The best parts of the life work of RMS are related to the understanding that Liberty can only be achieved if the means of discourse and use of language generally are free and open to all. Without free general computers and the free access to learn from and build upon the works created by those who came before us, we have no collective shoulders of giants to stand upon and continue the advancement and change of society.
Because on windows you are close enough to free. Raging twitter mob cannot force microsoft to prevent windows from working on your PC, you can install any app without microsoft approval etc etc ...
> Capitalism is buyer/seller/marketplace in lawful, competitive tension.
> A captured market is cartels, not capitalism.
No, capitalism is the economic system, dominant in the mid-19th century developed West, characterized by private ownership and unrestricted control of the means of production, and “capitalist” can refer either to a supporter of that system or member of the upper class in that system or similar systems which have priavte, though more restricted in use, ownership of the means of production, defined by deriving sustenance mainly from returns on their ownership of the means of production.
Capitalism has a strong tendency toward cartels and capitalists (in the second sense) tend to seek to capture markets (to have, in the words of startup culture, a “moat”).
Efforts to limit the free employment of capital to limit the development of monopolies/oligopolies/cartels were, along with the imposition of various basic rights for labor which also limit the free employment of capital, among the reactions against capitalism that became prevalent during the peak of the capitalist period and which propelled the progression from capitalism proper to the modern mixed economy.
> The irony of anti-capitalist efforts is that they tend toward monoculture: a single strong actor controlling everything, e.g. the USSR.
That's very much not the case of anti-capitalist efforts generally. It's the case for Leninism and it's descendants, which even other socialists describe as “state capitalism”. But it's not the case for things like leftist anarchism, market socialism, favoring of labor cooperatives as a firm model instead of capital-based ownership, etc., labor cooperatives, and other non-Leninist-descended challenges to the capitalist order.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_to_Read