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by wrs 2641 days ago
Historically one of the controversies/confusions regarding the FSF’s ideology is that it ignores the distinction between developers and users. In the ur-hacker world RMS wanted to preserve, the users are developers. That’s why the right to make a derivative work is paramount (a freedom no non-developer can take advantage of), and why libre software is strongly skewed toward developer tools rather than viable “end-user” software applications.

Traditionally the FSF advocate will say something here about end users hiring developers to modify software for them, but in reality that’s economically ridiculous.
2 comments
dragonwriter 2641 days ago
> That’s why the right to make a derivative work is paramount (a freedom no non-developer can take advantage of)

Non-developers take advantage of it by hiring a developer; it's essentially the right to take your software to be serviced by someone other than the seller.

> Traditionally the FSF advocate will say something here about end users hiring developers to modify software for them, but in reality that’s economically ridiculous.

It's perhaps ridiculous for non-wealthy individual end-users for software that isn't integral to a profit-making business, but it's quite common for major open source projects to see most of their contributions being from institutional end-users who have hired developers to address their own needs with the software.

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wrs 2641 days ago
If you define “end user” as “institution with enough profit to hire a developer”, then yes, it’s a tautology that they can hire a developer. But that’s a minuscule fraction of end users. The person who buys Quickbooks off the shelf at Office Max isn’t hiring any developers.
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sanxiyn 2641 days ago
> Traditionally the FSF advocate will say something here about end users hiring developers to modify software for them, but in reality that’s economically ridiculous.

Why is it ridiculous?

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wrs 2641 days ago
As a way to judge end user software budgets, commercial software that costs more than a few hundred dollars is considered “expensive”. That would pay for less than a day of work by a software developer to make modifications to software. The only economical way to support end users is to amortize that cost over many end users, by hiring developers into a central development organization.

Sure, for the far right of the bell curve, the “end users” who are owners of medium-sized businesses, it becomes viable. But I’m talking about the end users who buy Microsoft Office Home Edition.

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