Free Software Foundation Considered Harmful

The FSF advocates some very particular positions, especially that software businesses should be funded by user groups for improving software.

What happens when a business is deciding whether to do this? They receive no encouragement, no assurances that it will work, no market research, no nothing.

What happens when a business actually attempts to do this? They receive no support whatsoever, whether financial or logistical. Anyone who attempts to do what the FSF says it wants them to do is left out in the cold.

So does the FSF actually do anything to bring about the scenario it advocates? Nope, it does diddly squat.

In fact, does the FSF actually follow the criteria it advocates for others? Nope, the FSF's funding doesn't come from user groups for improving GNU software. Rather, it receives funding largely for its political activities.

The FSF advocates a business model that it has never researched, that it never supports, that it has never implemented, that it has no need nor intention to ever implement. The FSF is entirely hypocritical.

No wonder anyone who makes a living creating commodity software thinks free software is evil. The FSF is evil.

(Note: I do believe a service software business model can be made to work. The FSF is not evil for advocating it. It is evil for doing nothing but advocating it. It is evil for hyping something good in such an ineffectual manner that people will become sick and disillusioned of it. It is evil for sending the implicit message that its model is completely impractical and impossible. It is evil for saying "Justice would be great, but of course, it could never work.")

"The FSF advocates a business model that it has never researched, that it never supports, that it has never implemented, that it has no need nor intention to ever implement."

Is this page a MicrosoftFakeGrassroots rant? I was not aware that non-commercial, non-profit organizations were required to be businesses. By that regard, OSHA standards are invalid as OSHA is not a business. Many businesses have implemented FSF guidelines, and the FSF most certainly does support the businesses that choose to do so - whether by software, reference material, message boards, free distribution, or actual help from a person.

One important criticism of the FSF is that they don't care about the DigitalDivide. For example, they refused to port GNU utilities to microcomputers for years, and disdain for the Intel platform is still rife.

Cygnus was an example of this business model, and it was quite happily profitable before RH bought it, afaik even before they marketed any proprietary software.