RMS interviewed on Radio NZ
nb.inode.co.nz
nb.inode.co.nz
[RMS] I don't know, and I don't care.
[KH] Well, that's an interesting response. Why don't you care?
[RMS] Because I want freedom more than I want innovation.
Paying customers will pay for things if they are worth the value. Open source developers are the only ones forcing their prices down to $0.
Apple makes money selling overpriced hardware with extremely user friendly software. If the software causes problems, if it doesn't make their life easier, users won't pay the premium for the hardware, Apple has every incentive to invest heavily on GUI-candy and ease of use in general.
RH makes money providing support for their software. If the software is too easy to use, nobody will by the support. They have every incentive to keep a certain level of complexity.
That is basically incorrect in terms of their business model: in order to have Redhat Linux, you have to pay money for it, and pay it on a subscription basis, so it's not "call support when I need help", it's "pay for it on an ongoing basis and call support when I need it", so really it's in their interests to make it simpler and easier.
Also, OSX is built on top of a number of open source products, including GCC, created a number of years ago by one Mr. Stallman, back when he still wrote code.
It's more subtle than that. RH (et al) need to maintain a reputation for complexity amongst the people who make purchasing decisions, and they also need to discourange the users (e.g. sysadmins, developers, etc) from doing things that would make support difficult. So if you have RHEL you can install a certain limited number of packages on it and connect it to a certain limited number of devices (etc etc) or you're outside the support arrangement anyway.
If you follow the rules, you might as well be using CentOS because you won't need support, and if you step outside the lines you might as well be using CentOS because you won't be supported anyway.
I think those sorts of people care about many other things more than complexity, first and foremost: ass covering, and being able to call someone if something goes wrong. That's the kind of target they're aiming at. The period when people bought servers because of bright, shiny, 'uncomplicated' guis was relatively short lived, in the late '90ies with Windows NT.
One of the strengths of open source is that people can pay for innovation, not innovation + a whole heap of stuff that's not really that interesting. With open source, you can build up a huge amount of infrastructure and concentrate on your cutting edge secret sauce type of stuff to make money on.
Of course, RMS wouldn't be ok with that, but... well, "I don't care", to borrow his words. I'm glad he's around to frame the conversation though, he makes me look like a moderate.
Innovation is great for delivering new and better products, but it doesn't help much for allowing you to fix problems in the code you're using, avoid vendor lockin,or any of the other problems that free software can help solve.
I agree that it is important to keep practicality in mind, but I think it is also important to keep in mind that pretty much any philosophy you choose will have different tradeoffs involved.
Cars are a good example. Lots of people can do basic maintenance on their car. They get frustrated when they have to go to a mechanic to find out what the "check engine" light is complaining about this time. They buy the Chilton's or Haynes' car repair manuals. On the more extreme end they do a complete engine rebuild, or even assemble a kit car from publicly available reference designs.
Cars are getting more complex and computerized though. I hear complaints about how much harder they are becoming to service. And the example given in the interview of the proprietary software in engine management chips is real. Racers will completely replace the ECU controlling fuel injection and engine timing with one which is programmable.
My parents' generation takes for granted that they can do these things with their cars. But with my generation we changed from the grease monkeys to the hackers, and the freedom to tinker has to come with us. For most people a car is just a tool to get from point A to point B. But we are all poorer when the hobbyists and amateurs don't have the freedom to tinker with, explore, and hack their own computers and cars.
Note that he avoided actually answering this. I don't think it's quite so cut-and-dry as current software fashions make it seem. Having law which protected user's freedom, as RMS wants, would affect a variety of variables in our very turbulent industry. SS curricula would be different, business models would be different, code methodologies would be different, languages would be different, software distribution would be different. Hell, our elections might come out differently.
'Freedom is good' sounds like a tautology, but freedom to do what, or freedom from what?
Some freedoms are a good thing for people to have, others not (e.g. freedom to escape the law (assuming the law is good)).
For RMS, the freedom of the many to use, see, modify and distribute code always trumps the freedom of the individual person or organisation to keep their code secret and restricted to the end of making money for themselves.
Unfortunately, I get the impression that RMS tries to equate 'freedom' with 'the freedoms RMS is in favour of'. But there are other freedoms which one can argue for, and which conflict with RMS's preferred freedoms. (Which he does argue for, but my point is that there are good arguments for other views too.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#Possible_solutions
It is, however, very much an artificial construct, created and enforced by the government with the intention of striking a balance that benefits consumers by encouraging producers. So, while I disagree with RMS, I don't know that I would call intellectual property a very natural 'freedom'. More than anything, it's a compromise that has worked reasonably well until now, with some obvious defects (software patents).
If you don't want your code to be free as in free speech, use a different license and keep it to yourself. You have the freedom to do that.
You can make money off of free software by the way. It may seem tougher to do, but it's still possible.