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RMS Running For GNOME Board Of Directors
An anonymous reader points to this story at Newsforge which says that "RMS is throwing his hat in the ring as a candidate for the GNOME foundation board of directors. Speculation is that he's pissed because the GNOME summary keeps mentioning non-free software; now he's going to (try to) do something about it."
>GNU/Gnome
Gnome itself has GNU in the acronym.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
So RMS wanted an alternative to KDE bacause it was not "Free Enough" and created GNOME. They build the proyect on GTK Toolkit which is LGPL. LGPL allows to be used by non-Free products (see why LPGL is bad)
But now KDE is completely GPL and Free (Qt Toolkit now is GPL). So it is the perfect Free Desktop. Meanwhile GNOME have walk the oposite path and now is commercial.
I think RMS should join KDE team :-)
MOD THE CHILD UP!
"Per the GNOME Foundation's charter, any contributor to GNOME is eligible for membership. Although it is difficult to specify a precise definition, a contributor generally must have contributed to a non-trivial improvement of the GNOME Project. Contributions may be code, documentation, translations, maintenance of project-wide resources, or other non-trivial activities which benefit the GNOME Project. While large amounts of advocacy or bug reporting may qualify one as a member, such contributions must be significantly above the level expected of an ordinary user." from the GNOME foundation membership qualification page.
I don't think RMS fits these qualifications. The GNOME foundation membership, and all the more the board (almost all GNOME contributors are foundation members) should be active members of the GNOME community. Simply "being RMS" does not qualify one; the foundation is intended to represent the interest of those who make it happen, that is contributors.
As a minor side niggly, the candidacy period is over and I didn't see a message from RMS, so technically he isn't qualified to run this year anyway.
Perhaps he'd like to contribute to the GNOME project and re-apply next year?
-seth (GNOME Usability Project Lead)Yes. That post was what I was specifically referring to. RMS is whining that non-free (by his definition) software is being mentioned in the context of "free" software.
You know, I've always resisted comparing RMS to a communist, but this sounds like what the Soviet Union would do. "We must expunge all references to evil Capitalism from our literature so the people are not poisoned with impure thoughts. They will only be exposed to the beauty that is the communist ideal."
Sorry for pulling out the "instant flamebait" of the C-word, but I find this unbelievably appalling.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Hearsay evidence is given by the following quote: "RMS replied telling us that he disagreed with my argument and saying the we are legitimatizing the use of non-free software by mentioning it. I left it at that, but today RMS remailed us today asking us to confirm that we will not mention non-free software anymore."
The message that sparked this email is unknown, but circumstantial evidence would seem to point to the idea that RMS wants no mention of non-free software in some projects.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
This is interesting because there is now major heat between RMS of GNU and Miguel of Ximian. Miguel has even attacked RMS in public once or twice, this was around the glibc flamewar. Miguel even stated he regretted having ever made GNOME part of the GNU project.
Apparently RMS has long been politically maneovering around GNOME. Miguel didn't approve. My guess is this was part of the reason the GNOME Foundation was created.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
Did you actually bother to check the link or look into any of the background to this?
2 00 1-October/msg00049.html
if you look at
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/
you will see a more direct quote (although not the most damaging by a long way).
The 'hearsay evidence' is a public disclusure of discussions between RMS and Christian Schaller, who authors the GNOME summaries (and has done for some time, doing a fantastic job). He has been strongly backed in this particular event by people such as Alan Cox and Miguel de Icaza. This is not a case of anonymous rumour-mongering.
Perhaps you should learn to investigate issues rather than just defending people 'on principle'.
All activists, of any stripe, are authoritarians. ... Non-authoritarians take the world at face value. Therefore, you don't see them forming or active within liberation movements. This is not a paradox. It's perfectly logical.
Hm. Have you by any chance read some Krishnamurti? I recall him saying something about people wanting to Revolt against the system, only to create a new system for others to revolt against... (which is not to say that some systems aren't better than others... it's just that some people are more keen on revolting than they are on rethinking.)
Mod. me 'Offtopic', you anal nerd who can't connect two simple ideas...
>>I can't create a KDE application and sell it without buying a QT license for over $2000
>So you can't get rich on the efforts of others without giving them something back? Tough.
Your killer app is just going to have to be open source isn't it?
Yeah, it's all about giving NOTHING back... that's what he said right? NO. This is a favorite KDE strawman tactic (or maybe you miss the point)... to deflect all license criticism as "you must be a freeloader".
The above poster did not say he did not want or believe that *NOTHING* should be given back. He SAID it costs $2000 to develop a non-free application for KDE.
How many non-free applications do you own (or "use") on different platforms? I use quite a few that simply DON'T EXIST in the GPL world and you will only find them on Windows. Open source apps are not good at all at filling in small "niche" applications, and giving said applications a polished user interface.
Don't believe me? Go into ANY Linux #irc channel, and ask what application is closest to the batch image processing of "Paint Shop Pro". The answer you will hear is "write a perl script to loop around Image Magick". In #linux, often the answer to "What program does this" is usually "write a script". But that's OK, all this innovative shareware will probably be cloned as free software someday. Um, maybe. In the meantime, that lack of flexibility of Linux means it's yet another place I can't sneak Linux into the corporate world. Good job, you.
The point is not can or can not Jasc software afford the $2000 barrier to commercial software. Instead, my point is there are PLENTY of small software shops that would consider porting to Linux, but can't afford this high cost.
What you might call "scummy shareware", *I* would call "mom and pop software". It's where most great ideas get their start. In Windows, Shareware tends to be TOO commonplace... but that's Microsoft's fault (I mean, shipping Windows without a ZIP-capable program?? Please!!). Shareware would be less of a disease on Linux than it has with Windows.
I guess KDE is SO FREE SOFTWARE PURE that they don't mind polarizing the software world into the big Borlands and the Microsofts on one side, and the free software purists on the other. No small wanna-be software developers at all in the middle.
Guess where "innovation" comes from? The small software company. I wish I could say Microsoft's licensing took away more freedom than Troll Tech's, but it's just not true. We'll always be stuck copying other people's ideas, or taking the big-software crap that is given to us.
And I really get a kick out of people saying BECAUSE Troll Tech disallows development by small software companies, they must be MORE FREE than GNOME. Please. These are the same people who said "fuck the GPL" when it was convenient to violate the license.
I'd say the "parts of gnome are currently either horribly broken or simply unimplemented" is a mischaracterization. I use gnome everyday and rarely have problems provided I use the ximian distribution.
I think a score 4 for the above post is probably due to moderator bias. It made an unqualified criticism for a very successful project. I don't know a single opensource project that doesn't have this political infighting going on.
In my opinion RMS is merely a political type these days. If he wants to contribute to the project he should do so at the keyboard with vi onscreen.
Please also keep in mind that your beloved KDE started before Gnome, and the QT liscense is still not universally "free"; however, the gtk IS.
Please reconsider the rating on the above posting, its obvious that the poster has not used a distribution of gnome in some time and didn't even have the courage to post under his own identity.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.