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0 pointsdrzaiusapelord14y ago0 comments

That's the problem, you're the problem if you refuse to accept that the best solution is going to be the freedom for people to sell commercial closed software as well as use open software. The idea that this is a war is exactly why RMS is wrong. The idea that we must win it and we must make everyone use the new hot open license is wrong.

The idea should be to encourage people to use open licenses, and to promote the good of open licenses, not declare war on everything and become some bitter asshole neckbeard when you see guys like Jobs doing well with a slightly different approach.

The FSF doesn't do much. They're little more than negative campaigners "Windows 7 Sins" etc. I'm not sure what its purpose or real world effect is other than to scare middle management from FOSS as much as possible. Stick vs Carrot. FSF is all stick and people have noticed.

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kragen14y ago

> the best solution is going to be the freedom for people to sell commercial closed software as well as use open software.

The "freedom" you're describing involves government-granted monopolies enforced by pervasive surveillance, unannounced office raids to audit licenses, serial numbers to ensure trackability of all CD-R media, and prosecution of people for disabling malicious software running on their own computers. Certainly it's a kind of freedom; but can't we do better?

Stallman had a slightly different viewpoint about that "freedom":

The "freedom to choose a license" which denies others essential freedoms is not really a freedom. It is a form of power, of domination over others. Your description makes it sound like a matter of individual freedom by obscuring the presence of the others in the situation.

The GPL is designed to protect the essential freedoms for everyone, by denying anyone the power to take them away.

(He wrote that in 1999, but I imagine he still feels the same way.)

Produce14y ago

>That's the problem, you're the problem if you refuse to accept that the best solution is going to be the freedom for people to sell commercial closed software as well as use open software.

That's a debatable point since a sizable portion of the world's population does not think that capitalism is a good system. It's mind boggling that the task of convincing people to work together and share even exists, considering how social humans are.

>They're little more than negative campaigners "Windows 7 Sins" etc.

Here you have groups of people working towards the primary goal of taking money from you and the secondary goal of locking you into their brand so that you must continue to pay them and yet you vehemently defend them. These people are not your friends in a very active and direct way! Would we have solved other social issues such as equal rights without a stick or did they improve precisely because the powers that be begun to feel threatened? Are you aware of the fact that your local government is an organization which has a monopoly on sticks (which it is very ready to use against you)? Why do you not speak out about that if you are principally against sticks? Surely (I can't stop calling you that) those sticks hit a little closer to home? Incidentally, the very companies you are defending use their sticks the most.

Besides, since when did it become so politically incorrect to point out unethical behavior?

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