The thing is that you are worried about computing in the current world.
RMS is worried about the future of computing, and has helped shape it, winning several battles, even though he is losing the war.

Of course there are IP laws/contracts/whatever that don't let you link to GPLed code. That's why it's GPLed, so the work of free software developer does not help those who want to shrink our freedom.

You can use our work, if you share, if you don't share, go build it yourself. It _is_ us versus them, and RMS sees it very clearly.

Fifteen years ago, RMS rants about a dystopian future looked exaggerated. Right now, they look like old news.

You are right that the GPL is a PITA when you want to work with proprietary software, that's not a bug, it's a feature, which BSD software lacks. That's because the GPL is supposed to have a long term effect.

I agree.
At my second interview for a job, I was told that, if hired, I would be on trial for 3 months. I replied that I welcomed the opportunity of getting to know the company before making a long term decision, they replied that _I_ was expected to commit long term from day one.
We ended up working together for three years, but I had to help them fix their hiring process and expectations a little bit.

Not only in that case.
Your ability or interest might change. Like what happened now with NSA backdoors getting more publicity, the Linux code is getting more reviewed for their backdoors, even after being in use for several years. If the source were not available, it would be a lot harder to check.

About "non-code submmitting users", I don't think they are the ones who should audit it. You can trust someone who does submit code, or you can suddenly gain interest in security and start checking it, or even pay soomeone to do it. The thing is that it's possible.

This is why it's a lot better to think in terms of Free Software and not open source. Technical advantages are hard to value if they are not used. Freedom is a lot easier to understand. You have the freedom to use the code as you like, share it and whatever. To illustrate the importance of freedom vs its exercise: lots of people don't want to, or don't have the money to travel outside their countries, but we don't like to have that possibility restricted.

1 - Citation needed. In the sense of open source being easier to debug than proprietary code, it's undeniable.
2 - Citation needed. That strawman is getting old.
3 - True. It does mean anyone _can_, not that anyone _will_ . That's very valuable by itself. You can trust the vendor for example, but have the possibility to stop trusting them. Don't you prefer to be able to find backdoors vs not being able?
4 - Citation needed. Same as 2 -

You make sense. But it's a very subversive thing to say, for an American.
Your point is that if someone is to be rich, then someone else needs to be poor.
Plus, you don't really care about poverty, you just care about your standards of living.
But following your ideology, if one were to get rid of poverty, one would first need to get rid of the rich. You can't have everyone living above poverty levels, if you don't first get rid of the rich.

You discovered marxism. Congratulations. And good luck implementing that in the United States.

Linux _is_ a kernel. Everything else you are talking about is mostly the GNU part of GNU/Linux.
Android has the same amount of Linux than any flavor of GNU/Linux, so the GP is right, even though he uses the wrong terms.

Cool, as long as they don't harm me in the process.

RMS doesn't use that word, "open" a lot.
Doesn't use "greed" a lot.
Those are probably your preconceptions of what he says.

RMS usually talks about freedom, as in not giving away your freedom.
DRM requires you to give some other entity control over your devices, more than what you have. That means giving away freedom, and that's why he is against it. I agree with him, also.

I didn't say in my comment that it shouldn't be an insult, I was just exemplifying why I don't believe there is a left wing in the US. In Europe, and Latin America, many ruling parties call themselves socialist, so that's a particularly US thing.

I didn't mean conservative as a derogatory term, sorry if I did, English is not my native language. I mean that school of thought that believes that believes strongly in the power of a small state, low taxes, free enterprise, and letting the wealth drip from the top to the bottom, instead of messing with it with taxes or strong intervention. I don't mean the economy specifically, but it can't be seen apart. A person with a hundred million dollars of course can exercise more civil rights than someone who doesn't have them. Without income redistribution, you can't be left wing. You can call yourself "center", but we all know there's no such a thing. I don't mean it as a bad thing, I was just commenting the article, that it's false to say that people change from left to right.

In the US there are no left wing parties. As an example, "socialist" can be used as an insult there. From the outside, all US politicians are right wing (meaning that they are not for wealth redistribution or any other left wing concept). It's not that hard to change from strongly conservative to not that strongly conservative.

You are right. Free software is good, but needs a community. Android is probably better. I was thinking more in the line of a full scale government initiative. Here, we have Plan Ceibal, which uses OLPC hardware, and has a lot of government backing. Ceibal was one of the reasons the state owned telco now reaches the whole country with broadband. If large enough, an effort to just drop technology in the hands of kids can help everybody understand the need of basic infrastructure.

An ideological answer is a practical answer that takes the medium term future into account. Open source, is not a philosophy/ideology, just a software development thing. Free software is a philosphy/ideology. And it does take third world people into account. It's very hard to predict the result of teaching Office for kids. Of course, teaching Excel may land them jobs in multinationals, to feed their families. But also, it could entrench the influence of foreign companies in their government IT, with large expenses in licenses, that leae the country. If you teach free software, people can also learn valuable skills for the short term, but also develop a more sustainable IT insfrastructure, which could be one of the basis of future development. I live in Uruguay, more or less the same situation as Peru with copyrights, but free software is very popular. And most of our software industry (which is growing very fast) is based on free software.

Well, then I suppose I could have soup while driving in Alberta. It's not a meal, after all.

To be fair, all socialism is post-capitalistic.
The whole idea of socialism (like what Marx wrote) is that capitalism would succeed against scarcity (for exaple: "the end of money"), so a new model would be necessary that didn't rely on it, but on cooperation.
Of course, not all ideas can be implemented nicely, or even at all, but that doesn't mean that socialism is not prepared for "plenty". Penty is onw of its preconditions.