Matz wins the 2011 Free Software Award | Hacker News Reader

Matz wins the 2011 Free Software Award

fsf.org

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Congratulations Matz. You deserve every accolade and recognition for your great contributions to our tech world.

I wonder what RMS thinks of the fact that Ruby recently switched from a GPL-like license (Ruby License) to BSD.

At any rate, congrats to Matz!

From the FSF's own list of GPL-compatible licenses:

> License of Ruby (#Ruby)

> This is a free software license, compatible with the GPL via an explicit dual-licensing clause.

... yes? That was my point. They switched from a GPL-like license to a BSD one.

The dual-licensing nature of the Ruby license has always meant that you could distribute it in a BSD-like fashion (with an extra restriction on naming). They simply moved the "or" part of the license from GPL to BSD. Ruby was never distributed in a GPL-like-only fashion. The changeover is mostly a non-issue.

Interesting that the name of Linus Torvalds is not in the list of previous winners.

I think there's a simple reason... Have you seen how upset RMS gets when you call a distribution a "Linux Distribution" instead of a "GNU/Linux Distribution"? :P

* Sent from my laptop, running a Linux Distribution

Somewhat related: when the Linus Torvalds award was given to the FSF, Stallman responded with something along the lines of "Giving the Linus Torvalds award to the FSF is like giving the Han Solo award to the Rebel Alliance".

But who wouldn't be happy to get a Han Solo award?
I think Han Solo is a pretty cool guy. Eh shoots Greedos and doesnt afraid of anything

Not really. Linus isn't a Free Software zealot in the way that the FSF is. He's too pragmatic for that.
EDIT: Downvotes? Really? Linus isn't a Free Software advocate in the way that the FSF wants their people to be. He's a serious open source and GPLv2 advocate, but that's where it stops. He is not the kind of person that the FSF would give this award to.

(in case you don't know) I think the downvotes will be for the implication of the FSF being unpragmatic zealots. Obviously many don't share this view.

If they don’t share that view, I think they fail to understand what the FSF is all about.
I’m fairly certain RMS itself would agree that the ideal of freedom they fight and advocate for is to be followed without compromising to practical inconveniences.

One acronym ... LGPL

Just because you don't see the conveniences in having a full Free Software stack doesn't mean they don't exist.

What? Of course there are. That is not what I meant. If you choose to use a full Free Software stack, you'll have to face some inconveniences: fewer hardware choices, different or unavailable software and codecs, etc.
Easy examples: if you choose to run a completely free system most of the videos on the web today are unavailable to you (even counting the few YouTube converted to WebM), as are essentially all games on any platform. Also, you cannot have a smartphone (I think even OpenMoko needs a binary blob). These are inconveniences.
RMS thinks freedom has higher value than having the ability to choose whatever hardware you want, so he picked the only laptop available with free firmware.

Matz isn't a zealot either, so your argument is obviously flawed.

According to the announcement of the 1998 Free Software Award:
People such as Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds, who have already received other awards for their contributions, were not eligible for the Free Software Award.
Source: http://www.gnu.org/award/award-1998.html

Aha! Thank you.

So the FSF award is a tea towel? Grreeaattt...
It is nice that Matz was acknowledged for his work but I feel that the FSF is increasingly out of touch. Instead of campaigning against closed source applications I think they would be far more effective providing support and direction to open source projects.
The difference between open source and closed source commercial software is often polish and general direction. Helping take open source projects to the next level and showcasing them would be far more effective than bemoaning Windows and DRM.
Take MS Office. Libre Office can do pretty much everything everything MS Office can do and it doesn't cost anything to install. The FSF should be asking questions about why Libre Office hasn't made a bigger dent in the Office suite market and then help solve any issues which are slowing uptake.

Site went down. Here is the cached link:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.fsf...

The picture of Matz, Stallman and the Quilt is priceless.
I like that this award goes to Matz, good choice!

Will make a nice panel for Heroes.
RMS is pumping up to belch blue lighting-balls and Matz is puckering up to teleport the hell outta there.

What is the actual physical award? Is it some kind of flag or quilt? Hard to make it out in the picture.

Yes, it has historically been some sort of quilt. See also:
http://www.gnu.org/award/prior-years.html

I'm only about a month in with Ruby\Rails, but I like it a lot and really like the community I am finding. Nice.

The prize doesn't come with any money, but the winner gets free software for life! ;)

is the website down?

Mr. Stallman is looking charming as usual.

You've been downvoted to hell... but why?
Is there a taboo on commenting on his looks? This is the worst pic I've ever seen of him.
I get that this is a part of the unique 'character' which produced the free software movement, but after a point it hurts his message. I wish he'd groom himself a little - at least when he's on stage.

Discussions about Stallman rarely say anything new. A single line about RMS's appearance is adding nothing to the conversation, and risks a de-rail. (Already you responded, as have I. IHBT.)

I can only speak for myself, but the reason he is being downvoted is because circle-jerky comments about RMS's appearance add absolutely nothing interesting or insightful to the discussion. The internet already has one reddit. I don't think we need to turn HN into another one.

At the risk of getting meta, "This comment belongs on reddit, not HN" is just as circle-jerky.

Wrong caption.This is not Richard Stallman! It's Matz's gardener. He follows him around sometimes, help him carry stuff when he goes to the grocery store.

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