How did the ideology of libre/free software get so politicized?
I’ve noticed advocates for exclusively for libre software and actively discourage simple open source software for not going far enough, also want censorship of not allowing any proprietary software to be mentioned, and don’t allow any critiques of the software they use because it’s libre software so there are no faults or bad designs.
I thoroughly enjoy the code purity of what is labelled as libre software, for license I only like the ISC license for freedom. My attitude is if someone changes my code and doesn’t give back, it does not harm me or injury me in any way.
I also believe libre software can be used for the surveillance of other people, libre software does not be default mean privacy. How network software is configured in systems that other people don’t control, it doesn’t matter if it’s open source when people have no knowledge of other networks configuration.
On the principal of freedom, I do support the right to develop proprietary software. The fact that it exists does not harm anyone who chooses not to use proprietary software.
It seems the die hard libre software crowd, not open source people but the ones who want to live in an only GPLv3+ world can start to live in ther own world, their own bubble, and become disconnected losing perspective that which software other people use is not something that should affect your day in any way. Unless someone is both a network engineer and does infosec or something similiar, they’re not in a position to understand fully appreciate how network protocols matter more than a license and code availability.
Thank you for countering me point by point, I fully respect. Even if you say that I’m wrong, I must always respect someone who argues point by point, and doesn’t do the usual internet trash of “You sound stupid, you don’t know anything”.
I have seen in Trisquel Linux forums, they get irritated or offended for mentioning something that is not 100% open source. For example, if someone obviously new posts “I want to stop using Windows, will Trisquel help me to only use free software from now on?”, to which the replies will be “Yes, but please don’t mention that software in the forum here, we don’t like that kind of promotion”. I read that and my thought is “Dumbass, they were explaining their current situation and what background they are coming from in pursuit of trying to find guidance, they were not promoting anything.”
At a certain point, people have to address the way the world is, not the way they want everything to be running. I would love to live in an exclusively BSD world with a heavy majority towards OpenBSD, along side FreeBSD to to run on all other systems. But in the mean time, since people who do all production work with various proprietary program, we have to live along side them.
My view is until free software can match the quality of a $100 million movie project as proprietary software vendors, libre software does not exist any any conversation with those people. A movie editor that makes a million dollars doing all of the editing work production does not care about software.
I think that’s what I find puzzling, is how to libre/free software advocates not see that for people who get paid for their production work on computer all day, open source software is not an option. I am not going to criticize someone who uses various Adobe programs or Pro Tools for being able to produce better quality work in less time, and there is no libre software alternative for what those programs do.
Trisquel is sadly the kind of software that would attract those kinds of users. It’s all about being completely free and open source. No driver blobs or anything even slightly proprietary. I appreciate the stance and how they’re doing it but people who go that far in their software choices tend to be quite serious and almost radical when it comes to their choices. Some of them also feel superior to people who haven’t been able to make the switch to free software. It’s also sad that the way they react will probably chase away more potential converts than it actually helps.
The people who heavily push the libre/free software exclusionary attitude have very much turned people off with the attitude. I suspect that there have been a few that went back to Windows dueto the fanaticism.
I come from BSD, and outside of maybe Slackware and Gentoo, Linux people are not the technical people they think they are. As a collective whole, I find Linux users in general who are not paid Linux servers admins have more opinion than knowledge.
I deal with it in person and online, when Linux users hype the benefits of Linux over Mac and Windows, if I start talking about OpenBSD and FreeBSD, they shutdown or are put off by it, have nothing to say about Linux vs BSD.
I do wonder what is the real world, face to face, social skills of people who only use Linux-libre exclusively and won’t touch anything it. Given the posts on Trisquel forums, I get the impression that a few of them are not functioning in a healthy and socially observant manner.
Maybe they shutdown because they dont know enough about OpenBSD or FreeBSD to have an opinion?
I used FreeBSD a while ago just to try it out. That little devil guy was too hard to resist. Besides the fact that the community is tiny what would you be discussing? That its like using linux but harder :) ?