Re: RealMedia used for GUADEC live transmissions?

[Richard Stallman <rms gnu org>]

	    You've had your say - we've heard you, perhaps next time things will be
    done differently. I'm unsurprised that the pattern of peculiarly
    unfriendly fixation on tiny details at the expense of the big picture
    continues rampantly.

The big picture is freedom; we developed GNU for the sake of freedom.
GNOME in particular was developed specifically for the sake of
freedom.  However, programmers often get distracted from the big
picture by the details of developing their programs.  These details
are their daily work, and typically programmers are programmers
because they find programming a fascinating activity.

That tendency is natural, but we need to resist it.  To preserve our
freedom, we need to teach people to value it, so they will defend it
with us.

Alan Cox wrote:

    > Richard Stallman used proprietary C compilers to bootstrap gcc. I bet he
    > used proprietary editors to bootstrap emacs too, and all of GNU spent
    > years on a proprietary OS waiting for the real thing to come along.

We were not just "waiting" for the free replacement to come along.
Writing the free replacement for Unix was our project.

At the very start of developing GNU, I thought about the question: was
it ethically legitimate to use Unix to bootstrap GNU?  I decided that
it was legitimate, because our project was specifically to produce a
free replacement for Unix.  In other words, our work was aimed
directly at eliminating the need for others to Unix.  We participated
temporarily in the use of Unix so as to free others from it.  By the
same token, it is legitimate for the OGG developers to run RealPlayer
if that helps them make a better free replacement to help everyone
escape from use of RealPlayer.

Using RealPlayer *for broadcasting video* is a horse of a different
color.  Doing that is, in effect, asking other people to install a
non-free program to watch the speech.