Many FSF Priority Projects Still Not Progressing

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Many FSF Priority Projects Still Not Progressing

Last October I wrote about the sad state of the Free Software Foundation's high priority projects... Most of the projects are basically not going anywhere. Many of them at the time were not really advancing in their goals, haven't had releases in a while, or coding hasn't even started. It's been more than a half-year and still there's no significant work towards clearing many of projects from the FSF list...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTA5MDk

[XorEaxEax]

*Yawn*, here Micheal goes again. This is a list of projects FSF would *like* to see free software alternatives for, not projects FSF is working on, and they list alternatives as they find them. Of these projects I only know of Gnash and Coreboot which has actually been supported by FSF.

It's a wish-list trying to put focus on areas where open source alternatives would be appreciated, Micheal tries to turn this into some failure of FSF which I can only assume stems from his anti-FSF/anti-GPL bias.

FSF's main projects are things like GCC, GNU userland, and of course the GPL licence. Yes, they are very successful. But hey, let's focus on areas FSF lists as lacking in open source alternatives and try to paint these areas that are lacking as a failure of FSF (because of course THEY must provide open source alternatives to everything proprietary in use out there, else they are failing....wtf!?)

F***ing travesty of an article. Just like the first one. Yes, we know Micheal, you don't like GPL, you like permissive licencing, this not only shows in 'articles' like this but also spills over into your biased reporting of llvm/clang vs GCC.

But hey, when will we see the article on for example how 'FreeBSD projects not progressing' while listing things from http://wiki.freebsd.org/IdeasPage#Fr...2ideas.22_List and pointing out how many of them are 'active as a bumper car from Chernobyl'. Or any of hundreds of other open source wish-lists, it's hardly as if only FSF have wished for PowerVR drivers, but you hold FSF responsible for them not materializing??? Glad I never opted for premium membership here with smearing articles like this.

[Del_]

Actually, I think you are being too harsh

I am thinking of a couple of projects I have been following rather closely.

One is Kdenlive, and I believe it is ready for prime time in it's current version. It has already left the free offerings from Microsoft and Apple in the dust, and gives commericial offerings a run for the money. With this article series: http://opensource.com/life/11/11/introduction-kdenlive
just about anybody can do great videoeditiing. The speed of development is also outstanding.

The other project is OpenWrt, which brings drivers and full linux support to new network routers just about every month. It seems to have a vibrant and growing community. I run openwrt on all my routers, and have done so for years. It simply is a fantastic linux distribution. Even Broadcom seems to open up development on their network hardware these days. The fun part is how Atheros have taken market from Broadcom in this segment by providing open drivers, the first community commit to ath9k was from openwrt.

On the google earth thing, I claim that openstreetmap already compares well with google maps, which is a fantastic achievement. KDE's Marble is worth a look for a more complete offering. The development is amazing, openstreetmap is improving at a rapid pace.

With regards to skype, KDE's Telepathy now supports videcalls. I call that a substantial step towards the goal.

http://gkiagia.wordpress.com/2012/03/29/video-calls-in-kde-telepathy/

[allquixotic]

*Yawn*, here Micheal goes again. This is a list of projects FSF would *like* to see free software alternatives for, not projects FSF is working on, and they list alternatives as they find them. Of these projects I only know of Gnash and Coreboot which has actually been supported by FSF.

It's a wish-list trying to put focus on areas where open source alternatives would be appreciated, Micheal tries to turn this into some failure of FSF which I can only assume stems from his anti-FSF/anti-GPL bias.

FSF's main projects are things like GCC, GNU userland, and of course the GPL licence. Yes, they are very successful. But hey, let's focus on areas FSF lists as lacking in open source alternatives and try to paint these areas that are lacking as a failure of FSF (because of course THEY must provide open source alternatives to everything proprietary in use out there, else they are failing....wtf!?)

F***ing travesty of an article. Just like the first one. Yes, we know Micheal, you don't like GPL, you like permissive licencing, this not only shows in 'articles' like this but also spills over into your biased reporting of llvm/clang vs GCC.

But hey, when will we see the article on for example how 'FreeBSD projects not progressing' while listing things from http://wiki.freebsd.org/IdeasPage#Fr...2ideas.22_List and pointing out how many of them are 'active as a bumper car from Chernobyl'. Or any of hundreds of other open source wish-lists, it's hardly as if only FSF have wished for PowerVR drivers, but you hold FSF responsible for them not materializing??? Glad I never opted for premium membership here with smearing articles like this.

+1000. I am totally behind you on this. You said what I wanted to say in harsher words than I myself could write. Well done!

What Michael and many others don't realize is that the Open Source / permissive license camp doesn't have to be at odds with the Free Software / copyleft license camp. The two movements are not incompatible from a practical perspective, and the engineering efforts of both "camps" can be combined together to produce software that is both free software and open source. I mean, GCC and the Linux kernel, two copyleft-licensed projects, can be of enormous benefit to Open Source "purists", even if they otherwise prefer permissive licenses. LLVM, Mesa, X.Org, etc. can be of enormous benefit to Free Software "purists", who otherwise prefer copyleft licenses. By building up an ecosystem of software licensed under "whatever" license (as long as it's both free and open source), the goals of both movements are furthered.

What really irritates me is when people like Michael feel the need to make jabs at those who they see as their "opposition", for no better reason than to try to push their own ideology on others. It's even more damning because the diction and presentation of Michael's work makes it appear as if it's a news article, presenting well-researched journalism and facts. But the hidden agenda behind the scenes is as transparent as Fox News.

Like XorEaxEax said, if you're going to write an article like this, then at least talk about other projects' wish lists and how well they're materializing. How's LLVM coming on compiling the Linux kernel with all the drivers enabled? "Sad" (your typical description of free software projects) -- right? How's FreeBSD coming on KMS support? "Sad" -- right? How's Phoronix Fucking Test Suite coming on having a usable GUI rather than having to guess at test names? Sad -- right? Right.

This "article" is needlessly inflammatory and provocative. I think you totally misunderstand the purpose of the FSF High Priority Projects list, or are intentionally misunderstanding it just so that you can write an opinion piece against the FSF, thinly veiled as a status report on their wishlist projects.

Instead, someone who is serious about furthering the goals of the FOSS movement (important: free and open source) would support both the FSF and the open source camps' efforts. Instead of saying that the FSF isn't making any progress, instead showcase the projects that are making progress, and tell people how they can contribute to making some of the less-active projects more successful. And then you can do this for other organizations' wishlists, and become a positive force, rather than a needless detractor.

[curaga]

This prompted me to check how sipwitch was doing. Sadly, last commit 8 months ago.

[89c51]

the fact is as long as the FSF or any other organization doesnt put money (pay devs) in these projects things are going to be moving slowly or not at all.

you don't get things done by publicity alone or if you declare something as "priority"

and to add to that fragmentation is another big problem in open source but thats how it works

[siride]

Maybe Michael misunderstood the point of the list, but the broader picture is pretty fucking pathetic. The only successful FLOSS projects are ones with organization or corporate backing. The fact of the matter is, having weekend coders contribute to projects simply not going to produce quality, competitive software. The licenses are great, as is the idea of providing commodity software at zero to no cost. However, the proprietary world is eating the OSS world's lunch and I don't foresee that changing unless the community is willing to embrace this new concept called capitalism and to come to understand that the pseudo-anarchist model does not work and will never work.

[89c51]

Why do we even need Gnash now? Why don't we let that fucking piece of shit called Flash die already? We have HTML5 now. FFS people.

we need flash because of pornography

[XorEaxEax]

You said what I wanted to say in harsher words than I myself could write.!

Well to be perfectly honest I think much of the harshness comes from me being hung-over today.

Instead, someone who is serious about furthering the goals of the FOSS movement (important: free and open source) would support both the FSF and the open source camps' efforts.

Well I don't really care that Micheal doesn't like FSF, what pisses me off are when he consciously tries to misrepresent them in order to make them look bad. It's the worst kind of shit I'd only expect from some Microsoft-pro BS site, but then again Micheal removed the 'focusing on Linux' part from the site banner so maybe this is all part of some ugly ass transition... It's obvious that he is trying hard to paint a picture of FSF failing in open source, which I can only assume is supposed to reflect on the GPL. Wasn't there an Apple employee who was moderator here a while back? Yeah, I know, tinfoil hat and all but 'articles' like these really shows not only a strong bias but a penchant for outright distorting the truth in order to futher some f***ing agenda.

It's extra sad because I find that the technical articles (like the benchmarks) have recently improved in quality what with much better disclosure on test conditions.

[XorEaxEax]

Maybe Michael misunderstood the point of the list, but the broader picture is pretty fucking pathetic. The only successful FLOSS projects are ones with organization or corporate backing.

Software I use daily on my machine are (from the top of my hung-over head):

Inkscape, Gimp, Blender, MyPaint, x264, mplayer, flac, deadbeef, thunar, VP8, GCC, Transmission, openbox, tint2, rxvt-unicode, gedit, shotwell, 7-zip, gsopcast, Firefox, Virtualbox and likely tons of other shit I can't think of right now.

Many of these are backed by corporations/organizations, Blender, GCC, VP8, Firefox and Virtualbox but really there are tons of useful FLOSS projects which doesn't have any corporate or organizational backing, like Gimp, Inkscape ,Mypaint, x264, MPlayer, Shotwell, 7-zip which are all amongst those I listed and which are indeed great and 'successful'. And these are just projects I use daily, ask ten other users and the list will likely contain tons of other applications.