On Wed, 16 Aug 2006, Munir Nassar wrote:
> I think he is just miffed that some 20 year old Finnish college student
> was able to release his GNU system before he was and got all his glory,
> the this student did not even make it to MIT, to add insult to injury
> this system now is not known as GNU as it was supposed to, but linux
> after this upstart kid.
I think the real reason is that RMS wants attention for GNU, and for "Free
Software" more than for himself. But, who wouldn't feel it if (A) you had
worked for a decade on a project and shared it with the world and (B)
everyone seems to believe it was not you who had done that work and most
of the public acknowledgement went to that other person? Paraphrasing
what you wrote above and changing the names:
I think Joe is just miffed that Bob was able to release Joe's code
before Joe released it himself and because Bob then got all the glory.
Right. That Joe really needs to take a chill pill.
That said, I don't think "RMS needs to smoke less." Why would you say
such a thing? I think he deserves nothing but respect for his
accomplishments even if he has long hair and sloppy clothes. If you want
to know why we have an "Open Source Movement" - a name that RMS doesn't
like -- you need look no farther than Richard M. Stallman for the answer.
If it hadn't been for him, I have no idea what would have happened but it
wouldn't have been nearly as good as it is today. If not for Linus
Torvalds? I don't know. It's anyone's guess. There is no doubt that
something great would have happened without Torvalds, maybe greater, maybe
not as great.
Mike