Older blog entries for atai (starting at number 11)

tk: don't go bad.
Stallman worship? There was the comment that I "overpraised" RMS by referring to Lessig's description of RMS as "the philosopher of our age." Well, I did not make that up on my own, and I did state the source of that description :-)

Well, back to RMS, many people think of RMS as a big ego lunatic. It is worth mentioning that someone once asked RMS what he thought of extending the free software ideals to music and other art form. He initially replied that he considerd there is some similarity between music and software, and there may be the need, but he admitted he was not an expert on music and did not know the answer. Later he admitted that Gnutella has changed his mind and now he saw a greater need for free music. So RMS admits what he does not know. And people calling RMS a Marxist are just ignorant or do so on purpose.

tk refers to RMS's various comments on stallman.org as more of RMS "does not hold water." But did he note that RMS carefully separate his views on software (on gnu.org) from world politics, globalization, etc. (on stallman.org)? RMS is careful about his presentations. Compare this to Eric Raymond, and see his writings on libertarianism and gun ownership appearing in LinuxToday and similar Free Software/Open Source related media. RMS won't tell you his belief that there is no God and his support for anti-globalization movements and more legalization of Marijuana, unless you ask or go to stallman.org. Many (like me) would strongly disagree with RMS on some of these non-software matters, but such should have no bearing on how one views RMS's stand on software.

And whether RMS will be "the philosopher of our age", as recorded in history, we are not yet at the point to make the judgement. And RMS has a bigger chance of earning that title than Linus Torvalds, Eric Raymond, etc. RMS is not a God, but it is also wrong to consider RMS just as an egoist who wants to put "GNU" in front of everything. RMS is a philosopher, that's already sure, up to this point in time.

Linus Torvalds and philosophy? What? He does not care and never created one. "Just for fun" is just that.

tk:You say RMS's arguments on software "do not hold water." Show us why that's so. Merely saying so without logical arguments to back it up does not convince people.

Professor Lessig of the Stanford Law School calls RMS "the philosopher of our age." tk: Was Lessig talking baloney?

raph: I am glad that the CIFS license story helped promoting Advogato!

tk: You may find that a significant part of the world, or the hacker community anyway, cares about software freedom! Many people would not agree with your take on the FSF press release.

Recently there have been talks that software producers should be held liable for securty flaws in the software. See the discussions at slashdot.

What about free software? Some people argue that free software should be exempted, because users get "for free," etc. We all know free software is not about free beer. But the serious issue is, any argument against liability for free software authors may not be very strong. If some congressman argues programmers should be liable for software faults, that argument will apply to both free and proprietary developers. If one releases software, one means to have someone else uses the software.

The real worry is, free software authors have no resources, unlike, say, Microsoft. If software liability becomes a trend, that a law passes to make programmers responsible for every bug in their software, it can be a powerful weapon used by the proprietary software industry to shut down free software. Microsoft can pay dollars in the millions, but free software hackers cannot.

Tk wrote:

If there's anyone to blame for the current open- source mess (both in the ideological sense and in the practical sense), it's RMS. He's turned the whole purpose of hacking upside down. Now sharing code, instead of being a by-product of creating a good program, has become an end in itself.

Tk, you are both right and wrong. You are right in that RMS is largely responsible for the current "mass" (the way you called it). You are wrong in that hacking is only about creating good programs. See Steven Levy: (1984) "Hakcers' Ethics"

1. Always yield the Hands-On Imperative! Access to computers - and anything else which might teach you about the way the world works - should be unlimited and total.

2. All information should be free.

3. Mistrust Authority - Promote Decentralization.

4. Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position.

5. You can create art and beauty on a computer.

6. Computers can change your life for the better.

So you see, open access and free information has been there since the beginning. Creation is not the goal by itself. Bill Gates created "good" Basic but hackers did not like his Open Letter and his refusal to share. Merely creating good programs is not enough.

Kai, it is good to see KaiView is back from the dead!

Keep up on experimentation. For nobel ideas, I will definitely borrow from it!

Damn! The same article appears twice. I pushed the "back" button and the post page was visited twice. Sorry about this. Advogato really should add a feature to allow users to edit or to delete already posted articles.

Last week I patched Inti to make it compile with the latest gtk+. I have received no reply. Seems no one is interested or paying attention to Inti? I would have expected there are more interests in Inti. Kind of strange.

Damn, I post the same article twice. Editor, can you delete one instance of the article? Thanks.

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