Re: Shut it you tedious old windbag
No, you're underestimating Stallman's contributions here. Independent of the legal stuff, Stallman basically rebuilt an immense amount of infrastructure, without which Linux would have just been a toy. Gcc, gdb, more Unix utilities than you can shake a stick at, and Emacs are just the tip of the iceberg. And leading by example, he motivated lots of others to contribute their work as either GPL or really free (Sun-style) licensed tech, such as Samba, Apache, and lots more.
And the stuff is very good quality. I don't remember the last gcc bug I encountered, nor the last Emacs bug.
He basically started off in the late 70s or early 80s saying that he was going to rewrite everything AT&T did, just to show them. At the time, it seemed stone cold bonkers, but amazingly, he succeeded, well beyond any sane expectations. All the legal rulings in the world would have meant nothing if there was no actual useful free software. And we owe RMS a big debt of gratitude for providing that big initial burst.
And it might be nice if he listened more graciously to other opinions (and I know, I had argued with him lots years ago), at this point, I think it is fair to say that Stallman is Stallman. He's not going to start listening to others *now* :-)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
