9 ms·

Richard Stallman on the Ogg Vorbis license (2001)

65 points by _pius 14y ago

loumf 14y ago
It is exactly the FSF's reasoning for LGPL -- to stop a non-free alternative from becoming a standard: Using the ordinary GPL is not advantageous for every library. There are reasons that can make it better to use the Lesser GPL in certain cases. The most common case is when a free library's features are readily available for proprietary software through other alternative libraries. In that case, the library cannot give free software any particular advantage, so it is better to use the Lesser GPL for that library. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html
simonsarris 14y ago
The reasoning in this short message seems very unlike anything else I've heard from Stallman. Has he changed a lot since 2001? From what I've read I'd gander that Stallman has become markedly less pragmatic (or more radical?) since this was written. Listening to him speak in 2009 was surreal, especially during the Q&A session. I can't recall any specific quotes but he was ready to burn ten bridges for an ounce of symbolic freedom. The whole time I kept thinking of this John McCarthy (coined the term AI, "discovered" lisp) quote: "He's a man of principle. He'd cut his mother's throat for a principle."
- ajross 14y ago
  Stallman has been viewed as "radical" his whole career. Certainly there was nothing more "pragmatic" about him in 2001. The important distinction is that the things (you don't list specifics, so I'm just assuming) that Stallman finds "important" seem like senseless distractions to his audience. It's hard to remember now, but in 2001 the idea of patent-encumbered algorithms being a threat to free software was not nearly as well-understood as it is now. Most people in the community were happy to download and build LAME (or whatever), and just shrugged when the Linux distros turned out not to be able to ship it. Stallman was right (and to be clear: he'd been screaming about patents for a decade already in 2001). We were wrong. This has been a pattern his whole career. So, again without actual evidence, I'm just going to guess that within a decade that stuff you heard in 2009 that sounded so "radical" is going to seem a lot more clear in hindsight.
  - angersock 14y ago
    Stallman has two really, really annoying features: 1. He is a grating and uncompromising lunatic, and does not make any attempts to present himself as agreeable to other people. 2. He's been proven completely correct on everything he's warned us of in this industry to date.
    - rimantas 14y ago
      #2 is total bullshit.
      - holri 14y ago
        can you elaborate on that?
      - olefoo 14y ago
        [ citation needed ] on both the declaration that he's been proven right and on your slapdash dismissal of that assertion. And, please, could you be more of a contributor and less like an aggressive drunk starting a bar fight?
        cgh 14y ago
        This very story is a potential example. The mp3 patents in the US will expire in 2015. What "harm" has been done in that time? Fraunhofer made a pile of dough and that's about it. The open alternatives failed to catch on and my guess is that after 2015, mp3s will still be used as before. Very few users will know or care that the patents have expired. I guess you could say Stallman wasn't wrong exactly, just unnecessarily alarmist over this particular issue. I'm not saying software patents are benign, by the way - I'm only addressing mp3 here.
        nitrogen 14y ago
        What we lost was a competitive disadvantage for Linux distros and countless software and hardware products never released by independent developers. Failure lacks a marketing budget.
- babarock 14y ago
  Regardless of how you feel about the man, it's very difficult to predict when he's willing to compromise. LGPL is another common example of unexpected (at least for me) compromise.
- elwin 14y ago
  > Listening to him speak in 2009 was surreal, especially during the Q&A session. I can't recall any specific quotes but he was ready to burn ten bridges for an ounce of symbolic freedom. Was that when RPI ACM brought him in to speak? I recall he spent a while complaining about Linus letting binary blobs into the kernel. Then in the Q&A, he got trolled by someone claiming a music sample business was being undercut by CC-licensed competitors. RMS didn't handle that well. In my opinion, RMS is actually very pragmatic, meaning he's willing to do almost anything to further the goal. He only appears radical because he has uncommon ideas about what the goal is and what furthers it. His radicality varies according to pragmatic considerations. He'll give his blessing to BSD-style licenses in a case like this, and he'll hold out against GCC plugins for years when he thinks that furthers freedom. From a purely principled point of view, Free Software advocates might want to weaken copyright for software. RMS hasn't put much effort into that, because it would weaken the GPL. It would also be harder for Free software to compete if all software could be distributed free and legally. So he rarely attacks copyright in general, for pragmatic reasons.
- pavanky 14y ago
  Stallman on steam for Linux (in 2012/2013 ?). "However, if you're going to use these games, you're better off using them on GNU/Linux rather than on Microsoft Windows. At least you avoid the harm to your freedom that Windows would do. Thus, in direct practical terms, this development can do both harm and good. It might encourage GNU/Linux users to install these games, and it might encourage users of the games to replace Windows with GNU/Linux. My guess is that the direct good effect will be bigger than the direct harm. But there is also an indirect effect: what does the use of these games teach people in our community?" http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/nonfree-games.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/nonfree-games.html He may not be as pragmatic as you would like. But he has his valid reasons and walks the talk. It is important to not be offended when he calls you unethical for using / writing non-free software.
- rivd 14y ago
  Being less radical would diffuse his message and make it more difficult to explain to the masses. I dont agree to with him to extent he make his points and historically he has always acted "radical", so the thing im trying to say is very arguable. But his uncompromising stance could very well be a pragmatic approach, because there is next to no one doing it instead of him.
- dasht 14y ago
  The reasoning in this short message has been a consistent part of RMS' talk and actions since the very beginning of the GNU project. Earlier than Ogg Vorbis, the very existence of the LGPL is an example of similar reasoning, applied. You wrote: "I can't recall any specific quotes but he was ready to burn ten bridges" I think you might have been conditioned to expect RMS to be that kind of self-defeating extremist because many people who are opposed to him, including some who pretend otherwise, describe him that way.
- bitwize 14y ago
  He's both pragmatic and radical. He feels that using free software is morally superior to using proprietary software -- and is unwilling to concede that point. But it's not a binary distinction between the righteousness of free software and the sin and damnation of proprietary software. There are gradients of freedom that can be climbed; so Stallman will defend the use of non-GPL or proprietary software in situations where there are no other options, and said use gets more people to use free software. For example, a port of a widely-used proprietary CAD system to (GNU/)Linux would be viewed as a good move by him, but only as a precursor to the development of just-as-good free CAD systems.
- spiralpolitik 14y ago
  I think it's not that Stallman has become more radical it's more that the mainstream of the free software community has shifted away from Stallman making him seem more radical and more fundamentalist. Really he should have stepped out of the discussion about 10 years ago to make way for someone more pragmatic. The reality of the situation is that for the foreseeable future software patents are here to stay and the sooner the free software organizations get themselves involved in the committees that define things like media standards and start playing up the advantages of a "free" (as in software) implementations for everybody involved the sooner the damaging effects of software patents in these areas will be mitigated. Sadly with Stallman as a figurehead the Free Software community isn't in the same room as these discussions. In fact they aren't even in the same building. They are looked on as the crazy people on the streets with the "end of the world is nigh" flags. And that is the real tragedy of the whole affair.
jiggy2011 14y ago
Why is MP3 still more popular than Ogg if Ogg is much more leniently licensed? As an end user I can't discern any difference between the two in terms of filesize or sound quality.
- dgallagher 14y ago
  The most popular portable media players in the 2000's didn't support OGG. No iPod, Creative Labs MP3 players, iTunes, Windows Media Player, portable CD player w/MP3 support, car stereo's, etc... Around the mid-2000's, iRiver sold an OGG player, though it was $300 alongside a $300 iPod. Their interface wasn't as good, and it was clunky to use (I bought and returned one). It fell through the cracks like a zillion other iPod competitors. Also recall DRM was a big part of digital music for a while. iTunes was dominant, and made ACC popular. I'm not even sure you can add DRM to OGG, outside of wrapping the file or watermarking. Watermarking works, but wrapping an OGG file doesn't make it OGG anymore. So in a nutshell, OGG failed to catch on because there wasn't enough hardware or software support. On top of that, few people knew what OGG was, and didn't demand it from companies. Content owners had no reason to support it as they were focused on DRM. Apple dominated the market and standardized on MP3/ACC.
- hackernewbie 14y ago
  I'll say it. It might sound incredibly trivial, but the name. It's an insanely intimidating name.
  - shardling 14y ago
    I don't see how ogg is worse than mp3. And if you're considering Ogg Vorbis, lets remember that the "full" name of mp3 would be something like Moving Picture Experts Group 2 Audio Layer III. People just call them by their file extensions.
    - hackernewbie 14y ago
      But they didn't. Noone ever just called it ogg. It was always Ogg Vorbis, sometimes Ogg/Vorbis. Some file types just get an easy ride, like jpeg/jpg. Imagine if it was actually routinely referred to as a Joint Expert file. Maybe pngs would have taken off faster (they are still less frequently searched than gif or jpg according to gtrends).
Finster 14y ago
Wait a minute. Now that a court has decided mathematical algorithms can't be patented, can't we have the MP3 patent thrown out?
- Shamharoth 14y ago
  Law doesn't work like that.
- duaneb 14y ago
  The MP3 patent isn't a numerical algorithm, it's a description of using a certain algorithm to store sound (to my understanding). Yes, that seems like a silly distinction, but that's basically what patent law is.
mellis 14y ago
The key point here is the difference between copyright and patents. If someone has a copyright on something, you can create an alternative (free) implementation of it. If they have a patent, you can't.
kunai 14y ago
This reminds me of a time when I emailed rms about the entire GNU/Linux naming controversy. I had said that perhaps Linux could officially be the name of the OS, and also that to solve the problem of GNU and the FSF not receiving credit, that people could be educated on who actually wrote Linux. Needless to say, he disagreed. Stallman is as stubborn as a boulder, and a complete extremist. But he's also right.
- dllthomas 14y ago
  GNU/Linux is precise in the way alternatives aren't. Linux kernel running BusyBox? Linux, but no GNU software; not GNU/Linux. GNU utilities, BSD kernel? GNU but no Linux; not GNU/Linux. These are things that exist: lots of routers and similar "running Linux" use BusyBox; Debian will let you install a BSD kernel. Of course, "I am running Linux on my desktop" is accurate, and carries the expectation that you're using much of the rest of the GNU system because that's by far the most reasonable (and common) option... so people say that, because it's fewer syllables, and the FSF feels like they're not getting the credit they quite rightly deserve, and that's the situation we're in. But changing the name of the GNU project to Linux is not a solution at all; they're still working on Herd for one thing.
gcb0 14y ago
ogg/vorbis just have to change the format name. saying ogg (the file extension) is awkward in any language. hence nobody cares for an ogg player. just name it FM4 (free music 4). is will just naturally enter the mind of everyone that hears it as a a natural replacement for MP3. (dolbly did that, AC3 just to have the 3. mpeg-la did that, MPEG-4 after mpeg2)

65 points by _pius 14y ago

loumf 14y ago

It is exactly the FSF's reasoning for LGPL -- to stop a non-free alternative from becoming a standard: Using the ordinary GPL is not advantageous for every library. There are reasons that can make it better to use the Lesser GPL in certain cases. The most common case is when a free library's features are readily available for proprietary software through other alternative libraries. In that case, the library cannot give free software any particular advantage, so it is better to use the Lesser GPL for that library. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html

simonsarris 14y ago

The reasoning in this short message seems very unlike anything else I've heard from Stallman. Has he changed a lot since 2001? From what I've read I'd gander that Stallman has become markedly less pragmatic (or more radical?) since this was written. Listening to him speak in 2009 was surreal, especially during the Q&A session. I can't recall any specific quotes but he was ready to burn ten bridges for an ounce of symbolic freedom. The whole time I kept thinking of this John McCarthy (coined the term AI, "discovered" lisp) quote: "He's a man of principle. He'd cut his mother's throat for a principle."

ajross 14y ago
Stallman has been viewed as "radical" his whole career. Certainly there was nothing more "pragmatic" about him in 2001. The important distinction is that the things (you don't list specifics, so I'm just assuming) that Stallman finds "important" seem like senseless distractions to his audience. It's hard to remember now, but in 2001 the idea of patent-encumbered algorithms being a threat to free software was not nearly as well-understood as it is now. Most people in the community were happy to download and build LAME (or whatever), and just shrugged when the Linux distros turned out not to be able to ship it. Stallman was right (and to be clear: he'd been screaming about patents for a decade already in 2001). We were wrong. This has been a pattern his whole career. So, again without actual evidence, I'm just going to guess that within a decade that stuff you heard in 2009 that sounded so "radical" is going to seem a lot more clear in hindsight.
- angersock 14y ago
  Stallman has two really, really annoying features: 1. He is a grating and uncompromising lunatic, and does not make any attempts to present himself as agreeable to other people. 2. He's been proven completely correct on everything he's warned us of in this industry to date.
  - rimantas 14y ago
    #2 is total bullshit.
    - holri 14y ago
      can you elaborate on that?
    - olefoo 14y ago
      [ citation needed ] on both the declaration that he's been proven right and on your slapdash dismissal of that assertion. And, please, could you be more of a contributor and less like an aggressive drunk starting a bar fight?
      - cgh 14y ago
        This very story is a potential example. The mp3 patents in the US will expire in 2015. What "harm" has been done in that time? Fraunhofer made a pile of dough and that's about it. The open alternatives failed to catch on and my guess is that after 2015, mp3s will still be used as before. Very few users will know or care that the patents have expired. I guess you could say Stallman wasn't wrong exactly, just unnecessarily alarmist over this particular issue. I'm not saying software patents are benign, by the way - I'm only addressing mp3 here.
        nitrogen 14y ago
        What we lost was a competitive disadvantage for Linux distros and countless software and hardware products never released by independent developers. Failure lacks a marketing budget.
babarock 14y ago
Regardless of how you feel about the man, it's very difficult to predict when he's willing to compromise. LGPL is another common example of unexpected (at least for me) compromise.
elwin 14y ago
> Listening to him speak in 2009 was surreal, especially during the Q&A session. I can't recall any specific quotes but he was ready to burn ten bridges for an ounce of symbolic freedom. Was that when RPI ACM brought him in to speak? I recall he spent a while complaining about Linus letting binary blobs into the kernel. Then in the Q&A, he got trolled by someone claiming a music sample business was being undercut by CC-licensed competitors. RMS didn't handle that well. In my opinion, RMS is actually very pragmatic, meaning he's willing to do almost anything to further the goal. He only appears radical because he has uncommon ideas about what the goal is and what furthers it. His radicality varies according to pragmatic considerations. He'll give his blessing to BSD-style licenses in a case like this, and he'll hold out against GCC plugins for years when he thinks that furthers freedom. From a purely principled point of view, Free Software advocates might want to weaken copyright for software. RMS hasn't put much effort into that, because it would weaken the GPL. It would also be harder for Free software to compete if all software could be distributed free and legally. So he rarely attacks copyright in general, for pragmatic reasons.
pavanky 14y ago
Stallman on steam for Linux (in 2012/2013 ?). "However, if you're going to use these games, you're better off using them on GNU/Linux rather than on Microsoft Windows. At least you avoid the harm to your freedom that Windows would do. Thus, in direct practical terms, this development can do both harm and good. It might encourage GNU/Linux users to install these games, and it might encourage users of the games to replace Windows with GNU/Linux. My guess is that the direct good effect will be bigger than the direct harm. But there is also an indirect effect: what does the use of these games teach people in our community?" http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/nonfree-games.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/nonfree-games.html He may not be as pragmatic as you would like. But he has his valid reasons and walks the talk. It is important to not be offended when he calls you unethical for using / writing non-free software.
rivd 14y ago
Being less radical would diffuse his message and make it more difficult to explain to the masses. I dont agree to with him to extent he make his points and historically he has always acted "radical", so the thing im trying to say is very arguable. But his uncompromising stance could very well be a pragmatic approach, because there is next to no one doing it instead of him.
dasht 14y ago
The reasoning in this short message has been a consistent part of RMS' talk and actions since the very beginning of the GNU project. Earlier than Ogg Vorbis, the very existence of the LGPL is an example of similar reasoning, applied. You wrote: "I can't recall any specific quotes but he was ready to burn ten bridges" I think you might have been conditioned to expect RMS to be that kind of self-defeating extremist because many people who are opposed to him, including some who pretend otherwise, describe him that way.
bitwize 14y ago
He's both pragmatic and radical. He feels that using free software is morally superior to using proprietary software -- and is unwilling to concede that point. But it's not a binary distinction between the righteousness of free software and the sin and damnation of proprietary software. There are gradients of freedom that can be climbed; so Stallman will defend the use of non-GPL or proprietary software in situations where there are no other options, and said use gets more people to use free software. For example, a port of a widely-used proprietary CAD system to (GNU/)Linux would be viewed as a good move by him, but only as a precursor to the development of just-as-good free CAD systems.
spiralpolitik 14y ago
I think it's not that Stallman has become more radical it's more that the mainstream of the free software community has shifted away from Stallman making him seem more radical and more fundamentalist. Really he should have stepped out of the discussion about 10 years ago to make way for someone more pragmatic. The reality of the situation is that for the foreseeable future software patents are here to stay and the sooner the free software organizations get themselves involved in the committees that define things like media standards and start playing up the advantages of a "free" (as in software) implementations for everybody involved the sooner the damaging effects of software patents in these areas will be mitigated. Sadly with Stallman as a figurehead the Free Software community isn't in the same room as these discussions. In fact they aren't even in the same building. They are looked on as the crazy people on the streets with the "end of the world is nigh" flags. And that is the real tragedy of the whole affair.

jiggy2011 14y ago

Why is MP3 still more popular than Ogg if Ogg is much more leniently licensed? As an end user I can't discern any difference between the two in terms of filesize or sound quality.

dgallagher 14y ago
The most popular portable media players in the 2000's didn't support OGG. No iPod, Creative Labs MP3 players, iTunes, Windows Media Player, portable CD player w/MP3 support, car stereo's, etc... Around the mid-2000's, iRiver sold an OGG player, though it was $300 alongside a $300 iPod. Their interface wasn't as good, and it was clunky to use (I bought and returned one). It fell through the cracks like a zillion other iPod competitors. Also recall DRM was a big part of digital music for a while. iTunes was dominant, and made ACC popular. I'm not even sure you can add DRM to OGG, outside of wrapping the file or watermarking. Watermarking works, but wrapping an OGG file doesn't make it OGG anymore. So in a nutshell, OGG failed to catch on because there wasn't enough hardware or software support. On top of that, few people knew what OGG was, and didn't demand it from companies. Content owners had no reason to support it as they were focused on DRM. Apple dominated the market and standardized on MP3/ACC.
hackernewbie 14y ago
I'll say it. It might sound incredibly trivial, but the name. It's an insanely intimidating name.
- shardling 14y ago
  I don't see how ogg is worse than mp3. And if you're considering Ogg Vorbis, lets remember that the "full" name of mp3 would be something like Moving Picture Experts Group 2 Audio Layer III. People just call them by their file extensions.
  - hackernewbie 14y ago
    But they didn't. Noone ever just called it ogg. It was always Ogg Vorbis, sometimes Ogg/Vorbis. Some file types just get an easy ride, like jpeg/jpg. Imagine if it was actually routinely referred to as a Joint Expert file. Maybe pngs would have taken off faster (they are still less frequently searched than gif or jpg according to gtrends).

Finster 14y ago

Wait a minute. Now that a court has decided mathematical algorithms can't be patented, can't we have the MP3 patent thrown out?

Shamharoth 14y ago
Law doesn't work like that.
duaneb 14y ago
The MP3 patent isn't a numerical algorithm, it's a description of using a certain algorithm to store sound (to my understanding). Yes, that seems like a silly distinction, but that's basically what patent law is.

mellis 14y ago

The key point here is the difference between copyright and patents. If someone has a copyright on something, you can create an alternative (free) implementation of it. If they have a patent, you can't.

kunai 14y ago

This reminds me of a time when I emailed rms about the entire GNU/Linux naming controversy. I had said that perhaps Linux could officially be the name of the OS, and also that to solve the problem of GNU and the FSF not receiving credit, that people could be educated on who actually wrote Linux. Needless to say, he disagreed. Stallman is as stubborn as a boulder, and a complete extremist. But he's also right.

dllthomas 14y ago
GNU/Linux is precise in the way alternatives aren't. Linux kernel running BusyBox? Linux, but no GNU software; not GNU/Linux. GNU utilities, BSD kernel? GNU but no Linux; not GNU/Linux. These are things that exist: lots of routers and similar "running Linux" use BusyBox; Debian will let you install a BSD kernel. Of course, "I am running Linux on my desktop" is accurate, and carries the expectation that you're using much of the rest of the GNU system because that's by far the most reasonable (and common) option... so people say that, because it's fewer syllables, and the FSF feels like they're not getting the credit they quite rightly deserve, and that's the situation we're in. But changing the name of the GNU project to Linux is not a solution at all; they're still working on Herd for one thing.

gcb0 14y ago

ogg/vorbis just have to change the format name. saying ogg (the file extension) is awkward in any language. hence nobody cares for an ogg player. just name it FM4 (free music 4). is will just naturally enter the mind of everyone that hears it as a a natural replacement for MP3. (dolbly did that, AC3 just to have the 3. mpeg-la did that, MPEG-4 after mpeg2)