Answers

I will help you unclench a little by giving you the facts, which you seem to neglect actually looking at. Truth be told, many of these things can be answered by reading the stickies or considering the content of the writing.

Linsux.org is largely satirical.

* We don't actually mind GNU/Linux itself, but we absolutely hate what fanboyism from Ubuntu has done to the community. Instead of being a group of developers that admitted that the GNU/Linux desktop had faults, they started throttling everyone that held different views from them.
* As far as I'm concerned, anyone who repeatedly calls OpenBSD developers "masturbating monkeys" and "f*cking retards" directly on their own mailing lists for the fact that they aim for security is not OK by me.
* The FSF is a highly radical foundation that is more talk than it is action. For example: instead of working on developing a Free Media framework for the web, they would rather reverse-engineer a proprietary one.
* I can't speak for the rest of Linsux, but I personally like Richard Stallman and what he's trying to do.
* We're okay with the GPL and what it stands for.
* I personally very much enjoy Free Software, and in many respects most of the staff use it to some extent.
* Open Source is not all that different. If it's really good software such as OpenSolaris, I'll use it.
* Let's not kid ourselves, software patents are horrible for everyone, just like patenting in the scientific community. It gets nothing achieved because too many companies are covering their rears.
* Microsoft is a company, with human beings working inside it. Regardless of its own intentions, you shouldn't label a company full of people you've never met as "Evil, Freedom hating shills". I can't recall how many times BN has chased after a blogger with their own personal opinions who were aligned with Microsoft. No Roy, it's not a clash of interests. It's Free Speech.
* If it's good we'll use it. Recently we were considering switching our boards to Invision Power Boards, for the sake that in many respects the software is more extendable, themeable, and intuitive than phpbb3 and SMF.
* This community usually consists of paid developers working on a Free UNIX such as FreeBSD or OpenSolaris. We usually say good things about their software due to the high quality of integration in their software.
* To say that Free Software is one community with one viewpoint is a little misguided. Free Software is an Internet ecosystem in which developers work towards a common goal. However, many developers will use different philosophies or practices due to the very elastic principles of Freedom. I personally agree with many of the things done by the GNU project, as well as the KDE project. However, when one looks at some of the elitist communities such as Debian or uninformed communities such as Ubuntu, you get groups of people that attempt to alienate users of different systems with their own "superiority". It works against the very goals Free Software is trying to achieve. Rather than "Let's work together!" it becomes "We have to defeat those evil M$ shills! Death to Steve Ballmer!"
Yes trust me, we hear that one alot. BN supporters actually consider that kind of thing to be clever, unique, and funny. It's really an old one, and it makes most of us roll our eyes at what FOSS journaling is largely becoming.

For the Record

The bullet points correspond with your questions, if you failed to figure that out.

My answer

Hi Dave,
I'm a relatively new reader of Linsux.org. I'm probably not going to answer all of your questions exactly, because that would take a very long time, but I do want to summarise generally how I feel.

The simplest way of putting it, without meaning to sound excessively judgemental, is that I have engaged in both active research and usage of Linux and FreeBSD over the last 12-14 years now.

All of that observation and experience have led me, first intuitively, and then more rationally, to a realisation that of the two systems, both the BSD system and license were greatly preferable to me, rather than GNU/Linux.

This is not to say that GNU/Linux does not have the capacity to be an incredibly positive, empowering, life-changing system in its' own right; of course it does. It is simply a matter of a preference which has developed over time.

I feel that the BSD license is a means of practicing somewhat more unrestrained compassion; we don't have the legal requirement of source code availability, and instead have to rely on the positive elements of human nature, which we also wish to cultivate and encourage, in order to ensure said availability.

There also is no real danger, many of us I think feel, of anyone "stealing," the source code and making it entirely unavailable. Anyone is free to obtain the source themselves and, commercially speaking, do whatever they want with it. Because what they obtain is a copy, nothing is lost. We still have ours, and they have theirs. There have been, to my knowledge, no scenarios where the BSD license has needed to be enforced in court, because truthfully, there is nothing to enforce. Nobody has tried to destroy the central FreeBSD repository, either; the project has not had a need to defend itself from such.

So we see the world as being a source of far less threats, I think, than the FSF. I do not see Microsoft as being a threat, either. There are media files in existence with DRM, yes; but there are also many more without it, and I feel that that will always remain the case, simply because the prevalence of DRM is not something that is in accordance with the collective will.

Microsoft may have destroyed Netscape, but there again, we see the metaphorical truth of the words of Ben Kenobi; struck down, Mozilla became more powerful than ever before. Firefox and the suite's other applications have all become open source, and their long term wellbeing is far more effectively assured as a result.

If I could offer any message to anyone within the GNU/Linux community myself, it would be a request to let go of fear, as I feel, speaking as diplomatically as possible, that fear is one of the motivators of much of what I have seen the FSF as an organisation do.

I used to be quite an adamant opponent of the FSF myself, but I realised that in doing so, I was likewise allowing fear to guide my actions.

Fear of external entities, whether they be Microsoft or whoever else, and feeling a need to take opposing action towards them, is not, I do not believe, the most effective way of accomplishing our objectives.

I feel that the BSD license and overall approach is one which is more purely resonant with Gandhi's philosophy; that we can do much more effective good by simply focusing on what is important to us, and what we *do* agree with and resonate with in a positive sense, than we can by engaging in fear-motivated activism in opposition of those things which diverge from that.

We should not ultimately fear destruction from those who oppose us, if only because the most important thing that said fear does, is reduce our ability to be true to ourselves.

Even if, hypothetically speaking, it were possible for Free/Open Source Software to be completely destroyed by the corporate world, (although I do not believe that such is possible) such a thing is not actually primarily relevant. What is primarily relevant is the fact that, for whatever amount of time before that happened, we would have been true to ourselves, and in doing so, we would have been able to show those around us something more positive.

Money, pragmatism, and ultimately, even self-preservation are not that which is most important. Some within the FSF may see the BSD license as being potentially self-destructive, but truthfully, it isn't. It is simply the license of choice of those of us, who realise that it is more important for what the license represents, in its' purest form, to exist for whatever length of time that it can, than to dilute said license, and its' underlying ethos, due to fear that it will not survive otherwise.

just go read their forums,

just go read their forums, they speak volumes on the intelligence, integrity, and technical information that linsux.org has to offer.

I love the subtlety, here.

It's abundantly obvious that you are, in fact, making a negative judgement about the site, while still doing so in such a way that ensures complete plausible deniability. And of course, if you bother to respond to this, you likely will deny it.

Personally I find the kind of open profanity that some of Linsux.org's posters admittedly do engage in, to be infinitely more morally desirable than this kind of veiled hypocrisy. They might be juvenile and sociopathic, yes; but they're also honest.