[PLUG-TALK] F. Richard Stallman

[Russell Senior]

>>>>> "Ronald" == Ronald Chmara <ronabop at gmail.com> writes:

Russell> I don't own any Apple products*, but is this not correct?

Ronald> That "*" is possibly important to the discussion. I've run
Ronald> every Apple *nix I've been able to find in my career, trying
Ronald> to squeeze performance out of the hardware. Some of the
Ronald> innovations created even made it back into "mainline" *nix
Ronald> variants, such as yum for package management. (yum came from
Ronald> "yellow dog linux", which was the linux on Apple PPC project,
Ronald> with an amusing political joke in the name).

I should say, I also have an old salvaged apple lapop on which I tried
to run yellow dog linux once upon a time.  It was the first one with a
color screen or something.  630c maybe?

Russell>  "iOS jailbreaking, or simply jailbreaking, is the process of
Russell>   removing the _limitations imposed by Apple_ on devices
Russell> running the   iOS operating system through use of custom
Russell> kernels. " (emphasis on 'limitations imposed by Apple' is
Russell> mine).

Ronald> Same as every other phone. Once you start tinkering, you lose
Ronald> vendor warranted support.

They could just say that, and not have to have someone (library of
congress) rescue the customers by declaring that jailbreaking is
legal.

Ronald> I'm pretty sure that Apple has done mountains more for F/OSS,
Ronald> than, oh, MS, and Nokia and Oracle. [...] That doesn't mean
Ronald> that they're sitting on the OSS->private spectrum in a place
Ronald> Stallman wants, but blanket characterizations tend to be false
Ronald> because of the "blanket".

Stallman wasn't comparing Jobs to those others and making a relativist
comparison of who has done more.  To Stallman, Jobs was doing the best
job of doing the wrong thing.

Russell> Also, please correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't the
Russell> openness of the Apple II more a reflection of Wozniak than
Russell> Jobs?

Ronald> I think that is an accurate statement, but now we're forking.

But, wait!  If we are forking, it's me that staying on the original
path, since this thread is about Stallman commenting on the legacy of
Steve Jobs.

Ronald> Stallman's comments also seem to conflate Jobs and Apple,
Ronald> *and* not take into account Jobs' career trajectory away from
Ronald> proprietary to open, or many years of development and changes.

Russell> Is it possible for me to build OSX from source?  I wasn't
Russell> aware of that, it might be fun to try.

Ronald> You can build the entire OS from source. IIRC, They're (Apple)
Ronald> still selling their *window manager*, and add-on utilities,
Ronald> and not providing sources for those, without NDA/Developer
Ronald> agreement.

To anyone familiar with Stallman, this would completely explain his
response.  They continue to fail his purity test.

Russell> I do appreciate you attacking the facts rather than the
Russell> style. That's how we all replace wrong facts with right
Russell> ones.

Ronald> Hopefully I did it right again.

You++

Russell> * I do have an ipod someone left behind in my igloo a few
Russell> years ago,  but I am just "holding" it until they ask for it
Russell> back, along with  their smoking paraphernalia.

Ronald> Do you have a machine that uses 'yum'? 

No.

Ronald> A multi-buffer graphics GUI?

I'll guess yes here. ;-)

Ronald> A mouse?  Rounded rectangles?

Hey, didn't Jobs steal that from PARC?? ;-)


-- 
Russell Senior         ``I have nine fingers; you have ten.''
seniorr at aracnet.com