Advogato: Fallible Hacker Figureheads

“…Open source is the power hungry brat child of GNU.
Concerned with short term publicity and gain, they abandoned the
principles that have given GNU such a strong foundation. After RMS
split from opensource, there were various other internal
squabblings, most visibly over the use of the trademark “Open
Source”. Next came the talks at Microsoft from ESR and the killing
he made by being on the board of VA Linux. In the space of a few
months he managed to suddenly move from the editor of the Hacker’s
Dictionary and hacker icon, to sold out betrayor of GNU in the eyes
of many.“

“In a sense, ESR not only distanced himself from the hacker
ideal. But showed software developers and marketeerers just what
potential for cash-in existed in open source software. Since then,
it seems, open source has been the latest and greatest buzzword.
Everyone (even Microsoft) has either released open source software
or talked about it. Suddenly, there is a vast amount of code
available to normal users.”

“RMS argues that it is wrong to call the “Linux distributions”
“Linux”. Instead he favours GNU/Linux, to show that the system is
comprised of both GNU tools and the Linux kernel. This will
probably never happen as the term “Linux” is so well established in
the media now (when HURD comes along, things may be very different
though). A much better name for most of today’s Linux distributions
would be opensource/Linux. For example, Mandrake comprises binary
only versions of software such as netscape while providing
open-source software with restrictive licenses such as QT. The only
distribution which could realistically be called GNU/Linux is
Debian (but only if they finally ditch non-free).”

Complete
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