I guess we'll have to agree to disagree because from where I sit, Free Software had a bright spark at the beginning and slowly faded away into a miserable failure.
Apple sells a lot of laptops because they're really easy to use. The wifi "just works" and the battery life is excellent.
To a first approximation, zero people run fully-free stacks on their daily-driver laptops because they're not easy to use unless you're the kind of person who uses their 2005-vintage Thinkpad on Ethernet and AC power only.
There's no "vegan leader person" or "financial literacy leader person" or "animal cruelty leader person," etc. Not even "environment person," though you do get your occasional Greta Thunberg or Al Gore, but that's different from what you're saying here.
Well mostly it would look like an FSF that doesn't eat toejam on camera, and instead of giving the same tired lecture about the 4 freedoms, they actually go out and do productive things like put on workshops for college students to install trisquel or whatever.
Instead of wasting countless hours sponsoring dumb stuff like the GNU Name System they could be writing open wifi/bluetooth stacks that support more than 802.11g, since connectivity is usually the #1 reason people won't run fully-free stacks on their laptops (or at least it's a big reason I won't), or if not that then how about getting governments to run Linux and helping them do so? They could operate a consultancy to bring in some operating income.
>Meaning, I can't think of any similar "movement" that succeeds by having a camera-friendly diplomatic leader -- unless you're thinking about going "full politics?"
Are you unaware that the Free Software Movement is a political movement first and foremost? People think it's a technical thing but technical excellence has always been secondary to political/ethical purity for GNU/FSF as evidenced by things like HURD and gnutls.
>There's no "vegan leader person" or "financial literacy leader person" or "animal cruelty leader person," etc. Not even "environment person,"
Look, if you're not going to argue in good faith then don't bother replying further. Those movements all have have multiple organizations working towards somewhat-common goals. Those individual orgs do indeed have leaders and by and large they're not toejam eaters.
Bingo. It is a political movement. One rooted in idiotic ideologies that no thinking person takes seriously. Communism was defeated by taking the few valid points of Marx and addressing them. The 98% stupidity was easy to refute and discard when the 2% valid points were accepted and addressed.
(Love your username btw)
We're talking free as in libre here, not free as in beer.
Then don't frame it as a socialist idea. There's absolutely nothing about Free Software that has a hard requirement on socialist ideology.
Frame it as pragmatism: Governments/schools/etc should run free software because it's more cost-effective and thus a more fiscally-responsible use of taxpayer monies.
Frame it as democratic: Why should a bunch of unelected CEOs have the right to dictate what you, a citizen of $this_great_nation, do with your devices?
Frame it as nationalism: How can American kids grow up to be world-leading innovators if they can't hack their devices? We're losing to Russia and China in the hacking gap!
Frame it as free speech or something: Why does the government get to decide what I do with my devices? My ipad my choice.