Tony Stanco writes:
 > Why is it so hard for people to give Richard his due? But for Richard, there
 > would be no GPL. But for the GPL, there would be no Free Software nor,
 > arguably, Open Source.

I recall an organization Richard promoted some years ago called the
League for Programming Freedom.  One of the League's tenets (and I was 
a member) was that reinvention is commonplace in the software world,
and so patents on software are bad.

Now you're trying to give Richard a virtual patent on inventing free
software, and free software licenses?  I expect him to decline.

 > Now we only ridicule them.

Count yourself in that "we" if you want, but count me out of it.

 > Finally, I would say, the world has always rewarded those who took ethical
 > stands over those who compromised for expediency's sake.

History has forgotten those who took ethical stands over ideas ... and
failed to convince anyone that those ideas were worthwhile.

-- 
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