"I wonder if, in practice, so many of these frustrations would have been alleviated if we, as an industry, had adopted the "impractical" view of insisting on using only free software."
We'd live in a world with a lot less software and where computing was restricted to hobbyists. Propietary software exists for a reason, and its not because the world is run by the selfish and evil.
I love free software, too, but the thing to remember, and this is true for any discipline -- a massive amount of people will support something because they have the incentive to get money from it. A lot of people love programming, but a lot of people love money even more, and if the geniuses who went to Harvard and Stanford and UC Berkeley decided that they could make much more money in biotechnology or surgery, then that's one less Microsoft or Google in the world that's bad for us users. If these people loved programming more than money, their software wouldn't be proprietary. It's much much easier to make money off proprietary software than free software. Yes, there is dual-licensing and support and donations, but ultimately you cannot directly and legally charge users, your biggest market, to use your program; this logic is supported by some evidence: recently Red Hat reached a billion dollar valuation, making it the most valuable company to be majorly devoted to free software. That's amazing. Bill Gates on his own is worth $56B, though.
I think most people, and most people encompasses the people that make the proprietary software that we rely on most, look for money first and idealism next. We'd have RMS's work and some of the early MIT and UCB hacker's work without the incentive of money, but to get so far as multibillion dollar companies that produce programs 99% of us are reliant on? Impossible without the incentive of money.
We'd live in a world with a lot less software and where computing was restricted to hobbyists. Propietary software exists for a reason, and its not because the world is run by the selfish and evil.
I love free software, too, but the thing to remember, and this is true for any discipline -- a massive amount of people will support something because they have the incentive to get money from it. A lot of people love programming, but a lot of people love money even more, and if the geniuses who went to Harvard and Stanford and UC Berkeley decided that they could make much more money in biotechnology or surgery, then that's one less Microsoft or Google in the world that's bad for us users. If these people loved programming more than money, their software wouldn't be proprietary. It's much much easier to make money off proprietary software than free software. Yes, there is dual-licensing and support and donations, but ultimately you cannot directly and legally charge users, your biggest market, to use your program; this logic is supported by some evidence: recently Red Hat reached a billion dollar valuation, making it the most valuable company to be majorly devoted to free software. That's amazing. Bill Gates on his own is worth $56B, though.
I think most people, and most people encompasses the people that make the proprietary software that we rely on most, look for money first and idealism next. We'd have RMS's work and some of the early MIT and UCB hacker's work without the incentive of money, but to get so far as multibillion dollar companies that produce programs 99% of us are reliant on? Impossible without the incentive of money.