Re: Moving foundation-list to discourse?
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] I have heard that there is a gateway between Discourse and email. Is it possible to use that here? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [guadec-list] Registration for GUADEC 2019 is now open!
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > I also noticed that the "free" registration option went away. Is that > on purpose? If you have registration at no charge, how about calling it "gratis", to help people recognize the difference between that and free/libre? This is a small change, it is clear, and it helps make the distinction clear too. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Re: GNOME ASIA logo competition
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > With that out of the way, it seems like your issue with this competition > was not that of free vs non-free software, but rather LibreJS > compatibility. LibreJS is the only way for users to avoid running lots of nonfree programs as they browse. If you think there is a better solution, please describe it -- as far as I can see, there is no other. With all do respect, I believe the onus was on you in this > case to work around this issue. Is that even possible? Is there a feasible way to "work around" the need for Javascript code to declare its license and source code? I don't see one. One cannot have the responsibility to do the impossible. We have to use a method that is possible. You put extra effort on part of our > foundation and myself to solve for you a self-inflicted technical issue. LibreJS is a solution to the problem of avoiding running the nonfree software that many web sites send to the user. If it involves some work for web sites, well, "freedom isn't free" (i.e., gratis), as the saying goes. The only way to consider this "self-inflicted" is if you reject solving tthe problem. > While it would be excellent if GitLab had greater compatibility with > LibreJS, that is not exactly a GNOME Foundation problem to address. GitLab's responsible for not labeling its Javascript for automatic license detection, but the GNOME Foundation is responsible for including that unlabeled code in its page. As you recognize, it is not hard to put the logos in a page of ordinary HTML. We're going to do this, so as to be helpful. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Re: GNOME ASIA logo competition
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > I'm attaching all of the images as a tar.gz file to this email. The number > in the filenames of each document represents the number that they are > listed on the Gitlab contest for voting. I saw your message only today. I have been so backlogged this week I haven\t even seen all the messages from Tuesday yet. I can get those images into a page on gnu.org. I think we can call it gnu.org/software/gnome-logo-vote.html. Please send me text we should put in the page to explain its purpose, how to vote, etc. In order for that to do any good, people need to know about it. For instance, you could send out another announcement. Ok? To finish the job, there needs to be a way to vote without running Javascript code. https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Events/GNOMEAsia/issues/46 asks for login. (Strange, it didn't do that when I tried it the first time. I was able to see the page with the logos, though not the logos themselves.) I cannot test logging in, since I don't have an account. Likewise, I can't test submitting a set of numbers of logos. Can someone please test that, with LibreJS active? If that doesn't work, how should we tell people to votd after they see our page of logos? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME ASIA logo competition
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > Luckily, the full and corresponding source code is available. I think, > however, what you're asking is for is a pointer in a format that is > machine readable by LibreJS. Exactly. To investigate whether all the JS code in a page is actually free is a lot of work. Expecting each user to investigate this question for each page is not a workable approach. What is workable is for the site developers to indicate the licensing and source in a clear way for each script. Then we can automate the job for the users by means of LibreJS. > I had a look at that, it seems that the implementation of Web Labels > table: > a) doesn't support wildcarding or regexes > b) requires a physical link to be added to every page rather than > fetching from a known location. Perhaps it would be good to add those features. However, there may be nontechnical reasons not to do that -- we need to study that question. I will ask the LibreJS developers to study it with me. However, the discussion will take time, and implementation would take time too. Since the logo competition has a deadline, and this involves one page or a few pages, I suggest that you make the necessary small changes in the site now. I understand the reasons to minimize divergence from upstream, but "minimize" does not mean "absolutely reject". Right now, it's necessary. There is another immediate practical fix: make a simple page of HTML which shows the logos, and link to it from the existing page saying "If the logo images do not appear, go _there_." It won't be elegant but it will do the job. It won't introduce any divergence from the upstream models -- it will have no relation to them. Freedom isn't gratis -- sometimes it takes work. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME ASIA logo competition
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > All JavaScript served on that page comes from GNOME hosted servers and > it is all MIT licensed, as is the entirety of GitLab CE, which is what > we're running. It is possible to fix the problem by adding a machine-recognizable license notice for the appropriate license at the top of the pertinent pages, plus a source code pointer for each page. See https://gnu.org/software/librejs/free-your-javascript.html for documentation. The source pointers are needed because these pages contain compiled code. (More precisely, minified -- but that is a kind of compilation.) It is ok to use minified code, but it needs to come with the corresponding source code. The term "MIT license" is ambiguous -- it stands for either the X11 license or the Expat license. You can tell which by looking at the actual license text in the source and comparing with those two entries in https://gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html. The license notice should say which specific license. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME ASIA logo competition
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > The problem here is LibreJS not being able to realize this is free > software, so you should talk about it with them instead. It is impossible to tell whether code is free by looking at the code itself. The only way to tell is from the license notice (if any) attached to the code. That is how you or I would determine whether a given file of code is free, and that is how LibreJS does it. See https://gnu.org/software/librejs/free-your-javascript.html. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Announcing Board of Directors Elections 2019: revamped timeline
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] The members deserve to have a choice of candidates. It is not good to fill the board by first come, first served. I hope that at least 11 people will run. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Minutes of the Foundation Board, 22nd May
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > There is a good reason not to allow this: it would be sabotague of > project history. In a small case, it might be harmless, but if it's a > core developer, imagine the potential damage to GNOME if hundreds or > thousands of comments were to disappear from bug reports. I don't know what these "comments" contribute to later understanding of the development decisions. If hardly any, then there is no reason to object to deleting them. If they are important, then we should fight deleting them. Perhaps it is worth consulting a US lawyer about whether GNOME has to fear a Canadian censorship law. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Proposal for an Events Code of Conduct and Policy Referendum
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] I have two models to suggest that could be starting points. One is the LibrePlanet code of conduct, and one is the Abstractions code of conduct. The former is general; the latter is a lot more concrete. (Sorry, I don't have URLs.) -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Publishing the hackfest reports
> I'd like to note that this is not the official way we'll be reporting about > hackfests we had this year -- we do that in the official GNOME Annual > Report. What you're referring to is my personal blog. Whenever we publish something, the way we publish it conveys a message, along with the message of its contents. Since you're on the GNOME Foundation board, people will tend to associate your message with the GNOME Foundation -- even if you say that you're expressing only your own views. They will assume that surely the Foundation's views can't disagree much with your message, even if it doesn't agree 100%. So if the implicit message is, "Run the non-free JS code in this page", that will tend to rub off on the GNOME Foundation. Would you please take care not to publish in ways that send that message? For instance, you could take down that slide show, then look for a method of posting the photos that doesn't have the problem. I sent you, off the list, a suggestion. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Publishing the hackfest reports
> I think it would indeed be useful. Do note however that for it to work > in this case it would need to be in the form of a WordPress plugin > that Nuritzi can use with her wordpress.com blog. That surprises me, a priori, but I know nothing about using Wordpress. Could we discuss this off the list, and include Nuritzi? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Publishing the hackfest reports
The hackfest appears to have been very useful, but I noticed a problem in how this report about it (https://nuritzis.com/2017/10/21/2017-gnome-foundation-hackfest/) was published: It says, "This slideshow requires JavaScript." That JavaScript code seems to be nontrivial and nonfree: when I view the page, using a browser with LibreJS so as not to execute any nontrivial nonfree software, the slideshow is not visible. Leading people to use nonfree software teaches people that it isn't crucial whether a program is free. Doing so for just a little convenience teaches people that it hardly matters whether a program is free. That's the opposite of what the GNOME Foundation should teach; indeed, people who think that way won't pay attention when we suggest that they choose GNOME because it's free. How about changing that page so that at least the slides are visible without Javascript? The easiest way is to add a link to a subdirectory containing those images, with file names that sort in the proper order. For users that shun nonfree Javascript code, that would work a lot better than the current page does. Perhaps it can work with JavaScript code that's free and labeled as such. See https://gnu.org/software/librejs/free-your-javascript.html. I know only a little about web pages. I am sure there are nicer-looking ways that don't require nonfree Javascript code, which a suitable expert could tell us about. I will look for one at the FSF if that is helpful. Teaching ourselves to attend to this issue when it arises will make us more effective defenders of free software. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Maps' Mapbox free coupon is soon to expire
What does the coupon give access to? How how do we use it? Does this involve a proprietary program? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME 3.26 Release Parties
> It's difficult and time-consuming to audit a code-base received via a > web-browser. It can also very from client to client. Do you have a tool > that can tell us if a website contains non-free JavaScript? Perhaps a > browser plugin? Yes, it is called LibreJS. It functions in Firefox. A new version of LibreJS, which is much faster and uses WebExtensions, will be released as soon as WebExtensions supports a certain new feature. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME 3.26 Release Parties
1. How do you pay money to Transferwise in order to send it? 2. Would you like to check whether a person can use Transferwise without the person's running nonfree software? I am concerned that its web site may send nonfree software to the user's browder and require the user to run it. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME 3.26 Release Parties
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > I use TransferWise _a lot_ and I couldn't recommend it enough. I think > the Foundation should use it. What does that do? Is it free software? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Preliminary Results - GNOME Foundation Board of Directors Elections 2017
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > This year we had 225 registered voters, 110 of which sent in valid > ballots. I am not surprised that so few voted. Can anyone think of a way to encourage more candidates? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: The Goal of Gnome
The aim of Gnome is to be a graphic desktop for the GNU operating system. That's the purpose for which we launched Gnome. There is no hard and fast limit for what kinds of programs a Unix-like operating system can contain. (The first GNU Chess came out around 1989.) Likewise, a desktop can contain all sorts of graphical packages. There is no precise boundary for what _can_ be included. But there are essential things that _must_ be included. A Unix-like system has to have a C library, and its desktop has to contain a toolkit library such as GTK+. The desktop would be sort of pitiful if it did not contain a file navigator, system control panels, etc. Naturally, Gnome has them. However, it wouldn't make sense for non-graphic, non-desktop programs to be included in Gnome. It would be more natural to classify them elsewhere. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: The Goal of Gnome
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] Since a similar question arises for the GNU system as a whole, our experience might be pertinent to discuss here. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct Adoption Process
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > I don't know, but maybe he's just not subscribed. If so, his posts > won't appear until approved by a moderator. My practical question is, which of those lists _do his messages actually get through to_? I should send my reactions to the lists that his messages actually reach, and not to those his messages do not reach. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct Adoption Process
> My guess is that Lefty is replying publicly, that his posts are not > being allowed through the list for some reason, and that Richard > understandably does not realize nobody else can see the posts he is > replying to. Ironically, I was serving as his conduit into the list(s). I will certainly stop. Which of these lists is he banned from? Both? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct Adoption Process
> Can you please stop leaking half a conversation from a private mailing > list to a public one? Thank you. I do not understand. What I am doing is sending the reply to a message to the same lists that the other message went to. I do that because these messages attack me and I deserve a chance to respond. What is it about this that is wrong? Would you please spell out concretely what actions you are criticizing? What, concretely, are you asking me to do instead? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct Adoption Process
> My constructive criticism is that you not take your code of > conduct guidance from people who are unrepentant poster children > for the need for a code of conduct. He's exaggerating about me, but that's the smaller error. His fundamental error is in the general premise that he wants us to accept without examination: that we should judge proposals based on opinions about the people who worked on them. We should judge proposals based on what they say and their effects, not based on personalities. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct Adoption Process
"Lefty" has resumed his old practice of attacking anything that is associated with me, mainly as a way of associating my name with a cloud of vague disapproval. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct Adoption Process
Here's a code that I helped write: http://abstractions.io/policies/#code-of-conduct . I tried to avoid vague, subjective rules that could be interpreted in many ways. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to GNOME Foundation Board candidates
> > So let's turn those attacks around! Let's remind people that the > > distros' package systems are right way to distribute applications and > > GNOME works with those package systems. > Except the normal user gives shit about packaging systems. Our mission includes teaching users that freedom is important, so that they understand how GNOME is superior inherently to proprietary desktops. If we accept the misguided "normal" ways of judging, trained on proprietary software and disregarding its intrinsic faults, we also put ourselves at a disadvantage: we have to compete on a field shaped by the adversary. In effect, we would be competing with one hand tied behind our back. Instead of that, we must do our best to shape the field to favor our intrinsic advantage, respect for users' freedom -- what our proprietary adversaries refuse to try to do. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question to GNOME Foundation Board candidates
> * No apps for GNOME/GTK+ If that means that we don't offer a place to download nonfree applications, that's not a flaw, that's a moral superiority! It's part of respecting users' freedom. Every GNU/Linux distro offers a system for installing packages. And, of course, you can install programs from elsewhere or build them from source. This way is the ethical way, because it gives users control over what versions they run. So let's turn those attacks around! Let's remind people that the distros' package systems are right way to distribute applications and GNOME works with those package systems. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Really professional GNOME videos
Which distros are in the video? I'm concerned that most or all of them may be nonfree distros (see gnu.org/distros) and that the effect may beto praise and promote them at the expense of the free distros. (For this reason, the absence of Ubuntu is a good thing in my view.) Are any free distros mentioned? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Travel committee disfunctional?
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] Someone who isn't already doing substantial work for the free software movement might consider joining the travel committee to help it get its work done. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Free software streaming
> Hey, you did not react to Nicolas Dufresne's suggestion of using webrtc ? I don't know enough about it to have an opinion. I am provide the advice I mentioned in the form of a URL -- people requested that. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Free software streaming
I now have a URL to suggest: https://support.mayfirst.org/wiki/free-video-streaming-technology -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [Builder] Developer experience (DX) hackfest 2016
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] Jitsi works fine for meetings. All each participant needs is to visit a given URL; it could hardly be easier. I thought we were looking for one-way streaming to a lot of people, not for a meeting. But I could have misunderstood that. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [Builder] Developer experience (DX) hackfest 2016
Mallory Knodel <mall...@mayfirst.org> says that I can post her name and email address. Please write to her for instructions about free software streaming. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [Builder] Developer experience (DX) hackfest 2016
> > It is easy to do streaming with free software, in a way that lets > > everyone watch with free software, > Incorrect. It is possible, but it is not easy... That is a somewhat harsh way to say that you disagree. I have never done video streaming myself, by any method, but the people who give advice say they can guide non-wizards. (I would post the email address here, but it seems unkind to post someone's email address publicly without asking. I asked them if it is ok.) > > and I know people who would be glad > > to help you do this. > ... and this is why. ;) I can't make sense of that statement. Surely the ease of streaming is not a function of how I wrote the message. > You could have made it easier, than it is now, by pointing to an URL > which tells us how to do it I have doubts about that. A URL might be better for a wizard, who could read it immediately rather than waiting for a response. However, for someone who is not a wizard, personal guidance from an expert is likely to be more helpful. You can ask the expert to explain any point that you don't understand -- something that you can't do with a URL. Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that the URL is more helpful than offering to put you in touch with an expert. What's the right way to respond to something that is helpful but could have been more so? "Why didn't you do it the other way?" seems ungrateful and nonconstructive. I will ask them for a URL I could post. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [Builder] Developer experience (DX) hackfest 2016
> We did run a live stream on Google Hangouts during the first day of > the Content Apps Hackfest in Madrid. Google Hangouts requires nonfree software. Please don't ask people to run a nonfree program in order to view something. It is easy to do streaming with free software, in a way that lets everyone watch with free software, and I know people who would be glad to help you do this. When you want to do streaming, please write to me and I will put you in touch with them. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on November 3rd
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > So your point is that it would be better that the app appear on the > store to come from Random J Hacker that most of the users might not have > heard of, rather than a trusted organisation like the GNOME Foundation. Most of the people who install apps from the app stores are not worrying about who they can trust. If they did, they would not use these proprietary systems and their app stores. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on November 3rd
> > I suspect that uploading to the app store also requires nonfree software, > > but I don't know for certain. > To the best of my knowledge it does not, though some effort is required > to avoid it. (See some of the recent discussion about the Android SDK > and its EULA, for instance.) It's possible that it requires proprietary > JavaScript; I have not personally tested that. Proprietary Javascript is what I suspect Google requires. However, this is a secondary issue -- the primary one is that the user must run nonfree software to install the app from there. Leading others to run nonfree software is more grave than using nonfree software yourself. > While I do think we should recommend fdroid.org as preferable and only > link to it (such as in links from the GNOME application and its > documentation), and avoid linking to a version in the Play store (e.g. > "To use the Foo feature, install the Foo application for Android, > available via https://f-droid.org/...;), that doesn't preclude making > the application available via the Google Play store for users who > already have that installed. That's true. The program's developers, or others, can put it in the Google store if they wish. My point is that the GNOME Foundation should not do so. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on November 3rd
To download anything from the Google app store requires a nonfree program, Google Play. This program is known to have a back door (see http://gnu.org/proprietary/proprietary-back-doors.html) that is universal or pretty close. I suspect that uploading to the app store also requires nonfree software, but I don't know for certain. Thus, I think the GNOME Foundation should not do this. When we recommend free software for Android, let's instead recommend fdroid.org as the place to get them. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on November 3rd
What do we plan to do with a Google Play account, such that it is an issue for the board? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: User Data Manifesto
It looks quite good for the most part. I would change: Users should not rely on centralised services. That strong position is the right position, for many activities. Because the only server that offers you enough contol and freedom is YOUR server. You should use your server, and I should use my server, which makes it a decentralized system. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on July 7th
The joke is on me. I naively assumed they must be asking for GNOME support. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on July 7th
* https://kickstarter.com/projects/technoruninc/stratos/ What is the relationship between this and GNOME? I see two problems in the kickstarter page. The smaller, superficial problem is that it says Linux and means GNU. If they would like our support, we should insist they change that. The substantive problem is that kickstarter requires running nonfree software to donate. Since we should not ask people to run a nonfree program, we should not ask people to donate to a project on kickstarter. There is a crowdfunding site, crowdsupply.com, which permits donation without running nonfree software -- and they are willing to host a project when the FSF asks. So this problem has a solution which is not very difficult. I asked someone to check the distro's own web site. He reported that it isn't clear whether the distro will be free or not. Which means it probably won't be free. Is there anything we should do with it? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Privacy of information sent to the Travel Committee (was: GNOME.Asia Summit 2015 Travel Subsidy application is Open)
Another problem with Google Drive requires running a nonfree Javascript program. If you do this privately, you affect only yourself, but I hope GNOME won't use Google Drive for dealings with the public. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
If you want to mention both camps, Free/Libre and Open Source Software is the best way to do it. But mentioning both camps is something we should avoid, because that fails to strengthen the free software movement. The companies and projects that favor open source don't usually try to mention both camps. They wish to boost the open source camp at the expense of the free software movement, so they say only open source. When we have an opportunity to strengthen the free software movement, we should take advantage of it -- not be neutral. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
In this particular case, my aim is to provide a minimal set of requirements that apply to all software hosting sites, even those that choose to label themselves as Open Source rather than as Free Software. These issues are not limited to free software. Making it more general would avoid this name issue entirely. That said, in contexts such as this, I'd be happy to switch from saying Free and Open Source Software to saying Free Software / Open Source Software or Free, Libre, and Open Source Software, if you feel that that would more fully acknowledge Free Software. If you want to mention both camps, Free/Libre and Open Source Software is always the best way to do it. See http://gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.html for the reasons why. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
Do any other candidates want to state plans to intentionally spread the ideas of the free software movement? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] I'm currently thinking of writing up a Hosting Free Software Responsibly statement for projects, organizations (FSF, GNOME, etc), and hosting sites to sign on to. I'm working on repository criteria for the GNU Project. The is almost ready, waiting for a few details. I don't want to post it yet, but would you like to look at it privately and give me feedback? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Orca Project - forwarding a message
If those five links point to tweets, they must be rather short. How about including the text of the tweets in your message, rather than only links to them? PS. Thanks for contributing to Orca; it is an important project. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
To that end, I have a first draft of Responsible Distribution of Free and Open Source Software, which I'd love to get feedback on. Please don't call it that. Using the term free and open source software means you miss the opportunity to publicly support the free software movement. That term presents open source more visibly than free software. And people will probably misunderstand and think that free means zero price. See http://gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.html for more explanation. The way to show support for the free software movement, you say free software, or free/libre software -- not open source. We We need this sort of visible public support, to counteract all the companies and media outlets that say open source only. Just today I saw a published article that called me an Open sourcerer. I suppose the author heard misinformation identifying me as a supporter of open source, and has no idea that it is entirely false. I am going to ask the site editors to correct the article, if I can find a way to reach them. I have to do this often. With your help, we can inform people that free software is something else. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
Oh wait, I think I do actually see what you mean now You're concerned about the message we send out if we use non-free software to promote GNOME and things like this e.g. git servers and social networking? You've identified the issue, but you're focusing only on the possible negative side of it. Using nonfree software to promote GNOME would associate GNOME with the idea that nonfree software is ok. Promoting GNOME that way would help the cause in a narrowly focused way (more users, more development of GNOME _are_ good, all else being equal) at the cost of harming it in a broader and deeper way. The issue has positive side, too. In promoting GNOME, it is possible to talk about freedom explicitly, and talk about choices that GNOME has made for the sake of freedom. Thus, while helping the cause in a narrowly focused way, you help the cause in a broader and deeper way at the same time. One can spread a bad message by visibly using an unethical resource; however, choosing ethical resources does not _by itself_ spread a good message because it does not communicate anything. To spread the good message, you have to say it overtly. For instance, carrying an iThing around with you is enough to endorse Apple, but NOT carrying an iThing doesn't convey rejection of Apple. To show that you reject iThings on ethical grounds, you need to say so. Note that there's nothing wrong with git servers in general. Some are bad, some are ok. Doesn't GNOME maintain its own repository? It can and should make sure its repository is entirely good. Also, social networking in general is not a bad thing. Social networking systems vary greatly, so they can be good or bad, depending on details. Facebook is atrocious and we shouldn't encourage people to be useds of Facebook. On the other hand, using GNU Social is fine. Twitter used to be ok until it started making users identify themselves, last year I think, but it is still POSSIBLE to use it without running nonfree software, last I heard. Advertising is not inherently bad, but if you sell ads on a site via Google, you're likely to find it shows ads for nonfree software on your site. Unfortunately Google offers no way to filter ads based on this criterion. Also, internet advertising today normally means tracking visitors, and tracking visitors is direct mistreatment of them -- which is worse than merely conveying a bad message to them. See http://gnu.org/philosophy/surveillance-vs-democracy.html. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
There are a few subtle ways of getting the message out which we could explore: For example, getting GNOME listed onto some popular websites in the UK (e.g. BBC, NHS, RNIB etc) and elsewhere, by approaching them with up to date instruction manuals on how to use GNOME's accessibility tools so they can publish them or provide links. These are candidate ways for how to promote GNOME. They might be good ways. The board would want to compare them with other possible ways in order to choose. However, I'm raising a different point: about spreading the ideas of free software. That is different from use of GNOME. Thus, I ask, how would you piggy-back spreading the ideas of free software onto GNOME and the promotion of GNOME? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
Does this not limit the ability of the FSF to campaign against US laws which attack software freedom somewhat? In practice, the requirement is no difficulty at all. We could legally spend up to 10% of our budget on lobbying. Even if we did lobbying, we would never do that much of it. However, what we actually do about these issues is not lobbying. Rather, it is outreach to the public. That 10% limit does not apply to outreach to the public. Also, we are not allowed to work for or against specific candidates for office. I think you are correct about this. Am I right in assuming that only applies to political parties in the USA, then? I don't know -- for that you should check with a lawyer. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
especially as there are a fair few restrictions on what we at GNOME can do to contribute to the advance of free software under the bylaws and CNPBC so we are obliged to stick to the mission if we are to continue to enjoy 501(c)(3) status as a public benefit corporation (i.e. a charity).[1,2,3] The FSF has the same status; anything that's lawful for the FSF is lawful for the GNOME Foundation too. Mainly it's a matter of following the foundation's charter; but the charter doesn't have to be interpreted in the strictest possible way. There are limits on expendatures for lobbying, but lobbying is a rather narrow activity and I think we have never done it. Grassroots activism and communication to the public are usually not lobbying. Also, we are not allowed to work for or against specific candidates for office. I would be pretty open to hearing any ideas on what we can do above and beyond being useful free software which does fall within GNOME’s remit, though. The GNOME Foundation's activities will naturally focus on promoting GNOME; in the course of those activities, it can promote the free software ideas too, in many ways. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
One answer here is the emerging agenda around privacy. My view is that the GNOME project is at the forefront of advances in this area, which will not just benefit GNOME's users, but a whole range of Free Software projects. As a member of the board, I would seek to support this aspect of our work wherever possible. This is a useful avenue, if we can see a way for GNOME to advance it. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
I would like GNOME to positively influence other projects both propriety and Free Software ones. A positive influence has to be a good thing -- but what does it mean to have a positive influence on a proprietary program? Convincing its developers to make it free software is the biggest form of positive influence. But we can only occasionally achieve that much. Short of that, what kind of change would be positive? To be truly positive, it ought to be positive for users' freedom. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Questions for candidates
Thinking about your answer, and a couple of others, I realize that I didn't phrase my question clearly. You've made several _technical_ suggestions for how GNOME can be more useful and thus do more to enhance GNU/Linux and the free world. They are interesting ideas, and could make GNOME a better piece of free software. However, the foundation board doesn't make technical decisions, and the foundation couldn't implement ideas of this kind. Thus, what I really should ask the candidates is this. How do you suggest the GNOME Foundation could contribute more to advance the cause of free software and users' freedom, over and above what GNOME contributes by being useful free software? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Questions for candidates
I'd like to ask the candidates, how do you think GNOME should contribute more to the advance of free software and users' freedom in general (in addition to being useful free software). -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] I suggest that we postpone discussion on codes of conduct until after the election. It is likely be a very big debate and likely to drown out discussion with the candidates. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Please run for director!
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] If you have an interest in running for director, please run! If the candidates barely outnumber the seats on the board, the election is little more than a formality. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: You logo
A belligerent response does not mean that someone's action was offensive. Whether a message is polite or not is a question of what it says. My message pointed out what is right to do, but did not make a demand. It did not attack or even criticize anyone. It was polite and inoffensive. My message did not _cause_ anyone to leave the list. Some people chose to leave the list, slamming the door behind them metaphorically, but that was a gesture. They did it as a demand to gag me. They did not have to do that. They could easily have let my message pass without responding. If they had done so, this side-discussion would have been over so fast they'd hardly have noticed it. Don't worry about them -- they will probably come back. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: You logo
Please respect the rules of this list and stay true to the topic on the subject. With all due respect, I am doing exactly that. This list is for discussing activities related to the GNOME Foundation. To discuss such an activity here is within the rules. When I say that the activity should recognize the GNU system, that is part of the discussion of the activity. If you think the activity as a whole doesn't relate to the GNOME Foundation, and shouldn't be discussed on this list, then it's correct to ask people to move the discussion of it somewhere else. But that's a different matter. Richard, in the future, please reply off-list if you want to correct someone on the usage of GNU/Linux. We are already a GNU project, most of us already know all this. There are people on the list who do not know this. Mentioning this point twice a year, in a short polite message, is useful and is no reason for anyone to take offense. Those who already know this point can easily disregard two short polite messages a year. I think I understand what you find unpleasant. It could be the hostile responses. Some make a mountain out of my molehill and demand that you gag me. Other responses argue explicitly against citing the GNU system when talking about it. That hostility does not come from me. I am the one it is aimed at. If you think the attacks are objectionable, you should place the responsibility on those that send them. Or you could decide not to let them bother you. If I can remain calm while reading that hostility, surely it is easier for you who are not its target. I have another suggestion. How about if you notice these occasions, twice a year, and post a message saying The GNOME Foundation, as a part of the GNU Project, asks you to please refer to this operating system as GNU/Linux. See http://gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html. Please respond to me off the list if you would like more explanation. I think that will deal with the sub-issue quickly and without disputes, and nothing will be derailed either. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: You logo
Fedora is a GNU/Linux distribution, I thought it's a GNU/Linux/xorg/texmf/PHP/Perl/Python/HarfBuzz/... distribution. See http://gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#many. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Links that recommend running nonfree JS code.
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] Some others have mentioned social networking site links e.g. facebook et al. I believe it is possible to view many Facebook pages without running JS. (I am about to verify that.) So if it is just a matter of referring to the contents of some page there, that is not a problem, as long as viewing the page does not require login. We shouldn't encourage people to log in on Facebook. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Linking to non-free websites from gnome.org
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] I've added a section to the campaign borrowed from crowdsupply. Alternative Payment We understand that credit cards aren't for everyone. If you cannot or do not want to pay by credit card, eCheck, or paypal, contact christ...@hergert.me to make alternate arrangements. That is the right basic idea, but in order to do the job fully, it is important to mention the nonfree Javascript issue. How about this? We understand that credit cards aren't for everyone. If you cannot or do not want to pay by credit card, eCheck, or paypal, or don't want to run the nonfree Javascript code that IndieGoGo requires for those methods, contact christ...@hergert.me to make alternate arrangements. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Linking to non-free websites from gnome.org
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] I think that a banner ad for Builder endorses Builder. (That's fine.) It does not really endorse Indiegogo, but it does urge people to go to the Indiegogo site and donate. I would still have to say that the banner *advertises* Builder (and of course, endorses it too) but that it also inadvertently *endorses* the use of indiGoGo, in the process. I think we don't need to argue about this subtle shade of meaning. The substantial point is that this issue is NOT about endorsement in general. It's about a very specific kind of case: a recommendation that people go to a certain web site and perform a certain kind of operation there. Because the issue is so specific, it is ethically simple -- it's wrong to recommend the operation if the operation requires running nonfree software (including JS code). -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Links that recommend running nonfree JS code.
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] Whist I don't disagree with what you are saying. There are only so many hours in the day. I can't reasonably drop in replace non-free websites with all that text or I would never get to the points I am trying to make about it. If you think there are many such cases, I suspect a misunderstanding. The issue is about specific recommendations to go to a certain page and do a certain operation there (not just look at the page). Those are the _potential_ problem cases, occasions where the problem _may_ occur. If the operation requires running nonfree software, then the problem really occurs. I would expect that these potential problem cases occur rarely. Can you recall any others besides this one? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Linking to non-free websites from gnome.org
Now, to the subject of whether GNOME should or should not link to non-free websites The expression nonfree website is one we do not use, because it is not clear what that would mean. Web sites raise various kinds of ethical issues. The issue here is very specific: a web site requires visitors to run nonfree software in order to use the site to do the job in question (in this case, to donate). If a web site runs nonfree software internally, that doesn't affect the site's visitors, so we have no reason to concern ourselves with that. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Linking to non-free websites from gnome.org
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] Second, linking to a web site is not an automatic endorsement of its script licensing or the practices of its operator. For the most part, I think you are right: making a link to a site does not endorse most aspects of how the site operates. However, linking to the site and suggesting people do a certain job with the site does make one very specific statement about the site. It says that such use of the site is something we approve of. If such use of the site requires running nonfree softare on your machine, we shouldn't say we approve of that. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Linking to non-free websites from gnome.org
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] 1. In what situations can any published link on GNOME's servers be representative of the GNOME Foundation (i.e. how are we defining GNOME as a trademark/brand) such that that link could be perceived as being an endorsement/advertisement. The issue at hand is not a matter of endorsement. At least, not in the usual sense of the word. I think that a banner ad for Builder endorses Builder. (That's fine.) It does not really endorse Indiegogo, but it does urge people to go to the Indiegogo site and donate. Unfortunately, that is exactly where the problem enters, because donating thru Indiegogo means users must run nonfree software on their own machines. This issue of nonfree software is different in nature from endorsement and can arise even in the absence of an endorsement. I agree that GNOME should study the question of endorsements and when to make them, but that's a different issue. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Linking to non-free websites from gnome.org
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] Does crowdsupply accept software projects at all? I will ask them. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Linking to non-free websites from gnome.org
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] I hadn't realized others had used indiegogo to crowdfund for your travel though. Were there lessons learned from that we should know about? They did that without consulting me. When I found out about it, I was concerned (on general principles) that indiegogo might require nonfree JS. I asked a volunteer people to investigate that. When he reported that donating on Indiegogo required running nonfree software, that campaign was over, but the issue of Indiegogo's nonfree JS remained important. I had the FSF ask Indiegogo to free its JS code. Indiegogo declined. Since then I have tried other ways to fix this -- and I am still trying. I will not give up until the job is done. Is the continued existence of the page https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/richard-stallman-s-air-ticket-to-speak-in-south-africa/x/8947753 giving people the wrong idea? If so, I will ask the people who invited me to try to get rid of the page or add a note to it. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Linking to non-free websites from gnome.org
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] The problem is that it takes *months* to prepare a proper crowdfunding campaign. So if you didn't suggest crowdsupply to me back at the hackfest, it was simply *too late* to be reasonably actionable (despite that I might agree it would be a good idea). I understand that you can't move the campaign now. But can you post a bitcoin address, and invite people to send money that way if they don't want to run nonfree JS code? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Builder crowdsourcing banner on PGO
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] Hmm I am not so sure: The chip in your own card There is no chip in my ATM card, as far as I know. I've read about the chips in European credit cards, but I have never thought about the issue of the software in these chips. It may be ethically equivalent to a circuit, and if not, it may be too small and narrow an issue to matter. Anyway, you won't be using the chip if you enter your card number into Indiegogo. Thus, for several reasons, it isn't a pertinent issue for this campaign. We need not take up that tangent. Nonfree Javascript, by contrast, is a big issue and a serious problem. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Linking to non-free websites from gnome.org
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] I raised this issue as soon as I became aware of the campaign, which was when I saw it mentioned here. I would have raised the issue earlier if I had known earlier. This is simply untrue. I asked you in person during your lecture with about 20 witnesses at the GNOME hackfest in Boston what I should do. Perhaps we are miscommunicating. By this campaign I mean the campaign on Indiegogo -- which didn't exist at that time. I told you I was going to be raising money to work on a new development environment for GNOME and that I was concerned about our options for crowd funding. You were unable to provide me any actionable suggestions for how to go forward. That's because the several crowdfunding sites I had investigated all had the same unethical practice of requiring donors to run nonfree software. There was not one that we could use without contradicting the principles of the free software movement. This is a serious problem and I've been looking for a solution for more than a year. Didn't I tell you this at the time? Since then, I have come across one site, crowdsupply.com, which offers a way to send money bypassing the nonfree JS code. That makes it better than the others. I urge people to choose crowdsupply.com for future campaigns. Since it is too late to do the campaign differently, I think we should suggest to people that they bypass the campaign and send money directly to a person or organization associated with Builder. Richard, I'd be thrilled to receive money from you. The issue at hand is what to say to the public. We should not suggest that people run nonfree software. Some who see the banner might run nonfree software. Worse, _everyone_ who sees it would get the message that running nonfree software is ok as long as it's for a good reason. See http://gnu.org/philosophy/is-ever-good-use-nonfree-program.html for why that idea is perilous. Most people think that whatever they are doing is a good reason for whatever means. A good solution has already been proposed. You can state a way people can send you money, without running nonfree software, and the banner can point to that. It's not a lot of work, and it enables us to promote funding for Builder coherently with our principles. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Builder crowdsourcing banner on PGO
does anyone else here use IceCat or LibreJS and believe that donating to the Builder campaign via Indiegogo is unethical due to its use of obfuscated Javascipt? That's not quite what I said. The act of donating is not unethical. Running that nonfree software hurts you, but no one else. What is unethical is to urge others to run that nonfree software. That has an effect on others. In this case, probably thousands of others. On a practical level, a campaign against obfuscated JS is completely doomed and can only hurt our efforts to attract users to free software. (How many people do you think would be using your distro here if it shipped IceCat instead of Firefox?) The distro I use, Trisquel, does ship IceCat instead of Firefox. I feel much safer knowing that IceCat protects me from nonfree JS code. why is the question of whether it's the user's computer or the service provider's computer that executes nonfree code very interesting? The difference fundamental. The server should be under its owner's control; nonfree code there wrongs him. Your computer should be under your control; with nonfree code there, it's your freedom that's at stake. Running JS code controlled by others exposes you to spying. Without JS code, The server can only get whatever data you send it with your browser. (IceCat sends less in the way of identifying data than other browsers do.) JS code can get a lot more data about you and use it to recognize you. Many advertising companies use this fingerprinting to track visitors from site to site. If you let web sites run whatever they like on your machine, you will find that much of your computing is done by nonfree JS code sent by servers, and they control your computing. See http://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Builder crowdsourcing banner on PGO
1) Which bank is used for keeping/receiving money for FSF?. I'd rather not give out that information. 2) Are you sure that any kind of nonfree software is not used for anyone in the bank? Used for anyone in the bank is not ordinary English usage and I can only guess what meaning you had in mind. My guess is that you mean, 2a) Are you sure the bank does not run any nonfree software? We never asked them what software they run. That is not our concern. Here's the question that should and does matter to us: 2b) Are you sure the bank does not require customers to run any nonfree software? Yes, we are sure. We refuse to run nonfree software, and if we couldn't use this bank without nonfree software, we would not use this bank. It is the same here. We are not concerned with what software IndieGoGo uses. The issue here is about the nonfree Javascript software that IndieGoGo _requires donors to use_ in order to donate. Thus I say, let's ask people to donate to Builder through some other channel (not via IndieGoGo) that doesn't require donors to run nonfree software. By that means, we can achieve the same subgoal (helping Builder) without undermining our overall goal as a byproduct. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Builder crowdsourcing banner on PGO
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] I wrote: IndieGoGo has an ethical problem: to donate requires running nonfree software. Thus, even if a campaign is a good thing, we shouldn't promote it on that site. You responded: What nonfree software is needed? I think I don't have nonfree software, but I donated without problems. The nonfree software is included in the web pages, in the form of Javascript. You can verify this by accessing the site using GNU IceCat, or Firefox with LibreJS enabled. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Builder crowdsourcing banner on PGO
I generally take these things step by step. Explaining the problem (with supporting Builder through Indiegogo) is the first step. Solving it (finding another way) is the next step. I expect that some of the people on this list already know the situation with Builder and could quickly propose another way to donate to that project. There's no point in my searching for information that someone else here already has. But if that is not the case, I will investigate the situation. Can someone tell me the URL of the Builder project's own site? (Before you post it, please check whether someone else already did so.) -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Builder crowdsourcing banner on PGO
Are we considering not linking to this fundraiser because it is hosted on a website that uses non-free software? That depends what you mean by considering. Several people are arguing vigorously against that idea, but nobody proposed it and nobody advocates it. The issue I've raised is not about what software _Indiegogo uses_ in its server. We have no reason to be concerned about that. Indeed, we can't tell what software Indiegogo uses internally, because it does not affect us -- so we may as well ignore it. (Please forgive me for repeating what I've said before.) Rather, this issue about what software _donors_ have to run when they donate via Indiegogo. It includes nonfree Javascript code that Indiegogo installs in the donor's browser. That affects the freedom of the donors: if we ask people to donate via Indiegogo, we are asking _them_ to run nonfree software. See http://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html. Right. So, to recap: those who are objecting have never used a credit/debit card to buy stuff or get cash out the wall? Those scenarios are not similar. When I get cash from an ATM, the ATM owner is running software but I am not. I don't know what software is inside the ATM, but in any case it doesn't affect me. Since using an ATM does not require running nonfree software, there is no harm in suggesting other people use an ATM. I do occasionally pay with a credit card (very rarely, for privacy reasons), but only in ways that avoid my running any proprietary software. I don't know what software the merchant and the bank use for this, but in any case it doesn't affect me, etc. Many of us were already aware his fundraiser would be hosted on indiGoGo before it was published including you (Alexandre). Nobody from GNOME seemed to object to indiGoGo as a fundraiser platform when the idea was being thrashed out and nobody objecting here has suggested any alternative or offered to help support Christian in setting something up either. I raised this issue as soon as I became aware of the campaign, which was when I saw it mentioned here. I would have raised the issue earlier if I had known earlier. Since it is too late to do the campaign differently, I think we should suggest to people that they bypass the campaign and send money directly to a person or organization associated with Builder. With all that said, perhaps as a sort of compromise Christian could also think about publishing a bitcoin address on the indigogo page, so that those who are used to making transactions and are offended by the idea of indigogo are able to donate with this way instead. That would partially solve the problem, but it would be better for us to post the bitcoin address directly and skip Indiegogo. Intermediate: we could mention Indiegogo and ask people to please use the bitcoin address rather than donating thru Indiegogo. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Builder crowdsourcing banner on PGO
[I deleted my normal message to the NSA and FBI out of consideration for the people on this list who report feeling annoyed by it] If are you really concerned about people using non free software, you should take everything in consideration, no? It would be a mistake to take everything in consideration _in the same way_. They don't all relate to us in the same way. We have direct responsibility for the software we ask people to run. If we ask people to donate through Indiegogo, this includes the nonfree JS code that one must run in order to donate through Indiegogo. We would be wrong to ask people to donate through Indiegogo and run this software. We don't have direct responsibility for the software that Indiegogo runs internally. If Indiegogo has ceded its freedom by running nonfree software, that is unfortunate of course, and we hope Indiegogo will stop running that software, but we don't need to make a fuss about it. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Repeated apology
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
I see my apology for the repeated message was sent twice ;-{.
When I saw all those repetitions of the previous message,
I wanted to send an apology immediately, not wait for my next
batch of outgoing mail. So I copied that message individually to
the FSF's server and sent it explicitly.
However, I forgot to delete it from the next outgoing batch, so it was
sent again.
I'm sorry again, but this time I waited for the next batch
to say so, so this will only go out once.
--
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call.
___
foundation-list mailing list
foundation-list@gnome.org
https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Message repeated due to mail bug
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] I sent out the same message multiple times unintentionally due to a bug in a script I use for mailing. Sorry. It should not happen again. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Message repeated due to mail bug
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] I sent out the same message multiple times unintentionally due to a bug in a script I use for mailing. Sorry. It should not happen again. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on September 26th
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] Would it be possible for you to, instead of repeatedly bringing up the subject of Free Software vs Open Source and GNU/Linux vs Linux, do this privately, off the list? It is not possible for a private response to be effective. When errors are posted on a list, an effective correction has to be on the list. For most of the people who are here this continuous reminder is tiring, I trust that most people here recognize that it is important to stand up to these repeated errors, rather than let them pass as accepted. The only method I can see is to post corrections. Can you suggest another? If I were not the only one, it becomes a lot easier. By continuously repeating yourself publicly on these matters you end up making the rest of your message lost. This is not a phenomenon of nature, it is what you do. The rest of my message is not lost; rather, you drop it. You've said that you do so because you resent my correction of those errors. Isn't it the errors that deserve your resentment, rather than their corrections? If you reinterpret the situation, seeing the repeated errors as causing a real problem and my corrections as trying to prevent that problem, you might feel glad to see them corrected. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on September 26th
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] Would it be possible for you to, instead of repeatedly bringing up the subject of Free Software vs Open Source and GNU/Linux vs Linux, do this privately, off the list? It is not possible for a private response to be effective. When errors are posted on a list, an effective correction has to be on the list. For most of the people who are here this continuous reminder is tiring, I trust that most people here recognize that it is important to stand up to these repeated errors, rather than let them pass as accepted. The only method I can see is to post corrections. Can you suggest another? If I were not the only one, it becomes a lot easier. By continuously repeating yourself publicly on these matters you end up making the rest of your message lost. This is not a phenomenon of nature, it is what you do. The rest of my message is not lost; rather, you drop it. You've said that you do so because you resent my correction of those errors. Isn't it the errors that deserve your resentment, rather than their corrections? If you reinterpret the situation, seeing the repeated errors as causing a real problem and my corrections as trying to prevent that problem, you might feel glad to see them corrected. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on September 26th
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] Would it be possible for you to, instead of repeatedly bringing up the subject of Free Software vs Open Source and GNU/Linux vs Linux, do this privately, off the list? It is not possible for a private response to be effective. When errors are posted on a list, an effective correction has to be on the list. For most of the people who are here this continuous reminder is tiring, I trust that most people here recognize that it is important to stand up to these repeated errors, rather than let them pass as accepted. The only method I can see is to post corrections. Can you suggest another? If I were not the only one, it becomes a lot easier. By continuously repeating yourself publicly on these matters you end up making the rest of your message lost. This is not a phenomenon of nature, it is what you do. The rest of my message is not lost; rather, you drop it. You've said that you do so because you resent my correction of those errors. Isn't it the errors that deserve your resentment, rather than their corrections? If you reinterpret the situation, seeing the repeated errors as causing a real problem and my corrections as trying to prevent that problem, you might feel glad to see them corrected. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on September 26th
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] Would it be possible for you to, instead of repeatedly bringing up the subject of Free Software vs Open Source and GNU/Linux vs Linux, do this privately, off the list? It is not possible for a private response to be effective. When errors are posted on a list, an effective correction has to be on the list. For most of the people who are here this continuous reminder is tiring, I trust that most people here recognize that it is important to stand up to these repeated errors, rather than let them pass as accepted. The only method I can see is to post corrections. Can you suggest another? If I were not the only one, it becomes a lot easier. By continuously repeating yourself publicly on these matters you end up making the rest of your message lost. This is not a phenomenon of nature, it is what you do. The rest of my message is not lost; rather, you drop it. You've said that you do so because you resent my correction of those errors. Isn't it the errors that deserve your resentment, rather than their corrections? If you reinterpret the situation, seeing the repeated errors as causing a real problem and my corrections as trying to prevent that problem, you might feel glad to see them corrected. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on September 26th
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] Would it be possible for you to, instead of repeatedly bringing up the subject of Free Software vs Open Source and GNU/Linux vs Linux, do this privately, off the list? It is not possible for a private response to be effective. When errors are posted on a list, an effective correction has to be on the list. For most of the people who are here this continuous reminder is tiring, I trust that most people here recognize that it is important to stand up to these repeated errors, rather than let them pass as accepted. The only method I can see is to post corrections. Can you suggest another? If I were not the only one, it becomes a lot easier. By continuously repeating yourself publicly on these matters you end up making the rest of your message lost. This is not a phenomenon of nature, it is what you do. The rest of my message is not lost; rather, you drop it. You've said that you do so because you resent my correction of those errors. Isn't it the errors that deserve your resentment, rather than their corrections? If you reinterpret the situation, seeing the repeated errors as causing a real problem and my corrections as trying to prevent that problem, you might feel glad to see them corrected. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on September 26th
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] I think it would help if next time you please checked third party sites when you are raising objections like these (or maybe have someone at the FSF do the legwork?). That's not a good idea, since it would have taken days. The people I can ask to check such things are volunteer helpers, and they don't necessarily respond right away. Thus, to have found all the answers first would have meant a substantial delay, perhaps until after a decision was made. But there is another reason why it is better to raise the questions immediately rather than wait and give the answers: to encourage people here to investigate these issues rather than depend on me to think of them. Depending on someone else's web site always poses certain questions. The answers vary from case to case, but the questions are the same. It is best for the future of GNOME if several others mention these questions, each time such an issue arises, so that the project won't depend on me to mention them each time. After all, I won't be around forever. We hope GNOME will last a long time. Thus, rather than finding the answers elsewhere and (possibly) raising _objections_ next week, I decided to raise _questions_ this week. Can people interested in using Bountysource please find out the pertinent facts about it? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on September 26th
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] GNOME is part of the GNU Project, whose goal is freedom for users. Not only that, but GNOME in particular was started to protect users from a specific threat to their freedom (nonfree Qt). So freedom is at the heart of GNOME and should never be forgotten. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on September 26th
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] I'm not sure I understand Richard. Out of curiosity, have you used Bountysource? I almost never contact commercial web sites with a browser. I never even heard of Bountysource before this discussion, and I know very little about it. Depending on facts I don't know, it may be bad for users privacy or their freedom. Or it may be just fine. Since I don't know the answers to the crucial questions, I've posted the questions hoping people will post the answers. Your message gives some information. * Privacy. This would result in giving Bountysource people's personal data, which it shouldn't have any right to know. I don't see how one can give more personal data than the one you give from signing up with GNOME's bugzilla. Are you saying you _know_ that Bountysource would not ask for more personal data? Or that you _think_ based on theoretical grounds that it would not? It makes a difference, because if you know this, then we have the answer to the question; but if you're reasoning theoretically, we don't actually know yet. Does the Bountysource site have any web tags that give information about page visitors to various companies? * Free software. Many web sites require visitors to run nonfree software to use some or even all of the functionality. See http://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html. Does Bountysource work without nonfree JS? I don't know, but one can't presume that. Their JS is opensource Whether a program is open source is not the pertinent question. What matters is whether it is free software. Most published programs that are open source are free software, so that is a positive indication. But there are exceptions, so it does not give certainty. Also, the philosophy associated with open source doesn't say it is a moral requisite, only a convenience; thus, people may say our code is open source when in fact 5% of it isn't, and they think the discrepancy does not matter. Would someone like to verify that Bountysource works with the LibreJS extension activated in Firefox? If it does, we will know it is ok on this dimension. Unfortunately not all of their code is open source (their server-side is not). The code that runs _in their server_ is not directly an ethical concern for us because we're not considering asking GNOME users to run it. If they are using nonfree software, that is unfortunate for them, and we should encourage them to migrate, but that is no reason to condemn or punish them. Or the code that they run in their server could be unpublished, private software; if so, it is probably free software. (See http://gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html#PrivateSoftware.) It's not wrong to run private software on a server, but if FreedomSponsors publishes their server software as free software, that is a nice contribution to the community. Perhaps we should choose them instead in order to give them a boost -- provided it's ok on the crucial ethical questions stated above. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on September 26th
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] If the GNOME Foundation is considering inviting members of the community to use Bountysource to communicate with the Foundation, that raises two ethical issues: * Privacy. This would result in giving Bountysource people's personal data, which it shouldn't have any right to know. * Free software. Many web sites require visitors to run nonfree software to use some or even all of the functionality. See http://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html. Does Bountysource work without nonfree JS? I don't know, but one can't presume that. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: AUS
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] The term FOSS is meant to refer to free software and open source neutrally, but it doesn't treat them equally. If you want to be neutral, please say FLOSS which does treat them equally. See http://gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.html. You could also say free software or libre software, and show your support for freedom. Ubuntu is a GNU/Linux distro with some serious ethical problems. See http://gnu.org/philosophy/ubuntu-spyware.html. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GUADEC registration
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] Richard, I'm curious if you got more information about this, and if yes, could you share it? Eben Moglen seemed to think there was no problem, but since the GNOME Foundation is his client, it should consult him directly. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GUADEC registration
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] Converting bitcoins to dollars immediately seems fine to me as a way to accept payment in bitcoin. Does the GNOME Foundation accept payment for GUADEC this way? If not, could it do so? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Mission Statement
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] Do you understand that the many -isms that negatively impact GNOME and open source in general If you want to talk about the larger practice that GNOME is part of, please speak of free software. The free software movement campaigns for a particular aspect of human rights, in the field of computing. OPW campaings for a different aspect of human rights, but is based on the same attitude that human rights are important. The slogan open source was launched so as to reject that attitude. It's not a good fit for OPW or for GNOME. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Mission Statement
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] 1. Please get yourself a mailer that doesn't mangle Máirín's name, there are plenty of Free Software ones It sounds like you think you have seen some sort of problem. I use GNU Emacs for reading and sending mail. Like any nontrivial program, it has bugs. Perhaps you have found one. If you have come across a bug in some GNU program, the constructive response is to report it so it can get fixed. Please report bugs in GNU Emacs to bug-gnu-em...@gnu.org. 2. If the extent of your involvement in the GNOME Foundation's life is going to be something that a bot can replace, can we please have the bot instead? I've been campaigning for computer users' freedom for 30 years. The GNU/Linux system comes out of that campaign. GNOME in particular does, too; it was started specifically to provide a free software way to avoid running the then-proprietary Qt library. People who hold open source views would not have considered this necessary. If someone can design a bot smart enough to find and express new specific ethical points, such as highlighting the similarity in values between the free software movement and OPW, I would be glad to let the bot take over from me. I have a lot of other work to do. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GUADEC registration
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] Estimates of costs regarding audits come directly from accountants who could do the work and who have previously advised the Foundation employees that the best way to avoid being audited is to not do anything which may trigger an audit. Could you put me in touch with them? I would like to ask them why they think bitcoin use is likely to be one of them, and what evidence there is of this. I will also ask Karen. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GUADEC registration
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] This repression against Bitcoin seems to be arbitrary and needs to be both investigated more and publicized more. Can someone put me in touch with those accountants and lawyers? In the mean time, it would be good to urge people to pay cash so as not to identify themselves. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
