The FSF Has Entered into a Consulting Agreement to Improve Its Image | Hacker News Reader

The FSF Has Entered into a Consulting Agreement to Improve Its Image

linuxreviews.org

13 pointswailin8 comments

What's with the strangely transphobic jab at the end of the post? Perhaps "linuxreviews" also needs to look at improving their image. It comes off as very petty.

I'm not a fan of the opalgate woman but we still should show some modicum of respect. All I see is a rant.

This is a low quality site, without even a spell check (“ rather small niece organization”)

I think history is helpful here.

FSF lost RMS because of a spat where he was falsely accused by SJWs. I'm not going to get into history of all the upsides and downsides of RMS, or whether there were valid reasons for him to leave, but the point is that that the particular incident he left over was intentionally false reporting and misinformation. Everyone knew that. He was still gone.

The article is correct that FSF has had fewer people than Linux Foundation, but it has had much more impact. If FSF continues down that path, it's dead for impact.

>What's with the strangely transphobic jab at the end of the post?

Unfortuntely, more than a few free software advocates would rather believe RMS was crucified by a conspiracy of "satanic transgender SJWs" who just wanted to destroy the life of an awkward, neuroatypical man out of cruel spite and kill the free software movement with their fascistic gender equality initiatives and codes of conduct, than accept that his own well-documented and at times legitimately reprehensible views and behavior inevitably became his undoing.

Not entirely surprising that a movement whose mantra is "Stallman was right" might have a problem admitting Stallman did a lot of things wrong.

I do think FSF needs clean up their image. They have been proven right about software freedoms, but their stance has often been misunderstood. Their campaigns never resonated with me, even though I agree with the goals, their methods sounded more like childish insults. And it was hard to promote FSF without it getting derailed by anecdotes about RMS's toenails and such.

But this site says the problem was in FSF catering to "mentally ill satanic cult members"? What a garbage is that?

Jabs or no jabs, the point of the article is that the FSF is next in the set of organizations that appear to have been taken over by glib bureaucrats.

The point of these organizations is to provide cozy positions for directors, a fact which came up in the recent NumFOCUS CoC abuse debate.

FSF was never a movement or an organization. It's a fact that its influence has been waning in the last two decades becase it was nothing more than a echo chamber to RMS's own image.

I'm not sure they can part ways with that.

Free software was a movement.

The FSF was an echo chamber of RMS, and I was comfortable with that. I don't agree with RMS on everything, but it's a vice which needs to be heard. I don't mind having an organization with someone at the helm who has a firm moral compass, and always follows that compass, even if it's not my own moral compass. I supported the FSF largely to make sure that voice was part of the dialogue.

I do likewise for many voices I disagree with less or not-at-all, so...

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