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RMS Running For GNOME Board Of Directors

Posted by timothy on from the thus-could-the-circle-be-completed dept.

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."

4 of 439 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Sheesh by jmv · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    Who's censoring who here? Has he talked about censoring everyone? AFAIK this election is supposed to be democratic so you can vote against him if you like, but he's got the right to apply. Although I often disagree with him, I think it would probably good to have the two ends of the spectrum on the board: Stallman AND people from corporations (RedHat, Compaq, IBM?, ...).

    --
    Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
  2. Not A matter of choice for GNOME though. by jelwell · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. O.B.E. = Other Bugger's Efforts by Mandelbrute · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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?

    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.

  4. Re:Experienced Advocate by Asic+Eng · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I like his political views, I do however think he does a very bad job as an advocate.

    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.