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Richard Stallman Explains [video]

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Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#201

Post by rglullis »

cyphar wrote: post #196
rglullis wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said that FOSS is worse than proprietary software. This is not what the discussion is about. What I am arguing is simply that if proprietary software was forbidden, a lot of innovation would be restricted. Imagine today if we were living in RMS world and everyone that writes software needed to have their software openly published and freely distributed. How many would simply not even start? Would there be a M…

That feels like a backwards argument to me. There are many free software companies (RedHat, SUSE, Canonical, etc) that create plenty of innovative software. I'm sure you know the difference between "free as in beer" and "free as in speech", but your argument appears to be conflating proprietary and commercial. Especially when you start discussing academic settings (which, by the way, uses a lot of proprietary softwar…

The discussion is not about "what could've been", much less about "what should we do today". It is mainly about what "would've been if we lived in a world where RMS managed to forbid proprietary/closed-source software". I posit that if this prevailed in the 70's or 80's, there would simply be no software revolution.

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#202

Post by rglullis »

ue_ wrote: post #199
sokoloff wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not for a lack of good faith in interpreting your words (IMO), but a genuine difference of opinion on a critical point. I don't view software on a spectrum from proprietary through shitty to non-existent. I view it more as a two-by-two matrix of high quality/shitty on one axis and FOSS/proprietary on the other. All four quadrants are populated. The economic incentives that capitalism and proprietary software pro…

>In the 22 years since GIMP started, it hasn't caught Photoshop. I think it's important to look in that quadrant, though. Why does that quadrant exist? In my judgement, it's beacuse such software requires a large amount of research and time to be devoted to it, and while certain free software projects are able to catch up to it, they are few and far between. The next question to ask is why such development-intensive…

Oh, please. When are going to stop making objective comparisons between the Real World and crazy Utopias?

If we are getting closer to living in a post-scarcity world, it is thanks to these "horrible" things Capitalism brings us like private property, freedom to enterprise, rule of law that enables trade, etc, etc.

"In Socialism people have more free time to pursue their interests"? People in North Korea are more busy trying not to starve to death. Venezuela is facing shortages of toilet paper, and their government is pushing for forced labor. How can one even think that there will ever be a society rich enough to afford people universally free to do whatever they want?

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#203

Post by cyphar »

rglullis wrote: post #201
cyphar wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That feels like a backwards argument to me. There are many free software companies (RedHat, SUSE, Canonical, etc) that create plenty of innovative software. I'm sure you know the difference between "free as in beer" and "free as in speech", but your argument appears to be conflating proprietary and commercial. Especially when you start discussing academic settings (which, by the way, uses a lot of proprietary softwar…

The discussion is not about "what could've been", much less about "what should we do today". It is mainly about what "would've been if we lived in a world where RMS managed to forbid proprietary/closed-source software". I posit that if this prevailed in the 70's or 80's, there would simply be no software revolution.

> I posit that if this prevailed in the 70's or 80's, there would simply be no software revolution.

And I would claim that you have no evidence for such a statement. Given how much technical innovation happened in the hobbyist computer revolution that predated the "software revolution" (where proprietary software was unheard of) I would argue the opposite. But neither of us can possibly know what would've been in an alternate timeline.

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#204

Post by amelius »

teekert wrote: post #55
amelius wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything developed by big companies that deals with our data on their premises is evil. We should simply not allow that, and let big companies just develop the hardware.

""We" should not allow that"... Yeah that sounds like freedom to me. You are free to deal with these companies or not. Whether you agree with these companies and their ways is irrelevant. This is same as not agreeing with another persons' religion, you are free do choose a way to lead your life, don't try to force your way upon others. Others happily share their data with Google and reap the benefits of a very helpfu…

> ""We" should not allow that"... Yeah that sounds like freedom to me.

Absolute freedom does not exist. Every kind of freedom requires sacrifices.

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#205

Post by rglullis »

cyphar wrote: post #203
rglullis wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The discussion is not about "what could've been", much less about "what should we do today". It is mainly about what "would've been if we lived in a world where RMS managed to forbid proprietary/closed-source software". I posit that if this prevailed in the 70's or 80's, there would simply be no software revolution.

> I posit that if this prevailed in the 70's or 80's, there would simply be no software revolution. And I would claim that you have no evidence for such a statement. Given how much technical innovation happened in the hobbyist computer revolution that predated the "software revolution" (where proprietary software was unheard of) I would argue the opposite. But neither of us can possibly know what would've been in an…

You are right that we can not make a perfectly quantifiable experiment to check the rate of innovation in a "purely Free, RMS-style" world vs the current one where proprietary software is also allowed.

But using that as an excuse to keep believing that "we could have gotten where we are only with Free Software" is a cop-out. We don't need to have an alternate timeline. We can think of our existing one as the (non-linear) superposition of two competing philosophies and their development: the hobbyist/academic/free one & the commercial/private/proprietary/profit-motive-based one on the other. We can surely come up with some kind of model to see how the "free economy" would fare if there was no "proprietary" agent.

You have said it yourself: there was a revolution going on, but it was only affecting the hobbyists, the enthusiasts. It took the "proprietary" side to exist to make it computing something as universal as it has become.

Without proprietary software, there would be no BSD 4.4, Linus would not have anything to clone for the PC, there would be no Free/Open/NetBSD, and so on.

Remove these from the "software economy" of today, and what would we have? Minix? HURD? "Innovative", alright. But certainly never able to compete with the proprietary (or proprietary-clones) alternatives at any point in time.

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#206

Post by [deleted] »

cyphar wrote: post #203
rglullis wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The discussion is not about "what could've been", much less about "what should we do today". It is mainly about what "would've been if we lived in a world where RMS managed to forbid proprietary/closed-source software". I posit that if this prevailed in the 70's or 80's, there would simply be no software revolution.

> I posit that if this prevailed in the 70's or 80's, there would simply be no software revolution. And I would claim that you have no evidence for such a statement. Given how much technical innovation happened in the hobbyist computer revolution that predated the "software revolution" (where proprietary software was unheard of) I would argue the opposite. But neither of us can possibly know what would've been in an…

[deleted]

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#207

Post by ForHackernews »

legulere wrote: post #186
ForHackernews wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

GPL mandates that anyone that gets hands on your software can give it away for free, effectively making it impossible to sell it

The existence of bittorrent means that anyone that gets their hands on your software can give it away for free, effectively making it impossible to sell it.
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