6 ms·

My, how the tides have changed. Those of us old enough to remember, the landscape looked a lot different 15 years ago. There was optimism, there was a desire t

by jordigh 10y ago

My, how the tides have changed. Those of us old enough to remember, the landscape looked a lot different 15 years ago. There was optimism, there was a desire to install Linux on everything possible, and the GPL was the default license for most new free software that was getting written. It was not without strife. Since 1998, people like esr have been saying how the GPL is passé and is no longer needed because open source won, because open source was superior, because companies would naturally want to share their source code. Nobody needed anymore to be coerced into respecting user freedoms. Then the corporations started to take note and through their clout, they have convinced their employees that nothing is worse than keeping code free. Only unimportant scraps of code can be free, but the real code must remain secret, restricted, proprietary. AGPL is the ultimate evil to be avoided at all costs. I don't like this shift. I miss the Slashdot days. I miss the jokes about installing Linux on dead badgers. I wish we had a collective desire to do something about the most widely deployed proprietary software controlling our lives in the pocket computers so many of us carry around with us. We haven't won. The code is locked up, the spying is worse than ever, and the corporations are winning. They even influence the direction of Linux, actively trying to subvert GPL compliance efforts such as the VMWare GPL lawsuit by pulling Conservancy's funding. The GPL is a much-needed defence. Software controls ever more things of the internet. We need to bring back the rebellious attitude of the late 90s and early 00s. Linux needs to be installed on all of your phone, down to the radio firmware (and the dead badger).

reitanqild 10y ago
Let me just take one point: Only unimportant scraps of code can be free, but the real code must remain secret, restricted, proprietary. Clearly Microsoft missed this as they are open sourcing most (all?) of .Net?
- zer0tonin 10y ago
  Yeah, the real thing is "The only code that must remain secret is one that concerns the business logic". Ie. Facebook has open sourced React, Cassandra, HHVM... but they will never open source the code that powers the newsfeed or the friend list.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - jordigh 10y ago
    Whether you call it "business logic" or "the real code", the fact remains that the real, sneaky, controlling code; the one that manipulates users emotions[1], must remain secret and restricted. I don't think companies that do this have a true commitment to respecting their users, and their rhetoric about the evils of copyleft always make me think, "what are you trying to hide or control?" --- [1] http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/facebook-manipulates-emotions-business-usual-social-media-giant-n144811 http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/facebook-manipulates-em...
- schaefer 10y ago
  Oh really? I don't care for the way the my Microsoft Windows computer changes focus between windows. I'm sure a quick change to DWM.exe (Desktop Window Manager) would make me much happier as a user. I'll even do the work myself. Can you tell me where I can go grab the latest source code for DWM, so I can make those changes? I don't think it's possible for a home user. And I think it's important. (If I'm wrong, I'd love to be corrected.)
  - artimaeis 10y ago
    DWM.exe is not a part of .NET, it's part of Windows. The .NET team has been making strives towards open source, but the Windows team has not.
  - ksk 10y ago
    Can you point to all the things you have modified in programs where you do have source access? I don't find the argument that users will go around making changes and testing them on OS level code to be a credible reason for open-sourcing anything. If you want to say, that having the code helps in other ways for development, or debugging then sure..
    - schaefer 10y ago
      I will not provide an exhaustive list, but I will give a single example. I also wish I had the source code to the controller software to a large motorized rock climbing wall that was produced back in 2002. The "Assent fun rock". Alas, I don't. So... I've reverse engineered the protocol between the device and the native computer controller and implemented my own controller stack from the ground up on linux. Why? because I wanted to add an algorithm that lets the speed of the device respond to the reading on my heart rate monitor. Here's a photo of me on the thing, courtesy of my friend. https://www.instagram.com/p/48WVcbkT6x/ https://www.instagram.com/p/48WVcbkT6x/
      - reitanqild 10y ago
        >> Can you point to all the things you have modified in programs where you do have source access? Good question. Just ask it respectfully because.. > Alas, I don't. So... I've reverse engineered the protocol between the device and the native computer controller and implemented my own controller stack from the ground up on linux. ... it gets better everytime it actually is a hacker on the other end. Have my upvote!
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
lima 10y ago
With the shift to SaaS, more companies are open sourcing their stuff then ever before. AGPL is unpopular because the lawyers are afraid of it :(
Arizhel 10y ago
I miss those days too. Computing was a lot more fun. But the way things were back then depended on peoples' attitudes, and those have all changed, for the worse. You might as well give up; those days are over. People don't care about FOSS, GPL, Linux, etc., except as a means to an end (more profits). The corporations have won, and we might as well get used to constant spying. Also worth mentioning is that this is part of a bigger problem in society. Everything in western (particularly American) society is going downhill, and has been for the last 16 years. We just need to realize that this is inevitable and unavoidable: all societies collapse and fail at some point. The Roman Empire didn't last forever, nor did the British Empire. Internal stresses, corruption, etc. eventually take their toll and it becomes impossible to reverse course. Every big society has collapsed at some point, or at least turned into a has-been, and it's our turn next.
- pdelbarba 10y ago
  People don't care about FOSS -> society is going to collapse. I would argue that if "western" society collapses, it's pretty much the end of humanity. I don't think the Roman Empire was responsible for half the world's GDP and at least half the world's nuclear arsenal... Also, the British are still around. They just gave up trying to control the whole world in an era before speed of light communication.
  - Arizhel 10y ago
    I never said that people not caring about FOSS was going to lead to societal collapse, I said that it was a symptom of a much larger problem in society that will lead to collapse. As for the British, they're completely irrelevant these days, and becoming even less so with Brexit.
    - pdelbarba 10y ago
      Realistically, the colonial era and Brexit were symptoms of two totally different issues. The greater British empire disintegrated in much the same way as those belonging to the Dutch, French, and Spanish. Brexit was the result of the EU being very dependent financially on England (and Germany etc) but it wasn't an issue of England disintegrating, it was the EU falling apart (and if you like a little conspiracy for breakfast, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics).
pdelbarba 10y ago
As someone near the beginning of their career, the corporate attitude surrounding open source terrifies me. I spent a year with a company that made random weatherproof devices and developed a desktop interface for copying data off. It communicated over a simple bluetooth or serial interface using a pre-defined set of commands. We started to get requests to open source the desktop app because people wanted to add some features to it (data export, etc) but when we approached management about doing so, they were horrified and said that it was all proprietary. How on earth is a few thousand lines of Qt code with no algorithmic complexity at all considered proprietary? It couldn't do anything to the device or dump firmware or anything, just receive data. Nobody seemed to understand that if we let the community do some of the work, that was, in essence, free engineering time and the employees could stop wasting their time and work on the device firmware instead. Edit: The best part was that we were using some of the libraries in a way that there was ambiguity over whether we needed to open source the application so instead, they paid the Qt foundation $5k for the enterprise licence instead of the GPL version...
- winkv 10y ago
  what is the name of the company?
  - pdelbarba 10y ago
    I'd rather not say. They weren't a bad place to work, they just had bad upper management.
spacelizard 10y ago
What happened is that the marketing departments from a bunch of proprietary companies realized what was going on and amped up the bullshit. This is a good thing, it means they feel threatened by the concept of free software, which they should. They have been threatening us, the users, with ridiculous licenses for long enough anyway. The fact that these companies fear the AGPL so much is probably reason to start using it more. They won't respond to anything less at this point, they need to be dragged into it kicking and screaming. They have made it clear by now, there is no other way that they will even consider the concept of respecting users' freedoms. This will continue to be the case even with organizations like the Linux Foundation, which, if you look at who their biggest sponsors are, it becomes pretty clear which agenda they are going to be expected to push.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Stranger43 10y ago
I don't miss the fact that nothing actually worked back in the days when Linux and open source was mostly irrelevant to the wider it Industry. I really don't get where your coming from, having been a Linux user since the late 90ies i have seen nothing but progress for the desktop since the arrival of the commercial interest. Yes the community lost some of it's cohesion but thats the consequence of going mainstream and achieving pretty much everything we were hoping for back then. Listening to the FSF people today you often get the same paradise lost sense you get from old hippies who have forgotten exactly how bad the world outside of their bubbles were back then and how much have changed for the better in the meantime.
ksk 10y ago
The shift happened when people became less ideological and more practical/expedient/impatient. As someone whose been using Linux since the 0.9x days, Linux was always about ideology, not technology. It helped that the kernel at some point became 'good enough' , but that was never the point of installing Linux on everything. Its hard to maintain that kind of intensity as a single individual, much less as a collective. At some point, people burn out or lose their drive. But I'm optimistic that it will be back.
- cr0sh 10y ago
  > At some point, people burn out or lose their drive. Or grow older. I started playing with Linux around 1995 - first distro I tried was "Monkey Linux" (ugh!). Eventually moved on to Turbo Linux 2.0, then Redhat 4.2 (IIRC), then SuSE... Anyhow - maybe not since the beginning, but long enough. I was a lot younger then, and perhaps more idealistic than today. But I do agree with the OP that we need to return to our roots on this, and get that drive back. ...and I agree with you that it will be back. Maybe it should start with us first.
eeZah7Ux 10y ago
> The GPL is a much-needed defence. [...] We need to bring back the rebellious attitude of the late 90s and early 00s. Open Source has been commodified into free-as-in-beer stuff to build the next product - that will spy on us.
ythn 10y ago
> Only unimportant scraps of code can be free, but the real code must remain secret, restricted, proprietary. That just seems like entitlement. "Home Depot released a really awesome free toolbox that has everything you need to build a house, but they didn't release the blueprints for Home Depot brand houses, boo hoo"
- jordigh 10y ago
  Home Depot doesn't release software that controls how my computer which I own works, without my knowledge or consent (for example, radio firmware). Proprietary software is about control and ownership. Those peddling make it sound like it's an inevitable aspect of business. Since businesses exist that don't rely on proprietary software at all, we know it isn't actually inevitable.
  - ythn 10y ago
    I was talking more about companies like Facebook releasing React (toolbox) without releasing their actual project source (house). Giving power to the users can be costly and so often software is proprietary if only to mitigate risk. For example, I work for a satellite ISP. If the software running on the modems were completely open down to the radio firmware, normal customers could bring down the entire network by commanding the radio to setup a continuous wave that interferes with other people in the same satellite beam. Or a competitor could look at our source and see which TCP optimizations we have made for the satellite link and copy them (depending on your stance on software patents, this would be hard to protect). So yes, you can "buy" and "own" one of our modems, but solving the aforementioned issues would take a lot of thought, a lot of money, and probably a lot of (hardware) cryptography to prevent malicious radio usage if the software were completely free as in freedom.

by jordigh 10y ago

reitanqild 10y ago

Let me just take one point: Only unimportant scraps of code can be free, but the real code must remain secret, restricted, proprietary. Clearly Microsoft missed this as they are open sourcing most (all?) of .Net?

zer0tonin 10y ago
Yeah, the real thing is "The only code that must remain secret is one that concerns the business logic". Ie. Facebook has open sourced React, Cassandra, HHVM... but they will never open source the code that powers the newsfeed or the friend list.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jordigh 10y ago
  Whether you call it "business logic" or "the real code", the fact remains that the real, sneaky, controlling code; the one that manipulates users emotions[1], must remain secret and restricted. I don't think companies that do this have a true commitment to respecting their users, and their rhetoric about the evils of copyleft always make me think, "what are you trying to hide or control?" --- [1] http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/facebook-manipulates-emotions-business-usual-social-media-giant-n144811 http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/facebook-manipulates-em...
schaefer 10y ago
Oh really? I don't care for the way the my Microsoft Windows computer changes focus between windows. I'm sure a quick change to DWM.exe (Desktop Window Manager) would make me much happier as a user. I'll even do the work myself. Can you tell me where I can go grab the latest source code for DWM, so I can make those changes? I don't think it's possible for a home user. And I think it's important. (If I'm wrong, I'd love to be corrected.)
- artimaeis 10y ago
  DWM.exe is not a part of .NET, it's part of Windows. The .NET team has been making strives towards open source, but the Windows team has not.
- ksk 10y ago
  Can you point to all the things you have modified in programs where you do have source access? I don't find the argument that users will go around making changes and testing them on OS level code to be a credible reason for open-sourcing anything. If you want to say, that having the code helps in other ways for development, or debugging then sure..
  - schaefer 10y ago
    I will not provide an exhaustive list, but I will give a single example. I also wish I had the source code to the controller software to a large motorized rock climbing wall that was produced back in 2002. The "Assent fun rock". Alas, I don't. So... I've reverse engineered the protocol between the device and the native computer controller and implemented my own controller stack from the ground up on linux. Why? because I wanted to add an algorithm that lets the speed of the device respond to the reading on my heart rate monitor. Here's a photo of me on the thing, courtesy of my friend. https://www.instagram.com/p/48WVcbkT6x/ https://www.instagram.com/p/48WVcbkT6x/
    - reitanqild 10y ago
      >> Can you point to all the things you have modified in programs where you do have source access? Good question. Just ask it respectfully because.. > Alas, I don't. So... I've reverse engineered the protocol between the device and the native computer controller and implemented my own controller stack from the ground up on linux. ... it gets better everytime it actually is a hacker on the other end. Have my upvote!

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

lima 10y ago

With the shift to SaaS, more companies are open sourcing their stuff then ever before. AGPL is unpopular because the lawyers are afraid of it :(

Arizhel 10y ago

I miss those days too. Computing was a lot more fun. But the way things were back then depended on peoples' attitudes, and those have all changed, for the worse. You might as well give up; those days are over. People don't care about FOSS, GPL, Linux, etc., except as a means to an end (more profits). The corporations have won, and we might as well get used to constant spying. Also worth mentioning is that this is part of a bigger problem in society. Everything in western (particularly American) society is going downhill, and has been for the last 16 years. We just need to realize that this is inevitable and unavoidable: all societies collapse and fail at some point. The Roman Empire didn't last forever, nor did the British Empire. Internal stresses, corruption, etc. eventually take their toll and it becomes impossible to reverse course. Every big society has collapsed at some point, or at least turned into a has-been, and it's our turn next.

pdelbarba 10y ago
People don't care about FOSS -> society is going to collapse. I would argue that if "western" society collapses, it's pretty much the end of humanity. I don't think the Roman Empire was responsible for half the world's GDP and at least half the world's nuclear arsenal... Also, the British are still around. They just gave up trying to control the whole world in an era before speed of light communication.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  I never said that people not caring about FOSS was going to lead to societal collapse, I said that it was a symptom of a much larger problem in society that will lead to collapse. As for the British, they're completely irrelevant these days, and becoming even less so with Brexit.
  - pdelbarba 10y ago
    Realistically, the colonial era and Brexit were symptoms of two totally different issues. The greater British empire disintegrated in much the same way as those belonging to the Dutch, French, and Spanish. Brexit was the result of the EU being very dependent financially on England (and Germany etc) but it wasn't an issue of England disintegrating, it was the EU falling apart (and if you like a little conspiracy for breakfast, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics).

pdelbarba 10y ago

As someone near the beginning of their career, the corporate attitude surrounding open source terrifies me. I spent a year with a company that made random weatherproof devices and developed a desktop interface for copying data off. It communicated over a simple bluetooth or serial interface using a pre-defined set of commands. We started to get requests to open source the desktop app because people wanted to add some features to it (data export, etc) but when we approached management about doing so, they were horrified and said that it was all proprietary. How on earth is a few thousand lines of Qt code with no algorithmic complexity at all considered proprietary? It couldn't do anything to the device or dump firmware or anything, just receive data. Nobody seemed to understand that if we let the community do some of the work, that was, in essence, free engineering time and the employees could stop wasting their time and work on the device firmware instead. Edit: The best part was that we were using some of the libraries in a way that there was ambiguity over whether we needed to open source the application so instead, they paid the Qt foundation $5k for the enterprise licence instead of the GPL version...

winkv 10y ago
what is the name of the company?
- pdelbarba 10y ago
  I'd rather not say. They weren't a bad place to work, they just had bad upper management.

spacelizard 10y ago

What happened is that the marketing departments from a bunch of proprietary companies realized what was going on and amped up the bullshit. This is a good thing, it means they feel threatened by the concept of free software, which they should. They have been threatening us, the users, with ridiculous licenses for long enough anyway. The fact that these companies fear the AGPL so much is probably reason to start using it more. They won't respond to anything less at this point, they need to be dragged into it kicking and screaming. They have made it clear by now, there is no other way that they will even consider the concept of respecting users' freedoms. This will continue to be the case even with organizations like the Linux Foundation, which, if you look at who their biggest sponsors are, it becomes pretty clear which agenda they are going to be expected to push.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Stranger43 10y ago

I don't miss the fact that nothing actually worked back in the days when Linux and open source was mostly irrelevant to the wider it Industry. I really don't get where your coming from, having been a Linux user since the late 90ies i have seen nothing but progress for the desktop since the arrival of the commercial interest. Yes the community lost some of it's cohesion but thats the consequence of going mainstream and achieving pretty much everything we were hoping for back then. Listening to the FSF people today you often get the same paradise lost sense you get from old hippies who have forgotten exactly how bad the world outside of their bubbles were back then and how much have changed for the better in the meantime.

ksk 10y ago

The shift happened when people became less ideological and more practical/expedient/impatient. As someone whose been using Linux since the 0.9x days, Linux was always about ideology, not technology. It helped that the kernel at some point became 'good enough' , but that was never the point of installing Linux on everything. Its hard to maintain that kind of intensity as a single individual, much less as a collective. At some point, people burn out or lose their drive. But I'm optimistic that it will be back.

cr0sh 10y ago
> At some point, people burn out or lose their drive. Or grow older. I started playing with Linux around 1995 - first distro I tried was "Monkey Linux" (ugh!). Eventually moved on to Turbo Linux 2.0, then Redhat 4.2 (IIRC), then SuSE... Anyhow - maybe not since the beginning, but long enough. I was a lot younger then, and perhaps more idealistic than today. But I do agree with the OP that we need to return to our roots on this, and get that drive back. ...and I agree with you that it will be back. Maybe it should start with us first.

eeZah7Ux 10y ago

> The GPL is a much-needed defence. [...] We need to bring back the rebellious attitude of the late 90s and early 00s. Open Source has been commodified into free-as-in-beer stuff to build the next product - that will spy on us.

ythn 10y ago

> Only unimportant scraps of code can be free, but the real code must remain secret, restricted, proprietary. That just seems like entitlement. "Home Depot released a really awesome free toolbox that has everything you need to build a house, but they didn't release the blueprints for Home Depot brand houses, boo hoo"

jordigh 10y ago
Home Depot doesn't release software that controls how my computer which I own works, without my knowledge or consent (for example, radio firmware). Proprietary software is about control and ownership. Those peddling make it sound like it's an inevitable aspect of business. Since businesses exist that don't rely on proprietary software at all, we know it isn't actually inevitable.
- ythn 10y ago
  I was talking more about companies like Facebook releasing React (toolbox) without releasing their actual project source (house). Giving power to the users can be costly and so often software is proprietary if only to mitigate risk. For example, I work for a satellite ISP. If the software running on the modems were completely open down to the radio firmware, normal customers could bring down the entire network by commanding the radio to setup a continuous wave that interferes with other people in the same satellite beam. Or a competitor could look at our source and see which TCP optimizations we have made for the satellite link and copy them (depending on your stance on software patents, this would be hard to protect). So yes, you can "buy" and "own" one of our modems, but solving the aforementioned issues would take a lot of thought, a lot of money, and probably a lot of (hardware) cryptography to prevent malicious radio usage if the software were completely free as in freedom.