> Are we building a bad future for software by not fighting for something like the Free Software movement?
Yes.
Ask HN: Do you believe in GNU's Free Software?
21–30 of 94 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you believe in GNU's Free Software?
#22I believe in a Free Software. At the same time I do not believe at the Free Software. Without a way to pay for work of developers no software can be good enough. So in a way I do not believe in a FS. But I believe that we need to find a way to a Free Software, and that it can be found.
Free Software is not about price.
Re: Ask HN: Do you believe in GNU's Free Software?
#23I'm a drop in the sea, but I "believe" in free software
Re: Ask HN: Do you believe in GNU's Free Software?
#24I believe in free software but I do not like GNU and FSF zealotry. See: https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html "Debian also maintains a repository of nonfree software. According to the project, this software is 'not part of the Debian system,' but the repository is hosted on many of the project's main servers, and people can readily find these nonfree packages by browsing Debian's online package database and…
I understand why some feel they must be militant about this sort of thing and I'm grateful for their dedication; however, it's off putting to the general public and most of the community.
I wish any effort, particularly those built around online communities, weren't infiltrated and run by the militant.
Re: Ask HN: Do you believe in GNU's Free Software?
#25> Do you believe in Free Software?
> If we believe in things like right to repair...
> immoral
When it is phrased like that (and it often is phrased like that) it sounds like a religion. Also the notion that there is no compromise to be had also seems very religious. I already have a religion and Free Software isn't it.
I support the majority of the goals of the FSF, SFC, OSI, and EFF. Some of them overlap, some I don't agree with (particularly the FSF's stance on handling nonfree firmware), and some goals of mine aren't represented by any of the above groups.
What I absolutely reject is the all or nothing approach even implicit in the question. If I buy a piece of proprietary software or hardware that does not mean I don't "believe" in Free Software or that it is a lost cause. It means I want to play video games with my friends. It means the way I put food on my family's table depends on it sometimes (although 99% of what I do is FOSS even for work).
Even in religion we make these moral distinctions of how closely we're willing to cooperate with evil in the course of our daily lives. I don't want to live the ascetic lifestyle of Richard Stallman. And to imply that I should to really consider myself a supporter of Free Software is what drives me and a few other people away from such a movement. Not to ramble about my FOSS CV, but I release software under the GPLv3, I've donated to FSF, SFC, OSI, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD just to name a few, I've spent hours tabling for the FSF at different events. Because I sometimes use proprietary software does that excommunicate me from the belief of Free Software?
Re: Ask HN: Do you believe in GNU's Free Software?
#26These freedoms definitely make sense to me. If they were not present we would be living in a very different world where large corporations would keep us in walled gardens and no possible alternative. We would have software available for study but never to tinker with and make something useful.
Its incredulous that I can use a Linux distributions, compilers, multimedia tools and various application for my day to day use; not just a side hobby. You may argue about how good it is, but more or less you would get by. Yet I am not tied to a company with trillions of worth. The development happens in open and its driven by community of developers contributing out passion.
Playsatation and macOS are the examples where companies built heavily out of open source software, but they kept their systems closed. So you can have the code but its not a useful. You still are not in control about how software runs on it. Your only option is to not use it.
I own a PS4 and enjoy it very much. Thankfully its only for gaming, so I am not restricted. I wonder if it was an open platform people would have built many amazing things for it.
Re: Ask HN: Do you believe in GNU's Free Software?
#27"Either the user controls the software, or the software controls the users":
Re: Ask HN: Do you believe in GNU's Free Software?
#28> Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to ...study, change and improve the software. Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. As an individual, free software is valuable for a me if I can modify it at will, say at most with one month work and without having to learn arcane techniques. However this is not the case most of the time, so using free software not so different from using a propr…
That brings up another thought I've had over the years. From an end user perspective, which is more valuable -- a Free Software program that is very difficult to understand and modify, or a non-Free program that has a well documented extension API?
For example, if the world of web browsers consisted of a non-free browser that was ported to run on almost any platform that had a well documented extension/plugin system, vs. a Free web browser that was a mess of spaghetti code that no one would really want to touch, and didn't support any extensions -- which browser would be more valuable (both in general, and in specific ways)?
Re: Ask HN: Do you believe in GNU's Free Software?
#29No post body was provided.
Re: Ask HN: Do you believe in GNU's Free Software?
#30> Do you believe in Free Software? > If we believe in things like right to repair... > immoral When it is phrased like that (and it often is phrased like that) it sounds like a religion. Also the notion that there is no compromise to be had also seems very religious. I already have a religion and Free Software isn't it. I support the majority of the goals of the FSF, SFC, OSI, and EFF. Some of them overlap, some I do…
Once people start crossing the line from promoting an ideal to promoting an identity, that's when they lose me.