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An anonymous reader writes "Richard Stallman has written a piece on the state of free software and where it needs to go now, in celebration of GNU turning 20 today. It's available both on NewsForge and Linux.com."
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Stallman asserts that "non-free software carries with it an antisocial system that prohibits coopoeration and community."
This is MOST certainly overstating the importance of software's influence on each person's ability to cooperate and experience community. And I assert that this is where the open source movement fails.
While open source software promotes cooperation and community for the developers involved in its creation, it doesn't attempt to build community by creating more user friendly tools.
The general popluation doesn't care about the right to see the source code, most of the users of computers can't do any thing with the code any way. Open source project managers and developers need to better consider their end users. End users are not always other programmers, some are teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, housewives, grandparents.
Usability must extend into high quality instructional programs that provide the information at the user's fingertips. Job aids and other electronic performance support tools that address the needs of the non-developer community will do more to foster cooperation and community between the developers and their users.
After all what good is any application free or not without a high probability of end user acceptance?
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Monday January 05, 2004 @12:01PM (#7881309)
Richard, I agree with your pitch on free software to some extent, but how exactly are we in the IT business going to make a living if all (or most) of the software is free in the future? Why shouldnt someone charge for their software if its good and useful, why should they give away the design or their work, and isnt a little commerical competition good? If software developers should work for free, why not electronic engineers, architects, every profession? Like you, I dont agree with monopolies and those that abuse them, but thats another issue. If being a professional (charging) software developer becomes "bad" or "unfashionable", then isnt that a bit unfair on good, honest and reliable developers? We dont live in a 23rd century moneyless community, and communism didnt really take off in its various guises, so what are you promoting, a utopian future in every sense, a turn away from capitalism? But how can this just apply to software?
I don't want to be the one dissin' RMS, but I think he needs a sanity check or just stop being a "spokesperson" for the Free software community. It is true that he has done a lot to further it's progress, but lets face it, this is the person who hates debian simply because they include THE OPTION (which, mind you, has to be enabled by editing a text config file) of downloading non-free software. This is the guy who refuses to follow the proper procedures laid out hundreds of years ago by the French revolutionaries (you all know what I mean), etc
He gives the Free software community a bad name, and with him on the forefront, Free software will never be part of corporate america (which is becoming more and more synonymous with America itself.)
You make money like everything in the GNU/FOSS movement...by charging for services, installation, operation. Electronic and engineered items are harder to pass on to someone else, who can also make a contribution; software, on the other hand, allows you to make a copy, change it, and pass it on to someone else who might also make changes. That's hard to do with a bridge or a VCR.
I agree, someone less... zealous would make a better proponent for free software. I like my free software, but I like money too. Some things are better free, and some you need to pay for. Everything in moderation.
Before the contributions of Stallman, and those designing software under the GNU banner, who would have noticed the horrid direction proprietary software and hardware have us headed in?
They've demonstrated not only that it is possible to roll your own system (GNU/Herd, GNU/Linux, EMACS, and the myriad utilities), but also why it is necessary. What must come next in this new era of DRM are those who can create their own hardware, free of the oppression and lock-in that tomorrow's systems will have. But we will not ask ourselves what we can run on our homebrew hardware, because an answer is ready thanks to the efforts of the Free Software Foundation.
Ok, since the Linux kernel allows binary modules, it's not necessarily "free software". Does that mean that the Hurd kernel won't allow binary modules, or open wrappers (Nvidia)? If not, does Stallman think that developers can create drivers for proprietary hardware that are at least as good as, if not better than, those provided by the manufacturer?
Or, is "free software" just the first stepping stone to "free hardware," where every innovation is public, and any competitor is free to use your innovations?
Anybody else envision some larger than life figurehead standing at a podium telling you exactly what you need to do to be happy and that they have all the answers? I enjoy the spirit of cooperation and the quality of code that has come out of open source and free software but I'll be damned if I think it's the only way to do things.
Why did you say something so untrue? How is corporate American becoming America? I own corporations, yet I have very little control over other citizens. If they don't want my products, they don't buy them from me.
The average citizen has far more control over my corporation than I have over them. They can refuse to buy. They can open their own competitive business. They can vote in the town I am in to ban my product or my business. They can zone me out of their neighborhoods. They tax my sales and use that money in ways I disagree with. They tax my property. They tax the money I pay my employees. They tax my profits, too.
How is Corporate America a bad thing? Corporations that are friendly with the government are given benefits (cheap loans, tariffs against competition, and even regulating competition out of the business) is NOT a free market, but a mercantilist one. America was never supposed to be mercantilist, it was supposed to be capitalist. Capitalism allows no monopoly, but mercantilism does.
And mercantilism can only happen from government getting involved in economic planning -- ruin from the start.
"non-free software carries with it an antisocial system that prohibits coopoeration and community"
If most people's expectation of software was to create "cooperation and community", RMS mmight be onto something here. But the truth is that most people and businesses want software that fulfills a particular need (or set of needs).
As long as RMS continues to deny the purpose of software for most people, free software will never meet the needs of the masses.
First of all, Open Source is a movement and Free Software is another. They have completly differents phylosophies and objectives as well.
The main concept of this kind of freedom is to give users the power to copy, modify and redistribute a software or a manual. This improves life quality and the karma (not the/. one) of the human beans. This is all the GNU Project is about: try to improve socially the humans.
If you have a free software but it isn't working well and doesn't do what you exactly need, no matter: you can just fix it because you have the source code. But if you don't know how to program, you can ask some friend of your to do it. If you don't have a programmer friend, you can hire someone to do it. That's all the beauty.
People need to see free software as a social movement. It gives you a chance to be a better human being by sharing your knowledge with your neighboor.
He gives the Free software community a bad name, and with him on the forefront, Free software will never be part of corporate america (which is becoming more and more synonymous with America itself.)
I disagree. Without people like Mr. Stallman, The free software movement would not be where it is today. His "problem" is that he envisions a perfect world where all software is free. This is a noble goal, but the reality is that this will never be. There will always be need (and a market) for non-free software. But keep in mind also that not everyone in america is a corporation.
This is the problem with RMS - he is too black and white.
If you have read his writings, he has fairly convincingly argued from first principles that software should be free. I, and many others, have read this and been inspired, because the world he ultimately wants to live in is about co-operation and sharing.
However, RMS often leaves people behind with his extreme on/off view. This sentance is pivotal:
Users cannot be free while using a non-free program
This is seriously distorting his already bent definition of "free". Freedom, as he defines it, can be applied to software (and with a bit of work books, music etc) and while you might argue with the word used it's a useful concept to have.
Here though, he applies the word free to users, and this is a different thing entirely. Worse, he asserts that all it takes is one piece of non-free software to spoil his utopian dream.
I think a lot of people like the idea of free software, but we're willing to accept compromise. It's not an all or nothing proposition. Free software have inherantly good vibes because we're not imposing arbitrary limitations on what people can do with what we made (which is ultimately beneficial) but it's not like I'm a slave to the machine because I use the NVidia video drivers.
Yeah, I'd like to have free drivers, but Alan Cox himself has said he cannot think of a way to justify NVidia freeing their code - their fears of what would happen to their business if they did that are justified, he thinks. That's good enough for me. In this case, it just isn't practical. I don't like it, but that's life.
I read today that Win98 is nearly 25% of the desktop clients on the internet.
If Win98 were open, somebody would be stepping in to support it as Microsoft bowed out.
Win98 is not open, and now everyone who drank the coolaid is beginning to feel the effects of the arsenic.
Commercial software is always a ring in your nose. The GPL can also be a ring, but it is lighter and the developing entity generally does not hold the chain as tightly.
The most effective way to strengthen our community for the future is to spread understanding of the value of freedom--to teach more people to recognize the moral unacceptability of non-free software. People who value freedom are, in the long term, its best and essential defense.
I don't think Mr. Stallman defines freedom in the same way I do. I don't think Mr. Stallman's concept of morality is anywhere near mine either. I just can't take someone seriously who tells me that non-free software is morally unnacceptable. I think Mr. Stallman is a bit out of touch with reality and with his importance to the world.
The open source community is much better off gaining credibility and notoriety by making better software and being an inclusive place where developers and tinkerers hone their craft than by suggesting non-free software is immoral.
What the FSF proposes isn't to give away your software for free. You can charge for your work and you are encouraged to do this. But once you've sold your software to another you, you may let he/she to redistribute it for free or sell it under the same terms you used. You people who use the software are not ruled by the software or by the company.
Stallman doesn't encourage comunism or non-profit activies. He encourage the free software for the freedom of the users.
I could explain a lot of things here, but I would say exactly what have already been said at the GNU site [gnu.org]. Maybe you should read it really careful before saying thinks like 'turn away from capitalism'.
If I were to design hardware for a computer I should (for the greater good) provide open source drivers for my hardware (this would not mean I would have to provide source code for advanced hardware engines). This would allow my hardware to be used under many systems (and would increase profits, but that isn't important).
If I were to design hardware for a computer I should not have to release the schematics for my hardware and let others make and sell their own devices (this would decrease profits and might ruin me).
We should stop RMS before he says any more. I don't give a shit about Graphical User Interfaces or ridiculous beards but that attitude is wrong.
I can see where he is going with this. But before much of this can happen, other things have to happen. I recently changed my sig to compare RMS to Abraham Lincoln. I did some (quick, incomplete) research on the emancipation proclimation. One site describes is as "The first of many documents that slowly freed human slaves in the United States." The operative word here being "slowly". Much of the tech industry is still in its infancy. The best we can hope for right now is a "melting pot" effect. As people become more tech-aware and tech-savvy, maybe they'll embrace free software more, and even contribute to it. All it takes is enough of proprietary software, commercial entities and monopolies to get on the nerves of most people before radical change can take effect. I just believe that RMS is really ahead of his time. He could very well be the "first of his kind that slowly freed people from technical constraints."
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Monday January 05, 2004 @12:26PM (#7881528)
The goals are different. He even mentions it on the article, if you care just about popularity, closed source is more than welcome. If you're a cheap developer who wants to make money of other people's work without giving any back, LGPL is a blessing, GPL is bad. But if your goal is freedom, Stallman most likely is your hero and you agree with almost everything he says. So, don't call him crazy zealot just because his ideas and goals aren't the same as yours. All he is doing is being coerent to his principles. BTW, he's not telling that proprietary software turns people to antisocial, what he says is proprietary software is a reflex of how antisocial and coopoerative our society is. Also, as an economics student, I must point out: this is not anti-capitalist, comunist thing, it can be a market similar to most out there, one close example being the exchange of rights to use patented technology between companies.
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Monday January 05, 2004 @12:31PM (#7881574)
Stallman asserts that "non-free software carries with it an antisocial system that prohibits coopoeration and community." This is MOST certainly overstating the importance of software's influence on each person's ability to cooperate and experience community. And I assert that this is where the open source movement fails.
Tell that to people in developing nations that can't afford to buy licenses for proprietary software. Those who wouldn't have access to a computer or the internet at all if not for Free Software.
One, one part of that economy of scale is that it is very often useful for a company that has taken Free software and modified it for internal use, to release those modifications back to the original project. The advantages are that it is now someone else's job to keep your modifications compatible with new versions of the software, and that some other company may actually improve your code and also release it back, for you to use. The first of those (stay compatible) is my favorite reason for releasing stuff back.
The second point is: Have you tried SCID [sf.net]? I think it's a really great chess database application and it works on both Linux and Windows.
I also disagree with his proposal that we should shun proprietary software for the sake of encouraging the development of free software. Any business should do what best, subject to the law, makes money for its owners. The profit motive, which is responsible for the great efficiency of our economy, leaves scant room for altruistic software preferences.
This is not a universal constant, it's just
your preference of what you consider important.
You say "Any business should do what best, subject to the law, makes money for its owners". This is
a philosophical/ethical statement, and your
ethics on this subject differ from Stallman's.
For that matter they differ from those running
the many and various non-profits out there.
There are other motivations that making money.
That's not to say that your motivation is
necessarily a bad one, of course. Just
that you need to realise it's only a
motivation, not the only one. So if the
behaviour and statements of people like Stallman
perplex you, then it's because he is marching
to a completely different beat.
This is certainly overstating the importance of software's influence on each person's ability to cooperate and experience community. And I assert that this is where the open source movement fails.
Except for two little facts:
Stallman is a member - a founding member - of the free software movement, not the open source movement.
Both the free software and open source movements are succeeding spectacularly.
The general popluation doesn't care about the right to see the source code, most of the users of computers can't do any thing with the code any way.
The general population doesn't install new plumbing fixtures either. But only a fool would buy a house where all the pipes were kept locked away with only one plumber having the key.
Math is free, but we still have mathematicians. Laws are free (usually), but politicians still get paid to write them. Phone books are free, but people still get paid to compile them. Land title histories are free, but employees of title insurance companies still get paid to research them. "Free Software" doesn't mean software developers work for free. It's simply a matter of whether or not you want your job to be recreating stuff made by other people or creating new things.
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Monday January 05, 2004 @12:42PM (#7881669)
The current U.S. administration says (my paraphrasing):
The most effective way to strengthen the world for the future is to spread understanding of the value of freedom--to teach more people to recognize the moral unacceptability of non-free peoples. People who value freedom are, in the long term, its best and essential defense.
That's an assertion only. In order for me to accept it, you have to present a justification, too. Discuss!
If most people's expectation of software was to create "cooperation and community", RMS mmight be onto something here. But the truth is that most people and businesses want software that fulfills a particular need (or set of needs).
But among those needs is support; the ability to get questions answered and to have changes made.
There are two possible sources of support. Proprietary vendors, who keep you trapped with lock-ins and who can drop you at any time. (Like MS is dropping Windows 98 users). Or an open cooperating community of users and vendors, where you are not locked in and can almost always find help because you're dealing with peers. (If Windows 98 was free software or open source, the community of users could band together to fund continuing development and support.)
Cooperation and community are among the software needs that people and businesses have. Since software is still a very new thing, most don't realize this until they get burned; but they're learning. Which is why more and more people are becoming interested in free software.
Why will homebrew hardware be necessary? I believe there will always be a part of the population which will not like DRM hardware, and will therefore retain a demand for DRM-free hardware. Luckily hardware works with the natural laws of supply and demand.
Are you a troll? Or are you actually comparing the moral courage that eliminated slavery, and triggered the bloodiest war in US history, to a particular method of software methodology?
Don't get me wrong, I think the GPL is a good idea. But what really turns me off about GNU is their casting of the GPL as some sort of ideological crusade between good and evil. Nobody is being oppressed or having their human rights violated by using proprietary software. The market should be allowed to decide which model should prevail (or if both should coexist), without being tainted by some sort of acquired "morality".
I believe future historians will judge RMS as having done about as much harm as good.
This will be taken as flamebait, but I don't care.
Freedom right now in the USA is only limited to what can make them more money, not other countries that might limit/threaten their freedom.
By this I DO NOT mean in a direct assault on freedom itself, but by affecting the standards of living in the USA. The recent exposed plan in the 70/80's to invade oil rich countries to protect their oil needs is only one example. Need I mention DMCA and other laws to protect the corporate companies rather then the consumer.
Also note this is not a reflection of the mass population in USA, but the direction the goverment and corporate pressures on them are steering USA into.
Pretty soon the USA will turn into a class based system where only the rich and influential can effect the government and freedom of it's population goes out the window.
The scary part is most of it's citizens and for that matter the world will think the USA is still in a democracy, but it will be ruled by the rich and influential
Majority vote is only effective if the votes are informed and heard, not when they are recounted and recounted to fit somebody elses view of how the results should have been (yes I do believe that was a direct alteration to change the outcome of the election).
We are building a religion, we are building it bigger, we are widening the corridor and adding new lanes
If you haven't heard the song I would highly recommend it (get it how you please).
Now to the rest of the conversation. The best quote I've ever read is by far: "GNU is like Sex, better when RMS isn't involved" - anoynmous? How true such a comment can be. RMS has again decided to trump his own definition of free by stating that a user cannot be free if they are using a non-free system. But wait isn't that the beauty of free, not that it doesn't require cost, but it is a CHOICE. Can you not be free to chose to use Microsoft or Apple based products?
Are these systems Free Software, of course not, and they will never be as they are part of the new social system we in the 'biz' like to call "Reality". In this system of socioeconomics people like retribution for their work in which you cannot get money for nothin, and you have to actually force those who benifit from your work to give you retribution. Why? Because if people can take something without paying for it, THEY WILL.
Do car dealerships have a sign on the door that says "Here's a car, you can have it for free, but we'd like you to give us some cash for it please". Of course not, and that's why Free Software will fail, but then there's the Open Source movement which seems to have a much better chance as the happy medium between the corperate society and communistic FSF movement.
Communism in which the common man acts with regards to the community as a whole and not the individualistic gain of the self, is not our system. While it seems nice, cozy, and utopic, its not here and my magic 8-ball says that all possibilities point to no. Write all the papers and essays you want, but I'll stick to what works and what works is propritary software.
"I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks" - Fake Bill Gates (simpson's)
"You can't make money by giving something away moron" - My uncle
Replace "capitalism" with "free market" and I agree with you. Because capitalism seems to be leading to a situation where big are so big that they can control the market, and it's no longer free...
Damn fine post. I think a point you make that some miss is that commodity type applications will become free where as there will still be a demand in the market to innovate. I think what this means is that the number of developers will decrease while the skill demand will rise. Free or open software will have the effect, particularly in conjunction with off-shoring, of reducing the number of jobs available to us as commodity developers. But there will still be a healthy demand for custom developers. I personally think that this is A Very Good Thing. Conflict and competition combined with a higher standards base can only benefit society as a whole.
I just can't take someone seriously who tells me that non-free software is morally unnacceptable.
To believe that non-free software is morally acceptable, is to believe that it is acceptable to use force to prevent users from sharing or making changes to software.
I think it's worth seriously considering that this may be a false proposition.
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Monday January 05, 2004 @12:54PM (#7881784)
Your concept of "importance to the world" is probably not the same as mine, but I think if you lined up all the people in the world in order of their importance to the world, RMS would be closer to the front of the line than most of us.
RMS seems to believe free software use should be an all or nothing proposition, especially with regard to proprietary ports to free systems. That's a fine argument to make.
But what about a more gradual approach? So what if someone wants to run Weblogic and Oracle on Linux instead of Weblogic and Oracle on Windows? Maybe the transition to Tomcat and PostgreSQL on Linux is too much for them right now, for technical or political reasons. Maybe they'll switch eventually.
Or, maybe they won't. Isn't it still a positive change, a change providing more freedom? Would RMS rather that that user just stay on Windows forever, using no free or open software at all? I realize that RMS in his ideology above all else, and certainly above any pragmatism, but this kind of transition is a win for everyone. Even if the example user never switches to 100% free software.
RMS is all talk and no walk RMS has done a lot for free software. He has written significant amounts of it.
He doesn't want Linux called GNU/Linux, he wants a GNU system with the Linux kernel called GNU/Linux.
Think of this like buying a GM vehicle (system) with a Honda engine(kernel). You wouldn't call it a Honda, Likely either a GM, or GM/Honda vehicle.
The SCO mess is a temporary trivial harrassment, not really a serious problem. They have no proven claims, and unless they actually document one, they will probaly collapse under IBMs countersuit.
Not really a comment, but more as a question for further debate...
I think most of us have the instinct that democratic gov't should be using "open" software tools because of their transparency. However I wonder how we can distinguish the use of software compared to other "closed" tools such as automobiles. There doesn't seem to be a similar requirement for cars or fax machines that govt may use... is this fair?
Red Hat (the most popular distro) is dropping support, and nobody has stepped up.
Uh, actually Progeny [progeny.com] is offering support for Redhat. If you want an up-to-date debian, you use unstable, which isn't. And most aborted sourceforge projects I've seen seem to have been aborted due to lack of interest. So what?
Trolls and jokes aside, today would be a good occasion for everyone in here to recognize what kind of changes and good ideas the Free Software movement - and then the Open Source movement, too - brought. However obtuse RMS can be nowadays about some stuff ( I mostly agree with him but he seems to diminish freedom of choice too much ), you just have to recognize the vision and hard work this man did ; here's one hell of a dedicated person, and rightly so. That's the kind of passion that enabled Linus Torvalds to follow through as well, giving FLOSS the enormous possibilities it has today and permitting everyone to develop together better tools for a better tomorrow.
Realize that open source software is the way of the future ; anything else would be an intolerable regression. The fight for not letting that happen really started 20 years ago ; my deepest respect to Richard Matthew Stallman. ( I won't care for stupid replies. )
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Monday January 05, 2004 @01:05PM (#7881891)
RMS doesn't say you shouldn't charge for software, he says that the software should come with the FREEdoms to modify, share and copy it. Notice that the FSF sells GNU software on CD on their website...
RMS still doesn't get it (Score:2)
by IGnatius T Foobar [SNIP]
Software is a tool to get a job done. People do not turn on their computers to experience freedom. They turn on their computers to write, communicate, calculate, or whatever.
[SNIP]
Free speech thrives at UNCENSORED! BBS - http://uncensored.citadel.org [citadel.org]
Tell me, then, why should we care about Free Speech but not Free Software? I can buy perfectly good outlets for my speech, as long as I'm rich, what's the problem? I don't want to say things to "experience freedom" either, I just want to get my message to other people.
He has said [ofb.biz] however, that he doesn't recommend Debian because of the free vs non-free issue and instead encourages the use of GNU/LinEx.
This goes to the core of what I and many others don't like about RMS -- he dislikes choice. Debian strongly encourages Free Software. Heck, they were founded on the concept of a Free Software distribution of Linux. However, because Debian offers users the option of non-Free Software, RMS no longer recommends it. In his somewhat Orwellian stance, RMS boldly claims that to be free one must not have the choice to use commercial software. He's so wrapped up in the concept that not sharing your source is an inherently Evil idea that he forgets that true Freedom includes the option to shoot yourself in the foot.
I dislike the polarized, fanatical "either with us or with the terrorists" stance that he takes towards proprietary software. I don't like it in politics, and I don't like it in the philosophy of software development. Plus, I don't like how he has only words of criticism and scorn for those who are making moves towards his stance but have not yet fully committed to it. You're just not good enough unless you're pushing for a total abolition of non-Free Software.
He's certainly more civil nowdays than to openly claim to hate Debian, but he certainly doesn't think it's good enough, and that's pretty much the parent poster's point.
I don't have a problem with the license choice, just the hypocrisy.
There is no hypocrisy here. RMS does not advocate GNOME because people can develop non-free software. He advocates it because you can develop any software, unrestricted (i.e. free).
Others in the GNOME community may push the non-free angle of the above, but this doesn't make RMS or other FSS proponents hypocritical.
RMS argues that the goals of open source development ought to be freedom rather than popularity. Yet popularity serves a very real purpose in that it attracts money and interest in free software. To that end, proprietary software that makes GNU/Linux more usable to the masses is a good thing in that it makes the system more palatable to end users who have specific needs. RMS is a great torch bearer for altruistic geeks, but actual paid jobs developing free software do not automatically spring up from the rhetoric.
I don't care how much you hate profit and business, they get things done.
Really? Slavery is unacceptable because all people are created equal, and no man can possess another man. That doesn't exactly support "liberating software." Do you feel that it is an inherit right of software to not be enslaved? Then, do all of the Bill of Rights apply to software? Freedom of speech, right to bear arms, right to assemble peacefully? Would you bring chargest against software for inciting a riot? How would you interrogate it?
If you have a free software but it isn't working well and doesn't do what you exactly need, no matter: you can just fix it because you have the source code. But if you don't know how to program, you can ask some friend of your to do it. If you don't have a programmer friend, you can hire someone to do it. That's all the beauty.
And it sounds great in principle. It's in practice that it runs into trouble. Imagine, for instance, that I'm a freelance graphic designer, or do 3D visualization work, or whatever. And imagine that there are features of Photoshop or Quark or Maya or AVS that aren't available to me in the Gimp or Sodipodi or Blender or OpenDX or whatever (actually, I think the latter two are open source but not free software, but anyway). The suggestion above would be to roll up my sleeves and program in those features. But, in our example, I can't: I'm not a programmer. Nor do I have the time to become one and do that work when all my time is spent doing the actual work for which I get paid.
So then the second answer is to ask a programmer friend. But, even assuming I have said programmer friend, and assuming that programmer friend doesn't have something he/she would rather be doing, these aren't trivial enhancements we're talking about and such functionality will take a while.
So then the next suggestion above is to hire someone. With what money? And how can I justify spending ten times or more the cost of some proprietary software package hiring programmers to improve (or create) a free software competitor? Especially when my hypothetical freelance business probably isn't exactly rolling in the dough.
Well, RMS would say that the justification for spending that money to improve free software options is a dedication to freedom. And if it's really not possible to spend that money on that purpose, because I simply don't have it, then dedication to freedom demands foregoing that proprietary option, and simply doing without that feature set. But in my hypothetical case, that means doing without that client, or that income. So much for my hypothetical business; time to find another way to feed my kids.
My example is contrived, of course. For many (most? dunno.) users of proprietary software, free software alternatives exist that will do everything they want, and do it well. But for many others, that's not true. And telling those users to simply forego doing what they want or need to do as a stand for a cause is a very big request. Of course, people have sacrificed their economic health, and much more, for the cause of freedom before. But not for something as seemingly esoteric as free software; rather, it's been the freedoms accompanying equality of race or gender or religious background under the law.
Until RMS can persuade people that the freedom to modify the software one uses is as important as the freedom to work in the field of your choice without being held back by race or gender or religion, people and businesses are going to have a tough time justifying sacrificing their financial security for that freedom.
Oh, and it shouldn't matter, but just in case it does: I don't have any propriety software installed on my machine, and very little open-source-but-not-free-software stuff as well. I'm not making this post because I don't believe in free software; rather, because I don't think some free software advocates really realize just what big a thing they're asking people to do, and consequently how large a burden of justifying it they have.
It's not suprising that a guy named "Pave Low" - a designation for a helicopter widely used by U.S. Special Forces - would make derisive "hippie socialist" comments. That alone has most people tuning out his argument.
But I'll humor him. People who contribute to open source don't have disdain. That's just paranoia on your part. Many people straddle the fence between closed and open software. Some people se the educational aspects of using open source as a means to be self taught. Many Linux users hate Microsoft, but I don't think you can make sweeping generalizations like that.
Now, don't you have some Japanese people to round up and put into internment camps or something?
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Monday January 05, 2004 @01:26PM (#7882099)
(please forgive me for responding to this troll, but so many of the assertions he/she makes are common to non-trolls)
RMS asserts no such thing. Only that it may happen. There is ample evidence to support such a concern, so it makes sense to worry about it. Or maybe you have some real evidence that RMS has said this thing you claim he said? I've read a lot of his work and I don't recall it.
No one said public domain was not free. But most of what is in the public domain is not so at the gift of its author, rather it falls into public domain because the exclusionary rights granted by copyright have expired (or were never recognized in the first place). Perhaps you'd like to list for us all of the public domain software you have written? If the list is quite short (or non-existent as I suspect), then give it a rest. You are looking a gift horse in the mouth.
Bull. First, it's the GPL-- General Public License. GNU is a project of the Free Software Foundation. Get it right. Second, copyright law is what limits your freedom. If there were no copyright law at all, then the GPL would actually limit your freedom. But then the GPL would have no force in that situation either, so it's a meaningless assertion. In the meantime, the GPL offers you more rights than you would otherwise have, so complaining that it limits your freedom seems disingenuous at best.
"The open source community is much better off gaining credibility and notoriety by making better software and being an inclusive place where developers and tinkerers hone their craft than by suggesting non-free software is immoral."
...And this can happen quite easily, as more developers and managers realize that open-source and free-software are not bound at the hip.
I think many would agree that open-source can be an extremely effective development methodology - I have benefitted both personally and professionally from it, on a 'binary' level, as well as from the freedom to interact with other developers, many more talented than myself, thus learning along the way.
But it is not the panacea for all software development, there continues to be a place for proprietary projects. I have to believe this for now, because in my reality, much of my income is derrived from such projects. The true benefit of the more visible products of open-source, Linux, as well as various web and application servers, database servers, and the myriad supporting libraries available, is the formation of a core platform. This platform has and will continue to become a standard upon which other purpose-specific applications may be developed. Having such a common, mature, and well-tested platform is an amazing accomplishment that speeds the development of everything built upon it, but these purpose-specific applications (business/accounting software, scientific packages, art/music packages, etc.) will, for the near term, continue to benefit from their commercial nature.
I also find a core hypocracy in the view of 'free-software' as delimited by the GPL. One that, for me at least, colors Stallman's whole movement as something of a religion. I refer specifically to the requirement that derrivative works must also be released under the GPL. While I personally, on a moral and ethical level, support contributing back any and all modifications to open-source works, is making it mandatory actually free as in freedom? Or is it merely an attempt to make software free as in beer?
To me, this aspect of the GPL is as if the US Constitution's first amendment was rewritten to establish freedom of religion, so long as the religion is Christian. It gives you wide-latitude, yet still constrains you to a 'sandbox' of known proportions.
The argument for this element of the GPL is that it maintains the freedom of the code, barring it from ever being 'closed' -- but this argument is false. Once released, code cannot be 'closed'. Sure it can be used by people or businesses that you don't like, and hidden from the view of those business' customers. But it cannot be magically erased from the brains of those that have seen it, nor can the rights of the original authors be magically erased somehow (at least under current copyright). Further, the continued use of BSD-licensed, Apache-licensed, and other similar licensed code in both open and closed projects shows that licenses granting 'absolute' freedom of use do work.
I can only conclude that the purpose of the GPL is to further an agenda to which I do not subscribe.
And so in my pesonal and professional life, I make a clean separation between open-source, which I firmly beleive is a proven and tested methodolgy and a genuine social phenomenon, and 'free-software', which for me can only be defined by the absoute freedom to do anything you want with the code, and not by the current definitions of the 'movement'.
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Monday January 05, 2004 @01:33PM (#7882170)
>copyright law is what limits your freedom.
The copyright only exits if you never ever publically put the source code into the public domain.
Once it is in the public domain, that exact copy of the source code is in the public domain forever.
RMS main mantra of 'free as in beer' in promoting GNU as a license can be considered, at best, false advertising since the software is not free to be used as you wish, including putting into a commercial product, it is only free of cost.
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Monday January 05, 2004 @01:34PM (#7882195)
Why should Microsoft support 7 year old products when there are newer better alternatives available that aren't that expensive?
Because the expensive part is not the software but the new hardware it requires. Maybe you've got enough money to upgrade your hardware and software every few years, but a lot of people in this world don't. It's hard to convince someone on a tight budget he has to throw away a perfectly good machine because the software upgrade would turn it into a snail.
Or are you suggesting people should run XP on a 200Mhz 64MB machine? There still are a lot of sub-Ghz machines around, especially in the not-so-rich countries of this world.
Ah, but your example is NOT contrived. I'm a programmer by living, and encounter that all the time. The idea of "you can just fix it" isn't really true. If it's a minor glitch in a simple program, no problem. But even small problems in arelatively naiscent project management programs are too large for me to spend my time on - for the same reason you cite. Sure, I could fix them, and I'd love to, and we'd all be better off in the long run, but somehow the mortgage company isn't so concerned about that, so I have to use something else in order to complete my current project.
"Is it ethical to limit a naturally limitless resource to make a buck?"
Yes. If I have created something, it is mine to do with as I will. I have no ethical obligation to give it away, even if doing so would cost me nothing. Giving it away might well be a very nice thing to do, but that doesn't mean not giving it away is wrong.
People (not necessarily me) think Stallman is "some kind of hippie-communist-crackpot", because they can't see why he would disagree with this seemingly obvious assertion, unless he thinks making a buck is inherently unethical (which he does not, as far as I can tell).
This thread speaks to a deeper issue that I would love to see discussed in greater detail.
Specifically, it appears that many of the most vocal proponents of free-software have already made their money, and have acheived a certain amount of financial freedom. It is much easier to make simple black and white statements about freedom, software, or anything else, when you have been freed from the responsibily to provide for yourself and your family.
There are a large number of technical people who derrive income from entities that produce proprietary products. I count myself as one. Somehow, it just seems more important to me to feed my children than to subscribe to Stallman's world view. Does that make me evil?
Come on, we're talking software here, how exactly is this tied in with the greater good of humanity? If I discovered my company was murdering people, I'd quit and go to the authorities. But since they're not, I'll take my check please.
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Monday January 05, 2004 @01:57PM (#7882426)
not for something as seemingly esoteric as free software
This is your most salient point.
The stuff about paying for development... if you can afford several hundred dollars for a Photoshop license, you can afford to contribute to a development fund which will work with a programmer to get certain plug-ins written for the GIMP (or to rewrite the internals, or whatever). Obviously Photoshop did not start out as the program it is now, and it was only the act of people paying for it that allowed it to progress. I think worrying about how the software will get developed is a straw man.
It's the freedom issue and the esotericy (?) of it when it comes to software that is the more difficult and up-front issue. Americans, lately, don't seem wedded to a lot of more obvious forms of freedom. But even if we can find someone who will agree that basic human rights are important, we still need some persuasive arguments about the need for free software.
I suppose we'll need to hone our "car with the hood welded shut" and recipe analogies in ways that are more understandable or convincing. And further we have to start showing that there are explicit dangers to less esoteric liberties lurking in the background of proprietary software (e.g. Diebold's voting machines). I also find distinct advantages to using free software that I believe are directly related to the free-ness of the software.
Best example I can think of is Mozilla. Look at how much more pleasant the web is when you can feel like you have control over cookies, when certain JS functions can be turned off (so that deceptive JS cannot be used), when pop-up control is part and parcel of the browser, tabbed browsing is available, etc etc. I think these features exist as part of the core software because Mozilla is Free Software. It is clear evidence to my mind that the process of respecting freedom works. As RMS says, it takes time.... but look at it go!:)
OK, I'll bite, but I swear, after this last one, I gotta go back to work!
Assuming there is such a thing as a limitless resource, it is NOT ethical to impose a limit on it to make a buck. This would explain why I am allowed to breath without charge.
However, I challenge you to provide examples of resources similar to air, that would be perceived as 'limitless'. Careful! One might suggest water, but what about the construction of mains and other infrastructure for delivering water? It is ethical for providers of such infrastructure to recoup their costs. If the entity is a commercial enterprise, a reasonalbe profit for their efforts is ethical as well.
Note, I do believe that various governemnt and provate entities abuse this philosophy and charge too much, but that is the topic of yet another thread.
Do people only use computer's at work? At work, the person who makes the choice for the end user is normally the boss, so I don't think those people's opinions really matter in the discussion.
For everyone else, the whole choice thing is something you just make and live with it. It's not about having every little thing being written as free software. It's about using free software when it's available because you want to support free software because you're willing to accept the means of using software that is superior in the end.
In a less abstract sense, GNU has done an amazing job at fixing a lot of the problems (though not all) of the user-land unix environment. I personally would prefer using gcc over a proprietary unix's cc compiler just because gcc is superior (being free is also nice). And yes, I've used proprietary unix's because there are times you don't have a choice.
But when I make the choice, I almost always choose the free solution. And now, when there *is* fully free systems available, it's a lot easier than 20 years ago when there was nothing available. I still make concessions, so I'll admit I don't reach Stallman's ideal. I don't believe I need freedom in console games or the firmware on my keyboard, but I made the choice that I'd rather use a few proprietary things until something non-proprietary comes along (the one exception is nvidia's drivers, though thanks to patent laws there's no way a GPLed driver can become superior to nvidia's drivers -- a great example of why software patents are evil).
I have been using Linux for two years on my computer, and I like it a lot. I made the choice more because I got sick of Windows and its lack of a good, free C compiler (cygwin doesn't count to me mostly because it's more or less installing *nix on top of Windows because Windows is so sucky at fulfilling the environment needed). But if I were to try to get other people to use Linux or GNU, maybe it would be better to get them to support the idea of freedom than to push the ulitarian approach.
Users cannot be free while using a non-free program.
Hey RMS, didn't they offer intorductory logic at MIT?
Seriously, there is no logic to the above statement, it is totally bereft of value as a supporting argument. Particularly since it is patently false.
What should have been said is:
Users cannot be free until the M$'s and RMS's of the world let them make their own software choices free of obfuscation and misrepresentation.
Do you really seek to abridge the rights of end users to use the product which does the job best for them? Do you seek to abridge the rights of developers to dispose of their work as they see fit?
This argument is more akin to religious extremism than reasoned argument. I do not debate your right to have strong (and wrong) opinions. I will hotly debate the conclusions you would have people draw from your opinions.
Your assertion about the Invidious Video Driver Et. Al demonstrates this clearly. Your position seems to indicate that using any non-free software to resolve a problem is somehow wrong. Nothing can be further from the truth. Given two pieces of software X and Y where X is non-free but conforms to the requirements, and Y is free but does not satisfy all requirements, that users should select Y over X, despite the fact that X performs the required job and Y does not. This is where the argument gets it's religious flavor. What other term can I apply to a position which exhorts users to deny the evidence of their senses in the pursuit of some (likely unattainable) Xanadu?
As for those who create software, who has the right to determine how they dispose of their property? Your position on this is merely the antithesis of the Microsoft/SCO position. Nor is your position any more tenable than theirs. Microsoft/SCO assert that free software is somehow immoral, and you assert the opposite. I suggest that neither of your opinions matter a hill of beans.
It is unseemly for anyone who purports to support Free, as in freedom, to seek to villify developers for exercising their freedoms.
The simple fact of the matter is that your extremist position is no more valid than the extremist positions of your antagonists. Like most such positions, it has no place in the real world. In the real world, you seek solutions which work, regardless of their dogmatic purity. Several times in the last century people tried superimposing dogma over reality, by and large those experiments failed. Those that still are with us have had to yield to reality to continue to exist.
There is no one "right" answer in the free v. non-free software debate. The "right" answer is not blanket dogma, but the result of an unbiased analysis of the situation, and a choice based on that analysis and the constraints of the real world we live in, wether you are a producer or a consumer of software.
One of the difficulties I personally have with RMS is that there are niggling little inconsistencies between what he says and what he does.
Specifically, while he says that he is fine with software being for "fee", his actions, especially as measured against the LGPL, make that quite hard. This thinly disguised dislike of commercial software bleeds over into his general worldview. He clearly is very binary about whether something is "open" or not, and uses the wonderful "non-free Invidious video driver" example. (Am I the only one who found that particular spoonerism amusing, BTW?)
So, because he can only see the world as "free" or "non-free", he is unwilling to admit that things like video drivers, which are not published as open source, may nonetheless be of significant value to the OSS community. Another way of looking at this is that he simply does not believe in the notion of Intellectual Property, and therefore is unwilling to accept that there are reasonable commercial cases where it should be protected.
I'm probably being to quick to criticize as (Heaven knows!), we all owe him a lot, but I never trust a man that has a simple world view...
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Monday January 05, 2004 @02:19PM (#7882613)
If Linus was never born, eventually, someone else would have written a kernel. It might have come a few years later, and it might not be as good as the linux kernel, but it would come.
If RMS was never born, BSD would be closed/proprietary. So would KDE and gnome wouldn't exist. The GPL wouldn't exist and the face of Free software would be completely different.
"The less a man makes declarative statements, the less he's apt to look foolish in retrospect." --Quentin Tarantino
Thats true. Ever try to debate religion with an agnostic? it aint easy! Linus takes this approach with Free Software. Its hard to find fault with anything he says because he says very little. He is a good diplomat; he unifies the clans and presents a pleasant face for bussness.
The only problem with this is there are important things that need to be said! RMS is the one saying them. He gets down and dirty despite it being a position of less dignitty. He is not socially conscious enough to be diplomatic, he is blunt and to the point like a laser and i respect that.
There are 2 types of GNU users: -Those who use it because they feel its the best tool for the job, the Open Source Movement -Those who use it because they feel that Freedom is a philosophically superior position, the Free Software Movement
If the situation was reversed, and windows was Free and GNU/linux was closed, I would be a Windows zealot. So, in a way, the license is more important then the code.
Its unfortunate that some newbies have the impresson that he is trying to take credit for "linux". He deserves more credit then he is asking for. Also unfortunate, that its easier to understand Linus' contribution then his, because his is more complex.
He is not trying to "steal linux". He is the granddaddy of us all, and where he leads i will gladly follow.
Today, I can choose to write free software or closed software. It's my choice, and I like it that way. I have nothing against the free software movement, but I disagree with RMS when he suggests that I shouldn't have the freedom to develop software and try to make it a commercial product of it. Why should I only be allowed to market services like installation and support?
Software developers should be like academians? OK. Not all mathematicians share their advances. I know some who develop proprietary models of the stock market for an investment company. It's not for everyone, but shouldn't they have the freedom to choose such a pursuit.
And what makes software so special? Shouldn't hardware be open? Aren't chips mostly designed with source code now? Aren't production costs getting so low that they are essentially commodities like software?
A key element (to me, at least) of the above thread - there has to be an infrastructure in place to allow money to flow to developers, in return for features to flow to users. This is Non-Trivial - in fact, it's what most dot-bomb enterpreneurs called a Business Model, and we saw how many of those actually worked out, didn't we?
Hooking up users and producers is where business, finance, and marketing people live, and they're pretty good at it. Unfortunately, they want to be paid, too, so we're no longer talking about just paying programmers. Then there's the startup costs - it takes a while to get a critical mass of users, so unless you're working for an existing company, non-profit, university, or government, you have venture capital folks, and later shareholders, to answer to.
Who is making a profit off free software? Red Hat? Are they making it selling software, selling customization, or selling support?
It may be Free software, but until there's some kind of business model in place to allow Profit from its generation and support, then proprietary software will continue to exist, even if only in niche markets where there aren't enough interested hackers to build solutions for free.
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Monday January 05, 2004 @03:48PM (#7883492)
I disagree. Of course, I agree that you should be free to discriminate against military organisations, but I think it's inherently incompatible with Free Software.
Free Software doesn't restrict use. At all. It grants rights to make copies under some circumstances. Once you start attempting to restrict use, you end up in EULA territory.
Of course, you could restrict distribution - simply don't grant anybody the right to make copies, and make anybody you give a copy to sign a contract that states that they won't give it to a military organisation. But that's not very Free now, is it?
The old Open Source dodge and weave. Your argument is a cop out. Either OSS is ready for the prime time or not. You either are a bunch of backroom hacks or serious players. Decide. Can't have it both ways. Don't want to answer to the end user experience? Don't bitch about Microsoft owning the desktop market AND the server market. No, really. Stop. Want end users to USE your software? Well, then you have to answer for the work you've done. Sorry, that's how it works. You see I don't care about source code. I have a computer. I have tasks to accomplish. Source code is a foreign language that I don't speak, and have no intention of speaking. So for me, you're no different than MS. You have a product you want me to use, so it better be compelling. If that is too much to ask of you, see my point above then stop wondering why right thinking individuals (and business) will gladly pay Microsoft. Either get in or STFU.
So then the next suggestion above is to hire someone. With what money? And how can I justify spending ten times or more the cost of some proprietary software package hiring programmers to improve (or create) a free software competitor? Especially when my hypothetical freelance business probably isn't exactly rolling in the dough.
You are partially correct. OSS should not end up costing more than proprietary solutions. Personally hiring 3rd-party developers to improve the OSS you use rarely works.
This is why all the major OSS projects need to adopt means by which ordinary end users, such as the hypothetical graphics artist in this example, can donate reasonable amounts to respective projects. In return, they should get a say in prioritizing feature development. Considering how much graphics artists spend on proprietary packages, there is a lot of money out there. If a quarter of the people who use Photoshop skipped an upgrade and instead chipped in $100 to support the Gimp project, that would pay for a whole lot of developer brain-hours. Yes, it would be a longer-term investment, but certainly one that would pay off.
A more likely scenario is the graphics studio that finds Gimp to be, say, 99% of what they need and are willing to donate to the project what they would have spent on Photoshop in return for making Gimp 100% of what they need in the next 2 months. Then, 2 months later, another studio finds that the improved Gimp is now 99% of what they need.. and this cycle continues. In the real world, where not everyone is a developer, this is how collaboration in Open Source development must work.
It's as simple as this: If we want quality OSS, we need to financially support those who create it but are not financially rewarded elsewhere for their labors.
Stallman asserts that "non-free software carries with it an antisocial system that prohibits coopoeration and community." This is MOST certainly overstating the importance of software's influence on each person's ability to cooperate and experience community. And I assert that this is where the open source movement fails. While open source software promotes cooperation and community for the developers involved in its creation, it doesn't attempt to build community by creating more user friendly tools.
Well put.
The Free Software movement (like the Open Source Movement) is not at all focused on creating community. It is focused on giving people real power to use computers whose facilities were only partially available to their owners using non-free software.
A community is attracted to this, in part because it gives the community members more value for their money. For example, if I buy a PC with a network card today, I can install a free operating system and can run a free web server and a free database for no extra expenditure of cash.
This is not a new community. The core of this community is the same one that always wanted to get more value out of the things they use. This is the community of people who were called "power users" or "hackers" when they used non-free software. Thus, Stallman's assertion that "non-free software carries with it an antisocial system that prohibits cooperation and community" is not an overstatement, but simply factually incorrect.
Free software did not create the community. It is the community that creates free software.
Concerning your assertion about the failure of the Free Software movement to serve the community by providing user-friendly tools, I believe that is an overstatement of the case. Free software is constantly being built, improved, added to, and rebuilt. The success of the free software movement comes from the fact that when the community faces a need (for more user-friendly tools, for example) it builds upon what the community has already created. In essence, the free software community is a recursive process whose growth can be summed up: "Build it and they will come and build it."
Specifically, while he says that he is fine with software being for "fee", his actions, especially as measured against the LGPL, make that quite hard.
There is no inconsistency here. It is hard to charge for free (as in speech) software because without the monopoly power that proprietary software owners have it is hard to persuade people to pay. That is just a consequence of basic economics, not a contradiction between what Stallman says and what he does.
Am I the only one who found that particular spoonerism amusing, BTW?
"Invidious video driver" is not a spoonerism ("videous invideo driver" would be).
So, because he can only see the world as "free" or "non-free", he is unwilling to admit that things like video drivers, which are not published as open source, may nonetheless be of significant value to the OSS community.
Stallman has never claimed that proprietary software has no value or that it is never useful. He claims that giving up some of your freedom in return for something useful is a bad bargain - in exactly the same sense that Benjamin Franklin thought that trading liberty for security was a bad bargain. Security is valuable, but only a fool would allow himself to be enslaved in the hope that it would make him more secure.
Now maybe you do not believe that software can be free in the sense that speech can be free, but if you do beleive it then there is nothing extreme or simplistic about the idea that you shoud not use slave software. It is nothing more or less than the idea that you should not trade away your liberty for convenience.
I think this sentiment is exactly why we need to understand RMS's point in this article about the difference between the goals of popularity and preserving freedom (the core difference between the Open Source and free software movements).
The Open Source movement is completely compatible with your philosophy: they tell you that source code availability is a good thing because it produces software that's better.
On the other hand--and this is a point I think you've missed--free software is better because it's free. Preserving freedom is the goal, and the availability of the source code is only one necessary step on the way to that goal.
If you choose a piece of free software, you have important freedoms, regardless of whether you ever read the source code (these are taken from the GNU project's Free Software [gnu.org] page):
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose - It's your damn computer, right? Don't you think you should be in charge of what you're using it for and why? Or should your software vendor? I don't want Adobe telling me I can't paint pictures of elephants because the CEO got scared by one.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor - I like to help my friends. If I want to give my friend a bite of my sandwich I don't want Safeway telling me "Sorry, your friend must buy his own sandwich from me."
And even though you yourself do not enhance the software, when you choose free software you enjoy the side benefits of others' exercising that freedom.
RMS makes the very clear point in this article, and in his other writings, that you are mistaken when you say:
So for me, you're no different than MS.
The Open Source movement would have you believe this: that Open Source software is but one competitor for popularity. But the free software movement's goal isn't popularity, it's freedom, and that is very different from Microsoft (for you and other users), because Microsoft isn't interested in preserving your freedom (which by the way doesn't make them bad guys, in my opinion, they just have a different goal).
This goes to the core of what I and many others don't like about RMS -- he dislikes choice.
Your evidence of this is where, exactly? I don't see him telling people they shouldn't write any particular program. I see him telling people that if they intend on distributing the software they are writing, they should distribute it as free software.
Heck, they were founded on the concept of a Free Software distribution of Linux.
Actually the GNU project predates the development of the Linux kernal by many years. So that makes it very hard to found the free software movement on anything to do with the Linux kernal.
However, because Debian offers users the option of non-Free Software, RMS no longer recommends it. In his somewhat Orwellian stance, RMS boldly claims that to be free one must not have the choice to use commercial software.
Actually, RMS is not against commercial software, he's all for it so long as it is distributed with the freedoms of free software [gnu.org]. Perhaps you should have read the first paragraph of the article this thread is based on where RMS distinguishes between free as in price and free as in freedom (or as free software advocates like to say, "Think 'free speech', not 'free beer'.").
For RMS and a lot of other people, there are significant moral objections to non-free software, well rooted in their shared desire to build communities of people who have the freedom to share with one another. It's perfectly reasonable, given this stance, to object to any distribution of non-free software. It's also objectionable to see an organization (such as Debian) distribute software that belies their own goals (even Debian has some cognitive dissonance about the non-free software they distribute). Debian appears to be working toward getting rid of their non-free software. When they do, I'm guessing RMS will reevaluate his stance on Debian.
Plus, I don't like how he has only words of criticism and scorn for those who are making moves towards his stance but have not yet fully committed to it. You're just not good enough unless you're pushing for a total abolition of non-Free Software.
"The Free Software Foundation follows the rule that we cannot install any proprietary program on our computers except temporarily for the specific purpose of writing a free replacement for that very program. Aside from that, we feel there is no possible excuse for installing a proprietary program.
For example, we felt justified in installing Unix on our computer in the 1980s, because we were using it to write a free replacement for Unix. Nowadays, since free operating systems are available, the excuse is no longer applicable; we have eliminated all our non-free operating systems, and any new computer we install must run a completely free operating system.
We don't insist that users of GNU, or contributors to GNU, have to live by this rule. It is a rule we made for ourselves. But we hope you will decide to follow it too."
The FSF is led by RMS and his essays and talks are those people first look to when figuring out what the FSF and free software are all about. He is firm in his stance that all published software ought to be free software and he won't hesitate to disagree with you (some people find this uncomfortable because they're used to dealing with people who will silently retreat or lie and agree to your face and then harbor a dissenting point of view). If he ever said you were not a "good enough" person "unless you
well if you've just invented the concept of Free Software
Stallman didn't invent Free Software, not by a long shot. He just gave it a name and formalised it.
In the beginning of software, all software was "Free Software". It was traded freely as source code and nobody gave a thought about it. At the time, software was treated a lot like recipes: Sure, you had to pay for the food (hardware), but instructions for preparing the food (software) was written by anybody and given to anybody who wanted it.
It was Bill Gates that pioneered the idea of licensing software for money.
Stallman Re: Non-free software (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree mostly.. (Score:3, Insightful)
RMS.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want to be the one dissin' RMS, but I think he needs a sanity check or just stop being a "spokesperson" for the Free software community. It is true that he has done a lot to further it's progress, but lets face it, this is the person who hates debian simply because they include THE OPTION (which, mind you, has to be enabled by editing a text config file) of downloading non-free software. This is the guy who refuses to follow the proper procedures laid out hundreds of years ago by the French revolutionaries (you
all know what I mean), etc
He gives the Free software community a bad name, and with him on the forefront, Free software will never be part of corporate america (which is becoming more and more synonymous with America itself.)
Thank you for reading this.
Happy Brithday FSF! (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:I agree mostly.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:RMS.. (Score:2, Insightful)
He's already accomplished a great deal. (Score:5, Insightful)
They've demonstrated not only that it is possible to roll your own system (GNU/Herd, GNU/Linux, EMACS, and the myriad utilities), but also why it is necessary. What must come next in this new era of DRM are those who can create their own hardware, free of the oppression and lock-in that tomorrow's systems will have. But we will not ask ourselves what we can run on our homebrew hardware, because an answer is ready thanks to the efforts of the Free Software Foundation.
GNU/Hurd (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, since the Linux kernel allows binary modules, it's not necessarily "free software". Does that mean that the Hurd kernel won't allow binary modules, or open wrappers (Nvidia)? If not, does Stallman think that developers can create drivers for proprietary hardware that are at least as good as, if not better than, those provided by the manufacturer?
Or, is "free software" just the first stepping stone to "free hardware," where every innovation is public, and any competitor is free to use your innovations?
mod me troll -1 but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:RMS.. Corporate America = America??? (Score:4, Insightful)
The average citizen has far more control over my corporation than I have over them. They can refuse to buy. They can open their own competitive business. They can vote in the town I am in to ban my product or my business. They can zone me out of their neighborhoods. They tax my sales and use that money in ways I disagree with. They tax my property. They tax the money I pay my employees. They tax my profits, too.
How is Corporate America a bad thing? Corporations that are friendly with the government are given benefits (cheap loans, tariffs against competition, and even regulating competition out of the business) is NOT a free market, but a mercantilist one. America was never supposed to be mercantilist, it was supposed to be capitalist. Capitalism allows no monopoly, but mercantilism does.
And mercantilism can only happen from government getting involved in economic planning -- ruin from the start.
RMS still doesn't get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
If most people's expectation of software was to create "cooperation and community", RMS mmight be onto something here. But the truth is that most people and businesses want software that fulfills a particular need (or set of needs).
As long as RMS continues to deny the purpose of software for most people, free software will never meet the needs of the masses.
Re:Stallman Re: Non-free software (Score:5, Insightful)
The main concept of this kind of freedom is to give users the power to copy, modify and redistribute a software or a manual. This improves life quality and the karma (not the
If you have a free software but it isn't working well and doesn't do what you exactly need, no matter: you can just fix it because you have the source code. But if you don't know how to program, you can ask some friend of your to do it. If you don't have a programmer friend, you can hire someone to do it. That's all the beauty.
People need to see free software as a social movement. It gives you a chance to be a better human being by sharing your knowledge with your neighboor.
Re:RMS.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree. Without people like Mr. Stallman, The free software movement would not be where it is today. His "problem" is that he envisions a perfect world where all software is free. This is a noble goal, but the reality is that this will never be. There will always be need (and a market) for non-free software. But keep in mind also that not everyone in america is a corporation.
Black & White vs shades of gray (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have read his writings, he has fairly convincingly argued from first principles that software should be free. I, and many others, have read this and been inspired, because the world he ultimately wants to live in is about co-operation and sharing.
However, RMS often leaves people behind with his extreme on/off view. This sentance is pivotal:
This is seriously distorting his already bent definition of "free". Freedom, as he defines it, can be applied to software (and with a bit of work books, music etc) and while you might argue with the word used it's a useful concept to have.
Here though, he applies the word free to users, and this is a different thing entirely. Worse, he asserts that all it takes is one piece of non-free software to spoil his utopian dream.
I think a lot of people like the idea of free software, but we're willing to accept compromise. It's not an all or nothing proposition. Free software have inherantly good vibes because we're not imposing arbitrary limitations on what people can do with what we made (which is ultimately beneficial) but it's not like I'm a slave to the machine because I use the NVidia video drivers.
Yeah, I'd like to have free drivers, but Alan Cox himself has said he cannot think of a way to justify NVidia freeing their code - their fears of what would happen to their business if they did that are justified, he thinks. That's good enough for me. In this case, it just isn't practical. I don't like it, but that's life.
RMS sees it differently. That alienates people.
RMS and Linus (Score:5, Insightful)
God Bless Linus Torvalds for making it usable.
So the Win98 community is in good shape, then? (Score:5, Insightful)
I read today that Win98 is nearly 25% of the desktop clients on the internet.
If Win98 were open, somebody would be stepping in to support it as Microsoft bowed out.
Win98 is not open, and now everyone who drank the coolaid is beginning to feel the effects of the arsenic.
Commercial software is always a ring in your nose. The GPL can also be a ring, but it is lighter and the developing entity generally does not hold the chain as tightly.
RMS = William Wallace? (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think Mr. Stallman defines freedom in the same way I do. I don't think Mr. Stallman's concept of morality is anywhere near mine either. I just can't take someone seriously who tells me that non-free software is morally unnacceptable. I think Mr. Stallman is a bit out of touch with reality and with his importance to the world.
The open source community is much better off gaining credibility and notoriety by making better software and being an inclusive place where developers and tinkerers hone their craft than by suggesting non-free software is immoral.
Re:I agree mostly.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Stallman doesn't encourage comunism or non-profit activies. He encourage the free software for the freedom of the users.
I could explain a lot of things here, but I would say exactly what have already been said at the GNU site [gnu.org]. Maybe you should read it really careful before saying thinks like 'turn away from capitalism'.
According to RMS I should be allowed to (Score:1, Insightful)
If I were to design hardware for a computer I should not have to release the schematics for my hardware and let others make and sell their own devices (this would decrease profits and might ruin me).
We should stop RMS before he says any more. I don't give a shit about Graphical User Interfaces or ridiculous beards but that attitude is wrong.
RMS is before his time. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just my $.02.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure a lot of people don't like Stallman (Score:1, Insightful)
GNOME? (Score:4, Insightful)
GNOMErs gleefully point this out as the major selling point for GNOME over KDE.
I don't have a problem with the license choice, just the hypocrisy.
Re:Stallman Re: Non-free software (Score:3, Insightful)
Tell that to people in developing nations that can't afford to buy licenses for proprietary software. Those who wouldn't have access to a computer or the internet at all if not for Free Software.
Re:I agree mostly.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Nice explanation. Two points:
One, one part of that economy of scale is that it is very often useful for a company that has taken Free software and modified it for internal use, to release those modifications back to the original project. The advantages are that it is now someone else's job to keep your modifications compatible with new versions of the software, and that some other company may actually improve your code and also release it back, for you to use. The first of those (stay compatible) is my favorite reason for releasing stuff back.
The second point is: Have you tried SCID [sf.net]? I think it's a really great chess database application and it works on both Linux and Windows.
Re:I agree mostly.. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not a universal constant, it's just your preference of what you consider important. You say "Any business should do what best, subject to the law, makes money for its owners". This is a philosophical/ethical statement, and your ethics on this subject differ from Stallman's. For that matter they differ from those running the many and various non-profits out there. There are other motivations that making money.
That's not to say that your motivation is necessarily a bad one, of course. Just that you need to realise it's only a motivation, not the only one. So if the behaviour and statements of people like Stallman perplex you, then it's because he is marching to a completely different beat.
(And, BTW., may I say thank God he does.)
Re:Open Source and Broader Community (Score:4, Insightful)
Except for two little facts:
The general population doesn't install new plumbing fixtures either. But only a fool would buy a house where all the pipes were kept locked away with only one plumber having the key.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I agree mostly.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Math is free, but we still have mathematicians. Laws are free (usually), but politicians still get paid to write them. Phone books are free, but people still get paid to compile them. Land title histories are free, but employees of title insurance companies still get paid to research them. "Free Software" doesn't mean software developers work for free. It's simply a matter of whether or not you want your job to be recreating stuff made by other people or creating new things.
Re:a curious quote and comparison (Score:1, Insightful)
That's an assertion only. In order for me to accept it, you have to present a justification, too. Discuss!
Re:RMS still doesn't get it... (Score:2, Insightful)
But among those needs is support; the ability to get questions answered and to have changes made.
There are two possible sources of support. Proprietary vendors, who keep you trapped with lock-ins and who can drop you at any time. (Like MS is dropping Windows 98 users). Or an open cooperating community of users and vendors, where you are not locked in and can almost always find help because you're dealing with peers. (If Windows 98 was free software or open source, the community of users could band together to fund continuing development and support.)
Cooperation and community are among the software needs that people and businesses have. Since software is still a very new thing, most don't realize this until they get burned; but they're learning. Which is why more and more people are becoming interested in free software.
Why homebrew hardware? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:RMS is before his time. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, I think the GPL is a good idea. But what really turns me off about GNU is their casting of the GPL as some sort of ideological crusade between good and evil. Nobody is being oppressed or having their human rights violated by using proprietary software. The market should be allowed to decide which model should prevail (or if both should coexist), without being tainted by some sort of acquired "morality".
I believe future historians will judge RMS as having done about as much harm as good.
Re:a curious quote and comparison (Score:3, Insightful)
Freedom right now in the USA is only limited to what can make them more money, not other countries that might limit/threaten their freedom.
By this I DO NOT mean in a direct assault on freedom itself, but by affecting the standards of living in the USA. The recent exposed plan in the 70/80's to invade oil rich countries to protect their oil needs is only one example. Need I mention DMCA and other laws to protect the corporate companies rather then the consumer.
Also note this is not a reflection of the mass population in USA, but the direction the goverment and corporate pressures on them are steering USA into.
Pretty soon the USA will turn into a class based system where only the rich and influential can effect the government and freedom of it's population goes out the window.
The scary part is most of it's citizens and for that matter the world will think the USA is still in a democracy, but it will be ruled by the rich and influential
Majority vote is only effective if the votes are informed and heard, not when they are recounted and recounted to fit somebody elses view of how the results should have been (yes I do believe that was a direct alteration to change the outcome of the election).
Reminds me of a song ... (Score:2, Insightful)
We are building a religion, we are building it bigger, we are widening the corridor and adding new lanes
If you haven't heard the song I would highly recommend it (get it how you please).
Now to the rest of the conversation. The best quote I've ever read is by far: "GNU is like Sex, better when RMS isn't involved" - anoynmous? How true such a comment can be. RMS has again decided to trump his own definition of free by stating that a user cannot be free if they are using a non-free system. But wait isn't that the beauty of free, not that it doesn't require cost, but it is a CHOICE. Can you not be free to chose to use Microsoft or Apple based products?
Are these systems Free Software, of course not, and they will never be as they are part of the new social system we in the 'biz' like to call "Reality". In this system of socioeconomics people like retribution for their work in which you cannot get money for nothin, and you have to actually force those who benifit from your work to give you retribution. Why? Because if people can take something without paying for it, THEY WILL.
Do car dealerships have a sign on the door that says "Here's a car, you can have it for free, but we'd like you to give us some cash for it please". Of course not, and that's why Free Software will fail, but then there's the Open Source movement which seems to have a much better chance as the happy medium between the corperate society and communistic FSF movement.
Communism in which the common man acts with regards to the community as a whole and not the individualistic gain of the self, is not our system. While it seems nice, cozy, and utopic, its not here and my magic 8-ball says that all possibilities point to no. Write all the papers and essays you want, but I'll stick to what works and what works is propritary software.
"I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks" - Fake Bill Gates (simpson's)
"You can't make money by giving something away moron" - My uncle
Re:RMS.. Corporate America = America??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I agree mostly.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:RMS = William Wallace? (Score:2, Insightful)
To believe that non-free software is morally acceptable, is to believe that it is acceptable to use force to prevent users from sharing or making changes to software.
I think it's worth seriously considering that this may be a false proposition.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:RMS = William Wallace? (Score:1, Insightful)
All or nothing? (Score:3, Insightful)
But what about a more gradual approach? So what if someone wants to run Weblogic and Oracle on Linux instead of Weblogic and Oracle on Windows? Maybe the transition to Tomcat and PostgreSQL on Linux is too much for them right now, for technical or political reasons. Maybe they'll switch eventually.
Or, maybe they won't. Isn't it still a positive change, a change providing more freedom? Would RMS rather that that user just stay on Windows forever, using no free or open software at all? I realize that RMS in his ideology above all else, and certainly above any pragmatism, but this kind of transition is a win for everyone. Even if the example user never switches to 100% free software.
Re:Another RMS post (Score:4, Insightful)
RMS has done a lot for free software.
He has written significant amounts of it.
He doesn't want Linux called GNU/Linux, he wants a GNU system with the Linux kernel called GNU/Linux.
Think of this like buying a GM vehicle (system) with a Honda engine(kernel). You wouldn't call it a Honda, Likely either a GM, or GM/Honda vehicle.
The SCO mess is a temporary trivial harrassment, not really a serious problem. They have no proven claims, and unless they actually document one, they will probaly collapse under IBMs countersuit.
Re:I agree mostly.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Not really a comment, but more as a question for further debate...
I think most of us have the instinct that democratic gov't should be using "open" software tools because of their transparency. However I wonder how we can distinguish the use of software compared to other "closed" tools such as automobiles. There doesn't seem to be a similar requirement for cars or fax machines that govt may use... is this fair?
Re:So the Win98 community is in good shape, then? (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh, actually Progeny [progeny.com] is offering support for Redhat. If you want an up-to-date debian, you use unstable, which isn't. And most aborted sourceforge projects I've seen seem to have been aborted due to lack of interest. So what?
Re:RMS and Linus (Score:2, Insightful)
Trolls and jokes aside, today would be a good occasion for everyone in here to recognize what kind of changes and good ideas the Free Software movement - and then the Open Source movement, too - brought. However obtuse RMS can be nowadays about some stuff ( I mostly agree with him but he seems to diminish freedom of choice too much ), you just have to recognize the vision and hard work this man did ; here's one hell of a dedicated person, and rightly so. That's the kind of passion that enabled Linus Torvalds to follow through as well, giving FLOSS the enormous possibilities it has today and permitting everyone to develop together better tools for a better tomorrow.
Realize that open source software is the way of the future ; anything else would be an intolerable regression. The fight for not letting that happen really started 20 years ago ; my deepest respect to Richard Matthew Stallman. ( I won't care for stupid replies. )
Re:I agree mostly.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:RMS still doesn't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Software is a tool to get a job done. People do not turn on their computers to experience freedom. They turn on their computers to write, communicate, calculate, or whatever.
[SNIP]
Free speech thrives at UNCENSORED! BBS - http://uncensored.citadel.org [citadel.org]
Tell me, then, why should we care about Free Speech but not Free Software? I can buy perfectly good outlets for my speech, as long as I'm rich, what's the problem? I don't want to say things to "experience freedom" either, I just want to get my message to other people.
Re:RMS.. (Score:5, Insightful)
This goes to the core of what I and many others don't like about RMS -- he dislikes choice. Debian strongly encourages Free Software. Heck, they were founded on the concept of a Free Software distribution of Linux. However, because Debian offers users the option of non-Free Software, RMS no longer recommends it. In his somewhat Orwellian stance, RMS boldly claims that to be free one must not have the choice to use commercial software. He's so wrapped up in the concept that not sharing your source is an inherently Evil idea that he forgets that true Freedom includes the option to shoot yourself in the foot.
I dislike the polarized, fanatical "either with us or with the terrorists" stance that he takes towards proprietary software. I don't like it in politics, and I don't like it in the philosophy of software development. Plus, I don't like how he has only words of criticism and scorn for those who are making moves towards his stance but have not yet fully committed to it. You're just not good enough unless you're pushing for a total abolition of non-Free Software.
He's certainly more civil nowdays than to openly claim to hate Debian, but he certainly doesn't think it's good enough, and that's pretty much the parent poster's point.
Re:GNOME? (Score:3, Insightful)
Others in the GNOME community may push the non-free angle of the above, but this doesn't make RMS or other FSS proponents hypocritical.
Popularity vs. Freedom... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't care how much you hate profit and business, they get things done.
Re:RMS = William Wallace? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Stallman Re: Non-free software (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have a free software but it isn't working well and doesn't do what you exactly need, no matter: you can just fix it because you have the source code. But if you don't know how to program, you can ask some friend of your to do it. If you don't have a programmer friend, you can hire someone to do it. That's all the beauty.
And it sounds great in principle. It's in practice that it runs into trouble. Imagine, for instance, that I'm a freelance graphic designer, or do 3D visualization work, or whatever. And imagine that there are features of Photoshop or Quark or Maya or AVS that aren't available to me in the Gimp or Sodipodi or Blender or OpenDX or whatever (actually, I think the latter two are open source but not free software, but anyway). The suggestion above would be to roll up my sleeves and program in those features. But, in our example, I can't: I'm not a programmer. Nor do I have the time to become one and do that work when all my time is spent doing the actual work for which I get paid.
So then the second answer is to ask a programmer friend. But, even assuming I have said programmer friend, and assuming that programmer friend doesn't have something he/she would rather be doing, these aren't trivial enhancements we're talking about and such functionality will take a while.
So then the next suggestion above is to hire someone. With what money? And how can I justify spending ten times or more the cost of some proprietary software package hiring programmers to improve (or create) a free software competitor? Especially when my hypothetical freelance business probably isn't exactly rolling in the dough.
Well, RMS would say that the justification for spending that money to improve free software options is a dedication to freedom. And if it's really not possible to spend that money on that purpose, because I simply don't have it, then dedication to freedom demands foregoing that proprietary option, and simply doing without that feature set. But in my hypothetical case, that means doing without that client, or that income. So much for my hypothetical business; time to find another way to feed my kids.
My example is contrived, of course. For many (most? dunno.) users of proprietary software, free software alternatives exist that will do everything they want, and do it well. But for many others, that's not true. And telling those users to simply forego doing what they want or need to do as a stand for a cause is a very big request. Of course, people have sacrificed their economic health, and much more, for the cause of freedom before. But not for something as seemingly esoteric as free software; rather, it's been the freedoms accompanying equality of race or gender or religious background under the law.
Until RMS can persuade people that the freedom to modify the software one uses is as important as the freedom to work in the field of your choice without being held back by race or gender or religion, people and businesses are going to have a tough time justifying sacrificing their financial security for that freedom.
Oh, and it shouldn't matter, but just in case it does: I don't have any propriety software installed on my machine, and very little open-source-but-not-free-software stuff as well. I'm not making this post because I don't believe in free software; rather, because I don't think some free software advocates really realize just what big a thing they're asking people to do, and consequently how large a burden of justifying it they have.
Re:Stallman Re: Non-free software (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:free is public domain and not GNU (Score:1, Insightful)
RMS asserts no such thing. Only that it may happen. There is ample evidence to support such a concern, so it makes sense to worry about it. Or maybe you have some real evidence that RMS has said this thing you claim he said? I've read a lot of his work and I don't recall it.
No one said public domain was not free. But most of what is in the public domain is not so at the gift of its author, rather it falls into public domain because the exclusionary rights granted by copyright have expired (or were never recognized in the first place). Perhaps you'd like to list for us all of the public domain software you have written? If the list is quite short (or non-existent as I suspect), then give it a rest. You are looking a gift horse in the mouth.
Bull. First, it's the GPL-- General Public License. GNU is a project of the Free Software Foundation. Get it right. Second, copyright law is what limits your freedom. If there were no copyright law at all, then the GPL would actually limit your freedom. But then the GPL would have no force in that situation either, so it's a meaningless assertion. In the meantime, the GPL offers you more rights than you would otherwise have, so complaining that it limits your freedom seems disingenuous at best.
Re:RMS = William Wallace? (Score:3, Insightful)
"The open source community is much better off gaining credibility and notoriety by making better software and being an inclusive place where developers and tinkerers hone their craft than by suggesting non-free software is immoral."
...And this can happen quite easily, as more developers and managers realize that open-source and free-software are not bound at the hip.
I think many would agree that open-source can be an extremely effective development methodology - I have benefitted both personally and professionally from it, on a 'binary' level, as well as from the freedom to interact with other developers, many more talented than myself, thus learning along the way.
But it is not the panacea for all software development, there continues to be a place for proprietary projects. I have to believe this for now, because in my reality, much of my income is derrived from such projects. The true benefit of the more visible products of open-source, Linux, as well as various web and application servers, database servers, and the myriad supporting libraries available, is the formation of a core platform. This platform has and will continue to become a standard upon which other purpose-specific applications may be developed. Having such a common, mature, and well-tested platform is an amazing accomplishment that speeds the development of everything built upon it, but these purpose-specific applications (business/accounting software, scientific packages, art/music packages, etc.) will, for the near term, continue to benefit from their commercial nature.
I also find a core hypocracy in the view of 'free-software' as delimited by the GPL. One that, for me at least, colors Stallman's whole movement as something of a religion. I refer specifically to the requirement that derrivative works must also be released under the GPL. While I personally, on a moral and ethical level, support contributing back any and all modifications to open-source works, is making it mandatory actually free as in freedom? Or is it merely an attempt to make software free as in beer?
To me, this aspect of the GPL is as if the US Constitution's first amendment was rewritten to establish freedom of religion, so long as the religion is Christian. It gives you wide-latitude, yet still constrains you to a 'sandbox' of known proportions.
The argument for this element of the GPL is that it maintains the freedom of the code, barring it from ever being 'closed' -- but this argument is false. Once released, code cannot be 'closed'. Sure it can be used by people or businesses that you don't like, and hidden from the view of those business' customers. But it cannot be magically erased from the brains of those that have seen it, nor can the rights of the original authors be magically erased somehow (at least under current copyright). Further, the continued use of BSD-licensed, Apache-licensed, and other similar licensed code in both open and closed projects shows that licenses granting 'absolute' freedom of use do work.
I can only conclude that the purpose of the GPL is to further an agenda to which I do not subscribe.
And so in my pesonal and professional life, I make a clean separation between open-source, which I firmly beleive is a proven and tested methodolgy and a genuine social phenomenon, and 'free-software', which for me can only be defined by the absoute freedom to do anything you want with the code, and not by the current definitions of the 'movement'.
Re:free is public domain and not GNU (Score:1, Insightful)
The copyright only exits if you never ever publically put the source code into the public domain.
Once it is in the public domain, that exact copy of the source code is in the public domain forever.
RMS main mantra of 'free as in beer' in promoting GNU as a license can be considered, at best, false advertising since the software is not free to be used as you wish, including putting into a commercial product, it is only free of cost.
Re:So the Win98 community is in good shape, then? (Score:2, Insightful)
Because the expensive part is not the software but the new hardware it requires. Maybe you've got enough money to upgrade your hardware and software every few years, but a lot of people in this world don't. It's hard to convince someone on a tight budget he has to throw away a perfectly good machine because the software upgrade would turn it into a snail.
Or are you suggesting people should run XP on a 200Mhz 64MB machine? There still are a lot of sub-Ghz machines around, especially in the not-so-rich countries of this world.
Re:Stallman Re: Non-free software (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I agree mostly.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. If I have created something, it is mine to do with as I will. I have no ethical obligation to give it away, even if doing so would cost me nothing. Giving it away might well be a very nice thing to do, but that doesn't mean not giving it away is wrong.
People (not necessarily me) think Stallman is "some kind of hippie-communist-crackpot", because they can't see why he would disagree with this seemingly obvious assertion, unless he thinks making a buck is inherently unethical (which he does not, as far as I can tell).
Re:I have a crazy question.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Specifically, it appears that many of the most vocal proponents of free-software have already made their money, and have acheived a certain amount of financial freedom. It is much easier to make simple black and white statements about freedom, software, or anything else, when you have been freed from the responsibily to provide for yourself and your family.
There are a large number of technical people who derrive income from entities that produce proprietary products. I count myself as one. Somehow, it just seems more important to me to feed my children than to subscribe to Stallman's world view. Does that make me evil?
Come on, we're talking software here, how exactly is this tied in with the greater good of humanity? If I discovered my company was murdering people, I'd quit and go to the authorities. But since they're not, I'll take my check please.
Re:Stallman Re: Non-free software (Score:1, Insightful)
This is your most salient point.
The stuff about paying for development... if you can afford several hundred dollars for a Photoshop license, you can afford to contribute to a development fund which will work with a programmer to get certain plug-ins written for the GIMP (or to rewrite the internals, or whatever). Obviously Photoshop did not start out as the program it is now, and it was only the act of people paying for it that allowed it to progress. I think worrying about how the software will get developed is a straw man.
It's the freedom issue and the esotericy (?) of it when it comes to software that is the more difficult and up-front issue. Americans, lately, don't seem wedded to a lot of more obvious forms of freedom. But even if we can find someone who will agree that basic human rights are important, we still need some persuasive arguments about the need for free software.
I suppose we'll need to hone our "car with the hood welded shut" and recipe analogies in ways that are more understandable or convincing. And further we have to start showing that there are explicit dangers to less esoteric liberties lurking in the background of proprietary software (e.g. Diebold's voting machines). I also find distinct advantages to using free software that I believe are directly related to the free-ness of the software.
Best example I can think of is Mozilla. Look at how much more pleasant the web is when you can feel like you have control over cookies, when certain JS functions can be turned off (so that deceptive JS cannot be used), when pop-up control is part and parcel of the browser, tabbed browsing is available, etc etc. I think these features exist as part of the core software because Mozilla is Free Software. It is clear evidence to my mind that the process of respecting freedom works. As RMS says, it takes time.... but look at it go!
Re:It's a question of ethics (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stallman Re: Non-free software (Score:2, Insightful)
For everyone else, the whole choice thing is something you just make and live with it. It's not about having every little thing being written as free software. It's about using free software when it's available because you want to support free software because you're willing to accept the means of using software that is superior in the end.
In a less abstract sense, GNU has done an amazing job at fixing a lot of the problems (though not all) of the user-land unix environment. I personally would prefer using gcc over a proprietary unix's cc compiler just because gcc is superior (being free is also nice). And yes, I've used proprietary unix's because there are times you don't have a choice.
But when I make the choice, I almost always choose the free solution. And now, when there *is* fully free systems available, it's a lot easier than 20 years ago when there was nothing available. I still make concessions, so I'll admit I don't reach Stallman's ideal. I don't believe I need freedom in console games or the firmware on my keyboard, but I made the choice that I'd rather use a few proprietary things until something non-proprietary comes along (the one exception is nvidia's drivers, though thanks to patent laws there's no way a GPLed driver can become superior to nvidia's drivers -- a great example of why software patents are evil).
I have been using Linux for two years on my computer, and I like it a lot. I made the choice more because I got sick of Windows and its lack of a good, free C compiler (cygwin doesn't count to me mostly because it's more or less installing *nix on top of Windows because Windows is so sucky at fulfilling the environment needed). But if I were to try to get other people to use Linux or GNU, maybe it would be better to get them to support the idea of freedom than to push the ulitarian approach.
Heresy! (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey RMS, didn't they offer intorductory logic at MIT?
Seriously, there is no logic to the above statement, it is totally bereft of value as a supporting argument. Particularly since it is patently false.
What should have been said is: Users cannot be free until the M$'s and RMS's of the world let them make their own software choices free of obfuscation and misrepresentation.
Do you really seek to abridge the rights of end users to use the product which does the job best for them? Do you seek to abridge the rights of developers to dispose of their work as they see fit?
This argument is more akin to religious extremism than reasoned argument. I do not debate your right to have strong (and wrong) opinions. I will hotly debate the conclusions you would have people draw from your opinions.
Your assertion about the Invidious Video Driver Et. Al demonstrates this clearly. Your position seems to indicate that using any non-free software to resolve a problem is somehow wrong. Nothing can be further from the truth. Given two pieces of software X and Y where X is non-free but conforms to the requirements, and Y is free but does not satisfy all requirements, that users should select Y over X, despite the fact that X performs the required job and Y does not. This is where the argument gets it's religious flavor. What other term can I apply to a position which exhorts users to deny the evidence of their senses in the pursuit of some (likely unattainable) Xanadu?
As for those who create software, who has the right to determine how they dispose of their property? Your position on this is merely the antithesis of the Microsoft/SCO position. Nor is your position any more tenable than theirs. Microsoft/SCO assert that free software is somehow immoral, and you assert the opposite. I suggest that neither of your opinions matter a hill of beans.
It is unseemly for anyone who purports to support Free, as in freedom, to seek to villify developers for exercising their freedoms.
The simple fact of the matter is that your extremist position is no more valid than the extremist positions of your antagonists. Like most such positions, it has no place in the real world. In the real world, you seek solutions which work, regardless of their dogmatic purity. Several times in the last century people tried superimposing dogma over reality, by and large those experiments failed. Those that still are with us have had to yield to reality to continue to exist.
There is no one "right" answer in the free v. non-free software debate. The "right" answer is not blanket dogma, but the result of an unbiased analysis of the situation, and a choice based on that analysis and the constraints of the real world we live in, wether you are a producer or a consumer of software.
The conflict between OSS & IP (Score:2, Insightful)
Specifically, while he says that he is fine with software being for "fee", his actions, especially as measured against the LGPL, make that quite hard. This thinly disguised dislike of commercial software bleeds over into his general worldview. He clearly is very binary about whether something is "open" or not, and uses the wonderful "non-free Invidious video driver" example. (Am I the only one who found that particular spoonerism amusing, BTW?)
So, because he can only see the world as "free" or "non-free", he is unwilling to admit that things like video drivers, which are not published as open source, may nonetheless be of significant value to the OSS community. Another way of looking at this is that he simply does not believe in the notion of Intellectual Property, and therefore is unwilling to accept that there are reasonable commercial cases where it should be protected.
I'm probably being to quick to criticize as (Heaven knows!), we all owe him a lot, but I never trust a man that has a simple world view...
It pains me to see how misunderstood RMS is on /. (Score:3, Insightful)
If RMS was never born, BSD would be closed/proprietary. So would KDE and gnome wouldn't exist. The GPL wouldn't exist and the face of Free software would be completely different.
"The less a man makes declarative statements, the less he's
apt to look foolish in retrospect." --Quentin Tarantino
Thats true. Ever try to debate religion with an agnostic? it aint easy!
Linus takes this approach with Free Software. Its hard to find fault with anything he says because he says very little. He is a good diplomat; he unifies the clans and presents a pleasant face for bussness.
The only problem with this is there are important things that need to be said! RMS is the one saying them. He gets down and dirty despite it being a position of less dignitty. He is not socially conscious enough to be diplomatic, he is blunt and to the point like a laser and i respect that.
There are 2 types of GNU users:
-Those who use it because they feel its the best tool for the job, the Open Source Movement
-Those who use it because they feel that Freedom is a philosophically superior position, the Free Software Movement
If the situation was reversed, and windows was Free and GNU/linux was closed, I would be a Windows zealot. So, in a way, the license is more important then the code.
Its unfortunate that some newbies have the impresson that he is trying to take credit for "linux". He deserves more credit then he is asking for. Also unfortunate, that its easier to understand Linus' contribution then his, because his is more complex.
He is not trying to "steal linux". He is the granddaddy of us all, and where he leads i will gladly follow.
Mutually Exclusive Freedoms (Score:4, Insightful)
Today, I can choose to write free software or closed software. It's my choice, and I like it that way. I have nothing against the free software movement, but I disagree with RMS when he suggests that I shouldn't have the freedom to develop software and try to make it a commercial product of it. Why should I only be allowed to market services like installation and support?
Software developers should be like academians? OK. Not all mathematicians share their advances. I know some who develop proprietary models of the stock market for an investment company. It's not for everyone, but shouldn't they have the freedom to choose such a pursuit.
And what makes software so special? Shouldn't hardware be open? Aren't chips mostly designed with source code now? Aren't production costs getting so low that they are essentially commodities like software?
Re:Stallman Re: Non-free software (Score:3, Insightful)
Hooking up users and producers is where business, finance, and marketing people live, and they're pretty good at it. Unfortunately, they want to be paid, too, so we're no longer talking about just paying programmers. Then there's the startup costs - it takes a while to get a critical mass of users, so unless you're working for an existing company, non-profit, university, or government, you have venture capital folks, and later shareholders, to answer to.
Who is making a profit off free software? Red Hat? Are they making it selling software, selling customization, or selling support?
It may be Free software, but until there's some kind of business model in place to allow Profit from its generation and support, then proprietary software will continue to exist, even if only in niche markets where there aren't enough interested hackers to build solutions for free.
Re:Free Software vs Control - Military Application (Score:2, Insightful)
Free Software doesn't restrict use. At all. It grants rights to make copies under some circumstances. Once you start attempting to restrict use, you end up in EULA territory.
Of course, you could restrict distribution - simply don't grant anybody the right to make copies, and make anybody you give a copy to sign a contract that states that they won't give it to a military organisation. But that's not very Free now, is it?
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Stallman Re: Non-free software (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stallman Re: Non-free software (Score:3, Insightful)
You are partially correct. OSS should not end up costing more than proprietary solutions. Personally hiring 3rd-party developers to improve the OSS you use rarely works.
This is why all the major OSS projects need to adopt means by which ordinary end users, such as the hypothetical graphics artist in this example, can donate reasonable amounts to respective projects. In return, they should get a say in prioritizing feature development. Considering how much graphics artists spend on proprietary packages, there is a lot of money out there. If a quarter of the people who use Photoshop skipped an upgrade and instead chipped in $100 to support the Gimp project, that would pay for a whole lot of developer brain-hours. Yes, it would be a longer-term investment, but certainly one that would pay off.
A more likely scenario is the graphics studio that finds Gimp to be, say, 99% of what they need and are willing to donate to the project what they would have spent on Photoshop in return for making Gimp 100% of what they need in the next 2 months. Then, 2 months later, another studio finds that the improved Gimp is now 99% of what they need.. and this cycle continues. In the real world, where not everyone is a developer, this is how collaboration in Open Source development must work.
It's as simple as this: If we want quality OSS, we need to financially support those who create it but are not financially rewarded elsewhere for their labors.
Re:Stallman Re: Non-free software (Score:3, Insightful)
Well put.
The Free Software movement (like the Open Source Movement) is not at all focused on creating community. It is focused on giving people real power to use computers whose facilities were only partially available to their owners using non-free software.
A community is attracted to this, in part because it gives the community members more value for their money. For example, if I buy a PC with a network card today, I can install a free operating system and can run a free web server and a free database for no extra expenditure of cash.
This is not a new community. The core of this community is the same one that always wanted to get more value out of the things they use. This is the community of people who were called "power users" or "hackers" when they used non-free software. Thus, Stallman's assertion that "non-free software carries with it an antisocial system that prohibits cooperation and community" is not an overstatement, but simply factually incorrect.
Free software did not create the community. It is the community that creates free software.
Concerning your assertion about the failure of the Free Software movement to serve the community by providing user-friendly tools, I believe that is an overstatement of the case. Free software is constantly being built, improved, added to, and rebuilt. The success of the free software movement comes from the fact that when the community faces a need (for more user-friendly tools, for example) it builds upon what the community has already created. In essence, the free software community is a recursive process whose growth can be summed up: "Build it and they will come and build it."
Re:The conflict between OSS & IP (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no inconsistency here. It is hard to charge for free (as in speech) software because without the monopoly power that proprietary software owners have it is hard to persuade people to pay. That is just a consequence of basic economics, not a contradiction between what Stallman says and what he does.
Am I the only one who found that particular spoonerism amusing, BTW?
"Invidious video driver" is not a spoonerism ("videous invideo driver" would be).
So, because he can only see the world as "free" or "non-free", he is unwilling to admit that things like video drivers, which are not published as open source, may nonetheless be of significant value to the OSS community.
Stallman has never claimed that proprietary software has no value or that it is never useful. He claims that giving up some of your freedom in return for something useful is a bad bargain - in exactly the same sense that Benjamin Franklin thought that trading liberty for security was a bad bargain. Security is valuable, but only a fool would allow himself to be enslaved in the hope that it would make him more secure.
Now maybe you do not believe that software can be free in the sense that speech can be free, but if you do beleive it then there is nothing extreme or simplistic about the idea that you shoud not use slave software. It is nothing more or less than the idea that you should not trade away your liberty for convenience.
Re:Stallman Re: Non-free software (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this sentiment is exactly why we need to understand RMS's point in this article about the difference between the goals of popularity and preserving freedom (the core difference between the Open Source and free software movements).
The Open Source movement is completely compatible with your philosophy: they tell you that source code availability is a good thing because it produces software that's better.
On the other hand--and this is a point I think you've missed--free software is better because it's free. Preserving freedom is the goal, and the availability of the source code is only one necessary step on the way to that goal.
If you choose a piece of free software, you have important freedoms, regardless of whether you ever read the source code (these are taken from the GNU project's Free Software [gnu.org] page):
And even though you yourself do not enhance the software, when you choose free software you enjoy the side benefits of others' exercising that freedom.
RMS makes the very clear point in this article, and in his other writings, that you are mistaken when you say:
The Open Source movement would have you believe this: that Open Source software is but one competitor for popularity. But the free software movement's goal isn't popularity, it's freedom, and that is very different from Microsoft (for you and other users), because Microsoft isn't interested in preserving your freedom (which by the way doesn't make them bad guys, in my opinion, they just have a different goal).
That's fine. But you should care about freedom.
You should read what RMS actually says. (Score:3, Insightful)
Your evidence of this is where, exactly? I don't see him telling people they shouldn't write any particular program. I see him telling people that if they intend on distributing the software they are writing, they should distribute it as free software.
Actually the GNU project predates the development of the Linux kernal by many years. So that makes it very hard to found the free software movement on anything to do with the Linux kernal.
Actually, RMS is not against commercial software, he's all for it so long as it is distributed with the freedoms of free software [gnu.org]. Perhaps you should have read the first paragraph of the article this thread is based on where RMS distinguishes between free as in price and free as in freedom (or as free software advocates like to say, "Think 'free speech', not 'free beer'.").
For RMS and a lot of other people, there are significant moral objections to non-free software, well rooted in their shared desire to build communities of people who have the freedom to share with one another. It's perfectly reasonable, given this stance, to object to any distribution of non-free software. It's also objectionable to see an organization (such as Debian) distribute software that belies their own goals (even Debian has some cognitive dissonance about the non-free software they distribute). Debian appears to be working toward getting rid of their non-free software. When they do, I'm guessing RMS will reevaluate his stance on Debian.
Again, you are getting this from where, exactly? I see an organization that is only asking you to do as they do and I see an organization that takes a harder line on proprietary software than they ask of you [gnu.org]:
The FSF is led by RMS and his essays and talks are those people first look to when figuring out what the FSF and free software are all about. He is firm in his stance that all published software ought to be free software and he won't hesitate to disagree with you (some people find this uncomfortable because they're used to dealing with people who will silently retreat or lie and agree to your face and then harbor a dissenting point of view). If he ever said you were not a "good enough" person "unless you
Re:Stallman Re: Non-free software (Score:3, Insightful)
Stallman didn't invent Free Software, not by a long shot. He just gave it a name and formalised it.
In the beginning of software, all software was "Free Software". It was traded freely as source code and nobody gave a thought about it. At the time, software was treated a lot like recipes: Sure, you had to pay for the food (hardware), but instructions for preparing the food (software) was written by anybody and given to anybody who wanted it.
It was Bill Gates that pioneered the idea of licensing software for money.