04.21.10
Richard Stallman’s Life Dedication to Software Freedom
Summary: Richard Stallman explains how much he has sacrificed so that the world of software will be a better place for users and developers alike
WIRED MAGAZINE has this new article which starts with a big picture of an offender and breaker of the law, as though he is the father of computers or something like that (as opposed to a ruthless businessman from a family of lawyers who fought the law and disregarded the law). But deeper inside the article there are some paragraphs about Richard Stallman, the father of Free software. Glyn Moody has concentrated on these portions (he chose the headline ‘Richard Stallman: “I Wished I Had Killed Myself”‘) and received many comments — mostly positive comments — about Stallman, but having looked at other sites, I found some really nasty comments about Stallman (see the rude comments thereto) and they used Moody’s post as ammunition. “Your post about RMS puts his quote out of context; feeds anti-RMS crowd in TuxMachines,” I told Moody, but his reply was: “I disagree: people who are anti-RMS would twist *anything* against him; the post emphasises the positive…”
Perhaps there is logic to that given all the faith-based hatred of Stallman that we’ve come across. Stallman has no PR department (unlike some) and he is a risk to some people’s businesses (usually the lesser-ethical ones). Sooner or later they may have their Eureka moment and find out what they have done. █
“I don’t want to work for a toy computer company [Microsoft], I’ve got real iron here at Yale. [...at Microsoft] We don’t have a manager who cares about what we’re doing [...] We don’t really have a clue as to what we’re doing from a strategic standpoint. [...] This is shitty. If you guys want to do something with a windowing package like Vision’s, then you need somebody running the group who knows about it.”
–Steve Wood, early Microsoft developer
