The 2023 FSF Free Software Awards

Posted May 6, 2024 17:36 UTC (Mon) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523)
In reply to: The 2023 FSF Free Software Awards by atnot
Parent article: The 2023 FSF Free Software Awards

> That is not to diminish the work of the people honored of course, I'm sure it's great.
But you do by stating incorrectly that they are detached from the FOSS landscape.

Bruno has been a major developer to GLIBC for more than 25 years and contributed also to many other Free Sofware projects, like gettext, common lisp, autotools, PARI/GP, etc.
For some examples, looks at http://codesearch.debian.net/search?literal=1&perpkg=...

His works is as relevant today than 25 years ago. He fully deserve this award.

The 2023 FSF Free Software Awards

Posted May 6, 2024 20:00 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

And the folk from code.gouv.fr too. I've spent many hours talking with them this past year to get their advice for how other countries can copy their work.

The French government serves 68 million people and that team has got the government developing free software, using it, publishing catalogues that can be re-used by other countries, providing support, and they contribute to the BlueHats movement that organises users groups so that different administrations can discuss the use of free software.

The catalogues ( https://code.gouv.fr/sill ) are excellent because when you look at a software package it tells you who else is using it, so you can ask for advice or think about co-financing development of a feature, etc. (a government account is needed to see that part of the data)

The 2023 FSF Free Software Awards

Posted May 6, 2024 20:16 UTC (Mon) by atnot (subscriber, #124910) [Link] (4 responses)

I don't mean that the contributors are detached from the FOSS world to be clear, but that the FSF is. I don't have any especific gripe with the FSF handing out a GNU contributor award at all and the awardees definitely do deserve it.

I just find it very emblematic of the general sad state of the FSF and their refusal to accept their declining relevance or to do anything about it, that's all.

The 2023 FSF Free Software Awards

Posted May 7, 2024 9:47 UTC (Tue) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (3 responses)

If you look at the reasons for the awards, I'd agree; Mission logiciels libres clearly advances the Free Software cause as a whole. But Gnulib is only relevant within the FSF bubble, and Parabolic looks to be the same as the older project yt-dlp, just under different licensing terms.

This is, BTW, not to say that the people are undeserving - Bruno clearly is - just that the projects chosen are a bit weird as exemplars of why these people are awesome.

The 2023 FSF Free Software Awards

Posted May 7, 2024 11:52 UTC (Tue) by numgmt (guest, #167446) [Link]

Parabolic is a frontend for yt-dlp, and it's licensed under MIT instead of the Unlicense. Both are pushover licenses.

The benefit of Parabolic is that you can use it without learning yt-dlp's command-line options.

The 2023 FSF Free Software Awards

Posted May 7, 2024 12:41 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (1 responses)

I think the "outstanding new free software contributor" award is a difficult category to judge. It's almost inevitable that the winner will be someone we've never heard of. And with their first contributions it's unlikely they'll have created something that amazes everyone.

But there are exceptions. In 2021 the award went to Alyssa Rosenzweig, who reverse engineered the Mali GPU's of some common Arm boards and wrote free drivers. And then it seems she went on to reverse engineer a bunch of other Apple GPUs to produce more free drivers. That's amazing for anyone, particularly a new contributor. https://www.fsf.org/news/free-software-awards-winners-ann...

I'm also quite happy to happy to hear about Parabolic. I was always concerned about what happens if yt-dlp stops being maintained or stops working for whatever reason.

The 2023 FSF Free Software Awards

Posted May 7, 2024 14:47 UTC (Tue) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

If your peer comment by numgmt is accurate, then if yt-dlp stops working, so does Parabolic (it's a nice frontend for yt-dlp, not an independent implementation of the needed protocols).

And yes, the judging process is hard for all three of the awards; but if you step backwards and write the press release, only one of the three awards is one that I could explain to someone who is curious about what Free Software and the FSF are all about (the code.gouv.fr one). The other two are only relevant if you're already convinced that the FSF's philosophical positions are right; that's a bad position for the organisation as a whole to be in, since it means that these awards aren't great for bringing in new people to the movement.