Re: Questions

[Richard Stallman <rms gnu org>]

    We need to keep chipping away at the dam, not painting slogans on it.

Painting slogans doesn't affect the dam directly, but it is the way to
convince more people to attack it.  Indirectly, it does a vital job.

To succeed, we have to do both.  If all we did were talk about
political issues and not write software, we would get nowhere.  But if
we did not talk about political issues, we would lose track of the
goal--we would get somewhere, but not there.

Currently we tend to have lots of people writing software, while
showing the goal of freedom is almost forgotten.  If we put 95% of the
energy into programming, but use the other 5% to manifest the goal of
freedom, that might be a good balance.  I'd like to increase the level
towards 5%.

    We need to embrace any large corporate who is going to help a little,
    and not say "We will take your money, but buggered if we will mention
    that your software runs on gnome because it's not free"

We certainly should not speak to them with words like that.  As one
who has learned to be somewhat diplomatic, I would say it more like
this:

    We will be glad to tell the public that we appreciate your
    contribution, but mentioning that non-free package is horse of a
    different color, because we have a policy of not promoting
    non-free software.  There are no exceptions, because this is a
    matter of principle.

Making it a general policy and citing it as such makes the job of
saying no far easier.  They may have no principles about freedom to
use software, but they understand what it means to have principles.
They understand that asking the GNU Project to set aside our
principles is a rather harsh thing to do, so they won't push it.

The FSF has years of experience cooperating with companies, and we
have always followed this policy.  We thank all donors that wish to be
thanked, but not by advertising their non-free programs.  We have
never had difficulty with a major company because of this policy, and
I think I see why: any company that wants to put significant resources
into GNU would tend to have a strong practical reason, and that reason
would count far more than the hope we would advertise their non-free
products.