[rimantas]

I got what the problem is. Stallman does not try to protect anybody's freedom. The freedom he fights for is a product of his imagination and has very little to do with actually users and their freedom. The days when every software users was if not programmer then at least IT guy in some sense are long gone. That model no longer fits the world. Some say they admire the man who stoics to principles, but I think stubborn refusal to notice that the world has changed is just a sign of stupidity and nothing to brag about.

[icebraining]

I never touched a line of Firefox's code, yet I and millions of others benefit immensely from the source being available. Thousands benefit from CyanogenMod despite not having the faintest idea of how it was created.

On a different level, non-tech companies and organizations have hired small software companies to develop solutions based on OSS projects that would otherwise have been prohibitively expensive.

The belief that only IT people benefit from access to the source is completely incorrect; one may disagree with them, but calling RMS' views obsolete is nonsensical.

[rimantas]

Sad to see that for many OSS = GPL.

[icebraining]

That is unfortunate, but I don't see its relevance for this discussion, seeing as RMS is not one of those (particularly since he wouldn't use the term OSS in the first place ;)