[wplug] Richard Stallman talk at Pitt.

[Bryon Gill]

You might consider what actually causes change in the world.

Pushing hard for a principle gives you a position to compromise from.  Starting 
from the position of compromise gives you no principle on which to stand.  In 
other words, if everyone plays good cop, we're going to be forever farther from 
the goal.

Don't worry, there's only one Richard Stallman, there will always be a Linus or 
a Bruce Perens or an ESR to smooth things over with the corporate world.

Bryguy

ps - whoever said RMS is an activist first and a programmer second, in my 
opinion anyone who writes a widely used C compiler, libc implementation, and 
editor has done enough programming for a lifetime.  What else does the guy have 
to do?

On Mon, 4 Apr 2005, Tim Lesher wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 04, 2005 at 12:31:56PM -0500, Jonathan Billings wrote:
>> On Apr 4, 2005 10:30 AM, Tim Lesher <tim at lesher.ws> wrote:
>>> On Mon, Apr 04, 2005 at 09:41:50AM -0700, Michael P. O Connor wrote:
>>>> Are you sure you want to do that, he will be screamming on how beer
>>>> should be free.
>>>
>>> Yeah, the only thing more annoying than an out-of-touch idealist is
>>> people mischaracterizing an out-of-touch idealist.
>>>
>>
>> Which is almost as funny as a zealot annoyed by someone mocking their
>> out-of-touch idealist.
>
> I caught your humor, but just to stave off any impending flamewar, I'm
> not a zealot--if I were, I wouldn't be writing closed-source software
> for a company that makes proprietary hardware. :-)
>
> Personally, I see RMS and the philosophy of free software as a goal to
> strive for, like the elimination of war or the elimination of world
> hunger.  None of the three is practically or theoretically achievable
> in my opinion, but figuring out how to get 1% closer is a success, not
> a failure.
>
>