Quote:
Originally Posted by arjaybe
Even though you showed that you have it backwards with the bolded part of your quote, I did you the honor of reading the rest of your comment. Software freedom is primarily about the user's freedom.
You went on to demonstrate that most users are ignorant and apathetic, attributing to them shallow and venal motivations. And you make an appeal to pragmatism. This is all irrelevant to the principle of freedom. Software freedom is primarily about the user's freedom.
I can see that you have a grasp of the "free as in beer" vs "free as in speech" distinction. It's just that you don't get that software freedom is primarily about the user's freedom.
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I've been around this stuff far too long, your bold sentences just make me smile. They are the phrases I've see from open source evangelists many times before. They read very nicely but they are not embedded in reality. The only "users" who are able to fully enjoy the freedom of such software are users who also happen to be software developers - a (relatively) small and select group. It's much the same as the users on here talking about the evils of DRM, because it's important to them they think it is important to everyone. It's not. (Okay, so in principle it might seem like it is, but in practice it simply isn't relevant/important to most users.)
There is nothing venal or apathetic about not caring how some particular thing works. There is far too much technology in our lives these days for it to be practical to be familiar with the ins and outs of everything we interact with. I used to tune my own car, but I wouldn't try it these days. I currently have our washing machine in for repair because I don't want learn how to fix it for myself. I have other things to do (like continue probably pointless discussions on here
).