Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project known by many in the open source worlds as rms, is not the sort of person you'd expect to endorse a product. But Stallman and the FSF have formed a partnership of sorts with Crowd Supply, a crowdfunding company that has been largely focused on open source hardware and software projects.
Crowd Supply is best known for launching the Librem laptop (a privacy-focused computer built by Purism) and the Novena (an open-hardware "laptop" designed by Andrew "bunnie" Huang and Sean "xobs" Cross). Based in Portland, Oregon, the company was founded by Joshua Lifton, a Ph D alumnus of MIT Media Lab and the former head of engineering at Puppet Labs. In addition to providing product designers with a crowdfunding platform, Crowd Supply also provides them with long-term sales, marketing, and fulfillment services.
The partnership with FSF was a natural fit, Lifton said in a statement on the arrangement. "The lines between hardware and software are blurring," Lifton explained. "It only makes sense to consider them jointly rather than separately."
Is this RMS's version of selling-out?
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Sunday July 26 2015, @12:09AM
rms doesn't sell out so much as ask his assistants what the "in" thing is right now. Like Javascript or crowdsourcing. Then finds the project that most closely matches his own opinions and endorses its use and maintenance.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday July 26 2015, @02:14AM
They should crowdfund RMS some limburger cheese to help wean him off of his nasty toejam habit.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Lagg on Sunday July 26 2015, @03:13AM
I don't know if it's a habit for him at this point so much as a dependency. It might be his only source of calcium! Have some heart for fucks sake!
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2) by crutchy on Sunday July 26 2015, @08:09AM
there's an apt for that!
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 26 2015, @12:46AM
But please call it a GNU/sellout
(Score: 5, Informative) by jmorris on Sunday July 26 2015, @01:22AM
Of course RMS is not selling out. RMS and GNU have always endorsed the idea of selling things, even software. GNU itself sells software and manuals. So long as you aren't selling things with locks on them they are fine with making a living selling stuff.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday July 26 2015, @02:22AM
I guess it's too soon for GNU/Realtor, then...
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Informative) by jmorris on Sunday July 26 2015, @08:03AM
Ok, should have been more clear. Even locks are usually OK so long as it is the owner who has the keys and not the homebuilder. So unless there is other homebuilder/HOA lock in, RMS would be ok with homes having keys if the buyer gets ALL of them. He would probably object to common tricks like deeds carefully excluding a one foot barrier around the lot so you have to buy access to cross it, merge two lots in the future, etc. Lots of evil in the homebuilder and realty business.
Although he does get picky and goes off the rails even in what should be clear cases... the users of a timeshare system don't own it but he disapproves of the wheel group in UNIX on the grounds it is used to allow the admins to wield power over the other users. Which is kinda the point and why admins are hired in the first place; keeping a system up and available despite the best efforts of the users.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday July 26 2015, @01:32PM
Tho I was being a smartass, consequently you bring up some good points!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday July 26 2015, @06:08PM
Yeah, I remember when I heard the first time about "wheel" without knowing what it was, except that it was somehow related to permissions. Sitting on a Linux system, of course my first instinct was to try man wheel which indeed turned up a man page. But instead of explaining what wheel is, it contained a rant about how evil it is. I was no wiser after reading it.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by deimios on Sunday July 26 2015, @08:18AM
It's not RMS, it's rms. http://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/mundane-name/ [geekz.co.uk]
(Score: 1) by jdavidb on Sunday July 26 2015, @01:47AM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 26 2015, @04:41AM
From TFA:
For its part, FSF is formally endorsing Crowd Supply as its preferred crowdfunding platform for free software and open (or "Libre") hardware projects, and it will steer developers of hardware and software projects to Crowd Supply when they are looking to fund or sell their own work (or purchase products themselves).
emphasis added. Note: not "a crowdfunding platform for free software."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 26 2015, @04:01AM
Phoenix666, thanks for taking the time to be an editor, but please stop with these comments you are adding to the summaries you post. It is annoying, and worse, it is damaging to the discussion which follows.
As evidence, see everybody responding to your flame bait comment about RMS selling out rather than the actual content of the submission-- a crowd funding site that apparently respects the freedoms of it users.
I would have loved to have seen a discussion on the story-- what it is about Crowd Supply that lead the FSF to this endorsement? But, you completely derailed that discussion before it could even get started.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Sunday July 26 2015, @04:21PM
Hear, hear!
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Sunday July 26 2015, @04:29PM
Oops. Accidentally submitted my last post before finishing...
Let the community decide how to discuss the article. I know you already stated that you put in an opinion to stimulate a discussion: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=8548&cid=212530#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
Though I have another thought: What if an opinion wasn't given? Would the discussion be as "lively? Or would we see less comments?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Sunday July 26 2015, @04:59PM
I'm not an editor, I only submit articles. Those I choose to submit are those which I think Soylent might find interesting. The manner in which I do that, ie. an excerpt representative of the article in blockquote tags and a quip from me, is consistent with time-honored practice from the early days of Slashdot through to now. That same heritage can be noted in the form of the editor's quip, "from the the-times-they-are-a-changin' dept." on this article. My quips can be flippant, but they are never intentionally inflammatory. And I'm not going to stop being who I am or suppress my natural insouciance and irreverance because they discomfit you.
There are at least a few remedies available to you. If you want just-the-facts-ma'am information, excise media outlets and community sites like this one from your reading material and limit yourself to whitepapers, scientific journals, and government reports. If you want headlines with no quips as distasteful as you find mine, then RSS is for you. If you generally like Soylent and it's specifically my submissions you dislike, then that's a simple solution: dilute my submissions by submitting your own. I'll be happy to not drop the daily dozen in the hopper I do, and I'd be even happier to learn of new article sources I don't know about through the submissions of other Soylentils.
I submit as much as I do because I see the queue grow so terribly short and then the editors start to submit because no one else is, essentially doing double-duty; I am very mindful of the editor's cry for help this spring (LaminatorX's, wasn't it?) that he was burning out and needed help. I did the editor training on IRC with the guys but the latest cohort of editors completed it and were certified before I was, so I decided to mind the submission queue instead and step in when the nagger (ie., fewer than 20 submissions in the queue) appeared. I value the community and don't want to see it fail because the core developers and editors who make it work burn out and drop out.
There may also be a bit of a difference here in how you see the community versus how I do. Perhaps you see it as a purely factual, technical discussion forum where, say, deep experts on Ruby can dispassionately ponder the pro's and con's of its latest iteration. I see it as a discussion site, where nerds and geeks from many stripes and definitions submit and discuss a broad sweep of topics, mainly technical, scientific, and geeky but with a handful of general interest articles thrown in; it's a motley crew of iconoclasts and social misfits, but they're all smart and in the melange of their social dysfunction and awkwardness brilliant insights, useful information, and sublime moments often appear. To me it's a 21st Century agora, and you get what you get and you don't get upset.
So as you began with a polite request for me to stop commenting, so let me conclude with a polite request for you to stop criticizing and start building. If you took that pile of rocks you've been throwing you could have built an entire new wing on the site with them.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Wednesday July 29 2015, @11:58AM
Hear, hear.
I have been aware of this idea that the submitter's quips/opinions should be kept out of submissions. I think I could only agree with a requirement like that in situations where there could be any confusion between fact and opinion, or maybe where the whole tone & approach of the submission is adversely affected.
It's probably one of the reasons I don't submit as much as I should, because it goes against my natural style.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 26 2015, @07:59AM
Where is the FSF news release saying this is true? I don't see any.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 26 2015, @08:35AM
this is the joint press release:
https://www.crowdsupply.com/free-software-foundation-endorses-crowd-supply-for-respecting-users-software-freedom [crowdsupply.com]