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We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

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Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#31

Post by simonh »

deng wrote: post #24
simonh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solaris was a much bigger deal than Linux well into the OSX era. In fact if Linux had never happened Solaris would probably still be around and we'd be arguing about how much OS X owes to Solaris and whether it matters that SunOS predated NEXT but Solaris didn't.

> In fact if Linux had never happened Solaris would probably still be around and we'd be arguing about how much OS X owes to Solaris Hardly. How would have Apple developed a full userland and development toolchain with the resources it had at that time? That's exactly the point of the article: OS X wouldn't be where it is without Linux (read: GNU/Linux), not because it was technically the best Unix (it wasn't), but b…

You do know that OS X was just a rebranding of NeXTSTEP which dates back to 1985 and so had all those things (dev tool chain, userland, etc) 6 years before Linux started, right? How much did NeXTSTEP owe to Linux, say in 1990?

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#32

Post by gaius »

deng wrote: post #24
simonh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solaris was a much bigger deal than Linux well into the OSX era. In fact if Linux had never happened Solaris would probably still be around and we'd be arguing about how much OS X owes to Solaris and whether it matters that SunOS predated NEXT but Solaris didn't.

> In fact if Linux had never happened Solaris would probably still be around and we'd be arguing about how much OS X owes to Solaris Hardly. How would have Apple developed a full userland and development toolchain with the resources it had at that time? That's exactly the point of the article: OS X wouldn't be where it is without Linux (read: GNU/Linux), not because it was technically the best Unix (it wasn't), but b…

Err, it would have got them from NeXT which got them partially from GNU. No Linux was involved in the making of this operating system.

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#33

Post by gaius »

iheartmemcache wrote: post #15
pvg wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apache was a fork of NCSA httpd, not CERN httpd.

Came in here to be that guy and make this comment, but you beat me to it. Have an up-vote. I can't anyone is even disputing the fact that OS X didn't largely benefit from the fact that there was tons of GNU/GPL tooling out of the box that power users could use. Bash? GCC/G++ (before the clang/llvm migration out)? GNU. X-windows (granted I don't think many people used it post-Carbon, but I remember using it on my iBoo…

GNU yes, but GNU pre-dates Linux. I first used GCC on SunOS.

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#34

Post by pvg »

iheartmemcache wrote: post #15
pvg wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apache was a fork of NCSA httpd, not CERN httpd.

Came in here to be that guy and make this comment, but you beat me to it. Have an up-vote. I can't anyone is even disputing the fact that OS X didn't largely benefit from the fact that there was tons of GNU/GPL tooling out of the box that power users could use. Bash? GCC/G++ (before the clang/llvm migration out)? GNU. X-windows (granted I don't think many people used it post-Carbon, but I remember using it on my iBoo…

Well, OS X's ancestors had a largely BSD-derived userspace so that's neither here nor there. The strongest claim and perhaps biggest contribution, I think, was GCC on which NeXTs Objective C compiler was based from the beginning.

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#35

Post by gaius »

dTal wrote: post #16
gaius wrote: post #6

Apple's OS X, which wouldn't be what it is if Linux hadn't already been the leading nix OS.* Well that isn't true. NeXTStep was built on the 68k from 4.3BSD which originated on the VAX. It has no lineage in common with Linux, and in fact pre-dates it. And OSX now is by far the most popular workstation Unix. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Unix_history-simple.svg

If we assume that the author is following the usual convention of referring to GNU/Linux as simply "Linux", I don't think it's unfair to say that OSX draws heavily from the free software ecosystem. Take a look in /usr/bin on an OSX machine and it's pretty much the free software kitchen sink. Emacs AND Vim even. The only reason Unix is popular for a workstation at all nowadays is because Linux runs everything.

...apart from workstations...

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#36

Post by dTal »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #28
dTal wrote: post #27

This is a great article, if a little slapdash on the details. I don't agree with the notion that we're "losing"; the reason is neatly exemplified by the HN front page: 3. FreeBSD 10.3 officially supported on Microsoft Azure (microsoft.com) 138 points by tachion 6 hours ago | flag | 77 comments 10. Microsoft Edge WebGL engine open-sourced (github.com) 308 points by aroman 13 hours ago | flag | 80 comments 24. How the…

FWIW, this is not the article's actual title. The actual title is "What's Our Next Fight?"

Thanks, reworded.

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#37

Post by iheartmemcache »

bad_user wrote: post #17
legulere wrote: post #12

I think the problem is that the FSF's definition of freedom still stems from a time where everybody being a programmer was seen as a realistic and achievable goal. The actual situation is that we have two groups that care about different things: Users and developers. Users' biggest concern is that the software helps them achieve what they want to do. They care about restrictions like DRM if it hinders them in doing w…

> Users' biggest concern is that the software helps them achieve what they want to do. There are two problems with this assertion: (1) users often don't know what they want to do or what they'll want to do in the future and (2) users don't have the education to understand the freedoms provided by open source / free software or lack thereof. The situation is similar with automobiles. Until now at least people had the…

  ** > There are two problems with this assertion: 
  (1) users often don't know what they want to do or what they'll want to do in the 
  future and (2) users don't have the education to understand the freedoms provided by 
  open source / free software or lack thereof.
RE: 1 - Yes they do. Look at your little sister/brother/niece/nephew aged 13-18. They want to gossip and flirt on Instagram and take selfies as a way to promote themselves. Their goal is pretty clear-cut -- they want to raise their social stature amongst their peers. People in their 40s know what they want too. With Facebook they can keep in touch with people they knew 20 years ago and kill time at their work playing {whatever replaced Farmville} looking at pictures of {cats or something}.

RE: 2 - I agree, but I posit it's really not their job to care. You don't know how the traffic light infrastructure works (presumably) or the logistics of your city's DPW. You just presume concrete will be poured into potholes when appropriate. Very few people actually care how things actually get done; their concern isn't freedom or the subtle politics behind BSD vs GPL2 vs CC w Attribution - their concern is if they can 'drive home without hitting the potholes' (load instagram without the app crashing).

--

(That car analogy breaks down due to the fact that you're driving a relatively obscure car manufacturer/make/model. Those alternative and respectable repair shops are staffed with your average joe picking up a spanner used to swapping out Toyota Corolla struts and changing Ford Focus oil. The difference in topology between cars has decreased as a function of time (especially modern cars, which tend to share components - e.g. the '99 Corolla was piece for piece, internally, what a Chevy Prizm had of the same model year).

I'm no automotive engineer but I can tinker my way into making anything work (bonus: with a high confidence factor of "this wire loom won't catch on fire"), but Joe-your-friendly-tech is charging 2x-3x more because he has to open a book and invest time in reading data-sheets for something he's not used to working on regularly (then ordering the proper pieces, installing them, and doing things like calibrating the stoich of the carb/adjusting the float, etc that's all taken care of by one of the ~600-800 MCU's in a modern car).

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#38

Post by simonh »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #30
simonh wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>An open-source software on the other hand might not be maintained in 10 years from now, but people (like a government agency) can always fund further development, if they really, really need it alive. Open source never dies. At the government department or big organization level, they can fund or perform any proprietary development they need themselves as well. FOSS just isn't necessary at that level of resources. F…

"they can fund or perform any proprietary development they need themselves as well" Try phoning up Microsoft and asking them how much it would cost to add a feature for an old piece of DOS software that they haven't touched in the last 20 years. I suspect the answer would be at least 8 figures, if not 9.

The point is, an organization at that scale can solve problems at that level because they have the resources to fund development of an alternative that e.g. doesn't rely on DOS. Individual users don't have the funds to do that, or the skills to develop new features themselves, so once it's no longer supported they're equally screwed whether the software they rely on is FOSS or proprietary.

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#39

Post by Zigurd »

zanny wrote: post #2

Meanwhile, Windows is still pretty much the only desktop OS for 99% of people, Nvidia has stolen large-scale compute with a holistically proprietary CUDA, and Google has hijacked the ecosystem and culture with Android and ChromeOS (the former by having vendors use the incredibly destructive model of forking the kernel and stuffing it with binary blobs rendering it stuck to that version on whatever device you have, an…

Windows hasn't been at 99% for 15 years now. Apple's share of usage based on Web access stats is at about 10% now. Linux is at 1.5%, ChromeOS at 0.5%.

If you factor-in mobile Web access, Windows share is under 50%, and Android, which is an open source OS, with a Linux kernel (it took discarding the Linux userland and replacing it with a single runtime for apps and middleware to make Linux successful), is over 25% and Apple's OSs are at over 15%. Android "mods" like Cyanogen are a serious factor in open source development.

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#40

Post by chillingeffect »

franciscop wrote: post #20
Esau wrote: post #13

I think that if you are concerned about freedom, then you need to use an OS that is not controlled a commercial entity. OS X, iOS, Windows, Android, ChromeOS, and Ubuntu all have issues; even though some of them are open source.

Putting Windows and Ubuntu in the same "commercial" bag is very miguiding...

It is, but I upvoted bc I think they're trying to point out that even Ubuntu gets tainted by commercial desire. But you're right in that the degree and flavor of taint varies between the OSes. It's much more productive to point out the features and uses of each of these OSes that modulate freedom.

Freedom is partially in the OS and largely in how we use it. Constantly upgrading to the newest thing, for example, I would consider a luxurious consumer habit that serves the elite, but gives smaller relative gains to the individual. I suggest holding on to any OS as long as possible before upgrading.

And the fact that even Ubuntu gets tainted with commercial desire is really indicative of much bigger ideas... For example, it points out how power corrupts and needs checks and balances. (don't know if this is even possible with an open source OS). It also makes me wonder if this cyber-organic lifestyle is even physically possible. Is it possible that we've been drawing a massive check against ourselves and this degree of connectivity is unsustainable? Why does it constantly require so much software to keep going? Is there no point of equilibrium in sight?

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