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Free & Proprietary

mattmaroon.com

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Re: Free & Proprietary

#11

Post by drewcrawford »

This is a fantastic essay. I appreciate Stallman's work, but I find myself much more aligned with the likes of the OSI or Apache Foundation than the FSF. It is refreshing to see Stallman's philosophy intelligently challenged.

One rather large supporting argument the author overlooked: Stallman/FSF have appeared to largely reverse their stance on open standards; his/their views on OOXML and C# are incomprehensible to me. We could argue the technical advantages of ODF vs. OOXML all day, but the total sum of the philosophical difference between the two is zero.

Re: Free & Proprietary

#12

Post by henning »

aston wrote: post #10
henning wrote: post #3

Irony: Matt uses Wordpress, free software that owes its success to the proprietary software from Six Apart starting to really suck.

Where's the irony? Matt thinks proprietary software has its place, and he likes free (as in beer) software.

Where is the awesome proprietary software that has smashed Wordpress to pieces which he referred to? His analysis about relative quality is off the mark. Looking at Photoshop and ignoring Emacs, gcc, gdb, git, Apache, and all the other great free software isn't fair.

Re: Free & Proprietary

#13

Post by davidw »

> The market and the individuals who comprise it, rather than Richard Stallman, should decide, as they have in the past, which software people use.

Yes, although there's a footnote there: in winner take all markets, the externalities can drive people to feel 'forced' into choices. You can buy a car from whoever you want, pretty much - they're all interchangeable. But try living in the corporate world without .doc. It is finally starting to become feasible, but it's a tough, uphill battle.

That makes people frustrated.

Re: Free & Proprietary

#14

Post by ericb »

aggieben wrote: post #9
sspencer wrote: post #2

Stallman's inability to see how damaging his rhetoric is to his cause is rapidly overshadowing any of his achievements. I went to HOPE 2006 in NYC a few years ago, and ran into him while heading to a lecture about Asterix PBX use. As a huge admirer of GNU tools and the GNU/Linux operating system in particular, it was thrilling to finally get to meet one my heroes. For about a few seconds. I shook his hand and somewha…

To me the great irony is that FSF software isn't really free either - it just has its own restrictions that it prefers to others'. To me, FSF is synonymous with "hypocrite", and seems to have sprung directly from Stallman's own peurile bitterness, and not from anything so noble as what they claim. Even if you like the FSF stances (and I have no problem with that), I think it's hard to argue that their idea of "free"…

The MIT license and the BSD license are much truer to the idea of "free" than any FSF licenses.

The FSF licenses cause more proprietary code to come into existence (duplication at a great cost to society) when companies cannot integrate GPL products with their proprietary licensed software. So companies write their proprietary version of the component and no one can see the source, or the source of their subcomponents.

Re: Free & Proprietary

#15

Post by pg »

sspencer wrote: post #8
pg wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd. What's not free about ACL? All the code is available online with a notice saying you can use it for whatever you want. http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/paulgraham/acl2.lisp

Was that available in 2006? If so, I guess he just meant the book, which is even more bizarre. So he won't sign any book not published by a "free as in speech" publishing house? Curiouser and curiouser.

Sure, that file hasn't been changed in years.

I wonder if the problem is that just saying people can do whatever they want with code seems to him too unrestrictive.

Re: Free & Proprietary

#16

Post by dkasper »

henning wrote: post #12
aston wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where's the irony? Matt thinks proprietary software has its place, and he likes free (as in beer) software.

Where is the awesome proprietary software that has smashed Wordpress to pieces which he referred to? His analysis about relative quality is off the mark. Looking at Photoshop and ignoring Emacs, gcc, gdb, git, Apache, and all the other great free software isn't fair.

From the article: "There are lots of great open-source projects out there, especially in the development world." I think that covers Emacs, gcc, gdb, and git at least...

He's not ignoring the great free software, he's pointing out that only using free software means that you give up using proprietary software in the cases where it is better.

Re: Free & Proprietary

#17

Post by drewcrawford »

davidw wrote: post #13

> The market and the individuals who comprise it, rather than Richard Stallman, should decide, as they have in the past, which software people use. Yes, although there's a footnote there: in winner take all markets, the externalities can drive people to feel 'forced' into choices. You can buy a car from whoever you want, pretty much - they're all interchangeable. But try living in the corporate world without .doc. It…

The reason .doc is ubiquitous is because, at one point, MS had the best product and it was adopted by the market. There was no coercion--it was a choice between MS Word or a vastly inferior product.

Today, things are different. There are many wonderful office suites. But it's no good saying that we should restructure the pie as if office suites were new instead of old--Office is ahead because OO and iWork and whoever else were years late to the game. If they continue to be superior, they'll gain market share in spite of MS's best efforts.

Re: Free & Proprietary

#18

Post by davidw »

drewcrawford wrote: post #17
davidw wrote: post #13

> The market and the individuals who comprise it, rather than Richard Stallman, should decide, as they have in the past, which software people use. Yes, although there's a footnote there: in winner take all markets, the externalities can drive people to feel 'forced' into choices. You can buy a car from whoever you want, pretty much - they're all interchangeable. But try living in the corporate world without .doc. It…

The reason .doc is ubiquitous is because, at one point, MS had the best product and it was adopted by the market. There was no coercion--it was a choice between MS Word or a vastly inferior product. Today, things are different. There are many wonderful office suites. But it's no good saying that we should restructure the pie as if office suites were new instead of old--Office is ahead because OO and iWork and whoever…

I'm not saying someone should step in and 'restructure' anything, just that there's cause for users to be a bit grumpy with the world because some markets are 'winner takes all'.

> If they continue to be superior, they'll gain market share in spite of MS's best efforts.

The point of big network externalities is that that doesn't necessarily happen. Qwerty and Betamax being cited (albeit disputed) examples - I'm sure there are other good ones.

Re: Free & Proprietary

#19

Post by tjr »

sspencer wrote: post #8
pg wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd. What's not free about ACL? All the code is available online with a notice saying you can use it for whatever you want. http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/paulgraham/acl2.lisp

Was that available in 2006? If so, I guess he just meant the book, which is even more bizarre. So he won't sign any book not published by a "free as in speech" publishing house? Curiouser and curiouser.

I don't think RMS is opposed to all non-free books, but believes that books meant as reference or instruction ought to be free.

And as pg mentioned, the fact that the code is free for (implicitly) any use whatsoever means that the code could be used in proprietary software without issue, and thus the code isn't free.

Was RMS opposed to the book, the code, or both? I suspect both, and since it appears that he quickly recognized the book, he had probably already contemplated his opposition to it at some prior time.

His behavior in this situation surely would strike most as odd, but he seems to just be living by his ideals as much as possible. You may not see non-free reference books or non-free software as unethical, but he does, and wants no positive connection with it.

Re: Free & Proprietary

#20

Post by sfg »

pg wrote: post #4
sspencer wrote: post #2

Stallman's inability to see how damaging his rhetoric is to his cause is rapidly overshadowing any of his achievements. I went to HOPE 2006 in NYC a few years ago, and ran into him while heading to a lecture about Asterix PBX use. As a huge admirer of GNU tools and the GNU/Linux operating system in particular, it was thrilling to finally get to meet one my heroes. For about a few seconds. I shook his hand and somewha…

Odd. What's not free about ACL? All the code is available online with a notice saying you can use it for whatever you want. http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/paulgraham/acl2.lisp

I do not think he is talking specifically about the code. From http://www.gnu.org/doc/gnupresspub.html:

"GNU Press publishes ...books on computer science using freely distributable licenses... We believe the reader should be free to copy and redistribute it, just like our software".

I do not know what right readers have to distribute ACL, but if it is in anyway restricted then I would guess that is what he means.

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