On the value of stubbornness...

Posted Apr 1, 2005 3:33 UTC (Fri) by leonbrooks (guest, #1494)
In reply to: Stallman on the State of GNU/Linux (OfB) by allesfresser
Parent article: Stallman on the State of GNU/Linux (OfB)

...Linus has that in plenty, too, when it comes to certain areas. However, he also has considerably more by way of social grace - or perhaps it would be fairer to say that sociability is more important to Linus than to Richard, so it has been analysed and the results implemented far more effectively. As demonstrated by his excellent family.

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On the value of stubbornness...

Posted Apr 1, 2005 5:03 UTC (Fri) by allesfresser (guest, #216) [Link] (3 responses)

Don't get me wrong, I have experienced Richard's singlemindedness first-hand, and he definitely has his specially pointy bits active in the heat of a discussion, as a late friend of mine used to say. I do wish sometimes he could be more "nice" or "diplomatic" or whatever you want to call it. But I think that the way he holds to his principles is frankly more important than social graces.

On the value of stubbornness...

Posted Apr 1, 2005 12:30 UTC (Fri) by philips (guest, #937) [Link] (2 responses)

Diplomatic? Then this sticker

> ESR is all about CONVINCING

will apply to him too.

If he wants is to talk - so let him talk.

RMS is not part of party. Yes, he is in our community, but definitely out of party. ESR always tried to stay close to people, while for example, RMS already states third (or fourth?) Linux distribution as recommended.

Instead of sitting down and helping resolving issues, he just jumped to another distro. (LinEx, Debian?). For me - innocent bystander - RMS look very jumpy and inconsistent.
And I judge by his actions - not by words. "Talk is cheap, show me the code" (c) Linus.

Wise people do not try to adjust world to themselves, but try to adjust themselves to the world.

Antoher very old saying comes to my mind: bigger contribution person made at a time to progress, bigger obstacle for progress he will become in future. Might that be the case?

On the value of stubbornness...

Posted Apr 1, 2005 14:00 UTC (Fri) by avr (guest, #27673) [Link]

>RMS already states third (or fourth?) Linux distribution as recommended.
>Instead of sitting down and helping resolving issues, he just jumped to another distro. (LinEx, Debian?). For me - innocent bystander - RMS look very jumpy and inconsistent.
He tried to resolve issues, read the debian mailing lists for that one. He
did not however, compromise on his beliefs when trying to resolve them.
RMS has not recommended Debian as far as I'm aware. He recommended linex, untill it turned out they /did/ use proprietary software in their distribution, upon which he decided to not endorse it any longer. Hardly inconsistent I'd say. And jumpy ? perhaps, but not without reason.

>Wise people do not try to adjust world to themselves, but try to adjust themselves to the world."
another similar one is:
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man tries to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man" :)

>Antoher very old saying comes to my mind: bigger contribution person made at a time to progress, bigger obstacle for progress he will become in future. Might that be the case?
Only time will tell. At his moment I find RMS's dedication to travelling around the world and giving speeches about and lobbying for Free Software even more usefull then his previous concrete contributions to software. So for me he hasn't reached that "obstacle phase" yet as his contributions grow ever bigger although they might be different in nature.

On the value of stubbornness...

Posted Apr 1, 2005 14:09 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

RMS is not part of party. Yes, he is in our community, but definitely out of party.

He's trying to improve the freedom of users, not to have some sort of 'party'.