On Wed, 23 Aug 2000, Martin L. Shoemaker wrote:
>Then don't spread falsehoods. I never made light of Stallman's sacrifices. I
>misremembered the order of a few events, and pointed out that regardless of
>order, he was only able to make those sacrifices because he had other means
>of support that are not available to most in the gaming cottage industry (or
>to most in the software industry, either).
Of course, if he didn't have means to feed himself there would
be no FSF. He sacrificed a very comfortable life to give us
free software. Even today he lives very frugally.
>Then you're not reading the same biographies I am. At the time, he was
>seriously called the best programmer in the country. Now that is simply an
By whom was he called the best programmer in the country in the 80s?
At the time, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson were at Bell Labs
working on UNIX. Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie were working
on the C programming language. Don Knuth was creating Tex. Dan
Bricklin and Bob Frankston were changing the PC world with VisiCalc.
>Absolutely! From the biography I read, Stallman was VERY comfortable in his
>consulting.
Please give some examples of where he was very comfortably
compensated for his consulting in the 80s. Even the biggest
opponents of free software have never suggested that Stallman
was "VERY comfortable" financially during his work on GNU.
By all accounts, he lived very cheaply and sacrificed a very
comfortable lifestyle to give us free software. To suggest
otherwise is a discredit to what he's accomplished.
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