A working copy of Linux doesn’t pay your mortgage or put food on the table.

Stallman's point, almost exactly — he thinks that a working copy of Linux or Windows or Solaris or Photoshop or Ilustrator for that matter SHOULDN'T pay your mortgage or put food on the table. For him it is fine for a programmer to be paid to implement a feature but not fine for him to sell the same feature over and over again having done no additional work. Stallman has a of labor theory of value and looks at a stream of income derived from IP law as a kind of usury.

Stallman and GNU (emphatically) do not make a case that software somehow transcends the property rights that made its existence possible in the first place. Far from “transcending” property rights, Stallman and the Free Software Movement are insisting they be respected.

This is a long conversation and what's here is imperfect. We can talk about it sometime if you like,

One thing that I'd like to add is that the “process” you describe above is more akin to User Centered Design (UCD) rather than User Experience Design(UXD). While some will lump these two concepts into being the same thing, fundamentally they are different.

UCD relies on looking to the past to fix the problems that exist. This is why there is such a large focus on good tried and true research. Follow people around and watch them work, get them into a “lab” and probe them while they try to complete tasks. While these techniques are great, they only show you what's broken.

UXD takes all the great stuff about UCD, but plugs in the theories and concepts of Design. Rather than looking at what's broken and finding ways to fix it, UXD's look at what's broken and what's not to create something completely new and different. UXD uses the research to make better design decisions.

How does this help with positioning? Many of the theories and concepts that UXD gets from traditional design is present in fields that don't have any issue with positioning. I'm talking about architecture, print, film, literature, etc. Fields where context and use dictate how something will not only be built but used. If UX is truly having issues with positioning, then UXD's should look to these fields to understand how they approached that problem. Learn from the lessons of the past, rather than trying to re-invent the wheel again.

One thing that I'd like to add is that the “process” you describe above is more akin to User Centered Design (UCD) rather than User Experience Design(UXD). While some will lump these two concepts into being the same thing, fundamentally they are different.

UCD relies on looking to the past to fix the problems that exist. This is why there is such a large focus on good tried and true research. Follow people around and watch them work, get them into a “lab” and probe them while they try to complete tasks. While these techniques are great, they only show you what's broken.

UXD takes all the great stuff about UCD, but plugs in the theories and concepts of Design. Rather than looking at what's broken and finding ways to fix it, UXD's look at what's broken and what's not to create something completely new and different. UXD uses the research to make better design decisions.

How does this help with positioning? Many of the theories and concepts that UXD gets from traditional design is present in fields that don't have any issue with positioning. I'm talking about architecture, print, film, literature, etc. Fields where context and use dictate how something will not only be built but used. If UX is truly having issues with positioning, then UXD's should look to these fields to understand how they approached that problem. Learn from the lessons of the past, rather than trying to re-invent the wheel again.

So much of the inquiry that informs the UX design process is designed to get at what the user expects based upon their previous experience. The goal then is to give those users what they expect.

and

Good user experience helps a brand to comply with the consumer’s presuppositions and biases.

Such a limited definition (at least in this case) is problematic at best.

One of the primary values in UX, or generally in good design, is addressing what the user actually *needs* to accomplish a task, while considering prior design decisions (and not bound to those decisions).

Giving users what they expect stifles innovation and good design–look at game changing products or software (enter the usual examples as Google, the iPod, the Prius) or look at smaller-scale systems that broke from the status quo (such as Mint, Foursquare, Twitter, etc.).

While good design and UX can address those existing assumptions, biases, and prior engagements with the service or product, it's almost a cop out to limit a good UX based on what people are used to, either at the service level or brand level.

After understanding how people understand, interpret, and interact with the current or competitive offerings (all of which would be involved in a design, ux, and/or brand strategy), you can address how to position the new service for that “right time and under the right circumstances”.

Presuppositions and biases are simply design constraints that should inform the process of creating great design, not strangle the process at birth.