9 ms·

Kuhn's Paradox

47 points by g1n016399 11y ago

chei0aiV 11y ago
It is a horrible shame that Kuhn's Paradox is true. I wonder how we can stop this from happening?
- js8 11y ago
  Easy to answer, but you won't like it: Avoid BSD-style licenses and use GPL.
  - reitanqild 11y ago
    Linux is equally dependent on binary driver blobs as BSD, isn't it?
  - j_m_b 11y ago
    Because the only way to be free is to be more restrictive!
    - js8 11y ago
      No, the only way to be free is to constantly fight for it, even at your inconvenience. Convenience (mostly ability to use the same code at work) is the reason why so many people today, who contribute to open source, prefer BSD. That's why you won't like the answer (I certainly don't); it's an extra effort in politics that people would rather avoid.
  - chei0aiV 11y ago
    I like it.
gamegod 11y ago
It feels like open core is the new "embrace, extend, extinguish". ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish ) On the other hand, the economy just doesn't incentivize open source communities to build the very best software for average users, compared to say, making a billion bucks with by building my new shiny walled garden social network. Anecdotal examples and lots of great FOSS project aside, cash is king and capitalism doesn't favour open source.
a-nikolaev 11y ago
At least in the past, it was in good taste to just call your observation simply a paradox, and let the public decide if it's worthy to stick author's name to it or not. Let alone that for many people, the name "Kuhn" is primarily associated with Thomas Kuhn, rather than Bradley Kuhn- adding to the confusion.
- ianamartin 11y ago
  Agreed. When I first saw the title, I was wondering if I missed something from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. And it doesn't really qualify as a paradox in my opinion. Perhaps briefly counterintuitive. But the real question of "X is free and does the 'same thing' as Y, which is not free: so why are more people using Y?" Is perfectly easy to explain via UI/UX, discoverability, ease of install/uninstall, or network effects (all my friends/coworkers use Y, so I will too). This seems like an uninteresting question named after a very interesting writer.
- logicrook 11y ago
  I always thought very funny to imagine, say, Turing say 'let M be a Turing machine'... but in general you quickly discover that most named mathematical principles were named afterward by respect for the author. And then you have some who reinvent calculus and name it after themselves...
stuartaxelowen 11y ago
I'd think this is caused by efficient markets and competition between software companies. After all, developer productivity is greatly based on tools, and the best tools are rarely free.
- bikamonki 11y ago
  I could type a long list of best productivity tools that are free, starting with: using a free browser to search for free answers on SO hence saving devs a ton of time. Perhaps you were thinking on some 'very specialized tools' where the paid version is better? Which would be explained by the nature of niche markets and not necessarily efficiency.
  - TTPrograms 11y ago
    Is SO free? The paradox is referring to free as in speech, not free as in beer. Free browsers in that sense are also in the minority these days.
    - jeremysmyth 11y ago
      SO subscriber content (e.g. answers) are CC BY-SA[0] which "is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses"[1] [0] "all Subscriber Content that You contribute to the Network is perpetually and irrevocably licensed to Stack Exchange under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license" http://stackexchange.com/legal http://stackexchange.com/legal [1] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/
bikamonki 11y ago
I am no victim of the paradox: from a practical perspective all my stack is free and open source. I say practical b/c I am sure that some drivers are proprietary but I have not paid for any end-user software license that allows me to complete my work since I don't know when.
- SixSigma 11y ago
  Virtually all the computers between you and I run proprietary
- chei0aiV 11y ago
  You are accessing a website that runs proprietary software on the server as well as in your browser.
blablabla123 11y ago
Lol... I have never used fewer commercial applications like today. 10 or 15 ago I struggled with buying or downloading expensive software because computers were not much fun without that back then. But now... Just out of convenience I have an OS X computer, didn't buy it myself though, I would be perfectly fine with a Linux computer too. My web browser(s) are open source, same is true for my mail client, my shell, almost all of my dev tools. It's quite amazing, computers are so much more fun with open software.
yongjik 11y ago
I don't even think there's any paradox. Software is much more ubiquitous than before, much more powerful, and takes much more resource to develop. Obviously, a lot of stuff that were previously held by wires and switches are going to use software, and since people are selling these stuff, a lot of this stuff will be proprietary. An average user has zero reason to "avoid proprietary software while completing their necessary work on a computer." They are too busy trying to do their necessary work.
- dagw 11y ago
  and takes much more resource to develop This is I do not believe at all. Programming is today is so much more trivial than it was even just 10 years ago it's not even funny. I mean just recently I wrote a little app the allowed people to remotely connect to a server and not only interactively view 3d data stored on that server, but change the shading of the model depending on what factors they where interested in and to click on the models and based on the properties of the triangle they clicked query a database to get more information. A few years ago that would have taken a team of experts month to get up and running. Today I could do it by myself, in a few days, including the time it took for me to get up to speed on webgl/three.js, which I had never used before.
mulligan 11y ago
More people in the world than ever have access to clean potable water. More people in the world than ever have no access to clean potable water.
lindig 11y ago
The paradox ignores that more people than ever use computing devices, especially mobile devices. If we limited the view to users of software equivalent to those that used computers in the (say) nineties, the paradox might be less severe. But maybe then the programmers to create open-source code wouldn't exist either.
justin_vanw 11y ago
The observation stated in this 'paradox' isn't even true, and if it were true it wouldn't be a paradox. First, it's not even remotely factually true: - It's easier and easier to use computers while avoiding more and more 'proprietary' software. 25 years ago you could barely do anything without a paid for operating system, now you would be considered a bit of an idiot if you tried to suggest a major datacenter running anything but Linux. The same goes for office applications etc, there used to be nothing at all, now there are multiple high quality options. The same goes for web browsers, and look at the demise of Flash and IE6-only websites. So for basically every category, the last 25 years has been a story of going from complete dominance of proprietary shrink-wrapped software to one where open source alternatives are almost as good or much better. Secondly, if it became true, it wouldn't be a "a statement or proposition that, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory." - A lot of or even most of the 'proprietary' software being created has no real value as open source to begin with. Lets say Twitter open sources their mobile client, then what? Are you going to modify it and use your modified version? That is absurd, virtually nobody would do this because of the difficulty of even running your modified version on a platform with trusted computing, but lets say you don't care about that. What is the benefit of doing so? So you can tweak a font or add a button? Twitter is releasing all of the open source they can extract from their codebase that they think people would actually find useful, look at all of it: https://engineering.twitter.com/opensource/projects https://engineering.twitter.com/opensource/projects . The fact that the twitter.app for IOS isn't open source is 'meh', there is nothing interesting or hard about that app, and you can find a dozen open source equivalents , some of which are actually better. So the claim is false, and if it is someday true, it's not even surprising, much less a 'paradox'.
elcapitan 11y ago
The My Own Paradox: Each day, I have walked more miles accumulatively than I have walked ever before in human history; and yet, the world population also uses increasingly more cars every day.
jondubois 11y ago
It's baffling to me how the FSF came to the conclusion that JavaScript is not 'Free software'. I know the name 'JavaScript' is proprietary but the technology itself seems to be as free as it can possibly get. I think a problem that's coming up now is that the lines between proprietary and free software have blurred. The FSF movement made sense in the old days when we had to pay a one-time cost to buy a CD with software on it. Today because everything is delivered as a service, it becomes very difficult to distinguish the software from the service itself. We're not just paying for the software anymore - We're also paying for continuous software updates, security patches and the ongoing management of underlying hardware infrastructure... The money has to come from somewhere. I just don't understand the purpose of the FSF anymore... For the same reason that a 'Free Hardware Foundation' wouldn't make sense - You have to pay people to look after the software infrastructure in the same way that you have to pay people to get the silicon out of the ground to build your hardware.
- chei0aiV 11y ago
  You are mischaracterising what the opinion of the FSF is in relation to JavaScript; their actual opinion is here: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html

Kuhn's Paradox

47 points by g1n016399 11y ago

chei0aiV 11y ago

It is a horrible shame that Kuhn's Paradox is true. I wonder how we can stop this from happening?

js8 11y ago
Easy to answer, but you won't like it: Avoid BSD-style licenses and use GPL.
- reitanqild 11y ago
  Linux is equally dependent on binary driver blobs as BSD, isn't it?
- j_m_b 11y ago
  Because the only way to be free is to be more restrictive!
  - js8 11y ago
    No, the only way to be free is to constantly fight for it, even at your inconvenience. Convenience (mostly ability to use the same code at work) is the reason why so many people today, who contribute to open source, prefer BSD. That's why you won't like the answer (I certainly don't); it's an extra effort in politics that people would rather avoid.
- chei0aiV 11y ago
  I like it.

gamegod 11y ago

It feels like open core is the new "embrace, extend, extinguish". ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish ) On the other hand, the economy just doesn't incentivize open source communities to build the very best software for average users, compared to say, making a billion bucks with by building my new shiny walled garden social network. Anecdotal examples and lots of great FOSS project aside, cash is king and capitalism doesn't favour open source.

a-nikolaev 11y ago

At least in the past, it was in good taste to just call your observation simply a paradox, and let the public decide if it's worthy to stick author's name to it or not. Let alone that for many people, the name "Kuhn" is primarily associated with Thomas Kuhn, rather than Bradley Kuhn- adding to the confusion.

ianamartin 11y ago
Agreed. When I first saw the title, I was wondering if I missed something from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. And it doesn't really qualify as a paradox in my opinion. Perhaps briefly counterintuitive. But the real question of "X is free and does the 'same thing' as Y, which is not free: so why are more people using Y?" Is perfectly easy to explain via UI/UX, discoverability, ease of install/uninstall, or network effects (all my friends/coworkers use Y, so I will too). This seems like an uninteresting question named after a very interesting writer.
logicrook 11y ago
I always thought very funny to imagine, say, Turing say 'let M be a Turing machine'... but in general you quickly discover that most named mathematical principles were named afterward by respect for the author. And then you have some who reinvent calculus and name it after themselves...

stuartaxelowen 11y ago

I'd think this is caused by efficient markets and competition between software companies. After all, developer productivity is greatly based on tools, and the best tools are rarely free.

bikamonki 11y ago
I could type a long list of best productivity tools that are free, starting with: using a free browser to search for free answers on SO hence saving devs a ton of time. Perhaps you were thinking on some 'very specialized tools' where the paid version is better? Which would be explained by the nature of niche markets and not necessarily efficiency.
- TTPrograms 11y ago
  Is SO free? The paradox is referring to free as in speech, not free as in beer. Free browsers in that sense are also in the minority these days.
  - jeremysmyth 11y ago
    SO subscriber content (e.g. answers) are CC BY-SA[0] which "is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses"[1] [0] "all Subscriber Content that You contribute to the Network is perpetually and irrevocably licensed to Stack Exchange under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license" http://stackexchange.com/legal http://stackexchange.com/legal [1] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/

bikamonki 11y ago

I am no victim of the paradox: from a practical perspective all my stack is free and open source. I say practical b/c I am sure that some drivers are proprietary but I have not paid for any end-user software license that allows me to complete my work since I don't know when.

SixSigma 11y ago
Virtually all the computers between you and I run proprietary
chei0aiV 11y ago
You are accessing a website that runs proprietary software on the server as well as in your browser.

blablabla123 11y ago

Lol... I have never used fewer commercial applications like today. 10 or 15 ago I struggled with buying or downloading expensive software because computers were not much fun without that back then. But now... Just out of convenience I have an OS X computer, didn't buy it myself though, I would be perfectly fine with a Linux computer too. My web browser(s) are open source, same is true for my mail client, my shell, almost all of my dev tools. It's quite amazing, computers are so much more fun with open software.

yongjik 11y ago

I don't even think there's any paradox. Software is much more ubiquitous than before, much more powerful, and takes much more resource to develop. Obviously, a lot of stuff that were previously held by wires and switches are going to use software, and since people are selling these stuff, a lot of this stuff will be proprietary. An average user has zero reason to "avoid proprietary software while completing their necessary work on a computer." They are too busy trying to do their necessary work.

dagw 11y ago
and takes much more resource to develop This is I do not believe at all. Programming is today is so much more trivial than it was even just 10 years ago it's not even funny. I mean just recently I wrote a little app the allowed people to remotely connect to a server and not only interactively view 3d data stored on that server, but change the shading of the model depending on what factors they where interested in and to click on the models and based on the properties of the triangle they clicked query a database to get more information. A few years ago that would have taken a team of experts month to get up and running. Today I could do it by myself, in a few days, including the time it took for me to get up to speed on webgl/three.js, which I had never used before.

mulligan 11y ago

More people in the world than ever have access to clean potable water. More people in the world than ever have no access to clean potable water.

lindig 11y ago

The paradox ignores that more people than ever use computing devices, especially mobile devices. If we limited the view to users of software equivalent to those that used computers in the (say) nineties, the paradox might be less severe. But maybe then the programmers to create open-source code wouldn't exist either.

justin_vanw 11y ago

The observation stated in this 'paradox' isn't even true, and if it were true it wouldn't be a paradox. First, it's not even remotely factually true: - It's easier and easier to use computers while avoiding more and more 'proprietary' software. 25 years ago you could barely do anything without a paid for operating system, now you would be considered a bit of an idiot if you tried to suggest a major datacenter running anything but Linux. The same goes for office applications etc, there used to be nothing at all, now there are multiple high quality options. The same goes for web browsers, and look at the demise of Flash and IE6-only websites. So for basically every category, the last 25 years has been a story of going from complete dominance of proprietary shrink-wrapped software to one where open source alternatives are almost as good or much better. Secondly, if it became true, it wouldn't be a "a statement or proposition that, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory." - A lot of or even most of the 'proprietary' software being created has no real value as open source to begin with. Lets say Twitter open sources their mobile client, then what? Are you going to modify it and use your modified version? That is absurd, virtually nobody would do this because of the difficulty of even running your modified version on a platform with trusted computing, but lets say you don't care about that. What is the benefit of doing so? So you can tweak a font or add a button? Twitter is releasing all of the open source they can extract from their codebase that they think people would actually find useful, look at all of it: https://engineering.twitter.com/opensource/projects https://engineering.twitter.com/opensource/projects . The fact that the twitter.app for IOS isn't open source is 'meh', there is nothing interesting or hard about that app, and you can find a dozen open source equivalents , some of which are actually better. So the claim is false, and if it is someday true, it's not even surprising, much less a 'paradox'.

elcapitan 11y ago

The My Own Paradox: Each day, I have walked more miles accumulatively than I have walked ever before in human history; and yet, the world population also uses increasingly more cars every day.

jondubois 11y ago

It's baffling to me how the FSF came to the conclusion that JavaScript is not 'Free software'. I know the name 'JavaScript' is proprietary but the technology itself seems to be as free as it can possibly get. I think a problem that's coming up now is that the lines between proprietary and free software have blurred. The FSF movement made sense in the old days when we had to pay a one-time cost to buy a CD with software on it. Today because everything is delivered as a service, it becomes very difficult to distinguish the software from the service itself. We're not just paying for the software anymore - We're also paying for continuous software updates, security patches and the ongoing management of underlying hardware infrastructure... The money has to come from somewhere. I just don't understand the purpose of the FSF anymore... For the same reason that a 'Free Hardware Foundation' wouldn't make sense - You have to pay people to look after the software infrastructure in the same way that you have to pay people to get the silicon out of the ground to build your hardware.

chei0aiV 11y ago
You are mischaracterising what the opinion of the FSF is in relation to JavaScript; their actual opinion is here: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html