Re: removing toxic emailers

[Christopher Dimech <dimech@gmx.com>]

> Sent: Friday, April 16, 2021 at 11:52 AM
> From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com>
> To: "Christopher Dimech" <dimech@gmx.com>
> Cc: "Frosku" <frosku@frosku.com>, "GCC Development" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers
>
> Christopher Dimech via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>:
> > The commercial use of free software is our hope, not our fear.  When people
> > at IBM began to come to free software, wanting to recommend it and use it,
> > and maybe distribute it themselves or encourage other people to distribute
> > it for them, we did not criticise them for not being non-profit virtuous
> > enough, or said "we are suspicious of you", let alone threatening them.
>
> Actually, some of us did *exactly* those things late in the last century.

When I worked in ocean acoustics, everything was kept secret.  Yet russian
oceanographers (e.g. Leonid Brekhovshkikh who was working in the Sea Japan)
had themselves figured out the same phenomena independently at around the
same time.

> One of the challenges I faced in my early famous years was persuading
> the hacker culture as a whole to treat the profit-centered parts of the
> economy as allies rather than enemies.
>
> I won't say that a *majority* of us were resistent to this, but I
> did have to work hard on the problem for a while, between 1997
> and about 2003.

About ten years ago, free software was chosen as the operating system of
the International Space Station.  Things have been changing, but I agree
that there is much work to be done.  Our approach has been a noticeable
proposition, not just to us - though we understand why it is socially and
politically desirable that the world works this way.

> --
> 		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
>
>
>