But the problem is none of those foundations can raise enough money and hire enough people to compete in that space. It is not the right model.
Free Software is about vision, leadership and a lot of talented people freely contributing. I saw Stallman once "preaching" live at an event and telling us about the code he wrote, it was quite the experience. He is a weird guy but 1 hour of him speaking would have more impact than any MBA or Bachelor of Art type being paid to fundraise and coordinate.
I don't know if that's actually true but it's clear what they're arguing here anyway.
So the ones in the field have passed a higher barrier and pressure and are more qualified than the p80 male.
This could be another spin on the topic ;)
After Stallman launched the GNU project, the emergence of GNU licensed kernel for x86 architecture was inevitable. It just happened that Linux became that kernel. Had it not, the GNU project folks led by rms would have inevitably made their own.
I'm not sure this is guaranteed. GNU and the FSF have absolutely provided an enormous amount to the concepts and implementation of OS software. No doubt about it. Without it Linux would not exist, but it doesn't mean that'd have resulted in a widely used GNU alternative.
BUT, GNU/FSF also has a long history of losing focus on coding and spending a lot of time on political and philosophical arguments. I think it more likely BSD may have headed to where linux ended up than GNU. Linux was successful because they moved forwards and arguments were settled relatively quickly (for better and worse), whereas Hurd got stuck in development hell as people argued over how pure the microkernel architecture should be, pushing away people who just wanted things to work - including volunteers. During the crucial period over the 1990s, open source software needed to get things done (kind of like a startup). There are videos out there of people speaking at conferences about their work on Linux, and RMS being in the audience interjecting that it's "GNU/Linux" every time Linux was uttered. Who wants to work in an environment like that?
Even today, people are looking at more and more alternatives to important GNU software because of stagnation or other technical merits. GCC has lately seen alternatives become more common, as an example.
This also ignores the hostility the FSF historically has/had towards the commercial industry. Torvalds largely accepted patches from anybody if the code worked as intended.
Maybe something could have come out, but my gut tells me that people would have gravitated to something else that worked.
Do you have any data which shows that the type of leadership must be so different which affects this? Because if not, then you can infer only one thing from that data, and not what you did.
Are you saying that women with that qualification have the same opportunities as men without external intervention? Then why did you even bring up sex, and why I need to show you how to express it?
It is not about being "like him", he was just some fat old man with a big beard and I remember thinking he probably smells pretty bad. What was broad and inspiring was his vision and leadership as an human.
I still think that the FSF needs a strong character with a clear vision, man or woman, but maybe with less orthodoxy than RMS.
It doesn’t depend on external expression or validation.
Of course it is about political action, putting pressure, being loud etc.
But now look at the current state of affairs and tell me - how successful were all those orgs, with more professional management, PR people and proper gender representation? We don't need another man or lady in suit, giving generic word-salad speeches, full of currently fashionable words. Those on the other side of the fence have easily can have much more of those.
That might explain why the Scala Center (which oversees the Scala language) has a young political sciences grad as its executive director. She has zero commercial or academic experience in Scala.
And this is how she behaves at conferences:
https://x.com/jdegoes/status/1633888998434193411
Leftwing political activism, cancel culture and #metoo-style witchhunts (example: https://pretty.direct/statement )
This is what the Scala "community" has become. It's tragic, given how good the language is.
That there are non-technical leaders who lose the thread does not mean that leaders lose the thread because they're non-technical.
There are plenty of technical leaders who have also gone off on personal tangents and vendettas!
Maybe a more accurate appraisal would be 'some people suck at a job, and it's unfortunately difficult to dislodge a bad leader anywhere'.
Compare and contrast this:
> Say what you want about the Stalleman type he was very inspiring and had real leadership. So a lot of hackers followed him in his crazy vision and that gave us a lot.
With this:
> It is very feminine and obviously doesn't work that well.
It's a super sexist comment. A comment born in the 60s, or I guess in our geek land, still in 2025.
Is it?
To answer this, just reverse the genders in the statement and see if it's still sexist.
"It's very masculine and obviously doesn't work that well"
If you have problems with some type of behaviour it’s much better to say exactly what they are rather than appealing to some platonic notion of sex characteristics, which is both offensive and poorly communicates your position.
0. https://fortune.com/2025/01/13/zuckerberg-says-companies-nee...
Criticizing a woman for failure because of femininity falls nonetheless more into sexism than actual criticism of actions taken.
You really can't pick up on your own casual sexism? That's just evidence that this kind of anti-woman "femininity=weakness" language comes naturally to you.
Given this response, I would retract the accusation that you made a sexist statement, and instead conclude that you are a sexist person.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: you've unfortunately been posting tons of flamewar comments to HN and clearly using the site primarily for this, so I've banned the account.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.