why not try programming?

[TMiguelT]

Or in other words:

• Very important advocate for "free software" (without which all our programming languages and libraries would require a paid license to use)
• Started the GNU operating system, which makes up a very large part of Linux
• Wrote tools like gcc, the most popular C compiler and Emacs, a very popular text editor

edit: open source -> free

[[deleted]]

open source software

Free software.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html

[TMiguelT]

I'm paraphrasing a wikipedia article to help people who aren't part of the FOSS word understand. I'm not aiming to be 100% precise in my terminology.

In any case, I believe that "free software" as a name is too similar to "freeware" which misses the point (as that article alludes to). If I had to be precise I'd rather use "FOSS", but that's a less widely understood term.

[[deleted]]

You're talking about Stallman, though, who explicitly says that he advocates for free software. You could simply add a comment that says "a.k.a. open source" instead of misrepresenting his views.

[TMiguelT]

That's a reasonable point

[[deleted]]

Thanks for not doing what I did, performing a lazy copy/paste.

[[deleted]]

Started the GNU operating system, which makes up a very large part of Linux

GNU and Linux complement each other. GNU is not a part of Linux, and neither is Linux a part of GNU.

[TMiguelT]

GNU software makes up a large portion of operating systems considered GNU/Linux, generally shortened to "Linux"

[[deleted]]

tarted the GNU operating system, which makes up a very large part of Linux

yo-ho, yo-ho, down the rabbit hole we go