[seabird]

Stallman's ideas are often informed by high trust environments and business arrangements where the cost of the software itself is a fraction of the TCO. There's a big disconnect between the environment where Stallman made up his mind (large education/business environments) and how most people are introduced to free software (low cost entry into technical computer usage).

I used to think Stallman was an ideologue from a different era. When I started dealing with software projects measured in years and millions his thoughts made much more sense to me. When you're selling me a system that has a 6/7 digit implementation cost for it to stand any chance of meeting my goals, withholding the source code only serves to annoy me.

[Dylan16807]

Withholding source code is obnoxious in any era. But that's a pretty distant issue from administrative privileges.

[seabird]

Non-administrative users are given administrative privileges to complete their work all the time, even today. Misuse results in them being disciplined or fired. Heavy-handed privilege controls are very often a drain on the productivity of users and can result in stupid or dangerous (from a security standpoint) workarounds. 20 years on, you have to exercise more judgement in what you allow considering modern risks, but the idea that you shouldn't make things harder for people over a small number of bad actors that you can handle at an organizational level is still a good one.