Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Posted Sep 20, 2023 9:00 UTC (Wed) by vadim (subscriber, #35271)In reply to: Forty years of GNU by rsidd
Parent article: Forty years of GNU
My understanding is that way back, GNU software was extremely relevant. It competed with what you'd get from a commercial Unix, and was free of charge, modifiable and much more functional than what you paid $$$ for. It wasn't just there, but was better in every significant respect. And when Linux showed up it was there to provide a good core.
Today things seem to have stagnated. Where's the GNU answer to PowerShell, or to VS Code? Why isn't GNU jumping on the "redo everything in Rust" bandwagon and producing their own, GPL licensed versions? Because it seems to me that other people are now doing this "redo this software better" thing GNU did back in the day, but mostly without the GPL. And GNU should find this a very concerning development.
Posted Sep 20, 2023 14:29 UTC (Wed)
by jzb (editor, #7867)
[Link] (4 responses)
Is a question that rarely has an answer, or at least one that will appeal to a larger audience. I have, somewhat uncharitably, described the FSF as "the Party of Gno" -- that is, if there's a type of computing or tool that doesn't have a free analog, don't do it. Maybe, someday, there will be a free version, maybe not. But if not, don't use a proprietary version in the meantime.
There's no urgency or feeling that the FSF/GNU needs to meet users where they are: Those users should just *not do* anything that isn't free software.
There's also a pretty big crossover, in my observation, is that folks who strongly identify with the FSF are usually fine if things don't "advance." They're not agitating for VS Code or PowerShell or whatever. GNU Emacs is enough for everybody, right? I'm being slightly facetious but if you look at the alternatives proposed by the FSF's "Defective by Design" campaign, for instance, they're mostly "worse" by any objective measure that's not software freedom.
But if that's the thing you care about most *and* you happen to already be comfortable and happy with what a lot of folks would now see as "retro" computing, then it works out OK. To be candid, a lot of technology could've come to a complete standstill about 2008 and I'd have been OK with it excepting storage, RAM, and home internet speeds... My family, however, not so much.
If you don't see software purely as an "ethical" issue, though, this retro computing for the sake of free software falls flat pretty quickly. Most of the people in my family and social circles outside tech just do not care enough about these issues to change their habits or refuse a better whatever because it doesn't meet ethical standards they don't hold.
All that to say: Yes, it has stagnated. The FSF starts from a position that isn't held by most people and seems uninterested in really reaching them.
Posted Sep 20, 2023 15:06 UTC (Wed)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link] (3 responses)
There's stagnation in some software goals of the free software movement. Not sure it's fair to blame this on FSF, saying FSF has stagnated. (With VSCodium, we already have a free VSCode, right?)
I take your point about FSF's message being ineffective with a certain (large) category of people. But FSF doesn't have a monopoly on spreading messages. We can all adapt the message and spread it in new ways that we think will make sense for other audiences.
Posted Sep 20, 2023 19:33 UTC (Wed)
by vadim (subscriber, #35271)
[Link]
And VScodium isn't the preferred approach by the FSF's standards because it's MIT licensed, not GPL.
Posted Sep 21, 2023 17:13 UTC (Thu)
by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75)
[Link]
I think this is where things have fallen down. The FSF started as much as a developer of free software as an advocate. That gave it a lot of influence, both by proving it was possible to write great free software and by making tools other people wanted to use. It was important to have your new tool play nicely with GNU, which often convinced people to use the FSF-preferred licenses even when they weren't compelled to. Over time, though, FSF has gradually moved out of writing software. Now they're mostly an advocacy organization, with a secondary role as home for projects developed elsewhere and gifted to them for one reason or another. What was the last great piece of software that was written primarily by people from FSF?
That failure to produce its own software anymore has cut into FSF's moral position as an advocate of free software. People tend to respect and respond to the free software developers who write the most and best new stuff. Unfortunately, a lot of that has now been taken over by big companies who release "free software" mostly for their own purposes and don't really want to cede control to users. Some of that is a response to free software's success and the fact software as a whole takes much bigger teams to produce than it did back in GNU's heyday. Whatever the cause, it means FSF has lost a lot of its influence. Instead of the leading light of free software, it's mostly a bystander making less and less relevant criticisms of the real leaders' choices.
Posted Sep 22, 2023 6:27 UTC (Fri)
by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648)
[Link]
https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell
Not a lot makes sense in the most you replied to.
Posted Sep 23, 2023 11:34 UTC (Sat)
by anton (subscriber, #25547)
[Link]
In a way, the fact that large parts of PowerShell and VS Code are free software can be taken as success of free software. One may wonder whether this is a case of Microsoft doing the Embrace part of its Embrace-Extend-Extinguish strategy, but those of us who value free software can always stick with the released parts (if they care about that software at all; I am much too invested in bash and Emacs for that).
Likewise, if the redone-in-Rust software is free, why would GNU want to rewrite that? Sure, GPL (if enforced) would help against such software being taken proprietary, but proprietary extensions can be countered by copylefted extensions when the proprietary extension happens. And that would be a more effective use of limited resources.
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
"Please write free software to do these jobs"
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Where's the GNU answer to PowerShell, or to VS Code?
According to Wikipedia PowerShell is MIT licensed "(but the Windows component remains proprietary)", and Code-OSS and VSCodium is MIT-licensed, too. I.e., free software licenses. That's good enough. If you want a free version of "the Windows component" of PowerShell or the difference between VSCodium and VS Code, yes, AFAIK there is no GNU project for that. Apparently nobody has done that on their own and put it under the GNU umbrella, and GNU apparently spends its own limited resources on other projects.