I think that's a misunderstanding of what the FSF stands for overall, though. The FSF can never be a diplomatic negotiator for the benefit of free software; they are idealists, even when it serves against their own interests. Their whole shtick is not settling for half-baked appeasements, and so they're destined to be a pariah of the tech industry at-large. Neither you nor me can stop them, it's entirely within their right to advocate and for practice simpler software.
The statement criticized by the OP certainly seems warranted, but it's less endemic of the FSF removing itself from the mainstream and more like the mainstream has abandoned free software.
> The FSF's primary public-facing persona has peculiar computing habits
You know, the FSF would probably argue that our computing habits are the peculiar one. And unless you can tell me about the code your iPhone runs in detail, they're probably (albeit begrudgingly) correct.
There's no misunderstanding on my part; it's why I said that their ignorance is totally on-brand.
>more like the mainstream has abandoned free software.
Indeed, because free software development is largely driven by ideological purity rather than feature parity. Mainstream users see Free Software people as irrelevant kooks, and thus easy to dismiss, which is why Free Software has so utterly failed as a movement.
>You know, the FSF would probably argue that our computing habits are the peculiar one.
I'm sure flat-earthers feel that my belief that earth is an oblate spheroid is peculiar, too. Of what relevance is that to anyone?
>And unless you can tell me about the code your iPhone runs in detail, they're probably (albeit begrudgingly) correct.
We'll have to agree to disagree. The emacs developers don't even understand how large chunks of emacs work (per emacs-devel), for example. There's too much software out there for one person to keep in their head. This is not a reasonable heuristic.
> Indeed, because free software development is largely driven by ideological purity rather than feature parity.
This "ideological purity" didn't come out of nothing, it came out of the very practical issue of who is in control. People forget that RMS came up with the whole thing because he wanted to fix a broken printer and was denied the source code that could help him fix the issue.
He wasn't siting in some ivory tower coming up with abstract philosophical questions, he was in some lab and had an actual practical problem he wanted to fix.
> Indeed, because free software development is largely driven by ideological purity rather than feature parity.
Ideological purity is a valuable thing. Look at Minix, hell, even look at the BSDs today. These are projects that have collapsed because of their feature obsession and ignorance of ideology. The differentiation of ideology is what makes free software uniquely successful - it is the feature.
> Mainstream users see Free Software people as irrelevant kooks, and thus easy to dismiss, which is why Free Software has so utterly failed as a movement.
Mainstream users don't think about Free Software at all. They certainly use it though. They rely on it, to provide and maintain the runtime their cell phone and iPad and router all depend on. It probably runs an RTOS on their grandpa's CPAP machine, it probably occupies the DVR for their cable TV and it's likely running on their games console and personal computer, too.
Free software is even more inescapable than proprietary software. If users cared enough to understand the difference, you and I both know they would accuse the businesses of being the irrelevant kooks. Not a single "maintream user" I know would defend Apple or Google or Microsoft's business practices as software companies. No one.
> I'm sure flat-earthers feel that my belief that earth is an oblate spheroid is peculiar, too. Of what relevance is that to anyone?
As the other comment suggested, this is both an insincere response and one where you are the flat earther here. The FSF has reasons that they hold the principles they do, and you haven't refuted any of their ideology. You are the guy lambasting Gallileo, and when Gallileo asks you why heliocentrism offends you, you are replying "because the mainstream clergy sees you as kooks." It's not a response at all.
> The emacs developers don't even understand how large chunks of emacs work
Nobody is so stupid that we expect every kernel dev to understand the whole of the kernel. It's folly, and not what I was asking anyways. Nobody at Apple understands how the entirety of iOS works either, but that's not an implication that it's inherently insecure. What makes the FSF balk at Apple is the inaccountability. The lack of reason associated with their statements asserting the privacy and security of a system that sues it's auditors.
If you have a more reasonable heuristic to suggest, I'm all ears.
>You are the guy lambasting Gallileo, and when Gallileo asks you why heliocentrism offends you, you are replying "because the mainstream clergy sees you as kooks."
I'm lambasting the people who think this fictional Galileo is a good public persona to lead their political movement, because this Galileo can't convince anyone of anything because he is almost entirely devoid of the skills one needs to advance a political cause even if Galileo might have written some good C code 45 years ago.
>If users cared enough to understand the difference, you and I both know they would accuse the businesses of being the irrelevant kooks. Not a single "maintream user" I know would defend Apple or Google or Microsoft's business practices as software companies. No one.
I can see we have irreconcilable differences. I find this statement ludicrous.
I know lots of people who understand what free software is and choose to make a living selling proprietary software.
> I know lots of people who understand what free software is and choose to make a living selling proprietary software.
That's not what I asked you, though. Do those same people defend Microsoft and Google and Apple's business strategies? Do they respect what the apex of proprietary software looks like, replete with advertising, data collection, vaporware promises, removed features, integrated spyware and mandatory junk fees? Unless your friends are an LLM, I suspect they don't, because they've been burned before and know better. As no serious economist promotes laissez faire economics in the 21st century, laissez faire software is not healthy for humans either. The abuses are right in front of us, and the blame is simple to dole out.
It's for your own good that you stop replying to my comments if you're going to twist my words and avoid the topic. Free software isn't bound by the pragmatic demands of a market, and yes, that means that it can fail, but it can also end up displacing entire product categories as well. Anyone familiar with the past 3 decades of computing history knows this to be an irrevocable and proven fact. We would not be having this conversation on the internet if proprietary networking standards prevailed over open ones.
The flat earthers are the people dismissing the concerns of the FSF though.
(The Earth being round doesn't directly matter in practice to most people. It does have inevitable consequences though.)
Or perhaps a better example is anthropogenic climate change : here too the implications are extremely inconvenient for most people, so denial is rampant.
The statement criticized by the OP certainly seems warranted, but it's less endemic of the FSF removing itself from the mainstream and more like the mainstream has abandoned free software.
> The FSF's primary public-facing persona has peculiar computing habits
You know, the FSF would probably argue that our computing habits are the peculiar one. And unless you can tell me about the code your iPhone runs in detail, they're probably (albeit begrudgingly) correct.