As a developer, you have a choice to make when you encounter GPL bashing: jump on the bandwagon, or rebut. If you choose the bandwagon, don't come crying when you can't make a living building honest software that treats users with respect because you have to compete with large companies who ~~take~~ steal agnostic software and subsidize their products with user disrespect and line their pockets selling ad profiles.

As a user, demand honest software and new companies will rise to meet your demands. Instead of ads, pay $30 and support a project that puts your interests first. Subscribe for $3/mo when you find a product that brings you continuous value.

As a technical leader and someone in a position to make impactful technical decisions at your small company, educate yourself on the license landscape, examine your core product and target market. If you're targeting open source adoption by big companies and expect them to eventually pay for a proprietary overlay, probably avoid the GPL. If you're building a product for _users_, consider enshrining that position in your license terms and simultaneously defending their freedom while deterring predatory abuse by large companies.

It runs contrary to the FSF guidance, but I'd also suggest, out of practicality, patenting your (software) inventions. Ultimately it gives you flexibility and defense in the event that somebody else tries to assert their own patents. It also protects your GPL users because you explicitly license them to use your patented work, and it allows you to license that technology regardless of any software you've written to companies who may not find the GPL palatable but still would like to use your invention. Win win win.

PGP is a bunch of use cases glommed together; for most/all of them there is a better tool https://latacora.micro.blog/2019/07/16/the-pgp-problem.html

Here's a good quote from the article at the top of this chain:

> Take AEAD ciphers: the Rust-language Sequoia PGP defaulted to the AES-EAX AEAD mode, which is great, and nobody can read those messages because most PGP installs don’t know what EAX mode is, which is not great. Every well-known bad cryptosystem eventually sprouts an RFC extension that supports curves or AEAD, so that its proponents can claim on message boards that they support modern cryptography. RFC’s don’t matter: only the installed base does. We’ve understood authenticated encryption for 2 decades, and PGP is old enough to buy me drinks; enough excuses.

> You can have backwards compatibility with the 1990s or you can have sound cryptography; you can’t have both.

HTTP, javascript and TLS have also shown that a sufficiently motivated set of actors can move the ecosystem forward. True, organizing the ecosystem is not the same job as actually building stuff, but it's still beneficial to all of us.

Absolutely. PGP could be decent. Unfortunately efail and sks[1] show it's actors aren't sufficiently motivated.

[1] https://gist.github.com/rjhansen/f716c3ff4a7068b50f2d8896e54...

But I noticed change in my personal perception (and I am not alone) towards more positive reception of actually free software and I believe that mass perception may change.

This is what changed my perception:

You see how often proprietary and "fake" open source software gets subverted by companies over time, especially when company is heavily funded by VC. After you see it couple of times you just get tired and there is no motivation to invest yourself into it so you just ignore it. Keybase is perfect example of such failure. Now when I see something like Signal I just ignore it (their recent controversial addition of crypto proved to me that it was right decision).

And it applies to software that I use in my work too, if I get to decide what software to use I try to avoid such projects.

I and others were there, with source available, PD, shareware, beerware, postware and whatever else was available as business friendly license.

I will give it two decades max, for everything to get back to the old way of selling software.

More like: a small part of the professional word would be using the usual UNIX flavours, and the rest of the World would use Windows both for desktop and for servers (add a tiny share of free BSDs here and there if you wish).

It would be nice to get back to Turbo Pascal-like and old Adobe business models, instead of the divide between subscriptions and free (as in beer) open source funded by a bigcorp making money from something else. So I'll take that.

Big tech has learned how to keep Free software at bay, to the point that loving or hating the FSF doesn't matter anymore. It's irrelevant.

> I'm sad they can't learn to love GNU projects.

I think you don't realize how this sentence comes across. In some ways, it's an extremely concise way of describing why the FSF has failed.

Let me reiterate. The FSF does legal and advocacy work. You're only thinking in terms of advocacy. The legal work is just as important, without it, we wouldn't be able to use GPL licenses at all.

Big tech didn't accomplish it's goal of killing the FSF itself. The one org standing in its way of complete dominance. It's not a battle of ideas, it's a battle of people.

All it takes is a core group of people willing to put their money and time into it to keep it alive. Stallman himself said he never thought free software would ever become a thing and that the FSF has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

As long as the GPL continues to be a viable alternative, we will continue to have a bastion against the endless waves of proprietary software.

Do you believe they are making a genuine effort to do that? Or is it arrogance on the part of Stallman and co. which is still keeping the FSF closely associated with the Epstein scandal, while MIT and others have successfully moved on.

What's happening isn't 100% the fault of Stallman, but a continuation of the long-running chasm between the free software and open source communities. Though it certainly didn't help that Stallman chose to reclaim his board seat. There's just a lot of antipathy between the two camps. There always has been.

So orgs should pander to misinformation?

The FSF is an advocacy org and you can’t advocate well for a moral position (free software) if your main advocate is ensnared in scandal over morally questionable behavior, regardless of the truth.

The FSF first now has to advocate for the morality of RMS to clear his name enough that he can advocate for the morality something else and have enough people listen. Frankly, his track record beyond the Epstein mess was already dubious, so it’s a losing battle.

What does it mean to be "questionable"? controversial? wrong? That the earth is round is questionable (to some smaller subset of people) - that doesn't change the fact that the RMS was misrepresented (without scare-quotes) - the truth of his actual comments wrt Minsky do 100% exonerate him - that a subset of people don't agree is irrelevant.

He's viewed so negatively that this Epstein thing (which he is not exonerated entirely imo) is not the only reason to distance from him.

And it has zero to do with open source to wining over FSF. Like, nothing at all, popular organization survive sex-abuse scandals just fine. Partly it is business friendliness, yes. But also, personally I remember finding culture around FSF off-putting years ago, for reasons that have nothing to do with Minsky/Epstein kind of issues.

I found that off-putting because of hollier then tho, we are geniuses everyone else is looser and if you don't agree with us is bad programmer attitudes. And the massive thread wars over everything that kind of pretend to be rational, but are actually massively emotional.