Re: Supporting the free software movement

[John McHugh <mrmcq2u gmail com>]

I am of the personal opinion that the foundation needs to restructure and focus on the core gnome platform(GnomeOS). That's how the foundation can  promote the general idea of free software.

I am not sure what kind of responses you are likely to get here. I am certainly not a candidate myself. I get the impression from some people that the foundation doesn't really have a responsibility in coordinating releases but I don't really buy that. 

I would like to see something like coreobject developed for the gnome platform. Using telehash instead of xmpp for collaboration over encrypted dht. Wizbit was actually eerily similar to this framework though is not being actively developed. Rob Taylor was kind enough to re-upload the code onto github for me along with the content of the old site.

If your asking yourself what does a truly distributed version controlled object store of have to do with promoting free software then you haven't been paying attention. Locking collaborative features behind third party t&c and requiring users to hand over their data in order to make use of all of the functionality in your application is counter to the goal of promoting free software. 

I't actually does the opposite and gives the impression that free software is inherently crippled. I am not saying that people shouldn't be allowed to sign over their rights to third parties, what I am saying is it would be nice if the foundation promoted the idea of engaging with the development community to ensure that the platform itself offers developers the ability to create fully featured free/libre alternative's.

I am of the opinion that the foundation needs new web infrastructure. The wiki has information spread all over the place and isn't the most effective way of collaborating, planning or even finding information.

Bugzilla is horrible by design, a better approach would be to integrate a feedback tracker directly into gnome software. 

Using app data to select the appropriate location of the issue tracker that the upstream project has defined thus reducing the need for downstream to mirror issues all over the place.

If someone gives feedback on software they have installed with a thumbs up that would be considered a positive review and feedback with a thumbs down could be considered a bug.

Telehash would be a useful mechanism to glue it all together and ensure you can do a neat thing like show possible duplicate bugs from users on different distros before they send feedback, effectively allowing users to contribute in the form of sorting distro specific bugs from upstream specific bugs.

And if gnome really care about free software we have to acknowledge that integrating cloud services(gnome-online-accounts) instead of fixing the core platform to provide api's that allow developers to create distributed alternatives with full functionality built in is counter productive to the goal of free software. 

Requiring users to hand over data to company x or sign t&c to be able to use feature y leaves me asking myself why use free software to begin with.

 which allow users to collaborate with each other and build ecosystems behind their applications rather than clients. 

If someone gives feedback on software they have installed with a thumbs down that could be classified as a bug. a thumbs up could be a positive review. 

We should use telehash to send a report to a git issue tracker defined in the app data. This would ensure that upstream could define where they want the feedback in gnome software to go instead of having a distro specific comment system integrated into gnome software which would create more work.   

On Sat, May 31, 2014 at 6:22 AM, Richard Stallman <rms gnu org> wrote:

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

Would candidates please answer the question,

    How will you direct the GNOME Foundation to promote the general idea
    of free software: that software should be free/libre?

I mean, beyond just making GNOME a good and useful free program.

--
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.

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