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Today you have hardware that respects your freedom and free distros to choose from. You aren't facing the same situation RMS did when he started GNU. You're not acknowledging this enormous difference. Also, the GNU GPL v2 (a license the FSF wrote and RMS is a chief author of) doesn't "allow" proprietary software drivers into the Linux kernel. Allowing that is a choice of Linux kernel copyright holders who don't sue, encourage other Linux kernel copyright holders not to sue, or pass on copies of that variant of the Linux kernel with the proprietary software intact. No license can do any better because copyright holders always have the final say on whom they'll choose to sue.

Again it's GNU that has a solution to this (which you also don't acknowledge): GNU Linux-libre—a variant of the Linux kernel with the non-free software removed. This project and the essay that started this /. thread fully acknowledge that GNU Linux-libre won't run on all of the hardware Torvalds' variant of the Linux kernel will run on. But that's not the point; the point is keeping users in control of their computers, respecting their software freedom, and showing that one can do computing with a fully-free system running on fully-free hardware. The FSF doesn't "allow binary blobs to be a part of an OS", some distributors of GNU/Linux do that. No FSF-approved free distro includes non-free software and the free distro guidelines go beyond that to push for pointing to only free software. The user is free to add non-free software and/or repos to their system if they wish but an FSF-approved distro won't do that by default.

You claim "the free-software revolution is stalled" but offer no evidence to support the claim. It seems you overlook what the FSF is doing to promote software freedom and misstate the responsibility the FSF has for the Linux kernel project as a whole.

Your response strikes me as typical of programmers in that they don't recognize how their work can affect a great deal more people than almost all of the examples you cite. With the possible exception of mishandling food, none of the other examples come close to affecting the same order of magnitude of people as programmers can.

The recent VW emissions scandal is a perfect example: VW's proprietary software was used in around 11 million VW cars worldwide (that VW admits to) from model years 2009-2015. Comparable proprietary software was used in more cars of other makes and model years. VW's software apparently turned some VW cars into cars that never should have been sold. Other makes and models of cars are also showing bad signs of polluting too much and not being in line with regulations. The full scope of the damage has not been accounted for. Only centralized food processors working on very highly used ingredients have the potential for that kind of adverse impact.

This creates a situation that kills us slowly instead of quickly by polluting our air in ways our (admittedly inadequate) regulation framework was designed to disallow. Proprietary software cheated those tests by behaving radically differently in regular driving than in testing mode. These cars should all be taken back by their manufacturers at full cost to the manufacturer, giving the current owner a complete refund of whatever they paid for the car, and the manufacturer's higher-ups should pay with criminal penalties and huge fines because this is a serious environmental matter. Programmers know their software is widely used (some programmers even value the wide reuse of their code) but rarely do programmers brag that their software treats people ethically and well.

Being "aware of their moral compass" is too low a standard and something programmers have typically balked at besides. As Brad Kuhn points out, software freedom doesn't kill people, security through obscurity kills people, yet programmers today still debate the value of software freedom for its own sake instead preferring to either work on proprietary software outright, or choosing to value a non-free software-allowing right-wing corporate reaction to free software known as "open source". Read just about any /. thread today and you'll find plenty of technically literate people who balk at introducing ethics into the discussion, or try to explain away giving us all the means of helping ourselves via software freedom. Our best chance of finding and fixing the cheating car code is to require copylefted free software for all vehicles and make transfer of the complete corresponding source code and build instructions for said software with ownership of the vehicle. But we choose not to do our best motivated in part by those who would rather not enter into a moral discussion because they place business desires above how people ought to treat other people.

One easy way to help fix this is helping those who help us. Today the Linux kernel is used in a lot of products that end up in people's homes, listening and watching them all the time via cameras and mics controlled with proprietary software. It's hardly a stretch to imagine that non-technical customers are being spied on without their knowledge or consent. It's bad enough that Linus Torvalds' fork of the Linux kernel allows proprietary software (as opposed to GNU Linux-libre which does not), but GPL violations are rampant. We can help the Software Freedom Conservancy by funding their efforts to pursue GPL violations, and I hope you'll do so. We owe the entirety of free software routers to comparable efforts, freeing code from Linksys which we can apparently reuse in many other routers. That freed software and its derivatives makes routers more trustworthy, improv

The fork of the Linux kernel Torvalds distributes contains the "fragmentation" he claims isn't viable—Torvalds' variant of Linux contains proprietary binaries in it. These blobs of code are removed in the fully-free GNU Linux-libre kernel.

Hold up now, mr. FSF.

The kernel that Linus distributes is the Linux kernel, by definition.

Linux-Libre is a fork for FSF puritans.

Just as we come closer to ensuring no murders when we enforce laws against murder, we come closer to ensuring the software freedom described in the GPL when we enforce the GPL.

It's telling that Linus Torvalds said "I really think the license has been one of the defining factors in the success of Linux because it enforced that you have to give back, which meant that the fragmentation has never been something that has been viable from a technical standpoint." and hates enforcement ("Lawyers: poisonous to openness..."). The fork of the Linux kernel Torvalds distributes contains the "fragmentation" he claims isn't viable—Torvalds' variant of Linux contains proprietary binaries in it. These blobs of code are removed in the fully-free GNU Linux-libre kernel.

Linus Torvalds' position is more easily understood when you consider that Torvalds is a fan of the right-wing, proprietor-friendly open source movement which is a reaction to the older free software movement. The difference between the two movements has been described in writing (older essay, newer essay) and in every RMS speech for years.

You can see that difference playing out in Linus Torvalds' dig against GPL enforcement. Brad Kuhn, President and Distinguished Technologist of the Software Freedom Conservancy talked about the value of GPL enforcement in his most recent talk on the issue at linux.conf.au in 2016 in his talk "Copyleft For the Next Decade: A Comprehensive Plan", "Copyleft is not magic pixie dust; you don't sprinkle it on some code and then suddenly your code is liberated forever. I wish that were true but that's not how the world works." (9m2s). The way Torvalds talks about the GPLv2 you'd think the GPLv2 were magic pixie dust because that's what he wants Linux kernel copyright holders to believe—an unenforced GPL is fine—because Torvalds, like any good sycophant for proprietary software, knows what Kuhn reminds us of in Kuhn's talk, (around 13m1s), "If a copyleft license is not enforced it's indistinguishable from a non-copylefted license in practice.". But where Torvalds takes that as an instruction to not act in defense of the GPL, Kuhn says that as a warning against software proprietarism. Conservancy is the group doing that enforcement work to help assure all computer users actually get the freedoms of free software the GPL describes. That work includes GPL enforcement, specifically a coordinated compliance effort across multiple Conservancy projects.

Ah, the flames from someone without much finesse: Premature declaration of failure to discourage further examination ("The masses have spoken..."), misidentification of fault ("If Apple could have continued using gcc...", "[The FSF] should have gone into the hardware business..."), citing trends with no backing and overvaluing business interests ("...then corporations wouldn't have run away from any GPLv3 software..."), and outright lying about intention and execution ("...weighing the costs of the walled garden (censorship etc) vs the benefits (no viruses)...", "...the attempt to take over the Linux kernel by renaming GNU/Linux..."), your post has so much flamebait to choose from it's almost as if you were taking instruction from an open source proponent who is eager to convince licensors to pick non-copylefted software licenses so they see their work become charitable contributions to software proprietors.

If there's so little interest in protecting oneself from international spying, malware, and other forms of user abuse Glenn Greenwald and other journalists would find it hard to get articles on the Snowden revelations published anywhere, world leaders wouldn't be holding meetings about the Snowden revelations, and people/organizations around the world wouldn't care about encryption. Don't confuse a non-technical user's inability to do better than running proprietary apps from a walled garden with not caring about these issues. They get both no software freedom and plenty of malware in their choice. Most computer users are weighing options where freedom is not available; they're suffering from the myth of choice where all of the readily-available options they know about deny them loyal computers.

Speaking of proprietors, Apple is no victim here. Apple wasn't forced to switch to LLVM and Clang, they chose to because they're proprietors eager to rob users of their software freedom in derivative works. If any organization with the means can be accurately accused of not writing their own stuff, it's Apple not writing their own compilers but instead relying on other compilers. This goes back to NeXT which was the first big GPL copyright infringement case (according to Brad Kuhn, former Executive Director of the FSF which holds the copyright on GCC in his discussion on his OggCast "Free as in Freedom"). NeXT got caught distributing a proprietary derivative of GCC which contained code to compile Objective-C. When Jobs spoke with the FSF about the matter, the FSF informed him that they would enforce their license (GPLv2). Jobs never liked that and never forgot. Apple doesn't mind the GPL they just don't like to be in a position of equality with their users unless they can pull out of that relationship when it suits them (see Apple's purchase of Easy SW which originally developed CUPS).

The FSF never tried to "take over the Linux kernel" and isn't doing so now by properly identifying Linux as a part of an operating system. They have said for years and continue to say they would like the GNU Project to get a share of the credit (1, 2). They also acknowledge that there are systems that don't include GNU and therefore should not be called "GNU slash" anything. No doubt, it would be equally unfair and erroneous to call GNU/kFreeBSD or GNU/HURD a "Linux" system when Linux isn't a part of that. This has nothing to do with capability of writing a kernel; a Linux kernel without the blobs is available so there's no pressing need for a fully-free system to have its own original kernel written by the FSF or the GNU Project. The core of the issue was and is

I am so disappointed in the open source community. It's like they don't care about the very foundation this community was built on.

The open source movement was started to never raise a user's software freedom as an issue. Read the FSF's essays (older essay, newer essay) on how open source differs from free software and you'll get a very clear explanation of how open source's goal to speak to business means accepting proprietary software and whatever other anti-user stuff businesses want to implement with proprietary software (DRM, spyware, back doors, patent traps, etc.). Mozilla's partnering with Adobe, the Linux kernel accepting and distributing proprietary software as part of the project (code which GNU Linux-libre removes), and Mono developers celebrating Microsoft's releasing .NET software under the MIT X11 license without acknowledging the danger of Microsoft's patent promise are just a few examples of how the philosophical differences between the older ethically-minded free software movement and the younger developmental methodology-focused open source movement play out on the ground.

Seriously don't execute the halt and catch fire instruction.

At least he didn't accidentally execute an LNM instruction. This looks like it might also have been an attempt at SRSD with an SSD...

Note: I am not the grandparent.

hardware manufacturers could just write the Linux driver once for the lifetime of the ABI just like they do for Windows.

Until you install a service pack and then it breaks, as it has for me.

An unstable kernel API

The kernel API is generally stable. Generally, when it's broken, this is unfavourable.

Free and proprietary ideologies can co-operate, the problem is the free side doesn't want to make any concessions in order to foster that co-operation and then they get upset when the proprietary side just gives them the finger.

Except that the kernel licensed by Linus allows use of proprietary binary blobs to make this possible, so concessions have been made. In fact, because the kernel contains some binary blob, some people have provided tools to remove the blobs from the kernel.

Stop being such a religious absolutist and realize that not everybody bends to your point of view

This may come as a surprise, but your view clearly isn't exactly absolute or accurate.

FOSS world does exactly that, a culture of exclusion based on ideology.

I don't really have a problem with this difference to exclude something using ideology as opposed to legal licensing or company interests. It's obvious that FOSS is ideology based, but I don't really see what the point is you're trying to drive forward by identifying this, especially when compared to other software in the industry.

Addressing both your comment and the grandparent comment: this distinction of allowing non-free software is part of what distinguishes the older free software movement from the younger open source movement. RMS has been talking and writing about this critical distinction for years.

Consider the following from "Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software":

The idea of open source is that allowing users to change and redistribute the software will make it more powerful and reliable. But this is not guaranteed. Developers of proprietary software are not necessarily incompetent. Sometimes they produce a program that is powerful and reliable, even though it does not respect the users' freedom. Free software activists and open source enthusiasts will react very differently to that.

A pure open source enthusiast, one that is not at all influenced by the ideals of free software, will say, "I am surprised you were able to make the program work so well without using our development model, but you did. How can I get a copy?" This attitude will reward schemes that take away our freedom, leading to its loss.

The free software activist will say, "Your program is very attractive, but I value my freedom more. So I reject your program. Instead I will support a project to develop a free replacement." If we value our freedom, we can act to maintain and defend it.

In other words, open source won't endorse software freedom for its own sake. That movement was designed to never raise the issue of software freedom in order to promote a developmental methodology thought to lead to more reliable, more powerful programs. That methodology is fine as far as it goes (everyone likes powerful robust programs) but as we're seeing with the Snowden revelations, that methodology doesn't go far enough. RMS realized this very early on and has been providing ethical counterarguments since the open source movement began (older essay, newer essay).

This difference explains what we're seeing in the very different approaches taken in Linus Torvalds' fork of the Linux kernel versus the GNU Linux-libre fork of the Linux kernel. Linux-libre's distinction is that this fork removes the blobs that come with the Torvalds fork of the Linux kernel. Torvalds includes nonfree code meant to make the kernel run on more hardware which places a high value on convenience at the cost of software freedom. Linux-libre values software freedom instead. As a result, Linux-libre doesn't run on as much hardware and might not take advantage of everything modern hardware can do, but one gains a system they are allowed to fully inspect, share, and modify—software freedom. Linux-libre lets users make sure the software does only what that user wants that program to do. RMS, as recently as his recent responses to /. questions, encouraged readers to reverse engineer hardware in order to fully document hardware ("The parts of Linux we need to replace are the nonfree parts, the "binary blobs". [...] The main work necessary to replace the blobs is reverse engineering to determine the specs of the peripherals those blobs are used in. That's a tremendously important job -- please join in if you can."). This work leads to increased support for fully free operating systems, including fully free support in Linux-libre.

Increased security is one of the things you get with the pursuit of software freedom for its own sake. I think RMS very much recognizes the security enhancements that come along with Linux-libre and why his org

can I shove this in the face of windows fanboys who say that anyone could submit anything they want to Linux and you don't really know what's in there?

The fork of the Linux kernel maintained by Linus Torvalds contains non-free software. The Linux kernel fork maintained by the Linux Libre team is based on that kernel and "remov[es] software that is included without source code, with obfuscated or obscured source code, under non-Free Software licenses, that do not permit you to change the software so that it does what you wish, and that induces or requires you to install additional pieces of non-Free Software".

So you could point anyone running non-free software to the FSF's list of free GNU/Linux system distributions and to the guidelines where one can understand how the FSF decides what to put on that list.

there's Linux-libre.

http://linux-libre.fsfla.org/pub/linux-libre/releases/LATEST-3.6.0/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux-libre

Linux, the kernel developed and distributed by Linus Torvalds et al, contains software that is included without source code, with obfuscated or obscured source code and code under non-Free Software licenses. Linux-libre removes these parts.

http://www.fsfla.org/svnwiki/selibre/linux-libre/

So, you're saying it is a lot, lot less functional, possibly even to the point of uselessness. Hmm. Doesn't sound like my cup of tea.

Linux, the kernel developed and distributed by Linus Torvalds et al, contains software that is included without source code, with obfuscated or obscured source code and code under non-Free Software licenses. Linux-libre removes these parts.

http://www.fsfla.org/svnwiki/selibre/linux-libre/

Problem is that the FSF/GNU has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that they are incapable of producing a kernel on their own. If Hurd has moved anywhere today, it's thanks to the likes of Debian and Arch, who are doing their own ports. Otherwise, most recently, FSF LA has taken Linux 3.3 and re-branded it 'Libre-Linux' after removing all 'non-free' software. Likely reason for it was Linus making it clear that his kernel is not going to go GPL3, so they decided to fork it to this and make it GPL3, and all the famous FSF distros - Blag, Dynebolic, Trisquel et al will at some point or other be using it, if they don't already.

Speaking of GPL3, it's the reason that organizations which previously didn't have problems w/ GPL2 are now discarding software that has 'upgraded' the license to GPL3 - best example being LLVM/Clang replacing GCC for that reason alone. The 'issue' of software as a service is actually not addressed - even the FSF concedes that it's impossible to address it, even while it thinks of it as an 'issue'.

Linux-libre addresses the problem of non-free firmware (which is incompatible with the GPL license) creeping into the kernel Linux over the years. Linux-libre cannot be relicensed under GPLv3 since Linux is licensed under GPLv2 (without or later) and changing the license to version 3 would require the consent of all the developers (and Torvalds is known to prefer version 2 so it won't happen).

Problem is that the FSF/GNU has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that they are incapable of producing a kernel on their own. If Hurd has moved anywhere today, it's thanks to the likes of Debian and Arch, who are doing their own ports. Otherwise, most recently, FSF LA has taken Linux 3.3 and re-branded it 'Libre-Linux' after removing all 'non-free' software. Likely reason for it was Linus making it clear that his kernel is not going to go GPL3, so they decided to fork it to this and make it GPL3, and all the famous FSF distros - Blag, Dynebolic, Trisquel et al will at some point or other be using it, if they don't already.

Speaking of GPL3, it's the reason that organizations which previously didn't have problems w/ GPL2 are now discarding software that has 'upgraded' the license to GPL3 - best example being LLVM/Clang replacing GCC for that reason alone. The 'issue' of software as a service is actually not addressed - even the FSF concedes that it's impossible to address it, even while it thinks of it as an 'issue'.

He pushed Ubuntu? That's strange - he includes Canonical in the list of organizations whose software fails his definition of 'free'. In fact, FSFLA (as in FSF Latin America, not Los Angeles) has forked Linux and produced a kernel called Libre-Linux, whose only difference from other Linux versions is that it won't get adulterated w/ 'non-Free software'. On GNU's main page, they're now promoting Trisquel. In fact, the distros that the FSF promotes are ones I guess even most /.ers have never heard of - Blag, Dragora, GNewSense (which Stallman uses on his Lemote Yeedong), Tuto, Venenux and so on. None of the common ones, such as Debian, Red Hat, Ubuntu, and so on. In fact, they go out of their way to explain why they are 'non-Free'. Their reasons are classic - for instance, for Debian, 'the installer in some cases recommends these nonfree firmware files for the peripherals on the machine.', for Canonical, 'Ubuntu offers the option to install only free packages, which means it also offers the option to install nonfree packages too'. In short, you can't win w/ this bunch of whiners, no matter how much of free software you provide, or how careful you are to separate the 'free' from the 'non-free'.

In reality, the reason FSF have forked Linux is that Linus has made it clear that he won't make his kernel GPL3, and the FSF/GNU guys have proven themselves completely incompetent and incapable of producing HURD. Even the guys @ Debian and Arch are better at this. My guess - FSF is just going to take every version from kernel.org, stamp GPL3 on them, rename them and release them on their own - they're incapable of working on the kernel themselves.

I agree w/ the AC 2 levels up. If we were talking about Stallman actually writing code that prople would be interested in using, such as Openshot video editor or PDFcreator or Calligra Suite, then I'd agree that Stallman has contributed more in the last 5 years than AC has. All Stallman has done is shamelessly demand that software companies pay to host him at conferences, and suck up to his obsessions, such as calling Linux 'GNU/Linux', avoiding the term open source and talking about 'software freedom', and obsess about privacy violations of big brother. One doesn't need any programming, software development or even management skills to do that - all one needs is to be insanely opinionated. And on this front, I have no idea what Mr AC does for a living, but I'm willing to wager that s/he would be more successful in winning over organizations to her/his side. Reason being that while one can make a case for either BSD or GPL3, the AC is more likely than Stallman to listen to what the 'community' wants and needs from the licenses, and produce something of that kind, whereas Stallman would just turn on his propaganda about how they are not promoting 'Software Freedom' and alienate them, rather than win them over.

Notice how organizations like Apple, BSD, et al are actively working on either removing or replacing every bit of software that's going GPL3, no matter how valuable, be it GCC, Samba, glibc, and you have your evidence that Stallman has finally turned GPL into something that developers flee from. Even some GNU projects, such as GNOME3, haven't adapted the GPL3 license, since they don't want to be kicked out by mainstream Linux users, I'm willing to bet that over time, Linus is more likely than not to gradually replace GNU userand with something else, just so that they don't get stuck w/ GPL3. At which point, calling the OS GNU/Linux will be about as inaccurate as calling a BSD GNU/FreeBSD, and Stallman would have done to GPL what MS might end up doing to Windows w/ Windows 8 - for all practical purposes, kill it!

This is the result of a few years of work by Alexandre Oliva (FSFLA), who worked on the Linux-libre project and travelled to give presentations about the amount of non-free software in the default Linux kernel.

http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
http://www.fsfla.org/svnwiki/selibre/linux-libre/

(it's also generally thanks to the gNewSense guys, Paul O'Malley & Brian Brazil in Ireland, who worked on the general issue of non-free software in distros, but the specific work on the kernel was championed by Alexandre.)

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
This was exactly what latin american free software needed. FSF - LA successfully "converted" many Brazilian trade unions to Free Software. Uruguay adopted Linux for OLPC, Argentina was going to adopt Linux but then Ballmer paid a visit to the president and now they use dual-boot. Ubuntu is already more popular than Mac, and Microsoft is the paradigm of "colonialist foreign corporation" that all the leftists despise. (See this article (spanish) from Venezuela: "Free Software vs. Privative Software: freedom vs. slavery")
I recall the last time Stallman visited Argentina, he spent more time with politicians than with programmers. I really hope this is our chance. OLPC is like Gramsci: if the kids learn linux there's no way to bring them to Windows once they grow up.

The linux-libre project removes binary blobs from its variant of the Linux kernel. I'm not convinced that most users' variants of the Linux kernel are entirely free software.

Actually FREEEEE was done by BLAG's developer Jebba, i guess the guitar piece is something he play with friends in his garage :)

We were highly enthusiastic about this device since the early beginning, FREEEEE was born with the intention to deploy the linux-libre kernel on the device

FREEEEE currently works with BLAG and Fedora-9 packages (I'm using it on my 900 eee), but is not actively mantained as we don't have so much time for it. Also the website is down.. yes we know :) all the scripts written ad-hoc are hosted on git.dyne.org/freeeee.git.

ciao

http://www.fsfla.org/?q=en/node/139#1

It's good to see Canonical following our advice, even if in such a limited way and not necessarily for the right reasons... A step in the right direction nevertheless.

Interestingly, we didn't know about Tom Clancy's fifth freedom when we wrote the editorial in the URL above. That's too bad, because it fits. Oh well...

I also can't understand the naming. Free and open standards are one of the most important things today a organisation like the "Free Standards Group" could do a great job in this area. Now merging this into a "Linux Foundation" just doesn't fit.

If you want a Foundation which cares about Free Software in general why don't support one of the Free Software Foundations? They exist exactly for this task. I don't know where you living but today you can find a Free Software Foundation in North America, Europe, Latin America and India. If you don't live in one of this regions just select one of them which is near your location or which you like most.

Also, I just want to add that between FSF, FSFE, FSFI, and FSFLA, organising events around the World is not so difficult. There is a local network of employees and/or volunteers in many cities (and these would be the places chosen to host events).

And, after getting many experts into one place so that a large discussion can be had, all events were recorded in some way. A good example is the European conference, for which the entire two days were recorded and put online.