This is money that could have been better spent to fund something more useful. I stopped supporting the Free Software Foundation once they starting making compromises in their mission and failed to give proper funding to critical infrastructure components that are part of the GNU Project. While they did say :
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Increase innovation and the number of new projects in high priority areas of free software development, including the GNU Project;
I'll believe it when I see it. We have become too dependent on core components that are not being properly maintained, lack funding or both. This won't solve the funding issue if these funds are squandered on a bunch of new projects and management.
I won't give another dime to the FSF until management changes, campaigns actually does something engaging with the community and more funding is put towards critical GNU components (instead of new bloated projects).
I still support the idea of Libre / Free Software, just not the religion and church that popped up around it. I'd like to see an organization that advocates for Free Software and is consistent in their mission (Hint : OSI and the Linux Foundation are not a fit).
You criticize the FSF's software management, but software maintenance is the least important thing the foundation does in my opinion. (I mean I don't need a new `grep` release every month, I could actually use a version from 2004)
They take care of longer term issues, such as enforcing the GPL, defending it in lawsuits, writing good free software licences, raising awareness about issues (DRM, vendor lock-in, etc.), increasing free software use around the world.
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...software maintenance is the least important thing the foundation does in my opinion. (I mean I don't need a new `grep` release every month, I could actually use a version from 2004)
So, critical components that have issues : GPG, GNU TLS, GCC, Make, glibc, etc... are not important? If the tools that everything else is built upon are not being maintained, then a lot of infrastructure fails in spectacular ways. If these things are not important, I guess that I've been using the wrong tools and OS.
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They take care of longer term issues, such as enforcing the GPL, defending it in lawsuits, writing good free software licences, raising awareness about issues (DRM, vendor lock-in, etc.), increasing free software use around the world.
They have failed at these things for a long time. The FSF has not had any engaging campaigns in quite a long time (more than 5 years); writing a blog post and an angry letter does not usually get the job done (see HTML5 EME campaign). GPL enforcement from the FSF is a joke since they take forever to respond to anything and by the time they get to it, the device / software is no longer sold / shipped. I also don't see any new striking licenses on the horizon being drafted by the FSF.
Make: Ok. I don't personally need many changes in Make. In fact I think it is the kind of tool that should not change too much.
GCC: The last release was like 6 days ago: https://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/
I would not call that "not being maintained".
Similar thing for GNU tls.
I don't consider that these tools are not important, I'm just saying that the importance is small when compared to what the FSF does. Plenty of other organizations/businesses support and develop free software, few support the legal/licence/philosophy side.
> I'll believe it when I see it. We have become too dependent on core components that are not being properly maintained, lack funding or both. [...] more funding is put towards critical GNU components (instead of new bloated projects).
The GNU Project is a separate entity from the FSF. The FSF provides infrastructure and does provide fundraising / direct funds for certain projects, but otherwise, GNU projects are maintained by individuals with no connection to the FSF. To offer you program to GNU, you send it to GNU volunteers for evaluation (I am one of two active evaluators), after which it is sent directly to rms for final determination. The FSF is involved only if we need to get the sysadmins involved for something.
If you support a GNU package, donate directly to that project (or via the FSF's fundraising page, if applicable).
> I still support the idea of Libre / Free Software, just not the religion and church that popped up around it.
You criticize the FSF for "making compromises", and then criticize them for sticking hard to their principles.
I disagree that they are compromising on their principles.
There are a lot of examples, but the most notable is the endorsement / promotion of the X60 / X200 with non-free EC firmware and a dial-up modem that requires non-free software to work.
While not a freedom issue, they endorsed PureOS even though it uses a Debian kernel (linux-libre Vs. Debian kernel, not going to get into that here) while another distro was denied for that specific thing.
> endorsement / promotion of the X60 [...] with non-free EC firmware and a dial-up modem that requires non-free software to work
Sorry, I may need a source on this. My X60 boots perfectly without any non-free firmware, and everything works (except the wireless card I swapped in, I don't know if also the original needed them). I'm asking for a source because I would like to understand how they endorsed it. If it boots without problems and you need an external dongle to get wifi I don't see a problem with that, from a freedom standpoint.
Really, I'm not trying to be a contrarian, just trying to better understand where my money is going.
> What is the boundary, in digital devices, between hardware and software? It follows from the definitions. Software is the operational part of a device that can be copied and changed in a computer; hardware is the operational part that can't be. This is the right way to make the distinction because it relates to the practical consequences.
> There is a gray area between hardware and software that contains firmware that can be upgraded or replaced, but is not meant ever to be upgraded or replaced once the product is sold.
Debian's kernel is deblobbed and contains only free software. If you can find an example contrary to this, it is a bug.
The poster on the thread you linked is making the argument that free software shouldn't be looking for non-free firmware, even when it isn't installed. That's... interesting and not something I've ever heard complained about.
The FSF doesn't endorse Debian because of the non-free repository which, while not officially a part of Debian, they consider a Debian. If you install only the "main" repository you will get only free software. The default install only contains the "main" repository.
It has long been the case that FSF-endorsed distros could not use the Debian kernel, even though it contains only free software.
It had always been my understanding that the intention is that the messages the Debian kernel displays looks like an error
message suggesting that the module should have been present. Even if
it looks less like an error, and is more matter-of-factly "such and
such functionality is disabled because nonfree.bin could not be
loaded"; reading between the lines, that sounds a lot like "install
nonfree.bin for that functionality".
However, following the more recent discussion, particularly the comments of Alexandre Oliva (the Linux-libre maintainer), I'm not so sure. I hadn't realized that many of the extreme deblobbing measures (replacing firmare filenames with "/* DEBLOBBED /") in Linux-libre were because it must not load non-free blobs even on distros that are hostile to that goal. On FSF-endorsed distros that are not hostile to that goal, what measures are* necessary?
Ironically, many GNU manuals are included in the non-free sections because Debian considers the GNU FDL non-free because it allows invariant sections - sections that cannot be changed.
> I stopped supporting the Free Software Foundation once they starting making compromises in their mission
They can't win. Many people don't fully support them because they do stick to the principles of free software rather than the weaker concept of "open source". Now you criticise them of making compromises.
No one can win anything since life is a losing battle. I am still going to call out the FSF when they make critical or hypocritical compromises, in the case of pushing, making exceptions for, promoting or explaining away non-libre software in the case of components that can easily be changed. I know lots of people don't support them because, in their view, they don't make any/enough compromises (that is the OSI / Linux Foundation's job). I would like to live in a world where we have full control over the tools that we use and making compromises won't get us there.
We still continue to lose control of our tools because of the compromises we make or because some of us are tone deaf to the fact we need control over the various components in our computers (my favorite arguments : it's too complicated, not smart enough, because reasons...). The reason we are here is because not enough people care until it is too late, infrastructure fails, a new trendy security issue has been named or we find out that component X is running software that does something we don't like. The first step is education and getting enough people demanding hardware/software that makes no compromises on user control and freedom.
Well it's quite honestly bizarre that you would stop supporting the FSF. I don't think there is any other organisation in the world that is actively promoting what you value. As far as I know the FSF has never made compromises about its ultimate goals.
> This is money that could have been better spent to fund something more useful. I stopped supporting the Free Software Foundation once they starting making compromises in their mission...
So who do you give your support since the FSF is inadequate in your opinion?
> Increase innovation and the number of new projects in high priority areas of free software development, including the GNU Project;
I'll believe it when I see it. We have become too dependent on core components that are not being properly maintained, lack funding or both. This won't solve the funding issue if these funds are squandered on a bunch of new projects and management.
I won't give another dime to the FSF until management changes, campaigns actually does something engaging with the community and more funding is put towards critical GNU components (instead of new bloated projects). I still support the idea of Libre / Free Software, just not the religion and church that popped up around it. I'd like to see an organization that advocates for Free Software and is consistent in their mission (Hint : OSI and the Linux Foundation are not a fit).