RE: [SPAM] [fsf-community-team] Blog post: Free and Proprietary Software, Pragmatism, FSF, Stallman, and de Icaza

[three]

i love this person!

http://blog.lassehavelund.com/2009/free-and-proprietary-software/#comment-19


Justin "threethirty" O'Brien
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 http://numberedhumanindustries.com
 @threethirty - twitter/identi.ca/jaiku
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> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [SPAM] [fsf-community-team] Blog post: Free and Proprietary
> Software, Pragmatism, FSF, Stallman, and de Icaza
> From: Ted Smith <address@hidden>
> Date: Wed, December 16, 2009 10:39 am
> To: address@hidden
> 
> 
> <http://blog.lassehavelund.com/2009/free-and-proprietary-software/>
> 
> 
> > Back in the day, Richard Stallman started what could be considered a
> > revolution, working to promote Free Software. Today, Stallman is still
> > president of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), founded by him back
> > in 1985. And, while software development has changed dramatically
> > (particularly over the past 5–10 years), the position and views of the
> > FSF and Stallman himself have not.
> > 
> > What I’m specifically talking about is the rabid puritanism displayed
> > by Stallman—on his own website, as well as the FSF website.
> > 
> > Take, for instance, the FSF Windows 7 Sins campaign website. The
> > campaign “make[s] the case against Microsoft and proprietary
> > software.” The way I read this, the FSF is suggesting that all
> > proprietary (i.e. non-free) software is evil, and should be avoided at
> > all costs, regardless of its function or replaceability.
> > 
> > However, I can still understand this to a certain degree. The FSF want
> > people to use, support and work on Free Software replacements instead
> > of supporting proprietary ones. Right? Sensible, but that’s still not
> > exactly the message I get from the above statement. Oh well, nothing
> > out of the ordinary coming from the FSF camp.
> > 
> > 
> > Personal Insults
> > Miguel de Icaza, the founder of the GNOME and Mono projects, has my
> > deepest respect. Not only has he been the main catalyst of several
> > projects, whose products I utilise every day, but he’s also a
> > pragmatic. Mono, a project developing a number of programs, which
> > allow the use of the C# programming language on other platforms than
> > Microsoft Windows (hint: C# is designed by Microsoft), has given
> > software authors a new tool to write Free Software. De Icaza has often
> > been the target of Stallman’s rants, which are way below any standard
> > I’ve come across (except, of course, Stallman’s).
> > 
> > 
> > "Proprietary Software? Not on my watch!"
> > What struck me, most recently, is this thread on the GNOME
> > foundation-list mailing list. To most of you, it’ll be nothing new. In
> > short; members of GNOME community complain about irrelevant and
> > “offensive” content on Planet GNOME, Stallman responds by saying that
> > if it’s not free, it shouldn’t be on the Planet at all. He goes on to
> > support this by suggesting that because of GNOME’s ties to the GNU
> > Project and, thus, to the FSF, it should not attempt to circumvent the
> > FSF’s goal and aim in any way—“that is, to avoid presenting
> > proprietary software as legitimate.”. Right, the RMS-crazies, we’ve
> > heard of those before.
> > 
> > This prompted the important question: is it time for the GNU and GNOME
> > projects to part ways?
> > 
> > Personally, I would welcome such a split. The GNOME project doesn’t
> > need GNU; on the contrary, with this sort of aggressive policy, I
> > think it’s a counter-productive approach, which only forces people
> > away from the GNOME desktop—a desktop environment I, myself, love and
> > adore.
> > 
> > 
> > Conclusion
> > Stallman was a reformer back in the day. I really appreciate his work
> > with the GNU project. Along with the Linux kernel, it’s what keeps my
> > computer running, after all. I do, however, think the time for
> > zealotry is this kind is history. Stallman has succeeded
> > unprecedentedly, with Free Software being found all around us—Firefox
> > and OpenOffice.org are both widespread desktop applications, used by
> > millions around the world. Routers and other devices ship with Linux.
> > Or maybe the company they work for has a number of webservers in the
> > basement running Apache.
> > 
> > It’s time to realise that we, despite supporting free and open source
> > software, can work together with Microsoft and other corporations
> > developing proprietary software today. I love large-scale (and
> > small-scale) free software projects, and I find the way that several
> > thousand people can work together on the same project, because they
> > want to. And often, it produces amazing software; I’m on my Ubuntu
> > desktop, writing a post on my WordPress blog with Chromium. All three
> > of which are open source projects! Wow! Just wow!
> > 
> >