You have the requisite technical knowledge to do those things. Not everyone does. If someone non-technical's stuff breaks, you can't distribute the changes you've already made yourself. It limits the value of the work you're putting in and it limits the repairability of an item based on the owner's skills.
It's a bad analogy but it's as though car repair shops were illegal and you could only repair your own car. Most people would have some pretty junky beat-up cars or they'd be buying new ones every year.
It's a great analogy: just look at the Mac repair shops being sued by Apple, or the idiotic things printer manufacturers and even coffee pod makers do to prevent people from "pirating" their machines.
Free software, and arguably free markets, mean free secondary markets for used goods. That includes all the repair shops and a cottage industry of craftsmen who provide those goods and services.
GNOME forks Cinnamon and Mate (active), libav vs ffmpeg (now closing), mplayer/2/mpv (mostly overtaken by last one).
Most common pattern is multiple packages solving the same problem, rather than forks - and incompatible versions.
The rest are good examples but of the millions of projects very very few are forked successfully
I could add a couple to this list as well but that does not change the fact that successful forks are exceeding rare
When my parents wireless router breaks, if I had the source code to the system installed on it I could both better understand the documentation to explain it to them, and I could perhaps patch a security problem that caused the breakdown.
There should be nothing preventing me from re-distributing the fixes, just as Sams FotoFacts used to distribute radio repair manuals, or the Chilton car maintenance manuals.
Also it's quite possible that the mechanics of a car are simpler than most software, for starters software often runs on an extremely complex operating system.
Of course its seems that that freedom is now restricted as well, but that is a fairly recent development that can be laid at the feet of the DRM advocates.
That's not recent anymore.
Also makes me fearful that we will ever be able to reform or get rid of DMCA
Yes, it did!
You completely legally could buy a TV with the schematic included, use the schematic to modify your TV however you liked, and sell the modified TV. You could even use the schematic to develop some sort of modification-add-on for that model of TV and sell that add-on to people who wanted to modify their own TV. And that includes using any internal functionality of the TV whatsoever, and implementing any functionality whatsoever. If there was some function of a better model present on the PCB with just a few parts missing, you were perfectly within your rights to add the missing components and thus upgrade your TV to the premium version. And you were perfectly within your rights to tell others about how to do it. Or to sell kits with everything you needed to do the modification yourself. Or to sell the upgraded devices. Or to offer the modification as a service.
The cool thing about software is that one person, with one computer could totally disrupt a giant software company with a better widget because the manufacturing and distribution costs of software can be effectively zero.
That is the ex-post perspective: Those businesses that never became big weren't the ones that put the big companies out of business. And that is what you label "your side market" now. That doesn't mean other companies that ended up as serious competitors and that you wouldn't think of as "your side market" now didn't use such things to get started.
Also, even if you in fact couldn't put them out of business, that does not mean you didn't have a major influence on them. If small repair businesses around the country can upgrade your cheap TV model to a premium device for 50 bucks, that limits what you can charge for the premium model. Even if people are willing to pay a premium of 500 bucks, you won't be able to charge that. You may be able to charge more than the 50 bucks for convenience, but the mere fact that those repair shops exist prevents you from charging your customers as much as you otherwise would.
Right, and those were therefore notable exceptions, shining examples of what might be even though most stuff wasn't.
The idea behind copyleft[1] is to enshrine that "valuable thing to have" as a fundamental promise. The GPL is the tool, not the goal. And even RMS agrees.
[1] And free software more generally, but this particular point is what copyleft was invented for.
I don't think RMS misunderstands the interest of open source, freewares or various other arrangement. He just states that free software is something more.
Who made up the definition of Liberty? Not RMS. Was he first to use Freedom as a synonym to Liberty? I doubt it. It is imperfect but both words is commonly used interchangeable when talking about the philosophical concept of freedom and liberty so the question I have is why the distinction is important?
FSF definition was made strictly to prevent embrace, extend, extinguish actions (especially the last) and GPL was improved over time to close holes that allow this. (Affero, GPL3)
It's also not uncommon to use the term freedom as "free in all aspects but this set of restrictions", it's not equivalent to anarchy.
Of course I don't say that this is better definition as that coined by RMS, but he just arbitrarily chose what is software freedom and what is not. If you step outside of his worldview, there is no intrinsic reason why exactly his chosen attributes should constitute software freedom. He considers his definition as some axiom, and doesn't care that it isn't an established common understanding. Or in other words, he forces his opinions as truths.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_political_jokes
An American man and a Soviet man are arguing about which country is better. 'At the end of the day, I can march into the oval office, pound the President's desk and say "Mr. President I don't like the way you are running this country."', says the American. The Soviet man replies, 'I can do that too. I can march in to the Kremlin, pound the General Secretary's desk and say "Mr. Gorbachev, I don't like the way President Reagan is running his country!"'
Also, your "someone could say" example is only possible because english mixes up the words for free and gratis (not that FOSS software might very well be very expensive).
> but he just arbitrarily chose what is software freedom and what is not.
Nope, that is not how words work. He simply coined a short phrase for his "four freedoms" movement.
The "Free" in Free Software refers to the software itself being free from the shackles of any programmer or company trying to keep it under control - specifically controlling who can use it and for what reason (edit: to clarify, this doesn't imply that Free Software and Copyleft are the same, Free Software can still be "caught"/"trapped" in a proprietary product due to its permissive license).
Of course people may try and use "Free Software" to mean "software that has no price", but people apply labels and terms wrong all the time, that doesn't make them right.
Yes, but why do you think it is "wrong"? :-) Because it is the same opinion as RMS holds? It is only a matter of definition, IMHO.
"Liberty software is software that has no price" is obviously wrong. Just like "free speech" does not mean radios have to broadcast whatever you say at no cost.
> It is only a matter of definition, IMHO.
Language may change over time, but if you want to use "free speech" to mean "speech that has no price" I would certainly tell you that you are using the term wrong.
FTFY
- Transparency
- Knowledge sharing
- Repairability (hackability)
I see those as what I hope will one day be seen as essential consumer rights regarding software they purchase: The right to know it, the right to understand it, and the right to improve it.
Let me quote a comment from there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17230438
> These features aren't technically difficult to implement, but even if we wrote open source versions of them we'd have to carry our own internal fork of Gitlab since there is no chance upstream would accept them
What this commenter was saying was: I have the ability to fix the TV myself, but I would rather someone else fix it for me and keeping it fixed in the future, and I want them to do it for free.
This isn't even the first time I've heard it. Increasingly, this kind of expectation is becoming the standard. Being able to fix the TV yourself, and even receiving help in the form of a good manual, is increasingly becoming too low of a bar for people.
This holds true until you begin looking at bigger picture market economics, then it could be argued that "proprietary OSS" is harming "true free software" by preying on less principled developers (and users).
Oh, please. Non-GPL OSS developer here. I'm not some weak doe in the woods being preyed on by evil companies and their MIT and BSD licensed software. I know exactly why I strike the bargain I do - its because I want to be able to make money selling proprietary extensions and modifications on top of any software I write. And I want to encourage any developers using software I write to do the same.
I use BSD/ISC/MIT licenses because I support the right of other developers to make modifications to my software and keep their modifications closed source if they want. I support developers feeding their families. And more $ usually means more ideas, more developers and healthier ecosystem.
Get off your high horse. I'm not a "less principled developer". I just have different principles thank you. I think having developers who pay rent writing OSS is a great deal for everyone.
Here's my stab at it.
From the essay: The free software activist will say, “Your program is very attractive, but I value my freedom more. So I reject your program. I will get my work done some other way, and support a project to develop a free replacement.”
This is the attitude of people who care more about being special and different than they care about actually changing the world. Do you want to change the world? Then don't isolate yourself and others into a special group of the anointed. Do your best to stay away from harmful groupthink. If you want to change the world, then engage with the world. Solve the world's problems. Create something that sells itself. I think most of the successes of Open Source and Free Software come from the "engagement" way of thinking and most of the failures come from the isolationist way of thinking.
Free Software/Open Source should seek to eliminate barriers and solve problems. It should not be in the business of creating plainer, less featured, and worse designed alternatives to proprietary software. Separate but equal, but with an ideologically superior distribution model is a recipe for failure.
> Then don't isolate yourself and others into a special group of the anointed.
Thinking that the essay leads to isolation is a dangerous oversimplification. First, this reaction is an ideal. Everyone has some form of ideal and everyone draw some limits on how much they allow themselves to diverge from that ideal. So two important things: (1) you'd better get conscious about your divergences and (2) you'd better strive to lessen your and your surrounding's divergences at your pace and bit by bit. This is exactely what RMS is doing with that post.
Going back to the FS activist's reaction, the problem here is that rejection of a program doesn't mean in any case isolating from it. I deeply hate and don't use most social media and yet i do follow closely their development, looking for interesting bits i can learn from. It is actually very important that some individuals speak out and do "strikes" (eg perform "unbeneficial actions" for ethical reasons) because it's the starting point to bring unsuspecting people to think that there might be something wrong with the service they use. Speaking out and stubbornly refusing to use something is actually the opposite of isolation, it's goal is to communicate with people and build a link between less-known alternatives that would need some work&love and people that didn't think about that issue before. The root idea here is to make people think about new questions and open new doors into stuff that they didn't think was questionable (eg that we could do otherwise).
The first step in solving a problem is stating it clearly and thoroughly. Thus i think that just thinking "problem solving" (eg "let's just build a FLOSS alternative to x") is never gonna reach anything meaningful. You won't have done the step where you healthily criticize every single part of some service, deconstructing deeper and deeper the model it projected. Only then can you start doing it. So of course we need to eliminate barriers, but first we need to run around them for some time to not realize aftewards we're not breaking the most important ones first. And i'm probably noone is gonna break them themselves so the best choice is probably to spread plans of the barriers. Solving social issues (here patents and copyright laws) takes time, ideas are hard to figure out alone and somehow the biggest step is just to get a sufficient mass to understand the issue.
That's fair. My motivation is primarily my 30 years of watching the FSF, going from fanboy to skeptic, and less about the essay specifically.
It is actually very important that some individuals speak out and do "strikes" (eg perform "unbeneficial actions" for ethical reasons) because it's the starting point to bring unsuspecting people to think that there might be something wrong with the service they use.
The dramatic "actions" need to be done from a place of philosophical and moral integrity. The actions themselves need to be executed ethically. What I've encountered is the leaking-in of groupthink, in such a way as to other and turn away outsiders. This seems to have infected our society's view of activism as a whole.
The root idea here is to make people think about new questions and open new doors into stuff that they didn't think was questionable
The potential downside is to make people think, "Well, there go those nutcases again!" How much of that potential downside has the FSF accomplished? Way more than you'd like, from where I'm sitting.
You won't have done the step where you healthily criticize every single part of some service, deconstructing deeper and deeper the model it projected.
Critiques are valuable, but they will never easily reach any but a small fraction of the populace who like to analyze things as a general interest. Everyone analyzes things at that level, but usually only when they directly have something to lose or to gain. Also, it's easy to critique and deconstruct. It's harder by far to build. People should be highly skeptical of those who critique, but cannot support or substantiate their prescriptions for the future. (Particularly if those are utopian in nature.) Where free software and open source have won, it is through building. I think that is rightly so, because it's building and flourishing which is the only legitimate proof of ideology.
Look to the scene from the Gandhi movie, where he led the march to gather salt. Show by doing. Address a simple and stark injustice. Act constructively. (If possible tactically elicit a response that highlights the injustice.) That is how you reach people.
Too much of what I see around free software seems to be more about posturing.
I've spoken about this on The ChangeLog podcast[1], Hackernoon[2], and other places[3], to copy some of it here:
Stallman is wrong. He correctly claims that users should have freedom, but then argues for the following two thoughts that contradict each other and the premise of freedom:
1. He is okay with people charging money for their code[4]. This creates SES (socioeconomic status) barriers for vulnerable and impoverished people. This is like saying "access to information and education should be free" but then charging admission for a public library. Further, that could prevent people from review/verifying the program before purchasing it. This does not help create a free and flourishing society. Non-material goods (like software) should be free up to their economies of scale, instead charging for services/products (consulting, material goods, hosting things beyond scale, or penalizing people for themselves charging/spying on users).
2. But he is not okay with corporations [5]. What is the difference between a person charging (1) for something and a company charging (2) for something? Corporation literally comes from "corpus" in Latin, which means "body" (a person), a "body" of persons is a corporation. Corporations can be psychopaths, but so can individual people or other bodies of people (like the government). It is contradictory thinking of Stallman (and thus hypocrisy and heresy of his own ideology) to be okay with (1) but not okay with (2).
Personally, the most concise way to better express these ideas is just the decentralization of power. For me, any individual, group, corporation, or government that becomes too powerful represents a danger to any and everybody else. This is why we are building P2P systems and enabling end-to-end encryption, that can be used by any and all of us (whether individuals, groups, corporations, or governments). If we can create equal opportunities, free for all to compete and cooperate, we will enable the most freedom and flourishing for all.
[1] https://changelog.com/podcast/236
[2] https://hackernoon.com/the-implications-of-rethinkdb-and-par...
[3] https://github.com/amark/gun/pull/434#issuecomment-336536807
[4] https://www.datamation.com/osrc/article.php/12068_3737586_3/...
No, this lowers SES barriers for vulnerable and impoverished people to get into software development and thus become less vulnerable and impoverished and influence how the world works. If you can't charge money for your code, only rich people can write software.
> This is like saying "access to information and education should be free" but then charging admission for a public library.
No, this is like saying "access to information and education should be free" and also agreeing that authors shouldn't have to work for free.
If you want to have a public library, you don't ask authors to work for free, you use taxes to pay the authors for their work, and then make it available to the public for "free". Which is something that you can do even better under Stallman's model: If you pay someone for a piece of Free Software, you not only can then lend it to the public for free, you are actually allowed to give away as many copies of it as you want to the public for free, for the public to keep and redistribute and modify.
> Further, that could prevent people from review/verifying the program before purchasing it.
It absolutely doesn't have to. You totally can make a contract selling Free Software with the additional requirement that certain measures of quality must be met by the seller, so the buyer can refuse to pay if the software turns out to be crap.
""" Use taxes to pay the authors...
then make it free for the public...
This is even better under Stalin's model: """
It took me about 5 to 7 seconds of rereading before I finally saw "Stallman's model".
So I have to grant to you, you are probably right, if and only if you can find a perfectly fair and just agent to do the taxing and not become corrupt. Have any volunteers?
The remainder of your post you only talk about Richard Stallman. Sure, RMS is the father of Free Software, but that doens't mean RMS's beliefs are all perfectly aligned with it.
If you wish to argue about OSS vs Free Software, you should be arguing about licenses, movements, and emergent behaviours and incentive structures within each of them.
Arguing about one single person's beliefs on either side will not be productive. No one person defines OSS or Free Software in full.
By way of example, I disagree with RMS politically and on many many other subjects, but I still believe the free software movement to be better long-term than the OSS movement.
> [5] https://stallman.org/articles/why-we-need-a-state.html
That link does not demonstrate what you're claiming it demonstrates.
There are countless interviews where he rants about his hatred of corporations. Saying "no he doesn't" doesn't demonstrate any counterpoint. Tell me, what is he saying then?
That said, I don't see how you can expand this to him thinking corporations shouldn't sell software. He seems largely fine with Red Hat, save some ideological issues.
Psychopath: a chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behavior.
I think it is pretty far fetched to suggest I was misrepresenting Stallman. Sure the article discusses the need for a state, but very clearly suggests his primary interests in the state is to stop CEOs from intentionally murdering their own customers.
The gravity of irony is so severe, it forgets some of the most appalling history lessons of Stalin, Mao, Hitler and others.
So yes, I'll debate Stallman any day any where.
[1] For instance https://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/ https://craphound.com/littlebrother/buy/
Material costs I'm ideologically fine with people making some profit off of, however inevitable market forces will cut margins lower and lower, until a point where no, people won't make a profit off of them.
The most successful of companies will ironically be the ones that give away the most, because they'll be the only ones that can survive in an extremely skeptical public market.
I predict this will either not happen, because citizens vote their governments into being socialist benefactors that provide these services for free, instead of the market (I also predict this will lead to increase government abuse). Or I predict the capitalist market will cater to socialist citizens by providing 0 margin services that maintain their monopoly in order to out compete governments or competitors that reap higher profits.
When did he change his mind on this?
I can't find the exact thread right now, but RMS asked someone to use gcc instead of clang when proposed for code completion in emacs... and then refused to allow the necessary changes be made to gcc to allow code completion because evil corporations might use it to extract the AST from gcc and therefore bypass the GPL.
How do you know that? Especially so, given that tons of "social coding" happened long before github was a thing?
Or the fact that there are more software developers in the world today than there were when github was created wouldn't have happened without github?
Or is it that because sourceforge wasn't a quasi-monopoly, therefore everything that was not on sourceforge didn't exist?
Or what exactly is your point?
There is tremendous value in repairability of things when you can see all of the details of how they are constructed, without having to simultaneously give you permission to manufacture or reproduce those things on your own. I really enjoyed that old televisions and radios included the schematic in the owners manual so that you could repair them down to the component level. It was really nice that the BIOS source code was part of the IBM PC technical manual, it helped you understand what it was expecting when it probed an IO ROM on the ISA bus. Neither of those examples gave you the right to re-distribute your modifications, and yet they were in fact valuable things to have.