Re: Fascinating interview by Richard Stallman at KTH on emacs history and internals

[Kenneth Tilton]

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> In message
> <bd2d1d84-6090-4898-b7c2-59167fc8e1f5@c10g2000yqi.googlegroups.com>, Nick 
> Keighley wrote:
>
> > On 16 July, 09:24, Mark Tarver <dr.mtar...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote:
> > > On 15 July, 23:21, bolega <gnuist...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/stallman-kth.html
> > > > RMS lecture at KTH (Sweden), 30 October 1986
> > did you really have to post all of this...
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> > > > read more »...
> > ...oh sorry only about a third of it...
>
> Still totally unnecessary, though.
>
> > > Perhaps as an antidote
> > >
> > > http://danweinreb.org/blog/rebuttal-to-stallmans-story-about-the-formation-of-symbolics-and-lmi
>
>     In other words, software that was developed at Symbolics was not given
>     way for free to LMI. Is that so surprising?
>
> Which is conceding Stallman’s point.
>
>     Anyway, that wasn’t Symbolics’s “plan”; it was part of the MIT licensing
>     agreement, the very same one that LMI signed. LMI’s changes were all
>     proprietary to LMI, too.
>
> I don’t understand this bit. The only “MIT licensing agreement” I’m aware
> off _allows_ you to redistribute your copies without the source, but doesn’t
> _require_ it.

Right, and this "fascinating" and "amazing" and "awesome" post needs 
only one rejoinder: twenty-four years later all we have is "free as in 
beer" software being milked by proprietary enterprises.

Sadly, they would be more effective and more profitable if RMS had never 
existed, because then they would be paying fair market price for 
significantly better proprietary tools driven by the demands of a 
price/value competitive market.

What we do not have is any interesting amount of "free as in speech" 
software, because no one uses the GPL.

The LGPL is Stallman's way of saying, OK, I was wrong.

kt

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