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Re: [libreplanet-discuss] FSF individualism in Logic Magazine
From: |
Dmitry Alexandrov |
Subject: |
Re: [libreplanet-discuss] FSF individualism in Logic Magazine |
Date: |
Wed, 18 Sep 2019 15:51:03 +0300 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/27.0.50 (gnu/linux) |
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.
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