Relevantly, FSF's new executive director is asking for feedback, and specifically criticism:
http://lists.fsf.org/archive/html/info-member/2011-04/msg000...
Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter
131–140 of 210 posts
Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a happy fellow of the FSFE ( http://fsfe.org/ ), the European pendant to the FSF. Sometimes we also discuss FSF campaigns, and usually agree that those would almost certainly be counter-productive here in Europe, especially things like the "Windows 7 sins". However, we always thought: Well, the USA have a different culture, so maybe this kind of campaign is needed there, and probably our style of campaign would n…
Interesting! Exaggeration often does sell well in the US, but I don't think it's required. And negativity is very much in fashion here (alas) but positivity can be even more successful. So my guess is that your campaigns would work well here too. Are Americans allowed to join the FSFE?
Feel free to do so. As far as I know, the FSFE fellowship is open to anyone:
https://fellowship.fsfe.org/login/join.php
However, engaging in FSFE campaigns might become a difficult undertaking if you can't attend any of the local meetings. (Of course there are mailing lists, but those are, well, just mailing lists.)
So for a US citizen, I think it would be more effective to join the FSF instead, and to stay in contact with the FSFE from there. Those connections should already exist and probably just need to be pushed forward.
Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter
#133A few points i would like to remind everyone who criticizes rms. 1) rms is a radical guy. You cannot change that. He fights for what he thinks is right. He is not the kind of person you can ask to censor himself. If he thinks u.s goverment is to blame for 9/11, no matter how saying it in a lecture seems childish, he will say it. If you invite rms for a lecture, he is coming with his radicalism. That is to be expected…
I agree with your first point, however: > 2) rms is a practical guy. stop acting like he's a mad man who knows nothing. He started GNU, wrote emacs, glibc, gcc and probably others. He created the concept of free software and wrote a license as good as GPL to defend it. He created the concept of 'Free' (note the capital F) software as his definition of free. People were sharing source code beforehand. The source to Un…
I think the meaning of point three was a bit lost in the grammar.
Yes, RMS has (very clearly) stated that the only software a person should use is software that is free.
However, I think emilsedgh's point is that RMS _first_ wants people to value freedom, and use only free software as a result - as opposed to using free software because, for instance, it is (generally) cheap.
Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter
#134I respect RMS a lot, too, but I have to agree with this piece. He clearly tries to be a PR/sells person first of all. An advocate for free software in all industries and all other parts of society. Why then, doesn't he play to the rules of society where it makes obvious sense? As much as I find his stubbornness personally sympathetic, I doubt he is doing the FSF a favor at this point.
As an example I know from the people at MIT Open Course Ware, that even though they share a very similar view on free information, and RMS can show great achievements, it was really hard to use RMS as an effective advocate for OCW. The key audience was simply turned off by his appearance. As smug as that might sound.
In reality, you can hardly put people into sales, when they refuse to wear a tie every so often.
Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter
#135Damn you, Photoshop (presumably the only piece of closed software some people just can't do without).
Lots of proprietary software in the music industry too. Even if you want to create music as a hobby on your computer, things like samples are all in proprietary formats.
Count hardware design and embedded systems in as well. Many of us work in a morass of proprietary tools and obfuscated IP cores.
Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter
#136I pretty much agreed with everything except the ridiculous idea that Stallman should try out Google Docs so he could see how "good" it is.
I don't understand your objection. It is an amazingly simple tool for collaborative editing and I don't know of any free software alternatives that are as easily usable.
Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter
#137I had submitted something about Stallman and his genius some days back : [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2471620]
Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious -- what is considered a commercial Emacs clone?
There are a few commercial clones. I use Epsilon (by Lugaru Software) because I think it's faster and behaves more reasonably on Windows than Gnu Emacs, and I'm used to it. That said, I'm sure that Gnu Emacs is fine.
Just curious (big emacs fan here), but define "reasonably".
I have used Emacs under Windows and I have to agree it's a bit too surprising at times.
Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting! Exaggeration often does sell well in the US, but I don't think it's required. And negativity is very much in fashion here (alas) but positivity can be even more successful. So my guess is that your campaigns would work well here too. Are Americans allowed to join the FSFE?
Feel free to do so. As far as I know, the FSFE fellowship is open to anyone: https://fellowship.fsfe.org/login/join.php However, engaging in FSFE campaigns might become a difficult undertaking if you can't attend any of the local meetings. (Of course there are mailing lists, but those are, well, just mailing lists.) So for a US citizen, I think it would be more effective to join the FSF instead, and to stay in contac…
Hi all! I'm a Fellow of FSFE, too. Let me add that, as vog already mentioned, the Fellowship is open for everyone. I was told that FSFE already has some Fellows from the US. So you are not alone if you join FSFE. :-)
Of course some of the really great thinks of FSFE are the local Fellowship meetings, etc. which is more easy to organise with more Fellows around. But I would love to see Fellowship meetings in the US (usally 2-3 Fellows are already enough if you invite "non-Fellows" too). But all this is not mandatory to join FSFE. There are als FSF members at Europe without any FSF or LibrePlanet meetings. So the other way around would be perfectly OK too.
So, if you like FSFE than join us! :-)
Re: Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ... proofs were lacking on both sides ... religious fundamentalists (either christians or muslims). These are equally ridiculous statements. We know who did it, we know how they did it, we know why they did it. People just can't accept that enormous events can have relatively simple causes.
It's ridiculous to think that there is no possibility that there were people who could have prevented it, but choose not to.
While I think the intelligence agencies were just incompetent to identify the proper threat, perhaps for lack of an adequately warped imagination (911 was a game changer in the rules of plane highjacking - nobody ever used a passenger plane as a missile before), I don't think anyone allowed it to happen on purpose.
However, the president and his associates certainly saw the opportunity and ran with it. The damage done will take decades to undo.