3 ms·

Yepp, it's a trade off between the rights of the developer and the rights of the consumer / user, you fundamentally can't have both (simplification). RMS goes a

Yepp, it's a trade off between the rights of the developer and the rights of the consumer / user, you fundamentally can't have both (simplification). RMS goes all on the latter side, essentially.

alexvoda 9y ago
Like with most of RMSs terminology, I disagree with the dichotomy of developer vs user. Freedom 1 and 3 apply specifically to users who are or will become developers. I believe what we actually want to talk about is publisher vs user/consumer instead of developer vs user. The FSF people really like their ambiguous terminology, unfortunately.
- Karunamon 9y ago
  It's an important distinction IMO. Roughly 99% of the GPL is irrelevant to the end user if they don't have all of the knowledge, desire, and time to crack open the code and modify it.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    Even if they themselves do not, they have the possibility of finding someone that does.
    - Karunamon 9y ago
      And that's the remaining 1% :)
- digi_owl 9y ago
  I an honestly not sure RMS would make such a distinction. It seems more like one that has grown in into being in more recent years, particularly with the rise of mobile and web.
digi_owl 9y ago
I am not sure RMS makes such a distinction. To him all users are potential developers (or programmers more likely). Frankly he is more concerned with who actually control the computing hardware and software being in use on a daily basis. Keep in mind that one of the issues that got him on his quest was the loss of the ability to modify a printer driver to message those with a print job in the queue that the printer was out of paper. It may seem frivolous, but it made life that much nicer at MIT. Because once the printer down the hall was out, any number of people may converge on it to fix it once they got the message. Without it, any number of print jobs may be sitting in wait because nobody had checked if there were still paper ready before adding another job to the queue.
- danielbarla 9y ago
  I'd argue that he quite clearly does actually make that distinction, though perhaps with different words. (I'm also under the impression that he elaborates quite a bit on the core concept, though I'm unable to easily find a reference). But, e.g. from the GNU Manifesto, 1985: > GNU is not in the public domain. Everyone will be permitted to modify and redistribute GNU, but no distributor will be allowed to restrict its further redistribution. The phrasing is a bit different (it's from a point of view of freedom of distribution), but essentially he's pointing out the copyleft idea; that the code can never go back to a model that doesn't provide the same guarantees. So, there's the freedom of distribution, versus the freedom of someone to restrict the distribution. Both cannot exist at the same time. He's quite clear that the benefits of freedom of distribution outweigh (any potential) benefits of restriction, so he's happy to deny others that "freedom". It gets phrased in many ways, but right or wrong, that's what it is. In that sense, I agree with the poster I responded to; to the person doing the coding themselves, an MIT license leaves more doors open, and hence feels more free.

Yepp, it's a trade off between the rights of the developer and the rights of the consumer / user, you fundamentally can't have both (simplification). RMS goes all on the latter side, essentially.

alexvoda 9y ago

Like with most of RMSs terminology, I disagree with the dichotomy of developer vs user. Freedom 1 and 3 apply specifically to users who are or will become developers. I believe what we actually want to talk about is publisher vs user/consumer instead of developer vs user. The FSF people really like their ambiguous terminology, unfortunately.

Karunamon 9y ago
It's an important distinction IMO. Roughly 99% of the GPL is irrelevant to the end user if they don't have all of the knowledge, desire, and time to crack open the code and modify it.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Even if they themselves do not, they have the possibility of finding someone that does.
  - Karunamon 9y ago
    And that's the remaining 1% :)
digi_owl 9y ago
I an honestly not sure RMS would make such a distinction. It seems more like one that has grown in into being in more recent years, particularly with the rise of mobile and web.

digi_owl 9y ago

I am not sure RMS makes such a distinction. To him all users are potential developers (or programmers more likely). Frankly he is more concerned with who actually control the computing hardware and software being in use on a daily basis. Keep in mind that one of the issues that got him on his quest was the loss of the ability to modify a printer driver to message those with a print job in the queue that the printer was out of paper. It may seem frivolous, but it made life that much nicer at MIT. Because once the printer down the hall was out, any number of people may converge on it to fix it once they got the message. Without it, any number of print jobs may be sitting in wait because nobody had checked if there were still paper ready before adding another job to the queue.

danielbarla 9y ago
I'd argue that he quite clearly does actually make that distinction, though perhaps with different words. (I'm also under the impression that he elaborates quite a bit on the core concept, though I'm unable to easily find a reference). But, e.g. from the GNU Manifesto, 1985: > GNU is not in the public domain. Everyone will be permitted to modify and redistribute GNU, but no distributor will be allowed to restrict its further redistribution. The phrasing is a bit different (it's from a point of view of freedom of distribution), but essentially he's pointing out the copyleft idea; that the code can never go back to a model that doesn't provide the same guarantees. So, there's the freedom of distribution, versus the freedom of someone to restrict the distribution. Both cannot exist at the same time. He's quite clear that the benefits of freedom of distribution outweigh (any potential) benefits of restriction, so he's happy to deny others that "freedom". It gets phrased in many ways, but right or wrong, that's what it is. In that sense, I agree with the poster I responded to; to the person doing the coding themselves, an MIT license leaves more doors open, and hence feels more free.