4 ms·

no! free as in libre means free as in freedom like the word liberation, not anything to do with paying. because, it gives the user the freedom to use a program

no! free as in libre means free as in freedom like the word liberation, not anything to do with paying. because, it gives the user the freedom to use a program and then modify it to suit their own taste, and to give that same freedom to any person using their version.

TeMPOraL 4y ago
> no! free as in libre means free as in freedom like the word liberation, not anything to do with paying. That's a naive, dreaming view. RMS and others at FSF were and are realists. GPL isn't an empty political statement. > it gives the user the freedom to use a program and then modify it to suit their own taste, and to give that same freedom to any person using their version Yes, that's what the license says, more or less. But that alone isn't interesting. Look instead at the first-order consequences. Look at what these statements do. Or, in other words, as you read code, don't focus on syntax but on what the program will actually do when run.
- codeguro 4y ago
  No, he’s right. The GPL has everything to do with freedom. Money and monetary aspects are entirely orthogonal to the GPL and the FSF as a whole. This is said by Stallman and the GNU projects itself. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    Thanks for linking. I re-read that article just now, and I interpret it differently. In a completely abstract view, GPL indeed says nothing about money. However, there's a reason the very article you linked exists - GPL exists in the real world, world defined by money and markets. As such, the article reminds us that being able to sell the software is a part of the end-user freedoms that Free Software protects. The article in fact explicitly recognizes people need to make money, and encourages them to try making money on Free Software. My claim here is that Stallman and the FSF have a very realistic view of the world. The Free Software isn't about empowering individuals - it's about empowering communities. And communities, in the real world, always have some form of internal economy - be it favor-based, gift-based or money-based. They have a form of specialization of labor. They're also embedded in the larger local and global economies, and to survive, they need to be productive participants. Free Software isn't preventing people from making money on software - it's just counteracting the natural tendency for software to turn into capital and concentrate in the hands of the few. That is, it protects people's ability to make money via the software (should they choose to) from the interests that would build on it, establish exclusive ownership, and use it to seek rent. FWIW, this became clear to me when I started to look into what the "right to repair" movement is really about. There's a common argument against RtR, that's very similar to a common argument against Free Software: that it assumes or mandates everyone to be a specialist able to fix and improve their devices on their own. But the RtR crowd had a very clear counter to this: it's not about you becoming a hardware engineer so you can fix your own devices. It's about you being able to get a friend, or find a local repair shop, and pay them to fix your device for you. RtR is also expressed in terms of individual freedoms and seemingly orthogonal to monetary issues - but it's been made clear all this is primarily about making the economics of local community repairs work. Once I grokked that, I realized Free Software has always been about the same thing, but for software.
- fsckboy 4y ago
  you've written a great comment i agree with, but you completely did not understand my comment. keep fighting the good fight, you have no fight with me. isn't it interest that people say "you're just arguing over semantics" when they actually mean "you're just arguing over syntax"?
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    I'm saying that "free as in libre means free as in freedom like the word liberation, not anything to do with paying" is true in the same way a random piece of C++ code has nothing to do with CPUs, screens and keyboards. The code itself doesn't talk about hardware explicitly, but it's also not a poem - it's been made to be run on some hardware, and do things that are entirely about doing stuff to hardware. Same with Free Software - it talks about freedoms, but those freedoms are being exercised in the real, money-driven world, and they affect that world in specific ways. > isn't it interest that people say "you're just arguing over semantics" when they actually mean "you're just arguing over syntax"? I think I didn't make this mistake here. Or did I? Either way, it's just another unfortunate case of language drift, very similar to "literally" vs. "figuratively".

TeMPOraL 4y ago

> no! free as in libre means free as in freedom like the word liberation, not anything to do with paying. That's a naive, dreaming view. RMS and others at FSF were and are realists. GPL isn't an empty political statement. > it gives the user the freedom to use a program and then modify it to suit their own taste, and to give that same freedom to any person using their version Yes, that's what the license says, more or less. But that alone isn't interesting. Look instead at the first-order consequences. Look at what these statements do. Or, in other words, as you read code, don't focus on syntax but on what the program will actually do when run.

codeguro 4y ago
No, he’s right. The GPL has everything to do with freedom. Money and monetary aspects are entirely orthogonal to the GPL and the FSF as a whole. This is said by Stallman and the GNU projects itself. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  Thanks for linking. I re-read that article just now, and I interpret it differently. In a completely abstract view, GPL indeed says nothing about money. However, there's a reason the very article you linked exists - GPL exists in the real world, world defined by money and markets. As such, the article reminds us that being able to sell the software is a part of the end-user freedoms that Free Software protects. The article in fact explicitly recognizes people need to make money, and encourages them to try making money on Free Software. My claim here is that Stallman and the FSF have a very realistic view of the world. The Free Software isn't about empowering individuals - it's about empowering communities. And communities, in the real world, always have some form of internal economy - be it favor-based, gift-based or money-based. They have a form of specialization of labor. They're also embedded in the larger local and global economies, and to survive, they need to be productive participants. Free Software isn't preventing people from making money on software - it's just counteracting the natural tendency for software to turn into capital and concentrate in the hands of the few. That is, it protects people's ability to make money via the software (should they choose to) from the interests that would build on it, establish exclusive ownership, and use it to seek rent. FWIW, this became clear to me when I started to look into what the "right to repair" movement is really about. There's a common argument against RtR, that's very similar to a common argument against Free Software: that it assumes or mandates everyone to be a specialist able to fix and improve their devices on their own. But the RtR crowd had a very clear counter to this: it's not about you becoming a hardware engineer so you can fix your own devices. It's about you being able to get a friend, or find a local repair shop, and pay them to fix your device for you. RtR is also expressed in terms of individual freedoms and seemingly orthogonal to monetary issues - but it's been made clear all this is primarily about making the economics of local community repairs work. Once I grokked that, I realized Free Software has always been about the same thing, but for software.
fsckboy 4y ago
you've written a great comment i agree with, but you completely did not understand my comment. keep fighting the good fight, you have no fight with me. isn't it interest that people say "you're just arguing over semantics" when they actually mean "you're just arguing over syntax"?
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  I'm saying that "free as in libre means free as in freedom like the word liberation, not anything to do with paying" is true in the same way a random piece of C++ code has nothing to do with CPUs, screens and keyboards. The code itself doesn't talk about hardware explicitly, but it's also not a poem - it's been made to be run on some hardware, and do things that are entirely about doing stuff to hardware. Same with Free Software - it talks about freedoms, but those freedoms are being exercised in the real, money-driven world, and they affect that world in specific ways. > isn't it interest that people say "you're just arguing over semantics" when they actually mean "you're just arguing over syntax"? I think I didn't make this mistake here. Or did I? Either way, it's just another unfortunate case of language drift, very similar to "literally" vs. "figuratively".