Re: Reaching out to Amazon for credit?

[Richard Stallman <rms gnu org>]

    No, but they are rude in context. The fact that you do not work within the
    context of that particular conversation makes them rude.

On the contrary, I did exactly what was appropriate.  When someone
briefly mentioned Ubuntu, I briefly mentioned it, giving a link to
information about the issue.

That did not interfere with the discussion about hosting, which
will surely continue.  It was an aside.

Someone who works for Canonical posted a long apology for Ubuntu, so I
responded to it (as well as rebuking the groundless personal attack).

Each message was entirely appropriate in the situation where I sent
it.

    Sorry, I did not see it as a personal attack.

Here's what that message said:

    > Richard, I would appreciate if you didn't try to use every single
    > opportunity that you had to speak negatively about other projects,

A more cut-and-ried personal attack, there cannot be.  It exaggerates
a negative into a falsehood then and attacks me with it.  I am
surprised you did not see this.

You've offered me help in being "more effective", but there is no
reason to think I have not been effective already.  I am not perfect,
but I have been rather effective generally.  GNOME's existence is a
part of that effect (see http://www.gnu.org/gnu/the-gnu-project.html
and search for GNOME).

Were my two messages about Ubuntu effective?  They provoked
opposition, but that doesn't mean they didn't do their job.  I am sure
that many of the GNOME developers on the list have read the article
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ubuntu-spyware.html, and are now
concerned about the issue.  Perhaps even you will inform yourself
about the issue, though I can't force you.

Anyone who thinks there's a better way to raise this issue is welcome
to try that way.  If you do it better than I did, I will be glad to
step aside and leave it to you.

     and a plea to you to please help us all be more
    effective in our efforts to promote free software.

The plea in his message was to overlook the Ubuntu spyware issue, to
accept such spyware as normal and legitimate for the sake of avoiding
disagreement.  That raises a substantial and important issue.

There is a reason we should overlook minor annoyances and mistakes of
other free software developers.  If we quarrel about things that we
could disregard, we will lose out.

However, when another free software project does something especially
bad, we must not overlook that, because tolerating that would lower
our whole community -- and we will lose out.

Spying on the user is mistreatment of the highest order.  In 29 years
of campaigning for free software, I have seen nothing worse than this,
and few things that are as bad.  If there is anything we should not
overlook, it is this.

Ubuntu is not entirely free software; but most of it is.  Use of
Ubuntu is not moving to free software, but is much closer than MacOS
or iOS.  Thus, in the past we could not endorse Ubuntu but most of the
time we did not need to bring up the issue.

However, if we want to promote free software effectively, we can't
ignore the spyware.  We have to make Canonical back off the spyware,
and cancel the announced plan to go even further and make Ubuntu offer
products from Amazon.

To work together to promote free software, the supporters of Ubuntu
must try to pull it back from spying while we outsiders push it away
from spying.  If they think Canonical's decision was a mistake, that's
a good start, but they need to go beyond just thinking so.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call