On 10/11/10 23:44, John Cooper wrote:
> http://www.groklaw.net/images/awardvideofinalwithcopyright.mov
>
> She talks about free and open source software, inferring Linux, GNU et
> al. I don't think you stating GNU/Linux, inferring GNU has some
> hierarchy above Linux, is appropriate.
The 'freedom' philosophy easily gets lost in the 'expediency' philosophy.
I do not think it is a matter of hierarchy, it is about very different
social, political, engineering views.
An extract from a video from a Richard Stallman talk:
The subject is the kernel, and its (independent) creation after about
a decade of GNU work.
=======================
They think the whole system is Linux, and it was all started in 1991
by Linus Torvalds. Now, why does that matter, this confusion?
Well, it hurts our egos. But that's not really an important thing. The
thing that matters is that Linus Torvalds doesn't agree with our
philosophy. He doesn't share our vision of living in freedom. He
happens to think that non free software is legitimate. He doesn't like
the idea of making technical decisions based on social consequences.
He thinks that technical decisions should be made for technical
reasons, to keep the technology pure. Well, I can't really speak for
him, I hope I haven't made a mistake.
As you can see, I don't agree with those views, but he has a right to
his views, and he has a right to advocate them.
What I think is unfair is when our, larger, work is attributed to him
- and to his views, and becomes a platform for spreading his views
instead of ours.
Most of the users of the GNU system think it was developed by somebody
who wanted to have fun. Well, having fun is a perfectly good motive, I
have fun programming too.
But the reason we have a complete free operating system is because of
another motive, because of people who were determined to work as long
as it took so that we could live in Freedom.
And the users need to know this. Because they need to think about the
issue of freedom. Or they're likely to loose their freedom. And this
is something that is much more general that the area of software.
We can see in all areas of life, if you have freedom but you don't
value it you're likely to loose it.
=======================
From one video (video 11) on youtube, of a talk given by Richard
Stallman in India a while ago. The talk is covered by a series of 14
short videos.
Video (10 minutes)
Richard Stallman On FOSS GNU And Freedom 11 of 14
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M90o-Ue4UQI
--
alan cocks
Ubuntu user
