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It's up to the end user - if the GNU movement is somehow planning on restricting the ability of the user to use DRM'd software on their own systems, then they've gone completely off the rails.
We simply discourage it.
Why is it unethical to sell software, but (I presume) it's ethical to sell food?
It is not unethical to sell software, but software and other digital things at the core is a set of easily copiable bits, while food isn't, and it takes food to write software.
At the core of food are plants that have a set of easily copiable and modifiable DNA. Apparently, biotech corps think that they have DRM on plants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeis...
Why is it unethical to sell software, but (I presume) it's ethical to sell food?
It's a black box so to speak. Someone else pointed out the food comparison, it would in fact be unethical to sell someone food without telling them how it was produced and what was in it, and I think that's a reasonable take on the software situation.
However, one could argue that the GPL makes it almost impossible to build a traditional software sales business if the product is GPL licensed. The first person who buys it gains a legal exception to copyright to give it out freely, but that happens whether its GPL licensed or proprietary, we just call it piracy in the latter case.
So in some respect they're working against the idea of traditional software sales as a side effect of upholding the freedoms they promote.
Did rms just admit that proprietary software can theoretically have benefits? What's this world coming to lol
"My guess is that the direct good effect will be bigger than the direct harm." Did rms just admit that proprietary software can theoretically have benefits? What's this world coming to lol
I thought the point he made in this article was a balanced one.
Just to be clear, when he says "nonfree" he means free as in speech, not free as in beer, right?
Why is it unethical to sell software, but (I presume) it's ethical to sell food?
Free as in speech, not free as in beer, etc. It's not particularly ethical to sell food and refuse to tell anyone what's in the food, which is why we have various laws regarding that. Nor does it seem particularly reasonable to sell someone food under the condition that if they eat it in particular ways, you'll sue them.
I don't think Valve is being unethical in protecting their games. They're not controlling their products because "fuck you consumers, we are evil and wish to suppress your rights", they're doing it (at least I presume) because if they didn't, no one would buy their games and they wouldn't be able to operate. A food vendor can't make a similar claim (well, at least not in as strong a way -- though I guess there are things like secret recipes) to justify hiding things from consumers.
"My guess is that the direct good effect will be bigger than the direct harm." Did rms just admit that proprietary software can theoretically have benefits? What's this world coming to lol
Perhaps he realises that having steam + valve games would be a huge net win for desktop linux use.
Even if you had mainly nonfree software , in theory desktop linux would still be quite a free system in the sense that there would be a level playing field amongst software devs.
Why is it unethical to sell software, but (I presume) it's ethical to sell food?
I don't think that's their position actually, only that it's unethical to sell someone software they have no control over and no legal right to alter or work to understand, particularly if the software is actively undermining the user in various ways as DRM would. It's a black box so to speak. Someone else pointed out the food comparison, it would in fact be unethical to sell someone food without telling them how it…
Extending the analogy to software, if your program accesses personal information, contacts remote servers, inserts itself into the kernel, etc. then you have an ethical obligation to publish that behavior. But there's no ethical obligation to provide the source code, and indeed, providing the source code wouldn't be sufficient to satisfy your other obligations (because it wouldn't be accessible to 99% of users).