- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1366698
Richard Stallman was right since the very beginning. Every warning, every prophecy realised. And, worst of all, he had the solution since the start. The problem is not Richard Stallman or the Free Software Foundation. The problem is us. The problem is that we didn’t listen.
No it doesn’t. Either there’s no logic in that statement at all, or you’re playing 5D chess with time travel and I’m playing checkers. While the article says:
it makes no statement on whether this activity represents a sustainable business model, nor does it explore how selling FOSS may or may not affect other businesses. I said:
because the article itself ended with:
I don’t (and can’t) know whether the absence of discussion on FOSS’ relation to capitalism represents a touch of myopia (as you suggest) on the part of RMS & the FSF, whether RMS intends to be the Gary Yourofsky of free software and it’s a deliberate choice for the sake of optics, or whether it betrays a pro-capitalism stance, but my feeling is that RMS is more concerned about FOSS as a vehicle for the creation and preservation of a digital commons, and a safeguard against privacy violation, and likely doesn’t have terribly many well informed thoughts and opinions on economic systems.
Since you’ve completely ignored my main point, I’ll just repeat it:
Capitalism is not a side issue. It is the central issue.
While you’ve ignored, or grievously misunderstood, all of my points, I didn’t ignore yours; it just has absolutely no bearing on my position that:
…and you haven’t said anything that convincingly disputes that statement; if your very obviously correct point that
profitMotive + softwareEngineer == proprietarySoftware
was somehow meant to refute it, then I’m failing to see how.Failing to state their incompatibility is logically identical to stating their compatibility. This is trivial.
Let me make sure I’m understanding:
If I don’t tell you that I love bananas, then, logically, this means that I hate bananas?
To torture this stupid banana analogy until it’s relevant again, if you spend your entire life working against fascist coups in latin america but you don’t have a problem with the chiquita banana company, your advocacy rings kind of hollow