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Comment by ZeroGravitas | Hacker News Reader

Read this and tell me whether it says "Mono and de Icaza are evil" or "I think Mono is the wrong approach and here's why":

Why free software shouldn't depend on Mono or C# by Richard Stallman

http://www.fsf.org/news/dont-depend-on-mono

Some quotes:

"This is not to say that implementing C# is a bad thing. Free C# implementations permit users to run their C# programs on free platforms, which is good."

"The problem is not in the C# implementations, but rather in Tomboy and other applications written in C#. If we lose the use of C#, we will lose them too. That doesn't make them unethical, but it means that writing them and using them is taking a gratuitous risk.

We should systematically arrange to depend on the free C# implementations as little as possible."

Also related, the next news article:

http://www.fsf.org/news/2009-07-mscp-mono

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Read this and notice that rms calls de Icaza a traitor:

http://www.osnews.com/story/22225/RMS_De_Icaza_Traitor_to_Fr...

Looks more like the former (evil) to me.

Traitor doesn't mean "evil".

If you understand (not necessarily agree with) the reasons Stallman gives for being cautious about Mono/C# then you'd understand why someone who'd done so much for Free Software in the past, who is now driving Mono, could be described as "basically a traitor to the Free Software community" i.e. someone who used to promote their ideals, but now threatens them.

It seems strange that Stallman, widely regarded as some kind of maniac, regularly gets grief for single word choices or off-hand comments. Would this be a discussion if he'd said "his actions no longer align with the best interests of our community"? If he's really that crazy why didn't he go on some venomous tirade and character assassination like some political shock-jock?

Stallman is a 'polarizing figure', it's the if you're not with us you're against us mentality that gets a lot of people up in arms all over the world.

I'm a great fan of free software. I think all software should be free, and in the long run I hope that that will be the case, but I doubt that that will actually happen.

There will always be niches so obscure or unpleasant that the only way to get someone to code that stuff is to pay them for their work.

And that's good, it certainly does not brand them as 'traitors', unless you want to consider open source software versus closed software as a war. I think that is not the right way to approach the problem.

I think it is more along the lines of two competing business models that duke it out in the market, with market share being the yard stick by which you can measure the success of both methods for software development.

So far, open source software has done pretty good, but calling ex open source contributors 'traitors' is actually helping closed source, and hurting open source.

There's a few misconceptions here, first, though kind of off-topic but you can pay people to produce Free Software, lots of people do.

Two other misconceptions: He didn't call anyone a "traitor" for producing proprietary software, nor did he call anyone a "traitor" for stopping producing free software. That's kind of the point of using that specific word as it wouldn't apply in those circumstances though some people seem to be taking it as just a general insult.

He did use the word to describe someone who used to be a leading light of the Free Software movement. Remember de Icaza is the guy who started Gnome because the QT licence meant that KDE wasn't "free" enough, even though it was open source i.e. what most folks round here would call a Free Software zealot.

He's now, amongst other things that the FSF find dubious, advising a project specifically set up to create open source software which isn't copyleft with the clearly stated aim that it can be used in proprietary software. This is promoting Open Source (though only as a subordinate of proprietary software) but not Free Software which, for some people, is a very important difference.

If you don't understand that you could dedicate your life to the business success of open source and not impress Richard Stallman then you might want to read this:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.h...

> but you can pay people to produce Free Software, lots of people do.

Yes, of course. But the subject here is not whether or not it is possible to pay people to develop free software, the subject is whether or not paying people to develop closed software or software under a different license than the GPL is somehow morally repugnant. I think it isn't and it shouldn't be, and any person that pretends to say this with high standing in the open source community is not helping open source but hurting it.

It is insulting to large numbers of programmers that do both.

If de Icaza has decided that you can't change microsoft from the outside but that he stands a better chance of effecting change from within - and he seems to be successful in that - then that's fine with me and it should be completely his freedom to do so without being spoken of in derogatory terms by RMS.

> This is promoting Open Source (though only as a subordinate of proprietary software) but not Free Software which, for some people, is a very important difference.

So what ? Let the marketplace decide which is better. If 'real' (as in gpl'd) open source is better then that should stand by itself. Personally I will not touch any of microsofts code with a 10 foot pole because I suspect a catch, but I'm not going around calling people names.

It's the worst way to handle this sort of thing. The best would be to judge the offering on its merits and if there ever is fall-out from the licensing issues to use that as the reason to brand the code 'unusable', not to resort to personal attacks.

It's petty, mean, childish and a whole bunch of other things beside, and it hurts the open source movement as a whole.

This is not a war, and to resort to words like 'traitor' attempts to divide and hurts all of us.

I wouldn't even read that as "Mono is the wrong approach", but as "you should not choose Mono or C# as the basis for a new free software project".

Also, while Stallman can come across as kind of paranoid sometimes, where Microsoft is concerned they really have earned a lot of suspicion, distrust, and ill will with past behavior. I can't really blame someone for not wanting to forgive and forget quickly just because Microsoft has been a bit nicer lately.

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