8 ms·

> And I don't think that RMS is the only reason the free software movement has failed For one thing it hasn't failed, the free software movement has been an am

by zugi 4y ago

> And I don't think that RMS is the only reason the free software movement has failed For one thing it hasn't failed, the free software movement has been an amazing success. For another, RMS created the free software movement, in an era where most software was proprietary. The GPL, LGPL, and probably many subsequent free software licenses might not exist if not for him. Read his story that led him to this: he was trying to connect a printer to a new machine in the late 1970s or early 1980s, and the maker would not share their proprietary drivers, even though he was willing to port it to the new machine himself, so he reverse engineered it, wrote a new driver himself, and proclaimed his version to be free for all so others wouldn't have to face that same problem in the future, on the condition that they also share any improvements they make to it. Viewing most RMS behavior through the lens of this early formative experience makes it mostly make sense. Most of the article is really not about the FSF but about emacs. Emacs is Stallman's own project - he started it in the 1980s and remains its mostly-benevolent dictator. He wants it to abide by his own strict principles. If others disagree, they're free to fork it, as has been done over the years. And his free software ideals are the reason they have that freedom. I just don't see a general argument here to justify the broad title about the FSF in general.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
wmf 4y ago
RMS is micromanaging Emacs in a user-hostile and developer-hostile way. RYF is a disaster that accomplishes nothing. FSF/GNU has a habit of forking or rewriting existing free software to make it "more free" but delivering no actual benefits to users, like gNewSense, Libreboot, Guix, and GnuTLS.
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
  Then fork it and run it in the way you see fit.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    The existing software is already that fork, isn't it? Even ignoring the other reasons that lazy counter is bad to throw out.
    - skissane 4y ago
      XEmacs was a fork of GNU Emacs, driven by technical and philosophical disagreements with RMS. For a while it was rather popular, but then it died. Its failure is a counterargument to these complaints about RMS' management style–if his decisions are really as bad as some people say, why didn't the fork succeed? And why won't any of the complainers start up a new fork themselves, or revive the moribund XEmacs fork? You might be thinking of GCC – the current GCC is descended from a fork of GCC (EGCS). RMS agreed to let the forkers take over the official project. GNU Emacs itself is a fork of Gosling Emacs. The original Emacs was written in TECO, a rather horrendous language. Soon, people started writing Emacs clones in Lisp – Multics Emacs, and some of the Lisp Machine editors. James Gosling wrote the first Emacs for Unix platforms; for an extension language, he invented "Mocklisp", which resembled Lisp on the surface, but lacked its power and generality. GNU Emacs started out as a fork of Gosling Emacs, adding a real Lisp instead of Mocklisp. Gosling made his Emacs freely available under an unclear license, and then sold it to a commercial firm and declared its original free distribution rescinded. To get away from that legal problem, RMS rewrote all the remaining Gosling Emacs code.
      - pjmlp 4y ago
        Some of us found in XEmacs the escape route in the lack of IDEs on the UNIX world. XEmacs failed, because eventually IDEs became a thing on UNIX platforms and that is where we went, to the toolset we were missing, not Emacs.
  - wmf 4y ago
    That's already done. For example, Ubuntu has probably brought more people to free software than Debian. The argument I and other people are making is that the FSF's goals are being achieved but not by the FSF.
- creatonez 4y ago
  GNU Guix is way different from upstream (but that's about it, in terms of GNU forks that actually offer value)
  - 3836293648 4y ago
    Upstream in this case is NixOS, even if very little actual code ended up being used (basically just the builder/evaluator daemon)
- llanowarelves 4y ago
  I sympathize with your overall cautionary sentiment but have to push back on it as it pertains to Guix not adding value. I chose to use Guix SD because I like that the config is in a real (more general purpose) language, which I then proceeded to learn. From what I understand (someone that knows Nix can chime in) the Guix CLI is also more parsimonious than the Nix CLI, and not multiple differently named tools. I like the simpler interface this provides. It is however a bummer that there's no socially-approved way to share packages of non-free software on the official channels (what are the unofficial channels I should know about? Just have been searching Github to find).
  - forgotpwd16 4y ago
    >not multiple differently named tools. I like the simpler interface this provides They've been working towards this with the (introduced[0] in v2 few years ago) experimental `nix` command that combines the various `nix-*` commands. [0]: https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/release-notes/rl-2.0.html#:~:text=new%20command%20named%20nix https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/release-notes/rl-2.0.htm...
  - grumbel 4y ago
    NixOS has had the new `nix` command for a long while, this bundles up all the functionality under one command just like `apt` or `guix`. It's still marked as experimental and has to be enabled manually, but once done you'll never have to touch any of the old commands ever again. The only problem left is that a lot of the documentation still refers to the old commands. > It is however a bummer that there's no socially-approved way to share packages of non-free software on the official channels There is https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix That's one thing I prefer about NixOS, with Nix Flakes you can just turn any old Git repository into a package. No need to be part of any channels or need for the user to setup anything, you can just build and install straight from the upstream source with a single command line if they provide a `flake.nix` file. This automatically resolves a lot of pointless drama about what should or shouldn't be part of the distribution and makes it trivial to distribute patches and workarounds.
    - 4y ago
- rekado 4y ago
  I suggest you update your mental model of what Guix is. If you only see it as a rewrite of Nix you're missing out. I agree that the knee-jerk reaction of many FSF or GNU-adjacent developers to start a "filter" project that takes upstream and removes parts of it is regrettable.
- singpolyma3 4y ago
  The trouble with RYF I think is timing. If it came at a time when the movement was strong and had a large mindshare, then getting certified would get you a market and might be attractive to some vendors. As it is, the RYF market is so small that no vendor is incentivezed by it unless they are part of the movement already themselves.
- naasking 4y ago
  > FSF/GNU has a habit of forking or rewriting existing free software to make it "more free" but delivering no actual benefits to users "More freedom" is a benefit. You're free to judge whether it's a benefit specifically to you, but you can't judge that for others.
  - wmf 4y ago
    I put "more free" in scare quotes because the result isn't more freedom for users.
    - naasking 4y ago
      I disagree, the result is absolutely more freedom for users. Maybe they're not freedoms you care about but that's a different matter.
dathinab 4y ago
> For one thing it hasn't failed, the free software movement has been an amazing success. It has failed. Open software hasn't failed. But thats not the same as free software. Sure there is a lot of open and free software but there is soo much more open software which is not good for the free software movement. Weather that is because of it being open but not free or weather it's open and free but tightly controlled in ways which hurt the free software movement in the bigger picture.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  This comment is splitting hairs that don’t even exist. I have never once heard the term “open software”. The closest match is Open Source. The OSI definition for open source is exactly the same as the FSF Free Software. Another adjacent term is “Source Available” for software that isn’t open source but you can get the source, like Unreal engine. There is also Open Core for software that has an open source part and a proprietary extension. Like GitLab.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    > The OSI definition for open source is exactly the same as the FSF Free Software. It is not. If it is, you should explain that to every other expert and lawyer involved in litigating the differences, because they're operating under a delusion. They are mutually inclusive licenses, because OSI licensed stuff can always be relicensed to GPL (or anything else, really), and because OSI says that GPL is also OSI (although I don't understand why.) But they're different. You have to share your changes in GPL if you distribute them. That's it. That's the difference.
    - bonzini 4y ago
      You are confusing free software and copyleft. Not all free software is copyleft, and not all copyleft licenses are GPL compatible. But all free software is open source and vice versa. The four freedoms and the open source definition are intentionally equivalent.
    - Gigachad 4y ago
matheusmoreira 4y ago
The hardware manufacturers are adapting. They're now using cryptography to maintain control over "our" machines. Now we can only run software they sign off on. What good is free software if we can't run any of it? There's something even more important than free software and that is free computing. Free software takes free computers for granted. It assumes we're able to develop and run whatever software we want. This is increasingly no longer the case.
- jdoss 4y ago
  This is a FUD take. Are you griping about TPMs? I run Linux on every one of my personal machines and I run the software I want and I use my TPMs for useful things. I keep hearing this cry about hardware manufactures are coming for our hardware freedoms and I have seen one instance this year where Lenovo did some stupid stuff[1] on a specific piece of hardware. Now that I know that, I am not going to buy that specific hardware for my needs. If they follow onto their other models, I will find a hardware vendor that doesn't do stupid stuff. The market will adjust and you will have options like the Framework laptop to give you the freedom you want with your hardware. Also, even with the above stupid stuff, you can disable secure boot for now and move on with your life. 1: https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/59931.html https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/59931.html
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    > Are you griping about TPMs? I run Linux on every one of my personal machines and I run the software I want and I use my TPMs for useful things. There's no inherent problem with TPMs existing, since they do have some legitimate use cases. The problem with them is that they don't support owner override. Fixing that would make them useless for tyranny without impacting any legitimate use cases.
    - worthless-trash 4y ago
      > don't support owner override Asus talks about how to disable it: https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1047459/ https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1047459/ As do many other manufacturers, its a thing.
kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
Free software was being exchanged in the 70s. RMS didn't create it.
- zugi 4y ago
  Certainly! But my understanding is that RMS created the free software ideal, formalized as the GPL, that an author freely sharing code with others can in turn require them to freely share any changes and improvements they make to it. If he wasn't the first to think of it, he certainly was the one to codify and popularize it. And it all makes sense to me when viewed through the lens of his frustrating printer driver experience.
pjmlp 4y ago
Free beer has been a success, now businesses instead of pirating, they leech open source and in the process even feel entitled to ask for support.
EarlKing 4y ago
> For another, RMS created the free software movement, in an era where most software was proprietary. Stallman did a lot of things, but he most definitely did not start the free software movement. Free software was the norm prior to the meeting of the Committee on New Technology Uses (CONTU) suggesting in 1977 that rather than try to amend the recently passed Copyright Act of 1976 they should just classify software as 'literature'. It continued to be the norm and was openly termed "Freeware" by author Jay Lucas at InfoWorld (until a certain lawyer, Andrew Fluegelman, trademarked the term and began threatening legal action if he didn't change the name of his "Freeware" column, leading to a contest which suggested the term "Shareware"). Most freeware of the time came with source code and the right to make modifications (in fact this is how a number of improvements were made to Fluegelman's own PC-TALK). It wasn't until after the coining of Shareware that the two terms were hijacked by people essentially using it to create freely recirculatable demos of otherwise proprietary products, much like 'free software' was later repackaged as 'open source'. I'm not saying you shouldn't be thankful for his contributions, but to pretend that BSD didn't exist, nor an entire tradition of free software prior to the rise of proprietary software, is simply wrong.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Free Software is software where you're obligated to share your source code changes if you distribute them. It's not anything that was ever referred to once as "free software" outside of this definition, and it is not any software that is free. edit: hearing irrelevant histories like this makes me more upset that Stallman is the only person who keeps Free Software firmly in mind, and doesn't waver. Free software isn't a vibe, Open Source software can easily become Free Software if you relicense it within a GPL'd project (just as it can be incorporated into proprietary projects), but Open Source software is not Free Software. Free Software is what Stallman said it was, and has only been extended in a few logical ways that Stallman failed to anticipate ahead of time. Histories of people sharing source, and of not being able to copyright software are nice, but irrelevant.
  - lvc_ 4y ago
    Free software doesn't need to be copyleft, which is what you're describing - eg, the FSF explicitly considers 3 clause BSD to be a free license. Similarly Open Source (as used by the OSI) doesn't require that you can incorporate into proprietary projects and it considers the GPL to be open source. Somewhat famously the definitions of the two terms are basically equivalent even though they're motivated quite differently.
goodpoint 4y ago
> RMS created the free software movement > GPL, LGPL ... might not exist if not for him Both are not true. People shared software based on the same ideas for many years before RMS. Not to mention that the whole scientific world has been sharing knowledge while also respecting authorship and providing citations in ways very similar to FOSS for a century.
- naasking 4y ago
  > People shared software based on the same ideas for many years before RMS. And did they encode that understanding in an official license and create a foundation to spread and protect those ideas under the banner of "Free Software"? No? Then he ostensibly created that movement. I don't know why people just can't give RMS the credit he's due. Others had similar ideas to Darwin at the time, but he's credited with discovering evolution by natural selection because he was first to create the most comprehensive and authoritative work on it. > Not to mention that the whole scientific world has been sharing knowledge while also respecting authorship and providing citations in ways very similar to FOSS for a century. And this has what to do with free software? If RMS came out and said his ideas had been inspired by how open science worked, would that make you feel better? Would that in any way change the fact that RMS was a big influence in changing the prevailing trends seen in software development at the time?
pabs3 4y ago
> the free software movement has been an amazing success. It is a pretty hollow success though, just look at what it enabled; adtech, large corporations, proprietary SaaS, locked down consumer devices etc.
- selfhoster11 4y ago
  Sounds like nearly every tool in history: it enabled good things and bad things.

by zugi 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

wmf 4y ago

RMS is micromanaging Emacs in a user-hostile and developer-hostile way. RYF is a disaster that accomplishes nothing. FSF/GNU has a habit of forking or rewriting existing free software to make it "more free" but delivering no actual benefits to users, like gNewSense, Libreboot, Guix, and GnuTLS.

2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
Then fork it and run it in the way you see fit.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  The existing software is already that fork, isn't it? Even ignoring the other reasons that lazy counter is bad to throw out.
  - skissane 4y ago
    XEmacs was a fork of GNU Emacs, driven by technical and philosophical disagreements with RMS. For a while it was rather popular, but then it died. Its failure is a counterargument to these complaints about RMS' management style–if his decisions are really as bad as some people say, why didn't the fork succeed? And why won't any of the complainers start up a new fork themselves, or revive the moribund XEmacs fork? You might be thinking of GCC – the current GCC is descended from a fork of GCC (EGCS). RMS agreed to let the forkers take over the official project. GNU Emacs itself is a fork of Gosling Emacs. The original Emacs was written in TECO, a rather horrendous language. Soon, people started writing Emacs clones in Lisp – Multics Emacs, and some of the Lisp Machine editors. James Gosling wrote the first Emacs for Unix platforms; for an extension language, he invented "Mocklisp", which resembled Lisp on the surface, but lacked its power and generality. GNU Emacs started out as a fork of Gosling Emacs, adding a real Lisp instead of Mocklisp. Gosling made his Emacs freely available under an unclear license, and then sold it to a commercial firm and declared its original free distribution rescinded. To get away from that legal problem, RMS rewrote all the remaining Gosling Emacs code.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      Some of us found in XEmacs the escape route in the lack of IDEs on the UNIX world. XEmacs failed, because eventually IDEs became a thing on UNIX platforms and that is where we went, to the toolset we were missing, not Emacs.
- wmf 4y ago
  That's already done. For example, Ubuntu has probably brought more people to free software than Debian. The argument I and other people are making is that the FSF's goals are being achieved but not by the FSF.
creatonez 4y ago
GNU Guix is way different from upstream (but that's about it, in terms of GNU forks that actually offer value)
- 3836293648 4y ago
  Upstream in this case is NixOS, even if very little actual code ended up being used (basically just the builder/evaluator daemon)
llanowarelves 4y ago
I sympathize with your overall cautionary sentiment but have to push back on it as it pertains to Guix not adding value. I chose to use Guix SD because I like that the config is in a real (more general purpose) language, which I then proceeded to learn. From what I understand (someone that knows Nix can chime in) the Guix CLI is also more parsimonious than the Nix CLI, and not multiple differently named tools. I like the simpler interface this provides. It is however a bummer that there's no socially-approved way to share packages of non-free software on the official channels (what are the unofficial channels I should know about? Just have been searching Github to find).
- forgotpwd16 4y ago
  >not multiple differently named tools. I like the simpler interface this provides They've been working towards this with the (introduced[0] in v2 few years ago) experimental `nix` command that combines the various `nix-*` commands. [0]: https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/release-notes/rl-2.0.html#:~:text=new%20command%20named%20nix https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/release-notes/rl-2.0.htm...
- grumbel 4y ago
  NixOS has had the new `nix` command for a long while, this bundles up all the functionality under one command just like `apt` or `guix`. It's still marked as experimental and has to be enabled manually, but once done you'll never have to touch any of the old commands ever again. The only problem left is that a lot of the documentation still refers to the old commands. > It is however a bummer that there's no socially-approved way to share packages of non-free software on the official channels There is https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix That's one thing I prefer about NixOS, with Nix Flakes you can just turn any old Git repository into a package. No need to be part of any channels or need for the user to setup anything, you can just build and install straight from the upstream source with a single command line if they provide a `flake.nix` file. This automatically resolves a lot of pointless drama about what should or shouldn't be part of the distribution and makes it trivial to distribute patches and workarounds.
  - 4y ago
rekado 4y ago
I suggest you update your mental model of what Guix is. If you only see it as a rewrite of Nix you're missing out. I agree that the knee-jerk reaction of many FSF or GNU-adjacent developers to start a "filter" project that takes upstream and removes parts of it is regrettable.
singpolyma3 4y ago
The trouble with RYF I think is timing. If it came at a time when the movement was strong and had a large mindshare, then getting certified would get you a market and might be attractive to some vendors. As it is, the RYF market is so small that no vendor is incentivezed by it unless they are part of the movement already themselves.
naasking 4y ago
> FSF/GNU has a habit of forking or rewriting existing free software to make it "more free" but delivering no actual benefits to users "More freedom" is a benefit. You're free to judge whether it's a benefit specifically to you, but you can't judge that for others.
- wmf 4y ago
  I put "more free" in scare quotes because the result isn't more freedom for users.
  - naasking 4y ago
    I disagree, the result is absolutely more freedom for users. Maybe they're not freedoms you care about but that's a different matter.

dathinab 4y ago

> For one thing it hasn't failed, the free software movement has been an amazing success. It has failed. Open software hasn't failed. But thats not the same as free software. Sure there is a lot of open and free software but there is soo much more open software which is not good for the free software movement. Weather that is because of it being open but not free or weather it's open and free but tightly controlled in ways which hurt the free software movement in the bigger picture.

Gigachad 4y ago
This comment is splitting hairs that don’t even exist. I have never once heard the term “open software”. The closest match is Open Source. The OSI definition for open source is exactly the same as the FSF Free Software. Another adjacent term is “Source Available” for software that isn’t open source but you can get the source, like Unreal engine. There is also Open Core for software that has an open source part and a proprietary extension. Like GitLab.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > The OSI definition for open source is exactly the same as the FSF Free Software. It is not. If it is, you should explain that to every other expert and lawyer involved in litigating the differences, because they're operating under a delusion. They are mutually inclusive licenses, because OSI licensed stuff can always be relicensed to GPL (or anything else, really), and because OSI says that GPL is also OSI (although I don't understand why.) But they're different. You have to share your changes in GPL if you distribute them. That's it. That's the difference.
  - bonzini 4y ago
    You are confusing free software and copyleft. Not all free software is copyleft, and not all copyleft licenses are GPL compatible. But all free software is open source and vice versa. The four freedoms and the open source definition are intentionally equivalent.
  - Gigachad 4y ago

matheusmoreira 4y ago

The hardware manufacturers are adapting. They're now using cryptography to maintain control over "our" machines. Now we can only run software they sign off on. What good is free software if we can't run any of it? There's something even more important than free software and that is free computing. Free software takes free computers for granted. It assumes we're able to develop and run whatever software we want. This is increasingly no longer the case.

jdoss 4y ago
This is a FUD take. Are you griping about TPMs? I run Linux on every one of my personal machines and I run the software I want and I use my TPMs for useful things. I keep hearing this cry about hardware manufactures are coming for our hardware freedoms and I have seen one instance this year where Lenovo did some stupid stuff[1] on a specific piece of hardware. Now that I know that, I am not going to buy that specific hardware for my needs. If they follow onto their other models, I will find a hardware vendor that doesn't do stupid stuff. The market will adjust and you will have options like the Framework laptop to give you the freedom you want with your hardware. Also, even with the above stupid stuff, you can disable secure boot for now and move on with your life. 1: https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/59931.html https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/59931.html
- josephcsible 4y ago
  > Are you griping about TPMs? I run Linux on every one of my personal machines and I run the software I want and I use my TPMs for useful things. There's no inherent problem with TPMs existing, since they do have some legitimate use cases. The problem with them is that they don't support owner override. Fixing that would make them useless for tyranny without impacting any legitimate use cases.
  - worthless-trash 4y ago
    > don't support owner override Asus talks about how to disable it: https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1047459/ https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1047459/ As do many other manufacturers, its a thing.

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago

Free software was being exchanged in the 70s. RMS didn't create it.

zugi 4y ago
Certainly! But my understanding is that RMS created the free software ideal, formalized as the GPL, that an author freely sharing code with others can in turn require them to freely share any changes and improvements they make to it. If he wasn't the first to think of it, he certainly was the one to codify and popularize it. And it all makes sense to me when viewed through the lens of his frustrating printer driver experience.

pjmlp 4y ago

Free beer has been a success, now businesses instead of pirating, they leech open source and in the process even feel entitled to ask for support.

EarlKing 4y ago

> For another, RMS created the free software movement, in an era where most software was proprietary. Stallman did a lot of things, but he most definitely did not start the free software movement. Free software was the norm prior to the meeting of the Committee on New Technology Uses (CONTU) suggesting in 1977 that rather than try to amend the recently passed Copyright Act of 1976 they should just classify software as 'literature'. It continued to be the norm and was openly termed "Freeware" by author Jay Lucas at InfoWorld (until a certain lawyer, Andrew Fluegelman, trademarked the term and began threatening legal action if he didn't change the name of his "Freeware" column, leading to a contest which suggested the term "Shareware"). Most freeware of the time came with source code and the right to make modifications (in fact this is how a number of improvements were made to Fluegelman's own PC-TALK). It wasn't until after the coining of Shareware that the two terms were hijacked by people essentially using it to create freely recirculatable demos of otherwise proprietary products, much like 'free software' was later repackaged as 'open source'. I'm not saying you shouldn't be thankful for his contributions, but to pretend that BSD didn't exist, nor an entire tradition of free software prior to the rise of proprietary software, is simply wrong.

pessimizer 4y ago
Free Software is software where you're obligated to share your source code changes if you distribute them. It's not anything that was ever referred to once as "free software" outside of this definition, and it is not any software that is free. edit: hearing irrelevant histories like this makes me more upset that Stallman is the only person who keeps Free Software firmly in mind, and doesn't waver. Free software isn't a vibe, Open Source software can easily become Free Software if you relicense it within a GPL'd project (just as it can be incorporated into proprietary projects), but Open Source software is not Free Software. Free Software is what Stallman said it was, and has only been extended in a few logical ways that Stallman failed to anticipate ahead of time. Histories of people sharing source, and of not being able to copyright software are nice, but irrelevant.
- lvc_ 4y ago
  Free software doesn't need to be copyleft, which is what you're describing - eg, the FSF explicitly considers 3 clause BSD to be a free license. Similarly Open Source (as used by the OSI) doesn't require that you can incorporate into proprietary projects and it considers the GPL to be open source. Somewhat famously the definitions of the two terms are basically equivalent even though they're motivated quite differently.

goodpoint 4y ago

> RMS created the free software movement > GPL, LGPL ... might not exist if not for him Both are not true. People shared software based on the same ideas for many years before RMS. Not to mention that the whole scientific world has been sharing knowledge while also respecting authorship and providing citations in ways very similar to FOSS for a century.

naasking 4y ago
> People shared software based on the same ideas for many years before RMS. And did they encode that understanding in an official license and create a foundation to spread and protect those ideas under the banner of "Free Software"? No? Then he ostensibly created that movement. I don't know why people just can't give RMS the credit he's due. Others had similar ideas to Darwin at the time, but he's credited with discovering evolution by natural selection because he was first to create the most comprehensive and authoritative work on it. > Not to mention that the whole scientific world has been sharing knowledge while also respecting authorship and providing citations in ways very similar to FOSS for a century. And this has what to do with free software? If RMS came out and said his ideas had been inspired by how open science worked, would that make you feel better? Would that in any way change the fact that RMS was a big influence in changing the prevailing trends seen in software development at the time?

pabs3 4y ago

> the free software movement has been an amazing success. It is a pretty hollow success though, just look at what it enabled; adtech, large corporations, proprietary SaaS, locked down consumer devices etc.

selfhoster11 4y ago
Sounds like nearly every tool in history: it enabled good things and bad things.