Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

news.slashdot.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 623 posts

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#431

Post by tjader »

Beltalowda wrote: post #158
tjader wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stallman and the FSF see closed source software as unethical. Imagine if someone asked you for help and said "I don't see how to free my slaves while making a living, paying my rent, paying for my children's education". Would you tell them "You shouldn't have slaves, it's unethical" or would you try to help them find a way to run their business with fewer slaves, but still some?

What am I supposed to say to that? Proprietary software is not slavery, or even anywhere close to it, even if we accept the argument that it is unethical. I find this entire analogy unhelpful.

The point is not to compare proprietary software to slavery. The point is that Stallman does not find proprietary software bad for the user, he finds it morally wrong.

That means in this case it doesn't make sense to complain and argue about his answer to the developer, as his answer makes perfect sense given his premises. If you want to disagree with his advice, you have to disagree with his moral position on proprietary software and argue about that.

Expecting Stallman to help someone make money with proprietary software is like expecting a vegan advocate to help someone kill cows more humanely.

Note that I'm not expressing an agreement or disagreement with Stallman's worldview, only that his answer is exactly what follows from his worldview, and you should argue about that and not about the answer.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#432

Post by Shoue »

geofft wrote: post #422
jasoneckert wrote: post #384

From reading the other comments here, I understand that it's easy to pick something RMS said and say "Yeah, right..." But you have to keep in mind that RMS advocates the free software philosophy - the complete left end of the software spectrum - the white angel on your shoulder (not the red devil on the other). And while I find some of his points too radical to implement practically in my own situation, I believe it'…

> But you have to keep in mind that RMS advocates the free software philosophy - the complete left end of the software spectrum I don't think this is true! There are notable portions of the free software community that are farther left (or whatever direction you may consider it to be) than Stallman and GNU. Debian, for instance, rejects the GFDL as a non-free license when the "invariant sections" or "cover texts" mec…

> Or take the AGPL, for instance, sponsored by now-defunct startup Affero. There are many people (myself included) who believe the AGPL is a restriction on use, freedom 0, because it prevents you from using AGPL software in certain contexts where the requirements cannot be fulfilled.

> The GPLv2 itself starts by saying, "To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions" - there is a coherent political view that this is contradictory.

There will _always_ be such restrictions. For an extreme, but derived from the same philosophical core, example: the act of murder is an individual freedom, but it imposes on other peoples' freedoms. So we have to make a choice between which freedom is more important: that of the person whose life is at risk, or that of the person who wants to take lives. The formal concepts are referred to as negative liberty (freedom from murder) and positive liberty (freedom to murder someone).

The modern world leans heavily towards negative liberty because we recognise that freedom isn't some absolute individualistic freedom, but rather that it is better to balance freedom in favour of most people. That's why stealing, killing, sexual assault, and many other things are freedoms we deem unethical and unnecessary.

Some people say, "well, it's just software" which is dismissive of the idea that software can have very bad effects, indirect and direct, on the world, so we must empower ourselves.

> Or, in the left-libertarian direction, consider the folks who want to abolish copyright entirely.

There are also those on the left who want this, but also to go _beyond_ simply abolishing. If you abolish copyright without requiring code and build instructions to be open source as well, you just end up with people and companies who instead keep their code secret.

It's why, when slavery was abolished, it wasn't enough. The former slaves were free, but were now in a world where the power structures were not in their favour, meaning they could still be taken advantage of and treated like slaves and were still being oppressed.

Libertarian views are usually rejected by the left as right wing, instead when you talk about leftists with less authoritarian views, they call themselves anarchists (or even reject that label, and say they're "doing anarchism" rather than being "anarchists").

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#433

Post by dwringer »

ineedasername wrote: post #430
dwringer wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in that example the analogy might be more along the lines of studios who come down hard on fan fiction, forbidding it, versus those that allow it or even encourage or draw inspiration from it. Although my analogy falls short because even studios that don't allow fan fiction can't be as restrictive as most software, since everyone is still free to come up with fan fiction in the privacy of their own home. Not…

I'm not so sure. Movie aren't all there to see. A vast majority of work to get movies to look & sound like they do happen behind the scenes, off the set, in editing rooms where color corrections, sound effects, cgi, and countless other tweaks are made. That's as much the source code equivalent as the final product. The final product is more like a picture of (some) source code and UI rolled into one.

Free software doesn't mean you get to see all the hard work that went into it, though, or that you get to see all the UML diagrams, or napkins, or other design documents. You might not even get all the supporting code, if it isn't required to build the software from the freely-released source (think about what kind of emacs configs developers might use in developing free software, but never release). That's not really what's at issue.

Those things you mentioned behind the scenes of a film do not have ongoing side-effects on the audience. The hidden algorithms and obfuscated execution of non-free software do.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#434

Post by SkeuomorphicBee »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #268

Missing a reflection about how abundance of F/OSS has pushed us towards SaaS as one of the few places left to make a living from pure software dev, and the oligopolies arising out of it. What about Linux (Android) being used as the prime spyware vector, and Linux being used for cloud lock-in (k8s et al)? Also missing a discussion about the role of open standards as opposed to open implementations, such as POSIX/LSB,…

The move thowards SaaS started long before the rise in prominence of F/OSS, it was the creation of the Internet that was the catalyst to the rise of SaaS, nothing to do with the FOSS-vs-Proprietary fight. In fact, in the beginning of the Internet, the first wave of SaaS was all built on top of proprietary solutions, Oracle was the king, Sun Java was the up-and-coming go-to platform.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#435

Post by pjmlp »

Ekaros wrote: post #404
jdbernard wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people don't pay for FOSS, how do you expect developers who develop FOSS to feed their families? The "free" in "Free and Open Source Software" is free as in speech, not free as in beer. We'd like to think that decision to charge or not charge for the product is orthogonal to the decision to make the source code available. In practice there is some interrelation. But FOSS was never "you can't charge for it."

Do it as hobby in their free time? Maybe work in some other field producing actual physical things during day and then in evenings spend hour or two tinkering with free software? Just like any hobbying artist?

Like a street performer trying to make it to the end of the month rather.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#436

Post by tjader »

contrast wrote: post #304
tjader wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I made an analogy to another behavior that I hope everyone will agree is unethical. The point is that if you accept Stallman's position that closed source software is unethical his response is not unexpected.

Unless you have a low opinion of Stallman, why would you expect him to be so dismissive of the day-to-day concerns of someone who wants to support a family? Using extreme ethical examples to justify a statement is how Godwin’s Law came about, way back in the 90s. It’s a well known tactic to make one’s own position sound reasonable, by implying that anyone is still arguing with you may as well be saying the Nazis were…

I wasn't comparing proprietary software to slavery. I was making the point that for Stallman proprietary software is as unethical as slavery is to most people. Maybe I picked the wrong thing to make the analogy, it could have worked just as well with theft, murder, or any other unethical behavior.

I wasn't making any point about whether Stallman is right or wrong on that, I was just pointing out that people are attacking the wrong part of his argument. If you disagree with him you should attack his base belief that proprietary software is unethical.

> Unless you have a low opinion of Stallman, why would you expect him to be so dismissive of the day-to-day concerns of someone who wants to support a family?

When have you ever seen Stallman be pragmatic instead of idealist about anything regarding proprietary software?

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#437

Post by pjmlp »

Macha wrote: post #408
pjmlp wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might happen, however my point was about the SaaS that are from the authors themselves.

Ah, in the case of developer originated SaaS, then sure, doing a SaaS offering rather than donationware might lead to more income for the developer, but I don't think that free software is alone in this - plenty of proprietary software that would once have had fixed boxed releases is now subscription or SaaS based too. Recurring income is a stronger business model, nobody's denying that, but that doesn't mean it's an…

When users try to make a living as developers, income becomes something to worry about.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#438

Post by crtasm »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #351
the_af wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Do they care?" I guarantee you that they will. They might not think so now, but when in a couple or so of decades they suddenly remember a cherished videogame from their youth (maybe associated with the joy of discovering videogames, maybe with a memory of a friend who's passed away, maybe just because of doing videogame archaeology) and they cannot play it at all because of DRM or unsupported hardware (and the im…

Gamer nostalgia is a niche within a niche. The modern hardcore gamer market has tens of millions of customers - maybe hundreds if you include trivial but addictive phone games. The nostalgists who want to get Jetpack Willy running again so they can relive a misspent youth number tens of thousands at most. And in fact there are few/no DRM issues for these vintage games and emulations, because they're distributed as bi…

You don't need to be a hardcore fan of anything to want to revisit experiences from your youth and there's a lot more people playing games now than when Jetpack Willy released in the 80s, certainly not a niche market.

Think of the situation with today's games 40 years in the future rather than 40 year old games today.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#439

Post by specialist »

jasoneckert wrote: post #384

From reading the other comments here, I understand that it's easy to pick something RMS said and say "Yeah, right..." But you have to keep in mind that RMS advocates the free software philosophy - the complete left end of the software spectrum - the white angel on your shoulder (not the red devil on the other). And while I find some of his points too radical to implement practically in my own situation, I believe it'…

Correct. RMS is an Ultimatist.

He expanded the Overton Window (wrt FOSS). He created the necessary space for us to even have these conversations.

I have no opinions on RMS the person; I've never met him. But I have great esteem for RMS the ideologue. And I too respect that he walks the talk.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#440

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

rndgermandude wrote: post #368
Kinrany wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Stallman says "free as in free speech, not free beer", he means freedom to use software in any way you want including changing it. Not zero price.

Except this model is practically "zero price". Yes, you can sell GPL software, but on the customer side, buying such software cannot be justified economically, if all you got to do is to find somebody/some place that will provide this software to you free of charge and legally so. The only customers that would pay are ones that do it for moral purposes, at which point your business selling GPL software isn't a busine…

Ardour has 10's of thousands of users, many of which get the software from their Linux distributions. Nevertheless, more than 6000 of these individuals choose to help fund the project to the tune of between $150k and $210k a year.

So yes, although your observations are not wrong, they do not apply universally.

Post reply on HN