4 ms·

Its a great philosophy! Compare and contrast with using a service like google. Not only do you have 0 idea about the algorithm they use, your data is extracte

Its a great philosophy! Compare and contrast with using a service like google. Not only do you have 0 idea about the algorithm they use, your data is extracted for their benefit. You don't even know what data they have on you, and how this is used! I know you can takeout info from them about your profile, but let's be honest, what use is that to you then?

api 6y ago
Awesome. Now who pays people to write software? Proprietary software, which I agree often contains user hostile elements, also tends to have vastly superior polish and user experience. UI/UX is often the majority of the work required to make good software. Making the software function usually takes a lot less time and effort than making it usable. UI/UX and other aspects of software usability are also often the more boring and grinding aspects of software development. This stuff is not fun, so people have to be paid to do it. But “you can sell free software.” That is true. But by this philosophy software cannot restrict the rights of others to sell it too or it is nonfree. In practice that means third parties who did not write the software but have more money or more time to invest in polish and marketing (because they are not writing the software!) are the ones to profit and they usually give nothing back to the original authors. GitHub didn’t write git. AWS didn’t write Postgres. But they are the ones to profit. They took someone else’s work and marketed it well, or SaaSified it. The original authors get nothing. The original idea of free software was a mutual gift culture where everyone builds and everyone uses. Today it’s a take culture where a few people build, others polish and monetize and give nothing back, and most people use the monetized version because time is more expensive than money and nobody has time to DIY.
- fartcannon 6y ago
  Your desire to make money and this philosophy are orthogonal. They can co-exist, never interacting with each other. Go, be free, make money.
  - api 6y ago
    So that means if I need to make money I should not write free software. The vast majority of people must make a living. So that means free software is only for people with trust funds? This also implies that there will be almost no usable free software, so freedom is only for nerds. The general public gets proprietary malware that spies on them and locks them in, because that is where all the money is by design. There is no money in giving people freedom. I am simply pointing out that your nice utopian ideals are helping create a dystopia. That was not intended, but results matter more than intentions.
    - fartcannon 6y ago
      No, you can make money writing free software, but you can also make money not writing free software. Again, orthogonal to the philosophy.
    - brazzy 6y ago
      The two are not exclusive. You can make money writing non-free software (or doing something else entirely) and write free software as a hobby. A more interesting question is how it is then possible to create free software on the scale that is nowadays expected.
      - api 6y ago
        ... which means freedom is only for nerds or people who don't have to work and therefore have time to manually configure and maintain things? The general public gets lock-in and surveillanceware. This is structurally elitist and classist and is AFAIK the opposite of what is intended. The current model doesn't work... unless you only want freedom for nerds and the independently wealthy. Edit: wanted to throw in one more point on usability: Lets say my time is billed at about $50/month, which is low for a software engineer. Now lets say a Linux desktop/laptop requires 5 hours of system admin time per month to troubleshoot drivers, upgrades, etc. That means a Linux desktop/laptop costs $250/month. For that price I could buy a new Mac every 10-12 months. I have a Mac right now and spend less than 30 minutes per month futzing around with it, so it's far cheaper. A lot of the people who don't get this are young people who are middle class or above (in the developed world) and who therefore have an abundance of free time. Telling busier, poorer, or older people with families they should set up their own servers or run their own Linux systems is sort of a "why do they not eat cake?" attitude. This neglects the structural profession elitism here-- that only people who know how to admin Unix-type systems should have freedom or privacy.
- kiba 6y ago
  Ok? At the end of the day, I prefer free software, because it's not user hostile.
- mapgrep 6y ago
  I think you raise really valid points, even as someone who uses linux as my primary work OS day to day, and free software on the server as well, as well as free programming languages/environments/platforms. It's a tradeoff. And I think for a while there in the midst of the history of free software an idea took hold that we could have our cake and eat it too -- that you could provide free software (as in Free software, capital "F") AND earn revenue as a for profit business to profitably sustain a company and extend its ability to contribute free (Free) code. I wonder if recent history has shown that this is unrealistic. Maybe we should go back to seeing free software as almost accidental, as a wonderful anomaly -- when incentives are aligned correctly, you can subsidize its development, through government funding, or university research, or nonprofits, or hail mary last-ditch business efforts, or self interested loss leading spending by corporations (a bank contributing patches to a Java library, for example). (I don't think this contradicts the goals of GNU, by the way. Because successful Free software tends to just keep going and live, and even seeming moribund code can be resurrected at any time because the code is out there, I think we could end up using free software for a higher and higher percentage of our computing lives as time goes on, even if its funding is ad hoc and unreliable on balance.)
px43 6y ago
> Not only do you have 0 idea about the algorithm they use What? Google was the first search engine that actually published papers on how their search engine works, and they've continued to do so through the years. Nearly everything that Google does can be linked to academic and industry publications written by Google employees that describe exactly how their systems work. The only things they keep private are the techniques they use to prevent people from gaming their ranking algorithms. > You don't even know what data they have on you, and how this is used! Again, what? https://takeout.google.com https://takeout.google.com has exactly that information, and again, they were the first company that ever did this, and the vast majority still don't. Google has been incredibly transparent, and they're key reason why the open source community is where it is today. Did people forget what the world was like before Google? Do you remember Embrace Extend Extinguish? Open Source Software was under a full on assault by the software industry. The idea that a software engineer could work on open source software on their free time, let alone get paid for it, was a completely foreign notion.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  The parent is spouting uninformed nonsense. Google hasn't relied on PageRank for over a decade, and they will not tell anybody how their ranking algorithms actually work for trade and legal reasons. Any takeout link is not going to allow you to download dark profiles, etc. So goes the rest of the post.

api 6y ago

Awesome. Now who pays people to write software? Proprietary software, which I agree often contains user hostile elements, also tends to have vastly superior polish and user experience. UI/UX is often the majority of the work required to make good software. Making the software function usually takes a lot less time and effort than making it usable. UI/UX and other aspects of software usability are also often the more boring and grinding aspects of software development. This stuff is not fun, so people have to be paid to do it. But “you can sell free software.” That is true. But by this philosophy software cannot restrict the rights of others to sell it too or it is nonfree. In practice that means third parties who did not write the software but have more money or more time to invest in polish and marketing (because they are not writing the software!) are the ones to profit and they usually give nothing back to the original authors. GitHub didn’t write git. AWS didn’t write Postgres. But they are the ones to profit. They took someone else’s work and marketed it well, or SaaSified it. The original authors get nothing. The original idea of free software was a mutual gift culture where everyone builds and everyone uses. Today it’s a take culture where a few people build, others polish and monetize and give nothing back, and most people use the monetized version because time is more expensive than money and nobody has time to DIY.

fartcannon 6y ago
Your desire to make money and this philosophy are orthogonal. They can co-exist, never interacting with each other. Go, be free, make money.
- api 6y ago
  So that means if I need to make money I should not write free software. The vast majority of people must make a living. So that means free software is only for people with trust funds? This also implies that there will be almost no usable free software, so freedom is only for nerds. The general public gets proprietary malware that spies on them and locks them in, because that is where all the money is by design. There is no money in giving people freedom. I am simply pointing out that your nice utopian ideals are helping create a dystopia. That was not intended, but results matter more than intentions.
  - fartcannon 6y ago
    No, you can make money writing free software, but you can also make money not writing free software. Again, orthogonal to the philosophy.
  - brazzy 6y ago
    The two are not exclusive. You can make money writing non-free software (or doing something else entirely) and write free software as a hobby. A more interesting question is how it is then possible to create free software on the scale that is nowadays expected.
    - api 6y ago
      ... which means freedom is only for nerds or people who don't have to work and therefore have time to manually configure and maintain things? The general public gets lock-in and surveillanceware. This is structurally elitist and classist and is AFAIK the opposite of what is intended. The current model doesn't work... unless you only want freedom for nerds and the independently wealthy. Edit: wanted to throw in one more point on usability: Lets say my time is billed at about $50/month, which is low for a software engineer. Now lets say a Linux desktop/laptop requires 5 hours of system admin time per month to troubleshoot drivers, upgrades, etc. That means a Linux desktop/laptop costs $250/month. For that price I could buy a new Mac every 10-12 months. I have a Mac right now and spend less than 30 minutes per month futzing around with it, so it's far cheaper. A lot of the people who don't get this are young people who are middle class or above (in the developed world) and who therefore have an abundance of free time. Telling busier, poorer, or older people with families they should set up their own servers or run their own Linux systems is sort of a "why do they not eat cake?" attitude. This neglects the structural profession elitism here-- that only people who know how to admin Unix-type systems should have freedom or privacy.
kiba 6y ago
Ok? At the end of the day, I prefer free software, because it's not user hostile.
mapgrep 6y ago
I think you raise really valid points, even as someone who uses linux as my primary work OS day to day, and free software on the server as well, as well as free programming languages/environments/platforms. It's a tradeoff. And I think for a while there in the midst of the history of free software an idea took hold that we could have our cake and eat it too -- that you could provide free software (as in Free software, capital "F") AND earn revenue as a for profit business to profitably sustain a company and extend its ability to contribute free (Free) code. I wonder if recent history has shown that this is unrealistic. Maybe we should go back to seeing free software as almost accidental, as a wonderful anomaly -- when incentives are aligned correctly, you can subsidize its development, through government funding, or university research, or nonprofits, or hail mary last-ditch business efforts, or self interested loss leading spending by corporations (a bank contributing patches to a Java library, for example). (I don't think this contradicts the goals of GNU, by the way. Because successful Free software tends to just keep going and live, and even seeming moribund code can be resurrected at any time because the code is out there, I think we could end up using free software for a higher and higher percentage of our computing lives as time goes on, even if its funding is ad hoc and unreliable on balance.)

px43 6y ago

> Not only do you have 0 idea about the algorithm they use What? Google was the first search engine that actually published papers on how their search engine works, and they've continued to do so through the years. Nearly everything that Google does can be linked to academic and industry publications written by Google employees that describe exactly how their systems work. The only things they keep private are the techniques they use to prevent people from gaming their ranking algorithms. > You don't even know what data they have on you, and how this is used! Again, what? https://takeout.google.com https://takeout.google.com has exactly that information, and again, they were the first company that ever did this, and the vast majority still don't. Google has been incredibly transparent, and they're key reason why the open source community is where it is today. Did people forget what the world was like before Google? Do you remember Embrace Extend Extinguish? Open Source Software was under a full on assault by the software industry. The idea that a software engineer could work on open source software on their free time, let alone get paid for it, was a completely foreign notion.

redis_mlc 6y ago
The parent is spouting uninformed nonsense. Google hasn't relied on PageRank for over a decade, and they will not tell anybody how their ranking algorithms actually work for trade and legal reasons. Any takeout link is not going to allow you to download dark profiles, etc. So goes the rest of the post.