it's amazing the lack of respect people seem to have for
the FSF/GNU today. where would Linux, or any of the free
Unix be today, without the work already done by the FSF,
i.e. the GNU toolchain.
To be fair, for much of the GNU programs, very little of the work was
done by the FSF itself, but rather done by volunteers that donated their
code back to the FSF (just as the Linux development community is
composed of volunteers). Sure rms wrote the original emacs program, and
did a lot of the original work on GCC, but these days, most of what the
FSF does is legal paperwork. (And dealing with that is a real pain, let
me tell you.... even if you want to donate code back to the FSF, the
legal paperwork can be a real killer.)
I suspect the lack of respect for the FSF has a lot to do with RMS's
lack of a user interface, especially when he tried to grab what many
thought was undue credit for Linux's successes. Sure, he and all of the
volunteers for the FSF deserves credit, but trying to grab more credit
that people think is your due is the best way to lose respect in this
community.
(For another example, consider what happened when Frank Xia tried to
rename his xiafs to be "linuxfs", and how the community reacted to that
proposal.)
- Ted
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