Free Software Foundation Receives $1M Donation from Pineapple Fund

I wonder how easy it would be to liquidate these bitcoins? I would imagine that Joe Blow tries to liquidate the same amount, alarm bells would ring very loudly.

> and I think it's important to remember that both want user freedom

As a free software activist, I haven't found that to be true. Remember that the term "open source" was created explicitly to sell the development methodology to businesses without talking about the ethical issues.

When developers write software under the umbrella of "open source", many aren't even aware of software freedom issues---they may be doing it because their peers are doing it; because they were told they should do it for a portfolio to get a job; or maybe because they like sharing their software with others. Some businesses liberate their code merely for contributions or press.

That's certainly not the case for all open source developers---there is, as you said, an overlap. But it's important to use the term "free software" and talk about software freedom to start those discussions and get people thinking about software freedom.

As I've said many times before:

"Free Software" and "Open Source Software" refer to almost the same sets of software; but the "Free Software" movement/ideology and the "Open Source" movement/ideology are very different. And if we're talking about giving money to a foundation that does advocacy, it's the latter that matters more.

Because FS and OSS do refer to almost the same set of software, they are allies (more OSS means more FS and more FS means more OSS), but that doesn't make them friends. You are correct that OS does refer to more than just visible source. However, the OS movement/ideology does not care about user freedom as an objective, the OS ideology is based around the belief that user freedom leads to better, higher-quality software, for less dev cost; which is good business. Within the OS ideology and movement there is room to believe that there are situations where that isn't true, and that it can be the right decision to restrict user freedom. In the OS ideology, user freedom is the strategy, not the objective. In the FS ideology, user freedom is the objective; it is never the right decision to restrict user freedom.

OpenBSD is a different topic: it is free software, and considers user freedom to be an objective. However, they disagree with GNU/FSF about whether copyleft/the GPL is a good strategy for user freedom.

Open source focuses on the technical. Free software focuses on the political

Stallman has said many times he wasn't trying to move the state of technology forward with GNU projects - just trying to have a libre computing base because it was the best political option.

> "Open source" doesn't just mean visible source.

That's not how Microsoft uses the word "Open Source" so the expression is completely void of meaning nowadays.

Sort of. If this goes the same way it did with mtgox in 2013, we should expect to see bitcoin prices shoot up in the tether exchanges and go down in the USD exchanges.

In a collapse scenario there will be more speculative buying of some of them, but it certainly won't be at high prices.

(this is vaguely tautological statement, if the prices stay high then it isn't a collapse, etc.)

If we want to be philosophical then answer is very simple. The money comes from people who want to buy bitcoins.

Then we can ask why people want to buy bitcoins and the answer get a bit more complex but usefully branches into two areas. People want to either speculate (gamble) that the coins will increase in value because they think others also think that the value will increase and thus it will, or they want to buy the bitcoins because it enables them to buy objects for which bitcoins serves as value tokens.

Which in turn leads us to ask about the nature of value tokens. Why do we use them, the history, intrinsic values, and so on.

The value is drive up by money laundering / bypassing restrictions around foreign currency exchange (eg bypassing Chinese regulations)

I believe "to the people" is another way of saying not directly to large software corporations. To the people from the people.

It was driven up by 80-year-olds draining their 401-K accounts to speculate in something exciting and new that their grandson mentioned.

Not the 1%. It's the 4%.

http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-97-are-held-by-4-of-a...

I work for a non-profit that has been trying since the beginning of January to get an account at an exchange that will convert a Bitcoin donation we received to USD. So far we have not had any luck, since many (most?) exchanges are not accepting new customers (or explicitly state that reviewing new account applications is their lowest priority) and those that do still accept new customers have multi-week wait times for opening accounts (at one exchange we've been waiting over 3 weeks ago with no reply yet).

As a result, we cannot "literally convert 100 Bitcoin to $1,000,000 USD in seconds", or even 0.001 Bitcoin. In fact, we can't even do so in 3 weeks (and counting).

Could you point us to an exchange that is accepting new signups and will verify an account for a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization within a day (or even a week)?

Or you can request a block OTC trade with any of the major exchanges and they'll bite your arm off for your business. Zero slippage.

https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-google.en.html comes to mind.

I get stuff all the time that is presented as free while still having the understanding that there are costs. The streets, parks, education, they are all free if I don't consider that the Swedish government takes about 1/3 of my income.

If a friend helps you there is usually a unspoken contract that you will help them in return. They are not a 1:1 trade but any social relationship is a give and take. Very few things in life has one party that only take and an other that only gives.

Free Software means free as in speech not free as in beer.

You may want to check the actual definition of Free Software.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

> There's something very contrary about expecting payment/compensation for FSF software.

No, there's really not, because free software is about freedom, not price. C.f. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_libre

> Or don't I understand the FSF at all?

I think that's the case. Read https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html for more about the Four Freedoms: to run, to study, to distribute copies & to distribute modifications.

The FSF (for all its faults) has done a lot of good in the world, and companies like Google & Amazon owe it a huge moral debt. They are under no legal compulsion to pay it a single cent, but it's fair to say that without the Free Software Foundation there would be no modern web.

In addition to the other comments: The FSF is not only a vendor so software, but also a Lobby organization engaged in debates around privacy and control over computer systems (incl. DRM and such topics).

Yeah, but if you're an entity with infinite money, and derive great benefits from using it, it seems reasonable to toss them a few dollars. Not even just to be nice, but to ensure it continues to grow so you can keep milking it later.

I think you are mixing up freedom with expectation that work should be done for free.

You may be confused about the use of the term "free" in this context. It isn't about giving stuff away for $0 in compensation, it's about freedom in the sense of liberty and freedom to modify software you own.

RMS is possibly considering renaming it, too: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/7t97sn/fsf_foundatio...

You don't understand it at all.

I checked my calendar and it would appear the current year is 2018.

> ...software maintenance is the least important thing the foundation does in my opinion. (I mean I don't need a new `grep` release every month, I could actually use a version from 2004)

So, critical components that have issues : GPG, GNU TLS, GCC, Make, glibc, etc... are not important? If the tools that everything else is built upon are not being maintained, then a lot of infrastructure fails in spectacular ways. If these things are not important, I guess that I've been using the wrong tools and OS.

> They take care of longer term issues, such as enforcing the GPL, defending it in lawsuits, writing good free software licences, raising awareness about issues (DRM, vendor lock-in, etc.), increasing free software use around the world.

They have failed at these things for a long time. The FSF has not had any engaging campaigns in quite a long time (more than 5 years); writing a blog post and an angry letter does not usually get the job done (see HTML5 EME campaign). GPL enforcement from the FSF is a joke since they take forever to respond to anything and by the time they get to it, the device / software is no longer sold / shipped. I also don't see any new striking licenses on the horizon being drafted by the FSF.

There are a lot of examples, but the most notable is the endorsement / promotion of the X60 / X200 with non-free EC firmware and a dial-up modem that requires non-free software to work.

While not a freedom issue, they endorsed PureOS even though it uses a Debian kernel (linux-libre Vs. Debian kernel, not going to get into that here) while another distro was denied for that specific thing.

No one can win anything since life is a losing battle. I am still going to call out the FSF when they make critical or hypocritical compromises, in the case of pushing, making exceptions for, promoting or explaining away non-libre software in the case of components that can easily be changed. I know lots of people don't support them because, in their view, they don't make any/enough compromises (that is the OSI / Linux Foundation's job). I would like to live in a world where we have full control over the tools that we use and making compromises won't get us there.

We still continue to lose control of our tools because of the compromises we make or because some of us are tone deaf to the fact we need control over the various components in our computers (my favorite arguments : it's too complicated, not smart enough, because reasons...). The reason we are here is because not enough people care until it is too late, infrastructure fails, a new trendy security issue has been named or we find out that component X is running software that does something we don't like. The first step is education and getting enough people demanding hardware/software that makes no compromises on user control and freedom.