Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (2007) • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (2007)

#141

Post by WalterBright » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 6:25 AM UTC

eesmith wrote: post #47

sn41 wrote: post #7

In the years to come, I believe free software will be recognised as one of the paradigmatic changes in how science itself is done. Now chemists and biologists have started talking about making data openly available and so forth. It's a shame that RMS has to spout forth on every issue, and in the current climate of outrage, science may have lost an important transformational voice. I think as a society, we need to cal…

Free software isn't about making data openly available. Stallman, at https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html , argues that free software developers should "charge as much as they wish or can, ... if you are redistributing copies of free software, you might as well charge a substantial fee and make some money ." If you have useful data, the free software principles say that you might as well charge a lot of money…

There are a lot of things free on archive.org. Some people download categories, burn them on DVDs, and sell them for a few dollars. I find that worth the money rather than laboriously downloading things one by one, and bought a few.

Re: Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (2007)

#142

Post by 4bpp » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 6:28 AM UTC

waterhouse wrote: post #129

4bpp wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But consider the possibility that this might be perfectly rational behaviour for people who care about some side of the cause (even if it comes at the expense of HN as a forum): the victory condition for any belief is to be so universally accepted that its negation can not be expressed in polite company. If you come into a HN thread believing X and then see that every post stating X got downvoted into oblivion, maybe…

> the victory condition for any belief is to be so universally accepted that its negation can not be expressed in polite company. Well, to quote our host: No one gets in trouble for saying that 2 + 2 is 5, or that people in Pittsburgh are ten feet tall. Such obviously false statements might be treated as jokes, or at worst as evidence of insanity, but they are not likely to make anyone mad. The statements that make p…

I'm not sure what to make of your Bigfoot example; it seems more driven by the circumstance that nobody really at all cares whether Bigfoot wins or loses outside maybe of some scientific fields. I could imagine that claiming that Bigfoot does exist at a zoology conference would land you in some professional trouble, though not nearly as much as something that people actually do care about such as whether vaccines cause autism. (Conversely, I don't think not-Bigfoot is in fact in the victory condition outside of science: 14% of people [1] profess to believe in it, and I figure that if tomorrow SciAm posted an article that Bigfoot had been discovered, most people would shrug and accept it. I suspect this should bother any people outside of science who actually have an interest in not-Bigfoot, and I do have a vague recollection of seeing some post on FSTDT back in the days where Christian fundamentalists were agitating hard against Bigfoot because they were afraid it would be used as "missing link" style evidence for evolution.)

Maybe a better rephrasing of the victory condition is something like "nobody who will ever be in a position to make a significant decision that depends on this belief can get away with disagreeing with it". By that definition, non-Bigfoot wins because approximately nobody except maybe for people controlling federal animal conservation budgets will ever make any significant decisions based on non-Bigfoot, and those probably are judged by scientists; on the other hand, the pro and contra on Stallman's cancellation materially influences decisions all of us will make every time we decide which conferences to sign up for, universities to accept jobs at or Twitter accounts to bolster the influencer status of.

Downvoting itself is not perceived as nasty behaviour. Seeing somebody else be nasty in defense of a belief X harms belief X; not seeing anyone ever defend or even bring up belief not-X because anyone who would do so is afraid of becoming a target of nasty behaviour, on the other hand, surely would help belief X.

[1] https://www.publicpolicypolling.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/...

Re: Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (2007)

#143

Post by 4bpp » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 6:35 AM UTC

madacoo wrote: post #126

4bpp wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on why you dispute it is rational? I'm working with a definition of "rational" that is more or less "the optimal way to attain your goals", and assuming that the goals of Stallman's detractors imply that everyone agrees that Stallman/people like him should be cancelled. My argument, then, is that (1) upvote/downvote patterns on a forum like HN are a useful tools to reduce the frequency of the case a…

Let's start by assuming that a rational agent might choose as a goal the complete cessation of a particular belief. In that case I'd argue that downvoting patterns, as previously described, are not rational because, rather than having the intended consequence of reducing the likelihood of the expression of that belief, they would in fact simply cause that belief to strengthen and then be expressed elsewhere in altern…

I suppose it all depends on whether you think persuasion or group membership signalling is what primarily influences people's beliefs. I was under the impression there was a wealth of studies suggesting that people basically do not respond positively to logical argument but are easily swayed by what they think everyone around them believes, but I completely failed to find any of them (or studies to the contrary, on that matter), so barring someone producing links where I failed, I suppose we can only recognise that we have different beliefs about reality that we do not have easily serialisable/communicable evidence for.

One issue I take with what you said, though, is the notion of a "rational goal". I don't see how this would be defined in my understanding of the terms; goals are axiomatic, (ir)rationality is a property of candidate actions in pursuit of a particular goal. I still get the impression that we probably use different definitions, and yours is much closer to something like "rational"="conducive to intellectual growth". (So in my world a better paperclip maximiser would be more rational, and in yours a better paperclip maximiser would be less rational...?)

Re: Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (2007)

#144

Post by pjmlp » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 6:37 AM UTC

mav3rick wrote: post #60

4bpp wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe he has alienated more women from FOSS than he has inspired people to contribute to it? Considering the frankly extremely low percentage of female contributors, it seems that he would have had to personally (considering that all of the creepy behaviours listed seem to be limited to his meatspace circles) alienate multiple women for every one woman who did wind up working on in free software, which seems…

You are okay forgiving people as long as their "net impact" is positive? Is it okay for someone to murder a person if they saved more than one life before ?

That is what armies happen to do all the time.

Re: Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (2007)

#145

Post by thayne » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 6:39 AM UTC

cma wrote: post #112

eesmith wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free software isn't about making data openly available. Stallman, at https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html , argues that free software developers should "charge as much as they wish or can, ... if you are redistributing copies of free software, you might as well charge a substantial fee and make some money ." If you have useful data, the free software principles say that you might as well charge a lot of money…

If I'm understanding right, those journals still kept it copyrighted, without copy-left provisions. It's more like the notion of open source, where the source may be viewable but isn't necessarily available for redistribution. While Stallman says you can charge as much as you can, his terms say that once someone buys it they can immediately undercut you, and he admits that limits the amount you could charge sustainab…

> It's more like the notion of open source, where the source may be viewable but isn't necessarily available for redistribution.

I think you misunderstand the distinction between open source and free software. Open source software also needs to be available for redistribution. The main practical difference is Free Software also requires that if you make any changes to the software, those changes must _also_ be released under the same licensing, whereas open source may or may not have such provisions.

Re: Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (2007)

#146

Post by adtac » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 6:41 AM UTC

jimmaswell wrote: post #131

Free software misses the point of open source. Open source wants to make the world a better place without strings attached, while free software just wants to push some bizzare ideology.

Not bizarre in absolutely any way. The free software movement is a real thing that lobbies for you and me. Unlike silicon valley products, GPL and its siblings actually made the world a better place and to not recognise it is to be ungrateful. Even if making all software free is a dystopia, it's a good dystopia to strive towards.

Re: Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (2007)

#147

Post by pg_is_a_butt » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 6:45 AM UTC

sn41 wrote: post #7

In the years to come, I believe free software will be recognised as one of the paradigmatic changes in how science itself is done. Now chemists and biologists have started talking about making data openly available and so forth. It's a shame that RMS has to spout forth on every issue, and in the current climate of outrage, science may have lost an important transformational voice. I think as a society, we need to cal…

stallman.org

Re: Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (2007)

#148

Post by jonathankoren » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 6:47 AM UTC

4bpp wrote: post #124

jonathankoren wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The contemporary misinterpretation of the mattress aside, RMS already had already earned his reputation in the 90s, as had at least one other OSS luminary of the time. Case in point: RMS's incredibly uncomfortable St iGNUcius routine was already legendary.[0] Does he intend for it to be awkward at best, and offensive at worst? I doubt it. Has people told him that it is not received as he intends? Definitely. Does he…

I do not think that a tacky joke about "emacs virgins" as part of a comedy routine parodying real religious movements past and present deserves being treated as a punishable offense at all . Not only do I think that this should not be objectionable and those who try to make it out to be are contributing to our society being a worse place than it has to be, calls for punishment on the basis of it also strike me as pla…

Assuming good faith, I’m old enough to remember not only 2009, but also the 1990s.

This tacky joke wasn’t considered to be in line with the best advice at either time. While you may need to take my word for 1990s, the very fact that there are multiple contemporaneous articles about the inappropriateness of the 2009 skit, is evidence of that. I will concede that the tolerance for the tacky joke may have been a bit higher in 1990, or even 1999, than it was 2009. Also, to reiterate, I do not think that it is RMS’s intention to offend, but offend he none the less does.

I am confused by the line of thought about someone that may not have been considered a good feminist in 2009, but in 2019 may be considered a good one. People are always welcome to change and adapt their behaviors and opinions to be more inclusive. Furthermore, it is especially welcome to acknowledge past behavior that doesn’t rise to one’s current standards. That is the expected outcome of education, growth, and maturity. To steadfastly refuse to change behavior when it is brought to their attention that is inappropriate, and perhaps not in line with their professed ideas, seems suspect to me. Is there something I’m missing, or perhaps you accidentally got the years reversed, and I misinterpreted?

Re: Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (2007)

#149

Post by cma » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 6:48 AM UTC

eesmith wrote: post #117

cma wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm understanding right, those journals still kept it copyrighted, without copy-left provisions. It's more like the notion of open source, where the source may be viewable but isn't necessarily available for redistribution. While Stallman says you can charge as much as you can, his terms say that once someone buys it they can immediately undercut you, and he admits that limits the amount you could charge sustainab…

I think you refer to the publication, and not the journal? I was referring to "making data openly available", quoting the top-level comment, and "If you have useful data" in my comment you replied to. The data repository I mentioned is the PDB. Quoting http://www.rcsb.org/pages/policies : > Data files contained in the PDB archive (ftp://ftp.wwpdb.org) are free of all copyright restrictions and made fully and freely a…

Ah, I didn’t realize what the PDB was, sorry.

Re: Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (2007)

#150

Post by hdfbdtbcdg » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 6:56 AM UTC

toofy wrote: post #134

roenxi wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is even worth focusing in on specific issues; throwing mud at Stallman's character is post-hoc rationalisation for a situation created by thoughtcrime. Even if the mud sticks, the major problem is that Stallman was forced to resign after what appears to be (from public info) a moral panic. People acting on moral panics is really bad; good process is slow process. There are real complaints about Stall…

I don’t mean to quibble and I really want to strsss this next point: I’m absolutely as lost as we all seem to be regarding how some people in our communities should be dealt with. I don’t yet know how we’ll choose to handle them. But anyway, using the term “thoughtcrime” feels incredibly disingenuous and could easily be misconstrued as intentionally inflammatory. Obviously you wouldn’t be intentionally inflammatory o…

Thoughtcrime is an apt description for the events that triggered this moral panic.