iPad and the FSF

Shane — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 23:49:06 +0000

Oh FSF why do you make me embarrassed? Really I saw the article on ars about them protesting and I just said to myself “they have protested yourselves into obsolescence”. The flaw is they are protesting for something free and extremely positive but how they go about it is the opposite.
Do apple care its non free software included on most of their products, of course not. The FSF should simply shut up before they give all of us a bad name. They are the definition of great idea bad execution.
Oh and in the interest of funniness put your jokes about the iPad’s name below. My first thought when I heard it was that sounds like an Apple apartment.

FSF

Shane — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:11:24 +0000

Recently ive heard a lot of strange mailing list banter, mainly from the Gnome marketing mailing list. Its in regard to the FSF (Free Software foundation) terms like “Free Software” and “GNU/Linux”. The FSF believes that everyone should use the term GNU/Linux rather than just Linux and use Free Software not open source.
What im wondering is are the FSF an extremist organisation that no one takes entirely seriously?
Dont get me wrong I love the idea of free software, the ability to change share and use software for any purpose is something that I really want. On the other hand one has to understand companies like Nvidia who have trade secrets to protect and would rather not let anyone outside of the company look at the specifications for their GPUs. So Nvidia write their own proprietary drivers but at least they make drivers and thats the main thing we want, support. In order to compete in a modern world we need help even if its not in the way that we would like. The FSF dont see it that way. Richard Stallman called Miguel De Icaza a traitor and he is one of the biggest contributors to free software.
The FSF need to evolve from the hard line no means no mentality and embrace every little boost we get towards our ultimate goal of a world without the boundaries of proprietary software.
The simple fact is that if a proprietary tool for example Nvidia drivers makes it easier to use free software ill use it until something free can replace it. The FSF condemn that and they shouldnt. They should stop preaching and help make free software great. Being a voice box isnt helpful, attacking supporters isnt helpful. Actually programming, translating, answering questions for new users or writing manuals is helpful but they havent done much of those in a long time. The FSF seem to be less of a help and more of a chain around our legs.
They wrote GPL, campaign and help hosting projects but hosting is done by many other organisations (source forge, lauchpad, Gnome’s bzr repo….etc) and campaigning is useless when you are campaigning for an ideal. The best way to campaign in my opinion is to show that the alternative is better, preaching the ideal is useless. So the only thing that the FSF have contributed recently is a licence. A great licence though.
Lastly I have to say whats in a name?
Of course we recognise the GNU projects contributions but Linux is more used than GNU/Linux. Its only politics and id say if people really wanted we could be calling it Gnome/Linux or KDE/Linux. People have the right to use whatever name they want. I could start using the name “monkey” instead of “GNU/Linux” if I wanted so the FSF should just let it go. The simple fact of the matter is that Linux is a lot easier to say.

So to summarise this whole rant, the FSF need to not be so judgemental and they need to stop talking about change and instead help it. We need to stop fighting and being so negative for our own good.

Shane Fagan » FSF

iPad and the FSF

FSF