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I think people who actually wrote free software have advanced it. Why do Foundations have so much imaginary power?
by tsaloop 6y ago
I think people who actually wrote free software have advanced it.
Why do Foundations have so much imaginary power?
- geofft 6y agoLargely because RMS gave them that power? Like I'm not sure what your argument is. Are you saying one should not take board members of the FSF seriously, and one should ignore people whose contribution to the free software movement is more political than technical? Then you've already made the argument against RMS having a role on the GCC steering committee.
- tsaloop 6y agoThe only real power is in the "or any later version" part of the GPL, which IMO is a mistake. I'd delete it like Linus when using the GPL. Yes, I think foundation members' influence is overrated. The Kuhn story looks like any plain vanilla internal power struggle. Why hasn't he spoken up 10 years ago? It is hypocritical to do so when everyone else is piling on. The same applies to old guard RedHat and SuSE people. They have known RMS for decades and suddenly he needs to be removed. Foundations in OSS in general attract the wrong kind of people. RMS, for all his flaws, did pretty well overall compared to others.
- CJefferson 6y agoThe mailing list post this thread is about is that the people who, for the last 20 years are actually writing free software want rid of RMS, because he hasn't done anything useful, and has done a lot of harm, in those 20 years. RMS did indeed start a lot of great projects, but that doesn't give him the right to continue to rule over them now, after thousands of other people have contributed more lines of codes than him in the last 20 years.