MJ Ray: FSFE Fellowship Raffle: Notes on a Scandal
FSFE launched
a raffle
to encourage more people to join.
I don't find it particularly attractive,
which is probably partly because of my
statistics education.
I'll join FSFE when they stop promoting
non-free-software like the notorious FDL.
As it turns out, my reaction was pretty mild
compared to some existing fellows.
There was
a discussion
on the main FSFE international list
flaming them for including
the "likeable mask"-wearing
Nokia N800
and an
ex-Qt-locked Greenphone
among the prizes.
GNU Project Chief Webmaster Matt Lee wrote:
"I don't think this is appropriate, or wise. Further, it makes me want to not support FSF Europe."Pretty early on, FSFE's Jonas Oberg wrote:
"Actually, this is news to all of us. [...] if there's no way to liberate the hardware before sending it out, we might well have to withdraw those prizes from the raffle to avoid sending non-free software to anyone."but the flamefest continues unabated. As is sadly common on free software-related lists, the moderators have not stepped in with the fire blankets yet. (Some also found it worth reposting old lies about debian, which drew me onto the list to rebut them. sigh Way to go FSF fans.) Aside: Savannah has suffered a hardware failure in case you were wondering where cvs.savannah.* went.