> We only need him as a radical to make the normal open source look like a normal reasonable thing.
This kind of comment perturbs me.
Primarily because it's not clear what 'normal open source' looks like -- could you point to a definition (that's agreed upon by more than a handful of people).
But also because 'normal reasonable thing' is just as nebulous, but embeds the little back-hander that implies freedom (the thing that the 'OSS movement' jumped on and arguably hijacked the message of) is either abnormal or unreasonable.
> Which adds to the desired goal of making normal open source look like a normal and reasonable thing.
What didn't you like about my original question?
I don't think anyone involved in this story has a desired goal of making open source look normal. rms is famous for railing against the phrase 'open source' as it disguises the actual desired goal of understanding the relevance and importance of freedom.
> In all honesty that already happened. All the big players now release and support some open source projects; even Microsoft
I always worry that when people preface a statement with 'in all honesty' they are conceding that everything else they've said has been dishonest. Is that the case here?
Anyway, most of the big players have long since fought / lost / taken advantage of / contributed to free software ... and much of that happened in the last century. I'm not sure what your point is.
I would argue the notion of "free software" is largely irrelevant and actually contributes nothing to actual freedom.
What really does contribute to user's freedom is the ability to take their data out of a program (whether local to their machine or hosted on the cloud) and import it to another program. AKA open data formats and protocols with no vendor lock in.
Do you require your furniture to be released along with its "source code" so you can fix it yourself? It's simply enough that you can throw it away and replace it with something else.
On the other hand, if the chair was glued to the house (or worse, made as a part of the wall) then that would reduce your freedom. Simply not knowing how the chair was made is normal and does not take anything away from you.
This kind of comment perturbs me.
Primarily because it's not clear what 'normal open source' looks like -- could you point to a definition (that's agreed upon by more than a handful of people).
But also because 'normal reasonable thing' is just as nebulous, but embeds the little back-hander that implies freedom (the thing that the 'OSS movement' jumped on and arguably hijacked the message of) is either abnormal or unreasonable.