Quote:
Originally Posted by spiderpig
Why?  |
It's very simple. Without Richard Stallman, we'd never have gained the huge amount of inertia as it's been acquired by the open source realm, fueled by the Free Software initiative and its iconic sparkplug promoters. Open source would never have risen to the level it has, and the popularity of Linux may have been much less, even to the point of it's not being a political force.
Without the likes of Google Android, closed-system cell phones would be the dominant or only force in that arena. The "lock down" of the entire hardware ecosphere would likely have already happened by now, including the entire Microsoft hardware and software ecosystem, which would likely have followed much more closely in the politic of Apple. This could easily have made the open source domain an elite but small niche group of people who could build their own hardware.
While some big companies (like Samsung) embrace open source, it's not by a large political/economic margin that they do. Without all the hard work of people in the FSF community, such companies would not see any benefit to follow an open source model, and would likely submit to locked down NDA type software contracts for their goods.
I prefer the BSD/MIT license. It's less legalese for me to worry about. But - just because I live in that camp doesn't mean I don't appreciate Richard Stallman.