Re: [TUHS] Isaacson v Unix [really RMS bashing]

[Jon Steinhart <jon@fourwinds.com>]

Been wanting to wade into this for a few days but needed to think about how.

I think that we're all aware that RMS has atrocious personal habits.  But I
don't think that this mailing list is the place to discuss them unless it's
somehow in the context of UNIX.

Many seem to excuse RMS's revisionist view of the history of technology on
the grounds that RMS claims that his memory isn't very good.  I think that
if he knows that he doesn't remember things then he should refrain from
talking about them as if he does.

As others have said, I don't conflate coding prowess with the ability to
design.  I've had many an argument with John Gilmore (one of the people
who doesn't mind footing the cleaning and repair bill after allowing RMS
to stay at his place) where he begins with "When I wrote GNU tar..."  I've
always responded by saying that writing tar is no big deal; the specification
was the hard part.

One place where I completely disagree with RMS that I think is in context
for this list is his claim that Linux should be called GNU/Linux.  I've
written tons of software in my life, and I don't preface the name of each
one with the parts list.

Even if one believed that such an attribution scheme made sense, I would
claim that it should be called internet/Linux.  I would argue that Linux
would not have happened without the internet making it possible for folks
around the world to participate.  And I think that there's a good chance
that the tools would have been created anyway.

Of course, I acknowledge that the GNU tools have been ported to Linux.
Big deal.  I haven't seen RMS arguing for GNU/Windows now that Microsoft
has seen the light.

Like many of you, Linux is not where I first started using GNU tools; I
started using them on my Sun machines after Sun started charging extra
for the compiler and included a licensing system that was broken and often
interfered with getting work done.

Jon