> I'd love to live in the world rms lives in but most of the time free software just isn't good enough to be a viable option.
I've made this argument before myself, but I wonder how true it really is. The reality is, in 2016, that it's easy to assemble a free software environment that's far above and beyond anything I'd have had access to back when I started computing. It's true that that fit and finish of the best 2016 FOSS software doesn't match the fit and finish of the 2016 proprietary software, but in many ways, it's more than match for 1995 era software. While that may seem like faint praise, it was easily possible to do good, significant work in that kind of environment.
Standard response: rms has probably done more for free software than anyone else in the world. We should be glad at least someone has such uncompromising idealism. Even if it's annoying and inconvenient from time to time.
In 2015 most of the internet is running on free applications running on top of free operating systems and commercial companies are spending billions to maintain this situation. If you had predicted that circa 1990, you would have been dismissed as a lunatic. So something resembling success has happened for the free software movement. And no matter how you ascribe credit, it is hard to say that it would have happened without RMS.
How many cases has that happened?
A lot, but you don't hear about it if you're not swimming upstream trying to maintain code under a generous license. For a random example where it boiled out in public, see http://lwn.net/Articles/247872/.
>It is a multi-billion dollar industry that employees many many people.
Which is exactly why RMS is viewed as extreme. If the world followed his philosophy, it would not be a "multi-billion dollar industry that employs many many people." It would be slightly larger than HAM radio, full of smart and well meaning hobbyists trying to scratch personal itches but not adding up to much of consequence (which pretty much describes the state of the movement today).
RMSs response has always been a vague bit of handwaving about creating more innovative business processes around the free software but which basically amount to every software company becoming a services company. I'm sorry, but I really don't need or want services for 99.995% of the software I use every day.
>Apparently, RMS would seem to prefer that technology be exclusively Free and used by an tiny elite group of hackers than by millions of non-programmers and only partly Free.
It doesn't have to be this way. Thats' the point. There is no reason free software has to not be usable by the masses.
Apparently, RMS would seem to prefer that technology be exclusively Free and used by an tiny elite group of hackers than by millions of non-programmers and only partly Free.
Dear RMS: when it comes to creating good UIs, FOSS has never succeeded in keeping up with non-FOSS. Were it not for Jobs, there would be far fewer computer users and the free software movement might well be even further behind.
I guess I could have answered my own question and made a direct point of what I was trying to say - RMS's comment is wrong because it's coming from a position of weakness and a desire for a closed software market where users have to choose inferior free software. Free software will never triumph with that attitude.
> RMS is nothing if not a man of principle. He really, truly believes in his ideas of software freedom in a way that I really do think very few people believe in anything these days
The thing is, RMS is also a free software extremist in ways. He uses free software exclusively. Hard to imagine living that way. At some point you will have to interact with Windows in our modern world, or interact with other proprietary software.
That said, I use Trisquel[0] as my daily driver and have no issues, but I also own a workstation with Windows 11 installed for programming and general computing. The software available for Windows is fantastic and many vendors target Windows and treat Linux as a second class citizen, so I'm forced to use Windows just to interact with our modern world.
So in a sense I'm enjoying the best of both worlds and not letting the free software ideology rule me.
> Is it bad I just don't care that LLVM has enabled non-free software? Because it has done a hck of a lot for opensource software.*
This presents an interesting (to RMS) quandary. I take it as a given that he prioritizes the freedom of software over its technical merits (as discussed in other threads). But, even just from the freedom perspective: LLVM increases the amount of proprietary software produced, and also increases the amount of free software produced. Does RMS consider this a worthwhile trade-off? Or does he think that less software overall, and less free software in particular, is favorable to more free software existing and also some proprietary software.
70% seems quite high if you mean "free" as rms does.
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