there's this silly question of semantics: were they trying to create their own operating systems, or to distribute existing software? What's the difference?
GNU's project to create a Free operating system was and is important. I believe that a continuation of GNU's goals of freedom has resulted in the system that I use, know and love. But it's also a continuation of Linux's goals, those of creating the best operating system possible. So I call my operating system GNU/Linux, because it gives credit to both of these ideas. The two sets of ideas, complementary and often at odds with eachother. I'd only mention the distributor (or "meta-distributor", as I'm a Gentoo user) if someone was asking me about things relavent to package distribution or system configuration. Some people would be well, frankly, to list their operating system as KDE/GNU/Linux or Gnome/Linux (as Gnome/GNU would be redundant) because those projects bring a third set of goals to the table that strongly influences the experience of their users (by this I mean users of the full desktop environments and not so much those that merely benefit from the many quality apps made possible by those projects).
So I guess if an OSX user thinks that the goals and ideas of the Mach project aren't getting their due for doing the dirty work for Apple's operating system, that user would be fine by me to call the whole thing OSX/Mach. I don't think that what Mac users are presented with on a daily basis is the same kind of synthesis that GNU/Linux folk are.
Re:GNU/Linux (Score:4, Insightful)
So, do we have GNU/Solaris? GNU/AIX? GNU/HP-UX? No? Then why GNU/Linux?
Re:Freedom to name.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, I use KDE (feel free to substitute KDE for some other GUI in your case). And to me, as an user, KDE plays a lot bigger role than GNU-tools do. I use KDE-apps directly, they are the tools I use to carry out my tasks. So would't it be fair to call the system KDE/Linux then? And since I use GUI, I need X, so it's KDE/X/Linux. And let's give GNU part of the credit as well, so it's KDE/GNU/X/Linux.
You are propably saying that my example is dumb. But is it? Why should we include GNU in the name of the system, but not KDE (for example)? You say that the system would be un-usable without GNU. Well, I could say that it would be un-usable without KDE and X, so surely they should be included as well? Why include GNU, and exclude the others? Because it would sound dumb? Well, I think that GNU/Linux sounds dumb.
Re:Again? (Score:3, Insightful)
In 1990, GNU was already organized and had a fair amount of software in development and in use, including emacs and gcc. In 1990, Linus was a student learning on Minix and had not written a single line of kernel code.
I find RMS to be more preachy than he needs to be, but like you, I agree that is he is still right on the issues. GNU is just as important as Linus when it comes to Linux and the acceptance it now has, and it does seem fair to give credit where credit is due.
Re:Again? (Score:1, Insightful)
Now if RMS truly believes software to be free, then shouldn't it be totally free in that people can do whatever they want with it? Does he really draw a boundary of freedom in that you must give credit to the source? Can I freely take the software and call it mine or is it somehow "limited" in that I must give credit?
Now don't get me wrong thinking that I don't believe that credit should be given. I just wonder how "free" something can really be if it still has restrictions on it. Maybe the proper term should be "mostly free".
While I'm not exactly a fan of RMS, I can appreciate that he has been and will be a positive influence in the IT world. I won't agree with him on all issues (Java being an area of disagreement between RMS and I for example).
Jim
Re:Again? (Score:4, Insightful)
Every vendor who labels their products as "Linux" when there is as much GNU software in the distribution as Linux kernel, or more. I think that is his point. I don't think it is about being "famous" but rather that Linux should do more than be better than Microsoft, it should promote the idea of software Freedom, and that is the entire reason GNU exists. Again, I don't get political about it, but he does have a valid point.
Just as you have "Microsoft Windows" (as opposed to XWindows) you have GNU/Linux. I might not say "GNU/Linux" when I converse, but if i am advertising a product for sale, it seems logical to add the GNU, since at the very least, all the software in that "box" was compiled on the GNU CC compiler and is chock full of other GNU software.
What Linus does is extremely valuable, no doubt, and I am even glad he is neutral about the politics himself. But without the GNU components (and other components not related to the Linux kernel), all you would have is a kernel that boots and sits there and does nothing else. So yea, I think RMS has a point. I've also said RMS looks like Jerry Garcia after an all-nighter and is a bit preachy for my tastes, but he is still right on this point.
Re:Again? (Score:2, Insightful)