10 ms·

Do we need to rethink what free software is?

106 points by reddotX 7y ago

Ace17 7y ago
Feel free to create the "moral/ethical software" movement, but please don't touch the current definition of free software. People already have a hard time understanding what free software exactly is/requires/provides. Changing the definition at this point would only create confusion, especially if the new one is even more ethically grounded.
- pessimizer 7y ago
  Agree. I think the strength of free software is that it's making a single ethical point (which is hard enough to get across.) I support anybody wanting to make "ethical" software, but it's 1) not the same thing as free software and 2) very difficult to make an ethical tool; people find it hard enough to explain their personal ethical distinctions, I definitely don't want to listen to a some hammer's idiosyncratic belief system.
  - atoav 7y ago
    Say you develope a targeting algorithm to be used by a robotic arm with a water pistol — wouldn’t it then be totally legitimate to say: you are allowed to use this freely, as long as you don’t use it with a real gun? The non commercial clause in the creative commons is also sth like this: free for non-commercial usage, all others have to ask. I don’t see why authors shouldn’t be allowed to excert at least a little bit of control what their creations are used for, if they like to do so.
    - mantas 7y ago
      Let's say you write such targeting software and I make hardware using it. I add a sticker saying "don't put a real gun into it" on it. Are we good? Or is it like "known to cause cancer in California" stuff?
    - sebst 7y ago
      > The non commercial clause in the creative commons is also sth like this: free for non-commercial usage, all others have to ask. Perfectly fine. But then it's not free software, or in this case free creative work. It's as you said: it's free only for some which makes it unfree in general.
- sebst 7y ago
  Agree. Don't touch definitions. For example, some people were not fine with the definition of "free software", so they coined the term "open source software" to line out their views on the topic. I think "social" or "ethical" software could be a reasonable term for the views proposed. That being said, and IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that such ideas would not held in court, unless the "unethical behaviour" is illegal. But in this case, why should criminals stick to software licences?
- notus 7y ago
  What do you consider free software? Because I don't consider anything licensed under GPL as free, but I would consider software licensed under MIT or BSD as free.
  - jraph 7y ago
    To answer your question: probably any software following the widely accepted, opinion-free definition of "free software". Can you run it? Read its code? Redistribute it verbatim? Make modifications to the code for private use? Redistribute the modifications? Then it's free software. You are free not to like some free software licenses though.
    - amenod 7y ago
      > Can you run it? Read its code? Redistribute it verbatim? Make modifications to the code for private use? Redistribute the modifications? Then it's free software. Your answer proves that GP has a point: Commons Clause (on top of Apache for instance) fits your requirements perfectly, yet it is not "free software" according to FSF/OSI definitions. There are degrees to freedom, and while FOSS activists would like to paint issues black and white, they really are not. Which freedoms a particular user cares about is not at all given. For myself, I would gladly use Commons Clause software, because if I make money off software then it's only fair that I pay commercial license for it - after all, it's in my interest that the software is actively developed and maintained. And your questions are really all I care about, and this clause conforms to them. But I think in the end it is up to each user to decide which set of freedoms they care about to the point of not using non-conforming software. The cynic in me would say that most users care only about free (as in beer) - at least judging by Android and plethora of its free-of-cost apps. EDIT: I am not arguing that Commons Clause & co. should be accepted under the "free license" term - for better or worse, this term has some widely accepted definition that is not compatible with them. Maybe a new term, like "hybrid licenses" is needed? We'll see.
      - csande17 7y ago
        I'm not sure Commons Clause even meets those informal requirements. You can't run Commons Clause software if you're receiving payment for doing so. You can't redistribute Commons Clause software verbatim if you're receiving payment for doing so. (As written, it even appears to prohibit selling a CD of the software for the cost of the blank CD, a service that's otherwise widely accepted as a useful community contribution.) Because the Commons Clause restricts the situations in which you can run and redistribute the software, software licensed under it isn't free software.
eitland 7y ago
> As stewards of the free software definition, the Free Software Foundation should be taking the lead in ensuring that these issues are discussed. They came to a consensus yeeeears ago about what can and cannot go into Free Software licenses. I'm all for more fairness, but remember that for example the GPL is a giant legal hack, and maybe the next breakthrough will be an equally big legal and/of technical hack and not necessarily an attempt to amend other free licenses? Edit: seeing how things play out in the US and Canada I'm even more sure than before that politics should be kept far out of tech.
- amelius 7y ago
  > but remember that for example the GPL is a giant legal hack Tax avoidance schemes are also legal hacks. If you can (ab)use something for bad things, then you should be able to (ab)use it for good things as well, yes? EDITED
  - kube-system 7y ago
    Tax evasion schemes are not legal, by definition. Maybe you are thinking of 'tax avoidance'?
    - amelius 7y ago
      Yes, you get the point.
      - deleted 7y ago
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breck 7y ago
The solution here is simple: abandon intellectual slavery laws. They don’t do anyone any good except the 1%. Look at the richest amongst us, a sizable majority are rich because of IS laws. Forcing poor people the world over to pay artificially high prices for intellectual goods, by threat of force, is a form of slavery, poor and simple. Anyone who says they will stop making new ideas if they don’t get artificially inflated remuneration for that: good riddance! We don’t need talentless hacks like them.
- pessimizer 7y ago
  World socialist revolution is far from simple.
- kube-system 7y ago
  Be careful of what you ask for. IP laws are the foundation of what makes the GPL enforceable.
  - wind0w 7y ago
    We need a 'right to repair' for software -- anyone release commercial software should be forced to release the source code and allow users to build, modify and distribute it for free.
  - kazinator 7y ago
    From the perspective of a developer using the BSD license, such as myself, this isn't such a big deal. A violation means "someone removed or replaced the copyright notice in my source code file". I don't want them to stop using or redistributing the program, including in its binary form that has no copyright notices; just restore the notices in any redistributed source. I'm in favor of retaining only a limited form of IP law, which makes it unlawful to misrepresent the origin of a work. Basically, I would have academic misconduct and related types of misrepresentation continue to be offenses (even outside of an academic examination or publication setting), but not copying. Other than that, scrap copyright with extreme prejudice. Only problem is, what happens to the artists. Developers can still make money in a world in which the power of copyright is limited to fighting plagiarism. A lot of programs are in fact free to copy, but operate with limitations in the absence of a purchased license. But you can't record a song so that only limited features of the song are available for a limited time, unless the license is purchased. Such works can be taken outside of DRM easily via the analog hole.
skybrian 7y ago
I don't know about free software, but I suspect there will still be a lot of people releasing code under open source licenses, including most developers working for companies. Maybe there should be a standard license for non-commercial source code, but that could be called a "source available" license.
deleted 7y ago
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baybal2 7y ago
The answer is simple A-GPL
- EdSharkey 7y ago
  Yep, and good luck acquiring users!
  - falcolas 7y ago
    Perhaps acquiring users is not their goal? Open source does not have to be a popularity contest. Sharing for the sake of sharing - for increasing the knowledge of the world at large - is many people’s goal.
    - EdSharkey 7y ago
      The world is absolutely being crushed by "knowledge" right now. What the world needs is wisdom, that's in serious short supply. So what is the wise choice of open source tool in any sector? Some good measures are numbers of stars, forks, weekly downloads on NPM, that kind of thing. Eyes on. Active users. "Sharing knowledge" is mental masturbation, feel-good, I give back to the community talk. Nothing is given if there are no takers! "Aquiring users" is modus operandi, million dollar idea, change-the-world talk. And then there's the real wreckers in this thread who are all on about equality and fairness. Hey wreckers, just put in the work and get users; there's many ways to get paid! My problem with many of you is that you simply can't deliver the goods and are bitter about it. Maybe you're in the wrong line of business? I've heard the DMV is a delightful place for torturing comrades and ruining civil society.
jraph 7y ago
Interesting article. The problem of ethical use of something is not limited to software. When you get any tangible object, you don’t usually get usage restrictions from a license. So, if this is a problem to solve, I think that the solution should be sought more generally, not restricting the scope to software. (edit: and not to an individual software, which would be a weak way of "preventing" an unethical practice at the society level anyway). Usage of tangible objects is restricted by law. I think it should be the same for software. And yes, law is not perfect, and not the same for different countries. Everybody has their own, evolving, ethics. If everybody starts restricting usage for random things in licenses, we may be in for a big mess. And I say this as someone who has an opinion on many ethical matters.
- UncleEntity 7y ago
  > Usage of tangible objects is restricted by law. A company can refuse to sell you a product if they don't agree with what you're going to do with it but they can't do anything at all if you somehow legally get ahold of it through secondary means. Same with sold copyrighted works through the first sale doctrine (and this carries over to patents as well). Software has seemed to have carved itself out a special niche where you don't actually own the product so the producers can dictate what you can and can not do with it after "first sale" since they don't really sell (or grant) you anything other than the right to use the product.
mark_l_watson 7y ago
Good write up. It is a tough question, but I personally think that we are all well served with LGPL/GPL/AGPL, Apache 2, and MIT licenses. I understand the motivation for other more specific licenses, but it is also an advantage to just have a small set of licenses that people are familiar with. I like to release stuff under ‘use either Apache 2 or GPL’, your choice. However, I honestly don’t know what problems that might cause people. If I had to choose one license for all my stuff I would choose LGPL (permit free commercial use, changes to library must be shared) but a lot of my open source code is examples for my books so I like to be broad as possible, license wise.
jcelerier 7y ago
> As governments make more and more use of technology to perform acts of mass surveillance, detention, and even genocide, software authors may feel legitimately appalled at the idea that they are helping enable this by allowing their software to be used for any purpose. ah, classic american cultural suprematism
deleted 7y ago
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rubbingalcohol 7y ago
Whether software is used for ethical or unethical purposes has nothing to do with the license. There is no possible way to bake subjective ethical usage guidelines into a license and still end up with free software. Trying to license "good" and "evil" boils down to the same slippery slope that the TOR Project dealt with when they had to reject requests to add censorship mechanisms. "Can't we just censor hate speech?" Software is a tool. How that tool is used is at the discretion of the user. If a developer is concerned that a project could be used for evil, then he or she should consider whether releasing the software publicly is a morally good choice in the first place.
- atoav 7y ago
  I am not sure about that. Of course enforcing your usage ideas will be next to impossible, but mentioning sth. can serve other purposes too (e.g. making a set of shared values visible to other developers). So if you for example say that everybody except military, secret services and weapons manufacturers are allowed to use your software, that might not stop them from using it, but it makes other devs consider similar clauses and at one point it might be widespread enough to show some sort of effect (e.g. less people willing to work for the goons).
  - rubbingalcohol 7y ago
    Anyone can add ethical stipulations to the license of their choice but the result is no longer a free software license. A license requiring a user to adhere to the software developers' moral code is the opposite of a free software license. In your example regarding "weapons manufacturers;" in the United States the right to keep and bear arms is enshrined in the Constitution and interpreted by the courts as an inalienable human right. Your proposed software license would thus restrict the freedom of the user and is therefore non-free.
    - deleted 7y ago
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    - geofft 7y ago
kazinator 7y ago
> The definition of free software includes the assertion that it must be possible to use the software for any purpose. Rather, the assertion that the license must not assert any restrictions on use.
booleandilemma 7y ago
The JSON license includes a requirement that "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil" Thanks, I never knew this and needed a chuckle this morning.
- Figs 7y ago
  You may also get a chuckle out of an anecdote about the license that Douglas Crockford gave during one of this talks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C-JoyNuQJs#t=2480s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C-JoyNuQJs#t=2480s
- half-kh-hacker 7y ago
  Crockford actually puts this requirement in most of the software that he writes. A few years ago he told a story where he had to relicense JSLint for IBM, stating "I give permission for IBM, its customers, partners, and minions, to use JSLint for evil."
- johnisgood 7y ago
  Is it a joke or do they really not realize that there are no universal moral truths and that "good" and "evil" are completely subjective? What are the legal implications of that statement in theory and practice?
  - randallsquared 7y ago
    > Is it a joke or do they really not realize that [...] In case you're not aware, the idea that there are no universal moral truths is not universally accepted. :) (But, yes, it was a joke at George W. Bush's expense, per wikipedia).
    - johnisgood 7y ago
      > the idea that there are no universal moral truths is not universally accepted. Yes, I know, which further strengthens the point that this is an extremely subjective territory. :P
prepend 7y ago
This article confuses me. It seems to be calling for FSF to think about addressing the needs of non-free software.
- jraph 7y ago
  I think it is calling for the FSF to think about addressing a potential unwanted fragmentation of the free software community over opinions on ethical uses of software and solutions based on restriction from licenses.
  - kube-system 7y ago
    The FSF has never viewed anyone who wants exceptions to copyleft as being part of their community to begin with. Even something simple like the JSON license is something that the FSF sees as fundamentally incompatible with their values. https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/License:JSON https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/License:JSON
    - jraph 7y ago
      Yep, and I remember Stallman saying that these exceptions are not desirable in a talk. Matthew Garrett certainly knows it and certainly wants that something is done on the matter. Which could be good. However, the title implies a possible evolution of the definition of free software, but I just can't see that as conceivable. That would be akin to change the definition of the prime numbers to exclude 1, breaking many demonstrations in the process ⸮
      - lambertsimnel 7y ago
        > That would be akin to change the definition of the prime numbers to exclude 1 But one isn't prime: https://primes.utm.edu/notes/faq/one.html https://primes.utm.edu/notes/faq/one.html
        jraph 7y ago
walterstucco 7y ago
Says Matthew Garrett, who works at Google and said that "Eben Moglen is no longer a friend of free software community". What is ethical software anyway? How we figure out ethical software from non ethical software? If I create a software system to help disabled people with rare diseases to get their blood tested remotely and someone use it to trick people into going to the doctor and charge 500 USD every visit, is the software ethical or not? Is the knife an ethical tool that enable people to cut their food in small more edible chunks, or is it unethical because I can kill people with it?
raverbashing 7y ago
> the Free Software Foundation should be taking the lead in ensuring that these issues are discussed What I suspect will happen is that the FSF will keep their happy-naive view of what "Free Software" is, ignoring the commercial and viability aspects of software financing and their definition will become stale. And we will see more software that while not being officially OpenSource™ will, for most practical purposes, be open source. > If free software is going to maintain relevance, it needs to continue to explain how it interacts with contemporary social issues. If any organisation is going to claim to lead the community, it needs to be doing that. True. Though I don't think it will be open source that will suffer, rather, the organizations that miss the trends. 20 years ago most of the relevant free software was GNU, Apache, heavily Linux centric, etc Today, not so much.
Santosh83 7y ago
When it comes to ethical principles, perfect is the enemy of the good. No ethical system can be perfectly watertight or universal, but that shouldn't stop us from trying at all. With software specifically, those authors concerned about the ethical implications of the use of their software can add additional clauses to their license of choice, spelling out ethical constraints, but I fail to see how it can be reasonably enforced. I don't imagine for one moment that powerful corporations or governments are going to stand by and watch their empire crumble if the alternative would be to violate the ethical terms of a crucial piece of software that will give them an edge in their amoral powerplays.
- deleted 7y ago
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chiefalchemist 7y ago
> "...but many projects of immense infrastructural importance are simultaneously fundamental to multiple business models and also chronically underfunded." True. Which then means free isn't entirely free. Those using such software are taking on risk - whether they care to admit it or not. What's mind boggling is that this includes business entities large enough to mitigate that risk (i.e., contribute people and/or money). I'm being a bit cheeky but perhaps a license names "Use at your own risk" would be the way to go? That would be something upper level decision makers (and legal) would understand. As it is, many of those don't know GPL from MIT, etc.
GlitchMr 7y ago
> As governments make more and more use of technology to perform acts of mass surveillance, detention, and even genocide, software authors may feel legitimately appalled at the idea that they are helping enable this by allowing their software to be used for any purpose. Too bad, even if you were to disallow that in your license, governments won't care, those things often are often already illegal - courts will dismiss your cases about violation of copyright by saying it is "national security secret". Additionally, licenses are based on copyright and cannot put additional restrictions. Consider GPL, it doesn't add restrictions, rather it allows you to do what copyright normally wouldn't allow. Programs are usable for any purpose by default, GPL doesn't change that. You can use EULA to add restrictions, however this requires an user to actually agree to those restrictions (by, say, clicking "I agree").
- lambertsimnel 7y ago
  Is it true that copyright licenses can't add restrictions? Patent retaliation clauses in software copyright licenses suggest otherwise to me.
  - GlitchMr 7y ago
    This isn't a restriction. Rather, a license grants a patent license which has its additional requirements. If you violate those requirements, you lose a patent license, but you don't violate the copyright (at which point, the license can be read as if it didn't have patent clause at all).
    - lambertsimnel 7y ago
      Can't copyright licenses terminate for any licensee who violates any term? What about copyleft itself? Don't violators lose their licenses?
benologist 7y ago
We look at open source funding in isolation but wealth inequality is pervasively unbalanced all over the place. Per-project funding has already failed to allocate resources adequately because it's only corporate projects that are funded not their dependencies. One proposed solution to this wider inequality is Universal Basic Incomes, that funds open source by design. There are a lot of reasons to like UBI as a funding channel for open source. Open source contributes immensely to people learning how to use computers and even the bad ideas can influence the future. There is all this value and ecosystem being excluded when we look at funding on a per-project basis.
deogeo 7y ago
Any sort of 'ethical' clause will open you to endless legal battles, and make such software effectively impossible to use for anyone but large corporations able to afford those battles, or to buy themselves custom licenses. I.e. it will even further concentrate power, and accomplish the exact opposite of what free software set out to do. Not to mention the ethical nature of the software could be interpreted by potentially hostile courts. "Spreading disharmony against the state" will fall under "evil", and 'ethical' software will be reduced to another tool of control and propaganda.
- k__ 7y ago
  Never understood why buying special licenses is an issue.
  - deogeo 7y ago
    In general, it's not. Only when the license is such that using the software is impossible, even when the use is entirely in line with free software principles. You're effectively writing non-free software, but masquerading as free, and stealing its oxygen.
lacker 7y ago
Free software means that anybody can use it. Even people you don’t like, whether that is Amazon or the US military. You can add whatever restrictions you want to your own software, but it doesn’t seem “free” if it restricts what I can do with it.
- xisukar 7y ago
  I think this is the issue. They want to create these licenses that restrict people's use, whether be it "good" or "evil", of software and yet still brand them as "free software" licenses which couldn't be further from the truth. In the end , this only brews confusion and misunderstanding. My belief is that if you want to create an "ethical" license, whatever that might mean at a point in time, then do it and brand it as such but then don't come and try to pass it as "free" when clearly it's not. This way people who want to use free software (or license as such) and people who want to use "ethical" software will know where to look respectively.
wyldfire 7y ago
Doesn't Affero GPL cover this?
daenz 7y ago
I'm the author of some popular open source software, but I don't have any illusions about the relative ease of building my software. This author sounds like they are trying throw their weight around, but I'm not sure they realize how much software is easily reproducible, given the right incentives, with nothing more than a spec. Open source is a convenience, and that's why people use it. Pretending that you can have serious influence over what companies are allowed to do with your software, outside of a very narrow and legally well-defined area, is seriously misguided.
- DangitBobby 7y ago
  If you are making a new missile system and all of the free (as in beer) software you want says you can't use it to kill people, then you suddenly have to pay a lot more money to make your missile system. That seems like a good thing to me. I don't see how you could claim that it wouldn't be influencial if this became standard practice.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    The question is whether it could ever become standard practice, or whether "no-killing-people" software would inevitably just become a hobby ecosystem that nobody seriously considers running a business with.
    - DangitBobby 7y ago
      If people were actually committed to enforcing the ethics they espouse then there wouldn't really be a question, if such options were available. I agree that these are the things the discussion is ultimately about, and free software foundations taking it seriously might make it possible to be more than just a hobby ecosystem.
  - daenz 7y ago
    >then you suddenly have to pay a lot more money to make your missile I assume you're talking about a government or government contractor, because anybody else wouldn't care about "licensing" if they're building a system to kill people. In the former case, "pay a lot more money" means spending more of everyone else's tax dollars, which they definitely won't have a problem with.
Iolaum 7y ago
I think this is a slippery path. Freedom 0 says: The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose. If free software moves away from this how do we handle the curation of acceptable and not acceptable uses? This is a can of worms I 'd rather be left unopened. I agree that there is a problem about monetization of software and I welcome the discussion about it. Abolishing freedom 0 however is something I 'd be very hesitant.
craigsmansion 7y ago
Absent is any mention of the Affero GPL. And that's the problem. Who is trustworthy? > "The priority of the board right now should be to restructure itself to ensure that it can legitimately claim to represent the community" Who is this appeal to, and what is it for? Is it genuine or an attempt, in the current upheaval, to have the board restructured to make it less effective? > "and play the leadership role it's been failing to in recent years" Failed in what? In "Representing the community"? What community should be represented here? Is the timing accidental? What is being sold to whom, or who to what? Meanwhile rms is looking for new accommodations[1]: "There should not be ... a digital listening device such as Echo, Siri or "Hello Google", or a card lock that records who opens the door. I will ask about cameras." If nothing else, rms is trustworthy when it comes to software freedom. I'm not so sure about any new pretenders. [1]https://stallman.org/seeking-housing.html https://stallman.org/seeking-housing.html
- raverbashing 7y ago
  Ethics evolve, and shouldn't be pinned to a person. BSD licensed software is fine as well, nobody would say it is unethical. In the same way the GPL3 came about due to external circumstances, other forms of licensing should be able to be considered free (like the AGPL or maybe others) with regards to the current landscape and circumstances.
  - temac 7y ago
    Everybody who matters already consider AGPL a free software licence, and that's not even because of an hypothetical evolution of any position.
c-smile 7y ago
> Do we need to rethink what free software is? Yes we do need to do that. Initial idea of FOSS was more about personal use of OS applications, so at times when "you can share your code with your neighbour without your neighbour being able to deny the same freedom to others". But that model simply does not work (or at least is not fair) in cases when OS is used in paid services. And 90% of OS code now is in the form that is suitable only for services. And that is the problem - FOSS is not motivating fair use of our code. Sometimes - quite opposite.
- kick 7y ago
  That is not true. Google "free software four freedoms".
  - c-smile 7y ago
    What exactly is "not true"?
    - kick 7y ago
      Initial idea of FOSS was more about personal use of OS applications, This. Free software was initially aimed at protecting both personal and commercial freedoms, not just personal ones.
carapace 7y ago
Take it to the logical limit: either we have some sort of techno-utopia al la Star Trek -or- we have a world of Haves and Have-nots, Morlocks and Eloi, Techno-N. Korea. Unless Nature kicks our asses whatever we set up today will get amplified by technology one way or another. Most people today can't even control their television (they can select what to watch, but not decide not to be spied on by their own tv. This is on the frontpage right now: "Watching You Watch: The Tracking Ecosystem of Over-the-Top TV Streaming Devices" [pdf] (princeton.edu) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21100404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21100404 ) These are social/political issues. I think the FSF here is overwhelmed by a tidal wave.
zajio1am 7y ago
This discussion about enforcing specific ethical standards in software licences is nothing new, freeware licences that forbade specific usage (like in military) existed quarter century ago. That is why freedom 0 (the freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose) in free software definition is important, and rejection of enforcement of specific ethical standard was intention and not omission. This reflects modern liberal society, which accepts diversity of ethical systems and positions, accents civil cooperation and enforces just common necessary rules through law. It is true that copyleft licences like GPL enforce free software idea itself, and are ideological in that sense. But such ideology is restricted in scope, so people with diverse ideological positions (say RMS and ESR) can accept it as a common ground. And even with this there is fracturing on copyleft vs non-copyleft free licences. If 'free' software licences commited to some wider range of ideological and ethical positions, then it would lead to fracturing of communities along those lines and to endless infighting. I would expect that such change would be advantageous to people with mainstream ethical positions, but oppressive to people with heterodox ethical positions. It would be ironic if free software would be more oppresive that commercial one (who is at least limited by consumer protection laws). In conclusion, seems to me that such change is not benefical to free software and its users as a whole, but may be benefical to people who want to use free software as a power lever to force their ethical positions on others. (There are also technical problems, like such software would be incompatible with GPL, and if forced as a new version of GPL that could delegitimize 'any newer' ammendment in GPL-3+ licences.)
- bitwize 7y ago
  Indeed. As I put it on Reddit the other day: > Maybe you think that allowing people with a broad spectrum of opinions to work together on open source was only necessary in the early days when the movement was small and obscure, and now that it's popular and successful, those on the Right Side of History are justified in closing ranks and purging all who disagree because it's Their Movement. But I would say: why do you think the movement was successful in the first place? If you kill the common ground between hackers of all stripes, you're slaying the golden goose. The movement will not only resume languishing in obscurity, it will collapse in a series of petty squabbles over who has the correct exegesis of bell hooks's Ain't I A Woman with respect to routing underprivileged TCP/IP packets and who is obviously wrong and a cryptofascist and must therefore be expelled. Because that's where the movement will end up, once the current contingent of people pressing for power in FOSS get their way. (There is another theory which states that this has already happened; RMS is no right winger after all.) > And that will be music to the ears of upper management of Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, etc. They will then drop their façade of loving open source. The peace floats will stop dead in their tracks and the tanks will roll out.
temac 7y ago
The agenda is made very clear toward the end of the article: > As stewards of the free software definition, the Free Software Foundation should be taking the lead in ensuring that these issues are discussed. The priority of the board right now should be to restructure itself to ensure that it can legitimately claim to represent the community and play the leadership role it's been failing to in recent years, otherwise the opportunity will be lost and much of the activist energy that underpins free software will be spent elsewhere. Translation: now that Stallman is mostly gone, we may finally change the definition of free software, thanks to a better "representativeness" But this is extremely ridiculously naive to think that just because it would be coming from that Frankenstein FSF, it would not fragment the community. Debian would not follow. And tons of others. Whatever you think of the current def, I think there is exactly zero chance of not fragmenting significantly by attempting to change it. I even think this is a huge misunderstanding of the very nature of free software to consider that free corporate usage and exploitation shall be prevented.
- bitwize 7y ago
  Sometimes they spill their spaghetti so willingly that all talk of ulterior motives becomes moot. And if they can't change the norms of the community, fracturing it beyond repair is fine with them because it doesn't deserve to exist if it does not conform to their moral standards.
  - temac 7y ago
    I do not think that there is a coordinated effort whatsoever to disrupt Free Software communities (at least not at industrial scale, maybe there are groups of 3 or 4 people with a similar mindset doing things together, but that is the case for pretty much anything on earth...), only - and especially in this case - personal opinions and approaches I sometimes strongly disagree with. Here to the point of not even understanding from where Matthew comes from, although it is true that some Linux devs are sometimes extremely far from the "canon" free software ideologies -- or maybe simply never really thought deeply about it. And certainly this is the case here: getting rid of freedom 0 is not exactly something I would casually suggest esp in the name of preventing fracturing; I would expect the effect to be precisely the opposite :/ And I'm not sure at all why anybody would expect otherwise.
bbanyc 7y ago
In this age of software as a service, the FOSS model is obsolete. Consider the proposed backdooring of WhatsApp - even if I had all of WhatsApp's source code and set up an instance on my own server, would anyone use it? Why? How would I even get a non-backdoored encrypted chat program onto the app stores? And let's be frank, app stores are a much better model for the non-techie end user than the chaos of Windows 9x. Stallman's (deserved) fall from grace is leading to some soul-searching in the movement he founded and mismanaged for decades. Better late than never, but I'm afraid it's already too late.
cousin_it 7y ago
> As governments make more and more use of technology to perform acts of mass surveillance, detention, and even genocide, software authors may feel legitimately appalled at the idea that they are helping enable this by allowing their software to be used for any purpose. This reminds me of US visa application forms. After you list all your relatives and past employers and places you've been in the last decade, there's about three pages of questions like "have you tortured kids or are you currently planning to", "have you committed genocide with biological weapons or are you planning to" and such. The idea is that genocide mongers will tick "yes", so the US can deny their visa.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > The idea is that genocide mongers will tick "yes", so the US can deny their visa. You have failed to understand the system. The idea is that they will tick “no”, and that then even if their crimes can't be proven to the criminal standard of proof (beyond a reasonable doubt) necessary to impose imprisonment, capital punishment, or other criminal sanction they will then be subject to civil sanction for immigration violations, including deportation and bar from future legal entry, on the lower standard applicable to those non-criminal sanctions.
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flippinburgers 7y ago
No we dont.

106 points by reddotX 7y ago

Feel free to create the "moral/ethical software" movement, but please don't touch the current definition of free software. People already have a hard time understanding what free software exactly is/requires/provides. Changing the definition at this point would only create confusion, especially if the new one is even more ethically grounded.

pessimizer 7y ago
Agree. I think the strength of free software is that it's making a single ethical point (which is hard enough to get across.) I support anybody wanting to make "ethical" software, but it's 1) not the same thing as free software and 2) very difficult to make an ethical tool; people find it hard enough to explain their personal ethical distinctions, I definitely don't want to listen to a some hammer's idiosyncratic belief system.
- atoav 7y ago
  Say you develope a targeting algorithm to be used by a robotic arm with a water pistol — wouldn’t it then be totally legitimate to say: you are allowed to use this freely, as long as you don’t use it with a real gun? The non commercial clause in the creative commons is also sth like this: free for non-commercial usage, all others have to ask. I don’t see why authors shouldn’t be allowed to excert at least a little bit of control what their creations are used for, if they like to do so.
  - mantas 7y ago
    Let's say you write such targeting software and I make hardware using it. I add a sticker saying "don't put a real gun into it" on it. Are we good? Or is it like "known to cause cancer in California" stuff?
  - sebst 7y ago
    > The non commercial clause in the creative commons is also sth like this: free for non-commercial usage, all others have to ask. Perfectly fine. But then it's not free software, or in this case free creative work. It's as you said: it's free only for some which makes it unfree in general.
sebst 7y ago
Agree. Don't touch definitions. For example, some people were not fine with the definition of "free software", so they coined the term "open source software" to line out their views on the topic. I think "social" or "ethical" software could be a reasonable term for the views proposed. That being said, and IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that such ideas would not held in court, unless the "unethical behaviour" is illegal. But in this case, why should criminals stick to software licences?
notus 7y ago
What do you consider free software? Because I don't consider anything licensed under GPL as free, but I would consider software licensed under MIT or BSD as free.
- jraph 7y ago
  To answer your question: probably any software following the widely accepted, opinion-free definition of "free software". Can you run it? Read its code? Redistribute it verbatim? Make modifications to the code for private use? Redistribute the modifications? Then it's free software. You are free not to like some free software licenses though.
  - amenod 7y ago
    > Can you run it? Read its code? Redistribute it verbatim? Make modifications to the code for private use? Redistribute the modifications? Then it's free software. Your answer proves that GP has a point: Commons Clause (on top of Apache for instance) fits your requirements perfectly, yet it is not "free software" according to FSF/OSI definitions. There are degrees to freedom, and while FOSS activists would like to paint issues black and white, they really are not. Which freedoms a particular user cares about is not at all given. For myself, I would gladly use Commons Clause software, because if I make money off software then it's only fair that I pay commercial license for it - after all, it's in my interest that the software is actively developed and maintained. And your questions are really all I care about, and this clause conforms to them. But I think in the end it is up to each user to decide which set of freedoms they care about to the point of not using non-conforming software. The cynic in me would say that most users care only about free (as in beer) - at least judging by Android and plethora of its free-of-cost apps. EDIT: I am not arguing that Commons Clause & co. should be accepted under the "free license" term - for better or worse, this term has some widely accepted definition that is not compatible with them. Maybe a new term, like "hybrid licenses" is needed? We'll see.
    - csande17 7y ago
      I'm not sure Commons Clause even meets those informal requirements. You can't run Commons Clause software if you're receiving payment for doing so. You can't redistribute Commons Clause software verbatim if you're receiving payment for doing so. (As written, it even appears to prohibit selling a CD of the software for the cost of the blank CD, a service that's otherwise widely accepted as a useful community contribution.) Because the Commons Clause restricts the situations in which you can run and redistribute the software, software licensed under it isn't free software.

eitland 7y ago

> As stewards of the free software definition, the Free Software Foundation should be taking the lead in ensuring that these issues are discussed. They came to a consensus yeeeears ago about what can and cannot go into Free Software licenses. I'm all for more fairness, but remember that for example the GPL is a giant legal hack, and maybe the next breakthrough will be an equally big legal and/of technical hack and not necessarily an attempt to amend other free licenses? Edit: seeing how things play out in the US and Canada I'm even more sure than before that politics should be kept far out of tech.

amelius 7y ago
> but remember that for example the GPL is a giant legal hack Tax avoidance schemes are also legal hacks. If you can (ab)use something for bad things, then you should be able to (ab)use it for good things as well, yes? EDITED
- kube-system 7y ago
  Tax evasion schemes are not legal, by definition. Maybe you are thinking of 'tax avoidance'?
  - amelius 7y ago
    Yes, you get the point.
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breck 7y ago

The solution here is simple: abandon intellectual slavery laws. They don’t do anyone any good except the 1%. Look at the richest amongst us, a sizable majority are rich because of IS laws. Forcing poor people the world over to pay artificially high prices for intellectual goods, by threat of force, is a form of slavery, poor and simple. Anyone who says they will stop making new ideas if they don’t get artificially inflated remuneration for that: good riddance! We don’t need talentless hacks like them.

pessimizer 7y ago
World socialist revolution is far from simple.
kube-system 7y ago
Be careful of what you ask for. IP laws are the foundation of what makes the GPL enforceable.
- wind0w 7y ago
  We need a 'right to repair' for software -- anyone release commercial software should be forced to release the source code and allow users to build, modify and distribute it for free.
- kazinator 7y ago
  From the perspective of a developer using the BSD license, such as myself, this isn't such a big deal. A violation means "someone removed or replaced the copyright notice in my source code file". I don't want them to stop using or redistributing the program, including in its binary form that has no copyright notices; just restore the notices in any redistributed source. I'm in favor of retaining only a limited form of IP law, which makes it unlawful to misrepresent the origin of a work. Basically, I would have academic misconduct and related types of misrepresentation continue to be offenses (even outside of an academic examination or publication setting), but not copying. Other than that, scrap copyright with extreme prejudice. Only problem is, what happens to the artists. Developers can still make money in a world in which the power of copyright is limited to fighting plagiarism. A lot of programs are in fact free to copy, but operate with limitations in the absence of a purchased license. But you can't record a song so that only limited features of the song are available for a limited time, unless the license is purchased. Such works can be taken outside of DRM easily via the analog hole.

skybrian 7y ago

I don't know about free software, but I suspect there will still be a lot of people releasing code under open source licenses, including most developers working for companies. Maybe there should be a standard license for non-commercial source code, but that could be called a "source available" license.

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baybal2 7y ago

The answer is simple A-GPL

EdSharkey 7y ago
Yep, and good luck acquiring users!
- falcolas 7y ago
  Perhaps acquiring users is not their goal? Open source does not have to be a popularity contest. Sharing for the sake of sharing - for increasing the knowledge of the world at large - is many people’s goal.
  - EdSharkey 7y ago
    The world is absolutely being crushed by "knowledge" right now. What the world needs is wisdom, that's in serious short supply. So what is the wise choice of open source tool in any sector? Some good measures are numbers of stars, forks, weekly downloads on NPM, that kind of thing. Eyes on. Active users. "Sharing knowledge" is mental masturbation, feel-good, I give back to the community talk. Nothing is given if there are no takers! "Aquiring users" is modus operandi, million dollar idea, change-the-world talk. And then there's the real wreckers in this thread who are all on about equality and fairness. Hey wreckers, just put in the work and get users; there's many ways to get paid! My problem with many of you is that you simply can't deliver the goods and are bitter about it. Maybe you're in the wrong line of business? I've heard the DMV is a delightful place for torturing comrades and ruining civil society.

jraph 7y ago

Interesting article. The problem of ethical use of something is not limited to software. When you get any tangible object, you don’t usually get usage restrictions from a license. So, if this is a problem to solve, I think that the solution should be sought more generally, not restricting the scope to software. (edit: and not to an individual software, which would be a weak way of "preventing" an unethical practice at the society level anyway). Usage of tangible objects is restricted by law. I think it should be the same for software. And yes, law is not perfect, and not the same for different countries. Everybody has their own, evolving, ethics. If everybody starts restricting usage for random things in licenses, we may be in for a big mess. And I say this as someone who has an opinion on many ethical matters.

UncleEntity 7y ago
> Usage of tangible objects is restricted by law. A company can refuse to sell you a product if they don't agree with what you're going to do with it but they can't do anything at all if you somehow legally get ahold of it through secondary means. Same with sold copyrighted works through the first sale doctrine (and this carries over to patents as well). Software has seemed to have carved itself out a special niche where you don't actually own the product so the producers can dictate what you can and can not do with it after "first sale" since they don't really sell (or grant) you anything other than the right to use the product.

mark_l_watson 7y ago

Good write up. It is a tough question, but I personally think that we are all well served with LGPL/GPL/AGPL, Apache 2, and MIT licenses. I understand the motivation for other more specific licenses, but it is also an advantage to just have a small set of licenses that people are familiar with. I like to release stuff under ‘use either Apache 2 or GPL’, your choice. However, I honestly don’t know what problems that might cause people. If I had to choose one license for all my stuff I would choose LGPL (permit free commercial use, changes to library must be shared) but a lot of my open source code is examples for my books so I like to be broad as possible, license wise.

jcelerier 7y ago

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rubbingalcohol 7y ago

Whether software is used for ethical or unethical purposes has nothing to do with the license. There is no possible way to bake subjective ethical usage guidelines into a license and still end up with free software. Trying to license "good" and "evil" boils down to the same slippery slope that the TOR Project dealt with when they had to reject requests to add censorship mechanisms. "Can't we just censor hate speech?" Software is a tool. How that tool is used is at the discretion of the user. If a developer is concerned that a project could be used for evil, then he or she should consider whether releasing the software publicly is a morally good choice in the first place.

atoav 7y ago
I am not sure about that. Of course enforcing your usage ideas will be next to impossible, but mentioning sth. can serve other purposes too (e.g. making a set of shared values visible to other developers). So if you for example say that everybody except military, secret services and weapons manufacturers are allowed to use your software, that might not stop them from using it, but it makes other devs consider similar clauses and at one point it might be widespread enough to show some sort of effect (e.g. less people willing to work for the goons).
- rubbingalcohol 7y ago
  Anyone can add ethical stipulations to the license of their choice but the result is no longer a free software license. A license requiring a user to adhere to the software developers' moral code is the opposite of a free software license. In your example regarding "weapons manufacturers;" in the United States the right to keep and bear arms is enshrined in the Constitution and interpreted by the courts as an inalienable human right. Your proposed software license would thus restrict the freedom of the user and is therefore non-free.
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kazinator 7y ago

> The definition of free software includes the assertion that it must be possible to use the software for any purpose. Rather, the assertion that the license must not assert any restrictions on use.

booleandilemma 7y ago

The JSON license includes a requirement that "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil" Thanks, I never knew this and needed a chuckle this morning.

Figs 7y ago
You may also get a chuckle out of an anecdote about the license that Douglas Crockford gave during one of this talks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C-JoyNuQJs#t=2480s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C-JoyNuQJs#t=2480s
half-kh-hacker 7y ago
Crockford actually puts this requirement in most of the software that he writes. A few years ago he told a story where he had to relicense JSLint for IBM, stating "I give permission for IBM, its customers, partners, and minions, to use JSLint for evil."
johnisgood 7y ago
Is it a joke or do they really not realize that there are no universal moral truths and that "good" and "evil" are completely subjective? What are the legal implications of that statement in theory and practice?
- randallsquared 7y ago
  > Is it a joke or do they really not realize that [...] In case you're not aware, the idea that there are no universal moral truths is not universally accepted. :) (But, yes, it was a joke at George W. Bush's expense, per wikipedia).
  - johnisgood 7y ago
    > the idea that there are no universal moral truths is not universally accepted. Yes, I know, which further strengthens the point that this is an extremely subjective territory. :P

prepend 7y ago

This article confuses me. It seems to be calling for FSF to think about addressing the needs of non-free software.

jraph 7y ago
I think it is calling for the FSF to think about addressing a potential unwanted fragmentation of the free software community over opinions on ethical uses of software and solutions based on restriction from licenses.
- kube-system 7y ago
  The FSF has never viewed anyone who wants exceptions to copyleft as being part of their community to begin with. Even something simple like the JSON license is something that the FSF sees as fundamentally incompatible with their values. https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/License:JSON https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/License:JSON
  - jraph 7y ago
    Yep, and I remember Stallman saying that these exceptions are not desirable in a talk. Matthew Garrett certainly knows it and certainly wants that something is done on the matter. Which could be good. However, the title implies a possible evolution of the definition of free software, but I just can't see that as conceivable. That would be akin to change the definition of the prime numbers to exclude 1, breaking many demonstrations in the process ⸮
    - lambertsimnel 7y ago
      > That would be akin to change the definition of the prime numbers to exclude 1 But one isn't prime: https://primes.utm.edu/notes/faq/one.html https://primes.utm.edu/notes/faq/one.html
      - jraph 7y ago

walterstucco 7y ago

Says Matthew Garrett, who works at Google and said that "Eben Moglen is no longer a friend of free software community". What is ethical software anyway? How we figure out ethical software from non ethical software? If I create a software system to help disabled people with rare diseases to get their blood tested remotely and someone use it to trick people into going to the doctor and charge 500 USD every visit, is the software ethical or not? Is the knife an ethical tool that enable people to cut their food in small more edible chunks, or is it unethical because I can kill people with it?

raverbashing 7y ago

> the Free Software Foundation should be taking the lead in ensuring that these issues are discussed What I suspect will happen is that the FSF will keep their happy-naive view of what "Free Software" is, ignoring the commercial and viability aspects of software financing and their definition will become stale. And we will see more software that while not being officially OpenSource™ will, for most practical purposes, be open source. > If free software is going to maintain relevance, it needs to continue to explain how it interacts with contemporary social issues. If any organisation is going to claim to lead the community, it needs to be doing that. True. Though I don't think it will be open source that will suffer, rather, the organizations that miss the trends. 20 years ago most of the relevant free software was GNU, Apache, heavily Linux centric, etc Today, not so much.

Santosh83 7y ago

When it comes to ethical principles, perfect is the enemy of the good. No ethical system can be perfectly watertight or universal, but that shouldn't stop us from trying at all. With software specifically, those authors concerned about the ethical implications of the use of their software can add additional clauses to their license of choice, spelling out ethical constraints, but I fail to see how it can be reasonably enforced. I don't imagine for one moment that powerful corporations or governments are going to stand by and watch their empire crumble if the alternative would be to violate the ethical terms of a crucial piece of software that will give them an edge in their amoral powerplays.

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chiefalchemist 7y ago

> "...but many projects of immense infrastructural importance are simultaneously fundamental to multiple business models and also chronically underfunded." True. Which then means free isn't entirely free. Those using such software are taking on risk - whether they care to admit it or not. What's mind boggling is that this includes business entities large enough to mitigate that risk (i.e., contribute people and/or money). I'm being a bit cheeky but perhaps a license names "Use at your own risk" would be the way to go? That would be something upper level decision makers (and legal) would understand. As it is, many of those don't know GPL from MIT, etc.

GlitchMr 7y ago

> As governments make more and more use of technology to perform acts of mass surveillance, detention, and even genocide, software authors may feel legitimately appalled at the idea that they are helping enable this by allowing their software to be used for any purpose. Too bad, even if you were to disallow that in your license, governments won't care, those things often are often already illegal - courts will dismiss your cases about violation of copyright by saying it is "national security secret". Additionally, licenses are based on copyright and cannot put additional restrictions. Consider GPL, it doesn't add restrictions, rather it allows you to do what copyright normally wouldn't allow. Programs are usable for any purpose by default, GPL doesn't change that. You can use EULA to add restrictions, however this requires an user to actually agree to those restrictions (by, say, clicking "I agree").

lambertsimnel 7y ago
Is it true that copyright licenses can't add restrictions? Patent retaliation clauses in software copyright licenses suggest otherwise to me.
- GlitchMr 7y ago
  This isn't a restriction. Rather, a license grants a patent license which has its additional requirements. If you violate those requirements, you lose a patent license, but you don't violate the copyright (at which point, the license can be read as if it didn't have patent clause at all).
  - lambertsimnel 7y ago
    Can't copyright licenses terminate for any licensee who violates any term? What about copyleft itself? Don't violators lose their licenses?

benologist 7y ago

We look at open source funding in isolation but wealth inequality is pervasively unbalanced all over the place. Per-project funding has already failed to allocate resources adequately because it's only corporate projects that are funded not their dependencies. One proposed solution to this wider inequality is Universal Basic Incomes, that funds open source by design. There are a lot of reasons to like UBI as a funding channel for open source. Open source contributes immensely to people learning how to use computers and even the bad ideas can influence the future. There is all this value and ecosystem being excluded when we look at funding on a per-project basis.

deogeo 7y ago

Any sort of 'ethical' clause will open you to endless legal battles, and make such software effectively impossible to use for anyone but large corporations able to afford those battles, or to buy themselves custom licenses. I.e. it will even further concentrate power, and accomplish the exact opposite of what free software set out to do. Not to mention the ethical nature of the software could be interpreted by potentially hostile courts. "Spreading disharmony against the state" will fall under "evil", and 'ethical' software will be reduced to another tool of control and propaganda.

k__ 7y ago
Never understood why buying special licenses is an issue.
- deogeo 7y ago
  In general, it's not. Only when the license is such that using the software is impossible, even when the use is entirely in line with free software principles. You're effectively writing non-free software, but masquerading as free, and stealing its oxygen.

lacker 7y ago

Free software means that anybody can use it. Even people you don’t like, whether that is Amazon or the US military. You can add whatever restrictions you want to your own software, but it doesn’t seem “free” if it restricts what I can do with it.

xisukar 7y ago
I think this is the issue. They want to create these licenses that restrict people's use, whether be it "good" or "evil", of software and yet still brand them as "free software" licenses which couldn't be further from the truth. In the end , this only brews confusion and misunderstanding. My belief is that if you want to create an "ethical" license, whatever that might mean at a point in time, then do it and brand it as such but then don't come and try to pass it as "free" when clearly it's not. This way people who want to use free software (or license as such) and people who want to use "ethical" software will know where to look respectively.

wyldfire 7y ago

Doesn't Affero GPL cover this?

daenz 7y ago

I'm the author of some popular open source software, but I don't have any illusions about the relative ease of building my software. This author sounds like they are trying throw their weight around, but I'm not sure they realize how much software is easily reproducible, given the right incentives, with nothing more than a spec. Open source is a convenience, and that's why people use it. Pretending that you can have serious influence over what companies are allowed to do with your software, outside of a very narrow and legally well-defined area, is seriously misguided.

DangitBobby 7y ago
If you are making a new missile system and all of the free (as in beer) software you want says you can't use it to kill people, then you suddenly have to pay a lot more money to make your missile system. That seems like a good thing to me. I don't see how you could claim that it wouldn't be influencial if this became standard practice.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  The question is whether it could ever become standard practice, or whether "no-killing-people" software would inevitably just become a hobby ecosystem that nobody seriously considers running a business with.
  - DangitBobby 7y ago
    If people were actually committed to enforcing the ethics they espouse then there wouldn't really be a question, if such options were available. I agree that these are the things the discussion is ultimately about, and free software foundations taking it seriously might make it possible to be more than just a hobby ecosystem.
- daenz 7y ago
  >then you suddenly have to pay a lot more money to make your missile I assume you're talking about a government or government contractor, because anybody else wouldn't care about "licensing" if they're building a system to kill people. In the former case, "pay a lot more money" means spending more of everyone else's tax dollars, which they definitely won't have a problem with.

Iolaum 7y ago

I think this is a slippery path. Freedom 0 says: The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose. If free software moves away from this how do we handle the curation of acceptable and not acceptable uses? This is a can of worms I 'd rather be left unopened. I agree that there is a problem about monetization of software and I welcome the discussion about it. Abolishing freedom 0 however is something I 'd be very hesitant.

craigsmansion 7y ago

Absent is any mention of the Affero GPL. And that's the problem. Who is trustworthy? > "The priority of the board right now should be to restructure itself to ensure that it can legitimately claim to represent the community" Who is this appeal to, and what is it for? Is it genuine or an attempt, in the current upheaval, to have the board restructured to make it less effective? > "and play the leadership role it's been failing to in recent years" Failed in what? In "Representing the community"? What community should be represented here? Is the timing accidental? What is being sold to whom, or who to what? Meanwhile rms is looking for new accommodations[1]: "There should not be ... a digital listening device such as Echo, Siri or "Hello Google", or a card lock that records who opens the door. I will ask about cameras." If nothing else, rms is trustworthy when it comes to software freedom. I'm not so sure about any new pretenders. [1]https://stallman.org/seeking-housing.html https://stallman.org/seeking-housing.html

raverbashing 7y ago
Ethics evolve, and shouldn't be pinned to a person. BSD licensed software is fine as well, nobody would say it is unethical. In the same way the GPL3 came about due to external circumstances, other forms of licensing should be able to be considered free (like the AGPL or maybe others) with regards to the current landscape and circumstances.
- temac 7y ago
  Everybody who matters already consider AGPL a free software licence, and that's not even because of an hypothetical evolution of any position.

c-smile 7y ago

> Do we need to rethink what free software is? Yes we do need to do that. Initial idea of FOSS was more about personal use of OS applications, so at times when "you can share your code with your neighbour without your neighbour being able to deny the same freedom to others". But that model simply does not work (or at least is not fair) in cases when OS is used in paid services. And 90% of OS code now is in the form that is suitable only for services. And that is the problem - FOSS is not motivating fair use of our code. Sometimes - quite opposite.

kick 7y ago
That is not true. Google "free software four freedoms".
- c-smile 7y ago
  What exactly is "not true"?
  - kick 7y ago
    Initial idea of FOSS was more about personal use of OS applications, This. Free software was initially aimed at protecting both personal and commercial freedoms, not just personal ones.

carapace 7y ago

Take it to the logical limit: either we have some sort of techno-utopia al la Star Trek -or- we have a world of Haves and Have-nots, Morlocks and Eloi, Techno-N. Korea. Unless Nature kicks our asses whatever we set up today will get amplified by technology one way or another. Most people today can't even control their television (they can select what to watch, but not decide not to be spied on by their own tv. This is on the frontpage right now: "Watching You Watch: The Tracking Ecosystem of Over-the-Top TV Streaming Devices" [pdf] (princeton.edu) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21100404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21100404 ) These are social/political issues. I think the FSF here is overwhelmed by a tidal wave.

zajio1am 7y ago

This discussion about enforcing specific ethical standards in software licences is nothing new, freeware licences that forbade specific usage (like in military) existed quarter century ago. That is why freedom 0 (the freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose) in free software definition is important, and rejection of enforcement of specific ethical standard was intention and not omission. This reflects modern liberal society, which accepts diversity of ethical systems and positions, accents civil cooperation and enforces just common necessary rules through law. It is true that copyleft licences like GPL enforce free software idea itself, and are ideological in that sense. But such ideology is restricted in scope, so people with diverse ideological positions (say RMS and ESR) can accept it as a common ground. And even with this there is fracturing on copyleft vs non-copyleft free licences. If 'free' software licences commited to some wider range of ideological and ethical positions, then it would lead to fracturing of communities along those lines and to endless infighting. I would expect that such change would be advantageous to people with mainstream ethical positions, but oppressive to people with heterodox ethical positions. It would be ironic if free software would be more oppresive that commercial one (who is at least limited by consumer protection laws). In conclusion, seems to me that such change is not benefical to free software and its users as a whole, but may be benefical to people who want to use free software as a power lever to force their ethical positions on others. (There are also technical problems, like such software would be incompatible with GPL, and if forced as a new version of GPL that could delegitimize 'any newer' ammendment in GPL-3+ licences.)

bitwize 7y ago
Indeed. As I put it on Reddit the other day: > Maybe you think that allowing people with a broad spectrum of opinions to work together on open source was only necessary in the early days when the movement was small and obscure, and now that it's popular and successful, those on the Right Side of History are justified in closing ranks and purging all who disagree because it's Their Movement. But I would say: why do you think the movement was successful in the first place? If you kill the common ground between hackers of all stripes, you're slaying the golden goose. The movement will not only resume languishing in obscurity, it will collapse in a series of petty squabbles over who has the correct exegesis of bell hooks's Ain't I A Woman with respect to routing underprivileged TCP/IP packets and who is obviously wrong and a cryptofascist and must therefore be expelled. Because that's where the movement will end up, once the current contingent of people pressing for power in FOSS get their way. (There is another theory which states that this has already happened; RMS is no right winger after all.) > And that will be music to the ears of upper management of Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, etc. They will then drop their façade of loving open source. The peace floats will stop dead in their tracks and the tanks will roll out.

temac 7y ago

The agenda is made very clear toward the end of the article: > As stewards of the free software definition, the Free Software Foundation should be taking the lead in ensuring that these issues are discussed. The priority of the board right now should be to restructure itself to ensure that it can legitimately claim to represent the community and play the leadership role it's been failing to in recent years, otherwise the opportunity will be lost and much of the activist energy that underpins free software will be spent elsewhere. Translation: now that Stallman is mostly gone, we may finally change the definition of free software, thanks to a better "representativeness" But this is extremely ridiculously naive to think that just because it would be coming from that Frankenstein FSF, it would not fragment the community. Debian would not follow. And tons of others. Whatever you think of the current def, I think there is exactly zero chance of not fragmenting significantly by attempting to change it. I even think this is a huge misunderstanding of the very nature of free software to consider that free corporate usage and exploitation shall be prevented.

bitwize 7y ago
Sometimes they spill their spaghetti so willingly that all talk of ulterior motives becomes moot. And if they can't change the norms of the community, fracturing it beyond repair is fine with them because it doesn't deserve to exist if it does not conform to their moral standards.
- temac 7y ago
  I do not think that there is a coordinated effort whatsoever to disrupt Free Software communities (at least not at industrial scale, maybe there are groups of 3 or 4 people with a similar mindset doing things together, but that is the case for pretty much anything on earth...), only - and especially in this case - personal opinions and approaches I sometimes strongly disagree with. Here to the point of not even understanding from where Matthew comes from, although it is true that some Linux devs are sometimes extremely far from the "canon" free software ideologies -- or maybe simply never really thought deeply about it. And certainly this is the case here: getting rid of freedom 0 is not exactly something I would casually suggest esp in the name of preventing fracturing; I would expect the effect to be precisely the opposite :/ And I'm not sure at all why anybody would expect otherwise.

bbanyc 7y ago

In this age of software as a service, the FOSS model is obsolete. Consider the proposed backdooring of WhatsApp - even if I had all of WhatsApp's source code and set up an instance on my own server, would anyone use it? Why? How would I even get a non-backdoored encrypted chat program onto the app stores? And let's be frank, app stores are a much better model for the non-techie end user than the chaos of Windows 9x. Stallman's (deserved) fall from grace is leading to some soul-searching in the movement he founded and mismanaged for decades. Better late than never, but I'm afraid it's already too late.

cousin_it 7y ago

> As governments make more and more use of technology to perform acts of mass surveillance, detention, and even genocide, software authors may feel legitimately appalled at the idea that they are helping enable this by allowing their software to be used for any purpose. This reminds me of US visa application forms. After you list all your relatives and past employers and places you've been in the last decade, there's about three pages of questions like "have you tortured kids or are you currently planning to", "have you committed genocide with biological weapons or are you planning to" and such. The idea is that genocide mongers will tick "yes", so the US can deny their visa.

dragonwriter 7y ago
> The idea is that genocide mongers will tick "yes", so the US can deny their visa. You have failed to understand the system. The idea is that they will tick “no”, and that then even if their crimes can't be proven to the criminal standard of proof (beyond a reasonable doubt) necessary to impose imprisonment, capital punishment, or other criminal sanction they will then be subject to civil sanction for immigration violations, including deportation and bar from future legal entry, on the lower standard applicable to those non-criminal sanctions.
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flippinburgers 7y ago

No we dont.