What to do about GNU?
smalltalk.gnu.org
smalltalk.gnu.org
Regrouping things together and saying, for example, this one guy is the head of text processing means that he becomes the go-to guy for all the 1-logical-unit software that goes into that group. While traffic per project might be small, over all the projects it would be enough to warrant assigning a guy to it.
There's Gnome the window manager library and there's Gnome the "Graphic Environment" the shell and related applications (Gnome-shell, Nautilus, etc).
Gnome the window management library would make a great thing to put within a tighter GNU. It is the basis of Xfce and Ubuntu Unity as well as the Gnome Shell. Taking the underlying library out of the current tug-of-war over interfaces between these environments would be nice. And I realize there's also the Gnome 2.0/Gnome 3.0 issue in libraries but I'd say a more neutral umbrella would still be useful.
I wouldn't have them in charge of my preferred window manager either.
Why?
I vaguely agree about GNOME, who are often rather insular and sometimes do things that are of dubious wisdom for the GNU project (e.g., their on-and-off love affair for MS "standards").
However, GTK is something very different indeed. Even if GNOME has grabbed control (or tried to, I dunno the details) of GTK, GTK predates GNOME, was created by different people, is used by a far wider community, and even has a very different feel. At its core, GTK really is just a good UI toolkit; GNU needs a good UI toolkit, and GTK seems to serve that purpose very well.
Indeed, to the extent that GNOME has taken over GTK development, it reflects GNOME's good points (and do I think technically GNOME is often fairly good).
So if there's going to be some sort of distancing of GNU and GNOME, I'd rather see this accompanied by GTK becoming more independent of GNOME as well—not to "screw GNOME" or anything, but to ensure that it continues to serve all its users well (by "users" here, I mean "projects which use GTK", of which there are many, most of which have no connection with GNOME at all).
[It would be fine it the same people continue to work on GTK, but there should be a clear line between it and GNOME.]
That's just Miguel de Icaza, not really GNOME. If rms wanted to diss GNOME, he certainly would have had...
They can throw out Gnome and just keep GTK and glib, which are more widely used, independent projects not under Gnome's control.
Take mobiles and tablets, all I see is walled gardens created by large businesses. The longer you use a device the more you invest into it and the more locked in you become.
I would have thought this would be an area which fsf could make a difference in. Instead of a solution I get the impression that fsf would just support a gnu mobile os which would do nothing but create another silo for locked in content and purchases.
You can also stick Plasma Active from KDE on top of most phone hardware, given driver support, and get another mobile OS running on top of GNU.
The FSF isn't supposed to be an OS company. They are a foundation for free software. They wanted to make a POSIX compliant free *nix, and did. Their stuff also happens to work with Linux by design. You can take it or leave it, but they aren't a commercial entity to push consumer adoption.
is a FSFE campaign.
Somebody should curate GNU and come out with the subset that's signal minus the noise. One could argue that this is what distros are for, but there really needs to be something upstream of the distros. Likewise, there's Debian, which is great, but perhaps there needs to be something else that does a different level of curation.
And Sourceforge is . . . Sourceforge.
It might be useful for there to be a website that would fill in the gaps. It would provide semi-major free software projects with the tools and hosting to create real web presences. It wouldn't even necessarily have to provide source hosting.
(Edited twice.)
Also, fsf.org doesn't immediately scream at you what the FSF is and why you should care. They might want to work on that.