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The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

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Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#221

Post by type0 »

throw2016 wrote: post #47

It's hypocritical for people to continue to benefit from foss and complain about 'fundamentalists'. Without that level of commitment no one would have used Linux and all the early immature and amateurish efforts, there are people here who know what a horror some of the efforts were to use and the long journey to today. Would any of the practical minded folks use any of that? That part of the journey could only be mad…

This seem to be the case, the author don't understand that FOSS is usually built by the communities of people that share the same fundamental values (he can call them fundamentalists for all he wants) but it doesn't make his arguments correct. When he complains that FOSS community doesn't embrace the proprietary software - how exactly does he imagine this to be done, no one dictates what software we should use so this discussion is completely nonsensical. This whole idea is like someone would go to the vegan party, bringing meat there and then complain that no one wanted to eat it. Just this unwarranted complaining is enough to persuade many people that could have bought his software to stay away.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#222

Post by 4bpp »

keiferski wrote: post #40
throwaway4799 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free labor is distinct from free software and it is misleading to conflate the two. Plenty of people are paid to work on free software, and I'm not talking about Red Hat or SUSE either. See: 90% of the Linux kernel contributors. As for musicians, plenty of them share their music (or flps, or whatever) all the time. Soundcloud, bandcamp, jamendo, magnatune, soulseek... the list goes on.

1. Right, but I guess I was talking more about the ecosystem itself. If there were no jobs paying people to work on open-source software, would there be as much work done on free software in general? 2. True, but charging money for your music doesn’t get nearly the same negative reaction that paid software often gets.

1. Well, humans produced a lot of music long before anything like a copyright system existed, so maybe that's actually not the example you want to look for.

2. If people charge money for covers[1], the public does tend to exhibit some degree of outrage. I've heard a hypothetical future in which being caught whistling a pop song in public results in an instant fine being held up as a possible dystopia. Even when we are just talking about stringent enforcement of copyright on exact-ish reproductions of music or film, opposition to this propelled politicians into parliaments in the EU and several component countries (the Pirate Parties); I do wonder if Free Software fundamentalism actually ever involved the number of people that must have signed on for that to have been possible.

[1] https://www.thedailybeast.com/bmi-reminds-ohio-bar-cover-son...

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#223

Post by Sylos »

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 once was at a dev meetup and the speaker asked who in the room used FOSS. About 25% raised their hands.

So, in other words, about 75% did not know what FOSS means or have no clue what software they're using.

I was about to say that, you know, it's probably not necessary to know what FOSS means in order to just do your job, but no, it actually is necessary. If you want to use a library, you need to have at least a basic idea of what its license means.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#224

Post by mherrmann »

bjpbakker wrote: post #200
mherrmann wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 comple…

You are, obviously, free to choose the software you use. What you install on your computer is, again of course, completely up to you.

What I take issue with are people who jump into any discussion of proprietary software and downvote / criticize with "proprietary" being the only point. A fair criticism should take the form "Cons: Not open source", "Pros: ...". But it never does. It's always just "Nobody needs this proprietary crap". That is what I consider actively harmful, because it suppresses options that may actually be useful, if not for you then maybe for other people. If you don't like it, why not just let it be? I don't like JavaScript. I don't go around forums and shout "It's a horrible language!" where ever I see it mentioned.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#225

Post by mherrmann »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #198
mherrmann wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> but it is precisely because of the 'fanatics' that it is so

People fought for the freedoms in our democracies with their lives, and killing others. That doesn't mean we have to keep doing these things. I understand that it was a fight to get here. But it's not like we will lose it all again if an indie dev like me writes proprietary software.

> You will be asked why fman is proprietary from time to time

I'm not just "asked". I'm told it's shit for the mere fact that it's proprietary.

> You're free to ignore them

They're not just ignoring me. They take time out of their day to actively hurt my product by downvoting or commenting in the nice way I described above.

> if fman itself was GPLed, you'd see an uptick it sales, not any downturn

I talked to the author of a once very popular Mac app for developers. He open sourced it under the GPL. Sales went down by 90% over night. So, while I am with you and would love for fman to be open source, it simply is not viable.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#226

Post by microtonal »

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 does not need to be fundamentalist, it can also be utterly pragmatic. If counted the number of times that proprietary vendors have let me down, with no recourse (e.g. the cancellation of BeOS, software vendors moving to outrageous subscription schemes, Apple replacing Spaces by the Mission Control), it would be pragmatic to stop using proprietary software. Since with FLOSS software the community could maintain something ad infinitum when there is interest.

(Disclaimer: I do use some proprietary software.)

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#227

Post by dTal »

pdonis wrote: post #167
dTal wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tolera…

> 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? We don't enforce laws against food manufacturers putting secret ingredients in food by opening up food production processes so that any member of the public can walk into the factory and watch them at work. A major reason for that is that the FDA is bound by law to respect tra…

We do require food manufacturers to 'open up' their production processes by printing every single ingredient on the packaging, plus a comprehensive review of the effects of the food on the body in the form of nutrition facts, caffeine content, alcohol content and allergen content among other things. Quite what the equivalent procedure for software would be is left as an exercise for the reader, but it's not as simple as 'government says so'.

The trouble is that the effects of harmful software are much less obvious than harmful food.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#228

Post by icebraining »

pjmlp wrote: post #170
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.

Not really, because there are thousand others that can out offer you.

That's also a selling point, though, especially if you're a small company. Knowing that they weren't locked in to us, and therefore helpless if we closed or pivoted, helped sell our services many times.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#229

Post by icebraining »

nwah1 wrote: post #133
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #4

There's another problem with the "make money by offering support" argument: it incentivizes creating software that requires support, usually via added complexity. Similarly the customization argument: it incentivizes creating inflexible software. I'm not sure there is a monetization strategy that actually aligns with what should be the goals of FLOSS.

Models I know of are open-core, dual-licensing, paid support, selling developer tools, and providing hosted cloud service offerings.

There's also custom development of modules/extensions to the core (it's not open-core because these developments may be open themselves).

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#230

Post by icebraining »

TimJYoung wrote: post #119
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #4

There's another problem with the "make money by offering support" argument: it incentivizes creating software that requires support, usually via added complexity. Similarly the customization argument: it incentivizes creating inflexible software. I'm not sure there is a monetization strategy that actually aligns with what should be the goals of FLOSS.

I was thinking something similar while reading the blog post: the UNIX philosophy is to do one thing, do it well, and stop there. As you say, none of those things lend themselves to monetization if the source code is available for free and anyone can contribute to it or customize/fork it. You can't keep the software "on point" because anyone is free to add something completely unrelated to its core functionality. And…

You can use trademarks to force the forks to have other names, minimizing confusion. You can't use FOSS licenses to prevent them from customizing it or adding features, that would go against the point of FOSS.

But I think the "standing in the community" is overrated; your clients probably won't know or care. Some people will prefer your project and help it, just ignore the haters.

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