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Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

Where the FSF falls down is in its inability to compromise

They're an ideological foundation. There are already plenty of others who compromise in the name of pragmatism, and there's nothing wrong with that.

FSF represents a viewpoint that is constantly under threat from some of the world's richest corporations such as Apple. If they became the "Free And Also Not-So-Free (As Long As It's Useful) Software Foundation", they can just as well close shop.

They're now incredibly out of touch with Silicon Valley

Certainly this is a positive thing in the long run? There's much more to technology than just the Valley players' interests.

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My frustration doesn't stem from the FSF's stubbornness; my frustration stems from the fact that they don't realize how it's holding free software back. The EFF has been very successful at accomplishing their goals because they, unlike the FSF, understand diplomacy and relationships.

I can't really see how non-GPL free software has been held back. If anything, it's been successful beyond most people's dreams.

Most servers are powered by software under Apache and MIT licenses; companies pick what they want and mostly don't give back. The dominant operating system on personal devices is Android, which is free but nevertheless deeply tied with a corporation's interests and developed in secrecy using the same principles as proprietary software.

What would FSF gain by supporting that kind of software freedom, other than a reputation as nice guys? That model of freedom has already won, and from FSF's point of view, it's not much better than traditional closed software.

Imagine what it would be like if the FSF had been helping instead of fighting this type of open source development?

But isn't it precisely the FSF's "stubbornness" (their uncompromising defense of libre software) what results in the phenomenon you identify as not understanding diplomacy?

If the FSF compromises in order to be diplomatic, they'll have to compromise on the only thing they are adamant about: that software must be libre (and there's no such thing as "mostly libre" software). This would invalidate the FSF's mission, which is ideological and their only raison d'etre.

Do they have a reason to continue existing? If they didn't hew to their extreme position, would all open source software disappear? It's hard to say one way or another.

I think they do.

Open source software would probably not disappear, since it's largely successful (and extremely convenient even for companies who don't give anything back), but maybe libre software would. The FSF's concern is libre software, not open source software. I'd like libre software (as well as user rights and our freedom to tinker) to continue to exist and therefore I support the FSF's mission and their principled stance. I'm not as uncompromising as they are, but then again, my job is not advocacy.

I hate to sound paranoid, but I think libre software, user rights and the open internet are under attack, and we need to organize and defend those rights. This is an ideological issue orthogonal to any technical merit of open or closed source software. I'm glad the FSF exists as one of the groups on the side of users.

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