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Time to fork the FSF

larrythefreesoftwareguy.wordpress.com

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Re: Time to fork the FSF

#171

Post by burgerbrain »

rimantas wrote: post #128
marshray wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Stockholm syndrome.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#173

Post by icebraining »

aaronmorey wrote: post #92
sliverstorm wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ironic- it would seem to be RMS who is getting carried away. A great man has died, and all RMS can think about is what this means for the Free Software movement? To me, this discredits him more than anything I have ever heard him say. Software is not more important than life. Disclaimer: Actively avoids Apple products

I think this is a microcosm of a problem I've seen in the open source area in general... a preference for code over people. Open source software won't take over by being 1.86x faster and using a totally sweet heap sort algorithm. I'm a geek and I find that kind of thing interesting at an intellectual level, but it doesn't make me want to spend an entire Saturday trying to get Linux to recognize my sound card. "Normal…

RMS is not part of the Open Source movement and he was never the one to claim the technical superiority of open source. He thinks that misses the point.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#174

Post by rufugee »

0x12 wrote: post #151
aaronmorey wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a microcosm of a problem I've seen in the open source area in general... a preference for code over people. Open source software won't take over by being 1.86x faster and using a totally sweet heap sort algorithm. I'm a geek and I find that kind of thing interesting at an intellectual level, but it doesn't make me want to spend an entire Saturday trying to get Linux to recognize my sound card. "Normal…

> but it doesn't make me want to spend an entire Saturday trying to get Linux to recognize my sound card. Stuff like that is FUD though, linux sound support is pretty good these days and the amount and variety of devices supported dwarfs the best the commercial world has to offer. In general, Linux support of legacy devices is amazing. Newly minted hardware without a factory supported driver is a different kettle of…

This. I haven't had to troubleshoot a hardware problem in years, and I use Linux daily and install it quite often (I touch a lot of hardware). Don't subtly degrade something with FUD unless you speak from recent experience.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#175

Post by gurkendoktor »

fletcher wrote: post #152

What Stallman said is just, analytically speaking: 1) I don't like when people die. 2) But this happened to Steve Jobs, unfortunately. 3) However from my point of view he was doing so much damage to the world of software that this is a good thing. Not the fact he died but the fact that we no longer have his influence. Note: I don't agree. But I don't think it should be a problem to say the above. It is like if you ar…

Nobody wants to take this freedom away, but it hurts the cause he is supposed to advance, and that's what the posting is saying.

I can't see how mentioning human life and software licensing in the same sentence is ever a good idea if there is a chance that interested non-nerds are reading up on your ideals.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#176

Post by qntm »

forensic wrote: post #83
jpadvo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>horrendously, gratuitously crass and offensive way. And? It's rms. He's the biggest nerd in the world. Nerds are expected to be horrendously, gratuitously crass, offensive and insensitive of people's emotions. This is like being mad that the sky is blue. Pointless outrage.

> Nerds are expected to be horrendously, gratuitously crass, offensive and insensitive of people's emotions. This is like being mad that the sky is blue.

Speaking as one of millions of pleasant, sensitive nerds, I find this offensive.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#177

Post by Sandman »

While most of the commenters here discuss what Stallman said and what he actualy meant, whether it was distasteful or not, and whether Jobs was a modern day messiah who single-handedly changed the world we live in or just a smart business man with a very good sense of choosing the right people to create the products that he envisioned, I'd like to take a minute to think about what is actually proposed in this article - the forking of FSF. It's quite obvious from the article that the reason the author suggests something like that is not because his views on software freedom somehow differ than those of Stallman, but because he has issues with Stallman himself, or more precisely, with his publicly expressed opinions. He feels that they hurt FSF and free software in general. Isn't then the solution to the problem to, through some electoral process, replace Stallman and put a new figure at the head of FSF? Somebody more tactful, more careful about how they say what they mean (if that's truly the kind of a person memebers of FSF would like to see in charge)? Starting a new foundation with exactly the same goals as FSF, just because you don't like Stallman's public statements, seems pointless to me.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#178

Post by praptak »

forensic wrote: post #134
praptak wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of the linked article, as I understood it, was that "it's just Stallman being Stallman" should no longer be an excuse for tolerating this behaviour. It casts bad light on the free software community as a whole.

I guess you need to specify what you mean by "tolerate" If you're saying it's organizationally foolish to let Stallman be the face of the FSF due to his insensitivity... I can see a good argument there. If you're saying we need to stop "tolerating" nerd insensitivity by condemning them on blogs and refusing to use their software and stuff like that, then I just think that is childish and pointless.

Gosh, I certainly did not mean the latter. I'm ok with Stallman being crude on his own. I am not ok with this behaviour representing the free software movement.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#179

Post by v21 »

ori_b wrote: post #107
keyist wrote: post #40

RMS has the FSF and Defective By Design sites as soapboxes if he wished to gain more attention from Jobs's death. This was a post on his political notes page. He did nothing to publicize it. He didn't post to aggregators or tweet to ask for upvotes (technically it was posted on his Identi.ca account which is linked to his political notes feed, but it got no special treatment). If some major sites hadn't picked up on…

When you're a public figure, you have no personal pages. If it's public, it's part of your image.

But there's still a distinction between RMS and the FSF.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#180

Post by v21 »

orblivion wrote: post #133
BigCanOfTuna wrote: post #12

Crass and insensitive but in line with everything I've ever heard him profess to believe. He's never strayed from his goal in making great software available to millions of people around the world, and he's never given a shit why it shouldn't or couldn't be done his way...damn, that sounds familiar.

I don't think Jobs would say anything bad about Stallman if Stallman died first. Because unlike Steve, in Steve's words (vis a vis Bill Gates) Stallman has no taste.

Jobs knew public opinion, and how to sway it. Stallman is a zealot.
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