Free software founder sits down for multidimensional interview

founder of the free software movement? I don't think so. Software was being offered for free long before he came along.

Also, I highly doubt putting the GNU in GNU/Linux is a correct claim. Last I checked people didn't say they ran Ubuntu GNU/Linux...they just say Ubuntu Linux.

funny though if you think about it....PCGNULinuxOS...Fedora Core GNU/Linux. The whole idea that GNU needs to be placed in from of Linux is asinine if you ask me.

Last time I checked it was Ubuntu, not Ubuntu Linux. Oh, and there's Debian GNU/Linux :-)

Whether you think it's asinine or not doesn't matter. It's the distro's that pick the names. Some use Linux, some GNU/Linux, some neither. Personally I always refer to it however the distro I'm talking about uses it, so I'll talk about GNU/Linux on Debian, Linux on Slackware, etcetera.

Quoting: founder of the free software movement? I don't think so. Software was being offered for free long before he came along.

Mr Stallman is indeed the founder of the free software movement, that is beyond dispute. Think free speech, not free beer.

Herzeleid: Software was spread free as in freedom before the FSF as well. But it wasn't until RMS that people actually thought about it consciously and started calling it "Free Software". IN that respect, RMS certainly founded the Free Software movement.

It was not at all uncommon for code to be shared amongst "User Groups" ... It was this fact that free software was so common that motivated Bill Gates to write an "open letter" to the Altair community about "stealing" his code. The idea of non-free software code was so foreign at the time that Bill's paradigm was a novelty, and people just assumed that the code was meant for sharing and passing on.

http://www.blinkenlights.com/classiccmp/gateswhine.html

Anyways, that's the way I remember it. Of course, back then, a computer in every home was not something that was feasible.

Darren:

I was going to point that out. I remember back in the old days when the teachers in high school would teach students all that nonsense about not copying, nobody would write software if they couldn't sell copies, blah, blah, blah. Now how long will it take to unlearn all of the screwed up stuff that is burned in people's heads?

I would say my vote goes to RMS as the leader of the free software movement. Without his brilliance, it is unlikely we would have anything like we have today. Before RMS there was free software but not much of a movement.

bigg,

Before Bill Gates, there wasn't a need for a movement. So I guess if you consider RMS the father of Free Software, Bill Gates would be its mother ("necessity is the mother of invention").

The fact that there has been "freeware" almost as long as there has been the microcomputer tells us that those high school teachers were wrong about programmers working without direct pay. And contrary to some opinions, not all freeware was junk.

Even in today's tech-savvie schools in the US, the teachers really don't "get it" for the most part. And because of that, 99% of school districts across this nation are spending hundreds of thousands dollars each in software licenses that could be better spent educating our children.

I finished school before the advent of the PC and see the intrusion of Corporate Business into our school systems has been absolutely criminal. Of all that wicked plots that Corporate Business, and especially BG/MS has perpetrated on the populace, That one tops them all. Brainwashing our children is the ultimate evil. Does anyone really think that MS would even be in business if they hadn't done this?

This is changing the discussion a little, but when I was in high school (1980's, maybe on this board that makes me pretty young) I actually learned AppleWorks. Then I went to college and they had hundreds of IBM-compatible PC's, and exactly six Apple computers, with one copy of AppleWorks that you could check out. Then a short while later they had zero copies of AppleWorks.

It was at that point that I learned the difference between teaching computing skills and training monkeys. Few of my skills applied to wordperfect. And if you wanted to buy your own copy of wordperfect, you better get a good job on the side and be ready to sacrifice some of your GPA for that software. If I had learned to use free as in beer software, I would never have been off in a wilderness wondering how to use software so strange as wordperfect, where pressing enter three times didn't mean three blank lines (how naive was I to expect such a thing).

I think it's idiotic to institute a "proprietary only" policy in the schools. Funny that I see the local schools complaining about having to cut back on staff and then sending more than the money they are "saving" to proprietary software companies.

> I think it's idiotic to institute a "proprietary only" policy in the schools.

I'd say that proprietary software doesn't belong in schools at all.

oh you sweet naive LXers. You sound as though you believe schools are where kids get educated.

> you believe schools are where kids get educated.

Sigh... Well, that was the origional intent, but, obviously that project's failed :(

tuxchick,

schools are were they get educated. For example, my son didn't know anything about the male or female anatomy and human sexuality but thanks to school, that's changed. He also didn't know anything about handguns...but alas, that topic has fallen into his knowledge bin as well. There are many other topics that school is teaching him...what a great experience!

Thank god we pulled him out to home school him...

>oh you sweet naive LXers. You sound as though you believe schools are where kids get educated.

You stole my line!!

School is for the peace of mind of society, If you went to school then we know that there are a few things that you should be familiar with..like how to stand in line, say the pledge of allegiance, know what a teacher is..

> Well, that was the origional intent,

Of schools, yes. Of the public school system, no. :(

But that's not really an appropriate topic for discussion here. However for those interested, here's a good site: http://www.schoolandstate.org/home.htm

As for RMS being the father of the Free Software Movement, I would say he is at least that for the "modern" FSM. As for schools, my educational experience has taught me that I can learn just about as well on my own as having someone lecture me for an hour or two a day. Knowledge comes a bit easier than skill, but the latter comes with practice over time. There are many excellent alternatives to letting your child be treated like a zoo animal.

I have listened to a number of talks given by Richard Stallman. This one covers some of the same ground, but does it with an interviewer who keeps rambling about "multi-dimensional interviews", and with a sleepy Richard.

Here's a link to a better, more energetic and funnier RMS talk: http://punkcast.com/905/