I respect and admire Stallman personally. Likewise, I respect and admire his contribution to the world. The problem he set out to tackle was and is very real.

I question whether it remains a primary issue in regard to the future impact of computing on the world. In no small part this is because Stallman's principles have achieved so much. The threats to GNU and Linux do not appear to be existential.

I am a bit troubled by the tribalism of the larger FOSS community and the times at which it focuses on ideology over problem solving and its tendency toward a tribalism which casts so many as as unthinking malevolent "others."

Stallman's principles are valuable analytical tools but they are not a hammer which also saws wood and turns screws. Some problems are better solved by trying wrenches first.

> I respect and admire Stallman personally. Likewise, I respect and admire his contribution to the world. The problem he set out to tackle was and is very real.

> I question whether it remains a primary issue in regard to the future impact of computing on the world.

There are more threats to freedom now than ever. Look at UEFI on new laptops, graphics cards or wifi hardware that only work with closed-source drivers, and the whole world of smartphones that do not run without closed-source binary blobs.

A proprietary BIOS has always been a thorn of contention, but with UEFI you can't boot your own OS at all unless it is blessed by Microsoft.

In the "olden days" things moved a lot slower, and some companies - like Intel - even released drivers under the GPL. Now when a new phone comes out, its SoC is 99% powered by closed source binary blobs. The Nexus 4 is a disaster - look at this list of proprietary blobs https://android.googlesource.com/device/lge/mako/+/77f8e6b51... - how can you say there's no issue here? Almost all the interesting stuff this phone can do is powered by non-free software.

In addition most phones ship with proprietary bootloaders that don't let you change the operating system. I'd say that freedom-wise, today is much worse than the situation with computers from 5-6 years ago, especially if you expand computers to include phones and tablets.

'a tribalism which casts so many as as unthinking malevolent "others."'

I'm actually not worried about people cackling about how they can finally enslave the masses. Generally they do such a bad job when that is a primary goal that they end up failing. (Remember DivX, the time-limited DVDs, for instance?) I'm worried about people incrementally making a small choice here and a small choice there and before you know it, we've still pretty much ended up in the same place. Yes, FOSS as a community has done a lot of stuff but it worries me to see so many people declaring the job done and that we don't have to worry any more. Using the FOSS community as the freedom backstop doesn't work if the FOSS community no longer thinks it has to worry about freedom because of past successes.

I don't think the job is done. I don't think it can be - FOSS is a tool which for some problems can remain in the box without lessening the benefits which come when a particular problem is solved.

The problem of appliances locked down with spyware is an example. I believe it is a problem whose first order implications are more serious than those which FOSS (and even GNUism) are intended to address. The implications include threats to physical safety and political liberty.

I understand that there are different opinions. I acknowledge that it might be the case that the best possible solution adheres to GNUist principles. I just think that an unwavering GNUist approach is likely to an impediment to achieving a good and practical solution

I use "GNUist" because FOSS doesn't prevent lockdown - and "Stallmanist" sounds too much like "Stalinist". And like "pragmaticism" is too ugly to be co-opted for other purposes.

My Symbian Phone would load open source code written in Java, but only after it was signed. I was granted the means of self-signing, but only by Nokia's grace. And that turtle goes all the way down. The OS could have been FOSS and the device still constructed so as to require code signing for the OS.

I think you're right that the huge inroads free software has made contributes to a declining feeling of urgency in the community at large. I'm a huge fan of his but admit to the same general feeling most of the time.

The depth of his impact and contributions is really only obvious with the benefit of hindsight, though. Even among relative friends, it would be hard to find a time in that evolution that people weren't questioning similar issues of net future benefit, practicality and the reliance on strict dogma at the expense of practical compromise.

Based on that I'm inclined to believe his vision is as vital as ever and that the traits that at times make him and the FSF hard to work or deal with could very easily be the same ones that lead to long term benefits.

The GNUist vision was developed before the web. It doesn't really address the situation where computers are networked.

If you send a message to my computer, and my computer sends a response (or no response), how does that relationship justify your access to the source code of my computer even under the most liberal interpretation of GNUist principals?

Assuming of course that software on my computer is not GNUist. And even if it were GNUist, should I be required to notify you of that with each transaction to make you aware that you may modify the code with which you are interacting? I'll skip the logical extension of GNUist thought to the point where you can modify GNUist code on my computer.

GNU was designed around single computer, multiple users. But today's world is single user, multiple computers. The pressing problems of that world are different than those from the days of dumb terminals even if those problems are a result of the success of the dumb terminal era solutions.