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Richard Stallman Explains [video]

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Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#91

Post by cJ0th »

reacweb wrote: post #85
legulere wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument: Not giving away what you wrote for free under the terms dictated by Richard Stallman is literally slavery.

Yes, because you becomes dependent of the good will of the seller if you encounter bugs, limitations, incompatible hardware or if the OS updates in incompatible ways.

If you use FOSS only, you still remain dependent on the maintainers of your stack since realistically speaking you don't have the time to understand and hack every piece of software you rely on.

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#92

Post by rmc »

teekert wrote: post #54

Ever since I listened to this episode of the Linux Action Show [0] I can't take RMS serious anymore. He bases everything he believes on one assumption he doesn't dare to argue himself: "Proprietary software is evil." That is it. When you attack his values and stances, he falls back to that sentence. When you argue: But aren't you restricting freedom when you would keep a creator from sharing his software under his ow…

RMS is basically a Pope of free software. He's ideologicaly "pure", he sticks to what he believes in entirely. It's useful for a discussion "Would this pass muster with RMS? Do we want to make this RMS-approved?". We don't have to imagine someone who's completly against propritary software, we can just think of RMS.

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#93

Post by teddyh »

teekert wrote: post #54

Ever since I listened to this episode of the Linux Action Show [0] I can't take RMS serious anymore. He bases everything he believes on one assumption he doesn't dare to argue himself: "Proprietary software is evil." That is it. When you attack his values and stances, he falls back to that sentence. When you argue: But aren't you restricting freedom when you would keep a creator from sharing his software under his ow…

You’re assuming one thing, that the creator should be allowed to set terms for software they have created. A clothing designer, for instance, has no such rights. Why should software users be restricted in their use of the software by a law giving enormous power to the creator?

That is the essential question you must answer. Arguments against are legion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_copyright

The GPL license is not an end in itself. It is simply a holding action – a means to carve out a bit of freedom for end users using the current rules of copyright.

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#94

Post by oblio »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #90
oblio wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> except when you're checking email, waiting in line, playing Angry Birds, making a photograph, or checking up on Facebook. You've just proved his point more than you ever wanted. > checking email On the (probably) proprietary Mail or Gmail app. > waiting in line On the (probably) proprietary app for whichever thing you're staying in line for. > playing Angry Birds ... > making a photograph ... > or checking up on Fa…

Given your sense of fatalism about this, I assume you don’t spend your free time building OSS apps for mobile platforms?

I'm not a fatalist, I'm just pointing out a fact. FOSS is far from winning.

FOSS has barely "won" the lower levels of the stack and the highly technical niches. But the more you move towards user-facing applications, the more proprietary things become.

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#96

Post by ForHackernews »

legulere wrote: post #81
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"When you argue: But aren't you restricting freedom when you would keep a creator from sharing his software under his own terms?" I hope you're aware that this is the oldest argument in the book. It literally goes back to Plato and arguments about how you can be free if you're not free to make other people slaves.

Your argument: Not giving away what you wrote for free under the terms dictated by Richard Stallman is literally slavery.

There is nothing in the GPL that prohibits charging money for your software. You just have to provide the source code and allow users to make modifications & redistribute.

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#97

Post by belorn »

legulere wrote: post #81
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"When you argue: But aren't you restricting freedom when you would keep a creator from sharing his software under his own terms?" I hope you're aware that this is the oldest argument in the book. It literally goes back to Plato and arguments about how you can be free if you're not free to make other people slaves.

Your argument: Not giving away what you wrote for free under the terms dictated by Richard Stallman is literally slavery.

The argument is that freedom is often restricted if the end results is harmful.

Proprietary software depend on copyright to prevent owners, which today often mean property owners of physical objects with DRM in them. Property owner is deprived of all rights that personal property is normally given to their owners. That power is instead taken by those that produced the object.

If sale of property actually follow traditional first sale principles and gave the new owner rights which used to be naturally aspect of private property, then practically all freedoms under Richard Stallman definition is given. You don't have to give away the apple (in the classical example), but once sold you can't have copyright or patents preventing the new owner from using the apple to grew a orchard.

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#98

Post by missbit »

He is obviously brilliant. The interviewer wants to steer him into being a crazy nut corner. Pepsi vs. Coke.

I realize historically there was only low level software that existed. These days we've got much higher level services which really could benefit from free software.

He hits on these ideas. Maybe he'd be open to working on these sorts of things.

Services have gotten to the level where they are taking a piece of people's livelihoods. Uber & Airbnb takes 20-30%. why?

Amazon is a system of warehousing & distribution... could something like that be run in a distributed / cooperative way which provides as much opportunity to 3rd party retailers as it does Amazon? A level playing field.

These are the sorts of things that the free software movement could move towards now.

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#99

Post by al_chemist »

cJ0th wrote: post #91
reacweb wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because you becomes dependent of the good will of the seller if you encounter bugs, limitations, incompatible hardware or if the OS updates in incompatible ways.

If you use FOSS only, you still remain dependent on the maintainers of your stack since realistically speaking you don't have the time to understand and hack every piece of software you rely on.

"I don't have time to learn how to fix it myself! Fix it now, asshole!"

If you have any open-source project, you've probably received a lot of e-mails like that.

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#100

Post by teekert »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #66
teekert wrote: post #54

Ever since I listened to this episode of the Linux Action Show [0] I can't take RMS serious anymore. He bases everything he believes on one assumption he doesn't dare to argue himself: "Proprietary software is evil." That is it. When you attack his values and stances, he falls back to that sentence. When you argue: But aren't you restricting freedom when you would keep a creator from sharing his software under his ow…

> But aren't you restricting freedom when you would keep a creator from sharing his software under his own terms? GPL vs BSD all over again. Freedoms conflict. The one "freedom" RMS would restrict is the freedom to restrict the freedom of others (one's users). One has to chose at some point. Since there are more users than creators, the freedom of many users is more important than the freedom of one creator. (Assumin…

This discussion is one level higher, it is about the freedom of the creator to choose a license for his software. GPL is not better than BSD or the other way around, it is about the freedom to choose a license. The freedom to say to a buyer: "Ok, we have a deal under these conditions." The buyer has the freedom to reject the deal. This is the scenario with the most freedom imho.

I'm afraid, but correct me if I'm wrong, that if RMS would be dictator of the world, he would rob people of the freedom to offer their products under their conditions. To me, the RMS world is less free.

We could even start to argue things like: In RMS world there would be less software so less ways for people to express themselves freely. Photoshop frees a lot of people from the inability to express themselves in the exact way they want.

What is freedom? To me it is the freedom to make deals with others under your conditions and the freedom to reject deals of others because they don't match the conditions you like. This works even when everybody has said attitude, that is the beauty of it.

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