OT: 'conduct unbecoming of a hacker'

[Joakim via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 10 February 2016 at 18:31:22 UTC, Nick Sabalausky 
wrote:
> On 02/10/2016 01:09 PM, Joakim wrote:
>>
>> Pretty funny that he chose Stallman as his example of a guy 
>> who gets
>> stuff done, whose Hurd microkernel never actually got done, :) 
>> though
>> certainly ambitious, so Stallman would never have had a FOSS 
>> OS on which
>> to run his GNU tools if it weren't for Linus.
>>
>
> [Unimportant theorizing ahead...]
>
> I wouldn't say that's necessarily true: It could be argued the 
> existence and proliferation of the Linux kernel reduced the 
> priority of his Hurd work, even if only to a subconscious 
> extent. If it hadn't been for the Linux kernel, maybe there 
> would have been more drive (and more contributors) to Hurd.

I've read that the bigger issue was that they couldn't quite get 
Hurd working on '90s hardware, and the simpler linux kernel 
outpaced it, ie I doubt linux displaced Hurd contribution as 
they're different approaches.

On Wednesday, 10 February 2016 at 19:07:27 UTC, Ola Fosheim 
Grøstad wrote:
> On Wednesday, 10 February 2016 at 18:09:57 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> Pretty funny that he chose Stallman as his example of a guy 
>> who gets stuff done, whose Hurd microkernel never actually got 
>> done, :) though certainly ambitious, so Stallman would never 
>> have had a FOSS OS on which to run his GNU tools if it weren't 
>> for Linus.
>
> Well, 386BSD was there in 1992-1994, and several other OSes, so 
> I don't think Linux is that special. Linux did have the right 
> timing. Amiga and other specialized hardware was becoming less 
> attractive at that point in time, and students were getting x86 
> PCs with MMUs and wanted an OS that was more like Unix, but 
> less crude than Minix.

Still means he'd have had to rely on others to provide his OS, 
plus BSD was under a legal cloud at the time, which is one of the 
reasons people say linux lapped it, and he'd probably resent it 
not being GPL, so it wouldn't work for him anyway.

> But I don't think Hurd is much of a Stallman coding-project. 
> His core project is the GPL and he did created Emacs and GCC 
> which were very important for the spread of the GPL.

I thought he was intimately involved with Hurd, but I don't 
follow it.

> Before GPL most academic software had very limiting "free for 
> non-commercial educational use" clauses in their licenses. The 
> GPL itself is much more important than any individual piece of 
> software.

Perhaps historically as a guinea pig, but its use is waning for 
more permissive licenses, which have been around for decades too.

>> As for the main point about useless bickering replacing 
>> hacking, that's probably because it was a much smaller 
>> community back then, so it consisted of only the really 
>> hard-core who wanted to _do_ something, whereas now it's 
>> expanded outside that group to the more half-hearted.  Either 
>> that or he has on the usual rose-colored glasses for the past, 
>> the usual veteran complaint, "Everything was better when I was 
>> young!" :D
>
> Well, both Emacs and GCC have had their forks... so. Yes.

Forks are a different issue, as he'd probably say that's real 
technical disagreement.  He's talking more about silly reasons, 
though I guess forks are sometimes started because of the same 
dismissiveness he lays out.