Software is a tool like any other tool, and we all make trade-offs based on our priorities.
...except for the folks like Richard Stallman. They’re willing to suffer through bad solutions (or have the time and skills to write their own) just to maintain this ideological line in the sand.
The thing is, people who have real jobs and aren’t just academics like Stallman have to get shit done.
Sure, a lot of open source software is actually better than proprietary alternatives. a lot of open source software is an easy choice.
I’d like to see Richard Stallman run a wedding photography business without touching proprietary software. Or a restaurant. Or a scalable, highly available SaaS company.
If he ever had a job that made him do any of those things, he’d quickly realize that as CEO instead of chief computer tinkerer you suddenly start making those trade-offs.
“I could pay 5 engineers devote 10% of their time to maintaining and patching a monitoring system, or I can just buy Datadog.”
“I can spend 20% more time editing photos, or I can just buy Photoshop.”
“I can spend 20% of our IT person’s time maintaining our self-hosted video conference solution and email server, or I can just buy G Suite.”
Schools are actually one of the worst places for open source software. K-12 institutions are not technical and need a ton of hand-holding. And if the stuff breaks, your students will sit there twiddling their thumbs wasting taxpayer dollars.