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Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.

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Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.

#251

Post by rbanffy »

randallsquared wrote: post #204
rbanffy wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only freedom you give up by using the GPL is the freedom to take away the freedoms of your downstream users. Once GPL'ed, any derivative must also preserve the freedoms of its users. This doesn't happen with MIT/BSD and that's one of the reasons there is a vibrant ecosystem around the Linux kernel and the GNU userland and nothing comparable around *BSDs.

Freedom and capability are not the same. People have freedoms by default, and they can be taken away, but people lack capability by default, and they must be provided (in the context of software). The GPL preserves capability by removing a bit of freedom, while the BSD license preserves more freedom at the expense of the possibility to remove capability from downstream users.

It doesn't matter if downstream users are technically capable of exercising their freedoms or not. The point is that GPL preserves those freedoms and MIT/BSD doesn't.

Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.

#252

Post by gizmomagico »

rbanffy wrote: post #238
gizmomagico wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, God kills a kitten every time a proprietary license is sold. Even if it's your startup selling it?

Even if it's my grandma's startup selling it. Even if it's the girl scouts selling it. Seriously, when your user knows and willingly enters what has a good chance of becoming an abusive relation (depending on your upgrades, being unable to migrate their data, forcing you to support ancient versions because they don't have the money to upgrade), I believe it's fine. But I would prefer another model.

Of course there are risks involved, but don't your users usually pay you because they consider your software worth paying for?

They probably don't feel like they're resigning their fate to an abusive relationship.

Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.

#253

Post by shadowfox »

gaius wrote: post #161
whyenot wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He had no permanent residence, no salary, and lived out of his office at MIT for years before he got either of those awards.

Out of lifestyle choice. You trying living in your employers office and see how long before the call the cops! Note also in that article he talks about how much he likes to travel, and slates BP a paragraph later. Hypocrite, much?

Maybe he walks all the way ;)

Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.

#254

Post by avar »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #133

On a modern Linux system, Gnu is the command line userland, one compiler (among many, and not the dominant one for work if you're a Java shop), and Emacs. And that's it. Not X, not really Gnome, not KDE at all, not the polish put on by Ubuntu etc, and not most of the OS underpinnings either nowadays (dbus, hal, udev, upstart, dpkg, network-manager...). Tell me again, why he should get the Gnu/... in front of the kern…

This doesn't really address your main point, but GNOME is part of the GNU project. Which means that most of the both the GUI and command-line UI on e.g. Ubuntu is in fact GNU software. But obviously less so under KDE.

Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.

#255

Post by randallsquared »

rbanffy wrote: post #251
randallsquared wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom and capability are not the same. People have freedoms by default, and they can be taken away, but people lack capability by default, and they must be provided (in the context of software). The GPL preserves capability by removing a bit of freedom, while the BSD license preserves more freedom at the expense of the possibility to remove capability from downstream users.

It doesn't matter if downstream users are technically capable of exercising their freedoms or not. The point is that GPL preserves those freedoms and MIT/BSD doesn't.

MIT/BSD does preserve the freedom, just doesn't guarantee the preservation of the ability. The GPL guarantees preservation of the ability by removing a bit of the downstream developers' freedom. The GPL exploits copyright law in a clever hack to negate most of the harm of copyright law, but it isn't actually providing more freedom than the BSD license. The freest code is public domain, but some countries don't even allow their citizens to publish in the public domain, so...

Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.

#256

Post by rimantas »

rbanffy wrote: post #243
alextgordon wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Including denying its users any freedom. "Freedom" is not black and white. Sometimes you need to deny users one freedom in order to give them another. For example, Spotify is a non-free application and it has DRM and lock-in and nasty things like that (no doubt required by the music industry). However, it's completely changed the way I listen to music and given me freedom to listen to more music than I could hav…

Actually, you traded your freedom to tinker for your ability to play whatever they chose to offer you. I hope you like their offering.

  you traded your freedom to tinker
What kind of nonsense is this?

Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.

#257

Post by JulianMorrison »

avar wrote: post #254
JulianMorrison wrote: post #133

On a modern Linux system, Gnu is the command line userland, one compiler (among many, and not the dominant one for work if you're a Java shop), and Emacs. And that's it. Not X, not really Gnome, not KDE at all, not the polish put on by Ubuntu etc, and not most of the OS underpinnings either nowadays (dbus, hal, udev, upstart, dpkg, network-manager...). Tell me again, why he should get the Gnu/... in front of the kern…

This doesn't really address your main point, but GNOME is part of the GNU project. Which means that most of the both the GUI and command-line UI on e.g. Ubuntu is in fact GNU software. But obviously less so under KDE.

Gnu brands it, the Gnome developers build it, and seemingly Red Hat mostly pays for it. This is what I meant by "not really".

Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.

#258

Post by protomyth »

astrange wrote: post #248
rick888 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's support. I'm talking about selling software. There's a difference.

What is the difference? Is it possible for the difference to not matter?

Selling support implies that your software needs support and beyond needing it, your users need the support enough to pay for. This creates quite a disincentive to make your software intuitive.

Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.

#260

Post by scott_s »

sprout wrote: post #56
moxiemk1 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I normally have the same sentiment about RMS, but one of his responses here really ticked me off in the 'clarity of purpose' department: The bit about the microwaves (#23) 'Installing software' is a fairly abstract concept, especially given how liberally RMS likes to see the GPL used beyond normal software. To that end, I think that if he were truly logically pure, the same logic would apply to the iPhone. But, he wo…

Your comparison of the microwave to the iPhone is just false. The point is that if the software is simple enough that it's pretty obviously bug-free, and you have no reasonable need to tinker with it, there's no reason you should need the source for the microcontroller. If the controller isn't working, the source is probably not going to help you. You just need a new microcontroller. On the flip side, there's no reas…

The iPad is pushing us closer to computer-as-appliance. The distinction may not be so clear-cut in the future.
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