On the value of stubbornness...

Posted Apr 1, 2005 14:00 UTC (Fri) by avr (guest, #27673)
In reply to: On the value of stubbornness... by philips
Parent article: Stallman on the State of GNU/Linux (OfB)

>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.