6 ms·

I think you're maybe confusing 'Free Software' in the FSF sense, and just 'free' or 'open' software in the broadest sense. Open/Free/Public software is obvious

by jariel 6y ago

I think you're maybe confusing 'Free Software' in the FSF sense, and just 'free' or 'open' software in the broadest sense. Open/Free/Public software is obviously very useful. But it's the 'copyleft' stuff that I think the author is taking umbrage with. It's arguably we don't really need copyleft to do any of the things you indicate as being important.

jordigh 6y ago
The FSF has never said that free software must be copylefted. The article itself says that De Icaza and Stallman agreed that open source and free software are the same set of software and the only difference is the intent of the person who is going to use that software.
- enriquto 6y ago
  Jordi, by attacking RMS at this very moment you are joining people such as the author of this article, Microsoft and Google who want to destroy Free Software and Open Source alike. You are right on your views about leadership, but in practice you are acting as an enemy agent destroying free software from within. This is very saddening and embarrassing.
  - jordigh 6y ago
    RMS is not free software, and it's very distressing that people think he is. This is a cult of personality.
    - rjzzleep 6y ago
      No it's not, most people DON'T like his personality. It's the exact opposite. He's tolerated because of his views and actions on free software.
      - jordigh 6y ago
        "Cult of personality" doesn't literally mean someone's personality. It means making a cult out of a person. The way people are saying that attack rms is attacking free software itself is very much a cult of personality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_personality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_personality rms is not free software. The 2000 signatories of the letter are free software. We are a community much larger than a single man. Seeing the signatories of that letter is like seeing all of my old friends. I know that guy from debconf and that one from pycon and oh yeah we used to hang out in that irc channel man remember when we worked together on that bug.
        rjzzleep 6y ago
        People are attacking the FSF BECAUSE of stallman. YOU and your lot are the people that are making him a cult of personality. Again, he is a quirky old man who is in that position, because of his contributions and his views. I sat next to him and I never particularly liked him. But this is the same shit that you people did when you destroyed Mozilla to make an example out of Brendan Eich only to get him replaced with the Chief of Marketing and then wondering why Mozilla's direction is weird. You don't get to turn this into a cult of personality yourself, then attack it and then blame the other side for it. Your logic here is nothing short of insane. I don't see you calling for the tearing down of founding fathers statues and the US constitutions. All but 3 of them were slave owners, so probably have a bunch of cruelties they did while they were alive.
        Thiez 6y ago
        > But this is the same shit that you people did when you destroyed Mozilla to make an example out of Brendan Eich "You people"? Come now, stay classy. > I don't see you calling for the tearing down of founding fathers statues and the US constitutions. All but 3 of them were slave owners, so probably have a bunch of cruelties they did while they were alive. I don't see anyone here trying to erase RMS from history, so I don't see how this applies. But I imagine if your founding fathers would magically come alive, it would be a dumb idea to elect one of them president.
    - enriquto 6y ago
      100% agree. But he's not attacked because he farts in elevators or because of his awkward social antics. He's attacked by Microsoft and Google because he represents free software, or at least an important part of it. This attack is joined by an army of well-intentioned people who attack him by legitimate reasons like you do. The fact that these two attacks are parallel is really harmful. Churchill was a horrible person, far more horrible than RMS can ever be. Would you have supported a coup to defenestrate Churchill during the Battle of Britain? On whose side would you be in the light of history if you did that?
      - jordigh 6y ago
        > He's attacked by Microsoft and Google because he represents free software Almost none of the 2000 signatories are Microsoft and Google. There's no conspiracy here. You don't need to find a hidden villain in this story to explain why we don't want Stallman anymore. This is all out in the open. We really all know him over the decades and we know he needs to step down.
        enriquto 6y ago
        I hope you are right. Time will tell. But it breaks my heart to see the world falling around us while we fight about using the correct pronouns.
        devnonymous 6y ago
        I don't understand this gloom and doom. Wasn't the /re/instatement of rms whole reason for the current 'world falling around us' ? Are you saying Microsoft and Google have cleverly infiltrated FSF and reinstated rms knowing fully well that the FLOSS ecosystem would implode?
        enriquto 6y ago
        No. The world is crumbling around us because we are more and more encroached by the dystopian nightmare that big tech is building. The FSF is one of the last beacons of sanity (regardless of who leads it), for they are amongst the few to have an uncompromising stance for the right to read [0] and for general-purpose computing [1]. Now the FSF is being attacked by a Microsoft-led mob (via Sarah Mei, from Salesforce in partnership with Microsoft), and they write damning "open letters" that are hosted by Microsoft. They are opportunistically joined by people from the Open Source Initiative, and also by well-intentioned people like jordigh who are legitimately concerned by the FSF leadership, but in my opinion have chosen the worst moment to act. I'm really sad and embarrassed by all this. I just want to keep hacking but I'm full of gloom and doom instead. [0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html [1] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Coming_War_on_General_Computation https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Coming_War_on_General_Com...
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - Y_Y 6y ago
      vrms is free software though. In the unlikely event you're not already using it, you should. It looks through your installed packages to find non-freely licensed software, and if none if found then you win.
    - forgotmypw17 6y ago
      It's admiration of an admirable person who has accomplished a lot of good in the world. How do you call that a cult?
- wrycoder 6y ago
  The difference is the intent of the person who RELEASES the software. Free software under the GPL is deliberately restrictive. Put briefly, it’s designed to prevent someone from taking your software and releasing it under a license more restrictive than the GPL itself. It enforces the right to run the software, study it, distribute changed versions, and benefit from other people’s changes. With “open source”, meaning something like the MIT license, anyone can take the software you wrote, change it to add features, wrap it up in a fancy package, and sell it without source code access. You wouldn’t be able to even run the new version without buying a copy. Stallman has been explaining this for nearly forty years. He even wrote a book about it. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ https://shop.fsf.org/books-docs/free-software-free-society-s https://shop.fsf.org/books-docs/free-software-free-society-s...

by jariel 6y ago

jordigh 6y ago

The FSF has never said that free software must be copylefted. The article itself says that De Icaza and Stallman agreed that open source and free software are the same set of software and the only difference is the intent of the person who is going to use that software.

enriquto 6y ago
Jordi, by attacking RMS at this very moment you are joining people such as the author of this article, Microsoft and Google who want to destroy Free Software and Open Source alike. You are right on your views about leadership, but in practice you are acting as an enemy agent destroying free software from within. This is very saddening and embarrassing.
- jordigh 6y ago
  RMS is not free software, and it's very distressing that people think he is. This is a cult of personality.
  - rjzzleep 6y ago
    No it's not, most people DON'T like his personality. It's the exact opposite. He's tolerated because of his views and actions on free software.
    - jordigh 6y ago
      "Cult of personality" doesn't literally mean someone's personality. It means making a cult out of a person. The way people are saying that attack rms is attacking free software itself is very much a cult of personality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_personality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_personality rms is not free software. The 2000 signatories of the letter are free software. We are a community much larger than a single man. Seeing the signatories of that letter is like seeing all of my old friends. I know that guy from debconf and that one from pycon and oh yeah we used to hang out in that irc channel man remember when we worked together on that bug.
      - rjzzleep 6y ago
        People are attacking the FSF BECAUSE of stallman. YOU and your lot are the people that are making him a cult of personality. Again, he is a quirky old man who is in that position, because of his contributions and his views. I sat next to him and I never particularly liked him. But this is the same shit that you people did when you destroyed Mozilla to make an example out of Brendan Eich only to get him replaced with the Chief of Marketing and then wondering why Mozilla's direction is weird. You don't get to turn this into a cult of personality yourself, then attack it and then blame the other side for it. Your logic here is nothing short of insane. I don't see you calling for the tearing down of founding fathers statues and the US constitutions. All but 3 of them were slave owners, so probably have a bunch of cruelties they did while they were alive.
        Thiez 6y ago
        > But this is the same shit that you people did when you destroyed Mozilla to make an example out of Brendan Eich "You people"? Come now, stay classy. > I don't see you calling for the tearing down of founding fathers statues and the US constitutions. All but 3 of them were slave owners, so probably have a bunch of cruelties they did while they were alive. I don't see anyone here trying to erase RMS from history, so I don't see how this applies. But I imagine if your founding fathers would magically come alive, it would be a dumb idea to elect one of them president.
  - enriquto 6y ago
    100% agree. But he's not attacked because he farts in elevators or because of his awkward social antics. He's attacked by Microsoft and Google because he represents free software, or at least an important part of it. This attack is joined by an army of well-intentioned people who attack him by legitimate reasons like you do. The fact that these two attacks are parallel is really harmful. Churchill was a horrible person, far more horrible than RMS can ever be. Would you have supported a coup to defenestrate Churchill during the Battle of Britain? On whose side would you be in the light of history if you did that?
    - jordigh 6y ago
      > He's attacked by Microsoft and Google because he represents free software Almost none of the 2000 signatories are Microsoft and Google. There's no conspiracy here. You don't need to find a hidden villain in this story to explain why we don't want Stallman anymore. This is all out in the open. We really all know him over the decades and we know he needs to step down.
      - enriquto 6y ago
        I hope you are right. Time will tell. But it breaks my heart to see the world falling around us while we fight about using the correct pronouns.
        devnonymous 6y ago
        I don't understand this gloom and doom. Wasn't the /re/instatement of rms whole reason for the current 'world falling around us' ? Are you saying Microsoft and Google have cleverly infiltrated FSF and reinstated rms knowing fully well that the FLOSS ecosystem would implode?
        enriquto 6y ago
        No. The world is crumbling around us because we are more and more encroached by the dystopian nightmare that big tech is building. The FSF is one of the last beacons of sanity (regardless of who leads it), for they are amongst the few to have an uncompromising stance for the right to read [0] and for general-purpose computing [1]. Now the FSF is being attacked by a Microsoft-led mob (via Sarah Mei, from Salesforce in partnership with Microsoft), and they write damning "open letters" that are hosted by Microsoft. They are opportunistically joined by people from the Open Source Initiative, and also by well-intentioned people like jordigh who are legitimately concerned by the FSF leadership, but in my opinion have chosen the worst moment to act. I'm really sad and embarrassed by all this. I just want to keep hacking but I'm full of gloom and doom instead. [0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html [1] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Coming_War_on_General_Computation https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Coming_War_on_General_Com...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Y_Y 6y ago
    vrms is free software though. In the unlikely event you're not already using it, you should. It looks through your installed packages to find non-freely licensed software, and if none if found then you win.
  - forgotmypw17 6y ago
    It's admiration of an admirable person who has accomplished a lot of good in the world. How do you call that a cult?
wrycoder 6y ago
The difference is the intent of the person who RELEASES the software. Free software under the GPL is deliberately restrictive. Put briefly, it’s designed to prevent someone from taking your software and releasing it under a license more restrictive than the GPL itself. It enforces the right to run the software, study it, distribute changed versions, and benefit from other people’s changes. With “open source”, meaning something like the MIT license, anyone can take the software you wrote, change it to add features, wrap it up in a fancy package, and sell it without source code access. You wouldn’t be able to even run the new version without buying a copy. Stallman has been explaining this for nearly forty years. He even wrote a book about it. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ https://shop.fsf.org/books-docs/free-software-free-society-s https://shop.fsf.org/books-docs/free-software-free-society-s...