[cycloptic]

It's not equivalent, that was the point. Any responsibility one might feel towards their employer's code goes away immediately when they find a new job somewhere else for better pay. If you follow that, this whole line of reasoning really doesn't have anything to do with FOSS versus proprietary. You can observe the same effects happening at tons of Linux companies too, i.e. employees who don't care one way or another about the OS or the license and are just there to put in their time and collect a paycheck.

[crocko]

You are using the his language.

The language is that many developers take ownership of a project while they are working for an employer. The fact that people make these comparisons between children and source is the problem and what you are doing is framing it the way Stallman wants to frame it. This leads you to his conclusions. If you actually take some time to look as some of his assertions you can see they are far more nuanced that he would like you to think. It is disingenuous of him to frame it like that in the first place, he isn't stupid and therefore I cannot accept it is an oversight.

I would rather Software development was more seen akin to be a plumber or a carpenter and that is exactly how I try to work. People have to get over the fact that programming is a profession, it has a market and things need to be paid for.

The whole activism for free software is completely missing the point as it focuses on source code and not specifications. If there is an open spec then anyone can make a opensource or proprietary implementation of that spec. The "freedom" of that software is irrelevant because it adheres to the specification.

The current model for monetising free and open software software has lead to making money via support contracts, which leads to things like SaaS where you are perpetually renting something rather than actually owning a license. When you are perpetually renting from a large company you are then tied into what they want to do and you are probably in a worse situation than using a proprietary product especially if your data is held up in that service (that why Microsoft and Amazon want you to use their proprietary NoSQL infrastructure and price it so cheaply compared to something like Postgres of SQL Server).

This is such a difficult thing to get across I end up rambling on tangents because there any many many things wrong as the presuppositions are just incorrect or aren't as concrete as many assert.

[cycloptic]

>The language is that many developers take ownership of a project while they are working for an employer.

For most employees this seems to be factually untrue unless they have significant stock ownership in the company. And even with that, it's still common for projects to be regularly scrapped, postponed, sold off, redesigned from scratch, transferred to different departments, you get the picture. It's just business.

I have no comment on the rest of your post, I request that you please not make assumptions about what conclusions I've drawn. My only point is that that emotional argument makes no sense, it makes even less sense now in 2020 than it did when the article was written.

[crocko]

> For most employees this seems to be factually untrue unless they have significant stock ownership in the company. And even with that, it's still common for projects to be regularly scrapped, postponed, sold off, redesigned from scratch, transferred to different departments, you get the picture. It's just business.

I know many developers that are quite happy working and improving particular systems for years on end and consider it their project. Richard Stallman over simplified the relationship between employer and employee and the project they work on. I believe that is disingenous.

> have no comment on the rest of your post, I request that you please not make assumptions about what conclusions I've drawn. My only point is that that emotional argument makes no sense, it makes even less sense now in 2020 than it did when the article was written.

When did I state anything about what your motivations maybe? I didn't.

Well that is a shame you don't have any comment on the rest of my post because it is quite important when it comes to discussion about this. You cannot ignore that Richard Stallman in some ways has shown companies that engineers will create stuff for free and they don't have to pay. OpenSSL debacle proved this, they were quite happy to let the engineer who was maintaining the project basically live poorly until HeartBleed vulnerabilities. This is never discussed but this is direct consequence of Richard Stallman and his activism.

As for it being an emotional argument, it really isn't. All I am simply saying is that Richard Stallman ignores nuance when it suits him and invents it when it doesn't exist and by using his language that he invented (he redefined the word free).

IIRC he said on a mailing list that he specifically tied the plugin system to GCC to the main part of the program itself so plugins would be forced to use the GPL license. Forcing other people to be tied to your license is anti-freedom. But it is okay when he is a hypocrite about it, people will make all sorts of excuses for the hypocrisy because of the "GPL Freedoms" but the GPL is less free than many other licenses.