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Story: My response to Richard Stallman

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> Stallman is saying that we should ONLY
> have open source, and probably GPL, code
> in the world. That's a pretty extreme
> response, and I responded with
> moderation, not a statement that said open
> source should be wiped from the face of
> the earth.

To break apart a quote from Scrooge, 'Marley, methinks there's more of misrepresentation than of moderation in your words'.

Stallman has a very specific way of writing. He speaks of 'we should do this' or 'we should have that.'Have you never wondered who the 'we' is that he's talking about?

I've read LOTS of Stallman's writing. I can assure you that, for RMS, 'we' are largely the users. Sure, many developers (who are, after all, users, too) support the user rights movement -- hence we have a community: The Free Software Community (TM). Stallman states this in a clear and straightforward manner at nearly every opportunity. In fact, he wrote that the entire goal of the Free Software Movement is to ensure that the needs of users are elevated to equivalent to the rights of developers in the software social contract. When he says 'there should be no non-free software,' he means that we, as a community who values freedom, should have no truck with it. No one suggests we pillory Windows developers in the village square.

Stallman does not want to force you, or anyone else, to stop writing proprietary code. He merely suggests that 'we', the people who believe in freedom, will not participate as the end-user market for it.

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