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Summary: Richard Stallman and what seems like “Jobs' mob”/Mono mob in a debate over GNOME's views on Free(dom) software

THE unnecessary tension between GNU and a few people in GNOME was mentioned earlier today and the issue will hopefully be resolved now that provocateurs are being cornered. Here is a message from Dave Neary:

Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership

---

• From: Dave Neary <dneary gnome org>
• To: "Lefty (石鏡 )" <lefty shugendo org>



• Cc: pvanhoof gnome org, rms gnu org, foundation-list gnome org
• Subject: Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
• Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:35:02 +0100

---

Hi,





Lefty (石鏡 ) wrote:
> As a specific example, to the question, "Do you agree that viewing





> proprietary software as 'illegitimate', 'immoral', 'antisocial' and/or
> 'unethical' should be a pre-condition for syndication on Planet GNOME?", so
> far 151 respondents have answered "No", only 19 have answered "Yes". That's
> about an 8-to-1 ratio.





I'm no statistician (well, not any more at any rate), but I know that
you can construct surveys to say anything. If you ask someone "Do you
want to bring our boys home?" in the US, people are anti-war - if you
ask "Should we surrender in Iraq?" they're pro-war. Leading questions
prove nothing.





Your survey, in particular, is not particularly impartial. I would say
that it is somewhere between leading and "push polling". It's the type
of thing you rightly criticise when it is used by Boycott Novell.





Quite honestly, like others, I would just like to see this discussion
end. As I said before the weekend (50 emails ago), no opinions are being
changed, no new information of interest to GNOME Foundation members has
surfaced.





I'd like to ask both Lefty & Richard to refrain from mailing to this
thread again.





Thank you,
Dave.





-- 
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dneary gnome org

That's what may happen when Apple fans enter the GNOME Foundation (people who don't care about Freedom and expect others to feel the same way). The Inquirer likes to tease Apple fans for their attitude and in this latest article it even calls them "Jobs' Mob".

FRUITY PURVEYOR of cracked Imacs, Apple has decided not to ship any more of the machines for a couple of weeks.

On its webgroup, Jobs' Mob said sorry to customers amid reports of shipping delays affecting its recently introduced Imac computers.

Well, it seems like "Jobs' Mob" is also busy defaming Richard Stallman and the FSF (by distortion). Regarding those who are responsible for damaging hostility and friction, The Source wrote the following this morning:

Do you remember the last controversy around Richard Stallman and Mono? Well, surprise surprise: the players are same! Imagine that! Quite the coincidence.

It just so happens that the person calling for the vote is the same person that created the whole “I am not afraid of people writing code” slur-meme.

It just so happens that the person seconding the call for the vote is the same person that crafted “open letters”, published private correspondance and called for Stallman to be banned from speaking at future conferences.

(The irony of calling for someone to be banned from speaking while later pretending outrage at that same person for calling into question how appropriate some topics are is quite delicious.)

Again, read the posts to the mailing list and on the blogs. Stallman is calm and composed while being called a “fascistic extremist“, and subjected to push polling. His critics as usual are condescending, twist his words, and resort to childish rhetoric at every opportunity.

The beauty of the mailing list is that it is all laid out there for anyone to see.

Miguel de Icaza's response goes like this:

Hello,

> GNOME is not connected with the anti-hunting movement; there's no > reason it should have any position on the question. But GNOME is part > of the GNU Project, and it ought to support the free software > movement. The most minimal support for the free software movement is > to refrain from going directly against it; that is, to avoid > presenting proprietary software as legitimate.

Gnome supports both the free software movement as well as proprietary developers, and that is why Gnome for years has encouraged the use of the LGPL license for all of its libraries.

Gnome is a general purpose desktop, but it also recognizes the need for proprietary applications to use these libraries and to build and integrate properly with it.

Miguel.

According to Sam Varghese, this whole issue actually arose because Miguel de Icaza had been promoting proprietary Microsoft software. There is no reason to do that (let alone promotion of Mono, which the FSF is against). Gnote is still moving forward and as Clair Ching points out:

If you’re looking for an alternative to Tomboy which is faster and uses less memory, then GNote is the way to go.

She leaves out the part about Mono being troublesome; for practical reasons too, Gnote cannot be ignored. ⬆