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Time to fork the FSF

larrythefreesoftwareguy.wordpress.com

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Re: Time to fork the FSF

#181

Post by loup-vaillant »

This is a common pattern: (i) someone famous dies, (ii) someone else says something bad about that celebrity, (iii) everyone else is scandalized. Thou shalt not bash the dead.

Now, I don't think Stallman's lines were gratuitously offensive. He was merely clear and concise. He spent no word on niceness, but he spent no word on rudeness either. And by the way, he is factually correct: Jobs was "the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed [among other things] to sever fools from their freedom" (or, if not the pioneer, at least the most effective apologist).

Now should he have just shut up? Probably not. Every one now is praising Jobs, and that may trigger even more sales for the iPhone and the iPad. Praise Jobs, and soon you will praise Apple's most locked down products. At least a word of caution is needed.

Now I do understand that Stallman knows next to nothing about how not to trigger bad feelings. I do understand that he should work on that. But please, don't be offended by something that most probably wasn't intended to be offensive.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#182

Post by viraptor »

brendoncrawford wrote: post #19

Go ahead... fork it. Then what happens? Will you travel the world tirelessly promoting free software, speaking at universities and other events for very little money? Will you maintain a job board, mailing list, hardware database, software directory, year after year? Will you find lawyers to donate hundreds of hours to write and revise licenses? Will you hire lobbyists to fight software patents? Will you tirelessly f…

There are other people who already do the same, he's not doing all the work by himself. He doesn't want to become the leader either, unless I missed something - he just sees a growing issue and organisation which he cannot identify with anymore. What's wrong with saying that he'd like to see a forked organisation with a leader that does not offend people very often and doesn't use someone's death to push his own ideas?

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#183

Post by narag »

motters wrote: post #160

Although Stallman didn't use a great deal of tact in his statement I agree with his concern overall. Software should serve the user in accordance with the ideal of individual empowerment with technology and not become a sort of jail controlled by a central authority that you have to struggle to break out of. The problem of impersonal computing is by no means isolated to Apple though.

Although Stallman didn't use a great deal of tact in his statement I agree with his concern overall.

That seems oddly similar to my tl;dr from the article: "Although I agree with his concern overall, Stallman didn't use a great deal of tact in his statement".

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#184

Post by ugh »

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…

Hey, you seem to be as clueless about communication as he is.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#185

Post by delinka »

forcefsck wrote: post #161
pushingbits wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It is not legitimate for the mass of HN to be "in grief" because of Steve Jobs's death. You may be sad, but certainly no grieving period should be necessary for strangers. When was this decided? And by who? Did I miss a memo? I've never owned an Apple product in my life, but the computers I have used, the smartphone I own, the tablet I will eventually get, the world I will live in 20 years from now, probably would n…

> but the computers I have used, the smartphone I own, the tablet I will eventually get, the world I will live in 20 years from now, probably would not exist if it wasn't for Steve Jobs. This is such an overstatement. What makes you so sure that Jobs had a positive influence on the world? You can't tell if in his absence something better would evolve. Not all his ideas were originall nor all the inventions were his o…

I think it's pretty telling that tablet computers have existed for ... what, 15 years? And that tablet computing didn't take off with consumers until iPad. I think that's a fine example of how Steve influenced a change in the world.

The Average Person has no concept of How Things Could Be Better. They just take what's available, get the job done, take their paycheck and live their lives. iPad seems to be the first time that Average Jane is saying things like "it'd be really nice if more of what I need to do could happen on my iPad." Maybe it's not to the point of consumers actually driving demand -- such as demanding text books in digital form -- but it's a start (and a welcome change from people just accepting the status quo.)

The reasons from iPad's success and other tablets' failures are irrelevant to my point. Would the rest of the industry have eventually figured out how to make tablets marketable to all of humanity? Perhaps eventually, but the world we live in today, the one where tablets (specifically iPads) are in demand now is the one in which we live.

"...probably would not exist if it wasn't for Steve Jobs." Exactly. And also if not for Steve Wozniak. And if not for Bill Gates. And a handful of other people in the industry that worked with and competed against each other early on in their careers.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#186

Post by apgwoz »

themgt wrote: post #80
learc83 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't always agree with RMS, I think he truly believes everything he says. I don't think the same of Fred Phelps. I long ago reached the conclusion that he tries to say the most inflammatory thing possible wether he really believes it or not. I have no idea why, but I believe he has some other agenda than just the condemnation of homosexuality. I've even almost seriously entertained the idea that he is a clos…

The fact is though, RMS, today in 2011, isn't helping the free software movement any more than Phelps is helping Christianity It's hard to understand the internal reality that either is basing their actions on anymore, but it doesn't change the fact that they both see the world through their own singular vision which they're no longer able to coherently share with others and convince others of - they've taken their p…

I'm sure that if Larry Ellison died, it wouldn't only be RMS making this comment.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#187

Post by gbog »

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…

> All progress depends on unreasonable men.

This is a very bold generalization grounded on nothing. Once we had rational discussions here.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#188

Post by raganwald »

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.

Actually, Stallman DOES have taste. He lacks a design aesthetic, but that is not synonymous with taste. Taste is about having an internally consistent means of making choices.

The reason people say Microsoft had no taste is that they never said no, they bolted any old thing onto the side of Windows, there never really has been a sense that Windows is this and this but not that.

Stallman has an extremel sharp sense of what free software is and isn't, I'd call that taste with a capital T. Now, if someone were to say it isn't GOOD taste, well, that's a worthwhile conversation to entertain.

Windows, on the other hand... No idea how it is today, but up to XT it absolutely lacked any sense of taste, it wasn't even bad taste, it simply was stuff higgledy piggledy, some things for experts who use the command line, some chrome for newbies, all next together, but never as powerful and flexible as Unix nor as easy as Macintosh, but not even designed for the middle of the road user.

In other words, no taste.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#189

Post by jsavimbi »

microtonal wrote: post #135
rwmj wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, it is completely distasteful, and representative of actions that caused me to slowly change from being an FSF associate member to believing that FSF is a threat to free software rather than an asset. Of course, RMS is not speaking for the FSF here, but there in recent years there is a history of missteps (Emacs virgins) and childish campaigns (Windows 7 sinds, Bad Vista, etc.) associated with the FSF. It seems th…

> Where is the humanity?

Exactly.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#190

Post by alain94040 »

DanBC wrote: post #131
forensic wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

It's not outrage at Stallman's comments, but asking whether someone who is horrendously, gratuitously crass, offensive and insensitive of people's emotions should be "cheerleading" free software. See also RMS's disappointment at the developer busy with a new child - start here ( http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel/36137 ) His inability to understand people is distracting from the aims of FSF.

Indeed:

>It doesn't take special talents to reproduce--even plants can do it. On the other hand, contributing to a program like Emacs takes real skill.

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