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Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

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Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#241

Post by dragonwriter »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #236
dragonwriter wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RMS appears to believe that the creation and distribution of non-Free software is a categorical and unscionable evil, such that anything that anything that encourages it (whatever other benefits it provides) is categorically morally wrong, and anything that discourages it is categorically morally obligatory.

There a bunch of facts that contradict this, e.g. the exstance of the LGPL, RMS supporting BSD licencing of Xiph codecs etc. His approach is a lot more nuanced and tactical than it is often portrayed.

> There a bunch of facts that contradict this, e.g. the exstance of the LGPL, RMS supporting BSD licencing of Xiph codecs etc.

Those don't actually contradict it in any way that I can see.

> His approach is a lot more nuanced and tactical than it is often portrayed.

Sure. That doesn't mean that the long-term goal isn't as I've described it (and, in fact, RMS has pretty explicitly said it is for him, though that may or may not be true of the FSF.)

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#242

Post by Tloewald »

chongli wrote: post #214
Tloewald wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it telling that RMS explicitly has a problem with LLVM because it helps private companies "as well as us" instead of only helping us. It's literally zero-sum for him. He doesn't want companies to benefit in any way from open source. I think there's a big problem with copyright and software -- the goal of copyright is to provide public goods, but the public goods that copyright protects is the source code, not…

No, rms doesn't really care about source code. He cares about user freedom. He wants every user of software to have the same freedom to experiment, modify and redistribute that its original developers had. Placing source code in escrow would not accomplish any of these goals.

It would accomplish all of these goals in the long run.

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#243

Post by belorn »

pantalaimon wrote: post #53
rwg wrote: post #32

When I finally realized that the FSF is really about being a social movement and that creating useful software is a non-primary goal (or maybe even a non-goal), my level of annoyance with RMS greatly decreased. Of course, along with that, my level of give-a-shit about the FSF and the GNU project decreased proportionally. Stallman wants you to use Free software because it's free-as-in-ideology, not because it necessar…

It's also a social movement that cares about what is the epitome of a first-world-problem.

I think the street children in Bangalore would disagree.[1]

People set up computer centers to help the poorest of the poor. Its a place where they can learn and express themselves.

Try set up such place and then pay for the OS, the text editor, the programming language, the painting program, the video editing, and so on. Compare that to finding some old used hardware being unused, and simply start helping the community immediately.

[1] If you want to hear more, I suggest one of the many talks from Eben Moglen. For a transcript of one, see https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/09NTC_plenary:_Eben_Moglen but its a bit short on details.

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#244

Post by chris_j »

epistasis wrote: post #234
geocar wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure FreeBSD and Konquer didn't gain much from Apple deciding to use their code, but they also didn't lose anything either. I disagree. In fact, I think the GPL probably saved the World Wide Web. That Konquerer was GPL was the single advantage it had over anything else. It used to be a buggier, and slower, and generally worse web browser, but every time someone made an improvement, the GPL made those improvements F…

>That Konquerer was GPL was the single advantage it had over anything else. This is simply not true, and if it were, you'd be implying that Apple chose Konquerer over Mozilla because they preferred GPL to MPL. In reality, Konquerer had a much cleaner architecture that Apple thought they had a better chance of adapting to OS X. The GPL had nothing to do with any of these events, the key feature was open source, not GP…

I interpret geocar's point as being that the (L)GPL is the reason that Apple had to contribute the improvements that they made to Konqueror/KHTML back to the community in the form of WebKit: sure, they chose KHTML because of its technical merits but, having done so, they were obliged to make their improvements to the LGPL code available under the same license, thus allowing Google to use it in Chrome.

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#245

Post by belorn »

ochs wrote: post #173
ygra wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re Skype: He also suggests just making a normal phone call. Which has pretty much the same problems: It's an opaque, closed system with pretty much the only difference that there are multiple companies controlling it instead of just one.

I don't think that's true. Phone systems are standardised. There is also free telephony software (like asterisk). The cell phone stuff is more secretive, but it's still more open than Skype, which is completely obfuscated, proprietary and centralised.

I would only add that I can own my phone. I can not own my own skype client.

The complaint about using phone would be much better suited for 1950 where "the phone company" owned the phone. You called, was asked to choose between 3 different colors, and then a few days/weeks later they came and installed a phone with the clear label that said "property of the phone company".

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#246

Post by belorn »

dragonwriter wrote: post #78
lmkg wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it bad I just don't care that LLVM has enabled non-free software? Because it has done a h ck of a lot for opensource software.* This presents an interesting (to RMS) quandary. I take it as a given that he prioritizes the freedom of software over its technical merits (as discussed in other threads). But, even just from the freedom perspective: LLVM increases the amount of proprietary software produced, and also i…

RMS appears to believe that the creation and distribution of non-Free software is a categorical and unscionable evil, such that anything that anything that encourages it (whatever other benefits it provides) is categorically morally wrong, and anything that discourages it is categorically morally obligatory.

In the context of compilers, the harm of non-free compilers are not just speculations. The EU came down with large fines against intel when they did anti-competitive behavior in their compiler. If the intel compiler had been provided with source and under a free license, this anti-competitive harm could not have happened.

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#247

Post by nly »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #169
rwg wrote: post #32

When I finally realized that the FSF is really about being a social movement and that creating useful software is a non-primary goal (or maybe even a non-goal), my level of annoyance with RMS greatly decreased. Of course, along with that, my level of give-a-shit about the FSF and the GNU project decreased proportionally. Stallman wants you to use Free software because it's free-as-in-ideology, not because it necessar…

I have to agree. I love free; what doesn't feel "free" to me is the GPL, since I can't use just about anything GPL in my job. My job involves creating non-free software. Given the GPL's goals, it's not a surprise at all that I can't use it. But it strikes me as ironic that RMS talks about "freedom" when really he's advocating restricting your freedom to use the software. I understand it's in pursuance of a "greater g…

> My job involves creating non-free software.

> But it strikes me as ironic that RMS talks about "freedom" when really he's advocating restricting your freedom to use the software.

1. The GPL isn't restricting your freedom, your employer is. You are working under contract terms and policy selected by your employer. Your preferences aren't relevant.

2. The GPL isn't restricting your employer from using the software, just distributing proprietary add-ons or integrating parts of it in to their commercial products. They can still use it to compile and ship software, for free, giving nothing in return... that's still a pretty sweet deal when you go and look at the competition. Microsoft will charge you for the privilege of using their inferior compiler (full VS suite aside).

What kind of mindset says "Oh boy! B is giving me more stuff for free than A was, I'm going to go shit on A and make demands!"

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#248

Post by fleitz »

belorn wrote: post #239
fleitz wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, if you read the whole thing it sounds like George Bush > They have been supported by Apple, the company which hates our freedom so much that its app store for the ithings _requires_ all apps to be nonfree. > The only code that helps us and not our adversaries is copylefted code. Free software released under a pushover license is available for us to use, but available to our adversaries just as well. > If tha…

Let me just say that your comment sound as Hitler, and we can be done with Association fallacies altogether. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy

I must thank you, I'm kind of flattered you think I'm that charismatic.

Sorry about the charismatic way I presented my views, perhaps I should have mentioned my penchant for eating the raw uncooked flesh of freshly slain animals to make it more clear as to whether I was intending to advocate views similar to Hitler.

You may want to look into these links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modes_of_persuasion

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#249

Post by fleitz »

drcube wrote: post #171
fleitz wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a couple claims here: 1) Free means freedom in the copyleft sense. 2) Free means freedom in the open source sense. 3) Free means free as in beer. In the article RMS appears to be using definition 1, elsewhere on the FSF site the FSF uses 2. "In the free software movement, we campaign for the freedom of the users of computing. The values of free software are fundamentally different from the values of open sour…

You're confounding issues here. RMS is in the position of a critic of the US government, rightly claiming that, while your country is "free", it installs and supports dictatorships all over the world. It is possible to be unfree, and not support other dictatorships, like Cuba. It is possible to be both unfree, and support dictatorships, like the USSR. RMS's goal with GCC, is to be like the mythical free country that…

Except the the claim he is making is that free software is fundamentally different than open source.

"The values of free software are fundamentally different from the values of open source, which make "better code" the ultimate goal."

Perhaps you could provide quotes where RMS in the article says that clang is 'free software'. According to RMS in the article clang is a major set back for free software. (because it's better than their piece of crap)

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#250

Post by gress »

nly wrote: post #247
SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to agree. I love free; what doesn't feel "free" to me is the GPL, since I can't use just about anything GPL in my job. My job involves creating non-free software. Given the GPL's goals, it's not a surprise at all that I can't use it. But it strikes me as ironic that RMS talks about "freedom" when really he's advocating restricting your freedom to use the software. I understand it's in pursuance of a "greater g…

> My job involves creating non-free software. > But it strikes me as ironic that RMS talks about "freedom" when really he's advocating restricting your freedom to use the software. 1. The GPL isn't restricting your freedom, your employer is. You are working under contract terms and policy selected by your employer. Your preferences aren't relevant. 2. The GPL isn't restricting your employer from using the software, j…

The GPL is absolutely restricting what people do with software. To say otherwise is a lie.
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