[dragonwriter]

> Heh, a lot of it is a generational thing. Back in the 90's, many if not most programmers would have passionately agreed with every word of this. Today, for younger programmers who take open-source for granted... it just seems like the incoherent ramblings of that old uncle who rants about Obama at every family gathering.

I think that drastically overstates the support programmers as a class have ever had for the Stallman/FSF view that tools to combat the use of non-Free software are a moral imperative, though I do think that that extremist position of actively combating non-Free software did seem, if not a moral imperative, at least to be important instrumentally to the promotion of Free/open source software before the pragmatic case for open source was broadly accepted by much of the industry.

[c22]

The pragmatic benefits you mention are the direct consequence of the moral imperative the free software movement is fighting for.

[dragonwriter]

No, they aren't. Both the pragmatic benefits and the perceived (by some) moral imperative stem from the same source, but neither the perceived moral imperative nor the pragmatic benefits that motivate self-interested actors to participate in open source are dependent on the other.