Talk:Free Software Foundation

Holding copyrights

The article says FSF holds copyrights to most GNU software projects - there are thousands of independent GNU software products, so how can it be FSF owns them all? --Abdull 08:58, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

You can assign your copyright to them (typically because you want the FSF to cope with the job of preventing infringement) Ojw 11:42, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Note that there are hundreds, not thousands, of GNU software projects. Could it be that you've confused GPL-licensed projects with GNU projects? FSF owns the copyright for the latter, not the former. Gronky 12:02, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

Hello, I'm the current copyright administrator for the FSF. As other users have mentioned, we take copyright assignments on GNU software. In order for any software to be included in a GNU package, the copyright must be assigned to the FSF, so that we have the power to enforce the GPL on such software. I agree that there might be some confusion here for the original poster; not all GPLed software is GNU software.Donaldrobertsoniii —Preceding undated comment was added at 08:03, 22 November 2008 (UTC).

Status of FSF France

From the Sister Organisations section, I've removed "On 2001-04-19, The Free Software Foundation France was founded in France." because I don't think FSF France is actually an official sister organisation of FSF.

A search of fsf.org can confirm that FSF-India is a sister organisation [1] and that FSF-Europe is a sister organisation [2] but I can't find anything to say FSF-France is a sister organisation. There is also an FSF-Hungry, but it's not an official sister organisation of FSF, it just uses the name.

Can anyone give more info? Gronky 20:46, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

On this page, it is listed as a "Organizations related to free software". Thus, you were correct in removing it. ~Linuxerist E/L/T 03:51, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

see AfD:Staff & employees of the FSF

See Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Staff_and_employees_of_the_Free_Software_Foundation.

This new article started as a section in this FSF article, and was split off with no rationale, discussion, or consensus by User:Chealer (talk|contribs) . The editors of this FSF article could have good points to make on this AfD. Lentower 18:41, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

criticism

There should be a section on criticism of FSF.12.65.42.116 04:24, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Whether criticism sections are useful in Wikipedia articles or not is hotly debated. I think they are generally the worst quality part of any article. What criticism do you want added? There is probably another place in the article it can go rather than needing it's own section. For example, if an article has a section about finances, and there is a common financial criticism of that organisation, then the criticism can go in the finances section. Gronky 13:09, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Critisms are the best part of any good article because they prevent people from thinking that an organization it benevolent. I second the notion that there should be a Criticism protion of the article, perhaps pertaining to the note that the FSF could revoke rights to use the licenses of the patents they own, even to the people who made that patent. Additionally, they also don't allow closed source documents in any of their programs, even if its a tiny section of free software. Lastly, some boarderline retarded members refuse to let it go that Linux can be called Linux, and not Retard/Linux. Opps, I ment GNU/Linux. But it is babyish to put so much weight on such a SMALL part of an operating system. Perhaps this slight bias is why I am not writting one. - 68.228.56.158 14:37, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

• "Critisms are the best part of any good article because they prevent people from thinking that an organization it benevolent." They're also troll-magnets, and prone to include bullshit that is hard to remove, because deleting alleged criticism looks much more like non-neutral POV than adding baseless rants does. Good criticism sections can be positive, though. "[...]the FSF could revoke rights to use the licenses of the patents they own, even to the people who made that patent." Is it not so with any other license or patent? If it is, then the criticism belongs to the articles about licenses or patents. "[...] they also don't allow closed source documents in any of their programs, even if its a tiny section of free software." How could that be subject to criticism? Free content can be added to non-free works, and the rights of the authors of the non-free content are not hurt. Non-free content can not be added to a free work, without making the work non-free as a whole (because now the whole work has the use/distribution limitations that the less free of its parts has), so the rights of the authors of the free parts of the work, and of the potential users, are hurt. This is obvious, isn't it? "[...]Linux can be called Linux, and not Retard/Linux." I refuse to comment on that. — isilanes (talk|contribs) 13:09, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

If you know of notable and encyclopedic information about this organization, you should add it. If some of that happens to be criticism, that's fine. If there's enough thematically similar criticism to warrant it's own section, one should be created. Going out and fishing for criticism doesn't strike me the best way to improve this article. —mako๛ 13:42, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Deleting laundry lists "notable X"

I've removed the lists of notable whatevers. This article should describe and tell the story of FSF. Anyone notable should be mentioned in the description and story. These lists are also running into the usual problem of having no criteria for inclusion/exclusion. Here is what I removed:

Removed material

====Notable current staff and employees====

• Richard Stallman, President and founder of the Free Software Foundation. RMS is not paid by the FSF (see his Personal life).
• Peter T. Brown, Executive Director (was GPL Compliance Manager and Controller until February 2005)

====Notable former programmers==== In alphabetical order:

• Jonathan Arcenaux, GNU hacker, GNU Emacs
• Jim Blandy, GNU hacker, GNU Emacs version 19
• Jay Fenlason, GNU hacker, sed. Fenlason wrote the original version of the computer game hack as a high school student.
• Brian Fox, GNU hacker, Bash
• Tom Lord, GNU hacker, GNU arch, sed, regular expression engine, GNU Oleo features
• Roland McGrath, GNU hacker, GNU Libc, GNU Make, GNU Hurd
• Ian Murdock, GNU hacker and Debian Project founder.
• Len Tower Jr., GCC, GNU diff, who became a Founding Director. Tower was an employee of the Zimmer Foundation assigned to work with the FSF.

====Notable other former staff and employees==== In alphabetical order:

• Robert J. Chassell, Founding Director and Treasurer, GNU documentation hacker
• Bradley M. Kuhn, Assistant to Stallman (2000-2001), Executive Director (2001-2005)
• Prof. Masayuki Ida, Vice President for Japan (late 1990s)
• Eben Moglen, General Counsel (pro bono)
• Dan Ravicher, Senior Counsel (pro bono)
• Peter Salus, Vice President (mid/late 1990s)
• Etienne Suvasa, GNU illustrator
• Melissa Weisshaus, GNU documentation hacker

Gronky 16:13, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Seems reasonable. Thanks! In general, the article reads a bit too much like a series of lists. I think this is a good baby step toward a solution. —mako๛ 13:43, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Play Ogg

This is a 1 sentence article describing a campaign that the FSF does. It really should be merged. Panoptical 18:35, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Agree. Gronky 19:04, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Agree. bkuhn 18:54, 12 August 2007 (US/Eastern)

Board of Directors and Voting Members

The voting board being a superset of the Board of Directors is an unsubstantiated claim. The Board of Directors and the voting board should reflect exactly http://www.fsf.org/about/leadership.html and there should be no distinction between the two. Joshuagay 14:24, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it is fully unsubstantiated. The by-laws on file with the Commonwealth, which are linked to from the references, show that there is a separate voting membership and board of directors. In fact, having a voting membership that elects the directors is required by Commonwealth law. I agree that we don't have a citation for the composition of the voting membership, which would be useful. -- bkuhn 06:18, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, I find it unfortunate that the very existence of the Voting Membership has been fully removed from the entry. It is substantiated. It should at least be mentioned, even if its composition is secret. -- bkuhn 00:33, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

After 8 months, there has been no further discussion nor refutation of my point. I've therefore decided to restore the well-sourced section on the voting membership, now directly quoting the Articles of Amendment that establish them. I have not restored the claim that the "voting members are a superset..." since apparently only my personal knowledge can substantiate that claim right now. I will eventually find out if such records need to be made public in MA or not, and request them from FSF if so. Finally, I completely disagree with Joshuagay that the Structure section "should reflect exactly http://www.fsf.org/about/leadership.html and there should be no distinction between the two". I believe the corporate records that can be searched via the Commonwealth of Massachusetts should be used as the canonical source for such information, which fortunately is the case right now and I hope this does not change. -- bkuhn 03:21, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

The 12/18/2002 Articles of Amendment on file with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts state in part (this is cut-and-pasted, it was originally written in all caps), "NUMBER, ELECTION AND QUALIFICATION: THE PRESENT MEMBERS OF THE CORPORATION SHALL CONSTITUTE THE VOTING MEMBERS. THEREAFTER THE VOTING MEMBERS ANNUALLY AT THEIR ANNUAL MEETING SHALL FIX THE NUMBER OF VOTING MEMBERS AND SHALL ELECT THE NUMBER OF VOTING MEMBERS SO FIXED. AT ANY SPECIAL OR REGULAR MEETING, THE VOTING MEMBERS THEN IN OFFICE MAY INCREASE THE NUMBER OF VOTING MEMBERS AND ELECT NEW VOTING MEMBERS TO COMPLETE THE NUMBER SO FIXED; OR THEY MAY DECREASE THE NUMBER OF VOTING MEMBERS, BUT ONLY TO ELIMINATE VACANCIES CAUSED BY THE DEATH, RESIGNATION, REMOVAL OR DISQUALIFICATION OF ONE OR MORE VOTING MEMBERS." In other words, the Voting Members are a superset of the Board of Directors. Macduff (talk) 01:43, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Category:Movement against intellectual property

I'm not sure this category is accurate since they aren't against intellectual property per se but certain classes of what they see as excess. However, from a navigational perspective it clearly should be in this category. Thoughts?JoshuaZ 16:19, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

use of the DRM term

I've changed the instances of "digital restrictions management" in the article to "digital rights management". While I'm quite aware that the FSF promotes the latter term, it is not the canonically correct term for the technology, as used by the people who produce it. It is, of course, virtally important that we state in the article why this alternate expansion of the term is being promoted, with a reference back to the FSF's web site so that an interested reader can pursue it further. Whether any of us agree with the terms isn't important... WP:NPOV needs to be adhered to, and that means using the proper name, and not the politically-motivated rebranding of it. -/- Warren 11:54, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

GNU makes use of digital rights management (as in restrictions), too, so why shouldn't we regard the FSF as a DRM producer? I count the string restrict* four times in The GNU Manifesto. Rebranding the correct term for the technology to "digital rights management" is politically motivated. If Wikipedia adopts this minority term, we are pushing a POV. --mms (talk) 15:30, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

You are confused about what Digital rights management, it refers to a specific set of technologies, rather than just managing digital rights. And no, GNU does not make use of DRM, in fact, GPL v3 forbids DRM being used with the software. ~ 10nitro (talk) 03:57, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

I think the distinction is important because there are various types/uses of digital rights management, but FSF takes a stance on one: the type/use where a producer has control over a user. They call this type/use "digital restrictions management". So this isn't just politically motivated, it's about saying what you mean. (For example, DRM technology can be used by me to secure my computer, and I'd have all the relevant keys, and FSF wouldn't oppose that.) --Gronky (talk) 10:15, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Really? I do not believe that DRM can be used to secure your computer, that would be different technologies. I may very well be wrong though, I would love for you to point out specific technologies. ~ 10nitro (talk) 03:57, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Replicating the high priority list

The "High priority projects" section should not replicate the list on fsf.org. If "High priority projects" is an interesting topic for an encyclopedia, it is interesting to describe it, not mirror it. What sort of projects get added to the high priority list? Do project generally stay there a long time? Is there any measureable success rate? What portion are non-GNU projects? Are there any common threads such as language/licence used?

Please, write about the list, don't write the list itself. --Gronky (talk) 10:12, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I've now removed the list. For anyone who might use it as a source for writing something useful, the last version of the page which still contained the list is at: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Free_Software_Foundation&oldid=199455167

--Gronky (talk) 00:18, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

External links in the article

I've removed a few external links, and I've converted others to references.

The world needs a descriptive webpage about FSF, and it needs a webpage to help people get involved in FSF's work. Wikipedia cannot be both, so let's let Wikipedia be the encyclopedia and let fsf.org be FSF's advocacy page. --Gronky (talk) 12:20, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Is this communist?

Is this so called "freedoom movement" communist?

no. just compare marx's communist manifesto, and stallman's gnu manifesto Lentower (talk) 03:23, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

First associate member

The first associate member is stated as bkuhn, but note that RMS is member zero.[3] --Ashawley (talk) 00:00, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

mid 1980s?

In the introduction it says this, ``From its founding until the mid-1980s, FSF's funds were mostly used to employ software developers to write free software for the GNU Project.'' It was founded in 1985... so it was never focused on employing software developers? This needs to be clarified. ~ 10nitro (talk) 04:06, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Good grief! Mentioned here back in January and still not fixed?!

"... founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 ..."

"From its founding until the mid-1980s, ..."

"Since the mid-1990s, ..."

Dooya tink mebbe the "mid-1980s" ought to be "mid-1990s", huh, huh?

Shenme (talk) 02:43, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Debian and FSF

Didn't the FSF once sponsor the development of the Debian GNU/Linux? 85.76.117.180 (talk) 10:44, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Answering to myself, yes it did, right at the beginning of the Debian project, in 1994-1995. Added into the Debian article. 85.76.37.56 (talk) 08:32, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

GPL Enforcement?

Some more explanation is called for in the introductory paragraph of this section. For example, if the Foundation supports a movement, the purpose of which is "to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software," then it is not clear what "copyright infringement" would consist of for someone utilizing software subject to "universal freedom" of use. Indeed, it is not clear why the producers of such software would resort to copyright protection at all. The Foundation acting to uphold such copyrights would seem to be in contradiction with its primary stated purpose.

No doubt there is some perfectly reasonable explanation for this seeming inconsistency, but it is not readily apparent in this section, and the section is therefore more confusing than informative as it stands. I would edit this myself, but lack sufficient background on this issue to know what that explanation might be. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.92.174.105 (talk) 23:20, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I added a mention of copyleft. --AVRS (talk) 18:59, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

It's only a matter of inconsistency if you define "universal freedom" to be the lack of laws. To compare, to live in a country with universal freedom is then to live in a place with full anarchism. But this is not the only definition of freedom. There is another view that you can promote freedom using rules (or laws) so that as many people can get as much freedom as possible. I think it this definition that the FSF use when they apply the word "universal freedom".81.170.228.65 (talk) 13:07, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

You need laws to provide maximum freedom to the biggest number of people, because you need a way to keep people from taking away the freedom again. No rules leads to rule of the strongest, which if far from maximum freedom for all. The FSF promotes strong freedom: You are allowed to do everything, except denying other people the freedom you enjoy yourself. Draketo (talk) 14:14, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Criticism section

The Criticism section needs checking. --AVRS (talk) 13:01, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I rewrote a paragraph which cited something next to opposite (maybe Torvalds criticized something that can be associated with Stallman in that post, but certainly not enforcement of GPL or any other license, developers’ choice of which he defended?!). --AVRS (talk) 13:01, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

The quote from Linus Torvalds against “free software” sadly is not publicly available: I need to register, so I can’t check it at once. Is a non-accessible reference acceptable? Draketo (talk) 14:06, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Where is this quote published? So long its possible for people to independently verify the quote, and the source is a reliable one, then its a okey to use it as a reference.81.170.228.65 (talk) 16:44, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

As the paragraph (and source) is now, I dont see how its inclusion is relevant. Torvald's comment is defending the developer's right to choose the license for their own projects, how is that a criticism of the free software foundation? I could see how one might "twist" it to be a criticism of the GPL as a copyleft license, but the source is clearly not about that and thus is not supporting that claim. Could we remove the whole paragraph?81.170.228.65 (talk) 16:57, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I imagine how it can be twisted to be a criticism of a notion that something about non-free software is unethical, but I won't defend it. --AVRS (talk) 19:05, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I removed the paragraph so if re-added please make sure that it relates to FSF.81.170.228.65 (talk) 14:32, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

In the second Torvalds paragraph; "Torvalds was quoted as saying that he does not want to be associated with "free software" and criticized the movement for having "extremists"." Is this quote actually about FSF, or is it directed to either the free software movement in general, possibly Stallman, or something else? I cant view the source since its behind a paywall, so can someone please determine what the target of the criticism is? I removed this paragraph and replaced with one where Torvalds makes a directed criticism towards FSF about the GPL 3 and its anti-DRM parts.81.170.228.65 (talk) 14:32, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

The article “Ogg versus the world: don't fall for open-source FUD”, which is a reference for “The errors include the patent nature of the ogg format,” cites MPEG LA CEO's 2010 statement about Ogg Theora and other codecs (I might be misreading: is it cited as if it counters FSF’s statement about Ogg Vorbis; isn’t that wrong, even if Ogg Vorbis is one of the world’s “other codecs”?). What if it cited this 2000 article, where a Thomson representative said “We think it is likely they are infringing.” about Vorbis vs MP3? Is there anything in that article which has more ground on the subject of the patent nature of “ogg formats”? --AVRS (talk) 13:01, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Definition of the word Freedom

I think there is a bit of confusion and opinions on the matter on what the word freedom means as it is being used in the article. The lead use the phrase "universal freedom" which Im not use if it actually helps clear the matter up. Recently a Criticism entry about this was added, but reverted because the sentence just added to the confusion and the hole thing was sourced by a blog post. Now, adding a section to clarify the different views on the word could help lesser the confusion, but at same time; would that actually make the article better? It should added that the article Liberty do in a very broad sense take up those different view points, so a summery section in how that relate to Freedom in a software sense could be an option here. Belorn (talk) 04:11, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

File:FSF-Logo.svg Nominated for Deletion

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