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Absolutely. And yet the intellectual/philosophical underpinnings of that marvel are often demeaned, or neglected, even here on HN. The fact that the average per

Absolutely. And yet the intellectual/philosophical underpinnings of that marvel are often demeaned, or neglected, even here on HN. The fact that the average person has no awareness that the software powering the vast majority of their technology was built for free and that they can own it is mind boggling. They're just told that the prisons they think are "computing" (Windows/Apple/Android) are the natural state of things. Stallman is a (rightfully) controversial figure, but the Free Software movement is one of the most important movements of our age.

rglullis 4y ago
As a strong FOSS supporter, I'd like to disabuse you of the notion that it was built for free. It was not built for free. Saying that it was free cheapens the work of all the people involved in a project and gives the impression to end-users that open source is only a cheap knock-off of proprietary solutions.
- spockz 4y ago
  Okay. So it was built freely, or given/contributed for free. I don’t share this notion that free equals cheap.
  - rglullis 4y ago
    Sorry for bring pedantic, but it is still not the best way to frame it. I worked in open source projects for about half of my professional life, and I wouldn't be able to do so "for free". I also make a point of supporting FOSS development as much as possible, and I have not ever paid a dime for proprietary software. Free software is amazing and infinitely more valuable than closed source solutions, and we should never take it for granted or think that we are entitled for the time and effort of FOSS developers.
    - jsjohnst 4y ago
      > I have not ever paid a dime for proprietary software Sorry for being pedantic, but this is quite literally impossible, unless you’ve never bought a single piece of electronics.
      - rglullis 4y ago
        When one buys electronics, you are not paying for the software directly. Still, pedantry accepted. :) Let me qualify the statement, then: I never paid for off-the-shelf software (or SaaS subscriptions) unless it was available under a F/OSS license.
  - tehjoker 4y ago
    A helpful analogy for me is how you can get penicillin free or cheap. It's extremely low priced but it's more valuable and should be treasured because of that low price not devalued.
  - danachow 4y ago
    I mean this is still so much bullshit. The period when Linux really started to mature (the early 00s) for instance is when IBM of all things were bankrolling the major contributors including Linus and GKH (nevermind all the other devs at Redhat at SUSE). The same goes for Gnome, gcc, clang, blender, Firefox (google!). The idea that most of this major open source stuff isn’t getting funded hugely by some of the most closed and traditional corporations around is a naïveté that I thought was abolished by now.
- freedomben 4y ago
  I know they said it, but I don't think OP meant it was built for free, I think they meant that it's available to users/consumers for free. Nothing is free. All the FOSS I've built and give away "for free" cost me a lot of time, and time is my most valuable asset. So certainly it's not built for free, but it is given away for free (both as in freedom and in beer). Also important to note, not all FOSS or "free software" is given away for free. All that is required is that the purchase comes with the code and that code can be freely modified by the user.
- teddyh 4y ago
  The air you breathe was not made for free, many trees and ocean algae worked very hard and used up a lot of solar energy to make that oxygen!
  - thrwyoilarticle 4y ago
    But Intel didn't pay billions in payroll for trees to photosynthesise.
    - teddyh 4y ago
      Trees are just part of another country with a different currency. If you would convert it, I’m sure you would find that trees have spent more money than Intel.
      - rglullis 4y ago
        If there is any point you are trying to make here, I am failing to get it. Can you please try again, preferably with a less sarcastic tone?
        teddyh 4y ago
        Certainly. Everything (oxygen, software) is produced by someone (trees, programmers) at great cost, for their own reasons. If they then make their products available for free to you, then those producs are free. It does not matter if the original production was costly. The producers presumably got their money’s worth already, since otherwise they would not have spent the cost and created the thing in the first place.
        rglullis 4y ago
        Your analogy is broken in many different ways: - Trees produce O2 as a byproduct of the work they need to live, whether it is available for you or not is irrelevant to them. People working in Free Software are doing with the primary purpose of getting it available to people, and a secondary purpose of getting more people involved, collaborating, improving it, etc. - Much like we need to keep the environment healthy and not just take the O2 produced by trees for granted, we need to foment an economy where developers can choose to develop Free Software without sacrificing themselves. People working in F/OSS need to to have their livelihood secured somehow. This does not mean that all F/OSS developers need to turn it into a profession, but it does mean that we as consumers should understand that if we want to see an increased global output of FOSS, we need to contribute and support its economy. - Software is never finished. I've been using Emacs for almost 25 years of my life, but do you think I'd still be using it if it got stuck on version 17? The worst part though is this: > The producers presumably got their money’s worth already That is a terribly wrong assumption. Just like startups can go for a long time without being profitable, a lot of people working on F/OSS projects might be doing for the future expectation of turning it into a profitable venture. Personally speaking, if I were to bill for all the time that I've put into my own open source project [0] I'd would have stopped about two years ago, and if I stopped then it would never reach the stage that is reaching now where I can actually try to market it properly. Mind you, this does not mean that people should be forced to pay, but it means that it would help a lot if more people started to realize that it could be economically interesting for them to pay for some F/OSS projects. [0]: https://hub20.io https://hub20.io
jodrellblank 4y ago
> "They're just told that the prisons they think are "computing" (Windows/Apple/Android) are the natural state of things." Step 1, use diminutive gatekeeping scare quotes to imply that Windows and Apple users are not doing /real/ computing. Step 2, use flamebait language where a house you got without paying is "freedom" but a listed building you bought from someone else is "a prison". Step 3, make up some fantasy about people being told "the natural state of things". Step 4, make sure to look down on average people with their lacking awareness, compared to you, an intellectual with your posturing understanding of philosophical underpinnings. > "often demeaned, or neglected, even here on HN" "I'm the one being demeaned, you inferior clueless simpletons!"
- skrtskrt 4y ago
  A free house that I can use forever without restrictions sure sounds a lot more like freedom than buying a house with significant restrictions on how I can use it.
  - jodrellblank 4y ago
    The more important point in the analogy is that people who buy houses aren't in prison. The other important point is that a house free house forever without restrictions doesn't exist - you're still beholden to zoning laws, fire safety laws, environmental regulations, you couldn't use the house as a meth lab or fly kites from it into restricted airspace, or broadcast from it into restricted radio bands, or a thousand other things. And for your own self-interest you want to keep it clear of insects, keep the roof waterproof, keep the floors from collapsing, etc. Then it becomes a lot clearer that there are tradeoffs around amount of effort needed, amount of money spent, amounts of freedoms, with many reasonable choices for different people and use-cases, rather than the implied binary choice.
  - teddyh 4y ago
    Most people seem to know that HOAs are troublesome and should be avoided, though.
    - 4y ago
skohan 4y ago
I agree with you that the free software movement is incredibly important, and that it's not talked about enough. I actually think it should be taught about in schools so that the average person has a background on why it's important, and why they have a political stake in defending it.
danachow 4y ago
Um yeah, about that… most of this stuff wasn’t built for free.. it was either directly (think IBM and Oracle and Linux) or indirectly (the countless people including me that could contribute development time because of high compensation from 9-5 jobs) funded by major corporations. Even gcc was a languishing mess until it got some real corporate backing into it. The Hurd never took off - the bulk of the real FSF successes had tremendous infusion of commercial support.

rglullis 4y ago

As a strong FOSS supporter, I'd like to disabuse you of the notion that it was built for free. It was not built for free. Saying that it was free cheapens the work of all the people involved in a project and gives the impression to end-users that open source is only a cheap knock-off of proprietary solutions.

spockz 4y ago
Okay. So it was built freely, or given/contributed for free. I don’t share this notion that free equals cheap.
- rglullis 4y ago
  Sorry for bring pedantic, but it is still not the best way to frame it. I worked in open source projects for about half of my professional life, and I wouldn't be able to do so "for free". I also make a point of supporting FOSS development as much as possible, and I have not ever paid a dime for proprietary software. Free software is amazing and infinitely more valuable than closed source solutions, and we should never take it for granted or think that we are entitled for the time and effort of FOSS developers.
  - jsjohnst 4y ago
    > I have not ever paid a dime for proprietary software Sorry for being pedantic, but this is quite literally impossible, unless you’ve never bought a single piece of electronics.
    - rglullis 4y ago
      When one buys electronics, you are not paying for the software directly. Still, pedantry accepted. :) Let me qualify the statement, then: I never paid for off-the-shelf software (or SaaS subscriptions) unless it was available under a F/OSS license.
- tehjoker 4y ago
  A helpful analogy for me is how you can get penicillin free or cheap. It's extremely low priced but it's more valuable and should be treasured because of that low price not devalued.
- danachow 4y ago
  I mean this is still so much bullshit. The period when Linux really started to mature (the early 00s) for instance is when IBM of all things were bankrolling the major contributors including Linus and GKH (nevermind all the other devs at Redhat at SUSE). The same goes for Gnome, gcc, clang, blender, Firefox (google!). The idea that most of this major open source stuff isn’t getting funded hugely by some of the most closed and traditional corporations around is a naïveté that I thought was abolished by now.
freedomben 4y ago
I know they said it, but I don't think OP meant it was built for free, I think they meant that it's available to users/consumers for free. Nothing is free. All the FOSS I've built and give away "for free" cost me a lot of time, and time is my most valuable asset. So certainly it's not built for free, but it is given away for free (both as in freedom and in beer). Also important to note, not all FOSS or "free software" is given away for free. All that is required is that the purchase comes with the code and that code can be freely modified by the user.
teddyh 4y ago
The air you breathe was not made for free, many trees and ocean algae worked very hard and used up a lot of solar energy to make that oxygen!
- thrwyoilarticle 4y ago
  But Intel didn't pay billions in payroll for trees to photosynthesise.
  - teddyh 4y ago
    Trees are just part of another country with a different currency. If you would convert it, I’m sure you would find that trees have spent more money than Intel.
    - rglullis 4y ago
      If there is any point you are trying to make here, I am failing to get it. Can you please try again, preferably with a less sarcastic tone?
      - teddyh 4y ago
        Certainly. Everything (oxygen, software) is produced by someone (trees, programmers) at great cost, for their own reasons. If they then make their products available for free to you, then those producs are free. It does not matter if the original production was costly. The producers presumably got their money’s worth already, since otherwise they would not have spent the cost and created the thing in the first place.
        rglullis 4y ago
        Your analogy is broken in many different ways: - Trees produce O2 as a byproduct of the work they need to live, whether it is available for you or not is irrelevant to them. People working in Free Software are doing with the primary purpose of getting it available to people, and a secondary purpose of getting more people involved, collaborating, improving it, etc. - Much like we need to keep the environment healthy and not just take the O2 produced by trees for granted, we need to foment an economy where developers can choose to develop Free Software without sacrificing themselves. People working in F/OSS need to to have their livelihood secured somehow. This does not mean that all F/OSS developers need to turn it into a profession, but it does mean that we as consumers should understand that if we want to see an increased global output of FOSS, we need to contribute and support its economy. - Software is never finished. I've been using Emacs for almost 25 years of my life, but do you think I'd still be using it if it got stuck on version 17? The worst part though is this: > The producers presumably got their money’s worth already That is a terribly wrong assumption. Just like startups can go for a long time without being profitable, a lot of people working on F/OSS projects might be doing for the future expectation of turning it into a profitable venture. Personally speaking, if I were to bill for all the time that I've put into my own open source project [0] I'd would have stopped about two years ago, and if I stopped then it would never reach the stage that is reaching now where I can actually try to market it properly. Mind you, this does not mean that people should be forced to pay, but it means that it would help a lot if more people started to realize that it could be economically interesting for them to pay for some F/OSS projects. [0]: https://hub20.io https://hub20.io

jodrellblank 4y ago

> "They're just told that the prisons they think are "computing" (Windows/Apple/Android) are the natural state of things." Step 1, use diminutive gatekeeping scare quotes to imply that Windows and Apple users are not doing /real/ computing. Step 2, use flamebait language where a house you got without paying is "freedom" but a listed building you bought from someone else is "a prison". Step 3, make up some fantasy about people being told "the natural state of things". Step 4, make sure to look down on average people with their lacking awareness, compared to you, an intellectual with your posturing understanding of philosophical underpinnings. > "often demeaned, or neglected, even here on HN" "I'm the one being demeaned, you inferior clueless simpletons!"

skrtskrt 4y ago
A free house that I can use forever without restrictions sure sounds a lot more like freedom than buying a house with significant restrictions on how I can use it.
- jodrellblank 4y ago
  The more important point in the analogy is that people who buy houses aren't in prison. The other important point is that a house free house forever without restrictions doesn't exist - you're still beholden to zoning laws, fire safety laws, environmental regulations, you couldn't use the house as a meth lab or fly kites from it into restricted airspace, or broadcast from it into restricted radio bands, or a thousand other things. And for your own self-interest you want to keep it clear of insects, keep the roof waterproof, keep the floors from collapsing, etc. Then it becomes a lot clearer that there are tradeoffs around amount of effort needed, amount of money spent, amounts of freedoms, with many reasonable choices for different people and use-cases, rather than the implied binary choice.
- teddyh 4y ago
  Most people seem to know that HOAs are troublesome and should be avoided, though.
  - 4y ago

skohan 4y ago

I agree with you that the free software movement is incredibly important, and that it's not talked about enough. I actually think it should be taught about in schools so that the average person has a background on why it's important, and why they have a political stake in defending it.

danachow 4y ago

Um yeah, about that… most of this stuff wasn’t built for free.. it was either directly (think IBM and Oracle and Linux) or indirectly (the countless people including me that could contribute development time because of high compensation from 9-5 jobs) funded by major corporations. Even gcc was a languishing mess until it got some real corporate backing into it. The Hurd never took off - the bulk of the real FSF successes had tremendous infusion of commercial support.