this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
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Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman
I'll have to argue that Santos Dumont and others inventors did Open Source in the XIX.
But compared to one of those. Who did the biggest impact?
I dont know them and maybe they made a much greater impact.
Santos-Dumont was a pioneer of aviation, would say that that's a big deal.
Dumont was a prolific Brazilian-French inventor. Among his most famous achievements are several lighter-than-air flights and flying machines (blimps), as well as a potential claim as the inventor of the first airplane.
This Stallman? https://drewdevault.com/2023/11/25/2023-11-26-RMS-on-sex.html
Yes. That Stallman is arguably one of the top few people why we have the internet as it is, at all today.
Most other people could be "replaced". If it wasn't X, it would be Y. But only Stallman pushed the copyleft license onto Linux. Only Stallman's organization popularized it.
So yes, that sexist, neurodivergent, bigoted Stallman, is one of the most positively influential people of our time.
A person needn't be good in order to do good things, just as a good person doesn't necessarily impact the world positively simply by existing.
Sure.But if someone wants to say "X has done the most good because they fed 1 million people" but you don't mention that X also killed 900,000 people, you're being disingenuous. No, I'm not saying Stallman is a mass murderer. But normalizing pedophilia is a gross counterbalance to whatever good work he's done.
You're wrongly assuming that the opinion of one man on a subject he has no sway in is relevant to more than IRC discussions.