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Put a bunch of smart, pragmatic people in a room and you’ll only end up with the current state of the software industry. The stricter the rules, the more durable the movement.

He could definitely benefit from coming across as more pleasant and affable, though.

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He's extremely dogmatic, and so far his movement really doesn't seem to be working? Hard to way how much of that is his fault, though.

I'm interested in what you would consider success in the free software movement? GPL'd software is everywhere, Linux is a household name, proprietary competitors have been consistently overshadowed and made irrelevant. We are nowhere near a 100% free software world, but it's far better than 10 or 20 years ago, let alone 30+.

The FSF has been chronically incapable of doing anything about SaaS. What good is GPL software if I'm forced to use an opaque version of it in a device out of my control to do my business? The FSF made the AGPL as a stopgap but it's been an unpopular license.

So no, the world just moved proprietary software to the cloud with parts spun-off and GPLed on paper.

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