
No Radical Changes in GNU Project - stargrave
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2019-10/msg00005.html
======
kauffj
Excellent. This entire incident has been re-enforcing of how willing the media
is to lie and how little people care when the lies support a narrative they
believe in.

Here is what reporter Edward Ongweso Jr. wrote for Vice [1]:

> Early in the thread, Stallman insists that the “most plausible scenario” is
> that Epstein’s underage victims were “entirely willing” while being
> trafficked.

Here is what Stallman actually wrote:

> We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she
> presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced
> by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from
> most of his associates.

There is literally no way to read the previous sentence as Stallman arguing
that Epstein's victims were entirely willing.

People like Edward Ongweso should be the ones losing their jobs, not Richard
Stallman.

[1]: [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ne8b47/two-researchers-
re...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ne8b47/two-researchers-resign-in-
protest-over-mit-media-labs-ties-to-jeffrey-epstein)

~~~
daptaq
See [https://se7en-site.neocities.org/articles/stallman.html](https://se7en-
site.neocities.org/articles/stallman.html) for more details. It's really a
disgrace.

------
jgon
I don't want to get into the weeds discussing the ins and outs of the various
things that have happened with RMS and the FSF. I have my own opinions on
whether or not these moves were warranted. Separate from that I guess my
largest worry is that this is another step on the road to a complete neutering
of the Free Software movement, and the increasing corporate enclosure of the
software commons.

The one thing I feel like everyone would have to agree on with RMS is that he
was strident in his belief in the Free Software movement and refused to
compromise in ways that initially seemed intransigent, and were later revealed
to be prescient. I worry that both Gnu and the FSF will move more and more
toward being co-opted by the corporate "open source" movement as people less
obstinate that RMS take charge and let themselves and the "overton window" of
Free Software be dragged further into the realm of captive corporatism.

Of course the counter to this is that retaining RMS as the leader alienates
enough people to weaken the movement equally, and that may be true, I don't
have a crystal ball. What I do know is that he published The Right to Read in
1997 and a year later we had the DMCA and things have only accelerated from
there.

I guess we'll see where the road takes us, but as someone who remembers the
excitement and energy that surrounded the web, linux, firefox etc etc, it
feels like nowadays open source reigns supreme and it's all just a bunch of
free work for corporations to scoop up, stick a web interface on (or
containerize), and give back none of the same freedoms they make use of. I
just hope we don't look back on this moment (from our locked down walled
garden devices) as when the real decline of a _true_ free software commons
started.

~~~
shadowgovt
It's a complicated question, but I think the real decline of true free
software commons was probably around the time cloud services proved so
valuable. Cloud provides huge leverage to some end-users for getting to the
goal of doing the thing they want to do with the software, and it utterly
side-steps the Four Freedoms via the simple expedient of "You don't own the
hardware the software runs on."

GNU hasn't had an answer to this besides "boycott it," which feels an awful
lot like horse-riders suggesting we deal with the problems with cars by never
owning or supporting ownership of them.

~~~
swsieber
Well, AGPL was the answer to that issue, but it hasn't really done much. I
think part of the impact was things like GitHub recommending the MIT license.

~~~
Ironlikebike
My understanding is that the AGPL is an answer to an older problem and didn't
see the cloud coming. It addressed those running web-hosted GPL licensed
applications who were side-stepping the viral aspect of the GPL by claiming
that they were not "technically" distributing a binary by making the
application available on the internet as an executing web app.

The AGPL requires those who create web applications derived from the AGPL
(whether they're distributed as binaries or not) to make the code for their
web applications available.

The AGPL does not address the cloud-hosting conundrum at all. This conundrum
is where a cloud hosting company (e.g. Amazon AWS) can replicate the original
author's service offering using the unmodified open source tool (wrapping it
and interacting via API at most), and undercut the original author's business
model. I.e., you can imagine a power user of some AGPL software competitively
putting the software author's company out of business.

This is the reason for the recent licensing restrictions around ElasticSearch
and MongoDB. The originating companies have had their hosted service revenue
models undercut by Amazon AWS offerings that simply repackaged the software as
part of their cloud offering.

Making the AGPL even stronger by adding in a viral API clause would pigeon
hole AGPL software to only the most fringe ideological use-cases as everyone
would be afraid to run AGPL software in a business context.

~~~
saagarjha
I don't think the AGPL actually cares about being able to undercut the
original author's business model, as long as you're not just taking open
source software, adding minimal value-add, then keeping that as a closed
service.

~~~
ghaff
The AGPL was really driven by the increasing prevalence of software being
delivered in the form of a service. I don't recall much discussion of business
models at the time but there was at least a school of thought that the GPL's
protections of software freedom were being eroded because of service providers
exploiting this "ASP loophole."

------
Aissen
For context, I think it's an answer to this open letter from GNU developers:
[https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-
pr...](https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-project/)

~~~
ng12
> Stallman’s behavior over the years has undermined a core value of the GNU
> project: the empowerment of all computer users

The notion that empowered means shielded from opinions you might disagree with
seems odd.

~~~
swsieber
Contrast that with Ellen Degeneres responding to people dismayed that she sat
next to George W. Bush during a game (warning, video in the tweet):

[https://twitter.com/TheEllenShow/status/1181395164499070976](https://twitter.com/TheEllenShow/status/1181395164499070976)

Basically, it's okay to be friends with people we disagree with (and really,
we ought to).

~~~
favorited
We all have friends we disagree with, but Ellen deserves catching shit for
palling around with a guy who started a war that killed nearly 5 thousand
American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of civilians for absolutely
nothing.

~~~
swsieber
Americans started a war that killed nearly 5 thousand American soldiers and
hundreds of thousands of civilians for absolutely nothing. We're all pretty
much complicit. If there's any smaller group to be mad at, I'd say it's
anybody who didn't oppose that course, but more likely, the U.S. military
complex.

Ironically, she didn't catch flack for George being president of the Iraqi
war, she caught flack for George's stance on LGBT issues when he was
president.

~~~
abraae
Copy pasting the same comment over and over does not help make your point.

------
ng12
Well, good. An FSF without Stallman doesn't seem very relevant anymore, but
GNU is still very important.

~~~
scblock
Any movement that depends on one person to thrive is already dead.

~~~
passwordreset
Are you saying that about the FSF? Certainly, Stallman was very important for
the FSF, but there was an array of others who worked at various facets at
times. Eben Moglen, for example, did a stand-up job and had great success
helping the FSF, as did others. So, no, the FSF has not been about "one
person".

That said, however, with the circumstances surrounding the removal of RMS, the
FSF can longer be trusted. This very different than "depending" on a single
person.

------
zeko1195
This might be a noob question but can someone explain me how mailing lists are
used in software projects. I keep seeing these archived emails that are
posted. Could someone fill me in?

~~~
jedberg
Mailing lists are still the best async method for discussing meta issues with
regards to a project, when the people who work on it span the globe.

Basically you post to the list if you have a meta issue and then everyone
replies. It can get pretty tough to follow if you're using email, but most of
these had (still have?) mail<->news gateways, so you could use a threaded
Usenet reader to keep track of all the forks in the threads.

It's sort of a lost art with the news service being mostly gone and with
threaded social media.

~~~
zeko1195
Thank you for your response. I have a better understanding now. How is spam
dealt with? Do people get banned quickly? Also, who archives these emails. Do
they automatically get archived for public viewing?

~~~
wahern
Most lists require you to subscribe before being able to post. Subscription
involves the mailing-list software sending a cookie/none to your e-mail
address for authentication. You can either reply directly to the message or,
if the mailing-list software supports a web interface, follow an embedded
link.

That simple step prevents most bulk spam. For technical lists you can also do
things like limit messages to text/plain, reject binary attachments, etc. What
little spam remains, if any, can be handled by simple filters. Manual
moderation, where posts are queued waiting for approval, is rare but might be
necessary if someone is maliciously trying to disrupt the list.

One of the oldest mailing-list archive-to-HTML processors is MHonArc
([https://www.mhonarc.org/](https://www.mhonarc.org/)). Most mailing-list
software now supports this feature natively, but the organization of such
archives (by date, thread, etc) and the look & feel seem to have been heavily
influenced by MHonArc.

~~~
rambojazz
Manual moderation of the first 2-3 posts of a new user can go a long way to
prevent spam.

------
Fnoord
This whole issue, it hurts. Why do we need lynch mobs to bring justice? That
is precisely what we need courts of law for. Yet those are overburdened
because lawyers and judges are expensive because law is complex.

It just makes me so sad. I'd like to learn the truth about this whole issue,
and see justice served, but without an official and thorough situation it all
remains hearsay and such.

~~~
hdfbdtbcdg
It is amazing to see a plea for basic standards of justice being downvoted.

------
hudsonwillis
Glad to see this. I don't want GNU to be rebranded into a mediocre open source
project from radical free software symbols, and only someone who bites his
fingers after scratching toes like Tux has the least possibility to appease
corporations with those sugar-coated pills named "open source".

------
djsumdog
So RMS resigned from the FSF and his role(s) at MIT, but he's still on with
GNU?

~~~
kgwxd
According to [1], GNU isn't a legal entity.

[1] [http://wingolog.org/archives/2019/10/08/thoughts-on-rms-
and-...](http://wingolog.org/archives/2019/10/08/thoughts-on-rms-and-gnu)

~~~
belorn
GNU (and I think the GNU Project) is trademarked so there is a legal entity
that own the trademark. There is also the domain gnu.org which domain owner is
a legal entity. There is the publisher who publish information on the site and
distribute the copyrighted works, which depending on the law where the server
is located may or may not also be a legal entity. Last we have the Free System
Distribution Guidelines (GNU FSDG) which is maintained by the FSF Licensing
and Compliance Lab, which I would assume is owned by FSF.

------
marble-drink
Hard to read, but we definitely need to make sure the GNU project stays in the
right hands.

~~~
appleflaxen
Why do you say it's hard to read? Because it's talking about the eventual need
for succession?

~~~
marble-drink
> I won't be here forever

------
hdfbdtbcdg
Good hopefully he can separate GNU from the FSF and get it under responsible
stewardship.

~~~
sounds
I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say.

Do you feel the FSF is irresponsible? If not, what are you trying to say?

Can you share any specifics? What evidence do you have to back up your claims?

~~~
emilfihlman
FSF fell for the hit piece.

