Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Sabotage

Author:Brett Glass
Posted:8/24/2000; 8:48:03 PM
Topic:Next survey: Are you an open source developer?
Msg #:20146 (In response to 20138)
Prev/Next:20145 / 20147

Stallman's explicit intent, when he published free equivalents of Symbolics' products, was to drive the company out of business. Forbes Magazine reports:

[Stallman] retaliated [against the computer scientists who left the MIT AI Lab to form Symbolics] by sabotaging his former colleagues' sophisticated commercial programs for powerful computers, singlehandedly hacking up his own versions and giving them away. "They accused me of costing them millions of dollars," he says. "I hope it's true."

Stallman's activities were intended to sabotage Symbolics' business prospects. Stallman reaffirmed this in an interview published in BYTE magazine (where he claimed that he wanted to "punish" Symbolics) and again in interviews with Steven Levy for the book "Hackers." Levy reports that Stallman's sole motive was "revenge."

There is, furthermore, absolutely no question that the creation of commercial software is a field of endeavor which he attempts to sabotage in the same way via the GPL. Stallman affirms this in The GNU Manifesto, cited earlier in this thread.

--Brett Glass

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