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Balancing accessibility and software freedomBalancing accessibility and software freedomPosted Aug 11, 2010 7:04 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)In reply to: Balancing accessibility and software freedom by coriordan Parent article: Balancing accessibility and software freedom
The word "banned" was not mine: it was taken from the GNU manifesto and I quoted it in adequate context, I believe. A literal-minded person could argue that RMS is not himself calling for a ban, only saying it would be nice if the ban occurred. And he wrote, as of a couple of weeks ago, "Our goal is therefore to eliminate proprietary software." Of course proprietary software can theoretically be eliminated via free-market competition, but surely not even RMS believes that that is a practical possibility. Can you supply a link to RMS's stance as you describe it? It sounds inconsistent with his reiterated "good versus evil" view. Slavery was evil: if public opinion supported slavery, would RMS have been opposed to banning it? I think not. I stand corrected about the printer, but that makes it even more irrelevant. It is usually impossible to change the software (firmware) on a device like a printer. The realistic situation today would be that the printer can communicate a paper jam, and the proprietary Windows driver can read the communication, but the interface is not documented properly and therefore that functionality is missing on a Linux system.
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