8 ms·

People are focusing on the "liberal software" part but boy is the article full of dismissiveness of the real concerns of people who care about freedom and socia

People are focusing on the "liberal software" part but boy is the article full of dismissiveness of the real concerns of people who care about freedom and social justice where it connects with software. "Software vendors won’t usually be inserting spyware into their wares." Are you sure about that? It sounds like someone has been selectively reading the news for the last decade or so, somehow the author skipped the Snowden leaks and if you need something more recent, the controversy around Zoom. This is a terrible document that is riddled with so many inaccuracies that it doesn't convince anyone other than the uninformed. If anything, the last few years have highlighted the need for Free Software and proved many of the alarmist warnings of advocates were prescient actually and not so alarmist.

jameshart 6y ago
You need to address the author’s points though: if you agree that spyware is a problem that impinges on user freedom, what agenda should we advance to solve it? is advocating for copyleft licensing actually helping? Do you really believe that a world where everyone only used GPL software would be free of spyware?
- fsflover 6y ago
  > Do you really believe that a world where everyone only used GPL software would be free of spyware? There is no need to believe. Just have a look at F-Droid and GNU/Linux repositories.
  - jameshart 6y ago
    That Linux doesn’t itself contain any spyware doesn’t tell me how, in a world where everyone runs Linux, magically spyware would disappear. Android is built on Linux. Android-based TVs and phones are sold to consumers every day with spyware preinstalled. So we have broad adoption of GPL software. Spyware is still happening. What’s the next step?
    - User23 6y ago
      Don’t straw man. The comment you’re replying to is referring to using free software exclusively. If you avoid all non-free software, including services that don’t share their source code, then you will not have to deal with any adware or spyware at all if you don’t wish to. You’re really just supporting the FSF’s arguments against non-free software.
      - yunohn 6y ago
        Who will fund this entirely free stack you are talking about?
      - jameshart 6y ago
        But plot that path out for me. Explain to me how you make a world where the average consumer has access to a spyware free phone and TV because of free software. What societal or legislative or cultural levers do you plan to pull to bring about that utopia? Is the FSF pulling them?
    - sildur 6y ago
      No magic is needed. In a world where everything is free software, almost no spyware would happen. And the "almost" is because nobody can watch everything every time. But the most used software will be thoroughly reviewed.
      - jameshart 6y ago
        But we don’t live in that world yet. We live in a world where, on the contrary, companies are able to make products that distribute their spyware and do so by actively exploiting the contributions of free software developers! The Linux devs whose contributions are in android are having their software used to build TVs that spy on people! Is free software advocacy alone actually helping advance a spyware-free world, then?
        fsflover 6y ago
        No, the eventual goal of the FSF (and Stallman himself) is to make all software free. You cannot achieve this goal at once, you need to make part of the software free first.
  - Aldo_MX 6y ago
    I don't get your point, but I'm pretty sure that several GNU/Linux repos contain the version of Unity that pinged Amazon's servers to name an example. Where do you draw the line between spyware and legitimate feature? Where do you draw the line between malware and unintentional faulty code? Review time is a scarce resource, and a bad actor will always find a way to bypass automated checks.
    - laurent92 6y ago
      We should really pay for open-source. The FSF has a page saying it’s correct to charge before delivering OSS software (and the user can redistribute the software with OSS license). We could charge access to Debian repositories for example. For example one repo could have bugfixes, and the broader audience could have a 1-year-old repo. Sure your can build from source, get a zip from a torrent, or find someone who hosts a free mirror of the paid repo, but as a company it’s much easier to get it from the official source, for security compliance. (Btw I’ve always said I’d be happy to spend $200 per year per employee for a desktop OS of macOS quality, so probably much less for our servers). This would offer price discrimination: - Free for individuals who want to spin off a small website, - Paid when you need to prove compliance to security regulations, - Developments still go to the pool of mankind’s marvels, instead of being locked with a commercial license and dying with the company, - Customer can still fork or fix a bug themselves by building from source.
      - Aldo_MX 6y ago
        I agree with your point that we should look for a way to pay FOSS maintainers for their time, but my point was that Linux repos are not free of spyware naming the version of Unity that sent what you typed to Amazon Shopping as an example. The line that separates legitimate features and spyware is blurry, especially when a bad default ends up leaking information of the user.
    - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
      Customization is what GPL ensures. You install and run reviewed code.
    - 6y ago
  - slightwinder 6y ago
    Those repositories are used by a very small minority of users, which are also highly competent and constantly looking out for scatchy things. Yet, those scatchy things do happen occasionally on small scale be. But it's kinda obvious that the lack ob a big and serious actor is the main reason why nothing seriously bad ever happend in linux-land so far. Everyone switching to Open Source would change this and the watchmen would likely be unable to protect their world. I mean just look at the mildly bad things happening on mainstream-systems, which everyone knows about and still ignores them, because "that's just how it is". At the end people willingly use bad software & services, because their subjective gain is higher than the small price they pay.
- boudin 6y ago
  It doesn't systematically free people of spywares but allows to do so. Projects already get forked for that purpose like vscode, chromium. It also allows to audit and at least see what a software does.
  - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
    vscodium
runiq 6y ago
Just now we had a bit of a kerfuffle with telemetry being enabled in the most popular Lua language server[0]. I can't argue with the specific usecase presented in that GitHub issue, I'm going to keep telemetry enabled. But if you argue that vendors "usually won't be inserting spyware", in the face of evidence like free software products seeing value in phoning home with telemetry data, I think I have the moral right to reject your argument in full. https://github.com/sumneko/lua-language-server/issues/462 https://github.com/sumneko/lua-language-server/issues/462
- 3grdlurker 6y ago
  You can’t reject his argument in full because you’re already biting back at the wrong argument. OP isn’t saying that free, open-source software is untarnished by and incapable of crimes against consumer privacy, but the fact that it is FOSS allows concerned members of the public to inspect it so, whereas proprietary software does not. How do you reckon you are able to know of the very example that you cited, for instance?
  - EdwardDiego 6y ago
    I think you and runiq are in violent agreement :)
- StupidOne 6y ago
  I think we should separate telemetry from spyware. It is not close the same. We all have telemetry is our cars, yet nobody is making any fuss about it. Even in software engineering profiling database queries or active memory is not something anew and I don't recall we had any problems with that.
  - dhagz 6y ago
    I'd argue that if the telemetry is opt-out rather than opt-in it has (just _barely_) crossed the border into spyware. Sure it may not be tracking anything more than usage data, but I'd rather see a pop-up/dialog saying, "we'd like to track X, Y, and Z - we'll be using Q to identify your data. Is that okay?" And make a choice than to have that choice made for me.
CaptainZapp 6y ago
A bit further down the road you have Lenovo endangering their customers with the Superfish[1] spyware. And please don't give me "that was on consumer models only". I really couldn't care less. A company pulling off such dirty shit winds up on my eternal shitlist. No matter how great their "professional" products are. I'm sure there are countless other examples. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish
- EdwardDiego 6y ago
  I'm reminded of Sony's rootkit that was, well, just awful, in every respect - ethically, engineering, etc. Interesting that the founders of Superfish are both Israeli, I wonder if they both served with the Unit 8200 that was posted on here recently?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - gluegadget 6y ago
    But isn't this part of the point the author of the article is trying to make? In case of Superfish it was United States Department of Homeland Security who advised uninstalling it and in case of Sony's rootkit, a class-action lawsuit. In both cases higher authorities hired by people to protect them, protected them. Not FSF, nor the fact that the code wasn't GPL. Even if Superfish was GPL licensed, the issue would've persisted. As article mentions even laptops coming with Linux pre-installed hardly come with the Kernel and userspace tools source code and you need to download them separately. Should Lenovo have preloaded Superfish as Linux kernel module and shipped it to its consumer laptops, United States Department of Homeland Security would have still advised removing it.
    - boomboomsubban 6y ago
      In both examples, a higher authority may have also acted but if they had done the same with free software things either would have been caught immediately or a lawsuit would have been possible for breach of license if they tried to hide it. >In both cases higher authorities hired by people to protect them, protected them. Not FSF, The FSF did a better job of protecting them with their unwavering stance. Neither would ever have caused an issue if you followed their advice to never use non-free software.
arsome 6y ago
It's like someone hasn't even picked up a phone in the past decade. Nearly every app on your phone would have been considered spyware or adware just years ago. Pretty much the only things on my phone that aren't adware or spyware are free software apps.
- minikites 6y ago
  A web browser made by an advertising company is the currently the most popular web browser.
  - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
    It's basically a pirate ship.
- blablabla123 6y ago
  That's why I have only few apps installed and if it's possible I opt for the paid version. (I do appreciate Fdroid though) Still, I think it used to be much worse or at least more obvious in the early 2000s. At that time Shareware was still a thing and it was normal for installers to add completely unrelated 3rdparty software. Probably that's also half the explanation why Windows used to be so unreliable, half of the ecosystem around was just random stuff.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
npsimons 6y ago
> "Software vendors won’t usually be inserting spyware into their wares." JFC. I'm sorry, but this "article" can be dismissed on that alone. Software vendors already are inserting spyware into their "wares." Did the author do any research?
- TheCoelacanth 6y ago
  Software vendors basically have to be dragged kicking and screaming into not inserting spyware into their wares. Look at the giant tantrum basically every software vendor is throwing over the quite reasonable restrictions that the EU placed on spyware. I have to tell users about the spyware I'm inflicting on them and ask for consent first? End of the world.
- kazinator 6y ago
  The article can be entirely dismissed on pompous pseudo-intellectual pontification such as: > The Free Software coterie is fond of insisting that words mean what they say they mean, and that is a profound misunderstanding of the nature of language. Such linguistic naïveté is not an asset in pursuing political goals. Uh, take your snooty diaeresis and shove it where l'accent aigu don't shine? Defining terms is par for the course in the general intellectual sphere. Academic papers, data sheets for microchips and ISO standards for programming languages all define terms and insist on using them in the defined way. If that's not enough, there is outright misinformed claptrap: > With all that said, the intent of the adherents to the term Free Software is to seek to promote certain freedoms for the users of software, by depriving the creators of software (at least in the United States) of the rights afforded them by Congress under Article I, Section VIII, Clause VIII. What? Creators of software are deprived of freedoms by the Free Software Foundation? Not simply encouraged to copyleft their software, while retaining all rights to license it in other ways at the same time? Crazy.
  - npsimons 6y ago
    > the intent of the adherents to the term Free Software is to seek to promote certain freedoms for the users of software, by depriving the creators of software Oh, he's one of that kind of cunts. Someone with an axe to grind against FLOSS because he obviously hasn't studied history of copyright in addition to his misunderstanding of FLOSS.

jameshart 6y ago

You need to address the author’s points though: if you agree that spyware is a problem that impinges on user freedom, what agenda should we advance to solve it? is advocating for copyleft licensing actually helping? Do you really believe that a world where everyone only used GPL software would be free of spyware?

fsflover 6y ago
> Do you really believe that a world where everyone only used GPL software would be free of spyware? There is no need to believe. Just have a look at F-Droid and GNU/Linux repositories.
- jameshart 6y ago
  That Linux doesn’t itself contain any spyware doesn’t tell me how, in a world where everyone runs Linux, magically spyware would disappear. Android is built on Linux. Android-based TVs and phones are sold to consumers every day with spyware preinstalled. So we have broad adoption of GPL software. Spyware is still happening. What’s the next step?
  - User23 6y ago
    Don’t straw man. The comment you’re replying to is referring to using free software exclusively. If you avoid all non-free software, including services that don’t share their source code, then you will not have to deal with any adware or spyware at all if you don’t wish to. You’re really just supporting the FSF’s arguments against non-free software.
    - yunohn 6y ago
      Who will fund this entirely free stack you are talking about?
    - jameshart 6y ago
      But plot that path out for me. Explain to me how you make a world where the average consumer has access to a spyware free phone and TV because of free software. What societal or legislative or cultural levers do you plan to pull to bring about that utopia? Is the FSF pulling them?
  - sildur 6y ago
    No magic is needed. In a world where everything is free software, almost no spyware would happen. And the "almost" is because nobody can watch everything every time. But the most used software will be thoroughly reviewed.
    - jameshart 6y ago
      But we don’t live in that world yet. We live in a world where, on the contrary, companies are able to make products that distribute their spyware and do so by actively exploiting the contributions of free software developers! The Linux devs whose contributions are in android are having their software used to build TVs that spy on people! Is free software advocacy alone actually helping advance a spyware-free world, then?
      - fsflover 6y ago
        No, the eventual goal of the FSF (and Stallman himself) is to make all software free. You cannot achieve this goal at once, you need to make part of the software free first.
- Aldo_MX 6y ago
  I don't get your point, but I'm pretty sure that several GNU/Linux repos contain the version of Unity that pinged Amazon's servers to name an example. Where do you draw the line between spyware and legitimate feature? Where do you draw the line between malware and unintentional faulty code? Review time is a scarce resource, and a bad actor will always find a way to bypass automated checks.
  - laurent92 6y ago
    We should really pay for open-source. The FSF has a page saying it’s correct to charge before delivering OSS software (and the user can redistribute the software with OSS license). We could charge access to Debian repositories for example. For example one repo could have bugfixes, and the broader audience could have a 1-year-old repo. Sure your can build from source, get a zip from a torrent, or find someone who hosts a free mirror of the paid repo, but as a company it’s much easier to get it from the official source, for security compliance. (Btw I’ve always said I’d be happy to spend $200 per year per employee for a desktop OS of macOS quality, so probably much less for our servers). This would offer price discrimination: - Free for individuals who want to spin off a small website, - Paid when you need to prove compliance to security regulations, - Developments still go to the pool of mankind’s marvels, instead of being locked with a commercial license and dying with the company, - Customer can still fork or fix a bug themselves by building from source.
    - Aldo_MX 6y ago
      I agree with your point that we should look for a way to pay FOSS maintainers for their time, but my point was that Linux repos are not free of spyware naming the version of Unity that sent what you typed to Amazon Shopping as an example. The line that separates legitimate features and spyware is blurry, especially when a bad default ends up leaking information of the user.
  - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
    Customization is what GPL ensures. You install and run reviewed code.
  - 6y ago
- slightwinder 6y ago
  Those repositories are used by a very small minority of users, which are also highly competent and constantly looking out for scatchy things. Yet, those scatchy things do happen occasionally on small scale be. But it's kinda obvious that the lack ob a big and serious actor is the main reason why nothing seriously bad ever happend in linux-land so far. Everyone switching to Open Source would change this and the watchmen would likely be unable to protect their world. I mean just look at the mildly bad things happening on mainstream-systems, which everyone knows about and still ignores them, because "that's just how it is". At the end people willingly use bad software & services, because their subjective gain is higher than the small price they pay.
boudin 6y ago
It doesn't systematically free people of spywares but allows to do so. Projects already get forked for that purpose like vscode, chromium. It also allows to audit and at least see what a software does.
- GoblinSlayer 6y ago
  vscodium

runiq 6y ago

Just now we had a bit of a kerfuffle with telemetry being enabled in the most popular Lua language server[0]. I can't argue with the specific usecase presented in that GitHub issue, I'm going to keep telemetry enabled. But if you argue that vendors "usually won't be inserting spyware", in the face of evidence like free software products seeing value in phoning home with telemetry data, I think I have the moral right to reject your argument in full. https://github.com/sumneko/lua-language-server/issues/462 https://github.com/sumneko/lua-language-server/issues/462

3grdlurker 6y ago
You can’t reject his argument in full because you’re already biting back at the wrong argument. OP isn’t saying that free, open-source software is untarnished by and incapable of crimes against consumer privacy, but the fact that it is FOSS allows concerned members of the public to inspect it so, whereas proprietary software does not. How do you reckon you are able to know of the very example that you cited, for instance?
- EdwardDiego 6y ago
  I think you and runiq are in violent agreement :)
StupidOne 6y ago
I think we should separate telemetry from spyware. It is not close the same. We all have telemetry is our cars, yet nobody is making any fuss about it. Even in software engineering profiling database queries or active memory is not something anew and I don't recall we had any problems with that.
- dhagz 6y ago
  I'd argue that if the telemetry is opt-out rather than opt-in it has (just _barely_) crossed the border into spyware. Sure it may not be tracking anything more than usage data, but I'd rather see a pop-up/dialog saying, "we'd like to track X, Y, and Z - we'll be using Q to identify your data. Is that okay?" And make a choice than to have that choice made for me.

CaptainZapp 6y ago

A bit further down the road you have Lenovo endangering their customers with the Superfish[1] spyware. And please don't give me "that was on consumer models only". I really couldn't care less. A company pulling off such dirty shit winds up on my eternal shitlist. No matter how great their "professional" products are. I'm sure there are countless other examples. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish

EdwardDiego 6y ago
I'm reminded of Sony's rootkit that was, well, just awful, in every respect - ethically, engineering, etc. Interesting that the founders of Superfish are both Israeli, I wonder if they both served with the Unit 8200 that was posted on here recently?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- gluegadget 6y ago
  But isn't this part of the point the author of the article is trying to make? In case of Superfish it was United States Department of Homeland Security who advised uninstalling it and in case of Sony's rootkit, a class-action lawsuit. In both cases higher authorities hired by people to protect them, protected them. Not FSF, nor the fact that the code wasn't GPL. Even if Superfish was GPL licensed, the issue would've persisted. As article mentions even laptops coming with Linux pre-installed hardly come with the Kernel and userspace tools source code and you need to download them separately. Should Lenovo have preloaded Superfish as Linux kernel module and shipped it to its consumer laptops, United States Department of Homeland Security would have still advised removing it.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    In both examples, a higher authority may have also acted but if they had done the same with free software things either would have been caught immediately or a lawsuit would have been possible for breach of license if they tried to hide it. >In both cases higher authorities hired by people to protect them, protected them. Not FSF, The FSF did a better job of protecting them with their unwavering stance. Neither would ever have caused an issue if you followed their advice to never use non-free software.

arsome 6y ago

It's like someone hasn't even picked up a phone in the past decade. Nearly every app on your phone would have been considered spyware or adware just years ago. Pretty much the only things on my phone that aren't adware or spyware are free software apps.

minikites 6y ago
A web browser made by an advertising company is the currently the most popular web browser.
- GoblinSlayer 6y ago
  It's basically a pirate ship.
blablabla123 6y ago
That's why I have only few apps installed and if it's possible I opt for the paid version. (I do appreciate Fdroid though) Still, I think it used to be much worse or at least more obvious in the early 2000s. At that time Shareware was still a thing and it was normal for installers to add completely unrelated 3rdparty software. Probably that's also half the explanation why Windows used to be so unreliable, half of the ecosystem around was just random stuff.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

npsimons 6y ago

> "Software vendors won’t usually be inserting spyware into their wares." JFC. I'm sorry, but this "article" can be dismissed on that alone. Software vendors already are inserting spyware into their "wares." Did the author do any research?

TheCoelacanth 6y ago
Software vendors basically have to be dragged kicking and screaming into not inserting spyware into their wares. Look at the giant tantrum basically every software vendor is throwing over the quite reasonable restrictions that the EU placed on spyware. I have to tell users about the spyware I'm inflicting on them and ask for consent first? End of the world.
kazinator 6y ago
The article can be entirely dismissed on pompous pseudo-intellectual pontification such as: > The Free Software coterie is fond of insisting that words mean what they say they mean, and that is a profound misunderstanding of the nature of language. Such linguistic naïveté is not an asset in pursuing political goals. Uh, take your snooty diaeresis and shove it where l'accent aigu don't shine? Defining terms is par for the course in the general intellectual sphere. Academic papers, data sheets for microchips and ISO standards for programming languages all define terms and insist on using them in the defined way. If that's not enough, there is outright misinformed claptrap: > With all that said, the intent of the adherents to the term Free Software is to seek to promote certain freedoms for the users of software, by depriving the creators of software (at least in the United States) of the rights afforded them by Congress under Article I, Section VIII, Clause VIII. What? Creators of software are deprived of freedoms by the Free Software Foundation? Not simply encouraged to copyleft their software, while retaining all rights to license it in other ways at the same time? Crazy.
- npsimons 6y ago
  > the intent of the adherents to the term Free Software is to seek to promote certain freedoms for the users of software, by depriving the creators of software Oh, he's one of that kind of cunts. Someone with an axe to grind against FLOSS because he obviously hasn't studied history of copyright in addition to his misunderstanding of FLOSS.