Slashdot Mirror
GNOME Developer Suggests Split From GNU Project
blozza2070 writes "In a recent posting from Philip Van Hoof, he suggests that GNOME split off from the GNU Project and has proposed a vote. He was informed he will need 10% of members to agree for a vote to be put forth. At the same time, David Schlesinger (on the GNOME Advisory Board) has agreed on a vote. Stormy Peters said she doesn't agree with this, but then gave everyone instructions on how to proceed with a vote. She mentioned that roughly 20 members are needed to agree."
The mailing list server is timing out as of this writing, but iTWire has the Cliff's notes.
Maillist appears to be under some sort of dos attack of unknown cause. Does anyone know why they would want to split off?
QUOTE
Stone Mirror aka David “Lefty” Schlesinger
to me
show details Oct 3 (10 days ago)
These messages were sent while you were offline.
2:01 PM
Stone: don’t be a ninny, no one’s trying to “fuse Linux with Microsoft”. that’s paranoid rhetoric, but coming from a mental case such as yourself, it’s not surprising.
Groklaw is taking much abuse for their stance, as can be seen in the comments. Bad move on PJ’s part.
2:04 PM
Do you happen to know Celeste Lyn Paul.? She’s the head of the KDE Foundation Board
2:05 PM
She was in the audience at GCDS and tweeted her dismay at Stallman’s “bit of harmless fun” while it was happening
May you know Stormy Peters?
She’s the Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation.
2:06 PM
she was there, too, and not happy, either.
it’ll be interesting if “Dr.” Stallman finds himself blacklisted from both KDE and GNOME events in the future, won’t it?
UNQUOTE
documented evidence, mainly from his own emails and blogs, of David “Lefty” Schlesinger (he is an ACCESS employee) and his long career of illegal and menacing threats, stalking, harassment and blackmail.
here:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=4902686590059408050&postID=7665635887324397605
and here:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=4902686590059408050&postID=7149350615784434698
Lefty has written heinously sexist troll articles for the notorious troll site encyclopediadramatica.com.
” I try to stop a bit short of full-blown monster-hood.” – David ‘Lefty’ Schlesinger aka stonemirror
What else do you expect from him?
Philip Van Hoof
Fri, 11 Dec 2009 08:21:53 -0800
On Fri, 2009-12-11 at 10:12 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote:
> But GNOME is part of the GNU Project, and it ought to support the free
> software movement. The most minimal support for the free software movement
> is to refrain from going directly against it; that is, to avoid presenting
> proprietary software as legitimate.
I understand your position. I think you might not understand the
position of a lot of GNOME foundation members and contributors.
Their position isn't necessarily compatible with your position that
GNOME should "avoid presenting proprietary software as legitimate".
The way I see it is that most members want GNOME to stay out of that
philosophic discussion. Although GNOME usually advises to "work
upstream" and to "do things opensource when possible, as much as
possible". This is just a personal point of view, of course.
You, as one of the key FSF people, appear to be keen[1] on enforcing a ...
strict policy on how GNU's member-projects should behave. So
I propose to have a vote on GNOME's membership to the GNU project.
> I think Planet GNOME should have a rule to this effect.
I think it's clear that I disagree. Philosophically.
> There are many ways to implement such a rule, of which "block the
> whole blog" is about the toughest one we might consider. I'd suggest
> rather to try a mild approach; I'm sure that can do the job.
Let's first get a consensus from our members on GNOME's status as being
or not being a well-behaving GNU project, or having its own identity.
Original thread, alternative link: http://www.mail-archive.com/foundation-list@gnome.org/msg04068.html
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
the server has been completely slashdotted to hell, maybe i'll get to read the gnome mailing list tomorrow :P
Nobody would be part of GNU so we cloned a GNU and released GNU/GNU.
From reading the article, I'm getting the gist that part of the problem was that some folks on Planet GNOME, de Icaza included, made a lot of mention of proprietary software and relatively little mention of its open-sourced cousins. I got this impression from several points in the article, such as this one:
And in response to Van Hoof's comments about VMware, Stallman said people should not write about their work on Planet GNOME "unless VmWare (sic) becomes free software. GNOME should not provide proprietary software developers with a platform to present non-free software as a good or legitimate thing."
I think that's a preposterous rule! You mean to tell me that folks who work on open source software, but happen to also work on non-OSS for their employers (Microsoft, VMware, etc) aren't allowed to talk about the work that actually helps them put food on the table and may even HELP make open-source software better?
I don't know a terrible lot about the open source movement, but from what I've read here and elsewhere, Stallman's an extremist, and that's NOT a good role model to follow.
Suddently GNOME loks more appealing to me.
Q. Excuse me, is this the "GNOME" project?
A. Nome.
So this is just one more step for Gnome to become fully encased with Microsoft technologies. Have at boys.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
I don't know whether Stallman's latest diatribe is about VMware, Mono, or whatever other thing he happens to be ill informed about these days, but it may be time for Gnome to sever ties with him and GNU. He has contributed a lot, but it looks to me like he's losing touch both with the economics and the technology of free software.
Stallman should perhaps rather worry about the future of GNU itself; I haven't seen much innovation coming out of the GNU project itself recently, and GNU is getting rather long in the tooth.
But GNU/Gnome/Linux now?
The mere mention of Schlesinger's name in this kind of article prompts a lot of replies such as the parent post.
If anyone is interested in knowing why, this timeline of events can be a good read.
The first rule of GNU is: do not talk about non-free software.
The second rule of GNU is: DO NOT TALK ABOUT NON-FREE SOFTWARE!
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/518539
corny, arrogant, clueless and vile... that's David "Lefty" Schlesinger aka 'stonemirror', who works in marketing and PR for ACCESS, Inc.
ACCESS pays the Gnome Foundation 20k per year to let Schlesinger troll Planet Gnome.
Schlesinger is a paid astroturfer and corporate troll.
I know RMS is unpopular in /.
I know Miguel de Icaza is more popular.
But I also know that I am a fan of Free Software. I'd be too happy Gnome could shed non-free software (like Tomboy notes - based on Mono) instead of priding themselves for functionality. KDE is not much of an alternative, they are hopeless. German engineering, for the sake of engineering, great ideas, but agnostic to the concept of 'user requirements'.
I might have to go back to xfce?
This is just GNOME sliding further and further into irrelevancy. It's basically a dead project at this point. There is little innovation happening, and most discussion these days is bickering over philosophical issues like in this case.
Even if it wasn't great when initially released, at least the KDE project was able to get their KDE 4.x releases out and stabilized relatively quickly. They've built a good foundation for future development. GNOME, on the other hand, hasn't seen a major release since GNOME 2.0 in 2002! GNOME 3.0 is basically a bunch of mocks at this point, and even then, the proposed changes are quite minor.
A lot of people will say, "But GNOME is the main desktop of Ubuntu and Fedora!" Yes, that is true, but it is really only an artifact of history, dating back to when the Qt licensing wasn't as open as it is today (and thus making KDE a less-appealing option). These days, both Ubuntu and Fedora could switch from GNOME to KDE within one release cycle. I predict this will happen soon enough, probably with Ubuntu switching first.
At some point, the Ubuntu community is going to realize that GNOME has stagnated, and all of the real innovation is happening with the KDE project. It'll take time, but people are already moving over to KDE, especially as the more recent KDE 4.3 and the upcoming KDE Software Compilation 4.4 releases have shown to be of a very high quality.
KDE is just technically better these days. It is implemented in a better programming language (even C++ is better than the C-and-GObject hellhole), built upon a better GUI toolkit (Qt kicks the fuck out of GTK+), and offers much better desktop applications and a more integrated desktop experience. Unless there are some huge changes within the GNOME community, they will not be able to match KDE's current environment, let alone exceed it.
I seem to be missing something. "avoid presenting proprietary software as legitimate."?!!! I really don't understand why "proprietary" can't be "legitimate". What ever it is, can someone post the reason why RMS made such a remark?
Red Hat is currently in the process of consolidating all its community hosted servers to a single hosting facility. As part of that, the gnome.org servers are being moved *this weekend*. You plan on doing something other than working on GNOME this weekend, or find a programming task that doesn't rely on access to GNOME servers. Time ==== Start: Sat, Dec 12 approx. 1200 UTC End: on or before Mon, Dec 14 The plan is for a 48 hour outage window; we would hope to have major services back up and functional sooner than that. Affected systems ================ Most gnome.org services other than ftp.gnome.org and irc.gnome.org. This includes: www.gnome.org master.gnome.org bugzilla.gnome.org git.gnome.org mail.gnome.org live.gnome.org IP Changes ========== The gnome.org servers will all be moving to new IP addresses; in general this will be invisible to users, but you might notice messages from SSH in some cases. Selected new IPs: master.gnome.org: 209.132.180.167 git.gnome.org: 209.132.180.173
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Stallman will drop them from GNU Hurd now. They'll be on the outside looking in...
don't you think it's time to move on? The 80's are over and we have FORUMS now...
it's not bullshit, these links prove it with complete documentation, mainly from Lefty's own emails and blogs. documentation the partisan mdz blog refused to print.
the truth is winning, despite your attempts to drown it in lies.
RMS called Schlesinger a "troll like enemy of free software" for a very good reason, RMS doesn't use this kind of language often.
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=4902686590059408050&postID=7665635887324397605
and here:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=4902686590059408050&postID=7149350615784434698
Going private already ? So, who is the buyer going to be ? Gag-gle, (Er)pple, M$, ???
> Their position isn't necessarily compatible with your position that
GNOME should "avoid presenting proprietary software as legitimate".
Do they know what Gnome stands for? What GNU is?
To me, there's a slow process of takeover by M$ ideals -- the same thing which was done to ISO, but on a much more planned way. ISO needed to be taken asap, or ODF would kill Office. Since OOXML was "approved", ODF was sorta defused (OOXML does not need to be good or even work; in fact, if it appears to work but doesn't, so much the better for M$).
Gnome has an ubiquitous presence in the Linux world. Taking over Gnome would deal a serious blow on Linux; if things proceed this way, who knows where they aiming? The kernel?
Things came to a point so bad that the ISO room was full with pro-M$ dudes; it was even physically impossible to enter to vote for Linux (I'm not making this up, as unbelievable as it may seem). This equates in the free collaboration world to forums being crowded -- when a "Maillist appears to be under some sort of dos attack of unknown cause."
Even the division situation is already a defeat for FOSS: every part has now half developers.
From the comments above and following here on /., I guess RMS is right; people are talking about software "which puts food on the table", Stallman being a extremist, seceding Planet Gnome so it has nothing to do with GNU ideas... Wow. I mean, wow!
My view, FWIW, is to go where RMS goes. If not for him, I would have at home the suffering I must endure at work, a M$-only shop.
The issue is one that I wish more Planets would take seriously. Why are former GNOME devs which now work and post primarily about non-GNOME, proprietary software still being syndicated on the GNOME Planet? Why are some Ubuntu Planet members constantly posting about their Mac and Win desktops 9since they apparently don't eat their own dogfood)?
If you're on a Planet, do us all a favor: create a tag for posts that should be on the Planet and don't syndicate the other stuff. We don't want to know what you bought at the grocery store. If the Planet's ToS says the language is English, post in English (substitute appropriate language for other Planets).
Glad I got that off of my chest.
Put identity in the browser.
Ah yes! Another nail in Linux's coffin.
That's it! Gnome is finally irrelavent!
Live OSS or die!
This is the reason I stopped using Linux in the first place. I've been Linux free* for a decade.
* Except for using it at work, using it to game, using it on my cell phone, using it on 4 out of 5 systems in my home because my wife needs it... blah blah blah.
The proper form of address for Stallman is "The Hippie Dictator". It's his vision and idealism that created the entire FOSS community and he is its one true patriot and defender and needs to be referred to as such. In this case, he does have a legitimate complaint because some Gnome folks have been discussing their employers closed source products without any comparison/contrast or even reference to any open source alternatives, making it seem as though their employers have the only solution to certain problems. Furthermore as the creator of the FOSS concept, he fills the same role as Linus Torvalds in defining what constitutes FOSS, yet unlike Linus, he is not an absolute dictator that accepts/rejects apps based on his beliefs only.
Another thing at stake here is the historical efforts by MS to Embrace/Extend/Extinguis that appears to be in play with the Moonlight project, which isn't based on a clean room reverse engineering of the dot net protocols or even abi's. If they were to use published API's to provide the functionality, then the issue would not be as severe but when someone decides to drink the "MS Coolade" and accept their reasoning as right while accepting a paycheck from them, it raises the question of "Conflict of Interest" and follows the Extend/Embrace/Extinguish path that MS has followed in the past.
From what I've seen of the Moonlight/Mono project, it is in the extend/embrace stage right now by getting the Gnome folks so dependant upon MS Patents, that they're running the real risk of being shut down due to patent violations, which is the final Extinguish stage and they're damn good at playing that game. Oblig Quote "Do you want to play a game?" "It seems the only way to win is not to play at all." /Oblig Quote: That's the situatation as I see it, yet Stallman has been a very lenient dictator in this regards as he's only asking the fools to
neither of these seem to be an onerous request but if they continue to misuses the FOSS label, the only option that will remain is the removal of the Right to declare themselves a FOSS project, thus destroying them as independant from MS in the eyes of the community. To me the only benefit of this actually going to court would be getting the FOSS Foundation declared as the Authoritive Answer to usage of the FOSS Label and Status. If that happens, the final step taken would be the removal of the right to use FOSS project, thus destroying Gnome as a Community Project unless it's completely forked.
Think about that. If the FOSS foundation revoked the authorization of the Gnome Project to label themselves as a FOSS project, how many Distro's would quit using it? Damn near all of them and I can already hear the screams of rage from the Debian Folks in regards to Gnome because it violates their FREE SOFTWARE TENANTS and COMMITMENT. They might still offer Gnome but it couldn't be in the Base distro anylonger since it wouldn't meet their definition would it?
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
There is a blog aggregator called Planet GNOME which pulls together blog posts from various Gnome developers. One of these developers is Miguel de Icaza, a fairly senior GNOME developer (I believe he started both the GNOME and Mono projects, though I don't know his current position in them). Miguel is known, and somewhat infamous, for supporting MS Standards like C# (hence Mono, an opensource implementation of it), and OOXML.
In this instance Miguel wrote a blog post about Silverlight that reads like a press release. Silverlight is a proprietary and patent-encumbered replacement for Flash written by Microsoft.
Thus a promo for Silverlight was showing up on Planet GNOME.
This was not the only time something like this had happened, these are blogs afterall, people write about all sorts of stuff. Thus people started discussing a code of conduct about appropriate topics for blogs on Planet GNOME.
Stallman stopped by to offer his opinion (just couple very short posts in a long discussion) saying that people shouldn't use Planet GNOME to talk about proprietary projects like promos for Silverlight or even talk about using vmware since Gnome is a GNU project and opposed to proprietary software.
Philip Van Hoof responded saying he disagreed and started talking about a split, a few other people started talking about the rules surrounding the vote and the rest kept talking about the idea of a code of conduct.
I don't really know who anyone is other than Miguel and Stallman, but my gut says that no vote is going to occur.
I stole this Sig
Pretty much so, there is a major push to switch Gnome to C# as it core development language and now that the whole of Gnome is spliting you can bet that .NET will become the core dependency. Remember, MS can void its "promises" over .NET at any moment, the EEE is is progressing well.
But... the future refused to change.
If the GNU project wants to restrict the speech of it's members on GNU discussion boards regarding the merits of proprietary software, it's not worth it. Restricting the voicing of opinions is absolutely the antithesis of what we should expect from open-source communities. If someone thinks Mono or VMware is worth using, fine. Stallman seemed to be suggesting that removing a blog could be considered as punishment for voicing such an opinion; that's hardly an open and frank discussion conducted in a open community. I can't see how censorship could possibly be an appropriate course of action.
Gnome is attempting (and succeeding) in presenting itself as a viable alternative to proprietary desktops. Dogmatic insistence that it be developed in a vacuum, uninfluenced by any proprietary developments is absurd and not in the goal of developing Gnome into a truly versatile platform. Open-source software will utterly fail if it's community is not open-minded. Thankfully, that's not the case and if the GNU project wants to take Gnome down that narrow path I hope Gnome will choose to find it's own way instead.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
The question is: Will Mono further the cause of FOSS or not?
If you are a developer doing cross-platform development under GNU/Linux, there are always two possible outcomes:
Especially in the first case it is important to get the licensing right. KDE4 for example is being ported to Windows, MacOS, and Solaris. If KDE4 would be licensed under BSD/MIT instead of GPL, Microsoft or Apple could simply take the work and sell it as part of their proprietary software. The monetary gains then would be used to take control of the project.
You're not going to be able to call it GNOME, will you?
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
They do not know how things went before GNU and Linux were there, when to have an usable development environment you had to pay for an operating system (more expensive if it was a developer-oriented version), a windowing system, a file manager, an office application, a web browser, an email client, a compiler, a debugger, a zip program, a picture viewer, access to the official developer's documentation, and a full set of "Undocumented %s" books. Not to mention any library you might want to use.
Now they are growing tired of the "free software fundamentalists" because they do not see that what they've accomplished is inseparable from the ideology in which they believed. They just think that for some reason, charitable organizations such as Microsoft, Oracle, Sony and all the hardware manufacturers have an interest in providing them with software free of charge, and with unlimited freedom to use it in whatever way they see fit - and that they will keep doing so forever, even when that harms the sales of their commercial products.
GNOME will turn away from the FSF, this is obvious, and has been obvious since the first day the Mono affaire began. What will happen after Microsoft will be in control of key components of GNOME, is obvious too.
An then, hopefully before long, some new RMSes will appear, inspiring a free software movement again.
Mod Parent up +1: Good Synopsis
I am glad this controversy came up because I was not following GNOME development and had no idea how hard they were working to integrate with proprietary "cross-platform technologies" like Silverlight. To me the appeal of Linux is that it *doesn't* rely on the MS model of giving Web applications full access to the OS. The real "benefit" to end users from ActiveX, Silverlight, .NET, etc is they expose the users to all kinds of Trojan horses and malware. If GNOME has drunk the Microsoft kool-aid of doing away with any kind of application sandboxing, then to hell with it.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Those links are too unreadable.
I clicked those links, plus some from a higher-up post, and found some mentions of bad behaviour, but it's mixed in with long comments about other stuff I've no interest in. To present information in a readable way, I suggest making one page/post about this one topic, and write a statement, link to a proof for that statement, then write another statement, link to a proof for that statement, rince, repeat as necessary.
When it's written, reread it from the point of view of someone who's doubtful (not an enemy, just a critical visitor), and fix the points where you think that reader might stop reading.
How can someone differentiate between your tl;dr links and this:
http://mdzlog.alcor.net/2009/07/13/backlash-feminism-considered-harmful/#comment-1146
?
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
Does anyone know:
1. When the vote will take place?
2. Who can vote?
Seems like the easiest way to stop this is for open source and free software supporters to vote, assuming that's possible. I went to the gnome.org website to find out how I could become a voting member but the site is "down for maintenance" - hmmm...
I wish that the proposed changes for Gnome 3 were minor, but to me it looks like major change, and change resulting in a total usability clusterfuck.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
You do realize that to be a member of the Free Software Movement, you have to, I don't know, *agree* with its founding principles? So, discussions about promoting proprietary software in a Free Software community would be, I don't know, INAPPROPRIATE? If you want to discuss promoting proprietary software, why not do so in a forum which encourages the use of proprietary software like say maybe Microsoft's community website (they do have one, don't they? I mean a *community* web site?) While you're there, as a useful exercise, you might want to try to see what kind of reception you get when you try to promote Free Software alternatives over the proprietary software by bringing up the issue of promoting Linux use, or ditching Visual Studio in favor of the GNU build toolchain. You may be surprised by the reception you receive.
He's been promoting MS interests (eee) with-in the FOSS movement for too many years. The only open question IMO, is how long it will take to the GNOME people to get rid of his 'works'.
What's in a sig?
Interesting that this is posted by the very guy who both wrote the article this slashdot post links to AND submitted the link to slashdot, Brandon Lozza (aka blozza2070 and ender2070), who has been spreading libel about David Schlesinger on identi.ca as well as his own website until David Schlesinger forced Brandon to take those articles down.
There was a project named GNU. Then came GNUstep. Then came GNUstep + WindowMaker. GNU looked upon this and called it good, and declared it the official desktop of the GNU project. But GNUstep was not finished, not even close.
Then kame KDE. It was based upon the not-so-free Qt. Everyone at GNU cried "oh shit." Fire and brimstone began to fall.
Then came Miguel, a shit-disturber from the NetBSD holy wars. GNOME was cooked up with an official "fuck you" to the KDE team on their mailing lists. The 0.33 release was based on a bunch of free tools hastily thrown together and re-branded with the never-proven CORBA thrown into the mix.
Then came RedHat, wading into the morass and inspiring GNOME to jump from version 0.33 to version 1.0 overnight, resulting in much crash-age and tooth-gnashage. But the gospel had been preached and accepted in the West, and even Slashdot jumped on Miguel's bandwagon. Yea, even the Rasterman was drawn into the mighty whirlpool for a time and Enlightenment was lost to history. So the holy wars were joined.
Over time, KDE became more free. The dreaded, reviled Qt became GPL, then LGPL. On the flipside, GNOME began adopting questionable technologies like MONO. The grinning spectre of Dread Lord Gates lurked in the shadows. The wheel had turned.
And yet back in the dustbin of history, GNUstep waited. And all along this would have been the best choice of all, had Stallman & co not thrown their weight knee-jerk behind "anyone but KDE". Given the return of NextStep under the name "Mac OS X," just imagine the interoperability and cross-compatibility we could have today?
Gnote is a fully compatible rewrite of Tomboy in C++ with GTK+. It's excellent. Give it a try, it's more responsive than Tomboy which is amusing.
It will become MSNOME and then will die as it is embraced, extended, and extinguished.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
For those who are still stuck with Tomboy, here's a good alternative:
http://www.kabatology.com/06/17/gnote-a-mono-free-alternative-to-tomboy-notes/
Gnote is a lightweight port of Tomboy to C++. No more bloat, Mono, Novell or Microsoft.
What's wrong with "GNOME Network Object Model Environment"?
Oh, shit.
First off, I would disagree that the founding principles of the GNU project embrace the censorship of discourse regarding development. I would hope that the open source community holds itself to a higher ethical standard than Microsoft. Open source and open minds go together, that's why the movement is attractive.
My point is that if the FSF feels so under siege so as to resort to such tactics, I hope that Gnome distances itself from that blind, dogmatic pursuit of closed-mindedness. Restricting the code that gets into builds is one thing, restricting the speech that gets into community forums is another matter entirely.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
But don't you see, that just isn't true.
The newest generation understands the problem with proprietary vendors, at least most of them do. The problem is that GNU is becoming just as hurtful to the movement as those proprietary vendors once were. Instead of permitting branching out and new ideas and new philosophies to extend the movement, GNU is preventing anything that disagrees with their Dogma to speak, or at least, trying to do that here.
Personally, I absolutely believe that free software philosophy is important, even though I write closed source software to make ends meat. That said, I also believe that an ecosystem with both closed source and open source software coexist isn't a negative thing and that while care must be taken in dealing with those that build closed source software, it isn't a moral imperative that we have open source. Companies aren't evil entities intent on destroying free software becasue they hate RMS' hair style. They are out to make money. As long as they're out to make money, then if free software makes them money, there's no reason they care to dismantle us or harm us. That means they may sometimes be an ally, sometimes an enemy.
This is all BECAUSE of what came before. Back when free/open software had no place, we needed the extremism and philosophical doctorines to just survive, because no one took us seriously. No one realized there were business models that existed for free software, or that open and closed source could co-exist in an ecosystem. Now they do.
In my opinion, RMS is wrong for the right reasons (MS is certainly causing some crap, but discussing it isn't going to hurt, and restricting free speech based on dogma is RIDICULOUS) and Miguel is right for the wrong reasons (No, mono isn't that awesome, we don't need to pull this pro-MS crap, but yeah, GNU and FSF are limiting you based on their dogma which is RIDICULOUS).
If you run a tennis club, it is perfectly reasonable to restrict the use of the tennis courts to tennis. If someone wants to play basketball, they should be in a different club.
The same goes for software forums. GNOME planet is set up for the discussion of open source GPL's software. If you want to discuss, and particularly if you want to promote, something else then you need to go to another place. Nobody is restricting your free speech.
Of course, the fifth columnists who want to get rid of the GPL would rather flood the forum with their supporters and drown out the GPL supporters.
It isn't being open minded for the tennis club members to let the basketball crowd throw out the tennis rackets, tear down the nets and ridicule the game of tennis.
Like the swift fist of an angry god, Gnome.com is no longer accessible. You made RMS angry, now we all suffer.
It'll still sound the same though.
>So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
right here: https://jetpack.mozillalabs.com/
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
It's because of this that almost in almost all commercial cases, the OS is *BSD, while Linux is used almost exclusively by hobbyists such as IBM.
Yes, I totally agree ! Nobody serious use Linux !
It's this insistence of Linux on using GPL that causes it to have such a small market share. It's almost non-existent in fields such as scientific clusters ; embed firmwares for modems, routers, multimedia- and network- disk enclosures ; kernel forming the base of several smartphone systems ; and OS inside webservers and inside SOHO NAS/SANs.
The proof that this market share is too low is that nobody writes viruses for Linux !
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
How can all of this be more important than getting the most basic features of their GUI right?
See http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47948 for a bug that has been open for wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too long.
Couldn't agree with you more. I just don't have any mod points at the moment...
Warning: Contents May Be Flammable. Keep Out Of Reach Of Children.
they do not see that what they've accomplished is inseparable from the ideology in which they believed.
A lot of us were involved in free and open software and technologies long before Stallman had his freakout over Emacs.
The first open operating system platform was the Software Tools virtual OS, which provided a free (as in beer and as in speech) and open platform for developing UNIX-like software on any OS. And it came out of AT&T Bell Laboratories.
GNU is just the radical wing of a vast ecosystem of free and open tools produced by people of many different opinions and, yes, even ideologies. If "We just want to help people use good stuff" is an ideology.
Then acronym doesn't make sense anymore, so they could just change the name to "Gnome".
I spend a lot of time reading slashdot, and a lot of that time, the comments are awful. But I've got to say: we've got nothing on these guys, guys.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
You don't need approval from FSF or RMS to call your software free and open. There was open software before Stallman had his hissy fit over Emacs.
They could make it "GTK+ Network Object Model Environment".
That'd make the full expansion of the name, minus recursion:
*drumroll*
"GNU's Not Unix! Image Manipulation Program Tool Kit+ Network Object Model Environment"
The problem is that GNU is becoming just as hurtful to the movement as those proprietary vendors once were.
Becoming?
Deliberately putting proprietary extensions in GCC to discourage people from using non-GPL compilers? There used to be several independent C compilers, but they couldn't compile code written for GCC because of all the GCC extensions like the short-circuit "?:" (you could leave the middle expression out) they didn't support. GCC has moved away from that kind of nonsense to a certain degree, now it's done its job.
Deliberately developing incompatible extended versions of languages Stallman didn't like, like the Tcl vs Guile debacle.
RMS was strongly anti-Linux for a time, until it was obvious that Hurd was doomed.
This is not a new problem.
Well, you could do. This sums it up for me, though: Lefty repeatedly accused the man running Boycott Novell, Roy Schestowitz, of conspiring with another individual to get him sacked from his job based on an e-mail in which the other individual denied having anything to do with said attempt (which was also fairly feeble). If that wasn't enough, after Roy complained about this in a blog post Lefty threatened to sue him for libel for doing so...
All in favor of everything Microsoft stand on Miquels side. All others on the opposite side.
Then watch as every single distribution drops the mono infested stinkpile like a hot potato and chooses the other one.
I encounter Novells mono implementations all day through my work. I truly hate every single line of code coming out of Novell that happens to be done in mono. The iFolder client, iFolder itself, Zenworks 10 and bits and pieces that malfunctions and gives me much grief all have one thing in common. Written for Mono and buggy as nothing ive ever seen. Everything else from Novell works like a charm no matter what language its written in. We are dropping Novells products altogether because of this.
Why someone would build anything in mono is beyond me, really. No matter how you twist and turn it, no apps made in neither dotnet nor mono has ever been anything but total turd. It could be the best dev enviroment in the universe for all i care, the products coming out of it still sucks.
Fork!
HTTP/1.1 400
Even more directly, the versions of the promises that I read contained explicit statement that MS reserved the right to change it's mind whenever it felt like it, no reasons required. Granted, this particular set of promises were the ones it made while signing the contract with Novell, and those might not be the ones you are referring to. Still, the secondary sources reporting the promises ignored the disclaimers. I'd be quite suspicious of any reports of what the promises were that appear in secondary sources.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
If even the GNOME developers agree Windows is exciting cutting edge technology then why would I just use a cheap imitation? Give me the Real Deal. I used to be a Linux admin before going back to school. Linux is great for servers but I'm too concious of time management to waste precious time on the trifles of using a fake wannabe Windows environment. If he's right and silverlight really is this innovative, awesome technology then to hell with this cheezy GNOME imitation GIVE ME THE REAL MCCOY!
Posted from Windows 7 ( haven't wasted time on desktop Linux since going to grad school)
Most of the pages from his old "stonemirror"
website are still in the WayBack machine, where one can read his
taunting of the mentally ill, etc..... But, I try to stay away from the
more gross stuff because most people wouldn't believe it even if
you sent them the WayBack URL's.
what do you do?
The Free Software Fondation Europe shares offices with KDE, not any GNOME-related group.
Until someone writes a Firefox add-on that will let me (physically) fly, I will continue to be disappointed.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
Does this mean Ima lose my Gnome?.....
Visit my Forums?
One guy says something, and Slashdot reports sky is falling.
Sansation journalism.
-- The lion tried to kill me! ...
-- Are you paranoid or what? He was trying to hug you, so much he loves you!
-- Oh, sorry!
Forgive me for not wanting M$ embrace. 8-/
Don't forget LXDE, Enlightenment, the *box WMs, and the *wm WMs.
Call it NOME, then it will be spelled wrong, but pronounced right, instead of spelled right and pronounced wrong.
I used to be a huge KDE proponent in the past due to excellent FreeBSD support and the extensive set of APIs. Gnome seamed like a hack on top of another window manager a decade ago in comparison and I noticed all the errors in X when I did a "startx" to turn x on (ah the old days).
But after switching back to windows and then trying Ubuntu I was deeply impressed with gnome recently as it works very well. KDE is a montrosity. I can't customize its well unusable and annoying.
http://saveie6.com/
Your post is one of the wisest I've read in a long time.
It's about people recognize different people serve different roles.
Stallman has his "free software" role to play.
Miguel has the "pragmatic software" role.
Ballmer has the "chair throwing" role.
Thanks! Nice to read such contributions to a discussion, and wish more people would read the comments before blurting out with the same comments on every topic.
Why post if you're just reiterating what has been said zillion times before?
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
However, it's not as bad and gloomy as you describe...
Just because you haven't experienced it yet, doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
I've seen too many forum posts with "my Vista doesn't support X sound card" or "they just released a crippled driver which removed X cool features from my sound card"!
For people who buy expensive cards and use them professionally, this behaviour is unacceptable. When Creative and its ilk behave this way, they should be boycotted and everyone warned about it.
Try some searches. I think you'll be surprised how much is still unsupported, or have been crippled in new versions in proprietary software.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
I think it should be possible to have access to proprietary formats. I need to open .doc - do some people writing things against GNOME just delete the .doc-documents they get in order to fit their philosophy? But I prefer .odt and writing in C++ instead of C#. So I think support is good (see NTFS) but we should prefer things like Gnote and not Tomboy. GNOME must stay in GNU and just support Mono. It is not writing all software in Mono, there are just a few unnecessary projects!
There is just no pleasing some people :-P
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
If GTK / GNOME would release a subsequent version of their software under a truly free license like BSD instead of the anti-free-market restrictive commie license like (L)GPL, it would be a tremendous boost for software industry, both open-source and proprietary, with users benefiting most of all!
(Click my name and see the arguments I've made in the past.)
Gnome was created by GNU guys, the vision and the name belongs to them.
I suggest DOTNETDesktop or Icaza can come up with a stylish name like Mono/Stereo/Dolby Digital whatever.
What they want is to ship a freaking Mono desktop and they can't dare to tell it to public yet. As releasing a .NET Clone with GNU license would be really pathetic/impossible, they want to get rid of license.
IMHO, GNU should get rid of them very quick and support KDE and OpenStep. Yes, the OpenStep which people ignore.
If people see that Icaza clown as a representative of Gnome and see those lame "lets trojan the debian" tactics coming from the Gnome camp, they can predict everything regarding to .NET with Gnome.
First, Gnome must distance themselves from that MS reject, second they should come clean about Tomboy, for what EXACT REASON it was written in .NET and why Gnome team pushed it.
Even Windows camp and OS X camp started to see Gnome as some kind of a joke especially after this Mono (Made in Mexico) soap opera. Everyone on planet, even 13 year old kids knows you can't replicate a Microsoft technology just like you can't make Cocoa with OpenStep.
Gnome guys should get rid of trojans in them or I think, the FSF/GNU and FOSS community will get rid of them. Signs are already there.
I think it became more clear that these guys are abusing a project with your name on it. Tell them to get rid of Gnome name, support something which may replace it (e.g. KDE) and live happily.
All I see on Gnome guys blogs are "Did this with Mono, did that with Mono, they did this with Mono on iPhone"... The "Mono" they talk about is Microsoft .NET clone and these guys are supposed to keep open source desktop experience at same level as Windows 7, Snow Leopard.
Your biggest mistake was letting Icaza get a name with your project but anyway, that is already history.
All the old complaints about Qt are no longer valid. I find it ironic that Gnome is getting more and more Mono/.NET dependant when Gnome project was started for way less than that, because Qt wasn't GPLd. But now it is.
We have an advanced GPLd toolkit widely available and it can do more than just GUIs.
I would really love to see what the Gnome project can do with Qt along with their interface philosophy of simplicity.
KDE != Qt it's just one implementation of Qt.
"If a show of teeth is not enough, bite
There's no contradiction there.
I suggest that you read those three sentences again. As they are, unto themselves, a contradiction. I'm sure that MrNaz meant that simply declaring something not legitimate doesn't make it so. But what was written was essentially, "it is not legitimate to say that what someone else does is not legitimate". If you can't see a contradiction there then I'm not sure how to help you understand. What I wrote has nothing to do with GNOME, the FSF, RMS or FLOSS. It was simply a recognition of poor logic.
MrNaz's previously statements:
His tantrum basically boils down to "you can't present proprietary software as legitimate". Which is BS. Your own decision on how to do things is your decision, you can NOT tell others that their way of doing things is not legitimate
"Gandhi is the greatest enemy the untouchables have ever had in India."-- Ambedkar
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
With the G in GNOME standing for "GNU", talk of GNOME "splitting off" from GNU is so sneaky it borders on outright dishonesty. What GNOME will be doing if they reject the free software principles they were so happy to posture as if they cared about when QT was non-free, and still call themselves "GNOME", is not merely cashing in their principles for convenience and/or profit (as they would be if they forked and became the FAB "Free As Beer" project, or whatever), but also trying to disguise this self-serving betrayal of GNU by retaining the GNU-founded identity. If GNOME ejects the portions of its community that don't understand free software principles, fine, GNOME can continue, and the forkers can fork off. On the other hand, if GNOME still calls itself "GNOME" while not having the courage to stand by the GNU that currently heads its name, then the G will stand for "Garbage", and GNU/Linux distributions that care about freedom can simply ditch GNOME and work with KDE, XFCE and so on.
GNOME is becoming more and more Microsoft-like anyway, with its massive bloated heap of dependencies and its "hide settings from users because users are stupid" attitude. If it puts its principles to the vote, and its true colors turn out to be the colors of excrement, good riddance to it. Whenever a free software project sells out, there are genuinely free projects waiting to step into its place.
QUOTE
Stone Mirror aka David “Lefty” Schlesinger
to me
show details Oct 3 (10 days ago)
These messages were sent while you were offline.
2:01 PM
Stone: don’t be a ninny, no one’s trying to “fuse Linux with Microsoft”. that’s paranoid rhetoric, but coming from a mental case such as yourself, it’s not surprising.
Groklaw is taking much abuse for their stance, as can be seen in the comments. Bad move on PJ’s part.
2:04 PM
Do you happen to know Celeste Lyn Paul.? She’s the head of the KDE Foundation Board
2:05 PM
She was in the audience at GCDS and tweeted her dismay at Stallman’s “bit of harmless fun” while it was happening
May you know Stormy Peters?
She’s the Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation.
2:06 PM
she was there, too, and not happy, either.
it’ll be interesting if “Dr.” Stallman finds himself blacklisted from both KDE and GNOME events in the future, won’t it?
UNQUOTE
documented evidence, mainly from his own emails and blogs, of David “Lefty” Schlesinger (he is an ACCESS employee) and his long career of illegal and menacing threats, stalking, harassment and blackmail.
here:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=4902686590059408050&postID=7665635887324397605
and here:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=4902686590059408050&postID=7149350615784434698
Lefty has written heinously sexist troll articles for the notorious troll site encyclopediadramatica.com.
” I try to stop a bit short of full-blown monster-hood.” – David ‘Lefty’ Schlesinger aka stonemirror
http://brucebyfield.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/boycott-boycott-novell-and-i/
Hilarious satirical soundboard made from the unfortunate sayings of David "Lefty" Schlesinger, aka 'stonemirror'...
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/518539
Look to MS Halloween documents and especially the part they say "easily divided" to Free/Open Source community and tell me it has nothing to do with the current situation.
Slashdot users and thousands of bloggers are calling each other names because some DEAD project, which doesn't progress, took MS money to show an ad on their semi official site. Prejudice my ass really.
I don't care what Icaza or your future intentions are, the open source is healthy and good as never before (check iPhone license sometime) and some MS reject idiot tries to divide community with his half ass clone which doesn't do a SHIT. Just because some MS lawyers/IT suits designed something which suits to GPL, it doesn't make it GPL. It is GPL in a IT Lawyer sense, it is not really GPL otherwise.
Want to code with MS technologies? Look nowhere else than http://www.microsoft.com/NET/ , there, all features, performance, a perfect roadmap which isn't tied to some almost chapter 11 company. I am sure the actual .NET apps and frameworks already shows Mono as some dinosaur. MS Net 3.5 SP1 shipped, 4.x is already at beta stage... What is the functionality level of Mono? What is the functionality level of Sun Java in 4 platforms? Equal right? Equal... Will always be equal.
Guys, you are fighting for Silverlight clone's banner ad and the RMS/GNU finally said "Please, get serious" to them right?
Here is Silverlight 4 preview: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/03/silverlight_4_review/
Silverlight has already gave up the "MS Flash" promise. It will have better features on Windows and less features on OS X, which is officially supported, not by some hack plugin. These guys are running Silverlight ad, do they know where Silverlight is heading? It is designed/coded on MS Visual Studio for God's sake (check screenshot at page). It was taken as a complete joke on OS X land, with pathetic download numbers and people not even caring to flame on comments.
Flash on the other hand, will unify on a SINGLE spec, the demos/betas are already there so it is working... We speak about potentially half a billion devices in 2-3 years of time frame including MS Windows Mobile and iPhone.
Just to let you know, Silverlight is not going anywhere but MS spent so much money so they can't say "We give up." No reason to fight over a born dead plugin.
Now it is owned by a giant (Nokia), it is LGPL too. Want to know how serious they are about Qt? In 2 years, all Nokia devices and Symbian foundation devices will be basically "kernel for running Qt". The projects already started to popup and they are getting great reviews from the always "doom and gloom" Symbian community. E.g. Skype for S60 beta.
In 2 years, all those "cheap S40" devices will become "cheap S60 devices" with Qt. I speak about 150 million devices in everyone's hand. All high end Linux powered "N series" will be "Linux kernel for running Qt".
If future is mobile/touch/iPhone, Qt and Cocoa (GNUStep) has already won. GNU should be busy with replicating the entire Cocoa (minus Apple exclusive and DRM stuff) to GNUStep and somehow make use of Qt in the process.
And just one of the many questions Stormy Peters refuses to address?
WHY is David Lefty Schlesinger, who RMS called out in public as a “troll like enemy of Free Software” even allowed on the board of an alleged Free Software Foundation ie the Gnome Advisory Board?
Answer : the ACCESS corporation paid $10,000 last year to put Schlesinger on that board, and he is straight out of their marketing and PR dept.
Now Schlesinger wants to start a vote to remove Gnome from Gnu/FSF.
And why is anyone surprised at this? ACCESS has close corporate ties to Microsoft Mobile.
It will have better features on Windows and less features on OS X
What? MS is playing favorites with their own OS? I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you!
LOL, I just got through saying upthread that Silverlight on OSX would be nothing more than a second-class citizen in MS's world, so I'm *utterly* unsurprised by this.
Just to let you know, Silverlight is not going anywhere but MS spent so much money so they can't say "We give up."
Alas, given the content of Miguel's gushing press-release-cum-blog-post about it, someone obviously forgot to pass this note on to him. He thinks its a 'Universal GUI Toolkit' thats just chock full of goodness. Why, according to him, its even going to replace GTK# in Mono and GNOME (because its sooo obviously superior, of course!). :)
No reason to fight ...
The only people still 'fighting' are the Mono/Moonlight/Miguel apologists, who are now desperate to rationalize their Glorious Leader's consumption of MS's Coolaid, everyone else is too busy laughing to actually fight...
I tried to be a "nice guy" and tried my best to get Silverlight 1 to my system. I was impressed with its video decoding performance and openly said it on die hard Apple download sites... Later, MS simply dropped PowerPC support and MS apologists called "PowerPC is dead"... Well, it is dead in sense of no new hardware shipped, they didn't all explode or turned off forever when SJobs announced Intel switch. Adobe even SMP/multi core enabled the Flash player 10 on PPC, even advancing it.
Anyway, want to benchmark if MS really changed without even running anything other than browser? Check if they ship MS Windows Media Player for OS X, Intel version. Or, check if they actually WARN poor Mac Switchers that their Windows Media Player for PPC is unmaintained, won't get security fixes, will make _all_ installed browsers slow since it runs in PPC emulation, it won't play anything modern. Guess what? They are actually happy to make OS X systems unstable that way so they don't pull the download from their site. It is also Apple's fault not openly protesting it and not removing their "apple downloads" entry so it would help independent download sites to decide. Every single download of Windows Media Player means another destabilized OS X.
BTW, the MS Office, the pricey Office which OS X users pay for and makes huge money for MS. Its latest version installed in "user 502", the traditional powerless User account on OS X, especially on corporate. I took my time to check it, it is basically impossible to make that mistake if you are using Apple's packager. Especially if you are MS with thousands of engineers with huge expertise on Mac platform. As Miguel gang loves to accuse people of being paranoid, lets be paranoid... Why did MS install it under user 502 but not under 503? How could they make such a mistake? Why don't they remove Windows Media Player PPC _trojan_ from their downloads?
Writing some software and releasing it freely for other people to use it, *is* a political gesture: the only "pragmatical" thing to do with one's own work is to keep it for oneself, or sell it to others for a fee.
Have you ever sold software? There's nothing "pragmatic" about it. It's hard work, harder than writing the software in the first place. If the purpose of writing the software is to make money, that's one thing, but most of the software I've written I've written because I needed to solve a problem and if I didn't write the software it wouldn't get solved.
When you're actually using the software, giving it away is pragmatic: because if other people like it you get BETTER software back, from them. They use it, fix it, send you the code. If you're writing the software because you actually need it, rather than because you're creating it as a kind of art, then keeping it to yourself is a political statement... not a pragmatic one... because it just means you have to do all the work on updating and improving it yourself.
not bullshit, here is the proof from Schlesinger's OWN blog, that he was the sole "stonemirror the great and terrible' who wrote the hideously sexist and abusive of the disabled article on the infamous troll site encyclopediadramatica.com titled 'vitki'
proof that the sexist 'vitki' article was in fact written by stonemirror as part of ongoing harassment of this mentally ill man, and further ties Schlesinger to the encycloplediadramatica article by 'stonemirror the great and terrible' that he has been lying and saying some other 'stonemirror' with a fixation on vitki aka fred somehow wrote, note also references to ninja staff weapons such as bokken
5:03 pm | Oh, Fer Fuck's Sake! [11 gratuitous remarks]
[add your snotty comment]
Full moon. That's gotta be it.
vovinoiad thinks vitki is a troll, but I'm not convinced. I think he's
an actual clinically insane person.
http://web.archive.org/web/20041128153926/http://stonemirror.livejournal.com/
9:24 pm | Oh, Grand. [21 gratuitous remarks]
[add your snotty comment]
Special Fred's idjit friend has apparently developed some sort of
unhealthy fixation on me. The phrase "dangerously bereft of
anything like a clue" is coming to mind here.
I've told her in no uncertain terms to go fuck herself, and banned
her from commenting further here, to spare myself annoyance and
her additional opportunities for personal embarassment, at least
on my dime.
Sweet jeebub. When I said that crazy people were better in the
sack, I meant interesting crazy people.
Ninjutsu! [17 gratuitous remarks]
[add your snotty comment]
(Sol 25 Cancer, Luna 25 Pisces)
Oddly enough, my copy of Glenn Morris' Path Notes of an
American Ninja Master came from Amazon yesterday...
(Stolen, stealthily, from aleph_hq...)
http://web.archive.org/web/20030721114622/http://stonemirror.livejournal.com/
I read a bunch of true crime stuff from time to time, typically
having to do with serial killers, another little hobby of mine.
http://web.archive.org/web/20030926182029/http://stonemirror.livejournal.com/
Favorite Weaponry and Aerobic Exercise [11 gratuitous
remarks]
[add your snotty comment]
(Sol 14 Sagittarius, Luna 29 Taurus)
fenwickrysen and I had exchanged comments some time ago over
best weapons for general wandering-around-with, his favorite
being the yawara, a good choice. I ran over to the Zen Trading
Company on 41st Avenue yesterday afternoon and picked myself
up a jo, which is one of my more favorite weapons to play with. I
thought I'd start working with some of the stick forms again, and
swinging a Big Honking Dowel is both fun and good for you.
The jo is essentially a big stick, not as big as a bo, a little over four
feet long, and a bit under an inch in diameter. It was invented by
Muso Gonnosuke, a master of the bo, after losing a challenge to
Miyamoto Musashi, the author of The Book of Five Rings. Muso
contemplated his defeat for several days, and then received a
divine inspiration, and developed the jo as a weapon. Muso
challenged Miyamoto a second time, and defeated him, the only
fighter ever to do so....
Saturday, December 6th, 2003
http://web.archive.org/web/20031208091626/http://stonemirror.livejournal.com/
it should be noted that RMS precipitated the fight with more rhetoric about not including anything non-free.
And in response to Van Hoof's comments about VMware, Stallman said people should not write about their work on Planet GNOME "unless VmWare (sic) becomes free software. GNOME should not provide proprietary software developers with a platform to present non-free software as a good or legitimate thing."
If Planet GNOME is restricted from software developers worldwide based on the status of their current work, that's a very sad thing.
Where are those "more people" and why don't they openly protest that Icaza clown who has effectively took over the project and polluting its every bit with Mono? I remember Gnome 1.x, those times, it was showing the current MS Windows and MacOS interface as some dinosaur from past. What happened and what kind of stuff these people are busy with rather than Silverlight banner arguments?
They should remove "donate" buttons, remove GNU from the name and live happily with the MS Jobs they get. Currently, they are robbing people with false promises and GNU name/trust.
you might want to try to see what kind of reception you get when you try to promote Free Software alternatives over the proprietary software by bringing up the issue of promoting Linux use.
Yes, but the reason for the bad reception would not be because the software is free, but because it's Linux, which sucks big dick. Having your dick sucked for free is almost universally accepted, but few people want to use a free OS if it sucks dick.
Turning to a Linux advocate for thoughts on Microsoft is like asking Hitler how he felt about the Jews.
Stallman is consistent about his beliefs. [...] proceed directly to the GPL, and to Stallman's presentations [...] Stallman is a visionary, not an "extremenist".
First of all, I want the GNU project to succeed, and I want to be able to put my computers to good use (for both work and play) using only Free Software. Heck, I even "wave the GNU banner" in my email address (and proudly so).
I also agree with Stallman that the goal shouldn't be "using free software" but "not using non-free software". That is, that's a goal I want to pursue. (But damn ATI and NVIDIA for closed drivers and damn Intel for slow chips... lose-lose :\)
However, my dislike of proprietary software stops when I can use Free Software to replace the functionality of the proprietary offerings (i.e. I don't mind the existence of Notepad as long as I'm free to use Emacs, and I don't mind Word when I can use oowriter, except I think oowriter is slow and bloated :|).
Not so with RMS---and this is where I think he starts sliding from "Visionary" to "Extremist visionary." I think he wants to rid the world of proprietary software and have everyone use only Free Software, and I think he sees the mere existence of proprietary software as a threat to our freedoms.
Now, he might be right, of course; in fact, I think there's a good chance he is.
But I also think that his view is hard to sell to Jo(e) Public, because it is at one end of a continuum---that is, it's extremist.
I support the GNU project because it's about creating the world I want to live in. And I think RMS has done wonders for it, and that the net contribution is a huge positive despite some of the things he do which put some people off.
But I still think his views are extreme, and that lately the good Pro-Free core has been drowned out too much below Anti-Proprietary noise.