Re: Guix (and Guile's) promise, and how to (hopefully) get there

[Efraim Flashner <efraim@flashner.co.il>]

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On Sun, Oct 27, 2024 at 06:22:46PM -0400, Suhail Singh wrote:
> "Thompson, David" <dthompson2@worcester.edu> writes:
> 
> > Changing GNU/FSF from the inside has been a losing strategy for at
> > least a decade, as a conservative estimate. Nothing has meaningfully
> > changed for the better and the situation continues to deteriorate both
> > socially and infrastructurally.
> 
> Since I am unaware, for my awareness (and the awareness of others in a
> similar situation), could you please describe what specific attempts at
> social and infrastructure changes were attempted, but were unsuccessful?
> 
> > Juli did a great job describing why in an earlier message.
> 
> Perhaps Juliana's message made sense to those already aware.  To those
> unaware, such as myself, what I got was that FSF made some "bad
> political move" and said move seems to have resulted in FSF being
> considered toxic by some people - to the point where simple association
> with it or GNU is sufficient to cause discomfort.
> 
> If everyone whose opinion is relevant (I am not a committer, so perhaps
> I am intruding) is already aware of what's being discussed above, please
> ignore my message.  However, I am having difficulty forming an informed
> opinion based on the details that have been shared so far.

Some of the problems are that it's been the same problems for years. As
David Thompson said, and others too, trying to reform the FSF from and
the GNU project from the inside has been a losing battle for at least 10
years now. Because it's been so long people normally just hint at it,
since it always leads to strong feelings.

The problem is RMS.  The incident Juliana is referring to is when he
appointed himself back onto the board of the FSF a few years ago.

To phrase it diplomatically, it is not his Free Software positions that
give people pause. I will not try to list or go into detail the
different reasons people don't want to associate with him, but I will be
explicit that it is not because of his stance on Free Software.

If you (or others!) have questions I can try to answer them off-list.

-- 
Efraim Flashner   <efraim@flashner.co.il>   רנשלפ םירפא
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