Long Live the Free Software Foundation
concernednetizen.com
concernednetizen.com
The evidence can be had right here. About the only thing you hear about the FSF these days is controversy about Stallman and the peripheral issues about that. The FSF should be huge, and have a very prominent impact on the relevant parts of the industry, like say HN, various subreddits and slashdot. Instead it barely shows up anywhere.
If the FSF isn't prominent in its home turf, then things are even more dire anywhere outside it. A movement that wants to fight for user freedom has to somehow reach those users. Problem is, these days they barely know that it exists, and what they do hear about is all unflattering (eg, Stallman).
The FSF has a very tough mission to accomplish. Gathering a few like-minded people at a Linux conference is certainly a good thing, but comes very far from wielding the political influence needed to actually get things done.
Worse, even on its own home turf it's losing relevance. The FSF should be aggressively keeping up with modern developments and reacting to them, and finding ways to spread its message. But it seems woefully out of date in that respect.
Interest goes up every year. Donations go up every year. The crowds at the conferences they host go up every year. More stuff is added to GNU every year. They keep on innovating in the realm of software licensing. More stuff than ever is released under AGPL3.
You don't see it, because you, gentle soul, don't care about the FSF. You care about what you care about, and that means you only see ancillary stuff that other people are sharing.
And that stuff is hate because a lot of people hate the FSF, just as more people come to love the FSF every year. It's getting more attention and not less. It's gaining relevance. RMS has stated that the FSF has been successful beyond his wildest dreams.
That is very good to hear, but if that's the case then it's still doing far less well than I think it should be.
> You don't see it, because you, gentle soul, don't care about the FSF. You care about what you care about, and that means you only see ancillary stuff that other people are sharing.
I shouldn't need to care about the FSF specifically to hear something about it. I don't need to hang out in Blender-specific places to hear about Blender, because the project runs well, creates stuff people like, and makes good progress and people talk about it. The FSF doesn't seem to be doing that well in this department, and that's concerning because an organization that wants to push the world needs to have its message heard by the world at large, not just the fan club.
> And that stuff is hate because a lot of people hate the FSF, just as more people come to love the FSF every year. It's getting more attention and not less. It's gaining relevance. RMS has stated that the FSF has been successful beyond his wildest dreams.
Yeah, you're barking up the wrong tree. I want the FSF to be relevant. I agree with a lot of Stallman's ideas. I just don't think it's being nearly effective enough, and needs to do much better.
I'm not sure what happened. Maybe it was the fact that technology became mainstream and integrated into our lives so tightly.
Stallman is famous for having a very specific attitude to the way he interacts with the Internet. Back in the day it seemed difficult and quirky.
But now? The idea of a 20 year old not having a smartphone, not using any social media, not registering a real name account anywhere, never using a parking app, not using a card (including for the metro), not walking by facial recognition surveillance cameras, never getting on a plane to avoid being subject to invasive searches, there are _thousands_ of other examples - this is now the equivalent of living in a log cabin. I don't think it would actually be possible to live like this, even if you had millions of dollars, unless you genuinely lived in the forest.
I don't think most people who grew up post 2000ish are even able to understand what life used to be like.
You used to be able to go around and live your daily life generally being anonymous and in control of your own things and that was just how it was. It wasn't an effort.
I love the FSF but sometimes it does feel as if they're championing a return to the pre-Internet days, simply because the level of reconfiguration of the world we'd require now is so so massive.
It's a forum for the discussion of profitable endeavour first and foremost. Mac discussion is as common as Linux. There's a pervasive bias against cryptocurrency, not only the scams but the basic principle of freedom from regulation. "Intellectual property" isn't a joke here, it's generally respected.
I could go on, but my main point is that this is predominantly a capitalist forum, not an anarchist one. Principles take a back seat to pragmatism here, the FSF is the opposite of that.
Eg, the Linux kernel is under the GPL and I don't see anybody really complaining about that. Pragmatism tells me that even if the philosophy isn't to your liking, the code works and you can often make use of it anyway.
It just doesn't stop where it would need to for people to be aligned with the FSF. People here, in the majority, whack on "ALLOW_UNFREE_PACKAGES" and just get on with it. Or install unfree OSes, or use unfree hardware.
It's just not a focus at all.
They're less dogmatic about software freedom, but because of the "get your hands dirty" attitude I find they tend to use open source tools more often than not.
Their conference is probably the only one I'm excited about this year.
I think free software and open source are at this point the same thing. A lot of people who care about software freedom issues do so under the banner of open source because of the issues of the FSF and wanting to distance themselves from the FSF.
The FSF doesn't do a good job of promoting free software. Take a look at the FSF homepage -- where's the messaging on getting typical computer users (especially those on Windows or a Mac or a Chromebook) to use free software? The approach seems to be that either you install Linux from a small subset of minority distributions -- https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html -- or nothing.
Thirteen years ago (2010) I worked on a campaign aimed at end-users and it looks like it has been updated very little since -- https://www.fsf.org/working-together/moving -- getting this done was an uphill battle as the FSF didn't want to promote Firefox at the time.
Where is the end user campaign for using free software? Where is the EFF for users?
LibrePlanet is generally a good conference, but outside of that the FSF doesn't seem to be doing much impactful work, and the most I ever hear about it these days is about controversies surrounding Stallman.
I think we probably need a new organization to take up the cause at this point.
Focused on the distinctions between FS and OS, building an antagonistic narrative between them, doubling-down on purity.
I would agree "dying" is too strong a word, though, since there's no reason the FSF can't continue to exist indefinitely, as a kind of club of like-minded enthusiasts. But the direction they are going now, their activities will be ever more insular, having less and less affect on anyone but themselves.
Their stated mission is "to promote computer user freedom. We defend the rights of all software users." If you aren't having an effect outside your own group it's hard to see how that can be fulfilled.
(Not that I'm sad to see it end up this way. I've always understood how developer hostile it is.)
Eg, they refuse to use Youtube. Using it would involve a tiny bit of nose holding on their part, but they could still use it to spread their message.
This is a dumb take. If you don't understand principles or integrity, that is not a failing of others that do.
> Free Software cares about users and computer owners, Open Source cares about programmers. (......) And they are two separate things which Mr. DeVault—in accordance with many, many other knowledgeable and coders and activists and authoritative persons in the Open Source world—elides and blurs together in one giant movement.
People who advocate for MIT are compatible, acceptable, harmlessly misguided as far as I'm concerned.
IE I don't hate them or avoid their works, but do consider them not to be helping themselves or the world as much as they could, and for free with no extra effort. But they aren't hurting either. I do not call failing to do the most possible good according to my views to be equivalent to doing harm.
MIT is at least not harming. But also at best not harming.
> programming new editing commands was so convenient that even the secretaries in his [Bernie Greenberg] office started learning how to use it. They used a manual someone had written which showed how to extend Emacs, but didn't say it was a programming. So the secretaries, who believed they couldn't do programming, weren't scared off. They read the manual, discovered they could do useful things and they learned to program.
living the ideal Free Software lifestyle—that is, using no proprietary software or hardware, meaning no SteamDeck, no game consoles, no smartphones, etc.
I think my ideal Free Software lifestyle seems preferable to the author's :)
Every good thing tbey currently enjoy and are so proud of their cleverness in securing for themselves, whether it's a tech toy or a liberal law, only exists because someone before them took on the burden of bringing about the change, which made their lives actually a bit more difficult in the immediate.
Some people see that as stupid but I sure don't.
Even if you are using the libre modem distribution, it only covers the ARM cores of the modem, not the Hexagon ones.
unfortunately, at least for wechat, as far as i can tell, it won't be possible to log in without having an original wechat on a phone (that's how you log into the official web-wechat too). so that doesn't really solve the problem of not needing non-free software. there is also a high risk of getting banned for using an unauthorized client.
So for me this "rebutal" is a misreading insofar that it is treated as an attack on free/libre coming from the oss world, whereas i definitely view it as a call for reflectivity and strategical reevaluation coming from within free/libre.
Or maybe it wasn't and i'm seeing in it what i want to see: i definitely consider myself on the political side of free software as some sort of communism applied to technology and science, but i also find the fsf very dusty and dogmatic. Looks very much like nowadays's communist parties: a long time since these weren't on the forefront of these revolutionary ideas.
FS & OSS being in sorts of a (shotgun?) marriage, does not mean that they need a shared Facebook profile.
I didn't say the opposite. My point is that the FSF shouldn't be so sure they are the most radical out there. People more radical than them also criticize them. It's easy dismissing critics by saying they come from people with somehow "compromised" opinions, but it doesn't address any of the critics.
So, learn assembly and C, that's one takeaway for anyone interested in this area.
> "In 1987, the Borland Turbo C compiler for MS-DOS was priced at $99, while the Microsoft C compiler for MS-DOS was priced at $495. On the other hand, the Sun Microsystems SPARCstation C compiler for the SPARC platform was priced at $7,500."
I also think this is an area where OpenAI / GPT code generation will have a huge impact. It should be possible, given open-source hardware specs, to build the appropriate drivers for any operating system (i.e. Linux) quite quickly with the assistance of these new tools.
This seems something that is very unintuitive, even with the given documentation (which one often does not get). Often enough, all that is available is the assembly itself (thus reverse engineer). So how does chat gpt do with just the assembly? Can it write documentation on a given hardware plattform, just given the assembly?
Open source firmware is much less common and firmware reverse engineering even more rare though.
Is that too close to a dream? Maybe. Is it misguided? I don't think so
Everyone will benefit even if smaller projects that you have access to all the steps from start to finish. Either for learning or new companies to compete
Today is very difficult, almost impossible, to run a fully open source PC, from firmwares, BIOS, drivers, OS, software... but I am happy for FSF to keep the dream alive as there is no other organization bothering with it
The other extreme also exists where the company would like you to sell you hardware and software that you'll never own. That you have to connect to the network, login, and it asks everyday if it is allowed to run. Only for the subscribed purpose, user, and location. Otherwise to disable itself and contact local authorities
https://louigiverona.com/?page=projects&s=writings&t=philoso...
I think this post explains it well and it was also my reaction to DeVault's post. I have no opinion on whether the FSF is dying but what I did not understand about DeVault's post is what they can do about it. The only reason for FSF to exist is to protect the rights of the users of software, often at the expense of the developers. That is why copyleft exists, why the FSF exists. They cannot "change" and embrace open source and still have any purpose.
You could argue that they could be friendlier to OSS but if they are, how does that help the free software movement?
For the free software movement to be successful the open source movement has to be less successful. More developers need to embrace copyleft licenses over MIT, BSD, Apache.
As a developer, my interest in open source has always been in engaging with other developers. I prefer that model, even if a company wants to go make money off my code. I had option to choose a different license, or not contribute to an existing project. I did so for the collaboration and opportunity to work with other developers to solve the same problem I needed to solve. Copyleft licensed software, more often than not, has other goals.
And that's why I care about Free Software and not Open Source - and I'm a programmer! Freedom goes way beyond us "technical elites" and as such, I see Open Source as elitist since it cares only about an elite few.
Free Software cares about everybody.