Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

blog.hiri.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 247 posts

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#151

Post by seba_dos1 »

TimJYoung wrote: post #126
phkahler wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a software developer ones job is to edit code. The way to get paid for that are to fix things that are broken or add features. While support can be viable, good software should "just work" and not need support. Any other business model is simply trying to collect rent. An effort to "monetize" the software is an effort to collect money from its existence rather than doing work on it. I couldn't really find the poin…

Nobody is going to use software for anything critical that doesn't have someone "waiting around" to fix any bugs that appear, even if they are several years down the line from the original release (and yes, this happens a lot ). So, what you call "rent" is, in actuality, the cost of keeping the lights on and the original developers around so that such long-term support can be provided. And yes, these same developers…

> Nobody is going to use software for anything critical that doesn't have someone "waiting around" to fix any bugs that appear

This is exactly why you're often able to make money and sustain yourself out of free software.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#152

Post by seba_dos1 »

UncleMeat wrote: post #144
mcguire wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you name some products where this had happened?

BCH. Led to a meaningful drop in the price of BTC after the fork.

I don't think you can compare forking a blockchain with forking a free software project. Blockchain is just data and there are various wallets already available, so it didn't matter that the FLOSS code of the original wallet has been forked as much as the blockchain fork did.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#153

Post by seba_dos1 »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #142

The bigger problem with FOSS is that FOSS isn't actually user-editable at all. It's developer-editable - which is not even remotely close to being the same thing, except for that tiny subset of projects where end-users are developers. It's basically open blueprints, not open systems - with predictable results. There's never been a truly open system, although Hypercard, Excel, VBS, and Smalltalk have all tried (and fa…

Just don't use GNOME. /s

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#154

Post by AsyncAwait »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #86
ekianjo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux users who understand where Linux come from (don't bag Linux users under a single umbrella, there's a wide variety of them) have suffered from proprietary software companies not supporting their OS/distros (Adobe, Microsoft, just to pick a few) or seen the effect of "bad proprietary apps" (Chrome systematically trying to spy on you, software with backdoors, etc... that it's going to be a difficult case to come a…

They have only themselves to blame (as a whole, not individuals) because their platform is a pain to develop for compared to others unless your code is open source so distros can compile it themselves. One does wonder whether this situation is intentionally exacerbated by the fundamentalists. Case in point, there are people against Flatpak because it makes it easier for developers to bypass repos and their package ma…

> there are people against Flatpak

Hello there. An not so much against it, as not "for it".

> it easier for developers to bypass repos and their package maintainers.

No, that's not the problem at all. The biggest problem is duplication of libraries, most of which will not see security updates nowhere near as promptly as the system version would, integration with the DE and the problems there, fundamentally replicating the Windows/macOS model, while many see native package management as superior for the reasons I mentioned.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#155

Post by AsyncAwait »

avip wrote: post #35
dpower wrote: post #2

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

I honestly don't find anything controversial in that post. It just lists some points which are between "obvious" and "common sense". There is, however, a typo in your header! now that is interesting ('and' instead of 'an')

Except for the part where you don't automatically deserve all potential customers and they're free not to buy your product, unless a certain condition is met. Do you think butchers should complain about people not wanting to buy meat? Or even specifically their meat?

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#156

Post by AsyncAwait »

simion314 wrote: post #5
dpower wrote: post #2

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

FOSS is something I aspire too, I still use some proprietary software but as I dream at a Star Trek world similar I dream that in future I would work only on FOSS. If there is a choice use FOSS app A or proprietary app B I will use A if it does what I need, as a developer I adapted the open source apps to my needs where with proprietary apps I could never done it.

I also am personally fine with "open-core", something like JetBrains or GitLab, where the commitment to FLOSS is clearly shown, even if not all versions of their product are completely FLOSS. This is however not the case with the author of this post.

I also question him being a fan, it seems to me like he's a fan of building on it, that's about it.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#157

Post by seba_dos1 »

dpower wrote: post #11
simion314 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FOSS is something I aspire too, I still use some proprietary software but as I dream at a Star Trek world similar I dream that in future I would work only on FOSS. If there is a choice use FOSS app A or proprietary app B I will use A if it does what I need, as a developer I adapted the open source apps to my needs where with proprietary apps I could never done it.

The question is, will you choose FOSS even if it is a poorer choice?

Most of the time, yes. Of course it's nuanced, so it can only be evaluated on case-by-case matter, but if the FLOSS choice is "good enough", there's no need for me to look for anything else, even if it might be somewhat "better choice". Losing freedoms is way more painful than using second best software for the task.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#158

Post by dpower »

ruskerdax wrote: post #139

Proprietary software which restricts its distribution and "unauthorized" modification (virtually all of it) is the very essence of fundamentalism. It relies on a rigid and literal interpretation of what constitutes property (e.g. that the concept of "intellectual property" is coherent and non-contradictory) and even goes so far as to use threats, ultimately backed by violent force, to ensure compliance with this beli…

> ultimately backed by violent force, to ensure compliance with this belief

This is true of all laws. This is how society works. If you don't like it, in a democracy you can campaign for change.

You seem to believe you have a fundamental right to copy someone else's works. If the author of those works grants you permission (open source) - then fine. You seem to suggest that people shouldn't profit from their work. I just don't think FOSS software alone is tenable.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#159

Post by dTal »

dpower wrote: post #87
enriquto wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where do morals come into play here? I want to be able to check whether the software does anything harmful for me, and to be able to fix it and adapt it to my needs. Proprietary software effectively curtails the possibility of doing that. Say I am allergic to nuts. Fortunately, when I buy some processed food I can check easily whether it has nuts or not. Now imagine living in a world where food makers sneakily put…

> Now imagine living in a world where food makers sneakily put nuts in their products Sure, this would be morally wrong (and also illegal). But you are basically saying that everyone is putting peanuts in their software, which is simply false. Quite insulting to those of us that do work on proprietary software.

I don't see where they said "everyone". The fact that anyone does that is cause for concern.

It's great that you don't include malicious code in your proprietary software. But why should you defend the right of others to do so? It's not really "insulting" to note that this is a common occurrence.

As you note, it is illegal for food manufacturers to put anything secret in food, let alone secret and harmful. Why tolerate it in software?

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#160

Post by ppseafield »

dpower wrote: post #91
ekianjo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you fail to see the usefulness of fundamentalists. They help keep some kind of balance in the overall system, by pulling some of the practices towards one end. If no FOSS fundamentalists existed, we may be living in a very different software world right now. A number of extremely useful POSIX tools were the products of such ideologies. I think one of the "better" approaches if you cannot survive with a "suppo…

Interesting point, but I think it's a fallacy. Taking this line of argument and applying it to the social sphere - you would be arguing that there is a place for nazi's in this world (I'm just making a point - not saying you support nazis!) Totally agree with your "good citizen" argument though. Something we should consider.

I think you're equivocating a bit here: FOSS fundamentalism (as you put it) isn't even close to the same kind of thing as Nazis. I think a better name would be FOSS purists.

IIUC you mean this in the context of desktop environments (and not including things like Android, server OSes, or ChromeOS). The problem with your argument is that those of us who use Linux as our main desktop environment don't want just another platform: the entire point of its existence is its openness. The point is and has always been that you can download it, install it, and run it without having to jump through arbitrary hoops, agree to restrictive licensing, pay anyone, etc.

Watering that down for proprietary software vendors goes against the whole point.

Maybe we would get more, possibly better software. Steam has certainly shown that for games. However, the entire reason that Steam for Linux even exists is that folks at Valve didn't like what Microsoft was doing with Windows 8, specifically the Windows Store and its games for sale, competing directly with Valve. They created Steam Machines and Steam for Linux as a contingency in case Microsoft tried to use their position to prevent another, competing marketplace from existing.

They can do that because of the license, and specifically because of the license no one can later revoke Valve's ability to use the OS, even if Linus or GNU decide to go into the games marketplace business. That's why us purists insist on it.

Post reply on HN