Just this morning I thought to myself, what software does the FSF have as a flagship and its basically GIMP. GIMP which when asked about an Android version a year or so ago, said they couldn’t do and they’ve made no movement in being able to do it. It’s sad that their relevancy in tomorrow’s world will be limited.
Huh? How did you narrow it down to just GIMP? Are you excluding all non-GUI software or something? GUI has never been a big focus for GNU (which I assume is what you’re referring to when you say FSF), though they do have a couple of projects like GIMP and GNUCash. Most notably as far as GUI is concerned, they instigated the GNOME project, though they later split off. But yeah, they still maintain extremely important tools, especially for developers and UNIX systems, such as glibc, coreutils, gcc, emacs, gdb, make, bash, grub, octave, guix, etc.
I consider GCC to be the GNU flagship. There are are certainly other candidates ( Emacs has fans ) but GIMP is not an unreasonable proposal.
I don’t know if I would say “they” instigated GNOME depending on who “they” are. The free software movement certainly inspired GNOME ( hence the name ) but GNOME was started by Miguel de Icaza while he was still a University student. I don’t think RMS or anybody else at the FSF ( or GNU ) really had anything to do with it beyond inspiration. Miguel wanted an Open Source desktop to counter KDE which required Qt ( proprietary at the time ). He chose GTK instead. Despite that, Miguel and RMS were never completely on the same page in my view. As you say, GNOME is explicitly not a GNU project now. The FSF never really managed the GNOME project. Not long into its history, GNOME started its own foundation ( back in 2000 ).
Miguel has started multiple “for profit” software businesses including one expecting to make GNOME software ( Ximian ). Miguel founded the Mono project to make an Open Source .NET implementation originally to make GNOME software. Richard Stallman wrote essays telling people not to use Mono and the FSF even started a competing initiative ( DotGNU - went nowhere ). Miguel allowed the Mono Project to become corporately backed ( Novell ) and started his own .NET company ( Xamarin ) after Novell let the Mono team go. Xamarin was a for profit software business which was eventually sold to Microsoft. Mono is now a core part of .NET from Microsoft and Xamarin forms the basis for MAUI, Microsoft’s cross-platform app framework. Miguel works at Microsoft now. All this Microsoft stuff is also Open Source ( .NET, MAUI, Mono ).
I would argue that Richard Stallman and the FSF played just as big a role in the chain of events that led .NET to being Open Source as they did in “instigating” GNOME. That is, they are hugely important historical trail-blazers but not direct participants.
It depends what you mean. The FSF does not provide much software directly. However, if you credit them as the authors of the GPL, without question their flagship achievement is Linux.
The FSF did not create Linux of course. And Linux has kind of rejected the “pure” GPL license. That said, credit where credit is due in terms of not just influence but the supporting software and the license that allowed Linux to build momentum.
The Linux Project deserves just as much recognition in reverse of course. Linux is the main reason most of us have even heard of the GPL and / or the FSF or GNU.
Just this morning I thought to myself, what software does the FSF have as a flagship and its basically GIMP. GIMP which when asked about an Android version a year or so ago, said they couldn’t do and they’ve made no movement in being able to do it. It’s sad that their relevancy in tomorrow’s world will be limited.
Huh? How did you narrow it down to just GIMP? Are you excluding all non-GUI software or something? GUI has never been a big focus for GNU (which I assume is what you’re referring to when you say FSF), though they do have a couple of projects like GIMP and GNUCash. Most notably as far as GUI is concerned, they instigated the GNOME project, though they later split off. But yeah, they still maintain extremely important tools, especially for developers and UNIX systems, such as glibc, coreutils, gcc, emacs, gdb, make, bash, grub, octave, guix, etc.
Here is the list of GNU projects to choose from:
https://www.gnu.org/software/software.html#allgnupkgs
I consider GCC to be the GNU flagship. There are are certainly other candidates ( Emacs has fans ) but GIMP is not an unreasonable proposal.
I don’t know if I would say “they” instigated GNOME depending on who “they” are. The free software movement certainly inspired GNOME ( hence the name ) but GNOME was started by Miguel de Icaza while he was still a University student. I don’t think RMS or anybody else at the FSF ( or GNU ) really had anything to do with it beyond inspiration. Miguel wanted an Open Source desktop to counter KDE which required Qt ( proprietary at the time ). He chose GTK instead. Despite that, Miguel and RMS were never completely on the same page in my view. As you say, GNOME is explicitly not a GNU project now. The FSF never really managed the GNOME project. Not long into its history, GNOME started its own foundation ( back in 2000 ).
Miguel has started multiple “for profit” software businesses including one expecting to make GNOME software ( Ximian ). Miguel founded the Mono project to make an Open Source .NET implementation originally to make GNOME software. Richard Stallman wrote essays telling people not to use Mono and the FSF even started a competing initiative ( DotGNU - went nowhere ). Miguel allowed the Mono Project to become corporately backed ( Novell ) and started his own .NET company ( Xamarin ) after Novell let the Mono team go. Xamarin was a for profit software business which was eventually sold to Microsoft. Mono is now a core part of .NET from Microsoft and Xamarin forms the basis for MAUI, Microsoft’s cross-platform app framework. Miguel works at Microsoft now. All this Microsoft stuff is also Open Source ( .NET, MAUI, Mono ).
I would argue that Richard Stallman and the FSF played just as big a role in the chain of events that led .NET to being Open Source as they did in “instigating” GNOME. That is, they are hugely important historical trail-blazers but not direct participants.
Isn’t Grub moot now? You’re right in that I’m being unfair with my GUI based mindset.
there are many non-systemd distros
What do you mean with flagship software of the FSF? Why not krita, ardour, kdenlive, darktables, wine,…?
Because none of the projects you mentioned are GNU projects.
Mhm in that case: Emacs, grub, tar, screen. And damn, did you know about GNUHealth? Thats pretty dope.
Forget screen, all my homies use tmux
Mobile will never replace desktop. I would never do graphic art on a mobile device
not everyone agrees, but that’s ok
They can both exist
It depends what you mean. The FSF does not provide much software directly. However, if you credit them as the authors of the GPL, without question their flagship achievement is Linux.
The FSF did not create Linux of course. And Linux has kind of rejected the “pure” GPL license. That said, credit where credit is due in terms of not just influence but the supporting software and the license that allowed Linux to build momentum.
The Linux Project deserves just as much recognition in reverse of course. Linux is the main reason most of us have even heard of the GPL and / or the FSF or GNU.