18 ms·

Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software

123 points by octopus 16y ago

hasenj 16y ago
Or, why Free Software misses the point of Open Source :) Open Source is about the developers. Free Software is about the end users (or, it's supposed to be). In reality, Free Software ends up being useful only for programmers, hackers, technical people, and well, institutions which require programmers, hackers and technical people to run and grow their infrastructure (such as Universities and Governments). Free Software (as an ideology) offers nothing to the typical end user of, say, the iPhone. It offers a lot to Apple (the iPhone makers).
- cschwarm 16y ago
  I personally think, the user/developer distinction is misleading. I agree with Stallman that Open Source is about different goals and values: * Open Source supporters say "Some software should be..." * Free Software supporters say "All software should be..." In this regard, you're right: Free Software misses the point of Open Source, namely that the goals and values of Free Software are simply wrong.
- code_duck 16y ago
  You make it sound as if universities and governments (and Apple?) do not offer services which benefit people who do not directly use the software themselves.
- SwellJoe 16y ago
  "Open Source is about the developers. Free Software is about the end users (or, it's supposed to be)." In an ideal world, the user and the developer are one in the same. I don't mean everyone who uses a piece of software should have to know the code intimately; merely that they should have the freedom to see it, modify it and learn from it, should the need or desire arise. The power of the Free Software movement is that it created an entire generation of users who are also developers. Most of the people here at HN have Free and Open Source software to thank for their programming skills. You're mostly too young to remember the world in which code was closed, by default, and you had to learn without the benefit of an infinite variety of examples to peruse. "Free Software (as an ideology) offers nothing to the typical end user of, say, the iPhone." Which is why it is important to educate the next generation of the importance of Free Software (or Open Source, though having an ideology to back it might not be such a bad things), so that the rate of software advancement and innovation continues to accelerate, and so that the gap between the technology haves and have nots does not grow further and faster. To dismiss the ideology, I think, is to dismiss the importance of a free software culture; our Internet exists as it does today thanks to free software. Note that I'm not discussing licenses here, but the general culture of software. If we have a culture of sharing, which RMS and the FSF has been instrumental in creating (and the GPL was merely a part of that), we have a culture in which young programmers can learn from the experienced, and a culture in which barriers to entry are not as economic in nature. I think it's worth teaching kids the value of a free software culture, and working to keep that culture thriving going forward, despite the fact that many major corporations have a vested interest in seeing free software contained to the world of nerds and hackers.
  - brudgers 16y ago
    >"In an ideal world, the user and the developer are one in the same." My vision of utopia does not include helping my mother debug her cell phone - explaining gmail is bad enough.
    - SwellJoe 16y ago
      You've taken that quote out of context, as the next sentence dispels your fear of having to help your mother debug her cell phone. But, to answer that particular argument: It can't help the previous generation in any notable way. That ship has sailed. But, the next generation can be more capable than the current one, assuming we pass on the tools they need and a culture of learning and sharing discoveries. So, don't bother teaching your mother to code, unless she actually wants to learn. Teach your kids and give them the tools they need (which includes a huge variety of source to learn from).
      - EGreg 16y ago
        I think that in the future, I wouldn't expect everyone's kids to be know enough to provide patches for software they use. Rather, there has to be a responsive community of developers around the product, with a good TOOL (like a bug tracker) which the kids could use to report a bug and anther TOOL to capture the bug in the app and send the extra info. While everyone would have the freedom to contribute patches, most people aren't going to be educated along this line, or know the product very well. It is the tools that we must improve, although the principles of software freedom enforced in the GPL help protect people.
        SwellJoe 16y ago
        It's the difference between "may" and "must". You think I'm saying "must", but I intended to express "may".
        dwc 16y ago
        That's much better. May be a developer. May engage the services of a developer. May benefit from unknown developers somewhere halfway across the world.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- noibl 16y ago
  As he admits, "Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement." A comparison of the two is apples-to-oranges.
- sp332 16y ago
  In the Free Software model, there's no such thing as an end-user. Everyone gets to be a developer (for themselves or their friends). That's why it's so developer-friendly.
  - moron4hire 16y ago
    unfortunately, when you build your software on "everyone gets to be a developer", more often than not it comes out as "everyone has to be a developer".
  - tbrownaw 16y ago
    Yes, egcs and xemacs (and at least partly clang/llvm I think) are shining examples of the FSF's developer-friendliness.
- mvalle 16y ago
  "In reality, Free Software ends up being useful only for programmers, hackers, technical people," That is like saying that freedom of speech is only useful for journalists. You don't have to exercise a freedom to benefit from it. You benefit from others exercising it too. Whether a journalist exposes government corruption, or a security experts independently audits OpenSSL, everyone benefits of the relevant freedom being exercised. You don't have to be a programmer for benefiting from DeCSS. You don't have to be a hacker to benefit from Apache. You don't have to be a technical person to benefit from WordPress. The same applies to the reversed, you don't have to be a programmer to suffer from DRM, vendor lock-in, or nag-ware.
  - rick888 16y ago
    "The same applies to the reversed, you don't have to be a programmer to suffer from DRM, vendor lock-in, or nag-ware." ahh, so you don't want software to be commercial, is that it?
- ErrantX 16y ago
  >Open Source is about the developers. Free Software is about the end users (or, it's supposed to be). Yes, this. This might be an unpopular view but "free software" (in the sense talked about here) is unencumbered for the users only. For developers it is encumbered (via the GPL). Open Source makes a different trade-off for the same gain. This is the thing Stallman consistently misses; that Open Source and Free Software are simply two different solutions to a similar issue. Free Software sacrifices the freedom of developers when reusing the code. Open Source sacrifices a developers future porential ability to keep all uses of the code freely available. He throws out the word ethical, I think, because it makes FS sound better. But the bottom line is that both ideals have underlying issues and problems; the brilliant thing is that there is a choice between the two, and we are free to pick the one that makes the trade-off we prefer. The really great thing is that the real world is not as black and white as FS & OS; we can mix and match various aspects for our own preference :) That is the point of freedom. I suppose I can't fault Stallman for promoting his personal choice as best he is able.
aniket_ray 16y ago
I'm not a big fan on GPL anymore. When I create some software I prefer the user of my software to have all freedoms including the freedom to embed it in closed source software.
- emilsedgh 16y ago
  Its not about gpl vs. bsd-like licenses. Its about free software vs. open source software. bsd-like licenses are still 'free'.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    GPL-like licenses are still 'open' by OSI standards as well. So yeah, the permissive-license v. copyleft argument isn't the same one as the Free v. Open argument, though perhaps there's some correlation between what views people have on each one.
  - bad_user 16y ago
    Wouldn't you hate it if you did something, like giving money to a poor fellow, and then people are using your good deed to market their ideology (like communism perhaps); even though you think it's wrong? Now imagine how some open-source authors feel.
- bhickey 16y ago
  Can you articulate your concern? Are you specifically objecting to the 'tivoisation' clause of the GPLv3, or has your opinion on the GPL changed, or something else? The spirit that you seem to describe is, I believe, embodied by the LGPLv2 (minus the clause that allows you to convert LGPL -> GPL.)
  - zzzeek 16y ago
    I've been warned on many occasions that the LGPL is not trusted to cover dynamic languages like Python very well since its verbiage is specific to C linkers and compilers.
schallis 16y ago
Unfortunately, "Open Source" is easier to market than "Free Software". The real benefits of true free software evidence themselves in the end and that's what counts, not what you call it. Edit: It is however important to distinguish between free software and thinly veiled proprietary software marketed as Open Source.
- dasil003 16y ago
  What about distinguishing between non-free, but substantially open software (measured by ease of patch submission) vs proprietary software with the occasional code dump?
btilly 16y ago
Free software offers the end user benefits that the end user only rarely understands or appreciates. Open source offers developers benefits that lots of developers understand and appreciate. Therefore open source is a much better marketing tactic. (Which is exactly what it was designed to be.)
- prodigal_erik 16y ago
  Anyone who's ever taken their car to an independent mechanic (rather than back to the dealer) ought to understand a key end user benefit of free software: you aren't limited by the interests of its creator. I'm confused that nobody seems to get this.
  - bad_user 16y ago
    I get it, but it is also a bad analogy. Cars can't be repaired with a quick update over the wire.
EGreg 16y ago
If they only called it Liberating Software, they wouldn't have had this happen. After all, open source software is also free (as in, costs nothing). But liberating software sounds like it confers freedom on the person -- actually liberating them. Remember, branding is important.
- billswift 16y ago
  Open source (as in BSD, MIT, WTFPL) are more liberating than "Free Software" (GPL). They greatly enlarge your opportunities in how you use the software.
  - mvalle 16y ago
    Free Software is defined as software released under a license that follows the definition of Free Software ( http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html ). BSD, MIT and WTFPL are all on the list of officially verified Free Software licenses: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html and are thus "Free Software". Open Source, similarly, is defined as software released under a license that follows the definition of Open Source Software ( http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd ). The OSI also has a list of approved licenses: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical http://www.opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical
- adolfojp 16y ago
  I vote for Freedom Software. It has a nice ring to it and it removes the ambiguity.
  - jarin 16y ago
    Then we can change it back to French Software later.
cookiecaper 16y ago
Stallman's insistence on unlimited and unrestricted redistribution at a price not exceeding cost is the critical flaw with the free software movement. While I agree that this is good and should be encouraged where possible, if there were a license or some support for persons that allowed access to and modification of the code and redistribution of the code only to persons who were appropriately licensed by the copyright owner, then I think we'd have a much better ecosystem here. Everyone would weld the hoods of their cars shut if leaving it open meant they had to give the car away for free. Since it doesn't, most people are free to access the internals of their vehicles and do whatever they like. The same principle should apply to software -- if we make it reasonably easy for people to leave the hood open but still make some money, there'd be more freedom to go around for everyone.
- Omega191 16y ago
  This is comparing apples to oranges; you don't lose the possession of software when you share it.
  - cookiecaper 16y ago
    You do lose the ability to make money off of software licenses when you include a stipulation that every recipient is free to redistribute your software's source as far and as much as possible at a price not exceeding the cost of the reproduction and distribution of the code, and that he is free to resell binaries of said software at any price. As we see with RHEL, if you try to do so, something like CentOS will come in and spoil the party. There are times when this kind of sharing is good, but I believe if we were interested less in economic zealotry and more interested in individual freedom to control the software that runs on one's computer, we'd see a lot more people distributing source code. That would ultimately produce a net increase in freedom for computer users, even if the rules say you can only share modifications with people that have a rightful license. Those that want to license under a copyleft are by all means free to do so, but we shouldn't exclude people that would be willing to distribute source code so that their users can control the program themselves, but who are not willing to switch to a support or subscription based business model. You can't make much significant money selling GPL'd software, you only make money by selling support contracts to BigCo. And that model is not applicable to everyone, even if it works out OK for database systems and Linux distributions. Whether it's simple to copy or not, it's not simple to implement or design, and implementers and designers should be compensated even if their work can be reproduced at minimal cost after its initial production and release. A car's physical properties that make it much more difficult to copy have nothing to do with whether the hoods should be opened or shut, and whether rightful owners should be free to tinker around inside.
w1ntermute 16y ago
Does it bother anyone else that people circumvent the dupe-prevention code on HN by adding a CGI question mark to the end of the URL? This link was submitted quite a while ago[0] without the question mark, and it clearly didn't gain a lot of traction, so in this case it was a good idea to resubmit it. However, it seems wrong that the dupe-prevention code isn't more sophisticated. 0: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2000239 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2000239
moron4hire 16y ago
All I know is that the proponents of Free Software are constantly trying to tell me what to think and tell me what my ideals should be, whereas just-plain-Open-Sourcers are happy enough to see that I'm using their software, regardless of what I do with it.
krschultz 16y ago
With a BSD or Apache license you are giving your project away for anyone to use how they see fit. With GPL you are giving your project away only to those willing to work with you on improving it. The arguments back and forth are so tiresome when they don't recognize that sometimes one license makes a lot of sense and sometimes the other license makes a lot of sense. There will never be one license to rule them all.
- jarin 16y ago
  Exactly, I've always argued that Free Software is best for infrastructure and developer tools, and Open Source is best for everything else (like libraries for end user software).
wingo 16y ago
I read these comments and think that this article wasn't directed at HN readers; it was directed at free software people.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
dools 16y ago
if the term free is ambiguous, why not just call it Freedom Software? I suppose may have the unfortunate side effect of being co-opted by patriotic zealots :)
- archangel_one 16y ago
  He's said elsewhere that "Freedom Software" was an existing trademark.
tzs 16y ago
My problem with Free Software as opposed to Open Source is that Free Software people have a greater tendency to end up doing things like this: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.distributions.gnu-linux-libre/826 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.distributions.gnu-linux-... (The whole thread, not just the specific post linked to).
- tzs 16y ago
  OK, my other problem with Free Software is when Free Software proponents try to tell me that GPL is more free than BSD because GPL stops the software from becoming part of non-free software. It's like saying people in the US are more free than those in the EU, because the US restricts travel to non-free Cuba.
  - archangel_one 16y ago
    It's not really. The concept of a derived work does not apply well to countries, but if it did that wouldn't be an example of it. What you're describing sounds more like a Free software web browser that would only communicate with Free web servers, which of course isn't what the GPL says at all.
gte910h 16y ago
Free software people continually miss the value of just letting people use their stuff to do whatever. Letting people put back patches if they want to, but otherwise do what the hell they feel like is powerful, useful and practical for many more applications than the GPL et al licenses. Some of us like sharing, but also like selling software and not giving away the source.
motters 16y ago
I tend to use GPL for fairly pragmatic reasons. If I've written some software - typically voluntarily and without payment - and put it out there for others to use then I would rather that the code remain in the public domain where improvements can be made which benefit everyone, including the original author.
- eps 16y ago
  Just curious - how many actual improvements were made to your GPL'd software and how many of these in your opinion would have not been made public if the license was different (say, BSD)?
  - motters 16y ago
    It's always difficult to know exactly what people do with the software once it's out there "in the wild". Many of my projects are just curiosities with no other contributors, but a few have had many improvements submitted - some of them quite substantial. My guess is that if the GPL projects used BSD this would not make a big difference, but it might limit the ability to combine my own code with other GPL'd algorithms. The predominance of GPL as a FOSS license means that adopting it basically maximises the potential usefulness of the code, and since IANAL I'm not really qualified to judge compatibility between different sorts of licenses.
jaekwon 16y ago
When Stallman says "free software is an ethical imperative, because only free software respects the users' freedom", is he saying that I don't have the freedom to create closed source software for my own benefit? Is he saying that I'm not respecting the end user's freedom by distributing closed source services? With all due respect Mr Stallman, given those conditions I may not want to code at all.
- archangel_one 16y ago
  You can't create closed source software for yourself - you have the source code, because you wrote it! But if you distribute that software to someone else, yes he holds that it is morally wrong to deprive them of certain rights, eg. the right to modify it for their own purposes. Given his apparent stance on non-Free software, I suspect he is not concerned if you choose not to write some. He certainly wouldn't have used it in the first place.

123 points by octopus 16y ago

Or, why Free Software misses the point of Open Source :) Open Source is about the developers. Free Software is about the end users (or, it's supposed to be). In reality, Free Software ends up being useful only for programmers, hackers, technical people, and well, institutions which require programmers, hackers and technical people to run and grow their infrastructure (such as Universities and Governments). Free Software (as an ideology) offers nothing to the typical end user of, say, the iPhone. It offers a lot to Apple (the iPhone makers).

cschwarm 16y ago
I personally think, the user/developer distinction is misleading. I agree with Stallman that Open Source is about different goals and values: * Open Source supporters say "Some software should be..." * Free Software supporters say "All software should be..." In this regard, you're right: Free Software misses the point of Open Source, namely that the goals and values of Free Software are simply wrong.
code_duck 16y ago
You make it sound as if universities and governments (and Apple?) do not offer services which benefit people who do not directly use the software themselves.
SwellJoe 16y ago
"Open Source is about the developers. Free Software is about the end users (or, it's supposed to be)." In an ideal world, the user and the developer are one in the same. I don't mean everyone who uses a piece of software should have to know the code intimately; merely that they should have the freedom to see it, modify it and learn from it, should the need or desire arise. The power of the Free Software movement is that it created an entire generation of users who are also developers. Most of the people here at HN have Free and Open Source software to thank for their programming skills. You're mostly too young to remember the world in which code was closed, by default, and you had to learn without the benefit of an infinite variety of examples to peruse. "Free Software (as an ideology) offers nothing to the typical end user of, say, the iPhone." Which is why it is important to educate the next generation of the importance of Free Software (or Open Source, though having an ideology to back it might not be such a bad things), so that the rate of software advancement and innovation continues to accelerate, and so that the gap between the technology haves and have nots does not grow further and faster. To dismiss the ideology, I think, is to dismiss the importance of a free software culture; our Internet exists as it does today thanks to free software. Note that I'm not discussing licenses here, but the general culture of software. If we have a culture of sharing, which RMS and the FSF has been instrumental in creating (and the GPL was merely a part of that), we have a culture in which young programmers can learn from the experienced, and a culture in which barriers to entry are not as economic in nature. I think it's worth teaching kids the value of a free software culture, and working to keep that culture thriving going forward, despite the fact that many major corporations have a vested interest in seeing free software contained to the world of nerds and hackers.
- brudgers 16y ago
  >"In an ideal world, the user and the developer are one in the same." My vision of utopia does not include helping my mother debug her cell phone - explaining gmail is bad enough.
  - SwellJoe 16y ago
    You've taken that quote out of context, as the next sentence dispels your fear of having to help your mother debug her cell phone. But, to answer that particular argument: It can't help the previous generation in any notable way. That ship has sailed. But, the next generation can be more capable than the current one, assuming we pass on the tools they need and a culture of learning and sharing discoveries. So, don't bother teaching your mother to code, unless she actually wants to learn. Teach your kids and give them the tools they need (which includes a huge variety of source to learn from).
    - EGreg 16y ago
      I think that in the future, I wouldn't expect everyone's kids to be know enough to provide patches for software they use. Rather, there has to be a responsive community of developers around the product, with a good TOOL (like a bug tracker) which the kids could use to report a bug and anther TOOL to capture the bug in the app and send the extra info. While everyone would have the freedom to contribute patches, most people aren't going to be educated along this line, or know the product very well. It is the tools that we must improve, although the principles of software freedom enforced in the GPL help protect people.
      - SwellJoe 16y ago
        It's the difference between "may" and "must". You think I'm saying "must", but I intended to express "may".
        dwc 16y ago
        That's much better. May be a developer. May engage the services of a developer. May benefit from unknown developers somewhere halfway across the world.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
noibl 16y ago
As he admits, "Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement." A comparison of the two is apples-to-oranges.
sp332 16y ago
In the Free Software model, there's no such thing as an end-user. Everyone gets to be a developer (for themselves or their friends). That's why it's so developer-friendly.
- moron4hire 16y ago
  unfortunately, when you build your software on "everyone gets to be a developer", more often than not it comes out as "everyone has to be a developer".
- tbrownaw 16y ago
  Yes, egcs and xemacs (and at least partly clang/llvm I think) are shining examples of the FSF's developer-friendliness.
mvalle 16y ago
"In reality, Free Software ends up being useful only for programmers, hackers, technical people," That is like saying that freedom of speech is only useful for journalists. You don't have to exercise a freedom to benefit from it. You benefit from others exercising it too. Whether a journalist exposes government corruption, or a security experts independently audits OpenSSL, everyone benefits of the relevant freedom being exercised. You don't have to be a programmer for benefiting from DeCSS. You don't have to be a hacker to benefit from Apache. You don't have to be a technical person to benefit from WordPress. The same applies to the reversed, you don't have to be a programmer to suffer from DRM, vendor lock-in, or nag-ware.
- rick888 16y ago
  "The same applies to the reversed, you don't have to be a programmer to suffer from DRM, vendor lock-in, or nag-ware." ahh, so you don't want software to be commercial, is that it?
ErrantX 16y ago
>Open Source is about the developers. Free Software is about the end users (or, it's supposed to be). Yes, this. This might be an unpopular view but "free software" (in the sense talked about here) is unencumbered for the users only. For developers it is encumbered (via the GPL). Open Source makes a different trade-off for the same gain. This is the thing Stallman consistently misses; that Open Source and Free Software are simply two different solutions to a similar issue. Free Software sacrifices the freedom of developers when reusing the code. Open Source sacrifices a developers future porential ability to keep all uses of the code freely available. He throws out the word ethical, I think, because it makes FS sound better. But the bottom line is that both ideals have underlying issues and problems; the brilliant thing is that there is a choice between the two, and we are free to pick the one that makes the trade-off we prefer. The really great thing is that the real world is not as black and white as FS & OS; we can mix and match various aspects for our own preference :) That is the point of freedom. I suppose I can't fault Stallman for promoting his personal choice as best he is able.

aniket_ray 16y ago

I'm not a big fan on GPL anymore. When I create some software I prefer the user of my software to have all freedoms including the freedom to embed it in closed source software.

emilsedgh 16y ago
Its not about gpl vs. bsd-like licenses. Its about free software vs. open source software. bsd-like licenses are still 'free'.
- _delirium 16y ago
  GPL-like licenses are still 'open' by OSI standards as well. So yeah, the permissive-license v. copyleft argument isn't the same one as the Free v. Open argument, though perhaps there's some correlation between what views people have on each one.
- bad_user 16y ago
  Wouldn't you hate it if you did something, like giving money to a poor fellow, and then people are using your good deed to market their ideology (like communism perhaps); even though you think it's wrong? Now imagine how some open-source authors feel.
bhickey 16y ago
Can you articulate your concern? Are you specifically objecting to the 'tivoisation' clause of the GPLv3, or has your opinion on the GPL changed, or something else? The spirit that you seem to describe is, I believe, embodied by the LGPLv2 (minus the clause that allows you to convert LGPL -> GPL.)
- zzzeek 16y ago
  I've been warned on many occasions that the LGPL is not trusted to cover dynamic languages like Python very well since its verbiage is specific to C linkers and compilers.

schallis 16y ago

Unfortunately, "Open Source" is easier to market than "Free Software". The real benefits of true free software evidence themselves in the end and that's what counts, not what you call it. Edit: It is however important to distinguish between free software and thinly veiled proprietary software marketed as Open Source.

dasil003 16y ago
What about distinguishing between non-free, but substantially open software (measured by ease of patch submission) vs proprietary software with the occasional code dump?

btilly 16y ago

Free software offers the end user benefits that the end user only rarely understands or appreciates. Open source offers developers benefits that lots of developers understand and appreciate. Therefore open source is a much better marketing tactic. (Which is exactly what it was designed to be.)

prodigal_erik 16y ago
Anyone who's ever taken their car to an independent mechanic (rather than back to the dealer) ought to understand a key end user benefit of free software: you aren't limited by the interests of its creator. I'm confused that nobody seems to get this.
- bad_user 16y ago
  I get it, but it is also a bad analogy. Cars can't be repaired with a quick update over the wire.

EGreg 16y ago

If they only called it Liberating Software, they wouldn't have had this happen. After all, open source software is also free (as in, costs nothing). But liberating software sounds like it confers freedom on the person -- actually liberating them. Remember, branding is important.

billswift 16y ago
Open source (as in BSD, MIT, WTFPL) are more liberating than "Free Software" (GPL). They greatly enlarge your opportunities in how you use the software.
- mvalle 16y ago
  Free Software is defined as software released under a license that follows the definition of Free Software ( http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html ). BSD, MIT and WTFPL are all on the list of officially verified Free Software licenses: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html and are thus "Free Software". Open Source, similarly, is defined as software released under a license that follows the definition of Open Source Software ( http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd ). The OSI also has a list of approved licenses: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical http://www.opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical
adolfojp 16y ago
I vote for Freedom Software. It has a nice ring to it and it removes the ambiguity.
- jarin 16y ago
  Then we can change it back to French Software later.

cookiecaper 16y ago

Stallman's insistence on unlimited and unrestricted redistribution at a price not exceeding cost is the critical flaw with the free software movement. While I agree that this is good and should be encouraged where possible, if there were a license or some support for persons that allowed access to and modification of the code and redistribution of the code only to persons who were appropriately licensed by the copyright owner, then I think we'd have a much better ecosystem here. Everyone would weld the hoods of their cars shut if leaving it open meant they had to give the car away for free. Since it doesn't, most people are free to access the internals of their vehicles and do whatever they like. The same principle should apply to software -- if we make it reasonably easy for people to leave the hood open but still make some money, there'd be more freedom to go around for everyone.

Omega191 16y ago
This is comparing apples to oranges; you don't lose the possession of software when you share it.
- cookiecaper 16y ago
  You do lose the ability to make money off of software licenses when you include a stipulation that every recipient is free to redistribute your software's source as far and as much as possible at a price not exceeding the cost of the reproduction and distribution of the code, and that he is free to resell binaries of said software at any price. As we see with RHEL, if you try to do so, something like CentOS will come in and spoil the party. There are times when this kind of sharing is good, but I believe if we were interested less in economic zealotry and more interested in individual freedom to control the software that runs on one's computer, we'd see a lot more people distributing source code. That would ultimately produce a net increase in freedom for computer users, even if the rules say you can only share modifications with people that have a rightful license. Those that want to license under a copyleft are by all means free to do so, but we shouldn't exclude people that would be willing to distribute source code so that their users can control the program themselves, but who are not willing to switch to a support or subscription based business model. You can't make much significant money selling GPL'd software, you only make money by selling support contracts to BigCo. And that model is not applicable to everyone, even if it works out OK for database systems and Linux distributions. Whether it's simple to copy or not, it's not simple to implement or design, and implementers and designers should be compensated even if their work can be reproduced at minimal cost after its initial production and release. A car's physical properties that make it much more difficult to copy have nothing to do with whether the hoods should be opened or shut, and whether rightful owners should be free to tinker around inside.

w1ntermute 16y ago

Does it bother anyone else that people circumvent the dupe-prevention code on HN by adding a CGI question mark to the end of the URL? This link was submitted quite a while ago[0] without the question mark, and it clearly didn't gain a lot of traction, so in this case it was a good idea to resubmit it. However, it seems wrong that the dupe-prevention code isn't more sophisticated. 0: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2000239 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2000239

moron4hire 16y ago

All I know is that the proponents of Free Software are constantly trying to tell me what to think and tell me what my ideals should be, whereas just-plain-Open-Sourcers are happy enough to see that I'm using their software, regardless of what I do with it.

krschultz 16y ago

With a BSD or Apache license you are giving your project away for anyone to use how they see fit. With GPL you are giving your project away only to those willing to work with you on improving it. The arguments back and forth are so tiresome when they don't recognize that sometimes one license makes a lot of sense and sometimes the other license makes a lot of sense. There will never be one license to rule them all.

jarin 16y ago
Exactly, I've always argued that Free Software is best for infrastructure and developer tools, and Open Source is best for everything else (like libraries for end user software).

wingo 16y ago

I read these comments and think that this article wasn't directed at HN readers; it was directed at free software people.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

dools 16y ago

if the term free is ambiguous, why not just call it Freedom Software? I suppose may have the unfortunate side effect of being co-opted by patriotic zealots :)

archangel_one 16y ago
He's said elsewhere that "Freedom Software" was an existing trademark.

tzs 16y ago

My problem with Free Software as opposed to Open Source is that Free Software people have a greater tendency to end up doing things like this: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.distributions.gnu-linux-libre/826 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.distributions.gnu-linux-... (The whole thread, not just the specific post linked to).

tzs 16y ago
OK, my other problem with Free Software is when Free Software proponents try to tell me that GPL is more free than BSD because GPL stops the software from becoming part of non-free software. It's like saying people in the US are more free than those in the EU, because the US restricts travel to non-free Cuba.
- archangel_one 16y ago
  It's not really. The concept of a derived work does not apply well to countries, but if it did that wouldn't be an example of it. What you're describing sounds more like a Free software web browser that would only communicate with Free web servers, which of course isn't what the GPL says at all.

gte910h 16y ago

Free software people continually miss the value of just letting people use their stuff to do whatever. Letting people put back patches if they want to, but otherwise do what the hell they feel like is powerful, useful and practical for many more applications than the GPL et al licenses. Some of us like sharing, but also like selling software and not giving away the source.

motters 16y ago

I tend to use GPL for fairly pragmatic reasons. If I've written some software - typically voluntarily and without payment - and put it out there for others to use then I would rather that the code remain in the public domain where improvements can be made which benefit everyone, including the original author.

eps 16y ago
Just curious - how many actual improvements were made to your GPL'd software and how many of these in your opinion would have not been made public if the license was different (say, BSD)?
- motters 16y ago
  It's always difficult to know exactly what people do with the software once it's out there "in the wild". Many of my projects are just curiosities with no other contributors, but a few have had many improvements submitted - some of them quite substantial. My guess is that if the GPL projects used BSD this would not make a big difference, but it might limit the ability to combine my own code with other GPL'd algorithms. The predominance of GPL as a FOSS license means that adopting it basically maximises the potential usefulness of the code, and since IANAL I'm not really qualified to judge compatibility between different sorts of licenses.

jaekwon 16y ago

When Stallman says "free software is an ethical imperative, because only free software respects the users' freedom", is he saying that I don't have the freedom to create closed source software for my own benefit? Is he saying that I'm not respecting the end user's freedom by distributing closed source services? With all due respect Mr Stallman, given those conditions I may not want to code at all.

archangel_one 16y ago
You can't create closed source software for yourself - you have the source code, because you wrote it! But if you distribute that software to someone else, yes he holds that it is morally wrong to deprive them of certain rights, eg. the right to modify it for their own purposes. Given his apparent stance on non-Free software, I suspect he is not concerned if you choose not to write some. He certainly wouldn't have used it in the first place.