10 ms·

> Stallman's rhetoric is filled with this problematic logic on all layers: from trying to correct other people's terminology Yes, this is my main obstacle acce

by greyman 10y ago

> Stallman's rhetoric is filled with this problematic logic on all layers: from trying to correct other people's terminology Yes, this is my main obstacle accepting RMS. In my opinion, he took the word "free", made a term "free software", and described it in accordance with his agenda, while what he advocated only partially conforms to the meaning of the word "free" or "freedom". There are certainly licenses offering more freedom than GPL v3. Therefore I myself do not even recognize this term "free software". I am more than willing to discuss RMS ideas, I agree with many of them, but let's stop messing the language first.

milesrout 10y ago
>There are certainly licenses offering more freedom than GPL v3. Only if you consider 'freedom' to include the right to take something and make it closed source with or without changes. Only if you consider 'freedom' to include the right to restrict end user freedom. The GPL protects the freedom of users. If I license something as GPL then that means I'm saying "I want anyone to be able to use this, and if you want to modify and/or redistribute it you can, but only if you continue to respect users' freedoms as much as I have." The only person 'messing the language' are the people that turn every discussion of free software into a discussion of whether 'free software' or 'open source' is better terminology, and in my experience that's far more coming from your camp than Stallman's these days.
- greyman 10y ago
  I don't know, I don't feel I am in some camp. His license grants some permissions and forbids something else. I just don't feel the word "freedom" fits into what he wants to achieve. Just let's call it some other way and I am fine with it. This is just grabbing a positive word, twist it, and use for his own agenda. And I am not willing to play such a game.
  - thristian 10y ago
    Let's imagine a world exactly like our current world, except that I am allowed to punch anybody in the nose at any time, with no negative consequences for myself. Is that world "more free" than this one? My point is that "freedom" is a messy concept, and the freedom to do one thing (punch somebody in the nose, or to make proprietary software) is often at odds with the freedom to do another (go about your business without being punched, or to control the software that affects your life). That's not RMS twisting words, that's just an awkward philosophical truth. I guess you could say that the term "free software" is biased because it emphasises society-wide freedoms over personal freedoms, but I think it fits nicely alongside more widely held ideas like "only police should be allowed to fight crime" and "politicians should not write laws that directly benefit themselves". Both those ideas significantly limit personal freedom, yet they're very important parts of a free society.
    - swhipple 10y ago
      To add on to your point, this is called the 'paradox of freedom' -- that you cannot have both unlimited freedom and ensure freedom for the future. At the end of WWII, Karl Popper defended state interventionism with an argument citing the paradox of tolerance [1], and claimed ensuring a tolerant society in the name of tolerance, even when paradoxically intolerant. A parallel argument can be made in Stallman's case for copyleft to be claimed in the name of freedom. It's also worth noting that it is not only Stallman's FSF that uses this definition w.r.t intellectual property nowadays. Lessig's CC adopted the same terminology for their share-alike license (-SA), which has the goal of preserving freedom, while -NC or -ND are considered non-free because they contain restrictions not related to this purpose. The same is true in the greater free-culture community and academic contexts from my experience. [1] http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/25998 http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/25998
      - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
        That's a general point, but I think it missed the criticism that the FSF's definition of software freedom fails on its own terms. In practice the "freedom" is exclusive to a highly educated and exclusive technocracy. The same freedoms are not available to the general public. This may seem pedantic, but IMO it undermines the argument about software freedom, because Stallman has never shown the slightest interest in making software that the general public can modify, or in designing, promoting, or doing anything at all to encourage the existence of such software. The idea that if you want to promote software freedom you need to make tools and systems that ordinary people can modify - preferably without learning Emacs - doesn't seem to have occurred to him. It seems that in Stallman's world the public are supposed to become MIT-grade hackers before they can earn their freedom. You could argue that software is hard, and that's just how it is. But I'm not so sure that's true. It's not obvious that the hardness of software isn't a side effect of the culture around it, and not something unavoidable in the process of development. The reality is that there has been almost no serious CS research into making accessible user-modifiable systems. FSF would be more convincing if there had been at least some token effort in that direction. But instead FSF has always promoted a rather old-fashioned and nostalgic view of computing, where everything happens on the command line, and development means hand-editing source code and running a build system to create a local binary. That was more or less the only model around in the 1960s and 70s, but things have moved on since then. Unfortunately the FSF mostly hasn't. Given that, the question is - what does software freedom mean to users now? If source code doesn't actually equal freedom - what does?
  - theseoafs 10y ago
    I mean, obviously because some system gives you more freedoms than others doesn't mean it's the system that best preserves freedom. In the USA we don't have the freedom to enslave people but that doesn't make us less free. For the record I'm not an RMS-ite and I don't actually mean to compare proprietary software with slavery.
  - pksadiq 10y ago
    > His license grants some permissions and forbids something else. I just don't feel the word "freedom" fits into what he wants to achieve. What do you think "freedom" is? We are here because we are not free. And that is called "freedom". :) Freedom may be considered as a set of values that can be exercised on every human. So that is very limited. Say like "I wish not to be harassed in the public." So that means, "I shouldn't harass someone else in the public." If you say you need the second, and not accept the first, you can't call it a "freedom" in a communal sense.
pksadiq 10y ago
>There are certainly licenses offering more freedom than GPL v3. It's up to you what 'freedom' really is. For me, I wish my smartband had more features than it does now. I wish my non-smart phone vibrate when the opponent attends the call. Lots of my wish (and many others) won't be fulfilled as long as there isn't an easy way to modify the underlying software/firmware. I call that 'freedom'. Most of these limitations comes from the software/firmware in it. [AL]GPLv3 assures the freedom to its users. And every person is a user. A developer is a user of IDE, compiler, build tools, OS, etc. It is the freedom to control what [s]he own and not to be in control.
- SomeCallMeTim 10y ago
  You're arguing for features that would be genuinely challenging for companies to implement and support. I'd love to have the freedom to modify the software in every gadget I own. But the $40 digital toaster oven with absolute crap firmware coded by idiots doesn't even have a USB port or any way to attach it to a computer; it's probably got its code permanently burned into ROM and isn't even software upgradable even with the right hardware. If it were programmable, it probably would have cost 5x as much. Say it's a device that already supports updates, like your smartband likely does. By locking down, say, a smartband, you've made it much easier for your support personnel to be able to answer questions -- and they won't have to say, "Sorry, you've modified the device, so I can't help you." And they won't have to field questions from hackers who are trying to follow the poor instructions that engineers pieced together on how to rebuild the firmware. And that's if they even have the right to distribute the firmware to begin with. Just because your smartband manufacturer wants to do the right thing (in this theoretical universe) and make it hackable, doesn't mean that the chip manufacturers are happy with that. So they might need to switch to another, possibly more expensive chip. And that means the goal of "hackable" needs to be a design goal from the start. Shortcuts they might have been able to make with a closed system are now off the table. You've added another constraint to the design, and every constraint takes time. And money. Advocate that companies produce modifiable devices, sure. But don't pretend that it won't increase their cost at some level. It's not ethics; it's simply good business to lock down products that 99.9% of users won't try to hack. And I'm a fan of hacking devices. I just can see the other side of the argument.
belorn 10y ago
Freedom was incorporated into liberty a very long time ago. in the 17th century, John Locke famously defined freedom by: *"freedom is not 'A liberty for everyone to do what he likes, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws.'. GPL conditions are primarily concerned with freedom from external restraint, such as patents, proprietary licenses and DRM. Negative liberty, which is the freedom from interference by other people, is the other side of the coin from positive liberty, ie the possession of the power and resources to fulfil one's own potential. All FLOSS licenses has positive freedoms, but not all grant negative freedom.
pessimizer 10y ago
That's like saying that Spiderman abuses the words Spider and Man by solely referring to a crimefighter who wears blue and red longjohns, or that Star Wars is a lie because the war was neither between stars or over stars. It's a title for a concept, it isn't a redefinition of the word "free." It is always capitalized. Software can't even be free or unfree in any way other than gratis, unless you're talking about software behind a restrictive firewall - software isn't a person or an animal, generally isn't thought of as having agency or desires, and couldn't care less (or more) about the aspects of whatever license it is distributed under - licensing is for people. It's unbelievable that this could be the main obstacle in accepting a philosophical and political idea that has material effects on the human condition. What do you do when a "stop" light turns green?
kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
You're thinking of the wrong sort of freedom. RMS was motivated by the need to freely control and alter the behavior of computing hardware not software. The restrictiveness of the GPL is designed to guarantee that happens. BSD and MIT code that goes into embedded devices falls into a black hole of proprietary code no matter how free it was to begin with.
jordigh 10y ago
What is it that you want to do that the GPL will not allow you? How is the GPL taking your freedom or society's freedom away?
- cbdfghh 10y ago
  Personally, I find people complaining about the GPL's lack of freedom a bit hypocritical. What does the GPL prevent you from doing? As a user, nothing. As far as I (a user) is concerned, Mozilla's MPL/GPL, bash's GPL3 and VSCode MIT licenses are all equally free (I can use them and distribute them). So what problem do programmers have with GPL? You can't make a derivative closed source work. So you want to make a non-free work, fine. I'm not a GPL-or-bust guy. But are _your_ programs free?
  - prodigal_erik 10y ago
    It's not just that they want to make a non-free work, it's that they want my help, offering nothing in return.
    - cbdfghh 10y ago
      That's also true. Sometimes I suspect the main programmers for Apache2/BSD/MIT licensed works actually hope their works get used by the big guys so they can get employment there. That's why I've never heard any BSD guys getting upset at MS for ripping off their work, while getting upset at Linux for doing the same.
  - fryguy 10y ago
    > You can't make a derivative closed source work. That's not it. Your license has to be GPL in order to use any GPL code. I try to make the stuff I do on my personal time under the MIT license, which means I can't use GPL code, but GPL code can incorporate my code. Tell me which license is more free now. Also, it completely disregards the scope of things. If I incorporate a GPL library into my software for say JSON parsing, then it means my entire program must be GPL. Thankfully most libraries aren't GPL but LGPL. The other thing is that you can't use proprietary libraries in your own code that has been infected with GPL. If you want to develop your own software that incorporates GPL code and even release it to your users, it's impossible to link against proprietary libraries.
Ace17 10y ago
> There are certainly licenses offering more freedom than GPL v3. More freedom to who? Users, distributors, maintainers, vendors, service providers? You can't guarantee complete freedom to each of them simultaneously. For example, allowing distributors to do everything they want (e.g not providing source code) will prevent users to do everything they want (e.g modifying the program). So it makes no sense to talk about which license "offers more freedom". So, let's stop saying imprecise things like "GPL code doesn't give me freedom because I can't use such code in my proprietary software". The free software movement is about protecting the freedoms of the end users first.
- fryguy 10y ago
  There is absolutely no possible way that you can defend GPL as being more free than licenses like BSD/MIT. Copyright is about being able to copy the software. GPL places restrictions on who is able to copy your software. BSD/MIT place less restrictions. It's black and white; there is no argument. When a project includes code from another project (be it GPL or MIT), it is creating a new work under copyright. What GPL does is hold the developer ransom with a lighter over the GPL code, in order to guarantee the new work is distributed to other people with the same restrictive license. It just means that code under GPL is orders of magnitude less valuable to the world than code under less restrictive licenses. It's not just about proprietary software that can't put GPL code into their software, but software that's released under less restrictive licenses as well. If code is GPL, I just stay away.
  - prodigal_erik 10y ago
    You can't take credit for a lack of restrictions when users face draconian binary-only no-redistribution-ever restrictions that you turned a blind eye to. While we're voting with our feet, I don't contribute to BSD projects unless I'm paid to, because it's mostly feeding parasites.
  - vacri 10y ago
    > It just means that code under GPL is orders of magnitude less valuable to the world than code under less restrictive licenses. The most-installed kernel in the world is GPL-licensed. I'm not sure how it could possibly be orders of magnitude more valuable. > What GPL does is hold the developer ransom with a lighter over the GPL code It's not a 'ransom' when the ticket price is clearly displayed for all to see. If you don't want to play, that's cool, find another sandpit to play in. Like it or not, the GPL moved the needle back towards end-user friendliness, and without it and it's knock-on effects elsewhere, being a developer today would be a much more frustrating experience.
jcora 10y ago
Yeah I think you have the opposite mindset than me. Just letting people do what they want is _not_ fighting for freedom, but fighting for the status quo, because inequality exists. In other words the struggle is real
tscs37 10y ago
I think "Free Code" encompasses the ideology that ""free software"" wants to be much better and more efficiently than ""free software"". "Free Code" means the code is free as in free beer. You can get it, consume it and share it with friends. Once tasted, you can start a brewery and imitate the flavor if you want.

by greyman 10y ago

milesrout 10y ago

>There are certainly licenses offering more freedom than GPL v3. Only if you consider 'freedom' to include the right to take something and make it closed source with or without changes. Only if you consider 'freedom' to include the right to restrict end user freedom. The GPL protects the freedom of users. If I license something as GPL then that means I'm saying "I want anyone to be able to use this, and if you want to modify and/or redistribute it you can, but only if you continue to respect users' freedoms as much as I have." The only person 'messing the language' are the people that turn every discussion of free software into a discussion of whether 'free software' or 'open source' is better terminology, and in my experience that's far more coming from your camp than Stallman's these days.

greyman 10y ago
I don't know, I don't feel I am in some camp. His license grants some permissions and forbids something else. I just don't feel the word "freedom" fits into what he wants to achieve. Just let's call it some other way and I am fine with it. This is just grabbing a positive word, twist it, and use for his own agenda. And I am not willing to play such a game.
- thristian 10y ago
  Let's imagine a world exactly like our current world, except that I am allowed to punch anybody in the nose at any time, with no negative consequences for myself. Is that world "more free" than this one? My point is that "freedom" is a messy concept, and the freedom to do one thing (punch somebody in the nose, or to make proprietary software) is often at odds with the freedom to do another (go about your business without being punched, or to control the software that affects your life). That's not RMS twisting words, that's just an awkward philosophical truth. I guess you could say that the term "free software" is biased because it emphasises society-wide freedoms over personal freedoms, but I think it fits nicely alongside more widely held ideas like "only police should be allowed to fight crime" and "politicians should not write laws that directly benefit themselves". Both those ideas significantly limit personal freedom, yet they're very important parts of a free society.
  - swhipple 10y ago
    To add on to your point, this is called the 'paradox of freedom' -- that you cannot have both unlimited freedom and ensure freedom for the future. At the end of WWII, Karl Popper defended state interventionism with an argument citing the paradox of tolerance [1], and claimed ensuring a tolerant society in the name of tolerance, even when paradoxically intolerant. A parallel argument can be made in Stallman's case for copyleft to be claimed in the name of freedom. It's also worth noting that it is not only Stallman's FSF that uses this definition w.r.t intellectual property nowadays. Lessig's CC adopted the same terminology for their share-alike license (-SA), which has the goal of preserving freedom, while -NC or -ND are considered non-free because they contain restrictions not related to this purpose. The same is true in the greater free-culture community and academic contexts from my experience. [1] http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/25998 http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/25998
    - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
      That's a general point, but I think it missed the criticism that the FSF's definition of software freedom fails on its own terms. In practice the "freedom" is exclusive to a highly educated and exclusive technocracy. The same freedoms are not available to the general public. This may seem pedantic, but IMO it undermines the argument about software freedom, because Stallman has never shown the slightest interest in making software that the general public can modify, or in designing, promoting, or doing anything at all to encourage the existence of such software. The idea that if you want to promote software freedom you need to make tools and systems that ordinary people can modify - preferably without learning Emacs - doesn't seem to have occurred to him. It seems that in Stallman's world the public are supposed to become MIT-grade hackers before they can earn their freedom. You could argue that software is hard, and that's just how it is. But I'm not so sure that's true. It's not obvious that the hardness of software isn't a side effect of the culture around it, and not something unavoidable in the process of development. The reality is that there has been almost no serious CS research into making accessible user-modifiable systems. FSF would be more convincing if there had been at least some token effort in that direction. But instead FSF has always promoted a rather old-fashioned and nostalgic view of computing, where everything happens on the command line, and development means hand-editing source code and running a build system to create a local binary. That was more or less the only model around in the 1960s and 70s, but things have moved on since then. Unfortunately the FSF mostly hasn't. Given that, the question is - what does software freedom mean to users now? If source code doesn't actually equal freedom - what does?
- theseoafs 10y ago
  I mean, obviously because some system gives you more freedoms than others doesn't mean it's the system that best preserves freedom. In the USA we don't have the freedom to enslave people but that doesn't make us less free. For the record I'm not an RMS-ite and I don't actually mean to compare proprietary software with slavery.
- pksadiq 10y ago
  > His license grants some permissions and forbids something else. I just don't feel the word "freedom" fits into what he wants to achieve. What do you think "freedom" is? We are here because we are not free. And that is called "freedom". :) Freedom may be considered as a set of values that can be exercised on every human. So that is very limited. Say like "I wish not to be harassed in the public." So that means, "I shouldn't harass someone else in the public." If you say you need the second, and not accept the first, you can't call it a "freedom" in a communal sense.

pksadiq 10y ago

>There are certainly licenses offering more freedom than GPL v3. It's up to you what 'freedom' really is. For me, I wish my smartband had more features than it does now. I wish my non-smart phone vibrate when the opponent attends the call. Lots of my wish (and many others) won't be fulfilled as long as there isn't an easy way to modify the underlying software/firmware. I call that 'freedom'. Most of these limitations comes from the software/firmware in it. [AL]GPLv3 assures the freedom to its users. And every person is a user. A developer is a user of IDE, compiler, build tools, OS, etc. It is the freedom to control what [s]he own and not to be in control.

SomeCallMeTim 10y ago
You're arguing for features that would be genuinely challenging for companies to implement and support. I'd love to have the freedom to modify the software in every gadget I own. But the $40 digital toaster oven with absolute crap firmware coded by idiots doesn't even have a USB port or any way to attach it to a computer; it's probably got its code permanently burned into ROM and isn't even software upgradable even with the right hardware. If it were programmable, it probably would have cost 5x as much. Say it's a device that already supports updates, like your smartband likely does. By locking down, say, a smartband, you've made it much easier for your support personnel to be able to answer questions -- and they won't have to say, "Sorry, you've modified the device, so I can't help you." And they won't have to field questions from hackers who are trying to follow the poor instructions that engineers pieced together on how to rebuild the firmware. And that's if they even have the right to distribute the firmware to begin with. Just because your smartband manufacturer wants to do the right thing (in this theoretical universe) and make it hackable, doesn't mean that the chip manufacturers are happy with that. So they might need to switch to another, possibly more expensive chip. And that means the goal of "hackable" needs to be a design goal from the start. Shortcuts they might have been able to make with a closed system are now off the table. You've added another constraint to the design, and every constraint takes time. And money. Advocate that companies produce modifiable devices, sure. But don't pretend that it won't increase their cost at some level. It's not ethics; it's simply good business to lock down products that 99.9% of users won't try to hack. And I'm a fan of hacking devices. I just can see the other side of the argument.

belorn 10y ago

Freedom was incorporated into liberty a very long time ago. in the 17th century, John Locke famously defined freedom by: *"freedom is not 'A liberty for everyone to do what he likes, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws.'. GPL conditions are primarily concerned with freedom from external restraint, such as patents, proprietary licenses and DRM. Negative liberty, which is the freedom from interference by other people, is the other side of the coin from positive liberty, ie the possession of the power and resources to fulfil one's own potential. All FLOSS licenses has positive freedoms, but not all grant negative freedom.

pessimizer 10y ago

That's like saying that Spiderman abuses the words Spider and Man by solely referring to a crimefighter who wears blue and red longjohns, or that Star Wars is a lie because the war was neither between stars or over stars. It's a title for a concept, it isn't a redefinition of the word "free." It is always capitalized. Software can't even be free or unfree in any way other than gratis, unless you're talking about software behind a restrictive firewall - software isn't a person or an animal, generally isn't thought of as having agency or desires, and couldn't care less (or more) about the aspects of whatever license it is distributed under - licensing is for people. It's unbelievable that this could be the main obstacle in accepting a philosophical and political idea that has material effects on the human condition. What do you do when a "stop" light turns green?

kevin_thibedeau 10y ago

You're thinking of the wrong sort of freedom. RMS was motivated by the need to freely control and alter the behavior of computing hardware not software. The restrictiveness of the GPL is designed to guarantee that happens. BSD and MIT code that goes into embedded devices falls into a black hole of proprietary code no matter how free it was to begin with.

jordigh 10y ago

What is it that you want to do that the GPL will not allow you? How is the GPL taking your freedom or society's freedom away?

cbdfghh 10y ago
Personally, I find people complaining about the GPL's lack of freedom a bit hypocritical. What does the GPL prevent you from doing? As a user, nothing. As far as I (a user) is concerned, Mozilla's MPL/GPL, bash's GPL3 and VSCode MIT licenses are all equally free (I can use them and distribute them). So what problem do programmers have with GPL? You can't make a derivative closed source work. So you want to make a non-free work, fine. I'm not a GPL-or-bust guy. But are _your_ programs free?
- prodigal_erik 10y ago
  It's not just that they want to make a non-free work, it's that they want my help, offering nothing in return.
  - cbdfghh 10y ago
    That's also true. Sometimes I suspect the main programmers for Apache2/BSD/MIT licensed works actually hope their works get used by the big guys so they can get employment there. That's why I've never heard any BSD guys getting upset at MS for ripping off their work, while getting upset at Linux for doing the same.
- fryguy 10y ago
  > You can't make a derivative closed source work. That's not it. Your license has to be GPL in order to use any GPL code. I try to make the stuff I do on my personal time under the MIT license, which means I can't use GPL code, but GPL code can incorporate my code. Tell me which license is more free now. Also, it completely disregards the scope of things. If I incorporate a GPL library into my software for say JSON parsing, then it means my entire program must be GPL. Thankfully most libraries aren't GPL but LGPL. The other thing is that you can't use proprietary libraries in your own code that has been infected with GPL. If you want to develop your own software that incorporates GPL code and even release it to your users, it's impossible to link against proprietary libraries.

Ace17 10y ago

> There are certainly licenses offering more freedom than GPL v3. More freedom to who? Users, distributors, maintainers, vendors, service providers? You can't guarantee complete freedom to each of them simultaneously. For example, allowing distributors to do everything they want (e.g not providing source code) will prevent users to do everything they want (e.g modifying the program). So it makes no sense to talk about which license "offers more freedom". So, let's stop saying imprecise things like "GPL code doesn't give me freedom because I can't use such code in my proprietary software". The free software movement is about protecting the freedoms of the end users first.

fryguy 10y ago
There is absolutely no possible way that you can defend GPL as being more free than licenses like BSD/MIT. Copyright is about being able to copy the software. GPL places restrictions on who is able to copy your software. BSD/MIT place less restrictions. It's black and white; there is no argument. When a project includes code from another project (be it GPL or MIT), it is creating a new work under copyright. What GPL does is hold the developer ransom with a lighter over the GPL code, in order to guarantee the new work is distributed to other people with the same restrictive license. It just means that code under GPL is orders of magnitude less valuable to the world than code under less restrictive licenses. It's not just about proprietary software that can't put GPL code into their software, but software that's released under less restrictive licenses as well. If code is GPL, I just stay away.
- prodigal_erik 10y ago
  You can't take credit for a lack of restrictions when users face draconian binary-only no-redistribution-ever restrictions that you turned a blind eye to. While we're voting with our feet, I don't contribute to BSD projects unless I'm paid to, because it's mostly feeding parasites.
- vacri 10y ago
  > It just means that code under GPL is orders of magnitude less valuable to the world than code under less restrictive licenses. The most-installed kernel in the world is GPL-licensed. I'm not sure how it could possibly be orders of magnitude more valuable. > What GPL does is hold the developer ransom with a lighter over the GPL code It's not a 'ransom' when the ticket price is clearly displayed for all to see. If you don't want to play, that's cool, find another sandpit to play in. Like it or not, the GPL moved the needle back towards end-user friendliness, and without it and it's knock-on effects elsewhere, being a developer today would be a much more frustrating experience.

jcora 10y ago

Yeah I think you have the opposite mindset than me. Just letting people do what they want is _not_ fighting for freedom, but fighting for the status quo, because inequality exists. In other words the struggle is real

tscs37 10y ago

I think "Free Code" encompasses the ideology that ""free software"" wants to be much better and more efficiently than ""free software"". "Free Code" means the code is free as in free beer. You can get it, consume it and share it with friends. Once tasted, you can start a brewery and imitate the flavor if you want.