On Jan 10, 2015, at 6:35 AM, Magdalen Berns <m.be...@thismagpie.com> wrote:
> 
> Perhaps some might be seeing Richard as the FSF too quickly and not giving 
> due regard what he is actually saying about this in the reactions to what 
> he's putting forward. How he's defined "dodgy links" really does not seem all 
> that unreasonable or idealistic, because it takes into account the important 
> point that some members of the community might be excluded unless they 
> sacrifice their principles. I don't think it's necessary to agree with *all* 
> the ethics of the FSF to concede that this is a fair concern for Richard to 
> be putting forward for discussion.
> 
> It seems strange (at best) that anyone would see it as nonconstructive for us 
> to actively seek to ensure we have a strong cooperative relationship with the 
> FSF community, where this is possible. Given that we are branded as a free 
> desktop software community, this seems like something we ought to be taking 
> more seriously.

It’s frankly pretty difficult for me at least to distinguish between 
Richard-speaking-as-Richard-alone and Richard-speaking-as-the-FSF, and he never 
makes the distinction himself. Does he hold some viewpoint that the FSF does 
not, or vice versa? That would actually be news to me.

Maybe he could clarify whether his nominating me as an “enemy of the free 
software movement” at Software Freedom Day in 2009 was his personal position or 
the FSF’s; I’d been assuming the latter, and as I say, he never makes a clear 
distinction himself.

As far as “taking things seriously”, it becomes a little difficult when we’re 
being asked to also take things like the necessity of recognizing the "original 
designers” — some of them, anyway — of the "GNU/Linux” system, or the notion 
that the best piece of software to do a given job is the “free-est” one as 
opposed to the “most usable” one “seriously” as well.


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