>>2
Did you know that the FSF associate membership numbers are growing at a steady rate every year? I would postulate that this growth rate also applies to the number of people who agree with RMS (about his philosophy to software freedom) and are not associate members. The numbers may be an insignificant percentage
compared to the people that don't agree with him (>99%:1%), but I would contend that the number is high enough to make the qualifier of "many" to be accurate.
>>8
You are a failure at business, sales and marketing if
you cannot make money with free software. My small computer software company (2 y.o.) caters to small-mid size businesses in Australia. My business gets us (the employees) enough revenue and profit to do well enough through this recession. In all of my business affairs, I have never once subjected anybody out of their right to tinker and share the software I convey to them.
>>11
When we refer to freedom in software, we are talking about the right to sovereignty and the right to live as an upstanding citizen. When we accept accept proprietary software, we lose our right to either one of these freedoms and so, proprietary software isn't acceptable for us that value freedom. Liberally licensed free software is acceptable as is but it also has the danger of being forked and transformed into proprietary software.