this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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Thanks for responding, enforced material hardship under a capitalist class will limit you from contributing to free software. And I know retrospectively that I shouldn't of been so antagonistic.
I should have been more tactful, I am a university student who's not looking to go into software development and come from a bangladeshi working class immigrant background (second gen), so your remarks about needing to sell your labour are undeniable from me. I don't want to attack you but I want to push back on the narrative you've told me.
My main point was that there does not need to exist a nuance between "the people who believe all software should be libre" and the people who believe more or less the same thing but are coerced into creating nonfree software. We are both victims here of the same system.
I do not agree with dual licensing or "shareware." But if that's what you use then I can't change that for you. We likely don't even disagree on much past that.
What I do want to push back on is the idea that libre software is undermined at all by our own material realities, the opposite is true. My point with the James Gosling comment is that libre software does not claim anything other than the rights of computer users. It doesn't give us a blueprint of how to effect this system nor should it. Everyone should have equal rignts to computer science. Capitalism, thus, is incompatible with this ideal. We agree on this and this doesn't make you any more or any less of an adherent for free software and vice versa for me.
Non-software engineers can perpetuate nonfree software as well. I am not immune to this.
Should all software be libre? The answer is yes from both of us. There doesn't need to be a caveat.