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Behind the Doors of the Free Software Foundation
Linux.com has an interesting look at the inner workings of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). "The purpose of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) is probably obvious from its name -- but what does promoting free software mean in terms of everyday activity? Examining the roles of the organization shows how complex the FSF's advocacy role has become. It also reveals the range of services available to the free software community, and helps to explain how such a small group has had such a major influence on computer technology. As a 501(c)3 charity in the United States, the FSF is run by a board of directors. The current board includes FSF founder and president Richard M. Stallman and long-term member Henry Poole, but, in the last few years, new faces have appeared on the board."
As a user of Free Software for about 10 years now I would just like to say that I really appreciate the efforts of the FSF. No matter how much RMS is bashed and doubted he sticks to his ethics and invariably the projections he makes seem to come true to at least some extent.
Long live the FSF.
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For Stallman fans, it's a real shame to see him somewhat marginalized in his own community. If you know something of his life story (e.g. from Free as in Freedom ), he's passionate about coding. Yet, the growth of the FSF distracted him from software development, and now great projects like Emacs have to move ahead without him. But now, the FSF is going off into directions this bearded old guru didn't have to think about when he launched his campaign, and here he must rely on others to take charge. Oh well, at least once in a while he gives us a successful trip to India to rejoice about.
It is hard to grasp the importance of FSF, because one cannot see it until it is taken away. Free software is a good way to improve society as a whole just like the concept of a wheel, People use those free software all the time just like how wheels are incorporated in most of our technologies. Can anyone imagine what are the ramifications of a tightly controlled licensing scheme on wheel technology based fully on economics?
Where is the "Ignorant" mod tag?
That's not really "open" if you ask me.
Are you sure the FSF has DOORS?
I'd imagined the FSF as a sort of a Tepee or maybe a Mongolian Yurt, with maybe a flap or something.
Never anything as solid and 'non-open' as a door.
Yes I know, that's a Unix saying.
Since I was old enough to comprehend building computers, I have been running Linux. Having open source has directly affected my life. Thanks FSF and the OSS community for giving me interest, and the biggest part, being able to have development tools and code that I can learn with and from. With most commercial products costing ALOT of money, Open Source gave me the ability to have corporate sized products, for no cost. And Microsoft fans out there I think realize this too. Anyone in the computer world at some point recognizes what FSF and the bunch has done to the technology based world.
oh shit, is this post about Steve Ballmer? shit, I'll delete all my bootleg M$ software, I PROMISE!!
These days, Stallman spends much of his time traveling to promote free software. However, contrary to what outsiders might expect, as president, he remains closely involved with FSF policy, asking frequently for status reports and making policy decisions that do not require other members of the board.
Moreover, Brown says, "Richard can be very hands-on in relation to a specific target that he needs to be speaking about."
You call that marginalized?
Nice way to gloss over the fact that the FSF has essentially failed to grasp the point that the only way free software will be perceived as a valid replacement for proprietary software is if it is a 1:1 replacement. gNewSense's latest release should prove that FOSS developer's time would be better spent at improving their software rather than wasting their time with the FSF. Especially considering that the FSF is run in a non-democratic manner.
Thankfully other organizations exist that realize this and don't attempt to have us all waste time as the defective by design campaign does.
While I don't agree with this comment in all aspects, I do believe an important part of promoting free software is to give incentives to free software coders, especially those in charge of replacing popular proprietary products that still don't have a free-software equivalent.
I think they have something to do with free beer or speech.
Free something. I can't remember. It's Friday and I've been drinking.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
But he was kicked off the board due to mono releasing its class libraries under the MIT/X11 license instead of LGPL. You would have thought that MIT/X11 would be freer than the LGPL. MIT/X11 is like the BSD no advertising clause license.
I know, I know, Stallman has the "moral high ground", a full head of hair, and everything, but what does it matter? You're filthy rich and he's a peasant selling GNU toys and t-shirts on the internet.
It's OK. Shhhh, sshhhh, it's OK...sh......
Lullaby, Lullaby, Lullaby,...shhh...
Free means different things to different people. The GPL provides more freedom to users by requiring coders to give back to the community. The MIT/X11/BSD style license provides more freedom to coders, because they don't have to give back to the community.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You're leading yourself to a rather pure philosophical argument. But I might agree that we need "bad" extremists.
Having nutjobs on both ends of a spectrum lends the rest of us (middle of the bell curve) a bit of perspective, whether it's in regards to technology, politics or religion.
Of course, it might be that my "good" extremists are your "bad" extremists and so on.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
The purpose of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) is probably obvious from its name...
That's a pretty clueless statement. If it were obvious, then we wouldn't have to make the Beer/Speech distinction every time we used the word.
One reason this is unclear: to many of us, it's not at all clear that whether you have the right to hack somebody else's code is a first amendment issue. In a technical sense, I suppose it is. But that's the same technical sense that Comcast uses when they assert their right to give us 500 channels of crap. Even if legally valid, it's hard to get worked up over it.
The main contribution of the FSF to posterity has been to create the Open Source movement, which has proven to be a superior model for large-scale collaboration than the old standards committees it replaced. This was obvious to me the first time I compared early prototype of open source desktops like KDE and GNOME to their committee-managed predecessors, such as (the late, unlamented) CDE. Even early betas of the OS desktops had more functionality than CDE, which had been under development for many years.
But does FSF boast about their role in inventing Open Source? They do not. They consider OS, arguably their biggest accomplishment, as a distraction. That's because the FSF is about changing all the intellectual property rules as it relates to software, not about better development models. And IMHO, they don't really have a lot to show for 25 years of attacks on that particular windmill.
Having principles is not extreme. It's actually not really possible *not to have them.
Abandoning your principles when they're inconvenient is not "moderate".
If you claim to have principle X, and abandon it when it's inconvenient, your *actual principle is "convenience", and it coincided with principle X for awhile.
X doesn't suddenly become extreme because it's not your principle.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
... you are eaten by a Grue.
... and then they built the supercollider.