Subject:
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Re: Stallman mentions Lego in newspaper article
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.loc.uk, lugnet.general
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Date:
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Mon, 8 Nov 1999 17:34:55 GMT
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Viewed:
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502 times
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In lugnet.loc.uk, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> Boy, did they ever miss the point. What on earth do hair, knuckles or
> shoes have to do with software development?
Well, everything the reporter got out of RMS may have been to silly
and annoying to print. The last time I heard him interviewed
(at length) on the radio, his big point was that it's wrong
to make and sell copyrighted software. So whenever the interviewer
tried to confront him with the problem this view would present
for some people (namely those who'd like to program for a living),
starting a sentence referring to RMS's loathing of "commercial
software", he'd say that he had no problem with commercial
software at all [...] - and then finally the interviewer
would get out of the ensuing confusing and arguing when
RMS would present that he means "commercial" to mean used
by a business, rather then sold for profit. As far as the problem
at hand is concerned, he thought there was no problem with him
demanding everyone give up any commercial interest in the their
software. His example for how one can do this without starving
was that he had also sold some piece of software - which he was
routinely giving away for free - to some people, thereby making
some money... The odd point that maybe this was basically just
finding suckers to pay for otherwise free stuff (which I thought
would be refuted by stating that there was more to that story,
such as commercial usage) was dodged entirely by RMS, which indicates
that that's exactly what happened. Bottom line of the interview
was that since he had enough money, he doesn't have to make
money with what he produces, so everyone else should do the
same, or better, be required to do so. And that making everything
opensource and free would be *the* recipe for improving software
quality. (To which I personally have to say that I've used
so much good PD SW, bad PD SW, good commercial SW and bad commercial
SW (MS, particularly), that I don't see a correlation there.)
So, from listening to this live, call-in, radio interview,
I have to say I'm not at all surprised that the Guardian
reporter concentrated on RMS's annoying mannerisms.
Yes, the point was missed, but I'd bet it was either not
made in the first place, or found to be not well-supported.
(Certainly, open-source commercial software that the buyer can
enhance and call his own sounds great from the buyer's perspective,
but so does free lunch. RMS kinda changed the topic whenever it
got to this point...)
-gbr
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