We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 4:21 PM UTC

jpetso wrote: post #54

officialchicken wrote: post #25

Like everyone, I want more freedom, not less: the battle should begin with a sane GPL version 4. See the MIT, BSD and LGPL licenses which provide more freedom over GPL3.

There's no benefit from making the GPL into something like the LGPL or MIT/BSD. If you prefer those licenses, they're already available to be used instead. The GPL stands for a specific kind of freedom and should continue to stand for the same, maybe with tweaks but definitely in the same spirit. If it continues to go out of fashion then that's a different issue, but watering it down doesn't help to further the cause…

> If it continues to go out of fashion then that's a different issue, but watering it down doesn't help to further the causes that the FSF set out to achieve with it.

If it continues to go out of fashion, that means that it is not an effective means of furthering the cause ths FSF set out to achieve for it.

One can agree with what the FSF overtly claims its goals to be, without believing that the current form of the GPL is particularly an effective method at achieving those goals in the current environment (one might even believe that the basic approach of the GPL was the most effective approach for an earlier time with different circumstances, without believing that it is effective now.)

It may be the case that compelling very specific rules for software freedom if a package is used isn't actually the most effective way, in practice, of promoting software freedom.

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

#62

Post by sievebrain » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 4:22 PM UTC

the8472 wrote: post #42

I think what's contributing to the whole hourglass thing is that browsers do not play nicely with native/low-level primitives. It's bascially yet another waist above the OS waist (browser APIs) and the IP waist (HTTP). Develop a nice decentralized solution? Maybe it involves some UDP multicast? Forget the browser. Want to have two devices on the network talk to each other? Bounce it through a cloud provider. Want to…

The browser is a terrible app platform that 'won' primarily because the incredibly minimal levels of holistic design in it meant everyone could agree on it, because doing so gave power to nobody in particular. The downside of that approach is, well, it's just a mishmash of things that don't work well or fit together properly.

It's not even really decentralised. From the birth of the web it was driven by Netscape, then Microsoft, then MozCorp, then Apple for a while, and now Google, with bits of Opera thrown in occasionally. There has always been at least one dominating browser maker adding whatever random features they thought would be cool at the time.

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

#63

Post by kuba_ » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 4:23 PM UTC

tacos wrote: post #3

We're also a lot older now and many realize the "us versus them" thing wasn't helpful. Shame the article opens with such a flattering retelling of a wonky strategy. It was always the data, not the code. Try and find an open dataset for any interesting machine learning problem and you'll realize that while "freedom" was busy doing things like setting back the use of precompiled headers in GCC a decade and making it vi…

I agree. Google open some of your data. This empire defense bullshit game doesn't belong in the 21st century.

...and hey you Snowden's inside Google leak that 128k model already.

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

#64

Post by sievebrain » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 4:24 PM UTC

bluejekyll wrote: post #21

I wish he would have gone more into the design of the kernel and significant changes that are going to be needed to take advantage of the NVRAM based systems that are coming very soon. The I/O design needs to be completely overhauled. It's probably going to be a great time to rewrite and resign portions of Linux, but I honestly don't think the community will be capable of doing a major architectural change. Kernel mo…

Could you elaborate on the changes for the NVRAM devices that you'd like to see?

My understanding is that the 3D XPoint type devices are just exposed as a regular mmapped device and provide storage which is still a fair bit slower than DRAM, but a lot faster than SSDs.

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

#65

Post by StavrosK » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 4:27 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #48

bad_user wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I'm with you except the very last assertion: > Again, users don't care about DRM. Because they don't understand it. If they did, they would reject DRM-enabled products. I understand DRM in great detail (as CTO of a streaming film company), and though I would in principal like to reject it, I have no basis to do so except illegal piracy. Theoretically if all the customers stood up and boycotted DRM we could have an ef…

> I have no basis to do so except illegal piracy

Why? Pirates are the only ones who aren't affected by DRM. That's why I torrent Netflix shows even while paying for Netflix. I can play them anywhere, even without a net connection.

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

#66

Post by bryanlarsen » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 4:28 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #38

bryanlarsen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

If the software is open source, you can relatively easily find somebody to do it for you for $100/hour or so. That's within the scope of many individuals.

$100 000 000 is outside of the scope of pretty much everybody.

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

#67

Post by sievebrain » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 4:33 PM UTC

api wrote: post #5

Free Freedom Since everything in OSS has to be free, there is no economic model. Eventually things with an economic model supersede or embrace/extend open ecosystems because they have the resources to do so. They also have the resources to address user experience, which is the most important thing unless your target audience consists of only hackers. (Even then it still matters.) Good UX is an immense amount of work,…

It's not only about resources.

Things which are not controlled by a company, or at least a foundation of some kind, are essentially a commons. The tragedy of the commons then goes into effect.

Who is responsible for upgrading the system? Nobody.

Who resolves disputes over technical vision? Nobody.

The internet and web 1.0 were an aberration - they came out of government funded research (DoD/CERN/universities). People built decentralised things because their salaries were very safe and accountability against any kind of commercial metrics (like userbase size) were non-existent. But at the same time, beyond salary, they didn't have big budgets to run centralised services. Early internet protocols are a reflection of the funding model used to build them .... NOT what was technically the best approach and NOT even anything privacy related! Which is why despite being decentralised most early internet protocols didn't really think about privacy much: those weren't research topics that interested the government funding sources.

In a sense, the early internet was a product of a hard-left entirely state-driven economic model.

So we now have a strange kind of rose-tinted glasses effect where people hark back to a better era of cooperation and friendship, a time without dirty dirty things like "profit" and "digital rights" getting in the way. This is a common theme amongst those on the political left: stuff was better when it was run by the state.

But the state didn't want to continue funding the internet in perpetuity, so it was opened to commercialisation, and since then virtually all technical progress has been driven by the profit motive and by implication, the ability to make lots of money by getting lots of users on your centralised platform (which are a lot easier to build anyway).

Is this worse? Maybe. It's capitalist. Whether that's better or worse than what we had before depends on your political perspective.

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

#68

Post by vetinari » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 4:34 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #48

bad_user wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I'm with you except the very last assertion: > Again, users don't care about DRM. Because they don't understand it. If they did, they would reject DRM-enabled products. I understand DRM in great detail (as CTO of a streaming film company), and though I would in principal like to reject it, I have no basis to do so except illegal piracy. Theoretically if all the customers stood up and boycotted DRM we could have an ef…

I would turn the question the other way: are movie publishers going to give up the distribution over internet / playback on anything connected to the internet?

I very much doubt it. They are never going back to physical discs and require their customers to drive to shop and buy a physical copy. Heck, right now companies like Netflix fight hard in order to be able to be present in the web browser.

On the other hand, I see adapting a so keep your Game of Thrones for yourself attitude somewhat more realistic. There are already people like that.

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

#69

Post by dingaling » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 4:36 PM UTC

tacos wrote: post #3

We're also a lot older now and many realize the "us versus them" thing wasn't helpful. Shame the article opens with such a flattering retelling of a wonky strategy. It was always the data, not the code. Try and find an open dataset for any interesting machine learning problem and you'll realize that while "freedom" was busy doing things like setting back the use of precompiled headers in GCC a decade and making it vi…

> Focusing on code was a bit of a mistake; that's cheap and you get it for free

But as you said the people who spent their time writing the code generally didn't have the influence to release data, so there was very little lost time-opportunity.

So I'm glad they focused on the code rather than idly pontificating about the inequality of data access.

And through their efforts they managed to drag open concepts into the mainstream consciousness so that releasing data becomes a digestible mainstream concept instead of a crackpot manifesto.

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

#70

Post by tzs » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 4:37 PM UTC

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…

Apple had a full UNIX userland and development tool chain years before Linux existed. It was called A/UX.