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Don't associate the entire project and foundation with the actions of their figurehead.

Honestly, Theo can be an asshole, but often his temper is warranted when he's faced with idiocy, like when RMS was unapologetically trying to persuade the removal of all mentions of non-free packages in OpenBSD. (http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/134850)

I know this is what RMS does, and actually I'm sympathetic with his views, but in that context it was bullshit. This is just one incident, who knows how much Theo has to deal with other people wasting his energy on non-issues, trivialities and misconceptions?

For what it's worth, he isn't any less of a dick than Linus. Yet Linus consistently earns hero praise and adulation, the criticism of his personality being secondary and written off as justified. So why isn't Theo's justified?



I don't think Theo's reaction is really warranted. I mean, really? "slimy hypocritical asshole"?! And the follow up later on when someone calls him on this is pretty telling: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/134896

I don't know the full history of that thread, but it's not mentions of non-free packages that RMS was talking about - it was ports in OpenBSD that allowed people to easily install non-free packages.

Ah, found the original: http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=119730630513821&w=2

And FWIW, I think Linus is a dick, too - but Linux has a much larger following, mainly due to reasons other than Linus.


If you read through some of the OpenBSD pages, you can detect a lot of dislike for RMS. Example: http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#43




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