I had quite a few ideas about what I would want to write first about here, but the recent passing of Steve Jobs and the subsequent torrent of articles released on it made this a no-brainer. Sadly, the one article that led me to actually sit down and write was the post published by Stallman on his “personal” blog.

I’ve been a Linux user since at least 1997 and I’ve already been a paying member of the FSF since I wanted to contribute back not only with source code (which I did, for several projects) but also financially. But I’ve since then abandoned my membership of the FSF after seeing that several of the projects on which my money was being spent were merely publicity stunts that were neither advancing the state of Free Software nor helping out overall with the community.

Now seeing Stallman’s latest post and the repercussion it had, I can’t help but feel glad to no longer be a member of the association he embodies. The FSF seriously needs to rethink itself, coming up with new answers for things such as what it stands for, what it wishes to become and the best way to get there.

The main issues which I think would need answering are:

1. What the FSF stands for? Is it here to advance the cause of the GNU project (and is this project still valid)? Or is it here to engage with developers and users in order to foster the Free Software community?
2. Is the FSF relevant nowadays? Is it helping developers achieve more or is it getting in their way?
3. How can it become more relevant in the future (both short-term and long-term)? How can the FSF advance the cause of Free Software?
4. How can the FSF be organized in order to better achieve this?

I hate to say this, but I honestly think that Stallman also has one major item that would fall under his personal agenda: is the FSF being helped by his leadership or would he better provide for the FSF by stepping down and assuming another role within the organization?

The GNU project failed on its initial goal of providing a complete and useable Free Software operating system. But it succeeded in fostering several different projects which became the base of the Linux operating system. It is high time the FSF acknowledges this and changes to focus on becoming a center to foster Free Software development, perhaps even learning a thing or two from Steve Jobs about product development in order to turn Free Software into something useful for end-users.

One thing that is sorely lacking in the Free Software world is the attention to details that has become the signature of the person whose death sparkled this whole debacle. The state of Free Software has improved absurdly over the years, but an organization such as the FSF could do wonders if it focused solely on this, given that it is not directly related with any company (such as Canonical) or toolkit (GTK+/Qt/EFL/etc.).

Of this FSF focused more on the developers and end-users, I’d be a proud member.