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

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. ~LinuxeristFile:Tux-linux logo.svg 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)

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)

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)

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)