FSF, Political Activism or Crossing the Line?

orbitor writes to tell us InfoWorld's Neil McAllister is calling into question some of the recent decisions by the Free Software Foundation. From the article: "All the more reason to be disappointed by the FSF's recent, regrettable spiral into misplaced neo-political activism, far removed from its own stated first principles. In particular, the FSF's moralistic opposition to DRM (digital rights management) technologies, which first manifested itself in early drafts of Version 3 of the GPL (Gnu General Public License), seems now to have been elevated to the point of evangelical dogma."

Comments

the long view

[epine]

I'm not sure I agree with recent FSF positions (haven't tracked them much recently), but I agree overall with the FSF taking the long view of free software. There are enormous latent risks that DRM or shifts in the IP landscape (patents) could poison the well ten or twenty years down the road, by which point the crucial battles have already been lost. It's easy to come off as radical crusaders fighting battles that won't play out over a span of decades. Our short little span of attention is our worst enemy in these matters. The fact that they are alone in their extreme urgency doesn't prove much directly: they might be equally alone in a correct analysis of the risks at hand. Just because Chicken Little is squawking, that doesn't mean the sky isn't falling. Glib comments about Chicken Little behaving like Chicken Little have add nothing of any use to the larger debate. My comments add nothing of any use, either, but at least I know the difference.