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The Free Software Foundation is dying

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Re: The Free Software Foundation is dying

#91

Post by no_time »

jmclnx wrote: post #4

>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…

>What FSF should do is work stop the move to secure boot. Already there are Intel Laptops being created that will not allow us to replace Windows with Linux or a BSD.

Can you provide an example or article? I have not yet encountered an intel platform that refuses to erase the secure boot keys.

That being said, I would not be surprised.

Re: The Free Software Foundation is dying

#92

Post by Ekaros »

emu7652 wrote: post #73

>We need more leaders of color, women, LGBTQ representation, and others... That is dangerous mindset, so dangerous that I think the article is just trolling, trying to trigger people. But in case if author was serious, choosing leadership or any position for tha matter, should be based on their vision, skill, the weight of their respect is set community rather that on their sexual orientation, color of their skin, co…

I think main question really should be how effective they would be in the role. And what truly are the goals of FSF and how could right leadership aim at those.

Now some might thing diversity and inclusion should be the goals, but I think many disagree and consider that there is enough other organizations being able to do those things. FSF should have unique value proposition if it wants to continue to exist. And leadership should be effective for that value proposition.

Re: The Free Software Foundation is dying

#93

Post by jsnell »

jmclnx wrote: post #4

>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…

> What FSF should do is work stop the move to secure boot.

How would they do that? They have no influence, and if anything have worked for decades to alienate any potential allies. Nor do they have any leverage via the software or licenses the control. The only GPL software that's best of breed is Linux, which FSF has no say on. No critical software uses the latest versions of GPL.

Re: The Free Software Foundation is dying

#94

Post by nicpottier »

shortrounddev wrote: post #58
nicpottier wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you don't want inclusion to be your only bar, but if you don't state it as a goal from the beginning then it won't even be considered. It is becoming a bigger and bigger red flag for an organization to not have some diversity of gender or race, pointing it out is not inappropriate.

> if you don't state it as a goal from the beginning then it won't even be considered I don't think it should be a goal. I think it should be a societal goal to provide equal opportunities to everyone, and we can probably measure the results of those efforts by a statistical sample at the end of the pipeline: what % of engineers are black, white, etc. If we find over-representation of one group in a field which usual…

My view is WE are society, change starts at home etc.. Again, my point here was that pointing out lack of diversity is absolutely appropriate. I disagree that we get to just say it's the pipeline's fault and not try to do better in our organizations.

Re: The Free Software Foundation is dying

#95

Post by layer8 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #8

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.

Apache only provides organizational infrastructure for OSS projects, the foundation doesn’t drive the development and maintenance proper. Apache projects are usually either heavily supported by companies, or else on life support if not dead.

Re: The Free Software Foundation is dying

#96

Post by dale_glass »

cgio wrote: post #30

Maybe it’s dying because it already succeeded in its goals. That’s a good thing. From my myopic perspective, RMS is FSF. And he has changed the discussion around software forever. Now we need another kind of freedom, we feel it but cannot articulate it. And whoever articulates it, I wish them all the best, whether they do so under the banner of FSF or something else. One thing I am almost sure of is that whatever wat…

> Maybe it’s dying because it already succeeded in its goals.

Not really? Stallman obviously wants everything possible to be GPL licensed and harped on about GNU/Linux for decades, and so far all that is gradually fading away.

The modern landscape is much different from when things started, the core tools are a far smaller proportion of a modern OS and have been rewritten many times since, including in non-GPL licenses. These days there's efforts to rewrite them in Rust, usually not under the GPL.

I think under better management the FSF would do a better job of dealing with this. Both in watching for new developments and making sure not to lose relevance (eg, IMO the FSF should lead the effort to build new Rust-based versions of the GNU tools), and in being in touch with the modern tech landscape (eg, cloud)

Re: The Free Software Foundation is dying

#97

Post by acdha »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #7

How is the FSF failing? There seems to be far more freedom respecting choices nowadays than in the past and we're now entering the dawn of "free" cpus with RISC-V. I'd also consider that Linux is more widely used than at any time in the past as well. What am I missing?

Those things are happening without much involvement by the FSF – Linux, for example, is famously not an FSF project to the point that some activists tried to popularize the “GNU/Linux” label. I’m not saying that the FSF has no role or that some of the software it supports isn’t incredibly widely used (GCC, etc.) but that it’s seemed to be coasting for years, drifting out of the mainstream even for open source developers. That makes their mission harder to accomplish because everyone knows that they don’t speak for a large percentage of the community.

This largely comes back to RMS. It’s fairly common for organizations to have trouble surviving the departure of a key founder, and in his case that is especially complicated by having run it for decades as largely a personal vehicle. This was especially glaring when he was invited back after leaving in a cloud: how much does a “so what if he drove people away, he’s been here for years!” message suggest that they’ll become more relevant in the future, especially with the people who saw that and decided never to touch an FSF effort?

Re: The Free Software Foundation is dying

#99

Post by yarg »

brodouevencode wrote: post #56

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…

Ah yes, the notorious den of communists that is Hacker News?
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