A recent attack piece against Richard Stallman was written by Linus Torvalds on the eve of Obama’s election.

Black and white by Linus Torvalds

Linus begins with this:

In celebration of Software Freedom Day 2008, I would like to share to you all some of my favorite quotes about Free and Open Source Software from no less than the two pillars of FOSS, Linus Torvalds and Richard M. Stallman. Enjoy and be inspired.

So let's just accept that Linux geeks land on all points of the political spectrum and take a look at the personal politics and styles of the two godfathers of the open source movement: Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman.

"When Richard Stallman announced the GNU Project back in 1983, he launched a movement that would, in time, transform the software industry. The Free Software Foundation, also created by Stallman and now sponsor of the GNU Project, has become a driving force behind the adoption of the widely used GNU GPL software license.

We discussed some of the more recent developments with Richard Stallman, whose passion for freedom in computing remains intense. The following Q & A explores the goals of free software, progress that has been made, and ways to maintain or instill freedom in software that we use..."

I've been trying to make sense out of the new Version 3 of the General Public License and I've got to tell you, I can't yet.

This was amusing and odd. The presenter mistakenly gives the award to the "Free Software Association". The donation was modest but the cardboard check was huge.

Upon receiving the award, Stallman said "Giving the Linus Torvalds Award to the Free Software Foundation is sort of like giving the Han Solo Award to the Rebel Fleet."

"Finding an email in my inbox from Richard Stallman is not the way I start most mornings, but on a recent morning, there it was.

"Richard Stallman, otherwise known as rms or the founder of the free software movement, will be in town for a series of lectures at UBC and BCIT. I have been reading Stallman’s stuff since I wrote my master’s thesis in 2003. Although sometimes passed off as a crank, much of Stallman’s work has proven accurate, insightful and even prescient over the years.

In one of my earliest blog posts here I called Richard Stallman, a father of the open source movement and almost immediately got a personal nastygram. From Richard Stallman. I appreciated it and have sought to be more careful. Stallman believes in free software, which he calls Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS). (It’s also called Free Open Source Software (FOSS).)