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

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

#61

Post by smoldesu »

gandalfff wrote: post #15

I'm not a programmer so I can't practically exercise my user freedoms. If I was a programmer, I also couldn't practically exercise my user freedoms for most of the software I use. Maybe one programmer could maintain a fork of vim, but it takes a small company to maintain a true fork of larger projects like Firefox, Chromium, and LibreOffice. If you want control over your workflow, a program with a stable extensions A…

I have a couple private forks of software that I maintain for one reason or another. I've got a fork of a Discord theme with minor CSS changes I keep around and update once every few months, as well as the GTK app Password Safe with all of it's UI/UX changes pinned the way they were before GNOME took it over. The experience is pretty fine all things considered. I rarely ever need to hop in to change stuff around unless an update is pushed that I really want to ingest, and when it does happen it rarely takes more than an hour to get things sorted out and working again. It's not half as scary as it sounds, really.

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

#62

Post by r283492 »

Proprietary software is a societal ill, like spyware is. Getting people to understand that will be similar to when societies have figured out other things are wrong, like child labor is wrong. While proprietary software runs rampant, certain parts of our overall freedom and privacy has regressed in comparison to before computers, and in comparison to how they should be. It is not a lost cause to think that the software we depend on to live our lives should act in our interests, and having the 4 freedoms on that software is simply an essential part of it acting in our interest.

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

#63

Post by metroholografix »

warp wrote: post #48
gorjusborg wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe in free software but I do not like GNU and FSF zealotry I don't believe you believe in free software. > Free software (or libre software)[1][2] is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. If you believe in that, how can you consider what the FSF stands for 'zealotry'? They are sim…

I believe the world would be a better place if all software was free, and I think that is a worthy goal to be pursuing. In that sense, I believe in free software. I don't think the FSF as an organization is very effective in working toward that goal or promoting that goal. They're pushing away too many people and organizations who could've been their allies.

On the contrary, I think they've been very effective in avoiding being corrupted and destroyed from within (as is the norm).

It takes a super strong moral foundation to stand firm against the onslaught of corporate commoditization, and the FSF has managed to do it. I know RMS rubs some folks the wrong way, but he's been not only extremely prescient and decades ahead of his time, but THE main reason that the FSF has endured where so many others have failed.

It's a common saying that the FSF is old or promotes an aging philosophy that's not current with the times, usually meant as a stepping stone to some sort of modernization not only in procedures but principles, which is exactly how other projects have been destroyed. Popular appeal may wax or wane, but there can be absolutely no concession in the core philosophy of the FSF. Keep broadcasting an uncorrupted message, and let people tune in [1].

RMS fully understands this and it'll be a sad day when/if he's replaced by someone who doesn't.

[1] A look at the -healthy and invigorated by newcomers- Emacs community is testament that the state of affairs is not dire.

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

#64

Post by gorjusborg »

warp wrote: post #48
gorjusborg wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe in free software but I do not like GNU and FSF zealotry I don't believe you believe in free software. > Free software (or libre software)[1][2] is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. If you believe in that, how can you consider what the FSF stands for 'zealotry'? They are sim…

I believe the world would be a better place if all software was free, and I think that is a worthy goal to be pursuing. In that sense, I believe in free software. I don't think the FSF as an organization is very effective in working toward that goal or promoting that goal. They're pushing away too many people and organizations who could've been their allies.

> I don't think the FSF as an organization is very effective in working toward that goal or promoting that goal.

Okay, I can understand that line of reasoning, and I agree to a certain extent.

The FSF is aging, and their philosophy is not playing well anymore with the public.

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

#65

Post by nomemory »

ilovecaching wrote: post #53
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 af…

That's unfortunate... and I recognize myself in the programmer you've mentioned. I've written software that i am not proud of ... from an ethical perspective. In the last months I've become a little bit more concerned of the things I am building.

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

#66

Post by anthk »

I do, even for the oldest software. I even used to praise MIT's Dungeon over Zork because I tought it was under the public domain, but it wasn't. I hope one day some old MIT guy sets the pre-Infocom Zork (Dungeon) as libre software.

On most modern games, AAA games today suck, full of microtransactions, DRM and "always online" policies even for simple player runs. Nowadays I mostly play libre games and most of the music I own it's under a CC license.

The semi-infamous Nanowar band existed in Jamendo, among lots of other composers. Also, the TextFiles guy mirrored every CC Album from Jamendo to archive.org.

https://archive.org/details/jamendo-albums?noscript=1

So, there's no excuse today to get legal and libre gaming and media. You have libre game engines which allows you to play thousands of games from GOG, for example.

On comic books: https://comicbookplus.com/ I like both mistery/noir and sci-fi ones. Nowadays what it's being sold today it's 90's remakes on movies and Marvel comics, so in the end there's very few "new" and "groundbreaking".

Yes, "new" stories about hackers, dystopias and such, but that kind of media either already was on public domain or in copyleft-like fanfiction thru web sites and previously, Usenet and freeware interactive fiction games, if not libre.

On the "libre" term from Spanish, English speakers could spell it as "leebehr" or "lihbah (UK)".

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

#67

Post by anthk »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #14

I believe in free software but I do not like GNU and FSF zealotry. See: https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html "Debian also maintains a repository of nonfree software. According to the project, this software is 'not part of the Debian system,' but the repository is hosted on many of the project's main servers, and people can readily find these nonfree packages by browsing Debian's online package database and…

We need more blobless drivers and not more :)

AMD Radeon cards shouldn't require a blob to even turn themselves on and get 3D acceleration.

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

#68

Post by panick21_ »

ilovecaching wrote: post #60
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 ther…

And GPL prevents that only partially. As GPL does nothing to prevent Amazon Cloud. We know that Amazon internal Linux has changes. Its only about distribution.

And not sure how X history would be different. Yes, for a program that we know would turn universal eventually it might have been helpful. It also might not have ever been open source or whatever.

And again, a weak copy left like the CDDL style license might have been even better. The MPL 2.0 explicitly allows other open source licenses as well.

The MPL 2.0 is what I think is pretty idea for a lot of things.

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

#69

Post by Ourgon »

Do I believe society is better off with free software compared to the alternatives? Yes, I do.

Do I believe the GNU project, the GNU licence and the related software has done good for society? Yes, I do.

Do I believe the Free Software Foundation has done more good than harm in getting the idea of free software (free as in freedom, not free as in beer) out in society? Yes, I do.

Do I believe every act by any representative of the GNU project or the Free Software Foundation is good? Of course I don't, they are people with their own ideas which do not necessarily always agree with mine.

So, Free Software for the win, it will take time but it has in many ways happened already and will continue to do so.

The more software is integrated in hardware which used to be free of such - tractors, cars, household appliances, etc. - the more important the freedoms proposed by the Free Software Foundation are. The more intrusive surveillance by government and commercial entities becomes, the more important it is to have access to free alternatives which do not report back to their 'Owners'. Free software plus the right to repair are essential to keep society out of the grip of commercial entities who first and foremost are beholden to their bottom line, second and increasingly so to some ideology and/or political party.

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

#70

Post by jrm4 »

Much like religion itself; the key to finding the value in it is "accepting that it (or you, or whatever) will never be perfect," but generally trying to go in that direction regardless.

I think one people strongly undervalue is the extent to which "Free Software" is already overwhelmingly successful. Don't compare it to the platonic ideal that Free Software talks about, compare it to the much worse situation(s) we'd be in if we hadn't already digested and worked with the concept for the past few decades.

And keep fighting.

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