> Having a PayPal button in GNU, FSF and Trisquel.

There are some people who may have recently discovered the free software 
movement, agree with its goals, and want to donate, but have not completed the 
difficult process of reducing the power of proprietary software over their 
lives and migrating to as much free software as possible. Excluding them would 
not help the free software movement. Similarly, you can access the GNU and FSF 
websites from proprietary browsers. The FSF surely does not approve of 
proprietary browsers, but if they were to block users of such browsers from 
their websiste they would be preventing them from learning about the issues 
withand replacements for their browser.

> Using a proprietary bootloader (before switching to libreboot.

Before libreboot existed nobody could use it. Refusing to use a computer 
entirely would not have furthered the goals of the free software movement, so 
the FSF would had to use non-free bootloaders in the meantime. Fortunately this 
is no longer the case. Similarly, before there was a 100% libre distro, nobody 
could use one. If this were still true, the FSF would probably endorse Debian, 
but since it is no longer true there is no need to settle.

I understand where you're coming from with this, but I think you are confused 
on a couple of points that confuse many people. The first is that the FSF 
condemns the creation and distribution of proprietary software, not its use. 
Blaming users is blaming the victims. You should avoid proprietary software as 
much as possible for the sake of your own freedom, but you are not a bad person 
for using it. It is hard to rid yourself of proprietary software. That is not 
your fault, and the FSF doesn't think it is. Maybe they need to say this more 
often, because I often see people get defensive about sometimes using 
proprietary software when they have no reason to be.

The second point is the misconception that because the FSF has ideals, it 
cannot be pragmatic. The false dichotomy of pragmatism and idealism is a trap 
to make people think ideals are unimportant and vote for war criminals. Just 
because some bad people use a pretense of "pragmatism" as an excuse to not to 
the right thing doesn't mean that pragmatism is inherently bad.

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Reply via email to