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> is first and foremost about users No, it's about the software. Free software is free in the sense that it can't be owned, like a common good. Saying you shou

by pluma 10y ago

> is first and foremost about users No, it's about the software. Free software is free in the sense that it can't be owned, like a common good. Saying you shouldn't be able to own (i.e. control access to) software is very similar to the argument that you shouldn't be able to own land. This is a political ideal. The rationalization of that ideal is often made to be about the users but the benefits are indirect and whether they hold up in practice has not yet been reliably demonstrated as far as I'm concerned. Arguing whether permissive or restrictive open source licenses are freer is mostly and argument about the definition of what "freedom" actually means. GPL advocates say open source is about the freedom of the user to get access to the source code of what they are using. Advocates of permissive licenses will say open source is about the freedom of the downstream developer to bundle and distribute the software in any way they please (including in the creation of closed source products). Saying that one or the other of these "freedoms" is not really a freedom is literally just an argument about semantics and not meaningful unless you're specifically interested in having only that conversation. EDIT: Pragmatically IMO the freedom of the end user matters less because they need more than just access to the source code to derive any value of having that access, whereas for a downstream developer the value of being able to do as they please is extremely direct. Especially when talking about libraries which by themselves exist merely to help developers create software and frequently only use the GPL to force the hand of downstream developers when picking a license.

josteink 10y ago
> EDIT: Pragmatically IMO the freedom of the end user matters less because they need more than just access to the source code to derive any value of having that access, whereas for a downstream developer the value of being able to do as they please is extremely direct. Again, like I said, that's clearly debatable. First I think we need to shoehorn some terminology into this conversation in order for it to be useful. You have two clearly distinct roles. You call them "developer" and "user", but that's really imprecise and doesn't correctly capture the use-cases which we're discussing, so here's my attempt: * A publisher (what you call a "developer", someone who releases software, different software, one which will have to "deal" with reciprocal licenses). * A user (one which runs software, usually on devices he own). It may not be the norm, but a user may very well build and modify the software he uses (that is: do development work), and submit patches back upstream (instead of forking/bundling the code and modifications in another product). So while clearly a developer, he is first and foremost a user, and he doesn't need to care about licensing, since he doesn't actually release anything on his own. Example: As a user of a device I buy, I want to be able to modify and replace its firmware when I find it lacking. In this case I'm a user, not a developer, at least not until the need arises. And a "normal user" may not be able to do all these things, but as others have noted, there may be a pre-existing development community which has pre-modified builds available (like Cyanogendmod, OpenWrt, Coreboot, whatever). In that sense, things being open to me, the user, the owner of the device running the code, has an high value anyhow. Not having control over what runs on my devices is unacceptable in a post-Snowden, emerging IoT-ridden world. And I think those concerns are much more important for the IoT-everywhere world we're moving into, than some mere licensing inconveniences for publishers when they free of charge incorporate other people's work into their own product.

by pluma 10y ago

josteink 10y ago

> EDIT: Pragmatically IMO the freedom of the end user matters less because they need more than just access to the source code to derive any value of having that access, whereas for a downstream developer the value of being able to do as they please is extremely direct. Again, like I said, that's clearly debatable. First I think we need to shoehorn some terminology into this conversation in order for it to be useful. You have two clearly distinct roles. You call them "developer" and "user", but that's really imprecise and doesn't correctly capture the use-cases which we're discussing, so here's my attempt: * A publisher (what you call a "developer", someone who releases software, different software, one which will have to "deal" with reciprocal licenses). * A user (one which runs software, usually on devices he own). It may not be the norm, but a user may very well build and modify the software he uses (that is: do development work), and submit patches back upstream (instead of forking/bundling the code and modifications in another product). So while clearly a developer, he is first and foremost a user, and he doesn't need to care about licensing, since he doesn't actually release anything on his own. Example: As a user of a device I buy, I want to be able to modify and replace its firmware when I find it lacking. In this case I'm a user, not a developer, at least not until the need arises. And a "normal user" may not be able to do all these things, but as others have noted, there may be a pre-existing development community which has pre-modified builds available (like Cyanogendmod, OpenWrt, Coreboot, whatever). In that sense, things being open to me, the user, the owner of the device running the code, has an high value anyhow. Not having control over what runs on my devices is unacceptable in a post-Snowden, emerging IoT-ridden world. And I think those concerns are much more important for the IoT-everywhere world we're moving into, than some mere licensing inconveniences for publishers when they free of charge incorporate other people's work into their own product.