Hal Vaughan wrote:
On Friday 04 April 2008, Michael C wrote:Hal Vaughan wrote:On Friday 04 April 2008, Michael C wrote:Ivan Savcic wrote:On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 5:12 PM, Andrew Sackville-West <andrew@farwestbilliards.com> wrote:I have a problem with this. Debian, in it's default install is almost assuredly GNU free. And it has the additional freedom of allowing the user to choose to use non-free software within the structure of it's packaging system. IMO that is more free than preventing people from using the software they want.I had exactly the same view on that. But RMS is obviously a purist, he dreams to banish all closed source from this world. Like Hal pointed out, RMS believes that there should be no freedom when it comes to choosing freedom itself. IvanRMS is more of a hypocrite than anything else. He morally objects to distros/*BSD variants with non-free applications in their repositories/ports systems, on the grounds that this implicitly advocates the use of non-free software, whilst explicitly advocating GPL-licensed software for use in conjunction with that ultimate proprietary platform, MS Windows: http://www.gnu.org/software/for-windows.htmlI think what RMS objects to is anything that was not his idea first. HalHoni soit qui mal y pense!Merde!Granted that's just my opinion, based on what I've read and less than 2 1/2 hours at one of his talks (including some time talking to him afterwards), so I could be way off base, but I did get the sense that his world definitely starts and ends with his own views -- and basically contains only his views.The FSF's list curiously doesn't mention the GNU Foundation's support for the Win32 port of emacs and gcc: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/ntemacs.htmlI admire RMS and a lot of what he's done. I'm currently working on source for controlling an HD radio in C++ so I'm using gcc, based on his earlier version and he did write emacs (isn't that an OS or religion?). That doesn't mean that I think he carries things too far.But then again, maybe it's that blindness and need of his to go too far that has achieved what he has.Hal
FWIW, I don't have any particular problem with the notion -- implicit in Stallman's position -- that there's a set of positive political freedoms which *morally* override the permissive freedom to install proprietary software. What concerns me is that Richard, in common with many people half-seduced by their followers' portrayal of themselves as a prophet/guru figure, has stopped listening to anyone outside of his coterie of sycophants.