Drew DeVault, the author of Hare Lang, issued an article saying that after nearly 40 years, the Free Software Foundation (Free Software Foundation, FSF) is dying.
Their accomplishments are unquestionable: we must express our gratitude and admiration for what they have accomplished over the decades in building and advancing our cause. The principles of software freedom are more important than ever, and the products of these institutions are still necessary and useful -- the GPL licensed family, GCC, GNU coreutils, and more. Yet the organizations behind these efforts are struggling.
Drew believes that FSF did not pay attention to the development of the core concepts of disseminating free software ideas, developing, publishing and promoting copyleft licenses, and monitoring the healthy development of the free software movement . At the same time, it was distracted and invested resources in other idle work.
First, he accused the FSF of being a thought leader in free software philosophy for its narrow message; describing it as "deaf, ineffective, and short-sighted." At the same time, it expresses disapproval of the FSF's previous attacks on the "GNU/Linux" nomenclature, confrontation with allies in the open source movement, and denigration of the audience as "useds" rather than "users". "Pages and pages of dense philosophical papers and poorly organized FAQs do not provide a useful entry point or reference for the community. Information cannot be disseminated like this."
Secondly, FSF has not done its due diligence in the development of copyleft. According to Drew, the GPL series of licenses is crucial to the free software movement, but its dense and obscure terms make it difficult for the public to understand (although it is supplemented by a 16,000-word FAQ). And nowadays, some new projects are not optimistic about the adoption of copyleft: more than 1 million npm packages use permissive license, and less than 20,000 use GPL; cargo has 500,000 permissive packages, and another 20,000 or so GPL.
Finally, although the current free software movement is developing healthily. But this is largely due to the open source movement and the near equivalence between free software and open source software. "There is more free software than ever before, and almost all new software contains elements of free software, and most people refer to it as open source."
The FOSS community is now dominated by those out of reach of FSF information. The wider community is enjoying a growth in the diversity of backgrounds and values represented, and the message is not getting through to these people. The FSF fails to understand its place in the world at large, or its relationship to the progressive movements happening inside and outside the ecosystem. The Foundation's failure to reach out to new leaders in the community, allowing them to form siled, weak institutions without central leadership, leaves us vulnerable to growing movements like Open Core and the love for free and open source exploited by commercial attacks on software brands.
"FSF urgently needs reform to fulfill its fundamental mission". Drew called on the foundation to make the following changes:
- Reform leadership. It's time for Richard Stallman to go. The people he represents exclude everyone else and are becoming a minority in the free software movement. We need more leaders of color, women, LGBTQ representation, and more. The current leadership, especially from RMS, has created an environment of exclusivity where inclusion and representation are important to the success of the movement.
- reform institutions. The FSF needs to correct its myopic view of the ecosystem, reach out to emerging leaders across the FOSS world, and hold them accountable for the FSF mission. It is these leaders who hold the reins of the free software movement today -- not the FSF. If the FSF still wants to be involved in the sport, they need to recognize and empower the leaders who move the cause forward.
- reform information. People rely on the FSF to establish a strong background in free software philosophy and practice within the community, and the FSF does not provide this service. Messages need to be more accessible and calmer in tone, and the relationship between free software and open source needs to be reformed so that together the FSF and OSI become pillars of the foundation of our ecosystem.
- Separated FSF from the GNU project. For decades, the FSF and GNU have worked hand in hand to create something from nothing, but their privileged relationship is outdated. The GNU project represents a small fraction of the free software ecosystem today, and it is necessary for the Free Software Foundation to be independent of any particular project and concerned with the health of the ecosystem as a whole.
- Develop new copyleft licenses. Beyond the GPL and MPL, the FSF should write new licenses to fill other gaps in the market. And should show the community how free software thinks about licenses, as a resource that project leaders can rely on to understand the importance of their license choices.
"The free software movement needs a powerful force to unite it: we face challenges from many directions, and the Free Software Foundation today is not up to the task. The FOSS ecosystem is thriving, and now it is the FSF that stands up to It is high time that the name of liberty guides its coming success."