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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.
You don't want it.
;-)
It's the work of communism and the devil.
Besides . . . It'll never catch on.
Pretty Pictures!
www.khuuuun.com =)
"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
Hypocrites
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
My guess is that if you mention "free software" to 10 people who don't know already what it is, all 10 will think "free as in beer."
The term "free software" is inclined to give people the wrong idea.
But if you were to call it "software libre," some people would think "free as in speech" and others wouldn't understand, and would ask about it.
Wouldn't that be much better than giving the wrong impression?
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
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.
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