In an interview with APC, Linus Torvalds told the magazine that “it’s much more interesting to see how Open Source actually generates a better process for doing complex technology, than push the “freedom” angle and push an ideology.”

The ideology he was speaking about was the concept of “Free Software” popularized by Richard Stallman. And of course Linus is right. Free Software as a process, as a phenomenon in developing software is much more important than the ideology.

I support the idea of Open Source software and all that it has done for the software industry in the last 15+ years. But I never could get over the whole “Church of Emacs” thing that Stallman has going. From his personal website you can find:

“Sainthood in the Church of Emacs requires living a life of purity–but in the Church of Emacs, this does not require celibacy (a sigh of relief is heard). Being holy in our church means installing a wholly free operating system–GNU/Linux is a good choice–and not putting any non-free software on your computer. Join the Church of Emacs, and you too can be a saint”

Now, it is true that it also says on that page: “Warning: taking the Church of Emacs too seriously may be hazardous to your health.” But I think there is a religous ferver to the Free Software movement that isn’t healthy.

As Linus continued to say in the interview, “And I think that pragmatic approach was what made Linux and Open Source also much more palatable to many more people, and helped make it mainstream.”

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