> He is okay with people charging money for their code[4]. This creates SES (socioeconomic status) barriers for vulnerable and impoverished people.
No, this lowers SES barriers for vulnerable and impoverished people to get into software development and thus become less vulnerable and impoverished and influence how the world works. If you can't charge money for your code, only rich people can write software.
> This is like saying "access to information and education should be free" but then charging admission for a public library.
No, this is like saying "access to information and education should be free" and also agreeing that authors shouldn't have to work for free.
If you want to have a public library, you don't ask authors to work for free, you use taxes to pay the authors for their work, and then make it available to the public for "free". Which is something that you can do even better under Stallman's model: If you pay someone for a piece of Free Software, you not only can then lend it to the public for free, you are actually allowed to give away as many copies of it as you want to the public for free, for the public to keep and redistribute and modify.
> Further, that could prevent people from review/verifying the program before purchasing it.
It absolutely doesn't have to. You totally can make a contract selling Free Software with the additional requirement that certain measures of quality must be met by the seller, so the buyer can refuse to pay if the software turns out to be crap.
It took me about 5 to 7 seconds of rereading before I finally saw "Stallman's model".
So I have to grant to you, you are probably right, if and only if you can find a perfectly fair and just agent to do the taxing and not become corrupt. Have any volunteers?
No, this lowers SES barriers for vulnerable and impoverished people to get into software development and thus become less vulnerable and impoverished and influence how the world works. If you can't charge money for your code, only rich people can write software.
> This is like saying "access to information and education should be free" but then charging admission for a public library.
No, this is like saying "access to information and education should be free" and also agreeing that authors shouldn't have to work for free.
If you want to have a public library, you don't ask authors to work for free, you use taxes to pay the authors for their work, and then make it available to the public for "free". Which is something that you can do even better under Stallman's model: If you pay someone for a piece of Free Software, you not only can then lend it to the public for free, you are actually allowed to give away as many copies of it as you want to the public for free, for the public to keep and redistribute and modify.
> Further, that could prevent people from review/verifying the program before purchasing it.
It absolutely doesn't have to. You totally can make a contract selling Free Software with the additional requirement that certain measures of quality must be met by the seller, so the buyer can refuse to pay if the software turns out to be crap.