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Williams, Sam

"Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software"

Instead of fighting the marketplace
head-on as Stallman had done, Raymond, Torvalds, and
other new leaders of the hacker community had adopted a
more relaxed approach-ignoring the marketplace in some
areas, leveraging it in others. Instead of playing the
role of high-school outcasts, they had played the game
of celebrity, magnifying their power in the process.
"On his worst days Richard believes that Linus Torvalds
and I conspired to hijack his revolution," Raymond
says. "Richard's rejection of the term open source and
his deliberate creation of an ideological fissure in my
view comes from an odd mix of idealism and
territoriality. There are people out there who think
it's all Richard's personal ego. I don't believe that.
It's more that he so personally associates himself with
the free software idea that he sees any threat to that
as a threat to himself."
Ironically, the success of open source and open source
advocates such as Raymond would not diminish Stallman's
role as a leader. If anything, it gave Stallman new
followers to convert.


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