> It's true that the FSF and those who support them are more concerned with the long-term future of computing availability than about whether they can GSD in the next few days or weeks.
But what's the point then? If it's just an academic process then that's fine, but for the purposes of determining a useful day-to-day primary system, it seems like 'It's free software' is a terrible metric on its own. All else being equal, of course, I'd rather free than closed, but all else is not equal.
It feels sometimes like this sort of 'free therefore better' ideology blinds the people doing the actual development to the fact that if they made the system more productive and intuitive for people to use, then more people would use it, and that's a net benefit to everyone. Perhaps if they DID focus on 'whether they can GSD in the next few days or weeks', then their project would reach more people, and through that more people would be exposed to the (legitimate) benefits of free software.
Isn't that equal to always optimizing locally, as in a greedy algorithm, and therefore ending up at an suboptimal destination? Why isn't a short-term productivity loss acceptable if it improves things in the long-term?
I think it boils down to the difference between idealists and realists. Realists are always optimizing locally whereas long-term change is always brought by the persisting efforts of the idealists.
I also sense that you speak to FOSS as in "us vs them". You want to wait till their products become better than anything else while they are looking for comrades in their campaign to reach there.
But what's the point then? If it's just an academic process then that's fine, but for the purposes of determining a useful day-to-day primary system, it seems like 'It's free software' is a terrible metric on its own. All else being equal, of course, I'd rather free than closed, but all else is not equal.
It feels sometimes like this sort of 'free therefore better' ideology blinds the people doing the actual development to the fact that if they made the system more productive and intuitive for people to use, then more people would use it, and that's a net benefit to everyone. Perhaps if they DID focus on 'whether they can GSD in the next few days or weeks', then their project would reach more people, and through that more people would be exposed to the (legitimate) benefits of free software.