Torvalds may not like the GPLv3. However, I think that is orthogonal to why he is sitting out the process. At heart, the man is an engineer/coder. How many people work as software engineers/programmers/code monkeys/whatever and jump at the shot to sit in the "politcal" meetings? Seriously. As a general rule, engineers and programmers would rather be engineering and programming. They don't care so much about marketing. They don't care so much about the political undercurrents of the organization. They just want to do their job well.

(You might argue that Linux is totalitarian too, but besides the point that it isnt, you can fork Linux if you think you can do better, while you cannot fork the FSF license creation process. That's why it's so scary.)

1. RMS and the FSF (which are one and the same for all practical purposes) talk
   about "free software". What they are truly fundamentally about is
   creating a comprehensive category of software which is completely free from
   corporate/business control, and which individual users can completely control in
   all aspects as they wish.
   
   His fundamental motivation is an anti-corporation, pro-individual/community
   point of view. The fact that the mechanism for enabling his version of
   "free software" is the GPL and a common pool of open source is
   secondary. If he could have gotten a global law enforced that all corporations
   must release all their source code freely on the Internet, that's what he would
   have done, instead of GNU and GPL.
   
   RMS is an absolutist on this point. He truly sees this as good vs. evil, and as
   a belief system about which there can be no question.
   
   To help understand this, http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID =9350 [zmag.org]
   read this interview.
   
   This is where the insistence that DRM and "Trusted Computing" and
   software patents must be abolished comes from. These are all tools that
   corporations use to protect their property. RMS does not believe they should
   have property like this... that it should all be made available to users with no
   control by corporations.
   
2. 
   Linux is also licensed under the GPL (v2), but comes from a completely
   different motivation than RMS. Torvalds simply believes the open-source
   development model is the most effective way to create excellent software.
   Torvalds is just fine with corporations and businesses using Linux for profit,
   even if that means "controlling" some aspects of its use. He
   certainly has opinions on DRM, patents, and "Trusted Computing", but
   he's not going to let those get in the way of Linux development.
   
3. 
   So now starts the struggle for control of "what is the meaning of free
   software". RMS is clearly trying to re-establish his vision of the
   principles involved by pushing through GPL v3, because he's seen GPL v2 used in
   ways that offend his principles deeply. Is it too late? Has the FOSS movement
   taken off to an extent that he no longer controls it? Stay tuned.
   

Also, if you can verify the count, you've effectively got verification that there aren't fraudulent votes, because that would mean displacing legitimate votes, meaning someone's vote wouldn't be counted.

that might be true if everyone voted, but not when you don't have compulsory voting...and not when you don't even get close to 100% turnout of those who are registered to vote.

electronic data is too malleable, too easy to manipulate without any trace to trust with something this important.

Again, a Luddite statement. We're debating in a void without actually knowing what this system was, but consider signatures. Surely you'll admit that a signature is important, right? You don't want someone to be able to sign checks in your name. Now, they know what your signature is by comparing it to the copy they have on file, so it would be just as easy to give them a public RSA key as a signature in that case. And a PGP signature is much harder to forge.

no, it's not a luddite statement. it's an analysis of the risks vs the benefits. an election is FAR more important than a personal signature, it matters a lot more whether it is fraudulent or not because the scale of damage is far greater.

and, just as significantly, moving from written signatures to electronic signatures isn't a significant reduction in the security of the system because written signatures aren't very secure to start with. by contrast, moving from a many-eyes manual count to an electronic count is a massive reduction in the security of the system.

the miniscule benefits of electronic counting are greatly outweighed by the risks.

because they have to (pay at least lip-service) to representing ALL the people in their electorate, not just the extremists and fanatics...because if they dont, they run the risk of pissing off enough voters that they lose the next election.

I don't get why this is important. If the apathetic masses don't want to vote, haven't done any research at all on the candidates, then their votes would be much more harmful than the votes of the extremists. At least the extremists know what they're voting for. The apathetic masses, at least in America, would end up voting much the same way they choose Coke or Pepsi -- which candidate has the coolest campaign ads? Not in terms of what was said, but in terms of production values?

because they're going to be affected by the result of the election, regardless of whether they supported the winner or not. the winning candidate is supposed to represent *everyone* in their electorate whether they voted for them or not, they are elected to do a job - to represent the people in their area. it is a peculiarly american attitude that somehow you don't count, your right to be represented is void if you don't vote, or if you didn't vote for the winning candidate.

and, no, the extremists don't know what they're voting for either. for the most part, they're just like football fans voting for their side, regardless of what their policies are. non-compulsory voting means that voting is done by those most sucked in by the hype.

in practice, with compulsory voting, what happens most of the time is that people vote for those who either a) promise to have the least damaging policies, and/or b) offer the most to them (e.g. hospitals, schools, whatever other things are needed in the local community). there's certainly potential for problems here, but it's far better than candidates simply ignoring what the majority of people in their electorate want, to concentrate exclusively on what the nutters and corporate interests want (i.e. appease the nutters to get their vote, and do what their corporate masters tell them to do).

If all of America was forced to vote, we might end up with, say, a rapper or a movie star