From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Tue Jun 19 2001 - 11:33:57 MDT
Christian Szegedy wrote:
> Mike Lorrey wrote:
> > This is untrue. Robert Stallman is on record specifically admitting that his
> > goal in creating the GNU license was to destroy and bankrupt any software
> > developer that ever made a buck on software.
>
> I looked at some speeches and manifests of Mr.Stallman for example the
> most recent one:
> http://www.gnu.org/events/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt
>
> (I have to remark that this is about the same as his first talks in 1984, his
> philosophy remained remarkably stable over the years.)
>
> Let us look at what Stallman really says:
snip much RMS propaganda....
> Mike, it seems the it is YOUR statement which is untrue: it is not even an
> oversimplification, it is simply uncorrect and demagogue like Mundies
> hate-speeches against free software.
>
> Some people seem to have the interest to distribute desinformation, since they
> can't argue against the real arguments.
I am only communicating what I've read in Boardwatch Magazine, which quoted RMS from I
beleive a BYTE mag interview from some years ago. RMS said that he felt violated at his
intellectual atmosphere being violated by the commercialism of his colleagues who went off to
found successful software companies and vowed to make them pay. Whether the open source
business model(s) work or not is irrelvant to this historical fact. The market will decide
whether they do, or not. According to the president of Red Hat at a recent conference, they
don't.
However, that is immaterial to the reason why RMS originally was motivated into writing the
GNU public license.
Personally I like open source software, as I am generally a skinflint, and at present I am
also only working part time, as well as the fact that I generally don't need much support
beyond talking to other users for free (the presence of other users willing to share info for
free is one weakness, IMHO, of the open source business model, when your chief competition
for revinue works for free, its a bit difficult to make money off of anybody but people who
confuse CD players with cup holders.)
In that interview, RMS, after writing his GNU public license, found that it was difficult to
recruit others into his plan simply out of reasons of spite and economic jealousy, so he had
to create a manifesto of positive reasons for open source along the lines of GNU. Today, the
propaganda is what open source proponents hype, and are in denial about the possibility that
RMS might possibly have had other reasons when he first set out to create the GNU movement.
This seems to be something of a case of unintended consequences, where Stallman's
rationalizations have real world validity irrespective of his personal motivations. The
market will tell.
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