8 ms·

Who does that server really serve?

34 points by ekiru 17y ago

TeHCrAzY 17y ago
I really dislike the image Stallman pushes of the FOSS movement. I stopped reading after "(referred to as “Digital Rights Management” in their propaganda)." set the likely tone for the rest of the article.
- javert 17y ago
  Same. Proprietary software can't "take away your freedom" under any meaningful definition of "freedom".
  - wmf 17y ago
    I don't agree with RMS's politics, but the fact that you don't consider positive freedom to be meaningful (even though a large fraction of the population apparently subscribes to it) probably says more about you than about RMS. (If anyone doesn't know what I'm talking about: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/)
    - ez77 17y ago
      Using your own source, "Positive liberty is the possibility of acting — or the fact of acting — in such a way as to take control of one's life and realize one's fundamental purposes." Must one's (everyone's?) fundamental purposes include having all software available by law? If so, that's a mightily counterintuitive notion of freedom, be it positive, negative, or else.
    - tbrownaw 17y ago
      It has nothign to do with positive vs. negative freedom; the set of "things you can do" when you have only open software available is a strict subset of "things you can do" given that same open software and also the alternative of closed software. Closed software can only limit your freedom if its existence inhibits the availability of open software.
    - javert 17y ago
      This is an overly simplistic take on what I was getting at. For example, it could be said that proprietary software increases the "positive freedom" of proprietary software developers. So then what's wrong with them releasing proprietary software? Isn't that what they should do, if it works best for them---makes them the most money or whatever, and thus increases their "positive freedom"? One of the big problems with RMS is that he just throws out terms like "freedom" without stating what he means, giving a moral justification, and showing how they can be applied correctly.
  - esspem 17y ago
    Proprietary software does take some of your freedom away due to government granted monopoly (copyright). For example, you are forbidden to to make a copy of it.
    - thwarted 17y ago
      The government granted monopoly (copyright) is what gives open source licenses, like the GPL, their power. Depending on the exact license, you aren't allowed to make a copy of non-proprietary software either. Copyright doesn't say you aren't allowed to make a copy, it says that the owner of the copyright is allowed exclusive exploitation of the work, which is sellable/transferable to other parties, and is often restricted based on conditions -- with proprietary software, these conditions are usually only money changing hands.
      - esspem 17y ago
        As far as i understand, GPL license is a "hack" for living in copyright world, until the abolishment of copyright.
        thwarted 17y ago
        Yes, this is called working within the system to subvert it. It applies copyright like no one else conceived of, at the time the GPL was created, to achieve an ends other than "make money". If there was no copyright, or copyright is abolished, would there be a need for the GPL?
    - rick888 17y ago
      The GNU license requires all forks to also be open source. This means that I won't be able to add open source software to my proprietary application without all of my changes also being given out for free. The Free Software Foundation also sues companies in court for not complying with their license. This doesn't really sound like anything different than the current copyright system. I would not want to live in a world where I am forced by law to give out the source to my software.
fisadev 17y ago
May be RMS is wrong, but something on the article is true: we trust too much data to others, data that we could keep secure, and we don't know what they do with our data.
- lallysingh 17y ago
  He's pretty smart, and often makes good points. You just really, really have to filter him.
- blasdel 17y ago
  Except that unlike every single other user on the planet, RMS doesn't give two shits about your data in a SaaS environment. He cares about whether your application code generating responses on the server is GPLed, along with a few thousand other people. He also passionately cares the javascript running in your browser is GPLed, and is perhaps completely alone in this. It may be simply because he has never used a rich web app, out of abject fear. He normally surfs the web via emacs+gnus+smtp+aliases+wget -- he is not one of us, you can't argue with him on your own terms.
jsz0 17y ago
Some valid points but as usual he skips over the reality that OSS solutions often aren't the best solution for how people want to compute. In the past that may have been feature/usability disparity of desktop applications but in the context of SaaS it's simply lack of availability. The best way to promote OSS is to make the applications so good people prefer to use them over proprietary alternatives.
TomasSedovic 17y ago
I think that Richard is always pushing it too far. But maybe we need that. Anyway, he does raise a fair point -- one that I ponder about more and more often. To me the solution seems to be open source/open standards/open data. In the web world the standards and data being perhaps more important than the server's source itself. If you can run that thing on your own server, if you can communicate with the existing servers and if you can get the data you put there back, it seems to provide the same set of freedoms that you had in the original GNU sense.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
lallysingh 17y ago
RMS would get a lot further if he didn't talk like a complete jackass. Quoting on the kindle "(whose name suggests it's intended to burn people's books)" The condescending tone and the cheap shots do not put him in a good light. Nor does actually hearing the man talk, for that matter.
- tsally 17y ago
  It's not a cheap shot. The Kindle is designed for (figurative) book burning. Any book distribution system with strong DRM is. Amazon has the ability to remotely delete (or worse, modify) any book on any Kindle anywhere. Never in the history of written works has a government or private entity had that ability. Again, it's not a cheap shot. Digital books and newspapers present a clear and present danger. I'm open to well supported arrangements about why the rights of copyright holders are more important than freedom of the press and free speech, but honestly I don't think such arguments exist.
  - gizmo 17y ago
    The kindle is not designed for book burning, even if it might be used for that purpose. I'm not 100% comfortable with the concept of the "remote wipe", but as companies go Amazon has proven itself to be pretty trustworthy. And what's the worst case scenario? Amazon censors/deletes a bunch of books, people scream bloody murder and host some torrents. Never in the history of written works can a shout of a single man be heard by over a billion people. The internet still blows my mind, when I stop and think about it for a second. Thanks to encryption and publicly available algorithms people will always be able to communicate against the will of any government, even if the internet itself is compromised. So I don't think we have to worry about DRM and similar technologies. At any point in time we can just say 'No more!' and use something different, so DRM has no power over us. If you want to worry about something, worry that data can't be deleted, and advances in data mining (artificial intelligence) will change the laws of privacy forever. Perhaps, in 10 years from now, you'd wish for a remote wipe button.
    - tsally 17y ago
johngalt 17y ago
Stallman raises good points about the security issues with SaaS (i.e. contracts don't matter if you don't know when they are breached) But the alternative he recommends is impractical. I don't know of any normal non-tech business that are end to end OSS (even a majority OSS is rare). Businesses don't want to run their own servers and have large IT shops, but they do want the sun/moon/stars in services. SaaS promises to deliver what they've wanted for years. It will take more than a security risk to dissuade businesses from using SaaS. It certainly didn't stop them from using proprietary software. I wonder if the goals of Stallman/GNU/FSF/Anti-DRM/Patent folks are actually in opposition. Imagine if DRM was flawless? Paid OSS could be more common without risk to the publisher. IT shops would have more of a means to insist that vendors provide source for independent security review.
tbrownaw 17y ago
Choice is slavery. What does he mean I can't "control" closed software I run? I start it, stop it, and click on the pretty buttons to make it do things. Sure I can't turn it into something different, but then I don't have the infinite free time necessary to do that to open software anyhow. If OpenOffice is changed in a way I don't like, I have exactly the same options I'd have if Microsoft Office was changed in a way I don't like: stay on the old version, move to a different office suite, or put up with it. Hosted software is the same, except for the option to stay with an old version.
- tjarratt 17y ago
  The idea is more that you have the liberty to change the software should you want to. Regardless of whether or not you have the time, inclination or skills necessary to change the software, not having the source code prevents you from being able to do that. That said, Richard Stallman does sound like an idiot when he writes things like "Some web pages install nontrivial or even large JavaScript programs temporarily into your browser without informing you. When these JavaScript programs are nonfree, they are as bad as any other nonfree software".
  - tbrownaw 17y ago
    Sure, but a theoretical liberty is rather useless without the practical ability to, well, use it.
lanstein 17y ago
"For instance, some proprietary programs are “spyware”: the program sends data about users' computing activities to the program's owner. Microsoft Windows sends information about users' activities to Microsoft." He probably could have come up with a more credible example of spyware than Microsoft Windows.
donaq 17y ago
Can we please focus on the points RMS tries to make instead of on the man himself every time something he writes is linked on HN? I'm not trying to be offensive, but it's getting increasingly difficult to filter the meaningful comments from the repetitive noise of "RMS is t3h r0x0r" vs "reading RMS gives me crotch rash". We all know what RMS is like. Some of us sympathize, some of us don't, let's leave it at that (or at least start a long-lived thread where people inclined towards arguing about RMS can have it out).
blasdel 17y ago
It's a shame to see Stallman turning his back so coldly on Freedom 0: "to run the program, for any purpose" The AGPL is a goddamn clickwrap EULA: you can't just run the program without restriction if it involves responding to requests over a socket.

34 points by ekiru 17y ago

I really dislike the image Stallman pushes of the FOSS movement. I stopped reading after "(referred to as “Digital Rights Management” in their propaganda)." set the likely tone for the rest of the article.

javert 17y ago
Same. Proprietary software can't "take away your freedom" under any meaningful definition of "freedom".
- wmf 17y ago
  I don't agree with RMS's politics, but the fact that you don't consider positive freedom to be meaningful (even though a large fraction of the population apparently subscribes to it) probably says more about you than about RMS. (If anyone doesn't know what I'm talking about: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/)
  - ez77 17y ago
    Using your own source, "Positive liberty is the possibility of acting — or the fact of acting — in such a way as to take control of one's life and realize one's fundamental purposes." Must one's (everyone's?) fundamental purposes include having all software available by law? If so, that's a mightily counterintuitive notion of freedom, be it positive, negative, or else.
  - tbrownaw 17y ago
    It has nothign to do with positive vs. negative freedom; the set of "things you can do" when you have only open software available is a strict subset of "things you can do" given that same open software and also the alternative of closed software. Closed software can only limit your freedom if its existence inhibits the availability of open software.
  - javert 17y ago
    This is an overly simplistic take on what I was getting at. For example, it could be said that proprietary software increases the "positive freedom" of proprietary software developers. So then what's wrong with them releasing proprietary software? Isn't that what they should do, if it works best for them---makes them the most money or whatever, and thus increases their "positive freedom"? One of the big problems with RMS is that he just throws out terms like "freedom" without stating what he means, giving a moral justification, and showing how they can be applied correctly.
- esspem 17y ago
  Proprietary software does take some of your freedom away due to government granted monopoly (copyright). For example, you are forbidden to to make a copy of it.
  - thwarted 17y ago
    The government granted monopoly (copyright) is what gives open source licenses, like the GPL, their power. Depending on the exact license, you aren't allowed to make a copy of non-proprietary software either. Copyright doesn't say you aren't allowed to make a copy, it says that the owner of the copyright is allowed exclusive exploitation of the work, which is sellable/transferable to other parties, and is often restricted based on conditions -- with proprietary software, these conditions are usually only money changing hands.
    - esspem 17y ago
      As far as i understand, GPL license is a "hack" for living in copyright world, until the abolishment of copyright.
      - thwarted 17y ago
        Yes, this is called working within the system to subvert it. It applies copyright like no one else conceived of, at the time the GPL was created, to achieve an ends other than "make money". If there was no copyright, or copyright is abolished, would there be a need for the GPL?
  - rick888 17y ago
    The GNU license requires all forks to also be open source. This means that I won't be able to add open source software to my proprietary application without all of my changes also being given out for free. The Free Software Foundation also sues companies in court for not complying with their license. This doesn't really sound like anything different than the current copyright system. I would not want to live in a world where I am forced by law to give out the source to my software.

fisadev 17y ago

May be RMS is wrong, but something on the article is true: we trust too much data to others, data that we could keep secure, and we don't know what they do with our data.

lallysingh 17y ago
He's pretty smart, and often makes good points. You just really, really have to filter him.
blasdel 17y ago
Except that unlike every single other user on the planet, RMS doesn't give two shits about your data in a SaaS environment. He cares about whether your application code generating responses on the server is GPLed, along with a few thousand other people. He also passionately cares the javascript running in your browser is GPLed, and is perhaps completely alone in this. It may be simply because he has never used a rich web app, out of abject fear. He normally surfs the web via emacs+gnus+smtp+aliases+wget -- he is not one of us, you can't argue with him on your own terms.

jsz0 17y ago

Some valid points but as usual he skips over the reality that OSS solutions often aren't the best solution for how people want to compute. In the past that may have been feature/usability disparity of desktop applications but in the context of SaaS it's simply lack of availability. The best way to promote OSS is to make the applications so good people prefer to use them over proprietary alternatives.

TomasSedovic 17y ago

I think that Richard is always pushing it too far. But maybe we need that. Anyway, he does raise a fair point -- one that I ponder about more and more often. To me the solution seems to be open source/open standards/open data. In the web world the standards and data being perhaps more important than the server's source itself. If you can run that thing on your own server, if you can communicate with the existing servers and if you can get the data you put there back, it seems to provide the same set of freedoms that you had in the original GNU sense.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

lallysingh 17y ago

RMS would get a lot further if he didn't talk like a complete jackass. Quoting on the kindle "(whose name suggests it's intended to burn people's books)" The condescending tone and the cheap shots do not put him in a good light. Nor does actually hearing the man talk, for that matter.

tsally 17y ago
It's not a cheap shot. The Kindle is designed for (figurative) book burning. Any book distribution system with strong DRM is. Amazon has the ability to remotely delete (or worse, modify) any book on any Kindle anywhere. Never in the history of written works has a government or private entity had that ability. Again, it's not a cheap shot. Digital books and newspapers present a clear and present danger. I'm open to well supported arrangements about why the rights of copyright holders are more important than freedom of the press and free speech, but honestly I don't think such arguments exist.
- gizmo 17y ago
  The kindle is not designed for book burning, even if it might be used for that purpose. I'm not 100% comfortable with the concept of the "remote wipe", but as companies go Amazon has proven itself to be pretty trustworthy. And what's the worst case scenario? Amazon censors/deletes a bunch of books, people scream bloody murder and host some torrents. Never in the history of written works can a shout of a single man be heard by over a billion people. The internet still blows my mind, when I stop and think about it for a second. Thanks to encryption and publicly available algorithms people will always be able to communicate against the will of any government, even if the internet itself is compromised. So I don't think we have to worry about DRM and similar technologies. At any point in time we can just say 'No more!' and use something different, so DRM has no power over us. If you want to worry about something, worry that data can't be deleted, and advances in data mining (artificial intelligence) will change the laws of privacy forever. Perhaps, in 10 years from now, you'd wish for a remote wipe button.
  - tsally 17y ago

johngalt 17y ago

Stallman raises good points about the security issues with SaaS (i.e. contracts don't matter if you don't know when they are breached) But the alternative he recommends is impractical. I don't know of any normal non-tech business that are end to end OSS (even a majority OSS is rare). Businesses don't want to run their own servers and have large IT shops, but they do want the sun/moon/stars in services. SaaS promises to deliver what they've wanted for years. It will take more than a security risk to dissuade businesses from using SaaS. It certainly didn't stop them from using proprietary software. I wonder if the goals of Stallman/GNU/FSF/Anti-DRM/Patent folks are actually in opposition. Imagine if DRM was flawless? Paid OSS could be more common without risk to the publisher. IT shops would have more of a means to insist that vendors provide source for independent security review.

tbrownaw 17y ago

Choice is slavery. What does he mean I can't "control" closed software I run? I start it, stop it, and click on the pretty buttons to make it do things. Sure I can't turn it into something different, but then I don't have the infinite free time necessary to do that to open software anyhow. If OpenOffice is changed in a way I don't like, I have exactly the same options I'd have if Microsoft Office was changed in a way I don't like: stay on the old version, move to a different office suite, or put up with it. Hosted software is the same, except for the option to stay with an old version.

tjarratt 17y ago
The idea is more that you have the liberty to change the software should you want to. Regardless of whether or not you have the time, inclination or skills necessary to change the software, not having the source code prevents you from being able to do that. That said, Richard Stallman does sound like an idiot when he writes things like "Some web pages install nontrivial or even large JavaScript programs temporarily into your browser without informing you. When these JavaScript programs are nonfree, they are as bad as any other nonfree software".
- tbrownaw 17y ago
  Sure, but a theoretical liberty is rather useless without the practical ability to, well, use it.

lanstein 17y ago

"For instance, some proprietary programs are “spyware”: the program sends data about users' computing activities to the program's owner. Microsoft Windows sends information about users' activities to Microsoft." He probably could have come up with a more credible example of spyware than Microsoft Windows.

donaq 17y ago

Can we please focus on the points RMS tries to make instead of on the man himself every time something he writes is linked on HN? I'm not trying to be offensive, but it's getting increasingly difficult to filter the meaningful comments from the repetitive noise of "RMS is t3h r0x0r" vs "reading RMS gives me crotch rash". We all know what RMS is like. Some of us sympathize, some of us don't, let's leave it at that (or at least start a long-lived thread where people inclined towards arguing about RMS can have it out).

blasdel 17y ago

It's a shame to see Stallman turning his back so coldly on Freedom 0: "to run the program, for any purpose" The AGPL is a goddamn clickwrap EULA: you can't just run the program without restriction if it involves responding to requests over a socket.