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Free Software isn't for hackers. It's for users. Hackers are also users, but they're not special. The purpose of Free Software isn't to teach people how to pro

Free Software isn't for hackers. It's for users. Hackers are also users, but they're not special. The purpose of Free Software isn't to teach people how to program. It's not a scholarship program for gifted kids to generate startups. It's to institutionalize the right to access and change that software that defines the behavior of the machines that control our lives. You may say that only a programmer can take advantage of that right, so that means that Free Software is meant to create hackers. But I can hire a hacker just like I hire a plumber, or like my condo association hires a roofer, or my town hires a construction firm. There should not be machines in your life that run on secret commands that you are not allowed to know about. They are not working for you. edit: it is best not to talk about Free Software Licenses and Open Source/Creative Commons licenses at the same time if you're not talking as a consumer. They don't have much to do with other, other than that their development models are similar and that Open Source software will always be available over the same channels as Free Software. Copyleft licenses like the GPL are very restrictive licenses that try to make sure that access to the code that they cover will never be restricted to a user of that code. They are an attempt to grant the rights that people should have to all code to enough code that one can accomplish one's goals without having to touch a locked-down black box, and to forbid the makers of locked-down black boxes from taking advantage of, embracing, extending, or extinguishing that code. The copyright holders of copyleft code are granting you that right of access and modification instead of the government. Open Source/Creative Commons has zero interest in that. Open Source/Creative Commons are liberal licenses that allow anyone to do what they want, and make no (or very few and trivial) demands. You can take it and lock it behind any license. They are only compatible with copyleft licenses because copyleft licenses are part of the class "any license," not for any other reason.

mrob 2y ago
While I mostly agree with this, it's inaccurate to say that Open Source Software is more liberal than Free Software. The issue of copyleft vs. permissive licenses is orthogonal to that classification. The difference between Free Software and Open Source is mostly that of intent: Free Software is primarily political, with Freedom being the ultimate goal, while Open Source is primarily practical, with high quality software being the ultimate goal. In practice, almost all software that meets the definition of one meets the definition of the other.
- blendergeek 2y ago
  Rather than "political" vs "practical", I prefer to say, "social" vs "economic". Free Software is about helping your neighbor. Open Source is about cheaply producing a good. Either one can produce high quality software.
kube-system 2y ago
> Free Software isn't for hackers. It's for users. Hackers are also users, but they're not special. This is exactly the dated attitude that I think the author is talking about. Free software is for programmers. Once upon a time that was a distinction without a difference. Today, the fraction of users who can take advantage of source code rounds to zero. Yet, FOSS advocates keep beating this drum to “users” while entirely ignoring the reality that today’s users are interested an entirely different value proposition than they’re offering. Computers aren’t professional tools anymore. They are commodities. Computer users want source code like grocery store shoppers want a tractor and a plot of land.
- singpolyma3 2y ago
  Free software is definitely not for programmers
  - kube-system 2y ago
    Source code is not useful unless someone is capable of using it.
    - singpolyma3 2y ago
      Free software isn't about source code either. One of the four freedoms often gets a note that you need source code to make modifications, but this is not the focus, the focus is on being able to control your computing. source code is one very small possible prerequisite to some of that in some cases, but if all you have is source code you don't have freedom.
      - em-bee 2y ago
        i can't control my computing without source code. free software without source code is like freeware. even if i am not a developer myself, every time i had a problem with an application, i was able to find a fork that fixed the problem. without source code that would not have been possible.
imoreno 2y ago
>Free Software isn't for hackers. It's for users. Hackers are also users, but they're not special. This is wrong. Hackers like to hack, which requires having control over their tech. So you get foss which gives you lots of control. You get things like GPL which tries to protect that control. The control and freedom to hack is not relevant to regular users. Regular users don't want to modify and hack their software, they're happy to consume it passively. To them, the control is not a factor and foss is just another product. The pro is that they can maybe save a few bucks, unless the proprietary alternative is also free (they don't care about privacy or ads). The con is that it's less polished, the website is ugly, the docs are confusing and don't have cutesy cartoons saying to press the shiny button to make thing go brrr. Lumping both of these in the same category just confuses things. Hackers and non hackers want very different and fundamentally incompatible things.

mrob 2y ago

While I mostly agree with this, it's inaccurate to say that Open Source Software is more liberal than Free Software. The issue of copyleft vs. permissive licenses is orthogonal to that classification. The difference between Free Software and Open Source is mostly that of intent: Free Software is primarily political, with Freedom being the ultimate goal, while Open Source is primarily practical, with high quality software being the ultimate goal. In practice, almost all software that meets the definition of one meets the definition of the other.

blendergeek 2y ago
Rather than "political" vs "practical", I prefer to say, "social" vs "economic". Free Software is about helping your neighbor. Open Source is about cheaply producing a good. Either one can produce high quality software.

kube-system 2y ago

> Free Software isn't for hackers. It's for users. Hackers are also users, but they're not special. This is exactly the dated attitude that I think the author is talking about. Free software is for programmers. Once upon a time that was a distinction without a difference. Today, the fraction of users who can take advantage of source code rounds to zero. Yet, FOSS advocates keep beating this drum to “users” while entirely ignoring the reality that today’s users are interested an entirely different value proposition than they’re offering. Computers aren’t professional tools anymore. They are commodities. Computer users want source code like grocery store shoppers want a tractor and a plot of land.

singpolyma3 2y ago
Free software is definitely not for programmers
- kube-system 2y ago
  Source code is not useful unless someone is capable of using it.
  - singpolyma3 2y ago
    Free software isn't about source code either. One of the four freedoms often gets a note that you need source code to make modifications, but this is not the focus, the focus is on being able to control your computing. source code is one very small possible prerequisite to some of that in some cases, but if all you have is source code you don't have freedom.
    - em-bee 2y ago
      i can't control my computing without source code. free software without source code is like freeware. even if i am not a developer myself, every time i had a problem with an application, i was able to find a fork that fixed the problem. without source code that would not have been possible.

imoreno 2y ago

>Free Software isn't for hackers. It's for users. Hackers are also users, but they're not special. This is wrong. Hackers like to hack, which requires having control over their tech. So you get foss which gives you lots of control. You get things like GPL which tries to protect that control. The control and freedom to hack is not relevant to regular users. Regular users don't want to modify and hack their software, they're happy to consume it passively. To them, the control is not a factor and foss is just another product. The pro is that they can maybe save a few bucks, unless the proprietary alternative is also free (they don't care about privacy or ads). The con is that it's less polished, the website is ugly, the docs are confusing and don't have cutesy cartoons saying to press the shiny button to make thing go brrr. Lumping both of these in the same category just confuses things. Hackers and non hackers want very different and fundamentally incompatible things.