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Comment by pc86 | Hacker News Reader

If you think it's likely that we have great minds flipping burgers now, it stands to reason there were minds greater than Jobs, Gates, etc (RMS? really?) flipping burgers then, too.

I've seen this sentiment expressed before and it always struck me as the intellectual equivalent of "kids these days!" without much merit.

Some people will waste their talent. Some people won't.

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>RMS? really?

The dude wrote EMACS, GNU, GCC and the GPL license. He more or less single-handedly invented the concept of Free software. If RMS isn't a genius, then I don't know who is.

I’m fairly certain OSS predates him by a reasonable margin.

You'd be wrong. The Free Software movement predates the "Open Source" movement by 15 years or so.

The BSD license predates the GPLv1.

GNU as an organization pushing the idea of free software long predates the GPL. The people creating the BSD licensed BSD NET/2 explicitly aknowledged the GNU influence on their decision to release.

He started the free software "movement" to _preserve_ the existing ethos of software sharing at MIT and elsewhere, which he saw as being destroyed by corporate influence.

He also played a big part in ITS, the lisp machines and published multiple papers on Lisp, AI, and CS. Unlike Jobs and Gates he made actual contributions to the whole field.

You're comparing Gates with his poor quality virusware to RMS who has written incomparably important parts of the Unix operating system and made it free for all. Then you decide to act like RMS is the one that doesn't belong in the list. LOL

The core code of Unix will live on long past the current incarnation of Windows.

Gates is a ruthless business man and thats the only reason his name is larger in your mind. His most striking quote was about how you give Windows licenses for free to Africa so they get addicted and have to keep buying it even though they can't afford it and Unix is free due to familiarity. Meanwhile RMS labored quietly to build a better world.

> RMS? really?

Yes, Jobs and Gates can't even compare to him.

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