4 ms·

> The FSF is clearly not reaching the people it needs to reach. The FSF has been talking to users and to devs for decades, but unfortunately devs went from bei

by rakoo 3y ago

> The FSF is clearly not reaching the people it needs to reach. The FSF has been talking to users and to devs for decades, but unfortunately devs went from being users that had no problem sharing their progress to business people who thought that restricting access for personal, individual gain at the expense of the entire society of today and tomorrow is somehow "better", "more free", because who knows, maybe I'll be the next Bill Gates ? I see the catastrophic state we are in today as the result of non-copyleft, of "Open Source" as opposed to "Libre Software", of the depolitization of what it means to take from the commons and give back to the commons, of what society means whether we see it as a sum of perfectly rational individuals with no money problems or as a group of interdependent agents. The only reason Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok and other big platforms could start up and be where they are today is because they could take a bunch of existing tools in the commons and not share back, to build their own fortune and control prison. The FSF has known this for decades, and has talked about it at large, but no, developers don't want to listen. How do you fight greediness and individualism ? The issue runs deeper than software licenses, or even software.

nvy 3y ago
Perhaps if the FSF had actual professionals running communications, people who persuade other people for a living, the FSF's message would actually get through to people.
- tgma 3y ago
  I don't think PR is the real issue. IMHO, the fundamental principle behind FSF philosophy is the license is primarily written to secure the long-term interest of the _user_, not the community of the authors. The reason authors were okay with that in the first place is, early on in computing, users and authors largely overlapped, if not exactly the same. Over time, the authors and users diverged widely, thus their interests diverged. FSF philosophy has failed to appeal to the authors of the software because it is economically a bad deal for them. Users who do not pay are by-and-large leeches. Also, some of the freedoms are not considered as valuable by the users as they are for fellow authors, perhaps sensibly so because they are never going to utilize such freedoms.
  - dale_glass 3y ago
    That's of course an element, but there can be more than one problem at once. That the FSF holds position that's economically tricky makes it harder to "sell" it, which only reinforces the need for better communication. Plus, the GPL has long been used for commercial purposes as well.
- rakoo 3y ago
  The FSF has had actual professionals running communications. I don't think the issue is in the form but in the content: developers don't want to hear they are favoring greedy private interests (sometimes including themselves, sometimes at their expense) instead of the common goods, because the freedom to restrict a good from everyone for personal profit is more important than the freedom to access said good and build upon it.
- ekianjo 3y ago
  Its not about communication. They are fighting against very strong incentives for devs to do the "wrong" thing
pyrale 3y ago
> The FSF has known this for decades, and has talked about it at large, but no, developers don't want to listen. How do you fight greediness and individualism ? Yeah, the greed and individualism of earning a living wage. Not everyone can have a sheltered position at MIT or as head of a foundation.
- rakoo 3y ago
  Please, let's not pretend developers who build MIT- or BSD- licensed software on their free time after their day of work at BigTech are struggling for money. Let's not pretend React is done out of pure goodwill for the developers community by one of the richest companies in the history of mankind, and developers who work on it are evaluating whether they're going to have food on the table. There is a distinction between "I need money to live" and "I want money because I want more", and the distinction should be clear enough. Yes, many projects are in the first case, but that's not the subject. If you want to commit to a new project, make a living off of it, what does non-copyleft bring you compared to copyleft ?
  - tgma 3y ago
    > what does non-copyleft bring you compared to copyleft? This is not a statement of my values; simply providing plausible answers to that question. Usually non-copyleft free software is written in a variant of these scenarios: 1. Paid for by a company whose business model is distinct from selling software (e.g. ads) and prefers to not have to worry about copyleft licensing issues in small contributions they get back from the community and be free to integrate it in proprietary products. 2a. An individual author who will indirectly benefit (in both ego and monetary ways) by writing a popular piece of software. Copyleft in fact limits the spread of the software. Think Tanenbaum being excited and proud when the news that MINIX is used in Intel Management Engine came out. 2b. Result of a academic research that benefits from maximum spread. Lots of consuming companies prefer Apache to GPL and are more likely to use the non-copyleft software.
  - pyrale 3y ago
    Let's also not pretend that the solution to this specific issue is to expect all the devs of the world to respect some sort of honor code. Had the US done its job properly and antitrusted the offending companies a decade ago, as it should have, we wouldn't be having this discussion right now.

by rakoo 3y ago

nvy 3y ago

Perhaps if the FSF had actual professionals running communications, people who persuade other people for a living, the FSF's message would actually get through to people.

tgma 3y ago
I don't think PR is the real issue. IMHO, the fundamental principle behind FSF philosophy is the license is primarily written to secure the long-term interest of the _user_, not the community of the authors. The reason authors were okay with that in the first place is, early on in computing, users and authors largely overlapped, if not exactly the same. Over time, the authors and users diverged widely, thus their interests diverged. FSF philosophy has failed to appeal to the authors of the software because it is economically a bad deal for them. Users who do not pay are by-and-large leeches. Also, some of the freedoms are not considered as valuable by the users as they are for fellow authors, perhaps sensibly so because they are never going to utilize such freedoms.
- dale_glass 3y ago
  That's of course an element, but there can be more than one problem at once. That the FSF holds position that's economically tricky makes it harder to "sell" it, which only reinforces the need for better communication. Plus, the GPL has long been used for commercial purposes as well.
rakoo 3y ago
The FSF has had actual professionals running communications. I don't think the issue is in the form but in the content: developers don't want to hear they are favoring greedy private interests (sometimes including themselves, sometimes at their expense) instead of the common goods, because the freedom to restrict a good from everyone for personal profit is more important than the freedom to access said good and build upon it.
ekianjo 3y ago
Its not about communication. They are fighting against very strong incentives for devs to do the "wrong" thing

pyrale 3y ago

> The FSF has known this for decades, and has talked about it at large, but no, developers don't want to listen. How do you fight greediness and individualism ? Yeah, the greed and individualism of earning a living wage. Not everyone can have a sheltered position at MIT or as head of a foundation.

rakoo 3y ago
Please, let's not pretend developers who build MIT- or BSD- licensed software on their free time after their day of work at BigTech are struggling for money. Let's not pretend React is done out of pure goodwill for the developers community by one of the richest companies in the history of mankind, and developers who work on it are evaluating whether they're going to have food on the table. There is a distinction between "I need money to live" and "I want money because I want more", and the distinction should be clear enough. Yes, many projects are in the first case, but that's not the subject. If you want to commit to a new project, make a living off of it, what does non-copyleft bring you compared to copyleft ?
- tgma 3y ago
  > what does non-copyleft bring you compared to copyleft? This is not a statement of my values; simply providing plausible answers to that question. Usually non-copyleft free software is written in a variant of these scenarios: 1. Paid for by a company whose business model is distinct from selling software (e.g. ads) and prefers to not have to worry about copyleft licensing issues in small contributions they get back from the community and be free to integrate it in proprietary products. 2a. An individual author who will indirectly benefit (in both ego and monetary ways) by writing a popular piece of software. Copyleft in fact limits the spread of the software. Think Tanenbaum being excited and proud when the news that MINIX is used in Intel Management Engine came out. 2b. Result of a academic research that benefits from maximum spread. Lots of consuming companies prefer Apache to GPL and are more likely to use the non-copyleft software.
- pyrale 3y ago
  Let's also not pretend that the solution to this specific issue is to expect all the devs of the world to respect some sort of honor code. Had the US done its job properly and antitrusted the offending companies a decade ago, as it should have, we wouldn't be having this discussion right now.