Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Do you believe in GNU's Free Software?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 94 posts

Re: Ask HN: Do you believe in GNU's Free Software?

#51

Post by ilovecaching »

robmusial wrote: post #25

> Do you believe in Free Software? > If we believe in things like right to repair... > immoral When it is phrased like that (and it often is phrased like that) it sounds like a religion. Also the notion that there is no compromise to be had also seems very religious. I already have a religion and Free Software isn't it. I support the majority of the goals of the FSF, SFC, OSI, and EFF. Some of them overlap, some I do…

I think that the difference between where we are now and the RMS view is he sees free software as yet another constitutional right, a right that we could have only known about after the advent of the computer. Many people would die defending their constitutional rights, or at the very least lay quite a bit of their lives on the line for it. What got me thinking about this was an RMS talk where he was saying how the least we can do is suffer some minor inconveniences to support free software. Like maybe tool A is rough around the edges or doesn't have feature X, Y that tool B does, but tool A is FOSS, so we pick A anyway as a vote for free software.

So my question is twofold: do we believe that FOSS is a right, and where do we draw the line between dedicating our lives to fighting for FOSS, and only using it when its completely convenient.

On the one hand we have RMS, whose ideology has led him to a path where he can pick from maybe a handful of computers where he can get everything FOSS, and if he needs something where there is nothing FOSS to cover it, he can't use it. He can't enjoy modern gaming, or VR, etc. On the other hand, we have people who will buy a tool if it's better than the FOSS solution, who never consider FOSS into their calculus of picking one tool over another on principle, or an even greater sacrifice - refraining from doing an activity on a computer because the only solution is not FOSS.

Re: Ask HN: Do you believe in GNU's Free Software?

#52

Post by smoldesu »

I do, but I think a lot of people misinterpret the ideals of free software amidst all of the extremism. Free software is about user freedom, not necessarily free-as-in-beer or even developer freedom, to an extent. The purpose of free software hearkens back a few decades, to when proprietary Unix vendors dominated the market by selling mostly the same thing with small tweaks that were by-and-large designed to promote lock in. When Linux and BSD started reaching critical mass, these businesses closed up shop.

Why?

Well, the users were free. They were no longer forced to use proprietary systems that were designed by people who had different priorities than them. This empowered people to build the internet as we know it, and ever since then the dream has been to design an equally liberating software that can live up to the opus that is The Internet. As a user, I still use proprietary software on a daily basis; even Stallman does when he orders his Big Mac at the McDonald's kiosk. But I also appreciate having options; 3 years ago I finally said that I was fed up with Windows, and luckily for me there was software I could install on the hardware I already owned to let me escape it. I had options. I was no longer forced into a position where I was abused as a customer or target market.

So that's what I believe in. Empowering the individual to make choices, so they aren't trapped when proprietary systems decide to turn to shit. Without options, we have no democracy. Without democracy, there is no competition. Without competition, there is no innovation. And without innovation, we don't get new options.

Re: Ask HN: Do you believe in GNU's Free Software?

#53

Post by ilovecaching »

nomemory wrote: post #40

I believe that Stallman is correct in most of what he says. When he started his movements the threats were lower than there are now. But looking at the current state of the industry things are scarier than I ever imagined to be 10 years ago. People cannot even imagine how much data is collected from them each day. And the simplest way to collect data is to sell people phones, and make them install apps instead of let…

In one of his talks (it was some TED talk) he even drew pictures of companies with leashes around the necks of their users. In his words, if the source code is not available, the software owns the user, the user doesn't own the software.

I think this is something that the majority of programmers don't care about. I mean, most programmers only concern themselves with engineering. They rarely care about the societal affects of what they build, let alone how it's built. One area I agree with RMS on is that open source is essential to transparency from companies as to what they are doing with our inputs.

Re: Ask HN: Do you believe in GNU's Free Software?

#54

Post by hs86 »

I don't particularly appreciate how a group of nerds from the 80s have some supposed interpretational sovereignty over what "free" software means. The added restrictions on the GPL don't make the software more "free" than BSD/MIT, and I don't like how this is falsely presented as additional user freedom while most users would never look inside the source code or make modifications to it.

I prefer developers release their source code because they want to and not because an overengineered LICENSE.txt compels them. That looks more like free software to me.

The GPL isn't that bad per se, but I don't like the notion of making a folder of textfiles more "free" by adding restrictions on its usage (by people). It feels contrary to that advertised user freedom. The GPL looks like the attributed freedom of that folder with some textfiles is more important than people's freedom. That is still fine for lots of use cases, but its whole framing by the FSF is what irks me.

Re: Ask HN: Do you believe in GNU's Free Software?

#55

Post by dfdz »

> Do you believe in Free Software?

What does it mean to "believe" in Free Software?

I believe Free Software (as defined in your post) exists and will continue to exist for the foreseeable future.

> Is free software a lost cause?

This question seems to assume that Free Software is a cause, which is notably absent from the GNU definition you presented.

Re: Ask HN: Do you believe in GNU's Free Software?

#56

Post by psim1 »

GNU isn't the only Free (not to mention free) philosophy in town. I believe it to be the only one whose licenses start out in a combative posture, e.g. "The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast,..." (Is this claim even true?)

I believe in Free Software and I also believe in positive, cooperative attitudes, which is not the attitude that GNU puts forth.

Re: Ask HN: Do you believe in GNU's Free Software?

#58

Post by panick21_ »

I don't believe in viral GPL based enforcement of free software and things like GPL being used as mechanism to keep out ZFS and things like that.

But weak-copy left and MIT style licenses are great and are winning.

Go back 10-20 years and we live in a much, much, much worse world in virtually every domain.

Not to mention open hardware, open FPGA, open chips and so on.

How many databases are still closed source today? How many compilers? How many programing languages?

Compare now to the 90s and its actually mind blowing how different everything is.

Re: Ask HN: Do you believe in GNU's Free Software?

#59

Post by ilovecaching »

dfdz wrote: post #55

> Do you believe in Free Software? What does it mean to "believe" in Free Software? I believe Free Software (as defined in your post) exists and will continue to exist for the foreseeable future. > Is free software a lost cause? This question seems to assume that Free Software is a cause, which is notably absent from the GNU definition you presented.

The Free Software we are talking about is more of an assertion that you have a right to something, and not just a licensing model. By right, I mean something akin to a constitutional right - as in it's in the public's best interest for you to be able to see the source code of the programs you run, be able to modify them, etc. It's your right, as the owner of a piece of software, to be able to do these things. It's not about free as in price, but free as in speech (which is a constitutional right).

Re: Ask HN: Do you believe in GNU's Free Software?

#60

Post by ilovecaching »

panick21_ wrote: post #58

I don't believe in viral GPL based enforcement of free software and things like GPL being used as mechanism to keep out ZFS and things like that. But weak-copy left and MIT style licenses are great and are winning. Go back 10-20 years and we live in a much, much, much worse world in virtually every domain. Not to mention open hardware, open FPGA, open chips and so on. How many databases are still closed source today?…

There is a good talk by one of the authors of the X windows system as to why MIT for them was a mistake and how he'd wish they'd used the GPL. One could argue that a copycenter license is really just doing you doing the work of corporations for free, and when it comes time for them to contribute back to the hard work you've done, or to avoid fracturing the community by creating non-free addons, etc.

I agree that there is a lot of open source software, but there is also a pattern of corporations taking what they can and then building their own proprietary walled gardens around it. Most normal people still interact with the world through non-free software, a lot of which spends time spying on them, which is one of the main points RMS makes about why source code should be a right.

Post reply on HN