15 ms·

The fundamentalist FOSS mentality

74 points by kevkav 8y ago

liotier 8y ago
Ignore the naysayers. I loathe having to trust proprietary software for anything critical or anything I want control over, but there are things for which proprietary software got my money... So focus on your market segment - elsewhere, as all producers know, there will always be a chorus of negativity that you are better off ignoring.
- kevkav 8y ago
  Interesting. Do you mind if I ask what software (or category) have you bought if you don't trust proprietary software?
  - throwaway8879 8y ago
    For me, I'll use the best tool for the job, whether it's FOSS or not. If someone built a great FOSS DAW, then I would definitely switch away from Ableton, Reaper, Logic etc. Until then, I'll use whatever gets the job done in the best way possible. It isn't necessarily about trust.
    - klez 8y ago
      Out of curiosity, when was it the last time you checked on Free audio production tools? I know I didn't check for a while and was pleasantly surprised with the state of the current stack.
  - rhn_mk1 8y ago
    I'm not sure what the parent had on their mind, but the majority of people are forced to buy proprietary software coming bundled with hardware, like the BIOS, CPU microcode, graphics or network card firmware.
  - liotier 8y ago
    Games mostly, some photography RAW post-production applications, an Android language learning application for some African language... Things I'll take as finished products and for which I accept giving up even the pretence of control - same as third-party services actually. Opposite would be anything I consider infrastructural - such as operating system or messaging. When free competitive alternatives lack, I also accept some proprietary drivers. Considering how the industry moves towards managed hosting ("cloud") and how ridiculous it makes my old under-utilized family & friends servers look, I'm thinking that, confidentiality issues aside, I could accept what is standardized enough to transparently swap providers - the way my Internet access is wholly in hands of an access provider that I can swap by plugging another one in a free RJ-45 port on my border router (with no perceptible impact because I use none of their bundled services), or the way my domain names are in the hand of a perfectly replaceable registrar.
naringas 8y ago
> Extreme opinions are rarely correct. this is the only thing I agree with. some things should never be kept propietary unless there are widely availabe (FOSS) tools to reverse engineer them.
- tokai 8y ago
  > Extreme opinions are rarely correct. That is definitely an opinion. If you look throughout history it is clearly evident that extreme opinions were often right (No men have a god given right to rule. Consciousness is material. Other people have a right over their body. Etc.) The "wise" centric position might sound nice, but it is often just a mix of conformity and a weak imagination.
  - Nasrudith 8y ago
    Yeah extreme opinions are large leaps whether their direction is right or wrong. If they take a wrong direction much of the time it may be because most opinions are wrong. There is a depressing tendency looking at history seeing someone stumble upon something groundbreaking, looking at it and saying "Nah that can't be right." and then promptly discarding it. I think the late Justice Scalia had one such ironic moment with his dissent in I believe Laurence vs Texas when he derided a decision as saying under that logic it would lead to gay marriage.
dpower 8y ago
I'm the author of this particular blog post. Curious to see how this is received by the tech community.
- jgrahamc 8y ago
  I read it but I'm not sure what you're trying to say really. Sure, there are people like Stallman, there are others who are more 'pragmatic'. World keeps turning. Do your thing. See how that plays out for you.
  - dpower 8y ago
    Key point is this: If more Linux people embraced proprietary software it would help spread Linux. Simple as that really. As a proprietary app, we have encountered quite a bit of resistance from Linux users, usually berating us for not being open source. I think that's short sighted. We need more pragmatists.
    - 4ad 8y ago
      > If more Linux people embraced proprietary software it would help spread Linux. Linux runs the world. I highly doubt it needs more "spreading".
      - beaconstudios 8y ago
        I think they mean on the user-facing side. Linux runs the world in the sense that it is the backbone of the infrastructure layer, but it's running on very few end-user computers.
        starbeast 8y ago
        Other than all the android phones, tablets, set top boxes and TVs. If you include BSD as well as Linux, you get the Apple computers and phones.
        4ad 8y ago
AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
There's another problem with the "make money by offering support" argument: it incentivizes creating software that requires support, usually via added complexity. Similarly the customization argument: it incentivizes creating inflexible software. I'm not sure there is a monetization strategy that actually aligns with what should be the goals of FLOSS.
- gnulinux 8y ago
  It's not fully FLOSS but double licencing your library GPL and commercial license is another business model, and it seems to be working fine for companies doing this.
  - whitehouse3 8y ago
    Plotly does this with the added option to use their paid, hosted solution. Seems to work for them.
    - gronne 8y ago
      Based on my personal experience: The reason why is probably because of the poorly documented, unstable spaghetti code their public libraries consist of.
      - whitehouse3 8y ago
        Which confirms GP's original idea. There's a fine line between an API that is full-featured and one that can be learned in an afternoon. Plotly is easy to work-through. But if you're aren't comfortable digging through its source code the documentation won't help you. Furthermore, it seems like their support / hosted solution is less for hackers in need of a helping hand and more for completely non-technical users that won't touch JS with a ten foot pole.
        gronne 8y ago
        Yeah well - looks like we disagree. :) - Plotlys api is def. not full featured - more like a proof of concept (unless you are building generic 2d plots). - If you can’t use the api without reading the sourcecode: the api is not documented. - The 3d libraries only work with the simplest use cases. Its pourous, unstable and inconsistent. Like a poc or alpha. I am a “technical user” and its bc. of projects like Plotly I try to avoid js (pole or not).
keiferski 8y ago
I’m not a developer and I don’t have a strong opinion on open-source software either way, but I’ve always wondered: does the fact that developers and other technical people have (comparatively) excellent job security affect their attitude toward free labor and products? If developers had a job outlook similar to say, musicians, would open-source be as widely-used and praised as it is now? Surely some academic economic work has been done on a situation like this?
- throwaway4799 8y ago
  Free labor is distinct from free software and it is misleading to conflate the two. Plenty of people are paid to work on free software, and I'm not talking about Red Hat or SUSE either. See: 90% of the Linux kernel contributors. As for musicians, plenty of them share their music (or flps, or whatever) all the time. Soundcloud, bandcamp, jamendo, magnatune, soulseek... the list goes on.
  - keiferski 8y ago
    1. Right, but I guess I was talking more about the ecosystem itself. If there were no jobs paying people to work on open-source software, would there be as much work done on free software in general? 2. True, but charging money for your music doesn’t get nearly the same negative reaction that paid software often gets.
    - seba_dos1 8y ago
      There's nothing wrong with paid software. I'm happy to pay as long as it's free.
      - Multicomp 8y ago
        This is an interesting double entendre. Do you mean happy to pay as long as it has a permissive/OSS license and comes with source code or that the purchase price is zero, or both? Genuinely not trying to be pedantic, just curious if you were being clever.
throwaway4799 8y ago
No one is entitled to a business model. If your userbase has a culture of being (rightfully, in my opinion) defiant toward proprietary products, that's for you to remedy. If you can't make any money from ancilliary uses of your product (support, hosting, whatever) maybe you should question why you're monetizing in the first place. Free software is strictly more ethical than nonfree software. Any attempt at arguing otherwise basically boils down to a rationalization of 'but I want to make money', which is not a tenable ethical stance. I'm not saying it's wrong per se, but it doesn't inspire goodwill or good sentiments either. Trying to deride people with a strong sense of ethics regarding software production and use by comparing them to religious fanatics is misguided as best, malicious at worst.
- village-idiot 8y ago
  > maybe you should question why you're monetizing in the first place. I assume that the author happens to enjoy food and shelter, how strange of them.
  - throwaway4799 8y ago
    Are you implying that the author is so much reliant on this specific business model that they would likely end up homeless and starving to death if they were deprived of it?
    - village-idiot 8y ago
      Don’t be silly, no. But the chance that they would quit this job and go work on open source code for a living is about 0%. Would you rather they go make proprietary code for a megacorp instead? Nobody seems to single out Google engineers for abuse when it comes to FOSS vs proprietary, it’s always the little guys who get all the abuse.
      - AsyncAwait 8y ago
        He did not get abuse. He got one or two responses two years ago that said that they'd prefer this to be FOSS, I'd prefer Google's tools to be FOSS too.
ptero 8y ago
My 2c: the author has something to say and I mostly agree with many of the things he is saying. However, his choice of labels (fundamentalist mentality / reddit / FOSS defender / etc.) hurts intelligent discussion -- whoever is disagreeing would be tempted to counterattack with a label ("copyright nazi", etc.) rather than discuss the post on merits. Maybe author hopes that choice of words would stimulate discussion, but I think all it stimulates are flame wars reusing old slogans. So the content may be interesting, but the form struggles to make it underwhelming.
mrspeaker 8y ago
I didn't read the other post that was controversial, so I'm only seeing this as a self-contained piece: but what is the author saying? Is it just a laundry list of things about open source? What is it arguing? Is it new, or just someone thinking about FOSS for the first time? I can't see how any of the things mentioned support the conclusion "the Linux community should embrace proprietary software with open arms". Maybe it makes more sense in relation to the other post. If so, I think the essence of it should be worked into this post to give it some context.
shmerl 8y ago
> If we do Open Source Hiri, there is nothing to stop someone from forking it and selling it for less /offering it for free. Tbsync developers have no problem with that. > Also, you literally trust your life to proprietary software every time you jump into a car or onto a plane. Is that a good thing? People do it out of lack of choice, not because they want to. Trusting closed software for communication purposes is especially bad in the age of mass surveillance, so Hiri is actually not an example to be used if you are so interested in pitching for closed software. > There is ample evidence that companies competing using proprietary knowledge is actually a pretty good model for more productivity / technological progress. It’s why we have anti-trust laws. Laws which aren't working for the most part because they have been diluted by monopolists / oligopolists to completely toothless state. > I believe the Linux community should embrace proprietary software with open arms No, thanks. Linux doesn't need to become another macOS. There are cases when proprietary software has no alternatives, but encouraging such situations isn't something to aim for.
mherrmann 8y ago
I had the same experience numerous times. It's great OP is standing up to this. When I'm attacked for writing non-free software, I now respond by linking to https://fman.io/blog/dear-comrade/ https://fman.io/blog/dear-comrade/.
- rhn_mk1 8y ago
  The link is completely irrelevant to the topic. The topic is libre software versus proprietary. The link defends paid software against gratis, or at least misleadingly conflates both aspects.
  - mherrmann 8y ago
    You did read the section "Maybe you also dislike the fact that my project is not open source" right?
    - rhn_mk1 8y ago
      Yes, it's a small part that provides "I think I can't make it" as the only argument. That doesn't really bring anything into the discussion.
      - mherrmann 8y ago
        Before, you said "completely irrelevant", now you say "small part". Which is it? The article mentions and thus applies to both libre vs proprietary and gratis vs paid. And it is definitely meant to apply to both.
        rhn_mk1 8y ago
        As I said, it has a small part mentioning open source, which is still completely irrelevant with its weak argument. I'm not sure what the author is getting at, but it seems they treat open source as gratis, which comes back to the fact that gratis is not the topic here.
      - 8y ago
zzzcpan 8y ago
> If we do Open Source Hiri, there is nothing to stop someone from forking it and selling it for less /offering it for free. Your license can easily stop that in a way that still respects user freedom. Even more than GPL does.
- rhn_mk1 8y ago
  An Open Source license cannot limit for what purpose the software will be used.
  - zzzcpan 8y ago
    It can limit whatever you want it to limit, it doesn't have to conform to any rules.
  - zbentley 8y ago
    There's a substantial amount of legal complexity (and writing) about what exactly constitutes "used" in this case.
  - zeveb 8y ago
    That's because restricting the use of software is restriction of user freedom …
    - zzzcpan 8y ago
      Most open source licenses don't respect user freedom at all and are promoted precisely because they allow corporations to use such software to restrict user freedom. And among those licenses that claim to respect user freedom none actually respect it enough to prevent corporations from distributing such software as user freedom restricting services. Even GPL was not merged with AGPL because corporate interests outweigh respect for user freedom.
throwaway8879 8y ago
>I believe the Linux community should embrace proprietary software with open arms. It would enable many more users to adopt Linux as their daily driver. Depending on your source, Linux accounts for somewhere between 0.5–3% of desktop users. It’s simply not having the impact it could. If you are passionate about Linux/Open Source software, it’s time to think of the ecosystem as a whole and embrace proprietary software. You sell proprietary software, which is a perfectly fine and decent way to make a living. Why are you defending yourself and exactly what against? It's perfectly alright to make a living the way you see fit. However, I'd rather not have the Linux community "embrace proprietary software with open arms", thank you very much.
- dpower 8y ago
  >However, I'd rather not have the Linux community "embrace proprietary software with open arms", thank you very much. Why? What possible harm could it do? >Why are you defending yourself and exactly what against? I didn't write the article as a defence. I wrote it as food for thought. I would like to see Linux usage increase. I believe those that reject proprietary software outright are preventing this from happening. A vocal minority give the impression that proprietary software is not welcome. This has not been our experience.
enriquto 8y ago
I also believe that proprietary software is morally wrong. I do not care if it has better performance or features; it is just unacceptable on principle. If I'm a fundamentalist for this belief, so be it.
- Topolomancer 8y ago
  Well, using the term _morally wrong_ seems to paint you into a certain corner. I am curious: where do morals come into play here? Why is a written piece of software so much different than, say, a chair that was built by a carpenter. Would said carpenter be morally wrong as well if he did not want to show you how to build the chair? I am _not_ trying to start an argument here---I am honestly curious about your perspective!
  - rhn_mk1 8y ago
    The morality comes from letting the user exercise certain freedoms, which can only be fulfilled with source access. With the spread of DRM into the everyday world, we can see how this is playing out: coffee machines refusing third-party cartridges, printers requiring users to replace ink even if it's not used up, tractors unable to be repaired by the owner. A chair is quite close to its source - some people would find it easier to inspect the object than the blueprint. As such, there's no meaningful distinction between a chair and its source. In terms of freedoms though, a nonfree chair would restrict your ability to inspect or alter it. It would turn into dust when altered, or would be covered with a special layer preventing unauthorized repainting or installing a child seat. All those things refuse the user to enjoy the freedom of operating them whatever way they like, with real consequences. I know I wouldn't buy any of them given the choice, and I consider them malicious. In my book, malice is definitely related to morality.
  - enriquto 8y ago
    > where do morals come into play here? I want to be able to check whether the software does anything harmful for me, and to be able to fix it and adapt it to my needs. Proprietary software effectively curtails the possibility of doing that. Say I am allergic to nuts. Fortunately, when I buy some processed food I can check easily whether it has nuts or not. Now imagine living in a world where food makers sneakily put nuts in their products, in order to "enhance the user experience". And not only that, but they took great efforts to hide this information from the consumers. After all, most people are not allergic, so no big deal here. I would say that this is immoral.
throw2016 8y ago
It's hypocritical for people to continue to benefit from foss and complain about 'fundamentalists'. Without that level of commitment no one would have used Linux and all the early immature and amateurish efforts, there are people here who know what a horror some of the efforts were to use and the long journey to today. Would any of the practical minded folks use any of that? That part of the journey could only be made because of those motivated by ideals. The practical 'middle ground' mindset would not have delivered the rich open source world we know today. If you don't subscribe to the ethics or values driving it it's perfectly ok, but mature discussion needs to recognize that commitment is required to achieve anything. Simply looking at the results and failing to appreciate what it took to get here is a recipe for failure in any endeavour.
- type0 8y ago
  This seem to be the case, the author don't understand that FOSS is usually built by the communities of people that share the same fundamental values (he can call them fundamentalists for all he wants) but it doesn't make his arguments correct. When he complains that FOSS community doesn't embrace the proprietary software - how exactly does he imagine this to be done, no one dictates what software we should use so this discussion is completely nonsensical. This whole idea is like someone would go to the vegan party, bringing meat there and then complain that no one wanted to eat it. Just this unwarranted complaining is enough to persuade many people that could have bought his software to stay away.
  - dpower 8y ago
    I make an important distinction in the article. The FOSS community is not one 'type' of person. There are plenty in the FOSS community who use proprietary software. I have yet to hear a compelling argument on this thread for using FOSS software exclusively.
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
The post essentially lacks any actual arguments addressing the position of the other side and is based on a fallacy. The position of Stallmann is "the long-term societal costs of using proprietary software outweigh the short-term benefits in most cases". "Using proprietary software has short term benefits" simply does not address that position. The fallacy is in equating fundamentalism and extremism and a strong conviction. Having a strong conviction that democracy is a better form of government than dictatorship, and holding to that even tough democracy certainly has its costs and disadvantages doesn't make you a fundamentalist. A fundamentalist is someone who is unwilling to consider the evidence that their position is wrong. Weighing long-term costs against short-term benefits does not make you a fundamentalist. Extremism on the other hand is a completely useless term. Being extreme simply means that you are far away from the mainstream. People who work for free and fair elections in China are extremists. The only reason why "Extreme opinions are rarely correct" is kinda true is because the author is lucky to live in a place where, generally speaking, extreme opinions that are a good idea do become adopted into the mainstream sooner or later and thus are no longer extreme. For one, that isn't true everywhere, and, maybe more importantly, you don't ever get those good idea adopted into the mainstream if you reject them "because they are extreme".
taffronaut 8y ago
I assume that this is the "offending" thread on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/promos/comments/56ymfc/hey_linux_peeps_my_name_is_dave_founder_of_hiri/ https://www.reddit.com/r/promos/comments/56ymfc/hey_linux_pe... Quotes: “This is going to be a very hard sell being a proprietary closed source system to Linux users, many use Linux because they have bought into the idea of open source. Good luck with it anyway” “If it were FOSS, I would have downloaded it and compiled it 20 minutes ago.” Is that it? The rest of the thread seems pretty mild and politely interested. This was two years ago and I think I'd be over it by now.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- phkahler 8y ago
  >> This was two years ago and I think I'd be over it by now. The more I think about it, this was written for marketing purposes. He doesn't really make a point. It just draws more attention to the product.
  - whitehouse3 8y ago
    I tend to agree. There is suddenly a flash, 50% off sale on the hiri website that wasn't there earlier this morning before this link hit the HN front page.
    - dpower 8y ago
      There's no sudden flash sale. This has been there for about a year now.
  - dpower 8y ago
    I'm founder of the company and I wrote the post. I wrote it because despite a lot of negative comments our experience going to Linux has been a good one. Yet the 'fundamentalists' I mention tend to make proprietary vendors feel unwelcome. I believe this is bad for Linux. IMO a vocal minority are actively preventing Linux from expanding.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
mherrmann 8y ago
This article was in the #1 spot on the front page. Now, five minutes later it has completely disappeared. Did you not like the points it made mods?
- kevkav 8y ago
  I contacted the mods about this but haven't heard back. I'm not exactly sure what happened. Maybe some people didn't like the content of the article and decided to flag it? I didn't think flagging could be used as a downvote mechanism.
- detaro 8y ago
  Way more comments than upvotes is a negative signal for the ranking.
xte 8y ago
Well, my own personal response is that "FOSS fundamentalist" are as opposite free people that do not want actual society model but another and "people who describe them as fundamentalist" are simply people that can't think a different society or anything as society scale instead of their own company scale. It's not an offense but a simple reasoned scheme: did you know that at the start of IT golden age software was open? In the USA, not in the URSS. Did you know that in the golden age of USA "rich people" arrive even at 90% of income taxes and they are still happy? I do not talk about centuries in the past or restricted communities. My own personal truth is that you are right many in a FOSS world will be dead. Simply because they do not really produce anything sensible. FOSS world work on innovation, without innovation business die. Today we have near-zero innovation because we can't have anything really new in a managerial-drive world. But again this is a system that work well in the short term, crash miserably in the medium/long term.
maeln 8y ago
The complains about FOSS fundamentalists coming from proprietary software dev' (which I am) always seems a bit hypocritical to me. The reason is, you probably use a lot of FOSS software that were made possible only because a lot of people dedicated time and effort to it. Your servers probably run Linux, if not, the services that you use everyday probably do. Your compiler/language is probably FOSS too, if not, the software that was used to make it was probably. Your OS probably contain some FOSS software or was made using some. Even this blog post was only possible because of free software (medium rely on NGinx, NodeJS, Redis, ...). Today, it is almost impossible to work without at some point relying on a free software or using software that relies on free software. We wouldn't be were we at right now if it was not for FOSS. Hell, a lot of us may not have ever been developers if it was not for FOSS. I know I only learned programming because of FOSS like Ruby, Linux, GCC, ... So I understand that we don't live in a world where everything is simple and where we can all live making free software. But criticizing the people who made your job possible doesn't seem like a good thing.
- dpower 8y ago
  I think I was pretty clear in the article - I absolutely support FOSS. The point of the article was to debunk some of the perceived "evils" of proprietary software. It's not a zero sum game - FOSS vs Proprietary. Rather they can support each other.
  - maeln 8y ago
    I am not saying that you do :) . It is more about the critics of FOSS fundamentalists. As obnoxious as some can be (often the one who contribute the less), we should still respect that without the effort of some fundamentalist to spread FOSS, we may not be able to work like we do today.
  - phkahler 8y ago
    >> I absolutely support FOSS. The point of the article was to debunk some of the perceived "evils" of proprietary software. I took it as a complaint about FOSS fundamentalists. There has always been tension between FLOSS and proprietary, and I didn't feel you added anything of value to that discussion.
pretty_bubbles 8y ago
I disagree with part of your argument. If being FOSS is important to you, by all means, only use FOSS. In some situations it is critical. For example, all of my devices become worthless once they stop being supported, unless they're FOSS. At the same time there are some FOSS fundamentalists that think using proprietary software make you a bad person. They are wrong.
- dpower 8y ago
  If FOSS is important to you, it should absolutely be a factor in your decision. And of course, people can choose whatever they want. I'm OK with that (although I don't agree with it) as long as it only affects you. If your decision affects others and inhibits their ability to work efficiently, then I think you can justifiably be criticised.
- adrianmalacoda 8y ago
  > using proprietary software make you a bad person We don't believe this. We argue that free software is important[0] because it gives users control over their technology, and proprietary software is bad because it denies users that control. We don't believe using proprietary software (whether by choice or otherwise) makes you a bad person. If anyone is actually making this argument I would say they are doing the free software movement a disservice. [0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-impor...
bjpbakker 8y ago
IMO there's nothing "fundamentalist" about rejecting a _particular_ piece of proprietary software. When trying to sell a niche product, r/linux might not be the best place to ask. I'm wondering if the author would have had the same response when someone on a windows or mac subreddit did not want to use their software. Instead try to sell to people who you solve a particular problem for.
- mherrmann 8y ago
  Imho it is fundamentalist if the only reason for the rejection is that it's proprietary. Don't know if that was the author's exact experience. But it has been mine. And it's not just dogmatic and stupid in a similar way as religious fanaticism, it's harmful for the entire ecosystem.
  - bjpbakker 8y ago
    > it is fundamentalist if the only reason for the rejection is that it's proprietary Personally I don't use software that I cannot review myself for tasks that are important to me. That includes reading email. Hence, the reason for rejection is that it's not open source. I don't see how this makes me a horrible fundamentalist, but maybe you care to enlighten me :) > it's harmful for the entire ecosystem I also completely fail to see how me personally want to review source code is harmful to the "entire ecosystem" (I assume you refer to the FOSS ecosystem?)
    - mherrmann 8y ago
      You are, obviously, free to choose the software you use. What you install on your computer is, again of course, completely up to you. What I take issue with are people who jump into any discussion of proprietary software and downvote / criticize with "proprietary" being the only point. A fair criticism should take the form "Cons: Not open source", "Pros: ...". But it never does. It's always just "Nobody needs this proprietary crap". That is what I consider actively harmful, because it suppresses options that may actually be useful, if not for you then maybe for other people. If you don't like it, why not just let it be? I don't like JavaScript. I don't go around forums and shout "It's a horrible language!" where ever I see it mentioned.
zimbatm 8y ago
> If we do Open Source Hiri, there is nothing to stop someone from forking it and selling it for less /offering it for free. We die. And I do worry about my bank balance. The author is fearful of not making money if his code is open source. The rest of the article seems like a justification-wrapper around this. I am not saying that this an unjustified fear but that it doesn't seem to be tackled-on directly. Is there any alternate reality where Hiri could be making money while having their product open source? It seems to work for Travis CI and Sentry where their product has an infrastructure component attached to it.
aethertron 8y ago
Here's another old argument from Stallman against using nonfree software, not addressed in the blog post: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.en.html > As a computer user today, you may find yourself using a proprietary program. If your friend asks to make a copy, it would be wrong to refuse. Cooperation is more important than copyright. But underground, closet cooperation does not make for a good society. A person should aspire to live an upright life openly with pride, and this means saying no to proprietary software. I don't agree that refusing to copy the program would be wrong. "Cooperation is more important than copyright" is a nice slogan. But copyright IS a form of cooperation. In the situation described, you have to choose between cooperating with your friend and cooperating with the software vendor. Stallman is right to point out that it puts one in an ethical bind, and a way to avoid that is to avoid proprietary software. He argues (elsewhere) that the act of offering proprietary software is really bad, because it erodes society's most precious resource, goodwill. As for me, I have a fondness for the FOSS subculture, and a preference for free software, ceteris paribus. I use a mixture of free and nonfree software because I have other more pressing concerns, like choosing the best technological choice for the job, and ease of use, and making money.
- ruskerdax 8y ago
  Copyright is not a form of cooperation. It is a threat. If you copy something without permission, you risk retaliation that is, ultimately, backed by violent force. It is hardly honest to call something "cooperation" under these circumstances.
  - marssaxman 8y ago
    One might speak of "cooperating with the hijackers", or even more commonly one might refer to "cooperating with police officers", even though such cooperation in both cases has been compelled by threat of force. Cooperation would ideally always be a consensual collaboration but common usage of the word would not seem to require it.
  - type0 8y ago
    Proprietary software can be downright dangerous if you tightly integrate it in your work and the vendor suddenly goes away or shuts down the software. But this has nothing to do with copyright, Software Freedom Conservancy defends GPL for the copyright holders that they represent. The biggest issue with proprietary software is the unbalanced relationship with the vendor that it implies.
peterwwillis 8y ago
These arguments are myopic. It doesn't matter if your source is open if people give you money, right? So how to get people to give you money? The first answer is "find a pain point and build a product". Note I said product, not open source tool. The second part is selling it. That's pretty easy: is anyone else fixing this pain? No? Then sell people the product. You can give away your source code, but that's completely incidental. The third part, "Our competitors will fork and steal our business!", is possible, but extremely unlikely, unless you suck at your product. Incumbents don't get unseated without tremendous effort. The longer you're around, the more people will trust you to do it right, and the better you'll be at it, with more features and more customers. (I don't know of a single case of this ever happening; it's usually just a completely new open source product and they compete fairly) The last part, "How do I keep people from just building and using the code for free?", completely depends on how difficult this is, and whether your packaging and selling of the product provides additional value worth paying for. The simplest way is to provide premium services that solve more pain points and to provide this with their purchase. But you can also just make the software so annoying to build, and cheap to purchase, that it makes more sense to buy it.
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  > The third part, "our competitors will fork and steal our business!", is possible, but extremely unlikely, unless you suck at your product. I don't think you appreciate the danger here. Someone can sink a few tens of thousands of dollars into cloning a codebase, then make it to market in a bare fraction of the time it took you to get there. When you say "incumbents don't get unseated without tremendous effort," you're referring to big incumbents like Amazon or Google, or CVS or Home Depot. Sure, at that scale it's impossible to ramp up that quickly. But for small outfits struggling to survive, handing the jackals everything they need to compete with you is flat-out stupid. The barest vestige of a moat, something as small as locking your doors, can be enough to get the jackals to pick easier targets. Having to manage the creation of a software product is an order of magnitude harder than just cloning it and differentiating it from there.
  - peterwwillis 8y ago
erkIfShen 8y ago
The "inconvenient truth" that the author subscribes to is, in fact, a plain old neoliberal capitalist worldview. It is not an objective worldview, since those don't exist, and it is focused on money and power. The author cannot imagine doing anything for society without being compensated with cash, it seems. It sure would be an inconvenient truth for them if their blog and business and business model and a significant fraction of their perks in life were backboned by FLOSS. The author's approach to security is deplorable but frustratingly common, treating security as a feature, as optional, and as something that is too expensive for most software. As a reminder, the author's product is an email client. To the author's proprietary-software mindset: Remember, in the long run, all software is worthless. Someday, there will no longer be email. I have a box of add-on cards with connectors which will never be used again; I think that most folks do. We know that proprietary protocols fade away, that closed languages wither and die, and that siloed knowledge is never cited. To tackle the final argument directly: No, the purpose of software is to compute. Stop being married to work; it's an ugly American meme and doesn't have to be how we live. Finally, here's a popular argument that the author chose not to talk about: What if existing copyright law is unconstitutional? In particular, what if the Constitution's copyright clause forbids copyrights which survive the death of the creator; or what if works-for-hire are inherently disenfranchising to artists? This would align just fine with Stallman's opinion that copyleft is only necessary because copyright law exists; maybe a world where corporations can't take code from their employees as easily would be a better world.
jpereira 8y ago
Does anyone have instances of forking open-source software that supports a business in order to undercut that business?
- remy_ 8y ago
  mariadb / mysql? matomo / piwik.pro? It seems mostly done by the original developers however and not a new 3rd party.
  - Nasrudith 8y ago
    Generally it seems to happen in response to Darth Vader deals "pray we do not change the terms further". OS branches over technical direction disagreements are a closer thing but they generally aren't businesses.
cybervegan 8y ago
But Free Software is a reaction against Proprietary Software... it exists because some people don't want to embrace PS. Hey ho. You go your way and I'll go mine.
- sbuk 8y ago
  > Hey ho. You go your way and I'll go mine. That is the attitude that I can get behind, however neither side of this argument is really prepared to do that. In my experience, FLOSS advocates do appear to have a more fundamentalist all or nothing approach when espousing their opinion online, often aggressively. Ideology is great, but it does lead to book burning on occasion.
rubatuga 8y ago
What is the point of attacking such a minority? If the author claims it is a group of people so close to the "horizontal line", then why feel the need to negate their arguments? If the author is the one saying that strong opinions are rarely correct, why would he mention a different strong opinion that Linux users should embrace proprietary software with open arms? It seems as if the author never realized the true struggles that open source or FOSS (not the same thing, I know) movements had in the early 2000s, with corporations such as Microsoft being outright at war with them. The author only uses the example of his small inconsequential startup.
- watwut 8y ago
  1.) Refuting arguments is not an attack. The article does not read like attack. It is civil and non inflammatory and non insulting. 2.) Those people vocally disagreed with his previous article, him following up defending amd explaining his stance is how discussion work. 3.) Why not? 4.) Why do you want him to be silent and that group to hAve monopoly on discourse?
  - AsyncAwait 8y ago
    I saw the Reddit thread and couldn't find any particularly 'fundamentalist' views in it, not to say that a fundamentalist belief in user freedom is wrong.
    - mherrmann 8y ago
      By which you are admitting to being a fundamentalist. There's other people who do that. They often explode. Not a label I'd want to give myself.
      - AsyncAwait 8y ago
        I personally don't mind the perception that I fundamentally care about freedom of computer users to be in control. It's called a principle and without it, you'd never see any progress. Thanks.
ruskerdax 8y ago
Proprietary software which restricts its distribution and "unauthorized" modification (virtually all of it) is the very essence of fundamentalism. It relies on a rigid and literal interpretation of what constitutes property (e.g. that the concept of "intellectual property" is coherent and non-contradictory) and even goes so far as to use threats, ultimately backed by violent force, to ensure compliance with this belief. To conclude this blog post decrying the skepticism of proprietary software with "extreme opinions are rarely correct" strikes me as particularly ironic and absurd. FOSS is the antithesis of this fundamentalism, as it expressly rejects the use of threats to intimidate others into not copying or modifying code. I'm sure there are some people who make sweeping generalizations that may not apply to all proprietary software, but being suspicious of an opposing viewpoint doesn't make one a fundamentalist.
- dpower 8y ago
  > ultimately backed by violent force, to ensure compliance with this belief This is true of all laws. This is how society works. If you don't like it, in a democracy you can campaign for change. You seem to believe you have a fundamental right to copy someone else's works. If the author of those works grants you permission (open source) - then fine. You seem to suggest that people shouldn't profit from their work. I just don't think FOSS software alone is tenable.
  - ruskerdax 8y ago
    > This is true of all laws. This is how society works. If you don't like it, in a democracy you can campaign for change. I am well aware this is how laws enforced by governments work. It does not necessarily follow that is how society works, or that it must be so. I'd rather stay on topic than turn this into a criticism of democracy, however. >You seem to believe you have a fundamental right to copy someone else's works. If the author of those works grants you permission (open source) - then fine. On the contrary, you seem to believe you have a fundamental right to use violent threats to intimidate me into not copying or modifying code. >You seem to suggest that people shouldn't profit from their work. I absolutely do not suggest that. There are ways one can profit from software development (or other creative and technical endeavors) that don't involve threatening people with violent force. >I just don't think FOSS software alone is tenable. I understand that. At least acknowledge that you are the fundamentalist here, taking the approach that because you don't believe it is "tenable" for software to be free, you think it is pragmatic and therefor acceptable to use violent force to prevent others from copying or modifying code.
TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
The bigger problem with FOSS is that FOSS isn't actually user-editable at all. It's developer-editable - which is not even remotely close to being the same thing, except for that tiny subset of projects where end-users are developers. It's basically open blueprints, not open systems - with predictable results. There's never been a truly open system, although Hypercard, Excel, VBS, and Smalltalk have all tried (and failed) to edge into that space in their different ways. FOSS has certainly never shown the slightest interest in developing an open system. It has always been more of a charter for tinkering than a glorious liberation for end-users frustrated with bugs, poor UI choices, and all the other things that end-users hate.
- AsyncAwait 8y ago
  > FOSS has certainly never shown the slightest interest in developing an open system. Really? I got into Linux originally when I saw how you could swap DEs and customize practically everything. I wasn't a developer back then.
- seba_dos1 8y ago
  Just don't use GNOME. /s
- type0 8y ago
  > It's developer-editable - which is not even remotely close to being the same thing, except for that tiny subset of projects where end-users are developers. There are plenty of FOSS software where one could do meaningful changes that improve your user experience without being a developer. This includes customizing the theme for your desktop, translating the software into another language etc What do you even mean by open system? There are plenty of regular (non-dev) people that propose great ideas for changes to FOSS programs that later get implemented, you don't get this kind of interactions with your users with proprietary sw because that your "intellectual property" and who the hell are you to dictate how to do things with my property attitude (which is, if not implied then anticipated by most users).
tarboreus 8y ago
The statistic of .3% of desktop users on Linux is miles off. It's somewhere between 2% and 3%, or, by some measures, almost a third of the user base of Mac OS. Admittedly quite small, but not nothing. https://netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx https://netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.asp...
yellowapple 8y ago
"Secrecy is not necessarily a bad thing provided a proprietary software vendor’s incentives are aligned with your own objectives." That's the point: if you're being secretive, then your end users are denied the ability - without undue effort - to verify for themselves that you or your software are acting in their best interests or "aligned with [their] own objectives". Transparency is a dependency of trust. No ifs ands or buts. If you can't be transparent because "boo hoo we can't make any money" then I can't trust you, and no reasonable person should. The tired excuse that "but but but the black hats will see our code and hack us" is just that: a tired excuse along the same lines as "security by obscurity". The black hats will find holes in your software anyway, because they're motivated to do so (whether because it's how they put food on the table or because they find it a fun challenge). The least you can do is make it as easy as possible for the white hats to spot those zero-days first. None of the arguments in this article are groundbreaking or compelling. They're the same tired bullshit excuses closed-source devs always try to feed their users for why said users should be fine with "don't worry, just trust us, we pinky-promise we're not selling your data to advertising networks (wink!)". Maybe you are, maybe you're not. Maybe you aren't yet but might in the future. No way to know for sure without full-blown reverse engineering every single build. And note that none of this has to do with software freedom. Yes, most transparent software happens to be free software, but you can be transparent and proprietary. From a trustworthiness perspective, I don't care if there's a thousand-page Apple-style EULA in the source tree; I just want access to the source tree. Conflating transparency and freedom is a tell-tale sign of strawmanning here.

74 points by kevkav 8y ago

Ignore the naysayers. I loathe having to trust proprietary software for anything critical or anything I want control over, but there are things for which proprietary software got my money... So focus on your market segment - elsewhere, as all producers know, there will always be a chorus of negativity that you are better off ignoring.

kevkav 8y ago
Interesting. Do you mind if I ask what software (or category) have you bought if you don't trust proprietary software?
- throwaway8879 8y ago
  For me, I'll use the best tool for the job, whether it's FOSS or not. If someone built a great FOSS DAW, then I would definitely switch away from Ableton, Reaper, Logic etc. Until then, I'll use whatever gets the job done in the best way possible. It isn't necessarily about trust.
  - klez 8y ago
    Out of curiosity, when was it the last time you checked on Free audio production tools? I know I didn't check for a while and was pleasantly surprised with the state of the current stack.
- rhn_mk1 8y ago
  I'm not sure what the parent had on their mind, but the majority of people are forced to buy proprietary software coming bundled with hardware, like the BIOS, CPU microcode, graphics or network card firmware.
- liotier 8y ago
  Games mostly, some photography RAW post-production applications, an Android language learning application for some African language... Things I'll take as finished products and for which I accept giving up even the pretence of control - same as third-party services actually. Opposite would be anything I consider infrastructural - such as operating system or messaging. When free competitive alternatives lack, I also accept some proprietary drivers. Considering how the industry moves towards managed hosting ("cloud") and how ridiculous it makes my old under-utilized family & friends servers look, I'm thinking that, confidentiality issues aside, I could accept what is standardized enough to transparently swap providers - the way my Internet access is wholly in hands of an access provider that I can swap by plugging another one in a free RJ-45 port on my border router (with no perceptible impact because I use none of their bundled services), or the way my domain names are in the hand of a perfectly replaceable registrar.

naringas 8y ago

> Extreme opinions are rarely correct. this is the only thing I agree with. some things should never be kept propietary unless there are widely availabe (FOSS) tools to reverse engineer them.

tokai 8y ago
> Extreme opinions are rarely correct. That is definitely an opinion. If you look throughout history it is clearly evident that extreme opinions were often right (No men have a god given right to rule. Consciousness is material. Other people have a right over their body. Etc.) The "wise" centric position might sound nice, but it is often just a mix of conformity and a weak imagination.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  Yeah extreme opinions are large leaps whether their direction is right or wrong. If they take a wrong direction much of the time it may be because most opinions are wrong. There is a depressing tendency looking at history seeing someone stumble upon something groundbreaking, looking at it and saying "Nah that can't be right." and then promptly discarding it. I think the late Justice Scalia had one such ironic moment with his dissent in I believe Laurence vs Texas when he derided a decision as saying under that logic it would lead to gay marriage.

dpower 8y ago

I'm the author of this particular blog post. Curious to see how this is received by the tech community.

jgrahamc 8y ago
I read it but I'm not sure what you're trying to say really. Sure, there are people like Stallman, there are others who are more 'pragmatic'. World keeps turning. Do your thing. See how that plays out for you.
- dpower 8y ago
  Key point is this: If more Linux people embraced proprietary software it would help spread Linux. Simple as that really. As a proprietary app, we have encountered quite a bit of resistance from Linux users, usually berating us for not being open source. I think that's short sighted. We need more pragmatists.
  - 4ad 8y ago
    > If more Linux people embraced proprietary software it would help spread Linux. Linux runs the world. I highly doubt it needs more "spreading".
    - beaconstudios 8y ago
      I think they mean on the user-facing side. Linux runs the world in the sense that it is the backbone of the infrastructure layer, but it's running on very few end-user computers.
      - starbeast 8y ago
        Other than all the android phones, tablets, set top boxes and TVs. If you include BSD as well as Linux, you get the Apple computers and phones.
      - 4ad 8y ago

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago

There's another problem with the "make money by offering support" argument: it incentivizes creating software that requires support, usually via added complexity. Similarly the customization argument: it incentivizes creating inflexible software. I'm not sure there is a monetization strategy that actually aligns with what should be the goals of FLOSS.

gnulinux 8y ago
It's not fully FLOSS but double licencing your library GPL and commercial license is another business model, and it seems to be working fine for companies doing this.
- whitehouse3 8y ago
  Plotly does this with the added option to use their paid, hosted solution. Seems to work for them.
  - gronne 8y ago
    Based on my personal experience: The reason why is probably because of the poorly documented, unstable spaghetti code their public libraries consist of.
    - whitehouse3 8y ago
      Which confirms GP's original idea. There's a fine line between an API that is full-featured and one that can be learned in an afternoon. Plotly is easy to work-through. But if you're aren't comfortable digging through its source code the documentation won't help you. Furthermore, it seems like their support / hosted solution is less for hackers in need of a helping hand and more for completely non-technical users that won't touch JS with a ten foot pole.
      - gronne 8y ago
        Yeah well - looks like we disagree. :) - Plotlys api is def. not full featured - more like a proof of concept (unless you are building generic 2d plots). - If you can’t use the api without reading the sourcecode: the api is not documented. - The 3d libraries only work with the simplest use cases. Its pourous, unstable and inconsistent. Like a poc or alpha. I am a “technical user” and its bc. of projects like Plotly I try to avoid js (pole or not).

keiferski 8y ago

I’m not a developer and I don’t have a strong opinion on open-source software either way, but I’ve always wondered: does the fact that developers and other technical people have (comparatively) excellent job security affect their attitude toward free labor and products? If developers had a job outlook similar to say, musicians, would open-source be as widely-used and praised as it is now? Surely some academic economic work has been done on a situation like this?

throwaway4799 8y ago
Free labor is distinct from free software and it is misleading to conflate the two. Plenty of people are paid to work on free software, and I'm not talking about Red Hat or SUSE either. See: 90% of the Linux kernel contributors. As for musicians, plenty of them share their music (or flps, or whatever) all the time. Soundcloud, bandcamp, jamendo, magnatune, soulseek... the list goes on.
- keiferski 8y ago
  1. Right, but I guess I was talking more about the ecosystem itself. If there were no jobs paying people to work on open-source software, would there be as much work done on free software in general? 2. True, but charging money for your music doesn’t get nearly the same negative reaction that paid software often gets.
  - seba_dos1 8y ago
    There's nothing wrong with paid software. I'm happy to pay as long as it's free.
    - Multicomp 8y ago
      This is an interesting double entendre. Do you mean happy to pay as long as it has a permissive/OSS license and comes with source code or that the purchase price is zero, or both? Genuinely not trying to be pedantic, just curious if you were being clever.

throwaway4799 8y ago

No one is entitled to a business model. If your userbase has a culture of being (rightfully, in my opinion) defiant toward proprietary products, that's for you to remedy. If you can't make any money from ancilliary uses of your product (support, hosting, whatever) maybe you should question why you're monetizing in the first place. Free software is strictly more ethical than nonfree software. Any attempt at arguing otherwise basically boils down to a rationalization of 'but I want to make money', which is not a tenable ethical stance. I'm not saying it's wrong per se, but it doesn't inspire goodwill or good sentiments either. Trying to deride people with a strong sense of ethics regarding software production and use by comparing them to religious fanatics is misguided as best, malicious at worst.

village-idiot 8y ago
> maybe you should question why you're monetizing in the first place. I assume that the author happens to enjoy food and shelter, how strange of them.
- throwaway4799 8y ago
  Are you implying that the author is so much reliant on this specific business model that they would likely end up homeless and starving to death if they were deprived of it?
  - village-idiot 8y ago
    Don’t be silly, no. But the chance that they would quit this job and go work on open source code for a living is about 0%. Would you rather they go make proprietary code for a megacorp instead? Nobody seems to single out Google engineers for abuse when it comes to FOSS vs proprietary, it’s always the little guys who get all the abuse.
    - AsyncAwait 8y ago
      He did not get abuse. He got one or two responses two years ago that said that they'd prefer this to be FOSS, I'd prefer Google's tools to be FOSS too.

ptero 8y ago

My 2c: the author has something to say and I mostly agree with many of the things he is saying. However, his choice of labels (fundamentalist mentality / reddit / FOSS defender / etc.) hurts intelligent discussion -- whoever is disagreeing would be tempted to counterattack with a label ("copyright nazi", etc.) rather than discuss the post on merits. Maybe author hopes that choice of words would stimulate discussion, but I think all it stimulates are flame wars reusing old slogans. So the content may be interesting, but the form struggles to make it underwhelming.

mrspeaker 8y ago

I didn't read the other post that was controversial, so I'm only seeing this as a self-contained piece: but what is the author saying? Is it just a laundry list of things about open source? What is it arguing? Is it new, or just someone thinking about FOSS for the first time? I can't see how any of the things mentioned support the conclusion "the Linux community should embrace proprietary software with open arms". Maybe it makes more sense in relation to the other post. If so, I think the essence of it should be worked into this post to give it some context.

shmerl 8y ago

> If we do Open Source Hiri, there is nothing to stop someone from forking it and selling it for less /offering it for free. Tbsync developers have no problem with that. > Also, you literally trust your life to proprietary software every time you jump into a car or onto a plane. Is that a good thing? People do it out of lack of choice, not because they want to. Trusting closed software for communication purposes is especially bad in the age of mass surveillance, so Hiri is actually not an example to be used if you are so interested in pitching for closed software. > There is ample evidence that companies competing using proprietary knowledge is actually a pretty good model for more productivity / technological progress. It’s why we have anti-trust laws. Laws which aren't working for the most part because they have been diluted by monopolists / oligopolists to completely toothless state. > I believe the Linux community should embrace proprietary software with open arms No, thanks. Linux doesn't need to become another macOS. There are cases when proprietary software has no alternatives, but encouraging such situations isn't something to aim for.

mherrmann 8y ago

I had the same experience numerous times. It's great OP is standing up to this. When I'm attacked for writing non-free software, I now respond by linking to https://fman.io/blog/dear-comrade/ https://fman.io/blog/dear-comrade/.

rhn_mk1 8y ago
The link is completely irrelevant to the topic. The topic is libre software versus proprietary. The link defends paid software against gratis, or at least misleadingly conflates both aspects.
- mherrmann 8y ago
  You did read the section "Maybe you also dislike the fact that my project is not open source" right?
  - rhn_mk1 8y ago
    Yes, it's a small part that provides "I think I can't make it" as the only argument. That doesn't really bring anything into the discussion.
    - mherrmann 8y ago
      Before, you said "completely irrelevant", now you say "small part". Which is it? The article mentions and thus applies to both libre vs proprietary and gratis vs paid. And it is definitely meant to apply to both.
      - rhn_mk1 8y ago
        As I said, it has a small part mentioning open source, which is still completely irrelevant with its weak argument. I'm not sure what the author is getting at, but it seems they treat open source as gratis, which comes back to the fact that gratis is not the topic here.
    - 8y ago

zzzcpan 8y ago

> If we do Open Source Hiri, there is nothing to stop someone from forking it and selling it for less /offering it for free. Your license can easily stop that in a way that still respects user freedom. Even more than GPL does.

rhn_mk1 8y ago
An Open Source license cannot limit for what purpose the software will be used.
- zzzcpan 8y ago
  It can limit whatever you want it to limit, it doesn't have to conform to any rules.
- zbentley 8y ago
  There's a substantial amount of legal complexity (and writing) about what exactly constitutes "used" in this case.
- zeveb 8y ago
  That's because restricting the use of software is restriction of user freedom …
  - zzzcpan 8y ago
    Most open source licenses don't respect user freedom at all and are promoted precisely because they allow corporations to use such software to restrict user freedom. And among those licenses that claim to respect user freedom none actually respect it enough to prevent corporations from distributing such software as user freedom restricting services. Even GPL was not merged with AGPL because corporate interests outweigh respect for user freedom.

throwaway8879 8y ago

>I believe the Linux community should embrace proprietary software with open arms. It would enable many more users to adopt Linux as their daily driver. Depending on your source, Linux accounts for somewhere between 0.5–3% of desktop users. It’s simply not having the impact it could. If you are passionate about Linux/Open Source software, it’s time to think of the ecosystem as a whole and embrace proprietary software. You sell proprietary software, which is a perfectly fine and decent way to make a living. Why are you defending yourself and exactly what against? It's perfectly alright to make a living the way you see fit. However, I'd rather not have the Linux community "embrace proprietary software with open arms", thank you very much.

dpower 8y ago
>However, I'd rather not have the Linux community "embrace proprietary software with open arms", thank you very much. Why? What possible harm could it do? >Why are you defending yourself and exactly what against? I didn't write the article as a defence. I wrote it as food for thought. I would like to see Linux usage increase. I believe those that reject proprietary software outright are preventing this from happening. A vocal minority give the impression that proprietary software is not welcome. This has not been our experience.

enriquto 8y ago

I also believe that proprietary software is morally wrong. I do not care if it has better performance or features; it is just unacceptable on principle. If I'm a fundamentalist for this belief, so be it.

Topolomancer 8y ago
Well, using the term _morally wrong_ seems to paint you into a certain corner. I am curious: where do morals come into play here? Why is a written piece of software so much different than, say, a chair that was built by a carpenter. Would said carpenter be morally wrong as well if he did not want to show you how to build the chair? I am _not_ trying to start an argument here---I am honestly curious about your perspective!
- rhn_mk1 8y ago
  The morality comes from letting the user exercise certain freedoms, which can only be fulfilled with source access. With the spread of DRM into the everyday world, we can see how this is playing out: coffee machines refusing third-party cartridges, printers requiring users to replace ink even if it's not used up, tractors unable to be repaired by the owner. A chair is quite close to its source - some people would find it easier to inspect the object than the blueprint. As such, there's no meaningful distinction between a chair and its source. In terms of freedoms though, a nonfree chair would restrict your ability to inspect or alter it. It would turn into dust when altered, or would be covered with a special layer preventing unauthorized repainting or installing a child seat. All those things refuse the user to enjoy the freedom of operating them whatever way they like, with real consequences. I know I wouldn't buy any of them given the choice, and I consider them malicious. In my book, malice is definitely related to morality.
- enriquto 8y ago
  > where do morals come into play here? I want to be able to check whether the software does anything harmful for me, and to be able to fix it and adapt it to my needs. Proprietary software effectively curtails the possibility of doing that. Say I am allergic to nuts. Fortunately, when I buy some processed food I can check easily whether it has nuts or not. Now imagine living in a world where food makers sneakily put nuts in their products, in order to "enhance the user experience". And not only that, but they took great efforts to hide this information from the consumers. After all, most people are not allergic, so no big deal here. I would say that this is immoral.

throw2016 8y ago

It's hypocritical for people to continue to benefit from foss and complain about 'fundamentalists'. Without that level of commitment no one would have used Linux and all the early immature and amateurish efforts, there are people here who know what a horror some of the efforts were to use and the long journey to today. Would any of the practical minded folks use any of that? That part of the journey could only be made because of those motivated by ideals. The practical 'middle ground' mindset would not have delivered the rich open source world we know today. If you don't subscribe to the ethics or values driving it it's perfectly ok, but mature discussion needs to recognize that commitment is required to achieve anything. Simply looking at the results and failing to appreciate what it took to get here is a recipe for failure in any endeavour.

type0 8y ago
This seem to be the case, the author don't understand that FOSS is usually built by the communities of people that share the same fundamental values (he can call them fundamentalists for all he wants) but it doesn't make his arguments correct. When he complains that FOSS community doesn't embrace the proprietary software - how exactly does he imagine this to be done, no one dictates what software we should use so this discussion is completely nonsensical. This whole idea is like someone would go to the vegan party, bringing meat there and then complain that no one wanted to eat it. Just this unwarranted complaining is enough to persuade many people that could have bought his software to stay away.
- dpower 8y ago
  I make an important distinction in the article. The FOSS community is not one 'type' of person. There are plenty in the FOSS community who use proprietary software. I have yet to hear a compelling argument on this thread for using FOSS software exclusively.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago

The post essentially lacks any actual arguments addressing the position of the other side and is based on a fallacy. The position of Stallmann is "the long-term societal costs of using proprietary software outweigh the short-term benefits in most cases". "Using proprietary software has short term benefits" simply does not address that position. The fallacy is in equating fundamentalism and extremism and a strong conviction. Having a strong conviction that democracy is a better form of government than dictatorship, and holding to that even tough democracy certainly has its costs and disadvantages doesn't make you a fundamentalist. A fundamentalist is someone who is unwilling to consider the evidence that their position is wrong. Weighing long-term costs against short-term benefits does not make you a fundamentalist. Extremism on the other hand is a completely useless term. Being extreme simply means that you are far away from the mainstream. People who work for free and fair elections in China are extremists. The only reason why "Extreme opinions are rarely correct" is kinda true is because the author is lucky to live in a place where, generally speaking, extreme opinions that are a good idea do become adopted into the mainstream sooner or later and thus are no longer extreme. For one, that isn't true everywhere, and, maybe more importantly, you don't ever get those good idea adopted into the mainstream if you reject them "because they are extreme".

taffronaut 8y ago

I assume that this is the "offending" thread on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/promos/comments/56ymfc/hey_linux_peeps_my_name_is_dave_founder_of_hiri/ https://www.reddit.com/r/promos/comments/56ymfc/hey_linux_pe... Quotes: “This is going to be a very hard sell being a proprietary closed source system to Linux users, many use Linux because they have bought into the idea of open source. Good luck with it anyway” “If it were FOSS, I would have downloaded it and compiled it 20 minutes ago.” Is that it? The rest of the thread seems pretty mild and politely interested. This was two years ago and I think I'd be over it by now.

deleted 8y ago
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phkahler 8y ago
>> This was two years ago and I think I'd be over it by now. The more I think about it, this was written for marketing purposes. He doesn't really make a point. It just draws more attention to the product.
- whitehouse3 8y ago
  I tend to agree. There is suddenly a flash, 50% off sale on the hiri website that wasn't there earlier this morning before this link hit the HN front page.
  - dpower 8y ago
    There's no sudden flash sale. This has been there for about a year now.
- dpower 8y ago
  I'm founder of the company and I wrote the post. I wrote it because despite a lot of negative comments our experience going to Linux has been a good one. Yet the 'fundamentalists' I mention tend to make proprietary vendors feel unwelcome. I believe this is bad for Linux. IMO a vocal minority are actively preventing Linux from expanding.

deleted 8y ago

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mherrmann 8y ago

This article was in the #1 spot on the front page. Now, five minutes later it has completely disappeared. Did you not like the points it made mods?

kevkav 8y ago
I contacted the mods about this but haven't heard back. I'm not exactly sure what happened. Maybe some people didn't like the content of the article and decided to flag it? I didn't think flagging could be used as a downvote mechanism.
detaro 8y ago
Way more comments than upvotes is a negative signal for the ranking.

xte 8y ago

Well, my own personal response is that "FOSS fundamentalist" are as opposite free people that do not want actual society model but another and "people who describe them as fundamentalist" are simply people that can't think a different society or anything as society scale instead of their own company scale. It's not an offense but a simple reasoned scheme: did you know that at the start of IT golden age software was open? In the USA, not in the URSS. Did you know that in the golden age of USA "rich people" arrive even at 90% of income taxes and they are still happy? I do not talk about centuries in the past or restricted communities. My own personal truth is that you are right many in a FOSS world will be dead. Simply because they do not really produce anything sensible. FOSS world work on innovation, without innovation business die. Today we have near-zero innovation because we can't have anything really new in a managerial-drive world. But again this is a system that work well in the short term, crash miserably in the medium/long term.

maeln 8y ago

The complains about FOSS fundamentalists coming from proprietary software dev' (which I am) always seems a bit hypocritical to me. The reason is, you probably use a lot of FOSS software that were made possible only because a lot of people dedicated time and effort to it. Your servers probably run Linux, if not, the services that you use everyday probably do. Your compiler/language is probably FOSS too, if not, the software that was used to make it was probably. Your OS probably contain some FOSS software or was made using some. Even this blog post was only possible because of free software (medium rely on NGinx, NodeJS, Redis, ...). Today, it is almost impossible to work without at some point relying on a free software or using software that relies on free software. We wouldn't be were we at right now if it was not for FOSS. Hell, a lot of us may not have ever been developers if it was not for FOSS. I know I only learned programming because of FOSS like Ruby, Linux, GCC, ... So I understand that we don't live in a world where everything is simple and where we can all live making free software. But criticizing the people who made your job possible doesn't seem like a good thing.

dpower 8y ago
I think I was pretty clear in the article - I absolutely support FOSS. The point of the article was to debunk some of the perceived "evils" of proprietary software. It's not a zero sum game - FOSS vs Proprietary. Rather they can support each other.
- maeln 8y ago
  I am not saying that you do :) . It is more about the critics of FOSS fundamentalists. As obnoxious as some can be (often the one who contribute the less), we should still respect that without the effort of some fundamentalist to spread FOSS, we may not be able to work like we do today.
- phkahler 8y ago
  >> I absolutely support FOSS. The point of the article was to debunk some of the perceived "evils" of proprietary software. I took it as a complaint about FOSS fundamentalists. There has always been tension between FLOSS and proprietary, and I didn't feel you added anything of value to that discussion.

pretty_bubbles 8y ago

I disagree with part of your argument. If being FOSS is important to you, by all means, only use FOSS. In some situations it is critical. For example, all of my devices become worthless once they stop being supported, unless they're FOSS. At the same time there are some FOSS fundamentalists that think using proprietary software make you a bad person. They are wrong.

dpower 8y ago
If FOSS is important to you, it should absolutely be a factor in your decision. And of course, people can choose whatever they want. I'm OK with that (although I don't agree with it) as long as it only affects you. If your decision affects others and inhibits their ability to work efficiently, then I think you can justifiably be criticised.
adrianmalacoda 8y ago
> using proprietary software make you a bad person We don't believe this. We argue that free software is important[0] because it gives users control over their technology, and proprietary software is bad because it denies users that control. We don't believe using proprietary software (whether by choice or otherwise) makes you a bad person. If anyone is actually making this argument I would say they are doing the free software movement a disservice. [0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-impor...

bjpbakker 8y ago

IMO there's nothing "fundamentalist" about rejecting a _particular_ piece of proprietary software. When trying to sell a niche product, r/linux might not be the best place to ask. I'm wondering if the author would have had the same response when someone on a windows or mac subreddit did not want to use their software. Instead try to sell to people who you solve a particular problem for.

mherrmann 8y ago
Imho it is fundamentalist if the only reason for the rejection is that it's proprietary. Don't know if that was the author's exact experience. But it has been mine. And it's not just dogmatic and stupid in a similar way as religious fanaticism, it's harmful for the entire ecosystem.
- bjpbakker 8y ago
  > it is fundamentalist if the only reason for the rejection is that it's proprietary Personally I don't use software that I cannot review myself for tasks that are important to me. That includes reading email. Hence, the reason for rejection is that it's not open source. I don't see how this makes me a horrible fundamentalist, but maybe you care to enlighten me :) > it's harmful for the entire ecosystem I also completely fail to see how me personally want to review source code is harmful to the "entire ecosystem" (I assume you refer to the FOSS ecosystem?)
  - mherrmann 8y ago
    You are, obviously, free to choose the software you use. What you install on your computer is, again of course, completely up to you. What I take issue with are people who jump into any discussion of proprietary software and downvote / criticize with "proprietary" being the only point. A fair criticism should take the form "Cons: Not open source", "Pros: ...". But it never does. It's always just "Nobody needs this proprietary crap". That is what I consider actively harmful, because it suppresses options that may actually be useful, if not for you then maybe for other people. If you don't like it, why not just let it be? I don't like JavaScript. I don't go around forums and shout "It's a horrible language!" where ever I see it mentioned.

zimbatm 8y ago

> If we do Open Source Hiri, there is nothing to stop someone from forking it and selling it for less /offering it for free. We die. And I do worry about my bank balance. The author is fearful of not making money if his code is open source. The rest of the article seems like a justification-wrapper around this. I am not saying that this an unjustified fear but that it doesn't seem to be tackled-on directly. Is there any alternate reality where Hiri could be making money while having their product open source? It seems to work for Travis CI and Sentry where their product has an infrastructure component attached to it.

aethertron 8y ago

Here's another old argument from Stallman against using nonfree software, not addressed in the blog post: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.en.html > As a computer user today, you may find yourself using a proprietary program. If your friend asks to make a copy, it would be wrong to refuse. Cooperation is more important than copyright. But underground, closet cooperation does not make for a good society. A person should aspire to live an upright life openly with pride, and this means saying no to proprietary software. I don't agree that refusing to copy the program would be wrong. "Cooperation is more important than copyright" is a nice slogan. But copyright IS a form of cooperation. In the situation described, you have to choose between cooperating with your friend and cooperating with the software vendor. Stallman is right to point out that it puts one in an ethical bind, and a way to avoid that is to avoid proprietary software. He argues (elsewhere) that the act of offering proprietary software is really bad, because it erodes society's most precious resource, goodwill. As for me, I have a fondness for the FOSS subculture, and a preference for free software, ceteris paribus. I use a mixture of free and nonfree software because I have other more pressing concerns, like choosing the best technological choice for the job, and ease of use, and making money.

ruskerdax 8y ago
Copyright is not a form of cooperation. It is a threat. If you copy something without permission, you risk retaliation that is, ultimately, backed by violent force. It is hardly honest to call something "cooperation" under these circumstances.
- marssaxman 8y ago
  One might speak of "cooperating with the hijackers", or even more commonly one might refer to "cooperating with police officers", even though such cooperation in both cases has been compelled by threat of force. Cooperation would ideally always be a consensual collaboration but common usage of the word would not seem to require it.
- type0 8y ago
  Proprietary software can be downright dangerous if you tightly integrate it in your work and the vendor suddenly goes away or shuts down the software. But this has nothing to do with copyright, Software Freedom Conservancy defends GPL for the copyright holders that they represent. The biggest issue with proprietary software is the unbalanced relationship with the vendor that it implies.

peterwwillis 8y ago

These arguments are myopic. It doesn't matter if your source is open if people give you money, right? So how to get people to give you money? The first answer is "find a pain point and build a product". Note I said product, not open source tool. The second part is selling it. That's pretty easy: is anyone else fixing this pain? No? Then sell people the product. You can give away your source code, but that's completely incidental. The third part, "Our competitors will fork and steal our business!", is possible, but extremely unlikely, unless you suck at your product. Incumbents don't get unseated without tremendous effort. The longer you're around, the more people will trust you to do it right, and the better you'll be at it, with more features and more customers. (I don't know of a single case of this ever happening; it's usually just a completely new open source product and they compete fairly) The last part, "How do I keep people from just building and using the code for free?", completely depends on how difficult this is, and whether your packaging and selling of the product provides additional value worth paying for. The simplest way is to provide premium services that solve more pain points and to provide this with their purchase. But you can also just make the software so annoying to build, and cheap to purchase, that it makes more sense to buy it.

vinceguidry 8y ago
> The third part, "our competitors will fork and steal our business!", is possible, but extremely unlikely, unless you suck at your product. I don't think you appreciate the danger here. Someone can sink a few tens of thousands of dollars into cloning a codebase, then make it to market in a bare fraction of the time it took you to get there. When you say "incumbents don't get unseated without tremendous effort," you're referring to big incumbents like Amazon or Google, or CVS or Home Depot. Sure, at that scale it's impossible to ramp up that quickly. But for small outfits struggling to survive, handing the jackals everything they need to compete with you is flat-out stupid. The barest vestige of a moat, something as small as locking your doors, can be enough to get the jackals to pick easier targets. Having to manage the creation of a software product is an order of magnitude harder than just cloning it and differentiating it from there.
- peterwwillis 8y ago

erkIfShen 8y ago

The "inconvenient truth" that the author subscribes to is, in fact, a plain old neoliberal capitalist worldview. It is not an objective worldview, since those don't exist, and it is focused on money and power. The author cannot imagine doing anything for society without being compensated with cash, it seems. It sure would be an inconvenient truth for them if their blog and business and business model and a significant fraction of their perks in life were backboned by FLOSS. The author's approach to security is deplorable but frustratingly common, treating security as a feature, as optional, and as something that is too expensive for most software. As a reminder, the author's product is an email client. To the author's proprietary-software mindset: Remember, in the long run, all software is worthless. Someday, there will no longer be email. I have a box of add-on cards with connectors which will never be used again; I think that most folks do. We know that proprietary protocols fade away, that closed languages wither and die, and that siloed knowledge is never cited. To tackle the final argument directly: No, the purpose of software is to compute. Stop being married to work; it's an ugly American meme and doesn't have to be how we live. Finally, here's a popular argument that the author chose not to talk about: What if existing copyright law is unconstitutional? In particular, what if the Constitution's copyright clause forbids copyrights which survive the death of the creator; or what if works-for-hire are inherently disenfranchising to artists? This would align just fine with Stallman's opinion that copyleft is only necessary because copyright law exists; maybe a world where corporations can't take code from their employees as easily would be a better world.

jpereira 8y ago

Does anyone have instances of forking open-source software that supports a business in order to undercut that business?

remy_ 8y ago
mariadb / mysql? matomo / piwik.pro? It seems mostly done by the original developers however and not a new 3rd party.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  Generally it seems to happen in response to Darth Vader deals "pray we do not change the terms further". OS branches over technical direction disagreements are a closer thing but they generally aren't businesses.

cybervegan 8y ago

But Free Software is a reaction against Proprietary Software... it exists because some people don't want to embrace PS. Hey ho. You go your way and I'll go mine.

sbuk 8y ago
> Hey ho. You go your way and I'll go mine. That is the attitude that I can get behind, however neither side of this argument is really prepared to do that. In my experience, FLOSS advocates do appear to have a more fundamentalist all or nothing approach when espousing their opinion online, often aggressively. Ideology is great, but it does lead to book burning on occasion.

rubatuga 8y ago

What is the point of attacking such a minority? If the author claims it is a group of people so close to the "horizontal line", then why feel the need to negate their arguments? If the author is the one saying that strong opinions are rarely correct, why would he mention a different strong opinion that Linux users should embrace proprietary software with open arms? It seems as if the author never realized the true struggles that open source or FOSS (not the same thing, I know) movements had in the early 2000s, with corporations such as Microsoft being outright at war with them. The author only uses the example of his small inconsequential startup.

watwut 8y ago
1.) Refuting arguments is not an attack. The article does not read like attack. It is civil and non inflammatory and non insulting. 2.) Those people vocally disagreed with his previous article, him following up defending amd explaining his stance is how discussion work. 3.) Why not? 4.) Why do you want him to be silent and that group to hAve monopoly on discourse?
- AsyncAwait 8y ago
  I saw the Reddit thread and couldn't find any particularly 'fundamentalist' views in it, not to say that a fundamentalist belief in user freedom is wrong.
  - mherrmann 8y ago
    By which you are admitting to being a fundamentalist. There's other people who do that. They often explode. Not a label I'd want to give myself.
    - AsyncAwait 8y ago
      I personally don't mind the perception that I fundamentally care about freedom of computer users to be in control. It's called a principle and without it, you'd never see any progress. Thanks.

ruskerdax 8y ago

Proprietary software which restricts its distribution and "unauthorized" modification (virtually all of it) is the very essence of fundamentalism. It relies on a rigid and literal interpretation of what constitutes property (e.g. that the concept of "intellectual property" is coherent and non-contradictory) and even goes so far as to use threats, ultimately backed by violent force, to ensure compliance with this belief. To conclude this blog post decrying the skepticism of proprietary software with "extreme opinions are rarely correct" strikes me as particularly ironic and absurd. FOSS is the antithesis of this fundamentalism, as it expressly rejects the use of threats to intimidate others into not copying or modifying code. I'm sure there are some people who make sweeping generalizations that may not apply to all proprietary software, but being suspicious of an opposing viewpoint doesn't make one a fundamentalist.

dpower 8y ago
> ultimately backed by violent force, to ensure compliance with this belief This is true of all laws. This is how society works. If you don't like it, in a democracy you can campaign for change. You seem to believe you have a fundamental right to copy someone else's works. If the author of those works grants you permission (open source) - then fine. You seem to suggest that people shouldn't profit from their work. I just don't think FOSS software alone is tenable.
- ruskerdax 8y ago
  > This is true of all laws. This is how society works. If you don't like it, in a democracy you can campaign for change. I am well aware this is how laws enforced by governments work. It does not necessarily follow that is how society works, or that it must be so. I'd rather stay on topic than turn this into a criticism of democracy, however. >You seem to believe you have a fundamental right to copy someone else's works. If the author of those works grants you permission (open source) - then fine. On the contrary, you seem to believe you have a fundamental right to use violent threats to intimidate me into not copying or modifying code. >You seem to suggest that people shouldn't profit from their work. I absolutely do not suggest that. There are ways one can profit from software development (or other creative and technical endeavors) that don't involve threatening people with violent force. >I just don't think FOSS software alone is tenable. I understand that. At least acknowledge that you are the fundamentalist here, taking the approach that because you don't believe it is "tenable" for software to be free, you think it is pragmatic and therefor acceptable to use violent force to prevent others from copying or modifying code.

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago

The bigger problem with FOSS is that FOSS isn't actually user-editable at all. It's developer-editable - which is not even remotely close to being the same thing, except for that tiny subset of projects where end-users are developers. It's basically open blueprints, not open systems - with predictable results. There's never been a truly open system, although Hypercard, Excel, VBS, and Smalltalk have all tried (and failed) to edge into that space in their different ways. FOSS has certainly never shown the slightest interest in developing an open system. It has always been more of a charter for tinkering than a glorious liberation for end-users frustrated with bugs, poor UI choices, and all the other things that end-users hate.

AsyncAwait 8y ago
> FOSS has certainly never shown the slightest interest in developing an open system. Really? I got into Linux originally when I saw how you could swap DEs and customize practically everything. I wasn't a developer back then.
seba_dos1 8y ago
Just don't use GNOME. /s
type0 8y ago
> It's developer-editable - which is not even remotely close to being the same thing, except for that tiny subset of projects where end-users are developers. There are plenty of FOSS software where one could do meaningful changes that improve your user experience without being a developer. This includes customizing the theme for your desktop, translating the software into another language etc What do you even mean by open system? There are plenty of regular (non-dev) people that propose great ideas for changes to FOSS programs that later get implemented, you don't get this kind of interactions with your users with proprietary sw because that your "intellectual property" and who the hell are you to dictate how to do things with my property attitude (which is, if not implied then anticipated by most users).

tarboreus 8y ago

The statistic of .3% of desktop users on Linux is miles off. It's somewhere between 2% and 3%, or, by some measures, almost a third of the user base of Mac OS. Admittedly quite small, but not nothing. https://netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx https://netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.asp...

yellowapple 8y ago

"Secrecy is not necessarily a bad thing provided a proprietary software vendor’s incentives are aligned with your own objectives." That's the point: if you're being secretive, then your end users are denied the ability - without undue effort - to verify for themselves that you or your software are acting in their best interests or "aligned with [their] own objectives". Transparency is a dependency of trust. No ifs ands or buts. If you can't be transparent because "boo hoo we can't make any money" then I can't trust you, and no reasonable person should. The tired excuse that "but but but the black hats will see our code and hack us" is just that: a tired excuse along the same lines as "security by obscurity". The black hats will find holes in your software anyway, because they're motivated to do so (whether because it's how they put food on the table or because they find it a fun challenge). The least you can do is make it as easy as possible for the white hats to spot those zero-days first. None of the arguments in this article are groundbreaking or compelling. They're the same tired bullshit excuses closed-source devs always try to feed their users for why said users should be fine with "don't worry, just trust us, we pinky-promise we're not selling your data to advertising networks (wink!)". Maybe you are, maybe you're not. Maybe you aren't yet but might in the future. No way to know for sure without full-blown reverse engineering every single build. And note that none of this has to do with software freedom. Yes, most transparent software happens to be free software, but you can be transparent and proprietary. From a trustworthiness perspective, I don't care if there's a thousand-page Apple-style EULA in the source tree; I just want access to the source tree. Conflating transparency and freedom is a tell-tale sign of strawmanning here.