The FSF has incredible geniuses who understand code, technologies,
future directions and social implications. Their philosophies are
incredible, however some lack of people skills contributes to remaining
exclusionary through alienating many by not understanding and embracing
people, varying intellects, marketing and rates of comprehensive shifts
to new philosophical adoptions.
I'm not clear on precisely what you're referring to and I don't see
examples of your point. If you don't like what the FSF says, it would be
fine to say that you don't agree with it. But you should point to what
specifically you disagree with and explain why. I don't know how many
people you are speaking for when you say "many" and I don't see any
examples of what your criticizing. What did the FSF say when you tried
telling them specifically what messages you didn't like and how you thought
they should pose those issues instead? They're hiring a Deputy Director,
and I think that job would include plenty of chances to explain software
freedom better.
I've found the FSF to be forthright and to not suffer fools gladly (which
requires a clarity I appreciate). They rightly speak up about their cause,
write very clearly, and when people use language that frames an issue in a
way they don't agree with their representatives point it out. Richard
Stallman's recent Slashdot interview
http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/09/09/2252212/interviews-rms-answers-your-questions
has an example of this in the first Q&A -- a response from Stallman where
he pointed out what was wrong with framing an issue in terms of
"monetization". Stallman's response struck me as a well-stated and entirely
fair rebuttal to an attempt to justify bad behavior because it might make
more money than earning money ethically. Eben Moglen's talks are
consistently excellent. They're packed with detail and they really earn a
re-read/re-listen, but they're eminently understandable even for
non-technical people I've played them for over the air on community radio
(or so the listeners who call me tell me). I went to an FSF gathering some
years ago and Moglen's talk alone made the trip worthwhile for my travel
companion.
I think most people haven't begun to contemplate software freedom not
because the message of software freedom was put to them somehow
indelicately, but because the message of software freedom hasn't been put
to them at all. It's hard to repeat a message as frequently as the
billionaire proprietors repeat their ads, or even as frequently as open
source supporters say some proprietary software is okay.
We're constantly told that our proper role in society is to buy something.
This immediately circumscribes us as consumers rather than citizens. This
means reducing people to accepting choices set out for them (if they can
afford it) and never discussing doing what's just, ethical, and beneficial
for society such as pointing out systemic corruption (what if all the
choices are bad?), inequity (what if some people are too poor to
participate even as consumers?). Consumerism is designed to exclude ethical
discussion. When I try to behave ethically by purchasing the most ethical
option available, I usually face greenwashing or I find I'm outspent by the
wealthy who want unethical results. The narrow terms of debate are set up
this way on purpose, not by accident, and this makes for a very one-sided
way to live.
For example, in popular computing my choices come down to two nonfree
software distributors and a "choice" of which proprietor's interest to
cater to. When viewed from a perspective of software freedom, that's no
choice at all. Any differences between the proprietors are overwhelmed by
the similarities that one is basically picking who gets to keep me from
having software freedom. All of the important questions about software
freedom are immediately outside the allowable range of debate when the ends
are staked out by proprietors. There's simply no room left for a serious
discussion of ethics; other related issues (such as computer security) are
off-limits too as one can't have computer security without software freedom.
But I know better things are possible because I can look at history.
Apparently through hard work and political insistence free software hackers
built a better system: there was a time when GNU was not a complete
operating system and I had to run GNU programs on a nonfree OS. Now
GNU/Linux is a complete self-hosting OS, thanks in part to Linus Torvalds
distributing the Linux kernel under a free software license, and the
Linux-libre team for distributing a free version of the Linux kernel. I
didn't have hardware on which I could run a completely free OS. Now I can
buy hardware which runs a free BIOS thanks to all the reverse engineering
and work I'm probably not fully aware of. Sure, I have to accept that
things take time to develop and I can't use the latest hardware in freedom,
but things are demonstrably better now than they were just 20 years ago. I
don't want those gains to be lost for me or anyone else who uses a computer.
There are, quite literally, life and death issues one can resolve with
software freedom (the recent VW emissions fraud discovery, and keeping
people safe from spying while they're telling us important details about
what's really happening like Snowden did, to name a couple recent
examples). Saving lives, preserving privacy & civil liberties, and
introducing ethics into people's use of computers strikes me as far too
important to grant anyone social permission to dismiss a message because
they don't like how it was delivered instead of objecting to what the
message said. If the discussion raises questions, by all means, ask! And
feel free to state your mind, but expect to justify your statements too.