At parking-scarce UC-Berkeley, bagging a Nobel means you get preferential and free parking spaces.

(Academic geeks, take note: apparently the UCB parking office views the Fields (mathematics) Medal as equivalent.)

The free-software, open-source world is full of characters, many of whom are known by their initials. Probably the most infamous of these is the president of the Free Software Foundation, Richard M. Stallman, or rms. RMS is notorious for his inability to interact with other humans in anything resembling a “human” way, and for his (some would say) infantile insistance on correcting and challenging other people’s choices about technology and software. Stallman believes all software should be open source, and that there is no moral place in society for closed-source software, or proprietary hardware, or anything of the sort. It’s an extreme position really only viable for someone who doesn’t have to interact with the business world more or less at all, but whatever.

Anyway, it should come as no surprise that rms had something to say about the passing of Steve Jobs. He was of course gracious and respectful while also acknowledging their ideological differences, and making the case for his own position.

No, I’m kidding. He said he was glad Jobs was gone, hoped his influence would end, and called all Apple users fools:

Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.

As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, ‘I’m not glad he’s dead, but I’m glad he’s gone.’ Nobody deserves to have to die — not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs’ malign influence on people’s computing.

Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective.

My first reaction is basically “Jesus, what a dick.” That’s not news; Stallman is infamous for inappropriate behavior, and more than a few folks have suggested his cause — the free distribution of software unencumbered by what he considers “onerous” intellectual property rights — would be better served by someone that didn’t seem so content to piss everybody off.

Fortunately, someone over at ReadWriteWeb had the time for an actual takedown:

It’s no secret that RMS and Steve Jobs held firmly opposed views when it comes to software freedom. I didn’t expect Stallman to hold a vigil at an Apple store for Jobs, or even to say much of anything at all. But his ill-considered response does nothing for the cause of free software, and actually does a lot of damage.

[…]

This is, unfortunately, typical of Stallman – and exactly why the self-appointed leader of the free software movement is the last person who should be spokesperson for anything. He manages to offend common decency by celebrating the absence of a man who contributed enormously to the world of computing, and insult millions of Apple users simultaneously. But I see no argument whatsoever here to persuade Jobs’ fans that they should be considering free software. Just a petty expression of relief that a rival is no longer available to compete with Stallman’s cause.

If Stallman had to make a statement emphasizing his dislike of Jobs’ influence, he could still have done so respectfully. Consider this; “I didn’t share Steve Jobs’ vision of computing, and I wish he’d chosen to embrace free software. I’m very sorry that he’s gone and we’ve lost the opportunity to have that conversation. My sympathies are with his family at this time.” There’s no need to pretend that Stallman liked Jobs, but his post is contemptible.

Even if you accept Stallman’s world-views on free software and ethics about software licensing, we shouldn’t be “glad he’s gone.” Jobs’s work has inspired a lot of free software developers over the years, and he and his teams at Apple set a bar for excellence that more developers should aspire to.

It’s unseemly to wish away those we do not agree with. What Stallman is saying, in essence, is that his ideals of free software can only compete with what users want from computing products when they’re less attractive. To me, that says Stallman would be happy to force his ideals on users rather than persuading them that free software actually matters. Or, at least, that he lacks confidence that it’s possible.

There’s more, if you’re geeky enough to care.

You really need to watch this.

(H/T Rob.)

Just go check this out, courtesy of Rob.

God knows we here at Heathen are Apple fans, though sort of accidentally — we lack the zeal of of the true believers, but by and by we seem to have accumulated one of about everything Apple makes. We’re sad about Steve, obviously. 56 is entirely too young (Christ, I can SEE that from here), and the guy was still churning out hits. It is not exaggeration to say that, without him, the personal computing landscape would be very, very different — and most likely much less interesting, and much less usable by the broad population. He didn’t invent the personal computer, but he did a huge chunk of the work required to get it to a place where my 76-year-old stepfather can use it without calling me.

But this post isn’t about Steve. This post is about Dennis. You Heathen are a geeky bunch, but even so most of you have know idea who Dennis Ritchie was, or even that he died Saturday at the age of 70, but the odds are overwhelming that, in reading these words, you’re enjoying his work.

Dennis Ritchie wrote C. The partially-geeky among you will recognize this as a programming language, but it may have never occurred to you that languages, too, must have authors. C is now ubiquitous. It is no exaggeration to say that C and its derivatives (most famously C++, but also Microsoft’s C# and the Objective C that Apple favors, among others) run the world. The definitive book on the language has a real title, but it is known to coders the world over as “The K & R book.” The “R” is, of course, Ritchie.

But that’s not all. C is intimately tied to the Unix operating system, which is also Ritchie’s work, along with his colleagues Brian Kernighan (the “K” mentioned above) and Ken Thompson. You may have heard of Unix, but you (again, the noncoding Heathen) have no idea of the scale of its reach in your life. Unix runs everywhere, in some flavor or another. That commercial flavors have fallen from favor in recent years is of no consequence, because their de facto successor is Linux, which began life as a noncommercial, open, and free implementation of the same ideas. Without Unix there is no Linux. More than that, though, the world wide web as you know is based on Unix ideas and tools and protocols. Without Unix, the Internet itself would not be the same.

Today, variants of Unix run on countless devices — every Apple device running OSX or iOS is running a variant of something called FreeBSD, which is itself a variant of Unix. Android runs on Linux. The New York Stock Exchange? Linux. Your Tivo runs Linux. This site, and countless others (including Google, Amazon, and Facebook), is hosted on Linux. The firewall at your office probably has a Linux kernel. VMWare, the dominant virtualization platform in the world, is based on Linux.

Much was made last week of how many folks learned of Jobs’ passing on an Apple device. I’m sure the figure, if it could actually be measured, was a very high percentage. If we ask an equivalent question about Ritchie, though, the answer is easy: All. There is no communications channel in modern use that does not, somewhere, rely on his work or its descendants.

Humble pioneers are known for admitting that, in the words of Isaac Newton, “If I have seen further, it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Apple’s modern success and resurrection are based on a solid software platform, the sine qua non of any technological endeavor. Steve clearly saw further than his contemporaries, but Dennis Ritchie was one of the giants who gave him a leg-up.

Godspeed, Dennis.

Update: This tribute post is worth reading, too. I didn’t cover it here, but it’s not just the C was influential and remains essential; it was also hugely groundbreaking in terms of portability. What Ritchie and his colleagues did with C — i.e., creating a portable computer language not beholden to idiosyncrasies of the various computing hardware platforms — was widely considered impossible at the time. Or, as the linked writer put it:

C is a poster child for why it’s essential to keep those people who know a thing can’t be done from bothering the people who are doing it.

It’s another BB hit, but it includes a bit of data I didn’t have: Octopi are very, very good at matching color, and they do it by sight, but they are color blind.

Go watch the video.

The other thing is this: Octopus camouflage isn’t about looking like the background. It’s about hiding itself from observers, and those can be two very different things.

Go check this out.

This is awesome. And true.

Thirty years ago, when I read the Dark Phoenix Saga in the X-Men, I totally missed the pretty remarkable subtext that, quite frankly, seems to obvious to have been wholly accidental.

H/T to Lemay on Twitter.