RMS will be 'round, Aug. 9 - 20

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Alan DuBoff (maestro@SoftOrchestra.com):

> Then SLA is the only other room I might be able to stir up. I just sent a
> message off to Dave Briccetti, he ran the OS/2 user group there.

In fact, I used to attend OS/2 Bay Area User Group's meetings, there.

Of course, that's rather ridiculously far from City College of San
Francisco.

> No, I think you misunderstood. Many of the "proprietary" companies
> like IBM, HP, Compaq, even Dell are now trying to get behind Linux.
> These companies are the same very companies that RMS has made rabid
> comments about (not them specific, but just about companies that
> produced proprietary solutions), but the fact that they are actually
> trying to get on his side really makes a statement.

I cannot help noticing that you are still being extremely non-specific.
This tends to happen to people when they argue about RMS, and is one
major reason why those arguments immediately devolve into meaningless
exchanges of ideology.

You said "the companies that are making Linux popular are the very
companies that Stallman has fought."  I replied that this sounded highly
doubtful, and suggested you try to think of concrete examples.  If you
have done so, you are pointedly not citing them.

Further, your argument is _shifting_, even while becoming no less vague,
in that first you spoke of "companies that are making Linux popular",
and now are speaking of bandwagon-joiners like IBM, HP, Compaq, and
Dell.

Additionally, I cannot help noticing that all of those companies cited
are primarily known as hardware companies -- like Cisco, which you 
mentioned earlier.  Stallman's traditional beefs have been with (1)
people who usurp free software and make it proprietary, and,
secondarily, (2) people who "hoard" (his term) their own code by 
refusing to give free access to source code and the right to change it.

Last, there is your term "fought".  Now, it turns out that this term,
if it means anything at all, means "make rabid comments about".  Really?
If I make rabid comments about the Internal Revenue Service, does that 
mean I'm _fighting_ them?  (Would they care?)  Analogies aside, has
International Business Machines, Inc. ever particularly cared about 
argry remarks (hypothetically) hurled in its direction by a computer geek?

I doubt very much that Stallman has "made rabid comments about" the
likes of Compaq Comuter, much less that they would ever have cared, if
he had.

Amd this message topic, sir, is rapidly becoming severely off-topic.  In
the unlikely event that you have in mind _concrete, specific_ examples
to support your original assertion, please provide them by private
e-mail, and let's give the BAD list some relief.
 
-- 
Cheers,                   The cynics among us might say:   "We laugh, 
Rick Moen                 monkeyboys -- Linux IS the mainstream UNIX now!
rick (at) linuxmafia.com  MuaHaHaHa!" but that would be rude. -- Jim Dennis