Re: Practicality of GNU project and libre movement (Sagar Acharya : 2)

[Roberto Beltran]

> Becoming a patreon is still donations and relying on others.

Well you always rely on others, someone else has the money.

What makes what gets typically done on patreon different than other recurring 
donations is that you are delivering additional value for the subscription. 
Some examples for software: acknowledgement, access to the developer, status in 
the community, some say in what features or bugs get prioritized, being able to 
promote your related service.

Many artists use this successfully, and for example many mid-size Youtubers end 
up making more money having a minority of their fan base on patreon than from 
ad revenue, especially if what they make isn't particularly ad-friendly.

It's not perfect and doesn't make sense for everyone, but that's why there are 
many other methods listed and I have no doubts there will be more. In general, 
regardless of ethics, I think it just makes more sense for society to reap the 
full potential of technology and innovate on business rather than stunt tech 
innovation to make money the same old way.

> Point is GNU is losing. Majority of booting software used is proprietary, 
> majority of hardware used is backdoored and majority of OSes used are 
> nonfree. With Google having power over every Android user which it may or may 
> not choose to exploit, freedom is down in the bins. The sad part about 
> freedom is if others are not free, then you aren't because you are singled 
> out from others. If I want to be free, atleast significant size of population 
> must be free so I can hide or mix among them. Things are becoming even worse 
> with drones soon to come, SaaSS facilitating control even over hardware of 
> user's data and softwares, and so much infrastructure of website companies 
> based on cloud.

Most people on here already know how bad things are, but I don't think it's 
black or white win or lose. Either way, you can't control other people or 
society, what are YOU going to do. If what you want is money, go get it. If you 
want to be completely off the grid, you can move to rural South America or 
something. If you really do want everyone to be free, I would say get involved 
in your community and take up posts where you are needed there and in the 
broader free software community. Complaining and preaching to the choir like 
this doesn't accomplish anything.