🚀 go-pugleaf

Oops! ruhl@4dv.net (Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net>) was seen spray-painting on a wall:
> Sheesh, some folks really must have small, sad lives to care about
> this sort of thing.  I daresay that the FSF's goals would be furthered
> far better by writing a BitKeeper replacement, rather than arguing
> that the GNU Project should be singled out above all other for honour
> and adoration in a name.

Indeed.

The "advocacy stuff" seems to be doing little other than to irritate
people that would otherwise be _supportive_ of the FSF.

The positions being held at the FSF are hardly conciliatory, either.
They permit little response other than:
 a) "Oh, great masters, I was so WRONG!  I'll call it GNU/Linux now",
    or
 b) "Go away - you annoy me."

Neither are particularly satisfactory responses.

The thing that is _really_ irritating is that RMS has been playing
this "I need to stop and correct everyone that says Linux" game for
YEARS now.  If the "campaign" was really going to have an effect, it
would have had that effect by now.

What is pathetic about it is the fact that this seems about the only
noticeable ongoing strategy he is holding to.  Is that particular
"fight" the ONLY meaningful action that there is to be taken?  If it
is, that is very sad, as it would suggest that the FSF is becoming
irrelevant.  If it isn't, then we should be hearing about other more
important things.

The strawman argument that "nobody gives the FSF any credit" is really
offensive when it gets _so_ often presented.  The average Linux
distribution installation probably has 400 copies of the GPL attached
to it.  (Debian folds that down, quite a bit, by having symbolic links
to a central copy of the license.  <sarcasm> Quel dommage!  They must
have NO respect for the GPL to flaunt their disrespect by eliminating
so many copies of the GPL from their distribution.</sarcasm>)

The FSF _should_ be trying to promote strategic development of
important pieces of software.  I'd buy that a "BitKeeper replacement"
would be a meaningful example of that.  They could probably do a lot
worse than promote Arch, by a longtime FSF stalwart :-).
-- 
(reverse (concatenate 'string "ac.notelrac.teneerf@" "454aa"))
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lsf.html
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