9 ms·

actually RMS is an excellent spokesperson which is why the movement is so successful.

by shareme 15y ago

lightyrs 15y ago
In a world of Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Open Source, I wonder if FSM is actually successful. Sure it's had successes, but success-ful, I would hesitate to call it. Also, I'm pretty sure the original commenter was implying that RMS is a bad spokesman because he is so polarizing/unattractive (idealogically).
- jrockway 15y ago
  How much did it cost you to learn to program? Before Free Software, it would have been a lot. Now you can learn and create amazing software without spending any money. And there is a culture of sharing that's made software one of the most successful fields to date.
  - davidw 15y ago
    This stuff is always difficult to figure out with any certainty, because the "what if" world will always remain hypothetical. For instance, the FSF is fairly successful, but in an alternate universe, with, say, David Hasselhof (or, KITT, for that matter), as their spokesperson, maybe they would have been vastly more successful. With regards to the availability of free software, who knows how much is due to them, how much is due to BSD type sharing, and how much is simply due to the economics of free software making a lot of sense for some kinds of programs.
    - rjbond3rd 15y ago
      gcc.
  - maximusprime 15y ago
    Please don't pedal this nonsense. "Free software" existed well before Stallman. I learnt to program from magazines that had "free software" written out in BASIC. It was free (cost and freedom). After that we used to download free software from BBS's. Fractint etc. Free software existed before, it'll always exist. It's existence has nothing to do with Stallman. About as irritating as hearing 'Crockford invented JSON'.
    - jrockway 15y ago
      That was "free software". This is Free Software.
    - icebraining 15y ago
      Words and expressions often have more than one meaning. This is the case. See Gratis versus Libre: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_libre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_libre
    - rryan 15y ago
      Was it actually free as in libre? Did the magazine include a license for the code samples? If there was no explicit license then it was absolutely not libre due to copyright.
  - absconditus 15y ago
    BSD predates the FSF by almost a decade. pcc predates GCC by about the same amount of time. I know that you know that projects like Perl have nothing to do with the FSF as well.
    - throwaway64 15y ago
      BSD however, was not BSD licensed untill the early 90s, and they clearly stated this move was in response to GNU and the GPL, to use BSD before that point required an extremely expensive AT&T source code license.
  - nirvana 15y ago
    The Apple II, the first mass market personal computer, predates the "Free" software movement by several years, and came with Basic-- the most popular language at the time for hobbyists-- installed, by default, for free. For the most part, Apple has given away development tools for free, or at very low cost, primarily to cover the overhead of offering them. Since Mac OS X has been out, development tools have been free, and in the box. (Though now you download them rather than get them in the box, of course.)
    - nosequel 15y ago
      XCode is just recently free, it always cost something before now. Without GCC being out there, would it have been free this whole time? I don't know either way, no one does, but I cheap != free. GCC has always been free.
      - 0x09 15y ago
        > XCode is just recently free, it always cost something before now. This is plainly false and easily checked by simply looking at archive.org's record for developer.apple.com.
    - julian37 15y ago
      Don't you think Basic was the most popular language at the time because it came for free with many home computers? C and other compilers were hideously expensive at the time, no wonder these languages weren't particularly popular. And have you considered that one reason for OS X development tools being available free of charge these days might be because Free software changed the development tools landscape dramatically in the last two decades?
    - hugh3 15y ago
      For the most part, Apple has given away development tools for free, or at very low cost, primarily to cover the overhead of offering them There was no freely available compiler for the mac between System 1 and OSX. My fifteen-year-old self had to make an at-the-time pretty significant investment to buy Metrowerks Codewarrior. That was the anti-golden-age of programming.
  - lightyrs 15y ago
    Most of the tools I used to learn to program would not qualify as Free Software by RMS's own definition. Most of these were Open Source.
    - caf 15y ago
      Perhaps you are not aware that the vast majority of open source software does qualify as Free Software by the FSF's definition. Certainly BSD-licensed software does.
      - lightyrs 15y ago
        The vast majority of tools I used to learn how to program were not Free Software as defined by RMS.
        paradoja 15y ago
        But were OSS? An example, please?
      - cube13 15y ago
        BSD as it currently is(the "new" BSD licenses from 1999 on), because that's GPL compatible. The original BSD license does not count as FOSS as far as the FSF is concerned.
        candeira 15y ago
        The original BSD license was free too, it was just not GPL compatible. The FSF has always recommended against it, but they have always called it a Free Software license. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OriginalBSD http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OriginalBSD
    - icebraining 15y ago
      I very much doubt that, since the definitions are very similar. Just because you could look at the source doesn't make it Open Source, as defined by the OSI.
  - chc 15y ago
    Regarding the cost of learning to program: That's thanks to free-as-in-beer software, which is quite different from the FSF's free-as-in-speech software. (Though it is true that free-as-in-speech software also tends not to cost anything, since it's basically unsalable.) And the culture of sharing exists outside of Stallman's highly restrictive copyleft bubble. Ordinary open-source software falls short of Stallman's demands, but it actually grants the user more freedom than GPL software does.
    - sitkack 15y ago
      Since we value individual freedoms the most, the author decides what do with their software. Author's Choice. If you dont like the license on GPLd software, recode it and release as BSD. Go compete in the marketplace of ideas.
- bryanlarsen 15y ago
  Free Software is successful because Apple and Google would not have been successful without it. OSX & iOS are built on BSD, and Google's entire back end is based on open source software (Linux, Java, et cetera).
  - absconditus 15y ago
    BSD has nothing to do with the FSF and Stallman.
  - pyre 15y ago
    BSD does not use GNU software, IIRC. The BSDs use a separate re-implementation of the Unix base software under a BSD license (instead of a GPL license). That said, I'm a little fuzzy on how much FSF may be inspired the BSDs to exist. edit: I was overstating what I actually meant when I said that they don't use GNU software. I don't know about the current crop of BSDs, but I was referring to the original BSD system not being built on top of the GNU base.
    - absconditus 15y ago
      Most of the current BSD projects do in fact use some GNU tools. BSD predates the FSF.
    - X-Istence 15y ago
      There are a lot of tools and major projects within the various BSD's that are GPL'ed software. This includes but certainly isn't limited to gcc, gdb, grep, binutils, diff, and more. It is only recently in the last few years that the BSD projects have started removing GPL'ed software from their base trees and replacing them with BSD equivalents. clang is slowly being accepted by FreeBSD (a BSD compiler developed by Apple), tools like grep and diff are being redone under the BSD license, and OpenBSD is looking at pcc to replace the gcc compiler for their base system. The main reason is simply because they want to create a fully BSD distribution of components, where none of it is under the GPL license, secondary only recently has there been a new compiler available that is as good as gcc and could be a viable replacement.
  - 15y ago
- Tichy 15y ago
  In a world of Apple, Google and Microsoft FSM seems to be our only hope...

actually RMS is an excellent spokesperson which is why the movement is so successful.

by shareme 15y ago

actually RMS is an excellent spokesperson which is why the movement is so successful.

In a world of Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Open Source, I wonder if FSM is actually successful. Sure it's had successes, but success-ful, I would hesitate to call it. Also, I'm pretty sure the original commenter was implying that RMS is a bad spokesman because he is so polarizing/unattractive (idealogically).

jrockway 15y ago
How much did it cost you to learn to program? Before Free Software, it would have been a lot. Now you can learn and create amazing software without spending any money. And there is a culture of sharing that's made software one of the most successful fields to date.
- davidw 15y ago
  This stuff is always difficult to figure out with any certainty, because the "what if" world will always remain hypothetical. For instance, the FSF is fairly successful, but in an alternate universe, with, say, David Hasselhof (or, KITT, for that matter), as their spokesperson, maybe they would have been vastly more successful. With regards to the availability of free software, who knows how much is due to them, how much is due to BSD type sharing, and how much is simply due to the economics of free software making a lot of sense for some kinds of programs.
  - rjbond3rd 15y ago
    gcc.
- maximusprime 15y ago
  Please don't pedal this nonsense. "Free software" existed well before Stallman. I learnt to program from magazines that had "free software" written out in BASIC. It was free (cost and freedom). After that we used to download free software from BBS's. Fractint etc. Free software existed before, it'll always exist. It's existence has nothing to do with Stallman. About as irritating as hearing 'Crockford invented JSON'.
  - jrockway 15y ago
    That was "free software". This is Free Software.
  - icebraining 15y ago
    Words and expressions often have more than one meaning. This is the case. See Gratis versus Libre: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_libre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_libre
  - rryan 15y ago
    Was it actually free as in libre? Did the magazine include a license for the code samples? If there was no explicit license then it was absolutely not libre due to copyright.
- absconditus 15y ago
  BSD predates the FSF by almost a decade. pcc predates GCC by about the same amount of time. I know that you know that projects like Perl have nothing to do with the FSF as well.
  - throwaway64 15y ago
    BSD however, was not BSD licensed untill the early 90s, and they clearly stated this move was in response to GNU and the GPL, to use BSD before that point required an extremely expensive AT&T source code license.
- nirvana 15y ago
  The Apple II, the first mass market personal computer, predates the "Free" software movement by several years, and came with Basic-- the most popular language at the time for hobbyists-- installed, by default, for free. For the most part, Apple has given away development tools for free, or at very low cost, primarily to cover the overhead of offering them. Since Mac OS X has been out, development tools have been free, and in the box. (Though now you download them rather than get them in the box, of course.)
  - nosequel 15y ago
    XCode is just recently free, it always cost something before now. Without GCC being out there, would it have been free this whole time? I don't know either way, no one does, but I cheap != free. GCC has always been free.
    - 0x09 15y ago
      > XCode is just recently free, it always cost something before now. This is plainly false and easily checked by simply looking at archive.org's record for developer.apple.com.
  - julian37 15y ago
    Don't you think Basic was the most popular language at the time because it came for free with many home computers? C and other compilers were hideously expensive at the time, no wonder these languages weren't particularly popular. And have you considered that one reason for OS X development tools being available free of charge these days might be because Free software changed the development tools landscape dramatically in the last two decades?
  - hugh3 15y ago
    For the most part, Apple has given away development tools for free, or at very low cost, primarily to cover the overhead of offering them There was no freely available compiler for the mac between System 1 and OSX. My fifteen-year-old self had to make an at-the-time pretty significant investment to buy Metrowerks Codewarrior. That was the anti-golden-age of programming.
- lightyrs 15y ago
  Most of the tools I used to learn to program would not qualify as Free Software by RMS's own definition. Most of these were Open Source.
  - caf 15y ago
    Perhaps you are not aware that the vast majority of open source software does qualify as Free Software by the FSF's definition. Certainly BSD-licensed software does.
    - lightyrs 15y ago
      The vast majority of tools I used to learn how to program were not Free Software as defined by RMS.
      - paradoja 15y ago
        But were OSS? An example, please?
    - cube13 15y ago
      BSD as it currently is(the "new" BSD licenses from 1999 on), because that's GPL compatible. The original BSD license does not count as FOSS as far as the FSF is concerned.
      - candeira 15y ago
        The original BSD license was free too, it was just not GPL compatible. The FSF has always recommended against it, but they have always called it a Free Software license. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OriginalBSD http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OriginalBSD
  - icebraining 15y ago
    I very much doubt that, since the definitions are very similar. Just because you could look at the source doesn't make it Open Source, as defined by the OSI.
- chc 15y ago
  Regarding the cost of learning to program: That's thanks to free-as-in-beer software, which is quite different from the FSF's free-as-in-speech software. (Though it is true that free-as-in-speech software also tends not to cost anything, since it's basically unsalable.) And the culture of sharing exists outside of Stallman's highly restrictive copyleft bubble. Ordinary open-source software falls short of Stallman's demands, but it actually grants the user more freedom than GPL software does.
  - sitkack 15y ago
    Since we value individual freedoms the most, the author decides what do with their software. Author's Choice. If you dont like the license on GPLd software, recode it and release as BSD. Go compete in the marketplace of ideas.
bryanlarsen 15y ago
Free Software is successful because Apple and Google would not have been successful without it. OSX & iOS are built on BSD, and Google's entire back end is based on open source software (Linux, Java, et cetera).
- absconditus 15y ago
  BSD has nothing to do with the FSF and Stallman.
- pyre 15y ago
  BSD does not use GNU software, IIRC. The BSDs use a separate re-implementation of the Unix base software under a BSD license (instead of a GPL license). That said, I'm a little fuzzy on how much FSF may be inspired the BSDs to exist. edit: I was overstating what I actually meant when I said that they don't use GNU software. I don't know about the current crop of BSDs, but I was referring to the original BSD system not being built on top of the GNU base.
  - absconditus 15y ago
    Most of the current BSD projects do in fact use some GNU tools. BSD predates the FSF.
  - X-Istence 15y ago
    There are a lot of tools and major projects within the various BSD's that are GPL'ed software. This includes but certainly isn't limited to gcc, gdb, grep, binutils, diff, and more. It is only recently in the last few years that the BSD projects have started removing GPL'ed software from their base trees and replacing them with BSD equivalents. clang is slowly being accepted by FreeBSD (a BSD compiler developed by Apple), tools like grep and diff are being redone under the BSD license, and OpenBSD is looking at pcc to replace the gcc compiler for their base system. The main reason is simply because they want to create a fully BSD distribution of components, where none of it is under the GPL license, secondary only recently has there been a new compiler available that is as good as gcc and could be a viable replacement.
- 15y ago
Tichy 15y ago
In a world of Apple, Google and Microsoft FSM seems to be our only hope...