The Free Software Foundation: 30 Years In 135
An anonymous reader writes: The Free Software Foundation was founded in 1985. To paint a picture of what computing was like back then, the Amiga 1000 was released, C++ was becoming a dominant language, Aldus PageMaker was announced, and networking was just starting to grow. Oh, and that year Careless Whisper by Wham! was a major hit. Things have changed a lot in 30 years. Back in 1985 the FSF was primarily focused on building free pieces of software that were primarily useful to nerdy computer people. These days we have software, services, social networks, and more to consider. In this in-depth interview, FSF executive director John Sullivan discusses the most prominent risks to software freedom today, Richard M. Stallman, and more.
The usefulness of GNU/Linux peaked for me (Score:1, Interesting)
The usefulness of Linux and the GNU software peaked for me some time ago. Like around 2010. Since then it has been down hill.
The desktop experience is lacking. The modern desktop environments are all mostly shit. KDE is slow and bloated and full of "semantic" crap. GNOME 3 is so goddamn awful in every way that it makes KDE look pristine! The smaller DEs aren't very usable.
Linux is still kind of shitty on laptops, even on those that are widely used by the Linux developers themselves. Suspend and hibernate ra
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Was about to mod parent 'troll', then all of a sudden, in the middle of the post the AC reverts 180 degrees:
Systemd has caused me nothing but problems
So I posted this comment instead.
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I think he has already became a liability.
Part of the reason why Cloud/SaaS/Remote Hosted/Time Shared software has gotten popularity, was due to working around restrictions in Open Source systems, such as the Anti-TiVo addition. While it would be great if everyone will just share their code, avoid patents, etc... However in the real world, making software is expensive, and there are competitors willing to take your work and effort and offer more cost affordable services, because they didn't pay to do the w
Re:Risks (Score:5, Interesting)
Part of the reason why Cloud/SaaS/Remote Hosted/Time Shared software has gotten popularity, was due to working around restrictions in Open Source systems, such as the Anti-TiVo addition.
Huh? How so? The only way this claim would be valid is if large amounts of FOSS software had actually adopted GPLv3. To date, not that much has, and certainly nothing really important. Linux is GPLv2 and always will be (it's impossible to get all the contributors to agree to a license change), PostgreSQL is BSD-licensed, Apache has the BSD-like Apache license, etc.
The reason cloud/SaaS crap has gotten popular is simple: 1) software makers like it because it gives them a continuous revenue stream, so they just have to lock in the users and then they'll get monthly fees forever, and 2) these software makers target things that FOSS simply doesn't address very much or at all, such as specialized business software. Even Windows (OS) is trying to move to a SaaS model, and Adobe's been doing it for a while; it's all about being beneficial for the software companies. Users only do it because either they have little choice if they want to use that software, or they like the "low" monthly payments (and are too stupid to do basic math and realize they're paying more in the long run)., or they're running a business and thanks to wacky business accounting, it's easier to get the company to buy into a monthly service ad infinitum rather than shell out a higher one-time purchase fee (which is the same logic that makes businesses opt to lease expensive equipment rather than buy it, even though it costs them a lot more over time, but they don't care because it makes the short-term balance sheets look better and works better with taxes because they can deduct the expense instead of having to take depreciation).
Anyway, point is, FOSS licensing has absolutely nothing to do with the popularity of SaaS and cloud services; that's completely ridiculous.
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The only way this claim would be valid is if large amounts of FOSS software had actually adopted GPLv3. To date, not that much has, and certainly nothing really important.
Samba is not important? And many other examples. Better revise your argument.
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Samba and what else? Samba being GPLv3 is not pushing people to use SaaS; that doesn't even make sense. "Oh no! We can't modify Samba in a way that can be Tivoized, so let's move our accounting to this new online could service!"
Sorry, you haven't proven your point at all.
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Huh? How so? The only way this claim would be valid is if large amounts of FOSS software had actually adopted GPLv3.
He said "restrictions in Open Source systems, such as the Anti-TiVo addition", indicating it is not limited to that. Indeed limitations in many (not all because of the existence of the AGPL) free software systems (a kind of Open Source) include the necessity to distribute the source code for derived works with the binaries but if that program is hosted on a server and access is provided as a service then the distribution clauses do not apply.
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Sure, but Windows 10 is selling too, and look what a turkey that is, complete with keystroke logging sending all your passwords and everything else straight to MS.
And to be fair, there are reasons they're popular. I've already mentioned some of them, dealing with how corporations like to do acquisitions (they prefer to lease stuff instead of buying it outright). In addition, such services probably do have some seeming benefits as far as getting things working quickly, getting set up without a big initial
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It's all designed to lock you in and extract monthly payments from you.
How so? I've never had any problems taking documents from Google Docs and opening them in LibreOffice or MS Office. I'm perfectly able to sync my DropBox files between my computers and even other cloud storage providers. I have also never had any problem moving my applications between Node.js hosting providers. What exactly is this "lock in" you are describing?
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Those aren't SaaS providers. DropBox is cloud storage, not SaaS at all. Google Docs isn't representative of SaaS; Google's business model is about giving away services for free and using *you* as the product. SaaS is mainly about business software.
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Those aren't SaaS providers.
Of course they are.
DropBox is cloud storage, not SaaS at all.
No you can't just redefine it because it disproves your argument.
Google Docs isn't representative of SaaS
No now you're moving the goalposts because your argument has been disproven.
SaaS is mainly about business software.
That is absolute garbage, nowhere is this claim at all substantiated.
Irrespective of all this, you still failed to back up your claim about "lock in". You were so intent on trying to redefine the term that you forgot to answer the question.
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No you can't just redefine it because it disproves your argument.
I'm not redefining anything. Storage != software. I don't know where you ever got the idea that storage is anything like application software. If you're going to be this obtuse, then there's no point in continuing this discussion.
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I'm not redefining anything. Storage != software.
And if services like DropBox were just storage then maybe you would have a point, but clearly they are not.
I don't know where you ever got the idea that storage is anything like application software.
I don't know where you got the idea that there was no application software driving platforms like DropBox.
If you're going to be this obtuse, then there's no point in continuing this discussion.
No I think it's quite clear you are pretending not to understand as a way to avoid the question I've asked twice already and you have continued to avoid. If cloud storage is too difficult a concept for you to understand I will give you other examples: Google/Apple/Bing Maps, Siri/Cortana Voice assi
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Here's an article for you:
http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/... [forbes.com]
You keep pointing at consumer stuff; that's not what I'm talking about, I'm talking about business software like ERP.
Here's another (somewhat old though):
http://www.infoworld.com/artic... [infoworld.com]
Google for "SaaS lock-in"; there's countless IT industry articles talking about this. Many seem to think it's not a big problem though acknowledging there's a lot of concern about it, and the general advice is to warn people to make sure your ERP vendor lets you ha
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Here's an article for you: http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/... [forbes.com]
Like any setup you can lock your data in to a particular provider if you store it in a proprietary format or restricted location from which you can't extract it. This is hardly a new thing with SaaS and is certainly not broadly applicable to SaaS in general, in fact it's really only applicable to a small niche.
You keep pointing at consumer stuff; that's not what I'm talking about, I'm talking about business software like ERP.
Of course, because you said "SaaS" - which is a LOT more than just business ERP software.
Google for "SaaS lock-in"; there's countless IT industry articles talking about this.
It's a very limited subset of SaaS though, and hardly that it's all designed to lock you in and extract monthly [slashdot.org]
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I think he has already became a liability.
You sound like a garden variety RMS critic of the kind that has chirping away since the day there was a way to chirp away. Nothing new to see here.
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chirp
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You're trolling anonymously. Very telling.
One thing about us FOSS "zealots" (aka "users") is that we're perfectly happy to promote what we do with our slashdot names, our real names, whatever name is normal for the place we're in. We don't need to hide and call names from the shadows and pretend we didn't really say it.
We believe in how we want to be treated by software. And we've been living in that world, lets see, well, for the most part since emacs and gcc! And linux of course was a giant step forwards
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You're trolling anonymously. Very telling.
One thing about us FOSS "zealots" (aka "users") is that we're perfectly happy to promote what we do with our slashdot names, our real names, whatever name is normal for the place we're in. We don't need to hide and call names from the shadows and pretend we didn't really say it.
We believe in how we want to be treated by software. And we've been living in that world, lets see, well, for the most part since emacs and gcc! And linux of course was a giant step forwards overall. But it wouldn't have happened without the GNU environment, at least not as a mainstream thing.
We may be chirping away, but it is the happy chirps of us little birdies successfully using the tools we wanted, the tools we believe in, the tools that respect us and that we've been using for decades now.
~\_@< ~~~ Peep peep! ~~~
Hmm, lots of free software hating astroturfers with mod points slithering around tonight. I wonder if they are those losers who are paid to hang out on social forums and advance some agenda or other. Hard to imagine a lower form of internet life.
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Stallman should have made a viable business, not a giant soapbox.
RedHat would disagree with you
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Stallman was always a PRAGMATIST, not an IDEALIST.
emacs and gcc were written to run on HPUX and Solaris long before linux existed
he knows full well that he will never achieve his ultimate goal of free software everywhere, but he has to push his agenda
Most people are idiots about non-free binary blobs. Your cards and motherboard are all filled with binary code, whether it's burned in at the factory or loaded at runtime is a moot point.
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Stallman has no problem with binary blobs as long as they cannot be updated without the user's consent, and as long as they cannot be used to abuse the user, e.g., by providing a backdoor or otherwise altering the rest of the system. In his own words [gnu.org]:
Re:We're worse off (Score:5, Interesting)
GNU = GNU Not Unix.
While he made products for the Unix environment, his Goal is to get rid of the Closed Unix systems and make an Open Source Unix like system. GNU/Hurd was his attempt, however Linux was able to get something out faster, and the GNU community jumped on that to fulfill the Vision of GNU. Hence why they like to call it GNU/Linux. The GNU Not Unix Code clone of Unix, that happens to be based of the Linux Kernel not the HURD Microkernel.
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That is not pragmatic.
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Actually, it is pragmatic. He knows that his endorsement does not carry a huge weight, but it carries some, so he uses it to draw attention. Which it did.
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I can't, because literally the only time that I've read, seen, or otherwise heard of the distributions in question was in the article talking about his endorsement, and the subsequent problems trying to use those distributions to actually do anything.
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Why difference does it make? He got your attention.
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Can you name, off the top of your head, any of the distributions that he endorses?
While I'm not the greatest fan of RMS, I can name two. gNewSense and Trisquel (which RMS currently uses)
Of course the only reason I know about those is because of the articles mentioning RMS endorsements. Otherwise...is anybody other than RMS and a few other hardcore people working for the GNU/FSF using them? (The gNewSense people must be running their web server on a C64 or something)
Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, CentOS, those are distros with serious user numbers. Heck I'd bet even Slackware and Gento
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Actually, it is pragmatic. He knows that his endorsement does not carry a huge weight, but it carries some, so he uses it to draw attention. Which it did.
Oh what's this? RMS hating trolls skulking about with mod points?
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Probably a better description: pragmatic idealist.
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And the beneficiaries of the multi-trillion dollar economy that revolves around GPL licensed software.
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You are an idiot. There is in fact a multi-trillion dollar industry revolving around Linux. Just ask Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Ebay, Amazon, the list goes on and on. This industry revolves around Linux because any alternative would be less efficient, less flexible, and less reliable. If the big boys could switch to BSD easily they would, trust me.[1] And Linux is just one of the important GPL projects involved. But the most important one by far.
[1] Apple switched to BSD from something much crappier, and woul
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By the way, show me where Linus said that software freedom doesn't matter. You can't, because he never said that, or anything like that.
By the way, RMS has his place in history, unlike you.
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We're certainly worse off in that sense, but you can't lay that at the feet of the FSF. Without the GPL there would be vanishingly little free software in existence anywhere.
And what's so great about "a viable business"? A business has to put profits first. How would that have helped proliferate software freedom?
Hurray for a giant soapbox that has a higher purpose!
Alternate Theory (Score:3)
Not every venture is a publicly owned business that is legally obligated to increase "shareholder value".
It takes money to pay for a sufficiently persuasive soapbox. That's why a viable business is valuable.
Software is worthless if you don't have the hardware to run it on; Stallman never appreciated the impending doom of closed hardware.
Or ... he realized that his own expertise was software and did as much as he possibly could to further software freedom, certainly more than any of us could have obligated him to do, working on his own dream of libre/freedom software by using the information age's infinite ability to distribute free software at nearly zero cost. He then, at some point, had to let someone else worry about the hardware, someone whose particular talents are in that direction, perhaps hoping that the growing free software move
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Now, the most ubiquitous computing devices are completely under the control of corporations and the governments who use the people's money to litter the lot with all manner of backdoors.
Things have gotten worse, and that's because the FSF is more dogmatic than practical; Stallman should have made a viable business, not a giant soapbox.
In 1985, Stallman had founded FSF while Queen Elizabeth was queen, Gorby ran the Soviet Union, Deng ran China. Castro Cuba and Kim Il Sung North Korea. Today, only Queen Elizabeth is still in the same job as she was then, just like Stallman is. All the others are either dead or retired.
C++ dominant? (Score:3, Informative)
C++ was only 2 years old in 1985, and hardly anyone had heard of it. It was nowhere close to "becoming dominant."
Microsoft and Borland didn't introduce C++ compilers until after 1990, which is when it really took off.
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Yeah, and in my C++ class in I think 1991, the "textbook" was some compiler's manual, I *think* Borland's, since it fully explained the language and was apparently the convenient way to get a language reference. (I don't remember if it was before, or just way cheaper than, Bjarne's book.)
C++ (Score:3, Informative)
C++ wasn't becoming a dominant language in 1985. That didn't happen until the IDEs supported it about 5 years later. Turbo C became Turbo C++ and then Borland C++. Microsoft was recommending Glockenspiel until they could get their own support done. 1990 really.
Was there, got the T-Shirt.
I disagree (Score:5, Informative)
In 1985 C++ was not becoming a dominant language. C was certainly high on the list of "dominating" languages, but so was ASM (often C and assembly language for critical sections were used together) and so was Pascal, Modula-2, COBOL, Fortran, Lisp, etc, etc, etc and a bunch of languages (some still very much in use today), but C++... C++ was a newcomer and far from becoming dominant. It might be accurate to say that C++ was gaining support. It might be accurate to say that C++ was encouraging or spurring on the acceptance of the OOP paradigm (whatever that is), but no... I don't think that C++ was beginning to dominate anything at all at that point in time.
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OOP:
In an OOP world every sock would have an attached washing machine.
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Unless the washing machine was defined as static.
Then there would be one washing machine for every sock in the world.
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Unless you're programming in Java, in which case you'd have to build a WashingMachineFactoryClothingObjectReceiverTemplateFactory factory first.
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In an OOP world every sock would have an attached drying machine.
FTFY - From my experience, I typically find a stray sock or panties in the dryer machine.
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My dryers must have been defective over the years ... not once did stray panties appear in any of them.
I think that would make laundry day far more interesting if you could occasionally look forward to that.
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I'd rather find them in my bedroom:)
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In an OOP world every sock would have an attached washing machine.
Gah, you fail. Sock would be subclassed from apparel and washing machine would have a method taking apparel as a parameter.
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In an OOP world, everybody would know how to throw a sock into a washing machine. You can attach an indefinite amount of behavior to an object without adding any memory or other resources.
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There goes slashdot again, with their clickbait headlines!
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See, there's a whole economy that revolves around RMS.
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I think you mis-spelled "crazy zealots".
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More like the entire internet which these days is mostly Linux powered, and Linux got where it is in large part because of the GPL, which is the work of RMS.
So little respect, shameful.
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A multi-trillion dollar industry is hardly clutching at straws. Rather, what I see from you is denial.
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Except that multi-trillion dollar industry has nothing to do with software freedom...
Hahaha, you are a real stand-up comedian, I like your style. Thanks for lightening my day.
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The first time I ever even heard of C++ that I remember was in 1993 or so, and even then it was that interesting little project by that guy with the funny name over on the comp.lang.c++ newsgroup. And this is from a guy who had an interest in languages and compilers, and a subscription to SIGPLAN. I don't think I ever encountered it being used professionally until 1997 (and that was with VS6, which barely ought to count as C++).
In 1985 just getting a C compiler for your microcomputer was a really really bi
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> C++ was encouraging or spurring on the acceptance of the OOP paradigm (whatever that is),
Uh, you DO realize Alan Kay _invented_ the term Object-Orientated back in 1967, which is 20 *years* before C++ took off in 1990, right?
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
* http://programmers.stackexchan... [stackexchange.com]
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It might be accurate to say that C++ was encouraging or spurring on the acceptance of the OOP paradigm (whatever that is)
If you really have to qualify OOP paradigm with "whatever that is". Then you probably have no clue what was going on around the time C++ gained popularity. Sounds like you are still stuck in the 70s to this day.
You think that OOP is clearly defined even now? If so, then I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
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Sounds like you are still stuck in the 70s to this day.
Ah, the 1970's where nobody had ever heard of OOP.
Simula? Smalltalk? Never heard of 'em.
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Nothing's really changed in 30 years.
HELLO everyone carries a video camera today and the police are under scrutiny like never before. The police have been acting without restraint since the days of Rome and for the first time in history the people are able to push back against the police. Police were NEVER EVER punished for murder before video cameras, now many police are currently being charged with murder.
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Yup, the real actual threat of global thermonuclear war has turned into an idiot in a train who has his guns taken off him by some passengers.
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Entirely incorrect. 30 years ago you would have been on your way to Club Med instead of signing up with Ashley Madison.
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The Linux kernel
has nothing to do with the FSF.
try again
Some things don't change... (Score:2, Insightful)
Am I the only one who initially read "the most prominent risks to software freedom today: Richard M. Stallman, and more."???
Let the controvercy begin (dramatic music).
We are moving backwords (Score:2)
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In 1985 there was a revolt against copy protected software, people would not buy it.
Aldus Pagemaker shipped in 1985 with great success and big sales and heavy copy protection.
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There was PLENTY of copy protected software sold in 1985, on practically every platform. DOS, C64, whatever. Were you a Speccy user stuck using cassette tapes or something?
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Now Digital Restrictions Malware is everywhere, most people have turned into cattle that will buy whatever the corporations are selling.
Rubbish. People wanted their music on any of their devices so Apple - of all companies - made the push to make their extensive music catalog DRM-free to their users. Now people want on-demand music and videos on all their connected devices so Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, Spotify, etc provide this, whether or not there is a DRM component is irrelevant. The freedom to do something is a means to an end but you're so fixated on the ideological aspects of DRM that you ignore the most important thing: what end users w
Just don't buy RMS a Parrot! (Score:2)
Free other things (Score:5, Interesting)
FSF has definitely made the world a better place by given users choices, but also, ironically, by improving quality of proprietary software. I would hate to think how buggy SSL would be if every vendor rolled their own copy. If they could agree on a protocol standard at all without a mature free software stack that is.
But I wonder if nowadays software is really the most important thing that needs to be made more free as in freedom. How about free culture (copyrights that expire in time to share your favouring movies with grandkids)? Free food (planting seeds without Monsanto permission)? Free medicine (generic drugs would save millions of lives worldwide)? Free immigration/religion/politics?
Wish we had folks like RMS to achieve concrete progress in these causes.
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How about free culture (copyrights that expire in time to share your favouring movies with grandkids)?
that's a conflict of interest for RMS because code is only covered by the GPL because of absurdly long copyright. companies could make custom closed source versions of linux 2.4 and GNU tools and not even the GPLv3 could touch them. it would also make it more difficult to prove GPL violation because you would have to find the software version if it's old software like GNU.
RMS likes the eternal copyright because it makes the GPL stronger.
30 years later and... (Score:1)
I still don't have free beer.
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Where's my flying car??? (Score:2)
How can you list off events from 1985 and leave off the most important one: Back To The Future came out and promised us that by 2015, we'd all have flying cars. Darn it, I'm still waiting!
Back in 1985 I was (Score:2)
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And just because he had a few good ideas, and was about some aspects of free software, doesn't make him not a jackass...
Perhaps you can name off the visionary people of our time who do not get called jackasses on a regular basis
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Somebody doesn't call Steve Jobs a jackass? [thenextweb.com]
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Woz ?
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Woz was not a visionary. He was a genius engineer. Not the same thing.
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Nothing except achieve world domination.