Stallman [was RE: tlug: TLUG home page top 20]

[Craig Oda <craig@example.com>]

I would have to agree with Stephen Turnbull on most of his points.
While Linus may have a more realistic view of the world, I 
don't think that free software would enjoy the same reputation for  
high quality that it does without Stallman's consistent pushing
for the quality of open software source code.  Stallman's consistent
and vocal belief that free software is of higher quality than
commercial software is, IMHO, the basis of a lot of the free
software movement.  

IMHO, it is important to concentrate on the unified goals of the
free software movement.  While Stallman, Linus, BSD, and other free
software communities may have different views on things such as
software development models, the more important goal that everyone
agrees on is that software with source code should be freely
distributed and improvements to the software should be encouraged.  
It is this model of incremental improvements that makes free
software such high-quality software.   

Regards,
Craig
 

On Fri, 13 Mar 1998, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> If Stallman wasn't rather Leninist in his approach to free software,
> there probably would be a Linux, but I rather doubt there would be a
> Linux Phenomenon.  Linus is a nice guy and all, but I doubt he would
> have come up with a lawyer-proof Copyleft.
> 
> Stallman's Leninism has probably outlived its usefulness.  But the
> fact that people don't want to know what he has to say more likely
> means they don't really know who he is than that he's unpopular.
> Stallman's opinions are important to me, even when expressed as a
> rant, because (1) they go against the popular wisdom (the warm fuzzy
> approach that Linus Torvalds epitomizes) and even more so because (2)
> they go against the conventional wisdom of economics.  I don't know



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