Introduction to free software and the liberation of cyberspace (2014)

Might need a date (2014).

My "relationship" with FSF and RMS [1] is complicated. Their formation happened near the start of my career, and as I matured I've found that my opinion of them becomes more nuanced.

It's fair to say (from my perspective, they would likely not agree) that FSF occupies and extreme end of a continuum. Let's put them at one end, and say Apple at the other. Most of the rest of us are somewhere in between.

I kinda get where they are coming from. But their language can seem unnecessarily juvenile. For example casting users (of non fsf as Victims.) Or with the name calling (microserf etc). The insistence on calling it Gnu/Linux instead of just Linux, seems to refect, to me, that they feel like a victim more than I do.

Ultimately I like to eat, so I write commercial software. Their model of asking for donations doesn't scale - at least it doesn't for me. I like to be entertained so I'm happy to use commercial software, like YouTube or Netflix.

On the other hand I happily use OSS and even on occasion improve it. I'm completely comfortable living in both worlds.

Most of what i write is distributed as source code. Users are free to modify it, learn from it, but not distribute it (as source).

So I might not agree with the FSF. But I have considered their point of view. And I see merit in them acting as one end of the fulcrum. I'm never going to be an acolyte, but equally I'm not going to mind that they carry on.

This is my journey, of course. Yours is likely different. And we all sit in different places on the continuum. That's OK.

[1] I'm ignoring the controversies in RMS personal life, and personal views of things other than Free Software.

I mainly worry that we just don't know. Whatever advice is written is for an era that has somewhat failed. We need gumption and initiative & new things, to liberate cyberspace.