GNOME Foundation Elections - Final Candidate List

Motor writes: "The list of candidates for the forthcoming GNOME foundation election is now available. And yes, RMS is on there..." Note for voters, the email will be sent out the 13th. Please note the Election Rules and Director Overview Good luck to all the candidates!

Comments

My 2c on RMS

[Kiro]

I really admire RMS, but I have to say, he does go off the deep end to the point that he may be doing more to HURT the FSF than help it.

I understand that free software is as much a political movement as it is an idea for better software. However, RMS seems to be HOSTILE to those who don't make the same choices he does. Freedom to me, means, that, freedom. It's about having the freedom to make good or bad choices.

The KDE controversy, the takeover attempt on GLIBC etc, makes him look more like a raving lunatic, and by extension, makes ALL of us who support the principle of the GPL and open source look the same. Why? Because Stallman proclaims himself the leader of the whole movement whenever asked, or not asked.

While I have tremendous respect for the man, and his philospohy, his despotic style runs contrary to the whole anarchistic nature of free software. RMS needs to realize that not EVERYTHING needs to be called "GNU/"
===
(The price of freedom is eternal vigilance)

.

Re:Damn...

[SquierStrat]

I agree. Commercial software has a place, and RMS needs to understand that. The lack of commercial software for linux is what keeps it a niche (server and special use I mean) operating system rather than a desktop OS.

I'm not going to be one of the voters, but if I were, he would not get my vote. He has no business being there, and even his paragraph long biography shows his egotism.

He needs to get a grip on the reality that commercialism can be good, and that he isn't the king of open-source and needs to lay off stupid stuff like Linux should be referred to as GNU/Linux...I mean really, Linux is the kernel, that fact that gnu tools are used for the kernel's compilation means very little in the naming scheme.

Anyhow...off my soapbox.

Another way of looking at things

[AirLace]

You say RMS shoud accept "that [commercial products] do have a place."

First of all, commercial products and proprietary products are not the same thing. GNU has a clear set diagram that categorises software and makes this clear. RMS has always accepted that commercial products have a place -- he is not a communist. However he believes that these commercial products should embrace the same development methods and openness that the Free Software community does. He has no qualms with CyGNUs Software for example, since all of its work is released under the GNU GPL.

With this in mind, try to name one single case where proprietary software is valid or acceptable. Now you will begin to see what RMS is getting at. Even if you don't, you shouldn't be misrepresenting his ideas like this.

Re:Another way of looking at things

[geomcbay]

RMS has always accepted that commercial products have a place -- he is not a communist. However he believes that these commercial products should embrace the same development methods and openness that the Free Software community does.


The problem with RMS's view of embracing the same development methods and openess that FS does is that with such a method you can not make money on software. If you have to give the source code away for free to others, how can you make money from it in a practical sense?

The only known ways are service and support. Service and support is fine for large enterprise software or webservers, the kind of thing OSS is good at now, but its not so good for desktop applications which should just work without being supported or serviced. This is the fundamental problem holding OSS back from the desktop, and the reason why Linux will never be a mainstream desktop OS unless there is some major shift in attitude by its users/developers.

The fact of the matter is most software developers just can't afford to develop software that will be given away. I think the recent economic downturn is both good and bad for OSS, its good in that companies are more likely to adopt existing OSS software to reduce costs, its bad in that a large number of developers won't have time to further develop OSS because they'll be losing (or already have lost) their cushy day jobs which supported their efforts.

Re:Another way of looking at things

[Z4rd0Z]

I'll bite on this.

With this in mind, try to name one single case where proprietary software is valid or acceptable.

Wow, I'm amazed you can't think of one case where proprietary software is valid or acceptable. That takes a determined lack of imagination.Here's a quick example off the top of my head of a company who could never survive by making free software. For highly specialized applications that have a very small market, it really doesn't make sense to be pushing free software.

Now you will begin to see what RMS is getting at.

Well, I understand what RMS is getting at, because I have read his writings: he wants there to be no such thing as proprietary software. That's fine for him, but not everyone shares his vision. No matter how much philosophizing he does on the subject, my definition of freedom will probably always conflict with his. This is my right. I fear that if his vision were the dominant one, I would no longer have this right.

Re:Another way of looking at things

[johnnyb]

I think you're ignoring the people who do just this and make money.

You're also ignoring the fact that most development is done for in-house projects, which has no business reason for being closed. 90% of programmers are employed in this fashion.

Re:Another way of looking at things

[Syberghost]

You're also ignoring the fact that most development is done for in-house projects, which has no business reason for being closed.

Actually, most in-house code has the strongest reason for being closed. If you have to pay a bunch of programmers to write your business software, and your competition then uses your code for free, you are at a disadvantage. It looks great to say "gee, we'll get our development for free, we'll just use the community's code", but that pyramid scheme rolls up on somebody who's getting paid to write that stuff.

And the last thing you want is for there to no longer be a market for all those programmers; Open Source wouldn't exist without people to write it, and most of them are also coding to put food on the table.

Re:Another way of looking at things

[Lunastorm]

I don't know about you, but I'd rather have people make quality software that didn't need support. I also don't feel programmers must be public speakers or writers of cheesy books.

Re:Another way of looking at things

[mj6798]

I don't care if it's Oracle or RedHat -- the pay-for-support model sucks. It encourages the vendors to ship obscured and difficult products and to not publically release information.

I agree that if free software is created by the same people intending to support it, that is a problem.

But free software doesn't disable free market mechanisms. If RedHat ships software that sucks in order to drive up support costs, you don't have to use their software--you can pay someone to create the kind of software you like (perhaps as part of a collective bidding process).

So, overall, that's not an argument against free software in general, or against the ability to have an efficient market built around free software, it's an argument about one particular broken way of creating free software.

Re:Another way of looking at things

[Nate Eldredge]

In a free market, you can't sell GPL software as a commodity for any more than the cost of distribution (including copying). For if your markup is significant, I'll buy one copy, make copies of it (which the GPL lets me do), distribute your markup over all my copies, and sell them for the cost of copying plus my smaller markup. My copies will cost less than yours, so I'll take away all your business, and if I sell enough I'll make a profit. If my markup is still significant, someone will do the same to me, and so on. So unless the market is very small, nobody can charge a significant markup and still sell a significant number of copies.

You can only make money on it if you provide some extra value. This might be support, the promise of further development (which the FSF does), or good feelings (if people think your organization is worth donating money to).

Could RMS fulfill the required role?

[Chuck Chunder]

The role of someone on the GNOME Board of Directors is to represent the best interests of the GNOME project not the interests of any other third party. Can RMS make this distinction?

Re:The father of open source?

[bugg]

RMS claiming that he is the father of open source is like Linus Torvalds claiming he is the father of Linux.

No, it's much worse than that.
There was no Linux before Linus. There was most certainly open source software before RMS. Fast forward 7 years before there was a FSF and you have free development of UNIX extensions at Berkeley. Fast forward back an additional 10+ years to the first computers owned by individual hobbyists, and all software was free and open source. Open source is a concept much older than the FSF. Now, you could go into the whole "Free" Software thing, but frankly, I don't like people who redefine understood words such as free.

Re:The father of open source?

[Hieronymus Howard]

Linus has a very strong claim to being 'The father of Linux'. RMS would never claim to be the father of Open Source, since he hates the term. He's certainly the father of free software though.

I disagree with your statement that "claiming that you are the father of anything diminishes the hard work of lots and lots of people". These people are responsible for starting their respective projects and therefore should be classed as the 'fathers' of them. This does not in any way diminish the incredible effort made by thousands of other individuals.

HH
--

RMS

[geomcbay]

It seems pretty likely RMS will be voted in. He's a huge "name" in the Open Source community (for good reason).

However, I still think in the long run having him on the board will be bad for GNOME. He's way too anti-commercial-software, totally unwilling to compromise, and not really at all good in political situations since he just always says what he means. These are may be good traits in a technical project leader, but IMO not-so-great for people on boards of OSS projects.

While OSS has made great strides thus far, its not quite at a point where it can live in a vacuum. If RMS scares off all the commercial entities, I can easily see KDE coming in and sweeping up, gaining more developers (commercial developers with vested interest in products but willing to share code back to main trees are very valuable), and just stomping GNOME.

Re:RMS

[sunking]

GNOME is not an OSS project - it's a Free Software project. If you understand the distinction then you'll understand why it's pretty reasonable to have RMS on the board.

Re:Gnome needs to succeed

[Arandir]

Commercial software companies DO NOT need to purchase the Trolltech license. Only *proprietary* developers do. Huge difference.

The Qt license may be one of the most "fair" licenses in history. It's Free if you write Free Software (GPL), Open if you write Open Source Software (QPL) and need to make that distinction, and proprietary if you write proprietary software.

If a company is going to profit $20,000 next year off of a KDE application, then they can afford a $2000 license. If you're only going to make $2000 in profit, however, I would strongly suggest going into another line of work.

What about the hundreds of other people who pour hard work into Linux for free?

KDE is not Linux. It is a desktop that runs on Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, IRIX, etc. Nothing Linux specific about it.

Re:Why is RMS so upset with KDE?

[Korgan]

RMS is against the KDE project because it is based on Qt which is not a GPL application. Because Qt is not fully Free or OpenSource software, RMS refuses to acknowledge it for what it is. As a result, he excludes KDE and anything else that relies on Qt libs as well.

Things changed when Trolltech changed the licensing policy for the Qt libs so that there were essentially 3 different licensing models... Free, Open and Proprietry. However, even with this change, RMS still refuses to acknowledge it.

I find it funning that Miguel was inspired to launch "OUR" third desktop project... I didn't know RMS had any part in the code base at all.. Much less that he used a Graphical GUI of any kind.

Besides, while I use Gnome and haven't even looked at KDE since 2.0 was released, Gnome hasn't succeeded yet. Like Edward Scissorhands, its not finished yet.

Re:Gnome needs to succeed

[fault0]

> Of course....I can sell software that's under GPL. But then I have to provide the source-code. That is not viable for most businesses.

And you are saying that $2000 is not viable for most buisinesses? That's utterly BS, even for small shops.

Re:Damn...

[Ian Bicking]

For God's sake, someone mod this down as ignorant and uninformed. RMS is the undisputed father of GNU, and everyone should agree that he has been an extremely important figure in the Free Software movement. He's never claimed to be the father of Open Source, and in fact he goes to pains to distinguish himself from that philosophy whenever necessary. Had this guy ever read or heard anything from RMS, he'd know that.

Also, the idea that RMS is doing this for his personal glorification is absurd -- people may (perhaps rightly) criticize him for portraying himself as a martyr, but he's not starved for attention (*coughESRcough*).

If people want to start a debate on the place of proprietary software and the philosophies that RMS presents, can't it at least be hung off a slightly informed comment? Somebody who doesn't know any better will read this comment and think it's based in some sort of fact.

Re:Interesting Contrast...

[mandolin]

After our desktop initiatives in 1990 and 1994/5 didn't produce a working desktop (*),

This qualifies him to have meaningful control in a third initiative?

This inspired Miguel to launch our third desktop project, the one that succeeded: GNOME.

This is an endorsement for Miguel, not RMS.

Although the rest of RMS's statement (the part you didn't include) looks better, I think its safe to say the man hasn't written a resume in awhile...

Re:Surely this makes it easier

[super-flex-o-matic]

Surely highly specialized applications with a very small marketplace are fine being open and free.

this to some extent does only apply to scientific applications. things like digital video or sound editing tools are just too hard to code and to implement by open-source initiatives.
sure gimp stands out of this. but remember that gimp is the ONLY program on linux which is to some use to design professionals.
but when it comes to making website-designs, catalogues or cd-covers most design companies want to stick with fast reliable software like from adobe or macromedia.

i talk about end-user application, sadly only less than 10% of linux graphic apps are in end-user state.
their are neither usefull for design-professional, nor for your mom or dad.