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by BigTTYGothGF 18 days ago
> What I can see is a fairly clear indication that they do not want contributions from people whose politics differ from theirs

This is the same FSF that in the past has refused contributions from people whose politics include "I would like this software to run on my windows/apple/other proprietary platform". They're extremely political.
2 comments
collinfunk 18 days ago
When did this occur? I am a GNU maintainer, and have never heard such a thing from the FSF. The GNU Coding Standards and other similar texts leave the decision to support non-free platforms up to the maintainer.
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rpdillon 17 days ago
It was an emoji solution for Emacs that only worked on Mac. RMS basically said:

"If the point is to promote Free Software, we do ourselves a disservice by making our Free Software work better on a proprietary system than a Free system. Let's include this support when it works on the Free platforms as well."

FSF is political, but only about Free Software. Their goal is to promote it, and I think RMS has shown very clear thinking in this regard. I don't love the decision/outcome (someone did work to make something better and it was rejected), but I get it in service of the larger goal.

To flip the pschology, you could imagine a world where Emacs did way more awesome stuff on Windows and Mac, and the ensuing HN discussion where the obvious snipe appears a dozen times: "lol they keep talking about free software but their own products work better on windows lol".

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Ferret7446 17 days ago
FSF is not political in the sense that they won't forbid you to use their software or otherwise blacklist you even if you are against free software, or if you're far left or far right. They are only political in the sense that they have a goal. If that's how you define "political" then the word is somewhat meaningless.

They won't take contributions not aligned with their goals but won't block you from sharing your contributions in the spirit of free software.

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BigTTYGothGF 18 days ago
It was a while ago (20-ish years?) and I'm forgetting the details, but it was RMS and I think the package was emacs.
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mqus 18 days ago
But... that software (reaction) is not written by the FSF? They just use it
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