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We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible

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Re: We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible

#151

Post by yarrel »

sovande wrote: post #146

Sure, we need naive wish lists, but for open source to be more than a curios historical blip and not fall into a Venezuelan disaster, the least we can demand of FSF and OSI is to give us a proper open source license so those who want to _do_ open source work can also succeed commercially. They need to understand and address problems faced by MongoDB, Redis, Elastic et. al. and support their needs with a new license (…

No, they need to make clear that VC funding isn't entitled to returns on bad business models. That is the real problem.

Re: We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible

#152

Post by yarrel »

mruts wrote: post #39
shmerl wrote: post #18

Yeah, I'm often puzzled by some FOSS developers not using open communication tools and not running Linux on their actual day to day work computers.

I would argue that the GPL is so restrictive to violate the principles of FOSS. BSD or public domain is better and more free.

You'd be wrong.

Re: We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible

#153

Post by skyfaller »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #15
groovybits wrote: post #6

I am generally a fan of Linux and FOSS on my personal gear. However, I'm still not sure where this article is coming from, or who it addresses. The author seems to be mixing the use of FOSS in the professional world with the use of FOSS in their personal world. In a professional environment, there is no room for "modeling your values". It sounds harsh, but that is the way it is. You use what works. Yes, Linux OSs do…

I think part of what the author is addressing is the ignorance exhibited in your comment. I don't mean to be rude; it's easy not to see the big picture when you're busy just making a living. To me, Searls' point is that an overwhelming pressure to monetize everything has corrupted the health of the open source community. This is not just holier-than-thou moralizing; there will be real financial consequences if the cr…

Exactly. It's about solidarity, I think. If you make FOSS and you want people to use it, you need to make an effort to use other FOSS projects. Otherwise, don't be surprised if the community is gone someday, you don't get help developing and promoting your FOSS project, and everyone abandons your software for some better-funded proprietary cloud startup that gets bought out by Facebook.

Re: We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible

#154

Post by GenghisSean »

amyjess wrote: post #66
ralph84 wrote: post #2

Most people engage with FOSS for practical reasons, not ideological reasons. Given that developers of proprietary software have made a lot more money on the whole than developers of FOSS, I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Everyone could stand to learn the lessons of gcc. Back in the '90s, when gcc really took off, it got a lot of attention for being faster and optimizing code better than anything else out there. It wasn't just free: it was _better_. Of course, the 'free' part helped too, but the only 'free' people cared about was as in beer, not speech. This was when Sun was charging $$$$ for C compiler licenses on top of the operatin…

That's a great example.

The concept seems obvious, but often times free software activists forget or are unaware of lessons like this. Because free software activists are willing to make sacrifices to preserve their freedoms, they sometimes forget that others are not willing to make those same sacrifices.

Getting end users and often developers interested in your project isn't easy. The vendor lock in proprietary software companies use makes it even more difficult to get users even if a free solution is better. The goal of a project should be to grow the community outside of just the free software community by improving the software until it's eventually better than proprietary alternatives.

That's why I'm particularly excited about projects like GNUnet, Guix, and Librem 5. I think they have the potential to blow the competition out of water and move the free software community closer to it's goal. https://gnunet.org/en/ https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/ https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

Re: We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible

#155

Post by yarrel »

Drdrdrq wrote: post #98
dreamcompiler wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree. You point out that there are no incentives for FOSS developers to cater to the muggles. Fine, so how do we fix that? I really want to know. I have to believe it's possible.

I do believe it is possible, but it is a compromise. Let go of one of the freedoms so that other freedoms (like "right to repair") have a chance. In other words: Commons Clause.

Compromise sounds nice but when the "compromise" is a one-sided capitulation it's not really compromise.

Re: We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible

#156

Post by jslabovitz »

PeterisP wrote: post #138
jslabovitz wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps... But if you do that, it would also be interesting to trace free software back to the point where the GPL became popular. (GPL was published in 1983, but in my recollection it wasn't until the early/mid-90s that it surged into general usage.) Before that, 'free' software generally meant public domain: no licenses, no limitation on use -- at all. We had two or three decades of free software of that type, most…

My memory of that period (mid-90s-299ish) is that in a majority of cases the widely used 'public domain' software was distributed without restrictions but also without source code, and thus did not really enable modification and redistribution of improved versions even if the licence (or lack of it) didn't prohibit me to do so; so back then the 'ideologically free' movement towards open source software did result in…

Ah, I did not explain clearly. My mistake. I wasn't talking about binary-only shareware distribution, but rather source code (primarily Unix/C-based on comp.sources.*). I'm thinking about the Usenet software itself (B News, C News, rn, tin, vnews), sendmail/bind, early Pine/Mutt/procmail (?), scripting languages like Perl/Python/Ruby, and so on. And a pile of early microcomputer code for Z80/8080/6500/6800/etc.

Re: We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible

#157

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

wrs wrote: post #120
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #14

So the initial letter hits upon something that the article itself ignores, namely that the FOSS community requires more than just developers . I see this attitude all the time in certain circles that only the developers contribute any value to a project, and prospective contributors should either learn to code or get f--ked. It's not terribly welcoming to the larger community (of whom the majority are not developers)…

Having lived through the entire history of free software (well, Free Software with capital letters, anyway) it always comes back to this: Software freedom is fundamentally valuable only for developers, because only developers can use the freedom it gives. (That's pretty much the definition of "developer"—someone who can modify software.) Users get value only as a side effect of this developer freedom, because a devel…

> Software freedom is fundamentally valuable only for developers, because only developers can use the freedom it gives.

That is akin to saying that democracy is fundamentally valuable only for politicians, because only politicians can use the freedom it gives.

That is simply completely wrong. You don't have to be a developer yourself in order to benefit from not being dependent on a monopoly. The fact that you can buy development work on the free market benefits every user of Free Software. The fact that the code of Free Software is easier to inspect benefits every user of Free Software.

There is no need for everyone to be a politician for democracy to be generally valuable, there is no need for everyone to be a car mechanic for freedom to repair cars to be generally valuable, and there is no need for everyone to be a developer for freedom to inspect and change software to be generally vaulable. Those freedoms are what enable free markets instead of monopolies.

Re: We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible

#158

Post by groby_b »

kibwen wrote: post #100
jakelazaroff wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because they don't give a rat's ass about the freedom aspect of free software. If software A requires four clicks to do something, but B has a way to do it in 3, they are on B without a second thought. Isn't this kind of the point, though? To compete with proprietary software, free software needs to actually be competitive. "It's not as good as this other (proprietary) software, but it's free" won't cut it.

> "It's not as good as this other (proprietary) software, but it's free" won't cut it. Except that it has to cut it in order for a free software movement to exist, because otherwise free software is starved by a chicken-and-egg problem where developers don't use free software because it's inferior, and free software never improves because developers don't use it. In other words, being willing to use technically infer…

That argument is not holding any water.

First, free software doesn't improve "because developers use it". It improves because developers work on it. Blaming the users for that problem is not helping at all, except with a vague sense of moral superiority.

Second, people use tools (e.g. software) to achieve things. "Making the engine of free software run" is not on that list of things for the vast majority of people, so maybe we should try giving them reasons that actually matter to them.

Third, the reason that GCC was used for Linux was that it was the only one that was widely available, free, and had a 386 backend that produced useful code. Nobody involved gave a bit about "engines of free software" and "superior freedom", it was the only tool to get the job done.

It was certainly not technically inferior at the time.

Fourth, a large part of the reason for commercial software usage is the incredibly sanctimonious community around OSS.

If I can buy a piece of software that does exactly what I need, in a pleasant way, for a small amount of money, potentially even with support that cares about me? Why ON EARTH would I sink tons of time into a craptastic piece of software with horrible UI and an abusive community?

Like it or not, OSS is competing in a marketplace. It doesn't need to win on all axes, but it needs to win on some outside of "free"

Re: We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible

#159

Post by oneplane »

kazinator wrote: post #132
malvosenior wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of those look as good as Slack imho. Regardless, there's a bunch of stuff you can do with Slack that you can't with IRC. Emoji reactions, voice/video/screenshare, easily post files and images... Plus there's a unified experience for all users that's not client dependent, no burdensome technical or protocol jargon, no federated servers (or servers to think about at all)... I've used IRC quite a bit but Slack i…

"federated servers" is the only way to maintain a form of freedom while (out of necessity) operating software as a service. If you think that you can't do free software development without relying on all the capabilities of Slack, then the honest thing to do is to quit and spend the rest of your days just working on proprietary stuff. You obviously prefer the solution which has features over any other concern, so why…

Federation has been tried a lot and in the end it always fails, even if it's the best solution. XMMP is pretty much dead regarding free use, IRC for a lot of FOSS project is slowing dying, there were a lot of federated social media projects that simply failed because they couldn't attract anyone.

Being technically the best (or the best in 'freedom') doesn't seem relevant to anyone.

Re: We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible

#160

Post by subway »

floatboth wrote: post #128
malvosenior wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of those look as good as Slack imho. Regardless, there's a bunch of stuff you can do with Slack that you can't with IRC. Emoji reactions, voice/video/screenshare, easily post files and images... Plus there's a unified experience for all users that's not client dependent, no burdensome technical or protocol jargon, no federated servers (or servers to think about at all)... I've used IRC quite a bit but Slack i…

Forget IRC. You can do everything with Matrix :)

Kinda-sorta?

Matrix is an incredibly centralized service masquerading as an easily self-hosted distributed service. The moment you try to get a non-technical user connected to a homeserver other than matrix.org, all hell starts to break loose.

It's bad enough that both France (tchap) and Purism have created their own client forks to make on-boarding somewhat tolerable at the expense of really painful rebases against upstream Riot, while Riot tries to get it's shit together on the non-matrix.org user story.

Mattermost has a slightly less painful situation -- they provide a relatively easy to brand/preconfigure client (and fantastic docs on how to do so: https://docs.mattermost.com/mobile/mobile-compile-yourself.h... ), but you lose out on federation and self-service sign-up, leaving your community isolated (sometimes a pro, sometimes a con).

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