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发信人: reden (On the way!), 信区: Linux
标  题: Linux's Forgotten Man - RMS
发信站: BBS 水木清华站 (Mon Mar  8 21:36:06 1999)

  Linux's Forgotten Man

  by Leander Kahney


  12:00 p.m.  5.Mar.99.PST

  SAN JOSE, California -- You have to feel

  for Richard Stallman.


  Like a Russian revolutionary erased from

  a photograph, he is being written out of

  history. Stallman is the originator of

  the free-software movement and the

  GNU/Linux operating system. But you

  wouldn't know it from reading about

  LinuxWorld. Linus Torvalds got all the

  ink.


  Even the name of the operating system,

  to which Torvalds contributed a small

  but essential part, acknowledges

  Torvalds alone: the Stallman part -- the

  GNU before Linux -- is almost always

  left out.


  It makes Stallman mad. At a press

  conference during the show, one unlucky

  journalist thoughtlessly called it Linux

  and got an earful for his mistake.


  With a mane of long black hair and a

  Rasputin-like beard, Stallman looks like

  a wild man. He carries his possessions

  in plastic bags. In one hand, a bag is

  crammed with boxes of tea. In the other,

  he clutches his traveling kit, which

  includes a battered laptop.


  The computer isn't Stallman's. It

  belongs to the Free Software Foundation,

  of which he is the founder. Stallman, a

  programmer who has won a MacArthur

  Foundation genius award, has never owned

  his own computer. The loaner runs free

  software -- he has never used Windows.


  Nor does Stallman have a car, a TV, or a

  mortgage. By his own admission, the

  46-year-old bachelor lives frugally in a

  rented room in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  He hasn't had a full-time job in 15

  years. The little work he does costs his

  clients an arm and a leg. "I'm working

  to make software free and make computers

  free. That's my job," he declares.


  Work is also the reason Stallman doesn't

  want kids. He refuses to dedicate the

  time to making enough money to raise

  them.


  I've got more important things to do

  with my life," he says. "I've a mission

  that needs work."


  That mission began in the early 1980s

  while working at the Artificial

  Intelligence Lab at MIT. He began

  stitching together his own Unix-like

  operating system, which he called GNU, a

  recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix."


  He took bits and pieces from different

  sources and covered the growing system

  with a new license called the GNU

  General Public License, known as

  "copyleft." This unique license allows

  the software to be freely copied,

  modified, and distributed. It is the

  foundation of the free-software

  movement.


  In the mid-'80s, Stallman resigned from

  MIT to prevent the institute from laying

  claim to the growing GNU project.


  However, the system lacked an essential

  component: the kernel, or underpinnings,

  of the operating system that

  communicates with hardware. In the early

  '90s, a young Finnish programmer named

  Linus Torvalds created one, combined it

  with the GNU system, and posted the

  result on the Internet. It was called

  Linux, a name that stuck.


  "They put it together and called it

  Linux without acknowledging the work

  that came before," says Stallman. "I

  think it's unfair to call our work by

  someone else's name."


  While Stallman concedes that Torvald's

  contribution was essential, he estimates

  that the kernel represents only about 3

  percent of the entire system. In

  contrast, the GNU project contributed

  about 30 percent of the code, while the

  remaining 67 percent was taken from

  other sources, he says.


  The problem with being co-opted,

  Stallman says, is not one of personal

  glory, but that most people talking

  about the system are not talking about

  issues of freedom.


  "I want these ideas to get the

  publicity. I think it's a damn shame

  that all the publicity is going to

  someone who doesn't advocate these ideas

  of freedom."


  That someone, of course, is Torvalds.

  But is there not a hint of acrimony?

  Does he not wish he were getting more

  recognition?


  "I hope not. But how can I know for

  sure? I've got an ego like everyone

  else. I'm sure my ego wants me to be

  more famous. I don't know."


  In a nutshell, Stallman believes that

  software must be free, not necessarily

  available for nothing, but free to be

  copied, modified, distributed, shared,

  and fixed.


  "I'm not against commercial anything,"

  Stallman said. "I'm against proprietary

  software that divides and conquers the

  users."


  Unlike commercial software, which is

  proprietary, free-software programmers

  don't have to solve the same problems

  over and over. They keep improving on

  the work that came before, like the

  scientific methodology.


  However, in Stallman's eyes, the

  programming community is more interested

  in talking about practical issues, like

  performance -- an anathema to Stallman.


  And this conflict is partly why Stallman

  is marginalized. Most people don't want

  to talk about freedom. There's been a

  splintering of the movement: away from

  free software created by ideologues to

  open-source software created by

  business-friendly pragmatists like

  Torvalds.


  "[Torvalds] is basically an engineer,"

  Stallman said. "He likes free software,

  but isn't concerned with issues of

  freedom. That's why I'm unhappy when the

  GNU system is called Linux.... People

  are no longer exposed to the

  philosophical views of the GNU project."


  Does nomenclature matter to the geeks on

  the show floor? A number of showgoers

  say they felt in their hearts the

  correct name was GNU/Linux, but it was

  easier just to call it Linux.


  "I recognize it as GNU/Linux but I don't

  call it GNU/Linux because I'm lazy,"

  says one attendee. "I agree that

  Stallman didn't get the recognition he

  deserves, but that's partly because of

  his abrasive personality."
--
在江湖中，只要拿起了刀，就是一场无涯的梦。

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