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GNU means GNU's Not U: Stallman insists he's still Chief GNUisance while 18 maintainers want him out as leader

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Got any figures to back that up? And I mean more than three anecdotes about how RMS creeped you out by having a mattress in his office (he lived there). I mean actual figures. What percentage, exactly, constitutes "a large part"? What percentage is currently being alienated? Where did you get these figures? Can you show any work, or are you just making blanket assertions?

As I have said before here, I have met the man, and I have come across clones with his attitude in business which I had to immediately shove into the nearest closet for their own good.

Stallman & friends could do with realising that the world doesn't revolve around them, and businesses are there to make a profit. There are solid technical and financial arguments to make, but sadly, the zealots seem to forever unable to stay with those and go almost unprompted into "preaching the gospel" mode, even if that is wholly inappropriate and badly timed, thus scaring away the "non-believers" and pretty much ruining their opportunities.

There are good arguments to be made during discussion, but the whole preachy thing switches people off, hard, also because these people only think black and white.

I think that removing Stallman & people like him from the quation may do both frameworks (FSF and GNU) a world of good and there would finally be solutions that look and work modern (no, design-wise, I would not want FOSS to join the current trend of releasing alpha software and let the customers debug is, I still consider that a loathsome practice - yes, Redmond, looking at you).

The problem is what to do with Stallman, because his whole life (and, I assume, stipend/income) is based around GNU. Maybe he could restart work on Hurd? Haven't hurd of that for a while..

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