Re: Possible draft non-free firmware option with SC change
On 12/09/22 at 12:08 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> writes:
> > To me, the FSF's attempts to produce an operating system lead to the
> > range of GNU/Linux distributions that came about during that time, which
> > we all still use.
>
> Right, I think both things are true.
>
> I think the FSF achieved amazing things in the early days of the
> organization, to which we all owe them a debt of gratitude. And then, as
> is the tendency of many successful organizations, they were unable to
> distinguish between the tactics that were critical to their success from
> the tactics that they succeeded *in spite of*, and instead took this
> success as confirmation that every single jot and tittle of their ideology
> was correct. As a result, they became ideologically hide-bound and
> inflexible, unable to learn from experience and unable to push their
> long-standing effort to create a free software operating system over the
> finish line.
>
> The FSF bogged down in infighting over ideological purity, massively
> mismanaged several of their centerpiece projects to the point of nearly
> destroying them, and started becoming irrelevant, a trend that has sadly
> continued to this day. Meanwhile, other organizations, including Debian,
> learned from the tactics and ideology of the FSF that were successful and
> adopted them, learned from the FSF tactics that failed and discarded them,
> and picked up where the FSF left off and were able to succeed in that
> project.
Right. I think that it's important to realize that the FSF and Debian
use different tactics to promote Free Software. The FSF focuses on
promoting a clean ideology to the point of ignoring practical problems.
The risk is becoming irrelevant, because very few people are able to live
with the compromises that are required by ignoring the practical issues.
It's like the lighthouse joke: "the FSF is like a lighthouse. As a boat,
it's extremely useful to know where it stands, but you probably don't
want to be at the exact same position as the lighthouse."
Debian, on the other hand, promotes a similar ideology, but allows
compromises, while being explicit about them. This is extremely powerful
because we demonstrate that we are able to produce something that is of
high quality and useful to our numerous users, and at the same time we
are in a great position to inform our users about the compromises that
were required to do so, and weight in to improve the long term
situation.
I think that this GR can be read as answering the following question:
what would be the optimal way for Debian to make it slightly easier for
our prospective users to install Debian while continuing to inform about
the required compromises; which would (in the long term) increase our
user base; which would increase our impact; which would (in the long
term) increase our ability to promote free software.
Lucas
Reply to: