On January 10th this year Mr.Richard Stallman(Founder of Free Software foundation and often termed as the co-founder of Linux) came to my college(U.C College,Aluva,kerala) to do a seminar on "Free software ethics".
He gave us a 2.5hour class on free software and why we should stop using paid ones and use free software.Although I personally agree to only 50% of his thoughts,I found his speech very informative.Also I was surprised to see that he was a very simple man even after being a World famous personality.
And now to the points.
He asked us to "
Either throw Windows out of your computer or throw your computer out of the Window."
He told us that
Linus Tolwards is often mistaken to be the founder of linux and free software.
He told the story of Linux as follows:
In 1983 he was the first one to coin the term Free Software.But then nobody accepted his ideas.So he decided to make an OS of his own.He gathered some of his friends and hired a few programmers to make it.
After two years they came up with an OS which he called GNU.
But unfortunately the kernel o that OS was very very buggy and unstable.
But back then it was a very big accomplishment.But due to this problem GNU failed to gain acceptance.
Later in 1990 a college student Linus Tolwards made a kernel which he called Linux.But back then Tolwards wasnt into the idea of free software.He made it proprietery.
But after two long years he had to make it free.This kernel was then embedded into GNU to make Linux.
Stallman also said that many of the linux distros of today are not free.They just bundle light versions or trial versions of 3rd party paid software with them which is against the idiology of Free software Foundation.he mentioned the name of a few such distros but I dont remember the name.
He told that a free softwrae:
1.Should be completely free to use.
2.Users shud be able to share them without limits.
3.Users shud be able to modify them according to their likenesses........
...like that.
all in all it was a very good class and I was never bored in that 2.5 hr long one.
LINUX is NOT FREE SOFTWARE ?!!!!!
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