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

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.

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: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: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.