3 ms·
I think it's similar to third wave feminism. It's a revolution that has already won for most practical purposes, but keeps on fighting. In a world, where almos
by ajuc 9y ago
I think it's similar to third wave feminism. It's a revolution that has already won for most practical purposes, but keeps on fighting.
In a world, where almost all software was proprietary, and open source only made sense if you're living in towers of academia - RMS made sense and contributed greatly to society. Nowadays - not so much.
It isn't worth it to restrict freedom of creator and force him to write open source software for minimal increase in the freedom of the users, when there is already an open source alternative for the given task.
- dijit 9y agoFree Software has not "won", in any sense of the imagination. I am sitting in an office of 500+ Windows machines compared to 2 FreeBSD (and no Linux) machines. I have to use Outlook otherwise I can't book meetings. I must use Slack otherwise I can't communicate with my colleagues. (Or, alternatively, Skype For Business, but same issue) "Free Software" is _not_ winning anywhere that isn't servers. (and they have fierce competition there too).
- aaronbrethorst 9y agoThe most-used operating system in the world has a Linux kernel. But, it might not be in front of you...except when you're checking email, waiting in line, playing Angry Birds, making a photograph, or checking up on Facebook.
- oblio 9y ago> except when you're checking email, waiting in line, playing Angry Birds, making a photograph, or checking up on Facebook. You've just proved his point more than you ever wanted. > checking email On the (probably) proprietary Mail or Gmail app. > waiting in line On the (probably) proprietary app for whichever thing you're staying in line for. > playing Angry Birds ... > making a photograph ... > or checking up on Facebook ...! Who care if the kernel, heavily modified and buried 100 layers deep is Open Source if all the apps users actually use are proprietary?
- aaronbrethorst 9y agoGiven your sense of fatalism about this, I assume you don’t spend your free time building OSS apps for mobile platforms?
- oblio 9y agoI'm not a fatalist, I'm just pointing out a fact. FOSS is far from winning. FOSS has barely "won" the lower levels of the stack and the highly technical niches. But the more you move towards user-facing applications, the more proprietary things become.
- aaronbrethorst 9y agoIf you genuinely care about reversing this, then I recommend spending more of your free time building open source apps meant for end user consumption.
- qplex 9y ago>Who care if the kernel, heavily modified and buried 100 layers deep is Open Source if all the apps users actually use are proprietary? I guess by this definition any open sourced library that an "end user app" uses doesn't count either.