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> ...but neither is Android, which runs on a Linux kernel

The same goes for Ubuntu which runs Amazon Ads and sends usage statistics by default.

> As long as GNU keeps preaching this kind of absolutist position where the downsides of corporate-owned software ecosystems exist in a vacuum, they'll come off as doomsayers to many observers.

The FSF was absolutely spot on of raising privacy issues and that has forced a privacy overhaul throughout the entire tech industry. However it is still a shame at how they still cannot convince users to stop using non-free OSes or applications since they don't understand that most end users aren't willing to put the effort into migrating to another platform or to sacrifice convenience over freedom.

The only audience that seems to get the message are software engineers but not the average Joe or Jenny.

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I've been developing software for the better part of a decade (granted, not the most senior developer around, but still) -- their message comes off as unreasonable to me, if only because it revolves around heavily criticising the state of the industry without offering a clear alternative for anyone.

I say this as a former full-time user of a pretty huge chunk of their software offering, from emacs, to GCC, to screen -- over the years, I realised that many of their APIs or feature sets aren't modern, and better alternatives exist.

The "clear alternative" that they offer is unusable for the masses, arcane even for the tech-literate, and almost completely unresourced for improvement, with no viable plan to make it so.

I love FSF's products, contribute to them frequently, and use them every day for my job. But it is laughable to even dream that the alternative they present would be better for the average user, for almost any definition of "better" other than the most restricted FSF definition regarding no-compromise of any sort of "better freedom".

Would I love it if there were more free, "better" alternatives to Apple, Microsoft and Google? You betcha. But there isn't one, and there is no viable path to one, and hasn't been since Stallman first rode out of the desert.

One can argue that the FSF was absolutely spot on of raising privacy issues and the tech industry did utterly nothing until Snowden released how bad it really was.