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GNU/Busybox ?!?GNU/Busybox ?!?Posted Mar 22, 2007 10:55 UTC (Thu) by NigelK (guest, #42083)In reply to: GNU/Busybox ?!? by landley Parent article: The road to freedom in the embedded world His for cutting and pasting: I'm guessing because it was the first he'd seen it, so it was new to him? Yep. It opened my eyes to the antics of the "leaders" of the FLOSS scene. Having recently been disillusioned by PJ of Groklaw, the discoveries of RMS's and Perens' previous antics have been fascinating to me. I went off organised religion as a kid, and only recently have I discovered that extended to the computer field as well. Self-selected "leaders" have usually (with a few exceptions) put their own interests first. The moral of the story? Think for yourself, and work *with* others. Co-operation rather than conflict. That way great things happen.
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GNU/Busybox ?!? Posted Mar 22, 2007 12:14 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link] > Self-selected "leaders" have usually (with a few exceptions) put their own interests first.
Honestly, if the basis of your ill-feeling towards Stallman is simply disillusionment, then please, deal with it in private. Being a "great" person is pretty much fundamentally incompatible with being a nice person, because part of it is having the ego and the mulishness to insist that you're right when everyone else is telling you not to be silly; and expecting people such as Stallman or PJ to be somehow immune from the vices, doubts and insecurities that plague the rest of us is asking them to be something other than human.
But as far as "self-selected leader" goes, what sets Stallman apart is that he didn't move. At a time when everyone was taking a route away from what he regarded as a core principle, he dug his heels in - but he also DID something about it. (Not just GNU; before that there was Emacs, and before that the wholesale recreation of the Symbolics OS for the Lisp Machines Inc machines. And of course, before that there was Emacs again.) Stallman didn't go anywhere; he just found himself a leader when people started looking to him for direction. So it went to his head. Are you seriously claiming it wouldn't have gone to yours? The person that is Stallman is of vanishing insignificance; anyone with his ability could have made his choices. What is significant - his refusal to compromise his ideals; his advocacy of freedom in moral terms, rather than pragmatic ones; his ability to read the writing on the wall - are the very qualities for which people dislike him, yet without those there probably wouldn't BE a free software movement today, let alone one causing Microsoft sleepless nights.
And for reference, I've never knowingly used the term "GNU/Linux", as far as I recall, and I have no inclination to start.
(PS. Conflict is responsible for more invention, art, and pretty much any creative human endeavour than anything else. Don't be so hasty to condemn it. Without it, we'd have hegemony, and we certainly wouldn't have freedom.)
GNU/Busybox ?!? Posted Mar 22, 2007 18:23 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] Now that's a good reason not to use the term GNU/Linux: like the earlier unlamented Lignux it's a pig-ugly term (and to his credit he recognized that `Lignux' was horrible and stopped using it).
RMS has come up with a good few really nasty names for things and rarely realises when they're non-euphonious... (mind you he's picked some good names, too: Emacs isn't bad, and POSIX is so much better a name than IEEEIX that it's not true.)
RMS is stubborn as anything, yes, but a good few of his stubborn stands are *right*. (Not all of them: most people I've talked to think the GFDL is a mistake, for instance.)
GNU/Busybox ?!? Posted Mar 22, 2007 16:15 UTC (Thu) by landley (guest, #6789) [Link] > I went off organised religion as a kid, and only recently have I> discovered that extended to the computer field as well. > Self-selected "leaders" have usually (with a few exceptions) put their > own interests first.
Linus is refreshingly up-front about it though, isn't he? :)
GNU/Busybox ?!? Posted Mar 22, 2007 16:48 UTC (Thu) by NigelK (guest, #42083) [Link] I've yet to see Torvalds try and shape the world outside his project. I've seen him give various opinions on various subjects, but that's to be expected when you're the leader of such a high-profile project. I've also yet to see him take credit for other people's work.
In other words, he's just what you'd expect of a project leader (multiplied by the fact that Linux is such a public-facing project) - out to enable people rather than hinder them.
I've now lost count of the number of times FSF-mouthpiece Groklaw has railed against decisions and practices (outside the courts) which are actually acceptable inside the industry. When I realised they didn't understand business or the needs of the tech sector (cf. binary "blobs", so-called Tivoization, etc), I realised that (aside from the SCO saga) they didn't speak for me, or for people with my background (generic geek programming and using computers at work and at home who want to help out other people where they can).
GNU/Busybox ?!? Posted Mar 22, 2007 17:09 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] Luckily PJ is back on the SCO case, where she is simply amazing. I agree, her detours into "NOVELL IS BACKDOORING OPENOFFICE!!!!" etc. were wrong at best, and bold-faced lies at worst. Thankfully, the Utah courts are back in session and PJ appears to have mellowed out. You might want to give her another chance... people do make mistakes.
Even fake, invented-by-IBM people. :)
GNU/Busybox ?!? Posted Mar 22, 2007 17:18 UTC (Thu) by NigelK (guest, #42083) [Link] I still follow the site, but I don't contribute anymore. The tipping point was the deletion of posts critical of the FSF and of the GPL3 - you can only be neutral or positive about either, and if you criticize the GPL3, you're told your views don't matter because it doesn't exist yet.
People pointing out the contradictions between "software patents are being awarded for trivial pieces of code" and "Linux (however you define it) cannot possibly infringe patents" also got silenced and their posts deleted.
So I basically now just read it for the information, and not the editorial. She doesn't understand the tech, nor the industry, so her value is only in the lawsuit coverage.
GNU/Busybox ?!? Posted Mar 22, 2007 18:25 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] Of course she's never ever said that she's not a techie. (Only in, oh, virtually every article touching on tech matters. But I can see how you might have missed that.)
GNU/Busybox ?!? Posted Mar 22, 2007 19:08 UTC (Thu) by NigelK (guest, #42083) [Link] The point isn't that she's pretending to be a techie. The point is that she doesn't understand the technical issues, and yet feels comfortable writing sensational incorrect conclusions on matters she doesn't understand, yet she feels able to speak for the community on these subjects.
GNU/Busybox ?!? Posted Mar 23, 2007 14:28 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] As far as I'm aware she's writing a popular bloggy thing. She didn't insome way *insist* that people Let Her Speak For The Community: she's in that position de facto because a large number of people think she's worthy of it. It's not a position that it's possible to `resign' from (without entirely ceasing to write anything publically visible!)
That's how the rank structure we don't have works. My apologies that the
GNU/Busybox ?!? Posted Mar 23, 2007 14:49 UTC (Fri) by NigelK (guest, #42083) [Link] Wow, you make popular unqualified bloggers sound more important than people who actually know what they're talking about. I'll leave you (and others like you) to wallow and panic in your collective ignorance.
GNU/Busybox ?!? Posted Mar 23, 2007 15:20 UTC (Fri) by NigelK (guest, #42083) [Link] As an exercise for the reader, read through the Groklaw articles and count the instances of phrases along the lines of
* "The community doesn't want that."
* "The community doesn't work like that."
* "CommunityMemberFooBar is not acting in the interests of the community."
She seems to write about what the community wants, and yet her views only represent a small part of it these days.
GNU/Busybox ?!? Posted Mar 26, 2007 12:59 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] The only panicker (and conspiracy theorist) on this thread seems to be you.
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