[Cumbria] re the RH SuSe "discussion"

[Michael Saunders]

On Mon, 6 Jan 2003, Roger Cope wrote:

> thing forwards more than they hinder (having said that, I think that
> Richard Stallman is more than overdue to be told to SHUT UP!).

Yeah, RMS is a curious character who frequently gets on people's wicks. He
makes some valid points regarding freedom IMHO, and deserves the credit
for starting the GNU project in the first place, but sometimes he even
seems to forget his own past:

Some guys a while back, working on GNUstep (www.gnustep.org), asked VMware
for licenses so that they could run OpenSTEP on their boxes to aid in
development. VMware, being a pretty decent company in general, gave them
the licenses out of goodwill. Excellent stuff.

But! RMS then demanded that the GNUstep coders "apologise" for using such
proprietary software instead of sticking with freedom. This is laughable
considering a speech the man made ages ago, when he defended using
proprietary UNIX systems to develop GNU. Ugh, hypocrisy at its worst.

So RMS has some solid points but sometimes makes an ass of himself.

-- 
Michael Saunders
www.aster.fsnet.co.uk