The split personality in the HN community is interesting.
On one hand, you have things like "never let the perfect be the enemy of the good; better to have a product that works than to get everything right".
On the other, you have things like "Amazon puts DRM on their ebooks and terminated Wikileaks. Boycott everything they do."
Amazon is innovative enough and has benefited my life enough that I'm willing to sacrifice some freedoms for that convenience. Richard Stallman, however, cannot be happy if you make that decision on your own. Eventually, you have to ask yourself if you want to spend your life obeying what an influential person tells you to do (and sacrifice conveniences to hold the world to a higher standard which will never be realized), or realize that ships sail and you'd rather be on the ship than yelling at it with clenched fist from the harbor.
On one hand, you have things like "never let the perfect be the enemy of the good; better to have a product that works than to get everything right".
On the other, you have things like "Amazon puts DRM on their ebooks and terminated Wikileaks. Boycott everything they do."
Amazon is innovative enough and has benefited my life enough that I'm willing to sacrifice some freedoms for that convenience. Richard Stallman, however, cannot be happy if you make that decision on your own. Eventually, you have to ask yourself if you want to spend your life obeying what an influential person tells you to do (and sacrifice conveniences to hold the world to a higher standard which will never be realized), or realize that ships sail and you'd rather be on the ship than yelling at it with clenched fist from the harbor.