“It all boils down to these two extremes: RMS wants software freedom regardless of user satisfaction, and Miguel de Icaza wants user satisfaction regardless of whether the principles of the GPL are violated. Everyone else in the GNOME project is somewhere in between, spanning the gap.” Read the report at NewsForge.
de Icaza & RMS: Opposite Ends of the Bridge
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
god, it is just plain ignorence that you would have any problems from MS with this clean room implimentation of C#.
A great question. Should free software be better software, or just an expression of the arrogance of a few geeks who don’t give a rat’s butt what anybody needs from software?
I use Gnome and Ximian Desktop on my main machine. It is a great expression of Miguel’s philosophy (obviously).
Just what good is free software that nobody will use? What will RMS and his buddies do with it? Pull it off the hard drive once a month and self-actualize in front of a mirror? RMS might as well call it egoWare if that is all it is meant to satisfy. I have had a few usenet discussions with people like this. To quote one, “I write software for me, not for anyone else…I don’t care what users want.” Wow. That is sure a great way to displace proprietary software — tell potential users that they don’t matter. Arrogant and stupid — a dangerous combination. I hope these people don’t wonder why they haven’t taken over the world yet.
I have to disagree with the article’s conclusion that both positions are supports at the ends of a bridge. This bridge has only one support IMHO. An RMS-designed bridge just might have lanes that are too narrow, or none at all, have them running sideways, or be paved with chewing gum, because he wouldn’t care what drivers need. If it works, fine. If not, too bad; go buy Microsoft Bridge if you don’t like it.
That isn’t freedom. It IS elitism.
Be it religios, political or in this case… well I dont know what to clasify these people as. It comes down to this, RMS is a burn out hippie, tree hugger, save the algea at the bottom of the ocian freak. Miguel is worse. He’s a sell out. Wonder how much it cost microsoft to get him on their band wagon. All of the credit should go to the legions of hackers out there who are the ones writing code – not a couple of fucks who care more about publicity than helping the community.
— quote —
A great question. Should free software be better software, or just an expression of the arrogance of a few geeks who don’t give a rat’s butt what anybody needs from software?
I use Gnome and Ximian Desktop on my main machine. It is a great expression of Miguel’s philosophy (obviously).
— end quote —
If freedom doesn’t matter to you, why don’t you find the generally more useable and mature WinXP, MS Office, et al? Ahh, you must be one of those free-as-in-beer Linux types people are always ragging on in this forum.
or he could like using Unix, and wants to use a system that is easy to set up (Linux has the easiest x86 install out of all the consumer level Unixes)
> Miguel is worse. He’s a sell
> out. Wonder how much it cost
> microsoft to get him on
> their band wagon.
Why would it cost them anything? Is it so difficult to understand that not everybody wants to be an extremist? No, microsoft did not pay anything to Ximian, unless you prefer to disbelieve the man’s own words.
RMS is an purist ideologue who wants to change the world. Its an admirable ambition, albeit an impossible one. Miguel wants to work with what’s available, which is of course the more realistic perspective.
If freedom doesn’t matter to you, why don’t you find the generally more useable and mature WinXP, MS Office, et al? Ahh, you must be one of those free-as-in-beer Linux types people are always ragging on in this forum.
And you must be one of those self-absorbed geeks who can’t relate to humans. The world doesn’t revolve around you. SURPRISE!
Read my post. I said I use Gnome. Not XP, not MS Office. Learn to read.
Always ragging? Prove it.
Why should I use something that is suposedly more “free” if it is written by people who don’t care if it is actually usable or not?
Free beer? I PAID for my copy of Ximian. I paid for my copy of Red Hat. Yes, I paid for the Windows software that runs on my laptop. I support the people who write usable software with my hard-earned cash. What do you do?
You software socialists have no right lecturing anyone about “freedom.”
And what drugs are you on? Whatever you are shooting makes you shoot off you mouth too much. I suggest cutting back.
Why do so many folks hate Miguel? No doubt he’s a talented programmer and he’s delivering good products. Most of his code is not only available at no cost but also under the GPL. If he decides to release some other products as commmercial, non-free software, then it’s his decision and his freedom to make money from his work.
I don’t hate Miguel. I like him much more than RMS. He is far sexier too.
Seriously now, Miguel does the right thing. He is open minded. He is a “real” developer. He finds this cool technology, he likes it, he uses it. If it is open source, even better. He does not get into ideology bullshit and fight his way through it like RMS does.
I like Miguel.
I despise RMS. I like RMS for many things he have done, I respect him as a developer (the guy wrote so many apps, including the much complex GCC), but I hate all this ideology bullshit he is into 24/7. Freedom is good, but I do not hate my fellow man because he happens to use a closed source application, or because he happens to gain his bread by working for a software company that is closed source and all that. RMS has already divided people with his spread of ideology which becomes fanatism. Look at this very thread. And look some older ones. Some people HATE others just because they are not GPL fanatics. That sucks.
Peace.
Eugenia and I agree on something! Miguel is far sexier.
And about that whole ideolog thing. Yeah, I agree with Eugenia on that too. Use what you want.
The greatest truism I’ve ever read is “Live and let live.”
Zmai
Than RMS? Well, that’s not saying much…
I knew you have a realistic view on that, Eugenia. While I can’t say too much about Miguel’s sexiness without having seen him (though he can hardly be worse than RMS or Alan Cox
, I like it that he judges technology by what it does and not by under what licence it does it. I totally enjoyed reading his “Unix sucks” speech and I welcome that there are at least a few OSS developers that emphasize usability over feature-hype (the latter is unfortunately where I see KDE going).
Miguel sucks because he is a sell out. ‘cmon people, every one knows that microsoft is not in the bussiness of being nice. As soon as the open source communities support outlives M$s purposes they will do *something* to leave them in the cold. And this is why miguel is a goat blower. He knows that a certain percent of the people in the os community will follow him and his “mono”. And he knows that we’ll all get burned when M$ <some typical ms action goes here>. M$ is not pushing the whole .NET thing for its technological merits. They are doing it to lock people in even further.
Fuck MS.
Fuck Miguel for using his position to MSs advantage.
Yay Sun.
Yay Java – a *TRUE* cross platform language.
> While I can’t say too much about Miguel’s sexiness without having seen him
He isn’t that bad.
http://www.linux.cu/docs/images/deicaza_miguel.jpg
ruprecht, could you please elaborate on how Mono is a sell-out? I thought the GPL would protect the code that is licenced under it from exploitations by companies like Microsoft? If the result of Mono is a good, standard compliant C# compiler and an implementation of the .NET framework, in how far is that worse than the blackdown JVM? In how far is that something Microsoft could take away?
A general hint for you: More facts and less four letter words are likely to increase people’s interest in your posts.
> He isn’t that bad.
Despite him looking that good, I still prefer the other kind of humans, those what do you call them? Females? Yes, I think that’s it
Christ, how quickly do you people forget? The Free Software community we all know and are part of, would not be around without RMS’s fanatiscm. It seems to me that he’s become a fashionable victim for people to attack these days. The pure fact that he will not back down on his goals, or what he promises the community is a quality that benefits all of us, but often makes him an easy target.
You dispise RMS, Eugenia? Icaza has been very good for the community, but he might not be so faithful to his users in the long run. Politics are everything, and freedom should be high on peoples agendas. Surely you know what its like to be left out in the cold, what being such a BeOS advocate and all.
mono in it self is not selling out. Following microsoft is. Letsee, they produce mono. A portion of os developers jump on it. develop some apps for it. Some fairly usefull apps, lets say. 2 years down the line, M$ comes out with .Net 40000000000XP-ME/90-e20 (I should work for ms marketing dept
). They change things just enough for all the existing os .not stuff to not work. All of the suden, all the stuff written for mono no loger works as promised (*cough*cross platform*cough*) It only works in the os implementation.
<start ms fud machine>
os is not a viable methodology
look how os stuff is failing
look how nicely our implementation is working
switch from os, ‘cmon, you know you want to
</>
…or something along those lines. Again, microsoft is NOT doing this because they’re nice. They have some sort of alterior motives.
…and swearing is FUCKING cool!!
…and Miquel (from that pic) looks like a DORQ!
> …and swearing is FUCKING cool!!
>…and Miquel (from that pic) looks like a DORQ!
Actually, speaking as the (only?) female around here, he appeals much more to me, than you do right now with your language. (look who’s talking huh? 😉
ruprecht, you aren’t a developer, are you? If you had an idea how APIs and their implementations work, you’d know that your post doesn’t make sense.
Microsoft changing their implementation would not cause all OSS applications to fail but all applications to fail. A framework cannot determine an application’s licence. As long as they stick to the API as specified, all applications will behave the same.
well OFCOURSE he appeals more than me.
#1 – you’ve seen his picture
#2 – he’s latino.
I don’t know what it iz that makes women like latino men so much. My secret lab staffed with super inteligent monkeys are working day and night on figuring that misterie out.
As for swearing – in sertain cituations it can help bring the point accross while sacrificing class.
Then again, I put the “ass” in “class”
BTW
North European guys are WAYYYYY more appealing that latin guys
My monkeys are working on a way to spread the newz.
I’m not a developer??!?! BWAHAHAHAHA
betcha I’ve been coding longer than you have…
As for changes in the MS CLR – I think you ment ABI not API.
And breaking competitors apps while keeping their own crap working is deffinately Microsofts mo.
ROFLMAO! :oD
RMS:”We are not here to give users what they want. We are
here to spread freedom.”
Hmmm I saw Bill Gates say something similar (it was an interview in some Aussie IT rag) except along the lines:
“Users don’t know what they want, Microsoft does.”
So I’m somewhat bamboozled here. Who knows what the users want? Microsoft? RMS? How about the users themselves? Do we get any say in this?
Don’t know about you guys but the thing that attracted me to Open Source in the first place was because I could implement the features >>I<< wanted without answering to people higher up on the software totem poll (RMS, Gates, etc).
Seems to me extreamists are all the same. Hellbent on pushing their viewpoints (wether its for an ideology or for money/profits or for both) at the expense of the little guy (people like me). Heh.
So if I were to give advice to Miguel (and he were to actually listen) I’d tell him to tell RMS to fark off and do whatever the hell he and his developers want to do.
This is the guy who drafted the GPL. His ideas (and what’s more important, the fact that he ACTED on them) have created more great FREE software (and lots of crappy software too) than any of us ever will. And I know that his ideology is offensive to most of the moderates, who say “Live and let live”, or “the BSD license is the truly free license”, or “Look how much money Bill Gates gives to charity”, or whatever, but his strong views and support of the GPL – wherever he finds it being encroached – are the only reason Gnu/Linux and many other open-source/free software projects are alive today.
Without him or the GPL, Billg will TAKE every single positive aspect of Linux and incorporate them into Windows (like he’s currently doing with BSD). Linux will die. He will incorporate every good aspect of every piece of open-source software into his own, and all the open competition will die. Microsoft looks at BSD as “unpaid R&D”, suckers who do the grunt work, which he can then take, proprietize, embrace and extend, and profit from without asking. And I know Apple has used BSD extensively in their new OS, but at least they are giving back tools and code to the BSD guys to improve their own stuff (according to jkh).
And it’s fine with the BSD guys if BSD code gets taken; the BSD guys have no problem with getting trumped by a big company. The Gnu guys do. If I coded for free, I would.
Look at BeOS. I know Eugenia and many others here used it; so did I. It ROCKED. But it’s dead. If it had been GPLed (I know it’s impossible, I know!), it would still be alive today, and would probably have a much larger following than it ever had.
In fact, I can’t see a way to kill GPL software except by restricting the hardware specs from developers so it can’t run on your hardware. And if BeOS was GPLed, the Linux guys and them would’ve been able to swap some code and make a Frankenstein “SuperOS” with the best of both worlds. We’d have some competition for Windows on x86.
The GPL, by being so hostile to Microsoft’s “hostile takeovers”, is the only license that Bill Gates can’t win over. And face it, when he’s got 95% of the market, and is known for crushing his adversaries AND his “partners”, Miguel and Mono are only around as long as Bill finds them useful – unless Miguel stays out of Bill’s reach by using ONLY the GPL. If he dances with the devil too long or too close, he’s DEAD.
As far as application quality vs. freedom, I think RMS is looking long-term. Quality will come with time, but Freedom, once given up, will never return.
And neither one of those guys is sexy, and sexiness probably shouldn’t matter anyway, since Mel Gibson probably can’t code his way out of a paper bag (and C is about the only thing I have on the guy).
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=www.nature.com/nature/debate…
RMS or Miguel, can I go with Re-Open Nominations?
—
Can some explane to me what the diffrence is between “spread software freedom” and “anyone who is willing to release their code under a free software/open source license”?
OBOS ought to be called NotOS – because as this thread proves, it gets dragged in whenever anyone mentions any OS that it isn’t….
ioc2k wrote:
> Christ, how quickly do you people forget? The Free
> Software community we all know and are part of,
> would not be around without RMS’s fanatiscm.
Abso-friggin-lutely correct.
FUD wrote:
> RMS:”We are not here to give users what
> they want. We are here to spread freedom.”
> [snip]
> So I’m somewhat bamboozled here. Who knows what
> the users want? Microsoft? RMS?
RMS is not talking about what users want. Bill Gates
is talking about users not knowing what features they
want.
> Do we get any say in this?
>
> Don’t know about you guys but the thing that attracted
> me to Open Source in the first place was because I could
> implement the features >>I<< wanted without answering to
> people higher up on the software totem poll (RMS, Gates,
> etc).
You answered your own question — you don’t have to answer
to RMS; he *wants* you to be able to add features if you
want to.
‘Me’ (not me) wrote:
> [lots of excellent comments including]
> Without him or the GPL, Billg will TAKE every single
> positive aspect of Linux and incorporate them into Windows
>(like he’s currently doing with BSD). Linux will die.
I wonder how OBOS will fare with the MIT license…
It should be in RS’ interest to make good, usable software. An underdog (like any OS other than Windows) HAVE TO provide better software or people with money will never get the message about freedom and the people without money will only use the software because they can’t get anything better, not because it is “free”.
Also, RS’ tendency to act as a spokesperson for each and every project he’s got a finger in disturbs me as it’s disrespectful of others _free_ will to participate in e.g. the GNOME project without following RS’ religion.
>> Christ, how quickly do you people forget? The Free
>> Software community we all know and are part of,
>> would not be around without RMS’s fanatiscm.
>Abso-friggin-lutely correct.
Hmm after reading the original thread it seems like he does nothing except complain that FSF is not getting enough PR time in front of the camera.
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2002-May/msg00001.ht…
I think Jim Getty sums it all up in his response to RMS:
“So please get off your hobby horse and help unite the free/open source communities on this topic; everything that divides us makes proprietary software stronger no matter what we call ourselves.”
the MIT was chosen so close source devs could use it with out fear of “infection”, thus (hopfully) bringing developers to the platform.
> Don’t know about you guys but the thing that attracted
> me to Open Source in the first place was because I could
> implement the features >>I<< wanted without answering to
> people higher up on the software totem poll (RMS, Gates,
> etc).
You answered your own question — you don’t have to answer
to RMS; he *wants* you to be able to add features if you
want to.
That’s fine for those who can do it, but where does that leave computer users who are NOT programmers? Many “free software” types seem to have difficulty grasping the concept that MOST of us who use computers are not programmers. Most users of software will NEVER edit code or be able to improve it. That isn’t their calling in life.
Seems to me that the RMS philosophy leaves the majority out in the cold at the mercy of the chosen few…and none of them (who closely follow this ideology) give a flip about what the great unwashed masses of users want or need. What kind of “freedom” is that? Using a political parallel (which many do when discussing this topic), how is that any different from communism? Power in the hands of a few and everyone else can freeze in Siberia.
At least most closed source companies try to meet the needs of their customers so they can sell their products and stay in business. Most people have no less chance making changes to closed source software than to RMS-style “free” software…simply because they CAN’T PROGRAM.
In fact, as paying customers of a closed-source software company, users might even have a BETTER chance of driving improvements to software because these companies (most of them) have to listen to their customers if they want to stay in business! That is the Invisible Hand of capitalism; it finds the needs and fills them. Not perfectly, but I’ll take it anyday over the RMS-style alternative. But in the end I’d rather deal with an open-source developer who looks at customers as valued partners and not as dogs to be fed crumbs from the table of the geek aristocracy.
If ALL software is “free” per his definition, everyone who is not a hacker is in trouble. There will be NO freedom.
At least most closed source companies try to meet the needs of their customers so they can sell their products and stay in business. Most people have no less chance making changes to closed source software than to RMS-style “free” software…simply because they CAN’T PROGRAM.
Exactly. That’s why I like the BSD-license. It allows open source software and closed commercial software to coexists nicely. They both have their place.