A. P. Garcia <a.phillip.garcia(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Were the original Unix authors annoyed when they learned that
> some irascible young upstart named Richard Stallman was determined to make
> a free Unix clone?
A deeper, more profound question would be: how did these original Unix
authors feel about their employer owning the rights to their creation?
Did they feel any guilt at all for having had to sign over all rights
in exchange for their paychecks?
Did Dennis and/or Ken personally wish their creation were free to the
world, public domain, or were they personally in agreement with the
licensing policies of their employer? I argue that this question is
far more important than how they felt about RMS (if they cared at all).
Ronald Natalie <ron(a)ronnatalie.com> wrote:
> [RMS] If you read his earlier manifesto rants he hated UNIX =
> with a passion.
> Holding out the TOPS operating systems as the be-all and end-all of user =
> interface.
I wish more people would point out this aspect of RMS and GNU. While
I wholeheartedly agree with Richard on the general philosophy of free
software, i.e., the *ethics* part and the Four Freedoms, when it comes
to GNU as a specific OS, in technical terms, I've always disliked
everything about it. I love UNIX, and as Ron pointed it out like few
people do, GNU was fundamentally born out of hatred for the thing I
love.
SF