I agree that radicals are important and that RMS particularly is useful because he pushes the dialogue forward and keeps new ideas on the table. It's a good goalpost.
But nobody takes RMS's advice as practical. It's just too extreme. Most people don't believe as RMS stated in his recent Reddit interview that the only way to ethically use a pacemaker or other life-saving device that relies on proprietary software would be to start developing an open-source replacement.
RMS has been somewhat successful, but I think much less than he would have been if he hadn't poured so many resources into the silly points that should have easily been let go, like "GNU/Linux".
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I agree that radicals are important and that RMS particularly is useful because he pushes the dialogue forward and keeps new ideas on the table. It's a good goalpost.
But nobody takes RMS's advice as practical. It's just too extreme. Most people don't believe as RMS stated in his recent Reddit interview that the only way to ethically use a pacemaker or other life-saving device that relies on proprietary software would be to start developing an open-source replacement.
RMS has been somewhat successful, but I think much less than he would have been if he hadn't poured so many resources into the silly points that should have easily been let go, like "GNU/Linux".
I don't see how "go ahead and use the pacemaker but try and create an alternative solution" is an unrealistic or impractical stance.