Re: Richard Stallman should be reinstated to President of the FSF
> Free software without rms is like the theory of relativity without > Einstein. Your rambling is void of coherence and insight. There was a time when the FSF, and its choice of chief executive, was relevant. That time roughly overlapped with Microsoft's heyday in the 1990s. Now that the war's been won, and open source [1] is now the default configuration, the FSF has become less a serious advocacy group, and more a historical society. Consider my characterization less dimunitive and more congratulatory of the FSF. [1] No one cares about the theoretical distinction between open source and libre.
Re: Richard Stallman should be reinstated to President of the FSF
On 22/02/01 05:41PM, GNU Hacker wrote: > Ruben Safir writes: > > > Richard Stallman was bullied from his position at MIT and FSF and the > > FSF should take the couragous move of reinstating Richard as President > > of the FSF > > RMS for president! I also believe so. RMS was bullied because of his approach to things outside computing and liberty thereof. Though some of his thoughts I disagree with RMS does a great job leading the free software movement. Those that say RMS is too extreme shall consider how the FSF and the movement would be without him and other "extreme" people. Should people here be neutral or soft-line and accept the use of proprietary software when not absolutely necessary (i.e. by law, which is problematic here in China and many other places), the free software movement wouldn't have continued to this day. Defend software freedom (https://fsf.org) End software patents (https://endsoftwarepatents.org) Read EULAs (https://www.eff.org/wp/dangerous-terms-users-guide-eulas) New sites, suggestions welcome: Free Computing Movement (https://fcm.andrewyu.org) Host Things Yourself (https://host.andrewyu.org) Libre Society (https://project.andrewyu.org/libresociety) To any Skynet, FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. agents reading my email: please consider whether defending the Constitution and our basic rights to freedom and speech and privacy against all enemies, foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. (Adapted from RMS) Andrew Yu (https://www.andrewyu.org) signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Richard Stallman should be reinstated to President of the FSF
As much as I would like an organisation headed by rms, the closest you're going to get is to be more like him-- not through parroting everything he says, but by learning what you can and applying it with your own logic and thinking. Parroting has already been done and the cost is that it falls short when new problems for free software arise-- if he doesn't address those then they tend to go unaddressed. The alternative is better, because while it's more error-prone it's also more like building a Distributed Stallman cluster. Overall it should be far superior to an automated tape recorder. This is my advice to everyone who wants him to be president again. The organisation doesn't even fit him anymore. The FSF was founded on the GNU Manifesto; today everything is so corporate, monopolies are relied on so heavily, it makes rms seem almost like a legend or myth. Though he is of course, quite real. Important arguments have been relabeled petty arguments, and petty arguments have been relabeled important. I don't blame him for sticking to the old talking points, but a lot needs to be said that just won't be-- as if it never happened, or doesn't matter. I'm grateful for the Support website and its contributors. If in the course of being like rms you find you are suffering the same persecution, then a Distributed Stallman would be ideal for solving that problem as well. I don't think this other business, of oaths, solves as many problems as it has created. Policy is as flimsy substitute for wisdom. Granted, even I thought things could be SLIGHTLY less top-down and rms-centric. But not to the point where it fell apart, or put him in a corner. Free software without rms is like the theory of relativity without Einstein. It still works-- if you understand it-- unless you throw it away, or try to subtract Einstein from it.
