1. He moved into politics (which is in my HO, one of the failure points of a lot of tech people. Everyone has a right to an opinion, but certain people have more talent at politics than others, and certain people have more talents at code than others).
He's a great programmer, and could have pushed the FSF community directly by committing and improving code. And even if he can't code anymore, he could have focused on fund-raising/raising awareness in winnable (as in, not facebook)/worthwhile (as in, not HURD) battles, where others would benefit also.
Like a free Flash or free CAD (which are "FSF High priority projects", though practically dead).
What new coding projects were they involved in since HURD started (OK. Replicant.)?
And how did his political rants help the FSF (and the Free Software movement as a whole) lately?
>I guess you never heard of Eben Moglen (who's a lawyer and does great work with advocacy and public speeches), or Bradley Kuhn from FSF Europe.
You say this as if to refute them, but that's exactly the parent's point. Nobody, or few, have heard of those people.
It's all Stallman all the time.
It's not about them existing (nobody doubted that the FSF has somebody that's 2nd in command) -- it's about them getting the same spotlight.
>I'd say: GPLv3, Libreboot (fork of Coreboot).
Yeah, great successes both.
>Did you know who'd gonna take over Microsoft or Apple beforehand? No.
For one, we kind of do. Cook's name was referred to as the possible successor for years. And in Micosoft there are 3-6 senior executives that everybody expected to succeed Gates and then Ballmer, and one of them eventually did. Besides, those are for profit companies. With communities, organizations it should be even more transparent.
> Didn't libreboot start outside the FSF, then come inside, and is now trying to get out?
Yup, drama, long story. The question was though:
> What new coding projects were they involved in since HURD started (OK. Replicant.)?
Looking at the original question: former packages qualify, as long as they're new. When does this 'new' qualify though? Perhaps not here because of Libreboot being based on Coreboot.
As soon as a project joins GNU though, it becomes "GNU Name" and it is officially a new project.
Development of Hurd was started in 1990. So we're looking at least from 1991. A list of current GNU packages is available at [1] and [2]. Of note, I suppose GNOME qualifies.
>And how did his political rants help the FSF (and the Free Software movement as a whole) lately?
It's ridiculous. His political statements at rms.org are clearly separated from the FSF stuff. The guy is free to think what he like, practice dance or whatever would please him. And actually his political views are quite coherent with the political ideology of the Free Software movement. And in the same time you cannot remove the fact that he actually created the FSF and GPL.
>He doesn't let the FSF be larger than him. Who's their 2nd in command?
I read the FSF news and information bulletins since something 2016, I don't remind receiving things "signed by RMS". Do you really think that this guy is obsessed by being the number 1 and that there is a number 2? This is a non-profit organisation, with people working for a cause, not a tyrannical political party with people fighting for power.
I don't actually know who the second-in-command (if there is such a position, the FSF seems very flat) is. But the first-in-command is John Sullivan and has been for like, ten years? A long time at least.
I don't think anyone will ever replace rms. You can't necessarily teach vision like he has. Honestly, maybe nobody will replace rms because free software will be illegal in the surveillance dystopia of the future. Everything else in The Right to Read has born out. But, the management of the FSF has been out of his hands for a long time. He's just the theorist; a role that's utterly critical, but not business-critical. When rms dies, it'll be like Marx dying.
I have no idea what computing will look like in 30 years but I think the fundamental premise of the FSF is that software is an extension of thought, so the sanctity of your software is the sanctity of your mind and should be regarded as such. That is an easy thing to continue on.
The thing is, the world 30 years from now doesn't need RMS.
(I realize that sounds callous, but my long-term partner split from me today and I'm a little drunk, so spare me :p )
What the world in the short-term and 30 years from now needs is someone new to think about and develop philosophies around today's software freedom concerns.
What's that look like? I dunno, I'm not that thinker.
What RMS did was profound and important for that time in history. The last few years, everything he's written seems goofy and childish. What we need is an RMS for the modern era, i.e. a significant thinker who can speak to the next 20 years of people.
Sad to say, like most nonprofits, there's no succession plan.
Eben Moglen sounds like a formidable advocate. Maybe a bit old too, but right now, he is a synthesis monster. While Stallman may have vision, Moglen has crystal clarity of expression.
I don't pay much attention to Stallman for a while now, because I sense I feel I have got enough from his Free Software, Free Society essays —which I recommend to any who aren't familiar with Free Software.
Moglen however still manages to surprise me with new stuff —the last one being, it is now too late to build the [free] network we want. We can only fight the [centralised, spying] network we don't want, and we have less than 10 years.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T4bZ5R-MH8
> The last few years, everything he's written seems goofy and childish.
What people don't seem to realize (also in Torvalds discussions) is that people simply wrote like that on the Internet up to around 2005-2008.
These people also produced most of the software that the millenials are now churning around or write middleware for.
What I find disturbing is the trend that millenials spend more time learning how to write glibly, appear mature on the Internet and in general sell themselves instead of writing truly new software.
[None of this is directed at you, I just used your comment for context.]
There's really nothing wrong with making a concerted effort to be more polite or accepting on the internet or anywhere else for that matter. Framing wanting to have good self-presentation and wanting to be a great coder as mutually exclusive is clearly disingenuous.
> The last few years, everything he's written seems goofy and childish
This is you growing older and wiser, and his old rhetoric being outdated (someone like Eben Moglen, or even Edward Snowden is more up2date). You'll find the same to be true in other idealistic writings or speeches.
1. He moved into politics (which is in my HO, one of the failure points of a lot of tech people. Everyone has a right to an opinion, but certain people have more talent at politics than others, and certain people have more talents at code than others).
He's a great programmer, and could have pushed the FSF community directly by committing and improving code. And even if he can't code anymore, he could have focused on fund-raising/raising awareness in winnable (as in, not facebook)/worthwhile (as in, not HURD) battles, where others would benefit also.
Like a free Flash or free CAD (which are "FSF High priority projects", though practically dead).
What new coding projects were they involved in since HURD started (OK. Replicant.)?
And how did his political rants help the FSF (and the Free Software movement as a whole) lately?
2. He doesn't let the FSF be larger than him.
Who's their 2nd in command?
Who'll take over after he passes on?
What will the FSF look like in 30 years?