Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous

Re:Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous by hugey010 on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @03:15PM (#17760971)

I got to see Stallman talk at a large state school a few years back. Almost everyone, including myself, thought the guy meant well but had really lost his mind. It wasn't just the Emacs song, but how he spent so much of his time and energy understanding and maintaining all of his freedoms. Thinking back, it's like we forgot our rights aren't guaranteed and didn't need to be protected or even considered at those levels. We were very naive and short-sighted.

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Re:Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous by kartan on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @06:01PM (#17762307)

> Almost everyone, including myself, thought the guy meant well but had really lost his mind.

Yep. I know a guy that hang with him for a while and Stallman behaviour was already off. That was years ago.

But the original idea it is still relevant today. It is important to detach the message from the messenger.

> Thinking back, it's like we forgot our rights aren't guaranteed and didn't need to be protected or even considered at those levels.

Yes. I think that the success of the open source movement makes it commercially important and the message got diluted. There was a lot of pushback against LGPL and GPL licenses at that time.

Nowadays people contribute to projects that any company can take on and convert to a closed product. Just put some effort in some improvements - a nicer interface and some documentation - and the freemium version will overtake the free version. GPL was designed to make that move impossible unless the original company owned all the code, as then it can change the license whenever they want.

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Re:Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous by wott on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @04:42PM (#17761709)

Those companies (and capitalism in general) excel at identifying your sloths (as any other vice), encouraging and developing them in order to turn them into money. They thrive on such mechanisms.

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