>However, free open source software is not the only way to do that.

Please provide a way to do that without some ability to audit the source ?

> The assumption that non-free software is bad and harmful and by extension free software is good and beneficial

Being non-free is, by itself, already bad - freedom is worth far more than money. It's generally stupid to sacrifice your life to prevent losing money as it precludes the ability to make more (which always exists), but those who sacrifice their lives to prevent the loss of liberty are widely considered heroes.
Liberty is fundamentally more valuable than almost all other considerations.
This is why the FSF distinguishes between proprietory and commercial software. The one is harmful and the other is not in terms of liberty.
Now there may or may not be other harms - there could be malware in a free software project hoping nobody looks, a non-free program could offer you a way to guarantee you'll win the lottery this week - nevertheless the free software would STILL be superior in terms of liberty.

>Stallman has a very narrow view of what software development should look like
He had never proposed any view on this topic whatsoever. He has DONE software development in a certain style (which, by the way, was no the open source methodology but the traditional bazaar style he knew) but he never declared it a better way of developing software.
He has limited his position purely to the ethical and philosophical issues of freedom, which is a higher consideration than quality or commercial success.
After all - would you agree to a law that said you couldn't tell your friends what you saw on the news last night in order to help Fox make more money by forcing more people to watch the show themselves ?
Surely you would consider that an unacceptable constraint on your personal freedom of speech.
What Stallman's arguments prove, VERY convincingly is that the four freedoms he cares about are all - JUST as important.

People who wish to paint a strawman (which you did) tend to accuse him (falsely) of not recognizing some free software as such - which is actually not true at all. Stallman has NEVER denied that any BSD system is free, nor has he denied that of any GNU/Linux distribution (except for a few very specific cases like the Tivo which really weren't).
He does however refuse to endorse a product that does not share his values. So he won't endorse openBSD or redhat, but that is not denying that those products are free, it's just not endorsing something which (in turn) endorses other things he is opposed to. That's a perfectly reasonable position to take.
If you're opposed to something, would you endorse somebody who, while not themselves engaged in that thing, do however endorse it publicly in the very same sphere where they asked for your endorsement ?

Quite a lot of smaller projects, notably ones that target individuals, have voluntary donation based business models - and make enough to keep the developers' bills paid so they can write the software. Because a dollar here or a dollar there is not prohibitively expensive, and it adds up quite a lot if you have a few thousand people who do so every month which for a reasonably successful end-user project these days would only require about a 25% donation rate.

This is the exact same business model that humble bundle uses.

For quite a few years I maintained a project that was the market-leader in it's class for free software. I never made money out of end-users but I ran a successful business based on selling features to other business. My software was a management tool used for running a type of small business - a lot of indy such businesses used it, some NGO's distributed it for variations on the theme - but there were also quite a few big companies who were franchising business built around it. They wanted customized management software that would protect their franchised brand and offer functionality that the indy guys didn't care about (like integration between franchises) - and they paid me very handsomely to develop those for them.
Of course they COULD go to anybody to do it - but they didn't because I knew the code better than anybody and could do it cheaper.
For doing it, I would charge them an hourly rate. I would also make them a choice. I could either include the features they wanted back in the main branch for others to use (including competitors) or I could keep it in it's own branch - never publicly distributed to anybody else (hence without violation of the GPL) - and if any other customer wanted the same feature I would have to pay somebody else to clean-room it. But if they wanted feature exclusivity - the rate-per-hour was doubled.
I made very good money that way - drove a nice car, had a nice home. Eventually the technology changed and the market for that kind of business dissapeared almost entirely (actually - mobile replaced it) and so I moved on to other things (no point writing code nobody needs anymore).

Basically - you have no idea how many people successfully do the very things you just claimed nobody does.

Nothing in Stallman's philosophy precludes profit-driven development - on the contrary, he actively encourages it !
He precludes a certain METHOD of profit generation, not the idea of profit.

Your response is like saying "We can't have pollution standards because saying you can't make profit by dumping strychnine in my drinking water is the same saying you can't make profit at all".

There is absolutely no free software problem with profit. There is a freedom problem with software that are sold in one PARTICULAR bad way because the harms that it causes to the public far outweigh the profit earned by the seller.

The only thing Stallman has ever done is point out the age-old lesson that if you don't force the medicine seller to tell you what's in his medicine most of it ends up being snake-oil.

Stallman has only ever allowed for "use a proprietory application" in one sole exception case:
Where there is no viable free alternative.
However, if you believe in freedom - and use it under that condition, you need to also be contributing (in whatever way your particular skills and talents allow) to projects aiming to make a free alternative viable.

>Great example! Were you going to add, that Linus quit teaching, when he discovered a better programmer and OS-designer teaching in a classroom next door?

The scary thing is that you think that proves YOUR point when, in fact, it proves mine.

Small correction:
standardized testing GUARANTEES the highest degrees of cheating (including teacher-assisted cheating) and corruption of any form of student assessment.

>No, I don't know a single Finn or Korean. And even if I did, one person's circle of acquaintances is not sufficient to make meaningful conclusions about the quality of school system in any of their countries

Are you allergic to thinking ? Nobody suggested that. Luckily we have these things called science and statistics which work well together and lots scientists and statisticians who make detailed studies of education - including how it compares around the world and what does and doesn't work well. We also have huge organisations like UNICEF which funds international studies of this nature. We don't have to GUESS who have the best school systems - we have FACTS.
Among the things these scientists compare is - how many students manage to get in to high quality tertiary education (what Americans would call Ivy League schools) - and how they perform there (the first year drop-out rate is one of the best measurements of the pre-university school system).

>Big deal. I graduated trilingual too (Ukrainian, Russian, English) â" and most of Europe does, I guess, out of necessity. I don't know, how well they write (in any language) or whether all the graduates can solve a quadratic equation. If you have any evidence, that Finns (or South Koreans) are, indeed, the best educated in the world, you should've offered citations two posts ago...

We were comparing with America, not Europe where multilingualism is common. As for citations - google -it this is an EXTREMELY well studied field and there is very high consensus because there is such a massive abundances of ways to measure outcomes and they have little to no dissagreement. I gave one example above, another would be the likelihood of somebody to find work straight out of high-school compared to a drop-out. The number of people who manage to get PHDs is another.

>That was a great opportunity to list some MORE accurate alternatives, but you missed it. Likely, because none exist.

No, because I didn't realize I was talking to a person with absolutely no knowledge of the subject he is making such absolute statements about...
Well - one example of a MUCH more accurate measurement is through continuous grading via projects and assignments.
Exams barely, if at all, reflect actual skills in a subject - they reflect skill at passing exams and these skills rarely correlate.
Exams create disrupted educational incentives causing teachers to teach "to the exam", students to study "to the exam" and NOBODY to actually LEARN anything - not to mention as Stevin Levitt so conclusively proofed standardized testing GUARANTEES the highest degrees of teaching and corruption of any form of student assessment.

There are many, many educational systems without exams - even large universities like Harvard are moving away from them because the evidence of their complete lack of reliability is becoming too large to ignore.
People who think exams are the only, let alone a GOOD, way to measure ability are almost always people who went to school before anybody really studied this stuff - never really encountered any other ideas and think their experience is the only one that's possible - that BY ITSELF proves they had an inferior education.

The Waldorf education system (considered universally as one of the most comprehensive and highest quality education systems there is - found in the most expensive private schools around the world) for example is completely exam-less. In countries where matriculation requires a final government-mandated exam, their students still take those exams and outperforms those students who had, had exams throughout their school career - DESPITE not having been coached to exams every year since they had never HAD an exam before.
I have some personal issues with Waldorf (too much religion in there for my liking) but even so I can recognize that it's massively superior to the Prussian-style public school systems that still dominate most of the world DESPITE producing inferior outcomes everywhere it's used.

Exams were fine when the sole purpose of schools were to produce soldiers and factory workers. In an age where they need to produce people who think - not just people who obey orders (and what society needs is NOT just lots of really obedient people - but rather the exact opposite, lots of people who dislike and question authority) - they are worthless. You can't test critical thinking with an exam.

>And how do we know that? Without exams of some sort?

You can see how they perform in life maybe ?
You do know that the even the most struggling students in Finnland graduated trilingual right ?

>Sure. And I too am an excellent singer â" so long as you don't compare me with anyone else.

Comparing people and comparing schools are not analogous. The latter is a system - and there is absolutely no logical reason why all of them can't be as good as the best one is now or better.

>That "difference" seems rather self-serving. The purpose of a school system is not produce good teachers. It is to prepare students for all pursuits they may choose â" not just teaching.

That's an idiotic way to read it. The point is that if the best of the best are CHOOSING to become teachers then EVERYBODY gets the best education they can -regardless of what THEY choose to do.
Even Linus Torvalds did a stint teaching !

>I still don't understand, how you would know, your education is particularly good without some means to compare the results...

Of all the ways to measure a students abilities, exams are just about the LEAST accurate.

>Now, we know, that teachers dislike the standardized exams imposed by the Federal law(s). Sorry, no dice â" the exams must be standardized, otherwise the results of the different approaches used by different schools can never be meaningfully compared.

You're assuming too much:
1) That exams do not do so much harm to the educational process as to undo any good you see in them (which when we look at the actual patterns of behaviour that emerge seems to be highly unlikely).
2) That comparing schools is both a necessary and a good thing to do.

The two countries with the best education outcomes in the world today: Finnland and South Korea both had some of the worst 5 decades ago - interestingly their systems by which they turned this around are almost polar opposites in every regard.
Yet there is a few things they have in common:
1) *EVERY* school is a good school, nobody is allowed (in the broadest possible sense of the term - which would include everybody from teachers, the local community right up to the minister of education) to run a bad one - they don't have to compare schools to see which one is better - since they are all excellent.
2) Teachers are highly valued and extremely well paid. This is actually a criteria for 1 to be achieved, you can't have good teachers unless really smart and talented people with the ability to follow any career they want - can actually make a decent living as teachers.
Finnland approached it by closing 80% of their teacher colleges in the 1970's and only accepting the top 10% of applicants - making teaching one of the hardest courses to get into in a Finnish tertiary education. Those who do are among the best of the best of their generation - and THAT is who you want preparing the next one !
And it doesn't end with a diploma, Finnish schoolteachers spend less than 300 hours a year actually teaching - nearly all the rest are spent LEARNING - various forms of professional development that they are expected to engage in increasing their skillset continuously throughout their careers.

That is ultimately the difference between a good or a bad school system - how many of the smartest people it produces go back to work in it.

The saying goes that those who can't - teach.
That's a guaranteed way to create a really, really bad education system.
If you want a good one - there is a very simple cure: pay teachers extremely well, and then make it very hard to become one, so that those who teach are not just who CAN - but those who can EXCEPTIONALLY WELL.

I'd say the main reason is that WoD has been delayed way too long, this is the longest expansion lull in the history of the game... frankly, we've done everything in there a million times and even veterans like me (and my wife) have stopped playing until 6.0 drops.

So now you use two systems... How is that easier ?

So hard that every other country on earth managed it. There are only two countries on earth that couldn't and other is a third world dump with no functioning ... Well anything actually. Even the other third world countries managed it.
You know why ? Because the decimal system is hugely superior in every way and changing is easy with a little political will. Don't take my word for it - read Asimov's essay and learn.

You're a bit naive there.
NOTHING happens in US politics without a billionaire backing it. Nothing at all. No matter how badly the public wants it.

On those rare occasions when something happens that the public wants - it's because there happened to be a billionaire whose personal self-interest was temporarily (and quite coincidentally) aligned with the interests of the public.
I merely posited that this is slightly more common on the left side of the spectrum because the interests of liberal billionaires are slightly closer to the public interest in the first place.

I have no delusions that Soros does anything except to line his own pocket, it's just much more likely that what lines his pocket won't actually KILL you.

You realize that the ideologue here was you ?

I was the one arguing for pragmatism and an open-minded solution-seeking approach to economics that doesn't approve or reject something by the label it falls under by it's unique and specific attributes and success-rate for the specific problem.

It is therefore flat out bullshit in my mind to give exclusive credit to any particular ideology when it comes to social progress. Frankly, that was the NICE way of putting it.

>And have you noticed any particular changes in western civilisation since then?
Nothing that wouldn't have happened either way. Except of course for the child mortality rate in the 19th century being the highest it was at any point in human history either before or since - and that was BECAUSE of said revolution.

>but by any rational measure western civilisation is the most advanced set of countries on the planet.
Flat out bullshit.

>science
An inherently socialist and defiantly anti-capitalist concept - and far more important than capitalism in the advances made by society over the past hundred-odd years.

> I mean that computer you're typing on is another excellent example of capitalism in action.
Except of course that plenty of great strides in computer progress were made outside capitalism and under completely different economic systems.

>So yes I'd say that capitalism had and has a great deal to do with the growth of western civilisation.
But that's because you're cherry-picking data and ignoring everything else that contributed, and worse, when you are unable to exclude something pretending that it WAS capitalism regardless of whether this statement holds true.

>So, the US had atomic bombs first.
Only because it happened to be where Einstein fled from the Nazi's - in a world without Hitler, Germany or Austria had them first.

The history of the Soviet Union could not be LESS relevant to this discussion. This is not a discussion on whether Capitalism is better than Communism - it's a discussion on whether it's better than ALL other systems ever devised, and THAT's what I said it's not.
There are also MANY forms of Marxism that could avoid (at least in theory) the problems that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union - you haven't proven that the problems were in the idea rather than the implementation of the idea.
A great idea, badly implemented will fail but this doesn't mean the idea is bad.
There are REAL problems I have with Marxism but they have NOTHING to do with economics and everything to do with political freedom.

And there we have it in your final paragraph - I made a statement about the grand multitude of economic philosophies and how we should be more open to ideas from ALL of them and a MORON on the right goes and tries to split into a capitalism versus socialism thing AND then it just HAD to be one of the REALLY stupid ones who think American style leftism has ANY RESEMBLENCE WHATSOEVER with Marxism.
Hint: Marxism is fundamentally incompatible with democracy, while there are HUNDREDS of economic philosophies which are compatible with democracy and are NOT Marxism even if some of them may include elements of it.

Here I am saying we should be pragmatic and be open to good ideas regardless of where they come from - and YOU make it about left versus right - EXACTLY the false dichotomy I was arguing we should not fall into !