[comp.sources.d] LPF

nagler@olsen.UUCP (Robert Nagler) (07/07/90)

In article <22730@megaron.cs.arizona.edu> gudeman@cs.arizona.edu (David Gudeman) writes:
>...if not impossible, for Richard Stallman to keep his own more radical
>views out of whatever LPF does.  How many times have you heard of
>political groups doing things outside of their charter ...

While I don't necessarily agree with all the views of RMS (BTW, who does?),
he comes across as being honest and altruistic.  For example, he doesn't 
accept money from the FSF.  The LPF is up against some big companies.  If 
we choose to bicker about the integrity of RMS, we will certainly lose
the war.  How many political groups (coalitions) have failed by missing
the forest for the trees?

RMS isn't great, but he's all we've got (unless I hear any volunteers in 
the peanut gallery 8-)

gudeman@cs.arizona.edu (David Gudeman) (07/09/90)

In article  <173@munz.UUCP> nagler@olsen.UUCP (Robert Nagler) writes:
>In article <22730@megaron.cs.arizona.edu> gudeman@cs.arizona.edu (David Gudeman) writes:
>>...if not impossible, for Richard Stallman to keep his own more radical
>>views out of whatever LPF does.
>
>...  If 
>we choose to bicker about the integrity of RMS, we will certainly lose
>the war.

In email, someone accused me of "attacking" RMS, and now I'm accused
of bickering about his integrity.  On the chance that others
misunderstood my intentions, I want to try to clarify them.  The
message quoted above was not intended as an attack on RMS, it was just
meant as a caution.  By all means, support the LPF if you believe in
it's stated goals, but if you don't also want to support the software
socialism of RMS, it would be a good idea to keep track of what is
being done with your money.

I don't think anyone can be blindly trusted to ignore their own
beliefs and be completely objective.  And RMS (if you believe his
rhetoric) thinks that people who disagree with his views on
intellectual property rights are "evil".  This shows already that he
has a problem with objectivity.  I guess this too can be construed as
an attack on RMS, but that is not my intention, I'm trying to be
objective.

Within his own belief system, RMS surely has as much integrity as
anyone.  But part of his belief system is that intellectual property
rights are evil.  So he might (I say "might") have difficulty
distinguishing between the stated goals of the LPF and the closely
related goals of the FSF.
-- 
					David Gudeman
Department of Computer Science
The University of Arizona        gudeman@cs.arizona.edu
Tucson, AZ 85721                 noao!arizona!gudeman