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>You are right, although a bit pedantic. I was describing the process that took place, which was commerce taking over what had before that been almost entirely academic.

You made the same mistake again. Stallman had no problem with "commerce taking over what had before that been almost entirely academic" he had a problem with making software proprietary.

That's not pedantic, that's an important difference.
Being Free Software or proprietary software is a question of licensing. Being commercial is a question of development environment.

Free Software can be commercial (RedHat, Sun, IBM,...) and non commercial (Debian, KDE,...). Proprietary software can be commercial (Windows, MacOS,..) and non-commercial (all the freeware).

Stallman has something against proprietary software whether it is commercial or non-commercial and he accept all Free Software whether it is commercial or non-commercial.

>HURD itself has been in development for almost 20 years now with no usable version in sight, and it was the second try for a GNU kernel. While a micro-kernel is more difficult then a monolithic one, it isnt THAT much more difficult.

But it has a low priority since about 15 years because a lot of good free kernel already exists.
That's one of the advantages of Free Software, you don't have to reinvent the wheel again and again. If you have a wheel use it and go on doing something different.

>KDE calls itself Free NOW, but that is because of all the Qt drama when it started.

During the "Qt drama" it was neither complete Free Software nor complete Open Source so it make no sense to talk about this time.

>Well, quite honestly, most people don't care about either, and use linux because it is a cool way to "stick it to the man", and is free as in beer.

I talk a lot to computer users most of them don't use GNU/Linux at all. And while they don't care about any development strategy they understand quite well the dependency of society, economy and government on software and the question who should have control over this cultural technique (fyi it was Bill Gates who called software a cultural technique and he is right!)

>I will point out though that while they may say they support the FSF, they do not follow their principals. Most of those companies do not completely Free all their assets, which is what the FSF says is right.

They don't do it because their main interest is in making the most money. But that doesn't mean that they don't move into the right direction (e.g. look at sun, it is just great to see them moving). Also if they would agree to your rating of the FSF they wouldn't support them.

>It amounts to the same thing, a corruption of the word Freedom. Freedom for a guy to hack on a program in his basement is not the same thing as the charter of human rights.

But the freedom to participate equally in humans (digital) culture, the freedom to learn, study and work. To have control over your daily life/business which depends more and more on software. etc.

But we disagree completely on this topic and i have no interest in getting into this topic again and again. At least in the form of comments on a news portal.

>Like it or not, corporate innovation deals with things that academic innovation would never really consider a priority, and by removing commercial incentive, you are basically killing the software industry.

You make again the mistake creating the "commercial vs. academic" argument which is neither my argument nor the argument of Stallman or the FSF.

Software is needed everywhere and as long as software is needed we have customers and as long as we have customers you will find someone who take the job. Free Software could even boost the software industry because we wouldn't have a market with few large monopolies but a real free market.

PS: It is also interesting to read what Bruce Perens (one of the founder of the Open Source term and the OSI) said 1 year after starting the "Open Source" term: http://groups.google.de/group/muc.lists.debian.user/msg/c8001c56bdf...

Edited 2007-08-22 23:06