No, this lowers SES barriers for vulnerable and impoverished people to get into software development and thus become less vulnerable and impoverished and influence how the world works. If you can't charge money for your code, only rich people can write software.
> This is like saying "access to information and education should be free" but then charging admission for a public library.
No, this is like saying "access to information and education should be free" and also agreeing that authors shouldn't have to work for free.
If you want to have a public library, you don't ask authors to work for free, you use taxes to pay the authors for their work, and then make it available to the public for "free". Which is something that you can do even better under Stallman's model: If you pay someone for a piece of Free Software, you not only can then lend it to the public for free, you are actually allowed to give away as many copies of it as you want to the public for free, for the public to keep and redistribute and modify.
> Further, that could prevent people from review/verifying the program before purchasing it.
It absolutely doesn't have to. You totally can make a contract selling Free Software with the additional requirement that certain measures of quality must be met by the seller, so the buyer can refuse to pay if the software turns out to be crap.
""" Use taxes to pay the authors...
then make it free for the public...
This is even better under Stalin's model: """
It took me about 5 to 7 seconds of rereading before I finally saw "Stallman's model".
So I have to grant to you, you are probably right, if and only if you can find a perfectly fair and just agent to do the taxing and not become corrupt. Have any volunteers?
The remainder of your post you only talk about Richard Stallman. Sure, RMS is the father of Free Software, but that doens't mean RMS's beliefs are all perfectly aligned with it.
If you wish to argue about OSS vs Free Software, you should be arguing about licenses, movements, and emergent behaviours and incentive structures within each of them.
Arguing about one single person's beliefs on either side will not be productive. No one person defines OSS or Free Software in full.
By way of example, I disagree with RMS politically and on many many other subjects, but I still believe the free software movement to be better long-term than the OSS movement.
> [5] https://stallman.org/articles/why-we-need-a-state.html
That link does not demonstrate what you're claiming it demonstrates.
There are countless interviews where he rants about his hatred of corporations. Saying "no he doesn't" doesn't demonstrate any counterpoint. Tell me, what is he saying then?
That said, I don't see how you can expand this to him thinking corporations shouldn't sell software. He seems largely fine with Red Hat, save some ideological issues.
Psychopath: a chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behavior.
I think it is pretty far fetched to suggest I was misrepresenting Stallman. Sure the article discusses the need for a state, but very clearly suggests his primary interests in the state is to stop CEOs from intentionally murdering their own customers.
The gravity of irony is so severe, it forgets some of the most appalling history lessons of Stalin, Mao, Hitler and others.
So yes, I'll debate Stallman any day any where.
[1] For instance https://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/ https://craphound.com/littlebrother/buy/
Material costs I'm ideologically fine with people making some profit off of, however inevitable market forces will cut margins lower and lower, until a point where no, people won't make a profit off of them.
The most successful of companies will ironically be the ones that give away the most, because they'll be the only ones that can survive in an extremely skeptical public market.
I predict this will either not happen, because citizens vote their governments into being socialist benefactors that provide these services for free, instead of the market (I also predict this will lead to increase government abuse). Or I predict the capitalist market will cater to socialist citizens by providing 0 margin services that maintain their monopoly in order to out compete governments or competitors that reap higher profits.
I've spoken about this on The ChangeLog podcast[1], Hackernoon[2], and other places[3], to copy some of it here:
Stallman is wrong. He correctly claims that users should have freedom, but then argues for the following two thoughts that contradict each other and the premise of freedom:
1. He is okay with people charging money for their code[4]. This creates SES (socioeconomic status) barriers for vulnerable and impoverished people. This is like saying "access to information and education should be free" but then charging admission for a public library. Further, that could prevent people from review/verifying the program before purchasing it. This does not help create a free and flourishing society. Non-material goods (like software) should be free up to their economies of scale, instead charging for services/products (consulting, material goods, hosting things beyond scale, or penalizing people for themselves charging/spying on users).
2. But he is not okay with corporations [5]. What is the difference between a person charging (1) for something and a company charging (2) for something? Corporation literally comes from "corpus" in Latin, which means "body" (a person), a "body" of persons is a corporation. Corporations can be psychopaths, but so can individual people or other bodies of people (like the government). It is contradictory thinking of Stallman (and thus hypocrisy and heresy of his own ideology) to be okay with (1) but not okay with (2).
Personally, the most concise way to better express these ideas is just the decentralization of power. For me, any individual, group, corporation, or government that becomes too powerful represents a danger to any and everybody else. This is why we are building P2P systems and enabling end-to-end encryption, that can be used by any and all of us (whether individuals, groups, corporations, or governments). If we can create equal opportunities, free for all to compete and cooperate, we will enable the most freedom and flourishing for all.
[1] https://changelog.com/podcast/236
[2] https://hackernoon.com/the-implications-of-rethinkdb-and-par...
[3] https://github.com/amark/gun/pull/434#issuecomment-336536807
[4] https://www.datamation.com/osrc/article.php/12068_3737586_3/...
[5] https://stallman.org/articles/why-we-need-a-state.html