Re: [LI] Message from RMS.

[Arun Sharma <adsharma@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Dec 14, 1999 at 01:58:20PM +0530, Dakshinamurthy Karra wrote:
> 
> Revolutions are made by people who are obstinate and who are willing to
> sacrifise for these beliefs. No one can ever dispute the commitment of
> RMS for what he believes. The only other person who comes to my mind is
> Gandhi (Manoj mentioned it already, I believe).

RMS is certainly one of the most obstinate and principled people that
I've seen. Very sure and uncompromising about what he believes in. 
The parallels to Gandhi here are very appropriate.

But we have to bear in mind that Gandhi's teachings are applicable only
in some situations. You can't for example go into a war and preach
non violence. Lenin was a revolutionary, Hitler was one, Khomeni was one
too. They all had a sense of purpose and a large following. Perhaps
their actions were right in the situations they found themselves in.

But if you take their solutions to specific problems and try to apply
it to everything, it isn't going to work. 

Specifically, we all agree that Free software is great, works well in
many real world situations. But the main disagreement is - should *all*
software be free ? Should we *force* all software to be free ?

And I don't think we have an agreement on that. The only rational
thing to do - is to make your choices and continue to follow your
principles. But life isn't that simple. There are a lot of people who
don't have the time/energy to do the investigation themselves (Ah, I
don't want any more of the GPL discussion types) - so such discussions
are necessary every now and then for the new masses rushing onto the
Linux bandwagon. But lets not get these discussions overwhelm us ok ?
Save some time to write code :-)

	-Arun