This is the right thing to do and I hope it is not too little too late. Free/libre OSS won the battle for the server, lost the battle for the desktop, but desktop is not (that) relevant anymore. FLOSS phone ecosystem will be hard to next to impossible, in my opinion, but worth going into. Self-hosted server side software has a very good chance of succeeding. For a long time I essentially wanted something like Synology and QNAP but completely open, with a single package installation interface and ecosystem of phone apps working with my self hosted software.
> Free/libre OSS won the battle for the server, lost the battle for the desktop, but desktop is not (that) relevant anymore.
Desktop won't stop being relevant in the foreseeable future - there is nothing to replace it with for a whole variety of tasks. And usage of Linux on the desktop is gradually growing.
If GNU's idea of free software and open source are lumped together, I'm not convinced that the battle for the desktop and mobile are over due to the direction Microsoft is currently heading and the way in which Apple's closed source ambitions are increasingly subject to criticism on the basis of being closed source. Of course the caveat is I'm looking at it more as the 100 Years' War [1] than the 30 Years' War [2].
The reason I take the long term view is that it seems to me that open source development provides advantages that play out over the long term. At the very least, Google and Red Hat's hybrid models look more and more like the main stream default.
> FLOSS phone ecosystem will be hard to next to impossible, in my opinion, but worth going into
You can run Android without gapps fairly well, I believe there's even a project that replaces gapps and uses xposed to fake signatures so that they look legitimate to replace Google Maps and other in-app widgets frequently used on Android. Or you can run with GApps if you're willing to tolerate some level of proprietary software.
FLOSS on phones is actually in a quite good state, F-Droid is pretty good, many well maintained open source roms. Better than most other platforms.
> Free/libre OSS won the battle for the server, lost the battle for the desktop
I don't think it lost the battle on desktop - if you don't rely on platform(or interest)-specific software like the adobe/microsoft suites and some 3A games then you'll be more than fine on the linux desktop.
While doing all of this catch-up is important, I think it would help FOSS politically (as it were) if there were something new and exemplary to come out. Signal is a good example (once they fix the Google thing, and BTW someone finally took up Moxie on the offer and there's a PR in progress). Maybe Sandstorm too (Plug and play web apps that are secure? That's kind of novel and useful if you think about it. And IMO they're doing a bang-up job with UI) If FOSS can shine, maybe it'll attract more help with the catch-up.
FOSS often plays catch-up, because true innovation is really hard and takes a lot of time and resources. It's frequently too much to ask of an all-volunteer workforce. It's not that they can't do it (ultimately the people writing FOSS are the same people as those writing apps for companies) it's just that there isn't the same set of motives in place.
This is why in earlier days, GNOME's goal was to catch up to Windows, and why a phone operating system (a pretty standard thing that everyone has) is now a target.
I think the FSF is spot on with most of these priorities. The free phone and decentralized web, in particular, are areas for massive improvement and will be necessary for a FOSSful world. Getting governments to adopt free software is also a great priority, as they write the laws that govern the software ecosystem and could be a huge source of revenue for free software projects.
The page suggests that they are priorities, not that the FSF is supporting the development of these projects.
Given the diverse skill set and interests of free software developers, it's probably better to have a long list of priorities as long as there is little overlap. It would be difficult to attract individuals and businesses into supporting projects that they are not interested in or don't have the skills to contribute to.
I stopped being a regular member last year, but love their work. After reading the priority projects list, I just made a small one-time donation.
The first project seems most important, a free and open cellphone operating system. This seems like a huge challenge, given that phone hardware has proprietary firmware. I look forward to seeing what comes of this.
I'm actually happy that the FSF has considered this one:
- Free phone operating system
They don't have the for-profit nature of both Mozilla and Canonical and perhaps supporting the FSF over either of those 2 (Mozillas failed FFOS and no availability of the UbuntuOS mobile devices) will ensure a stable OS that isn't Google-ware.
PS. I know Mozilla isn't for-profit, but they abandoned FFOS just like a for-profit would
The only organizations that don't abandon projects are the ones that never took them on to begin with (or the ones designed around a specific project). It's not a for-profit vs non-profit distinction.
In this case, unfortunately, being in the high priority list of the FSF doesn't mean much. It's a list of stuff they'd like to see being developed, not actually a list of projects being actively supported with funding or developers' time.
if FSF wants a intelligent assistant it will have to collect usage data, no? a little against the whole principle... but if the data are open, that would be kind of cool ;)
An AI-driven assistant doesn't have to necessarily run on someone else's servers and be under their control to be useful. In fact, if I teach my assistant patterns like how when I say "David" I mean David O, then I don't see a) why this type of learning can't be fully localized, or b) how phoning home with this kind of data is going to be of any particular use to anybody else, anyway.
To put it another way, what's wrong with letting my Siri and your Siri just be two different "people" instead of feeding back into a single, networked hivemind?
> if FSF wants a intelligent assistant it will have to collect usage data
Well, not necessarily (although that is certainly the path of least resistance). However, even if data collection is necessary, there are ways of doing it in a privacy- and freedom-respecting manner.
At work, we had a speaker who talked about his company's diversity hiring approach. I don't recall specifics, but I believe it was a bank that was pretty well-known for having good representation across race and gender -- which was the basis for the invitation to come speak.
The bit that stood out for me was the claim that they never hired merely to increase diversity. Instead, they hired only based on the merit of applicants.
To achieve diversity, however, they were very aggressive about inviting minority applicants to apply, for example, posting job notices in places where under-represented groups were likely to see the notices.
Applying that idea to OSS, one could imagine active outreach as a means of increasing diversity among contributors.
The larger question of why one should care about having diverse contributors has, I think, been largely addressed by other commenters already. In addition to the UI issues others have mentioned, I might also guess that, from the perspective of Free Software Foundation, they probably also want to understand and engage minorities' privacy concerns.
> There's no force keeping people from contributing, they are just choosing not to.
Are you saying that people who are underrepresented in the free software community have a natural aversion to contributing to free software? That there are no outside forces impacting their choices, but it's something inherent in their character or genetic makeup?
I don't believe this to be true. If it's not true, then there do exist external factors that impact people's ability or desire to contribute.
> Why is this necessary?
I wouldn't claim the statement "Underrepresented people should spend more time contributing to free software" is some universal truth. Far from it. But from the perspective of the FSF, they presumably believe in their mission, and believe that increased diversity and inclusion would improve the community and its ability to achieve its mission.
Not necessarily minorities in the US(in fact a lot of US minorities are overrepresented in tech), but if you could make say, a few Spanish speaking people in poorer parts of Brazil contribute, they could spread whatever knowledge they gained with their broader community and encourage more people to participate who might have otherwise viewed these things as stuff "genius hackers with degrees" do.
That would be my reasoning. We need to get people who would never see themselves as being able to develop software because they never went to university or don't have the 'brains' to get into it. There's a lot of wasted brainpower because of the false impression that coding is something for an elite few.
Putting polical corectness aside, it's important to have as a varied crowd as possible using your software, to figure out what's still missing, where you still fall short.
I saw that happening time and time again - something I didn't consider important at all, was essential for other folks.
One example - if no blind people use your software, you'll never know how hard or easy it is for them - hence you'll never get a blind person to be your contributor, since it's unusable to them.
> There's no force keeping people from contributing, they are just choosing not to.
Ah, but there are forces that keep people from contributing, or at least increase the amount of effort required considerably. These forces are not evenly distributed, and there are several dynamics operating that actually increase the effect many of these forces have on members of underrepresented groups.
So, given that this is to some extent a self-reinforcing phenomenon, if we want the community to look like it welcomes all comers, we not only have to be welcoming (which we aren't doing that great on in the first place), but also do everything we can to counteract the force of those feedback loops that keep groups underrepresented.
> There's no force keeping people from contributing, they are just choosing not to.
We all naturally have tunnel vision, and apply our experience to everyone else. I can't speak for you, but many people who don't face discrimination naturally don't encounter the obstacles and don't feel negatively toward minorities; they assume that therefore such things don't exist.
But something is missing from our perception, because the evidence is overwhelming. Just consider that a black-skinned person in the U.S., for example, would be insane to assume they face no racism and no risks from it. A woman in IT would be willfully ignorant to think there is no sexism and she faces no threat from it.
* The historical record is overwhelming, and does not need to be recounted.
* Consider that white-skinned males make up ~33% of the U.S. population, yet look at their overwhelming prevalence in tech, business leadership, government, entertainment, and elsewhere - far more than a 1/3 of the people you see are white guys. Probably not coincidentally, it's the group that benefited most from prior centuries of discrimination. If it was a meritocracy, what is the statistical chance that Silicon Valley or the U.S. Senate would turn out to be so overwhelmingly white male? I doubt you believe that their skin color and gender make them superior (and if someone does, then we don't have to argue about where the barriers are); so how else do we explain their overwhelming proportion of success, and the lack of success for so many minorities?
* Surveys show that large numbers have prejudicial views of people of other races, religions, nationalities, etc. Look at the widespread support in Western countries for openly discriminatory leaders, openly discriminatory policies, and similar behavior by many citizens. This includes discrimination by religion (e.g., Muslims), race (e.g., blacks), nationality (immigrants), etc. Many people, even some on HN, claim it's ok to discriminate (to be clear, I don't mean the parent comment), but in the next breath argue that discrimination doesn't exist.
There's a lot of literature that answers your question, explaining what those barriers are and what they look like from other people's perspectives.
It becomes an even stranger thing to focus on when you consider that the main avenue of contribution to open source projects is the Internet, a medium where identity is irrelevant. You can be an incredibly productive member of a community and never need to be known as anything but a name, and perhaps "human".
Other so-called "identities" are truly irrelevant in this context.
The FSF is a political organization; saying it has too much politics behind it is an oxymoron. And choosing to go after users over licenses is also a political decision.
Besides, we already have Open Source as a movement that makes the pragmatic argument for free software, there's no need to water down the FSF.
A license defines what a user is allowed to do with a software. Therefore battling for licenses can very well mean battling for users and seeing them as a contradiction doesn't make any sense.
[+] [-] mynegation|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shmerl|9 years ago|reply
Desktop won't stop being relevant in the foreseeable future - there is nothing to replace it with for a whole variety of tasks. And usage of Linux on the desktop is gradually growing.
[+] [-] emilsedgh|9 years ago|reply
And we nailed it. We have several desktops and they all have decent quality.
It seems that the problem on phones isnt that Android/iOS have all the market share.
Biggest problem seems to be closed hardware.
[+] [-] brudgers|9 years ago|reply
The reason I take the long term view is that it seems to me that open source development provides advantages that play out over the long term. At the very least, Google and Red Hat's hybrid models look more and more like the main stream default.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Years%27_War
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War
[+] [-] mhd|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] finid|9 years ago|reply
Plasma Mobile is not in a bad state [1]
[1]: https://plasma-mobile.org/
[+] [-] problems|9 years ago|reply
You can run Android without gapps fairly well, I believe there's even a project that replaces gapps and uses xposed to fake signatures so that they look legitimate to replace Google Maps and other in-app widgets frequently used on Android. Or you can run with GApps if you're willing to tolerate some level of proprietary software.
FLOSS on phones is actually in a quite good state, F-Droid is pretty good, many well maintained open source roms. Better than most other platforms.
[+] [-] idobai|9 years ago|reply
I don't think it lost the battle on desktop - if you don't rely on platform(or interest)-specific software like the adobe/microsoft suites and some 3A games then you'll be more than fine on the linux desktop.
[+] [-] orblivion|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moxious|9 years ago|reply
This is why in earlier days, GNOME's goal was to catch up to Windows, and why a phone operating system (a pretty standard thing that everyone has) is now a target.
[+] [-] ramblenode|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slitaz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] II2II|9 years ago|reply
Given the diverse skill set and interests of free software developers, it's probably better to have a long list of priorities as long as there is little overlap. It would be difficult to attract individuals and businesses into supporting projects that they are not interested in or don't have the skills to contribute to.
[+] [-] em3rgent0rdr|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] igravious|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epse|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rando832|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] openplatypus|9 years ago|reply
https://fsfe.org/join
Or
https://my.fsf.org/join
[+] [-] mark_l_watson|9 years ago|reply
The first project seems most important, a free and open cellphone operating system. This seems like a huge challenge, given that phone hardware has proprietary firmware. I look forward to seeing what comes of this.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] phantom_oracle|9 years ago|reply
- Free phone operating system
They don't have the for-profit nature of both Mozilla and Canonical and perhaps supporting the FSF over either of those 2 (Mozillas failed FFOS and no availability of the UbuntuOS mobile devices) will ensure a stable OS that isn't Google-ware.
PS. I know Mozilla isn't for-profit, but they abandoned FFOS just like a for-profit would
[+] [-] icebraining|9 years ago|reply
In this case, unfortunately, being in the high priority list of the FSF doesn't mean much. It's a list of stuff they'd like to see being developed, not actually a list of projects being actively supported with funding or developers' time.
[+] [-] tmsldd|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carussell|9 years ago|reply
To put it another way, what's wrong with letting my Siri and your Siri just be two different "people" instead of feeding back into a single, networked hivemind?
[+] [-] webmaven|9 years ago|reply
Well, not necessarily (although that is certainly the path of least resistance). However, even if data collection is necessary, there are ways of doing it in a privacy- and freedom-respecting manner.
[+] [-] flukus|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheAdamAndChe|9 years ago|reply
Why is this necessary? There's no force keeping people from contributing, they are just choosing not to.
edit: To those downvoting me, can you please explain to me what is wrong with what I said?
[+] [-] dmlorenzetti|9 years ago|reply
At work, we had a speaker who talked about his company's diversity hiring approach. I don't recall specifics, but I believe it was a bank that was pretty well-known for having good representation across race and gender -- which was the basis for the invitation to come speak.
The bit that stood out for me was the claim that they never hired merely to increase diversity. Instead, they hired only based on the merit of applicants.
To achieve diversity, however, they were very aggressive about inviting minority applicants to apply, for example, posting job notices in places where under-represented groups were likely to see the notices.
Applying that idea to OSS, one could imagine active outreach as a means of increasing diversity among contributors.
The larger question of why one should care about having diverse contributors has, I think, been largely addressed by other commenters already. In addition to the UI issues others have mentioned, I might also guess that, from the perspective of Free Software Foundation, they probably also want to understand and engage minorities' privacy concerns.
[+] [-] freyir|9 years ago|reply
Are you saying that people who are underrepresented in the free software community have a natural aversion to contributing to free software? That there are no outside forces impacting their choices, but it's something inherent in their character or genetic makeup?
I don't believe this to be true. If it's not true, then there do exist external factors that impact people's ability or desire to contribute.
> Why is this necessary?
I wouldn't claim the statement "Underrepresented people should spend more time contributing to free software" is some universal truth. Far from it. But from the perspective of the FSF, they presumably believe in their mission, and believe that increased diversity and inclusion would improve the community and its ability to achieve its mission.
[+] [-] otalp|9 years ago|reply
That would be my reasoning. We need to get people who would never see themselves as being able to develop software because they never went to university or don't have the 'brains' to get into it. There's a lot of wasted brainpower because of the false impression that coding is something for an elite few.
[+] [-] timonovici|9 years ago|reply
I saw that happening time and time again - something I didn't consider important at all, was essential for other folks. One example - if no blind people use your software, you'll never know how hard or easy it is for them - hence you'll never get a blind person to be your contributor, since it's unusable to them.
[+] [-] mjg59|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] webmaven|9 years ago|reply
Ah, but there are forces that keep people from contributing, or at least increase the amount of effort required considerably. These forces are not evenly distributed, and there are several dynamics operating that actually increase the effect many of these forces have on members of underrepresented groups.
So, given that this is to some extent a self-reinforcing phenomenon, if we want the community to look like it welcomes all comers, we not only have to be welcoming (which we aren't doing that great on in the first place), but also do everything we can to counteract the force of those feedback loops that keep groups underrepresented.
[+] [-] hackuser|9 years ago|reply
We all naturally have tunnel vision, and apply our experience to everyone else. I can't speak for you, but many people who don't face discrimination naturally don't encounter the obstacles and don't feel negatively toward minorities; they assume that therefore such things don't exist.
But something is missing from our perception, because the evidence is overwhelming. Just consider that a black-skinned person in the U.S., for example, would be insane to assume they face no racism and no risks from it. A woman in IT would be willfully ignorant to think there is no sexism and she faces no threat from it.
* The historical record is overwhelming, and does not need to be recounted.
* Consider that white-skinned males make up ~33% of the U.S. population, yet look at their overwhelming prevalence in tech, business leadership, government, entertainment, and elsewhere - far more than a 1/3 of the people you see are white guys. Probably not coincidentally, it's the group that benefited most from prior centuries of discrimination. If it was a meritocracy, what is the statistical chance that Silicon Valley or the U.S. Senate would turn out to be so overwhelmingly white male? I doubt you believe that their skin color and gender make them superior (and if someone does, then we don't have to argue about where the barriers are); so how else do we explain their overwhelming proportion of success, and the lack of success for so many minorities?
* Surveys show that large numbers have prejudicial views of people of other races, religions, nationalities, etc. Look at the widespread support in Western countries for openly discriminatory leaders, openly discriminatory policies, and similar behavior by many citizens. This includes discrimination by religion (e.g., Muslims), race (e.g., blacks), nationality (immigrants), etc. Many people, even some on HN, claim it's ok to discriminate (to be clear, I don't mean the parent comment), but in the next breath argue that discrimination doesn't exist.
There's a lot of literature that answers your question, explaining what those barriers are and what they look like from other people's perspectives.
[+] [-] camdenlock|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] QuadrupleA|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tyingq|9 years ago|reply
(joking a bit, but there isn't a notable GPL licensed web server, is there?)
[+] [-] II2II|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vpol|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icebraining|9 years ago|reply
Besides, we already have Open Source as a movement that makes the pragmatic argument for free software, there's no need to water down the FSF.
[+] [-] hannob|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mlinksva|9 years ago|reply