Comment another step to inevitable decline and fall of M$ (Score 1) 393
When RMS wrote the first version of the GPL, it aroused a storm of controversy on gnu.misc.discuss. I was one of many, arguing as "johnston@me.udel.edu", that the GPL was not communistic but rather a peculiar use of the intellectual property and copyright laws of the United States. One that has proved in practice to be sufficiently "iron-clad" in its legal formulation that large corporations like IBM and government agencies like the NSA have followed the GPL to the letter. I bowed out of the Usenet debates in 1991 when Linux took off, because by then it appeared to me that the eventual successful creation of a free replacement for unix - RMS's original goal - had become a fait accompli, the Hurd project notwithstanding.
And so today we hear that the largest nation on earth is choosing Linux over Microsoft. RMS could have told you that would happen 15-odd years ago, after he finished writing the first draft of the GPL. It doesn't matter how long it takes; free software in the RMS sense of the word will eventually win out over the black-box proprietary model. RMS knew it then, and so did Per Abrahamsen, Barry Margolin, Adam Richter, Eric Raymond, HJ Lu, John Gilmore, Larry Wall, Jon "maddog" Hall, and all those who were involved in the free software movement long before Linus Torvalds picked up a copy of Andrew Tannenbaum's book on Minix and decided to try to write his own operating system. The great thing about young people is that they are too young to know that big projects are too hard to try, so they try them anyway. So we thank Linus most of all.
And so today we hear that the largest nation on earth is choosing Linux over Microsoft. RMS could have told you that would happen 15-odd years ago, after he finished writing the first draft of the GPL. It doesn't matter how long it takes; free software in the RMS sense of the word will eventually win out over the black-box proprietary model. RMS knew it then, and so did Per Abrahamsen, Barry Margolin, Adam Richter, Eric Raymond, HJ Lu, John Gilmore, Larry Wall, Jon "maddog" Hall, and all those who were involved in the free software movement long before Linus Torvalds picked up a copy of Andrew Tannenbaum's book on Minix and decided to try to write his own operating system. The great thing about young people is that they are too young to know that big projects are too hard to try, so they try them anyway. So we thank Linus most of all.
