9 ms·

Stallman Video: If You Want Freedom, Don’t Use Proprietary Software

50 points by jolie 16y ago

jarin 16y ago
"If you prefer convenience — well, best to stop complaining about your loss of freedom and/or privacy." Bingo.
- johnswamps 16y ago
  But that's not what Stallman believes, that's what the author of the article wrote. What makes a freedom a freedom (to me) is that you have the ability to waive a freedom if you wish to do so -- otherwise it's an obligation. And Stallman is of the opinion that you should never trade freedom (at least when it comes to proprietary software) for convenience. I actually asked him about this a few weeks back, if he thought there were situations where it's reasonable to willingly and in full knowledge give up some freedom (the question was in the context of software as a service). He interrupted me before I finished and said that you should never do that, because even if you're not giving up much freedom now, they'll be taking more and more of it as times goes on. (I hope I'm not misrepresenting his views, but that is the impression I got.) I disagree. While perhaps it's wrong that many people give up freedom without really knowing that they're doing so, I think it's reasonable to on occasion to do it if you know the trade-off you're making.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
    - Groxx 16y ago
      I'll remove it, as it's mistaken. Sorry, internets! Slippery slope == fallacy is still true though, and it's still a wholly invalid standpoint.
    - freetard 16y ago
      Stallman usually talks about software when it comes to freedom. I wouldn't make any conclusions on his opinion about "freedom to kill" without asking him for clarification.
    - johnswamps 16y ago
      Sorry, perhaps my post generalized too much. This was in the context of proprietary software, specifically software as a service. I've edited my post to clarify that.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
ihodes 16y ago
Makes sense to me. Regardless of if the software if free, you do have the choice to use it. I love the idea of free software, but in practice it's left a lot to be desired for me. For others, more power to them if it works for them.
- Groxx 16y ago
  Same. Proprietary software provides unique encouragement for something to be created. In my experience, much of free-OSS has been significantly worse than a cheap proprietary, if it exists at all. "much", not "all" by any means. Some utterly, incomparably awesome stuff has come out as OSS.
  - rdtsc 16y ago
    > In my experience, much of free-OSS has been significantly worse than a cheap proprietary, if it exists at all. For us, OSS has worked a lot better. Having the ability to inspect the source code all the way down to the hardware level, tweak it, adjust it, and share the fixes with the world is a lot better than waiting for that phone call back or that tech support email back. -- This is the practical benefit of OSS. It also appeals to those who want to understand how the system works, and those who dislike dealing with black-boxes that constantly break.
  - sp332 16y ago
    OSS software junk may get better press than it deserves. But there are many, many times more proprietary software junk. e.g. http://cd.textfiles.com/directory.html http://cd.textfiles.com/directory.html
  - Groxx 16y ago
    To both / all replying to this: I'm not in any way claiming proprietary doesn't have crap. It's got loads of crap. But I'd be willing to bet that a large amount of the most used applications out there are proprietary, in many cases because there is no comparable OSS equivalent. And remember that the deciding factor in many cases is user interface - the average user does not care if they can hack it. Many many many OSS projects which could be contenders have absolutely abysmal UI and help documents.
petercooper 16y ago
It must have taken him a while to get to that conference, not having used any planes or modern motorized transport that rely on proprietary software.
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  Do you think you could have posted this comment without using any Free Software?
  - petercooper 16y ago
    I doubt it! But, unlike Stallman, I support progress in all its forms, encumbered or not, and enjoy the advantages offered by free /and/ proprietary software.
- pingswept 16y ago
  I think you may have inadvertently implied that Stallman is too practical. A first!
jdietrich 16y ago
I have wrestled with this quandry for years, regularly alternating between Macs and Linux-based computers. My personal choice is slightly more fine-grained - I use proprietary software, but will not invest in it, so as to avoid lock-in. I won't use anything that requires proprietary file formats. I use a proprietary text editor, but only because it offers a familiar vi-mode interface. I do a brief mental audit every few months - If I expect it to take more than a day to migrate to a fully-open environment, I know I've ceded too much control to software companies. I think Stallman is a fundamentalist, but an important one. I think he prompts debate and exemplifies practice in a way that is only possible because he simply will not touch proprietary software. Seth Godin recently argued that one of the most underrated properties of the internet is its ability to show us the limits of what is possible and in that sense Stallman is vital. I see him as a figure like Heston Blumenthal or Ray Jardine - there aren't many people with a sous-vide setup in their kitchen or hiking the Appalachian Trail with an eight pound pack, but their example broadens all our horizons.
- jasonkester 16y ago
  Why wrestle with it even for a second? If a piece of software is useful, use it. If it's useful enough to pay money for, pay money for it. It's just not an area that requires ideology to enter into your decision-making process in any way. As you've noted, they've got a guy on the internet saying every possible thing there is to say. Do yourself a favor and ignore pretty much all of them.
  - jdietrich 16y ago
    Because I have personal experience of being completely shafted by software companies. In a past life I was a music technology geek. Recording engineers spend huge amounts of time, effort and money on learning our preferred Digital Audio Workstation software, which has come to replace almost every piece of equipment in a modern recording studio. Think of it as the audio equivalent of Photoshop, but with half a dozen competing alternatives. It's the kind of software you go on training courses for, the kind that comes in a huge box to make you feel like you're getting your money's worth, the kind that has multi-thousand dollar plugins available. The market leader, DigiDesign Pro Tools, only works with DigiDesign's proprietary hardware, which can easily run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Two major upheavals shafted a lot of audio engineers. One of the most popular DAW suites is a package called Logic. After nearly twenty years of development, Emagic sold out to Apple and Apple decided to abandon the PC version. Suddenly guys who had used the same piece of software all day every day for a decade or more were faced with either buying at least one top-end Mac, having to learn to use OS X and potentially a whole bunch of other software, or abandon their preferred DAW and have to relearn how to do their work in a different DAW. Either option would prove enormously expensive for a lot of engineers, both in direct costs and lost work. When Apple shifted over to Intel, there was a huge lag from many developers in getting updates released. For engineers, this is a serious problem - having the fastest hardware and the latest software is a significant competitive advantage. A lot of people lost out on work, or had to buy PCs or new audio hardware. The experience of that world has led to my current position. Professionals in all sorts of disciplines have huge personal investments in particular software and are often completely betrayed by the developers. EULAs are a one-way street and only the most rarified of enterprise software has any sort of reciprocal commitment. What Stallman talks about isn't purely abstract. Relying on proprietary software is dangerous, for very straightforward practical reasons.
CitizenKane 16y ago
I've heard Stallman's arguments quite a bit and every time I hear them they don't ring entirely true. Pratically speaking, the freedoms granted by free software are primarily meaningful to developers. If you can't modify the software (or have no concept of what source code is) these freedoms largely become meaningless. By the same token, if the source code is absolutely terrible the freedom to modify it is next to meaningless (I've had to deal with this issue a fair amount myself). There seem to be a couple of implicit arguments in this that I find interesting. First, that others aren't to be trusted. Second, that software is in no way an invention. Regarding the first, I think that for most people they have to rely on the developer of the software they use. If the developer decides to stop working on it they can get screwed. With open source software they may be able to find another developer, but then they are simply at the mercy of the other developer. Their lack of freedom isn't shaped by whether the software is open source or not, it's shaped by their lack of knowledge. Regarding the second, it seems that the argument for free software is an argument for free speech. This in essence means that software is exlusively a work of creativity (an thus copyrightable) and is not a work of invention (thus not patentable). I don't completely buy this argument. I think software is unique in that it has aspects of both creativity and invention. On one end of the spectrum _why would definitely epitomize the creative aspect of software. On the other end, software paired with super computers and embedded systems certainly come closer to machines. Overall, I these are tricky things to deal with. I don't think that all software should be out in the open, nor do I think that every piece of software should be cloesd away. I think the free software community needs to have a more nuanced view of the world and that having one will bear more fruit.
- yason 16y ago
  I'm a developer but I don't develop most of the programs that I use every day. I don't even read the source code of these programs. With regard to programs that I don't develop, I'm very much a user who enjoys that almost everything I use comes nicely in packages with Ubuntu. Almost. A few programs that I use need patches or modifications that aren't included in stock Ubuntu. Because I use free software the appropriate patches do exist and are available on which ever website their authors have published them. Or they circulate around on the internet. So, the features I desire suddenly become available via side-channel distribution. Often someone keeps prebuilt binaries of the software available with the same patches compiled in. Or they're available via alternate or backported APT repositories. In some cases, being a developer myself, I download the patches and dpkg-buildpackage them into binaries myself, but generally I not. If I had used proprietary software: - No third party could write patches for it; - I would have to stick with whatever the author decides to release; - I couldn't run old binaries if my OS went through some big upgrade and the author didn't bother to support a yet another binary; - I also wouldn't enjoy the vast repository of prepackaged and configured software that comes with Ubuntu: unless the author was agreeing to take part in an OS distribution, I would have to search, download, and install each program separately. Free software is much more than a single developer's ability to hack on other people's code. Free software is a whole ecosystem that benefits each participant. But since all software will come down to programming, that software ecosystem comes down to individual developers' ability to hack.
cooldude127 16y ago
The problem is that often (not always), proprietary software is just better than any free equivalent. I will gladly sacrifice some freedom to gain quality.
- stretchwithme 16y ago
  and you're not even sacrificing freedom. all you're really doing is paying someone to do some work for you.
  - tome 16y ago
    You're sacrificing freedom if the workers you pay don't give you free access to the source code you pay them to write.
    - stretchwithme 16y ago
      I don't have to know how something is done for it to be worth paying to have it done. I'm not sure freedom is what one gives up in this situation. It seems more like giving up control. And one has to do that in life just to be able to delegate tasks to others. Is it really freedom being given up or freedom obtained by freeing up one's time to do things you value more than examining the code for the microprocessor that makes your clock radio work? And its freedom that makes it possible for one person to offer the work of their minds to others without having to disclose everything about how it is that they are capable of doing it. We are free to make such a deal and then later if we choose another alternative. There is no loss of freedom at any point, just the exercise of one's freedom.
- pingswept 16y ago
  Yeah, there are a few areas where free software gets killed by the proprietary alternatives. I've been waiting for free mechanical CAD and PCB layout software to appear for years. The best free alternatives (Blender, sort of? Kicad? gEDA?) are still relatively weak compared to, say, Solidworks and Altium Designer. I guess I'd say that I'll unhappily sacrifice some freedom to gain quality.
credo 16y ago
From what I've seen, some businesses/organizations have been successfully employed open-source based business plans. However, they don't seem to be software-product-development companies.Here are the categories I see 1. Software companies like Google: Google open-sourced Android, but Android isn't their money-making business. They want to use Android to help their primary business - search and advertising. They haven't open-sourced their search code or their ads code. 2. Consulting companies: These companies focus on generating money from software consulting, not from creating software products. So promoting the open-sourcing of software-products is good for them. The software/consulting division of IBM is a good example of this category of companies 3. Hardware companies like Sun: These companies make their money from selling hardware. They stand to benefit if software is free/cheap and easily available for their hardware. 4. Non-profits: These organizations get money from wealthy individuals/foundations and their software products/websites don't need to generate revenue. I'm curious to know of other open-source business models that have been used to build a sustainable business.
- rythie 16y ago
  RedHat made $653m last year, mostly by selling support.
  - elblanco 16y ago
    That's an interesting example. I wonder how much of the software stack is profitable in this way? I'm willing to guess very little because most software isn't so horridly complex. If you need to pay for support services to use a web browser, a text editor, or some other completely normal piece of consumer level software for example, that would be the software's problem and only exemplifies the areas where open source doesn't work as well as proprietary. Companies make money from software because they devote lots of resources into making software easy to use. Relying on support services to float every random xyz piece of software will make for a very dead industry. The funny thing is that I've never actually seen any viable business models from the open source community about how to build a business around free software (as in beer and freedom) that wasn't entirely couched in "support services". This creates the unfortunate situation that if a company were to create a consumer level piece of software that was easy to use (say, anything by Apple), they would put themselves out of business. Their incentive then is to simply make the software terrible to use so they can sell support services. On top of this, the price of support services is often quite a bit higher than the alternative of just buying software. A thousand dollars of custom consulting will get you about a day's worth of labor hours. If I need to bring in a guy for a week to setup some software, or purchase the $3000 easier to use proprietary software, I'll go with the cheaper option. Even replacing that software at some point in the future, due to lock-in or what have you, is cheaper. Paying a bunch of money so I can figure out how to use an OS to connect to the internet so I can send an email or make a home movie is a waste of my time and money. Ergo, support services only work when the cost of buying a proprietary solution that works out of the box (or with minimal support) is greater than the cost of the free software plus support services. And yes, I recognize that I'm talking about beer here, but for end-users of software, that tends to be the principle consideration. The truth is, most people and companies that use software care very little if their freedoms are being impinged by using MS-Office.
stretchwithme 16y ago
isn't this just another way of saying that nobody should ever pay for others to write code?
jsz0 16y ago
The world has changed so much since Stallman started his crusade. I'm just don't think what he's advocating is realistic which unfortunately makes most of what he's saying irrelevant. You simply cannot avoid proprietary software anymore. It's a nearly impossible standard for even OSS developers & users to adhere to. Think about it. You can't drive an automobile. They all use proprietary software. You probably can't even ride a bike because the traffic signals are controlled by proprietary software. You can't own most major appliances. You can own any cellular phone regardless of the operating system it runs. I guess my point is by advocating this extreme approach Stallman is hurting the cause more than helping it at this point. A more realistic approach has some chance of actually connecting with a broader audience.
- varjag 16y ago
  > You simply cannot avoid proprietary software anymore. Anymore? You really think it was easier in 1980s? Over the years Stallman has singe-handedly affected the software ecosystem in very tangible and important ways. Yes he may look like Osama preaching from a cave in these videos, but make no mistakes, software landscape would've been different and even more sad place if not him.
  - jsz0 16y ago
    I do think it was easier simply because we had far less technology in our lives. Your choice of which operating system to put on your PC is ridiculously easy today but for many people it only accounts for a small amount of the software they buy, use or interact with in their daily lives.
- Daishiman 16y ago
  You have no idea of what you're talking about. You can get Linux distributions that are 100% Free Software nowadays. 8 years ago that was simply impossible. You can be wholly productive on a FOSS system for a multitude of tasks. Seriously, do you even go to FOSS conferences or meetings? If anything the number of participants has increased exponentially in the last few years. More people know and use Free Software right now than at any other point in history. And more governments and states look to Stallman for solutions on many technological issues (look it up; the Indian state of Kerala, several South American countries, etc). FOSS has never been used as widely. Stallman's campaign is a resounding success in comparison to the way things were before.
motters 16y ago
I doubt that proprietary software will ever really go away, but I think that its importance will diminish over time as the heap of free software grows ever larger. Over time the issue of freedom in the digital domain has become increasingly important. Today perhaps more than ever there are an array of forces who are trying to snatch away people's control over their own computing and put it into the hands of highly centralised technocrats, usually by dangling the carrot of convenience. The personal computer is in danger of no longer being personal.
tzs 16y ago
If program X is Free Software, but non-Free program Y will accomplish a task I wish to accomplish better and faster, I consider using X to be giving up freedom. The extra time I spend accomplishing the task with X is time that I am no longer free to use for more interesting pursuits. If it were possible to make a list of everything I wish to do, and then arrange to do those things in the most time-efficient manner possible, there would still not be anywhere near enough time in my likely maximum lifespan to accomplish more than a small fraction of them. I'm not going to further waste my limited time using tools that aren't the best I can obtain for the task at hand.

50 points by jolie 16y ago

jarin 16y ago

"If you prefer convenience — well, best to stop complaining about your loss of freedom and/or privacy." Bingo.

johnswamps 16y ago
But that's not what Stallman believes, that's what the author of the article wrote. What makes a freedom a freedom (to me) is that you have the ability to waive a freedom if you wish to do so -- otherwise it's an obligation. And Stallman is of the opinion that you should never trade freedom (at least when it comes to proprietary software) for convenience. I actually asked him about this a few weeks back, if he thought there were situations where it's reasonable to willingly and in full knowledge give up some freedom (the question was in the context of software as a service). He interrupted me before I finished and said that you should never do that, because even if you're not giving up much freedom now, they'll be taking more and more of it as times goes on. (I hope I'm not misrepresenting his views, but that is the impression I got.) I disagree. While perhaps it's wrong that many people give up freedom without really knowing that they're doing so, I think it's reasonable to on occasion to do it if you know the trade-off you're making.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
  - Groxx 16y ago
    I'll remove it, as it's mistaken. Sorry, internets! Slippery slope == fallacy is still true though, and it's still a wholly invalid standpoint.
  - freetard 16y ago
    Stallman usually talks about software when it comes to freedom. I wouldn't make any conclusions on his opinion about "freedom to kill" without asking him for clarification.
  - johnswamps 16y ago
    Sorry, perhaps my post generalized too much. This was in the context of proprietary software, specifically software as a service. I've edited my post to clarify that.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]

ihodes 16y ago

Makes sense to me. Regardless of if the software if free, you do have the choice to use it. I love the idea of free software, but in practice it's left a lot to be desired for me. For others, more power to them if it works for them.

Groxx 16y ago
Same. Proprietary software provides unique encouragement for something to be created. In my experience, much of free-OSS has been significantly worse than a cheap proprietary, if it exists at all. "much", not "all" by any means. Some utterly, incomparably awesome stuff has come out as OSS.
- rdtsc 16y ago
  > In my experience, much of free-OSS has been significantly worse than a cheap proprietary, if it exists at all. For us, OSS has worked a lot better. Having the ability to inspect the source code all the way down to the hardware level, tweak it, adjust it, and share the fixes with the world is a lot better than waiting for that phone call back or that tech support email back. -- This is the practical benefit of OSS. It also appeals to those who want to understand how the system works, and those who dislike dealing with black-boxes that constantly break.
- sp332 16y ago
  OSS software junk may get better press than it deserves. But there are many, many times more proprietary software junk. e.g. http://cd.textfiles.com/directory.html http://cd.textfiles.com/directory.html
- Groxx 16y ago
  To both / all replying to this: I'm not in any way claiming proprietary doesn't have crap. It's got loads of crap. But I'd be willing to bet that a large amount of the most used applications out there are proprietary, in many cases because there is no comparable OSS equivalent. And remember that the deciding factor in many cases is user interface - the average user does not care if they can hack it. Many many many OSS projects which could be contenders have absolutely abysmal UI and help documents.

petercooper 16y ago

It must have taken him a while to get to that conference, not having used any planes or modern motorized transport that rely on proprietary software.

ZeroGravitas 16y ago
Do you think you could have posted this comment without using any Free Software?
- petercooper 16y ago
  I doubt it! But, unlike Stallman, I support progress in all its forms, encumbered or not, and enjoy the advantages offered by free /and/ proprietary software.
pingswept 16y ago
I think you may have inadvertently implied that Stallman is too practical. A first!

jdietrich 16y ago

I have wrestled with this quandry for years, regularly alternating between Macs and Linux-based computers. My personal choice is slightly more fine-grained - I use proprietary software, but will not invest in it, so as to avoid lock-in. I won't use anything that requires proprietary file formats. I use a proprietary text editor, but only because it offers a familiar vi-mode interface. I do a brief mental audit every few months - If I expect it to take more than a day to migrate to a fully-open environment, I know I've ceded too much control to software companies. I think Stallman is a fundamentalist, but an important one. I think he prompts debate and exemplifies practice in a way that is only possible because he simply will not touch proprietary software. Seth Godin recently argued that one of the most underrated properties of the internet is its ability to show us the limits of what is possible and in that sense Stallman is vital. I see him as a figure like Heston Blumenthal or Ray Jardine - there aren't many people with a sous-vide setup in their kitchen or hiking the Appalachian Trail with an eight pound pack, but their example broadens all our horizons.

jasonkester 16y ago
Why wrestle with it even for a second? If a piece of software is useful, use it. If it's useful enough to pay money for, pay money for it. It's just not an area that requires ideology to enter into your decision-making process in any way. As you've noted, they've got a guy on the internet saying every possible thing there is to say. Do yourself a favor and ignore pretty much all of them.
- jdietrich 16y ago
  Because I have personal experience of being completely shafted by software companies. In a past life I was a music technology geek. Recording engineers spend huge amounts of time, effort and money on learning our preferred Digital Audio Workstation software, which has come to replace almost every piece of equipment in a modern recording studio. Think of it as the audio equivalent of Photoshop, but with half a dozen competing alternatives. It's the kind of software you go on training courses for, the kind that comes in a huge box to make you feel like you're getting your money's worth, the kind that has multi-thousand dollar plugins available. The market leader, DigiDesign Pro Tools, only works with DigiDesign's proprietary hardware, which can easily run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Two major upheavals shafted a lot of audio engineers. One of the most popular DAW suites is a package called Logic. After nearly twenty years of development, Emagic sold out to Apple and Apple decided to abandon the PC version. Suddenly guys who had used the same piece of software all day every day for a decade or more were faced with either buying at least one top-end Mac, having to learn to use OS X and potentially a whole bunch of other software, or abandon their preferred DAW and have to relearn how to do their work in a different DAW. Either option would prove enormously expensive for a lot of engineers, both in direct costs and lost work. When Apple shifted over to Intel, there was a huge lag from many developers in getting updates released. For engineers, this is a serious problem - having the fastest hardware and the latest software is a significant competitive advantage. A lot of people lost out on work, or had to buy PCs or new audio hardware. The experience of that world has led to my current position. Professionals in all sorts of disciplines have huge personal investments in particular software and are often completely betrayed by the developers. EULAs are a one-way street and only the most rarified of enterprise software has any sort of reciprocal commitment. What Stallman talks about isn't purely abstract. Relying on proprietary software is dangerous, for very straightforward practical reasons.

CitizenKane 16y ago

I've heard Stallman's arguments quite a bit and every time I hear them they don't ring entirely true. Pratically speaking, the freedoms granted by free software are primarily meaningful to developers. If you can't modify the software (or have no concept of what source code is) these freedoms largely become meaningless. By the same token, if the source code is absolutely terrible the freedom to modify it is next to meaningless (I've had to deal with this issue a fair amount myself). There seem to be a couple of implicit arguments in this that I find interesting. First, that others aren't to be trusted. Second, that software is in no way an invention. Regarding the first, I think that for most people they have to rely on the developer of the software they use. If the developer decides to stop working on it they can get screwed. With open source software they may be able to find another developer, but then they are simply at the mercy of the other developer. Their lack of freedom isn't shaped by whether the software is open source or not, it's shaped by their lack of knowledge. Regarding the second, it seems that the argument for free software is an argument for free speech. This in essence means that software is exlusively a work of creativity (an thus copyrightable) and is not a work of invention (thus not patentable). I don't completely buy this argument. I think software is unique in that it has aspects of both creativity and invention. On one end of the spectrum _why would definitely epitomize the creative aspect of software. On the other end, software paired with super computers and embedded systems certainly come closer to machines. Overall, I these are tricky things to deal with. I don't think that all software should be out in the open, nor do I think that every piece of software should be cloesd away. I think the free software community needs to have a more nuanced view of the world and that having one will bear more fruit.

yason 16y ago
I'm a developer but I don't develop most of the programs that I use every day. I don't even read the source code of these programs. With regard to programs that I don't develop, I'm very much a user who enjoys that almost everything I use comes nicely in packages with Ubuntu. Almost. A few programs that I use need patches or modifications that aren't included in stock Ubuntu. Because I use free software the appropriate patches do exist and are available on which ever website their authors have published them. Or they circulate around on the internet. So, the features I desire suddenly become available via side-channel distribution. Often someone keeps prebuilt binaries of the software available with the same patches compiled in. Or they're available via alternate or backported APT repositories. In some cases, being a developer myself, I download the patches and dpkg-buildpackage them into binaries myself, but generally I not. If I had used proprietary software: - No third party could write patches for it; - I would have to stick with whatever the author decides to release; - I couldn't run old binaries if my OS went through some big upgrade and the author didn't bother to support a yet another binary; - I also wouldn't enjoy the vast repository of prepackaged and configured software that comes with Ubuntu: unless the author was agreeing to take part in an OS distribution, I would have to search, download, and install each program separately. Free software is much more than a single developer's ability to hack on other people's code. Free software is a whole ecosystem that benefits each participant. But since all software will come down to programming, that software ecosystem comes down to individual developers' ability to hack.

cooldude127 16y ago

The problem is that often (not always), proprietary software is just better than any free equivalent. I will gladly sacrifice some freedom to gain quality.

stretchwithme 16y ago
and you're not even sacrificing freedom. all you're really doing is paying someone to do some work for you.
- tome 16y ago
  You're sacrificing freedom if the workers you pay don't give you free access to the source code you pay them to write.
  - stretchwithme 16y ago
    I don't have to know how something is done for it to be worth paying to have it done. I'm not sure freedom is what one gives up in this situation. It seems more like giving up control. And one has to do that in life just to be able to delegate tasks to others. Is it really freedom being given up or freedom obtained by freeing up one's time to do things you value more than examining the code for the microprocessor that makes your clock radio work? And its freedom that makes it possible for one person to offer the work of their minds to others without having to disclose everything about how it is that they are capable of doing it. We are free to make such a deal and then later if we choose another alternative. There is no loss of freedom at any point, just the exercise of one's freedom.
pingswept 16y ago
Yeah, there are a few areas where free software gets killed by the proprietary alternatives. I've been waiting for free mechanical CAD and PCB layout software to appear for years. The best free alternatives (Blender, sort of? Kicad? gEDA?) are still relatively weak compared to, say, Solidworks and Altium Designer. I guess I'd say that I'll unhappily sacrifice some freedom to gain quality.

credo 16y ago

From what I've seen, some businesses/organizations have been successfully employed open-source based business plans. However, they don't seem to be software-product-development companies.Here are the categories I see 1. Software companies like Google: Google open-sourced Android, but Android isn't their money-making business. They want to use Android to help their primary business - search and advertising. They haven't open-sourced their search code or their ads code. 2. Consulting companies: These companies focus on generating money from software consulting, not from creating software products. So promoting the open-sourcing of software-products is good for them. The software/consulting division of IBM is a good example of this category of companies 3. Hardware companies like Sun: These companies make their money from selling hardware. They stand to benefit if software is free/cheap and easily available for their hardware. 4. Non-profits: These organizations get money from wealthy individuals/foundations and their software products/websites don't need to generate revenue. I'm curious to know of other open-source business models that have been used to build a sustainable business.

rythie 16y ago
RedHat made $653m last year, mostly by selling support.
- elblanco 16y ago
  That's an interesting example. I wonder how much of the software stack is profitable in this way? I'm willing to guess very little because most software isn't so horridly complex. If you need to pay for support services to use a web browser, a text editor, or some other completely normal piece of consumer level software for example, that would be the software's problem and only exemplifies the areas where open source doesn't work as well as proprietary. Companies make money from software because they devote lots of resources into making software easy to use. Relying on support services to float every random xyz piece of software will make for a very dead industry. The funny thing is that I've never actually seen any viable business models from the open source community about how to build a business around free software (as in beer and freedom) that wasn't entirely couched in "support services". This creates the unfortunate situation that if a company were to create a consumer level piece of software that was easy to use (say, anything by Apple), they would put themselves out of business. Their incentive then is to simply make the software terrible to use so they can sell support services. On top of this, the price of support services is often quite a bit higher than the alternative of just buying software. A thousand dollars of custom consulting will get you about a day's worth of labor hours. If I need to bring in a guy for a week to setup some software, or purchase the $3000 easier to use proprietary software, I'll go with the cheaper option. Even replacing that software at some point in the future, due to lock-in or what have you, is cheaper. Paying a bunch of money so I can figure out how to use an OS to connect to the internet so I can send an email or make a home movie is a waste of my time and money. Ergo, support services only work when the cost of buying a proprietary solution that works out of the box (or with minimal support) is greater than the cost of the free software plus support services. And yes, I recognize that I'm talking about beer here, but for end-users of software, that tends to be the principle consideration. The truth is, most people and companies that use software care very little if their freedoms are being impinged by using MS-Office.

stretchwithme 16y ago

isn't this just another way of saying that nobody should ever pay for others to write code?

jsz0 16y ago

The world has changed so much since Stallman started his crusade. I'm just don't think what he's advocating is realistic which unfortunately makes most of what he's saying irrelevant. You simply cannot avoid proprietary software anymore. It's a nearly impossible standard for even OSS developers & users to adhere to. Think about it. You can't drive an automobile. They all use proprietary software. You probably can't even ride a bike because the traffic signals are controlled by proprietary software. You can't own most major appliances. You can own any cellular phone regardless of the operating system it runs. I guess my point is by advocating this extreme approach Stallman is hurting the cause more than helping it at this point. A more realistic approach has some chance of actually connecting with a broader audience.

varjag 16y ago
> You simply cannot avoid proprietary software anymore. Anymore? You really think it was easier in 1980s? Over the years Stallman has singe-handedly affected the software ecosystem in very tangible and important ways. Yes he may look like Osama preaching from a cave in these videos, but make no mistakes, software landscape would've been different and even more sad place if not him.
- jsz0 16y ago
  I do think it was easier simply because we had far less technology in our lives. Your choice of which operating system to put on your PC is ridiculously easy today but for many people it only accounts for a small amount of the software they buy, use or interact with in their daily lives.
Daishiman 16y ago
You have no idea of what you're talking about. You can get Linux distributions that are 100% Free Software nowadays. 8 years ago that was simply impossible. You can be wholly productive on a FOSS system for a multitude of tasks. Seriously, do you even go to FOSS conferences or meetings? If anything the number of participants has increased exponentially in the last few years. More people know and use Free Software right now than at any other point in history. And more governments and states look to Stallman for solutions on many technological issues (look it up; the Indian state of Kerala, several South American countries, etc). FOSS has never been used as widely. Stallman's campaign is a resounding success in comparison to the way things were before.

motters 16y ago

I doubt that proprietary software will ever really go away, but I think that its importance will diminish over time as the heap of free software grows ever larger. Over time the issue of freedom in the digital domain has become increasingly important. Today perhaps more than ever there are an array of forces who are trying to snatch away people's control over their own computing and put it into the hands of highly centralised technocrats, usually by dangling the carrot of convenience. The personal computer is in danger of no longer being personal.

tzs 16y ago

If program X is Free Software, but non-Free program Y will accomplish a task I wish to accomplish better and faster, I consider using X to be giving up freedom. The extra time I spend accomplishing the task with X is time that I am no longer free to use for more interesting pursuits. If it were possible to make a list of everything I wish to do, and then arrange to do those things in the most time-efficient manner possible, there would still not be anywhere near enough time in my likely maximum lifespan to accomplish more than a small fraction of them. I'm not going to further waste my limited time using tools that aren't the best I can obtain for the task at hand.