The problem with foundations (and many similar tribalism constructs) is that they are highly prone to politics and turf wars over non-issues. The top brass in these organizations hardly care about the core issues their "foundation" was meant to solve such as advocacy of free software (in case of FSF), they are more interested in things like national politics and general social issues which may not be related to software (or their core activism) at all.
Consider the latest head of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), Geoffrey Knauth, who was appointed as its President recently. This guy is supposed to step into the shoes of RMS (Richard Stallman) who started the whole FSF movement and made it reach where it is today. RMS leads by example (like any true activist should) and tries his best to avoid any non-free (proprietary) software or platforms, and also actively advises everyone else to do the same.
But this guy Geoffrey Knauth is nothing of that sort, a cursory lookup on the internet suggests that he has a profile on both Twitter and Linkedin, two popular non-free platforms which RMS actively despises and avoids! Furthermore, his Linkedin profile shows that much of his experience lies in things like C#, SQL Server, Azure, etc. which are all proprietary platforms having nothing to do with free software.
His twitter activity, on the other hand, suggests that he is more interested in national politics matters and social issues like BLM, racism, etc. which are all great causes but have little to do with free software or open source. And on the other hand, I couldn't find a single tweet or mention by him about anything even remotely relating to a GNU software such as gcc, emacs or linux.
If you are comfortable spending your hard-earned money on an organization that doesn't even pretend to stand for the issues it represents, that's up to you. However, if you don't want to do that and still want to help the cause of open source or free software (FOSS), understand that it's the technical people (developers, testers and build guys) who actually toil and labor to create the software that you happen to use. Isn't it a better idea to help them directly instead?
If you ever happen to raise an issue on the bug tracker of a popular software like emacs or ubuntu or libre-office, chances are that you have come across a friendly developer who had helped you in that situation. Find out more about that developer by visiting their github profile, etc., and see if they are on a funding platform like Patreon. If not, ask them directly about how they accept donations, check out if they are available for hire on a freelance project for customizing a software product.
In short, if you truly want to help FOSS, then put your money where your mouth is: help the actual makers of free software, not the toothless organizations who just have a claim on activism.
1 comment:
RMS himself wasn't born a free software maker or activist. He used proprietary software up to a certain point, when there was enough free software to do what he expected from it. So what really matters is what Geoffrey Knauth will do as the new leader of the FSF.
And I wholeheartedly agree with directly supporting the developers. I did so, and I'll keep doing it.
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