Stallman Loves Microsoft Money

Another sign of the End Times: Free software guru Richard Stallman speaks at Microsoft HQ
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/05/richard_stallman_microsoft/


Remember folks: it is _GNU_ Linux.

The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

O RLY?

RMS got that part very very wrong. If the GPL was not about access to source but freedom to reverse-engineer, it could've become the ultimate viral license. Instead his harping on source code distracted the free software community from better RE tools and gave lawyers more to argue over. Access to a general-purpose computer is the true precondition for this. He even wrote a story about this later (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html ) but far too late. All the "walled garden" dystopian ecosystems are based on OSS, and sometimes the fat pigs in power even release pieces of it; but having access to the source does nothing. On the other hand, having access to the binary and a means to edit it is all you need.

Also, fuck those SJWs and their bullshite. They have a desire to destroy those in power because their retarded brains can't comprehend the thought of someone being more intelligent than they are. https://dis.tinychan.org/read/prog/1525743384

there's no need to reverse engineer GPL software because it gives you source

I'm asking "what if GPL was not about mandatory access to source code, but 'freedom to RE, providing source is recommended'?"

and there's no way GPL (which is a license) could guarantee the right to reverse engineer non-GPL software (because it has a different license with no such guarantees),

How do you know whether pieces of some binary came from (or just happened to have the same sequence of bytes!) as in a GPL binary?

That's what I mean by "ultimate viral". It could give plausible deniability to RE everything and basically destroy copyright completely.