The enemy of FLOSS is convienence and ease-of-use. I'm not trying to be snarky: I'm typing this on Firefox in Linux and I've almost excusively been on Linux since 2002. I've been elbow deep in this stuff for years, hacking and tweaking and experimenting, etc. I'm at the end of my rope, about to jump to Apple with all the lock-in and overpriced shit and inflexibility and patent abuse, etc. At least it is easy to use and maintain and has many powerful, flexible and even niche applications. And well-supported libraries.
I'm starting to see those free software ideals I've held so dear turn into tradeoffs. I'll trade in some 'freedoms' for more capable, abundant, and better supported software that allows me to get work done easier and more effectively.
If RMS wanted GNU software to spread then he shouldn't have gone into politics and preaching. He should have made sure that GNU software was more useful to the software users. To most people software freedom is too intangible to be counted as a benefit. Hell, 99.9% of people couldn't even explain it in very basic terms if you asked them. He's just created software for enthusiasts and hobbyists. Not a bad thing, but not his goal either.
Anyways, I've grown out of it.
I'm just talking about consumer-facing software, by the way. I know free software will always have value in education, commodity software that is not your primary business, etc. It is always going to be an abysmal failure on the desktop unless a free software Steve Jobs appears out of thin air, though.
"If RMS wanted GNU software to spread then he shouldn't have gone into politics and preaching. He should have made sure that GNU software was more useful to the software users"
Indeed, consider this alternate timeline whose RMS is more pragmatic and willing to give up a few short term small victories in order to win big in the end:
It's the late '70s. The microprocessor revolution is just getting started. RMS and his band of wily hackers jump onboard, realizing there is going to be a lot of money to be made, and that a person with a lot of money can do a lot more good than a person without a lot of money.
They make a decision: they will go commercial, amass a fortune, and then retire to promote their ideal free software world.
It's GNU BASIC that Altair picks up in this timeline, not MS BASIC. It's RMS that gets the IBM deal. It's RMS that becomes the world's richest man.
25 years later, RMS retires, and then sets up the FSF, endowed with about $50 billion dollars. With just the investment income, not touching the principle at all, the FSF is generating enough money to be able to give out 50000 grants a year that each pay a developer for one year's full time work on free software.
In 10 years, the FSF has produced GPL replacements for every important piece of non-free generally available software on the planet. The only non-GPL software left is internal things on corporate intranets.
I'm starting to see those free software ideals I've held so dear turn into tradeoffs. I'll trade in some 'freedoms' for more capable, abundant, and better supported software that allows me to get work done easier and more effectively.
If RMS wanted GNU software to spread then he shouldn't have gone into politics and preaching. He should have made sure that GNU software was more useful to the software users. To most people software freedom is too intangible to be counted as a benefit. Hell, 99.9% of people couldn't even explain it in very basic terms if you asked them. He's just created software for enthusiasts and hobbyists. Not a bad thing, but not his goal either.
Anyways, I've grown out of it.
I'm just talking about consumer-facing software, by the way. I know free software will always have value in education, commodity software that is not your primary business, etc. It is always going to be an abysmal failure on the desktop unless a free software Steve Jobs appears out of thin air, though.