Free Software Cannot Rely on Politicians, They Don't Even Care About Software, They Only or Mostly Care About Money
Software Freedom is nice and all, but trying to explain this to politicians (there's no "elevator talk" unless you buy 'dinner' with them) is very hard because they're looking for the smell of money, not sense. Yes, of course there are exceptions, but exceptions do not make up majorities.
There's a discussion this week involving Jean Louis and Akira Urushibata [1, 2] and it's partly about explaining Software Freedom. Jean Louis has just told Akira Urushibata:
I disagree with that viewpoint. Firstly, advocating for free software is equivalent to standing up for human rights in the present and future. It's not a matter of religious belief, but a reasonable and factual reflection of our society, where programmers and companies often try to control the user and their computing, rather than the user controlling their own computing.I disagree that "free of cost" is the primary draw for free software. I have never seen it that way, but perhaps statistics could provide insight. To me, the appeal of free software is the wide variety of options that aren't available on other systems, and the ideal development environment that can't be found on Windows/OS. However, I haven't used Windoze in 25 years, so I can't speak to its current state.
Of course he sort of preached to the choir at libreplanet-discuss, where no politicians or non-techs (barely any) are present. There's no simple solution to this situation short of revolutionising the political system. In 11 days from now the US Government will become 100% about bribes and graft. █