Re: [SLUG] What do you all think?

From: chris lee (chris.a.lee@gmail.com)
Date: Sat Oct 14 2006 - 01:26:31 EDT


On 10/14/06, Eben King <eben01@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Oct 2006, Robert Waldo wrote:
>
> > I came across this article on Forbes:
> > http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/1030/104.html?partner=rss
> > Is this guying going to ruin is for us who want to pursue a career in Linux
> > or will there be a work around that makes him irrelevant?
>
> Unfortunately:
>
> ,--
> | Please log in to access this article:
> |
> | Toppling Linux
> | by Daniel Lyons
> | Software radical Richard Stallman helped build the Linux revolution. Now
> | he threatens to tear it apart.
> '--
>
> Got a synopsis?
>
> --
> -eben QebWenE01R@vTerYizUonI.nOetP royalty.no-ip.org:81
> > A: It's annoying as hell
> > Q: Why do most people hate top-posting? -- Lots42 The Library Avenger
> http://www.fscked.co.uk/writing/top-posting-cuss.html
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>

Quote:

Software radical Richard Stallman helped build the Linux revolution.
Now he threatens to tear it apart.
The free Linux operating system set off one of the biggest revolutions
in the history of computing when it leapt from the fingertips of a
Finnish college kid named Linus Torvalds 15 years ago. Linux now
drives $15 billion in annual sales of hardware, software and services,
and this wondrous bit of code has been tweaked by thousands of
independent programmers to run the world's most powerful
supercomputers, the latest cell phones and TiVo (nasdaq: TIVO - news -
people ) video recorders and other gadgets.

But while Torvalds has been enshrined as the Linux movement's creator,
a lesser-known programmer--infamously more obstinate and far more
eccentric than Torvalds--wields a startling amount of control as this
revolution's resident enforcer. Richard M. Stallman is a 53-year-old
anticorporate crusader who has argued for 20 years that most software
should be free of charge. He and a band of anarchist acolytes long
have waged war on the commercial software industry, dubbing tech
giants "evil" and "enemies of freedom" because they rake in sales and
enforce patents and copyrights--when he argues they should be giving
it all away.

Reader Forum: Discuss This Article
Despite that utopian anticapitalist bent, Linux and the "open-source"
software movement have lured billions of dollars of investment from
IBM, Hewlett-Packard (nyse: HPQ - news - people ), Red Hat (nasdaq:
RHAT - news - people ) and other tech vendors, plus corporate
customers such as Wall Street banks, Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news -
people ) and Amazon (nasdaq: AMZN - news - people ) and Hollywood
special-effects shops. IBM has spent a billion dollars embracing
Linux, using it as a counterweight to the Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT -
news - people ) Windows monopoly and to Sun Microsystems (nasdaq: SUNW
- news - people )' Unix-based business.

Now Stallman is waging a new crusade that could end up toppling the
revolution he helped create. He aims to impose new restrictions on IBM
and any other tech firm that distributes software using even a single
line of Linux code. They would be forbidden from using Linux software
to block users from infringing on copyright and intellectual-property
rights ("digital rights management"); and they would be barred from
suing over alleged patent infringements related to Linux.

Stallman's hold on the Linux movement stems from the radical group he
formed in 1985: the Free Software Foundation. The Boston outfit, which
he still runs, is guided by a "manifesto" he published that year,
urging programmers (hackers) to join his socialist crusade. The group
made Stallman a cult hero among hackers--and ended up holding
licensing rights to crucial software components that make up the Linux
system.

Stallman hopes to use that licensing power to slap the new restraints
on the big tech vendors he so reviles. At worst it could split the
Linux movement in two--one set of suppliers and customers deploying an
older Linux version under the easier rules and a second world using a
newer version governed by the new restrictions. That would threaten
billions of dollars in Linux investment by customers and vendors
alike.

Click here to see which tech companies Stallman's attack could hurt.
A cantankerous and finger-wagging freewheeler, Stallman won't comment
on any of this because he was upset by a previous story written by
this writer. But his brazen gambit already is roiling the hacker
world. His putsch "has the potential to inflict massive collateral
damage upon our entire ecosystem and jeopardize the very utility and
survival of open source," says a paper published in September by key
Linux developers, who "implore" Stallman to back down. "This is not an
exaggeration," says James Bottomley, the paper's chief author. "There
is significant danger to going down this path." (Stallman's camp
claims Bottomley's paper contains "inaccurate information.")

Simon Lok, chief of Lok Technology in San Jose, Calif., a maker of
cheap wireless-networking gear, dumped Linux a few years ago in fear
of the Stallman bunch. "I said, 'One day these jackasses will do
something extreme, and it's going to kill us.' Now it's coming to
fruition," Lok says. "Some of this stuff is just madness. These guys
are fanatics." He adds: "Who do these people think they are?"

Even the Linux program's progenitor and namesake, Linus Torvalds,
rejects Stallman's new push to force tech companies to design their
software his way and to abandon patent rights. Torvalds vows to stick
with the old license terms, thereby threatening the split that tech
vendors so fear. The new license terms Stallman proposes "are trying
to move back into a more 'radical' and 'activist' direction," Torvalds
says via e-mail. "I think it's great when people have ideals--but
ideals (like religion) are a hell of a lot better when they are
private. I'm more pragmatic."

But then, Richard Stallman rarely is pragmatic--and in some ways he is
downright bizarre. He is corpulent and slovenly, with long, scraggly
hair, strands of which he has been known to pluck out and toss into a
bowl of soup he is eating. His own Web site (www.stallman.org) says
Stallman engages in what he calls "rhinophytophilia"--"nasal sex"
(also his term) with flowers; he brags of offending a bunch of techies
from Texas Instruments (nyse: TXN - news - people ) by plunging his
schnoz into a bouquet at dinner and inviting them to do the same.

His site also boasts a recording of him singing--a capella and
badly--his own anthem to free software. ("Hoarders can get piles of
money / that is true, hackers, that is true. / But they cannot help
their neighbors, that's not good, hackers, that's not gooood," he
warbles, which culminates in polite applause from his followers.) He
hasn't hacked much new code in a decade or more. Instead he travels
the world to give speeches and pull publicity stunts, donning robes
and a halo to appear as a character he calls "St. IGNUcius" and offer
blessings to his followers. (GNU, coined in his first manifesto, is
pronounced "Ga-NEW" and stands for "Gnu's Not Unix"; the central Linux
license is known as the GNU license.)

And though he styles himself as a crusader for tech "freedom,"
Stallman labors mightily to control how others think, speak and act,
arguing, in Orwellian doublespeak, that his rules are necessary for
people to be "free." He won't speak to reporters unless they agree to
call the operating system "GNU/Linux," not Linux. He urges his
adherents to avoid such terms as "intellectual property" and touts
"four freedoms" he has sworn to defend, numbering them 0, 1, 2 and 3.
In June Stallman attempted to barge into the residence of the French
prime minister to protest a copyright bill, then unrolled a petition
in a Paris street while his adoring fans snapped photos.

Long ago Stallman was a gifted programmer. A 1974 graduate of Harvard
with a degree in physics, he began graduate school at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology but dropped out and took a job in an MIT lab.
There he grew furious that companies wouldn't let him tinker with the
code in their products. A Xerox (nyse: XRX - news - people ) laser
printer was a key culprit. In the early 1980s he called on hackers to
fight their oppressors by helping him create a free clone of Unix,
naming it GNU.

Stallman and his allies hacked away for nearly a decade but couldn't
get GNU to work. In 1991 Torvalds, then an unknown college kid in
Finland, produced in six months what Stallman's team had failed to
build in years--a working "kernel" for an operating system. Torvalds
posted this tiny 230-kilobyte file containing 10,000 lines of code to
a public server, dubbing it "Linux" and inviting anyone to use it.

Soon people were combining Torvalds' Linux kernel with Stallman's GNU
components to make a complete operating system. The program was a hit.
But to Stallman's dismay people referred to it as Linux, not GNU.
Torvalds became famous. Stallman got pushed aside. The ultimate insult
came in 1999 when his Free Software Foundation was given a "Linus
Torvalds Award." Stallman accepted but said it was "like giving the
Han Solo award to the Rebel Alliance."
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