There was a little bit of a set-to on identi.ca yesterday, wherein Bradley Kuhn of the SFLC felt it necessary to "denounce" people who were expressing some excitement there about "Hulu" bringing out a version for Linux. According to Kuhn, such interest is a "tragedy".
I took some issue with Kuhn online myself, as did others; Ravi Pinjala commented, "I never saw Linux as a gated community". Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier has written an excellent blog post on the issues here.
As Brockmeier points out there, denouncing people over software (remember, kids: it's all just ones and zeroes at the end of the day) never makes sense. You can't shame folks (and certainly not those who don't have any investment in your opinion of them—they'll just think you're a judgmental dope, and they'll be right, too) into doing much of anything, and if you manage to do so, the result—grudging acquiesecence followed by growing dislike for having been burdened not only with inconvenience but opprobrium—is surely not worth the effort.
More to the point, the necessity to try such cheap histrionics as a "motivator" shows a certain intellectual bankruptcy. "Why don't use just use VLC and MythTV"? Kuhn asks. Simple: Hulu is, in large part, about the content. This sort of appeal to shame doesn't start or stop here, though.
I've been told that I should use GIMP instead of Photoshop and Inkscape instead of Illustrator. I've declined to do so, on two grounds: I'm happy and familiar with the tools I use, and—having spent some time working with both of the free alternatives—I find them to be decidedly inferior, at least for my purposes. I don't think this observation is terribly controversial. (I keep threatening to make t-shirts which read, "Open Source Software: 80% as good as the last guy who worked on it needed it to be"; no one's expressed offense so far.)
One would think that my doing video-editing on OS X, with Final Cut Pro, must be an even bigger "tragedy". The simple fact is that there's absolutely nothing in the free software landscape that's even remotely comparable. Yes, it costs a grand; yes, it's proprietary. Guess what: I don't especially care.
I've got work that I need to do, and this is the tool I need to get it done. If it's not being sufficiently "free" represents a tragedy to you, then you must need large supplies of Kleenex to get through your day. And if "shaming" and "denouncing" is the best way, in your view, to get people to use your software, then there's something terribly wrong with your software, not to mention your approach.
If the "free software" world can't, or won't, or simply doesn't, solve people's problems, then don't tell me it's a "tragedy" that people use software that does solve their problems. You have no right to demand that people not use something, simply because it doesn't live up to your ideals, nor can you foist something inferior off on them because it does.
Free software advocates do themselves no service—unless they're interested solely in preaching, not to even the entire choir, but only one section—by taking a tack such as this. All of this indignation is entirely out of place, especially coming from those who like to use the word "free" so much.
Let other people be free their own damned way, hm?
Of course, Roy Schestowitz is in an uproar over this. It's apparently just fine to call people "traitors", but if Miguel de Icaza points out Richard Stallman's somewhat "free" use of the facts (this is the fellow who was talking complete smack about OS X right up until Apple Legal apparently "persuaded" him to both knock it off and apologize), and calls Stallman's approach "George Bush-esque", that's "daemonisation"*. And if Brockmeier takes issue with Kuhn's nonsense, evidently that's "adding to Novell's hostility toward the FSF" and cause for additional exercises in line-drawing on Schestowitz's part.
I'll be happy when all the folks who want to tell me what tools I can use and how I should be free are all safely snuggled on their side of the line. Then, the rest of us can get some actual work done.
And maybe they can finally get the HURD going. (Now, that's a "tragedy". Or a "travesty". Or both.)
* Speculation in comments regarding "headless" versions of Richard Stallman or others will not be tolerated.
