RMS Talk at University of Toronto Mississauga

[Christopher Browne]

On 7/6/07, phiscock-g851W1bGYuGnS0EtXVNi6w at public.gmane.org <phiscock-g851W1bGYuGnS0EtXVNi6w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Yeah, it was interesting. RMS spoke essentially without notes for I would
> guess over an hour. He's clearly a prickly character - he bridled at a
> couple of questions. For example, one hapless soul mentioned 'Linux' so of
> course Stallman brought up the GNU+Linux issue. On that I think he has a
> valid point, Linux would not have succeeded without the GNU utilities
> (such as GCC). On the other hand, strategically, perhaps less effort
> should have gone into Emacs and more effort into Hurd (or whatever
> replaced it).

Unfortunately, this characterizes what I might term as a "diplomatic
rut" that RMS has fallen into.  He has been prickly in pretty much all
of the ways you describe for about the last ten years.  Unfortunately,
there are various things about the position that encourage others to
play the "make RMS bristle" game.

Part of the problem lies in the ambiguity that lies in "What does
Linux mean?  Kernel?  Or distribution?"

If the FSF had chosen to create or ally with some distribution (and
Debian sometimes appears to be apropos), there would be no argument in
them calling the result "GNU/Linux."  What we hear sounds way more
like sour grapes.

If new things were emerging in greater quantity from the FSF, then
people would more clearly see credit deserved for both new and old
things.

> His ideas are really original and worth consideration, and his first
> concern is with the community. For example, he suggested two mechanisms
> for getting payment to musicians that would bypass the large record
> companies and result in more revenue for most musicians. He suggested that
> the umbrella term 'Intellectual Property' was inappropriate and explained
> why in an argument that made sense.

Not to quash that too much, but he has been telling those same tales
for a lot of years now.  Yes, he has original ideas worth
consideration; unfortunately, there's so much "broken record"
repetition that there's some question of what's new lately:-(.

> I got the impression that he's on a speaker's circuit, so maybe you could
> encourage the FSF to ship him to wherever you are.

I'll bet part of that relates to the recent release of GPL 3.0...
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