Re: about the GNU promise

[Alexandre François Garreau]

Le mercredi 12 février 2020, 06:54:10 CET Mike Gerwitz a écrit :
> On Mon, Feb 10, 2020 at 16:32:53 -0500, nylxs wrote:
> > On 2/6/20 5:36 AM, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> >> The goal is to acknowledge that GNU is not the only free software
> >> provider, and that the GNU Project (socially) and the GNU System
> >> (technically) has to work with these other free software projects.
> > 
> > That is because you fail to understand the importance of Free
> > Software, because honestly, you are so corrupt and greedy that you
> > can't be educated, and you can not be helped.
> 
> Personal attacks weaken your argument and are not appropriate for this
> list.

I believe personal attacks are wasteful, but more than this this one is 
unkind (“that you can’t be […]” is, and the preceding wording is violent).

> And despite my disagreements with Ludo on the topics under discussion, I
> very strongly disagree with your characterization of him.

Personally, I believe Ludo intends nothing wrong, but I believe even with 
good intents, anyone, even he, can do bad.

If we were to listen the polishing discourse or the vague and approximate 
promises of Ludo&al, I don’t see how we’d avoid to end with a “democratic” 
consortium of companies’ employees.  We would have x% redhat, x% 
canonical, x% microsoft…

And the only proposed way of avoiding that is merely signing a short and 
weak non-juridical pledge… that could be disregarded easily by personal 
interpretation.  Words can be twisted, and people (especially paid 
employee ordered to be so) can be dishonest: *THAT*’s the main conclusion 
from “the last rms’ events” to me.  And the proximity of both severly 
frightens me

But then Ludo, what would prevent consensual decisions such as their 
common  “remove lisp and some C, and prefer with javascript, python, and 
c++”?

What would prevent going as hypocritical as FSF marketing, such as saying 
“DRM and  proprietary software are shit let’s not use them for 1 day out 
of 356”?

What would prevent going as corrupt as W3C such as “let’s forget semantic 
web, XML and XSLT/functionnal programming and put ecmascript and json all 
the way to pave the way for javascript trap, SaaSS and DRM” (and pretend 
accessibility is not a question of design and meaning but of individual 
(not social) effort, like if switching off the lights when exiting a room 
could prevent global warming)

What could prevent from getting as greedy as Apple and state “let’s remain 
under GPLv3 but outsource more stuff to LLVM”…  How is this case taken in 
your “Social Contract”?  Could it only be so?  I can foresee pressure for 
that to happen.  But can a mere text cover all cases in advances?

How could you expect it to stay be democratic in an society ran by 
plutocracy, in an economy ran by capitalism?

We’re not talking about a country elections, or about a small town whose 
inhabitants are all known in advance… GNU is international, and developed 
via internet… there is no people to provide security, for this… and a 
pledge is a really bad filter… while rms’ predictions have thoroughly have 
been good.

Only people can defend texts, which can’t defend themselves (Plato said 
that, criticizing Writing itself).  But if people are employee, there is 
no defense anymore to be expected.