I read "Free as in Freedom" by Richard Stallman and am a strong supporter of GNU project. I strongly want it to succeed.
However, when you keep money away from the free software movement, such a movement cannot survive against people who actively charge money for binaries without source code. All power arises from concealment. When you understand a system very well, the power goes away and it looks ordinary. When GNU or libre movement asks contributors or volunteers (both fancy words for "work for me for free"), you present making libre software as a secondary thing rather than a central thing. When projects licensed GPLv3 rely almost completely on "donations" from other, you rely on the donor's generosity for getting food at your table. I really want people to remove reliance on external things and make GNU central and very active. With such a system, when a coder has to choose between working for Microsoft, Google or GNU projects, I really doubt whether he'll go for GNU. GNU project is not bigger than survival. Having libre hardware(none yet wrt computer), libre booting software(most hardware is incompatible), libre OS(Done) and libre basic tools(Done) like compilers and building tools are central for freedom. Applications still can be proprietary when their ability to exploit can be limited. With the above 4 things under control of power-hungry people today, I don't see Windows going away. It's getting worse with smart devices and surveillance devices everywhere. (I really don't get the point of why a smart fridge is even required!!) Today, in the worst case scenario, thinking silently is the only thing one can do without giving your data away. GNU project needs to have clear concept of how it will generate funds and incentivize people(reasonably talented) to create free software and free hardware and it is not possible with "donations" and "volunteers". It needs to get money with a significant business and marketing force and needs to provide an alternative computer with every component libre which can be used for some purpose like designing (2D graphics with inkscape say). Products can be cheap with minimal profits but profits must be present. Thanking you Sagar Acharya GO GNU! _______________________________________________ libreplanet-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
