Re: [libreplanet-discuss] FSF individualism in Logic Magazine

[Dmitry Alexandrov]

Danny Spitzberg <stationaery@gmail.com> wrote:
> this article <https://logicmag.io/failure/freedom-isnt-free/> on the 
> "failure" of free software ran last month (long before the recent scandal) 
> and offers what could be an important wake up call — especially in light of 
> the wild hand-wringing about RMS.

> As we look forward from this RMS fracas, I wonder how other folks here feel 
> about this article.

Well, I am not much aware of that fracas, and probably missed the connection.  
From a sideways glance, it looked like yet another malevolent hype started by 
professional SJWs, completely unrelated to software freedom.  If I am wrong, 
please enlighten me.

> The following quote feels prescient:
>
> “Free software pioneers like Stallman tended to approach the issue from an 
> individualized perspective, drawn from the 1970s-1980s hacker culture that 
> many of them came from: if you could change how enough hackers wrote and used 
> software, you could change the world. This highly personalized model of 
> social change proposed an individual solution to a structural problem, which 
> necessarily neglected the wider social context.”

I am not that familiar with RMS’s views to say whether a claim that “if you 
could change how enough hackers wrote and used software, you could change the 
world” may be really attributed to him either.

But if you could change _how_ hackers write software, you could change the 
world.  Free software + bazaar development is exactly about that, not about 
quantities.

And I do not observe any failure on that front.   Unfulfilled expectations for 
immediate and huge success (did anybody really share them?) != failure.

signature.asc
Description: PGP signature