He's also an extreme fundamentalist. I don't think he knows what 'compromise' or 'real world' mean.
He lacks taste, class and humanity.
He lacks taste, class and humanity.
Isn't that how we got a functional free software stack though? A "real world" "compromise" pragmatic guy would have bought another printer and moved on.
The world needs idealists. We may not always agree with them, they sometimes sound crazy, but they play an important role.
Surely most of us started out downloading free software from BBSes? Remember fractint?
Sorry, but if Stallman hadn't done anything, we'd still have Linux, and all the other software we enjoy today.
Are you absolutely certain about that? Think about it: if for example Linus had released his kernel with a more permissive license, he might not have received as many contributions, and maybe Linux would never have become as great as it is now.
History is littered with cases where a large number of people 'discover' or 'invent' something, and then one of them happens to be credited with it, and goes down in history as "the inventor". But it was bound to happen anyway.
You could say the same of Einstein, or ... even Steve Jobs :)
Not having software isn't a show stopper. It just means you have a bit more work to do. So yeah maybe building gcc might have taken a few months, but it wouldn't have prevented anything, only delayed the inevitable.
This isn't rocket science, it's just programming. We don't invent things, we just build what needs building.
If people needed a compiler, they would have built one. Jquery was an optional addition that some like using. It hasn't enabled things that weren't possible before.
You may not be aware of this, but people were writing working computer programs for almost 20 years before they invented compilers. People still occasionally write working computer programs today without compilers.
> with a javascript library which makes things a bit easier for newbies?
I've been programming since 1980. I've been doing AJAX (and Comet!) since 2000 — very reluctantly at first! I've shipped production software that kicked Cisco's ass, in the market, at managing Cisco devices. I'm in the AUTHORS file for Perl 5, although I don't deserve to be. Among other things, I've written OLAP systems; user interfaces; music softsynths; 3-D engines, one of which was in JavaScript; full-text search engines; mailserver software; and compilers.
And I think jQuery is awesome.
> If people needed a compiler, they would have built one. Jquery was an optional addition that some like using. It hasn't enabled things that weren't possible before.
No software "enables" things that weren't possible before; obviously if it hadn't been possible to do the things that the software "enabled", it would have been impossible to write the software.
In particular, any software you can write with a compiler, you can write in machine code. It's just more work.
But some software gives you a lot of leverage. jQuery is a good example. A C compiler is another good example. The leverage provided by the two is roughly comparable.
Not having tools at hand is a major factor for not to pursue a project everywhere in the world. Not just in the open source world. I don't think Guido or Larry or Matz would have taken trouble to write a compiler to write Python or Perl or Ruby.
Not to mention nearly all major open source projects and many other closed projects are using gcc one way or the other. I bet even Apple uses gcc in some way.
Work happens by incrementally building on others work. Even Linus agrees RMS is one of the giants on whose shoulders he has stood to look farther.
RMS might have some problems communicating in most socially accepted ways. But he has achieved and helped other achieve far more things valuable. And he has done it in time. A lot of people have built on top of his work. And a lot of that work has made a lot of money and provided employment.
Its wrong to compare Steve Jobs and Richard Matthew Stallman. They are great in their own rights. But in terms of absolute comparisons, RMS has achieved far more than Jobs.
iProducts are the cool must have gadgets of this era, they haven't changed the world any more than video games have.
Linux was originally under a similar license. It could have died in the same way, leaving only the BSD projects, which have been much less effective at attracting contributors. You could argue that maybe without competition from Linux, they would have been able to attract more contributors; but I think the truth is the opposite — with fewer free-software users, there would be fewer free-software contributors, and less free software, increasingly marginalizing free-software systems.
And, without inspiration from Stallman's ideology, even BSD would never have become free, according to Keith Bostic.
So we'd have some free software, but we wouldn't have a coherent movement that strives to ensure that everyone can use a 100%-free-software system.
For those of us who've been around a while, GNU wasn't very notable until the Linux kernel came around. I figure Linux has probably done more for GNU PR than rms or anyone else.
It is certainly true, though, that without Linux, GNU might easily have collapsed in the early 1990s.
It's akin to car-bombing a funeral; something only really insane or angry people do. And last time I checked, Stallman doesn't have much to be angry about.
There... uh.. seems to be a lot of difference between "god kills soldiers because gay people exist" and "software should be free." Even though his quip about Jobs's death was tacky, I'm still gonna give RMS more points than the Westboro Baptist Church.
There's a big difference between being tacky out of ignorance and immaturity and deliberately hurtful in a public forum with a measured audience. Coupled with a sense of timing and purpose, any sane and intelligent person would be able to make that distinction.
And much like a car-bomber at a funeral, what sets Stallman aside from the rest of us is the opportunistic cowardice with which he operates. If he truly felt harmed by Steve Job's actions whilst living, why didn't he make a case for him to die sooner rather than waiting for his death to be fait accompli?
As for opportunistic cowardice? Have you ever heard of RMS before? He's constantly saying these things, and to anyone who will listen (and some who won't).
Likening Stallman to a car-bomber is far worse than what Stallman actually said - you don't really have the moral ground to call someone else an opportunistic coward.