I personally know high quality developers who only work on free software projects because of Stallman.

I’m not sure how valuable these baseless anecdotes are to the conversation and is one of the reasons why I try to argue on principles.

I’m optimistic that you brought up principles as well as I think it’s important to judge developers based on the quality of their code rather than how popular they are.

The popularity of a developer is certainly not a reason to judge them in itself. But the reasons for that developer's popularity are. Is that developer popular because they provide empathetic feedback to other developers? Is that developer popular because they help other project members think about the goals of the project in useful ways? Is that developer popular because they make it easier for others to involve themselves in the project? If so, that developer should be regarded highly even if their code isn't great.

I agree with you. I was trying to communicate that we should evaluate based on the underlying value rather than surface characteristics. Hopefully a great developer will also be popular (because of impact) but not necessarily. I frequently try to remind myself that I should assume value based on popularity.

Good software isn’t a democracy. Democracy is great for things that are arbitrary, but sucks for things where there’s objective value. I don’t want my surgeon taking a vote on how to proceed while I’m on the table.

However, that doesn’t mean democratic principles have no place. Consensus, discussion, collaboration are all important. But not to the exclusion of skill and responsibility. While I don’t want my surgeon taking a vote that includes the orderly and electrician who happen to be in the room, I hope that they solicit input and consider opinions from others before they decide on the course of action.

I also don’t know of a way to compare individuals for their value and think it’s a waste of effort to do so. People who encourage facilitation are awesome and I think frequently projects can do better with a fun person who attracts participation rather than some hard core coder who pisses everyone off. But not as an absolute rule. I’ve worked on projects with wonderful cheerleaders that never produced anything because they were all happiness and tons of people, but no one actually doing work.

The main problem of Free Software (read GPL) is that it is not free, compared to say BSD. It doesn't promote competition and doesn't help small player, as you have to release all changes back under GPL. On the other hand, GPL increases barrier to entry, so big monopolistic players, like Microsoft and governments, win from it, while small indie devs lose.

So they only work on commercial software projects because of Richard Stallman?

Yes. They concluded that working in communities that wouldn't tolerate people like RMS was more important than working on free software.

This is a disingenuous argument.

I work on some free software projects and most people don't even know who RMS is. There are multiple Free/Open Source software associations, projects and communities to choose, all with different people working on them, some of them don't tolerate such behavior.

If none of those fit, people can just create their own and choose who to associate with.

> They concluded that working in communities that wouldn't tolerate people like RMS was more important than working on free software.

This is clearly a fabricated justification. But if such people were to actually exist they would not participate in the free software movement either way due to misalignment of values and ideologies.

Companies have cultures and legal constraints that get coworkers fired for perpetually hitting on their coworkers. That's a positive for a lot of people (myself included).

Bushnell makes the excellent point that he wasn't pushed out for this email alone, but for the pattern of thought the email indicates when aligned with other behaviors in his career.

https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-depa...