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If “free” must include the right for massive corporations to take your unpaid labor and extract profits from it, then I’m not sure the author and I have the sam

If “free” must include the right for massive corporations to take your unpaid labor and extract profits from it, then I’m not sure the author and I have the same definition of freedom. Or, perhaps, I have zero interest in a setup that seems to benefit only a small number of parties, regardless of how you may argue that it’s actually “freedom”.

api 5y ago
The entire FOSS movement is stuck in the 1980s-1990s and has not adapted to the new business and computing environment of the 21st century. Source code is far less relevant to freedom today. The new closed is closed runtimes and closed data. I can run a service based on 100% open source software that I either use from others or produce myself, and if the runtime and user data are behind a paywall the result is something that is more closed than closed-source software. At least with closed-source software you can still run it. I can take a file produced by a 1980s DOS program and load it up under that program in DOSBox on a computer today. I also have all the data I ever made, and if I want to put in the effort to reverse engineer the format could extract it or port it to some other format. My data is my data. None of this can be done with hosted SaaS. Cloud is the new closed and is far more closed than the old closed. We confuse free "as in beer" with free "as in freedom." These two are actually at odds. If all software is free "as in beer," it becomes impossible to field any business model that prioritizes the user. The only available business models are closed-data/closed-runtime SaaS, usually with a healthy dose of lock-in and surveillance capitalism, or closed super-locked-down hardware like Apple's iOS that effectively achieves SaaS levels of lock-down but at the edge. A model in which the user pays directly for the software is necessary (but not sufficient) to enable software that actually prioritizes the user. (The other necessary condition is at least some users exercising discernment and purchasing software that doesn't treat them like shit.) If you can't sell software, you either have to sell the user (surveillance capitalism), exploit/con the user (gambling-based models like loot boxes), or find some other way to erect a paywall (SaaS, locked-down hardware). Free "as in beer" means honest straightforward business models are impossible. Finally the idea that all software even can be free "as in beer" is a fantasy, especially when you go beyond bare bones open source code that requires a lot of expert setup or "geek tools." Software that non-geeks can actually use requires exponentially more effort to produce and maintain than open source projects that are made for programmers by programmers. Getting a program to work is often maybe 5-10% of the effort, with the other 90-95% being UI/UX. Worse, UI/UX is the sort of work that most programmers do not find fun. As a result they have to be paid to do it, which is why few if any truly free "as in beer" open source products have broken out beyond hacker subcultures and IT/developer audiences (unless they are used as a hidden platform or component in providing something else, like Google's massive surveillance capitalist empire running on Linux). IMHO we need to re-think the entire open source social contract from the perspective of how to maximize freedom (and privacy) in today's world. Dogmatism is the largest impediment to this, but I also have the sense that the institutional side of open source (e.g. OSI) is completely captured and in the pocket of FAANG companies that do not want anything to change. I recall a FOSDEM lecture a while ago on "threats to open source" that read a bit like this article, and the presenter was a lawyer for Facebook. If organizations like OSI won't help, we need new organizations. We may also need new terminology. Edit: AFAIK Richard Stallman would probably agree with at least some of the things I say above. He argued on several occasions that open source did not always have to imply free as in no payment or no economic model. The GPL has issues that hamstring its adoption and is not the right answer to this, but it's still one of the better licenses for open source ventures that want to dual-license or prevent SaaSification.
- zokier 5y ago
  > Getting a program to work is often maybe 5-10% of the effort, with the other 90-95% being UI/UX Just because you can spend 90+% of effort on UX doesn't mean that it is necessary or even beneficial.
  - api 5y ago
    It's necessary if you want anyone other than programmers and IT people who have a lot of time on their hands to use it. Not only is good UI/UX required for end users, it's also required for expert users who are busy and don't have time for your 25-step installation procedure or constantly dinking around with something until it works. Actual percentages vary by type of software and user base, but I'd say it's almost never less than 25% of the effort for developer tools, enterprise, backend, etc. software and is probably closer to my 90-95% number for most software designed for end users. If you want a world where freedom is only for software developers and IT professionals and everyone else lives in a locked-down surveillance panopticon where they don't even control their own data, then maintain the status quo. Personally I did not get into this industry to be a mercenary knight for a bunch of neo-feudal lords.
- danShumway 5y ago
  > Finally the idea that all software even can be free "as in beer" is a fantasy, especially when you go beyond bare bones open source code that requires a lot of expert setup or "geek tools." You don't see any irony at all in saying this as an argument against calling Non-Commercial licenses Non-Free? This is the content that by law can't be used to fund anything, at all, including freedom-preserving software. Ironically, the best legal chance you have at getting away with funding a product that includes Non-Commercial licensed content is probably ads/donations, which you seem to dislike. > If all software is free "as in beer," it becomes impossible to field any business model that prioritizes the user So how exactly are licenses that literally require you to make everything built on top of them free (as in beer) helping with this? If you don't believe that free (as in beer) software/content is worthwhile or feasible to make in the long term, than these Non-Commercial licenses aren't contributing anything worthwhile to the commons, because they can't be used to fund anything. Anything built on top of them will always be the kind of low-effort unsustainable software that you decry here. If what you're saying is true, then producers of Non-Commercial licensed content might as well just license that stuff as straight proprietary in the first place and stop pretending to be occupying a middle ground.
danShumway 5y ago
> I have zero interest in a setup that seems to benefit only a small number of parties Heads up, it's not only giant companies that are restricted by Non-Commercial licenses. Also, Non-Commercial licenses apply regardless of whether or not the finished product is made available in a way that respects user freedoms. CC BY-NC can't be used for commercial products even if they're made available under CC licenses. It's totally fine for you to like those licenses, I've used them in the past, I've used straight-up proprietary licenses in the past that gave my users zero freedom. But "freedom" is a completely orthogonal concept to whether or not you as a creative have the ability to monetize your work. When you look at restrictive licenses that are actually free (like the GPL), you see that they're not interested in restricting what the software is used for, just what terms derivative products can be made available under. Note that the article does not say that Share-Alike licenses are non-free. But Non-Commercial licenses are a world away from that, they restrict actual usage for everyone big and small, which yeah, that's less free. Of course it's less free, you have to have a really weird definition of freedom to disagree with that. And what's weird about this conversation is nobody's even arguing about whether Non-Commercial licenses are good, or even if they're good for preserving freedom in the long run. The article itself says: > Isn't prohibiting the usage of some artefacts for commercial purpose good for free artefacts? Maybe it is. May be it is not. That is irrelevant while deciding whether a license is considered free or not. It would be totally fine to say, "sometimes NC licenses are more appropriate for some projects than Free (as in speech) licenses." It would be totally fine to say, "sometimes Free (as in speech) licenses make it easy to take advantage of creators." Both of those statements are true. They're just apparently not enough. It feels weirdly appropriative for proprietary devs to step in and champion themselves as the real defenders of freedom because they're solely focused on economics instead of what ordinary users can actually do with their content/software. Next up we'll be hearing people claim that Copyright itself is the real freedom-preserving system because Copyright-abolition just makes it easy for Disney to steal things. If we got rid of Copyright, then indie artists wouldn't be able to monetize their work, and if you think that world is "free" then you have a different definition than me of "freedom". /s
- api 5y ago
  > It feels weirdly appropriative for proprietary devs to step in and champion themselves as the real defenders of freedom A proprietary developer offering something that gives the user full control of their data and full privacy is championing freedom more than an open source developer who uses FOSS as a lever to herd people into a surveillance capitalist we-own-your-data ecosystem. Cloud is the new closed.
mnw21cam 5y ago
I think the Debian example is a useful one here. If you release your software under a NC license, then it can't be integrated into Debian. The reason for this is that Debian is freely available for anyone to download and install. Someone in a large commercial company who installs Debian onto a random computer must be able to press the "install everything" button, and not be exposed to the hazard of accidentally installing something that (due it its commercial use inside a company) is in violation of its license. Even if it were a little CPU usage status widget in the bottom corner of the screen, that would be a violation. If Debian didn't enforce this set of rules on acceptable licenses, then the freedom to install the OS would not be there. I don't think anyone could really argue with a straight face that Debian shouldn't be free to install in commercial situations.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  Obviously, the Debian project is free to do whatever it wants. There are a variety of choices I can make that would make my projects incompatible with Debian’s requirements, and that’s fine. What gets my hackles up is when developers are accused of not supporting “freedom” when they don’t allow the fruits of their labor to be used for someone else’s profits.
  - pritambaral 5y ago
    Do you accept patches? Do you profit off of said patches?

api 5y ago

The entire FOSS movement is stuck in the 1980s-1990s and has not adapted to the new business and computing environment of the 21st century. Source code is far less relevant to freedom today. The new closed is closed runtimes and closed data. I can run a service based on 100% open source software that I either use from others or produce myself, and if the runtime and user data are behind a paywall the result is something that is more closed than closed-source software. At least with closed-source software you can still run it. I can take a file produced by a 1980s DOS program and load it up under that program in DOSBox on a computer today. I also have all the data I ever made, and if I want to put in the effort to reverse engineer the format could extract it or port it to some other format. My data is my data. None of this can be done with hosted SaaS. Cloud is the new closed and is far more closed than the old closed. We confuse free "as in beer" with free "as in freedom." These two are actually at odds. If all software is free "as in beer," it becomes impossible to field any business model that prioritizes the user. The only available business models are closed-data/closed-runtime SaaS, usually with a healthy dose of lock-in and surveillance capitalism, or closed super-locked-down hardware like Apple's iOS that effectively achieves SaaS levels of lock-down but at the edge. A model in which the user pays directly for the software is necessary (but not sufficient) to enable software that actually prioritizes the user. (The other necessary condition is at least some users exercising discernment and purchasing software that doesn't treat them like shit.) If you can't sell software, you either have to sell the user (surveillance capitalism), exploit/con the user (gambling-based models like loot boxes), or find some other way to erect a paywall (SaaS, locked-down hardware). Free "as in beer" means honest straightforward business models are impossible. Finally the idea that all software even can be free "as in beer" is a fantasy, especially when you go beyond bare bones open source code that requires a lot of expert setup or "geek tools." Software that non-geeks can actually use requires exponentially more effort to produce and maintain than open source projects that are made for programmers by programmers. Getting a program to work is often maybe 5-10% of the effort, with the other 90-95% being UI/UX. Worse, UI/UX is the sort of work that most programmers do not find fun. As a result they have to be paid to do it, which is why few if any truly free "as in beer" open source products have broken out beyond hacker subcultures and IT/developer audiences (unless they are used as a hidden platform or component in providing something else, like Google's massive surveillance capitalist empire running on Linux). IMHO we need to re-think the entire open source social contract from the perspective of how to maximize freedom (and privacy) in today's world. Dogmatism is the largest impediment to this, but I also have the sense that the institutional side of open source (e.g. OSI) is completely captured and in the pocket of FAANG companies that do not want anything to change. I recall a FOSDEM lecture a while ago on "threats to open source" that read a bit like this article, and the presenter was a lawyer for Facebook. If organizations like OSI won't help, we need new organizations. We may also need new terminology. Edit: AFAIK Richard Stallman would probably agree with at least some of the things I say above. He argued on several occasions that open source did not always have to imply free as in no payment or no economic model. The GPL has issues that hamstring its adoption and is not the right answer to this, but it's still one of the better licenses for open source ventures that want to dual-license or prevent SaaSification.

zokier 5y ago
> Getting a program to work is often maybe 5-10% of the effort, with the other 90-95% being UI/UX Just because you can spend 90+% of effort on UX doesn't mean that it is necessary or even beneficial.
- api 5y ago
  It's necessary if you want anyone other than programmers and IT people who have a lot of time on their hands to use it. Not only is good UI/UX required for end users, it's also required for expert users who are busy and don't have time for your 25-step installation procedure or constantly dinking around with something until it works. Actual percentages vary by type of software and user base, but I'd say it's almost never less than 25% of the effort for developer tools, enterprise, backend, etc. software and is probably closer to my 90-95% number for most software designed for end users. If you want a world where freedom is only for software developers and IT professionals and everyone else lives in a locked-down surveillance panopticon where they don't even control their own data, then maintain the status quo. Personally I did not get into this industry to be a mercenary knight for a bunch of neo-feudal lords.
danShumway 5y ago
> Finally the idea that all software even can be free "as in beer" is a fantasy, especially when you go beyond bare bones open source code that requires a lot of expert setup or "geek tools." You don't see any irony at all in saying this as an argument against calling Non-Commercial licenses Non-Free? This is the content that by law can't be used to fund anything, at all, including freedom-preserving software. Ironically, the best legal chance you have at getting away with funding a product that includes Non-Commercial licensed content is probably ads/donations, which you seem to dislike. > If all software is free "as in beer," it becomes impossible to field any business model that prioritizes the user So how exactly are licenses that literally require you to make everything built on top of them free (as in beer) helping with this? If you don't believe that free (as in beer) software/content is worthwhile or feasible to make in the long term, than these Non-Commercial licenses aren't contributing anything worthwhile to the commons, because they can't be used to fund anything. Anything built on top of them will always be the kind of low-effort unsustainable software that you decry here. If what you're saying is true, then producers of Non-Commercial licensed content might as well just license that stuff as straight proprietary in the first place and stop pretending to be occupying a middle ground.

danShumway 5y ago

> I have zero interest in a setup that seems to benefit only a small number of parties Heads up, it's not only giant companies that are restricted by Non-Commercial licenses. Also, Non-Commercial licenses apply regardless of whether or not the finished product is made available in a way that respects user freedoms. CC BY-NC can't be used for commercial products even if they're made available under CC licenses. It's totally fine for you to like those licenses, I've used them in the past, I've used straight-up proprietary licenses in the past that gave my users zero freedom. But "freedom" is a completely orthogonal concept to whether or not you as a creative have the ability to monetize your work. When you look at restrictive licenses that are actually free (like the GPL), you see that they're not interested in restricting what the software is used for, just what terms derivative products can be made available under. Note that the article does not say that Share-Alike licenses are non-free. But Non-Commercial licenses are a world away from that, they restrict actual usage for everyone big and small, which yeah, that's less free. Of course it's less free, you have to have a really weird definition of freedom to disagree with that. And what's weird about this conversation is nobody's even arguing about whether Non-Commercial licenses are good, or even if they're good for preserving freedom in the long run. The article itself says: > Isn't prohibiting the usage of some artefacts for commercial purpose good for free artefacts? Maybe it is. May be it is not. That is irrelevant while deciding whether a license is considered free or not. It would be totally fine to say, "sometimes NC licenses are more appropriate for some projects than Free (as in speech) licenses." It would be totally fine to say, "sometimes Free (as in speech) licenses make it easy to take advantage of creators." Both of those statements are true. They're just apparently not enough. It feels weirdly appropriative for proprietary devs to step in and champion themselves as the real defenders of freedom because they're solely focused on economics instead of what ordinary users can actually do with their content/software. Next up we'll be hearing people claim that Copyright itself is the real freedom-preserving system because Copyright-abolition just makes it easy for Disney to steal things. If we got rid of Copyright, then indie artists wouldn't be able to monetize their work, and if you think that world is "free" then you have a different definition than me of "freedom". /s

api 5y ago
> It feels weirdly appropriative for proprietary devs to step in and champion themselves as the real defenders of freedom A proprietary developer offering something that gives the user full control of their data and full privacy is championing freedom more than an open source developer who uses FOSS as a lever to herd people into a surveillance capitalist we-own-your-data ecosystem. Cloud is the new closed.

mnw21cam 5y ago

I think the Debian example is a useful one here. If you release your software under a NC license, then it can't be integrated into Debian. The reason for this is that Debian is freely available for anyone to download and install. Someone in a large commercial company who installs Debian onto a random computer must be able to press the "install everything" button, and not be exposed to the hazard of accidentally installing something that (due it its commercial use inside a company) is in violation of its license. Even if it were a little CPU usage status widget in the bottom corner of the screen, that would be a violation. If Debian didn't enforce this set of rules on acceptable licenses, then the freedom to install the OS would not be there. I don't think anyone could really argue with a straight face that Debian shouldn't be free to install in commercial situations.

ashtonkem 5y ago
Obviously, the Debian project is free to do whatever it wants. There are a variety of choices I can make that would make my projects incompatible with Debian’s requirements, and that’s fine. What gets my hackles up is when developers are accused of not supporting “freedom” when they don’t allow the fruits of their labor to be used for someone else’s profits.
- pritambaral 5y ago
  Do you accept patches? Do you profit off of said patches?