At some point there should be the counter essay which is "Why Free Software Misses the Point of Open Source."
Here's my stab at it.
From the essay: The free software activist will say, “Your program is very attractive, but I value my freedom more. So I reject your program. I will get my work done some other way, and support a project to develop a free replacement.”
This is the attitude of people who care more about being special and different than they care about actually changing the world. Do you want to change the world? Then don't isolate yourself and others into a special group of the anointed. Do your best to stay away from harmful groupthink. If you want to change the world, then engage with the world. Solve the world's problems. Create something that sells itself. I think most of the successes of Open Source and Free Software come from the "engagement" way of thinking and most of the failures come from the isolationist way of thinking.
Free Software/Open Source should seek to eliminate barriers and solve problems. It should not be in the business of creating plainer, less featured, and worse designed alternatives to proprietary software. Separate but equal, but with an ideologically superior distribution model is a recipe for failure.
I think you're right about engagement, yet imho this is in the same direction as the essay.
> Then don't isolate yourself and others into a special group of the anointed.
Thinking that the essay leads to isolation is a dangerous oversimplification. First, this reaction is an ideal. Everyone has some form of ideal and everyone draw some limits on how much they allow themselves to diverge from that ideal. So two important things: (1) you'd better get conscious about your divergences and (2) you'd better strive to lessen your and your surrounding's divergences at your pace and bit by bit. This is exactely what RMS is doing with that post.
Going back to the FS activist's reaction, the problem here is that rejection of a program doesn't mean in any case isolating from it. I deeply hate and don't use most social media and yet i do follow closely their development, looking for interesting bits i can learn from. It is actually very important that some individuals speak out and do "strikes" (eg perform "unbeneficial actions" for ethical reasons) because it's the starting point to bring unsuspecting people to think that there might be something wrong with the service they use. Speaking out and stubbornly refusing to use something is actually the opposite of isolation, it's goal is to communicate with people and build a link between less-known alternatives that would need some work&love and people that didn't think about that issue before. The root idea here is to make people think about new questions and open new doors into stuff that they didn't think was questionable (eg that we could do otherwise).
The first step in solving a problem is stating it clearly and thoroughly. Thus i think that just thinking "problem solving" (eg "let's just build a FLOSS alternative to x") is never gonna reach anything meaningful. You won't have done the step where you healthily criticize every single part of some service, deconstructing deeper and deeper the model it projected. Only then can you start doing it. So of course we need to eliminate barriers, but first we need to run around them for some time to not realize aftewards we're not breaking the most important ones first. And i'm probably noone is gonna break them themselves so the best choice is probably to spread plans of the barriers. Solving social issues (here patents and copyright laws) takes time, ideas are hard to figure out alone and somehow the biggest step is just to get a sufficient mass to understand the issue.
Thinking that the essay leads to isolation is a dangerous oversimplification.
That's fair. My motivation is primarily my 30 years of watching the FSF, going from fanboy to skeptic, and less about the essay specifically.
It is actually very important that some individuals speak out and do "strikes" (eg perform "unbeneficial actions" for ethical reasons) because it's the starting point to bring unsuspecting people to think that there might be something wrong with the service they use.
The dramatic "actions" need to be done from a place of philosophical and moral integrity. The actions themselves need to be executed ethically. What I've encountered is the leaking-in of groupthink, in such a way as to other and turn away outsiders. This seems to have infected our society's view of activism as a whole.
The root idea here is to make people think about new questions and open new doors into stuff that they didn't think was questionable
The potential downside is to make people think, "Well, there go those nutcases again!" How much of that potential downside has the FSF accomplished? Way more than you'd like, from where I'm sitting.
You won't have done the step where you healthily criticize every single part of some service, deconstructing deeper and deeper the model it projected.
Critiques are valuable, but they will never easily reach any but a small fraction of the populace who like to analyze things as a general interest. Everyone analyzes things at that level, but usually only when they directly have something to lose or to gain. Also, it's easy to critique and deconstruct. It's harder by far to build. People should be highly skeptical of those who critique, but cannot support or substantiate their prescriptions for the future. (Particularly if those are utopian in nature.) Where free software and open source have won, it is through building. I think that is rightly so, because it's building and flourishing which is the only legitimate proof of ideology.
Look to the scene from the Gandhi movie, where he led the march to gather salt. Show by doing. Address a simple and stark injustice. Act constructively. (If possible tactically elicit a response that highlights the injustice.) That is how you reach people.
Too much of what I see around free software seems to be more about posturing.
Here's my stab at it.
From the essay: The free software activist will say, “Your program is very attractive, but I value my freedom more. So I reject your program. I will get my work done some other way, and support a project to develop a free replacement.”
This is the attitude of people who care more about being special and different than they care about actually changing the world. Do you want to change the world? Then don't isolate yourself and others into a special group of the anointed. Do your best to stay away from harmful groupthink. If you want to change the world, then engage with the world. Solve the world's problems. Create something that sells itself. I think most of the successes of Open Source and Free Software come from the "engagement" way of thinking and most of the failures come from the isolationist way of thinking.
Free Software/Open Source should seek to eliminate barriers and solve problems. It should not be in the business of creating plainer, less featured, and worse designed alternatives to proprietary software. Separate but equal, but with an ideologically superior distribution model is a recipe for failure.