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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."
RMS has ideas and though some may argue that they are extreme, he isn't afraid to do something about them. Him running for a position on the GNOME Foundation's board of directors is a perfect example.
The Moo went "Cow!"
It isn't enough for RMS to promote his ideas of what "free software" should be about. Now he has to censor everyone else and become the thought police?
I agree with the mailing list poster who said if RMS doesn't like it, let him publish his own "pure" list, sanitized and "approved" for reading by the ignorant masses.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
To me this just smacks of him trying to get his name assosiated with another project, so when Hurd does become ready for prime time, he can say GNU accomplished the creation of a free Kernel/tool and desktop environment.
Gnome seems to be dropping off of the map in developmental terms. It feels fragmented and just plain messy. IMO Gnome is going to seffer a very slow, but very definite demise.
Gnome was born not out of technical need but a conflict of ideology.
If RMS is chosen it will show that Gnome has continued with it's root cause - creating Free software.
If RMS is not chosen it will show that Gnome has moved on from a base cause of creating free software and is perhaps a bit more open minded about mere open source.
This will be interesting to watch. Imagine the diminished relevance of GNU if he doesn't get it!
This message will self destruct in 5...4...3...2...
The is the best news for KDE ever!
and do I mean __EVER__!
Instead of posting gripes to chat groups, RMS does the right thing: he gets involved. It is a good example about how democracy should work. Roll up your sleeves and participate. Whether or not you agree with RMS, it is a good example about how to constructively effect change.
When I first started running linux, I checked out the various wordprocessor available. Abiword, kword, emacs, wp and staroffice. For awhile I used different ones for different projects. I've now settled on staroffice for heavy duty work and kword for light duty work. I've now started using Open Office. While I'm not convinced of the wisdom of Java as a development language, I'm quite pleased with the results. Now you tell me that Richard Stallman doesn't like StarOffice, so what??? The cool thing about open source is we don't all have to be clones of each other. The open source community has benefited from both Richard and Linus. Even the current $100 million "open courseware" project at MIT is in some ways of legacy of Richard Stallman. I believe he'd make a good board member even if I disagree with him on StarOffice. RMS has enough karma to last several lifetimes!!!
And they CAN choose to run what they want, no one is forcing anyone to run anything here.
What RMS is trying to do is block people from even being TOLD about software which is not part of his empire.
The software he is trying to block (StarOffice, and by association OpenOffice) is certainly what I think most level headed people would consider 'free', however he doesn't want people to know about it, possibly the knowledge would poison their brains, turning them into rabid M%@#&soft zombies or something.
Perhaps he needs to do a little more reading w.r.t. his 'free as in speach' concept, and stop trying to block people from finding out about what is VERY useful software.
I use OpenOffice, it works well, and it's free, I'm very happy about that, it saves me rebooting to read the one or two Msoft office documents I get per week.
Of course, keeping it free will obviously be a concern of his, but it might not be his main concern.
You don't appear to have read his writings. Check out the philosophy section of GNU.
On GNOME's homepage they claim "GNOME is part of the GNU project, and is free software (some times referred to as open source software.)".
If they want to participate in the GNU project then they are giving away their choice to the Free Software Foundation.
As a user, you still have choice in what you do. But as developers they bought into something, and they need to follow through in their goals, or adjust their participation in the Free Software Foundation.
Joseph Elwell.
Everybody hates free stuff but loves socialism... wait... reverse that
.
-pyrrho
The reality of the situation is that there are some programs in this world that are not, by RMS's definition, "free," yet have value to many people. Examples of such programs are VMWare, commercial game ports, Word Perfect, and maybe StarOffice (forgot what the license is on that these days).
RMS represents pretty much the extreme of trying to prevent people from using what he considers "non-free" software. He routinely uses both license and PR to try to discourage "non-free" software. If he were in a position to do so, I'd expect him to work to work hard to prevent or at least strongly discourage "non-free" software from being able to use GNOME, for example by trying to force changes in the licensing. Look at the GNU libc LGPL isssue recently for a fine example of him trying to push the libc in that direction.
Why is this bad? Because there's some software that has value to many people that will be forced to use a different UI kit than the rest of your GNOME environment, and thus have a different look and feel and not play nicely with other apps. Who loses here? The user. And thus all of us who want to see *IX become a rational desktop choice over completely commercial systems. The long, LONG standing problem with *IX GUIs is that there is not enough consistency and interoperation between apps, and for GNOME to be successful in solving that problem it needs to not be discriminatory against programs that RMS doesn't want you to use.
On a more straightforward level, and again look at the recent GNU libc license issue, RMS is basically a nut-case and a control freak. If he has any real control over the GNOME board, it will NOT cause the GNOME board to make better or even more rational choices. I think it would be downright sad to watch a lot of good work from a lot of dedicated people become hijacked by a nut-case and made irrelevant.
Why is there a board anyway? Isn't the whole point to have an open system with a developer in charge, and not a part-timer (or commitee) who occasionally chirps in with orders for the developer. Think back to the darkest days of Emacs development, when RMS replaced the Emacs developer with someone that took many months before any development happened.
RMS has plenty to do without sitting on a gnome board. He may actually be good, as long as he doesn't reject features purely on the basis of their lack of relevance to hurd (eg. his rejection of X windows support in Emacs due to the fact hurd would not be capable of using X for some time).
Now that gnome has some real goals and has long discarded the "replacement of the evil KDE desktop" goal, it is probably a good time to let the developers continue with developement and not have things imposed on them by a bunch of uninvolved people that consider the project for a few hours each year.
I use Linux to run an engineering business. Sorry RMS, but that means lot's of expensive software ($24K for just one program). There simply are no free as in beer alternatives, and likely never will be.
I did not choose Linux because it is free (and after all I went to Fry's and purchased a distro). Linux it is an excellent platform for engineering, and seems to be quickly gaining popularity in this field. And the reason of course is that, next to games, engineering tools really push raw processing horsepower to the limit. And using Linux allows us to keep up with the latest and fastest processors, without breaking the bank on high end Sparcs.
RMS is not only responsible for the licsense that most GNOME software falls under, but also for a very large chunk of the compiler that builds it. I think I can appreciate where you're coming from, but to say that RMS hasn't made a significant contribution to GNOME seems absurd to me. I don't call it GNU/Linux either, but the man deserves a lot more recognition than he gets. Very few of us hard core Linux types would be where we are without the contributions of RMS. GNOME is symbolic of the fight against propriatary software, and RMS deserves a position on that board just as much as Miguel does, even if for different reasons. I do not believe that GNOME would exist without RMS.
I disagree with you.
He provided the license that the entire mess of GNOME sits on. I believe he has been a great contributor to this project. Not only did he influence Miguel to start it up during the KDE/Qt-bashing, but he has established years of a cultural environment that enables large open projects like GNOME to exist instead of being engulfed by proprietary companies.
Just my two bits. Probably redundant, but nonetheless -- valid.
Why the hell is this marked insightful? It is pure bullshit.
You know what the G in GNOME stands for? That's right, GNU.
I'd say writing the compiler, development tools (emacs, make, etc) that GNOME is developed with is a pretty damn large contribution, even forgetting the fact that he wrote the license that it's under.
And, on the contrary, the GNU OS -- aka HURD -- does exist, is actively developed, and is very cool.
Get your facts straight before you throw out trolls, boy.
While I usually disagree with you on many usability design issues, Mr Nickell, I totally agree with you on this issue. I seem to remember hearing some time ago about Richard Stallman not using GUI's, at all. Assuming this is true, would you really want such a person on board that is involved in some way in making GUI design decisions? Would a person who knows nothing about web servers, who has never set up a web server, who really doesn't know what HTML is or what it does really be a good choice as a board member of the Apache Foundation?
The root cause IS creating free software, that's what the Gnome Project is about. But software that interoperates and is build ontop of the architecture that the Gnome Project provides can be free/costly, open/closed. Imagine if libc was straight gpl'd. You could have no commercial application written for Linux. An LGPL'd Gnome library set allows commercial apps to be written for Gnome, and sit side by side with free (beer and/or speech) applications. And the commercial developers don't have to pay anything extra to make use of these technologies.
KDE, with QT, your apps are stuck being GPL'd, or you have to pay trolltech for QT. Yah, it's their project, they have the right too, blah blah blah.
For something that's as "essential" as desktop gui apps and related services, lgpl is the way to go. You make it cheap for *everybody* to develop apps, and it's a win win situation.
As far as RMS goes, he wrote emacs, created the FSF, the GPL, and the FSF has created so much great GNU software (especially for developers), it's not funny. I'd say he's provided a rather significant contribution to just about any project that uses GNU software, including the Gnome project. As such, by the rules, he should be able to run. Would he be a right fit? Will he be voted in? That's a whole other story.
And as to the speculation as to why he's running? I haven't seen any links to any vitriolic GNU/Gnome (lol, sorry, couldn't resist) oriented emails. RMS is not a man who's known for hiding his opinions.
Your killer app is just going to have to be open source isn't it?
Somehow I think all of the people that want to get rich on open source software without giving anything back (Trolltech has given a lot back) are missing the point entirely.
You can create an LGPL library on top of a GPL library. You can also create BSD or X-style licensed programs as well. The KDE libraries are indeed LGPL, and see the license to mosfet's Pixie.
This means your second statement is false. You can buy a Qt license and develop closed-source KDE apps. Want an example? Try Kapital, from TheKompany.
Don't get me wrong ... I admire Richard and his determination to attain free software's rightful position in the world ... but ...
... Richard, grow up ... Sun, HP and IBM are pouring HUGE resources into free software ... if you were a wee bit less political, they might pour a few resources into the FSF
Sun paid something like $80MM to acquire Star Division and then, almost immediately, turned the codebase over to the newly-chartered Open Office project. Still, Star Office isn't "purely free" enough to be RMS-approvable? Give me a break!
Hint
Besides, WTF made you the King of Open Platforms?
utter rubbish
Miguel even stated he regretted having ever made GNOME part of the GNU project.
If he didn't make it part of the GNU project, there is a good chance that it would not be anywhere close to where it is today; licensing matters. GNU carries alot of weight and familarity with programmers.
Being impolite, rude and easily sidetracked don't make you liked by other people. If other people don't like you, then you have a hard time convincing them of your ideas, they'll be less likely to want to listen to you. RMS seems convinced that his personality should not have any bearing on his views, and he expects others to filter that out, when evaluating his ideas.
Well he's right, that's what *should* happen, but it's equally clear that it does not.
I think, just looking at the reactions of the slashdot crowd to his actions shows that he is not doing terribly well as an advocate. There seem to be quite a number of people who have nearly identical views to his, and still dislike him.
Imagine a manager who listens to a speech by RMS, hears about "freedom more important than features", "President Bush not really elected" and then gets rebuked for calling Linux "Linux".
Imagine the same manager asking his IT department to switch their webservers to Apache. Imagine it if you can, because honestly, I can't.
So you like GTK because you can make money from it without paying the GTK developers anything ??!
:-)
Do you actually have a clue what free software is about ??
you create free software -> you can use Qt for free
you create commercial software-> you have to pay Trolltech.
This is a completely healthy economic system
Too bad that stupid hypocrits like you don't understand that...
...You are over-qualified and under-paid. If we give you a raise, we will break the cosmic balance of the universe.
If freedom and liberty are so important, why is RMS attempting to restrict free speech, and restrict the information that I receive from the GNOME Foundation? Does the importance of freedom in software override the importance of freedom in other areas, such as speech?
The mark of a fanatic is when the fanatic's cause overrides all other considerations.