Re:The Shaggy God - Richard Stallman in Boston Magazine
by wallflower on Friday July 11, 2008 @10:22PM
(#244231)
"Strictly speaking, the complete operating system should have been called GNU/Linux, representing the combined contributions of Stallman and Torvalds. Stallman always insists on the term, pronouncing it "GNU slash Linux." But in the popular mind, it came to be known as only Linux. Stallman has never gotten over that."
The more I read about Stallman the more I find that his extreme stance is just who he is:
"He's entirely consistent and uncompromising and I think the world needs someone like that," Perens said.
Re:The Shaggy God - Richard Stallman in Boston Magazine
by mechanical_fish on Saturday July 12, 2008 @10:39AM
(#244522)
Obviously this sentence is... flawed. But the most important lesson here is: Every sentence of the form "X invented Y" suffers from the same flaw.
Consider "X invented the television": One canonical value of X is "Vladimir Zworykin", but maverick outsiders have a hero in Philo Farnsworth, and every Scot knows that the correct answer is "John Logie Baird". And all of them are right, in one way or another.
Or the sentence "X invented the first antibiotic": is the correct value of X "Sir Alexander Fleming", "John Tyndall", or "molds in the Penicillium family"? (And why didn't the Penicillium get knighted as well? It did all the grunt work!)
For the really strong form of this argument, google "James Burke connections".
Re:The Shaggy God - Richard Stallman in Boston Magazine
by robg on Saturday July 12, 2008 @08:49AM
(#244487)
Can anyone answer for me how Stallman has influenced the Cambridge tech community? What was interesting, as the author envisons "Mt. Hackmore", is that Stallman is the only East Coaster in that circle. Makes me think that in combining his personality and ethos with the venture community in Boston you could perhaps explain the very conservative investment environment.
Re:The Shaggy God - Richard Stallman in Boston Magazine
by patrickg-zill on Friday July 11, 2008 @11:22PM
(#244264)
Stallman got trolled (though he realized it) when Philip Greenspun did a parody page on "Heather Has Two Mommies and they go to the Zoo" : http://philip.greenspun.com/zoo/
Re:The Shaggy God - Richard Stallman in Boston Magazine
by coffeeaddicted on Saturday July 12, 2008 @02:19AM
(#244360)
I understand why Stallman wants the GNU in GNU/Linux. But what's always confusing me is - why the slash? He's a programmer, so he knows that this is usually used for paths. But that does not seem to make sense if he wants this as a single name which should always be used. You can't create a single GNU/Linux folder - at least not in GNU/Linux. So anyone know why he didn't use another character there?
We're talking about a version of GNU, the operating system, distinguished by having Linux as the kernel. A slash fits the situation because it means “combination.” (Think of “Input/Output”.) This system is the combination of GNU and Linux; hence, “GNU/Linux”.
There are other ways to express “combination”. If you think that a plus-sign is clearer, please use that. In French, a hyphen is clear: “GNU-Linux”. In Spanish, we sometimes say “GNU con Linux”.
Re:The Shaggy God - Richard Stallman in Boston Magazine
by huhtenberg on Saturday July 12, 2008 @11:43AM
(#244536)
> .. there may be another Linux also that's not GNU
Technically there may be one. While the history of Hurd shows that the opposite is not quite true. So all things considered it should really be Linux/GNU :-)
Re:The Shaggy God - Richard Stallman in Boston Magazine
by tjr on Saturday July 12, 2008 @11:45PM
(#244857)
He was successfully charging $250/hour as a software consultant prior to taking up his "evangelist" role full-time. I think he could be quite wealthy if he were to attempt to be.
Re:The Shaggy God - Richard Stallman in Boston Magazine
by iheartrms on Sunday July 13, 2008 @03:49AM
(#244997)
haha...RMS didn't post that ad for himself on craigslist, I posted it on his behalf! It's so strange to see oneself indirectly referred to in an article which one otherwise has nothing to do with.
Re:The Shaggy God - Richard Stallman in Boston Magazine
by me2i81 on Saturday July 12, 2008 @01:35AM
(#244343)
gcc was an important piece of work that Stallman started. The rest of the GNU stuff was a bunch of knock-off code because the original code was bound up in lawsuits (just like the kernel) or later replicated because of licensing purity of essence concerns. Writing a second verson of tar, cpio, cron, etc. hardly counts as a great piece of innovation, and Stallman is kind of a git for acting like it is. The thing about Linux is that Torvalds just went ahead and wrote it, rather than wanking about it for years and years like Stallman did.
Re:The Shaggy God - Richard Stallman in Boston Magazine
by mechanical_fish on Saturday July 12, 2008 @10:21AM
(#244513)
Man, BSD conquers the desktop and it still can't get no respect.
(Of course, its non-free "Mac OS X" disguise does fool a lot of people.)
What I'm trying to say, of course, is that there's no reason why multiple takes on the Unix kernel can't live happily next to each other in the marketplace. Also, you can't just blame Linux for stealing potential mindshare from the HURD... it was a group effort. There was also FreeBSD, as well as non-free but well-respected options like Solaris.
Re:The Shaggy God - Richard Stallman in Boston Magazine
by gaius on Saturday July 12, 2008 @03:09PM
(#244622)
Well, kinda sorta. Why, for example, didn't Oracle choose FreeBSD as their preferred platform? They've gone with Red Hat, and include a long-ish list of stuff that you have to install on top of RHEL to get their software to work. It's crazy really. As in, one of their premier platform simply doesn't work out of the box. Solaris, Windows, you name it, you just install and go, but RHEL is a complete pain in the arse.
So, why? 'Cos Linux has the mindshare, and it got the mindshare because it has legions of activists (e.g. Slashdot) with nothing better to do than repeat the message to anyone who will listen. Linux hoovered up basically all the non-geek consciousness of free Unix, which means you show up to work and the company has already bought a squillion RHEL licenses and can't understand why all the engineers are slack-jawed with horror...
Re:The Shaggy God - Richard Stallman in Boston Magazine
by pmorici on Sunday July 13, 2008 @01:34AM
(#244918)
Tell me about it RHEL is a pain in the butt. I much prefer Suse (SLE) from a usability standpoint. I think the reason BSD isn't more popular though for example with Oracle is because there is no company that sells BSD as a business platform and is as well known as RH. Sure it's a major part of OSX but not many people use OSX as a server.
Re:The Shaggy God - Richard Stallman in Boston Magazine
by gaius on Sunday July 13, 2008 @02:28AM
(#244954)
There did used to be a company called BSDI that sold BSD/386, I wonder whatever happened to them. Way back in the day, Oracle had a project called Raw Iron in which they planned to sell boxes as dedicated Oracle appliances, they used FreeBSD for that, so somewhere within the company they do acknowledge that it's the best of the free Unixes (for their app).
My cow-orkers and I all run OSX, FreeBSD, Debian/Ubuntu on our own kit... No-one I know uses Red Hat by choice. I'd love to deploy XServes at work, but again, it's a mindshare problem... Dells running Red Hat, yuck.
Re:The Shaggy God - Richard Stallman in Boston Magazine
by ehedberg on Sunday July 13, 2008 @02:59AM
(#244980)
BSDi merged with Walnut Creek, then sold its software operations off to Wind River in 2001. That was a bit of a rocky period for FreeBSD releases, if memory serves, since a good chunk of core had worked for Walnut Creek before the merger...
Re:The Shaggy God - Richard Stallman in Boston Magazine
by qwph on Saturday July 12, 2008 @12:11AM
(#244296)
From the article:
"In 1991, all that was left was the kernel, the brain within the brain of the computer, and thus the most essential component of any operating system, and the hardest part to create. Before Stallman could finish building his, an ingenious young Finnish computer scientist named Linus Torvalds—who was initially inspired by a Stallman speech at the Polytechnic University in Helsinki the year before—played off a Unix-like operating system called Minix to develop a free software system of his own. Incomplete in other respects, it had the kernel that Stallman's lacked—one that meshed so beautifully with the GNU system that it seemed destined for it. Strictly speaking, the complete operating system should have been called GNU/Linux, representing the combined contributions of Stallman and Torvalds. Stallman always insists on the term, pronouncing it "GNU slash Linux." But in the popular mind, it came to be known as only Linux. Stallman has never gotten over that."
The more I read about Stallman the more I find that his extreme stance is just who he is:
"He's entirely consistent and uncompromising and I think the world needs someone like that," Perens said.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/open_source/sho...
Without him, we may still be in the world of non-disclosure agreements and closed Unices.
-Emerson
I believe this is not entirely accurate - I seem to remember someone else being involved in creating linux...
Consider "X invented the television": One canonical value of X is "Vladimir Zworykin", but maverick outsiders have a hero in Philo Farnsworth, and every Scot knows that the correct answer is "John Logie Baird". And all of them are right, in one way or another.
Or the sentence "X invented the first antibiotic": is the correct value of X "Sir Alexander Fleming", "John Tyndall", or "molds in the Penicillium family"? (And why didn't the Penicillium get knighted as well? It did all the grunt work!)
For the really strong form of this argument, google "James Burke connections".
Stallman's PC response, laying all on the "right wing Christian movement": http://philip.greenspun.com/zoo/stallman-reaction.text
We're talking about a version of GNU, the operating system, distinguished by having Linux as the kernel. A slash fits the situation because it means “combination.” (Think of “Input/Output”.) This system is the combination of GNU and Linux; hence, “GNU/Linux”.
There are other ways to express “combination”. If you think that a plus-sign is clearer, please use that. In French, a hyphen is clear: “GNU-Linux”. In Spanish, we sometimes say “GNU con Linux”.
And yes, GNU/Linux reads like a path: here is the GNU world and here's Linux subworld.
Technically there may be one. While the history of Hurd shows that the opposite is not quite true. So all things considered it should really be Linux/GNU :-)
He travels the world as a free software evangelist
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Does he detest wealth because he is a free software evangelist?
Or is he a free software evangelist because he never figured out how to become wealthy himself?
-rms
Apparently just insisting that it be called "GNU/Linux" wasn't too successful.
(Of course, its non-free "Mac OS X" disguise does fool a lot of people.)
What I'm trying to say, of course, is that there's no reason why multiple takes on the Unix kernel can't live happily next to each other in the marketplace. Also, you can't just blame Linux for stealing potential mindshare from the HURD... it was a group effort. There was also FreeBSD, as well as non-free but well-respected options like Solaris.
So, why? 'Cos Linux has the mindshare, and it got the mindshare because it has legions of activists (e.g. Slashdot) with nothing better to do than repeat the message to anyone who will listen. Linux hoovered up basically all the non-geek consciousness of free Unix, which means you show up to work and the company has already bought a squillion RHEL licenses and can't understand why all the engineers are slack-jawed with horror...
My cow-orkers and I all run OSX, FreeBSD, Debian/Ubuntu on our own kit... No-one I know uses Red Hat by choice. I'd love to deploy XServes at work, but again, it's a mindshare problem... Dells running Red Hat, yuck.
"In 1991, all that was left was the kernel, the brain within the brain of the computer, and thus the most essential component of any operating system, and the hardest part to create. Before Stallman could finish building his, an ingenious young Finnish computer scientist named Linus Torvalds—who was initially inspired by a Stallman speech at the Polytechnic University in Helsinki the year before—played off a Unix-like operating system called Minix to develop a free software system of his own. Incomplete in other respects, it had the kernel that Stallman's lacked—one that meshed so beautifully with the GNU system that it seemed destined for it. Strictly speaking, the complete operating system should have been called GNU/Linux, representing the combined contributions of Stallman and Torvalds. Stallman always insists on the term, pronouncing it "GNU slash Linux." But in the popular mind, it came to be known as only Linux. Stallman has never gotten over that."