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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.
Stallman is consistent about his beliefs. Don't read 3rd hand re-interpretations: proceed directly to the GPL, and to Stallman's presentations, to understand what he said and what he believes.
Stallman is a visionary, not an "extremenist". Sometimes that means the rest of us need to pay the rent and don't follow his grand visions, but he's consistent and historically very perceptive of the risks of the slippery slopes often presented by people, and their corporations, who don't share that vision. In this case, Silverlight does in fact present some nasty risks to Gnome and free software development. We've seen Microsoft's "embrace and extend" behavior too often to trust them in this case.
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.
Richard Stallman is important for the free software movement. However it seems he is losing momentum in inspiring people who are on free software projects. This is a pity. I can partially understand his extremism, because freedom is easily lost. However if freedom has to be defended by dictatorship, there is no freedom either.
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.
Dear noob, Stallman is an extremist in the same sense Ghandi is an extremist. Different ideals, though. I mean, the guy started GNU/FSF and spends decades with it, instead of going into the industry and raking it in.
What are you, born 20 minutes ago?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
I don't think that Miguel is all that popular. The last time I saw a long thread with him here, he suffered pretty badly. Making mono a dependency in Gnome exposes the project to unnecessary risk.
I respect Stallman far more than de Icaza, both for his thoughts and his actions over the years. Stallman is often taken out of context, but he is very consistent, and his statements almost always make sense years later - sometimes prophetically so.
There are a group of people (mostly affiliated with corporations) who have a hate-on for Stallman, because he values his principles more than he does development speed, ease of use, profits, or being able to use the latest shiny thing from MS.
Slashdot - the place where you can look like a genius by restating the obvious
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.
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.
Thank god for KDE, XFCE, etc. Anyone who thinks multiple desktop environments are a waste of effort, this is exactly why we need them.
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The whole situation amuses me given that the only reason Gnome exists is because back during KDE 1.x days it was "OMG QT is too proprietary!"
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>Remember, MS can void its "promises" over .NET at any moment, the EEE is is progressing well.
No, they can't. If you make a "promise" that causes someone else to take an action, it's the same as having a contract and you can be sued.
Yes they can, there's a loophole, the promises only apply while they hold the patent, they don't apply if they sell them to some one else like a split company a puppet think tank or a patent troll.
And there is precedent of MS attempting to do just this. http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=4800
But... the future refused to change.
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.
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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.
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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.
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.