4 ms·

Stallman told you so.

echelon 5y ago
Stallman saw everything that was going to happen to our industry 30 years ago and warned us about it daily. He has a ton of flaws, but we shouldn't ever forget his warnings nor his contributions to free software. The future he was telling us about is here, and it's going to get worse.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
Stallman actually helped bring this about. The ad companies all run their massive data farms on open source software. Stallman and open source helped drive a lot of paid software out of the market because they could not compete with free versions. For the most part, the paid consumer software market is dead. Companies will always want to make money, so they “gave away” free software funded by ads and then used free open source software to run their servers serving and targeting ads.
- xenihn 5y ago
  >Stallman and open source helped drive a lot of paid software out of the market because they could not compete with free versions. >they “gave away” free software funded by ads Proprietary software isn't free software. Free doesn't just mean free as in no cost to use.
  - eropple 5y ago
    I feel like this post elides the functionally single-source nature of plenty of free and open-source software. "But you can fork it" means nothing when you, singularly or collectively, don't have the will or, far more frequently, the resources (time, money, knowledge, etc.) to do so in a sustainable and secure manner. It's the "the law, in its majestic equality, forbids all men to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread--the rich as well as the poor" of tech. There is an argument, and I sometimes wonder if it doesn't have legs, that a software developer who I just hand money to is more likely to be aligned with my interests than an advertiser's. (And yeah you can say "well bankroll free software!"--then you have to find somebody and be capable of evaluating the results and you've just hit the resource scarcity problem from the other side. A commercially-released application is a lot more concrete.)
- npteljes 5y ago
  >For the most part, the paid consumer software market is dead. What do you mean? Was it anytime alive? Also, don't people buy, for example, games more than ever? And I don't mean the micro-transaction stuff, I mean the more traditional, paying upfront stuff. And back then there were lot of demos, shareware, freeware and shitty DRMs that were easy to crack. I'm not seeing a healthy consumer software market - at any point of time.
Dylan16807 5y ago
Would any of his advice prevented this? The user can go change the launcher.

Stallman saw everything that was going to happen to our industry 30 years ago and warned us about it daily. He has a ton of flaws, but we shouldn't ever forget his warnings nor his contributions to free software. The future he was telling us about is here, and it's going to get worse.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago

Stallman actually helped bring this about. The ad companies all run their massive data farms on open source software. Stallman and open source helped drive a lot of paid software out of the market because they could not compete with free versions. For the most part, the paid consumer software market is dead. Companies will always want to make money, so they “gave away” free software funded by ads and then used free open source software to run their servers serving and targeting ads.

xenihn 5y ago
>Stallman and open source helped drive a lot of paid software out of the market because they could not compete with free versions. >they “gave away” free software funded by ads Proprietary software isn't free software. Free doesn't just mean free as in no cost to use.
- eropple 5y ago
  I feel like this post elides the functionally single-source nature of plenty of free and open-source software. "But you can fork it" means nothing when you, singularly or collectively, don't have the will or, far more frequently, the resources (time, money, knowledge, etc.) to do so in a sustainable and secure manner. It's the "the law, in its majestic equality, forbids all men to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread--the rich as well as the poor" of tech. There is an argument, and I sometimes wonder if it doesn't have legs, that a software developer who I just hand money to is more likely to be aligned with my interests than an advertiser's. (And yeah you can say "well bankroll free software!"--then you have to find somebody and be capable of evaluating the results and you've just hit the resource scarcity problem from the other side. A commercially-released application is a lot more concrete.)
npteljes 5y ago
>For the most part, the paid consumer software market is dead. What do you mean? Was it anytime alive? Also, don't people buy, for example, games more than ever? And I don't mean the micro-transaction stuff, I mean the more traditional, paying upfront stuff. And back then there were lot of demos, shareware, freeware and shitty DRMs that were easy to crack. I'm not seeing a healthy consumer software market - at any point of time.

Dylan16807 5y ago

Would any of his advice prevented this? The user can go change the launcher.