Re: [TUHS] Isaacson v Unix

[Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com>]

On Sat, Jan 05, 2019 at 04:38:40PM -0500, A. P. Garcia wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 5, 2019, 3:27 PM Paul Winalski <paul.winalski@gmail.com wrote:
> 
> > On 1/5/19, A. P. Garcia <a.phillip.garcia@gmail.com> wrote:
> > [concerning Richard Stallman]
> > >
> > > Building an operating system in and of itself was not so much his goal as
> > > building the friendships and community surrounding it.
> > >
> > The GNU Hurd kernel certainly seems to have gotten nowhere, and with
> > the success of Linux IMO the free software community doesn't need it
> > anymore.  But FSF certainly has made a big impact and contribution
> > with the gcc toolchain and the free versions of the Unix shell and
> > utilities.
> >
> 
> But RMS sort of invented that community, just like Al Gore sort of invented
> the internet (as we know it today). He was certainly an important catalyst,
> and his views remain influential to many people.

I'll remind you all of a story I'm sure I shared here in the past.  

I was friends with the 3 Cygnus founders and I was having a dinner
with them at Gumby's house.  (This is an aside but it is important:
Gumby was, at that time, married to a very nice German woman named
Silka; she still had a pretty strong accent, English was not her
first language).  

Cygnus was pretty much a 100% GPL / LGPL shop.  So the discussions
were all "RMS this", "RMS that" and went on for a long time (hours).

Silka was clearing the table and she pipes up with "Are you saying
'RMS this'?"  We say yes, and she responds with "Huh, all this time I
heard 'Our mess this', 'Our mess that'".  We all looked at each other
in silence, sort of replaying everying through that view.  And started
laughing (and freaking out a little) that every sentence made sense as
"Our mess <whatever>".

I'm clearly not a fan of RMS, yeah, he did some good but in the process
he took credit for an enormous body of work in which he didn't write a
line of code.  As a programmer, that's lieing and I can't stand liars.

And that's all I have to say on the RMS topic, it's probably too much
as it is.