[DiseasedBadger]

But Gnome and Redhat need to have a brand, or how will they gain marketshare?

I mean, getting everyone's grandma (and her java server, I guess?) on Linux, is the goal - right? Surely the well behaved user will fight for openness?!

[Accujack]

It's a strange game... the only winning move is not to play.

If any project accepts that its goal is to gain users by displacing other products (commercial or not) then that project is committing to a fight it can't win simply because of the nature of open source projects - in the present day world, whoever has the most money tends to win.

Open source needs to find a way to exist as partially commercial software, or else projects won't have longevity, which inevitably means they'll be displaced by commercial products because while the motivation to develop open source isn't constant, the motivation to find a way to sell software for money IS constant.

The ideal that Stallman and others have always aimed for - that all software should be free - is impractical in the real world until the real world changes significantly, like most utopian ideals.

[pjmlp]

The problem with FOSS ideals is that the rest of the world still likes money as exchange for goods and one cannot get a steady stream of it just by donations.

It is like playing on the street, yes you can make it for the supermarket, but don't expect to pay for rent and pension out of it.