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I personally cannot thank enough GNU project for standing software freedom. We are living in a world where corporations control nearly everything by building p

I personally cannot thank enough GNU project for standing software freedom. We are living in a world where corporations control nearly everything by building proprietary systems. They have more than resources to buy, lobby, manipulate, seem "attractive". We need more of this kind of organization, free society cannot exist without free software.

chrisseaton 6y ago
I would guess that the vast majority of free software is written and paid for by corporations.
- pornel 6y ago
  It is, but when you have ability to modify or fork a project, it is an insurance against corporations adding anti-features.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    But the corporations gave you that ability to modify or fork their code in the first place.
- abetusk 6y ago
  Is it? I would really like a reference for that claim. Maybe you're confusing the free time that developers have because of their corporate jobs to create FOSS, but this is not the same as directly writing and paying for FOSS by corporations. This gets complicated because are you talking about volume of code created or are you weighing code by its use? Anyway, you might be right, I don't know, but my assumption is that FOSS is mostly developed in spite of lack of corporate resources, not because of it.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    > Maybe you're confusing the free time that developers have because of their corporate jobs to create FOSS, but this is not the same as directly writing and paying for FOSS by corporations. Massive companies everywhere have thousands and thousands of people collectively working all day on free software as their main job. You’re probably using a free software browser from a corporation right now?
    - xenocyon 6y ago
      > You’re probably using a free software browser from a corporation right now? Free (as in 'free beer') is not the same as FOSS.
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        > Free (as in 'free beer') is not the same as FOSS. Who said it was? Chrome, Safari, Firefox are all primarily FOSS - they have some proprietary trademark and minor components, but the actual browser core in each is FOSS.
        crpatino 6y ago
        I'd have to disagree... https://policies.google.com/terms https://policies.google.com/terms https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/terms/site.html https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/terms/site.htm... Maybe there's some code that at one point was FOSS in those products, but the products themselves are nor Free. IMHO a code base that has been forked from a FOSS project cannot be considered FOSS itself even if they keep retrofitting changes back to the original, because you cannot know what is there in the proprietary part. This is specially true if you distribute the derivative product only in binary form.
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        You're hell-banned, by the way. But you're also wrong. The trademarked Chrome distribution is built from the free Chromium, where main-line development is done. They don't dump changes over the wall like you're suggesting. That's the same for WebKit and Firefox.
        crpatino 6y ago
        Really, hell banned? Go figure. I assume you at least can still read me. BSD and MIT licenses are Open Source but not Free, they are more concerned with providing a claim of ownership to the author than with the freedom of the user. LGPL is a backdoor to let Free Software interact with non Free Software, which is a good thing too. If your product uses Free Libraries, no big deal, the more the merrier. But you cannot claim it is also Free y proxy.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    There are quite a few FOSS projects that have developers who are paid to work on them. The biggest is Linux. But to claim that the vast majority are? I’d say that’s wrong.
    - jabl 6y ago
      Sure, but you somehow have to weight the size and/or importance of the project as well. If you count in all the not-updated-in-the-past-5-years 50-line projects on github, yes you might find that hobbyist coders are behind the largest number of FOSS projects, but that's a rather silly conclusion.
- max_ 6y ago
  They mean "free" as in freedom not free beer.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    No that’s what I mean as well. Corporations wrote tons of free as in freedom software. You’re probably using a corporate free software browser right now? The idea that free software is a niche done by amateurs is wrong. Most people who work on Linux are paid to do so. Same for Chrome, same for Java, same for LLVM, etc etc all the way up the stack. Free software won, and we have the corporations who funded it to thank.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      Linux was started by someone because they could, not because they were paid. Sure, if a project (like Linux) gets big enough, corporations will throw money at developers who work on it, but by and large, FOSS is done by unpaid people. If the majority were paid, GIMP would be on par with Photoshop, Inkscape with Illustrator, etc. But they’re not on par because they don’t have corporations throwing millions of dollars at them like Adobe does.
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        Have you ever been somewhere like FOSDEM? Next time walk around and ask people if this is their full time job. In most of the rooms I’m in, it’s everyone’s corporate full time job and they’re there on corporate expense accounts. It’s just not the case that most projects are just random hobbies these days, and it’s bad for the movement to keep pretending it is. It’s grown up and corporations invested - that’s a good thing!
        colejohnson66 6y ago
        No. I haven’t been to FOSDEM and I’d bet the majority of FOSS developers haven’t. And that’s the point. Just because you experience a lot of people getting paid to do it doesn’t mean “the vast majority” are. I guess we’re just arguing past each other. I agree it’s good to recognize money in the industry (many have an aversion to it because of EEE fears), and I also agree that the majority of successful projects are done by paid people. I guess that’s the disconnect: I’m looking at all projects, not just the successful ones.
- worik 6y ago
  That is the original idea IIRC. The companies that make the hardware should fund the software.
- jangid 6y ago
  Perhaps, I am in a minority then.
bonoboTP 6y ago
A shocking number of developers I know who use FOSS have no idea that there is even some kind of philosophy behind free software, relating to politics and ethics. Basically zero idea about licenses outside generic FUD about the viral nature of the GPL etc. The ethical-philosophical free software people are terrible at marketing and getting their message across. It's still just a small niche subculture despite the wide adoption of GNU tools and licenses. You'll never reach further with all the silly in joke stuff like Chief GNUisance etc. You'd need charismatic frontline personalities (there's a wide spectrum to explore between RMS and sleazy snake oil salesmen), who don't immediately put off the general population.
- temac 6y ago
  Worse, some believe Free Software is worthless if third party companies can not extract money from it in some ways, without any compensation or even just keeping it Free in practice for the users. And I'm OK that some Free Software actually let do that, but the thought that those who don't are somehow bad or a threat to the general concept of "freedom" is... weird. (Like there is a single perfectly defined concensus on the concept of freedom anyway)
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  It feels rather contradictory that people on fora like this are all in favor for being tolerant of neurodiversity – let’s not judge those on the autistic spectrum for lack of social graces because they were born that way – but at the same time there is a lot of disapproval of RMS. If we aim to create a better world, should that not be a world where a figure like RMS would seem perfectly fine, not a weirdo who has to be represented by more "acceptable" figures?
  - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
    > It feels rather contradictory You are confusing respecting people differences (e.g. neurodiversity, ethnicity, religion, nationality, orientation and so on) with accepting any behavior with choosing the right person for a given role. This are 3 different things.

chrisseaton 6y ago

I would guess that the vast majority of free software is written and paid for by corporations.

pornel 6y ago
It is, but when you have ability to modify or fork a project, it is an insurance against corporations adding anti-features.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  But the corporations gave you that ability to modify or fork their code in the first place.
abetusk 6y ago
Is it? I would really like a reference for that claim. Maybe you're confusing the free time that developers have because of their corporate jobs to create FOSS, but this is not the same as directly writing and paying for FOSS by corporations. This gets complicated because are you talking about volume of code created or are you weighing code by its use? Anyway, you might be right, I don't know, but my assumption is that FOSS is mostly developed in spite of lack of corporate resources, not because of it.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > Maybe you're confusing the free time that developers have because of their corporate jobs to create FOSS, but this is not the same as directly writing and paying for FOSS by corporations. Massive companies everywhere have thousands and thousands of people collectively working all day on free software as their main job. You’re probably using a free software browser from a corporation right now?
  - xenocyon 6y ago
    > You’re probably using a free software browser from a corporation right now? Free (as in 'free beer') is not the same as FOSS.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      > Free (as in 'free beer') is not the same as FOSS. Who said it was? Chrome, Safari, Firefox are all primarily FOSS - they have some proprietary trademark and minor components, but the actual browser core in each is FOSS.
      - crpatino 6y ago
        I'd have to disagree... https://policies.google.com/terms https://policies.google.com/terms https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/terms/site.html https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/terms/site.htm... Maybe there's some code that at one point was FOSS in those products, but the products themselves are nor Free. IMHO a code base that has been forked from a FOSS project cannot be considered FOSS itself even if they keep retrofitting changes back to the original, because you cannot know what is there in the proprietary part. This is specially true if you distribute the derivative product only in binary form.
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        You're hell-banned, by the way. But you're also wrong. The trademarked Chrome distribution is built from the free Chromium, where main-line development is done. They don't dump changes over the wall like you're suggesting. That's the same for WebKit and Firefox.
        crpatino 6y ago
        Really, hell banned? Go figure. I assume you at least can still read me. BSD and MIT licenses are Open Source but not Free, they are more concerned with providing a claim of ownership to the author than with the freedom of the user. LGPL is a backdoor to let Free Software interact with non Free Software, which is a good thing too. If your product uses Free Libraries, no big deal, the more the merrier. But you cannot claim it is also Free y proxy.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  There are quite a few FOSS projects that have developers who are paid to work on them. The biggest is Linux. But to claim that the vast majority are? I’d say that’s wrong.
  - jabl 6y ago
    Sure, but you somehow have to weight the size and/or importance of the project as well. If you count in all the not-updated-in-the-past-5-years 50-line projects on github, yes you might find that hobbyist coders are behind the largest number of FOSS projects, but that's a rather silly conclusion.
max_ 6y ago
They mean "free" as in freedom not free beer.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  No that’s what I mean as well. Corporations wrote tons of free as in freedom software. You’re probably using a corporate free software browser right now? The idea that free software is a niche done by amateurs is wrong. Most people who work on Linux are paid to do so. Same for Chrome, same for Java, same for LLVM, etc etc all the way up the stack. Free software won, and we have the corporations who funded it to thank.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    Linux was started by someone because they could, not because they were paid. Sure, if a project (like Linux) gets big enough, corporations will throw money at developers who work on it, but by and large, FOSS is done by unpaid people. If the majority were paid, GIMP would be on par with Photoshop, Inkscape with Illustrator, etc. But they’re not on par because they don’t have corporations throwing millions of dollars at them like Adobe does.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      Have you ever been somewhere like FOSDEM? Next time walk around and ask people if this is their full time job. In most of the rooms I’m in, it’s everyone’s corporate full time job and they’re there on corporate expense accounts. It’s just not the case that most projects are just random hobbies these days, and it’s bad for the movement to keep pretending it is. It’s grown up and corporations invested - that’s a good thing!
      - colejohnson66 6y ago
        No. I haven’t been to FOSDEM and I’d bet the majority of FOSS developers haven’t. And that’s the point. Just because you experience a lot of people getting paid to do it doesn’t mean “the vast majority” are. I guess we’re just arguing past each other. I agree it’s good to recognize money in the industry (many have an aversion to it because of EEE fears), and I also agree that the majority of successful projects are done by paid people. I guess that’s the disconnect: I’m looking at all projects, not just the successful ones.
worik 6y ago
That is the original idea IIRC. The companies that make the hardware should fund the software.
jangid 6y ago
Perhaps, I am in a minority then.

bonoboTP 6y ago

A shocking number of developers I know who use FOSS have no idea that there is even some kind of philosophy behind free software, relating to politics and ethics. Basically zero idea about licenses outside generic FUD about the viral nature of the GPL etc. The ethical-philosophical free software people are terrible at marketing and getting their message across. It's still just a small niche subculture despite the wide adoption of GNU tools and licenses. You'll never reach further with all the silly in joke stuff like Chief GNUisance etc. You'd need charismatic frontline personalities (there's a wide spectrum to explore between RMS and sleazy snake oil salesmen), who don't immediately put off the general population.

temac 6y ago
Worse, some believe Free Software is worthless if third party companies can not extract money from it in some ways, without any compensation or even just keeping it Free in practice for the users. And I'm OK that some Free Software actually let do that, but the thought that those who don't are somehow bad or a threat to the general concept of "freedom" is... weird. (Like there is a single perfectly defined concensus on the concept of freedom anyway)
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
It feels rather contradictory that people on fora like this are all in favor for being tolerant of neurodiversity – let’s not judge those on the autistic spectrum for lack of social graces because they were born that way – but at the same time there is a lot of disapproval of RMS. If we aim to create a better world, should that not be a world where a figure like RMS would seem perfectly fine, not a weirdo who has to be represented by more "acceptable" figures?
- eeZah7Ux 6y ago
  > It feels rather contradictory You are confusing respecting people differences (e.g. neurodiversity, ethnicity, religion, nationality, orientation and so on) with accepting any behavior with choosing the right person for a given role. This are 3 different things.