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it says a lot about how his goal of making sure software is libre has been shoved aside by everyone else for other priorities. I'd call this a deep problem wit
by saidajigumi 12y ago
it says a lot about how his goal of making sure software is libre has been shoved aside by everyone else for other priorities.
I'd call this a deep problem with how the FSF has operated to-date. It's not that libre software isn't important, or hasn't had a huge impact on the software world. But the very idea that it should be perceived as the ultimate priority in the existence of software is wrong. That viewpoint fails to understand or acknowledge how people use software and what other important risks they perceive and face related to software. As such, our libre utopia falls apart because we didn't understand that it had to be inhabited by real humans.
he probably could be "connected with the present technology" if he wanted to.
Case in point. Understanding how people use and are affected by "present technology" is key to follow-on innovations after copyleft. IMO, a significant risk to libre software is that its social innovation has not continued to adapt to the changing software landscape. For a time, that was fine because we had the heyday of free software's expansion to worry about. But there's been this tacit (or maybe explicit) assumption in the community that the GPL and "belief" in libre software are enough. But in fact, I'll posit that the real goal is to build sustaining social infrastructure for free software and information culture.