Thread by @steveklabnik

ugh why blog when you can tweet

okay so here's the thing: i've long been a fan of free software, but have found myself writing open source in my entire career. this has always bugged me. i go back and forth about why exactly this has happened.

part of it is because, well, stallman has been personally indefensible for a very long time. as in, defending the person

free software has always been a *political movement*, and that means that it's a thing about humans as much as it is about software. so what happens when it's led by an indefensible human?

political movements have two components: a criticism of the way things are now, and a suggestion on the way that things should move in the future

"stallman was right" is a phrase long used by his supporters, because his criticism of the way things are now seems to hold weight. but it's clear that he has not been right in the way things are moving

if anything, the world has been moving farther and farther away from GNU since.... well, 1998, when "open source" started. in this sense, rms has been *wrong* for *two decades*

political movements need leaders that can be supported by people. and so when you put an indefensible person as the leader of your ideological movement, you create an indefensible ideological movement

in this way, the fsf has probably done far more to hurt the ideas that it has been trying to advocate than any other organization

it took up space, not leaving room for others.

and then other organizations stepped in and took over. and we're all decrying the state of open source today.

it's good that change is happening

it's happened far too late

the moment was lost long ago

i'm not sure where things go from here

where could we have been if the free software movement *was* actually focused on people?

and not just one person, and a printer at MIT?

I meant to say another thing here, but it got lost

Part of the reason that the world has been moving away from stallman’s vision is *because of stallman and him being an intensively human*

You cannot unlink these things. They are inherently connected