> „Handle nur nach derjenigen Maxime, durch die du zugleich wollen
> kannst, dass sie ein allgemeines Gesetz werde.“ - Immanuel Kant
>
> (Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time,
> will that it should become a universal law.)

> But this doesn't mean that we don't have
> to do our homework. And often, it doesn't even cost anything. When we
> write free software, it doesn't cost anything to license it under the
> GPL (vs the monopolist-friendly so-called more liberal licenses like
> the MIT license). Yet, I have the impression that the younger
> generation has been made blind in this regard. (As everything here, it
> is my personal opinion, of course.)

It's great that you bring up Kantian ethics - that could be the main
dividing line between free software and open source. I am suspicious of
ethics in general and unimpressed by Kant's imperative in particular. We
say what is good or bad via hidden impulses to advance our own
interests. Ad hoc ethics is largely a rationalization of those impulses.
Attempts at universal ethics are an error since morality is inherently
personal and situational. Group morality is filtered personal morality,
and is even less stable than individual morality.

The younger generation is not missing the point - people simply have
different priorities. When we care deeply about something, the most
uncomfortable thing to come to terms with is that others understand its
merits but are indifferent to them. They may not understand the details
but they get the big picture which generally adds up to "life is short"
and we can't change the world very much. Idealistic people can be very
distressed at the difficulty of change, but we forget that most people
are not. It is sobering to view idealism as a hobby and that most have
other hobbies. Fanatic idealists annoy others because of the insistence
that our corner of the world warrants special importance. The effect is
similar to people who are fanatical about art, sports, or food, but with
the added implication that others are malicious (as opposed to merely
simple-minded or uncultured) for having other interests.

Of course, people who really do advance culture tend to be somewhat
zealous. But there's always a gamble on what really is advancement and
what is not. The enthusiasts are the people who find it in themselves to
easily bet on one side. Moral issues are difficult because most people's
conscience doesn't call upon them to place any particular bet and yet
there are people berating them from all sides. Stable societies tend to
hedge their bets.

In the particular case of things like the GPL, LibreJS, and the name
GNU/Linux, many people (myself included) see them as heavy-handed
solutions to issues that may not be problems in the first place. In
highly technological societies people lead very specialized lives, which
means that popular things used by masses of people have to be efficient.
It's mainly hobbies done for leisure that can afford the luxury of being
inefficient. For example, people say Linux instead of GNU/Linux because
it's shorter and easier to understand. The MIT license is used in place
of the GPL for the same reason. Growing up in a high-tech society, we
gradually learn to ignore inefficient things (that don't relate to our
own hobbies) because they will eventually be replaced by things that
work better. Free software aficionados don't mind inefficiencies in
software and even enjoy some of them, but may just as easily balk at
waiting for a late train or queuing at a busy store. Most people feel
that way about software. Free software in turn is not a hobby to most
programmers so they generally want free software programming to be as
easy as proprietary programming.

Some of us ascribe to the open source ethos because we are acutely aware
that software is just one corner of a staggeringly complex world and is
subject to the same efficiency pressure as all other tools. I personally
believe the pressure is an intrinsic part of high-tech civilization and
to ease it we would need to stop or reverse technological development
(in an environment with few things to do, inefficiencies don't matter).
Hence popular software needs to be efficient (in technical construction
and social customs), and other things have to be subordinate to that
goal (within reason).

RMS's hardline views on technology ownership are proving prophetic now
that computers are driving surveillance, censorship and other forms of
centralized control with no end in sight. Unfortunately free software is
orthogonal to that problem. For people with an activist bent, time is
better spent on legislation and making convenient privacy-aware apps
than arguing over nuances with open source people and other computer
enthusiasts who are already sympathetic and co-operative on the main
points :)

General agreement on the rest.