

"How Will History View Richard Stallman?" - asciilifeform
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2002/02/28/williams.html
An interview with Sam Williams, author of "Free as in Freedom."
======
eru
A lot of free software was just created by the communal customs throughout
this hacker elite programmer community. They're just engineers, everybody
liked to share information, and it goes against the hacker mindset to reinvent
the wheel.

But Stallman really grafted that onto notions of morality and ethics, and
said, "No, this is the way it's suppose to be. It works so well because it is
ethical."

~~~
eru
Oh, that should have been marked as a citation.

------
mynameishere
Actually using "free" software, I'm not sure how to view its developers as
anything but suckers. I would have paid for development and infrastructural
software. But I didn't, because there were always suckers out there who
thought they were philosophers rather than professionals.

The _best_ thing you can say about free software is that it lowers costs for
operating a business. It's the difference between going to Sam's Club rather
than Walmart, only moreso. Again, philosophers may disagree.

