I've created closed source software for many years now, and we've happily reduced our costs by incorporating open source software (where the licenses permit). We've also paid for proprietary libraries.

I would be surprised to find anybody doing serious development without relying on open source software somewhere.

And the companies I've worked for have generally been very willing to release code as open source, partly for goodwill and advertising (we've received several job applicants who only learned about us through our contributions to open source projects), and partly to avoid the cost of maintaining an internal fork of, say, Boost or JQuery. Even if you can't open source the whole kaboodle, it's often possible to release something, especially additions to existing open source projects.

Even if you release some stuff as open-source, if "the whole caboodle" is not free software, then you're still one of the proprietary software vendors Stallman is railing against.

The trick is not to take it personal. I don't care how much Stallman is railing against proprietary software, I care about how he seems to have an uncanny ability to have the longer view and to see what misery will come from a blind continuation down a certain road. As always there is middle ground, extremist positions have use, they show you the spectrum rather than just their position.

personally, i don't owe it to anyone to release my copy the source code as long as i am using the product of the source code privately. for example, let's take a point of sale. at the broadest possible sense of imagination, my pos operators have a standing to demand to see the source code. at no point in time does a customer, who does not directly interact with the pos except in handing my operator their money have a right to look at my source code. richard stallman would, i hope, agree that he does not have a right to look at it either.

free software to me does not mean free for all. a person and an organization can still keep its secrets. (corrections welcome)

Correct, but the GPL demands that once you've given the source to your POS operator, that they are then free to share it with anyone and everyone.

So, in your hypothetical, it turns out to be very hard to prevent the distribution of the source, unless all the POS units are held in-house (that you are a company developing and using your own POS units in commerce, as opposed to being a POS vendor) and that all your employees who have standing to receive a copy of the source have some compelling reason to not distribute it.

That's a feature to GPL advocates and a bug to GPL detractors.

And?

I wasn't trying to tell people how to be Stallman's friends, or how to get absolution (for whatever wrongs) by following the FSF's advice. Instead, I want to encourage people to pick their battles. If you can't get permission to release your full program as open source (or, if you plan to become rich and don't see any way to do so after you've published your source code), then perhaps whoever is responsible for the decision would be willing to release less than everything today.

> No need to be condescending.

I disagree because this is HN

Because this is HN, there is a need not to be condescending.

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