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FSF Appoints A New Executive Director
An anonymous reader writes "The Free Software Foundation (which has a
new website, BTW) has appointed a new
Executive Director. The former executive director, Bradley M. Kuhn,
is going to work for the new Software Freedom Law Center as
its Chief Technology Officer." Peter T. Brown, who is replacing Kuhn, is currently the director of the FSF's GPL Compliance Lab.
The Wrath of Kuhn!
A morning without coffee is like something without something else.
You don't want it.
;-)
It's the work of communism and the devil.
Besides . . . It'll never catch on.
Pretty Pictures!
"Everyday it becomes more apparent that the growing success of Free Software threatens established proprietary software and media interests. These interests will continue to see our freedoms as threats, and we fully expect, and are preparing for, further challenges to our community."
It's good to see that he understands that the fight is not only ion the software field, but also on other subjects, such as books, images, or music. He talks about the new GPL, i would also like to see improvements on the GFDL to make it more suitable to other kind of media, and other kind of books, such as literature (as it's right now, i see it more suitable and focused on tech documentation).
He seems to have his objetives clear, it's good to see that RMS has lawyal and intelligent people arround, many times people just discards rms's words, just because it's him saying it, and the enormous campaign against him over the last years has convinced many people into looking at him like a crazy zealot, and just not hearing to what he has to say. Maybe having other people saying some things to the media would be a smart move.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Not only that, it violates many copyrights and patents! Which ones you ask? We're not going to tell you; you're just supposed to believe me.
Karma whorin' since 1999
on his website.
Wonder what his reaction is?
2b || !2b =?
... Which is actually a nearly stock roll-out of a rather popular Content Management System called Plone. They added their logo and replaced some icons with the GNU logo and changed the blues to greys. An excellent use of multiple tiers of free software to illustrate their point succinctly; my hat goes off to the FSF and to the Plone team for a job well-done.
To our new Free Software Overlord.
It's a good argument, and it applies to software, that is, if you're a coder. People who don't code might want to republish software verbatim but most the time they don't. In fact, us coders generally tell them that isn't a good idea because of viruses and trojans. i.e., it's a lot safer to download FireFox from the official web site than it is to grab it off a friend or some shareware website. With that struck off the list, what exactly is the non-coder fighting for Free Software for?
There's lot of reasons why users of Free Software should support it, but they don't at the moment. We, the coders, need to make sure they know these reasons. The most obvious reason to me is that it is only Free Software that can be fixed by someone other than the original developer. Proprietary software is inferior because if you want it fixed you have to go back to the original developer. It used to be a given that you wouldn't take your car back to the original manufacturer to get it serviced. Now-a-days you get a warrentee with your car that gives you an incentive to go back to the original manufacturer, but you're still free to seek maintainence from a third party.
Warrentees strike a good balance, they force the original manufacturer to do a good job in the first place to reduce the number of people who claim service under warrentee, and they up front specify a specific date after which the customer is responsible for paying for all future service.
Maybe if coders were to start offering Free Software with a warrentee (something the GPL specifically advocates) users would come not only to expect high quality software, but to be free to have it maintained by a third party.
How we know is more important than what we know.
What phrase (ie, not "free software") might more accurately connote "free as in speech" without implying "free as in beer"?
Any suggestions?
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
I looked at the new website, and all I can determine is that these "FSF" people are stark raving insane.
Hypocrites
d00d! he's totally the 0-day leader, yo.
Is it just to make sure they get their own TLA? So, the FSF, started by RMS, appointed PTB to replace BMK... and then probably some reference to ESR.
sic transit gloria mundi
http://blog.kordix.com/marv/archives/000400.html
right here of course:
https://agia.fsf.org/order/
I guess All our GNU/Base Are belong to Brown then.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
...by prodding me with a shock-stick and saying Move along. I didn't know if it was Stallman or Brown or some other guy--he did look bald and have this big gas-mask-thing on...
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Are those like those acTUATIONS that you inhale from an asthma pump? (FWIW I suffered from asthma once; it simply "faded" away.) I gess we all miss a letter once evey few miutes.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
What phrase (ie, not "free software") might more accurately connote "free as in speech" without implying "free as in beer"?
Unfortunately the phrase the FSF has come up with to meet this exact situation is "libre", which has the same problems as "GNU" and then some, i.e., no one knows what it means until you explain it to them, and no one can pronounce it.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
...if they begin to require a EULA, an NDA, or an IOU, we'll be SOL and then FUBAR.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
I'm sure he'll go on to do great things at his new job, but I really enjoyed him as the FSF executive director. His talks were some of the most entertaining and informative, and he had a real way with crowds that RMS never picked up on.
You really should do yourself a favor and listen to the OggVorbis recordings of his talks on the FSF site. I asked a friend who really had no interest in free software to listen to just one 40 minute speech while going through his daily videogame routine, and he was a GNU convert overnight.
"WTF?"
"Software Freedom Movement" instead of "Free Software Movement". "Free Software" stays the same. (As in: "the Software Freedom Movement promotes Free Software".)
It's less ambiguous and it's not a drastic change.
What phrase (ie, not "free software") might more accurately connote "free as in speech" without implying "free as in beer"?
The problem is that in English, there is no phrase that does that. Just as there's no translation for "wishful thinking" into Italian.
In any given language there are concepts and distinctions that simply cannot be expressed succinctly.
TTFN
Truly an American icon.
Perhaps liberated? Somewhat like the libre that has been chosen by the powers that be.
warning: This post is likely to contain gobs of dripping sarcasm. Consume at your own risk.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...THANK GOD that it wasn't just anti-slash railing for michael's firing or he'd be here posting as much as ever.
Anti-slash is in no way responsible for this glorious event. In addition to your web site being down for weeks, your organization has been totally ineffective and irrelevant, and I'd be surprised if there were more than one or two of you who actually were active in Anti-slash.
I realize that you *tried* to expose editor injustices, but your months-old, hastily written, totally incomplete little list of Michael's offenses, along with whatever goatse'ing or other juvenile shit you might have done, was of no use. Instead, it was my repeated assault of detailed, informative anti-michael first-posts that likely made the difference.
I should also mention that falling for such a ridiculous, idiotic troll further illustrates how inept and worthless anti-slash has become.
Sycophantic? I don't think you're using that word right. Truly inconceivable.
English is easier said than done.
People have touched on this in other posts, but English is one of the only languages which has no distinction between free as in freedom, and free as in cost. As a fluent French and Spanish speaker, rms appreciates the concept of a seperate word for freedom, and his speeches in other languages tend to come across a bit better in terms of ambiguity.
As Stallman has also mentioned on occasion, there are Nineteen definitions for the word "Free" in the dictionary, and only one of them refers to price. The most apt is quite possibly:
So in many respects, it is not even the ambiguity of the word, it is the modern use and context of it which causes the ambiguity.
Russ Nelson vs. Peter Brown in a CAGE MATCH!!!
My money's on Russ -- he's angry.
You know... it always seems that serial killers (and famous killers, in general) always are referred to by their 3 name: John Wayne Gacey (sp?), John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, etc. Only Ted Bundy and Sirhan Sirhan come to mind that aren't. Of course, you could probably just throw one more "Sirhan" in there and put him in the first list. Nobody'd notice :)
Do you think these guys are all closet serial killers and they're trying to dupe us by just using initials? Inquiring minds want to know...
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.