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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."
Sheesh... Talk about getting all bent out of shape...
On my debian 2.2 laptop, i do not run any non-free software. It is my choice... i personally feel that running non-free software on a free operating system is weird. People should be allowed to choose what kind of sw they want installed.
Of course, keeping it free will obviously be a concern of his, but it might not be his main concern.
Whether or not you like RMS' political views ...
Having an experienced advocate of free/open source as a member of the GNOME Foundation will be a much needed shot in the arm towards GPL, (et. al.) acceptance across the business community. His philosophies aside, he could leverage this position and the visibility to showcase the benefits of free/open source.
GNOME, and to a lesser degree - the GNOME Foundation - is certainly being discussed more and more across the industry. Especially in light of Sun's choice to adopt GNOME for future Solaris versions.
His membership would be a welcomed aid to combat the negative rhetoric we are seeing ala Bill Gate's grossly negligent comments at the recent stock holder's meeting.
When a company doesn't want to put paedophilia topics in it's weekly memo it's not censorship. It's an organisation deciding what's relevant to itself. Gnome was born entirely out of GNU Ideology so let them soak in it and reveal their true offensive nature that does not want to be friends with non-Free software even if it is open source.
Huh? That "Hall of Shame" is a list of packages that failed to build on a version of Linux for a particular architecture, some of which happen to be non-free. What does this have to do with GNOME? With just a cursory glance at the list, I spotted a few free GNOME applications (Balsa, Skipstone, etc.).
No, that's not it. How about reading up about RMS and the beginnings of GNOME before you attack RMS?
What utter rubish, 'GNOME' is not an entity, nor are many of it's developers, or people helping with such things as maining lists, etc. The 'GNOME Foundation' may be, but that certainly does not cover all that is gnome.
The people who are being *very* *damb* *generous* in working on the GNOME project have *NOT* bought into anything, they are just people who should be appreciated, not trampled upon due to differing ideologies.
If RMS, and the FSF, require absolute censure over everything that is related to the GNU project, then they had better make that *VERY* clear, include it in their licenses, and then see how many people are willing to continue to so generously help them.
I personally think RMS needs to get back to considering the workers who have put him in such a strong position, rather than trying to pressure them into doing his bidding over small idealogical details.
As a developer I find it harder and harder to place my work under the GPL, *purely* because of RMS's attempts to control all things related to it. Visionary or dictator? time and actions will tell.
On one side there will be a group of people who believe in freedom in the pragmatic,, That you can use non-free tools on either the development, or application side. That it is the hack, be it the kernel, qt or wine that is important above all things. I spose Linus, Cox etc etc are the ones that fall into this catorgorie. We are all in this for the fun of it after all.
On the other that only tools which fall into a certain type of license are valid. Such as GTK etc etc. That it is the ideology you are trying to promote as most important thing. Some of this is based on the quiet rational fear that like BSD your work may be taken over and used in ways beyoud your control.
Personally,, I fall in the former but still see a great deal of value in the later. After all the worst that can happen is that these people try to create their own OS, like, hurd has only been in development forever plus they can always use debian. Hell dis RMS if you must but gcc is still a pretty good effort. I admit he is a looney but he is our looney
Liberial things like linux often fall into these types of ideological wars, visa viz life of brain. where the "freedom fighters" (I dont think Ill be able to use the T word ever again) spend more time fighting each other then the Romans
I must be an idealist at heart since why else would I post as a Anonymous Coward.
KDE is not the perfect desktop. I can't create a KDE application and sell it without buying a QT license for over $2000.
I'm sorry. I just find this whole cyclical argument continuously hypocritical. You want to use GNOME because it is "completely" free or something like that, but then you try and knock down KDE because it makes you go through an extra loop when you want NOT to write software as edquivalently free as itself???
I'm sorry, I just find that really hypocritical and I hope it at least makes sense to some people