Thursday, April 12, 2007
Pike, Stallman, Patents, and Civility
A couple weeks back, Rob Pike revived this weblog, which in turn triggered this discussion (among others, I'm sure). The only post on the site at the time of this writing (other than the short "revival" post) is a long rant about Richard Stallman that Pike wrote in 1991, and re-posted in 2004.
Rob Pike is a towering genius of computing.
And he's dead wrong.
To begin with, Pike's 1991 rant is showing its age. Free Software is about as mainstream and commercial as you can get these days. Hell, Sun Microsystems is releasing about everything they do under the GPL, and that's just for starters. IBM, RedHat, Oracle... all big players in Free Software.
But that aside, Pike intentionally mis-represents Stallman's viewpoints, ostensibly for the sake of making a point:
But Free Software?
Come on, Free Software is more like Free Markets than it is like a hippie pipe dream. Pike almost surely knew this when he wrote the rant. And if he didn't know it then, he certainly knew it when he re-posted it in 2004.
Pike's rant goes on to talk about how civilized everyone at the "protest" was. He even cites this as evidence of him being right, and Stallman being wrong. He could just as easily have taken it to show how civil the Free Software movement was, even in 1991. But he didn't.
Software patents do hurt programmers.
I am a programmer.
So they hurt me.
I don't believe they're good for AT&T, but they're definitely not good for programmers. If you don't understand why, read Donald Knuth's explanation. But that hasn't kept me (or Stallman, or the rest of us) from being civil.
I started out by calling Rob Pike a towering genius.
He is. But he's dead wrong on the issue of software patents.
Rob Pike is a towering genius of computing.
And he's dead wrong.
To begin with, Pike's 1991 rant is showing its age. Free Software is about as mainstream and commercial as you can get these days. Hell, Sun Microsystems is releasing about everything they do under the GPL, and that's just for starters. IBM, RedHat, Oracle... all big players in Free Software.
But that aside, Pike intentionally mis-represents Stallman's viewpoints, ostensibly for the sake of making a point:
"Free Software is like Free Love, a hippie pipe dream in which computing is free from venality, commercial interests, even capitalism."Now, Stallman himself may be a bit of a hippie pipe dream. He is, as far as I can tell, free from venality, commercial interests, and, yes, capitalism. He is the President of a prestigious foundation, yet he makes no salary.
But Free Software?
Come on, Free Software is more like Free Markets than it is like a hippie pipe dream. Pike almost surely knew this when he wrote the rant. And if he didn't know it then, he certainly knew it when he re-posted it in 2004.
Pike's rant goes on to talk about how civilized everyone at the "protest" was. He even cites this as evidence of him being right, and Stallman being wrong. He could just as easily have taken it to show how civil the Free Software movement was, even in 1991. But he didn't.
Software patents do hurt programmers.
I am a programmer.
So they hurt me.
I don't believe they're good for AT&T, but they're definitely not good for programmers. If you don't understand why, read Donald Knuth's explanation. But that hasn't kept me (or Stallman, or the rest of us) from being civil.
I started out by calling Rob Pike a towering genius.
He is. But he's dead wrong on the issue of software patents.
// posted by David @ 8:55 AM 
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