61–70 of 247 posts
I lost all the respect that I had for FSF when they decided to re-elect Stallman. Would love to see a lot of changes in that foundation.
[flagged]
> We need more leaders of color, women, LGBTQ representation, and others besides. The present leadership, particularly from RMS, creates an exclusionary environment in a place where inclusion and representation are important for the success of the movement. I'm not a fan of RMS, but this is the exact kind of left wing platitude that people think will revive an organization, but really just signals thats the organizat…
I worked for a company which licensed its product as GPLv2. One of our clients (who we trained on the product) saw this and then began competing with us by selling their own version of our product. The company released a newer version of the code and made it proprietary. The FSF answer to this is that this is exactly how the GPL is intended to work Updating GPL code and making the resulting product proprietary is one…
Perhaps it is because of it ...
> Reform the leadership. It’s time for Richard Stallman to go. > We need more leaders of color, women, LGBTQ representation, and others besides. Stallman is in many ways a problem - but the solution is finding technically and socially competent leadership with a vision that aligns with the core ideologies of the FSF and the ability to lay it out as a coherent long-term plan. Forced diversity has not ever and will not…
Technical and socially competent leadership is compatible -- actually, well-aligned -- with diverse representation.
When someone starts out with bullet-point one devoted to orthogonal social issues and not the actual goals of the foundation and how to reach them, it's fairly clear where they stand.
>It’s time for Richard Stallman to go I was expecting to see this, there is nothing more corporations would like more then to see him gone. Then they can take full control of the FSF, already they have their hands in it. So far many of his predictions have come true and there are a few more that seems to be on their way to happening. What FSF should do is work stop the move to secure boot. Already there are Intel Lap…
That's amazingly over-optimistic IMO. Stallman hasn't been relevant in decades. Companies don't fear him. The FSF is as far as I can tell politically irrelevant.
Just look at even the nerdiest sites: HN, Slashdot, the Linux-centric subreddits. Nobody talks about what Stallman is doing today unless it's the old "Do we need a new FSF leader?" topic. Even that pops up infrequently to be then forgotten. Most of the time you see him brought up is in a historic sense, like your reference to the Right To Read, which is from 1997. I frequent all the places I listed, and from my activity there I haven't the faintest idea what Stallman or the FSF are up to.
If that's the state in the places that would be most interested in what Stallman/the FSF have to say, then in further away areas things are just dire and their influence is probably close to nonexistent.
I think Stallman did excellent and valuable work. But he just doesn't make an effective leader at this point. I think he'd make a far better "guru". The FSF should shove him to the side to some sort of consulting role, and give the role of the public face to somebody who can communicate more effectively.
And in any case, that's going to be needed on a pretty short timeframe anyway, since the man is just old. He can't do this forever, so there has to exist a worthy successor.
Are they even coming out with any new software? I remember GNU being big in the 1990s and I know a new version of gawk came out recently, but it seems the center of gravity of “free software” (as in beer) has moved in the direction of the Apache foundation (so many data-related projects it is a “big data” problem to keep track of them all), Github, etc.
GNU Guix (package manager and OS distro) is a pretty big project, that's fairly recent.
1: https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-pr...
There's going to be a lot of negativity in these comments. I don't have numbers and this is purely anecdotal observation, but there is a large contingent of supporters of the FSF that base their association to the foundation on their political positions (read: a very large number of communists, democratic socialists, and anarchists support FSF). Any criticism of RMS will be met with at least anti-corporate but most l…
Whether or not the FSF is still the best champion for this cause is a different matter, but I support anyone pushing against the world of proprietary software.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
It's his history and actions that made him unsuitable for the position. Despite that, they still decided allow him to return to the board. While RMS and FSF have done great things in the past, actions should have consequences and movement shouldn't be tied to one person.
I'm all in for finding a replacement for Stallman, but that must be done in a more careful manner.
[flagged]
Then what, precisely, are you calling for when you call for more surface-level diversity in the leadership? How do you achieve proportional representation without manual manipulation?
And why do you think that DEI is the first problem worth listing? If we're criticizing Stallman as an unpopular and uncharismatic leader, it seems like his documented history of comments about child molestation should be #1, not vague hand waving over race and sex.
>It’s time for Richard Stallman to go I was expecting to see this, there is nothing more corporations would like more then to see him gone. Then they can take full control of the FSF, already they have their hands in it. So far many of his predictions have come true and there are a few more that seems to be on their way to happening. What FSF should do is work stop the move to secure boot. Already there are Intel Lap…