Richard Stallman on Steve Jobs: “I’m glad he’s gone”

ibxoful wroteI wasn't accusing anyone of anything i just reported what was written from al safeer

then you tell us not to trust what the media say...

well, he only has donated to charity once, with all that money,just once? come on
bill gates has donated lots and lots of times, still its sad that hes dead
richard, i have no comment on how mean he is

I know nothing about Steve Jobs as a person, so I cannot say that I'm sad nor that I'm happy that he's gone. However, some people say they miss him and that includes former Google and Sun executive Eric Schmidt.

From an industry's point of view we have surely lost one of today's brains in driving innovation in the market.
Steve jobs was a great business man and a visionary. The products that he marketed and that he brought to the end users was the fruit of the engineering team behind him, including Apple's Co-founder Steve Wozniak (who in my opinion should get more credit that he does actually).

Jobs was the brain behind innovation and helped accelerate the production of new technologies and end-user gadgets which helped consumers AND investors alike and this is why he was an icon to the masses, and maybe not greatly respected by most of the Technical crowd / geeks.

It is VERY rare to hear about the engineers who are behind a commercial product, the praise always goes to the leadership (hear CxO levels).
For example Lary and Sergei (Google); this is one of the rare examples in the industry, they brought the product to life and led the company to the commercial stage. Not many engineers do that (for many reasons that I won't get into...) And Steve Jobs was not that techie brain behind the development, he just had the vision and he was able to bring it to life.

I won't get into the media bashing but it is unfortunate how the communication has shifted nowadays and how consumers are so blinded by what the media feeds them.

How much did the masses mourn the loss of Dennis Ritchie?... that was one of the guys that should have received MOST if not ALL the publicity in the last few weeks, but unfortunately the consumers just don't care because they were NOT fed by the media, and they don't care because he did not create a gadget, he created the ENGINE that drives MANY of today's gadgets...... how unfortunate.

Stallman reviewed yesterday evening his comments about Jobs. Here's an interesting extract

... I criticized Jobs' public activity. My feelings about Jobs as a person are not strong, since I barely knew him. The important thing about Jobs is what he directed Apple to [...], to make general-purpose computers with digital handcuffs more controlling and unjust than ever before. He designed them to refuse even to let users install their own choice of applications — and installing free (freedom-respecting) applications is entirely forbidden. He even tried to make it illegal to install software not approved by Apple.

Jobs saw how to make these computers stylish and smooth. That would normally be positive, but not in this case, since it has the paradoxical effect of making their controlling nature seem acceptable.

Jobs' death inspired a flood of articles lauding him for these very devices. That further increases their potential for harm, which is why now more than ever we must focus attention on it. [...]

Jobs also made it a personal crusade to attack Android with software patents. In practice, Android is not entirely free software, but it is a big step closer compared with the iPhone. If Apple's guns hit Android, they could wipe out all possibility of free software portable devices that are attractive to use. Jobs' final legacy may be the patent disaster we have warned about for 20 years.

whole post

The least we could say is that he's moderating his comments. I agree much more with this language (rational and argumentative) than his original provocative mess.