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Miguel...
Miguel...
Posted Nov 10, 2006 21:38 UTC (Fri) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767)In reply to: Miguel... by N0NB
Parent article: On Novell and Microsoft
"""Imagine if RMS had opted to do programming and left the lawyering to someone else? Or, worse, had not bothered to act on his principles at all?"""
We might have been in a better position today.
Open collaboration is a phenomenon of an easily accessible internet, not of Richard. It would have happened with or without him.
Why do some people fail to see that?
GPL has been a helpful license. However, many projects have prospered with other licensing. (Apache, et. al.)
When technical things are done with goals in mind which are primarily political, there is a price to pay.
Compare HURD to Linux, for example.
Stallmans's best avenue for the success of his movement would be to simply finish up HURD and upstage "Linux" with the benefits of GNU/OS. After all, the kernel is the only bit of software that FSF lacks, right?
Instead, since he doesn't seem to see HURD as a credible contender, he resorts to insisting that his project's name be tacked onto the names of relatively successful Linux distros. If his movement were really a success, he would not have to resort to such embarrassing tactics.
So, if Stallman had stuck to the technical and left the lawyering to someone else, we might or might not have some good software that we don't have today. Stallman would not have become so well known within the community. (Don't discount this as a major motivation.) And we really don't know where we would be today if Stallman had not developed such a taste for the limelight.
Overall, I'd say we've done pretty well as thing are. But please don't overemphasize the role of Stallman in the history of open collaboration on the internet.
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Miguel...
Posted Nov 17, 2006 0:35 UTC (Fri) by quintesse (subscriber, #14569) [Link]
You do realize that Linux is GPL as well, don't you? And that you'retaking one "failed" example out of many successful GNU projects.
But anyway, what I think we owe Stallman for is that fact that he
actually made us THINK about the licenses we use. So yes, there's more
than just the GPL around, but they are there exactly because people saw
the success of GPL projects and the benefits of a GPL license, but they
just didn't agree with the ideas behind it so they made their own.
Sometimes making people stop and think is the only thing that is
necessary.
Is he the only one to do that? Of course not. Was he the first? Very
likely not. But as with many things in history sometimes the acts of
others are forgotten because one comes along that embodies everything
that they stand for.
You say that we might have been in a better position today, by the same
reasoning (which is none, because I don't seen anything to support what
you say) we could have been in a much worse position.
Because I have no idea how old you are, but I can tell you that people
where collaborating quite nicely even before existence of (or easy access
to) the Internet. Before that, you either just kept your code to
yourself, sold it or made it freeware or shareware.
The Internet has of course made collaborating with a large number of
people on large projects a lot easier but don't think it didn't happen
before.
But the whole licensing thing was just plain chaos in the free/shareware
scene, basically everybody just made up his own and there was not much
thought put into it. No direction, no ideals.
So in that aspect I think RMS (and some others like him) woke us up and
made us THINK about our licenses. And if that includes people thinking
that RMS stinks and that they'd rather sell their mother than ever use a
GPL license for their code, well more power to them.