So Android doesn't track you? The Google apps inside Android don't track you? MS is behind the curve on this one...

Windows 3.1 did not have a "Start" menu. Windows 3.1 had the "Programs" folder, on an otherwise blank desktop.

An academic: Someone educated beyond their intelligence.

That joke aside, one does have to learn to use a tool. The Start menu made it easier to use the tool.

RMS is interested in software freedom. To him, the other freedoms you enunciated are secondary, and indeed will eventually arise from freedom to alter the software running on your hardware. This is basically in the GNU and FSF mission statement.

I would venture also that he believes that one should not barter their freedoms. A largely-butchered quote from Ben Franklin comes to mind...

And then this developer blows away existing code supporting existing users because they truly believe that the team is catering to the wrong users (despite those users being both more numerous and more lucrative), leaving them to find another solution, destroying the team from within. No, I've never seen that happen, why?

They won't. The release manager has to. Right now, at work, that role is mine, so I, I have to.

*takes a bite of cheeseburger* You said it! *sips soda* We have to save these people from the evil corporations! *dips french fry in ketchup and crams in mouth* GMOs will destroy our planet! *drives away in gas-guzzling SUV*

That's not "software freedom", that's using software to express some other freedom.

You. I like you.

Standups, Kanban, Scrum, swim lanes, and other political middle management bullshit, but not for me. For all the _bad_ coders. Not me.

Most of the version control commit messages I've seen do not describe at all the reason and purpose of the changes. No, VCS are no substitute for changelogs.

You mean like everything to do with meth already is?

Why do I *sneeze* need to give you my driver's license? *sneeze* All I want is allergy *sneeze* medication *sneeze*!

It's also a lot less expensive to treat drug addicts than it is to imprison them. And to treat mentally-ill people (but we got rid of our federal mental health system and use prisons instead). And it's even cheaper to house the homeless than it is to let them sleep on the streets (or imprison them).

Economies work on scarcity, indeed without scarcity there is no need for economics. "Money" is a metaphor, and as you point out, has been for quite some time.

As I said: Rights are not money. Rights are not zero-sum. My gain in rights is not your loss of rights.

But, my gain in rights can mean that I gain more of a limited resource (rank hath its privileges). As I gain more of a limited resource, I can use my gains to get even more, or to ensure that only the people I want get more.

And that's where we are right now, still, even as those institutions have been slowly eroding away (the world has become generally more egalitarian as time goes on), but mostly for white, land-owning males (though the "land-owning" part has been relaxed).

Now, women want the same thing, and that's called feminism.