"There
was a thing in the Linux documentation which says print
out the GNU coding standards and then tear them up,"
says Stallman, recalling one example. "OK, so he
disagrees with some of our conventions. That's fine,
but he picked a singularly nasty way of saying so. He
could have just said `Here's the way I think you should
indent your code.' Fine. There should be no hostility there."
For Raymond, the warm reception other hackers gave to
Torvalds' comments merely confirmed his suspicions. The
dividing line separating Linux developers from
GNU/Linux developers was largely generational. Many
Linux hackers, like Torvalds, had grown up in a world
of proprietary software. Unless a program was clearly
inferior, most saw little reason to rail against a
program on licensing issues alone. Somewhere in the
universe of free software systems lurked a program that
hackers might someday turn into a free software
alternative to PowerPoint. Until then, why begrudge
Microsoft the initiative of developing the program and
reserving the rights to it?
As a former GNU Project member, Raymond sensed an added
dynamic to the tension between Stallman and Torvalds.
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