[Discuss] RMS

[worley at alum.mit.edu (Dale R. Worley)]

> From: Shirley M?rquez D?lcey <mark at buttery.org>
> 
> RMS hasn't been actively involved in software design for a number of years.
> At this point his contributions are limited to evangelism and a bit of
> overall guidance to the cause; he is best known now as a public speaker.
> His retirement from the FSF and CSAIL is symbolic and will have little
> impact on either organization. It may lead to him getting fewer or no
> speaking gigs but his involvement in that scene was likely winding down
> anyway, with or without the recent incident.

Thanks for giving us that history!

Of course, RMS ran into trouble for speaking his mind plainly in a time
when that is unsafe, and his personality makes him particularly
vulnerable to that.  But I have been wondering whether his personality
has robbed him of the connections and goodwill that can buffer one from
problems.  That is, whether CSAIL may have been wanting to eject him for
some time and this provided the opportunity.

Which led me to wonder what he had been doing recently.  I hadn't been
paying attention for decades; my last memory was the announcement of
GCC, which was a huge step forward, probably the most massive single
open-source system at the time, and a vital one for building independent
systems.

RMS's history reminds me of an observation that big changes in politics
are often done by unreasonable people pursuing unlikely agendas:

    The important American Presidents are those like Reagan who "know a
    few big things" and push them unceasingly, without much regard for the
    pragmatic or even the reasonable.	-- Tyler Cowen

Dale