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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."
Really, and you've done a scientific study to determine that the abrasiveness of these groups outweighed the benefit of bringing the issues into the public eye for discussion by more level heads? Not sure exactly how you would determine that to be the case, but it's an interesting view.
Sure, there is some amorphous "best" way to go about getting things changed, but taking into account mankind's general ignorance of social machinery I tend to think it's better to do something than waiting for the perfect strategy. Every group that has ever achieved anything has pissed people off and been the target of ridicule... at least until they succeeded. Sometimes the ridicule continues even then. But things keep rolling on regardless.
Cheers.