The thing I learned from this is that Stallman did not call Miguel a traitor.
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I believe this is where it all started:
http://doctormo.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/software-freedom-da...
The quote seems to be pretty direct and has not been retracted, in fact the groklaw article has it verbatim in the second gray text block.
He didn't call him a traitor, he called him "basically a traitor to the free software community".
I'm sure there is a difference in there, but I'm not a lawyer, the people at groklaw obviously are.
Personally I think that this could have been communicated less harsh, it would have been better for the image of the FOSS community.
Calling ex-Foss contributors basically traitors to the free software community smacks way too much of axis-of-evil and other extreme positions.
If Miguel deIcaza wants to work on mono that's fine with me, I'll never use it. If he wants to work on Microsoft stuff that's fine with me, I'll never use it. If he wants to go and work on closed source for Larry Ellison next week that's fine with me too, I will most likely never use it.
But I wouldn't call him a traitor for any of that, I'd simply let him go his way, and I'd thank him for the contributions he made up to the point where his goals deviated from mine.
But then again, I'm clearly not Richard Stallman, so I'm probably not qualified to have much of an opinion on this.
Also, I really dislike witch-hunts, live and let live.
> But then again, I'm clearly not Richard Stallman, so I'm probably not qualified to have much of an opinion on this.
Richard Stallman has earned the right to have an opinion, yes, but I see a huge problem in the people that take his lead.
This whole "Freedom is more important" and "lets protect the users" sounds a lot like the US propaganda whenever a country is going to be invaded ... i.e. the people there don't know any better, lets send them a couple of bombs in the name of democracy and human rights. It's self-righteous, cocky and plain insensitive to those people, because maybe they like their life just the way it is.
If the authors of a Free Sofware project wanted other people to not build upon their software without subscribing to their ideology, they should've put that in the license instead of the perpetual harassment going on.
If my opinion is stupid, short-sighted or just wrong, I would like to know why.
Maybe my opinion about the US propaganda is too harsh, but I've earned that right considering that I live in a third-world ex-communist country.
Thanks,
I didn't downvote you because I never downvote, but I do think your opinion is confused and off topic. You seem to think that the occurrance of the word "freedom" in both US foreign policy and the FOSS soap opera makes this a good enough reason to plug your political opinion. It's not.
It's not my political opinion that I tried to express. I just tried making an analogy, and most analogies are bad if taken literally.
I'll try to give you some context. The other day I read a comment on Miguel's blog, signed A.J. Venter (Founder, Kongoni GNU/Linux) ...
> I don't think Richard has any interest in improving the pool of open-source software, nor of free software. His interest is simple: protecting the users, and that means zero tolerance for non-free software
It's this attitude I was referring to, and can also be seen in Groklaw's article.
And regardless of what Richard truly wants, many people have taken upon themselves the responsibility of fighting a war against companies that release proprietary software.
Not only many of those people haven't contributed anything like what people like Miguel or RMS did (with meritocracy going out the window), but those same people are using the same tactics of companies we despise ... like FUD and harassment, in the name of saving the world from proprietary software.
The end justifies the means after all, but maybe the world doesn't want to be saved and that's something to consider whenever you insult someone for their choices (and this goes on both sides of the barricade).