Or maybe the FSF has absolutely miserably failed at actually getting their message out there?

The Right to Repair movement has been more successful; there's quite a bit of overlap between the concept of Free Software and Right To Repair: both are fundamentally about "I can do to the machine I bought whatever I want!" And it seems both the public and lawmakers are receptive to this argument. Right to Repair hasn't been as successful as I'd like (yet), but a lot more successful than Free Software. It seems to me that part of the blame squarely lies with FSF's inability to actually communicate their message effectively. Open Source has been more successful either.

I never like this kind of externalizing of issues and blame other people/corporations/governments because it's just not helpful. Even if you're 100% correct about all of that, you can't change what other people/organisations do where you have no influence, but you can influence what you do, so it's almost always better to think about "what can I/we do better?" rather than "what can they do better?"

I don't think FSF communication really has that much of an impact on the success. Even if the average person understands the benefit to free software it just doesn't impact them in the same way that right to repair does and that will result in them not really caring about it.

Some practical scenarios:

- The game Guacamelee crashes at 30 minutes in to the game for me and quite a lot of other people, but I can't fix it or download an "unofficial patch" (how many games have reverse-engineered unofficial patches btw?).

- I happened to have bought Hyperlight Drifer on GOG.com today; it seems okay, but the controls are horrible to the point of being almost unplayable. Pretty sure someone would have fixed it if they could.

- Back in the day KPN (Dutch AT&T) gave everyone a wireless dongle with their internet, but the driver was bugged and after a certain Windows update it would cause BSODs, and I had to sell a lot of new wireless dongles because of that.

- How many people and organisations would have preferred running Windows XP/7 instead of more or less forcibly updating to 8/10 because Microsoft no longer maintained it?

- How many people wished they could get a version of Windows 10 that doesn't forcibly reboot on updates?

And many more. These are all things a regular person could take advantage of, and very concrete advantages for a regular person, and not all that different from "right to repair".

A big point of Free Software really is about "right to repair"; a lot of people really do want their software to do something different or is broken beyond repair, but there is no way anyone can actually make it work any different. Chances are that if you're struggling with $problemX someone else is too, and already released a fix for it. Or, especially in a corporate environment, you can hire someone.

The FSF takes a very high-level philosophical/academic views of things, as well as a very programmer-centric view, but it doesn't need to be like this.

None of the issues you brought up are necessaries in the same way right to repair can be. Right to repair can save people thousands of dollars while the examples you provided are more of nice to have sorts of things.

Don't get me wrong. I am very much in favor of free software and I think if people understood it they would like it as well. I just don't think they would really care about it anywhere near the same level as right to repair.

>The game Guacamelee crashes at 30 minutes in to the game for me and quite a lot of other people, but I can't fix it or download an "unofficial patch" (how many games have reverse-engineered unofficial patches btw?).

A lot of games have mods. These games are proprietary and the mods often are as well. Look at a game like Skyrim. There is literally a mod called the Unofficial Patch. It fixes a lot of the issues with the game. I think most people care about mod capabilities not an actual open source game. If all games had mods people would be content.

>I happened to have bought Hyperlight Drifer on GOG.com today; it seems okay, but the controls are horrible to the point of being almost unplayable. Pretty sure someone would have fixed it if they could.

How many people play games that don't have remappable controls? That seems like such a niche issue that it wouldn't impact the average person I was referring to.

>Back in the day KPN (Dutch AT&T) gave everyone a wireless dongle with their internet, but the driver was bugged and after a certain Windows update it would cause BSODs, and I had to sell a lot of new wireless dongles because of that.

I don't think this is really a big issue anymore. More and more people don't even have computers and when they do, they have wifi card built in. Again not appealing to the average person (in the present day).

>How many people and organisations would have preferred running Windows XP/7 instead of more or less forcibly updating to 8/10 because Microsoft no longer maintained it?

While this is probably the best one you brought up, I don't think you would have enough people maintain older versions of something as complex as an OS and this would create a massively insecure situation for users of it. I think this would do a lot to harm the free software movement.

>How many people wished they could get a version of Windows 10 that doesn't forcibly reboot on updates?

I think Microsoft already fixed this? There are also third party software that can fix this without modification to the OS.

Regardless, let's say that was not the case. If it was something desirable I have no doubt that it would have been trivial for Microsoft to implement. This means Microsoft would be choosing not to implement it. Windows being free software would do nothing to get this change implemented as Microsoft would not accept the pull request.

People would have to fork Windows to add this in. Given Window's habit of reverting settings the fork couldn't just change a setting and provide the ISO. This means they would have to continually provide updates. I have no reason to think Microsoft would collaborate with Windows fork maintainers so we would have slower updates assuming the forks actually update regularly.

When the forks inventively take too long to patch there would be security issues resulting in the negative press from security issues.

Linux and associated software are made by open source people for open source people. If Microsoft turned Windows into free software I just don't think they would make it convenient for people forking it since they would still want people to pay for Windows.

I understand these were just random ideas you thought of, but only one seemed like something the average person would actually care about and it could very likely turn into negative press for free software.

I think the fact you had to through out so many different items and still not find things that could appeal to the majority of users is the problem. When it comes to right to repair it is simple. Phones and cars. Large numbers of people have one or both of them and would like to be able to repair them instead of getting a new one.

I fully agree the FSF should get better at communication, but I think the issue is not their failure at communicating well but that the issue just doesn't really impact as many people.

In contrast, right to repair does not require abandoning the entire framework of copyright. In fact, it barely touches it. Furthermore, Louis Rossman is way better at explaining the problems with anti-repair bullshit than RMS is at explaining the harms of proprietary software.

[0] Yes I know GPL relies upon copyright to work. That was the backup plan - if we can't force all software to be Free we can at least keep our own software from being locked down.

I do think copyright reform has favored individual expression recently, and I don't see this changing.

I used computers in 1985. To suggest that the free software movement has only lost ground since then is completely absurd. Has it gone anywhere nearly as far as Stallman and others hoped it would? No. Has it gone much further than anyone who was around in 1985 to watch this being born thought it would go? Absolutely.

Are you joking? This was before my time, but there once was a time when you would not only have to pay for development tools, but pay for them seperately. Want a compiler? $500, please. Want something like Bison? Fork a few hundred. Want an assembler? Another few hundred. etc.

There have been setbacks, and it does look like the tide is turning towards everything becoming closed again but it's untrue to say that Free Software has "only lost ground" since 1985 -hell, GCC didn't even come out until what, 1987, 1988 or so?

Right, but to most people, that's still an extreme position. Because again, like 99.99% of games are non-free, and especially the way he phrased it is gonna come across as a crank.

Stallman strikes me very much as the kind of person who communicates poorly, in an inflammatory way, and gives zero shits how much this bothers anyone else.

Which for a random individual is probably fine, or at least tolerable, but is less good when you're the face of a movement.

In exactly which way is Stallman being inflammatory here?

Nothing you say addresses that.

I use plenty of proprietary software, but I also know it’s bad for me. Like someone who enjoys alcohol, I think the benefits are worth the negative effects, but whenever I can get the same benefits from free software, I prefer them. I keep one computer around that runs only free software, and it’s great. It’s a decade old, but gains on desktop software performance in the last decade have been slow.

Even Stallman gives one reason to use proprietary software: to make a free version of it. I’ll offer a liberal interpretation of that rule: most people work in technology need to use a wide variety of proprietary software to understand trends and developments in software paradigms, even if they are not directly copying it while using it.

And my prediction: one day, all software will become free. All proprietary software is only temporarily restricted. Future computers will be able to reverse-engineer any existing program and create code that is functionally identical. That still makes it harmful, but that harm will eventually end. We just have the responsibility to make better laws in the future. Most important is preserving political freedom, and software freedom will eventually follow.

If it has to be interpreted, it is poorly communicated.

In a way, it is a form of society-wide bargaining. Ask for everything, get something. Ask for something, get nothing. Start big, end up small; start small, end up nowhere.

He could definitely benefit from coming across as more pleasant and affable, though.

So no, the world just moved proprietary software to the cloud with parts spun-off and GPLed on paper.

That is just plain not true. If it were, that would be fantastic. Unfortunately that's only part of Stallman's message, and a good portion of the rest of it is either simply unworkable or batshit insane.

To quote David Schlesinger after RMS got up on stage and talked about how "women who have not been introduced to emacs are emacs virgins and 'relieving them of their virginity is a sacred duty of all members of the church of emacs'", Stallman continues to embarrass us all

I took him out to dinner once, my wife and I, and had a lovely evening talking mostly about his childhood experiences.

He was extremely respectful to the staff at the restaurant I recall. Going out of his way to compliment them on the food.

That at some point he said: "women who have not been introduced to emacs...sacred duty of all members of the church of emacs" is entirely possible. We all have said stupid things. Out of context especially, had these things been recorded, we would be ashamed.

To use that quote to define RMS is a gross insult, intellectually fraudulent, it is a political attack.

I do think it is important to play nice in politics. So if you have criticisms of RMS' stand on software, make them.

This sort of thing is insulting to all of us who do our best to imperfectly maintain standards of debate

Before I commented I tried to find the source, interesting digressions ensued, but nothing that suggests this is typical.

Also I mentioned I have been following him for a long time (nearly three decades, golly). I have never heard those sorts of words pass his lips.

So I accuse you of telling a lie here. It is not uncommon to make up stories and exaggerate faults of those you politically oppose. Still lies

>I have never heard those sorts of words pass his lips. >So I accuse you of telling a lie here. It is not uncommon to make up stories and exaggerate faults of those you politically oppose. Still lies

You must not be listening very hard. Making comments like these is even part of his wikipedia page as he had to set down from the FSF and MIT for a while for similar comments

That's the issue. Stallman's technical contributions and early political contributions were both foundational and heroic. That does not negate the fact that for the better part of two decades he's been a constant embarrassment that continuously degrades the movement in the eyes of anyone who hasn't developed a tolerance for him. Evangelizing free software was comparatively easy in the days when peoples' reaction to his name was "Haha, that guy who ate stuff off his foot on stage? Wild." It's gotten considerably harder now that the reaction is "wait, the guy who wrote those pedophile emails and harasses women at conferences?"

I'm tired of trying to advocate for free software when just the name "Free Software Foundation" is a conversational liability.

https://geekfeminism.fandom.com/wiki/EMACS_virgins_joke

There are references too.

No it has not.

I exclusively use Free Software outside my working life (for my sins, developing iOS software with Swift. A bit like Linux in 1997 - it mostly works)

I mean, we live in a world powered by Free Software, so, I don't know, really. If anything, corporation were kinda successful making money out of free software, but that's another can of worms.

That's not true, it gained ground for a long time after that. "Free" as in freedom software, by Stallman's definition, probably peaked in the early 2000s.

And I would say that the losses mostly started happening when the FSF stopped producing software that people wanted to use. They effectively ignored the entire internet revolution.