I am curious
posted by Secretwallaby @ 1:56 PM
2 comments
Friday, October 13, 2006
About Me
- Name: Secretwallaby
- Location: La Mirada, California, United States
Previous Posts
- A little less than a month
- Might be of interest?
- 300
- Everyone gone yet?
- And all was right once more in the world
- Depressing
- An interesting article
- God works in mysterious ways
- Details
- My Scheme
2 Comments:
What, you expect us to be members or look for bugmenot passwords? Sheesh, you expect too much of your readers, especially if that reader is Eric!
I have a hard time taking the article seriously just from the sidebar--they're taking photos of him when he's goofing off and trying to draw conclusions about what kind of person he is from that.
Further reading confirm the article to be entirely without credibility:
Richard M. Stallman is a 53-year-old anticorporate crusader who has argued for 20 years that most software should be free of charge.
The Free Software Foundation (which Stallman started) believes no such thing, and you don't have to look very hard to find that out.
They would be forbidden from using Linux software to block users from infringing on copyright and intellectual-property rights ("digital rights management"); and they would be barred from suing over alleged patent infringements related to Linux.
Even admitting that the term "Linux software" could mean a handful of things in this context, there's no interpretation for which this statement still holds true. It is true that the GPLv3 will bar license holders from including DRM in their products, but nobody is "forcing" IBM or anyone else to use the GPLv3; they can continue with version 2 of the GPL without issue. Also, suing for patent infringement is only prohibited when the patent is infringed on by free software, though if you've got a patent on an idea and you implement free sofware that uses it, you probably weren't planning on suing over that patent anyway.
I could go on about the unwarranted attacks on Stallman's character and other problems (He hasn't hacked much new code in a decade or more. Not true; he's been preparing for the release of Emacs 22 which should be released within a month; hell, they even got the pronounciation of GNU wrong and they mock counting from zero... the GPLv3 does not ban enforcement of copyright; it relies on it for its very validity.) in the article, but it would be pointless; the whole post is entirely without merit or credibility given the gaping flaws in its accuracy. It's just another case of the media trying to blow something out of proportion because conflict sells regardless of substance.
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