Although the author isn't clear about his thesis in his writing (which makes people think the whole thing is a conspiratorial attack on the FSF and RMS), there

Although the author isn't clear about his thesis in his writing (which makes people think the whole thing is a conspiratorial attack on the FSF and RMS), there is some good discussion to be had here. I think the verdict is: the author has fundamental disagreements with the anarcho-libertarian roots of Free Software. I ultimately disagree with most of the article, but I'll just be a devil's advocate here. One of the important points the article makes is about *trust* in software: Do we not trust our fellow developers to adhere to the goodwill ethics of creating technology ("don't do harm"), and if that is the case, do we not trust the government for creating laws and regulations for software to not cause harm? He talks about the need for absolute right of source code as an irrational fear rooting from the fact that "nefarious actors" might sneak malicious things into your computer that can't be audited. Some passionate developers would swear for this right at all costs, but the reality is that most people (both non-technical end users AND corporations) do not really care this at all. Non-technical people, who do not have the ability to really audit source code, would probably want governmental regulation to do the job for them, and corporations always had access to source code when they needed it (often paying huge sums of money for it, to the benefit of the developer of the original code). Many devs will say that the end user ("the commoner") is ignorant about the inner workings of the software and therefore their desires aren't really that important. But isn't software just a tool towards creating a better world, and shouldn't non-devs have a say in this matter when they are the end user (and often the receiver) of that tool? What do "they" really want? My take on this is: there's actually enough reasons to NOT trust the current state of government at all, regardless if you're a dev or not, and because of this free software still has some value. Both Western/Eastern governments like US, China, etc have routinely showed that they do not really lead software for the common good, when they have been caught eavesdropping on citizens too many times. They are also prone to be lobbied by corporations, and many parties (including the "liberal" ones) have failed to act against those corporations when they have also been spying on users. (Well, the EU is bit of an edge case, but even so these corporations always find a way to go around those regulations). But there's the problem with FSF: they have largely succeeded in creating an ideology among developers for the absolute right of source code, but they have failed to persuade the average end-user for needing to have those same rights. RMS actually relates a bit to this problem: having a controversial programmer of cult-like status as a leader might be welcomed here in HN, but also casts an incredibly poor image on the org which would lead ordinary people lose faith in this whole movement. And it's reasonable to think that even ignoring the glaring RMS controversy, free software organizations have largely interacted only among technical people and haven't gained much interest among the general populace, and haven't been able to produce a significant voice in the parliament. For further though, there are two additional problems of free software to think about which are not fully touched upon in the article: - One is that free software is now mostly maintained entirely by the goodwill of unpaid volunteer developers, with the exception of a few prominent projects with substantial corporate backing. A lot of previous free (and open-source) devs have been burnt out by growing maintenance costs with not enough compensation (even sometimes derided for not doing their free work.) Is the current state of unpaid developer labor really sustainable, or should we start to think about alternative models of free-software development when developers might actually be able to pay for food and rent for the goodwill they contribute towards software? - The second is that free software licenses like GPL ultimately depend upon the law for its enforcement, and therefore depends on the government for it to really have effect. Once the government becomes corrupt enough for GPL to not be enforced (ex. the military starts using Linux for their military drones but refuses to enforce its license), we might seriously need to reconsider alternatives. But then we're asking more weird questions like "what would free software mean and could be enforced in an anarchist society?", which is quite fun to think about.