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Martin Schulze Steps Down As SPI Vice President

Posted by timothy on from the dissension dept.

Tina Gasperson reports on NewsForge that Martin Schulze, Vice President of Software in the Public Interest, is resigning his position there to protest the lack of time he says fellow SPI higher-ups are devoting to the organization. Since SPI serves as a coordinating body for several large-scale Free software projects (like GNOME and OpenOffice.org), discord there should concern a lot of people. Update: 11/26 03:14 GMT by T : That should read "OpenSource.org," not "OpenOffice.org." Sorry.

7 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. Not to be a troll but ... by emkman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Seriously, he is resigning because he thinks others aren't putting enough time in. One could assume that he was most likely putting a good amount of time in. Now he is resigning, accomplishling what? Even less time being put in.
    I understand what he is trying to do, but maybe its not the best of going about it, good luck to him though.

    --
    Moderation Totals: Flamebait=2, Troll=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=6, Overrated=1, Underrated=1, Total=12. (not mine)
  2. It doesn't concern me particularly.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    As much as I like gnome and openoffice, one of the great things about open source is the redundancy in projects. If I don't like gnome or the direction the project is going, I can just choose an alternative. Disarray at the top would be bad, but not disastrous.

  3. Re:A question by PhysicsGenius · · Score: 1, Interesting
    Black CEOs? A lot.

    Back the actual question, nobody is claiming that 19 year olds are subhuman. The claim is that they are inexperienced. You are right that "young" and "inexperienced" are non-synonymous. But one is a proper subset of the other, pretty much by definition.

    Saying young people are inexperienced isn't maligning their character. It is akin to saying black people are poor. An unfortunate and to-be-mended, but nonetheless entirely factual circumstance.

  4. Re:A 19 year old??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Has it occurred to you that maybe a 19 year old is able to perform complex technical tasks but might lack the knowledge of human interactions and politics required for such a role ?

    No ? Then perhaps you are also of tender years ?

  5. Thanks for the golden shower, troll. by twitter · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I swear the open source community is often it's own worse enemy.

    Nah, no one wants free software to go away except vendors of crappy closed source software. Free and Open software folks can have their differences but the commonality is much greater.

    Since (almost) noone is making money doing it, the primary form of compensation is ego gratification.

    What a crock, lots of people are making a good living with free software. Even pioneers such as RMS got by. Now that free software is universally recognized as superior to other software, there is a much larger demand. Show me someone who does not get some ego gratification from their job and I'll show you someone who should be doing something else.

    If someone doesn't get their way, they throw a temper tantrum and go off on their own.

    This is unique to free software? -Bangs his fist and insults a federal judge- Have you ever seen the monkeyboy dance? If your eyes don't convince you, just read this article. I would never ever want to work at a place like that. It looks like they treat each other worse than they treat the rest of the world.

    The end result is forked code trees, huge amounts of duplicated effort, and projects that never go anywhere.

    Said another way, free software could never make a working operating system, an easy to use GUI, it's chaos, blah, blah, bull shit on a stick This message posted with Mozilla and Windowmaker on X11 under Debian, software so superior to comercial junk I can never ever go back.

    SPI will survive this little tussle and free softare will survive SPI.

    --

    Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.

  6. Am I living in a hole? by duncf · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I am somewhat shocked as a Debian Developer, and a new SPI member that I hadn't heard of this earlier. I really think Joey ought to have made this a little more public than he did. A posting to debian-devel-announce@lists.debian.org or even debian-devel@lists.debian.org would have been nice. Saves people like me from getting the news from /. -- not that that's a bad thing, but it's strange that /. and NewsForge managed to scoop a story before it was posted to a Debian mailing list. (Unless I missed something obvious...)

    Joey did send a mail, forwarded by Bdale Garbee to debian-devel-announce@lists.debian.org that essentially stated:

    Some members of the current Board of Directors of Software in the Public Interest would like to expand its Board.

    In that e-mail he solicited nominations and suggested that candidates must have time to devote to the board.

    It is true, without a doubt that SPI, and its Board of Directors, have not done anything in the last year that makes me consider SPI to be anything other than a formality designed to collect money for Debian and other worthy causes. I think the SPI website explains it best:

    News

    No items for this year.


    So, I applaud Joey's decision. Maybe someone will wake up and realise, SPI has a role to fulfill and it's not doing it right now.

    And maybe Joey will have even more time to write the Debian Weekly News, since nobody else is willing to do it :-)
  7. Agreed. by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Interesting
    If you're going to diss Joey, you'll get a big F**K You from me, too. The other folks involved aren't devils, they're just too busy and it's time for them to let go. I also work for SPI and have some idea what's going on there... which is not much.

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.