Time to fork the FSF
larrythefreesoftwareguy.wordpress.com
Time to fork the FSF
1–10 of 340 posts
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#2so... it's perfectly ok to publish tons of linkbaits about 'how steve jobs changed my life' even if they are vague and repetitive boring opinions, but nobody can state his negative views on this occasion. gimme a break. death is sad, but it's good that there are people who had decided to stay out of this bubble.
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#3I 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'd argue that beyond the inner, hard-core "free software circle, he's seen as much of an embarrassment to the notion of free software as Phelps and Westboro are likely seen by other Christians.
I've felt this way a long time about RMS; his comment about Steve Jobs's death was uncalled for--but it really was well-within character. Just like Phelps and Westboro are expected to show up at soldier's funerals to protest, we've come to expect this type of shit from RMS--and I agree with the OP that it's time to stop just accepting it.
[Edit] I want to state that RMS, like everyone, is fully entitled to his opinion and that opinion carries no more or less weight than my own. Moreover, you're completely entitled to agree with him. What I do have a problem with is what the OP described: he doesn't belong at the head of a major organization, nor does he belong at the apex of the free software movement. Beyond my earlier described "inner circle," in the past several years, he's done more to tarnish the image of the free software community than to help it.
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#4I've attended one of Stallman's talks and it was more of a comedy than anything else. I don't actually take him seriously, he did some great work in the past but the world has moved on.
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#5so... it's perfectly ok to publish tons of linkbaits about 'how steve jobs changed my life' even if they are vague and repetitive boring opinions, but nobody can state his negative views on this occasion. gimme a break. death is sad, but it's good that there are people who had decided to stay out of this bubble.
If it wasn't obvious from the past few days, HN is that bubble. If you don't like the circle jerking about Steve Jobs, come back in a week or two.
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#6I'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 opensource implementations eventually outpace their proprietary counterparts. We saw this trend first with UNIX -> Linux. Today, just reading this webpage I'm using Chrome (Chromium + WebKit) which communicates via POSIX to the BSD network stack in my kernel (Darwin). The browser has been compiled with either GCC or LLVM. Hackernews is probably hosted on nginx / apache behind varnish or something, running on linux.
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?
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#7so... it's perfectly ok to publish tons of linkbaits about 'how steve jobs changed my life' even if they are vague and repetitive boring opinions, but nobody can state his negative views on this occasion. gimme a break. death is sad, but it's good that there are people who had decided to stay out of this bubble.
If it wasn't obvious from the past few days, HN is that bubble. If you don't like the circle jerking about Steve Jobs, come back in a week or two.
the first day I saw this http://i.imgur.com/xlNGD.png, today I took the risk to click HN and was very surprised the frontpage doesn't look like that. when you've heard the news, it's not news anymore.
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#8Emacs Virgin thing: http://opensourcetogo.blogspot.com/2009/07/emailing-richard-...
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#9so... it's perfectly ok to publish tons of linkbaits about 'how steve jobs changed my life' even if they are vague and repetitive boring opinions, but nobody can state his negative views on this occasion. gimme a break. death is sad, but it's good that there are people who had decided to stay out of this bubble.
Here, I'll let someone with much more eloquence than me explain to you why Stallman's diatribe is poorly wrought.
If Stallman had to make a statement emphasizing his dislike of Jobs' influence, he could still have done so respectfully. Consider this; "I didn't share Steve Jobs' vision of computing, and I wish he'd chosen to embrace free software. I'm very sorry that he's gone and we've lost the opportunity to have that conversation. My sympathies are with his family at this time." There's no need to pretend that Stallman liked Jobs, but his post is contemptible.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2011/10/why-fsf-found...
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#10After reading this, all I can say is that some people are too sensitive.