Dear GNU folk,
Long ago I had a conversation with a fellow long-time GNU developer. We were talking about how we had come upon free software in the 1980s and early 1990s. We were discussing how sometimes we had felt exhilerated by, for example, the coming of gcc, or gcc-2, which were so technically excellent. And then we both commented that we had eventually reached the conclusion that the usefulness of gcc, or the linux kernel, or other great products, had come mostly because of the freedom that comes with s/w, rather than the fact that at the moment it is the coolest s/w around. Years latere we then noticed that, for example, gcc had played leapfrog with various proprietary compilers, passing in and out of the top performance slot (that's not true anymore). But sticking with depending on tools that offer freedom turns out to be both ethical and deeply strategic in the long run. I wonder if anyone here would care to send me examples of how they came to feel this viscerally, and what examples drove home for them that freedom is what gives you a deeper convenience than the occasional technical peak. If I get responses I will summarize it in a brief article and post it back here.