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The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

blog.hiri.com

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Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#111

Post by erkIfShen »

The "inconvenient truth" that the author subscribes to is, in fact, a plain old neoliberal capitalist worldview. It is not an objective worldview, since those don't exist, and it is focused on money and power. The author cannot imagine doing anything for society without being compensated with cash, it seems.

It sure would be an inconvenient truth for them if their blog and business and business model and a significant fraction of their perks in life were backboned by FLOSS.

The author's approach to security is deplorable but frustratingly common, treating security as a feature, as optional, and as something that is too expensive for most software. As a reminder, the author's product is an email client.

To the author's proprietary-software mindset: Remember, in the long run, all software is worthless. Someday, there will no longer be email. I have a box of add-on cards with connectors which will never be used again; I think that most folks do. We know that proprietary protocols fade away, that closed languages wither and die, and that siloed knowledge is never cited.

To tackle the final argument directly: No, the purpose of software is to compute. Stop being married to work; it's an ugly American meme and doesn't have to be how we live.

Finally, here's a popular argument that the author chose not to talk about: What if existing copyright law is unconstitutional? In particular, what if the Constitution's copyright clause forbids copyrights which survive the death of the creator; or what if works-for-hire are inherently disenfranchising to artists? This would align just fine with Stallman's opinion that copyleft is only necessary because copyright law exists; maybe a world where corporations can't take code from their employees as easily would be a better world.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#113

Post by mcguire »

keiferski wrote: post #6

I’m not a developer and I don’t have a strong opinion on open-source software either way, but I’ve always wondered: does the fact that developers and other technical people have (comparatively) excellent job security affect their attitude toward free labor and products? If developers had a job outlook similar to say, musicians, would open-source be as widely-used and praised as it is now? Surely some academic economi…

Developers and musicians cannot be compared directly; there is simply too much money in the (extended) software economy.

Look at the history of free software. It started from an academic environment where sharing was the norm.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#114

Post by scbrg »

htk wrote: post #31
throwaway4799 wrote: post #7

No one is entitled to a business model. If your userbase has a culture of being (rightfully, in my opinion) defiant toward proprietary products, that's for you to remedy. If you can't make any money from ancilliary uses of your product (support, hosting, whatever) maybe you should question why you're monetizing in the first place. Free software is strictly more ethical than nonfree software. Any attempt at arguing ot…

What if we change "software" for "work" in your argument? "Free work is strictly more ethical than nonfree work. Any attempt at arguing otherwise basically boils down to a rationalization of 'but I want to make money', which is not a tenable ethical stance." We can argue that not all software is work, but some certainly are, and many times the final product is used to make money. Like any other work or product of wor…

You did not only change the word "software" to "work". You also changed the word "free" to "free". Just because those two words happen to be spelled the same way in the English language, that does not change the fact that they mean different things.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#115

Post by throwaway4799 »

dpower wrote: post #50
throwaway4799 wrote: post #7

No one is entitled to a business model. If your userbase has a culture of being (rightfully, in my opinion) defiant toward proprietary products, that's for you to remedy. If you can't make any money from ancilliary uses of your product (support, hosting, whatever) maybe you should question why you're monetizing in the first place. Free software is strictly more ethical than nonfree software. Any attempt at arguing ot…

I'm certainly not trying to deride open source. For the record, we have plenty of Linux users paying for the product (see previous article), but I simply don't understand why some people won't buy the product because it's not open source. I mean it's their choice - fine. But it's also our choice on whether we open source or not. No need to abuse us for this choice. I am trying to remedy the issue - I'm writing about…

I don't think I was in any way abusing. I said that your attitude does not inspire goodwill or good sentiments. You're trying to make money, like everyone. That's fine, not everyone is a monster for not writing free software, giving to charity, whatever. I just don't see why you should feel entitled to make the money the way you're attempting to. Your userbase feels strongly about some issues and these are the same people you're trying to convince to give them money to you. Calling them fundamentalists will not help or solve anything, and I can't emphatize with "If only more of my users agreed with me so I could make more money".

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#117

Post by whitehouse3 »

gronne wrote: post #110
whitehouse3 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plotly does this with the added option to use their paid, hosted solution. Seems to work for them.

Based on my personal experience: The reason why is probably because of the poorly documented, unstable spaghetti code their public libraries consist of.

Which confirms GP's original idea. There's a fine line between an API that is full-featured and one that can be learned in an afternoon. Plotly is easy to work-through. But if you're aren't comfortable digging through its source code the documentation won't help you. Furthermore, it seems like their support / hosted solution is less for hackers in need of a helping hand and more for completely non-technical users that won't touch JS with a ten foot pole.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#118

Post by Nasrudith »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #4

There's another problem with the "make money by offering support" argument: it incentivizes creating software that requires support, usually via added complexity. Similarly the customization argument: it incentivizes creating inflexible software. I'm not sure there is a monetization strategy that actually aligns with what should be the goals of FLOSS.

The thing is that while it is a flaw for FOSS it is one for closed source and can even be worse there. Look at just car manufacturers and their measured to make error codes opaque. It is less prime when they sell software but upselling is always a thing for capitalism. Bad incentives effect everyone unfortunately. I mean this not as whataboutism but as a question of how it may be overcome?

I believe FLOSS ideally bypasses it via doing things for the sake of software or the task - minimizing trouble for the sake of making it easier on themselves but that has its own limitations and requirements including motivation. There isn't any open source turbotax equivalent for one as far as I know.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#119

Post by TimJYoung »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #4

There's another problem with the "make money by offering support" argument: it incentivizes creating software that requires support, usually via added complexity. Similarly the customization argument: it incentivizes creating inflexible software. I'm not sure there is a monetization strategy that actually aligns with what should be the goals of FLOSS.

I was thinking something similar while reading the blog post: the UNIX philosophy is to do one thing, do it well, and stop there. As you say, none of those things lend themselves to monetization if the source code is available for free and anyone can contribute to it or customize/fork it. You can't keep the software "on point" because anyone is free to add something completely unrelated to its core functionality. And, if you try to keep control of the situation, the person(s) can simply fork the project and spread FUD until your project is "persona non grata", so your ability to keep control of the software is only as good as your perceived standing in the community.

However, I could be missing something here in terms of licensing: can anyone stipulate how the various FOSS licenses could help with this situation ?

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#120

Post by adrianmalacoda »

floss_fulltimer wrote: post #99
dpower wrote: post #2

I'm the author of this particular blog post. Curious to see how this is received by the tech community.

Disclaimer: I've been working full time on various large FLOSS projects for many years and I contribute to other ones in my spare time. You start with "I salute you. I’m a fan" and then call a lot of people "fundamentalist", then "You have made a choice based on an ideology", "blind to the realities of the world you live in". Then "But like most utopian views, it’s naive", "It’s a pipe dream", and finally "Like all f…

Proprietary software developers "love FOSS" when they can build their products on it. But, if users desire those same freedoms, they're suddenly fundamentalists or zealots.
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