1 Sep
2012
1 Sep
'12
7:50 p.m.
On 2 September 2012 02:39, Doc <doc at vaxen.net> wrote:
On 9/1/12 5:12 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
How so?
He wants credit for GNU - hell, he wants joint billing, essentially.
But he has got a point. No GNU, no Linux; but no Linux, still a GNU,
someway, somehow.
X.org isn't a Linux thing any more, either - it also runs on the BSDs
and Solaris and probably other Unices too.
So candidates were TRIX, Sprite, BSD, UZI, then
they tried to build
HURD and in the end it became Linux.
No, not at all. RMS fiercely fought (may still do) Linux's "takeover"
of
the GNU environment. The whole "GNU/Linux" thing wasn't an
effort to coopt Linux as part of
GNU, but rather RMS's attempt to force Linux users and vendors to
acknowledge GNU as the OS and Linux as "just the kernel".
Again, he has got a point. I don't agree with him, but his arguments
are not entirely without merit.
I was involved in the local Linux Users' Group
when all that fight was
fresh. The LUG invited RMS to speak here, and he accepted the invitation -
with the minor condition that we must change the name of the group from
AustinLUG (Austin Linux Users' Group) to AustinG/LUG (Austin GNU/Linux
Users' Group).
I really don't think he even saw the humor in the suggestion....
Not famed for his sense of humour.
But the thing is, the threat we all face to our freedoms from the big
proprietary vendors is immense. If MICROS~1 and Apple get their way,
we won't own our computers or the content on them - they will and they
will have total control at all times, from bits on disk to display on
screen. We will only be allowed to do what they permit us to do, and
anything we thing we own or create, they can keep, take away from us,
use as they wish and there won't be a damned thing we can do about it.
And there is, at the end of the day, only one man who warned about
this and who led a project for many decades to ensure that there /is/
an alternative. That man is not Eric Raymond, Linus Torvalds or Mark
Shuttleworth. It's Richard Stallman. The one, the original, and
however rude, inconsiderate, hostile, intransigent, uncooperative or
anything else he is, he has never wavered and remained true all the
way.
If in another decade people still have control of their own computers
and can do whatever they want with them and the data on them, it will
be because of RMS and nobody else.
And frankly, for all that he can be ornery or whatever, at the end of
the day, the world could not thank him enough for that. People have
won Nobel prizes for a lot less.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
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