Richard Stallman, recipient of the ACM Software System Award for the development and leadership of GCC (GNU Compiler Collection), which has enabled extensive software and hardware innovation, and has been a lynchpin of the free software movement. A compiler is a computer program that takes the source code of another program and translates it into machine code that a computer can run directly. GCC compiles code in various programming languages, including Ada, C, C++, Cobol, Java, and FORTRAN. It produces machine code for many kinds of computers, and can run on Unix and GNU/Linux systems as well as others.
GCC was developed for the GNU operating system, which includes thousands of programs from various projects, including applications, libraries, tools such as GCC, and even games. Most importantly, the GNU system is entirely free (libre) software, which means users are free to run all these programs, to study and change their source code, and to redistribute copies with or without changes. GNU is usually used with the kernel, Linux. Stallman has previously been recognized with ACM’s Grace Murray Hopper Award.
Well-deserved.
Replaced by the forks which he “blessed” when everyone just switched to the forks and stopped using his version.
I’ll get buried by those that bow at the feet of RMS but screw it I always speak my mind and when it comes to RMS? He’s a guy that did some great stuff…a long time ago, now? Frankly he does more damage to the free software movement than he does good.
From his being a useful idiot for Chavez, to his “voluntary pedophilia” bit (sorry RMS sex between a 45 year old and a 13 year old can never be voluntary because the 45 year old can manipulate the 13 year old with ease), from his childish attacking a company by name with GPL V3 (thus making GPL about as appealing to companies as prostate cancer, which its ever declining numbers proves) to the infamous scene where he sat on stage and ate toe cheese like a homeless person, all he does now is damage the image of free software by making it look like an idea for loonies and bums.
If free software HAS to have a figurehead? Linus Torvalds or ESR would be IMHO a MUCH better choice, as these days a “squatter at MIT” (his words not mine) is really not the image you want to be projecting in 2016.
Well, I agreed with everything you said, except for the pedophile part. Pedophiles molest 6yos, not 13yos. But that’s just a matter of semantics, because it’s shitty either way if it did happen.
Edited 2016-04-29 02:33 UTC
Talking about GPL and copy-left.
GCC is deliberately plugin infrastructure is designed to force devs to release stuff under a GPL license.
From Stallman himself.
https://lwn.net/Articles/582268/
Which is fucking rich considering he has complained about minified and obfuscated JavaScript
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.en.html
I see no contradiction here. RMS wants as much software as possible to be free, while nobody should be unwittingly exposed to proprietary software.
No, he wants to remove the freedom of others to license their software as they wish.
How?
Because your statement is the biggest pile of bullshit I’ve read in today, which, taking the state of the internet into account, is quite telling.
LOL. This whole thread is a shitshow.
Richard Stallman is a polarizing figure to some people; the realization that a bearded ill-adjusted weirdo still managed to achieve (technically and socially) lots more than they ever will really stings.
There is a warm hart inside that cold, green skin. We are part of the ‘little’ people born already forgotten, long time ago, which will dye forgotten, not so far in the future. No, no sting. Just cry for my children’ future, and their children’ -sometimes- every decade or so.
I suspect he’s a polarizing figure more because he sees the world either his way or wrong. That doesn’t sit well with a lot of people. He’s a religious zealot, and we react to him as such. It makes no difference that he’s not preaching some god but rather a software ideology. He goes about it as a fanatical preacher determined to make the world in his image whether they like it or not, and to hell with you if you don’t agree.
I fear that tells me more about you than Stallman.
Another Ad-hominem.
I don’t think he achieved anything of note. That is the complaint.
The only reason the GPL is popular is because Linus happened to choose it for the Linux kernel. If that hadn’t have happened it would have faded into obscurity.
Stallman hasn’t done anything of note, other than f–king whine. Even his Roommate Jaron Lanier (who pioneered VR) thinks his dream of GNU was awful.
Edited 2016-04-29 21:34 UTC
But of course, in the world of style over substance Stallman hasn’t achieved much and Larnier is someone to talk.
Lanier comes off as someone that does research, which is fine. He wasn’t interested in recreating a unix.
LOL.
Edited 2016-04-30 17:01 UTC
LOL
Great comment you fucking trolling cunt.
LMAO.
Your ignorance is funny, sometimes. Your extreme insecurity is hilarious, always.
There is no ignorance.
Jarion Lanier says in his book “I was dismayed when Stallman announced his plans to create a free unix”.
He has done more stuff that is either pioneering e.g. VR or research. His current work title has “Research in the title.
http://www.jaronlanier.com/general.html
You other than saying “LOL” really said nothing of worth.
Edited 2016-05-03 18:02 UTC
No it isn’t.
He basically thinks that other people are en-slaved for using proprietary software. EVERYTHING must be GPL or it is not FREE, EVERY developer must release under a compatible license or they are enslaving their users. It is so f–king ridiculous, yet somehow it is considered normal.
Stallman does not believe a developer who writes the software should be able to decide the license that they release it under and his actions with GCC and regarding the plugin infrastructure show this quite clearly.
Also he thinks paedophilia is can be *sometimes* okay. Any rational and moral person will agree that molesting kids is horrible, yet Stallman thinks it is okay in some circumstances.
You yourself were raging against Brenden Eich because you thought he was a homophobe, but someone that is a apologist for paedophilia is somehow f–king A-okay with you.
Edited 2016-04-29 21:13 UTC
Dude, calm down.
1. You are not obligated to use GPL licensed code. But there are people who decided that GPL works for them and they keep pushing it forward, not RMS. Yeah, there is all the ideology around it, and RMS is the advocate. So what do you expect, what the advocate should do? If it does not work for you, write your own, join a community that provides an alternative, or pay the people who provide the alternative. That is: prove yourself.
2. “any rational and moral person” is a big big strawman*. RMS can share his opinion, maybe he is wrong, but he did not act evil. And this reward was given because of his technical achievements not his moral views.
edit: scotsman
Edited 2016-04-29 22:25 UTC
What technical achievements? Most of the code he wrote has been replaced in anything GNU. He managed to write a license and form a foundation and nothing much more.
Edited 2016-04-29 22:45 UTC
You mean his work in the 80s, and by work I mean not just coding, but organisation and leadership, that created GNU, made Linux possible, and inspired countless projects through the last 3 decades is not a technical achievement? Working in IT is not only about writing stupid text files and giving them to computers to make something useful out of them…
Thanks for the kind language, what I can suggest is that instead of bitchin about RMS and GPL, support some of the alternatives. You know, maybe, freedom comes in more than one flavour.
I do, financially.
I can still criticise even if I never had to touch it. It doesn’t in anyway invalidate the critcism on its own.
Though It is pretty impossible to not use GCC if you are using a Linux system …
Also I had to link to GPL code for my project for my dissertation. I can’t release a single binary for my project legally under a license other than the GPL (I want to license under something more permissive).
There wasn’t a viable non-gpl alternative, so I either release the tool and require someone to build it, or I build an installer for a library with various legalese. I just didn’t bother releasing it as I didn’t have to do it, I think the software is rotting somewhere on a hardrive. I probably port everything to python at some point and release it.
Edited 2016-04-30 08:40 UTC
You could have released your code under a more permissive license and thus enabled the receivers of the software to link against replacements of the GPL code you’ve been using, thus arriving at a different licensed binary.
THERE WAS NO GPL REPLACEMENT TO THE CODE I WAS LINKING AGAINST. FFS.
No I couldn’t because I would have expected non-technical users to install compilers and the rest of the Jazz instead of just shipping the JRE.
lucas maximus,
If this is completely true, then your project would have been non-viable if not for the GPL code.
Edited 2016-05-02 16:51 UTC
No I was criticising Stallman of playing double standards when it came to restrictions.
He doesn’t says it is “anti-freedom” (whatever the fuck that means) because microsoft required an API to use a particular video codec.
But is is okay when he forces people to release their code under GPL because they are writing a plugin to the GCC compiler.
It is “freedom as we tell you”. Fuck that.
Did you not realize that by saying the statement above, you also in effect restricting Stallman from releasing a software according to the license he preferred? You can’t have it both ways, restricting Stallman’s preferred license while allowing all other developers to choose their own license, why not Stallman?
You don’t like the license of his software, USE ANOTHER!
You guys are full of contradictions.
Nope.
Edited 2016-04-30 08:31 UTC
The point is, he was not asking those people who develop software to use the GNU. I think he was avoiding people to use his software as a means of creating proprietary software.
What in the world that you restrict Stallman from providing a license to his own created software as he desire? That’s a contradiction.
No he doesn’t. His wish is for everyone to use the GPL, which as far as I’m concerned is not the best license for every project no matter what he thinks, but that’s a far cry from “wanting to remove the freedom of others”.
I will say that while the GPL is not as “free” (permissive) as some other open source licenses, we certainly wouldn’t be where we are with open source if not for it being the license behind Linux and many other great FOSS projects. However, the tide is turning and more permissive licenses (BSD, MIT, etc) are allowing open source to make huge inroads into the commercial sector, and giving developers more choices about how much control they have over their creations. I’m not a developer so my opinion doesn’t matter all that much, but I think the fact that the GPL forces the developer to do things they may not want to do makes it a bad fit for many projects, and makes it less “free” in spirit.
On a side note, I’ve always found it sadly humorous that nearly every attack on RMS is ad hominem; it’s as if no one can find fault with his achievements, so they attack his personality and character instead.
I must agree that RMS wants everyone to release their software as free as long as possible, so that is why they created version 3 to address more specific concerns.
And yes, why some people appears to restrict Stallman from releasing a license based on GPL 2/3? It is his freedom, in the same way as everybody else has this freedom to license their own created software. Deriving your work from the GPL-based software, you are also require to release your software as GPL, since using a GPL is tantamount to agreeing with RMS’s way of licensing a software.
I think the only mistake of RMS is his belief if true that all software must be released as free software. This is impossible.
For example, if you are developing weapons, as a government contractor perhaps, you will be using a software or embedded operating systems. So, even if you use GPL-licensed softare, you need to obfuscate your code so that it becomes impossible to determine what type of software your works are based upon. Because weapon manufacturers can’t shared their source in public, there is no way for that without risking security. While it is beneficial to release your software as free, not all things are beneficial. Therefore, if your work as a developer is classified, I doubt your creations should be released as free software, BSD type or GPL.
There is no requirement that says you need to share the source with the public.
The requirement is that the receiver of the software also gets access to the code that was used to make the software.
Governments routinely require that even for closed source components (e.g. through source escrow), do you expect the military to not have similar requirements?
Yes there is. In the case of GCC the design of compiler and it plugins are compromised because of fear that people may create non-free plugins and are forcing devs to release *their* work under a GPL license.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.en.html
I will admit while the situation isn’t exactly the same, he is admitting that he is quite happy to be restrictive through a copy left license, while complaining that Microsoft are being restrictive because they are tying their plugins to proprietary codecs.
I dunno about you, but I think that is disingenuous.
In anycase their dogmatic attitude is basically causing for GCC over certain versions not be used in projects. Especially in the BSDs that have either been forced to use older versions (OpenBSD) or Adopt Clang.
Edited 2016-04-29 15:12 UTC
The silverlight bit is funny, since I see it as a problem but for entirely different reasons. It will, indeed, create a problem similar to what Flash has done (provided anyone but Microsoft ever actually bother to use it) because, once again, the Windows version will be the only version getting proper updates and attention. This would tie web apps closely to Windows, and we’d start the vicious cycle all over again.
“their dogmatic attitude is basically causing for GCC over certain versions not be used in projects”
The dogmatic attitude approved by his VERY SMALL legal team is a huge effort to not mess the sharing economy with the $tatus Quo.
A TRUE AWARD from USA Government -which benefits a lot directly and indirectly from this decades long open sharing- would be the first baby steps toward the inclusion of sharing principles into the Legal Frame.
What does that even mean.
The goal is to keep all the freedoms of free software available to the end user and avoiding software which does not have these freedoms. This guarantees all users of the software has the same freedoms.
If that is not something you are looking for that’s fine. There are groups of people that do prefer these ensured freedoms over functionality however. It’s good that Stallman has worked so hard to provide these people with solutions and that he keeps progressing on preventing (potential) obfuscation and keeps looking for ways to enable more code to be available for as many people as possible.
No he keeps on finding ways to get paid for turning up at university campuses and funding his bullshit foundation that has only one purpose … it is to whine about other people being productive.
In any case that is irrelevant to what I said
He was saying the same sort of situation was fine because he was doing it with GCC while complaining about a similar situation with a browser plugin system.
GCC situation
* Write plugin code for GCC
* Plugin must be GPL because of reasons
* Developer is forced to license it under GPL
Silverlight situation
* Write plugin (aka monolight)
* Plugin must use proprietary codec.
* Code is tied to use proprietary codec.
As I said, it isn’t exactly the same. But lets be honest it isn’t far off.
Edited 2016-04-29 21:46 UTC
The first does not create any obstacles or hindrances for anybody. The second is a risk for the developer, because he may be developing against something which he may not be used by all potential users or even its own developer due to a proprietary dependency.
Note that one of the conditions for software to qualify as free software according to the FSF is that there are no limitations in commercial use or resale. If you look at today’s software industry, with notable exceptions, most software is custom made for a particular purpose and most users would be able to access the source code for the software they’re using if they would actually bother asking. This fits perfectly with the GPL which ensures that users have this right. If you’re living in the shareware world, walled garden app store world or maybe web development world that’s fine, but this is not where the majority of the software development is going on. Those worlds also happen to have the pieces of software where I myself care less about having the source than in other circumstances.
It doesn’t matter.
The first is forcing someone into using a license they might not like.
The other is forcing someone to use a particular codec.
I said it is Rich that they complain.
It doesn’t matter who benefits off of what. The point is that he is advocating similar behaviour because he thinks he is right.
He is right. There’s no way around it. The behavior he encourages is fully necessary if you don’t want to risk that you may become dependent on software you cannot look at or change.
That wasn’t my complaint.
They are forced into using GPL if they wish to create plugins.
Again the GPL doesn’t have anything to do with use. They are only forced to use the GPL when they redistribute their plug-ins. This ensures that the recipient will have the same freedoms as the people writing the plug-ins. There is only avoidance of limitations here.
And as per my original complaint that is it particularly rich considering they are complaining about in the link I post specifically about silverlight implementations being tied to a codec with a proprietary license.
In both cases you can avoid problems by not doing anything. It is pretty much the same goddamn thing.
The whole “freedoms” spiel is missing the point.
Why is this is soo hard to understand is beyond me.
Edited 2016-04-30 14:42 UTC
Is this some additional clause in the licensed used by GCC?
Because the usual GPL would not require that, just that the license being compatible, e.g. LGPL, BSD, MIT, etc.
Read the link at the start of the comment tree. Stallman says it himself.
Any plugins for GCC must be GPL.
Self-contradictory. You are also free to use another software if you do not like the licensing GNU’s software. You are whining about Stallman’s because it impedes somebody who wants to release a software using GNU to another license, yet if you own the software, you cry foul when somebody try to limit you by not obfuscating the code you wrote! In the first place, they have that power to restrict you if you build a software using their Stallman’s tool chain, so USE ANOTHER software that will not impede your freedom.
You are getting ridiculous.
Nope. I never said that.
If I write code (I never said anything about linking or using GPL code) and I want to protect the copyright i.e. stop someone from abusing my copyright, obfuscating my code is one way of making it more difficult. As I have written the code, that is my right as the creator.
I never said anything about trying to use GPL code.
Edited 2016-04-30 09:39 UTC
Come on, Lucas_Maximus. Just fork GCC. When your piece of $___ going a version number up. Just fork again.
If you fit some new line beneficial to your fresh fork. Don’t Contribute Back. They will give NOTHING to you, in exchange. They could even dare to give your line back, so rude people.
No doubt. They pay by the log. Quite a huge amount of resource$ inverted here. Many times more than Stallman will expend on PR for the rest of his life.
“If free software HAS to have a figurehead?”
OPEN software need to have no Heads [Thanks, but all yours].
…..
They can give you every thing you could need for living your life.
But if those things are not truly yours, then you are living on a Lended World.
…..
<JokeAlert> Talks have almost concluded, to start selling air, at some ‘secret’ Global Treaties. [Have you already paid rent to Them, this month?].</JokeAlert>
Does that make this quite old news?
1. rtfa
2. Just like 2015 taxes are old news here in the U.S.
What can I say? One of those crazy men and women yelling at a desert, all of a life. Such a few are able to see so far on the horizon.
This kind is AWARDED by wining a new soul with the courage to live up to human standard.
🙂
But, “in reply to” should be followed by the name|avatar, Thom.
Wait, GCC compiles COBOL? When did this happen?
GCC does not compile Cobol directly, there’s a free gnu cobol to C translator which can be integrated with the gcc toolchain.
Anybody has the idea of what RMS’ thoughts on software development for weapon manufacturers?
Does RMS still believe that
BOEING, Thales, Finmeccanica, United Technologies,Corporation, EADS/Airbus Group, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, BAE Systems (These are all weapon manufacturers from short fire arms to fighter jets),
must release all their software as free?