9 ms·

RMS: GitHub has done terrible harm to our community

49 points by stargrave 7y ago

xwowsersx 7y ago
How does GitHub encourage sloppy licensing? How is GitHub bad for free software?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- robinwassen 7y ago
  I think the reason is that GitHub lowers the barrier of entry to distribution of OSS. This makes more people distribute OSS, and most devs do probably not care as much about OSS licensing as RMS would like and therefore do "mistakes". RMS has a high horse stance, I think that easier access to OSS is better even though it might come with some side effects.
  - TheCapeGreek 7y ago
    It's way easier for him to have a high horse about doing FOSS "correctly" when he was in an academic environment with different pressures for most of his career. There'd be a different tune sung if he were an average Joe with business requirements to fulfill.
    - devnonymous 7y ago
      You do realize that he is not an average Joe with business requirements to fulfill because he decided to mount that high horse, right ? This argument of 'Oh, he'd be singing a different tune if he had to deal with today's reality' is so naive. The fact that he doesn't (/doesn't have to) deal with everyday reality is his whole point -- he has claimed that it is unrealistic to use software that confirms to his set of values, so he denied to participate in that reality.
- danieldk 7y ago
  I think the reasoning is that you can host projects on GitHub without them being FLOSS, since you can just start a repository and add code without ever adding a license. If you do not add a license, it is just copyrighted code, and cannot be redistributed freely. Some repositories take this to the extreme. There are some closed source software vendors that use GitHub as an issue tracker and collection of Markdown files. If GitHub wants to permit such uses - it's their party.
blihp 7y ago
Is his comment based on outdated information? I just checked and github appears to recognize a few dozen (https://help.github.com/en/github/creating-cloning-and-archiving-repositories/licensing-a-repository#searching-github-by-license-type https://help.github.com/en/github/creating-cloning-and-archi...) license types including gpl2, gpl3 and lgpl
- em-bee 7y ago
  RMS argues against licensing under only a single version of the GPL obviously he prefers "GPL2 or later" and "GPL3 or later" does github offer that?
  - watwut 7y ago
    If you click on the link, you find: GNU Affero General Public License v3.0, GNU General Public License family gpl, GNU General Public License v2.0 gpl-2.0, GNU General Public License v3.0 gpl-3.0, GNU Lesser General Public License family lgpl, GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1 lgpl-2.1, GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 lgpl-3.0.
  - Godel_unicode 7y ago
    Yes. https://help.github.com/en/github/creating-cloning-and-archiving-repositories/licensing-a-repository https://help.github.com/en/github/creating-cloning-and-archi... https://choosealicense.com https://choosealicense.com
    - em-bee 7y ago
      it takes some searching, but when one selects GPLv3 then the default text does indeed include the "or later" clause. so not only is it an option, but it is the default option, because an extra step is needed to change that. unfortunately, in my opinion, the whole choosealicense site could be improved a lot. for example the license templates could be actual form fields letting you fill in the details needed, and then producing a license text that is correctly filled out. as it is, some users will likely miss some fields
- 7y ago
lgierth 7y ago
RMS has done terrible harm to our community
- naringas 7y ago
  maybe he has recently... but he is one of the founders of it.
  - travbrack 7y ago
    The 80s were a long time ago
  - new_realist 7y ago
    No, OSS predates Stallman.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- pearjuice 7y ago
  Without RMS most of the software you are currently using wouldn't work. He has orthodox manners and is an extremist for freedom but "terrible harm" is a lie.
  - rimliu 7y ago
    I am sure it would work just fine.
    - dbdjfjrjvebd 7y ago
      It mainly would not exist. Or if it did it would be very different.
      - Godel_unicode 7y ago
        This is falling prey to the great man theory of history. How can you know that nobody else would have championed FOSS if not for him? There are lots of FOSS advocates who were turned off to the whole movement because of him; what might they have done with him absent?
kburman 7y ago
Can someone explain the issue with slopy licensing and what is RMS?
- rethab 7y ago
  RMS is Richard Stallman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman
- Snetry 7y ago
  While GitHub encourages licensing and even help users with a dedicated menu for it they don't enforce it or help in making licensing decisions which in the eyes or RMS (Richard Matthew Stallman) is bad
  - kburman 7y ago
    Ok, this RMS's view not GNU. Now it makes sense. Thanks, Man!
wichert 7y ago
There is some awful stuff in that thread, like this gem [1]: After microsoft puchased Github, they encouraged "Codes of Conduct". So now 40k "opensource projects" hace CoC's. Obviously men won't be contributing to said projects, other than the people allready in them. [1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-system-discuss/2019-11/msg00282.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-system-discuss/2019-1...
- sergiotapia 7y ago
  Obviously it's hyperbole - but a lot of people are definitely put off by coc, myself included. It's a wretched, insidious text sneaked in by very bad actors into mainstream open source repositories.
  - elcaminocomplex 7y ago
    The great thing about CoC is that they tend to be self-reinforcing, keeping out exactly the people who are bound to conduct themselves in ways that are inconsistent with the principles behind them.
    - sergiotapia 7y ago
      before coc was snuck into these repos, was it just a shitshow of nasty people acting a fool in open source communities? I don't remember it that way.
      - Godel_unicode 7y ago
        I recommend you Google the name Linus Torvalds. You will find some truly shocking language directed at his fellow human beings.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        laresistance 7y ago
psv1 7y ago
There is being direct and then there is speaking like an edgy teenager for entirety of your adult life. It's so difficult to take Stallman seriously when he makes these extreme generalisations.
- tsukurimashou 7y ago
  I think he really just speaks his mind, I'm not sure he is trying to be edgy or anything, he always had quite radical ideas and positions. I mean people have been calling him a lunatic for years, he has been fighting for free software and warning people about proprietary software and the obvious risks it carries. Despite being proven right about quite a lot he warned about, people views never really changed about him.
  - ezkl 7y ago
    What exactly do you consider radical about his position in this instance?
    - ac29 7y ago
      Radical might not be my choice of words, but he's got a certain type of ideological purity around free software that's definitely on the extreme end. Here's a paraphrased version of what he's saying: "GitHub [...] has done terrible harm to our community. GitHub was so bad for free software, all along[.]" Now, if you were to define "our community" as the open source community, this would be laughable - very few people would argue that open source software has been terribly harmed by GitHub (on the contrary, the rise of GitHub has seen many projects flourish). I don't necessarily think he means the wider open source community, though - he's referring to his own Stallman flavor of free software.
      - ezkl 7y ago
        I absolutely agree. His lack of self-awareness and seeming inability to see the generally positive aspects of the growth of open source just doesn't sound radical to me. Quite the opposite in fact.
danieldk 7y ago
Maybe it has done harm to GNU and the GPL, since they have become less relevant. But despite its problems, GitHub has been a huge net positive for free software. They considerably lowered the bar for making a project available. SourceForge acted as gatekeepers and rejected projects. With GitHub, anyone could start a project and no-one would look down on you and tell you that your project is not novel enough or whatever. GitHub also drastically lowered the bar for contributing to free software. Contributing to a project used to mean subscribing to a mailing list, submitting a patch there, and not much would usually happen. With GitHub you fork, submit a PR, get your PR automatically built and unit tested with CI, the project owner can merge your PR with a single button click. It's fine to prefer an e-mail patch workflow, but GitHub has shown that for most of the population, submitting patches through PRs is a much lower bar. At this point, GitHub is largely unnecessary. Most of the features have been copied and reimplemented better in FLOSS alternatives such as GitLab, Gitea, Gogs, etc. But since they were one of the first, people will stay due to network effects.
- viraptor 7y ago
  > SourceForge acted as gatekeepers and rejected projects. Did it? I remember starting two projects which made not much sense at all. I vaguely remember the process was automatic then. Has it changed with time?
  - danieldk 7y ago
    Maybe it has changed later. In the mid 2000s, you definitely had to wait for approval. Some of my projects were rejected. There is still some documentation around the net about approval: Once you complete your registration, you must wait a few days for the SourceForge administrators to review your request and set up the infrastructure. You should receive an email response informing you of the project's creation when it is ready. You can check the status of any of your project requests by visiting your SourceForge home page: http://sourceforge.net/users/your-userid/ http://sourceforge.net/users/your-userid/ . There, you can view all of your SourceForge projects. Also, on the 'my projects' page you can see all your projects regardless of their approval status. Source: https://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Plugging-into-SourceForge/sourceforge.html https://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Plugging-into-Sourc...
beenBoutIT 7y ago
Interesting how RMS now views Apple as being worse than Microsoft.
farfegnoogin 7y ago
Seems a weird sentiment to me. GitHub, as is, is largely a throw back to an older time that RMS sought to recreate. when people just wanted to share code, without much motive beyond that.
scarejunba 7y ago
This guy was my hero growing up because I'm fairly certain that the things the initial community set up is why open source is so common today. But now he needs a handler. My god, man. Get it together.
- wahern 7y ago
  A handler now? The linked article is classic RMS: pedantic, relentless, and reasoning so nuanced to the point of being indecipherable if not imperceptible to all but the few who have spent countless hours wrestling with RMS' ideas. If you assume RMS is smarter than you, or at least more analytically rigorous (like a computer)[1], then you'd be hard pressed to find anything RMS has said which isn't consistent with the entire body of his thinking--including his opinions on certain age-related matters and his recognition of and apology for the insensitive manner in which he expressed them. Which isn't to say you would consequentially agree with him, just that his reasoning is about as impeccable as is possible for such insoluble human social issues. You almost always end up having to wrestle with and reject his premises, which can be difficult because his premises are often agreeable on their face. But by doing so you develop and strengthen your own views. RMS is like Socrates, a pacemaker in a race, or the Energizer Bunny--absolutely exhausting, but if you're disengaging then more likely than not you're the one falling behind, not him. Which is fine--the biggest premise of all is that any of this matters, and if you have your doubts it's impossible to match his stamina; just don't pretend like he's the one slowing down or tripping up. [1] I want to say that one should simply apply the HN rule of assuming the best version of the argument. But RMS almost always puts forth the best version of the argument, at least from a logical perspective, though certainly not necessarily a rhetorical perspective. Thus with RMS the better habit is assuming he's smarter than you, regardless of whether that's true or not, as it forces you to identify and trace the elements and threads of his reasoning, which are invariably present in plain sight.
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    The world's changed, man. He didn't. That's all there is to it.
madiathomas 7y ago
GitHub probably did more good for the FOSS community than any other project I can think of. Before GitHub, it was so difficult to share code. Solutions available weren't anywhere close. I don't understand why he wants every little piece of software to be open sourced. GitHub was attractive to investors because it had closed source projects that have to pay in order to use it. I don't see how GitHub was going to succeed if they were purely open source and no-one was paying to use it. Those proprietary projects that he so hates are the ones who were keeping the lights on. They are the ones which were giving Investors hope than GitHub will make lots of money in future and they must invest more.
- thethrowboat 7y ago
  If you wanted to use that little piece of code, wouldn't it be better if it was open source? I remember when you could only get exe and projects didnt even think of sharing the code, even if it was just some small project.
  - madiathomas 7y ago
    If it is a library, I will prefer an open source one, but if it is some software, I don't mind even when it is closed source.
- viraptor 7y ago
  Both google code and sourceforge existed before GitHub. I'd say the experience wasn't streamlined for collaboration like today, but it was definitely easy to share code if you choose to. GitHub mainly flipped the default view from "project description, forums, and downloads" to "code" which was the massive change.
mk3 7y ago
Stallman being Stallman, let's move on people.
kstenerud 7y ago
This is just RMS being consistent. He's never liked non-GNU licenses, and considers anything that allows the use of open source code in closed source projects to be the spawn of the devil. He'll continue saying this until his dying breath. That said, GNU and the GPL have been very helpful, sometimes instrumental, in fostering and protecting open source code and developers, so I'll put up with his ivory tower vision for the practical benefits it's brought us. Call him crazy (and he probably is), but he's been a net benefit to society, which is a lot more than most achieve.
- teddyh 7y ago
  > considers anything that allows the use of open source code in closed source projects to be the spawn of the devil. He'll continue saying this until his dying breath. I claim that RMS has never said anything like that, and I challenge anyone to prove otherwise. He’s consistently said that it’s better if software was copylefted (like GPL) than if it was simply free software (like BSD), but he has consistently reserved the, like you say, “spawn of the devil”-type categorization for proprietary software and worse, like malware, etc.
jimnotgym 7y ago
Gate keeping Imagine doing the wonderful things RMS did in the past, being a hero of both FOSS and software in general. Imagine then being remembered for the ahole tricks that came later instead. Github opened up both software and FOSS to me. I found projects despite not having a computer science education, not working full time in software, not having a personal network of academic buddies, not using irc. Very occasionally I contributed, and my submissions were taken on the value of the bugs I fixed, despite my lack of reputation. RMS is a gatekeeping mysogynist pxxxx. He is failing to damage the community despite his best efforts because he has marginalised himself by his behaviour. Ps. I haven't started a repo on github in a while, but I firmly remember it suggesting you add a license, and linking to explanations of the different licences. Did RMS want them to force it on you?
dbdjfjrjvebd 7y ago
> GitHub's encouragement of sloppy licensing, no licensing, or licensing under only a single version of the GPL, has done terrible harm to our community. > GitHub was so bad for free software, all along, that I could imagine Microsoft's making it less bad, or making it more bad. We should judge by what actually happens, not by prejudice. > Keep in mind that Apple is much worse than Microsoft. The title this thread "Github has done terrible harm to our community." is a very selective quote.
ngcc_hk 7y ago
Open source not free source get the movement above the ground. Sometimes what start (rms), what help (Linus) may not be the one that make it great.
Grue3 7y ago
It did, by making Git a monoculture. It's very difficult to get a project to take off if it's not on Github. When Github goes down, so do the majority of important projects, breaking builds and causing chaos across the developer world. It didn't have to be like this. Git hosting should've been distributed like GNU Social/Mastodon.
DarkWiiPlayer 7y ago
I'm sorry, but I don't see it. > GitHub's encouragement of sloppy licensing, no licensing, or licensing under only a single version of the GPL, has done terrible harm to our community. There's many projects out there that are meant to be open source, but the author never put a license on it, so it's, legally speaking, "all rights reserve" and you aren'y even allowed to use the software yourself. Github doesn't really encourage this; in fact, it even offers initializing a new repo with a license, but it still happens that project owners just don't > GitHub was so bad for free software, all along, that I could imagine Microsoft's making it less bad First of all, this is obviously just his opinion; I can't really attack or defend it like "good" or "bad" are some sort of mathematical constants. The fact is: github does serve as a platform for non-free software (heck, every single one of my projects is either MIT or public domain, which means it can be put into a closed-source project), so if your ultimate goal is for all software to be "free" in the FSF sense, then yes, github has caused much harm. > We should judge by what actually happens, not by prejudice. This statement is so obviously correct, there's just no way you could interpret it in any unreasonable way.

49 points by stargrave 7y ago

xwowsersx 7y ago

How does GitHub encourage sloppy licensing? How is GitHub bad for free software?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
robinwassen 7y ago
I think the reason is that GitHub lowers the barrier of entry to distribution of OSS. This makes more people distribute OSS, and most devs do probably not care as much about OSS licensing as RMS would like and therefore do "mistakes". RMS has a high horse stance, I think that easier access to OSS is better even though it might come with some side effects.
- TheCapeGreek 7y ago
  It's way easier for him to have a high horse about doing FOSS "correctly" when he was in an academic environment with different pressures for most of his career. There'd be a different tune sung if he were an average Joe with business requirements to fulfill.
  - devnonymous 7y ago
    You do realize that he is not an average Joe with business requirements to fulfill because he decided to mount that high horse, right ? This argument of 'Oh, he'd be singing a different tune if he had to deal with today's reality' is so naive. The fact that he doesn't (/doesn't have to) deal with everyday reality is his whole point -- he has claimed that it is unrealistic to use software that confirms to his set of values, so he denied to participate in that reality.
danieldk 7y ago
I think the reasoning is that you can host projects on GitHub without them being FLOSS, since you can just start a repository and add code without ever adding a license. If you do not add a license, it is just copyrighted code, and cannot be redistributed freely. Some repositories take this to the extreme. There are some closed source software vendors that use GitHub as an issue tracker and collection of Markdown files. If GitHub wants to permit such uses - it's their party.

blihp 7y ago

Is his comment based on outdated information? I just checked and github appears to recognize a few dozen (https://help.github.com/en/github/creating-cloning-and-archiving-repositories/licensing-a-repository#searching-github-by-license-type https://help.github.com/en/github/creating-cloning-and-archi...) license types including gpl2, gpl3 and lgpl

em-bee 7y ago
RMS argues against licensing under only a single version of the GPL obviously he prefers "GPL2 or later" and "GPL3 or later" does github offer that?
- watwut 7y ago
  If you click on the link, you find: GNU Affero General Public License v3.0, GNU General Public License family gpl, GNU General Public License v2.0 gpl-2.0, GNU General Public License v3.0 gpl-3.0, GNU Lesser General Public License family lgpl, GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1 lgpl-2.1, GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 lgpl-3.0.
- Godel_unicode 7y ago
  Yes. https://help.github.com/en/github/creating-cloning-and-archiving-repositories/licensing-a-repository https://help.github.com/en/github/creating-cloning-and-archi... https://choosealicense.com https://choosealicense.com
  - em-bee 7y ago
    it takes some searching, but when one selects GPLv3 then the default text does indeed include the "or later" clause. so not only is it an option, but it is the default option, because an extra step is needed to change that. unfortunately, in my opinion, the whole choosealicense site could be improved a lot. for example the license templates could be actual form fields letting you fill in the details needed, and then producing a license text that is correctly filled out. as it is, some users will likely miss some fields
7y ago

lgierth 7y ago

RMS has done terrible harm to our community

naringas 7y ago
maybe he has recently... but he is one of the founders of it.
- travbrack 7y ago
  The 80s were a long time ago
- new_realist 7y ago
  No, OSS predates Stallman.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
pearjuice 7y ago
Without RMS most of the software you are currently using wouldn't work. He has orthodox manners and is an extremist for freedom but "terrible harm" is a lie.
- rimliu 7y ago
  I am sure it would work just fine.
  - dbdjfjrjvebd 7y ago
    It mainly would not exist. Or if it did it would be very different.
    - Godel_unicode 7y ago
      This is falling prey to the great man theory of history. How can you know that nobody else would have championed FOSS if not for him? There are lots of FOSS advocates who were turned off to the whole movement because of him; what might they have done with him absent?

kburman 7y ago

Can someone explain the issue with slopy licensing and what is RMS?

rethab 7y ago
RMS is Richard Stallman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman
Snetry 7y ago
While GitHub encourages licensing and even help users with a dedicated menu for it they don't enforce it or help in making licensing decisions which in the eyes or RMS (Richard Matthew Stallman) is bad
- kburman 7y ago
  Ok, this RMS's view not GNU. Now it makes sense. Thanks, Man!

wichert 7y ago

There is some awful stuff in that thread, like this gem [1]: After microsoft puchased Github, they encouraged "Codes of Conduct". So now 40k "opensource projects" hace CoC's. Obviously men won't be contributing to said projects, other than the people allready in them. [1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-system-discuss/2019-11/msg00282.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-system-discuss/2019-1...

sergiotapia 7y ago
Obviously it's hyperbole - but a lot of people are definitely put off by coc, myself included. It's a wretched, insidious text sneaked in by very bad actors into mainstream open source repositories.
- elcaminocomplex 7y ago
  The great thing about CoC is that they tend to be self-reinforcing, keeping out exactly the people who are bound to conduct themselves in ways that are inconsistent with the principles behind them.
  - sergiotapia 7y ago
    before coc was snuck into these repos, was it just a shitshow of nasty people acting a fool in open source communities? I don't remember it that way.
    - Godel_unicode 7y ago
      I recommend you Google the name Linus Torvalds. You will find some truly shocking language directed at his fellow human beings.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - laresistance 7y ago

psv1 7y ago

There is being direct and then there is speaking like an edgy teenager for entirety of your adult life. It's so difficult to take Stallman seriously when he makes these extreme generalisations.

tsukurimashou 7y ago
I think he really just speaks his mind, I'm not sure he is trying to be edgy or anything, he always had quite radical ideas and positions. I mean people have been calling him a lunatic for years, he has been fighting for free software and warning people about proprietary software and the obvious risks it carries. Despite being proven right about quite a lot he warned about, people views never really changed about him.
- ezkl 7y ago
  What exactly do you consider radical about his position in this instance?
  - ac29 7y ago
    Radical might not be my choice of words, but he's got a certain type of ideological purity around free software that's definitely on the extreme end. Here's a paraphrased version of what he's saying: "GitHub [...] has done terrible harm to our community. GitHub was so bad for free software, all along[.]" Now, if you were to define "our community" as the open source community, this would be laughable - very few people would argue that open source software has been terribly harmed by GitHub (on the contrary, the rise of GitHub has seen many projects flourish). I don't necessarily think he means the wider open source community, though - he's referring to his own Stallman flavor of free software.
    - ezkl 7y ago
      I absolutely agree. His lack of self-awareness and seeming inability to see the generally positive aspects of the growth of open source just doesn't sound radical to me. Quite the opposite in fact.

danieldk 7y ago

Maybe it has done harm to GNU and the GPL, since they have become less relevant. But despite its problems, GitHub has been a huge net positive for free software. They considerably lowered the bar for making a project available. SourceForge acted as gatekeepers and rejected projects. With GitHub, anyone could start a project and no-one would look down on you and tell you that your project is not novel enough or whatever. GitHub also drastically lowered the bar for contributing to free software. Contributing to a project used to mean subscribing to a mailing list, submitting a patch there, and not much would usually happen. With GitHub you fork, submit a PR, get your PR automatically built and unit tested with CI, the project owner can merge your PR with a single button click. It's fine to prefer an e-mail patch workflow, but GitHub has shown that for most of the population, submitting patches through PRs is a much lower bar. At this point, GitHub is largely unnecessary. Most of the features have been copied and reimplemented better in FLOSS alternatives such as GitLab, Gitea, Gogs, etc. But since they were one of the first, people will stay due to network effects.

viraptor 7y ago
> SourceForge acted as gatekeepers and rejected projects. Did it? I remember starting two projects which made not much sense at all. I vaguely remember the process was automatic then. Has it changed with time?
- danieldk 7y ago
  Maybe it has changed later. In the mid 2000s, you definitely had to wait for approval. Some of my projects were rejected. There is still some documentation around the net about approval: Once you complete your registration, you must wait a few days for the SourceForge administrators to review your request and set up the infrastructure. You should receive an email response informing you of the project's creation when it is ready. You can check the status of any of your project requests by visiting your SourceForge home page: http://sourceforge.net/users/your-userid/ http://sourceforge.net/users/your-userid/ . There, you can view all of your SourceForge projects. Also, on the 'my projects' page you can see all your projects regardless of their approval status. Source: https://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Plugging-into-SourceForge/sourceforge.html https://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Plugging-into-Sourc...

beenBoutIT 7y ago

Interesting how RMS now views Apple as being worse than Microsoft.

farfegnoogin 7y ago

Seems a weird sentiment to me. GitHub, as is, is largely a throw back to an older time that RMS sought to recreate. when people just wanted to share code, without much motive beyond that.

scarejunba 7y ago

This guy was my hero growing up because I'm fairly certain that the things the initial community set up is why open source is so common today. But now he needs a handler. My god, man. Get it together.

wahern 7y ago
A handler now? The linked article is classic RMS: pedantic, relentless, and reasoning so nuanced to the point of being indecipherable if not imperceptible to all but the few who have spent countless hours wrestling with RMS' ideas. If you assume RMS is smarter than you, or at least more analytically rigorous (like a computer)[1], then you'd be hard pressed to find anything RMS has said which isn't consistent with the entire body of his thinking--including his opinions on certain age-related matters and his recognition of and apology for the insensitive manner in which he expressed them. Which isn't to say you would consequentially agree with him, just that his reasoning is about as impeccable as is possible for such insoluble human social issues. You almost always end up having to wrestle with and reject his premises, which can be difficult because his premises are often agreeable on their face. But by doing so you develop and strengthen your own views. RMS is like Socrates, a pacemaker in a race, or the Energizer Bunny--absolutely exhausting, but if you're disengaging then more likely than not you're the one falling behind, not him. Which is fine--the biggest premise of all is that any of this matters, and if you have your doubts it's impossible to match his stamina; just don't pretend like he's the one slowing down or tripping up. [1] I want to say that one should simply apply the HN rule of assuming the best version of the argument. But RMS almost always puts forth the best version of the argument, at least from a logical perspective, though certainly not necessarily a rhetorical perspective. Thus with RMS the better habit is assuming he's smarter than you, regardless of whether that's true or not, as it forces you to identify and trace the elements and threads of his reasoning, which are invariably present in plain sight.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  The world's changed, man. He didn't. That's all there is to it.

madiathomas 7y ago

GitHub probably did more good for the FOSS community than any other project I can think of. Before GitHub, it was so difficult to share code. Solutions available weren't anywhere close. I don't understand why he wants every little piece of software to be open sourced. GitHub was attractive to investors because it had closed source projects that have to pay in order to use it. I don't see how GitHub was going to succeed if they were purely open source and no-one was paying to use it. Those proprietary projects that he so hates are the ones who were keeping the lights on. They are the ones which were giving Investors hope than GitHub will make lots of money in future and they must invest more.

thethrowboat 7y ago
If you wanted to use that little piece of code, wouldn't it be better if it was open source? I remember when you could only get exe and projects didnt even think of sharing the code, even if it was just some small project.
- madiathomas 7y ago
  If it is a library, I will prefer an open source one, but if it is some software, I don't mind even when it is closed source.
viraptor 7y ago
Both google code and sourceforge existed before GitHub. I'd say the experience wasn't streamlined for collaboration like today, but it was definitely easy to share code if you choose to. GitHub mainly flipped the default view from "project description, forums, and downloads" to "code" which was the massive change.

mk3 7y ago

Stallman being Stallman, let's move on people.

kstenerud 7y ago

This is just RMS being consistent. He's never liked non-GNU licenses, and considers anything that allows the use of open source code in closed source projects to be the spawn of the devil. He'll continue saying this until his dying breath. That said, GNU and the GPL have been very helpful, sometimes instrumental, in fostering and protecting open source code and developers, so I'll put up with his ivory tower vision for the practical benefits it's brought us. Call him crazy (and he probably is), but he's been a net benefit to society, which is a lot more than most achieve.

teddyh 7y ago
> considers anything that allows the use of open source code in closed source projects to be the spawn of the devil. He'll continue saying this until his dying breath. I claim that RMS has never said anything like that, and I challenge anyone to prove otherwise. He’s consistently said that it’s better if software was copylefted (like GPL) than if it was simply free software (like BSD), but he has consistently reserved the, like you say, “spawn of the devil”-type categorization for proprietary software and worse, like malware, etc.

jimnotgym 7y ago

Gate keeping Imagine doing the wonderful things RMS did in the past, being a hero of both FOSS and software in general. Imagine then being remembered for the ahole tricks that came later instead. Github opened up both software and FOSS to me. I found projects despite not having a computer science education, not working full time in software, not having a personal network of academic buddies, not using irc. Very occasionally I contributed, and my submissions were taken on the value of the bugs I fixed, despite my lack of reputation. RMS is a gatekeeping mysogynist pxxxx. He is failing to damage the community despite his best efforts because he has marginalised himself by his behaviour. Ps. I haven't started a repo on github in a while, but I firmly remember it suggesting you add a license, and linking to explanations of the different licences. Did RMS want them to force it on you?

dbdjfjrjvebd 7y ago

> GitHub's encouragement of sloppy licensing, no licensing, or licensing under only a single version of the GPL, has done terrible harm to our community. > GitHub was so bad for free software, all along, that I could imagine Microsoft's making it less bad, or making it more bad. We should judge by what actually happens, not by prejudice. > Keep in mind that Apple is much worse than Microsoft. The title this thread "Github has done terrible harm to our community." is a very selective quote.

ngcc_hk 7y ago

Open source not free source get the movement above the ground. Sometimes what start (rms), what help (Linus) may not be the one that make it great.

Grue3 7y ago

It did, by making Git a monoculture. It's very difficult to get a project to take off if it's not on Github. When Github goes down, so do the majority of important projects, breaking builds and causing chaos across the developer world. It didn't have to be like this. Git hosting should've been distributed like GNU Social/Mastodon.

DarkWiiPlayer 7y ago

I'm sorry, but I don't see it. > GitHub's encouragement of sloppy licensing, no licensing, or licensing under only a single version of the GPL, has done terrible harm to our community. There's many projects out there that are meant to be open source, but the author never put a license on it, so it's, legally speaking, "all rights reserve" and you aren'y even allowed to use the software yourself. Github doesn't really encourage this; in fact, it even offers initializing a new repo with a license, but it still happens that project owners just don't > GitHub was so bad for free software, all along, that I could imagine Microsoft's making it less bad First of all, this is obviously just his opinion; I can't really attack or defend it like "good" or "bad" are some sort of mathematical constants. The fact is: github does serve as a platform for non-free software (heck, every single one of my projects is either MIT or public domain, which means it can be put into a closed-source project), so if your ultimate goal is for all software to be "free" in the FSF sense, then yes, github has caused much harm. > We should judge by what actually happens, not by prejudice. This statement is so obviously correct, there's just no way you could interpret it in any unreasonable way.