5 ms·

I downmoded you. Mainly because I see no freedom in Stallman's vision and phrases like "shiny toys" and "lock yourself" rub me the wrong way. I want my freedom

I downmoded you. Mainly because I see no freedom in Stallman's vision and phrases like "shiny toys" and "lock yourself" rub me the wrong way. I want my freedom to use whatever I choose: open source, proprietary, free, paid, whatever, without some RMS telling me what to do. And I see more freedom in MIT/BSD than in GPL.

delackner 16y ago
Since he argued coherently, honestly, and with good manners, just find someone else to up-mod instead please.
rbanffy 16y ago
The only freedom you give up by using the GPL is the freedom to take away the freedoms of your downstream users. Once GPL'ed, any derivative must also preserve the freedoms of its users. This doesn't happen with MIT/BSD and that's one of the reasons there is a vibrant ecosystem around the Linux kernel and the GNU userland and nothing comparable around *BSDs.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- randallsquared 16y ago
  Freedom and capability are not the same. People have freedoms by default, and they can be taken away, but people lack capability by default, and they must be provided (in the context of software). The GPL preserves capability by removing a bit of freedom, while the BSD license preserves more freedom at the expense of the possibility to remove capability from downstream users.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    It doesn't matter if downstream users are technically capable of exercising their freedoms or not. The point is that GPL preserves those freedoms and MIT/BSD doesn't.
    - randallsquared 16y ago
      MIT/BSD does preserve the freedom, just doesn't guarantee the preservation of the ability. The GPL guarantees preservation of the ability by removing a bit of the downstream developers' freedom. The GPL exploits copyright law in a clever hack to negate most of the harm of copyright law, but it isn't actually providing more freedom than the BSD license. The freest code is public domain, but some countries don't even allow their citizens to publish in the public domain, so...
loup-vaillant 16y ago
> I want my freedom to use whatever I choose: […] proprietary, […] whatever, […] So you want the freedom to lose your freedom, for a short term benefit. Make no mistake: you are not as free to stop using that proprietary software as you might think. Most proprietary software strongly encourage you to stick with them, and make switching difficult. The best examples I have in mind are operating systems and office suites. The same could be said about slavery: you give up all your freedoms for the ultimate short term benefit: staying alive. Fortunately, we try to eliminate this horrible choice, by abolishing slavery. Likewise, abolishing proprietary software might be a good idea. Until then boycott is all we have.
- cschwarm 16y ago
  Slave owners universally don't want to be slaves, thus it's immoral. Buyers and sellers of proprietary software don't have no problem buying and selling proprietary software from others, thus it's NOT immoral.
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    There's plenty of examples of proprietary software vendors doing their best to avoid lock-in from other proprietary software vendors, while doing the same to their own customers. Apple vs Adobe on the iPhone flash issue for example, where Apple proposed open standards and developing directly for iPhone as the two permitted options.
    - cschwarm 16y ago
      Interesting observation, but it has nothing to do with the question of moral behavior. There're also plenty of examples of businesses trying to buy as cheap as possible while at the same time trying to sell as expensive as possible. That just proves that buyers should beware. Also, proprietary software is not equivalent to high switching costs: in fact, it's a rather subjective calculation. If you don't care about keeping your old emails, switching your E-mail client has nearly no costs, for example. Additionally, "free" software doesn't imply low switching costs: develop a large application using the KDE or GNOME APIs, and you'll find that switching is rather expensive. In general, your argument is a red herring: Since switching costs may establish a trap, you should warn about software with high switching costs, not about proprietary software.

delackner 16y ago

Since he argued coherently, honestly, and with good manners, just find someone else to up-mod instead please.

rbanffy 16y ago

The only freedom you give up by using the GPL is the freedom to take away the freedoms of your downstream users. Once GPL'ed, any derivative must also preserve the freedoms of its users. This doesn't happen with MIT/BSD and that's one of the reasons there is a vibrant ecosystem around the Linux kernel and the GNU userland and nothing comparable around *BSDs.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
randallsquared 16y ago
Freedom and capability are not the same. People have freedoms by default, and they can be taken away, but people lack capability by default, and they must be provided (in the context of software). The GPL preserves capability by removing a bit of freedom, while the BSD license preserves more freedom at the expense of the possibility to remove capability from downstream users.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  It doesn't matter if downstream users are technically capable of exercising their freedoms or not. The point is that GPL preserves those freedoms and MIT/BSD doesn't.
  - randallsquared 16y ago
    MIT/BSD does preserve the freedom, just doesn't guarantee the preservation of the ability. The GPL guarantees preservation of the ability by removing a bit of the downstream developers' freedom. The GPL exploits copyright law in a clever hack to negate most of the harm of copyright law, but it isn't actually providing more freedom than the BSD license. The freest code is public domain, but some countries don't even allow their citizens to publish in the public domain, so...

loup-vaillant 16y ago

> I want my freedom to use whatever I choose: […] proprietary, […] whatever, […] So you want the freedom to lose your freedom, for a short term benefit. Make no mistake: you are not as free to stop using that proprietary software as you might think. Most proprietary software strongly encourage you to stick with them, and make switching difficult. The best examples I have in mind are operating systems and office suites. The same could be said about slavery: you give up all your freedoms for the ultimate short term benefit: staying alive. Fortunately, we try to eliminate this horrible choice, by abolishing slavery. Likewise, abolishing proprietary software might be a good idea. Until then boycott is all we have.

cschwarm 16y ago
Slave owners universally don't want to be slaves, thus it's immoral. Buyers and sellers of proprietary software don't have no problem buying and selling proprietary software from others, thus it's NOT immoral.
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  There's plenty of examples of proprietary software vendors doing their best to avoid lock-in from other proprietary software vendors, while doing the same to their own customers. Apple vs Adobe on the iPhone flash issue for example, where Apple proposed open standards and developing directly for iPhone as the two permitted options.
  - cschwarm 16y ago
    Interesting observation, but it has nothing to do with the question of moral behavior. There're also plenty of examples of businesses trying to buy as cheap as possible while at the same time trying to sell as expensive as possible. That just proves that buyers should beware. Also, proprietary software is not equivalent to high switching costs: in fact, it's a rather subjective calculation. If you don't care about keeping your old emails, switching your E-mail client has nearly no costs, for example. Additionally, "free" software doesn't imply low switching costs: develop a large application using the KDE or GNOME APIs, and you'll find that switching is rather expensive. In general, your argument is a red herring: Since switching costs may establish a trap, you should warn about software with high switching costs, not about proprietary software.