Please note: I'm not trying to denounce Stallman or anything like that. I believe he's made a huge contribution, philosophically, legally and technically, to the free software world. I typically err on the side of free software philosophy than open source practicality in these debates. I just wanted to share this because ESR's article made me think: am I being a zealot, pursuing ideals just for the sake of ideals, or am I pursuing them for a reason?
I still think free software is hugely important. But what I took from ESR's piece, and what I think a lot of the criticism of RMS is based on, is that we don't want to let the good be the enemy of the perfect. A good example, for me, is the fairly recent "No DRM" movement in the games industry. Look at companies like GOG.com and Humble Bundle that are making a huge marketing fuss about "No DRM". In particular, Humble Bundle is regularly selling games from numerous developers with the following positive outcomes: - As a condition of entry, making all developers build a Linux version of their game (even if some of them seem rushed and in one case just a Wine wrapper, most of them have been ported properly, and specifically for the bundle), - No DRM, - Supporting independent game developers, - Giving money to charity, - Occasionally resulting in the open sourcing of the games. However, most of the Humble Bundle games are proprietary. In Stallman's hard-line view, these games are "evil" and should be avoided. But that's nonsense: I want to play games, I don't mind paying for them, and frankly I want to stick it to these big companies like Blizzard and Ubi Soft that require you to be constantly connected to the Internet and authenticated to their DRM servers just to play a single player game. So hell yes I am supporting the Humble Bundle. ESR's blog post tells me that I don't have to feel guilty for playing a proprietary game -- after all, what is the harm? I can't modify the games? I'm happy with that -- it's not like my personal documents are being held to ransom in a proprietary file format. And I'm sending a positive message in doing so -- not one about free software, but one about no-DRM and Linux, and that's still a positive message. _______________________________________________ Free-software-melb mailing list Free-software-melb@lists.softwarefreedom.com.au http://lists.softwarefreedom.com.au/mailman/listinfo/free-software-melb
