Close enough! 
This is why I prefer BSD licenses. You know youāre giving people the right to do whatever they want with your code, except claim they wrote it. Yes, youāre giving away a lot of your rights, but you know what youāre getting into. Much less drama (yes thereās been drama, ironically, most of which was because of people using GPL licenses for patches of BSD code) that way.
Stallmanās a zealot. Nothing wrong with being a zealot, they can be incredibly useful. The team leader of my favourite OS, OpenBSD, can be a bit of an asshole. Assholes can be incredibly useful too. Especially when theyāre right most of the time 
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For the most part I think Linus Torvalds is an asshole. but I understand where he comes from. but the problem though is negative reinforcement is not going to make people want to join you and help you. yeah people should have thicker skin, but there are times where a lot of the language that Linus uses, is un-necessary.
This is the point of view most have until they get to review patches for large complex and critical software projects. Once youāre there you become like a defensive parent watching over your baby project.
Also sidenote: everyone always only seems to notice when Linus rages at someone, never when heās nice? Heās nice lots of times actually. Selection bias perhaps the reason that most donāt notice?
So yeah I think heās a nice kind of asshole. The Drill Instructor kind of asshole if you will.
Back on topic:
Working on the Linux Kernel carries & requires a certain kind of personal responsibility thatās hard to acquire and even harder to teach.
Itās like asking how to train an astronaut. There isnāt a single guaranteed step by process if you want to start with an average Joe with basic skills. Rather most astronaut candidates already come with the special mindset and other requirements that they have acquired themselves. NASA just teaches them the spacecraftās and procedures.
Hence why Linus doesnāt coddle or use positive reinforcement when someone screws up bad. Thereās isnāt much time and room for errors so trial by fire is the shortest path to weed out the pack.
I hope that makes sense, since this is a rather tricky subject involving too many psychological and societal angles to succinctly put into words in one post.
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Thank the gods for assholes and zealots ^^
Without them, open source and free software wouldnāt be where itās at today.
itās probably because people are SICK TO THE BLOODY TEETH of identity politics and labels and buzzwords. I ABHOR all of the things youāve mentioned. I abhor people who want to silence others or keep others down. I am ON [vaguely] YOUR SIDE.
But you throwing out labels and buzzwords and SJW that and this DOES NOT HELP. It makes you sound like youāre 15 and just discovered InfoWars. NOBODY COMES HERE FOR THAT. A BETTER way to do it is just by posting the article without the angry buzzwords and instead just calmly explaining what you think about it, and then foster an actual discussion.
Also the entire thing is a complete non-troversy, which probably shouldāve alerted you to whether it would be a constructive topic or not.
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Anyone want to make a storyline of how a similar issue would have gone down at Microsoft?
The following is a 100% totally REAL email excerpt from internal microsoft correspondence:
DEV 1 to MANAGER
Hey the windows VBS help documentation has this really old joke in it thatās in poor taste, can we remove it?
[ Joke attached]
Proj MANAGER 1 to DEV 1
Uh wow thatās a bad joke. Canāt have that. Who wrote that?
[CC Proj MANAGER 2]
Proj MANAGER 2 to Proj MANAGER 1
Looks like it was Steve Balmer
STEVE BALMER to ALL ~screaming like steve balmer~
You MENTIONED my NAAAME!
THAT"S MY JOKE
I LOVE THAT JOKE
THERE ARE MANY OTHERS LIKE IT
BUT THAT ONE IS MINE!
It stays in.
Signed: Stevo
ALL
WTF?
Steve doesnāt even work here anymore. When did he ever write code for us?
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I sometimes wonder if thatās actually true.
For example, if you were just as unwavering as Theo or Linus, but donāt ever yell or insult anyone; i.e. you reject the same code but do so factually and politely - would your project be just as well off?
Iāve always seen the āassholeā-ness as a byproduct of someone who is very dedicated and passionate, but looses their temper. I would credit the success to the dedication, not the temper and outbursts.
A zealot, on the other hand, is probably useful in its own right. Especially when it leads people to reverse engineer drivers and firmware that are proprietary. You are probably willing to spend less time on free drivers for a network card or something else if you give yourself the option of a proprietary alternative.
Then again, if the proprietary alternative is that much better that it gives you more money/free time/efficiency, you might be able to spend that on writing opensource code faster. Who knows which is really better in the long run.
Oh, Iām not saying open source/free software necessarily needs them, Iām saying that quite a few of them have made incredibly important contributions, either in code or in other ways.
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Well, we do call it Linux, not GNU. That should speak for itself.
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I canāt tell, are you referring to GNU Hurd vs Linux becoming dominant, or the naming GNU/Linux never catching on, or something else?
In both cases, I would guess the deciding factor was technical rather than personality.
To my knowledge: Linux became popular because the alternative monolithic kernel project, BSD, was stuck in licensing issues.
My opinion is that GNU/Linux didnāt catch on because the kernel is what brings everyone together, some people use non-GNU libc, some use an alternative to GNU bash, etc. but the mishmash is all on top of Linux (except for Debianās experiments with alternate kernels. Ex: GNU/kFreeBSD).
Thatās the best 1 line summary Iāve ever seen of RMS.
I really wish Linux had gone BSD license with BSD userland. So much of GNU is ādifferent to Unix for no good reasonā.
The Linux kernel is great, but the userland toolsā¦ not so much. And the license is viral.
See discussions with Theo de Raadt a few years ago about GNU hippies taking BSD code and re-licensing it so contributions couldnāt be sent back upstreamā¦ purely because someone wanted to stamp GNU all over the previously more openly licensed code.
Iām not sure it could be possible to send a bigger āfuck youā to the original developer of a project.
The hypocrisy among some of the GNU developers is amazing.
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While I would agree with burn out, I disagree with no talent. gcc and emacs arenāt nothing. It would be nice if we werenāt suffering from GNUisms (style and GNU C and various GNU extensions) and I wish emacs used scheme instead of elisp, but I donāt think these faults make him a no talent hack. I do think that since he put politics in front of making good code, and getting so worked up over percieved slights (and actual ones), he lost his edge. I think he could have handled everything a lot better, but as has been pointed out, heās pretty autistic. Iāve talked to him in emails (remarkably he really does answer anyone who emails him), and itās very clear that he lives in a very particular bubble.
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GCC and EMACS arenāt nothing, but RMS isnāt solely responsible for them, and clang and vi are superior anyhow.
/holywar
RMS and his ideology have actively made GCC worse due to unreasonable fanaticism. The most input he has had to GCC for example in recent years is to make it worse/stifle development.
Screeching it all the way like a four year old with coprolalia. Then:
Yes. For apparent reasons.
Man, you are welcome to share your opinions, I may even agree with your opinions to a large extent. Stallman is a zealot, but he isnāt my existential enemy. Screeching alt-right and alt-left yahoos are, because they are so damn busy triggering that little reason comes out of any interaction - because they overwhelm everything with broken feelings and then try to choke the life of any intelligent discussion, because it is so damn important to them, fuck the world and everyone else in it. You do you.
I care about the Stallman topic, but not about the tone, so kindly, if you (and anyone else similarly inclined) have the capacity for it - cut the aggression. You may end up having a far more rewarding discussion than this.
Considering I am neither, Iād say you and a few others are the ones being overly sensitive.
Maybe turn off the news if youāre so easily irate about everything.
Anyway, Iām done defending myself against something Iām not.
I believe RMS has been diagnosed as being on the spectrum and his lack of personal empathy is at times legendary. Whilst I am in no way qualified to diagnose, the way he acts certainly reminds me of a few people I have worked with who have been diagnosed with Aspergerās.
To be honest there are a lot of us who work in systems or software engineering who would score highly on a test & not understand why someone else is distressed about something. As a kid I never understood why people would get so upset when loved ones died (especially pets), I used to think they were odd being upset by something so natural as death. Some people with Aspergerās can be like that multiplied by 100! Still, they can usually learn correct behaviors and social niceties, but everyone is different.
No one is nearly as sensitive about anything youāve said, as you are sensitive about Stallman. Whatever he did to you, he must pay.
What news?
Am I more irate about something here than you are irate about something here?
Maybe first take the advice you give?
I donāt know what you are. Only the way you communicate and what you communicate, which is all that defines you here.
I donāt care you to defend yourself, excuse yourself, or explain yourself. Just to man up and keep whatever possessed you away from yourself for long enough to make sense and discuss the damn topic as the intelligent and decent being you are. That is not attacking you.
Now Iāve said all Iāve had to say as well.
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Iāve stated my feelings pretty clearly as to why I dislike Stallman (as have others). Evidence was provided to suggest he may have changed, which I am more than receptive to, as stated above in response to said video.
Deal with it. Stallman and the nVidia haters can be passionate and dbaggy, but I canāt? Piss off, this is the one time Iāve made a ranty thread in this forum. If you were as objective as youāre demanding me to be, you would have just ignored it. I edited the original post so as to not upset anyone else that stumbles upon it. No more āSā words from me.
Cāmon guys, no need to be all pissy with each other. This is literally just a (relatively) anonymous tech forum, no reason to get worked up over other peopleās opinions.
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