Pragmatism > idealism, which is why the free software movement is now a breeding ground for lolcows. Quite a shame too because the idea of a machine running 100% auditable software at the firmware or microcode level (forgot the proper nomenclature, forgive me) is an amazing thing to strive for. I don't even care if the GPL itself is generally infeasible to use for commercial projects; if the code is of amazing quality and the program itself is a real game-changer, keeping it open for the community is arguably a great thing.
The big problem I have with free software projects is that there's more emphasis on broad idealism rather than producing quality code. The big irony is that anything from the FSF's sponsored projects is of laughably poor quality compared to the more pragmatic BSD projects like Free/Net/OpenBSD, PFSense, and so on. Unlike utter chaos that Linux thrives in, the BSD projects are properly engineered, unified operating systems. I don't need to worry about the next glibc update borking my system because the BSDs fucking test their shit. Spinoff projects like PFSense also provide robust feature sets, consistent support, and the performance over time is fucking legendary. The only major difference between BSD land and Linux land is ideology; the BSD Projects only care if their code is being used at all, which is why it's licensed so permissively. It's mind boggling how one little difference like that can change the culture of an entire ecosystem.
Speaking of which, there's so much fragmentation going on in the free software community over the stupidest bullshit. Why the fuck should I use GNU IceCat if Mozilla Firefox is more easily accessible and is under the same fucking license? Why the fuck should I one of the many boneless Ubuntu/Debian spinoffs if I can just use vanilla Ubuntu/Debian, or one of its good clones like Linux Mint or MX? Hell, why the fuck should I run a boneless CyanogenMod clone like Replicant when I can just run regular AOSP ROMs or LineageOS itself? So many projects that try to abide by the "strict" standards set by the FSF are also liable to go dormant due to a lack of desire among its maintainers to keep it updated. Why should I bother maintaining a fork of fucking Fedora if the Fedora Project itself already adheres closely to the principles of software freedom, barring binary firmware in the kernel? That's exactly what happened to GNU Gnash, Musix, Blag, Dragora, and countless other FSF-endorsed projects.
Even the projects that I am interested in, like libreboot, are fucking awful. Not because of the concept, mind you. Rather, it's because the project itself devolved into a political troon manifesto because libreleah, the project's maintainer, decided to bitch about their life story as opposed to making worthwhile commits to the git tree. That's another thing that pisses me off about the free software "community," - it's no fucking different than the repressed, hypercorporate PC cultures of Silicon Valley. Sure, my data's not liable to get sold to some Chinese marketing firm but the price I pay for my ideals is substandard software maintained by a lunatic who thinks their life story is more important than quality code.
At a tl;dr level - I still believe that free software is something worth fighting for, but maybe a BSD approach would be better for everyone in the long run. At least companies like Sony, Netflix, and Yahoo share the patches they make with the FreeBSD project.
