On Wed, 5 Jun 1991 13:03:01 EDT Valdis Kletnieks <[log in to unmask]> said: >Please note that anything Rich writes will most likely be covered by the >GNU Public License, which has been referred to as the "gnu public virus" >due to some of its "copyleft" features. Please read it *carefully* to >determine if the conditions are acceptable - Freedom of software is one of the aspects of Richard Stallman's personal "quest" against today's most dangerous criminals: 1. People/companies who *sell* software (software should be free). 2. People/companies who work on making computers more secure (computers should have no "locks"). Your average Richard Stallman program is not unlikely to contain statements such as '/* Someone put something here for security, I removed it */'. Feel free to ftp /etc/passwd from the anonymous ftp directory of the GNU machine, it's been placed there on purpose. Here are a couple quotes from the EMACS release notes: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- "GNU Emacs does not support encryption. Down with security!" ;; you can of course turn this off by doing ;; (setq ftp-password-alist 'compulsory-urinalysis) (defvar ftp-password-alist () "Security sucks") ------------------------------------------------------------------------- >Other than that, Rich is quite the programmer - both the GNU Emacs >editor and the GNU gcc compiler are regarded as among the best in their >respective fields... I agree with Valdis, except that he forgot to mention that the field in question is known under the name of "Unix" - an environment where the "standard" system editor is 'vi' and where C compilers often do not have any "real" optimizer. I have a copy of GCC on a (quoting RMS's release notes) Vomit Making System machine and, while the code it produces is more than decent, it is the slowest compiler I have ever seen. Also, I'm afraid Ken's C compiler produces less vomit per unit of source code - unless you ask for a listing, but then everyone knows that compiler listings and cross-references are intrinsically useless (proof: if they weren't, GCC would know how to make one). Now that the intro is over... I'd be delighted to hear that RMS is going to make a mailing-list server for GNU ("GNU's Not Un*x" - "GNU's Nearly Un*x" would be more accurate, but for some reason the official name is the former), so that I can stop having to answer complaints from Un*x people who are unhappy about the fact that end-users do not have access to privileged commands, when they can so easily fake the 'From:' field and my passwords are not secure since they are not crypt(3)'ed anyway - so why not make the LIST files world writable and set up a 'subscribe' guest account? However, I'm afraid that the newspaper in question (which I haven't read) was probably talking about a 'list processor'. Obviously, a list processor is not a LISTSERV but a compiler or interpreter for the LISP language - it's so obvious that any self-respecting newspaper reporter should know this, and there really is no point saying it explicitly. The LISP language is what EMACS macros are written in - look at the quote beginning with '(setq' above for an example (oops, I meant '(setq of course :-) ). My understanding (but I may well have misunderstood) is that RMS would like LISP to be the system language for GNU, and now that he's got a C compiler it would make sense for him to work on a LISP garbage collector (oops, interpreter). Disclaimer: I am a criminal, I use brain-damaged operating systems on a daily basis and never liked having to take care of the garbage bags. In other words, I am hopelessly asinine and you shouldn't make the mistake of taking me seriously. Eric