Bonum Certa Men Certa

"Just a Little Bit of Meat..."

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Oct 04, 2025

Hand grinding meat, white background

Being vegetarian is not about reducing consumption of meat; it's about eliminating it. There are those who say "I still eat just fish". We're not even talking about Vegans here; that's truly activism. It's not easy. Some administrators at the FSF are proud Vegans. It means they're very principled and "devout" when it comes to causes that they believe it. It takes strength, not intolerance (it's unclear who Vegans can possibly be "intolerant" towards; Veganism is about love).

When it comes to activism, even just "a little" proprietary software can beget trouble. In many circumstances, choosing Free software is a practical stance and since so much Free software exists right now (in 2025) it's often pragmatic to say, "proprietary? No, thanks!"

As far as I'm aware, I'm not using proprietary software, except perhaps my Palm PDA, which is over 2 decades old and offline. My wife also lacks any desire to install proprietary software. Yes, Mozilla Firefox contains some blobs, but for the time being they can be secluded and de-activated.

Several of us started noticing as recently as yesterday that Mozilla starts delivering ads into Firefox tabs without the user's consent (those too can be de-activated).

In general, in many cases as we've already explained last month, proprietary stuff boils down to doing things the users do not want but cannot turn off either. Forking the code of the software isn't an option, so collectively the users exercise no control.

The bottom line is, Free software "absolutism" is not a radical stance, more so if the only "radical" belief the user possesses is that he or she must be in control of his or her software, and by extension his or her computer. In the area of security or the context of safety, that's a prerequisite.

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