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I want to upvote the first two paragraphs and downvote the second two, so I'll comment instead :-) Stallman's ideological intransigence is the backbone of the

I want to upvote the first two paragraphs and downvote the second two, so I'll comment instead :-) Stallman's ideological intransigence is the backbone of the free software world. If he was even a little bit "reasonable", free software would have been nibbled to death by ducks by now. Instead it's still going strong after thirty years. Freedom isn't reasonable, and there will always be a few people who go to unreasonable lengths to defend it. This is a good thing, and Stallman has managed to do so by not killing anyone, not overthrowing anything, but by building something unequivocally positive and good. Free software is going to win, of course, because it will never go away. Companies are transient. Ownership is temporary. Freedom is persistent, so long as the rule of law is operative. GPL is still the dominant open-source license: http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2012/02/15/decline-of-the-gpl/ http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2012/02/15/decline-of-the-gpl/ (or it was as of 2008-ish) The thing that gives free software power is precisely the freedom Stallman baked in: the freedom of developers to change the code. A decade from now any given proprietary system will be a pile of undifferentiated hexidecimal sludge, but we'll still be able to compile the Linux kernel from source, on architectures that aren't even invented yet. For all that he rants about users using non-free software, the core freedom Stallman is defending is developer's freedom. To paraphrase George Orwell, "Freedom is the freedom to modify source. Grant that, and everything else follows."

dragonwriter 12y ago
> If he was even a little bit "reasonable", free software would have been nibbled to death by ducks by now. If he had been flexible in the 1980s and 1990s, maybe. Once the practical case for free software was established by facts on the ground, free software has been on a pretty secure footing whether or not the Free Software movement (or the FSF and Stallman) was flexible, or even present.
- teddyh 12y ago
  People have always said that “now” is the time to be flexible, since “now” we are on a secure footing. Constantly. Since the beginning. You will excuse me if I don’t believe it this time, either.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    I don't recall anyone staying that in, say, 1990, nor do I remember any facts that would have supported that if they did, like many leading firms releasing free software without compulsion, either where they were the original copyright holder or where the upstream was under a permissive license so that they had no obligation to release anything, with thriving community driven free software projects, with major firms frequently contributing or sponsoring, under permissive free software licenses in many application domains. The fact that the pragmatic case for free software has been made and well-avcepted is quite evident.
    - teddyh 12y ago
      I do. It started when the BSD project made its initial free release, and really got going when BSD became a runnable OS in its own right. Ever since then, people have been saying that the GNU project is unnecessary since BSD exists.

dragonwriter 12y ago

> If he was even a little bit "reasonable", free software would have been nibbled to death by ducks by now. If he had been flexible in the 1980s and 1990s, maybe. Once the practical case for free software was established by facts on the ground, free software has been on a pretty secure footing whether or not the Free Software movement (or the FSF and Stallman) was flexible, or even present.

teddyh 12y ago
People have always said that “now” is the time to be flexible, since “now” we are on a secure footing. Constantly. Since the beginning. You will excuse me if I don’t believe it this time, either.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  I don't recall anyone staying that in, say, 1990, nor do I remember any facts that would have supported that if they did, like many leading firms releasing free software without compulsion, either where they were the original copyright holder or where the upstream was under a permissive license so that they had no obligation to release anything, with thriving community driven free software projects, with major firms frequently contributing or sponsoring, under permissive free software licenses in many application domains. The fact that the pragmatic case for free software has been made and well-avcepted is quite evident.
  - teddyh 12y ago
    I do. It started when the BSD project made its initial free release, and really got going when BSD became a runnable OS in its own right. Ever since then, people have been saying that the GNU project is unnecessary since BSD exists.