Re: Irony

[kaih at khms dot westfalen dot de (Kai Henningsen)]

rms@gnu.org (Richard Stallman)  wrote on 29.11.02 in <E18Hmge-0002BD-00@fencepost.gnu.org>:

> http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html.)  They also describe our
> community as "open source", connecting GCC with the wrong movement.
> (See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html.)

Frankly, I've never been able to identify a difference between "free  
software" as used by rms and "Open Source" as used by esr. They're quite  
obviously exactly the same thing. (Not a surprise, really, as they were  
*designed* to be the same thing.)

As for "movements", AFAICT they are also the same except for a handful of  
individuals who, for some silly reason or another, insist that the one  
they're in is only connected with one of the names.

They're wrong.

As far as I can see, there *are* no separate movements, just different  
labels for the same thing. Or, put differently, there may well be separate  
movements, but all of them use both labels. The *only* person I can name  
off the top of my head who insists on this invisible difference is rms.

As for the old "GNU/Linux" saw, I won't repeat the arguments against that  
sillyness, they've been mentioned often enough. (Note that I'm not against  
the name per se, but against the insistence on it - anything else would be  
silly for someone in Debian, after all.)

And of course, it also seems rather silly for someone promoting the "GNU/ 
Linux" name to object when someone using the Linux name wants to honor a  
GNU product. That is, after all, the same thing that the "GNU/Linux" name  
is meant to do. Oh well.

Let's just say that rms' ideas about effective PR look rather strange to  
me, and leave it at that.

MfG Kai