Alex Hudson wrote:
I think all that helps to do is muddy the waters a bit, really. Obviously, FSFers are always going to have their own opinions, and most of the time these opinions are probably going to be anti-patent, anti-this and anti-that. I think the importance of Free Software is much greater than that of Free Music, for example, and needs a separate emphasis.
If I can take this as embodying the main gripes against my ideas, I shall attempt to respond. If the idea of separating FSF and GNU creates confusion then I'm sure it was my ineloquence and not a quality of the concept.
Firstly, the greater philosophy is absolutely not anti-anything. It's just pro- ideals that I find slightly harder to pinpoint. Nextly, the FSF could switch to being a homemade ice cream dispensary tomorrow with no detrimental effect, as it's presently nothing more than a GNU mirror. And to extend my analogy to program design, a change during testing will cost 100 times more than a change during design, so please leave the confusing gnu off the logo, keep the mortal GPL out of it, and acknowledge eternal goals we can promote now rather than when the need appears most pressing. Does that analogy really apply here? I've no idea. But what is there to lose?
Now is the time when valuable information (which I will persist in calling software) has become expressible in almost identical forms, so now is the time those against software liberation on the incidentally-opposed grounds of profit will spread the meme of an intrinsic difference between software types. A divide and conquor plan that gets the FSF's tacit support because "other groups are better able to deal with it."
Regarding the much slated notion of free music, until I thought about it properly just now I would have largely agreed (I only included it to make the list longer ;-). But then I don't know much about music, or how psychoacoustics relate to cognition and emotion, nor the many possibly ingenious ideas to improve its inherent value. A GNU sister* concerned with music would want to know these things, and could then promote 'goodness' in music. The GPL would not be an applicable tool here, though a similarly spirited document might be. It is this spirit, not the details, which should concern FSF(E).
IMO, you have to stop thinking as programmers, or at least recognise that as more appropriate to GNU. A serious deficiency in free software as it stands is its lack of use in science. Tell a scientist he should liberate his software so other people can perhaps use it and fix bugs and he'll dismiss it as a trifling detail. On the other hand, present a cogent argument that libre software is a valid step to universal enlightenment and he'll embrace you as a brother. (The fact I evidently cannot make this argument doesn't preclude its existence. And don't laugh at my naivete of scientists' motives, that's my best quality.)
Jonas wrote: "As I said earlier though, we should definitely support such activities, and the FSF makes a point out of linking and in other ways supporting free music, free books and everything else where the freedom associated with it is similar in philosophy to that of the freedom of software which we advocate."
Seems the simplest thing in the world to support GNU by linking and other ways, instead of the present situation of being GNU. On top of everything, I just noticed that separating FSF-GNU is bound to reduce the time wasted belabouring the difference between Free Software and Open Source.
Fooey, suppose I'll draft an email to Stallman. All my ramblings were on the premise that anyone else intuitively believes liberating software of all forms can profoundly benefit human development, rather than just being a cool thing for program hackers.
* I propose Rab Ain't Bertelsmann, with a Robert Burns' face logo.
David