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.

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Why non-coders don't get Free Software

[QuantumG]

The Blog of RMS is a rare opportunity to see him sum up his views. In this entry he's actually managed to fit his "copyright is no longer a good deal" concept into a single paragraph (whereas usually it takes him 15 pages). For those who don't know it (and couldn't be bothered clicking on a link) RMS basically says that way-back when we gave up the right to republish to encourage people to make works we weren't giving up much cause no-one republished back then, but now, with the internet, we all republish so we need to rethink that deal.

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.

Re:Why non-coders don't get Free Software

[DeepHurtn!]

Very insightful post. I just thought I'd share my perspective, as a non-coder who switched to GNU/Linux last summer (and hasn't looked back!). First, I need to say that it was the rhetoric of the free software movement, especially that of RMS, that persuaded me to switch -- *not* the open source movement. You're a lot more likely to convince a non-coder, I believe, by emphasizing the freedom aspects of it than by technical ones. RMS's right-to-read arguments are what got to me, and I think plenty of people would respond to it.

For example, I think that right now academics -- particularly those in the arts! -- could use more exposure to that type of argument. I began my grad studies in September, and I was really shocked by how dependent all of the profs were on MS file formats. These people don't like to hear that all of their research and papers might be inaccessible in 20 years -- or that if they are, they might have to give MS money just to read them.

Anyways, IMHO unfortunately the open source ideals seem to be getting most of the publicity right now, and I think that that argument, in the long run, isn't as powerful as the free software argument is.

Hope you don't mind the ramblings.