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FSF Europe Founded
senfman writes "The German News Service Heise Onilne writes in this article, that the Free Software Foundation Europe was founded. The four founding members are Germans who look for people in other european countries to support them. The FSF Europe is going to cooperate with Richard M. Stallman to make sure that there are no differences between this institutions." Excellent.
"You cannot sign your program up under FSF Europe License because there is only one license .. the GNU License. Creating a license that might be governed by a different law made in Europe is creating un free software."
Result: FSF Europe cannot be different from FSF. Just a club.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Actually ... Europe has been around for millenniums (I know because it's been reported on Slashdot several times already). This link
shows the existence of prior art.
Corollary to Moore's Law: The IQ of new computer owners is declining.
~~~To the Karma Police~~~
Hey, this may be offTopic, but I'd prefer if you didn't mark it as such. Take a look at this thread to see what's going on. It's actually kind of interesting. It seems to be a flamewar between an editor from Slashdot (Michael) and someone in contact with Signal 11. I'm not posting anonymously because I'd like to show "TheReverand" who says--I think--that moderation intimidates readers into posting anonymously, that I don't agree and I don't mind speaking with my actual username because I trust you, the moderator. If this is unclear to you, I'd really appreciate it if you'd just ignore this post. Thanks.
~~~End of Disclaimer~~~
I kind of doubt this is genuine, but for the sake of argument...
TheReverand, I have to point out to you that "[freezing] membership at about 10000 or so" isn't really a very useful way to increase freedom of speech. Maybe for the 10000 people but not for the greater good. As an advocate of freedom of speech, how can you suggest a solution that doesn't allow everyone to have a voice? Why should the first 10000 be the ones who have the voices? That seems sort of arbitrary. Sure, there are more trolls today than in the past, but that happens when there is a larger user base. It doesn't mean that the trolls are actually more disruptive. I also think there are a lot of intelligent people who have come along recently. Isn't that good? Doesn't that benefit The Greater Good? What kind of solution is it of yours that would exclude those intelligent, insightful, interesting and funny posters who make this forum a better place for everyone?
Just my 2 cents,
PhatKat.
(I should note that the change could have been done silently, so that you wouldn't have known who changed the password on your account.)
/. has lost all journalistic credibility. And thank you for doing your part to make it possible.
So the answer is more secrecy? That hardly seems consistent with the mission of YRO. You throw a fit every time a closed-source program dials out and shares user data with a secret server somewhere. You would've thrown a fit if Intel had secretly manufactured its PIIIs with serial numbers. You've built yourself a career here railing against abusive secrecy, and now you turn around and inflict the same?
I've never thought much of you, michael, but you've far exceeded my expectations here. You positively drip with hypocrisy. How can anyone read anything you ever post again knowing that whatever ideals you pretend to stand for are a ruse masking your power infatuation?
Thanks for reminding me why
Georg C. F. Greve is a longtime GNU supporter. I doubt he'd be involved in something designed to undermine the FSF in the US.
What could be very useful about the FSF Europe is creating a legal entity there that an accept tax free donations from EU citizens. I don't know the European tax laws, but the US generally prohibits claiming tax deductions for contributions to foreign charities. Now the legal system could be very different in Europe, especially in light of its emphasis on state support for charitable activities versus the private contributions in the US. (I just read an article someplace about how in Germany some arts organizations had no clue how to go about raising private funds for support).
People don't like to talk about using GPL code here (even the LGPL code) because management gets nervous. Even if the end result is a product for internal use only.
It would be nice to have the FSF here as a lobby, to clarify this and other issues such as the trouble with EU IP law.
See my journal, I write things there
"But the FSF doesn't want me to distribute software privately, only publicly or not at all."
This statement is very wrong.
The only thing that the FSF want is that if you recieve a binary, that you have rights to the source code as well. If you didn't get the binary, you don't get the source code.
Simple, isn't it. You CAN distribute privately. You don't have to distribute publicly. It says this in the GPL!
Stop being so contensious!
...um.."except change the license" is a restriction. The GPL is a restriction too.
I was not talking about licenses. I was talking about the philosophy of Free Software in general. Please reread my posts. My problem with RMS has nothing to do with his software, the GPL or Free Software in general. It has everything to do with his goals and ideology.
I am not attacking RMS the man. Instead I am attacking his philosophy which is a much different thing. RMS does not want software to be owned. This is the foundation upon which his entire philosophy rests. But I cannot accept that premise. This doesn't mean that I reject Free Software however, because I don't. In fact, the concept of Free/Open software is that much stronger because it doesn't depend upon a single philosophy.
And you are free to release your own software under any license you like. He doesn't dictate that.
No, he doesn't dicate that. But throughout his writings and talks he makes it very clear that he considers the authors of proprietary software to be immoral and evil. If he had the power to dictate what licenses people could or could not use, and exercised that power, I would stop attacking the philosophy and start attacking the man.
Is it an American thing, to attack whoever accomplishes something?
To restate the obvious, I am not attacking RMS. I am only attacking his philosophy. Is it a <insert your nation here> thing to consider a disagreement to be a personal attack?
I wish you'd just leave the poor guy alone. He is also a human being, you know.
And as a human being he has the capacity to be wrong.
And for all the people who endlessly post "he's a communist", he's stated publicly he isn't...so what is *that* all about?
For the record, I have never accused RMS of being a communist. If you're going to comment on my post, then please do so. But don't drag in every peeve you've got and dump it here.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I'm pretty sure, but please don't misunderstand me. We certainly wouldn't have free software in masses today like we have now if it hadn't been for FSF and ultimately, RMS. I think his "radicalism" about software freedom is why we have so much free software today. For Christ's sake, the term "open source" wouldn't even exist today hadn't it been for RMS, as that word was coined by people who liked the idea of free software but didn't like RMS' radicalism and the ideology behind it.
I personally think that his radicalism is a good thing, because you always know where you have him. He always tries to be as clear about his views and software freedom as possible. Although I don't agree with him about everything, it makes me trust him more than those who are willing to compromise about software freedom and licenses all the time, and end up with stupid licenses that are bad in the end anyway.
My point is, you can like or dislike RMS and his radicalism, but I think giving him credit for the success of the concept of free software is still due.
GNU/Linux. The Freshmaker.
Yes but there are limits on what is appropriate to do. Raising the "default" threshold for non-logged in users is very appropriate (which they have done). Linking karma from posts made with the "AC" button checked to the account they were posted with might help even more (they have the ability to do this, make an "AC" post logged in and your ability to moderate that discussion goes away.)
/. authors get. Given his responses here and the general attitude that he gives off, I have a feeling this problem won't go away on its own, and will get much worse if we see more of these "proactive" measures. He should apologize for blowing up, give the account back to where it belongs (signal11@mediaone.net), and begin to understand that you can't seriously post stories on censorship, while taking a "one hand doesn't know what the other..." attitude.
However, and as others have pointed out, when you single out one user it scares the others, even those with no real reason to be scared. It's a bad precedent to set, CmdrTaco agreed with this when he stopped wielding the ability to mass remoderate people (ironically those who were messing with Signal 11).
Not only that, but it definately shows that Michael is letting the abuse get to him. That does him quite a bit of harm, as now his last article seems to be about 75% crap, as opposed to the probably 35% that the other
Posted non-anon because this is stuff that matters.
This surely is good because it's getting easier form European programmers to identify themselves with this organisation. Sitting far away in the US, the FSF is "only" some good organisation over there that does good things but is not soooo important for us here in Europe, some programmers might think.
As anyone who has cared to look at the website can tell, this is so far only a Declaration of Intent. Greve, Bernhard, Werner, Peter and others are currently very busy with organisating a Free Software Foundation Europe. There will also be local chapters of this FSF Europe. If I have anything to say about this, and I think I do, Sweden will be one of those countries having a local chapter. This is interesting times indeed.
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
PDP-8 was not expensive compared to other systems at the time. And Unix initially was much cheaper than the competition. Don't judge history by today's $300 PCs running $80 Windows/Redhat.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
We certainly wouldn't have free software in masses today like we have now if it hadn't been for FSF and ultimately, RMS.
Maybe, maybe not. No one can tell. But one thing is certain, RMS did not invent the concept of free software. He was not coming up with something new, but trying to get back to what once existed.
The computer and software industry has undergone tremendous changes since their beginnings. At first hardware was incredibly expensive so software was thrown in for free. Now we have the opposite, where you can get the hardware for free by signing up for two years with a service. But the intrinsic value of source code has not changed. To say that free software all hinged on one man is ridiculous. Eventually someone would have done something similar.
Would free systems like Linux, GNU or BSD have arrived later without RMS? Maybe. But maybe they would have arrived earlier. Maybe without his radicalism the commercial developers wouldn't have shied away from it. We'll never know.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Is it? Are we all 100% sure of the perfection of the FSF model, that nothing needs to be changed about it (particularly RMS)?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.