[Fsf-friends] NEWS: RMS comes under attack again

[Frederick Noronha [फ़रेदरिक नोरो]

http://www.itwire.com/content/view/27980/1090/

RMS comes under attack again  	
by Sam Varghese
Thursday, 24 September 2009

It appears to be open season for launching attacks on the head of the
Free Software Foundation, Richard Matthew Stallman, the man who is in
large measure responsible for the status that free and open source
software enjoys today.
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The latest attack on Stallman is a lengthy post by ZDNet blogger Jason
Perlow and is based on remarks that Stallman is said to have made
during the Free Software Day celebrations in Boston.

There is no audio or video file of the remarks, just the one blog post
by Ubuntu developer and Ubuntu evangelist Martin Owens whom Perlow
quotes.

The relevant portion of Owens' blog post which Perlow uses as the
basis for his attack is the claim that Stallman called Miguel de
Icaza, the current vice-president of Novell, a traitor to the free
software community.

I asked the FSF for a transcript of Stallman's remarks; this was the
reply I got from operations manager John Sullivan: "His talk was
primarily answering questions, so there's no draft or transcript. I
can't confirm those comments as a whole, but if you want to ask about
specific ones I will do my best."

Let's assume that Stallman did make the remarks. Is he
mischaracterising de Icaza's current position? The short answer is no.

The software activities that de Icaza is involved in right now serve
the ends of Microsoft. Read about it here. And here.

The one thing that amazes me about Perlow's post is that he has made
no mention of de Icaza's current billet at Novell, the company that
signed a patent licensing deal with Microsoft, a deal that sold out
the entire FOSS community, and made Novell some kind of a pariah.

Add to that his tendency to tell half the story to build his argument
and you have a classic case of spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Page 2 and 3
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/27980/1090/1/1/
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/27980/1090/1/2/

Miguel snuggles closer to Microsoft
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/27785/1090/

CodePlex Foundation will help spread use of Mono
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/27941/1090/

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