Time to fork the FSF • Hacker News Board

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#121

Post by rwmj » Sat, Oct 08, 2011, 6:25 AM UTC

jpadvo wrote: post #70

sgentle wrote: post #21

I don't get it, personally. Yes, Stallman's a loon - although as an aside I think that every good movement needs its loons. Who's going to say "you know what? I believe in Free Software so much that I will use nothing else, and publicly and harshly declare that anyone doing otherwise is a moron and a traitor to the future of humanity"? Anyone who is willing to sacrifice the usefulness of the last 30 years of propriet…

The issue is not at all with his opinion. It is that he expressed it in a horrendously, gratuitously crass and offensive way. Here is a transliteration into humane language of what he said: "My heart goes out to Steve Jobs' family in their time of grief. And my heart also goes to the millions of people who looked up to him as an icon and inspiration. But we need to not get so carried away honoring the dead that we fo…

The RMS posting is hardly "horrendously, gratuitously crass and offensive".

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#122

Post by VonGuard » Sat, Oct 08, 2011, 6:26 AM UTC

snth wrote: post #110

mrb wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loon is NOT an adjective that you can apply to Stallman. loon n 1: a worthless lazy fellow He is certainly not that. He founded the GNU project. Authored the GPL. Wrote dozens of open source applications. And overall contributed a lot to free software. Choose your words carefully!

Loon: a silly or foolish person. From my apple dictionary.

It's also a bird. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loon

The bird does, notably, have better hygiene than RMS.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#123

Post by poink » Sat, Oct 08, 2011, 6:36 AM UTC

This is kind of like wanting a "toned down" PETA. People don't devote their lives to marginalized causes without either having or picking up a twinge of zealotry. If you want those people to stand up for causes you mutually believe in, you have to take the bad with the good.

RMS might not be the best possible Free Software advocate, but I'm glad someone's doing it, and nobody else seems to be volunteering for the job.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#124

Post by rimantas » Sat, Oct 08, 2011, 6:38 AM UTC

josephg wrote: post #6

I'm aware of Stallman's advocacy on free software issues, but (completely honest question), what else does the Free Software Foundation do ? Software is at a point where its basically impossible to make anything useful without opensource software. Proprietary code is a minority in my stack both as a developer and as a user. Proprietary software is often good before opensource software is good, but consistently openso…

  > In short, I feel like the opensource movement has already
  > won. Aside from RMS's crusade against software patents,
  > how is the FSF still relevant?

It's not. Many won't agree, but time will show (or have it already?). Stallman's ideas were born at the time when absolute majority of computer users were also IT guys — and in that context they do make sense. However nowadays computers are just mere tools/entertainment machines for the most of the users. The only concern they have is "does it work", not "can I modify the program". For some reason there are people who cannot accept this shift and get more and more out of touch with reality each day.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#125

Post by rimantas » Sat, Oct 08, 2011, 6:41 AM UTC

Produce wrote: post #53

spitfire wrote: post #39

In the marketplace of ideas Stallman has a simple remedy for his woes with Apple. Make better software than them. Go on Richard, I dare you to.

He already does. The only difference in the perceived quality is the learning curve. Learn the *nix way and you will be enlightened. Learn the Apple way and you will remain ignorant (but have lots of time for shopping, cos math is so boring, right?).

Apple way? You mean the one where OS is unix? The one which comes with perl, php, python, ruby, etc? The one which comes with fee Grapher app?

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#126

Post by rimantas » Sat, Oct 08, 2011, 6:42 AM UTC

marshray wrote: post #55

leot wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but RMS is simply wrong, here. Jobs has put great software into more hands than RMS ever did. Jobs might well have (indirectly) had an even more positive influence on FOSS by spreading BSD. (I'm not saying that there isn't a ton of FOSS out there in lots of hands -- but RMS isn't responsible for its being there in the same way Jobs is responsible. Jobs is responsible for the iPhone. RMS isn't responsible for And…

Jobs has put great software into more hands than RMS ever did. You do realize that Apple has been dependent on GCC to build its products for most of Jobs' second tenure, don't you? Some of that is code that RMS personally wrote. The GPL license that, again, RMS personally wrote covers the kernel of the Android system. "Great software" that's in "more hands" than Jobs' devices. Jobs was a slick businessman like Gates.…

Gues who contributes a lot to LLVM and Clang.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#127

Post by orblivion » Sat, Oct 08, 2011, 6:48 AM UTC

bcrescimanno wrote: post #3

I tweeted earlier that I see RMS as the Fred Phelps (Westboro Baptist Church) of Free Software. He may not have started out this way; but these days he's completely single issue. If you're not doing free software 100% his way; you not only disagree with him but you are actually evil. Not just free software; but free software as RMS defines it(see GNU/Linux) or you're wrong. He's so blinded by his own zealotry that I'…

The problem is, RMS is part Fred Phelps, but also part Jesus Christ because he sortof started this whole thing, if my understanding is correct. Just like you got to respect Steve Jobs' accomplishments despite his own personal failings, I think (granted to a lesser extent) we gotta hand it to RMS, despite being a tactless fanatic, his moral compass always steers us toward the ideal for Free Software. And I should note I don't even agree with Free Software as a moral imperative, but freedom gives software more value none the less, and it's good to have someone there to point us in the right direction.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#128

Post by rimantas » Sat, Oct 08, 2011, 6:49 AM UTC

marshray wrote: post #104

leot wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point was that RMS is wrong when he asserts[1] that Apple and Jobs have hurt the development of free software. [1] RMS: " we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing "

My understanding is that Apple restricts the applications that it "allows" to run on users' iOS devices to the point that programming language interpreters were effectively banned until about a year ago, now they're merely severely restricted. Users of iOS devices are effectively prevented from running GPL apps because of the restrictions Apple is putting on other peoples' code on users' devices. It's not just agains…

  > It's an attack on all software developers.

I am a software developer and I don't think I am under any attack. Heck they gave me one more platform to develop for. And there is lots of open source code written for it already.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#129

Post by chanon » Sat, Oct 08, 2011, 6:50 AM UTC

I agree with this comment by "tom robinson" in the blog post:

To those saying you agree with what RMS wrote: that’s fine, but irrelevant. As a spokesman for FSF he shouldn’t be pandering to his already devout followers, he should be trying to convince others that the ideals of the FSF are worth pursuing, and he’s been doing an absolutely TERRIBLE job of that lately.

Silly campaigns of immature puns, lashing out at people who don’t say “GNU/Linux”, insulting a recently deceased man who much of the world admires, and making otherwise inappropriate remarks on a regular basis is an excellent way to alienate the people you’re trying to win over.

How have these tactics been working out for FSF? I don’t have stats, but anecdotally most new open source projects I come across have rejected the GPL licenses for BSD, MIT, Apache, etc.

Now imagine what FSF could accomplish if they had a spokesman with the skills of Steve Jobs

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#130

Post by jsz0 » Sat, Oct 08, 2011, 6:53 AM UTC

sgentle wrote: post #21

I don't get it, personally. Yes, Stallman's a loon - although as an aside I think that every good movement needs its loons. Who's going to say "you know what? I believe in Free Software so much that I will use nothing else, and publicly and harshly declare that anyone doing otherwise is a moron and a traitor to the future of humanity"? Anyone who is willing to sacrifice the usefulness of the last 30 years of propriet…

I think that every good movement needs its loons.

This is probably true but when they become an embarrassment and a liability it's better to distance yourself from them as much as possible. His latest comments are particularly insensitive but it goes a lot deeper than that. Most of the stuff he writes leaves me with a more negative view of free software. He basically wants people to reject most modern software/technology/services and devote their lives to being as spiritually pure as himself. Never-mind. I'll just use the closed software instead because that's not a commitment I'm willing to make. If everyone in his organization feels that way then it's doomed. He's now an intensely negative force.