Barry Margolin wrote: [...] > While it may be a shame, they've been using the phrase for about 20
And 20 years back... (quoting Michael Zeleny, you should recall him, Barry) ------ As a personal note, back in 1985, I was deceptively expelled from the Free Software Foundation, to which I gave its name, by the underhanded dealing of Richard Stallman, whose allies took exception to my argument that "Free" meant just what it said. [...] is most gratifying to see the open source movement finally outgrow the ideology of Frenetics, which was the name RMS had originally favored for his private charity. ------ Here's more from Zeleny: (hey dak, ">" below is you, uh veteran retard) ------ Once upon a time, RMS wanted software to be as free as air. Based on this claim, I suggested that he name a repository for the same, "Free Software Foundation". Had I known that "free as air" meant something else altogether, our misunderstanding would have been avoided. But absent a preambulary distinction between "free beer" and "free lunch", which in fact came much later, you cannot fault a reading based on the standard meaning of words. ------ ------ What you deem a red herring is directly relevant to your grandiloquent assumption that Stallman's personal philosophy strikes fear into men's hearts. I do not wish Stallman any harm. His crusade is useful as an object lesson in the perils of fundamentalism. My only desire in this matter is for truth in advertising: let "free" mean free and nothing but free, and "charitable" mean charitable and nothing but charitable. Running a private lobbying organization in the guise of a public charity is both deceptive and illegal. ------ ------ Not liking someone for betraying oneself is a personal reason. Not liking someone for hypocrisy, which constructs an appearance to betray the truth, is a very principled reason. I have a problem with people restricting the use of their property in the name of freedom. I have a problem with people shutting off their autocratic organization from the voice of their community in the name of public service. I have a problem with people striving to acquire possessions and charging for their goods in the name of charity. If you think that I am advancing frivolous objections, read the FSF doctrine alongside the US tax code. ------ ----- >The GPL is not intended as a tool for increasing the number of true >saints on Earth. I am not sure about Germany, but in the United States many people loudly and effectively complain about tax funding of welfare. The proportion of single jobless mothers among them is rather beside the point of their argument's merits, such as they might be. So if you are angling for a reductio ad absurdum, you will have to try harder. Even so, bringing in the social policies raises an interesting issue, since the FSF is registered as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) public charity, which is not allowed to operate as a private foundation or engage in overt political lobbying. Nevertheless, its policies are formulated to foster and leverage non-negotiable ambitions of a single man in a transparently political manner, which in turn entails that they are not principally charitable, educational or scientific in nature, as required by the U.S. law. ------ ------ No surprise there. Stallman is the man least conscious of his impact on the others that I ever met in my life. Our final conversation revolved around his apology proffered for "stabbing me in the back." I never managed to explain to him the absurdity of such a request. "On nest jamais excusable dêtre méchant, mais il y a quelque mérite à savoir quon lest ; et le plus irréparable des vices est de faire le mal par bêtise." I have no problem with uncompromising adherence as such. Uncompromising adherence to blithe hypocrisy is a very different matter. ObBook: Baudelaire, Le Spleen de Paris ------- ------- I would be the first to disclaim an interest in, and an aptitude for, following an administrative lead. But RMS originally issued his call in terms of following an idea, and no idea can be followed without sublating its followers' egos. And the first thing one learns from personal interaction with Stallman is that he would not know where to begin doing that. Any discussion with him goes through arbitrarily many stages of Richard's creative paraphrase of his initial position, with absolutely no new content added to each successive iteration. Just as Weizenbaum's Elisa operates on an illusion of responding to its interlocutor by suggestively transforming his statements into questions, so RMS has learned to sustain the illusion of interacting with his audience by adapting his leitmotif to their queries and concerns. But the song always remains the same. As I mentioned before, I was not the first to be frustrated by this discursive solipsism. But whereas Chuck Wegrzyn did the smart thing by cutting his losses early on, I had invested too much time, effort, and resources into wrapping up all my work in Los Angeles and riding across the continent on the promise of having a say in an enterprise beguilingly represented as driven by belief in free exchange of ideas, to do likewise. So I stuck around LMI and MIT AI Lab for six months writing press releases, doing legal research, and sending out emacs distribution tapes. One thing that stuck in my mind was that while I sent out the software on behalf of the FSF, Stallman did so only for his own sake, explaining his actions by pointing out that everyone was equally free to copy and resell GNU distributions as he saw fit. In retrospect, I cannot understand ever having believed the philanthropic rationalization of his behavior. The only idea Stallman is capable of serving is that of his being infallibly, indubitably, and unimpeachably right on everything that counts. ------- ------- But now that we bring up our memories, here is another tidbit. After Wegrzyn's departure from the FSF ranks when I was the only remaining member of its provisional board to voice any objections to Stallman's plans of copyleft, Jerry Sussman asked me in private to relinquish my stand against requiring all derivative software products to fall under our proprietary licensing terms. He explained that he viewed his own backing of the planned charitable foundation as a personal favor to Stallman, who at any rate has shown himself constitutionally unfit to deal rationally with any opposition to his ideology. In return for my cooperation Sussman promised to support my proposal for free software licensing terms unencumbered by any restrictions on redistribution, if and when the copyleft distribution model that Stallman so inflexibly favored proved impractical. I politely refused, explaining that my considered understanding of Stallman's position as a gross travesty of freedom we were claiming to uphold was a matter of moral principle, and though I would always yield to the majority rule of the corporate board of directors, my conscience required me to make my objections on the record as persuasively as I could. Shortly thereafter, FSF was incorporated behind my back with my name stricken from its roster, notwithstanding Stallman's original promise to include me as a board member, which had motivated my traveling across the continent and spending six months of my life and several times the amount of my savings in the service of the idea of free exchange of information. ------- regards, alexander. _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
