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> But aren't you restricting freedom when you would keep a creator from sharing his software under his own terms? GPL vs BSD all over again. Freedoms conflict

> But aren't you restricting freedom when you would keep a creator from sharing his software under his own terms? GPL vs BSD all over again. Freedoms conflict. The one "freedom" RMS would restrict is the freedom to restrict the freedom of others (one's users). One has to chose at some point. Since there are more users than creators, the freedom of many users is more important than the freedom of one creator. (Assuming any two humans have roughly the same moral value.) So yes, we would restrict a bit of freedom. But that's the only way to prevent even greater restrictions. By the way, RMS never called permissive licences evil. Just weak. And he's not opposed to GPL/proprietary dual licencing, as long as the two versions are the same. It's not weaker than a permissive licence, and the creator has another way to make a profit.

teekert 9y ago
This discussion is one level higher, it is about the freedom of the creator to choose a license for his software. GPL is not better than BSD or the other way around, it is about the freedom to choose a license. The freedom to say to a buyer: "Ok, we have a deal under these conditions." The buyer has the freedom to reject the deal. This is the scenario with the most freedom imho. I'm afraid, but correct me if I'm wrong, that if RMS would be dictator of the world, he would rob people of the freedom to offer their products under their conditions. To me, the RMS world is less free. We could even start to argue things like: In RMS world there would be less software so less ways for people to express themselves freely. Photoshop frees a lot of people from the inability to express themselves in the exact way they want. What is freedom? To me it is the freedom to make deals with others under your conditions and the freedom to reject deals of others because they don't match the conditions you like. This works even when everybody has said attitude, that is the beauty of it.
- Joeri 9y ago
  In RMS world there would be less software so less ways for people to express themselves freely. Photoshop frees a lot of people from the inability to express themselves in the exact way they want. In RMS world all software woud be GPL licensed, including photoshop. In his view there are other ways software companies can make money than selling licenses, and it is up to their customers to demand them to do that. It's impractical to be sure, but crazier things have happened given enough time.
  - rglullis 9y ago
    In RMS' world Photoshop wouldn't even come to existence.
    - teekert 9y ago
      The question is indeed: would Adobe have created Photoshop in RMS world. It's very short sighted to think everything else would be the same except for software licenses.
      - loup-vaillant 9y ago
        In a capitalistic society where proprietary software were forbidden, we may not have Photoshop. To me, that indicates a problem with capitalism itself.
        sokoloff 9y ago
        In a capitalist world where food could not be sold or traded for consideration, I believe we would obviously not have restaurants/supermarkets and it seems very likely either more people would need to be farmers and/or more people would starve. Is that also a problem with capitalism, or a problem with "not capitalism"?
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
        loup-vaillant 9y ago
        I was just saying that if capitalism requires proprietary software, then capitalism has a problem. The unstated (yet obvious) assumption was that proprietary software is evil. I'm not sure food trade is evil. Forbidding it doesn't make much sense to me. Regulating it however makes a whole lot of sense. But we already do. Isn't the cold war finished by now? Surely there could be viable alternatives to the current corporate capitalism veering cyberpunk?
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  There are limits on what is enforcable in a contract. Like, you cannot enslave yourself. It is true that that limits freedoms in some sense. But it serves to protect freedoms that society at large deems more important.
  - afarrell 9y ago
    There is indeed a set of contracts with the property that banning them makes people more free. This set is non-empty. But the argument still needs to be made that proprietary software licences are part of that set.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
      Sure, but (a) RMS actually does make that argument and (b) he AFAIK doesn't actually call for making proprietary software illegal, but just tries to convince people to not produce, endorse, or use it.
      - afarrell 9y ago
        Ah, then someone should reply to the top-level comment with a link to where RMS makes that argument.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
- loup-vaillant 9y ago
  > This discussion is one level higher, it is about the freedom of the creator to choose a license for his software. In part only. You cannot ignore the freedom of whoever that choice of licence affects. We already have restrictions over deals one can make. Stuff like "Grab this gun and kill yourself on camera for the enjoyment of our snuff movies fans. In exchange, your family will get $1M." Sure, it sounds extreme, but many people would give their lives for their family, and I'm sure some sick powerful people take advantage of this. Which leads to my next point: > The buyer has the freedom to reject the deal. Not really. There's a point where the actual choice is between using such and such spying service or proprietary software, or stop participating in society altogether. Don't want your position to be tracked at all times? Imagine your life without a cell phone. Many people would lose friends if they quit Facebook —if only because they would no longer receive their messages. The real reason why so many people are using proprietary software is because they don't have a choice. Microsoft Word is a prime example: everybody uses it, so everybody else has to use it. --- No matter how you cut it, freedoms conflict. You cannot maximise the freedom of the provider without sacrificing the freedom of consumers. More generally, you cannot maximise the freedom of anyone without sacrificing the freedom of everyone else —if only by a little bit. That's freedom's most basic principle: one's freedom stops at others'. One way or another, there's a limit. The question is where we should put that limit.
- craigsmansion 9y ago
  > Photoshop frees a lot of people from the inability to express themselves in the exact way they want. It's not quite as binary. Creative urges and most other human endeavours do not exist in a vacuum. If you are at a friend's house--say a fellow artist, and he shows you how to effortlessly create new art with Photoshop. You might be impressed and enthused and say: "This is great! I want to be part of this," but your artist-friend would have to say: "I'm sorry, but I can't give you a copy, I promised I wouldn't do that" or, more likely, he would have to break laws to support you in your enthusiasm. Now, had your friend be using GIMP he would gladly have given you a copy. Not only because he's your friend and wants to support you creatively, but also because more users generally leads to more development and a better program. He's not just helping you, he's helping himself as part of a greater creative community. So no, Photoshop doesn't completely free you. Someone would have to break the law, or you would have to submit yourself to an arbiter to ask them if you can be part of their community. Usually they just ask for money and a promise not to let anyone else be part of that community without referring those people to them. Free Software lets you share your ambitions without breaking laws or referring to an arbiter. It's a decision you have to make for yourself, but one choice does not free more people to express themselves by default, even if it might feel more free towards your own person at a particular time, but that freedom is not transitive.
  - teekert 9y ago
    I agree! And I use Gimp for that very reason! However, my Photoshop inclined friends would experience the absence of the liquify and Refine Edge tool as an inhibition of their desire to reach their goal (the image they have in mind). In that sense, Photoshop is an enabler for their wishes, Photoshop gives them the freedom to make what they want.
    - loup-vaillant 9y ago
      Surely GIMP could copy those tools, as well as any missing functionality? Couldn't the funding that currently goes to Adobe be devoted to further the development of GIMP instead?
    - teekert 9y ago
- chriswarbo 9y ago
  > But aren't you restricting freedom when you would keep a creator from sharing his software under his own terms? Nobody is stopping anyone. If you create some software, you're free to share it (or not) under whatever terms you like. RMS would not stop you, and would not want to stop you (although he may try to persuade you to favour FOSS terms if you were to discuss it). What RMS would do is avoid your software if your terms aren't FOSS, and perhaps he'd encourage others to make a FOSS alternative if it looks like that might be useful. Of course, this is assuming that the software in question really was made by that "creator". If it actually contains a bunch of other people's work (e.g. FOSS components) then it's not "his" to dictate the terms of. It's this latter situation where the GPL/BSD debate takes place, and it would be a strawman to claim that the GPL restricts a "creator" from doing what they want with "their own work" (since it's precisely the bits which they didn't create and aren't theirs that are the point of the discussion). > I'm afraid, but correct me if I'm wrong, that if RMS would be dictator of the world, he would rob people of the freedom to offer their products under their conditions. To me, the RMS world is less free. No, in RMS's ideal world everyone is free to use whatever terms they like, but most users would shun anything that denies them the '4 freedoms' they've come to expect from everything else. Whilst "freedom of speech" is important, it doesn't imply we should have "freedom of having-people-agree-with-you". Likewise, "freedom to license however you want" doesn't imply "freedom to have-people-use-your-stuff".
teekert 9y ago
BTW, ask yourself, if Freedom conflicts, are you really using the correct definition of Freedom? I strongly believe the definition of Freedom should be applicable to all human without creating any paradoxes. Check all your premises, carefully.
- csydas 9y ago
  Well, to a degree Freedoms compete. As the old adage often misattributed adage goes, "Your right to swing your arms ends where my nose begins." Sometimes our freedoms encroach on other people's own freedoms; despite the notion of an unalienable right, such freedoms are only available via force of some means; monetary compensation, organized violence (state or otherwise), and so on. As rights need some external force to validate, to me it seems reasonable and sensible that you're going to have both competing freedoms as the enforcers will hold different freedoms in higher/lower regard than others. I understand that such a position basically strips away all human dignity and reduces everything to a "might is right" argument, but is that not very much true in many ways? We agree on the freedoms we want to have protected and are more lax about those less important.
  - teekert 9y ago
    The nose hit is a transaction, you supply, I "enjoy". However, I do not agree on the terms of this nose hitting, it only leaves me with a lot of pain. If you would offer me 1 million BTC I might be inclined to agree to the nose hitting, I'm free to do so. I can not be forced into a transaction but I can choose to accept all consequences. No freedom is lost in this case. You should not engage in nose hitting without negotiating the terms of such a transaction, as your should never. You don't know yet if this is a consensual transaction and you should thus withhold from taking an action which clearly involves me. Yes this is a ridiculous example and yes there are many examples where explicitly negotiating terms is not necessary. When this is, and when it not, is a cultural thing. I mean I shake hands with a woman without second thought, an Islamic Imam may need some special compensation before agreeing to it. I'm pushing this discussion to the edge because it feels extremely significant to me. Pushing it over my own boundaries also is a way of testing my premises. I'm certainly willing to change my mind.

teekert 9y ago

This discussion is one level higher, it is about the freedom of the creator to choose a license for his software. GPL is not better than BSD or the other way around, it is about the freedom to choose a license. The freedom to say to a buyer: "Ok, we have a deal under these conditions." The buyer has the freedom to reject the deal. This is the scenario with the most freedom imho. I'm afraid, but correct me if I'm wrong, that if RMS would be dictator of the world, he would rob people of the freedom to offer their products under their conditions. To me, the RMS world is less free. We could even start to argue things like: In RMS world there would be less software so less ways for people to express themselves freely. Photoshop frees a lot of people from the inability to express themselves in the exact way they want. What is freedom? To me it is the freedom to make deals with others under your conditions and the freedom to reject deals of others because they don't match the conditions you like. This works even when everybody has said attitude, that is the beauty of it.

Joeri 9y ago
In RMS world there would be less software so less ways for people to express themselves freely. Photoshop frees a lot of people from the inability to express themselves in the exact way they want. In RMS world all software woud be GPL licensed, including photoshop. In his view there are other ways software companies can make money than selling licenses, and it is up to their customers to demand them to do that. It's impractical to be sure, but crazier things have happened given enough time.
- rglullis 9y ago
  In RMS' world Photoshop wouldn't even come to existence.
  - teekert 9y ago
    The question is indeed: would Adobe have created Photoshop in RMS world. It's very short sighted to think everything else would be the same except for software licenses.
    - loup-vaillant 9y ago
      In a capitalistic society where proprietary software were forbidden, we may not have Photoshop. To me, that indicates a problem with capitalism itself.
      - sokoloff 9y ago
        In a capitalist world where food could not be sold or traded for consideration, I believe we would obviously not have restaurants/supermarkets and it seems very likely either more people would need to be farmers and/or more people would starve. Is that also a problem with capitalism, or a problem with "not capitalism"?
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
        loup-vaillant 9y ago
        I was just saying that if capitalism requires proprietary software, then capitalism has a problem. The unstated (yet obvious) assumption was that proprietary software is evil. I'm not sure food trade is evil. Forbidding it doesn't make much sense to me. Regulating it however makes a whole lot of sense. But we already do. Isn't the cold war finished by now? Surely there could be viable alternatives to the current corporate capitalism veering cyberpunk?
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
There are limits on what is enforcable in a contract. Like, you cannot enslave yourself. It is true that that limits freedoms in some sense. But it serves to protect freedoms that society at large deems more important.
- afarrell 9y ago
  There is indeed a set of contracts with the property that banning them makes people more free. This set is non-empty. But the argument still needs to be made that proprietary software licences are part of that set.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
    Sure, but (a) RMS actually does make that argument and (b) he AFAIK doesn't actually call for making proprietary software illegal, but just tries to convince people to not produce, endorse, or use it.
    - afarrell 9y ago
      Ah, then someone should reply to the top-level comment with a link to where RMS makes that argument.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
loup-vaillant 9y ago
> This discussion is one level higher, it is about the freedom of the creator to choose a license for his software. In part only. You cannot ignore the freedom of whoever that choice of licence affects. We already have restrictions over deals one can make. Stuff like "Grab this gun and kill yourself on camera for the enjoyment of our snuff movies fans. In exchange, your family will get $1M." Sure, it sounds extreme, but many people would give their lives for their family, and I'm sure some sick powerful people take advantage of this. Which leads to my next point: > The buyer has the freedom to reject the deal. Not really. There's a point where the actual choice is between using such and such spying service or proprietary software, or stop participating in society altogether. Don't want your position to be tracked at all times? Imagine your life without a cell phone. Many people would lose friends if they quit Facebook —if only because they would no longer receive their messages. The real reason why so many people are using proprietary software is because they don't have a choice. Microsoft Word is a prime example: everybody uses it, so everybody else has to use it. --- No matter how you cut it, freedoms conflict. You cannot maximise the freedom of the provider without sacrificing the freedom of consumers. More generally, you cannot maximise the freedom of anyone without sacrificing the freedom of everyone else —if only by a little bit. That's freedom's most basic principle: one's freedom stops at others'. One way or another, there's a limit. The question is where we should put that limit.
craigsmansion 9y ago
> Photoshop frees a lot of people from the inability to express themselves in the exact way they want. It's not quite as binary. Creative urges and most other human endeavours do not exist in a vacuum. If you are at a friend's house--say a fellow artist, and he shows you how to effortlessly create new art with Photoshop. You might be impressed and enthused and say: "This is great! I want to be part of this," but your artist-friend would have to say: "I'm sorry, but I can't give you a copy, I promised I wouldn't do that" or, more likely, he would have to break laws to support you in your enthusiasm. Now, had your friend be using GIMP he would gladly have given you a copy. Not only because he's your friend and wants to support you creatively, but also because more users generally leads to more development and a better program. He's not just helping you, he's helping himself as part of a greater creative community. So no, Photoshop doesn't completely free you. Someone would have to break the law, or you would have to submit yourself to an arbiter to ask them if you can be part of their community. Usually they just ask for money and a promise not to let anyone else be part of that community without referring those people to them. Free Software lets you share your ambitions without breaking laws or referring to an arbiter. It's a decision you have to make for yourself, but one choice does not free more people to express themselves by default, even if it might feel more free towards your own person at a particular time, but that freedom is not transitive.
- teekert 9y ago
  I agree! And I use Gimp for that very reason! However, my Photoshop inclined friends would experience the absence of the liquify and Refine Edge tool as an inhibition of their desire to reach their goal (the image they have in mind). In that sense, Photoshop is an enabler for their wishes, Photoshop gives them the freedom to make what they want.
  - loup-vaillant 9y ago
    Surely GIMP could copy those tools, as well as any missing functionality? Couldn't the funding that currently goes to Adobe be devoted to further the development of GIMP instead?
  - teekert 9y ago
chriswarbo 9y ago
> But aren't you restricting freedom when you would keep a creator from sharing his software under his own terms? Nobody is stopping anyone. If you create some software, you're free to share it (or not) under whatever terms you like. RMS would not stop you, and would not want to stop you (although he may try to persuade you to favour FOSS terms if you were to discuss it). What RMS would do is avoid your software if your terms aren't FOSS, and perhaps he'd encourage others to make a FOSS alternative if it looks like that might be useful. Of course, this is assuming that the software in question really was made by that "creator". If it actually contains a bunch of other people's work (e.g. FOSS components) then it's not "his" to dictate the terms of. It's this latter situation where the GPL/BSD debate takes place, and it would be a strawman to claim that the GPL restricts a "creator" from doing what they want with "their own work" (since it's precisely the bits which they didn't create and aren't theirs that are the point of the discussion). > I'm afraid, but correct me if I'm wrong, that if RMS would be dictator of the world, he would rob people of the freedom to offer their products under their conditions. To me, the RMS world is less free. No, in RMS's ideal world everyone is free to use whatever terms they like, but most users would shun anything that denies them the '4 freedoms' they've come to expect from everything else. Whilst "freedom of speech" is important, it doesn't imply we should have "freedom of having-people-agree-with-you". Likewise, "freedom to license however you want" doesn't imply "freedom to have-people-use-your-stuff".

teekert 9y ago

BTW, ask yourself, if Freedom conflicts, are you really using the correct definition of Freedom? I strongly believe the definition of Freedom should be applicable to all human without creating any paradoxes. Check all your premises, carefully.

csydas 9y ago
Well, to a degree Freedoms compete. As the old adage often misattributed adage goes, "Your right to swing your arms ends where my nose begins." Sometimes our freedoms encroach on other people's own freedoms; despite the notion of an unalienable right, such freedoms are only available via force of some means; monetary compensation, organized violence (state or otherwise), and so on. As rights need some external force to validate, to me it seems reasonable and sensible that you're going to have both competing freedoms as the enforcers will hold different freedoms in higher/lower regard than others. I understand that such a position basically strips away all human dignity and reduces everything to a "might is right" argument, but is that not very much true in many ways? We agree on the freedoms we want to have protected and are more lax about those less important.
- teekert 9y ago
  The nose hit is a transaction, you supply, I "enjoy". However, I do not agree on the terms of this nose hitting, it only leaves me with a lot of pain. If you would offer me 1 million BTC I might be inclined to agree to the nose hitting, I'm free to do so. I can not be forced into a transaction but I can choose to accept all consequences. No freedom is lost in this case. You should not engage in nose hitting without negotiating the terms of such a transaction, as your should never. You don't know yet if this is a consensual transaction and you should thus withhold from taking an action which clearly involves me. Yes this is a ridiculous example and yes there are many examples where explicitly negotiating terms is not necessary. When this is, and when it not, is a cultural thing. I mean I shake hands with a woman without second thought, an Islamic Imam may need some special compensation before agreeing to it. I'm pushing this discussion to the edge because it feels extremely significant to me. Pushing it over my own boundaries also is a way of testing my premises. I'm certainly willing to change my mind.