[badsectoracula]

FWIW Stallman's stance was always that freedom is more important than technical excellence and that he'd rather use and promote a technically inferior product that respected users' freedoms than one that was technically superior but came with shackles.

[mlindner]

Which is one of the reason's Stallman's ideas are fundamentally flawed as if there's a better product available even if it's only free as in beer, people will use it over the worse one, from the end user's perspective.

[wahern]

In the worldview of Stallman, your argument is analogous to saying that advocating for democracy is flawed because if an authoritarian regime or slave society provides a better product, people will choose it over worse democratic ones.

To Stallman, your counter-argument is a non-sequitur. His goal is maximizing user freedom. UX may be one dimension of user freedom, but at best it's secondary to certain prerequisite freedoms, such as the freedom to modify code so you can independently improve it, perhaps by improving UX for yourself and your community.

Many people sympathetic to Stallman, but more utilitarian, might argue that in the long term, user freedom is necessary for achieving optimal utility (e.g. UX, etc). And getting there might require short-term sacrifices in superficial aspects like UX.

[Firehawke]

It's really simple. If you want me to use your software, it needs to not be like brushing my teeth with a Dremel. I have things to get done, and while the Open Source movement doesn't owe anyone anything, I'm going to pick the product that isn't going to halt my work to try to figure out what broke again.

With as many open and closed options that exist out there, competition is a thing and Open Source as a whole needs to compete on more than just being "the freedom option"

Stallman's valid points are entirely lost in the ocean-full of software like GNU Image Manipulation Tool that incite frustration from users.

[mlindner]

> In the worldview of Stallman, your argument is analogous to saying that advocating for democracy is flawed because if an authoritarian regime or slave society provides a better product, people will choose it over worse democratic ones.

Except that's exactly what human behavior does.

[Jasper_]

Fundamentalists take hardline stances to problems. To Stallman, one of the most unethical, immoral things one can do is to willingly run a computer program that they do not have permissions to modify.

Very few people in the world, even most FOSS contributors and developers, share that belief that strongly. They might feel like FOSS programs give them certain advantages and rights, but morals? Stallman has mentioned that he would rather go homeless than run proprietary software. That level of devotion is exceedingly rare.

To approach someone, even a Linux user, and tell them that they need to give up their convenience for free software because what they are doing is immoral, that's a very hard sell. This is one reason GNU has mostly produced free software clones of better, commercial software, where practical concerns take a backseat to GPL.