In the item we ran yesterday about GNOME and the GNU Project, one aspect got snowed under a little bit. It turns out a claim made in the iTWire article about the role a blog post by Miguel De Icaza was false, and even though the claim wasn’t ours, I did repeat it, and therefore, should correct it too. I also need to offer apologies for not framing the opening of the article clear enough – had I framed it better, a lot of pointless discussion and name-calling could’ve been avoided.
The claim went something like this: iTWire author Sam Varghese claimed that this blog post by Miguel De Icaza, which talks about Silverlight, was what prompted the complaints about posts on Planet GNOME. Varghese had nothing to back this claim up, and neither did I – obviously. I did specifically made it clear that it was “just” a claim by iTWire, though.
In any case, the result was that a lot of the discussion around this topic focussed on Mono and Miguel De Icaza. GNOME board member Behdad Esfahbod has now made it quite clear on the Foundation mailing list that this claim is nonsense. “The ITWire article suggests that a blog post by Miguel was the trigger for Lucas starting the thread in f-l,” Esfahbod writes, “I can assure you (as a board member) that this is not the case. Yet half the comments are around that blog post by Miguel now.”
Another issue I’d like to touch upon is the whole GNOME-GNU divide – if such a thing even exists. My point with the article was not to summarise and talk about all aspects of the thread in question – I wanted to talk about how I feel about RMS and the FSF, because I know a lot of people feel likewise. Of course, a lot of people feel different, too, and that’s fine.
I did not make it clear enough in the introduction what my intentions were, and I want to apologise for that. I should’ve made it clear in the teaser that I wanted to talk about RMS and the FSF, and not about GNOME and the GNU Project. When writing articles, especially ones that cover almost a thousand emails, it’s easy to get lost and lose perspective on how to start and end articles. As a result, a lot of people probably thought that the GNOME-GNU issue was the main topic of the thread, and this is simply not the case.
I hope this clears up some of the confusion, and if the article did any damage anywhere (which I doubt, I have no illusions about OSNews’ limited sphere of influence), I want to apologise for that. Now, let’s all move on and discuss more important matters.
Climate change, anyone? Religion? Politics?
“Climate change, anyone? Religion? Politics?”
Journalist bias and professionalism? :p
I *am* biased. We stopped pretending otherwise long ago.
Now, let’s talk religion
You know, you’re really getting close to the news media who claim all sorts of bullsh*t stories are true, without checking them out first properly.
I have no doubt at all that you will do this again and again and again because people like made up bullsh*t, just like the other sites to get hits.
This reminds me of why dogs lick their balls. It’s disgusting but it’s what dogs do, just like you and the media. I wouldn’t put you quiet up there with the likes of the tabloids, but just keep on this way and you’ll get there.
Edited 2009-12-16 01:34 UTC
Do you not think that’s a bit strong? When was the last time you saw a member of the mainstream media printing a front page retraction?
As for bias; I don’t see anything wrong with a bit of bias in journalism, after all it is peoples’ own personal opinion that makes for an interesting conversation. The caveat being of course that this bias is made crystal clear to the audience which can be said for all but a few of Thom’s articles that I have read.
Sigh. When I read comments like yours, I’m really sorry that I can’t mod people down and comment at the same time. Because your post really needs some southward modding.
You’re probably just trolling, but just on the off chance that you’re serious, I would simply say: ‘get a grip’. It’s not like he was announcing that life had just been discovered on Mars for crying out loud.
Personally I would like my tech news in a timely manner and run the small risk that it is occassionally bollocks. It’s OK as long as retractions are printed when errors are found.
So anyway, I reckon Jesus didn’t exist, and he’s basically a mythical solar deity.
Although perhaps you will waste time reading and discussing 310 comments, but do you think that is the fault of the discourse of the commentors?
There were many articles published before the correction, although many don’t have that many comments. It’s like we’re waiting for a correction.
Edited 2009-12-16 07:36 UTC
…Back aboard the Enterprise, Uhura, who has been monitoring the radio frequencies of the planet, realizes that the “sun worshipers” were actually worshiping the “Son of God” – Jesus Christ…
I expected it to get modded right down and apologies are worth nothing if you keep making the same mistakes, rather than research stories properly first.
It may have been harsh but the damage is done and no doubt it will happen again.
Edited 2009-12-16 14:38 UTC
It’s what every male human would do too if they could actually reach their heads down there. :p
Thom writes editorials. He has never claimed to write subjective articles. Big difference.
Why do dogs lick their balls? because they can
I for one don’t like any of those things
Isn’t that what we *were* talking about?
Calvinism and predestination is a very good start…
I’d say Wesleyan Armenian doctrine is more scripturally sound, but I really don’t want to start a discussion over Christian doctrines at this site. It’s just too off-topic.
Perhaps, but I find Open Theism and indeterminism to be more philosophically consistent with the Christian narrative overall.
Now if only Open Theism was even tangentially related to Open Source, then we might be able to justify a conversation on the topic
Edited 2009-12-16 08:18 UTC
Did someone mention Calvinball? It’s very easy. You make up the rules as you go.
I think you clarified things well. I don’t take that for granted. Most wouldn’t take the time.
Now let’s move on to which is freer – the BSD license or the GPL. Shouldn’t take long.
Heehee
BSD, of course. Freedom only applies to people, not to things. You can’t say a rock is more or less free than a piece of code; but what you can or cannot do with that piece of code is another matter.
Edited 2009-12-16 04:58 UTC
Good luck trying to, for example, convince a gun-rights advocate of that.
Issues of freedom are involved in anything people do, *but* since people love their toys…
Freedom only applies to what I say! Yours truly, RMS.
Edited 2009-12-16 08:23 UTC
Because there’s no such thing as “free memory”.
I propose the BJ licence; if you want to use the code you have to give the main programmer a BJ.
It is a win-win situation; you get the code and the programmer finally gets laid. Both get screwed – but in a good way
Edited 2009-12-16 12:13 UTC
I… can’t believe you actually said that.
It wasn’t false……..nor was it true. All we know is that there had been some complaints about the content of some blog posts on Planet Gnome, but we don’t know which specific blog posts. There might well have been some complaints about that post since it has zilch to do with Gnome, but we don’t know since the nature of the complaints was never revealed.
Anyone who has tried to read Planet Gnome over time knows that this was long overdue.
Why would it need to be about RMS and the FSF? The discussion was squarely about Gnome’s place as a FSF project, despite the avenue that you chose to go down.
Why? That has absolutely nothing to do with the article or the e-mail thread in question. Your inane ramblings and opinions are not germane to the events in discussion.
Why not?
It was the main topic of discussion, or at least it should have been. The topic of discussion was a post in a long thread proposing a split from Gnome and the GNU for various reasons discussed. I certainly didn’t misread that at all. I certainly read most of that thread.
Who gives a f–k? The article and the main avenue of discussion was bang on and it was based on a public mailing list discussion. Someone hasn’t been badgering you over this have they Thom?
Grow some cajones please and stop telling me or anyone else what they did or didn’t read. I do RTFAs and I did gander down the e-mail thread in more than enough detail.
Agreed. It was the subject of the article after all…
But it wasn’t the core of the discussion in the mailing list, Stallman’s argument was.
Regardless if the topic was actually about GNOME and its alignment (or lack thereof) with the aims of the FSF’s project (GNU) of which GNOME is supposed to be a part … Thom really wanted wanted to rant and whine about Stallman and the FSF.
I thought he made that clear?
OSNews participants are all such nasty people for talking about something other than what Thom wanted.
Where are the [sacrcasm] tags when you need them?[/sarcasm]
PS: for anyone unclear about what the aims of GNU are supposed to be, here they are in all their long-established finery:
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html
Edited 2009-12-16 05:46 UTC
Yet another example of Sayre’s law:
“In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the stakes at issue”
Behdad made it very clear that the trigger was not Miguel.
Probably because RMS weighed in in his role as FSF bigwig.
Half of this site is Thom’s editorials. If you don’t like that, I have no idea why you read it. There are plenty of other news sites out there that are far less subjective.
It doesn’t prove a thing one way or the other. We know that the whole trigger for the thing was many blog posts made on Planet Gnome (we don’t know which ones, obviously) and that post is certainly a prime candidate.
That was no reason to make RMS the sole topic of conversation in an article that was titled something completely different and wasn’t about RMS other than the fact that he commented.
I don’t know why people feel the need to completely lose track of a discussion topic when RMS’s name pops into view and talk totally about him. Those people are, ironically, just as bad if not worse than RMS himself at times.
Yep, and that freedom of choice is why I feel free to make a comment on it. 😉 Telling people that they can go elsewhere won’t change that.
You clearly did not read Behdad’s email nor Luis Rocha’s comment. They are the only 2 people who have commented that know the full details of who complained and about which blog posts/etc and they have both agreed that Miguel’s blog post was not among the list of complaints.
Therefor, you are wrong. Accept that fact and move on.
BTW, is not “cajones” is “cojones”.
wrote your own, you wouldn’t be having this problem. Almost all of your “Read More” content is merely a copied and restated article of the article to which you are linking to.
http://www.osnews.com/story/22612/Russinovich_Details_MinWin_Once_M…
http://www.osnews.com/story/22501/Microsoft_Kernel_Engineers_Talk_A…
http://www.osnews.com/story/22610/GNOME_To_Split_from_GNU_Project_
http://www.osnews.com/story/22618/BusyBox_Author_Bruce_Perens_on_th…
If it makes you feel smarter to plagiarize other people’s ideas so that you can say, “I wrote an article one time about…” so that you can feel informed and say wrote an article, by all means, go ahead continue. But don’t get any glorious ideas about those articles being any different than the article which you got caught red-handed copying from. If it turned out that ITWire was correct about what they said, I’m damn sure you wouldn’t refer to what you wrote as “their claim”, but instead refer to it as: “OSNews ran a story on this a few days ago”.
So if you’re going to continue to rip content off other sites by just restating everything they wrote, get used to saying “even though the claim wasn’t ours, I did repeat it” even when the end result isn’t a positive one. Because really, that is all your doing.
Edit:
And I really love this one:
http://www.osnews.com/story/22575/Microsoft_Amends_Browser_Ballot_P…
“None of the companies involved was available for comment, so we don’t know if this is really the end of it all.”
You make it sound as if you attempted to contact them. But, yet, of course, that too was taken from the article: “All parties to the negotiations — Microsoft; Google; Mozilla, which makes the Firefox browser; and Opera, which filed the initial complaint that led to the commission’s investigation and ruling — declined to comment.”
Edited 2009-12-16 06:27 UTC
Now in case anyone interprets my previous post as too harsh, I would like to mention that Thom does write some interesting articles. Most recently is the article below:
http://www.osnews.com/story/21999/Editorial_X_Could_Learn_a_Lot_fro…
A lot of the content in that article, however controversial, was his own and offered an interesting point of view not often expressed on front page articles. It was a good article in my opinion, and brought a lot of interesting discussion as can be seen by the discussions of that article.
But nevertheless, nobody is going to deny the arrogant attitude that is inherent to much of his articles. It’s just annoying to add to that fact that much of his ‘articles’ aren’t even composed of his own ideas. Perhaps if more of his articles were similar to the one linked above, things would be different…
Who has the time?
I think you need to go back to school and learn what plagiarism meanS before making such serious and heavy accusations. Plagiarism meaning taking someone else’s words and ideas, and claiming them as your own, without giving source.
We do NOT do that.
We ALWAYS properly provide attribution and links, and we ALWAYS make it clear that our content is not our own. I find it very unpleasant and hurtful to claim that I plagiarise.
I can handle Mac, Linux or whatever trolls, but you’re really going too far. Your personal attack on me is not only clearly unfounded, but probably also just designed to hurt me instead of doi g anything else.
Very unpleasant and unessecary. An apology would be nice.
Apologize for what exactly? You are the one who wrote the “Read More” link. And what is the read more link supposed to be?
Taken from your “Clean Slate”: http://www.osnews.com/story/20693/OSNews_Clean_Slate
“Another addition that many have noticed are what we internally refer to as “long items”. These are the items that carry a “read more” link, under which an editor writes in a little more detail about the subject at hand, and maybe provide an opinion or two. The idea is that we want to offer more – on the crew mailing list, I explained that the internet is actually a pretty simple entity.”
Of course, you go further on to state:
“As you may understand, we don’t know enough about every subject to cover them all in-depth, and as such, we have made a very bold decision. Basically, we love and hug our longer items so much, that we have decided to make them our primary focus.”
Fact is, the so-called additional “in-depth” coverage is NOT yours, but rather the article which you are ripping from. Despite what you wish the “Read More” link to be – no wait-my apologies, I mean “long items” as you call them “internally”, they are not your own additional commentary but the content of the article you are linking. I mean, look at the Windows 7 kernel articles. You wrote paragraph upon paragraph of content, all derived from the article you linked. So much so that if one were to read your article first, they would learn nothing more from the original article.
And in regards to your comment about me going back to school, how about you ask your teacher if providing a citation to the source precludes one from being guilty of plagiarism. If 90% of the ideas presented within one article comes from that of another article, even with sources cited, ask your teacher if that is plagiarism.
That article is a recounting of a public speech held by Mark. I’m using his direct quotes, as jotted down by BetaNews, and the attribution is 100% clear in the VERY FIRST PARAGRAPH:
Thanks, I didn’t catch that citation, my apologies Thom! Next time I take 90% of the content from another article, I’ll be sure to quote that it was taken from that article. Yep, will do! Because proper citation allows a full ride to republish and copy whatever I wish elsewhere!
Are you enrolled in your Masters in Journalism yet? Perhaps you can ask your teacher about it.
Thom runs a blog. Blogging by definition is logging the web. That is what he is doing. Logging something that is somewhere else. “I [sic] suppose, [hic], but I’m onest overst the eight!”
So ITWire is incorrect for “OSNews ran a story on this a few days ago”. OSNews just blogged it. Of course there is a 10% extraction rule for education and many professions.
Blogging is not a profession according to “God damn me” Rupert Murdoch. He runs a journalist company anyway. Now you could write an article about my (not RMS) position on this.
But the comment claryfying what the story was really about makes sense, I see the point and of what your point was too.
Edited 2009-12-16 08:08 UTC
Holwerda,
You have made a claim about me in your posting above. You have no basis for this claim and I strongly advise you to withdraw it immediately.
Someone from the GNOME Foundation has made a counter claim – that is all you can say. Has this Esfahbod chap offered you incontrovertible proof that the post that led to Lucas Rocha’s initial mail was something other than De Icaza’s post? Do you have that proof? You may be needing it soon unless you retract your accusations about me.
You say I had nothing to back up my claim – did you bother to check with me?
Let people know the whole story: I submitted a link to OSNews to my story on Saturday morning (Dec 12) AEST, as I did to Slashdot and a couple of other sites. You did not have the integrity to link to it, you plagiarised it. The source was public and I had provided all the links but the proper thing to do was to link to my story, even if you wrote your own. You wanted to be a star.
Now someone from GNOME seems to be putting pressure on you and you don’t appear to have the guts to stare them down. Or are you trying to suck up to them?
Develop some guts. Else stop calling yourself a journalist. The way you have handled this whole thing shows that you haven’t a clue about journalism.
Sam Varghese
This is an issue of trust. You provide no proof in your article about the claim – if you had, I’m sure you would’ve. I trust someone like Esfahbod, that much is true. However – people are free to make up their own minds. That’s the whole point: in articles on OSNews, I state my own opinions. My readers are clever enough to agree or disagree with me, to make up their own minds about who to believe – your claim, or one of a noted GNOME developer.
I am free to state that I find Esfahbod’s claim trustworthy, just as much as you are free not to.
My story was entirely based on posts made to public sources – in this case, blogs on PGO and emails to the Foundation list, a number of them which had no place in your article at all. You wrote a story based off the same sources – that’s what happens. Are you seriously going to argue that if we were to both write about a Steve Jobs keynote, I’d be plagiarising you because you covered the same public content?
On top of that, as explained, my article wasn’t supposed to focus around GNOME-GNU at all – but about the second half of my article. I apologise here for not framing that well.
No, I am trying to be as honest as possible. If this story only had 5 comments, I wouldn’t have cared. However, this story generated over 300 comments, and this means that it might have had negative consequences not based on actions of GNOME developers or Miguel, but based on MY presentation of it – including the claim about Miguel, which served as a major hot iron in the comments.
Contrary to many other bloggers, I like to be held accountable for my words, so if it turns out that I’m spreading nonsense (other than nonsense opinions of course) that can have negative effects, I’d like to offer apologies and clarify matters. I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again.
I’m not a journalist, I’m a blogger. On top of that, if “having a clue about journalism” means standing by claims even though you personally believe them to be nonsense, the I’d rather NOT have a clue about journalism.
Edited 2009-12-16 08:13 UTC
Yeah, it’s convenient to switch on the blogger switch when things get nasty isn’t it. Again, from your so called “Clean Slate”.
“OSNews is not Thom’s blog
With just me doing the longer items, OSNews was moving dangerously close to just me spouting opinions, which is of course not desirable. That’s why from the moment I started doing the longer items, I started a very strong push towards getting more dedicated editors on board, with opinions that differ from my own, so that they can bring balance to the site as a whole.”
That sounds to me like you are trying to become editor of a few writers. Hell, you don’t even call yourself a blogger on your Profile page:
“Title: Managing editor”
http://www.osnews.com/user/uid:5/
Point me to ONE instance where I claim to be a journalist. ONE.
Yup. Editor OF A BLOG.
Thom, this is really weak for you…
This is OSNews, a news site, not a blog. If all you wanted was to blog, your stories should not appear on the front page of OSNews, but under the OSNews Staff Blog.
IMO, OSNews has been gradually straying from its stated goal of informing its “readers with the latest news on a vast range of operating systems and computing environments, from the well-known mainstream OSes, down to small (but also very interesting technically) hobby or embedded ones”. It used to be more original and about the technology per se; now if has become more of a place for soap opera-ish posts or a rehash of already existing information, both of which are of questionable journalistic value IHMO. I miss the old days…
Thank you, for informing us, longtime owners and editors of this site, what our own site is.
We used to be a glorified RSS feed. Last January, this changed. If you miss the old days, there’s nothing I can do for you. We cannot be everything to everyone. We decided to cover the same topics, but in a different way. This was not an easy decision (took well over 18 months to get there), but it was made anyway.
You have the freedom to get your news elsewhere. That might sound like I don’t care about what you think, but that’s not what I mean. What I mean is that it is impossible to please everyone while still having fun on our own. Remember, OSNews is a volunteer effort, and the glorified RSS feed mode was not something that brought any of us any sense of fulfilment or accomplishment. A trained frakking monkey could do that. We didn’t like doing it. Had we stayed on that course, we would’ve thrown in the towel, ending OSNews. Is that what you would’ve preferred?
All this is actually remarkably similar to Haiku, for which you do a lot of valuable volunteer work. How do you respond to people barging into the Haiku mailing lists, telling you that he wants Haiku to be/act like Xyz because that’s what he believes Haiku should be? Are you going to give in to his every demand, or do you tell him “Sorry, but we have different plans. Haiku is a volunteer effort, so we cannot give in to your every wish”?
I can guess what you’d say.
In the end, OSNews is a volunteer effort that takes up 3-5 hours of my day. This means that OSNews should be fun for me and the other team embers, because why else would we spend so much time on it?
Well, you were the one who said that you were just blogging… So, perhaps you could change your title to Managing Blogging Editor? Stupid jokes aside, you can’t portray yourself as the managing editor of a news site and then conveniently claim to be just a blogger when the potatoes burn. It’s kind of mis-portraying yourself.
My comment about the (good) old days was more related to OSNews now having a different balance in the types of news; I just feel there is too much legal stuff and/or “you said this, no I said that” soap opera posts now, and a lot less exciting stuff about the actual technology and the people that make such technology happen.
I don’t argue that there may have been more syndicated content in the past; but while many news posts are definitely longer now than the past syndicated posts, the added volume is in many cases a rehash of information existing elsewhere — including verbatim quotes — which IMO add little informational value.
In the bigger picture, OSNews seemed to have more actual hands-on reviews and definitely more interviews of people in technology (5 in 2009, 4 in 2008, 9 in 2007, 11 in 2006, 14 in 2005…), and that is what I used to find the most interesting.
Needless to say, this is all just my personal preference and you are free to totally ignore me.
I do not have to provide any proof in my article – and your claim that I have to shows how ignorant you are. iTWire is a registered Australian company operating under Australian media laws and you can take us to court to show proof.
This is what you have written: “It turns out a claim made in the iTWire article about the role a blog post by Miguel De Icaza was false,”
That is potentially defamatory.
You can state your opinions but if you start calling me a liar then you had better show proof, else it may turn nasty.
You can state that he has denied my claim and give his designation to add weight to that. But if you say my claim is false, then you have to prove it. I have my own sources for my claims and we can match sources when we meet in court.
My story was the very first one and your post is startlingly similar. Additionally, you were careful not to link to my story because people would then have seen the similarities. I am not a fool to make a claim about plagiarism – I have seen people of your ilk for the last three decades.
I note that I am not the only person accusing you of plagiarism – you seem to have a history of doing this kind of thing.
You can do what you like. But when you call someone a liar, you need to have proof. If you’d rather have lawyers deal with this, that’s your choice.
Your title is managing editor – it is not blogger. If we go to court, you will have a big problem claiming that you have told the public who read this site that you are a blogger.
Sam Varghese
Do you have any backup from ITWire or are you just bluffing? Frankly, you’d have a very hard time proving either plagiarism or defamation. Why don’t you ask the army of lawyers at your disposal just how valid your claims are before you start running at the mouth.
Do yourself a favour. Suck up the embarrassment and crawl back under that stone you came out from.
Wow, being schooled in journalism by Sam Varghese.
*burn*
The pot just called you black.
Oh dear! And…
Tell me, Sam, what exactly are you hopping to achieve with those statements? Do you honestly think that by hinting at legal action you could possible impress anyone either on this site or on the rest of the web?
Oh the bully.
And do you have any for any of your claims?
Do you have anything to back up your claims?
If so, produce the evidence.
Otherwise you are just a troll on his soapbox with empty threats. I would love to see you make your threats real, it would provide me with infinite amusement.
It is all okay. At least here we can discuss and flame whatever we want. That is to say, at least here the editorial doesn’t push GNU/FSF-style censorship, exclusion, and demonization of alternative views.
It’s not the same thing at all. Here is a neutral blog that is not involved in software creation at all.
Call me when you see GNU adverts on a Microsoft site, or when you can buy Windows in an Apple shop ==> “censorship, exclusion, and demonization of alternative views.”
You don’t understand it at all. The FSF present their view because they have one. They’re not a neutral party blogging about everything and anything.
Haha. Nice try. Go launch another Windows7Sins or something.
Yeah, I’ll do that while you launch another “get the facts” campaign, calling the GPL a cancer.
Seriously. It’s not like the FSF are any worse than any other software vendor.
And FFS, it’s censorship when the government does it. The owners and moderators of a private forum can moderate it however they wish. You have no inherent human right or reasonable expectation to be able to say whatever you wish on a private forum owned and operated by someone else. Get over it. If you just want to loudly scream your inane opinion to people who will agree with you, then find a forum run by and populated with partisans who agree with you, and have fun in your echo chamber. Or, get a radio show on Fox.
Last time I checked, FSF was not a “software vendor”.
Last time I checked, FSF was not operating “private forum”. But it sure was the association with GNU that provoked arguments that the Planet Gnome should be moderated and censored.
Last time I checked people whose blogs are aggregated by Planet Gnome have right to express whatever opinions they wish.
Edited 2009-12-16 18:07 UTC
Fair enough: here, let me fix that.
Equally, I could point out that “The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is the principal organizational sponsor of the GNU Project,” or that gnu.org has a “join the FSF” link on their top-banner. I think I can say, with great confidence, that they are affiliated organizations, by any reasonable definition.
Oh, I was unaware that none of the private forums of the FSF or its affiliates — no web forums, mailing lists, IRC channels or content portals — where involved. Wait, how are we talking about FSF censorship if we’re not talking about an FSF forum? What, where they somehow deleting content from OS News? Like, with their minds? Telepathically?
And, even if it’s bastardly, it’s not criminal or particularly unreasonable of them to ask an affiliate of theirs, for whom they are the “principal organizational sponsor,” to restrict the presentation of views to which they are strongly opposed. They are an advocacy group, after all, and GNU comes down pretty strongly on the FSF’s side. In more concrete terms, given that the GNU are strongly affiliated with the FSF, I think it’s reasonable for the FSF to ask the GNU not to actively distribute and reproduce media generated by groups (or the affiliates of groups) to whom the FSF (and the GNU) are directly philosophically opposed!
And you would be incorrect about that — well, partly. They have the right to post whatever they want on their blogs; they do not have the right to have Planet Gnome reproduce those posts. If Planet Gnome decides, as a matter of policy, not to aggregate blogs that espouse views with which they do not agree — or fail to meet other standards — it would not be a case of censorship. Or, specifically, it would be in no way criminal, and would not in any way constitute a violation of the right to free expression. Seriously.
Edit: I can’t oppening tag
Edited 2009-12-16 18:39 UTC
Yes. You quite nicely summarized all that I fiercely oppose. No self-respecting open source / free software project should actively limit the free speech of its members.
(And just to recapitulate the context here: this is about limiting the free speech to disallow talking about so-called “proprietary software”, which should be always presented as “immoral” or “unethical”, as stated by the head honcho of FSF himself.)
If actions like these are required for Gnome to stay as a GNU project, these two should divorce immediately, the sooner the better.
Edited 2009-12-16 18:46 UTC
They don’t limit speech by choosing not to reproduce speech. Really. Seriously. Free speech doesn’t work that way.
But: I don’t disagree with you about the situation, I was just trying to make two points:
1: Planet Gnome is (derivatively, indirectly) associated with an advocacy group, whose position they do not completely support, and
2: Accusing the FSF of censorship is inflammatory, an exaggeration, and melodramatic.
You’re right that, if Planet Gnome, or the Gnome project in general, does not feel that they can adhere to the portions of the FSF’s ideals that the GNU project endorses, they should separate themselves from the GNU and the FSF. Whether that’s the case is a decision that the GNOME community has to make, and I don’t really have a strong opinion on which way they should go.
But it was proposed. The whole thread started from reinforcing “the code of conduct”.
Sure. No offense taken.
In that infamous thread, the head of the mentioned advocacy group in very clear words stated that promotion of “non-free” software should not happen in planet Gnome.[1] Call it what you want, but that is censorship at the end of the day.
Agreed. It is my personal opinion (to which I am hopefully entitled to) that the connection to GNU does more harm than good to Gnome.
I’ve thrown my own set of patches to Gnome or software closely related to it, and I can associate with the project also code-wise. I also have an opinion about this. So what? To rephrase from my original comment: at least here at OSnews we can write and flame whatever we want.
[1] Actually, this happened many times, but e.g. in:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg04052.html
Here is particularly nasty idea of censorship on a Planet (!):
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg04106.html
Edited 2009-12-16 19:45 UTC
I worded that ambiguously. What I meant was, “Even if the GNOME team decides not to represent opposing points of views presented in blogs they would normally aggregate, they will not then be limiting others’ free speech.” Free speech entitles people to express their views in public forums, or in private forums they own. It does not allow them to express their opinions in other people’s private forums. It is not a moral outrage if Planet Gnome chooses not to aggregate blog posts that speak positively about non-free software.
“Censor” is a loaded term. If you define censorship to include “any use of power over a communication channel to limit the spread of a message,” then sure, not aggregating “pro-closed-software” posts would be censorship — but by that definition, so would spam filtering, or any type of content moderation at all — even removing, say, extremist, racist or homophobic messages. Adopting content standards would not be a moral outrage, would not be censorship in the dire and sinister sense of the word, and would not even be particularly unreasonable or amoral. And it certainly would not be a free speech issue, at all, in the slightest.
Planet Gnome has the right to enforce whatever arbitrary content standards they want to. Whether they want to adopt content standards is their choice, but they certainly have the right to do so.
I thought pointless discussion and name calling was the whole point of osnews.
It’s the whole point of the web. That, and funny pictures of cats.
And porn. You can’t forget the porn.
Sam Varghese is not a journalist, he’s a low-rent blogger. Don’t cite him or use him as a source, or you will end up looking silly. As in this case.
careful of what you say … or you might have the mighty legal team of itwire in your neck … have you any prove that he is only a low-rent blogger, did you bother asking him what he actually earns for his rants? — sorry couldn’t help it.
Hmm i wonder if he will also legally threaten Esfahbod … that would be entertaining
Edited 2009-12-16 16:02 UTC
Another nasty thread. Tom, I forgive you for whatever what it was… I wouldn’t throw a rock because I am not perfect. However, some folks in this thread pretend to be perfect – let us spot them at cam4 dot com and see if they come up right here to bash anyone.
a core of the discussion in the mailing list was to address a complain raised by somebody over a post at planet gnome ..somebody complained the post was inappropriate and comments were asked what content are appropriate and what arent
RMS commented on an already going on thread and gave his opinions about what he doesnt consider as appropriate and the anti-RMS crowd came out and start calling for gnome to break away from GNU
Thom, wanted to rant about RMS and wanted the focus to be and to remain on RMS and his mentioning of mr Icaza and gnome “confused” the commenters and they went on the path he didnt want them to go and that is what he is saying on this follow up ..
the only follow up that was critical is to report what post on planet gnome was responsible and he still hasnt ..he just said it wasnt Icaza’s post because he “trust” somebody he said it wasnt but who also didnt mention what post was actually responsible ..
it sounds like osnews(or thom alone??) has taken a side against RMS
The very idea, real or not, of taking the GNU out of Gnome is just silly, as in step away from the keyboard, we’re gluing your hands together now silly. That’s a matter of identity, raison de etre, and not turning into OME which looks just plain stupid. Do that and I’ll go Mac-only out of embarrassment – just watch me.
The discussion started by me on behalf of the GNOME Foundation’s Board of Directors on foundation-list was definitely not caused by posts by Miguel on Planet GNOME. Actually, the discussion was not even supposed to be specifically about Planet GNOME. We just wanted to know the opinion of foundation members about making the GNOME Code of Conduct[1] a requirement to become a foundation member[2]. In other words, the discussion ended up focusing on Planet GNOME but that was not the intention at all.
I wrote a summary[3] of the topics discussed in the thread. I hope it helps to clarify what has actually been discussed and the respective outcomes.
[1] http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct
[2] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2009-November/msg000…
[3] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2009-December/msg001…
Someone who has not already replied to this story mod parent up, please.
Thom you write:
and
I think you throwing in RMS actually started the name-calling. This seems to always be the case here on osnews, once someone mentions RMS the name calling starts. I don’t believe that you did not anticipate this.
Thanks for clarifications and apologies,
keep up the good work.