Fascinating interview by Richard Stallman on Russia TV

Emmy Noether emmynoether3 at gmail.com
Sat Jul 17 20:16:35 EDT 2010


The XEMACS programmers have documented in writing that Richard
Matthews Stallman asked them to explain every single line of code.

They got exasperated and would explain him blocks.

I suspect that they were playing the same game as him - perhaps giving
him the same medicine.

If he was NEEDY of an explanation of every single line, isn't it
UTTERLY SHAMELESS of him to deny others similar information and give
them such a puzzle ?

We have the right to tell the people what it really is all about.

By writing the GNU license, he eliminated the competition only from
those one-in-a-million who were persistent enough to read his code and
figure it out.

This is because by not documenting and describing his softwares, he
ensured that there is little chance that the multitude would be able
to take the code and do anything with it.

But by writing the GNU license, he made sure that those few who can
understand it cant take it away and build on it.

An new type of license is needed that requires concurrent
documentation with each release, even if hand-written. Scans can be
put together in a pdf and diagrams drawn with hand.




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