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by cookiecaper 5366 days ago
RMS makes no comment about "great software" in the post. He says that Jobs "made computers as a jail 'cool'" (paraphrase), and I think to a great extent that's true -- Apple has always been the most aggressively locked-down computer maker. Although OS X uses several open-source internals and although Apple even maintains some of these (including very important ones, like CUPS and X), they are still in some ways the most "locked down" computer (and consumer electronic) maker out there.
2 comments
wazoox 5365 days ago
> le has always been the most aggressively locked-down computer maker.

Actually this isn't the case. Back in Apple II times, they provided the most hacker-friendly, fully documented hardware and software, together with the built-in rom assembly listing. But this was Woz' creation (über-hacker par excellence), not Jobs'.

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cookiecaper 5365 days ago
Indeed. My reading is primarily that Jobs and Woz had an internal battle over the hackability of the Apple II and that Woz won out (as far as I'm aware, for unspecified reasons). Subsequent projects (Mac) have not followed the same pattern.

RMS's gripe with Jobs seems to be that he played a very active role in transforming computing from an open, academic activity based on information sharing to a completely proprietary profit center.

In the early 80s, some openness was expected. Releasing a computer without expansion slots then is like releasing a phone where you can't even replace your own battery now.

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leot 5366 days ago
RMS is wrong insofar as he believes that FOSS exclusively will result in more people having better software than if there is FOSS + ~FOSS.
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cookiecaper 5366 days ago
The post in question makes no mention of FOSS exclusively resulting in better software than FOSS + non-FOSS. Are you just debating Stallman's generic platform here? Seems a bit off-topic to me...
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leot 5366 days ago
RMS is glad Jobs is gone. This means he thinks Jobs' non-FOSS is a net negative for the world.

[edit of first sentence for clarity]

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masklinn 5365 days ago
Which is perfectly in line with pretty much all of his life and advocacy: for RMS, user potential freedom (to much around with the internals of his device, software and hardware) trumps everything.

Therefore, as somebody making locked-down everything and locked-down everything cool Jobs was a nemesis figure. It makes perfect sense for Stallman to be glad he retired from current affairs, that Jobs had to retire due to death does not really enter in his thinking because as far as he's concerned it's a completely separate issue.

Those demonizing him for his comments are just idiots.

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