🚀 go-pugleaf

In an attempt to throw the authorities off his trail, ruhl@4dv.net (Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net>) transmitted:
> Christopher Browne <cbbrowne@acm.org> writes:
>> 
>> The "advocacy stuff" seems to be doing little other than to irritate
>> people that would otherwise be _supportive_ of the FSF.
>
> That's part of the problem IMHO.  The FSF's mission, last I checked,
> was to promote free software rather than the proprietary sort.  I'll
> admit, were I not so firmly in the free software camp, I'd probably
> have returned to the open source camp, or even gone over wholesale
> to championing proprietary software (not a good chance of that
> latter, to be certain).  Its actions regarding the naming nonsense
> are driving people away.

Well, Eric Raymond has his own irritating properties, too.  

Indeed, it is not totally evident that the "Open Source Movement" is
progressing all that terribly much, these days.  It was popular
amongst corporations for a little while on the basis of the purely
pragmatic principle that they figured they could get some debugging
done for free.

In the absence of some "ethical principles," which is (agree with them
or not) what RMS is about, participation in "open source" is a pretty
purely pragmatic matter, and when it becomes pragmatic to stop doing
so, companies can jump off the bandwagon just as easily as they jumped
on.

The "open source" movers may have provided some value in coming up
with some business strategies to help encourage switching projects to
be less proprietary under the right circumstances, but in the absence
of an "ethical framework," it will only last, as movement, as long as
it is pragmatic to continue as such.

>> 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.
>
> Yup.  I think that the original point--that some folks haven't
> recognised the contributions of the GNU Project--is possibly valid
> (I'm not certain, as I've read several articles which have pointed
> out that Linux is far more than just Linus Torvald's creation).  I
> think that some way to let people know what a moral debt they owe
> the FSF would be a Good Idea.

It's fair that there should be more than a mere footnote.  On the
other hand, demanding that "GNU" be part of the name of the system
seems overreaching what is legitimate.

> I just believe that harping about names and being seen as childish
> is hardly the way to go about it.

Just so.

>> 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 :-).
>
> I think that Torvald's point, that he'd use a free alternative were
> it available, makes a lot of sense.  There _should_ be a free
> alternative.  Had I any knowledge whatsoever, I might try my hand at
> it.  Unfortunately, I don't, and what little time I have is taken up
> by travtrack:-(

There's Tom Lord's "Arch" that has a quite fascinating architecture.
I suspect there are enough partially done things out there that at
least one is worth further developing.

> Enjoy your webpages, BTW.

Thanks!
-- 
(concatenate 'string "cbbrowne" "@cbbrowne.com")
http://cbbrowne.com/info/emacs.html
When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the
question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"