Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Open Source is about the developers. Free Software is about the end users (or, it's supposed to be)." In an ideal world, the user and the developer are one in the same. I don't mean everyone who uses a piece of software should have to know the code intimately; merely that they should have the freedom to see it, modify it and learn from it, should the need or desire arise. The power of the Free Software movement is t…
"I don't mean everyone who uses a piece of software should have to know the code intimately; merely that they should have the freedom to see it, modify it and learn from it, should the need or desire arise." Hopefully, in your ideal world, this doesn't take away the freedoms of the developers that don't want to release their code. "You're mostly too young to remember the world in which code was closed, by default, an…
Nowhere have I suggested that anyone should ever be forced to do anything. Using a straw man as your opening salvo here really doesn't say anything good about your position or your arguments.
"This would have happened even without the GNU license. Anything that can be digital is being shared on the Internet, regardless of the license."
As I mentioned, I'm not talking about licenses here. I'm talking about the culture of free and open source software, which the FSF and RMS were instrumental in helping to build.
And, I don't consider piracy a useful kind of sharing. You can't learn from pirated software, and you can't give back to pirated software. Pirating software is a net negative for the world (probably, and in most circumstances). While sharing software under an open license is a net positive (probably, and in most circumstances).
"Most people will never look at the source code...so the absence of a license that gives you the right to tinker with the inner workings of an application won't really have an effect on the "technology haves and have nots"."
Most is not all. Some people will look at the source code, and some of them will become contributing members of the community. If they arrive to a culture of sharing, teaching, and learning, that's what they will bring to their own family and friends. You and I are not magical unicorns of uniqueness. The elements of our personalities that drove us to become hackers exists in millions kids all over the world, and if they're exposed to software that has open windows into its operation they will learn from it.
"We should be more concerned with people that can't eat."
It's two sides of the same coin. People who know technology are among the best paid people in the poorest parts of the word.
Software is what I do, so I try to make what I do as positive for the world as possible (while still making a living). If I were a Dr. perhaps I'd volunteer at a clinic. If I were a scientist, I'd want to work on something that makes the world better. If I were a politician, perhaps I'd kill myself and make the world better that way. But, software is my business, so I use it as best I can to help people.
"Which is funny because this right here is devaluing programmers' salaries every day."
Citation needed.
"Because there are so many free apps out there, companies can hire less experienced developers for less pay (IE: mechanics instead of engineers). It's one of those things that nobody will notice until it's too late. I suspect at this point, we will start to see programmer unions to keep wages at an inflated level."
This is very fragmented thinking, and I'm having trouble following it. If programmers aren't needed, a programmers union will have no effect (because you don't need to hire programmers; you just hire "mechanics"). And, if wages are at an inflated level, then market forces should be working to bring them down. That's what the market is for. But, it's not. There are more programming jobs than ever, because software is more important and more valuable than ever.
More code equals more developer jobs. Open Source and free software does tend to drag down the extreme ends of the software cost spectrum. Databases, for example, have become a commodity in all but the highest end use cases. But, that's OK. It frees up funds for building higher level tools on top that increase business efficiency, which can cost a lot until they, too, get commodotized. That's the nature of the market, and Open Source/Free software just helps it along.
"So, when your company decides to replace you with someone cheaper or goes over to India or the Philippines, don't complain."
Here's where the conversation starts to get funny. I'm co-founder of my company (that shouldn't be surprising; the majority of people at HN have started a company or are planning to). The only way I could be replaced is if the company fails. Perhaps funnier, my company produces 95+% open source software, and I've been involved in Open Source projects for 13 years. Working on and with Open Source software has been the entirety of my professional career, in fact.
We're also a distributed company. We hire people overseas when they're the best person for the job. My co-founder was in Australia when we started the company. Our first employee is in Pennsylvania. We're interviewing frontend developers now, and one candidate is in Eastern Europe. I don't see how that's a bad thing. People in India, the Philippines, and Eastern Europe deserve opportunities just as much as white folks in the good old US of A.
"Even if they closed-sourced the application, the original source code is still free. You just don't get the changes (which were never yours in the first place)."
Yeah, I know how the various licenses work; you're not enlightening the unwashed masses here. We have both GPL and BSD licensed code (500k+ lines of it, in total). If I write the code, I get to decide how it's used. Them's the breaks...if you don't like it, you can write your own. Sometimes I want software that I write to be open in all its forms, including derived works.
Anyway, as I mentioned, I'm not talking about licenses in my discussion of freedom and sharing, and I explicitly mentioned that the things I consider important can happen with other licenses. You're just looking for a flamewar, as it has become apparent is extremely common for BSD fanatics.