
LinuxWorld 1999, Torvalds and Stallman [video] - solarized
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnb_eFSnXFI
======
drewg123
I met Linus at the Linux BOF at the 1994 Boston USENIX. Very ironically, I
have Linus to thank for a long career using FreeBSD. It sounds like a cheap
shot, but please hear me out:

I was sysadmin'ing a university stats department at the time, and NFS use was
very important. I had been trying to use Linux on 486's, but performance of
xdvi (with NFS mounted fonts) was abysmal. A 486 would take minutes to render
the same page that a wimpy DECStation could render in a second. From tcpdump,
I figured out it was because Linux did not do any sort of NFS caching at the
time, and xdvi wandered around font files one byte at a time.

I asked Linus at the BOF when they planned to implement NFS. He told me NFS
was unimportant, nobody used it, and so on.

I then attended the FreeBSD BOF where a clean shaven guy in a collared shirt
was giving a power point presentation. I asked about NFS there, and was told
it should work fine. When I got home from the conference, I switched the 486
to FreeBSD, and it worked just fine.

I eventually did OS research on FreeBSD, was one of a few people to port
FreeBSD to the DEC Alpha, and I now do kernel performance work for a large
CDN, where we run FreeBSD.

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rofo1
Say what you want about RMS, he never sold out and stood on his principles.
And his cause is noble. I might not agree with his methods 100% of the time,
but I respect this man.

And another thing: he was right about many "controversial" things, and was
ahead of his time.

I really think that him asking people to call the software GNU/Linux isn't
that much to ask.

Seriously, once you understand the amount of work GNU has done.. and it's all
open and free.

~~~
panpanna
A Linux distro is much more than GNU software. A lot of things I use everyday
are BSD licensed. There are distros where the only gnu code is the kernel.

Stallman cannot really make any such demands.

Edit: sorry for the confusion, I meant the Linux kernel, which is not gnu.

~~~
rootietootie
Not true. GNU coreutils comes standard on most distros.

> _There are distros where the only gnu code is the kernel._

What? GNU never finished Hurd kernel and that is why it is now GNU/Linux
because Linux was the missing piece since they could not get Hurd working. In
other words, there is no GNU kernel. Please don't just make things up.

~~~
aidenn0
That does raise the question, can I safely not call a busybox based
distribution GNU/Linux in front of RMS, particularly if it uses uClibc?

~~~
lixtra
Don’t you need gcc to compile the Linux kernel? At least it was like this for
a very long time.

~~~
aidenn0
Nobody in GNU is suggesting that all software compiled with gcc must be called
GNU.

------
dankohn1
Linus keynoted last month at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon + Open Source Summit
Shanghai, if you want to compare his views after 20 years.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjR1Ht__9KE&list=PLj6h78yzYM...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjR1Ht__9KE&list=PLj6h78yzYM2Njj5PvNc4Mtcril2YyR95d)

(Those baby daughters on the stage in 1999 are in college now.)

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traderjane
> The open source movement focuses on practical advantages that you can get by
> having a community of users who can cooperate on interchanging and improving
> software. (Stallman)

...

> Freedom to cooperate with other people, freedom to have a community, is
> important for our quality of life, is important for having a good society
> that we can live in. And that is, in my view, more important than having
> powerful and reliable software. (Stallman)

~~~
vgetr
I mean, it shows (in Hurd, for example).

------
fit2rule
I was there. Man, how things have changed. I'll never forget the feeling of
getting Linux booted on my old 386 the day Linus posted about it to the minix-
list .. what a rocket-ride its been!

~~~
Crinus
If only that ride was towards better personal desktop computers where people
have control over instead of towards data farms controlled by a handful of
multinational corporations meant to be accessed by locked down mobile
consumption terminals masquerading as social devices through supposedly open
standards which are so complex as to only be implementable by said
multinational corporations... it'd be nice.

~~~
user9383781
Strange comment for a video about the 1999 LinuxWorld.

~~~
Crinus
The comment is for the comment i replied to, not the linked video. If it was
for the video i'd post it as a top level comment.

(though if anything around 1999 things were most likely looking towards
desktop use, it wouldn't be until a few years later that computing would turn
away from desktop and towards the web and later towards mobiles)

------
mempko
"Giving the Linus Torvalds Award to the Free Software Foundation is sort of
like giving the Han Solo Award to the Rebel Fleet"

RMS always had the best sense of humor.

~~~
INTPenis
I actually don't understand that analogy.

Han Solo was part of the rebels no?

~~~
mempko
Did you watch the movies? He was an outsider who helped the cause... The
analogy is spot on.

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nickjj
Wow near the end when Linus takes his daughters on stage in the middle of RMS'
speech. That's next level. Probably not scripted but it comes off as so
undermining.

~~~
filmgirlcw
It’s from a documentary (Revolution OS) and is an intentional edit to
juxtapose the difference in the two men. The camera pans — Linus was
presumably getting an award too. He’s standing off-stage, he’s not walking in
while RMS is talking.

~~~
abvr
If a person watching this closely without any knowledge of the people in this
video, they may just see Linus as one arrogant brat who could care less about
anything the person speaking is intending to convey.

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AdmiralAsshat
RMS never misses a chance to tell the world why it should be called
"GNU/Linux" instead of "Linux". Even at LinuxWorld.

~~~
cbm-vic-20
_ahem_ GNU/LinuxWorld.

~~~
abtinf
If GNU is there to signify all the surrounding tools that make Linux a usable
system, then the conference should've been titled "San Jose Convention
Center/LinuxWorld".

~~~
wrycoder
You mean to make writing the Linux kernel _possible_. RMS wrote gcc compiler,
gdb debugger, and the shell tools first.

Edit: to say nothing about the GPL, which is what really got the momentum
going.

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marknadal
Man, RMS is so bitter.

Sorry all, I'm on team Linus.

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Narishma
Title should be LinuxWorld as that's the name of the expo.

