I know I'm not unique in being bugged by RMS's ideas but I do feel the need to attempt to articulate why. There has been, in the rarified world of tech commente

I know I'm not unique in being bugged by RMS's ideas but I do feel the need to attempt to articulate why. There has been, in the rarified world of tech commenters, an increasing number of people claiming Stallman has been proven correct by recent events. This seem to converge around the rise of iOS propriety "walled garden" (and similar systems) and the Snowden leaks. I don't see it. The argument shouldn't be that systems have come to dominate that are closed.Stallman is making a moral argument, as such there need to be proportional harms being enabled by such closed systems. Potential harms are not the same as actual and his arguments seem to focus on those. In the mean time the world goes about its business and people are happily using all sorts of software. Along with free (as in beer) software like that of Google, and relatively secure systems like those of the big tech companies, many are also use various flavors of "libre" and open source software. An accounting of harms, potential or otherwise, needs to have benefits included, otherwise it remains an exercise in ideology. This nags at me as well in hysterical discussions of NSA spying, which sometimes strike me as a sophisticated form of chicken littleism. If one stubbornly sticks to an absolutist form of ideology for many years, eventually some of the predicted harms, or at least similar ones, might come to pass. But this didn't mean the ideology is correct. Without a more complete and balanced analysis it's hard to say. I feel similarly about the absolute conviction displayed by some that NSA spying is an absolute wrong. While it does seem bad In some ways, it is not a slam dunk in my view. I can see some value in spying if it substitutes for more violent methods of control, and if it does actually lessen crime/terrorism.