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20060524 Wednesday May 24, 2006

Will Stallman ever stop tilting at windmills?

yes, yes, I realize that RMS is much more interested in software being Free than he is it being Useful.  That's a valid ideology, and he pursues it relentlessly -- but it's fundamentally irrelevant to the industry as a whole.

Why?  Because people don't care whether the software they use is free.  People can't even be bothered to care about their own personal freedoms -- witness the Patriot Act and the general lack of uproar over the NSA's domestic spying!  Given the choice between software that works, but is proprietary and software that is Free, but hard to use (and therefore doesn't work), they'll choose the latter every time.  Perhaps, if two products were identical in their use and one was Free and the other wasn't, they'd choose the Free one if they knew there was a difference.  But usefulness trumps license every single time for most people, and RMS' assumption that it doesn't hurts him, and his crusade, every time he opens his mouth in public.

Posted by fraxas ( May 24 2006, 01:30:29 PM EDT ) Permalink Comments [3]
Trackback URL: http://blogs.sun.com/dandaviesbrackett/entry/will_stallman_ever_stop_tilting
Comments:

Stallman is right: Sun's just trying to use "Open" in marketing purposes and there is nothing "open" or "free" actually. So, I'd reword as "will Sun ever stop lying?"

Posted by mamamia on May 24, 2006 at 01:37 PM EDT #

I think RMS often fails to assign value to user time. Users always want the "lowest cost" option, where cost = one time fee (license) + reoccuring fee (cost to use).

Posted by Atlas on May 25, 2006 at 03:17 PM EDT #

Good point about Sun's marketing playing fast and loose with the terms "Open" and "Free", mamamia. I feel obliged to point out they didn't actually lie, although I'd much rather have them be a little less press-releasy in their press releases myself. That said, my point was actually that while RMS picked up on marketing's tricks and posted an editorial on them, the rest of the world said "blah blah java blah licence blah OOH LOOK it's in portage now! yay!" because both press release wording, and licenses, are only important to people with nothing better to do than champion causes most of the world cares very, very, very little about.

Posted by Dan Davies Brackett on May 25, 2006 at 03:58 PM EDT #

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