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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."
Of course, keeping it free will obviously be a concern of his, but it might not be his main concern.
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
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!
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.
"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)Free Software is like sex. Its better when RMS isn't involved.
Bowie J. Poag
GNU/I GNU/once GNU/read GNU/a GNU/comment GNU/saying GNU/that GNU/RMS GNU/won't GNU/rest GNU/until "GNU" GNU/is GNU/in GNU/front GNU/of GNU/every GNU/word GNU/in GNU/the GNU/English GNU/language. GNU/Doesnt GNU/he GNU/realize GNU/that GNU/would GNU/leave GNU/him GNU/joyless GNU/having "GNU" GNU/all GNU/over GNU/the GNU/place, GNU/not GNU/to GNU/mention GNU/weird?
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
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.)
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.
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.