Is The Free Software Foundation Still Important? 

My biggest gripe with FSF's approach are their apparent delusions when it comes to firmware, the software-hardware boundary and interacting with the proprietary systems we don't have control over. FSF should distinguish the goal (everything controlled by the user) from the best-effort possibilities of today. To maximize the adoption of Free Software and to grow it outside the current possibilities, we need to not scare new users away. Even if it means they will use and rely on some proprietary products! It is far better than them relying solely on proprietary products. Proprietary software is bad (for the user) because it has some inherent defects. The user is legally forbidden from interacting with it in certain ways, it requires unwarranted trust, it has a tendency to cause problems or be user-hostile and ultimately it is controlled by someone else! But Free Software can also be bad - when it is deficient in other areas. And since choosing your tools is a trade-off, no wonder that plenty of people would rather put up with these inherent problems when they don't find them such a big deal. If they've ever noticed these flaws. In the long term we should strive to make Free Software products better in every regard. But short term, we may need to accommodate users of proprietary software - so that they may benefit from Free Software in at least some areas. Libreboot has got it straight now! (instead of bending over backwards to accommodate FSF's definitions) postmarketOS mentions a similar distinction. (with their _Open platforms_ and _Proprietary platforms_ description on their website) Then there's Fedora, which ships only Free Software and redistributable firmware. You can use RPM Fusion to obtain free-but-legally-dubious and also nonfree packages. It is a sensible trade-off and I'm grateful they keep nonfree stuff at a distance.

8:18 This has nothing to do with GPL being complicated or not. It's simply market pressure, permissive licenses have higher adoption for obvious reasons so of course most libraries use it. Honestly after the corejs thing I realized permissive licenses are basically a devious way corporations have come up with to have developers work for them for free.

one thing that FSF should make clear is: free software is important to guarantee the right to repair, open source is not enough in this case, because one company can download an software, modify it and not distribute the modifications they made, they can use this modified software to lock an hardware device and make it hard or nearly impossible to repair. they cant do that with free software (at least not legally) because they would have to provide the code they used, unlike with opensource where that is opitional, if they wanted to lock people, they would have to write the code from scratch and many companies cant afford to do that.

The FSF is the FSF. If people want something else, they should do just that. Don't like the license? Write your own and see if it can stand the competition. If the MITL gets the lion share, then there is a reason. Doesn't mean that the GPLvX has to become any of it's "competitors". On the contrary. That would only reduce the number of licenses with their own identity and function. As for me, i see the GPL as one of only few possibilities to protect an authors work from becoming totally abused by tech giants and perverted and gated off against the authors will.

Hot take: the biggest challenge the FSF has hampering it's goals, regardless of leadership etc is a severe lack of visibility & mind share. For the FSF to gain any mindshare at all with arbitrary individuals they need to do something radical like back a (legitimate) lawsuit against one of the tech giants protecting the rights and responsibilities afforded by their promoted licenses.

I would respect the FSF’s hardline extremism if it took more of a stand against corporate influence rather than legalistic technicalities. The FOSS movement is gradually being captured by big tech and no one’s talking about it. Also unless one believes that marginalized groups are inherently less competent, then promoting diversity and inclusion is the same thing as valuing “quality of candidate”. Framing those two things as opposed to one another is… a questionable take at best. If a certain demographic which tends to dominate society in general is over represented in your selection of “quality candidates”, then there’s something wrong with your selection process or with broader societal structures, and every organization needs to take initiative to counteract that.

I'm not a big fan of the FSF's approach myself, but I feel like they have a role to play, so I just don't understand why Richard Stallman can't be allowed to have FSF and GNU for those that like it. The people who don't get along with the FSF have long formed their own organizations and moved forward without them. Mozilla, the OSI, etc. But what the FSF provides is the purist voice, the voice that is impractical and uncompromising, insists on everything being copyleft, the side that stands for the ideal rather than the practical. There have always been alternatives to the FSF, and if anything those voices are drowning out the FSF. But some people do value their brand of software freedom, and I say... what's the harm in letting them have it? Why do they have to be practical and inclusive and compromise their vision? If anything, I think having the FSF around makes other open source initiatives like Mozilla seem like "the reasonable ones" by comparison. Take the FSF away, and then all the ire directed at their radical views would be directed towards the next-most impractical group, until everything is just a series of popular compromises with no one standing for the ideal. My view is... just because the FSF isn't perfect and doesn't represent everyone, doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with them existing or that they need to change. They may not be very effective as an organization, but I also don't think they are harming anyone or that letting the GNU project and the FSF do things their way and attract more desperate, idealistic people who are just done with proprietary stuff altogether would be a bad thing. They are and always were a small group of idealists fighting for a cause that few people outside of old academics from research universities care about... maybe you don't think that cause is inclusive enough, or that it's practical, or that it will ever be very relevant to non-technical users, but why go out of your way to insist that it be different, that there is something wrong with it existing in its current form at all? Clearly some people like their brand of leadership and are inspired by it, and it does provide a small core of things we can rely on to stand for the most extreme idea of software freedom imaginable.

I don't want Stallman out. His uncompromising nature is incredibly useful. I agree that the FSF has a big messaging problem. And I think Stallman is part of the issue here because he lets his ego get in the way of making the necessary changes. I do think this is a more direct attack specifically directed at Stallman because Stallman is now somehow tainted in some people's eyes. The FSF needs to restructure so that Stallman is presented as the voice of the ideal, while much of the FSF does more pragmatic work to spread the message better and to make better connections. I mostly disagree with the diversity of skin color issue. Though I do think finding some prominent Indian, Chinese, or Japanese software developers who talk about Free Software and Open Source would be a really good idea. From where I am, it doesn't seem like the idea has made strong inroads into their culture, and we need people who understand their culture to tailor messaging such that they can hear it. These cultures are big contributors to the body of software that exists in the world in general. And open hardware would be really good to get Taiwanese and Japanese companies to understand. I'm actually pretty hopeful about the Steam Deck here.

Hot take, many GitHub projects on weak licences do so simply because they don't understand the GPL.

The extremism of the FSF is what allows OSI and FOSS proponents to appear moderate. Could you imagine a world without the FSF, corporate software is the norm, and the OSI are seen as the radical, out of touch hippies? The FSF gives us ground to stand on and tons of adjacent room to move around. We have patents for cars that drive themselves to the repo and soon prosthetic legs that will do the same. Corporate, proprietary software extremism remains unchecked and there's no evidence on the horizon of it slowing down. Why should the FSF compromise on their ideals? They aren't forcing anything onto anyone and they certainly aren't the ushers of this software dystopia.

I always find it odd that people almost want to force a more "diverse" leadership/company. Those things have to happen on their own naturally or you'll end up with another USA (a country known for it's amazing relations with other cultures /s)

Personally, I think the one take where Drew is on point is 3. The most important thing the FSF should do first is focus on fixing their communication strategy, specially including things like cutting down on the pedantry regarding terminology and dropping the non-free-javascript shtick until someone somewhere comes up with a good solution for that. Decoupling the FSF from GNU at least in a leadership and project management sense is also a good idea, I think. I think I agree with Drew that the FSF should pivot from an institution for programmers to a fully policy/advocacy focused organization like say the EFF, and letting GNU spun off as a separate technical focused organization would be best for both in the long run. I don't want to comment much on his first proposal though. I will just lump that with the plethora of bad faith (and coming from someone with an ideological investment in FOSS like Drew, I would also say highly ungrateful) attempts at getting rid of RMS from the past 3 or so years. Even if it's the most milquetoast "get rid of RMS" take ever, I will still put it with the other ones.

I like that the FSF's main goals are about software freedom and that they really care about it to the point they have to sacrifice people's convenience such as not accessing or sharing a site that forces you to use javascript for example, since that promotes giving up your freedom of deciding what software runs on your machine. It might seem dumb, who else is going to make it clear the free software movement's main goals are about freedom and not quality or convenience?. That's why I also appreciate Stallman for continuing to push for software freedom even if people don't listen because they aren't willing to go as far as him and sacrifice whatever they have to in order to avoid propitiatory software(myself included) and remain true to their ideology 100%. Maybe someday someone more charismatic than him that's good with people while also standing 100% for software freedom will show up and things will be better, but I don't know.

These criticisms all sound like "stop caring about free software so much"

ANSWER:- They're vital to the free software movement, but there's room for improvements

I think someone pushing for the extreme opinion is important. Otherwise the „normal, regulated“ opinions will be regarded as extremas soon and its not like Stallman‘s opinion is harmful to anyone

I have had to read the FAQ on the GPL licenses and found it quite useful. If you just want a specific question answered, you can generally find that specific question on there quite easily, without reading the whole site. As a user, I don't really care about the license as long as it's open source, mostly just so that I can tinker with it if I need to. As a professional software developer, you find a library, find that it's GPL, and then say "that's a shame" and pretend it doesn't exist. I still prefer that up front over bait and switch later.

I do agree with most of this post, but I think that in order to replace someone like Stallman, someone as influential as him needs to be the new leader. Imagine a world where Mozilla and FSF works together, how wonderful would it be.

There were several talks where Stallman referred to Facebook users as “useds.” I’ve only heard that term used in conjunction with Facebook and only in talks.

Every country that has free health, private health is not as expensive and tries to offer a better service than public health. This can be compared. If there is no free software for people to use, everyone will only be subject to using corporate solutions decided entirely by private entities. In this sense, any concession towards liberalizing the FSF would be a corporate and private company victory. On the other hand, I agree with the article in the sense of pointing out that Stallman is no longer a leadership that resonates with the current times, hindering any momentum capacity that the FSF could have.

GNU has the best presentation of information and documentation by far. it may not be the most accessible for noobs, but i don''t think they're the target audience. the GNU/Linux thing makes sense to emphasize, but for people to push other people away by amonishing people who say Linux is silly. but yeh, there are hills that GNU will die on and it makes sense because that's their philosophical goal. there are other groups to represent other ideals, but the FSF software freedom maximalism is not something that most people will take up. they should absolutely not dilute their stance on those ideas.

Ok, here's a hot take: I fully disagree with Drew. Well, most of his points are actually ok, and I agree with some (like decoupling GNU and FSF and the need for new licences). But I said fully disagree because I totally do not agree with the method of achieving said reforms. There is this case that FSF is kind of tone deaf, that is extreme in its philosophy. I do think that is good. That is should stay that way (off topic and that Richard Stallman should stay in FSF, including leading it). Why (to answer Brodie's question in the end) ? Because it is objectively pure. It is a golden standard. When FSF endorses something, so far you can be sure that it actually, absolutely is free software, no "practical considerations", no "in a manner of speaking" no "for all intents and purposes" and so on. That is very valuable. If someone like Drew likes to improve the situation and cannot do so with/within FSF for reasons like FSF being very rigid, I don't understand this need to change FSF, when it has a clear stated goal and philosophy. He should begin another foundation and achieve those things like that. A milder FSF, more in tone with the masses I'm sure would attract a lot of people that are in the sentiment of FSF, but are not willing to go to the lengths that Richard Stallman go (and why I have huge respect for him). This doesn't have to be at the expense of the current FSF, it should be alongside. Also, I cannot agree with that 5-year-old mentality that if red people are known to be good with something, then to have blue people good with that, we should put blue people in charge. That's downright insulting for anybody with 3-digit IQ. If the blue people want to weave, then they should start learning. And only deal with the cases when they are not allowed to learn, that's the only thing that should be done. Equality of chances, not equality of outcome. Leadership should be on merit. Assuming that blue people need to be put in charge automatically assumes that both red and blue people are tribalist cavemen-level people who cannot be impartial and cannot see value in the people of other color. How can I take this man seriously when he's so gigantically wrong about such a simple issue ? Also, that "we're told that unfree Javascript" is stupid and cringe, I have to agree. That should be improved. By FSF.

All 5 points are painfully accurate.

11:20 is where Drew lost the argument for his opinion. As a minority in the LGBTQ community, I'd rather that I get a new job somewhere based on my merit than based on my labels. Also, all of my personal projects, from userscripts to extensions, are licensed under AGPL v3. I simply love user freedom. I even donated to the FSF until I received their branded credit card shaped USB drive that I put Ventoy on.

I love FOSS and the community but this is a common problem. A lot of that stuff is a slog to read through, hard to navigate and not really intuitive. I end up having to go find secondary sources that can explain things in plain English and succinctly WITH EXAMPLES that make sense lmao for the love of god please add examples. Im new to FOSS, programming and linux and I make my best faith effort to try and read and learn with what is given, but its not really aimed at people like me

So now this dude want quotas on FSF, well that's counter productive. Why not just say "those who have great passion for free software", it doesnt matter what ever gender, color or religion you have as long as you are passionate about free software then you can be part of FSF leadership, you dont need to specify other things....

I feel like being against the FSF is being a facilitator of EEE. Extinguishing Stallman is the first step to the downfall of extinguishing all free software. They already did the embrace and expand part.

Giga Chad, smiling: It's not GNU/Linux, it's just GNU.

I agree with FSF. Freedom is the only reason that I use Linux.

I'm an associate member of the FSF and I agree with a lot of this criticism, we need a more pragmatic approach whilst keeping robust rhetoric about the ideals.

Richard Stallman's uncompromising nature may have problems but his voice is still extremely important. The FSF needs more pragmatism but it should still keep Stallman's idealistic vision close to heart otherwise the organization will lose even more of its teeth. Really all it needs is an editor team to make Stallman's fervent rhetoric on the website more digestible to a broader audience, a more concise and comprehensible GPL, and more resources put towards litigating license violators.

I mean I was pretty involved with the FSF the last few years; used to read tte forum every day, went to their last few cotferences, etc...and I've never seen any of these issues outside of memes. Not since I was in highschool. This dude is relying on fifteen year old stereotypes and memes to define the organization...

MPL is not a copyleft license comparable to the GPL. At most, its comparable to the LGPL, but it does not come close to what the GPL does. You can use MPL code in a nonfree program. Practically, the MPL is no different from MIT or BSD licenses, except for being longer and more complicated.

Yes, "GNU/Linux" is a mouthful, but if you want to cut down the number of syllables, by rights we should be calling it "GNU" (with a Linux kernel). I mean yeah RMS can be too pedantic for his own good, but also - *he invented a free operating system for the masses!* I think he has the right to name it what he wants. Yes... we get it... the foot thing is gross, but it doesn't negate his good ideas.

Linux Torvalds did two things that the FSF failed to pull off: 1. He created a kernel that worked, which is something the FSF couldn't pull of. GNU Hurd was really falling behind. 2. He made people care about Free Software and the GPL. When the FSF has to say Free as in beer, not free as in price, it shows that the term Free Software does not do a good job of explaining the software for the masses.

Anytime someone says leadership needs to change for demographic reasons (other than the leaders being geriatric) I immediately lose all respect for their entire argument. Stallman for life if for no other reason than this guy doesn't get his way.

Basket weaving would go to hell in a low-quality handbasket if it had meritless people in its leadership. Also, it doesn't actually need any blue people. Blue people should be welcome, obviously, but they shouldn't be forced into basket weaving if they are historically more interested in other fields.

I agree with most of the post, nowadays FSF is mostly known by the GNU slash joke, and to be honest I don't think that Linux would fail if they didn't use GPL in the past. I saw a ton of people saying that Apple or Sony never helped *BSDs, but who cares? Both OpenBSD and FreeBSD is still up and running, and growing year by year. Yeah, it has much less support than Linux, but this is because of the popularity which didn't comes because of a license. I almost agree with all the five points, I think that RS can be more harmful than helpful nowadays. But dude, please... Why it cares about the skin color, genital organs and what the people do with it? If the institution is about freedom in softwares, it need someone aligned to the ideal, it doesn't care if it's a black lesbian or some average redneck, the ideal is far more important that the body.

After watching this video I now see that I know nothing about the open source community

11:50 you need competent leadership, not a ticklist of all people

Like it or not, RMS knew a world where the corporate world threw a lot of money at universities or at places like Bell Labs and PARC, and the ideas that moved tech forward were always under threat of being pulled back behind the veil of proprietary IP instead of being used for the good of humanity. How is that any different from today? OpenAI started as open source, but now is proprietary. Corporations like Microsoftviolate free licenses without much fear of litigation. Wokeness has no mathematical value (wasn't in my algorithms book back in the day), and it helps not at all in keping free software free.The arguments have some good points floating in a sea of ageist rhetoric and shallow ideology. Such sniping may provide entry to corporate shills. Raise a huge fund, sue the crap out of big violaters, and give free software real teeth.

I can't remember the last time I heard someone discuss or even mention the FSF.

that point with red and blue people is extremly dumb. To start thinking about basket weawing you need to cover your basic necessities first, not some token leader who doesn't even know how to do it

FSF Should build a "fail safe"way to make money without need a Big Tech on it.

One thing has become quite apparent these days: the FSF is not the only foundation with quite extreme traits - just considering the Rust foundation recently. 😂

There seems to be this underlying assumption that times have changed, and the FSF needs to evolve in response to this perceived "change" This is not correct. People were levelling the same praises and critiques against the FSF and RMS back in the mid nineties, and there was the same tension about the differences between "Free Software" and "Open Source". Furthermore, there really was not a cohort of people using GNU/Linux greater than the amount of people using that phrase today; it was just as unusual back then. For this reason I don't see why the FSF needs to "change" - their whole reason to exist is to play the role of uncompromising purist.

I'm Finnish. Actually, Linux has always been just a Linux for me. I, totally, understand that for someone (and, if you think it like that, for all) it is a (GNU/Linux)... We have Linus and Stallman... Yeah, whatever ;p Free software, to my mind, is important. Linux is just Linux. I don't care about the term GNU, maybe because I'm Finnish and Linux is Finnish? Anyway, the GNU-part is, at least, as important.... I would say it's just Linux. And Brodie, you have a talent for talking... ;)

"We need diversity!!!!" How about pick leaders by MERIT instead? FFS FSF!!!

As someone who've pretty much wrote off the entire free software movement due to its inaccessibility in the true and purest form of the movement that its adherent preaches, I pretty much agree with all these. Heck, I didn't get interested in OSS because of FSF or GNU, I got interested because of the Privacy Tools community, and they have good guides for alternatives to proprietary software that, by the time Windows messed up for the Nth time and LTT released a video on PopOS at the same time, I was receptive to the message despite the hassle I would need to deal with. In an extreme analogy, I feel like FSF has become the communist parties when championing social security movement. Other organizations represents the movement better while communist fans are stuck being weirdos no one want to deal with.

RMS and FSF are the two main reasons why I never fully supported the FOSS. For me as the user, the most important freedom above all the others is the freedom of choice - I should have the freedom of choosing and getting the software that suits my needs the best, no matter if it's free or non-free. And FSF instead of promoting and incentivizing good alternatives to proprietary software, rather opts for using and promoting measures that are preventing users from using non-free software instead (see the GNU/Linux distributions endorsed by FSF - mostly obscure distros that make getting non-free software on them as hard and annoying as possible), or pretending that proprietary software doesn't exist (by not linking to a freakin' issue tracker just because it uses non-free JavaScript). So I totally agree RMS has to go. First of all, his mind is stuck back in the 80s and he simply doesn't comprehend that the user needs changed dramatically since then. Second, he's just not the best person to represent any community in general, giving his deranged hermit vibes, singing cringy songs and eating pieces of epidermis picked out from his own foot during public speeches. He can't be fixed. And as long as he is the leading face of the FSF, the foundation can't be fixed as well, because with him involved, they will never get past their near-sighted opinions and actions that discourage new people from joining the FOSS movement.

I'd like to have some copyleft license that forbids big AI models from using my code. Explicitely. If something "has to be tested in court", it's bad.

Drew's advice is the advice I would give if my intention were to sabotage the FSF and its ability to promote free software

The FSF won't do any of these things including the last one. People have requested the FSF release a LAGPL for ages and it would have been a useful license to counter the rise of SaaS and of cloud providers embracing and extending and killing service and support revenue. They wouldn't even do that. The FSF is a zombie.

As a trans lesbian woman, I find Drew's first point amusing. What the LGTBQIA+, PoC, and women want, is to not be discriminated. Being put in a leadership position ONLY because of your gender, sexuality, or skin colour, is patronising and helps no one. The whole take is bad, because there are already a lot of people in these communities that have their merits, and I am certain *someone* out there could take a FSF position. There is no need to force discriminated people into places. Just, you know, don't discriminate. The other takes, (point 2 to 5) I do agree with.

That whiteboard: First Second Firth!

I joined the FSF nearly a decade ago (in suport of the cause), and I get the newsletter... in print, when I also support waste reduction and would rather have a .pdf, but if it has a single line of proprietary code, then that may be the reason I get paper. I get member emails too, but they are for people who are part in making Linux software, announce seminars... I as a mere member in support, not knowledge or skill, rarely get something out of it, and most of them are asking for money with a "Woe is me" rather than a "Let's make this happen" attitude which sounds more pathetic than encouraging. Most of all the GPL is a license, and the FSF makes it but does not enforce it, but if they did, court battles and all, they would gain a better understanding of where the market is moving, what works to it's advantage and what doesn't. The newer GPL 3 is better and a little more flexible, but still a little tight for many, who still want more control over their intellectual property. I also agree that the FSF and GNU need to be separated, as free software under the GPL adhered to as strictly as Herd Linux, is destined to fail until such time more of this right to repair, vendor lockout, standards and the regulation as to their use, and similar actually face the legal challenges they should in the best interest of all. As for now, the way I see it the GPL is more indicative of an ideological doctrine (Not a bad one) than a feasibly workable license most can agree to and get on board with.

FSF proved in the past years that they care more about defending Stallman against his bad public reputation than their supposed mission as a foundation. At this point they're scaring people away from the GPL because it has the Gnu name in it, and a lot of people don't want any implied relationship/endorsement with Stallman whether they personally dislike him or not.

Growth for its own sake is pointless, the FSF has to commit to its ideals and lead by example. Not everyone has to be so uncompromising, what's important is spreading the idea. Free software and open source have different goals...open source is about liberating code, free software is about liberating users. Author doesn't seem to get that.

Interestingly how on earth copyleft is “free” software? Here is some definitions I found in Cambridge dictionary site: “not limited or controlled”, “costing nothing, or not needing to be paid for”, “ not a prisoner any longer, or having unlimited movement”, “ not in a fixed position or not joined to anything”, “ to remove the limits or controls on someone or something”, I can’t see where here gpl* or fsf fits? Copyright = averse, Copyleft = reverse, it is the other side of the same coin.

well how about the new cyber resilliance act. maybe that is significant enough to be worth covering as its own video

The FSF doesn't seem to understand who its stakeholders are, and what are their interests.

The Free Software movement, is the original movement. They should LEAD the way, not follow others.

Why does every single person that's crazy want to force diversity. As is quite literally adds nothing to anything. Sometimes also drags things down.

Never understood the whole "GNU slash" evangelism, especially nowadays. Your Linux doesn't have to have or be made with GNU utils, and it will still be Linux. We don't have "SystemD slash," "GNOME slash," "Firefox slash" Linux.

Ah drew devault, he has always been a radical lunatic

I think the first point is junk. People should be given jobs depending on how good they are at doing the job. Giving someone a job because of their race, gender or sexuality is tantamount to saying "we know you;re not up to the job but we have quotas to fill" which must be worse for the person if they actually care about their reputation in the organisation. In the mid 90s I headed up a small team in a (UK) software house and I had a guy helping me for 6 months or so before I found out over lunch he was trans, because thanked me for not being weird about it. I am a little oblivious to these kind of things tbh but I just told him I appreciated that I could just give him things to do and he would deal with them, or quickly tell me if he thought he couldn't. Clearly outside of work he faced some problems, but It seemed back then there was a short time when these things didn't seem to matter to most people in IT at least, nowadays I am glad I am retired because sometimes it seems that its nearly all that matters.

I'm definitely from the OSS side of things. I started out in the FSF bandwagon, but when I couldn't use libraries that were GPLd in jobs I was getting paid for, the Apache Software Foundation filled that gap. For the languages I was using, it filled that gap even better than some of the GPL licenses at the time. The "cold dead fingers" rhetoric of the FSF doesn't help the cause and only serves to alienate people. There's a host of software that is only used by the corporations that it serves, and they don't want to leak their special sauce. Nor is it generally useful outside of those corporations. They pay my bills, so I appreciate when software uses MIT, ASL, or other non-copyleft license. It means I can use it _everywhere_, which I can't say for copyleft licenses. The FSF should spend its resources in defending its license in court though. Particularly for companies that claim their software is GPL, but refuse to furnish the source code in any form. I feel that this is a much more useful mission for the FSF than preaching to its own choir.

RMS IS the FSF. Removing him was and would not be right. But i do think, they need to modernize with more new talent. On the whole "diversity" notion. That shit was a dissaster for the OSI. Not to be repeated.

4:39 editing mistake

Do you have to provide the source code from a branch of some GPL open source code; that you modify and sell under a different license? I think you have to provide the original source code that is under GPL.

i confused at the part around say generally 12:00 but ... yeah i am all for inclusion BUT I am more for quality of the person and what they can bring then rather just someone who is not as good as someone else in a LEADERSHIP role because it checks off some "we included this group" checkbox (not to get political but on most things ... 100% social issues i 'lean left" myself but there is a "that doesn't make sense" line i have) .... now maybe IF people who are in those groups and they show potentional ... say you can help them out so they CAN fit leadership roles in different places. But yeah ... "we hired rather than someone else who was way more qualiifed" in some contexts DOESN'T make any sence to me

show me someone as autistic and committed as stallman to fsf, then we talk inclusion. i hate that we are in this state of kind of criticism, where changing the board is all it can say for itself, and count as "critic". put forward an alternative, another license. everyone of this kind of people, i bet would remove any copyleft essence and freedom that made fsf great.

I don't now much about this but I think licences should have like a rating system so by just looking the rating you now what you are allow to do with it

Belonging to a minority myself, I think I have an understanding of what the "diversity argument" is about that perhaps other people who don't belong to a minority misses. I think it's often poorly worded and therefor easily misunderstood. I'm a huge diversity advocate (and I also think Drew's text about the basket-weaving red people was very good), but what is often misunderstood by it is that we don't advocate diversity first, merit second. What diversity means is that _everything equal_ it's better to actively try to get as diverse group of people as possible, because their collective experiences and perspectives will result in much more diverse thought. For example, if 25 applicants of equal merit, 20 men and 5 women, seek 10 open positions, it has been shown that if a man is recruiting, he will often unconciously choose 10 men. It doesn't mean he's sexist or don't think women are qualified, but it just happens. People seek others like themselves. I have experienced this first-hand. I'm disabled and in my community we're all too familiar with being discarded out of fear of us requiring a lot of changes to office space, working hours, communication channels etc. It's not that I and others never gets hired --- we do. But we need to be more merited than people without disability. When I compete with another computer engineer with the same amount of work experience, I tend to lose. If I compete with someone without a university degree or with less work experience, I win. That's the experience of many other minority groups as well, including women. I find it very strange that some people who claim to want a meritocracy and an environment where big ideas can flourish are so opposed to the idea of diversity, when it's diversity that guarantees that meritocracy and big ideas. The more ideas we have, the higher the chance of a great idea. And why would a homogenous group of people, often White heterosexual men with very similar education and work background, be better equipped at coming up with big ideas than a heterogenous group of different ages, genders, races, sexual orientations, religions, ethnicities, work backgrounds, education, socioeconomic backgrounds? Research has also shown that corporations with a gender diverse board of directors are more profitable than corporations with a board consisting of only men or only women. 40 year old White straight men who all are civil engineers educated at MIT tend to think quite similarly to eachother.

I am much more pragmatic when it comes to software I will happily use free software, open source or proprietary. I much prefer free software but don't want to be demonized for using open source or proprietary software. I like the freedom to use what software works best for me. However I would like to see promotion of free software as an idea that makes it accessible and understandable why a development might choose to use a free or open source license instead of proprietary.

Calling Linux "GNU/Linux" or "GNU+Linux" is an artifact of an ancient time when the only serviceable userland, toolchain, libc, binutils and so forth for Linux were all GNU. This, of course, is no longer the case. We have coreutils, compilers, toolchains, and binutils equivalents outside the GNU project. An insistence on prepending "GNU" to "Linux" is not merely pedantic now. It is ignorant and deceptive.

Unfortunate encounter with a hedge trimmer, eh?

GNU/Linux is actually a useful distinction still, it allows you to separate GNU/Linux from systemd/Linux and Android/Linux. I'd even go so far to state that these three operating systems are *very* different in their internals. And then of course there is the Debian distributions GNU/Linux, GNU/HURD and GNU/BSD... Debian is Linux, are those also Linux? Do you see the problem yet? Of course, there are GNU-less Linux variants as well, both UNIX-like and of course, embedded systems like Android.

FSF mostly seems to peddle an ideology at this point.

11:48 aaaand that's where i stop taking this criticism seriously

Isn't Richard Stallman a god then?

Brodie, nobody says "GNU/Linux" but the Cult of GNU. Not now, not before, going all the way back to 1997. And I'm a Debianite, with Debian being one of the few distributions that play that stupid game. But most of its devs do not because it's awkward and anyone who knows that the GNUish userspace is a big and important part of the Linux operating system doesn't need to face the direction of Baltimore and genuflect every time we read, write, or say "Linux". But there was a point during the rise of the OS when people did begin to at least write it when the GNU cultists stopped kissing Richard's ass long enough to correct the newbies that it was "considered impolite" not to do it. They got wise to that and stopped. I wrote some stuff a few years ago, during the pandemic. Now … I've got medical issues, too many to list here, we'll just say one of them starts with "stage 4" and is a terminal, incurable disease and the least likely thing to actually kill me at the moment. Right, so, I wrote my stupid little tutorial thing and put it under a CC0 public domain declaration. Because I wanted people to use it, and there's an actually zero percent chance that I'm going to pay a lawyer and take someone to court for using my code. Right, so this jackass GNU zealot decided to start screaming at me that I was failing to protect HIS rights to my code (which he apparently didn't actually have any interest in anyway…) Yeah, I kind of told him how far up his arse he could shove it. You say people are using permissive licenses? That's not shocking, actually! It's expensive to sue someone for violating your Copyright. And what happens if they break your GNU GPL and you don't take them to court for it? They get away with it. You might as well have put it under the MIT license anyway unless you're going to sue the crap out of people and can demonstrate that you are owed damages. I don't need to make everything affirmative action because frankly every time we've done that it's broken things. That said, there are people who are already diversified and doing good and important things. How about we support them? IMO that's a separate problem to what's wrong with the FSF. If the FSF doesn't get some major reforms, I do think it needs to just go away, honestly. I don't care how many women, non-white people, and a whole damned rainbow of sexual orientations they pack into the leadership of the FSF, because if the FSF continues to be a bunch of tone-deaf fruitcakes screaming at people for using e.g. the GPL v2 as committing some sin against Richard Motherfking Stallman's Holy GNU World, nobody will ever care what else they're doing ever again. I sure don't. And how about we stop beating people over the head over terminology and maybe make some serious steps to make some of that proprietary bullshit hardware work without proprietary software components? I mean, nvidia cards have been notoriously awful on Linux for a long time, and the biggest place that's a problem is the part they didn't want to open source for some reason. That's not a really easy problem to fix, but it's a problem that can be fixed if enough people learn how to set up a debugger and start trying to crash the hardware and report the logs when they do.

i understand the article, and i do think reform is needed, though how this can be done im not sure of how it can/should be done, and it will just be the case that some crazies will be in the FSF. and on 1. at about 12:00 i totally agree, im bisexual, but id rather people think im straight (even if it put me at a disadvantage) 1000X over than be judged like that for being that thing, whenever i see it it deeply upsets me (and to avoid becoming too political, i'll leave it at that).

Stallman refers to 'users' as 'useds' in every single one of his talks.

Okay, the next bullet point is just as stupid or ignorant: "Reform the institution": Why should it be "the leaders throughout the FOSS world" to "take charge of FSF's mission"? You don't need leaders to promote the concept of Free Software. If the people are not concerned about the concept of Free Software, then FSF's mission will fail no matter what leaders of FOSS do, while the FSF will eventually succeed if people care, no matter what the leaders of corporations or governments do. The leaders on both sides only matter insofar as the have an impact on what people think and feel, and there are much more important aspects to that than free software. It's the future of humanity that hinges on the question of whether actions are aimed at the benefit of humanity as a whole or the various leaders and fractions of leaders holding the power to act. Being part of "the movement" is not a primary goal of the FSF and should not be. This is at best a means to an end, which is the actual mission of the FSF. The causes that are pushed by various leaders of the FOSS community are just as various as the leaders are. Some align with the cause of the FSF, others don't. That's why the FSF is part of but not THE FOSS. And it's important that the FSF preserves it's distinct identity, because it's not the same identity as that of the FOSS movement, if that is a movement at all. The FSF is a movement, because you can follow it. How do you follow the FOSS movement? I say all that without myself being fully convinced that the mission of the FSF is what I want see succeed. It's certainly better than a fully corporate defined reality. But a nebulous group of "FOSS leaders" is certainly not what I want to be in charge of something as important as the freedom of the most important technology sector in recent human history.Who are those leaders? The guys starting innovative projects? The currently most appreciated toy makers? The same guys that say "Don't be evil" and then sell us out? Like Docker trying to charge FOSS image makers to pay the bill for the guys downloading stuff? The best reason to like and agree with FOSS leaders is because they don't lead anything. The FSF does some leading, and that mostly why they are so annoying. I never used Qt because of GPL. And that's even though I love the concept of Free Software. But because I understand Free Software, I don't complain about Qt (much). I just don't use it. But it's important that some people make, use and argue for Free Software and that requires leadership. The very leadership that the FSF provides and FOSS leaders don't. The cause of Free Software does not require more popularity. it's already popular. It requires a response from people if they actually care or not. Mostly they don't. But that's not a communication or leadership problem on the part of FSF, it's the simple fact of life that wisdom and intelligence is not scaling well with numbers. People are stupid, always. Individuals may or may not be.

The minute I saw "we need more people of color, marxist group TIQA, and women," I knew this was a nothing burger.

I dont get why this guy is bringing politics into FSF. Why mention "blue", "red", "lgbt", "colour", "race" etc. If someone is skilled and deserving, they should be hired. Hiring based on "culture" to promote "diversity" is really dumb. You could be missing out on good skill and leaders because of your "forced diversity". If a black guy is skilled enough, he should be hired. This doesnt mean that 50% of the board has to "compulsarily" be people of colour/lgbt/something else.

The very name of the FSF is a major problem; free software means I don't need to pay for it, nothing else. This is how I manage things internally: Free = no cost. Open = the code can be inspected and compiled by anyone. Libre = copyleft, other projects that use this code must also be open.

the reason MIT is winning over GPL (in my opinion at least...) is the same reason i've been telling people as to why i person do not use copyleft license. I want to write code not worry about legal troubles, i'm a programmer not a lawyer. but if i choose a copyleft license it almost forces me to be both programmer and lawyer because i have to understand what exactly the license is doing. with something like MIT, i can choose to just not give a shit about the license and focus on what i actually love doing and that's the programming.

I found it very interesting that a concerning number of Go packages are using GPL licenses and not LGPL - as Go libraries are distributed in source form, GPL licensing is abusive and predatory and - IMHO - does not align with the ideals of the Free Software movement.

I still believe in the FSF.

I find the bullet point "Reform the leadership" somewhere between abhorrent and stupid. The FSF, while in the past the leading edge, is today part and only part of the FOSS community. I don't see a FOSS movement, at least not prominently. As such, they represent an important part of the FOSS that should not be watered down to be more harmonious. RMS and his FSF was always about the social or socio-political aspect of software. OSS is personal: "Use my stuff freely". FSF is transformative: "Liberate us" and the latter always meant "from THEM". Asking the FSF to become more compatible or cooperative is to ask them to give up on their cause and do the next best thing. And why the hell does the FSF need more leaders of color, women, LGBT as well as others who remain unspecified? Maybe some of the white old men in the FSF are more "other" than the average member of the contemporarily favored minority. And maybe the reason why they are in the leadership of the FSF is because their personal difference is just what proved to be the motor of the not quite unimpressive success the FSF had in the past. Sure, most people don't care for the goals of RMS or the FSF. They might seem too dogmatic or just irrelevant for the practicalities of day-to-day life. I knew the leader of the German FSF many years ago, she was and probably still is a woman. But she was a prick (in my personal evaluation). I don't think she helped the cause of the FSF or the broader FOSS community, despite the fact that she was a woman. I don't care for anybodies gender, color or otherness, unless that has a role to play in some context. And freedom or software does not seem to be related to any of that. I was really upset when some opinionated code style enforcer rejected a commit of mine, because I called the ends of a pseudo terminal "master" and "slave" in my code. Soon it will complain about client and server and then service. Is this seriously the culture we want to create while at the same time George Floyd was publicly executed in front of scandalized cameras? Terms such as "diversity" or "inclusiveness" are only absolute positives if used in a context of their abusive opposites. Maybe RMS would do the FSF a favor if he resigned. But is the fact that he is not black, red, yellow, female, queer - or whatever category is important to you - enough to make such a determination?

I agree on some of the reform proposals, but the forced diversity bit is just idiotic. The FSF should just be about what its name says, i.e. free software. What forced diversity will bring is more divisive politics not less, and if (or when) that happens, the FSF might as well not exist. It will be in an even worse position.

You lost me at “diversity”

People called him out on simply adding minorities on the FSF board for the sake of them being minorities and his response was telling everyone on mastodon about "white fragility" and shit. I agree with a few things he points out but after finding out drew is just another internet racist i'm like "no way chief, this is the internet, we have people of all kinds of races here." Also his red and blue people, mental outlaw has done far more than any movement to bring black people into the opensource space. And i know this thought makes Drew seethe and cope.

GNU and FSF are not the same organization.

These "diversity leadership" positions are reliably bad. We need diversity _internships,_ because shoving people into positions they aren't ready for is harmful to them, to those they work with, and to those they work for. It reliably goes bad, with those people failing to take the struggles _of others_ into consideration, because they haven't had the experience to understand and respect those struggles.

Drew Devault is wrong

trojan horse wokist detected, how about no to everything this he them Drew wants

I like Drew's basket-weaving analogy, but I feel that many will have a hard time understanding the meaning of it and the relevance. One common argument against diversity within the software development field is that there are mostly men anyway (red basket-weavers) and they are really good at it. Sure, there are some women (blue people) who are good, as well, but it doesn't seem that important demographic to try to include. But if we purposefully bring in more women (blue people) to learn the basket-weaving craft, other blue people will become interested and we will start to find that the blue people are in fact both interested in and good at basket-weaving. The point is: if a group remains secluded and exclusionary, the members of that group shouldn't be surprised if nobody else wants to join, and they shouldn't assume that nobody else is qualified enough for that group. Thinking back at the time when only men were allowed in universities, was it that strange that researchers and scientists were mostly men? Was it because women didn't want or weren't able to do science, or was it because they lacked the best opportunities to learn how to do science? There were women who did science of course, even back then, but they did so at a significant disadvantage to their male colleagues. The effect was that the women had to be so much better than the men to reach the same levels as them.