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Comment by AsyncAwait | Hacker News Reader

> The OSI exists to be a non-political entity so that people who want to work on open source have resources to do so without necessarily participating in the politics of the FSF.

In what way is the FSF any more political than the OSI, beyond trying to protect the defined freedoms of free software?

By inserting itself as the only legitimate body to define what "open-source" is, it is by definition engaging in politics, no less than the FSF.

> The OSI is a respected organization that defends basic and non-controversial rights in open source

It is rather assuming that the OSI is "respected" or that it defends "non-controversial rights in open source".

The right to take my code, profit from it and not share back is essentially what the OSI stands for and is thus not respected by me.

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>In what way is the FSF any more political than the OSI, beyond trying to protect the defined freedoms of free software?

The OSI only concerns itself with defining open source and publishing a list of open source licenses. The FSF unquestionably concerns itself with much more.

>The right to take my code, profit from it and not share back is essentially what the OSI stands for and is thus not respected by me.

No, this is what open source stands for. If you don't want to write open source software, then don't. That's your choice. But the right to do exactly this is protected by both the OSI and the FSF, and I doubt you can find another authority which disagrees.

> The OSI only concerns itself with defining open source and publishing a list of open source licenses. The FSF unquestionably concerns itself with much more.

The FSF concerns itself with defining/defending free software, same as OSI does for open-source. If FSF "concerns itself with much more", I assume you would not have a problem listing some of these things.

> No, this is what open source stands for. If you don't want to write open source software, then don't. That's your choice. But the right to do exactly this is protected by both the OSI and the FSF, and I doubt you can find another authority which disagrees.

The difference here is that the OSI was historically created as a response to FSF for this exact purpose, whereas the FSF was primarily created to defend copyleft, later adopting some non-copyleft licenses as well, so the exact reverse of what OSI did.

Ask the FSF yourself. Richard Stallman can be reached via rms@gnu.org and usually responds to emails within a day. The FSF defends the right for others to sell your software, and has wide-reaching political ambitions. Don't just take my word for it, ask them.

> Ask the FSF yourself

YOU have asserted that the FSF has "wide-reaching political ambitions", therefore it is upon you to provide evidence for this.

> has wide-reaching political ambitions

I am asking what "political" ambitions does it have, beyond protecting free software.

> Don't just take my word for it

The thing is, you didn't provide any evidence of the "political ambitions" you speak of and so you're quite right, I don't take you word for it, unless you list at least some of these ambitions.

Fine, if you must have it spoon fed to you:

https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/

How is https://www.fsf.org/campaigns supposed to prove that the FSF has "far-reaching political ambitions"?

It's not really different in function from https://opensource.org/AdvocateCircle and squarely fails within achieving the goals of free software.

The FSF wants free software to be adopted as widely as possible. The OSI supposedly wants open-source to be as widely adopted as possible, doesn't it?

Looking at both links it is completely obvious which is the political of the two. You are really stretching calling the Advocate Circle the same as the various FSF campaigns. Some of the FSF campaigns listed are "surveillance", "upgrade from Windows" and DRM.

> Some of the FSF campaigns listed are "surveillance", "upgrade from Windows" and DRM

All of these restrict your freedoms, so that someone else is in control of the program and not the user. This is very much what free software stands for. So in reality, you're disagreeing with the principles of free software themselves.

> surveillance

Directly interferes with you being in control of the program, if it spies on you, violating the principle of free software that the user should be in control of the program and not the other way around.

> upgrade from Windows

So the Free Software Foundation advocating for the adoption of Free Software. Isn't that what it should be doing?

> DRM

DRM, by its very definition, restricts the freedom of the user to run the software in any way they wish, thus violating the free software principles.

None of these imply a "wide-reaching" political agenda.

>> The right to take my code, profit from it and not share back is essentially what the OSI stands for and is thus not respected by me.

Nope. You are so very wrong here. The OSI defines open source so that licenses comply with the terms... that's all. They don't have any other agenda, period. Stating so shows a complete lack of understanding OSS and the OSI.

Stating so shows a complete lack of understanding of why and by whom OSS/the OSI was started and popularized.

It ignores by who the OSI was co-founded and promoted by, (ESR, O'Reilly etc.) and why, (as a response to FSF to make free software more appealing to corporations for the exact purpose I outlined in my original post).

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