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From: tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: All these MINIX questions
Message-ID: <1734@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: Wed, 4-Feb-87 16:35:41 EST
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.1734
Posted: Wed Feb  4 16:35:41 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Feb-87 06:45:29 EST
References: <9110@duke.duke.UUCP> <547@atari.UUCP>
Reply-To: tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney)
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Organization: Centram Systems, Berkeley
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> Finally, an anecdote from his talk: somebody mentioned GNU, and Dr.
> Tannenbaum said, "Mr. Stallman and I don't get along very well.  In
> fact, Mr Stallman and X don't get along very well, for all X."

How true!  From my meetings with Stallman, I would not be at all surprised
if he had deliberately been obnoxious to Tanenbaum because that would get
him more attention.  This seems to be the only social strategy he knows.  I
view GNU as an extension of this approach.  We can all agree that engineers
sharing public domain code among themselves is a Good Thing, that it is very
bad that people tend to slap these idiotic shareware agreements on software
they would have given out free in the 1970's, and that commercial software
is overpriced.  But this isn't enough for Stallman; like some street person
evangelist, he tries to sell us on a wholly religious and nonsensical idea
that all software should be free!  This is in a world where the arts are not
free, the necessities are not free, knowledge is not free; apparently
software is some mystical ideal, beyond all bounds of human society.
Without this idiotic proviso, most of us would be enthusiastic backers of
GNU, but that wouldn't be in line with Stallman's attention through
obnoxiousness strategy, or his image of himself as the only truly good
person in a world where all are opposed to him.  This is the sort of
religion one would expect from a compu-nerd, but the rest of us can hardly
be expected to take it seriously.

I'm sorry, but I just had to get that off my chest.
-- 
Tim Maroney, Electronic Village Idiot
{ihnp4,sun,well,ptsfa,lll-crg,frog}!hoptoad!tim (uucp)
hoptoad!tim@lll-crg (arpa)

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