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"I may be unfriendly at times, but you are a power-misusing hypocritical liar"

lol that was the best part

OUTSTANDING.

It's about time someone called it like it is.

I cannot take a single thing RMS says seriously. The man is a living parody.

stimmt!!!

Unfortunately, it only highlights Theo as the hypocrite. The OpenBSD project itself considers the ports tree to contain the applications you can install through it. Straight from the FAQ:

http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq8.html#Browsers

So the basis Theo uses to call Stallman a liar is a distinction so fine even the OpenBSD project itself doesn't make it!

If you don't get it, don't flame it. It's that easy, THERE IS NO NON-FREE SOFTWARE IN THE PORTS. Ports are just makefile, YOU, the very user, have to run the makefile, YOU are installing it and furthermore ports in OpenBSD aren't officially part of the supported OS. Maybe next time you should read the whole FAQ or use the system!

But no-one ever claimed there *was* any non-free software in ports. RMS said it 'suggested' the use of non-free software. This is not the same thing at all.

But it's just that; a suggestion. It's up to the user to take the suggestion just like they would any other suggestion. If they don't want to install non-free software, they won't, just as they probably wouldn't jump off a cliff if they were suggested to.

It's the user's freedom to make a decision based on the suggestions that he or she is given. They may have been convinced well enough never to run non-free software, so that no suggestion of non-free software will change that. RMS is now saying we shouldn't give them the freedom to choose what software they use, they should only run what RMS approves of.

That's totally not the point RMS was making... ofcourse if you actually read the messages in the mailinglist, or hell, even the title of this article,

Read my comment. This definition of "the ports" as being the Makefiles only and not the software itself is a definition that OpenBSD itself doesn't use. Theo invented an arbitrary distinction just to call Stallman a liar. The OpenBSD FAQ itself states that Opera, well-known for being non-Free, is "in the ports tree", those exact words.

If OpenBSD had been using the definition in Theo's mail all along, then you might have a point, but they have not. It looks like Theo invented that narrower definition so that he could call Stallman a liar. Unfortunately for him, the OpenBSD's website is available to prove that isn't the definition used up until today.

Do you understand the difference between a FAQ and a technical report?


'Nuff said.

although 'not recommending' something is pretty far cry from 'condemning' something which Almafeta tried to make it out as, for Stallman to pop into the OpenBSD list and start his speech on unethical and antisocial software is totally non-constructive and for OpenBSD followers most likely offensive. Stallman is free to not recommend OpenBSD, but I really doubt that OpenBSD advocates gives a rat's ass what Stallman recommends and I'm certain they don't wish to listen to the ranting reasoning behind his non-recommendation (which seems based on hearsay), especially on their own mailing lists.

Stallman will get flak for this, and imho deservedly so. as usual there will be alot of trolls who will try to turn this into a GPL vs BSD licence flame fest and will likely succeed.

He wasn't making a speech but rather trying to correct some misinterpreted statements that were floating around.

"someone told me you're a bad guy. and that you smell bad". indeed...

Personally, I'd rather he just shut the hell up.

de Raadt VS Stallman. This is the fight I've been waiting for. Stallman has the frothing-at-the-mouth zealotism, de Raadt has no holds barred anger issues.

On any other topic, I would have disliked a comment like this, but this time I feel you're spot on and I moded you up.

*Shakes head in amazement, takes a beer, and sits back*

I'd love to see that, and the wild card, Hans Reiser and his "you don't want my file system in the kernel because you hate me" (then proceeds to sit in the corner listening to My Chemical Romance whilst cutting himself).

The problem I have with Stallman isn't so much his philosophy (which I am not with) but the fact that he has this idea if you don't subscribe to his view in the most purist of forms, you are some how deficient as a human - possibly even evil.

There doesn't seem to be a pragmatic bone in his body, a willingness to sit down, hear both sides of the arguments and come up with a compromise - it seems that its a 'my way or the high way'.

With each passing day he is turning into the equivalent of cantankerous old priest (Father Jack) off 'Father Ted' who screams, "Drink!", "Feck!", "Arse!" and "Girls!"

> Richard Stallman is annoying, yet funny at the same time.

RMS is great :
- emacs
- gcc
- (L)GPL
- FSF
- ...

Just because RMS has produced a lot of goodness doesn't make him above criticism. Even the most wonderful coder or project leader can make a serious gaffe now and then, and IMO when they do they should be called on it.

Well look for another oportunity because this isn't it. He was factually correct in his statement. Too bad Thom is after the quick thrill, as usual, and couldn't help posting a story that puts side by side completely unrelated statements.

Do you know what he said? Did you read the thread?

Or did you just banter on based on what someone else told you?

That's hearsay. Which oddly enough is exactly what RMS did, and why he's looking like the backside of a working animal.

RMS was factually incorrect in his statement that OpenBSD includes non-free software. It doesn't. But he couldn't say, "opps, sorry." No, oh no, he then went on to change his story to something along the lines of 'I said it recommends non-free software'.

Wait, that's not what he said. Huh.

Funny, an RMS follower (apparently) blindly accepts things that people say, without doing due diligence -- JUST LIKE RMS.

ESR did the major work at emacs. And gcc wasn't such a beast as today. So yes he did something, but nothing more, nothing less. But he wasn't even able to build a real operating system, just a bunch of tools.

One could say Linus wasn't able to make a real OS just a kernel. What's your point?

Both are given far more credit for their work and those that contributed greatly far less credit and fortunately for us we have some great software. We also have some fascinating approaches to licensing and vision on how to expand the benefits of technology to the masses.

It takes the works of many but we all too often credit a few for all of it.

Feel free to reply with a small list of your personal accomplishments that have done so much for the world as RMS did with his radical, annoying and funny ways.

His (or my) list of personal achievements have NOTHING to do on the subject of whatever RMS is or is not.

RMS may possibly be an asshole without knowing whether I have ever written a line of C or whether I have ever been born, for that matter.

As a free being, we are entitled to express our opinions exactly as we see fit, even more so when they are about RMS, who is a public personage with the self-assigned role in life to instruct people about the Real Ethics of Freedom.

Expressing your opinion is fine. But if you do so without anything to back it up then the only thing people will have to value your opinion will be the fact that it's yours. So they'll ask "who are you?" And if they discover that you're an absolute nobody throwing mud at a guy who is somebody, it will make them mad.

I hope you understand why. It's normal human reaction. Don't be surprised when it happens. Keep doing it, by all means, but be ready for the consequences.

Ok ok, maybe I should've said "Richard Stallman's *ways* are annoying, yet funny at the same time", as it's what I meant. You're right, Stallman has done a _lot_ of good work for the open source community. I use a lot of software created by him/GNU every day: emacs and gcc most notably.

"Free means not restricted.
GPL restricts you.
Thus, GPL does not promote free as in freedom"

Freedom of speech is restricted them, DRM is freedom. I'm confused what do mean.

" Thus, GPL does not promote free as in freedom "

well ... no, you obviously don't fully understand the GPL. GPL promotes an ensures freedom, because it restricts that which would restrict freedom (i.e use the source and close it or not contribute back). In this way GPL ensures software freedom more than BSD does. The freedom to restrict someone else's freedom does not make sense if you want to ensure the freedom (as defined in the four freedoms in the GPL) of everybody (which essentially BSD style licences allow). Anyway the GPL does what it does very well.

He obviously does fully understand the GPL, because what he said is true.

We all know the point of the GPL and its admirable. If you don't want your code used in proprietary software then it is your right, use the GPL, but calling it more free than the BSD license is fallacious.

It would be so if there was a clear shot at "freedom". But there isn't.

Absolut freedom is a pipe dream, an abstract. If you allow anything to be done with your software it means you also allow someone making it non-free. Some people may like it that way. FSF doesn't, and that's why we have GPL.

To achieve realistic freedom, at the very least you have to include one condition: to disallow the software to be made non-free. GPL may seem complex and convoluted and restrictive, but in today's day and age that is the absolute minimum that had to be done to ensure that free software stays free.

Blame it on the world we live in, not on FSF, RMS or GPL. In a perfect world the BSD license would be all that's needed. Hell, public domain would be all that's needed, everybody would be fair and we wouldn't even need copyright law to tell us what fair means. But it's not a perfect world, is it.

Someone using my code in non-free software in no way makes my code non-free. Everyone is still able to download and use it how they see fit.

well ... no, you obviously don't fully understand the GPL. GPL promotes an ensures freedom, because it restricts that which would restrict freedom

George Orwell could not have put it better himself.

This has nothing to do with Orwell.

*All* laws are based on restricting freedom of some people so others can have more freedom. The old saying "Your freedom to swing your arms around ends at my nose" is based on this principle.

If you want complete freedom, you want a Darwinian world where might makes right and anything that you can get away with is right. If I'm bigger and stronger than anyone else, then I have the right to hit anyone in the nose. You have the "right" to hit me back, of course, but you won't be able to because I can pound you into power before you even get close.

The GPL is based on the "quid pro quo" principle of "If you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours". If you want to play by those rules, then fine. If not, then fine too -- just don't expect that other people are your development slaves.
The BSD is based on the principle of charity (the only thing asked back is recognition). It is a noble mindset which it would be great if it were universal, but the moment one starts yelling that others leach your software, you're revealing a closet GPL hypocrasy.

I don't know if OpenBSD is or is not "completely free" in Stallman's purist philosophy. But like him or hate him, it is very consistent so if it was a misunderstanding, OpenBSD will be recognized.
But if it isn't, then, so what? If OpenBSD really cared about Stallman's opinion, it'll either create Gobuntu-like fork that allows a purist OpenBSD to be created or it'll go the distance and fix the issues, if there are any, at the expense of it's less pure OpenBSD users.
And if they don't care, they Stallman-type purists aren't their target customers anyway, so it's a waist of breath.

"If you want complete freedom, you want a Darwinian world where might makes right and anything that you can get away with is right."

This has nothing to do with Darwin. Darwin *described* a natural process. He did not advocate aping it (badly) in artificially constructed situations. He did not suggest that it has any kind of intrinsic moral significance, as of course it doesn't.

Actually, it would be, "If I scratch your back, you have to scratch mine." Which, if you think about it, highlights the issue that a lot of people have with the GPL.

"ensuring" *freedom* is the first step to dictatorship. It's no freedom at all.

Thats the American constitution..and the Magna Carta torn up then. Although its interesting you mention Dictatorship isn't that more Microsofts domain .

It's of course the American way of life, to enslave the rest of the civilized world and RMS is on his way to argue with Bush-like rhetorics.

I agree somewhat. There is the freedom to do whatever the hell you want, then there's the freedom to do what is ethically or morally right.

And as a libertarian it is up to the individual to exercise self restraint based on their own moral principles rather than expecting a series of laws passed down by those up high to regulate the lives concerned.

Lets hypothetically say that I go out, I take the FreeBSD source code, and made all the BSD licensed source code closed source - how am I restricting your freedom? you can still access all the FreeBSD code off the original CVS free. Sure, you won't get back any enhancements, but its my freedom to choose whether I disclose what I add upon FreeBSD.

This is why I can't understand how people here claim that 'source code needs to be protected from those who might put restrictions' - how can you claim that you're some how disadvantaged by virtue of someone taking opensource and making their enhancements not public?

Here is an example, I purchase a two flats, I rent them out, one of the people decide to extend his side of the flat. The equivilent of complaining 'restriction of freedom' would be like turning around and saying "you there fore have a moral obligation to extend my side of the house after extending your side of the house".

Edited 2007-12-18 07:31

If:

is true then:



must not make sense either.

well ... no, you obviously don't fully understand the GPL. GPL promotes an ensures freedom, because it restricts that which would restrict freedom

It's really a question of how you define "freedom". Personally, I consider freedom to be a condition that is free from restrictions -- or, at least, as many restrictions as possible. Compared to the BSD license, which has practically no restrictions whatsoever except for attributing sources, GPL is much more restrictive; hence, less free.

"If it's "free as in freedom" you should be able to do whatever you want with it, right?"

No. That's not what 'freedom' is, in any remotely sophisticated definition. Please read up on, oh, say, a few thousand years of political philosophy.

That is actually part of a holy war that has been going on for years between proponents of the GPL and the BSD licenses.


The idea behind the BSD license is that we are doing what we are doing for the sake of doing it. To further along knowledge, for general altruism, and to make a name for ourselves. Someone who does something in a BSD license doesn't care if a big corporation uses their code, because they are doing it for everyone.

The idea behind the GPL is radically different. The attitude is that it is ethically not right to NOT share your code with the rest of the world. Since the rest of the industry is engaging in a practice that is ethically wrong, we will create a competing eco-system that will be superior in every way, and eventually dominate the proprietary sector. The GPL attitude isn't doing something for the sake of doing it, it is doing something to further a cause. Because of that, you don't want a big corporation using your software, because that would completely defeat the purpose. As such, the GPL is designed to encourage people to join the eco-system, but protect the system from exploitation.

Note that these are the attitudes behind the licenses, but people choose them for a variety of reasons. For example, Linus doesn't care about the cause of Free Software, he just likes the idea of forcing people to play fair.

So, even though the GPL is restricted in a generic "Freedom" sense of the word, it is designed to promote a cause.

You're more-or-less correct, but I think it's clearer to say that Linus prefers the GPL because of its guarantee of reciprocity. The strong copyleft share-alike license best reflects the organic distributed development model.

It's not so much about forced fairness as it is about induced collaboration. What we see in the Linux ecosystem is a bunch of direct competitors deciding against their normal business instincts to collaborate with one another because the GPL provides a legal framework for preventing the misappropriation of their work by their competitors.

Market capitalism holds that competition is more productive than collaboration. If the issue is framed as a choice between pure competition and pure collaboration, then I strongly agree. But it is abundantly clear that introducing incentives to collaborate into a competition-based economy dramatically increases productivity. It is this "80/20" mixed economy that best reflects the human condition as it relates to combined productivity.

The GPL is designed to induce collaboration in a competitive economy. In combination with the weak (file-granular) copyleft licenses, both reciprocal (LGPL/MPL/CDDL) and non-reciprocal (Apache), it allows copyright owners to delineate where they would like to focus on cultivating collaboration, differentiation, or adoption with respect to their codebase. The GPL also provides the opportunity to directly monetize the software for use in proprietary products, which, among free software licenses, is generally a unique property of the strong copyleft.

As a moral statement, the GPL is demonstrably beneficial, but not universally so. I believe that no rule of man or nature is universally beneficial. There is no categorical imperative. Ultimately, morality is a function of our evolving interpretation of history, which, in the future, will be the judge our present activities as they pertain to morality.

Moral philosophy is not so much the study of how we ought to behave as it is the study of how to improve upon our past behavior. The GPL is the direct result of applying to software a particular perspective on the history of regarding creative works as a form of property. It is moral only to the extent that it is used to encourage behaviors that increase the benefits of computing to society.

Finally, I consider altruism to be a positive externality of an economic system in which some productive behaviors go unrewarded. In a sense, altruism helps to balance the negative externalities where some counterproductive behaviors (e.g. pollution) go unpunished, but these opposing forces result in great inequity. The morality of an economic system is, like anything else, determined by how well it encourages productive behaviors. Altruism is a symptom of an immoral economy.

"That is actually part of a holy war that has been going on for years between proponents of the GPL and the BSD licenses."

You mean like the crusades with knights and stuff...Thats cool, but isn't it about like mainly about things like selling skills.

I won't quote all your anti-GPL which is what this is about but basically if I say this.

"The idea behind the GPL license is that we are doing what we are doing for the sake of doing it. To further along knowledge, for general altruism, and to make a name for ourselves. Someone who does something in a BSD license doesn't care if a big corporation uses their code, because they are doing it for everyone."

It is not out of place. In reality this is one of the reasons for choosing GPL.

What you do is quite funny you try and box people who choose one license over another, when the spirit differ in one instance "copyleft" vs "permissive"

Personally I believe that it is upto the original developer how he wants to license his software.

"The attitude is that it is ethically not right to NOT share your code with the rest of the world. Since the rest of the industry is engaging in a practice that is ethically wrong, we will create a competing eco-system that will be superior in every way, and eventually dominate the proprietary sector."

That's such crap. It's got nothing to do with ethics beyond "Playing Fair". What the GPL does say is that IF you use my code, I get to use yours. That's it. What the GPL camp dislike about the BSD license is that this isn't the case. You can take my crappy code, make it better and no-one else gets the advantages from it. If you're ok with that then fine...BSD is for you.

And as for what the rest of the industry is doing, I think you'd find most in the GPL camp could actually care less what you or I use. The attitude tends to be if you like it, go ahead and use it...but if you actually like using some virus-riddled, DRM'd piece of over-priced rubbish...hey, that's your choice too. Enjoy. No-one is forcing anyone to do or use anything...but it sure does give people like yourself something to bitch about by conjuring up these conspiracy theories doesn't it.

Edited 2007-12-18 07:25

Let's not get into an argument again over the dictionary definition of free, and the Stallman definition of free. That sort of semantic battle can only end poorly.

For once I agree with you. This debate is sterile, and rather off-topic with regards to the actual issue at hand.

Now who mentioned the GPL anyway? For one, we're talking about OpenBSD, which obviously isn't bound by the GPL. And for another, Richard Stallman is just saying "naughty boy" to Theo de Raadt - he's not accusing him of breaching any license, just of being less-than-completely-free.

I think it's worth pointing out that you can run proprietary software on Linux, just as much as on OpenBSD and that Ubuntu, for example, also provides non-free software through it's package management system. So this really is a license-agnostic issue.

Give me a break.

Using your logic, there are no free societies in the world, only in complete anarchy are you free. The restrictions are there to ensure what was started free, remains free -- unless of course the author changes his mind.

You're essentially complaining you can't take another persons work and effectively steal it by closing the code.

Over and over and over and OVER and OVER it goes.

BSD: Free as in "Freedom for the developer"
GPL: Free as in "Freedom for the source"

This is not hard.

The BSD license also restricts me and using Theo's interpretion it is even a non-free proprietary license, since his interpretion overrides the rights granted by the BSD-license.

Freedom is not unrestricted. Freedom is usually restricted to your person. You can do anything against yourself as you want to, but you cannot do anything to restrict _other_ persons. That's the one and only restriction you are allowed to enforce.

The "freedom" you and Theo are so highly praising is the freedom to enslave people. It is only unrestricted freedom for the stronger part. The weak part is enslaved.

The problem with the "freedom" of GPL is that it - as all other protective systems - tend to "protect" people against an increasing amount of "enemies" making people just as unfree as the BSD-license.

The only free license would be a BSD-styled license with a clause explicitly disallowing the changing of the license and disallowing the use of the software if suing of other users.

Even better would be if copyright law was identical to BSD-license. That would give true freedom. But as long as the copyright law does not protect those freedoms, the BSD is unfree - how impossible it may sound to you.

Maybe you should first grow up before trying to master common sens