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The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

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Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#211

Post by msla »

dpower wrote: post #79
maeln wrote: post #69

The complains about FOSS fundamentalists coming from proprietary software dev' (which I am) always seems a bit hypocritical to me. The reason is, you probably use a lot of FOSS software that were made possible only because a lot of people dedicated time and effort to it. Your servers probably run Linux, if not, the services that you use everyday probably do. Your compiler/language is probably FOSS too, if not, the so…

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.

> The point of the article was to debunk some of the perceived "evils" of proprietary software.

The idea that software can sell my information isn't just a "perceived" evil anymore.

Back in the 1990s, the closed-source advocates had more of a point: Internet access wasn't omnipresent, and wasn't assumed to be, and it was legitimately more difficult to monetize whatever information you could collect, if only because hard drives to store it were more expensive.

These days, well, Microsoft is adding advertisements to its email application. What else is it doing? Anyone who knows has signed an NDA. European governments might be able to GDPR some of it out of them, but I doubt they'll be able to get all of it. Code is law, after all, and steganography is a very old field.

The trust has been poisoned. The innocence is lost.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#212

Post by type0 »

ruskerdax wrote: post #132
aethertron wrote: post #85

Here's another old argument from Stallman against using nonfree software, not addressed in the blog post: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.en.html > As a computer user today, you may find yourself using a proprietary program. If your friend asks to make a copy, it would be wrong to refuse. Cooperation is more important than copyright. But underground, closet cooperation does not make for a good society. A pers…

Copyright is not a form of cooperation. It is a threat. If you copy something without permission, you risk retaliation that is, ultimately, backed by violent force. It is hardly honest to call something "cooperation" under these circumstances.

Proprietary software can be downright dangerous if you tightly integrate it in your work and the vendor suddenly goes away or shuts down the software. But this has nothing to do with copyright, Software Freedom Conservancy defends GPL for the copyright holders that they represent.

The biggest issue with proprietary software is the unbalanced relationship with the vendor that it implies.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#213

Post by type0 »

dpower wrote: post #98
starbeast wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If more Linux people embraced proprietary software it would help spread Linux. Microsoft uses Linux on something like 60% of their own cloud servers, presumably because they find it more profitable to do so than to use the software they wrote themselves. One thing you have possibly missed is that the people you think are fundamentalists rather than pragmatists, are for the most part being fundamentalist about pragma…

To be absolutely clear, and I've made this point several times in the article - I am not dismissing the open source community. I am dismissing those that reject proprietary software on principle. I also made it clear that we would open source our software if we could find a business model that would work for us.

> I am dismissing those that reject proprietary software on principle

If they dismiss it then they don't need it. You can't force anyone to buy things they don't need, at least in free society that is.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#214

Post by yellowapple »

"Secrecy is not necessarily a bad thing provided a proprietary software vendor’s incentives are aligned with your own objectives."

That's the point: if you're being secretive, then your end users are denied the ability - without undue effort - to verify for themselves that you or your software are acting in their best interests or "aligned with [their] own objectives".

Transparency is a dependency of trust. No ifs ands or buts. If you can't be transparent because "boo hoo we can't make any money" then I can't trust you, and no reasonable person should.

The tired excuse that "but but but the black hats will see our code and hack us" is just that: a tired excuse along the same lines as "security by obscurity". The black hats will find holes in your software anyway, because they're motivated to do so (whether because it's how they put food on the table or because they find it a fun challenge). The least you can do is make it as easy as possible for the white hats to spot those zero-days first.

None of the arguments in this article are groundbreaking or compelling. They're the same tired bullshit excuses closed-source devs always try to feed their users for why said users should be fine with "don't worry, just trust us, we pinky-promise we're not selling your data to advertising networks (wink!)". Maybe you are, maybe you're not. Maybe you aren't yet but might in the future. No way to know for sure without full-blown reverse engineering every single build.

And note that none of this has to do with software freedom. Yes, most transparent software happens to be free software, but you can be transparent and proprietary. From a trustworthiness perspective, I don't care if there's a thousand-page Apple-style EULA in the source tree; I just want access to the source tree. Conflating transparency and freedom is a tell-tale sign of strawmanning here.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#215

Post by ajhurliman »

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…

Don't you think it's possible to take an ideal too far? Like, beyond the point of pragmatism?

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#216

Post by yellowapple »

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.

No coincidence that this is literally the first time I've heard of his product.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#217

Post by ruskerdax »

ajhurliman wrote: post #215
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…

Don't you think it's possible to take an ideal too far? Like, beyond the point of pragmatism?

You mean like where you're threatening people over a fundamentally peaceful activity like copying code? Yeah, definitely.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#218

Post by yellowapple »

chii wrote: post #206
tokai wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't think you'd have to read many business books to find an account of this happening, albeit with non-software products. So it's a general problem with businesses and not a valid argument against FOSS alone then. That being said I don't see "uber for x" companies to be a danger for legit businesses. To me it seems more of a way to milk investors, and not a viable way to steal markets. Most systems have a potent…

If it happens with businesses so often, why make it easier for them by providing the source?

Because the source code is really not the important part of that equation. A competitor with a slick marketing strategy will steal your business no matter what.

Meanwhile, if you do release your software as FOSS, then you at the very least get a marketing channel (the FOSS community) that's 1) cheap to acquire (any "this week in FOSS" blog or software repo or whatever will jump on spreading it around specifically because it's FOSS) and 2) is on average savvy enough to know that you're the actual encumbent and your competitor is a fraud. Assuming your product is actually good, they'll be inclined to support it and possibly even buy it.

If this is scary to do with your core product, then at least start with the FOSS dependencies of that core product. See also: Valve being one of the "good guys" in the Linux-on-the-desktop movement; their core product (Steam) is closed-source DRM (the literal antithesis of free software), but their free software contributions (especially around Mesa and Wine/Proton/DXVK) more than offset the "evil" of their core product, and so Linux users (myself included) have no qualms throwing money their way.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#219

Post by type0 »

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?

Poorer choice for what? If it's something I heavily rely on - it's should be FOSS because I already experienced sitting there with a bunch of proprietary files with no way to fix the issue when the vendor was closed down.

If I need to do some short time job and there are no FOSS tools I usually buy the license for proprietary software do the work and then uninstall it. Since I can't even see if there are some obvious security vulnerabilities so why risk having it installed.

About the "poorer choice", by using not sufficiently featurefull FOSS tools you get the chance to improve those and everyone benefits.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#220

Post by solarkraft »

nyolfen wrote: post #201
magissima wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

proprietary software frequently inspires foss clones

Uh, their contribution is inspiration?
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