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What's wrong with Debian and RMS?

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steve_v
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Re: What's wrong with Debian and RMS?

#21 Post by steve_v »

For anyone not watching the news, satements are up. From the FSF and RMS himself. He's officially back, and apparently the FSF still has a spine. :D

I give it a few minutes before the usual "non-apology" bollocks from the corporate shills and zoomers hits the mainstream channels. :roll:
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Re: What's wrong with Debian and RMS?

#22 Post by golinux »

Sadly, this is yet another wake-up call. We must remain vigilant or truly free software will become a distant memory and then a footnote in history . . .
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Re: What's wrong with Debian and RMS?

#23 Post by RU55EL »

I just received an email from the Free Software Foundation:
Dear Free Software Supporter,

The voting members of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which include the board of directors, voted to appoint Richard Stallman to a board seat after several months of thorough discussion and thoughtful deliberation.

We decided to bring RMS back because we missed his wisdom. His historical, legal and technical acumen on free software is unrivaled. He has a deep sensitivity to the ways that technologies can contribute to both the enhancement and the diminution of basic human rights. His global network of connections is invaluable. He remains the most articulate philosopher and an unquestionably dedicated advocate of freedom in computing.

RMS acknowledges that he has made mistakes. He has sincere regrets, especially at how anger toward him personally has negatively impacted the reputation and mission of FSF. While his personal style remains troubling for some, a majority of the board feel his behavior has moderated and believe that his thinking strengthens the work of the FSF in pursuit of its mission.

We take full responsibility for how badly we handled the news of his election to a board seat. We had planned a flow of information that was not executed in a timely manner or delivered in the proper sequence.

FSF staff should have been informed and consulted first. The announcement by RMS at LibrePlanet was a complete surprise to staff, all those who worked so hard to organize a great event, to LibrePlanet speakers and to the exhibitors. We had hoped for a more inclusive and thoughtful process and we apologize that this did not occur.

In his position on the board, RMS has the same responsibilities as other members. He is an unpaid volunteer and subject to the organization's policies, including prohibitions against conflicts of interest and sexual harassment and those outlining whistleblower processes and fiduciary duties. The responsibilities of the board are described at https://www.fsf.org/about/the-role-of-t ... -directors.

We believe his views will be critical to the FSF as we advance the mission and confront the challenges that software freedom faces.

In recent weeks, the board has committed to a series of changes related to organizational governance, including plans to adopt a transparent, formal process for identifying appropriate candidates to become new board members, future changes to the organization's bylaws, and the addition of a staff representative to the board of directors.

Selected by FSF's unionized staff, senior systems administrator Ian Kelling was elected to a newly created staff seat on the board of directors as a voting member on March 28.

The FSF board will continue to pursue additional ideas and actions designed to improve transparency and accountability.

There is still considerable work to be done. We recognize the need to attract a new generation of activists for software freedom and to grow the movement. We will report our discussions and activities to the community as we move forward.

As we work on these issues, let's not forget the purpose of our movement, or the great work of our staff and all the good people of the free software community who are dedicated to users' freedom.

In freedom,

Free Software Foundation Board of Directors
Maybe sanity will prevail.

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Re: What's wrong with Debian and RMS?

#24 Post by Bulkley »

golinux wrote:Sadly, this is yet another wake-up call. We must remain vigilant or truly free software will become a distant memory and then a footnote in history . . .
+1

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Re: What's wrong with Debian and RMS?

#25 Post by steve_v »

golinux wrote:Sadly, this is yet another wake-up call. We must remain vigilant or truly free software will become a distant memory and then a footnote in history
+1
IME much of the younger generation, developers included, have already forgotten what free-software is about. While it's encouraging to see the FSF take the right stand, it's also extremely concerning that things went as far as they did. If principles bow to mob pressure, we are truly lost.
prohibitions against conflicts of interest
The optimist in me likes to think this particular FSF leadership bylaw can be used to protect it against insider attacks and subversion by those with an interest in promoting watered-down "open source" over free/libre ideals...
IMO the apparent (though rather unscientific) correlation between which "open source" organisations and developers receive funding from corporate sources and which backed the anti-RMS witch-hunt is a stark reminder of how real this threat has become. As more more corporations take an interest in open-source and more developers indentured to (and accepting of) omnipresent social-media control join projects, the threat will only grow.

The FSF is our bastion against this corruption of free software, and one of very few organisations which explicitly makes a distinction between libre and merely open-source. That right there is RMS's influence and his vision.
Long may it remain so, because we need it now more than ever.
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Re: What's wrong with Debian and RMS?

#26 Post by dice »

So RMS gets reinstated what happens with this debian vote thing, what impact does it have ? To me it sounds like a waste of time and effort.

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Re: What's wrong with Debian and RMS?

#27 Post by golinux »

dice wrote:So RMS gets reinstated what happens with this debian vote thing, what impact does it have ? To me it sounds like a waste of time and effort.
This is the third Debian GR that I have experienced and AFAICS "waste of time and effort" pretty much describes the process. The idea may have been implemented with the best of intentions but my life experience has shown that bureaucratic structures like that create more division than harmony and ultimately suck the joy and trust right out of a collective effort. Like all "elections" it is a fig leaf that gives the illusion of a "democratic" process but really is more of a divide and conquer tactic. Just my .02 . . .
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Re: What's wrong with Debian and RMS?

#28 Post by Bulkley »

“We trained hard—but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while actually producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.”
Petronius Arbiter - roughly 2000 years ago.

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Re: What's wrong with Debian and RMS?

#29 Post by golinux »

Bulkley wrote:
“We trained hard—but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while actually producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.”
Petronius Arbiter - roughly 2000 years ago.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Humans are very good at exploring and manipulating external events but fail miserably at understanding the internal processes of what makes them tick. All too often, we do unskillful things for the wrong reasons. It is a habit that is not easy to correct. It requires restraint and acknowledgment of thoughts and actions which cause harm to oneself and others. That is not easily accomplished by those who feel entitled by their self-importance to do whatever they please. That is not "freedom". It is bondage to whatever whim arises.
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Re: What's wrong with Debian and RMS?

#30 Post by sunrat »

The results of the General Resolution is:
Option 7 "Debian will not issue a public statement on this issue"

The details of the results are available at:
https://www.debian.org/vote/2021/vote_002


Kurt Roeckx
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Those who have lost data
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Re: What's wrong with Debian and RMS?

#31 Post by dice »

golinux wrote:
Bulkley wrote:
“We trained hard—but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while actually producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.”
Petronius Arbiter - roughly 2000 years ago.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Humans are very good at exploring and manipulating external events but fail miserably at understanding the internal processes of what makes them tick. All too often, we do unskillful things for the wrong reasons. It is a habit that is not easy to correct. It requires restraint and acknowledgment of thoughts and actions which cause harm to oneself and others. That is not easily accomplished by those who feel entitled by their self-importance to do whatever they please. That is not "freedom". It is bondage to whatever whim arises.
I would think twice about why it is you have "not a buntard!" in your profile. Your internal process has been compromised, you should be cancelled, lets vote on it!

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Re: What's wrong with Debian and RMS?

#32 Post by LE_746F6D617A7A69 »

sunrat wrote:
The results of the General Resolution is:
Option 7 "Debian will not issue a public statement on this issue"
(...)
It's good to know, but for Me, the significant fact is that some of Debian devs have followed that dangerous global movement targeted at hanging everyone who is not "politically correct".
I'm sure that this problem will return sooner or later... ...unfortunately...
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Re: What's wrong with Debian and RMS?

#33 Post by chomwitt »

I've watched closely the RMS internet lynching that started by
Sep 12, 2019·10
Remove Richard Stallman And everyone else horrible in tech.

Going back to 93 RMS -vs- Doctor, on the evils of Natalism we see RMS isnt the person that you would call conservative..
But that unconventional wisdom is the reason that the libre software movement was initiated in the first place.
So get to the crucial point here.

That Salem.G article who marked the lynching i think is helpfull (to seeking a more encompassing approach) to see in the time context of what was happening to MIT then.
As a point of referernce and further study to anyone interested : On me, and the Media Lab Aug 21, 2019

So the context is that a scandal break regarding funding from Epstein that put the heads of mit under pressure from many sides (including the students that were calling from RMS to resign :shock: ... mmm... sorry mistake.. that must have been MIT President L. Raphael Reif .
To get a better understanding at the anger against RMS at that time read also:
MIT Students and Alumni Call for President L. Rafael Reif to Step Down Over Epstein
MIT's Epstein scandal kept student Mani Mengiste up at night — so she decided to fight back (another angry mit student with RMS !!)
Angry mit students outside RMS office calling him to get the hell out of MIT due to dirty sponsors. no i meant akward flirting ..

If you reseach further (like the young protesters , you will find accusations for more ethically questionable funding.
Anyway..
So inamidst of all this protests Salem thinks (and many who happilly blowed her little flimsy sail boat) ..that the crux of all that troublosome and embarrising situation is .. voila.. RMS ,...that wasnt even a teacher because in CSAIL email list he steps in to defend his deceased friend ...
And voila!! a suitable scapegoats appear. From that act we must draw a line to --> Remove Richard Stallman And everyone else horrible in tech .... Remove ... (how ?) ... RMS ... from .. tech... A person who spend his whole life to improve tech and founded libresoftware.. our mental home and compass for thousand programmers..... A nosense for a girl who has not a clue..
So Salem starts the accusation chorus. Like that.. in snap . No further discussion. Lets cancel the @#$#$%.

Step some twitters nanosecs forward and bam!! the freesoftware communities announce in unison the 'Ethical sponsor hunting initiative' to avoid scandals like the epstein affair.. (kidding.. ) so what reallly happens is .. suddenly many start remembering creepy , akwards encounters .. pro peadophilia opinions , old animosities resurface and think
that now is the moment to strike!! like notably Miguel de Icaza , Zachhirolli , Matthew Garrett , fsfe !! , gnome and others think also that now is the moment to meddle and give instructions to fsf what to do and even some threat to cut donations..
(thanks god that moms with their babies that were shocked back with their natalism vierws attacked in the 90s didnt catch up in the twitter revolution... :D )

And here starts the magnus opus of hypocrisy. The main line of attacke was shifted that RMS drives away people from libre - open software..
We need to be more inclusive . But what that means is ofcourse open to the agenda of each organization, country , person in the world. Some organizations seem to
think inclusive applies to microsoft (its latest mischief ..) or google (a respected inclusive company)

Funny, but in line with my personal diversity inclusion standards (as a multinational would put it) i think to put it as simply as i can ,,, multinationals coprs are not welcomed in a libresoftware community driven project

So lets please stop that silly game and state the situation at its really solid ground. Sponsoring and their agenda.
RMS's crime is that he is not friendly to big software business. He speaks against them , he drives the best minds away from them. That is his crime.

...what drives me away from even thinkging to donate to fsf or even other projects is because i stand behind those MIT students protesting ethical donation frameworks and unaccountably .

So why i got into it and 'lost' so many hours writing and researching.. It wasnt Salem accusations . It was the easiness by which libre - open source organizations seized the opportunity to meddle in fsf and attack RMS not giving a fok about his legacy ... And that was the moment of Eureka to me . Those persons dont respect his legacy ... they fear his legacy... They wont his reputation dead.
And now with sorrow i hear that Debian project vote whether to do it also.

So the line here is: If we are into this mainly as a business .. RMS is bad for business. (big business mainly)
If we are mostly into RMS free software vision we stand behind him but we pressure him to promote more accountabilty , ethical sponsoring , and democratic processes in libre communities and projects. But ofcourse that could hurt.. Money flows could get disrupted .. people with positions with fancy names and nice chairs could lose them(the chairs)...

So in that line of thinking RMS must lead and decide himself . Can you be in the middle of that line ?
Last edited by chomwitt on 2021-06-11 05:18, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: What's wrong with Debian and RMS?

#34 Post by LE_746F6D617A7A69 »

@chomwitt: thanks for Your excellent post - it have extended my knowledge beyond what I was able to investigate myself.

It is obvious that RMS is very inconvenient for "big business" - the main problem is that He is insisting on using (L)GPL licenses - GPLv3 family of licenses, unlike any other (so called "permissive") licenses, assures that the software is really free (like in freedom).
All/most of other licenses are allowing to turn open source projects into a proprietary code - in most cases it's sufficient to just add a single line of code.

Google is doing this, Facepalm is doing this, and Microshit is a king of the thieves - they have bought GitHub, and now they are stealing every single project which is worth attention, and which is licensed under a "permissive" terms - simply by forking it and changing the licencing terms. They have build their cloud services on a code stolen in this way.

Obviously they hate GPL, and RMS is their foe number 1 (so it's not too hard to figure-out who is responsible for this whole mess)
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Re: What's wrong with Debian and RMS?

#35 Post by RU55EL »

LE_746F6D617A7A69 wrote: Google is doing this, Facepalm is doing this, and Microshit is a king of the thieves - they have bought GitHub, and now they are stealing every single project which is worth attention, and which is licensed under a "permissive" terms - simply by forking it and changing the licencing terms. They have build their cloud services on a code stolen in this way.
Strictly speaking, they aren't stealing it if it is given away for free by the terms of the license.
(Which makes it easy to understand why they don't like RMS's License preferences.)

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Re: What's wrong with Debian and RMS?

#36 Post by chomwitt »

Thank you for pointing to the license issue which is central and i missed to mention.

And that fact in a way underlines how power has this agenda discussion shifing propaganda
machine
that was unleashed against RMS.

Lets search diligently among all RMS's opinions political social views in a span of decades , lets search how his door looked 10 years before, lets be nitpicking in how he tries to defend a deceased friend and magnify that by 1.000.000 .

Hey but lets , not speak about his main work and that he is holding ground against pro-business open licenses that make a software field and it's programmer's mental fruits easily exploitable.

Once i've read a short fiction story about a guy who was buying dreams ... but unfortunately my memory hasnt get a hold on author or name..

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Re: What's wrong with Debian and RMS?

#37 Post by chomwitt »

Funny , there was a time where prominent people of the libre-open 'community' with a pro-business mindset spoke of RMS and his work with gratitude recognizing his great work ..
https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/openso ... emans.html

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Re: What's wrong with Debian and RMS?

#38 Post by LE_746F6D617A7A69 »

RU55EL wrote:Strictly speaking, they aren't stealing it if it is given away for free by the terms of the license.
Well, strictly speaking I've already confirmed this here - but some time have passed since that day and my investigations went further..

Considering only the licensing terms, You're right - formally this is not a theft.
But, the global picture is completely different:
For at least 2 - 3 decades big software companies were spreading a FUD about GPL, saying that You can't earn money on a GPL-ed code.
Instead, if You will use a "permissive" license then You may earn a small fortune because some big company may want to hire You to develop a customized version of Your project.
Today Microshit (and Google, and others) are showing a middle finger to those naive developers who have believed in that FUD.

GPL is not guaranteeing that You will earn millions of $$ (although it is possible), but a "permissive" licences are guaranteeing that some day You'll lose the owner rights of the project if it only becomes attractive to software giants.

Clever programmers can be a naive people at the same time - usually they don't understand the law, and the law is constructed to support corporations (lobbying is just a nicer name for bribery)

The case of github and Microshit have proved that by using a non-GPL license the original developers can be completely ignored - they won't see a single cent from those millions of dollars which Microshit have earned by using their code.

It turns out that RMS is right regarding the GPL, but not only because it protects the freedom of the end users - it also protects the developers.
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