You criticize the FSF's software management, but software maintenance is the least important thing the foundation does in my opinion. (I mean I don't need a new `grep` release every month, I could actually use a version from 2004)
They take care of longer term issues, such as enforcing the GPL, defending it in lawsuits, writing good free software licences, raising awareness about issues (DRM, vendor lock-in, etc.), increasing free software use around the world.
>
...software maintenance is the least important thing the foundation does in my opinion. (I mean I don't need a new `grep` release every month, I could actually use a version from 2004)
So, critical components that have issues : GPG, GNU TLS, GCC, Make, glibc, etc... are not important? If the tools that everything else is built upon are not being maintained, then a lot of infrastructure fails in spectacular ways. If these things are not important, I guess that I've been using the wrong tools and OS.
>
They take care of longer term issues, such as enforcing the GPL, defending it in lawsuits, writing good free software licences, raising awareness about issues (DRM, vendor lock-in, etc.), increasing free software use around the world.
They have failed at these things for a long time. The FSF has not had any engaging campaigns in quite a long time (more than 5 years); writing a blog post and an angry letter does not usually get the job done (see HTML5 EME campaign). GPL enforcement from the FSF is a joke since they take forever to respond to anything and by the time they get to it, the device / software is no longer sold / shipped. I also don't see any new striking licenses on the horizon being drafted by the FSF.
Make: Ok. I don't personally need many changes in Make. In fact I think it is the kind of tool that should not change too much.
GCC: The last release was like 6 days ago: https://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/
I would not call that "not being maintained".
Similar thing for GNU tls.
I don't consider that these tools are not important, I'm just saying that the importance is small when compared to what the FSF does. Plenty of other organizations/businesses support and develop free software, few support the legal/licence/philosophy side.
They take care of longer term issues, such as enforcing the GPL, defending it in lawsuits, writing good free software licences, raising awareness about issues (DRM, vendor lock-in, etc.), increasing free software use around the world.