Re: RMS

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>]

On Thu, Aug 01, 2002 at 07:00:13AM -0700, Paul Johnson wrote:
> What do folks have against RMS?  I like his goal of a free world, and
> respect the fact he's got the balls to act on it.

He does have a tendency to rub people up the wrong way from time to
time. I've only met him once, at a conference: at first, he gave a very
powerful speech about the history of copyright and the importance of
freedom from its abuse, and won over a substantial group of people from
quite a range of academic disciplines. Unfortunately, he then came in
part-way through a talk from a patent lawyer who was actually on his
side but was in the process of satirizing the whole business of software
patents, and got completely the wrong end of the stick (loudly). That
managed to put off quite a lot of people who'd been nodding vehemently
during his earlier talk. I found the whole affair to be an interesting
one-day microcosm of the politics of free software.

That said, there are few people whose technical achievements and
strength of belief I respect more. Bradley Kuhn (FSF vice-president)
said at the last-but-one Debian conference that he expected free
software to be the eventual norm, but perhaps not in our lifetimes. That
gave me an appreciation of the scale of the effort that's needed and the
commitment of those leading it.

(So in case this post is misunderstood: I agree with you completely, but
can see what has caused some people to be irritated. Perhaps much of
that abrasiveness was necessary just to get it through people's heads
that freedom is important.)

-- 
Colin Watson                                  [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]