{"id":4940,"date":"2011-10-10T12:19:03","date_gmt":"2011-10-10T17:19:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcitement.com\/?p=4940"},"modified":"2011-10-10T12:19:03","modified_gmt":"2011-10-10T17:19:03","slug":"open-source-mouthpiece-richard-stallman-writes-steve-jobs-eulogy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/hardware\/open-source-mouthpiece-richard-stallman-writes-steve-jobs-eulogy\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Source Mouthpiece Richard Stallman Writes Steve Jobs Eulogy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Richard<\/a>

False idol?<\/p><\/div>\n

Confrontational advocate of the open source computing model, Richard Stallman, blogged his own version of a eulogy for Steve Jobs last week. As a line item in his political notes<\/a> section of his personal website, Stallman wrote, “Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died” and “We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective”, among other negative comments.<\/p>\n

On one hand, I guess this sentiment can be expected from the man who has dedicated his life to opposing software patents and the idea of commercial operating systems. Apple’s business model is diametrically opposed to Stallman’s vision of computing. Furthermore, as the media reports on his comments and reports on them, I suspect most reporters will simply express shock at Stallman’s rudeness, rather than taking the time to see the point he’s trying to make.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, I think Richard needs to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Open source is alive and well regardless of anything Apple creates, and OS X itself has its roots in the open-source BSD Unix operating system. The computing world is big enough to accommodate multiple business models, and it’s foolish to take up a crusade to make all software free, open source for all situations. Specifically, I take issue with Stallman’s comment about Jobs’s computers severing users from their freedom. If anything, Apple succeeded in enabling millions of people to take part in the computer revolution. While Linux may indeed enable some poor college students to obtain their own functional personal computer on a very tight budget, limited finances aren’t the only reason people get left behind. Apple makes the computer approachable in ways the Linux community doesn’t. Steve Jobs always felt an Apple purchase should be buying into an entire “computer experience” versus simply taking home a product in a box. Long after the sale, Apple customers are welcome to schedule free appointments to learn how to use the company’s products in their retail stores, and they even offer a summer computer camp for kids. Even the pairing up of the Mac hardware and operating system as one purchase is part of that concept, because the OS X operating system performs more reliably and predictably when it’s designed to work with only a limited number of system configurations.<\/p>\n

If the Jobs and Wozniak duo didn’t come up with the first Apple computer in 1977 with the skills and determination to market it, where would we all be today? If it weren’t for the success of the early 8-bit computers, practically all “me too” responses to Apple’s product launch, would IBM have ever bothered making the original IBM PC?<\/p>\n

Stallman’s a zealot, pushing his idea of a computing utopia on everyone, while refusing to acknowledge that true freedom means freedom to develop software for commercial profit, as well as freedom to give it away to all takers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Confrontational advocate of the open source computing model, Richard Stallman, blogged his own version of a eulogy for Steve Jobs last week. As a line item in his political notes section of his personal website, Stallman wrote, “Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[905,31,908],"tags":[1459,1460,1461,1185],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4940"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4940"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4951,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4940\/revisions\/4951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}