Stallman Responds To GNOME Questionaire

proclus writes: "Stallman's response to the GNOME board election process is a lesson in the application of free software principles. For Stallman, GNOME is a GNU project, and the main goal is to promote free software. His consistancy and ethics are admirable, but one wonders if GNOME has grown beyond its roots in the free software community. Is Stallman's view of GNOME too narrow? The GNU-Darwin Distribution and The Fink projects are a case in point. It is simply amazing how many people want to use GNOME together with Mac OSX, and yet in Stallman's view, this would be an example of GNOME falling short of its goals. If free software is used together with proprietary, then the movement has failed to displace proprietary software, and free the users. Is it possible to reach such users with free software ideals, and is it necessary to divorce free software from proprietary in order to accomplish that goal?"

Comments

I think

[nll8802]

I think using Free Software with Proprietary software is a way to reach people who are not yet informed about Free Software. I dont think this hurts Free Software in any way, it helps promote it.

Re:I think

[JCCyC]

He didn't say he is against porting GNOME to proprietary systems. He explicitly said, lots of times, there can be Free Software running on proprietary systems and it'll still be Free.

On the other hand, I can see him disapproving of efforts like Wine, which have the potential of turning systems that already are 100% Free into less-than-100% Free. "Hey, MS Office runs in Linux now? Let's stop using KOffice!"

GNOME on the Mac, on the other hand, is exactly the opposite - it takes a 100% proprietary system and turns it into something part Free, part proprietary. This is a good thing, and I'll bet RMS would agree. A beachhead if you will.

Another interesting tidbit from RMS's responses is:

From time to time I face the ticklish task of asking a complete stranger to change the license of his software package. Making this request is like waking up a dragon to ask to borrow its hoard: the developer is likely to find the request impertinent and could easily get angry. Nonetheless, I succeed most of the time.

I wonder if he's had the opportunity to tackle Dan J. Bernstein yet. Although his terms seem to meet the Free Software criteria for me, I hear all the time that Qmail isn't free software.

No!

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not required to divorce free software from non free software. One of the main strengths that open source has is its portability. Stallman needs to recognize this and embrace it. Take away my right to run software where and how I see fit and it is no longer FREE. Stallman is extremely hypocritical in this respect. I can understand his goal of creating a completely free system that is accessible to users, but this freedom he talks about must be applied, even when he doesn't like it.

EX. I may not like Microsoft bashing Linux, but I will defend their right to do so.

Now, that is somewhat of a contrived example of free speech at work, but, it is vital to defend all aspects of freedom. If you take away one person's freedom (the freedom to run Gnome with proprietary software) then what good is the rest of the freedom that is associated with Gnome? How long until other freedoms are taken away in the interest of "the greater good"?

Re:No!

[the_2nd_coming]

It is not required to divorce free software from non free software. One of the main strengths that open source has is its portability. Stallman needs to recognize this and embrace it. Take away my right to run software where and how I see fit and it is no longer FREE. Stallman is extremely hypocritical in this respect.

Hypocritical os the wrong term. Stallman does not advocate free software then turn around and sell proprietary software. However, his idiology is cotradictory to his goal. he says that he wants freedom for software, however, in his thinking freedom means that everyone must use his modle. that is a contradiction not hypocracy.

Re:No!

[Phillip2]

"Stallman needs to recognize this and embrace it"

He does. I am sure that he is quite happy for instance to be directly involved in porting Emacs to run under NT. And likewise for other projects that he doesn't directly work on.

The point that he is making is that the purpose of free software is not to have as many people use it as possible, but to help develop the idea that software should be free. This is his aim, which you may or may not agree with, but is something that he stuck to clearly thoughout the years.

GNOME is not important to him per se. Free software is important. Seems like an admirable position to me.

Phil

Cooperation with KDE forgotten ?

[sl956]

I had a dinner with RMS last week in Paris. When I asked him that very question (why he was running for Gnome Board of Directors), he said that the first reason was to help improving the coperation with the KDE development team. He spoke of the duplicate development effort in the desktop area and he even made a parallel with the gnu-emacs vs x-emacs debate (just a couple days after he took the lead back in gnu-emacs!!!).

I cannot understand why KDE is not even cited in this response. Is this only electoral bulls**t ?

Tough Medicine

[abde]

Many people disagree with RMS. Many people hate him, many people flame him, many people have honest and sincere disagreements with him, many people have sterotypical understanding of who he is and many have an understanding of who he is based on extensive personal contact.

In all of this, RMS has been a constant - he promotes Free Software.

is presence on teh GNOME board would be a case of Tough Medicine. Without an avowed extremist to act as a "conscience" of sorts, it is easy to imagine that GNOME might be tempted to compromise a little here and a little there. As long as you have RMS standing in the corner, reminding everyone (obstinately, ruthlessly, pick your adjective) exactly when we are moving towards the many slippery slopes that can be stumbled across, the concept of Free Software will benefit.

IMHO, RMS deserves a place on that board solely because of his constancy and vision. I personally may disagree with any number of his ideals or issues, but IMHO you need the full spectrum to ensure that the integrity of the project is maintained.

Only be listening to the extremes can you triangulate the middle ground.

Re:Tough Medicine

[fredbsd]

Interesting take on keeping the board on their toes.

However, most companies don't succeed with this type of leadership. If Gnome is to be successcul, they will need a board of like minded, energetic people to lead them. Do you think there was anyone on Microsquish's board who said "hey, I think we are doing the wrong thing here?".

If the goal of Gnome is to simply encourage 'free' software, then RMS is a good choice. But if they want to be successful as a product, then RMS would simply cause to much dissention to be effective.

Personally, as a businessman, I would never, ever have RMS on a board. He is quite good at pontificating his views, but he is absolutely horrible at seeing other sides of arguments. It's his way or the highway. Can you imagine the board meetings? He would drive everyone else crazy.

My biggest complaint is with Mr. Stallman is the hypocrisy in his definition of 'free'. Freedom = Choice. Mr. Stallman thinks freedom = his way.

But, I could be wrong.

Re:Tough Medicine

[ethereal]

If Gnome is to be successcul, they will need a board of like minded, energetic people to lead them. Do you think there was anyone on Microsquish's board who said "hey, I think we are doing the wrong thing here?".

If there was any justice in the world (or in the U.S. government) then Microsoft would right now be wishing that they'd had such a conscience. Most of the time, keeping a business focused on ethics (or at least on staying within the law) is a good business practice, not a mistake. It saves you money and time in the long run. Microsoft just happens to have been a giant exception to this so far.

Re:Tough Medicine

[Ian Bicking]

Personally, as a businessman, I would never, ever have RMS on a board. He is quite good at pontificating his views, but he is absolutely horrible at seeing other sides of arguments. It's his way or the highway. Can you imagine the board meetings? He would drive everyone else crazy.

As a businessman, what perspective do you have on Gnome anyway? Gnome isn't a business, its board is not the board of a business, large parts of the work are done on a non-commercial basis. There are many, many people who have contributed to Gnome without expectation of monetary reward. To businesses these people are just dopes -- and yet they are the only reason Free Software has succeded, they are the ones who have actually given for the cause. Businesses just make deals. One day they help you, the next day they change their mind, or maybe just go bankrupt.

As a businessman, I think you can't appreciate what GNU is about, what Gnome can be, and what is important for the project. There will always be arguments and negotiations -- RMS will argue about important things, like freedom, while the businesses will be more apt to argue about territory.

Stallman's honesty

[Trepidity]

Say what you will about his goals, but at least he's perfectly honest and up-front about them (and everything else), even going so far as to admit that he hasn't been following the GNOME development.

putting words in his mouth

[brlewis]

He says that GNOME will have only part-way met its goals if it is used mainly in conjunction with proprietary software. The mere existence of projects that put GNOME in a proprietary environment does not constitute failure according to what RMS said.

Re:Small victories...

[NetSettler]

I haven't talked to Stallman personally in 6 or 7 years, but unless he's changed his tune of late, his goal is not to change the world, so there is no notion of "small victories" for him.

I think his goal is (and I think this because my recollection is that he's told me, not because of some analysis I've done) to make the world work for him personally in the way he wants. I've never heard him say he really wants to change the world for its own sake. On that point, he's said the world is full of people he doesn't really necessarily like and has no interest in helping. So doing things "for the world" doesn't seem to matter to him.

People attribute all kinds of ethics and high moral principles to him, but I've never heard him say this was his motive. From all I can tell, and all I've ever heard him say, he's just single-mindedly selfish in a way that happens to have some positive community benefit. So people attribute all kinds of other attributes to him to explain the outcome.

If I'm right about this, it should help you see why things that only partly address an issue don't really make him happy. He wants things to work for him today, not for people generally some day. And so a partial solution is not a solution.

I'm 50-50 on the whole free software thing. I think it's got some pluses, but it also has some minuses. And definitely one of the minuses is having Richard at the helm. Because when I want to discuss social policy, I want to discuss it with someone who understands that compromise is not always evil, that partial solutions can sometimes be better than no solutions, and that there are ways of doing good for the world that don't fit into the narrow definition of free software. I get none of this from Richard.

I think it leads to confusion when the community looks to him for leadership, becuase I don't think he is offering what some see him as offering, and so it never comes out looking like what they expect. Maybe this continued sense of "unexpectedness" makes him look "mysterious", and maybe that's why people have such a continued interest, never being able to predict him because the model they have for him is never aligned with the reality of him. Just guessing.

...and this is where Stallman gets it wrong

[blayd]

Using free software with a non-free operating system should be viewed as a win, not a loss. More people using free software is a good thing. You start them off slow with a couple of nice applications. Then the user starts looking for free alternatives first before buying something proprietary. From there it's a short hop to running a free system.

For example, I used to be an OS/2 user. There is a ton of free software out there that has been ported to the OS/2 platform. I started out with GCC and some of the GNU tools. Pretty soon I was using free software for about 95% of my computing needs. One day I decided that since I was primarily using free software, why not move to a free system. That was 5 years ago. Today I run free systems exclusively at home, and I am in the process of getting the same at work. The only non-free software that I own are my Linux and console games. I don't dual boot or use wine or some other emulator. Maybe some day I will be able to dump non-free software altogether.

I realize that my use of non-free software, even just for entertaintment purposes, would get me blacklisted by Stallman and his fanatics. It is this my-way-or-the-highway, no compromise attitude that turns me off to Stallman and the FSF. In my opinion, this makes him more of a hindrance than a help to the free software movement.

Stallman is an honest man

[avdi]

I think this response says a lot about RMS's personal character. Some salient quotes:

In our community I often encounter personal insults, sometimes simply reflecting personal enmity, sometimes used as a tactic. You know what I mean. Could you face such hostility for years and respond as dispassionately as this?

and:

People have given me have a reputation for being uncompromising.

and especially:

By nature, I am not diplomatic at all.

Whatever people say about his being "out of touch", I think this shows that he is well aware of the criticisms levelled at him. He is also admirably aware of his own stubborn nature, and of the ideals he stands for. This guy knows what he's fighting for, knows his personal limits, and has no illusions about how he comes across to others.

Free isn't free if it comes with strings attached

[swb]

Really. If you have meet a sociopolitical standard to use free software, how free is it?

Stallman is right

[deno]

GNU != freeware.

The idea behind GNU software isn't "let's do something to help producers of propriatery software". Just on the contrary: the idea is: "let's do something AGAINST propriatery software".

Those who disagree are free to use software which is "freeware", or licenced under one of BSD licences, but the point of GNU licence has always been very clear: Even in the case where licence itself allows some kind of mixed propriatery and GNU-licenced software, this is clearly an "unwanted artefact" by whoever choose to put his/hers software under GNU licence, and one should not expect to be greated as a hero if doing so.

The fact that "oh so many people want to do it" is completely irrelevant, because these "oh-so-many-people" haven't written the programs in question, and thus have nothing to say about the way these should be used apart from kindly asking the author(s). Let me state this once more:

GNU != freeware

How is this different fron GNU on proprietary UNIX

[Craig Maloney]

How is this much different from GNU running on proprietary UNIX machines all these years? GNU wouldn't have had the visibility it does and the loyalty it does if they hadn't had Sun and HP versions of GNU tools. I think the real reason GNU is where it's at is because it's always been there to scratch the users itch. What's so wrong about having GNOME or other GNU tools there to scratch OSX users itches? I think it's a big win for GNU that people are ready to accept these tools on OSX.

I think this is more of a purity issue than a political issue. Yes, in a perfect world users would prefer to run GNU tools on GNU operating systems and pass around GNU blessed formatted documents. We're closer to that goal if people become more familiar with the GNU tools, and not a moment before. I can't think how GNOME or other tools running on OSX hurts the end goal.

not an exception at all

[kaisyain]

Microsoft just happens to have been a giant exception to this so far.

Sony, Merck, General Motors, Major League Baseball, Coca-Cola, Disney, Nike, Wal-Mart, Exxon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Monsanto, McDonald's, Nestle, Allstate, Macy's, Bloomingdales, Levi Strauss, Abercrombie & Fitch, British American Tobacco, Doubleclick, Ford, Glaxo Wellcome, Tyson Foods, Titan International, The Gap.

I'm sure if you really cared you could add more names to the list once you remove your anti-Microsoft blinders.