From kragen@dnaco.net Thu Aug 27 16:38:23 1998 Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1998 16:38:21 -0400 (EDT) From: Kragen To: "Bradley M. Kuhn" cc: clug-user@clug.org, rms@gnu.org Subject: Re: Renaming of the group, CLUG -> CGLUG In-Reply-To: <19980827155818.E25301@ebb.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Keywords: X-UID: 1522 Status: O X-Status: RMS: I'm Ccing you on this because I'm saying some things about you in a public forum which you ought to have the opportunity to correct if they are incorrect. On Thu, 27 Aug 1998, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote: > However, I do know the history of the free software movement. The > open-source movement is just a repackaging of the free software community > that RMS founded. There was a period in the early 1980s when proprietary shrink-wrapped software for PCs was very lucrative. Before then, the majority of software was non-proprietary; since then, proprietary software has been most common. Non-proprietary software is starting to become popular again, largely due to things RMS did during the "dark ages", when he was left all alone and abandoned by his community, all of whom had gone to write proprietary software. We owe RMS a great debt for that work. But there are several things to keep in mind. 1. RMS was *never* the only person promoting free software. Even during the dark ages, there was BSD, X, rn, Perl, Fractint, Byte, TeX, Tcl/Tk, sendmail, numerous computer users' groups, and the FIG, among others. RMS was probably the most cogent and passionate person promoting it, because (a) he's a damn good hacker, and that requires thinking cogently, and (b) he had been in free software heaven in the 1970s, and had suddenly been evicted from it when the AI craze hit, leaving him in a sort of post-apocalyptic desolation from which the FSF rose. (You can read about it in _Hackers_. This would be a good time for RMS to correct any errors in that book.) 2. RMS is far from being the only person who believes in free software today, and some of the other people who believe in free software today believe differently than he does. 3. RMS is a pain in the butt. He corrects people's wording, calls them parasites and whores, posts controversial statements in gnu.misc.discuss and then doesn't bother to read the replies, etc. He'd probably be much more pleasant in person, although I haven't had the pleasure of finding out, myself. (And I doubt that I ever will, after I send this message. :( ) These faults are in spite of his many excellent and holy qualities, such as honesty, principledness, clarity of vision, detachment from material wealth, humility (above and beyond the Linus Torvalds level), steadfastness, etc. I believe that RMS is, in many ways, the father of the free software movement. But his many children sometimes disagree with him, and they are entitled to do so. It does not make their opinions illegitimate if they disagree with him, or even if they meet to discuss their opinions. Kragen -- Kragen Sitaker We are forming cells within a global brain and we are excited that we might start to think collectively. What becomes of us still hangs crucially on how we think individually. -- Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web