Z:gnu-www-ja-stallman-kth--1512d0-Essentially all the competent/en

Essentially all the competent programmers except for me, at the AI lab were hired away, and this caused more than a momentary change, it caused a permanent transformation because it broke the continuity of the culture of hackers. New hackers were always attracted by the old hackers; there were the most fun computers and the people doing the most interesting things, and also a spirit which was a great deal of fun to be part of. Once these things were gone, there is nothing to recommend the place to anyone new, so new people stopped arriving. There was no-one they could be inspired by, no-one that they could learn those traditions from. In addition no-one to learn how to do good programming from. With just a bunch of professors and graduate students, who really don't know how to make a program work, you can't learn to make good programs work. So the MIT AI lab that I loved is gone and after a couple of years of fighting against the people who did it to try to punish them for it I decided that I should dedicate my self to try to create a new community with that spirit.