Sam Varghese
Thursday, 24 September 2009 09:47
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 3
It appears to be open season for launching attacks on the head of the Free Software Foundation, Richard Matthew Stallman, the man who is in large measure responsible for the status that free and open source software enjoys today.
The latest attack on Stallman is
a lengthy post by ZDNet blogger Jason Perlow and is based on remarks that Stallman is said to have made during the Free Software Day celebrations in Boston.
There is no audio or video file of the remarks, just the
one blog post by Ubuntu developer and Ubuntu evangelist Martin Owens whom Perlow quotes.
The relevant portion of Owens' blog post which Perlow uses as the basis for his attack is the claim that Stallman called Miguel de Icaza, the current vice-president of Novell, a traitor to the free software community.
I asked the FSF for a transcript of Stallman's remarks; this was the reply I got from operations manager John Sullivan: "His talk was primarily answering questions, so there's no draft or transcript. I can't confirm those comments as a whole, but if you want to ask about specific ones I will do my best."
Let's assume that Stallman did make the remarks. Is he mischaracterising de Icaza's current position? The short answer is no.
The software activities that de Icaza is involved in right now serve the ends of Microsoft. Read about it
here. And
here.
The one thing that amazes me about Perlow's post is that he has made no mention of de Icaza's current billet at Novell, the company that signed a patent licensing deal with Microsoft, a deal that sold out the entire FOSS community, and made Novell some kind of a pariah.
Add to that Perlow's tendency to tell half the story to build his argument and you have a classic case of spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt.
CONTINUED
