2010/9/2 Raj Mathur (राज माथुर) raju@linux-delhi.org
On Thursday 02 Sep 2010, Naveen Dhanuka wrote:
My take from his speech is that I see him as the silent soldier who has been defeated in the battle and the war and has not given up and is telling at every possible and permissible place what ETHICS and SACRIFICE and BLOOD & SWEAT that has gone into make solid engineering and given for free as free speech and not free bear.
That's a pretty sweeping statement to make, isn't it?
?
In my opinion, RMS is one of the most important figures in the field of computing, right up there with Turing and Tim Berners-Lee.
I know and I agree.
If it weren't for him computing as we know it wouldn't have existed.
By computing do u mean servers or desktops or internet. I guess penetration has happened because of PC which has Windows and a millions of apps.
And the Internet would have remained a small academic network connecting a few thousand universities. In fact, we wouldn't have been having this conversation at all.
Penetration of Unix and its clone even today is in Universities and not anywhere else. Its the hackers or the newbies who want to get their hands dirty with the code or read the poetry written by hackers who download and install the GNU/Linux.
RMS created the concept of free software. Every packet sent on the
Internet today is processed by one or more free software-based packages somewhere along the line.
His vision is his. And he has taken the pains of going at every prospective place and share his vision. He has not only shared the vision. He has also designed the copyleft and the license which protects the freedom. Also the compiler and an editor which some refer to as an OS (emacs).
He also created GCC, thanks to which people could easily compile, enhance, modify and customise packages like Apache, any e-mail solution, PHP/Perl/Python/Java, BIND, a router kernel, etc. How many of these packages would have existed if GCC hadn't? Very few, I suspect.
I know and I agree. Just a question does BSDs also have GCC.
After all that, to call him a "soldier who has been defeated" is just
plain ignorant.
I can explain.
First came RMS. He coined the word Free Software, which he explained as Free Speech and Not Free Bear. He wrote GCC, GPL, emacs and lot other utilities which any fellow hacker would need. He thought of then writing the kernel. He then chose the micokernel architecture which was superior design and could not be made. Monolithic kernel was inferior in design, but the advance in microprocessors filled the gap and the kernel was successful.
The OS now is called Linux. No one calls it GNU/Linux. Its only the luggers and should i say its the GLUGGERS. The word Free Software is not used by the corporate and its now the word OPEN SOURCE in use in packaging and solutions. Its not wrong on their part, because you can't see a solution to a corporate saying that its made using free software. The word free does not implant the thought of freedom, but of free as in cost free.
I believe RMS is defeated because the concept of FREE SOFTWARE and the 4 laws of free software are churning out money for Open Source. RMS is doing the right thing by taking his vision and ethics back to ACADEMIA, where budding engineers and can wear his shoes and walk a mile. And decide for themselves what they want to do and what they should do.
Does it make sense to you?
Regards,
-- Raj
Raj Mathur raju@kandalaya.org http://kandalaya.org/ GPG: 78D4 FC67 367F 40E2 0DD5 0FEF C968 D0EF CC68 D17F PsyTrance & Chill: http://schizoid.in/ || It is the mind that moves -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers