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There's an alternate history where Stallman did the Aikido move of accepting the descriptor of "open source" to simply describe a subset of the free software ph

There's an alternate history where Stallman did the Aikido move of accepting the descriptor of "open source" to simply describe a subset of the free software philosophy. After all, in his initial announcement to create Gnu, he didn't say, "Of course it might turn out to perform worse, and it won't have near as many features, nor attract many other developers, or have a sane review process, or be secure... but that doesn't matter because it's all in the interest of freedom and that's the model people should follow." No, as with the OSI, he set out with some bold claims, then inspired people to help by incrementally making those claims be true. Anyway, I fail to see how anything bad would have happened from him making this clever play. What would have been wrong with going to open source conferences, and eventually reaching a larger audience with his prescient warnings about mass surveillance, DRM, and whatnot?

pessimizer 6y ago
Open Source has nothing to do with Free Software other than that since anybody can take Open Source and add whatever restrictions they want to its licensing, it can all be considered Free (or proprietary for that matter - I can take it, obfuscate it and throw DRM on it, then sell it as my product.) OSI people tend to be as hostile, if not more, towards Free Software as people who write proprietary software, who simply think of it as a competitor that they rarely have to worry about (because their customers don't use it.) Open Source competes with Free Software for contributors, although it offers them nothing but the glory of helping multibillion-dollar corporations for free. At least Free Software gives you the ideological reward of contributing to the commons in an inalienable way.
- deleted 6y ago
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- kelnos 6y ago
  > Open Source has nothing to do with Free Software I don't see how this is a true statement. Open Source is clearly a subset of Free Software. Free Software is, largely, Open Source software that also respects user freedom. Unless you are making the claim that the "respects user freedom" part of Free Software is so huge as to make up 90% (or some other large percentage) of the importance of "Free Software"... but I don't really agree with that claim. > since anybody can take Open Source and add whatever restrictions they want to its licensing Well, no, not really. Copyleft licenses are free software licenses, but are also generally Open Source licenses. You can't add restrictions to copyleft licenses (in most cases). And while it's true that you can fork and add restrictions to your modifications when the original work is licensed under many of the weaker open-source licenses, that does not make the original work further encumbered. Someone can come along and take the original work, keep the license, and make modifications under that same license.
  - seba_dos1 6y ago
    > Free Software is, largely, Open Source software that also respects user freedom. No. Open Source software also respects user freedom. OSI definition of Open Source license is pretty much compatible with FSF definition of Free Software license. Those terms are mostly interchangeable - but the whole point is that while technically they're similar, philosophically they point to completely different concepts. > Unless you are making the claim that the "respects user freedom" part of Free Software is so huge as to make up 90% (or some other large percentage) of the importance of "Free Software"... but I don't really agree with that claim. That's the exact claim of the article you're commenting under. And I happen to agree with that claim. User freedom is what's important, the rest are just consequences of respecting user freedom.
    - kelnos 6y ago
      Ah. In that case, while I certainly respect your opinion that user freedom is by far the most important thing, I don't share that opinion, so we're likely not going to agree on the rest.
- jobigoud 6y ago
  It looks like you are conflating Open Source with permissive licenses like MIT or BSD licences. You would be mistaken. The GPL is both a Free Software and an Open Source licence to take the most obvious example. The differences are ideological, not practical.

pessimizer 6y ago

Open Source has nothing to do with Free Software other than that since anybody can take Open Source and add whatever restrictions they want to its licensing, it can all be considered Free (or proprietary for that matter - I can take it, obfuscate it and throw DRM on it, then sell it as my product.) OSI people tend to be as hostile, if not more, towards Free Software as people who write proprietary software, who simply think of it as a competitor that they rarely have to worry about (because their customers don't use it.) Open Source competes with Free Software for contributors, although it offers them nothing but the glory of helping multibillion-dollar corporations for free. At least Free Software gives you the ideological reward of contributing to the commons in an inalienable way.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
kelnos 6y ago
> Open Source has nothing to do with Free Software I don't see how this is a true statement. Open Source is clearly a subset of Free Software. Free Software is, largely, Open Source software that also respects user freedom. Unless you are making the claim that the "respects user freedom" part of Free Software is so huge as to make up 90% (or some other large percentage) of the importance of "Free Software"... but I don't really agree with that claim. > since anybody can take Open Source and add whatever restrictions they want to its licensing Well, no, not really. Copyleft licenses are free software licenses, but are also generally Open Source licenses. You can't add restrictions to copyleft licenses (in most cases). And while it's true that you can fork and add restrictions to your modifications when the original work is licensed under many of the weaker open-source licenses, that does not make the original work further encumbered. Someone can come along and take the original work, keep the license, and make modifications under that same license.
- seba_dos1 6y ago
  > Free Software is, largely, Open Source software that also respects user freedom. No. Open Source software also respects user freedom. OSI definition of Open Source license is pretty much compatible with FSF definition of Free Software license. Those terms are mostly interchangeable - but the whole point is that while technically they're similar, philosophically they point to completely different concepts. > Unless you are making the claim that the "respects user freedom" part of Free Software is so huge as to make up 90% (or some other large percentage) of the importance of "Free Software"... but I don't really agree with that claim. That's the exact claim of the article you're commenting under. And I happen to agree with that claim. User freedom is what's important, the rest are just consequences of respecting user freedom.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    Ah. In that case, while I certainly respect your opinion that user freedom is by far the most important thing, I don't share that opinion, so we're likely not going to agree on the rest.
jobigoud 6y ago
It looks like you are conflating Open Source with permissive licenses like MIT or BSD licences. You would be mistaken. The GPL is both a Free Software and an Open Source licence to take the most obvious example. The differences are ideological, not practical.