Re: Temujin

[Richard Stallman <rms gnu org>]

    But I'm also not completely ignorant of history.
    The same words --- "swift, precise, etc." can ne said
    about Nazi troops.

Temujin (who ruled as Jinghiz Khan) was not an ordinary conqueror, and
his conquests were not based only on the strength of his army.  They
were based on cruel slaughter.  His policy was that if a city resisted
his troops even briefly, he would kill the entire population when he
eventually conquered it.  Hitler is an apt comparison.

I would not want to compare even Microsoft to Jinghiz Khan.
Why should we compare ourselves to him?

More fundamentally, the aim of GNU (including GNOME) is to free the
users, not to dominate them.  To compare ourselves with a conqueror,
even with one that was not so merciless and bloodthirsty as Jinghiz
Khan, is the exact opposite of what we really ought to say.  Let's
compare proprietary software to campaigns of conquest; we are
the resistance movement.

I need to digress to one side issue in the message.

    First of all, let me thank you for your great work!
    I'm truly devoted to GNU (associate member) & Open
    Source & CORBA & GNOME.

In the GNU Project we do not advocate "open source" very much, since
that is the slogan of a movement founded to reject our ideals.  We
describe what we do as "free software", free as in freedom that is.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html for
more explanation.