Linus Torvalds: the king of geeks (and dad of 3)
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 20th Mar 2012 22:47 UTC
Linux "If you meet Linus Torvalds, he comes off as a mild-mannered, down-to-earth Finnish-American. He lives with his wife Tove, three kids, a cat, a dog, a snake, a goldfish, a bunny and a pet rat in a comfortable 6000 square foot home just north of Portland's tony Lake Oswego neighborhood. The house is yellow - his favorite color - and so's the Mercedes. But he's not really like any of his neighbors. He drives his Mercedes fast, slamming the car into gear and flooring it. There's no coaxing, no hesitation. Either the hammer is down, or the car is at rest. And he has an abnormal number of stuffed penguins on his mantle." Yup, sounds like the to-the-point Fin we all know and love.
E-mail Print r 5   41 Comment(s) http://osne.ws/ju1
Thread beginning with comment 511486
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
RE[5]: I like Linus
by kwan_e on Wed 21st Mar 2012 23:54 UTC in reply to "RE[4]: I like Linus"
kwan_e
Member since:
2007-02-18

"[q]Fourthly, your last argument is just pathetic and irrelevant. The FSF and Stallman's activities have measurable impact as a direct result of their stated goals. Your last argument is irrelevant and is no more than an excuse to restate that you think they're religions without having to back up that argument.


This is very easy to explain. Folks like Linus use the GPL for practical reasons, because he believes that is the best license for what he is doing. Stallman and his followers use the GPL for moral reasons, regardless of whether it is practical or not, because to use a non-FSF approved license would be akin to commiting sin. He's already said everyone should use free software, regardless of whether or not is is technically superior to the non-free alternatives. If that isn't religion, I don't know what is. "

Except there are NO Stallman followers. People are allowed to agree with Stallman's principles, even in part, without being a follower.

So what if he said everyone should use free software? Are people not allowed to have opinions? Having a strong opinion or belief is NOT "religion". And how has he acted on those beliefs? He used COPYRIGHT LAW and subverted it with the GPL. That's pretty pragmatic to me.

Did you know back in Darwin's day, to combat slavery, Darwin's family and associates campaigned to stop everyone buying slave sugar, even if it was too expensive at the moment. Does that make anti-slavery a religion?

You continue to prove my point that people have not thought this through. You have a really poor definition of "religion". You really don't know what is religion. By your flaky definition, anyone or anything's who is not inhumanly neutral on every subject. Hell, by your definition, the anti-software-patent movement is a religion.

"Patents have everything to do with copyright because they are forced into the Intellectual Property umbrella which is a debatable concept, but nonetheless exists due to lobbying.

Technically, you are right, but the people seeking to take away basic freedoms aren't playing a technical game. They are playing a political game.


Again, you can give out the source code to something like a codec and still demand royalties for their use, so I'm not seeing how the discussion of patents is relevant to this topic. Even DRM has been used in open source software, hence the creation of the GPL v3. Every time the discussion of non-free software comes up, Freetards feel the need to bring up patents and DRM as the main reason not to use said software, even though most non-free software devs are not patent holders, and most non-free apps have no DRM at all. These things are NOT mutually exclusive. It would be like saying that since a lot of shitty, 'v0.1' alpha/beta software happens to be open source, then we should just quit using FOSS altogether to avoid these kinds of apps. "

You continue to miss the point that this is not a technical issue. We have to treat these in one package because the opposition, with their money and political power, are making it one package. Deal with it.

It's strange that I was called "religious" for using the term "BSD apologist" but others can use terms like "Freetard".

Even if you believe strongly that DRM and patents are evil and should be done away with, it doesn't help your cause to paint all non-free software devs as seal-clubbing bastards who are out to take away your freedoms, just because a select few happen to fall under this category. Most of them just want to get paid for their work, and they aren't going to make a lot of money selling support or custom versions of a $2 phone app.


And who of Stallman's "followers" have actually demonized people for taking money for software? It's been said time and time again that the GPL doesn't preclude monetary payments.

The most that comes from that group is the insistence that free software be preferred over binary blobs. They haven't tried to ban anything. They may have tried to create their own distros, but that's a personal choice that they haven't tried to force down other people's throats.

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[6]: I like Linus
by WorknMan on Thu 22nd Mar 2012 02:04 in reply to "RE[5]: I like Linus"
WorknMan Member since:
2005-11-13

You continue to prove my point that people have not thought this through. You have a really poor definition of "religion".


You are right, I use the term 'religion' to describe the philosophy of people who are more concerned about the moral/ethical aspects of software rather than the practical use of said software. I use that term simply because I don't know of a better one, and I think it gets the point across. In the end, Stallman cares more about freedom (or at least his warped version of it) rather than silly little things such as productivity and actually getting work done.

The most that comes from that group is the insistence that free software be preferred over binary blobs. They haven't tried to ban anything. They may have tried to create their own distros, but that's a personal choice that they haven't tried to force down other people's throats.


Quoting Stallman:

Our goal is to establish freedom for software users, and freedom is
much broader and deeper than "freedom of choice". Thus, our aim is
not just that people should be able to "make choices about software
freedom", but rather that they should actually HAVE software freedom.

Proprietary software is digital colonization, unjust and evil. Our
goal is therefore to eliminate proprietary software. We cannot
eliminate it this year, but what we can and must do now is refuse to
legitimize it.

In the same way, the abolitionists did not seek to give people
the power to make choices about freedom or slavery. They sought
to abolish slavery.


Source:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/accessibility/2010-07/msg00055.ht...

No question about it... this guy is a fanatic. And yes, I would consider anybody who wishes to abolish FOSS to be just the same.

Edited 2012-03-22 02:07 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[7]: I like Linus
by kwan_e on Thu 22nd Mar 2012 04:55 in reply to "RE[6]: I like Linus"
kwan_e Member since:
2007-02-18

"You continue to prove my point that people have not thought this through. You have a really poor definition of "religion".


You are right, I use the term 'religion' to describe the philosophy of people who are more concerned about the moral/ethical aspects of software rather than the practical use of said software. I use that term simply because I don't know of a better one, and I think it gets the point across. In the end, Stallman cares more about freedom (or at least his warped version of it) rather than silly little things such as productivity and actually getting work done. "

Another fine example of not having thought things through.

You think that worrying about the ethical aspects of software is opposed to productivity and actually getting work done? Have you or have you not seen the progress made because of certain projects adoption of open source licences?

Linux uses GPLv2. It is very successful and very active. Both corporations and hobbyists contribute to it. Highly productive. End of story.

Stallman is right to care about freedom because productivity and getting work done REQUIRES freedom. For you to make them out as opposite ideals is idiotic at best.

"The most that comes from that group is the insistence that free software be preferred over binary blobs. They haven't tried to ban anything. They may have tried to create their own distros, but that's a personal choice that they haven't tried to force down other people's throats.


Quoting Stallman:

Our goal is to establish freedom for software users, and freedom is
much broader and deeper than "freedom of choice". Thus, our aim is
not just that people should be able to "make choices about software
freedom", but rather that they should actually HAVE software freedom.

Proprietary software is digital colonization, unjust and evil. Our
goal is therefore to eliminate proprietary software. We cannot
eliminate it this year, but what we can and must do now is refuse to
legitimize it.

In the same way, the abolitionists did not seek to give people
the power to make choices about freedom or slavery. They sought
to abolish slavery.


Source:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/accessibility/2010-07/msg00055.ht...

No question about it... this guy is a fanatic. And yes, I would consider anybody who wishes to abolish FOSS to be just the same. "

And what ACTIONS have they taken to achieve that goal?

Basically, what we have here is people arguing "fanaticism" and "religion" based on a person having strong opinions or beliefs. What kind of philosophy course taught you this nonsense?

Reply Parent Score: 2

Read more of this thread... >