You all are way overthiniking this. FSF is Stallman's organization. Stallman is an extremist by anyone's objective measurement.

Virtually no software, even most OSS software, conforms to Stallman's demands, and his organization tries to push licenses that virtually no one can adopt in practice.

He was once relevant in the free software movement, but now he's just a crazed voice howling into the wind about how everything isn't free enough. Don't try to ascribe sense or logic to him.

There is value to countries in having certain industries, even when the market doesn't agree.

Farming is the classic example: we pay farmers to grow food that then gets thrown away. That's crazy right? we subsidize an un-needed product, a product the market tells us shouldn't exist!

We do it because we want to have a ready and available American source of food, so if a foreign provider decides to stop providing us their food exports, we won't starve. It's 100% socialism (put into law by anti-socialist lawmakers, probably): the government is deliberately messing with the market, for a non-market benefit (preserving local food supplies).

While it's not as strong, there is a similar argument to be made for important non-food products ... like cars.

Why the downvotes here? This is the correct response to everything that Sam Altman claims!

Mods, may I remind you of his quote: "I have no equity in OpenAI. I'm doing this because I love it." Later financial disclosures and admissions revealed that he held substantial equity through third-party venture cap.

Or when (confronted by his board members that he was secretly telling different people conflicting stories to get board member Helen Toner pushed out), Altman claimed:"I never said that." ... and then an extensive 70-page review paper with preserved Slack messages, emails, and internal HR records proved Altman had indeed made those exact statements (leading the board to do take the incredibly rare step of firing him from his own company)?

Or have you forgotten that under oath this exchange occurred (the subject isn't some random person, it's Altman's own co-founder):

“You told the board that Altman ‘exhibits a consistent pattern of lying, undermining his execs and pitting his execs against one another’,” Musk’s lawyer Steven Molo asked Sutskever.

“Yes,” Sutskever responded.

Altman is a habitual liar, and we SHOULD laugh at his bullshit claims.

I think this is generally true, but at the same time don't forget that OSS is built by highly motivated people.

In other words, it doesn't matter if a thousand people all say "we want this" ... if no one is willing to implement it. But, if even one user cares enough about the feature to build a patch for it (that the maintainers will accept), virtually any lost feature could be recovered.

New crop? CEOs haven't always thought they were cooler/more insifghtful?

The OP answered this already:

Read https://casten.house.gov/media... . The goal of stock is NOT to enrich the C-Suite! The goal of stock is to foster economic growth and give investors long term returns: stock buybacks aren't necessary for either.

It's insane that the judge ruled this way, but it's not his fault: the law is ancient and terrible.

There's a good chance we're going to have a very different Congress next year: lets pressure them to strengthen anti-trust law.

They absolutely do care about your ethics ... if they think they can make a buck off you by doing so.

MapQuest is picking up tons of users by "caring" about peoples ethics (and not changing established geography to suit the Orange One's whim).

I've been told (by my dentist) that a water flosser (whatever brand) is better than not flossing ... but is still significantly worse than actually flossing. YMMV.

I remember that growing up I read every issue as they arrived, and loved them so much I kept them all in a box. I never re-read them, and eventually that box did make it into the garbage ... but it took years and was quite full at that point.

Time used to be a bastion of quality journalism, but in the digital age they've been reduced to irrelevance, except when they name the X of the year.

There are multiple definitions of "monopoly" in different contexts (eg. economic vs. legal) ... but either way, you can say the same about "cartels", so feel free to mentally substitute.

- the words of every monopolist in human history.