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The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

blog.hiri.com

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Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#191

Post by dpower »

phkahler wrote: post #96
dpower wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I was pretty clear in the article - I absolutely support FOSS. The point of the article was to debunk some of the perceived "evils" of proprietary software. It's not a zero sum game - FOSS vs Proprietary. Rather they can support each other.

>> I absolutely support FOSS. The point of the article was to debunk some of the perceived "evils" of proprietary software. I took it as a complaint about FOSS fundamentalists. There has always been tension between FLOSS and proprietary, and I didn't feel you added anything of value to that discussion.

Perhaps I failed to make my point. I believe the fundamentalist brigade are doing Linux a disservice by scaring off proprietary vendors, who mostly believe they will not be welcome (This has not been our experience). I believe this is bad for Linux as it prevents people from adopting Linux as their daily driver.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#192

Post by dpower »

magissima wrote: post #165
dpower wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I was pretty clear in the article - I absolutely support FOSS. The point of the article was to debunk some of the perceived "evils" of proprietary software. It's not a zero sum game - FOSS vs Proprietary. Rather they can support each other.

Obviously FOSS supports proprietary software, but I'm curious how you think proprietary supports FOSS. Seems like a pretty one-sided relationship to me.

In this case, Linux would get wider adoption if it could attract some large software vendors. Good for everyone.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#193

Post by dpower »

phkahler wrote: post #84
taffronaut wrote: post #56

I assume that this is the "offending" thread on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/promos/comments/56ymfc/hey_linux_pe... Quotes: “This is going to be a very hard sell being a proprietary closed source system to Linux users, many use Linux because they have bought into the idea of open source. Good luck with it anyway” “If it were FOSS, I would have downloaded it and compiled it 20 minutes ago.” Is that it? The rest of…

>> This was two years ago and I think I'd be over it by now. The more I think about it, this was written for marketing purposes. He doesn't really make a point. It just draws more attention to the product.

I'm founder of the company and I wrote the post. I wrote it because despite a lot of negative comments our experience going to Linux has been a good one. Yet the 'fundamentalists' I mention tend to make proprietary vendors feel unwelcome. I believe this is bad for Linux. IMO a vocal minority are actively preventing Linux from expanding.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#194

Post by dpower »

whitehouse3 wrote: post #102
phkahler wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> This was two years ago and I think I'd be over it by now. The more I think about it, this was written for marketing purposes. He doesn't really make a point. It just draws more attention to the product.

I tend to agree. There is suddenly a flash, 50% off sale on the hiri website that wasn't there earlier this morning before this link hit the HN front page.

There's no sudden flash sale. This has been there for about a year now.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#195

Post by klez »

throwaway8879 wrote: post #54
kevkav wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Do you mind if I ask what software (or category) have you bought if you don't trust proprietary software?

For me, I'll use the best tool for the job, whether it's FOSS or not. If someone built a great FOSS DAW, then I would definitely switch away from Ableton, Reaper, Logic etc. Until then, I'll use whatever gets the job done in the best way possible. It isn't necessarily about trust.

Out of curiosity, when was it the last time you checked on Free audio production tools? I know I didn't check for a while and was pleasantly surprised with the state of the current stack.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#196

Post by imtringued »

throwaway4799 wrote: post #46
dpower wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Key point is this: If more Linux people embraced proprietary software it would help spread Linux. Simple as that really. As a proprietary app, we have encountered quite a bit of resistance from Linux users, usually berating us for not being open source. I think that's short sighted. We need more pragmatists.

Linux is quite spread already. It is present on billions of Android devices, holds a quasi-monopoly on supercomputers, a large majority of servers and a quite fair chunks of embedded systems. "But it doesn't run games or Excel on my desktop!" Ah yes you're right. Guess Linux is niche and needs spreading after all.

Games not running on Linux is slowly becoming a thing of the past. The largest hurdles are studios that develop their own engines from scratch and do not support anything other than directX.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#197

Post by seba_dos1 »

TimJYoung wrote: post #172
seba_dos1 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Most companies do not want to deal with the hassle of finding someone to perform support/bug fix work on their software. They want to be able to call up a vendor and get an answer today about a bug fix or support. Most open source projects do not have this level of support.

...and those that do are often making money out of it.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#198

Post by AsyncAwait »

mherrmann wrote: post #187
AsyncAwait wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem isn't with you writing proprietary software, (I'd prefer if it wasn't proprietary, but do you as you wish). My problem is with you people who benefit daily from FLOSS to then act as if the FLOSS people are just crazy hippie, commie lunatics and how you couldn't possibly be FLOSS without also putting food on the table and how other people are apparently not (gosh!) allowed to advocate for not using propriet…

I don't care about FLOSS people. Actually, I'm grateful to them and I also have my own set of FLOSS libraries [1], because I feel we as a dev community should work together and not have to reinvent the wheel all the time. What I take issue with is being criticized for writing proprietary software. It happens somewhat regularly. And the silencing that takes place is simply unacceptable. 1: https://github.com/mherrmann

People are free to say they won't buy your software because it is not free, (as in freedom). Also, there are important differences between merely "open-source" and free software, so am glad to see that fbs is indeed copyleft and applaud you for that. You seem to however be more on the open-source side of things, despite the great choice for a license of fbs.

One thing to understand, is that the free software movement strives for a bit more than open-source. It strives for trustworthy, ethical software. Software that does not spy and only does precisely what the user knows about and can be adopted to work according to one's needs. Copyleft is the best means we have of achieving that.

What I think you're also missing is how hard what we have even now was to win. You're grown up in a world where FLOSS was already a thing and fairly popular, but it is precisely because of the 'fanatics' that it is so and we're still far from an ideal place. If they were so lax as you wish them to be, you may not have all the things you take for granted today, because it is radicals who change the status quo.

You will be asked why fman is proprietary from time to time, because you market to people that have a lot of principled people on this issue in their ranks. You're free to ignore them and they're also free to keep not buying your proprietary product. That's how it works.

P.S. Just to let you know, I did subscribe to fman when it first showed up here and even renewed my license to support a one man shop, despite me not using the tool. Posts like the commie one however, carry with them a serios lack of understanding of the goals and reasons behind the (need for) free software movement.

Nonetheless, as I already said, I applaud you for taking the step to make some of your work copyleft. I am personally strongly of the belief that if fman itself was GPLed, you'd see an uptick it sales, not any downturn, because it would generate excitement and make people like me write plugins for it. At present, I don't want to do that due to it being non free.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#199

Post by seba_dos1 »

Multicomp wrote: post #183
seba_dos1 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with paid software. I'm happy to pay as long as it's free.

This is an interesting double entendre. Do you mean happy to pay as long as it has a permissive/OSS license and comes with source code or that the purchase price is zero, or both? Genuinely not trying to be pedantic, just curious if you were being clever.

Although I have just meant "free as in freedom" above, it's not uncommon for me to pay non-zero amount for FLOSS with purchase price of zero as well.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#200

Post by bjpbakker »

mherrmann wrote: post #182
bjpbakker wrote: post #77

IMO there's nothing "fundamentalist" about rejecting a _particular_ piece of proprietary software. When trying to sell a niche product, r/linux might not be the best place to ask. I'm wondering if the author would have had the same response when someone on a windows or mac subreddit did not want to use their software. Instead try to sell to people who you solve a particular problem for.

Imho it is fundamentalist if the only reason for the rejection is that it's proprietary. Don't know if that was the author's exact experience. But it has been mine. And it's not just dogmatic and stupid in a similar way as religious fanaticism, it's harmful for the entire ecosystem.

> it is fundamentalist if the only reason for the rejection is that it's proprietary

Personally I don't use software that I cannot review myself for tasks that are important to me. That includes reading email. Hence, the reason for rejection is that it's not open source. I don't see how this makes me a horrible fundamentalist, but maybe you care to enlighten me :)

> it's harmful for the entire ecosystem

I also completely fail to see how me personally want to review source code is harmful to the "entire ecosystem" (I assume you refer to the FOSS ecosystem?)

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