6 ms·
RMS has done terrible harm to our community
by lgierth 7y ago
RMS has done terrible harm to our community
- naringas 7y agomaybe he has recently... but he is one of the founders of it.
- travbrack 7y agoThe 80s were a long time ago
- new_realist 7y agoNo, OSS predates Stallman.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pearjuice 7y agoWithout RMS most of the software you are currently using wouldn't work. He has orthodox manners and is an extremist for freedom but "terrible harm" is a lie.
- rimliu 7y agoI am sure it would work just fine.
- dbdjfjrjvebd 7y agoIt mainly would not exist. Or if it did it would be very different.
- rimliu 7y agoWhat makes you think someone else would not step in instead? There was a similar argument when Ritchie died: "we would not have C, we would not have software". Well, maybe we would not have C, but for sure we would have (and already had) some other programming languages.
- Godel_unicode 7y agoThis is falling prey to the great man theory of history. How can you know that nobody else would have championed FOSS if not for him? There are lots of FOSS advocates who were turned off to the whole movement because of him; what might they have done with him absent?
- lidHanteyk 7y agoSure, "copy-center" attitudes like those common in BSD communities would have prevailed, likely, and we'd have entered the shared-source/commons-licensing phase a decade earlier. Without the option of copyleft, an entire pillar of philosophy would be missing, but it likely would not matter, since the world would still be just as corporatist. The main thing missing in that world would be a belief that copyright can and will be changed in order to better suit the people.
- rimliu 7y agoI am still not getting that someone else would not come up with these or better ideas.
- mbrodersen 7y agoMost open source software wouldn't exist if it wasn't for proprietary software succesfully showing there is a market for it.
- pearjuice 7y agoI think you underestimate the impact of GNU on your daily life. Sure, someone else might have made the same things, but in this timeline RMS did and by removing him, most of the software you are currently using falls apart.
- new_realist 7y agoNot true at all. I intentionally use BSD licensed software. Open Source predates GNU and would exist just fine without it.
- teddyh 7y agoFrom what I hear, it was actually RMS who originally convinced the BSD people to release their software, i.e. to create the BSD licence. I can’t remember where I read this, though, and I can’t find it now.
- mbrodersen 7y agoYou mean the 98% of people world wide that doesn't use GNU software?