13 ms·

Who is the enemy of FOSS today?

33 points by Sandman 17y ago

steveklabnik 17y ago
I'm not sure that promoting an alternate development model really means "the enemy" of FOSS. If you'd ask RMS, he'd probably say so, but I don't see why Apple's closed model and FOSS' open one can't co-exist. Also, it's not like Apple is attacking OSS, it's playing nicely as well as sponsoring several large projects. If Apple is the enemy of FOSS, we've got a rosy future.
- orangecat 17y ago
  Also, it's not like Apple is attacking OSS Apple's lawsuit against HTC effectively asserts that Android is illegal. That's a rather big deal; there are three mobile computing platforms that matter, and Android is the only one that's open.
  - blasdel 17y ago
    They're attacking HTC's TouchSense modifications, not Android itself (yet)
    - orangecat 17y ago
      They specifically named the Nexus One as an infringing device, which uses stock Android.
  - steveklabnik 17y ago
    I'll admit that I'm not happy that they're doing that. The good thing that comes out of this is that the more software patents are abused, the more likely they'll be abolished.
  - bbgm 17y ago
    And they would have done that whether Android was open source or not. You could argue that if Android was not open source, it wouldn't be doing as well as it is, but the lawsuit is about Android's success not the open source nature
    - orangecat 17y ago
      Maybe. Although I can see Apple being much happier to split the market with Microsoft and their equally closed Windows mobile devices than with Android. Open platforms lead to disruptive innovations, which are often bad for market leaders.
- keyist 17y ago
  You do realize that if Apple has its way, developers must not only pay an entrance fee to release software for a system, but also run the risk of being disapproved? If X% of the market is iPhone/iPad, that is X% of the market where big brother Apple gets to decide exactly what software is available. That's even worse than closed-source commercial Windows under Microsoft, let alone FOSS. Apple is a greater enemy to FOSS than Microsoft because where the latter's attacks center around FUD and legal threats, Apple's is a competent attempt to undermine open computing platforms. The walled garden begins at the hardware level.
  - steveklabnik 17y ago
    Yep, but also remember that this only applies to Apple systems. Apple isn't trying to push this on anyone else, it's part of what you accept by buying an Apple product. There'll always be a non-Apple 100% free platform. The two models can coexist together just fine. I use Apple products where appropriate, and others where it's not.
mahmud 17y ago
I read the title and thought "Apple". Everything about the company smells of evil, and I am reminded of this every morning when I need to download my news podcasts for the road; I have always copied and pasted audio files into every MP3 player I owned, but with the iPod, I need to launch the horrible iTunes and drag programs into my iPod. Should I plug my device into any other computer with iTunes, it would attempt to reset its memory and initialize it for this other iTunes :-/
- blasdel 17y ago
  Congratulations, you're one of the %0.1 of people that wants to manually copy files from your manually-organized arbitrary directory structure onto your music player's filesystem. To support that, the player has to index all the files itself when it boots up, which is why the old Nomad took minutes to be ready to hit play. Everyone else uses a database-backed program that automatically organizes their collection (iTunes), and expects to synchronize from that database to their device. If you weren't so set on doing things the way you did them in 1998, you'd be fine with iTunes — it can automatically download the podcast files, and synchronize that playlist when you plug in the device to charge it.
  - cema 17y ago
    Try that in Linux.
    - silentbicycle 17y ago
      Gtkpod works reasonably well.
      - cema 17y ago
        Perhaps, but it would be easy for Apple to break it at the next upgrade, and it would not be unlike them to do it. Oh, and I would have to jailbreak iPhone to use it.
      - nailer 17y ago
kprobst 17y ago
Every day I am more convinced that the enemies of FOSS are the borderline morons that descend on articles like that one to "tell it like it is" with "M$ IS TEH DEVILZ LOLZ" prose that only makes everyone else shake their heads in disgust or shame. Microsoft would do a far better job at discrediting FOSS if they simply flooded the internet with astroturfers that mimic the FOSS nutjobs.
- bediger 17y ago
  I've heard the paranoid ascribe FOSS nutjobs to Microsoft Astroturfing efforts. This character emailed me claiming that the bellicose, "F*ck MSFT!" mouth-breathers were really Waggoner-Edstrom shills.
  - epochwolf 17y ago
    fsck? (It probably needs it.)
adriand 17y ago
One thing I find a bit silly about this debate is how seriously we developers tend to take it. We toss around words like "enemy", "devil", and "evil", to describe a company that manufactures consumer electronics. I realize that many of us care deeply about open source software, and hope that the field we work in does not become tightly controlled, but let's face it: it's not like Apple is producing weapons of mass destruction, or cheap guns intended for street gangs, or cigarettes. If we showed an iPad to the average person, and said, "Look how EVIL this is!", they'd probably be more than a little confused.
- kylemathews 17y ago
  This was exactly my thought. My second thought was Clay Shirky's classic "A Group is its Own Worst Enemy" http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html He quotes from research derived from watching a group of neurotics that consistently defended itself against his [the researcher] attempts to make them do what they had ostensible gathered themselves together for. The second pattern of defensive behavior was identifying a common enemy. Clay writes: "The second basic pattern that Bion detailed: The identification and vilification of external enemies. This is a very common pattern. Anyone who was around the Open Source movement in the mid-Nineties could see this all the time. If you cared about Linux on the desktop, there was a big list of jobs to do. But you could always instead get a conversation going about Microsoft and Bill Gates. And people would start bleeding from their ears, they would get so mad. If you want to make it better, there's a list of things to do. It's Open Source, right? Just fix it. "No, no, Microsoft and Bill Gates grrrrr ...", the froth would start coming out. The external enemy -- nothing causes a group to galvanize like an external enemy. So even if someone isn't really your enemy, identifying them as an enemy can cause a pleasant sense of group cohesion. And groups often gravitate towards members who are the most paranoid and make them leaders, because those are the people who are best at identifying external enemies." So let's forget about Apple or Microsoft or any other so-called-enemy for awhile and get back to coding and "defeat" them the old-fashioned way.
- algorias 17y ago
  Without the freedom to tinker, the internet wouldn't have happened. There wouldn't have been such an incredibly rapid evolution of technology. Open source ensures that this kind of freedom remains in place.
naner 17y ago
The enemy of FLOSS is convienence and ease-of-use. I'm not trying to be snarky: I'm typing this on Firefox in Linux and I've almost excusively been on Linux since 2002. I've been elbow deep in this stuff for years, hacking and tweaking and experimenting, etc. I'm at the end of my rope, about to jump to Apple with all the lock-in and overpriced shit and inflexibility and patent abuse, etc. At least it is easy to use and maintain and has many powerful, flexible and even niche applications. And well-supported libraries. I'm starting to see those free software ideals I've held so dear turn into tradeoffs. I'll trade in some 'freedoms' for more capable, abundant, and better supported software that allows me to get work done easier and more effectively. If RMS wanted GNU software to spread then he shouldn't have gone into politics and preaching. He should have made sure that GNU software was more useful to the software users. To most people software freedom is too intangible to be counted as a benefit. Hell, 99.9% of people couldn't even explain it in very basic terms if you asked them. He's just created software for enthusiasts and hobbyists. Not a bad thing, but not his goal either. Anyways, I've grown out of it. I'm just talking about consumer-facing software, by the way. I know free software will always have value in education, commodity software that is not your primary business, etc. It is always going to be an abysmal failure on the desktop unless a free software Steve Jobs appears out of thin air, though.
- tzs 17y ago
  "If RMS wanted GNU software to spread then he shouldn't have gone into politics and preaching. He should have made sure that GNU software was more useful to the software users" Indeed, consider this alternate timeline whose RMS is more pragmatic and willing to give up a few short term small victories in order to win big in the end: It's the late '70s. The microprocessor revolution is just getting started. RMS and his band of wily hackers jump onboard, realizing there is going to be a lot of money to be made, and that a person with a lot of money can do a lot more good than a person without a lot of money. They make a decision: they will go commercial, amass a fortune, and then retire to promote their ideal free software world. It's GNU BASIC that Altair picks up in this timeline, not MS BASIC. It's RMS that gets the IBM deal. It's RMS that becomes the world's richest man. 25 years later, RMS retires, and then sets up the FSF, endowed with about $50 billion dollars. With just the investment income, not touching the principle at all, the FSF is generating enough money to be able to give out 50000 grants a year that each pay a developer for one year's full time work on free software. In 10 years, the FSF has produced GPL replacements for every important piece of non-free generally available software on the planet. The only non-GPL software left is internal things on corporate intranets.
jorgecastillo 17y ago
<sarcasm> I am in total accordance with you. Apple is pure evil just imagine they had the core of their operating system(Darwin) open sourced even if they didn't need it to. They contribute to some high profile open source projects(WebKit, LLVM & SproutCore). Their web browser is standards compliant and their competitors can use the same rendering engine. And you can choose to buy an Apple product or not. We need to stop them now before they destroy our freedom forever. </sarcasm>
known 17y ago
I think free software is enemy of open source software.

33 points by Sandman 17y ago

I'm not sure that promoting an alternate development model really means "the enemy" of FOSS. If you'd ask RMS, he'd probably say so, but I don't see why Apple's closed model and FOSS' open one can't co-exist. Also, it's not like Apple is attacking OSS, it's playing nicely as well as sponsoring several large projects. If Apple is the enemy of FOSS, we've got a rosy future.

orangecat 17y ago
Also, it's not like Apple is attacking OSS Apple's lawsuit against HTC effectively asserts that Android is illegal. That's a rather big deal; there are three mobile computing platforms that matter, and Android is the only one that's open.
- blasdel 17y ago
  They're attacking HTC's TouchSense modifications, not Android itself (yet)
  - orangecat 17y ago
    They specifically named the Nexus One as an infringing device, which uses stock Android.
- steveklabnik 17y ago
  I'll admit that I'm not happy that they're doing that. The good thing that comes out of this is that the more software patents are abused, the more likely they'll be abolished.
- bbgm 17y ago
  And they would have done that whether Android was open source or not. You could argue that if Android was not open source, it wouldn't be doing as well as it is, but the lawsuit is about Android's success not the open source nature
  - orangecat 17y ago
    Maybe. Although I can see Apple being much happier to split the market with Microsoft and their equally closed Windows mobile devices than with Android. Open platforms lead to disruptive innovations, which are often bad for market leaders.
keyist 17y ago
You do realize that if Apple has its way, developers must not only pay an entrance fee to release software for a system, but also run the risk of being disapproved? If X% of the market is iPhone/iPad, that is X% of the market where big brother Apple gets to decide exactly what software is available. That's even worse than closed-source commercial Windows under Microsoft, let alone FOSS. Apple is a greater enemy to FOSS than Microsoft because where the latter's attacks center around FUD and legal threats, Apple's is a competent attempt to undermine open computing platforms. The walled garden begins at the hardware level.
- steveklabnik 17y ago
  Yep, but also remember that this only applies to Apple systems. Apple isn't trying to push this on anyone else, it's part of what you accept by buying an Apple product. There'll always be a non-Apple 100% free platform. The two models can coexist together just fine. I use Apple products where appropriate, and others where it's not.

mahmud 17y ago

I read the title and thought "Apple". Everything about the company smells of evil, and I am reminded of this every morning when I need to download my news podcasts for the road; I have always copied and pasted audio files into every MP3 player I owned, but with the iPod, I need to launch the horrible iTunes and drag programs into my iPod. Should I plug my device into any other computer with iTunes, it would attempt to reset its memory and initialize it for this other iTunes :-/

blasdel 17y ago
Congratulations, you're one of the %0.1 of people that wants to manually copy files from your manually-organized arbitrary directory structure onto your music player's filesystem. To support that, the player has to index all the files itself when it boots up, which is why the old Nomad took minutes to be ready to hit play. Everyone else uses a database-backed program that automatically organizes their collection (iTunes), and expects to synchronize from that database to their device. If you weren't so set on doing things the way you did them in 1998, you'd be fine with iTunes — it can automatically download the podcast files, and synchronize that playlist when you plug in the device to charge it.
- cema 17y ago
  Try that in Linux.
  - silentbicycle 17y ago
    Gtkpod works reasonably well.
    - cema 17y ago
      Perhaps, but it would be easy for Apple to break it at the next upgrade, and it would not be unlike them to do it. Oh, and I would have to jailbreak iPhone to use it.
    - nailer 17y ago

kprobst 17y ago

Every day I am more convinced that the enemies of FOSS are the borderline morons that descend on articles like that one to "tell it like it is" with "M$ IS TEH DEVILZ LOLZ" prose that only makes everyone else shake their heads in disgust or shame. Microsoft would do a far better job at discrediting FOSS if they simply flooded the internet with astroturfers that mimic the FOSS nutjobs.

bediger 17y ago
I've heard the paranoid ascribe FOSS nutjobs to Microsoft Astroturfing efforts. This character emailed me claiming that the bellicose, "F*ck MSFT!" mouth-breathers were really Waggoner-Edstrom shills.
- epochwolf 17y ago
  fsck? (It probably needs it.)

adriand 17y ago

One thing I find a bit silly about this debate is how seriously we developers tend to take it. We toss around words like "enemy", "devil", and "evil", to describe a company that manufactures consumer electronics. I realize that many of us care deeply about open source software, and hope that the field we work in does not become tightly controlled, but let's face it: it's not like Apple is producing weapons of mass destruction, or cheap guns intended for street gangs, or cigarettes. If we showed an iPad to the average person, and said, "Look how EVIL this is!", they'd probably be more than a little confused.

kylemathews 17y ago
This was exactly my thought. My second thought was Clay Shirky's classic "A Group is its Own Worst Enemy" http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html He quotes from research derived from watching a group of neurotics that consistently defended itself against his [the researcher] attempts to make them do what they had ostensible gathered themselves together for. The second pattern of defensive behavior was identifying a common enemy. Clay writes: "The second basic pattern that Bion detailed: The identification and vilification of external enemies. This is a very common pattern. Anyone who was around the Open Source movement in the mid-Nineties could see this all the time. If you cared about Linux on the desktop, there was a big list of jobs to do. But you could always instead get a conversation going about Microsoft and Bill Gates. And people would start bleeding from their ears, they would get so mad. If you want to make it better, there's a list of things to do. It's Open Source, right? Just fix it. "No, no, Microsoft and Bill Gates grrrrr ...", the froth would start coming out. The external enemy -- nothing causes a group to galvanize like an external enemy. So even if someone isn't really your enemy, identifying them as an enemy can cause a pleasant sense of group cohesion. And groups often gravitate towards members who are the most paranoid and make them leaders, because those are the people who are best at identifying external enemies." So let's forget about Apple or Microsoft or any other so-called-enemy for awhile and get back to coding and "defeat" them the old-fashioned way.
algorias 17y ago
Without the freedom to tinker, the internet wouldn't have happened. There wouldn't have been such an incredibly rapid evolution of technology. Open source ensures that this kind of freedom remains in place.

naner 17y ago

The enemy of FLOSS is convienence and ease-of-use. I'm not trying to be snarky: I'm typing this on Firefox in Linux and I've almost excusively been on Linux since 2002. I've been elbow deep in this stuff for years, hacking and tweaking and experimenting, etc. I'm at the end of my rope, about to jump to Apple with all the lock-in and overpriced shit and inflexibility and patent abuse, etc. At least it is easy to use and maintain and has many powerful, flexible and even niche applications. And well-supported libraries. I'm starting to see those free software ideals I've held so dear turn into tradeoffs. I'll trade in some 'freedoms' for more capable, abundant, and better supported software that allows me to get work done easier and more effectively. If RMS wanted GNU software to spread then he shouldn't have gone into politics and preaching. He should have made sure that GNU software was more useful to the software users. To most people software freedom is too intangible to be counted as a benefit. Hell, 99.9% of people couldn't even explain it in very basic terms if you asked them. He's just created software for enthusiasts and hobbyists. Not a bad thing, but not his goal either. Anyways, I've grown out of it. I'm just talking about consumer-facing software, by the way. I know free software will always have value in education, commodity software that is not your primary business, etc. It is always going to be an abysmal failure on the desktop unless a free software Steve Jobs appears out of thin air, though.

tzs 17y ago
"If RMS wanted GNU software to spread then he shouldn't have gone into politics and preaching. He should have made sure that GNU software was more useful to the software users" Indeed, consider this alternate timeline whose RMS is more pragmatic and willing to give up a few short term small victories in order to win big in the end: It's the late '70s. The microprocessor revolution is just getting started. RMS and his band of wily hackers jump onboard, realizing there is going to be a lot of money to be made, and that a person with a lot of money can do a lot more good than a person without a lot of money. They make a decision: they will go commercial, amass a fortune, and then retire to promote their ideal free software world. It's GNU BASIC that Altair picks up in this timeline, not MS BASIC. It's RMS that gets the IBM deal. It's RMS that becomes the world's richest man. 25 years later, RMS retires, and then sets up the FSF, endowed with about $50 billion dollars. With just the investment income, not touching the principle at all, the FSF is generating enough money to be able to give out 50000 grants a year that each pay a developer for one year's full time work on free software. In 10 years, the FSF has produced GPL replacements for every important piece of non-free generally available software on the planet. The only non-GPL software left is internal things on corporate intranets.

jorgecastillo 17y ago

<sarcasm> I am in total accordance with you. Apple is pure evil just imagine they had the core of their operating system(Darwin) open sourced even if they didn't need it to. They contribute to some high profile open source projects(WebKit, LLVM & SproutCore). Their web browser is standards compliant and their competitors can use the same rendering engine. And you can choose to buy an Apple product or not. We need to stop them now before they destroy our freedom forever. </sarcasm>

known 17y ago

I think free software is enemy of open source software.