6 ms·

Proprietary and free software are a dichotomy. It's commercial and free software that's a false dichotomy. It doesn't matter if you can "see the source" if you

by cyphar 11y ago

Proprietary and free software are a dichotomy. It's commercial and free software that's a false dichotomy. It doesn't matter if you can "see the source" if you don't have the four freedoms when using the software.

nickpsecurity 11y ago
You can have all of the key freedoms with the restriction that they're paid for. This continues development, maintenance, and support. I'm not speculating as there's software with source available developed through commercial licensing. So, "free as in Stallman" software might be a dichotomy with proprietary but not "free as in free enough for many people." That exists and can flourish further with right mix of organizations, charters, licenses and so on. Just little work in it.
- cyphar 11y ago
  > You can have all of the key freedoms with the restriction that they're paid for. None of the four essential freedoms mention price. I work for a free software company which sells that software. I don't know what you're referring to. I clearly said that "free and commercial software are a FALSE dichotomy" -- meaning that you can have commercial free software. > So, "free as in Stallman" software might be a dichotomy with proprietary but not "free as in free enough for many people." Again "free as in Stallman" doesn't have anything to do with whether you pay for the software (in fact, he used to sell copies of GNU Emacs for $100). Proprietary software is software that takes away your freedom to use, modify and distribute the software. You can pay for free software and you can pay for proprietary software. But you can't get proprietary software that respects your freedom. That is a dichotomy. Free doesn't refer to price it refers to freedom. Please stop spreading misinformation.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    "I clearly said that "free and commercial software are a FALSE dichotomy" -- meaning that you can have commercial free software." Oh, I apologize. I clearly misread that exact statement. I bet it's because free, commercial, and false in same sentence almost always are arguing against what you said. That the two can't be combined. Whereas, we're arguing in different ways that they can. I must have skimmed it with my brain jumping right past the actual words to its intuitive guess of what they meant. At least I see how I failed. :) "Proprietary software is software that takes away your freedom to use, modify and distribute the software. You can pay for free software and you can pay for proprietary software" What firms are bringing in billions licensing or selling free software? I need a list of successful companies longer than Red Hat that can compete in both investment and lawsuits with big, proprietary firms. You can sell truly free software but almost nobody will buy it w/ you being super-niche in revenue. Whereas, useful and proprietary software can bring in significant money from customers esp in enterprise or government scenes. The proprietary ones just tend to scheme on customers, disappear, and other stuff. The free ones often aren't developed much, maintained, and so on. My concept is to give you all the freedoms except for free distribution for a given project. You can use, modify, whatever the software as long as you pay the non-profit that develops, maintains, and supports it. You can also re-distribute that to other paying customers of the project. If non-profit stop supporting or distributing it, it goes BSD or Apache immediately per terms of the license or charter. What are you missing other than widespread, free distribution in this model? As in, the availability of freeloaders that rarely contribute crap back. Do note that the project can give free copies in exchange for testing/feedback to get many eyeballs effect. Can also give discounts or free copies to academics to get their improvements. What's left? Seriously, as I'm trying to see how close proprietary, shared source can get to FOSS without loosing the "sustainable, cash flow" part.
    - cyphar 11y ago
      > What firms are bringing in billions licensing or selling free software? I work for SUSE, which is a free software company. Red Hat is another, as you mentioned. I found a list on Wikipedia[1] which has quite a few entries (though quite a few of those companies either no longer exist or were bought out by companies that don't exclusively work on free software). > You can sell truly free software but almost nobody will buy it w/ you being super-niche in revenue. That depends on your business model. The SUSE (and Red Hat) business model is to sell you a complete operating system which you are guaranteed to have support for. This is paid for by license costs for the base system and "modules" which are other pieces of software. If a user decides to install software which they didn't pay for, we don't support such a configuration if it breaks. Support in this case is not just support in setting up the system, it's also security updates and bug fixes (which are sometimes written by us and contributed back to the community). This sort of business model allows you to sell completely free software, because you're not selling the actual software you're selling licenses and support. > My concept is to give you all the freedoms except for free distribution for a given project. That would then be considered proprietary software in the strict sense of the word. It's better than nothing, but you have no practical freedom in that case because you cannot share your improvements to create a community -- one of the goals of the free software movement. The main thing to know is that free software is meant to mean that you cannot become entirely dependent on a company to support you. If you don't have the freedom to distribute modified and unmodified copies then you're (practically) at the mercy of the company that gave you the software. > Seriously, as I'm trying to see how close proprietary, shared source can get to FOSS without loosing the "sustainable, cash flow" part. Personally, I would never buy such software. I understand why it seems to be valuable to you to remove the free distribution freedoms of your users, but I don't agree with the logic. The problem is that you're still trying to "just sell the damn code", which doesn't guarantee you revenue with free software licenses (you can still sell it, but it's possible for a user to share the code with others without you knowing about it). Now, it's not very likely that many users would actually share the code (unfortunately), but it is possible. So, now you have to ask the question "what should I be selling". If you sell support (clients pay for you to develop new features for them, providing security fixes, bug fixes, etc) then you can make money selling completely free software. If you're scared of someone making money from your code, make it GPL and then you can take their changes back into your software. Free software and proprietary software have only one difference which is how their distributed. Proprietary software is distributed in binary form only. Free software is usually distributed in binary and source form, but you can also distribute it in binary form with a link to where the source code is (and you can make it only be available to your customers -- that's still free software). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_software_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_software_compani...

by cyphar 11y ago

nickpsecurity 11y ago

You can have all of the key freedoms with the restriction that they're paid for. This continues development, maintenance, and support. I'm not speculating as there's software with source available developed through commercial licensing. So, "free as in Stallman" software might be a dichotomy with proprietary but not "free as in free enough for many people." That exists and can flourish further with right mix of organizations, charters, licenses and so on. Just little work in it.

cyphar 11y ago
> You can have all of the key freedoms with the restriction that they're paid for. None of the four essential freedoms mention price. I work for a free software company which sells that software. I don't know what you're referring to. I clearly said that "free and commercial software are a FALSE dichotomy" -- meaning that you can have commercial free software. > So, "free as in Stallman" software might be a dichotomy with proprietary but not "free as in free enough for many people." Again "free as in Stallman" doesn't have anything to do with whether you pay for the software (in fact, he used to sell copies of GNU Emacs for $100). Proprietary software is software that takes away your freedom to use, modify and distribute the software. You can pay for free software and you can pay for proprietary software. But you can't get proprietary software that respects your freedom. That is a dichotomy. Free doesn't refer to price it refers to freedom. Please stop spreading misinformation.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  "I clearly said that "free and commercial software are a FALSE dichotomy" -- meaning that you can have commercial free software." Oh, I apologize. I clearly misread that exact statement. I bet it's because free, commercial, and false in same sentence almost always are arguing against what you said. That the two can't be combined. Whereas, we're arguing in different ways that they can. I must have skimmed it with my brain jumping right past the actual words to its intuitive guess of what they meant. At least I see how I failed. :) "Proprietary software is software that takes away your freedom to use, modify and distribute the software. You can pay for free software and you can pay for proprietary software" What firms are bringing in billions licensing or selling free software? I need a list of successful companies longer than Red Hat that can compete in both investment and lawsuits with big, proprietary firms. You can sell truly free software but almost nobody will buy it w/ you being super-niche in revenue. Whereas, useful and proprietary software can bring in significant money from customers esp in enterprise or government scenes. The proprietary ones just tend to scheme on customers, disappear, and other stuff. The free ones often aren't developed much, maintained, and so on. My concept is to give you all the freedoms except for free distribution for a given project. You can use, modify, whatever the software as long as you pay the non-profit that develops, maintains, and supports it. You can also re-distribute that to other paying customers of the project. If non-profit stop supporting or distributing it, it goes BSD or Apache immediately per terms of the license or charter. What are you missing other than widespread, free distribution in this model? As in, the availability of freeloaders that rarely contribute crap back. Do note that the project can give free copies in exchange for testing/feedback to get many eyeballs effect. Can also give discounts or free copies to academics to get their improvements. What's left? Seriously, as I'm trying to see how close proprietary, shared source can get to FOSS without loosing the "sustainable, cash flow" part.
  - cyphar 11y ago
    > What firms are bringing in billions licensing or selling free software? I work for SUSE, which is a free software company. Red Hat is another, as you mentioned. I found a list on Wikipedia[1] which has quite a few entries (though quite a few of those companies either no longer exist or were bought out by companies that don't exclusively work on free software). > You can sell truly free software but almost nobody will buy it w/ you being super-niche in revenue. That depends on your business model. The SUSE (and Red Hat) business model is to sell you a complete operating system which you are guaranteed to have support for. This is paid for by license costs for the base system and "modules" which are other pieces of software. If a user decides to install software which they didn't pay for, we don't support such a configuration if it breaks. Support in this case is not just support in setting up the system, it's also security updates and bug fixes (which are sometimes written by us and contributed back to the community). This sort of business model allows you to sell completely free software, because you're not selling the actual software you're selling licenses and support. > My concept is to give you all the freedoms except for free distribution for a given project. That would then be considered proprietary software in the strict sense of the word. It's better than nothing, but you have no practical freedom in that case because you cannot share your improvements to create a community -- one of the goals of the free software movement. The main thing to know is that free software is meant to mean that you cannot become entirely dependent on a company to support you. If you don't have the freedom to distribute modified and unmodified copies then you're (practically) at the mercy of the company that gave you the software. > Seriously, as I'm trying to see how close proprietary, shared source can get to FOSS without loosing the "sustainable, cash flow" part. Personally, I would never buy such software. I understand why it seems to be valuable to you to remove the free distribution freedoms of your users, but I don't agree with the logic. The problem is that you're still trying to "just sell the damn code", which doesn't guarantee you revenue with free software licenses (you can still sell it, but it's possible for a user to share the code with others without you knowing about it). Now, it's not very likely that many users would actually share the code (unfortunately), but it is possible. So, now you have to ask the question "what should I be selling". If you sell support (clients pay for you to develop new features for them, providing security fixes, bug fixes, etc) then you can make money selling completely free software. If you're scared of someone making money from your code, make it GPL and then you can take their changes back into your software. Free software and proprietary software have only one difference which is how their distributed. Proprietary software is distributed in binary form only. Free software is usually distributed in binary and source form, but you can also distribute it in binary form with a link to where the source code is (and you can make it only be available to your customers -- that's still free software). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_software_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_software_compani...