Are Richard Stallman and the free software movement idealist?

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stallman.org/

When enough high quality free software exists and is continually refined in the interests of the users as a result of the philosophy, people will have no choice but to use free software. Proprietary software is at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to actually serving customers.

Well I think its good to be a critic of the free software movement, to see its limitations. At the same time its a crack in the sistem that can lead to good things. It can also be apropiated by porky. I dont think there is a definitive absolute answer to that. Its just another experiencie, an attempt of rebelion of some kind. So even if it is limited to just label it as unworthy and disregard the actual experience and the lessons that can be learnt from it would be retarded.

Plus, if some kind of revolution happens we will need free software to aid direct democracy and collective proyects, so overall I think its a positive force in our struggle. Many times we make the mistake of giving up people and whole experiencie to social democrats because they arent class aware or arent radical enough. Thats the equivalent of shooting ourselves in the leg.

god, he is THIS CLOSE to becoming class-conscious.

Can SOMEONE who knows theory please email him with some Marxist reading recommendations?

Never will. Proprietary software will ALWAYS keep itself ahead, no matter what competitive disadvantage is has, the capitalist system will constantly keep itself with its proprietary software in the lead. Free software will never have good support, proprietary software makers will make certain that free software project are both unknown and never as widely used.

Dude, it is perfectly possible to run an all-FOSS system today with very few issues. And I think the average person uses FOSS daily now.

Just because it is possible and just because people can doesn't mean that it will ever become widely accepted. I use entirely free software at this very moment. Proprietary software corp will make certain that free software doesn't take an advantage.

That time is now.
Capitalism can no longer improve software, they just add more DRM.

Cloud Photoshop is the end of photoshop.
Office 365 is functionally no better than Office 97 (and libre office)

People don't care about software being improved or good, people just use what they are taught and advertised. Free software cannot make a large footholds in schools, there is no money in free software for the schools. Free software cannot make it remotely competitively in advertisement, such little money. Only under socialism will free software be widespread.

I agree.

But I'd argue it doesn't really matter about "wide spread". Linux is popular enough and has enough software, that I can enjoy my software communism today.
The fact that 95% of people use windows doesn't really harm me.

No development time on your platform is the same as losing out. Devs having to develop for windows instead of linux means you get harmed by not getting the stuff you would have gotten.

That effort doesn't come from the same pool of labour (enthusiasts vs wage slaves), except in the macroscopic sense that once freed from wage slavery, there will be more freely assignable development hours in total.

Of course it will be better once Lennart Poettering has been sent to the gulag

It's just that there are plenty of cases where FOSS is ahead of proprietary. Many are really important cases. Yes, overall, it's obviously not "winning," but it's doing really well for the situation.

Web servers.
There are no successful proprietary web servers.

Ftfy
Oh yes, schools can save a lot of money on switching to free software. Since playing Far Cry on ultra settings is not a requirement for school computers, Windows is not necessary.
How come big companies are contributing to the Linux kernel and the GNU C library? People develop free software free of charge every day. Some do it because it's in their self-interest to have this piece of software and no one else would start developing it for a long time, unless you do it.
Free software is already widespread: the internet runs on GNU/Linux amd Android uses the Linux kernel. Unless you are a gamer, chances are you can switch to some Freenix (any free unix-like system) today.

You can do that even as a gamer. Yes there are some sacrifices, but most you can run (and in some cases actually better, since it's all sandboxed and more in your control) via playonlinux (a great way to manage wine), or in many cases today - native.

Tons of games run natively, on linux, now. MS is still trying to dictate and control everything with their control over direct x, but it's their last bastion, and it's falling.

It's only a matter of time until Windows is reverse-engineered enough so you could run Windows programs at native speed and accurately on free Unix-like operating systems using WINE.

The complexity of the Win32 API as it was updated over the years by Microsoft has a logarithmic growth. Once the Win32 API is figured out to the point you can run all 32-bit Windows programs properly (Windows XP-like compatibility), then you've passed a major hurdle and it'll be much easier and quicker to achieve Windows 7-like compatibility afterwards, as the newer operating systems have not changed much since Windows 2000 when they've ditched Win16 and the monolithic kernel.

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Is that supposed to be an insult? Chavez had the people's mandate. Are you going to inject some nice little 'liberal' us media propaganda here that has you magically appearing like a radical revolutionary but at the end of the day has you supporting the exact same policies, or rather the theory and thought chain behind them, of the empire? Is that what you're going to do?

"I'm such a rebel! Here's my positions! (everything the empire's media supports)"

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Is that what you're going to do?

Nah.

-t.idealist

That's a cute baby. 11/10, would rub belly.

Not the other poster.

It seems like RedHat through it's assorted tentacles (systemd, gnome, pulse…) are trying to entangle the whole linux ecosystem.

The whole early systemd adoption and the way it was preemptively set as exclusive option despite being a broken,unstable, patch-hellscape mess is beyond suspicious.
Not to speak of the immediate extortion the devteam resorted to with udev's development.

I might be tinfoil-hatty though.

pretty much just proves that FOSS is very fragile to capitalism. in socialism, we wouldn't have rich corporate faggots like Poettering or Shuttleworth ordering the rest of the FOSS community around.

Ok. For real this is good thinking.

This is why Piracy just works, thats why no one wants Piratebay or other torrent websites to go away. Everyone likes using them, except the ruling class since they have the money to buy all the expensive software.

Basically: Tool Software (software used to create media or other software) should be free, money should be made through donators that want to see more from the developers. It's a good that can be copied, it's virtual, it's like magic. You're not stealing something unique.

It would be amazing if you could copy-paste a car you like irl & use it.

That sort of tinfoilhattery is exactly the kind that the phrase tinfoilhattery was made and used to try and ostractize and make people think it was crazy.

Your kind of paranoia, is good and healthy.

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You mean an attraction which someone has no choice over and probably will never act on is wrong?
We need a fucking exorcist over here.

There are idealists and there are people who fail to change anything. He's the former.

is that steve wozniak at 1:40?

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