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The agenda is made very clear toward the end of the article: > As stewards of the free software definition, the Free Software Foundation should be taking the l

by temac 7y ago

The agenda is made very clear toward the end of the article: > As stewards of the free software definition, the Free Software Foundation should be taking the lead in ensuring that these issues are discussed. The priority of the board right now should be to restructure itself to ensure that it can legitimately claim to represent the community and play the leadership role it's been failing to in recent years, otherwise the opportunity will be lost and much of the activist energy that underpins free software will be spent elsewhere. Translation: now that Stallman is mostly gone, we may finally change the definition of free software, thanks to a better "representativeness" But this is extremely ridiculously naive to think that just because it would be coming from that Frankenstein FSF, it would not fragment the community. Debian would not follow. And tons of others. Whatever you think of the current def, I think there is exactly zero chance of not fragmenting significantly by attempting to change it. I even think this is a huge misunderstanding of the very nature of free software to consider that free corporate usage and exploitation shall be prevented.

bitwize 7y ago
Sometimes they spill their spaghetti so willingly that all talk of ulterior motives becomes moot. And if they can't change the norms of the community, fracturing it beyond repair is fine with them because it doesn't deserve to exist if it does not conform to their moral standards.
- temac 7y ago
  I do not think that there is a coordinated effort whatsoever to disrupt Free Software communities (at least not at industrial scale, maybe there are groups of 3 or 4 people with a similar mindset doing things together, but that is the case for pretty much anything on earth...), only - and especially in this case - personal opinions and approaches I sometimes strongly disagree with. Here to the point of not even understanding from where Matthew comes from, although it is true that some Linux devs are sometimes extremely far from the "canon" free software ideologies -- or maybe simply never really thought deeply about it. And certainly this is the case here: getting rid of freedom 0 is not exactly something I would casually suggest esp in the name of preventing fracturing; I would expect the effect to be precisely the opposite :/ And I'm not sure at all why anybody would expect otherwise.
  - bitwize 7y ago
    It takes "industrial scale" to build a large building, but not to burn one to the ground. The people involved in disrupting the community are relatively small in number, but they've developed an MO that lets them do great damage. They identify leadership of the targeted community, demand that they submit or be removed, and if neither of those happen they start contacting the sources of the community's funding. If you decide to speak out against the Church of Scientology, a Scientologist may show up at your door telling you to stop. If you don't stop, your boss at work will start to get anonymous calls about you, exposing what a horrible person you are -- perhaps a sexual harasser, rapist, or child molester. Their story will be backed up -- by other Scientologists (who won't identify as such). As for where Matthew is coming from, the details of that are not so important as that the Right People are in leadership of the community. If the community is not led by the Right People in service to the Right Ideas, then it is part of the system of White-Supremacist-Capitalist-Patriarchy, does not deserve to exist at all, and should be destroyed. And yes, Matthew "Ted Ts'o is a Rape Apologist" Garrett is one of the Right People (though thankfully, Ts'o seems to have a bit more spine than Stallman, so the smear didn't work nearly as well as was hoped).
rurban 7y ago
Exactly. Now that they got rid of Stallman, they want to weaken the GPL, to look less fundamental and strict. Beware
deleted 7y ago
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by temac 7y ago

bitwize 7y ago

Sometimes they spill their spaghetti so willingly that all talk of ulterior motives becomes moot. And if they can't change the norms of the community, fracturing it beyond repair is fine with them because it doesn't deserve to exist if it does not conform to their moral standards.

temac 7y ago
I do not think that there is a coordinated effort whatsoever to disrupt Free Software communities (at least not at industrial scale, maybe there are groups of 3 or 4 people with a similar mindset doing things together, but that is the case for pretty much anything on earth...), only - and especially in this case - personal opinions and approaches I sometimes strongly disagree with. Here to the point of not even understanding from where Matthew comes from, although it is true that some Linux devs are sometimes extremely far from the "canon" free software ideologies -- or maybe simply never really thought deeply about it. And certainly this is the case here: getting rid of freedom 0 is not exactly something I would casually suggest esp in the name of preventing fracturing; I would expect the effect to be precisely the opposite :/ And I'm not sure at all why anybody would expect otherwise.
- bitwize 7y ago
  It takes "industrial scale" to build a large building, but not to burn one to the ground. The people involved in disrupting the community are relatively small in number, but they've developed an MO that lets them do great damage. They identify leadership of the targeted community, demand that they submit or be removed, and if neither of those happen they start contacting the sources of the community's funding. If you decide to speak out against the Church of Scientology, a Scientologist may show up at your door telling you to stop. If you don't stop, your boss at work will start to get anonymous calls about you, exposing what a horrible person you are -- perhaps a sexual harasser, rapist, or child molester. Their story will be backed up -- by other Scientologists (who won't identify as such). As for where Matthew is coming from, the details of that are not so important as that the Right People are in leadership of the community. If the community is not led by the Right People in service to the Right Ideas, then it is part of the system of White-Supremacist-Capitalist-Patriarchy, does not deserve to exist at all, and should be destroyed. And yes, Matthew "Ted Ts'o is a Rape Apologist" Garrett is one of the Right People (though thankfully, Ts'o seems to have a bit more spine than Stallman, so the smear didn't work nearly as well as was hoped).

rurban 7y ago

Exactly. Now that they got rid of Stallman, they want to weaken the GPL, to look less fundamental and strict. Beware

deleted 7y ago

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