[carapace]

Yes, that's the obvious argument against this being a false flag operation: why would they bother, they already won. Is Bill Gates that petty?

So that means that it's more likely that this is just backbiting on an old, sick man. E.g.: The People's Front of Judea vs. Judean People's Front

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WboggjN_G-4

Let the old nerd die in peace with his friends.

(I'm done with this thread and this subject. Have a better one.)

[shadowgovt]

It's a bit hard to do that for the people who still care about the movement when the "old nerd" is still on the board of directors.

You make an interesting point though: perhaps the FSF has made its bed and the best solution is to give up on it and rally behind another organization with similar goals. Maybe the 'net interprets Stallman as damage and routes around him.

[oytis]

I mean, yes, that would be an obvious alternative to bullying Stallman into resigning from the organisation that he himself created around his own ideas - why didn't it come to anyone's mind before?

[e844dbe8fb]

But the real organization still exists and continues to behave in a decent manner, so it would foil their wicked goals.

[shadowgovt]

Probably for similar reasons people would rather change leadership at, say, Mozilla than fork Firefox. Again. To create another fork nobody cares about. Again.

Politics is, often, about centralization and coordination of power. It's a lot more effective to change leadership at an organization with good ideas but questionable people than to split power and focus by forming a competing organization. The two resulting organizations may end up politically weaker than one organization (especially if they can't coordinate their efforts because the membership of one of them expects their org to boycott the other org for the reasons they split in the first place).

Jill Stein may, for example, have ideological purity over the Democrats but she'll never be President.

In any case, I hear the FSFE decided to split from working with the FSF when the FSF re-instated Stallman. I'd prefer to have an org with more direct influence over US law and policy, but I'll happily support FSFE since it's the closest thing I have to supporting free software as a concept without supporting continued discussion of age of consent on the side.