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Re: [Sheflug] RMS Talk
Vaguely related to free software philosophy and personalities.
>>>>> "Timothy" == Timothy Baldwin <csyteb [at] comp.leeds.ac.uk> writes:
Timothy> Another possible reason is ignorance of the FSM within
Timothy> left wing parties, 5 of the 6 SWP members I have
Timothy> discussed the FSM with, were not aware if it's existence,
Timothy> or of GNU/Linux.
Could be. A coalition of the FSM and left wing politics is an obvious
thing to try. I suspect it won't mix well, but I have no claim to
expertise here.
On the other hand, the OSM obviously mixes really well with what we
Yanks call "libertarianism" and most Britons call "liberal," if I am
correctly informed. Cf. Eric Raymond (aka ESR).
Timothy> RMS is not at all revolutionary,
>> He is with respect to free software.
Timothy> I was largely thinking of his tactics, AFAIK he has not
Timothy> even hinted at the use of strike action against the
Timothy> makers of propiretry software, for example.
Was Gandhi a revolutionary? Of course. Did he strike? Only hunger
strikes. What do you think rms is doing when he refuses to use any of
the goodies that come "for free" with MS Windows?
Timothy> I suspect the fact that the FSM is largely made up of
Timothy> software professionals is due to it's failure to mount a
Timothy> serious political campaign, which would win support from
Timothy> people who are not computer experts.
Read the GNU Manifesto again. People who are not computer experts are
of _no_ concern to the FSM. The FSM is not about the Quake-playing
non-participants. It is about my "right" to read _your_ code, improve
it, and pass that improved application along to Will, including source.
It is the OSM that cares about non-programmers directly. The FSM only
points out that benefits from free software are likely to spill over
to non-programmers. In fact, rms has personally asked me _not_ to
study the advantages of free software to non-programmers (because it
can have nothing to do with the ethics of free software).
Timothy> Which rather makes a folly of their boycott of Amazon
Timothy> (due to it small size).
The motivation for the boycott is not necessarily to change Amazon.
>> The GNU system using the Linux kernel is a wild success,
>> though, and campaigning for "credit where credit is due" is
>> pretty easy.
Timothy> But that is not going to get the message to the person in
Timothy> the street, or the leaders of the Serbian revolution.
No. But never fear, the Croats and Ukrainians (no Serbs yet, sorry)
working on XEmacs are well aware of the FSM. They don't see any
relation to "socialism," though, and they don't understand what RMS is
trying to do at all. They find the OSM much more attractive.
And their bosses are well aware that as long as the telephone line is
open, they have access to much better support services over the 'net
than any MCSE can provide in person (since the latter is likely to get
mugged for his tools on his way to the shop).
>> it's RMS they can't work with, and that only at the
>> philosophical/ political level.
Timothy> Not surprising, he is a supporter of Ralph Nader after
Timothy> all.
>> That's not the political level I meant; it's
>> intraorganizational. Ie, RMS's need to fully control anything
>> he manages, and inability to compromise.
Timothy> Does that apply to all organisations?
I don't know. I know he makes basically all the decisions at the FSF,
and ran the GCC and Emacs projects with iron control, precipitating
long-lived forks in both projects. He writes most of the propaganda
on gnu.org. He is _the_ spokesman for the FSM; pretty much everybody
else with much prominence, from Don Knuth to ESR to Bruce Perens to
Tim O'Reilly to Linus Torvalds is either associated with the OSI or
very independent of any organization.
I've never heard of a project where rms participated actively where he
played second fiddle.
>> Could be. But IBM in particular is getting involved in open
>> source for many purely profit-oriented reasons.
Timothy> I was referring to why they would want to associate
Timothy> themselves with the FSM instead of the OSM.
Are you kidding? They don't have any choice about the license; it has
to be GPL. The FSF is the obvious place to assign S/390. But IBM is
a major player in Apache, and has recently released the IBM Classes
for Unicode as free software, which is _not_ FSF-assigned. I don't
see anything but pragmatism there.
In fact, I don't know of any major company which makes a point of
cozying up to the FSM to the exclusion of the OSM.
Timothy> As long as capitalism exists. That is why to abolish
Timothy> proprietary software we have to overthrow capitalism (and
Timothy> replace it with socialism). Now that computers exist free
Timothy> software is a part of socialism.
It's the other way around, I'm afraid. The fundamental conditions of
software are far more conducive to (what I understand to be) socialism
than those of hardware. If you can't abolish property in software,
give up on the rest. (IMHO, YMMV, etc.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Truth-in-Posting Note: The rest of my reply can't even pretend to be
related to Linux or free software, so I sent it directly to Tim. It's
at http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/Personal/Rants/sheflug-2000-11-03.txt.
--
University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091
_________________ _________________ _________________ _________________
What are those straight lines for? "XEmacs rules."
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