20th Anniversary of RMS's Original GNU Post 526
An anonymous reader writes "Sep 27, 2003 is the 20th anniversary of Stallman's original Usenet post describing his vision of GNU. Good time for reflecting over GNU's successes and failures, about how it has changed our world."
Thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thanks (Score:3, Interesting)
Really, I can't thank hime enough.
Thanks for providing us with the tools that make our jobs easier, and our lives freer. I use GNNU/Linux in a day to day basis, it feeds me and my family, it gives us a roof, it has helped me pay for theschool of my sons and the car we just bought.
Thanks GNU amd Linux
Re:Thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
> I use GNNU/Linux in a day to day basis, it feeds me and my family, it gives us a roof, it has helped me pay for theschool of my sons and the car we just bought.
I love GNU/Linux as much as the next guy and it also provides me with income, but are you suggesting you couldn't have had these things without GNU/Linux? Or did I miss some hefty sarcasm? I suppose the Insightful mod could be taken either way, but I would have modded it Funny.
It's a cold Wisconsin winter for those who live in a house made from likes of gcc and gawk!
All joking aside, I too am greatful for open source and free software.
Re:Thanks (Score:4, Interesting)
Could I possibly make a living without it? maybe, but the fact is, I make a living and my family makes a living. I must thank RMS for starting it all.
Re:Thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thanks (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically, OSI just wants the source to be available for practical reasons (safety, compatibility, etc.), while FSF wants all software to be free (as in speech and beer). You may ask money for your software, but you cannot stop someone else from giving your software away for free (beer), so effectively you're stuck with a charge-for-support-and-the-box business model.
Re:Thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not at all true. For a long time the FSF got most of its money by selling tapes of GNU code. They continue to sell copies of GNU software on their website [fsf.org], so RMS would be pretty hypocritical to criticize others for selling free software. (Hypocricy has never struck me as being one of RMS's failings; he's unusually true to his principles.) There's a page about selling free software [gnu.org] on the FSF web site, and it should clear up confusion on this matter. The FSF positively encourages anyone who's distributing Free Software to charge as much for it as they think they can get away with. A particularly salient quote from that page (emphasis is theirs):
That sure doesn't sound like an objection to selling software to me!
Re:Thanks (Score:2)
Re:Thanks (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.iana.org/arpa-dom/
But today,
Re:Thanks (Score:3, Insightful)
I spent some of my childhood years around RMS and the AI lab, and I can say that he's changed remarkably little over the years.
As I told my then-girlfriend, "A bit intense but really not a bad guy".
It's impossible not to respect and a
Re:Thanks (Score:2, Interesting)
"I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it. I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software license agreement."
Thankyou RMS
Re:Thanks (Score:3, Insightful)
So, where's GNU/Hurd?
Re:Thanks (Score:3, Interesting)
Here [debian.org].
Re:Thanks (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Thanks (Score:3, Funny)
Is this a dirty story, or one o' them brain teaser things?
Remarkably, he said... (Score:5, Funny)
Usenet (Score:2, Funny)
Dream come true. (Score:5, Insightful)
Think big and see what you can do with your life!
Arpa? (Score:5, Funny)
Arpanet mail:
RMS@MIT-MC.ARPA
What's an "ARPA", and why wont Network Solutions let me register one!?!?!
Re:Arpa? (Score:5, Funny)
I could register one for you, but then I'd have to kill you.
Re:Arpa? (Score:2)
It's the network SCO has copyright for and that the Internet was illegally based on. Networks Solutions are just trying to avoid a $3Bil suit.
Re:Arpa? (Score:4, Informative)
GNU's greatest accomplishment.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:GNU's greatest accomplishment.. (Score:5, Insightful)
OSS is indeed a gift to the world in every sense of the word.
Also have you ever read the credit list from a large project? It reads like a world phone book. People from all over the world, all religions, all races, all idiologies working together to make something. It would be remarkable in and of itself but the fact that they are doing it for free makes it nothing short of miraculous.
If that is not love then what is?
Repeat the holy mantra (Score:2, Funny)
GNU is God and RMS is His Prophet.
GNU is God and RMS is His Prophet.
There is no God but GNU.
Re:Repeat the holy mantra (Score:3, Funny)
If RMS is a "nutso prophet," ESR is the televangelist version. :-)
-- Henry Spencer
weirdo (Score:5, Insightful)
All HAIL RMS! Agree with him or not, his efforts have made your life better.
Re:weirdo (Score:5, Funny)
Re:weirdo (Score:5, Funny)
Re:weirdo (Score:3, Funny)
Everyone of us in China competent enough is trying to keep the mail servers as an open relay, so that you all western evil capitalists can scam the blood out of those poor Nigerian people to pay to enlarge your penis and breast, and still have enough money to get tons of viagra, in order to get into permanent decadence.
That way, we Chinese will rise up, set up a Moon base and throw rocks at you decadent capitalists! Yup, that's right!
End of conspiracy theory.
Re:weirdo (Score:3, Funny)
If you promise to do webcasts from your gymnasiums, you've got a deal.
Re:weirdo (Score:5, Insightful)
A freak is that which is unusual. The nail that sticks up and won't be whacked back down.
If one only does that which is usual only the usual results will come of it.
Take a good look around you right now. Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, central heating, television, your computer, the internet. Outside cars, planes and even the odd space ship or two.
All made by freaks, all of whom were resisted, whacked and even reviled by some for trying to give us what they did.
Whither thou goest Goddard and Tesla?
Would that freaks were a bit more usual and that the usual would take a bit less care about trying to whack them down.
KFG
Re:weirdo (Score:3, Insightful)
But that doesn't mean they were social rejects lacking the ability to communicate concepts to their fellow man without bristling every person they met. It doesn't mean they espoused ideologies with technology and tried to use their innov
just for clarification (Score:3, Informative)
RMS is neither a soc
Back to the software. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Back to the software. (Score:5, Informative)
The GNU project is 100% political, it's not about creating a clone of the 'ls' command, is about setting the foundations to a Free Software world.
Hail RMS, for he has done what few of us could have, he has dedicated his life to provide us qith a choice, be it a choice from IBM, UNIX or Microsoft. it's a choice for freedom, and a lot of us, who have made the choice, live and subsist now thanks to it.
Re:Back to the software. (Score:2)
Re:Back to the software. (Score:2)
Personally I think GNU/Linux is a great nama, that describes exactly what you have: a Linux kernel with a GNU userspace.
But you should be happy with whatever floats your boat
Re:Back to the software. (Score:2)
As far as I have understood, the development of technical GNU components critical to GNU/Linux, such as GNU libc and the GNU C Compiler, is doing fine. The objective of the GNU project has been and still is making a technically superior GNU operating system that is free for everyone. The fact that many people know GNU only from their ideol
Re:Back to the software. (Score:2)
Absolutely not. Without ideology GNU is no different then MS or SCO. Besides all things are political today. Do you listen to music? do you go to the movies? Do you use software? Guess what you are engaging in political behavior.
Re:Back to the software. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, MS and SCO have ideology. Its not so readily apparent because its the dominant ideology. "Business is good, propriatary code is good. Sale for profit is the only sensable way to live." Its odd to see it spelled out because it is usually simply part of the background...
RMS' ideology stands out because its different. So different that people can't really place it easily. Some people who quite obviously haven't given the matter any thought at all call it "communist" because it is definately not in line with taditioal capitalist ideology. But there are more options than just communist and capitalist. The idea of Free Software is patently not communist. It is different though. And, as you say, it needs constant statement simply because without constant restatement it would fade away due to the background ideology.
Re:Back to the software. (Score:5, Insightful)
For me the GNU manifesto is pretty damned close to the sermon on the mount. It's more Christian then communist.
Re:Back to the software. (Score:5, Funny)
He said beer was vile. I don't know if he got the joke.
Then he made me give him a dollar for a GNU sticker.
Re:Lisp-based window system. (Score:3, Insightful)
RMS came from the AI lab at MIT, who were using Lisp machines as personal workstations before workstations even became common. These machines had OS's that had user-readable and user-modifiable code all the way down t
I remember the good old days... (Score:5, Interesting)
For more information, contact me.
Arpanet mail:
RMS@MIT-MC.ARPA
Usenet:
Raise your hand if you ever had a "bang-path" email address. For that matter, raise your hand if you know what a bang-path address is.
Re:I remember the good old days... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I remember the good old days... (Score:2)
Remember bang paths!? I have flip'n nightmares about them to this very day--or rather, the ten-plus years of dealing with every possible way of interpreting RFC-822 (IIRC) et al, when trying to route mail from a fido-net homed Bouroughs (SP?), with one weird character set to uucp'd boxes that spoke petscii (SP?) or some such and mysterious 300 baud black holes that wanted baudot. There was a sign on the wall that said "the wonderful thing about standards is there are so many to choose from" until someone
Re:I remember the good old days... (Score:2)
An address that never worked when I tried sending mail to it. :-| I had better luck sending mail to Fidonet nodes than to anybody with a bang-path address. (This would've been from 1989 onward...by that time, most people already had what we'd now consider normal email addresses.)
It has made my life more interesting.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It has made my life more interesting.. (Score:2)
An Empire game? (Score:2, Funny)
From the post:
To begin with, GNU will be a kernel plus all the utilities needed to write and run C programs: editor, shell, C compiler, linker, assembler, and a few other things. After this we will add a text formatter, a YACC, an Empire game, a spreadsheet, and hundreds of other things.
Dreaming of world domination was obviously among the top priorities already at that point... ;)
Re:An Empire game? (Score:2)
So far as she was ever able to determine ( since he really couldn't talk about his work very much ) his main duty seemed to be porting Zork to it.
So here we have Stallman ( who some would consider a Barbarian) dreaming of Empire, and the guys in charge of building the actual tools and infrastructure for World Domination dreaming of just being a Barbarian and going out for a bit of the hack and slash.
A suggestion for the next 20 years... (Score:5, Insightful)
People know their distribution (Red Hat), and the kernel (Linux). The "middleware" GNU will never be famous. But the GPL is, though the people that talk about it is a lot higher than those that have read it. That is not ment to undermine what they have achieved, it's just that sometimes I feel they're barking up the wrong tree...
Kjella
Re:A suggestion for the next 20 years... (Score:2)
GPL is what makes it all happen, without it Linux is just another unremarkable operating system.
Re:A suggestion for the next 20 years... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also interesting to note that he saw the need for Free software at the very early stages of the game. It's also interesting to note that the scenerio he was trying to avoid has almost word-for-word come true. MegaMedia corps, Microsoft Monopoly, DMCA. None of that would have been considered reasonable back then...most people thought him crazy. Unfortunately, many still do. But the change has been slow, like a frog set to boil, and many people still don't get it because it hasn't bit them....Yet! [see RIAA!]
Where would he be now if he charged for EMACS all those years ago?...Think about it!
Re:A suggestion for the next 20 years... (Score:4, Funny)
We'd all be using vi?
Re:A suggestion for the next 20 years... (Score:3, Interesting)
A while back I read a post which (to paraphrase) went something like this;
In fifty years, Stallman will be considered the most important luminary, with whole chapters devoted to his exploits. By contrast, Bill Gates will warrant only a footnote.
I'm not convinced that there will be a clear winner between these two extremes of principle. I think it's more likely that our current software ecology will continue to evolve a symbiotic relationshhip between F/OSS and proprietary, but that's spe
A new perspective on it... (Score:3, Interesting)
And only 20 more years (Score:2, Funny)
Original Post and Current Status of GNU (Score:5, Interesting)
It is interesting to look at how the ideas in the post agree and disagree with the state of GNU today.
For example, Stallman states that a kernel is a top priority, yet we still don't have a really stable, working kernel out of GNU (I don't think Mach or Hurd count).
Also interesting - filename completion is mentioned as a possibility. Now it is difficult for many people, including myself, to live without it. Yet Stallman implies that a Lisp-based window system is more important. What became of this idea?
By far, my favorite quote from this is:
Is this not what GNU started? Many projects with part-time distributed workers? This is a quote from RMS, stating that the development model most open source projects now use would be very difficult.
Re:Original Post and Current Status of GNU (Score:3, Insightful)
He said that twenty years ago, but when another suitable kernel was released under the GPL, the impetus for a GNU kernel diminished. (RMS still wanted one, but it's harder to get people to work on it instead of on Linux when Linux is much more mature.)
Re:Original Post and Current Status of GNU (Score:2, Interesting)
RMS was, in my opinion, speaking of individual utilities: "Individual programmers can contribute by writing a compatible duplicate of some Unix utility and giving it to me." He was saying, in my opinion, that projects which involve a large number of small utilites could be developed in this way. In other words, he thought it would not be hard to coordinate developers each working on a seperate, standard, important program for GNU.
I, on the other hand, am considering projects like Linux, or most other large
Able to operate in a residential area? (Score:2)
Can someone give examples of donated computers that couldn't run in a residential area in 1983? Is he talking like building-sized supercomputers? Something like the WOPR?
Re:Able to operate in a residential area? (Score:5, Interesting)
For years, the GNU project ran on a Vax 750 called "prep.ai.mit.edu", but it was at MIT on the 7th floor of Tech Square, not in RMS's house (which burned down, by the way). Quite a few times I crashed prep by using the vt100 on top of it and typing ^P in Unix EMACS (as opposed to ITS EMACS on the PDP-10). ^P takes you to the machine boot ROM on a Vax -- equivalent to taking you to the BIOS immediately on an Intel PC.
It was a while before I figured out how to recover and continue running Unix. So I probably lost the GNU project a few files due to fsck lossage...
Java is dangerous (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Able to operate in a residential area? (Score:2, Interesting)
In 1983, I remember the PDP-11 was on the way out and the VAX computer was on the way in. I was at Berkeley then; BSD was still nastily entangled with AT&T code.
I worked at Lawrence Berkeley Labs part time during the school year and full time during summers. We ran our entire building off of a single VAX 11/780. It was about four feet high, three feet deep, and maybe 15 feet long, and it had the processing power of One MIP, and we were lucky to have it. The external disk drives were about the size of a
Whoa (Score:2, Funny)
1) there was actual email "arpanet mail" back in '83
2) they were calling it "snail" mail back in '83 (while I was still in pre-school)
Jeez, I feel really behind the curve.
Who was "we"? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's about RMS switching between "I" and "we". What's up with that? Obviously this post is a shout-out to anyone interested in helping. But on that date, when RMS first shouted-out this revolutionary idea [chokes back tears, pauses to regain composure], who else was already involved? Who was this "we" he speaks of? Or was it a theoretical "we"? The Royal "we"?
While I'm writing, can I just say once more to Richard, Linus, Rusty, Alan, and all the other* millions who have contributed their code in the spirit of the GNU project: A MILLION THANK YOU'S!! You have already changed the world!
*If you're a big-kahuna-GNU/developer, please don't be offended that I left your name out. I love you too.
Thank you, RMS (Score:2)
Thank you, RMS.
Many people find you very eccentric at times, myself included. But at the end of the day, you're right. And your vision has turned into freedom, which these days is quite a treasure.
Hey RMS, (Score:5, Funny)
We are right in the middle of it... (Score:2)
How have you been using your turns so far?
Re:We are right in the middle of it... (Score:2)
Some great things are born out of passion (Score:3, Insightful)
1. The Americans who fought the revolutionary war and establish the United States of America
Grudge: They didn't like being bullied by the monarchy
2. Martin Luther King and the Civil rights movement.
Grudge: Many... Rosa Parks, the integration of public schools, etc...
3. Steve Jobs and his vision of a computer without IBM and corporate suits.
Grudge: He hated IBM.
4. Thomas Edison and his many inventions
Grudge: Life
5. SUBJECT LINE TROLL
Grudge: Slashdot posters
6. Linus Torvalds and the Linux kernel
Grudge: The high cost of Unix
GNU will live on forever as classical music does. It may not be popular, but you can't argue that it is powerful, classic and has great beauty. Bravo RMS!
And some bad (Score:2, Insightful)
umm, didn't these guys have grudge too?
7. saddam hussein - invaded kuwait in 1991.
grudge: who knows. because he could.
8. george w. bush - invaded iraq 2003.
grudge: who knows. because he could.
etc.
Have you... (Score:2)
Congrats! But I am still going to use vi!
Twenty Years Ago... (Score:5, Funny)
As an adult, I nearly gave up coding altogether. I felt like a farmer without my own land. I owned no share of the programming tools that I used daily. All the API's were immutable, opaque, and hostile (VFW comes to mind).
Then I found Linux, and from there, the FSF and GNU. Beyond a doubt, without the work of Stallman and everyone fighting for Open Source, I'd be doing anything but writing code today. And aside from my family, few things are more integral to who I am than writing software. I was born to code.
So thank you Richard! It took me awhile to find everyone, but now that I'm here, I'm glad you started when you did. That said, if we had to start from scratch today, I would be part of it.
-Hope
His greatest contributions: GPL and GCC (Score:5, Insightful)
The GPL attracted a whole bunch of people who are willing to contribute code, but not if someone could rip the code off, change a few things, and sell it in a broken state. This is one of the reasons for the great vitality of Linux and of GNU software. Also, the GPL makes companies like IBM willing to donate patents (such as the Read-Copy-Update patent) for use in free software; thanks to the GPL they know they can still sell a patent license if anyone wants to use the patent for a proprietary purpose.
GCC, on the other hand, made it possible for people to write free software without paying thousands of dollars for a compiler. It also served as a common language across all the *NIX platforms; if you were writing a utility, you could write to GCC instead of needing to work around the quirks of the various C compilers.
Linus Torvalds got the ball rolling on the Linux kernel, but he used GCC and the GPL to do it.
Thank you, RMS.
steveha
Crashproof filesystems and windowing systems? (Score:2)
Anyone have any documentation on this? I'd like to see a crashproof filesystem from 20 years ago, and I've always been fascinated by Lisp machines...
From the 1993 issue of Wired (Score:2, Informative)
Here is a link [techtv.com] to RMS when he appeared on The ScreenSavers
Long Live RMS!! (Score:2)
write and run C programs: editor, shell, C compiler, linker,
assembler, and a few other things. After this we will add a text
formatter, a YACC, an Empire game, a spreadsheet, and hundreds of
other things. We hope to supply, eventually, everything useful that
normally comes with a Unix system, and anything else useful, including
on-line and hardcopy documentation.
And there it is! The reason for all of our Opensource Insanity over the last 2
What happened to HURD? (Score:3, Insightful)
The design of HURD, on paper, is arguably better than a monolithic kernel such as Linux. But getting HURD working has proven difficult. Linux, on the other hand, started out as a toy that didn't do very much... but it was a toy that worked.
Thus Linux and not HURD benefitted from Mozilla's Law, which is: Projects that work get more attention than projects that don't work. It's a positive feedback loop: the more it works, the more people will get interested in it, and the more people are likely to contribute.
If I am correct about this guess, HURD should advance more quickly now, because it does now work.
It's possible that Linux has drawn developers away from HURD, simply because it was ready for production use long before HURD: for example, HURD isn't ready for IBM's customers to use it, so IBM isn't contributing developers to HURD, and they've already decided to support Linux anyway. I think to some extent this is true, but it can't be the whole story. There are multiple versions of BSD out there, and they seem to have active developer communities.
So, what's the situation with HURD? It's supposed to be really easy to develop it (e.g. as I understand it, almost everything happens in user space, so you can single-step even low-level stuff in the debugger). Did that turn out to be true, or not? If not, is it a temporary problem, or did HURD just not work out as hoped? Also, how easy is it to join the HURD development? How easy is it to get patches accepted? What is the HURD community like?
P.S. You will know HURD has "arrived" when SCO starts selling licenses to it...
steveha
His post is 4242 bytes long. Coincidence? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Great example... (Score:5, Interesting)
Stallman's vision for GNU has stayed remarkably consistent. He has am overriding definition of value - "free is better", everything since has been a result of that. The dislike of the business world for the GPL is not a setback for RMS, his goal is Free Software, so the fact that it is now interested does not mean he is going to sell out his principles and do anything to get businesses to use his software.
I admire that. Although I use a lot of prorietary software (and tend toward the pragmatic over principle) I'm glad that RMS chose to start GNU and stuck with it so long.
Re:Great example... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say this is a Good Thing and obviously so does most of the commercial world.
However, the middle ground is always defined by the end points. Move the end points to the right and the "moderate" point of view moves to the right right along with them. (Errrr, right?)
So, on one end of the field we have Microsoft and their "we intend to own it all" position and on the other end of the field you have. .
I don't care if he's a nut, whack job, unrealistic idealist, extremist radical or what have you.
But I do very much care that his flag stays staked very firmly, right where it is, and that someone is protecting it.
God bless the crazy old bastard for taking on the job.
KFG
Re:Great example... (Score:2)
The extremes set the dynamic and the boundaries of the discussion. That is why it is important for defenders of the status quo to demonize the radicals, once the idea of Free Software became a part of the discussion then the established software business was under attack.
The thing that is funny is that GNU was Stallma
Re:Great example... (Score:3, Interesting)
My job leads me to deal with software vendors on a regular basis, and many of them have been
Re:Great example... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Great example... (Score:5, Insightful)
It goes to the old adage, "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." By taking what is viewed by some to be an extreme position (not the concept, but the associated zealotry), I believe that RMS has alienated a significantly-sized group of people. Not because they don't like or agree with the concept, but that they disagree with his associated zealotry.
It's similiar to the reason why some people won't use qmail or djbns. It's not that they don't like the software, it's that they perceive the author to be an asshole.
Re:Great example... (Score:5, Insightful)
How are the GNU ideals lessened for keeping the original views? The GNU project is about freedom, is not about taking over the desktop or making Microsoft go bankrupt. It's about CHOICE, and it has been extremely successful at that.
Do you run Linux, BSD or any othe UNIX clone? chances are that you are using the ls, grep, mv, cp, cd, find, etc versions from the GNU project. Have you ever realised the contribution made from RMS to your day to day work? Maybe if you don't use free software you will not notice, but a lot of us live from it, and we are thankful.
Even if we do not share the same political views as others we can benefit from their achivements. Their ideals may lead them to create and do wonderful things, and in this case RMS deserves all the respect and recognition we can give him.
Kudos to RMS!!! You may not share his views (I DO share them), but no one can argue he has helped to make this a better world
Re:Great example... (Score:2)
Look at the average user of free software. They most likely use a mix of free and non-free software. They usually pick the best tool for the job and go with it.
Now look at RMS. Try suggesting to him that he use some non-free software. If you're lucky, all you'll get is a long rant about why non-free software is the most evil thing possible.
Even saying "My computer runs Linux" will probably get him fuming.
Now com
a work in progress (Score:3, Insightful)
Choice? (Score:2)
I think you pretty much had it when you said the GNU project was about freedom, given their definition of that term. (Freedom is a very tricky thing to define, and subject to much disagreement. Many people dispute whether GPL or BSD-style licensing are better examples of freedom-in-licensing.) But then you went and said it's about CHOICE, an
Re:Great example... (Score:5, Insightful)
Where I come from that was once called "integrity".
incorrect (Score:3, Insightful)
If you confine yourself to stricly advocating gradual and "practical" changes, it is very easy to lose sight of the end goal. In the case of Libertarianism, the end goal is to eliminate all government and allow the world to operate
Re:Great example... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see what Linus' views have to do with anything.
Linus was just in the right place at the right time. Yes, his personality helps a lot because he is independent, fair, insightful, and humorous. But the real reason Linux exists is the GPL, which as I understand it comes from GNU and RMS.
RMS wants GNU to be the star. It's an institution he wants to continue, so he fights for it. But the real star of his
Re:Well done... (Score:2)
Excuse me, I'll go crawl back under my rock now. Let me know when I need to belabor the obvious to you again.
Re:Great example... (Score:2)
Re:RMS married? Gay? In a relationship? (Score:4, Informative)
Computer and PS2 (Score:2)
Re:Really now... (Score:2)
who gives a shit? I mean really. People get a life. I mean a real life. This isn't a troll. Go out and get a woman, see a movie, hey maybe even get laid. *sighs*
When you write something like this, does it even cross your mind that perhaps clicking 'Submit' puts you in the same boat as everybody else reading this?