That man again.

Richmond richmondmathewson at gmail.com
Wed Aug 1 04:01:19 EDT 2012


http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19065082

"Richard Stallman - founder of the Free Software Foundation and the GNU 
operating system - said releasing DRM-protected games on the open-source 
platform would be "unethical" 
<https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/nonfree-games.en.html>."

This man is a pain in the bum.

I saw him in Sofia about 8 years ago, where his shrill ranting, at 
first, impressed me, and then came to be seen as unrealistic.

1. The Linux platform does NOT belong to Richard Stallman.

2. Where is "the GNU operating system"? still unfinished after years and 
years of Stallman banging on about it.

The most recent 'alpha' release came out in 2011; from 1983-2011 to get 
an alpha does not over-inspire me.

3. If people carry on taking this chap seriously Linux will never manage 
to capture anything but a minority share of the desktop market.

4. His rantings [since when he was God and could decide what was ethical 
or not in the world of computers. I know not] could have repercussions 
for Livecode developers. I develop something
that will [after significant tweaking and divergence from the Mac/Win 
codebase] end up as a
Linux offering, but made with a close-source programming environment, 
and, after all my work, not going to be wide open so all and sundry can 
rip-off my code left-right-and-centre.

Mr Stallman can describe me as "unethical", and I could give him a biff 
on the nose!

This man has resemanticised "ethical" to mean "completely free and 
open", and these are not the
same thing; if I give you a glass of beer (i.e. a free glass of beer) I 
am not obliged to reveal to you the ingredients of the beer, how it was 
brewed, and so on.

" "Non-free game programs (like other non-free programs) are unethical 
because they deny freedom to their users," he wrote on his blog."

Big hairy things!

What would be unethical would be compelling end-users to buy/use 
non-free games: that is not
happening.

Somebody ought to point a few things out about Mr Stallman, his "moral 
hijacking" of Linux (Torvalds,
unlike Stallman, doesn't appear to be a 'slobbering' fanatic) should be 
seen as outdated, outmoded, and no longer terribly relevant.

Richmond Mathewson. BA, MA, MSc.

P.S. My academic qualifications are not open-source . . .  LOL.



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