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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.
What else do you expect from him?
This is just off the top of my head, but I would assume that while gnome interacts with many programs in the GNU project it is almost big enough to be a separate project in it's own (like KDE or other DE). This would probably allow for quicker discussions as far as packages and more centralized management. Improving things for developers and the users.
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.
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.
Miguel should just go and work for Microsoft.
RMS is 100% right on this one. Again.
Then again, Gnome has always been an ugly desktop.
So in other words: the Gnome folks (those who love Microsoft technologies) is telling the FSF folks to get bent. I image Microsoft is very pleased with this new direction with Gnome. I predict in 5 years, perhaps less Microsoft will have maneuvered these short sighted individuals to accepting Microsoft to buy Gnome. By that time it will have forked and these "forward" thinking Gnome folks will have changee the license making it possible. It is unfortunate some of the Gnome folks are so blinded to not realize just the kind of manipulation they have been exposed to; it is the proverbial frog+cold water+a fire.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
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.
Rather than Gnome leave GNU, wouldn't it be easier for Richard Stallman to just fork reality? It seems he's always wanted his own.
I hate printers.
No, the GNOME folks want to decide where they want to go. Puristic or non-puristic.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
> 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.
What's the point to even consider VMware if you have a range of alternatives which do the same? For those who want everything to be nice and user-friendly, there's VirtualBox. For those who want emulating other architectures, qemu. For when you don't need to pretend that it's a stand-alone system, there's Xen and vserver.
Using proprietary software may be a reasonable choice if there are no alternatives with feature parity. For VMware, this is not the case.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Actually, for a GNU project, he arguably might be right.
The split proposal assumes he is, actually.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Didn't you just do what you say can't be done in those three sentences?
The thing to keep in mind about Stallman's "crazy" opinions is the function that they serve among the much large set of opinions that actually control what the software world looks like. Roughly speaking, the software(and availability of hardware support) that will actually be available in the present and immediate future reflects the a weighted average of the present's opinions of what software ought to be.
There is always going to be a reliable bloc of "all proprietary, all the time" opinions, because that is where the best money is. There will also usually be a reliable supply of "C'mon guys, pragmatic compromise!" opinions; because that is the home of a particularly nice costs/features ratio. "All Free, all the time", by contrast, is a largely thankless ideological position(since it will, at any given time, pay less well than "all proprietary" and be missing features that "pragmatic compromise" has). However, since future software availability reflects(roughly) a weighted average of today's opinions, it has a very important role to play.
If today's opinions are all "proprietary" or "pragmatic compromise", tomorrow's software landscape will move a bit closer to all proprietary. Each iteration will go the same way. The existence of the zealous(and explicitly ideological) "Free Only" faction helps keep things from drifting steadily in the proprietary direction.
As for proprietary crap - I use proprietary video drivers almost exclusively.
But that means that within one year and a half, when you go to your card manufacturer's web site to download the drivers, you'll see your card put in a separate "legacy products" box, and that will mean that you're not getting any more driver updates. Also, at the next big operating system version bump, you'll be likely in danger of being left with no drivers at all.
Moreover, since the manufacturers of your card won't probably be enthusiastic about the highly dynamic nature of the open source stack your drivers are running in, they will not be the first ones to support the new features offered by innovations on the open source side.
What I want to say is, that using open source drivers is not necessarily a philosophical/political/religious matter. It can be a very pragmatic way to use the card you paid for as long as you like, and not until its manufacturers decide it's time for you to buy a new one.
First, Gnome is a GNU project, not simply a GPL licensed. So, yes, they should agree with the Gnu philosophy, or they're lying. They are allowed to fork and get out GNU, nobody forces them to stay.
Second:
"If your approach is better, then time will prove that."
In a purely technical perspective, that's true. But the GNU philosophy is *not* purely technical, and sustains that access to code is a consumer right. So, by that POV, any proprietary software is worst from the start.
He's not ruining anything. He's saying what he believes, but doesn't force anyone to follow it. You're the censor here.
Dilbert RSS feed
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).
And he's right. Microsoft sets the standard because they have the largest platform (Windows) and they not only get to decide what the spec is, they will also release it after they released the latest Windows version.
To top that; Microsoft gets to decide if they even should release the latest specs...
*think... think.... think...*
We also have better cross platform tools already with Qt4.x... And for everything that's not native code we have webbrowsers...
*think... think... think...*
RMS is 100% correct about dumping this redundant piece of locking shittery.
Here be signatures
Gnash is an open source implementation of a closed source virtual machine (Flash Player). And yet they are largely held up as heroes because they are making it possible to use a full open source environment and still see flash content. How is this any different from what Miguel is doing with Moonlight?
I guess the difference is that Gnash guys hate Flash with passion, whereas Miguel & friends recommend the technology they work with as reasonable choice for new development.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Rather than Gnome leave GNU, wouldn't it be easier for Richard Stallman to just fork reality? It seems he's always wanted his own.
Mixing non-free software with free software systems is a slippery slope. To work on that slippery slope, as most real-world software development must, an anchor is needed. RMS and FSF are that anchor. Even though I don't agree with them 100%, I realize that my idea of good free software would be impossible if they didn't fight for their ideal and keep everything from sliding down the slippery slope.
So even if it's sometimes sensible and useful to mix free and non-free, especially from user point of view, I sure hope FSF and everything directly supported by FSF stays pure.
And Ballmer can go fork himself!
Isn't one Ballmer enough?
Wish I had mod points.
/. love to bash RMS, but when it comes to Steve Jobs, they have multiple orgasm.
It's sad how people here on
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.
Where are those "more people"
Most of them are still involved in GNOME to some degree, with the exception of Jay Painter who stopped contributing fairly early on.
why don't they openly protest that Icaza clown who has effectively took over the project and polluting its every bit with Mono?
Perhaps because Mono isn't "polluting" the GNOME project. It's required for a couple of apps - Tomboy and F-Spot, and there are comparable alternatives that don't rely on Mono. My wife uses a netbook running Ubuntu, and I removed Mono from that for space reasons with no loss in functionality for the GNOME desktop. Similarly, many Linux distributions ship with the GNOME desktop as default, and without Mono.