This is an interesting statement from Richard Stallman. This was the statement from the very mouth of Richard Stallman after Steve Jobs‘ death:
“Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died. As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, “I’m not glad he’s dead, but I’m glad he’s gone.” Nobody deserves to have to die – not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs’ malign influence on people’s computing. Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective.” (http://stallman.org/archives/2011-jul-oct.html#06_October_2011_(Steve_Jobs))
Richard Stallman (courtesy of Wikipedia)
Richard Stallman is an activist and a pioneer of the GNU Project and free software movement. He’s the founder of the Free Software Foundation with the goal to create, modify, and distribute software. Stallman’s views states that users should have a freedom with their softwares. They should have a freedom to study it, see the code behind the software, change or modify the code, and distribute it as the user wants. Open Source as he termed it.
A great man as he is, people were surprised by his statement against Steve Jobs.
Analyzing his statement further, this can be boiled down into two: Principles and Morals.
Richard Stallman had his principles about Open Source thus making him look as anti-Apple person. Apple’s way just doesn’t fit on Stallman’s principles. He hates the way Apple do their thing. It’s Richard Stallman’s principles.
On the other hand, people where surprised by his statement because his words affect morals. Respect the dead, so they say. This isn’t just the right time to say those words while people are mourning for Steve Jobs.
Actually, Apple plays big time in many open source initiatives. They are part of the committee behind HTML5, I think. And a lot of their OS code is posted at http://opensource.apple.com/
But I agree, everything should be open source. That will really make everybody think smarter. Why? If everybody knows your code and can follow, you will be forced to think of something new all the time since it won’t be long until competitors will imitate.