Why do we continue to give increased weight to a guy whose computer
science knowledge ends in 1980? Dude became an icon by preaching a
rationalization to an all-too-receptive generation of cash poor college
students: that Microsoft should work pro bono. Odd that he didn't
extrapolate that principle to other "secret sauce" enterprises like Coca
Cola or KFC.
Physical goods like Coca Cola require raw material. Software costs effort to make, but then practically nothing to copy, hence making it “free” is more feasible. We just have to figure out how to pay the creators before it’s released, and ensure they have a decent path to continued funding after (e.g. other projects to create).
You know, when the internet made distribution frictionless, all "knowledge work," most notably music, became feasibly free. The advent of AI now threatens to make not just the distribution but also the creation of such work feasibly free. For me, RMS will always be a duplicitous shyster, not to mention a lousy programmer. I'll concede he made the world a better place, much as Robin of Locksley did, but for all the wrong reasons.
> I would say his main argument is that you should not use closed source software.
His argument/s go beyond that and {wa,i}s actively hostile towards uses and interoperability if code, other libraries, systems, services, and users aren't pure enough. That was the progression from GPL2 -(TiVo)-> GPL3 -(Mandriva )-> AGPL with ever more extremism and less choice and usability.
There's no need for anyone to mirror his entire philosophy or much of it, but that some bits can be replaced by the choice of the user/developer without being forced by others into another walled garden (licensing tainting) that claims to be "free".
YMMV. Take with a grain of salt. Ask your doctor if licensing is right for you.
(One of my late friends had a falling out with rms over XEmacs development.)
I'm personally a fan of a DWFL license model of FOSS as a gift and giving up control rather than an exclusionary battle for utopian purity. Either create secret groups of code sharing that aren't public or give code away; trying to tell other people what they can do with gifts is as absurd as subscriptions for windshield wipers. I guess I'm neither a communist nor Marxist, sadly, merely a variation of a socialist who values freedom and choice not imposed by others. At the rate the current crop of billionaires are mismanaging things and running roughshod over us little people, the blowback in some land(s) will lead to a "Soviet Union Dve" rhyming of history with even more strife, same as the old strife.
