Journal spellraiser's Journal: Stallman 2
I must say that I was greatly impressed, both by the man's ideas and his presentation of those ideas. He is obviously a man who thinks things thoroughly, spending a great deal of time on building his opinions on sound logical foundations. On top of that, he is a man of principles - he has basic philosophies of life, and does not compromise them for any reason.
I am fascinated by the community-minded aspects of the whole Free Software philosophy. No wonder Steve Ballmer and his lackeys have compared it with communism. Although that's surely a ridiculous and typically simian comparison, it does have a slight grain of truth to it - Free Sofware is about building communities and contributing to society as opposed to making a profit through divisionism and monopoly.
Also, Stallman's analysis of the software patent situation was, as far as I could tell, spot on. If I thought software patents were a bad idea before hearing Stallman lecture on them, I am totally won over now. Broad-ranging software patents on algorithms or some vague ideas are harmful to software development in general. It is the software itself as a whole that has a value, not the various ideas that it uses. Stallman likened the current situation to a 18. century Europe where composers could get patents on general musical ideas, thus stagnating the whole music scene.
Well, Stallman said it all better than I can. Maybe I should just finish with a link to the fine fellow's page.
Software Patents (Score:2)
Re:Software Patents (Score:2)
But like you said, they way these patents are being applied, and how truly inane many of them are, it's detrimental on the whole. We can only hope that the rest of the world does not follow the United States in adopting these kinds of patents, and that they will be repealed there.
I'm crossing my fingers for good luck.