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by _snsh 2274 days ago
Well, at least in my opinion, it was a good question and the answer across the board is "Yes, these solutions need to be more accessible".

A good part of that is corporations not giving back to OSS but I also think that a large part of OSS developers are missing the point (I keep remembering the story of that one these OSS guy trying to get his printer working but I can't remember his name to find the link).

2 comments

RMS said one of the inspirations for free software was a particular printer he couldn’t get to work because of a driver issue. The company refused to give him the source code, and iirc said he was not allowed to write his own for it. He did not forgive or forget this slight, and we live in the world he helped create as a result
I did find it, it was Eric Raymond and "The Luxury of Ignorance" http://catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html
I think I may have heard it from one of his talks.

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/201cthe-printer-story201...

how are they missing the point?