[AsyncAwait]

My problem isn't with you writing proprietary software, (I'd prefer if it wasn't proprietary, but do you as you wish). My problem is with you people who benefit daily from FLOSS to then act as if the FLOSS people are just crazy hippie, commie lunatics and how you couldn't possibly be FLOSS without also putting food on the table and how other people are apparently not (gosh!) allowed to advocate for not using proprietary software, or how is wrong for them to do so and other such garbage.

[mherrmann]

I don't care about FLOSS people. Actually, I'm grateful to them and I also have my own set of FLOSS libraries [1], because I feel we as a dev community should work together and not have to reinvent the wheel all the time. What I take issue with is being criticized for writing proprietary software. It happens somewhat regularly. And the silencing that takes place is simply unacceptable.

1: https://github.com/mherrmann

[AsyncAwait]

People are free to say they won't buy your software because it is not free, (as in freedom). Also, there are important differences between merely "open-source" and free software, so am glad to see that fbs is indeed copyleft and applaud you for that. You seem to however be more on the open-source side of things, despite the great choice for a license of fbs.

One thing to understand, is that the free software movement strives for a bit more than open-source. It strives for trustworthy, ethical software. Software that does not spy and only does precisely what the user knows about and can be adopted to work according to one's needs. Copyleft is the best means we have of achieving that.

What I think you're also missing is how hard what we have even now was to win. You're grown up in a world where FLOSS was already a thing and fairly popular, but it is precisely because of the 'fanatics' that it is so and we're still far from an ideal place. If they were so lax as you wish them to be, you may not have all the things you take for granted today, because it is radicals who change the status quo.

You will be asked why fman is proprietary from time to time, because you market to people that have a lot of principled people on this issue in their ranks. You're free to ignore them and they're also free to keep not buying your proprietary product. That's how it works.

P.S. Just to let you know, I did subscribe to fman when it first showed up here and even renewed my license to support a one man shop, despite me not using the tool. Posts like the commie one however, carry with them a serios lack of understanding of the goals and reasons behind the (need for) free software movement.

Nonetheless, as I already said, I applaud you for taking the step to make some of your work copyleft. I am personally strongly of the belief that if fman itself was GPLed, you'd see an uptick it sales, not any downturn, because it would generate excitement and make people like me write plugins for it. At present, I don't want to do that due to it being non free.

[mherrmann]

> but it is precisely because of the 'fanatics' that it is so

People fought for the freedoms in our democracies with their lives, and killing others. That doesn't mean we have to keep doing these things. I understand that it was a fight to get here. But it's not like we will lose it all again if an indie dev like me writes proprietary software.

> You will be asked why fman is proprietary from time to time

I'm not just "asked". I'm told it's shit for the mere fact that it's proprietary.

> You're free to ignore them

They're not just ignoring me. They take time out of their day to actively hurt my product by downvoting or commenting in the nice way I described above.

> if fman itself was GPLed, you'd see an uptick it sales, not any downturn

I talked to the author of a once very popular Mac app for developers. He open sourced it under the GPL. Sales went down by 90% over night. So, while I am with you and would love for fman to be open source, it simply is not viable.

[icebraining]

What's the name of the popular Mac app?

[mherrmann]

I can't say, sorry. The dev told me in private and I don't want to violate his trust. Suffice it to say, people on HN usually know it.

[AsyncAwait]

> That doesn't mean we have to keep doing these things. I understand that it was a fight to get here.

But we're not here, not by a looong shot and the very fact that you think we are shows you're missing the point. The goal of the free software movement is to make it so that no user has to touch any proprietary software in their lives if they don't want to. Of course they can if they want, but the point is they wouldn't have to.

> I'm told it's shit for the mere fact that it's proprietary.

I very much doubt that's the exact wording, bar some oddballs, but there's no denying that it is strictly inferior to any free software file manager in the user respecting dimension, that's just a fact you have to deal with when marketing to an audience with a large subset of free software enthusiasts. You ARE free to ignore them and they're free to criticize you. It's not a "mere fact", it's the most important factor for many. You have to understand that to many, proprietary software disrespects users, it's about more than the source, it's about the ethics of it.

> They take time out of their day to actively hurt my product by downvoting or commenting in the nice way I described above.

I think you're making yourself a tad self-important here. I am pretty sure there's not many, if any, people that actively go to 'hurt' fman. They're browsing and see a fman post, so they chime in their critique, that's all. This is why launching products is so difficult. If you were to be insulated from the critique, it would be easy. Voting with their wallets and putting pressure on the people who make the product is one of the least tools common people have to affect change. To force humane conditions in factories etc. and in the same way to get as much software that respects the user as possible.

> I talked to the author of a once very popular Mac app for developers.

There's a huge problem here. You won't find many believers in free (as in freedom) software in the Mac crowd, they'd never use a Mac, so the only people there are people who have been milked for decades, (because on macOS, even stupid utilities are pretty expensive), so all they want now is free, (as in cost), stuff. They don't care about user freedom, or they wouldn't be on a Mac. The fact that I need to point this out shows, again, a lack of understanding of the free software movement. I recommend you read up on it.

P.S. Quite frankly, fman doesn't eclipse free software file managers like Dolphin by a long shot, so it's not like people who wouldn't want to pay would get it for the features. In other words, there's no particular need to 'pirate' fman if you will, because there are already more featureful file managers that are free as in both cost and freedom out there. So by making it GPL, you'd really do a service to users who pay for fman. As I said, you'd only make it so that people like me would actually find time spent writing plugins as well invested. Right now, people who write plugins are enriching your product, with it being free software, they'd enrich the software commons.