[IAEP] FSF attitude to xo and sugar

[Edward Cherlin]

I am in personal contact with Stallman (rms) on this. Who else here
knows him? We have met several times at computing events, and
discussed other questions in e-mail. I was a factor in his choice of
the XO as his main computer, which unfortunately lasted only a short
time, because he was unaware that Nicholas had Mitch working on a
GPLed BIOS replacement.

rms is talking nonsense still, but there remains the possibility of
progress. I'll let you know more if I hear anything positive. Our
correspondence will appear in OLPC News as an Open Letter with
whatever followup is appropriate.

I have looked through the rest of this thread. I don't have time to
reply in detail, but I have raised all of these issues with rms, and
asked him why he won't take Yes for an answer. ^_^

You should understand that _we_, all of us, have failed to communicate
with the public, with the press, and with our natural allies. It isn't
just Nicholas. We need a way to put out press releases when Nicholas
says something dumb, or the Wall Street Journal runs a completely
false op-ed about our work. We should be able to get a pro bono
account at PR Newswire or some such service.

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 2:33 AM, Bill Kerr<billkerr at gmail.com> wrote:
> n Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 7:20 AM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> === Sugar Digest ===
>
> 4. The recent FSF campaign condemning the use of Windows 7 in
> education (See http://windows7sins.org/) imputes OLPC in complicity
> with Microsoft. It is disappointing that the FSF is not making any
> constructive arguments in favor of free software alternatives to
> Windows such as Sugar on GNU/Linux, which is currently shipped on
> every machine distributed by OLPC.
>
> http://windows7sins.org/#1
> When I first saw it I interpreted that page as contrasting the xo as a
> positive alternative to Windows (and still think that is a valid
> interpretation)
> When I read what walter wrote above later I was shocked to realise that it
> could indeed be interpreted the way walter has, as well
> On revisiting I can't see any clarifying text there
> If walter's interpretation is the correct one, which may well be true, then
> it's a bad choice of graphic - they should have shown windows running on the
> xo screen,  not happy smiling children
> from this 2008 article RMS is supportive of sugar but ambivalent about the
> xo:
>
> Sugar is free software, and contributing to it is a good thing to do. But
> don't forget the goal: helpful contributions are those that make Sugar
> better on free operating systems. Porting to Windows is permitted by the
> license, but it isn't a good thing to do
>
> http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/can-we-rescue-olpc-from-windows
>
>
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>



-- 
Edward Mokurai Cherlin
Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name, and
Children are
my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://earthtreasury.org/