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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 ar

• 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?
            • sokoloff 9y ago
              Capitalism doesn't require proprietary software, but it enables it.
              • loup-vaillant 9y ago
                A little good faith, will you? The idea was that capitalism gives you a choice between proprietary, shitty, or non-existent software. Not much of a choice. Photoshop is often showed as an example where free alternatives aren't up to snuff (I personally don't have an opinion on this one). Hence the short "requires".
    • newscracker 9y ago
      Just in the image management space, we do have GIMP [1], Inkscape [2], Krita [3], just to name a few FOSS applications using GPL that come to my mind right now, among many others. Photoshop may probably not have come into existence in RMS's world, but that wouldn't have precluded any of these from coming up (even if they appear not to be of the same caliber or if they seem like clones of proprietary applications). Your statement would've made a lot of sense probably several decades ago though. [1]: https://www.gimp.org/about/ https://www.gimp.org/about/ [2]: https://inkscape.org/en/about/license/ https://inkscape.org/en/about/license/ [3]: https://docs.krita.org/KritaFAQ https://docs.krita.org/KritaFAQ
      • rglullis 9y ago
        As much as I am big supporter of FOSS - writing open source software as much as I can, financially support developers, and actively try to avoid proprietary solutions when there is an adequate free alternative - I am yet to see any kind of open-source software that is original or that it has managed to create a new industry on its own. All praise to GIMP, Inkscape and Krita, but they only exist because some proprietary software already existed and created the demand for an free alternative.
        • cyphar 9y ago
          That's true for proprietary software as well. Hell, most software is a remake of something that existed in the past. You can find examples of original free software projects that have caused real change (one that comes to mind is the whole Zones/Jails/Containers thing), but that's not really a good measure of whether free software is succeeding. There are countless free software projects that were created as alternatives to proprietary software and have exceeded the original by orders of magnitude. If you want to look at a measure of success other than "amount of work you can do with free software" then that's what you should be looking at. Improvement and innovation often doesn't come from some massive new technology, it's always gradual improvements that really make the difference.
          • rglullis 9y ago
    • snakeanus 9y ago
      And this is a good thing.
• 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".