The fundamentalist FOSS mentality • Hacker News Board

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#61

Post by enriquto » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 1:42 PM UTC

zbentley wrote: post #44

enriquto wrote: post #34

I also believe that proprietary software is morally wrong. I do not care if it has better performance or features; it is just unacceptable on principle. If I'm a fundamentalist for this belief, so be it.

Would you care to explain why? Additionally, do you object to patents and/or copyright in principle? If so, why? Genuinely curious, not critical or necessarily opposed.

Proprietary software is based on purposely hiding important information that affects the lives of people. I find this behavior appalling.

Copyright and patents on inventions are perfectly OK in my book. They are based on spreading the relevant information, not on hiding it. (However I loathe patents on theorems and algorithms.)

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#62

Post by mherrmann » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 1:43 PM UTC

This article was in the #1 spot on the front page. Now, five minutes later it has completely disappeared.

Did you not like the points it made mods?

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#63

Post by simion314 » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 1:45 PM UTC

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?

Most of the time no but I feel bad for doing it and I won't try to defend my choice by attacking RMS or the FOSS ideology, the fault is mine.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#64

Post by rhn_mk1 » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 1:47 PM UTC

mherrmann wrote: post #57

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's a small part that provides "I think I can't make it" as the only argument. That doesn't really bring anything into the discussion.

Before, you said "completely irrelevant", now you say "small part". Which is it? The article mentions and thus applies to both libre vs proprietary and gratis vs paid. And it is definitely meant to apply to both.

As I said, it has a small part mentioning open source, which is still completely irrelevant with its weak argument. I'm not sure what the author is getting at, but it seems they treat open source as gratis, which comes back to the fact that gratis is not the topic here.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#65

Post by liotier » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 1:48 PM UTC

kevkav wrote: post #29

liotier wrote: post #19

Ignore the naysayers. I loathe having to trust proprietary software for anything critical or anything I want control over, but there are things for which proprietary software got my money... So focus on your market segment - elsewhere, as all producers know, there will always be a chorus of negativity that you are better off ignoring.

Interesting. Do you mind if I ask what software (or category) have you bought if you don't trust proprietary software?

Games mostly, some photography RAW post-production applications, an Android language learning application for some African language... Things I'll take as finished products and for which I accept giving up even the pretence of control - same as third-party services actually. Opposite would be anything I consider infrastructural - such as operating system or messaging.

When free competitive alternatives lack, I also accept some proprietary drivers. Considering how the industry moves towards managed hosting ("cloud") and how ridiculous it makes my old under-utilized family & friends servers look, I'm thinking that, confidentiality issues aside, I could accept what is standardized enough to transparently swap providers - the way my Internet access is wholly in hands of an access provider that I can swap by plugging another one in a free RJ-45 port on my border router (with no perceptible impact because I use none of their bundled services), or the way my domain names are in the hand of a perfectly replaceable registrar.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#66

Post by starbeast » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 1:48 PM UTC

dpower wrote: post #17

jgrahamc wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read it but I'm not sure what you're trying to say really. Sure, there are people like Stallman, there are others who are more 'pragmatic'. World keeps turning. Do your thing. See how that plays out for you.

Key point is this: If more Linux people embraced proprietary software it would help spread Linux. Simple as that really. As a proprietary app, we have encountered quite a bit of resistance from Linux users, usually berating us for not being open source. I think that's short sighted. We need more pragmatists.

>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 pragmatism.

They are not telling you to open source based on some abstract philosophy, but because they think that the practical effects of doing so are better.

And given that open source as an economic system of production is currently out-competing liberal capitalism at its own game, on its own terms, on its home turf, I suspect that they may have a point.

Do what you want, but it may be a mistake to dismiss the open source community as not being pragmatic when they critique you.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#67

Post by xte » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 1:53 PM UTC

Well, my own personal response is that "FOSS fundamentalist" are as opposite free people that do not want actual society model but another and "people who describe them as fundamentalist" are simply people that can't think a different society or anything as society scale instead of their own company scale.

It's not an offense but a simple reasoned scheme: did you know that at the start of IT golden age software was open? In the USA, not in the URSS. Did you know that in the golden age of USA "rich people" arrive even at 90% of income taxes and they are still happy?

I do not talk about centuries in the past or restricted communities.

My own personal truth is that you are right many in a FOSS world will be dead. Simply because they do not really produce anything sensible. FOSS world work on innovation, without innovation business die. Today we have near-zero innovation because we can't have anything really new in a managerial-drive world. But again this is a system that work well in the short term, crash miserably in the medium/long term.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#68

Post by devnonymous » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 1:54 PM UTC

dpower wrote: post #2

I'm the author of this particular blog post. Curious to see how this is received by the tech community.

These are the same tired arguments being made for almost 3 decades now. Sure, go ahead and do your own thing. Just don't expect FOSS users to sympathize with your point of view. To wit tho', I'll try and explain why (I'm sure ineffectively, but if you were really interested, you'd have already made the effort to understand).

A lot of people often confuse FOSS users and users of proprietary software. The difference is that FOSS users (for example users who do install linux, even on a Mac) typically feel more comfortable with the 'idea' that they or anyone else can look under the hook and tinker, if it comes to it and bothers them sufficiently. This is the primary reason why proprietary software is unappealing to them. Users of proprietary software don't value the freedom to look under the hood and tinker as much. Personally speaking, I won't judge people choosing one or the other.

However, arguments such as OSS makes "life a lot easier for a bad actor to pick it apart." or "..if you only have a handful of contributors, mistakes may not be caught." or "there is nothing to stop someone from forking it and selling it for less /offering it for free." is just disingenuous.

> bad actor

Unless your software is crazy popular and there is cred to be earned in the black hat community, people who go around looking for exploits in OSS typically would not be bad actors. In fact, a proprietary tool that run /on top of/ an OSS platform would be a much more appealing target for bad actors than an open source one -- because hey, finding a way to use 'paid-for' software for free is far more appealing than finding a way to reverse engineer some random binary custom format used to store addressbooks.

> mistakes may not be caught ...

total(mistakes caught by in house team) > nothing to stop someone from forking it ...for free

Firstly - Licensing. Learn about it. Secondly, search for forks that are more popular than the upstream. I'm sure you might find a few (although I am also sure you won't find many). Understand why they are more popular (hint: will have nothing to do with code).

And finally, (most importantly) if you still feel that access to code is the only thing that will stop competitors from copying you and then beating you on price -- well, think hard about your future business strategy.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#69

Post by maeln » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 1:58 PM UTC

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 software that was used to make it was probably. Your OS probably contain some FOSS software or was made using some. Even this blog post was only possible because of free software (medium rely on NGinx, NodeJS, Redis, ...).

Today, it is almost impossible to work without at some point relying on a free software or using software that relies on free software. We wouldn't be were we at right now if it was not for FOSS. Hell, a lot of us may not have ever been developers if it was not for FOSS. I know I only learned programming because of FOSS like Ruby, Linux, GCC, ...

So I understand that we don't live in a world where everything is simple and where we can all live making free software. But criticizing the people who made your job possible doesn't seem like a good thing.

Re: The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

#70

Post by xte » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 1:58 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #6

I’m not a developer and I don’t have a strong opinion on open-source software either way, but I’ve always wondered: does the fact that developers and other technical people have (comparatively) excellent job security affect their attitude toward free labor and products? If developers had a job outlook similar to say, musicians, would open-source be as widely-used and praised as it is now? Surely some academic economi…

I suggest you to read "In the beginning was the command line" paper, it describe an ancient world with many companies, in the USA market, not academia nor URSS, that make big money and give software for free.

As a matter of fact job security is threatened by turbocapitalism in which anyone is a Ford-model replaceable worker...

The substance is that job security in FOSS is based on personal competence, you pay competence, actual work, not evanescent product so a skilled programmer it's always safe, a mediocre one is always in trouble and can't try "managerial career" to mask his/shes low skill...