Thanks again for your comments!

I think we are on different “sides” of this argument, but I honestly appreciate you laying out your reasoning.

“You, as one of the key FSF people, appear to be keen[1] on enforcing a strict policy on how GNU’s member-projects should behave.”

the [1] here is quite important.
“[1] You write “minimal support”. “Minimal” to me means: either you do this, or you’re out. Feel free to correct me.”

Which was followed by “So …
I propose to have a vote on GNOME’s membership to the GNU project.”

Which essentially means as much as; “If what you have said is the position of GNU/FSF, and you will enforce these kinds of unwritten rules, we should have a member vote to see if we still want our project to be a member of GNU.”

This is of course not sparked by a single incidence, this was simply the trigger to say it out loud.

Also to clarify, I do not consider Philip or Lefty or almost all who were part of that mailinglist discussion to be “fringe instigators” or something. They are all respected members and contributors of gnome and have a right to voice their opinions.

Ironically perhaps, RMS and Philip have something in common; People often interpret what they write as somehow being rude or insulting. In the case of Philip I am quite sure that it is almost never intended unless he specifically calls out someone for being an idiot or resorting to petty rhetoric.

In case of RMS, people often respond before asking themselves crucial questions about what he specifically wrote.
Often when people read text they don’t read the specific meaning, but more an interpreted meaning. Which I think in the case of RMS’s can result in misreading of what he may have meant.
I also think this is in a way partially to blame on RMS, since he tends to be very concise, not iterating and exemplifying enough what he actually means.

Also as you touched on yourself when you said “his (unsurprising) opinion”; RMS will always answer based on his ideological conviction, even if it would create a impracticable or even unmaintainable situation. In the idea that there can be no middle way, and the actions have to be black and white.

I do however think that RMS could have done a lot to nip this in the butt by actually answer the question Philip put in his footnote. It is a shame that did not happen.

I find it strange that you say “raised a big stink about how ‘radical’ RMS is.”. While I agree it is a bit redundant to point it out, RMS very much is radical.

Also the survey was in no way official or fully representative, it was used as a argument instead of just using an ad populum like I more or less did in my previous comment.
You can say the survey was made in such a way that more people then normal would choose for a specific outcome, but even then there was a significant result, resulting in a much better argument then just saying “me and a lot of others”.

Also please note that some people in the open source communities can get quite frustrated (me included) by free software people who are pushing their agenda. Stuff like badvista is truly cringeworthy. The general public does not make a distinction between open source and free software, which means in part our “image”/”brand” gets affected by it.

Now I am sure that by saying the above some free software people might cringe a bit, but alas that is the nature of these types of ideological differences.

Which is the reason of the proposition. If the large majority of gnome contributors are open source minded (and I personally think it is), then distancing ourselves from GNU will only create more clarity in the position of gnome and that of GNU.

Of course in the details there are quite a few practical and technical problems, but those could be addressed if it ever came far enough to vote. And do note that as described in the posts from behdad, neary and stormy, quite a lot will have to be done to make that vote happen.

But I do think, that if the polarisation continues, it will eventually come to such.

Thank you for your comment!

I think you are on target, but I would like to clarify that I think some people are “blowing this way out of proportion” intentionally.

Maybe I didn’t get that point across, but I read the entire thread and what I saw there is what I saw in some other so-called “controversies”: RMS says something, and the usual gang of idiots jump in, build up a straw man and burn it up with great glee.

As far as the term “fascistic extremist”, fascism is a political belief that authoritarian nations should control corporations that run the state, and believes in the benefit of inequality. This is no where near anything that RMS proposes. Therefore, Andre is either stupid (he does not know what the words he uses means), or he is malicious (he knows what the words mean, knows they do not apply, yet uses them anyway.)

I hate to be that blunt about it, but that’s really the only two options for that sort of “opposition”: stupid or malicious. Let me add something I should not have to, but know I must lest I fall prey to the same straw man fighters: there are perfectly rational and thoughtful people that disagree with RMS, I’m just talking about the noisy handful right now.

But what happened on that Foundation List is RMS joined a conversation in progress (he did not initiate it), gave his (unsurprising) opinion, and then the usual suspects twisted his words, overreacted by suggesting GNOME leave GNU (there were no such “IFs” in the original proposal), put up a bullshit “push poll”, all done with a personal and vile tone mind you, and raised a big stink about how “radical” RMS is. This is the usual M.O. for those people and that aspect is what I am trying to draw attention to.

The whole disassociating of GNU came with multiple IF’s associated to it. IF RMS was acting as GNU spokesman and IF it was a condition and not a request. Those questions never got answered and as such the whole falling over the vote thing is a moot point.

Secondly, and this is something that rears it’s ugly head again and again. Planet.gnome.org is not a information outlet about gnome. It’s isn’t. It’s about people who contribute or have contributed to gnome. It’s about those people, not gnome. A entire weeks worth of blog posts could come and go without gnome even being mentioned and p.g.o would still be perfectly accomplishing it’s goal.
You want gnome only news, start reading news.gnome.org, which should be only about gnome and gnome related tech (afaik).

Thirdly, RMS does not make it a secret that he is fighting a war. He is a ideological activist, as such he does not have a moderate stance in free vs open vs proprietary software. Which is I think what Andre meant when he wrote “fascistic extremist”. If fascism wasn’t such a loaded concept he would have been totally correct with that notion, imho. Also if you think that was harsh you obviously haven’t read anything posted by Theo de Raadt yet.

Without trying to make an ad populum, many contributors of gnome do not have such an extreme point of view, but are more moderate in their “beliefs” (if you will excuse the term for this purpose). Now I will certainly admit there are also those who are on RMS’s side on the spectrum, which is exactly why these discussions tend to flare up.

Polarisation happens. But I would argue that most of the time it doesn’t happen within projects, it happens mostly on the fringes of communities surrounding a project. People who feel the need to either defend RMS or the extremist free software stance, or flame RMS or whatever kind of non constructive comments.

I’ll gladly admit that I probably fall into a fringe group now a days, seeing as I’m actually writing this. Although I do think I actually argue fairly, but that can be in the eye of the beholder.

P.s.
When I say extremist free software stance I mean the extremist variety of free software. I am quite sure there are also people who feel all software should be free but do not find it ethically wrong to use proprietary in the mean time.

One last response from me to you. As is my custom, I invite you to have the last word.

Yes you misrepresent me, because not only did I not ever mention Mr. de Icaza until you did, it has always been my understanding that he had nothing to do with the topic at hand. You are simply projecting here. He’s certainly guilty of loudly and enthusiatically evangelizing Closed and Proprietary Microsoft Software, so I can see why his name sprang to your mind.

RMS Says No One Should Even Mention Proprietary Software

That bit about the Flash plug-in is in single email in a seperate discussion 2 years ago, so I was not aware of it. I thank you for digging deep. That being said you are (of course) misrepresenting him. Not only is the thread several hundred mails centered around discussing should Free Software OS/packaging systems/web sites be “recommending” proprietary software (hence the ease of slipping into general nouns like “people”/”you”), but RMS goes on to explain:

Free speech means you are free to tell people about the Adobe flash
plug-in, and also free to decide not to tell them.

I exercise my freedom of speech by not telling people about the Adobe
flash plug-in. I think you should, too. But I will not try to force
you to do that, because I respect your freedom of speech.

Think how sad it is that RMS needs to actually explain this.

Do you honestly not understand the difference between me saying “I don’t think people should listen to Nickleback” and me trying to force people not to listen to Nickleback? Under your interpretation of RMS words, no one could ever express a direct opinion! We’d all have to say things like: “Oh, I guess Nickleback is just fine for some people, but personally I prefer Slayer much more…not that I don’t respect other bands and people that don’t like Slayer as much.” No! Screw that! Nickleback sucks and Slayer rules. Deal with people expressing a direct opinion and stop misrepresenting people.

I do thank you for providing a perfect example of a common Misrepresentin’ tactic, though: if RMS expresses his opinion, act like he is making some sort of a demand. Bonus points if you pretend like he made an ultimatum as well. Triple Word Score each time you pretend like RMS is an out-of-touch zealot for making demands and ultimatums.

This is exactly how RMS sending a email saying he doesn’t think people should be promoting proprietary software on Planet GNOME suddenly turns into a vote that GNOME should leave the GNU project, and a half-dozen idiots start talking about what a problem RMS is.

Windows7 Sins Campaign
“You can’t undercut linux because it’s free” is so ignorant that I don’t want to waste time on it. Nor am I going to argue over the 7 sins. You stated that they are “argument out of thin air”, but they are not. There is documented evidence behind each point. You may disagree that the evidence supports the point strongly, or you may disagree that the points are serious enough to campaign against, or so on. Your commentary leads me to believe you are simply ignorant in this area, and may just need to be presented the evidence. But to pretend there is no evidence at all, that the entire campaign is based on nothing? Well, let me be polite and state that doesn’t put us in a place where we can communicate with each other.

Your closing argument – Economics

I can’t directly refute the idea that if all software was GPL there would be no market, because we can’t know that. Of course, that means you can’t really support your argument either. Some GPL software has made a lot of money, so there seems to be some sort of economic viability behind it. That is a complicated and very interesting question. You aren’t doing it an honest service, of course, but I felt I should acknowledge the only interesting thing you managed to stumble upon.

Your closing argument – Everything Else

The communist card being played and personal attacks on RMS and myself notwithstanding…nothing remains. I do appreciate the delicious irony of you calling RMS “disgusting”, a “giant asshole” and an “egomaniac”, accusing me of not even reading Stallman’s writings (I have), and then turn around and cry that you are the subject of “personal attacks”.

He did say that people should not even acknowledge that proprietary software exists:
here on the OpenBSD mailing list. It’s a ridiculous stance to take, saying that people need to be protected from proprietary software for their own good. If FOSS was so good, why not talk about the alternatives and how much better the FOSS product is than the proprietary one?

OK, so MS offering educational discounts is now “undercutting competition”. Nevermind that you can’t undercut linux because it’s free. So you’re saying you disagree with their decision to offer lower prices to schools, because it’s some kind of conspiracy to keep people using their product. They do want people to keep using their product sure, but every company in America wants that so why single MS out for it? Offering a lower price to customers in order to grow marketshare and beat your competitors is extremely common, and I do not find it unethical or immoral in the slightest.

I don’t know what you mean by “dictate hardware manufacturer requirements”. The only possible anticompetitive behavior in this would be to make sure your competitors software does not run on said hardware. Linux does run on any hardware Windows can, and mac OS as well (except many drivers do not exist, apple wants it that way not MS- they want you to buy only apple stuff). If you’re implying it’s MS’ fault that there is limited driver support for Linux, that’s a pretty far fetched conspiracy theory. HW manufacturers largely don’t want to work with the Linux kernel guys because the kernel foundation wont accept binary only drivers. They’ll demand your source code, and HW manufacturers are under no obligation to release their driver sources.

It says on w7sins.org that MS sends the contents of your hard drive back to redmond, which is completely unfounded. W7sins says that it ‘enforces DRM’ which implies that it forces you to use it. Windows 7 does not, instead it ALLOWS you to play media that is encrypted with DRM, if you have the proper rights to the file. It doesn’t force you to use it at all but w7sins is worded to imply that it does.

I’ll call RMS out on stuff because I believe his ideology is DANGEROUS, and if every company released all their stuff as GPL there would be no market for software coders and programmers would all be broke. A good synopsis is located here. Not everyone who disagrees with RMS has some secret agenda. I don’t like the man, I find him disgusting (he eats stuff off his feet in public), a giant asshole (he has been known to refuse people interviews because they say Linux instead of GNU/Linux) and an egomaniac. He wants credit for FOSS even though he hasn’t contributed anything except evangelism for over 20 years.

You attack me by calling me irrational and either a liar or ignorant without refuting my statements. I’ve actually READ Stallmans writings while apparently you have not. This is the sort of personal attack I see more and more from the FOSS community these days, and it’s unfortunate the community has come to be defined by its hatred for MS and other proprietary software companies. History has shown that ideologies like this are founded on hot air. It’s why the soviet union no longer exists, and basically every major country in the world is largely capitalistic and free market.

I never compared De Izaca to a racist or smut peddler but nice try. The point is that no one would defend all sorts of speech, so the argument that simply because the person is involved in the GNOME project that any speech goes is foolish. The question to be addressed is does enthusiastic promotion of proprietary software rise to an objectional level?

(As a sidebar, you may recall a hullabaloo not too long ago about sexist/pornography being used in presentations to promote software projects and the lamentations that followed? Very few people accepted the defense that the presenters were indeed quite involved in the project being discussed.)

If you say promoting proprietary software is acceptable that’s perfectly fine. I’m not suggesting that Stallman’s word is law or infallible. No one is. In fact, I strongly believe each person and organization should set its own standards. Ff you read through the mailing list, you’ll see that Stallman says very little, neither instigating nor driving the conversation; and he certainly never makes a “my-way-or-the-highway” style ultimatum.

The point I am making is that the opposition to Stallman is rarely rational and all-too-often personal and twisted; and therefore dishonest. Read the mailing list. RMS basically shot out an email saying “I don’t think posts promoting proprietary software belong on Planet GNOME” (a shocking and uncharacteristic missive, to be sure), and two hard-core anti-RMS people jumped all over it, suggesting that GNOME split from the GNU project and attempted to crank up the old anti-RMS noise machine.

You are guilty of such misrepresenation yourself in your very response:

You say RMS “will call you out if you even ACKNOWLEDGE that software exists”. RMS speaks out on the dangers of using and relying on proprietary software. To my knowledge he has never said anything like “Don’t even say that proprietary software exists”.

You say “everything on windows7sins.org” is an “argument out of thin air”. There is a documentation for Microsoft lobbying and undercutting alternatives in education (EDGI). There is documentation that Microsoft illegally abused its monopoly position to dictate hardware manufacturers behavior – including court convictions in the US, Japan, and Europe. There is documentation that Microsoft stacked voting boards and otherwise behaved unethically in the promotion of OOXML. None of these things (nor any of the 7 points on that site) are “arguments out of thin air”.

You try to paint RMS as some sort of hypocrite because the FSF receives sponsorship from companies producing proprietary software. But there is nothing hypocritical about that because RMS has never said “Organizations promoting Free Software should not take money from companies that produce proprietary software”. He hasn’t said that, because that is foolish. You must distort or misrepresent him in order to paint him as a hypocrite.

And so on. I find that the vast majority of people complaining about RMS fall into 1 of 2 camps:
1. Liars. They intentionally and maliciously twist or misrepresent what he says.
2. Ignorant. They blindly accept what the above liars say.

Honest and informed people that disagree with RMS don’t try to make him out like some sort of scheming two-faced jihadist. They just say “Hmmm. Can’t say I agree” and move on. Personally, I don’t have a super big problem with using proprietary software if it is the only tool for the job. That doesn’t mean I’m going to sing the praises of proprietary software, anymore than I would sing the praises of any other necessary but unpleasant activity I had to do. I also wouldn’t show up to every local Lion tamer’s meeting talking about the cool Pecan Pies I’ve been baking – because it’s not venue appropriate. If I did that every meeting, the local Lion tamer’s might think I was promoting my Pecan Pies and become annoyed.