Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 13:00:32 -0700 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: On "intelligent people" and "dangers to BSD" Message-ID: <4.2.2.20000317124248.00b5bc10@localhost> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.20.0003172221550.1530-100000@theory1.physics.ii sc.ernet.in> References: <4.2.2.20000317090329.041ccde0@localhost>
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At 10:19 AM 3/17/2000 , Rahul Siddharthan wrote: >Those who respect Stallman respect his work. No amount of >propaganda would have earned him respect without the hard code >that came with it. Interestingly, most of the programs for which Stallman is given credit were revamped, partially or entirely, by other programmers before they reached acceptable levels of quality. GCC is a good example. The FSF policy of insisting on owning all rights to the code perpetuates this by hiding the identities of the contributors (since their names don't appear in copyright notices). Thus, the FSF and Stallman get credit while the person who wrote that "hard code" generally remains unknown and unsung. A great PR scheme. > Whether he had a disagreement with coworkers >is hardly relevant: one may as well argue against supporting >OpenBSD because it started as a split from NetBSD. Not so. The GPL was intended as a weapon against not only his former co-workers but also all commercial software developers, whom he demonized one and all. The GPL is the instrument of Stallman's 16-year-old vendetta against commercial programmers and their livelihoods. > > Linux isn't "shoddy," though it is of lower quality than the BSDs, > > IMHO. As for the agenda behind the GPL: the story DOES deserve > > to be told, because not becoming part of Stallman's agenda is > > a strong motivation to use the BSDs instead. No one likes to be > > used, and if one embraces the GPL then one IS being used to > > further Stallman's personal aims. > >Not at all. Linux users are thinking people, they know to what >extent to agree with Stallman's ideology and to what extent not >to. If they agree with him entirely, that's up to them. Some do >and some don't. The majority don't even know what the GPL says. Take a straw poll yourself. >In any case, it is useful to have extremists like him around. If >it hadn't been for the popularity of linux and the vocality of >"free software" supporters, X11R6.4 may not have been free >software today, The fact is that there would have been a fork regardless, because too many people depended upon that code. Stallman used the event as an opportunity to attack BSD licensing and promote the GPL -- again, to further his agenda. >Qt would almost certainly have been under a more >restrictive licence, IMHO, basing KDE on Qt was a mistake to begin with. Had Qt not been released under a different license, this might have been fixed and the result would have been better. >and none of the recent open source >announcements would have taken place. Which one(s)? >Stallman isn't directly to >be credited for all of this, but the GPL's appeal to a lot of >people certainly is responsible for the wide "free software" >sentiment today. You haven't shown cause and effect. The fact that Linux is licensed under the GPL does not mean that the GPL was responsible for its success. Likewise, the appeal of open source can be said to be a result of Linux, but not the GPL. The GPL actually hurts open source by putting it at odds with commercial ventures and commercial developers. >Take also the ongoing discussion here about whether BSDI will >have a lot of binary-only drivers under NDA to the detriment of >FreeBSD. I'm sure that any such drivers will be usable with FreeBSD as well. I prefer open source drivers but have no problem with binary-only ones. After all, if the manufacturer doesn't want people to improve his or her code, he or she is taking a substantial risk that people will reject the product due to poor driver quality. If he or she is willing to assume that risk in return for making it tougher to reverse engineer his work, fine. >A lot of linux people will argue that the GPL protects >against that sort of thing. If they said such a thing, it'd be completely bogus, since Linux allows binary drivers. >Arguments about license are the worst way to promote an >OS, It's a key reason that *I* use BSD. The GPL is, again, unethical. I feel that the BSDs are themselves sullied a bit by using the GNU toolchain, but alas the GPL had already begun to destroy alternatives before the BSDs were released by Berkeley. >except for commercial developers to whom the fewer >restrictions of BSD may really matter. BSD has enough other >strengths to boast about without bringing Stallman's alleged >hidden agenda into it Stallman's agenda is not hidden. It is publicly stated in his writings and speeches. He favors the destruction of commercial software developers, the reduction of programmers' compensation, and the abolition of artists' and authors rights. To support the GPL is to support this. --Brett Microsoft is continually protecting its turf, even if that turf appears to the rest of us as belonging to a company other than Microsoft. -- Robert X. Cringely To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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