This article is reproduced from the negative review
A few days ago, Richard M. Stallman announced in the video that he would return to the FSF (Free Software Foundation) that he founded 35 years ago and hope to lead FSF again.
In the technology circle, many people are no strangers to Richard Stallman.
Stallman, code-named "RMS", is one of the world's god-level programmers. He is the builder of Emacs and the missionary of software freedom. He is also called the "father of free software" by industry insiders.
In the current Internet world, there are so many commercial companies and programmers who selflessly open source their code for everyone to learn and watch, which is largely due to him.
However, it was such a big boss who wanted to return to the company he founded but was jointly boycotted.
More than 2500 people and 41 organizations signed an open letter requesting the removal of all RMS positions again and the resignation of the entire FSF board of directors that allowed him to return.
The life story of the boss is more exciting than the TV series
Today, I will tell you about Richard's story.
Charles was born in New York in 1953, and there is nothing remarkable about the early days of his life, just a mediocre comparison. As a volunteer laboratory assistant in the Department of Biology at Rockefeller University, the professor praised him as a biologist in the future.
The university passed the entrance exam to Harvard. The freshman scored very well in Math 55, which was officially claimed by Harvard as "the most difficult undergraduate mathematics course in the United States."
This is the description of this course on the official website of Harvard University (2007)▼
In 1974, this buddy graduated from Harvard with honors and received a bachelor's degree in physics.
At the same time, Richard was still working as a programmer in MIT's artificial intelligence laboratory at the University of Massachusetts, and his level was quite good.
When Bill Gates, Richard's Harvard elementary school brother, just dropped out of school to start his own business, the Emacs editor that Richard and his lab colleagues worked together began to be popular at MIT.
Later Richard wrote GNUEmacs ▼
Richard at this time also likes to bounce around in the hacker community.
Nowadays, hackers usually refer to people who "destroy computer programs" and "drill program loopholes", but at that time hackers were more like "computer lunatics": people who like to explore the details of programmable systems and continue to optimize them.
At that time, the computer industry atmosphere was not the same as it is now. Free copying and open source code were the mainstream at the time.
If you want to optimize a piece of software, find its source code (most likely it is open), and then you can modify it by yourself! Such a free atmosphere has created a lot of successful software, such as Unix.
But things quickly took a turn for the worse.
In 1976, Richard’s younger brother Gates, who dropped out of school and started his own business, found that the sales of software were not right, so he wrote an open letter condemning piracy, to the effect that software is also a commodity and should be sold for a fee; source code is the core of software. Confidential, should enjoy copyright and keep confidential .
When the company and programmer heard it, it makes sense! If you have money but don’t make money...
Commercialization has swept the entire software industry, talented programmers have been put into the arms of the market, and software like Unix that has been created by a free atmosphere has also been protected by the company.
In the past, Unix would give the source code to universities and other research institutions at a very low price or even for free. Now it has not only stopped licensing, but also declared the copyright to the previous Unix and its variants.
In this case, "computer lunatics" can no longer learn, modify, and distribute software freely.
If ordinary people face this kind of thing, then they must forget it, and keep up with the times.
But true geniuses (part-time lunatics) will not succumb to reality. Richard decided to open another hang-up, which changed the world of computers.
This dense little head ▼
Don't you want to privatize? Don't you want to play by yourself?
Then I will make a set of things myself, and then open up the whole thing!
Richard wrote a free operating system compatible with Unix, named GNU, which is a recursive abbreviation of "GNU's Not Unix", and established a complete set of free ecosystems, such as software.
Under his "free" ecosystem, users can run, copy, publish, research, modify, and improve programs. In short, they have 100% control.
As a bigwig, Richard called on many hackers at the time to join this project, founded the FSF (Free Software Foundation), and hired a group of people to do things.
However, the power a person can initiate is ultimately limited.
So Charlie fiddled with a "virus"-the GPL agreement.
This thing is a kind of open source agreement, in simple terms: the code under the GPL agreement, you can use it as you find it useful, but the code of the software you release on this basis must also be public and not confidential .
Under this rule, GPL will freely infect every corner of the Internet.
As a result, some people ridicule that sooner or later RMS will make Coca-Cola publish their formula under the GPL agreement.
Everything is beautiful, except Richard has never written a core that he is satisfied with.
Until Linus Benedict Torvalds wrote Linux, and put it on the Internet for casual use.
A penguin with hands on feet▼
After Richard found out, he was quite excited, so he found Linus and invited him to join his free software industry.
In this way, GNU and the ecology of GNU plus the ecology of Linux constitute a modern operating system: GNU/Linux.
GNU official website will emphasize that Linux is a wrong name▼
Although most people only know Linux and don't know GNU, most of the software on the Linux system comes from GNU.
The big manufacturers we are familiar with, such as Xiaomi, Huawei, ZTE, and Meizu, have all used the code under the GPL agreement, and the power of open source reaches every user through their products.
Some of Xiaomi's open source code▼
It stands to reason that Stallman's contribution is obvious to all, and it is also an object of worship by many developers. However, an incident in 2019 left Stallman in a whirlpool of public opinion.
At that time, due to Stallman’s wording in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory mailing list in relation to the Jeffrey Epstein case and Marvin Minsky (sex crime case) Improperly commenting that "the victim of sexual assault is guilty" caused dissatisfaction among users. Later, Stallman announced his resignation from MIT CSAIL and chairman of the Free Software Foundation.
This big programmer pursues true freedom
Only 100% that can be controlled by him is true freedom.
For complete freedom, the programmer even used a Loongson notebook many years ago. The performance of this notebook and the display screen are outdated, but even the BIOS is open source, and Richard is holding it and preaching everywhere.
Based on the pursuit of true freedom, Richard made some peculiar remarks on brain circuits.
For example, he said, e-books are very dangerous things.
Because service providers can remotely delete e-books through the backdoor, they can perform any operation on the user through the backdoor.
He said that online translation sites violated human freedom.
Because the user needs to transmit the text to the website server to enjoy the translation, so the translation work is under the control of the website operator.
Original official website▼
Richard created a religion that opposed VI (the predecessor of Emacs' competitor vim), called VI a curse, and asked everyone to use the free version of VI, saying that this was their religious confession ritual.
And call himself the Son of the Emacs Church (similar to the Christian Jesus).
He spread the "Gospel" in preaching everywhere, and he said, "I bless your computer, my child."
Appears in the image of the Son (the head looks like a compact disc)▼
As well as picking their feet in public lectures, and collecting garbage smoothly.
Stallman's return sparked heated debate
In response to his return, hundreds of users jointly issued an open letter "An open letter to remove Richard M. Stallman from all leadership positions" (removing Stallman from all leadership positions, https://rms-open- letter.github.io/), strongly resist.
So far, 1933 individuals and 21 organizations have signed this open letter, including former FSF board members, open source initiative director, GNOME foundation executive director, former Debian project leader, and chairman of the Software Freedom Protection and Evaluation Committee. And Mozilla, X.org Foundation, etc.
In the open letter, it stated:
Stallman has always been a dangerous force in the free software community. He has stated that he is a misogynist, abilityist, transphobia, and other serious accusers of misconduct. These beliefs have no place in the free software, digital copyright, and technology communities. With his recent return to the board of directors of the Free Software Foundation, we call for the removal of the entire board of the Free Software Foundation and request that RMS be removed from all leadership positions.
In addition, the open letter also detailed 16 public incidents of Stallman’s misconduct (https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix), and stated: “Some of us have been Interactive stories, but these are not recorded in emails or videos. We hope you can read the content that has been shared and consider the harm he has caused to our community and others."
At the same time, it is reported that some members of the FSF do not recognize the return of RMS, claiming that they have no knowledge.
However, some people have expressed their support for Stallman and said, "Some people in the FSF Free Software Foundation are planning to remove RMS from the FSF board. We think this is very detrimental to the development of FSF and the free software movement. "
But the dispute is a dispute. At present, we have seen from the official website of the Free Software Foundation (https://www.fsf.org/about/staff-and-board) that Richard M. Stallman's name has been updated. However, the details The position has not yet been determined.
He is a genius, a top hacker, the father of free software, and a man full of bugs. What do you think of it?