7 ms·

Richard Stallman on proprietary software, SaaS and open source

71 points by pixelmonkey 13y ago

tunnuz 13y ago
I attended a talk by Richard Stallman about two years ago, and it revolved around the same ideas. While some of his ideas are a bit too extreme for my taste, e.g., when a guy asked how to make money by building Open Source software he replied something like "get another job", I think that many of them are inspiring. Such as the ones about proprietary formats and owning your own data.
- mixmastamyk 13y ago
  I thought the answer to this question was, "sell services around the product."
  - sp332 13y ago
    Most contributors to major free software projects, like the Linux kernel, are paid developers working for corporations. So I guess it's not that hard to make money on free software.
    - JoachimSchipper 13y ago
      ... or that it's hard to be a major contributor without getting paid for it.
  - cytzol 13y ago
    You can't sell services to everything. If you want to sell support for your open-source product, then you get more money (from more support contracts) by deliberately making the interface obtuse and hard-to-use. The GNU manifesto says that eventually "There will be no need to be able to make a living from programming", but it doesn't give much advice on what to do until then. In the future, the software that runs the asteroid miners should be open for the public to see, but in between there and then there'll be private companies trying to mine the most asteroids, keeping their software proprietary as they do.
- eksith 13y ago
  'e.g., when a guy asked how to make money by building Open Source software he replied something like "get another job"' He's right in a way, don't you think? Let's look at it in another way: Open source is ostensibly about altruism isn't it? You get side benefits like free code review (this is arguable to a degree since edge cases/difficult issues don't get a lot of love), but in the end, it's about giving your work away for the benefit of people you'll likely never meet. So then how do you turn altruism into a business? Some people have (charities are big business these days), but that isn't in the true spirit of altruism. So those who do build open source software without ulterior motives are destined to break even at best.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    Open source is ostensibly about altruism isn't it? No. Free Software (Open Source misses the point[1]) is about giving users their four freedoms. There's nothing in the philosophy that implies that you shouldn't charge for it. Personally, my salary - and of the other developers at the company I work for - is paid for writing Free Software, some of which is publicly available, some of which isn't. "Since free software is not a matter of price, a low price doesn't make the software free, or even closer to free. So if you are redistributing copies of free software, you might as well charge a substantial fee and make some money. Redistributing free software is a good and legitimate activity; if you do it, you might as well make a profit from it." http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html [1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.e...
    - eksith 13y ago
      Fair point. Well put. I suppose it's easy to widen the scope of what "Open Source" actually entails and have it fall outside the realm of Free Software.
- pixelmonkey 13y ago
  I attended the talk covered in this article, and someone actually asked him a similar question there. His reply this time is that, personally, he had never made more money in his life than when companies paid him to fix or improve open source software. And I can see his point! It may not be common, but there certainly plenty of organizations that either have business interests aligned with open source technology (e.g. 10gen, MySQL AB), have open source ingrained into their culture (e.g. Wikimedia Foundation, Mozilla), provide consulting/training services around open source (e.g. DataStax, Elastic Search, LucidWorks), or simply use open source so heavily that they need to pay people to improve it (e.g. Intel, Google). And then, there are plenty of companies (like mine, http://parse.ly http://parse.ly) that take the business perspective that anything that isn't core to our business / competitive advantage not only can, but should, be open source, eventually. Getting a job working on open source isn't some fringe thing anymore. If it feels that way because your employer doesn't allow open source work, you may want to get the heck out :)
  - rimantas 13y ago
    And Mozille gets its money wrom where? Google paying for being the default search engine? Is Google search open source?
  - emmett9001 13y ago
    hear, hear
- bmj 13y ago
  I suspect if you really, truly believe what Stallman says about freedom, you would be hard-pressed to find a job in any field. Many of Stallman's ideas echo what Ivan Illich had to say in Tools for Conviviality (though Illich understood that sometimes, some systems were "closed." For example, let's say you want to be a carpenter. You would need "open source" tools that you could hack and fix, or you'd have to simply make your own from scratch. I realize such things exist, but you immediately put yourself at a disadvantage because you'll pay significantly more for your tools than a carpenter buying equipment at Home Depot. Note, too, that I'm not criticizing Stallman's perspective here (I am sympathetic to it)--I'm simply thinking about the ramifications.
  - ds9 13y ago
    His concerns are about law and policies constraining freedom, not about building things from scratch. You need not write your own compiler to be consistent with the principles he advocates - Stallman would say you're fine using gcc, because it is legally open for the "four freedoms". And physical goods are already "free" in the Stallman sense, if not patented or subject to restrictive contracts. Both software and hardware have use-value and costs to produce, but only the physical goods have intrinsic market value. The hammer needs materials and significant per-unit labor as well as intellectual contributions, and in the absence of IP, has market value approaching its intrinsic (use) value. Commercial software that is published rather than used only in-house (i.e., monetized on a licensing model) has market value only because of artificial scarcity, and could hardly exist in a "free market" (without state-enforced monopolies).
    - bmj 13y ago
      His concerns are about law and policies constraining freedom, not about building things from scratch. You need not write your own compiler to be consistent with the principles he advocates - Stallman would say you're fine using gcc, because it is legally open for the "four freedoms". Yes, that's right. But what about, say, an electric drill with proprietary schematics? While I may be free to modify the drill as I see fit, it wasn't necessary built for that purpose. Additionally, I can't modify the drill a little bit, and then start producing them myself (I suspect the original manufacturer might have something to say about that). Perhaps I'm splitting hairs a bit, or thinking too deeply about it, but the topic of tools interests me.
mathattack 13y ago
"Richard Stallman, revered by some as a genius (after all, he won a McArthur “genius” grant in 1990) and by others as a crackpot" When I first heard him speak many years ago, I thought he was a real crank. My negative thoughts centered around: 1 - How can we build the next Microsoft without true ownership? 2 - Does his model of thinking demand that 100% of the population be technical enough to troubleshoot their computers? 3 - I can see people writing software for love, but who writes all the documentation? As the years go by, he's one of the few people who sounds less like a crackpot, even though he hasn't softened his extremism. With the current state of patent trolling, it's getting harder to create the next Microsoft. Improvements in GUIs is taking some of the issue away for #2. But I still haven't figured out #3. Edited for formatting
- algebr 13y ago
  The most coherent and consistent views tend to be viewed as extreme.
  - harrytuttle 13y ago
    To start with that is. When they are considered rational, it's probably too late.
- gnosis 13y ago
  "How can we build the next Microsoft without true ownership?" The next Microsoft? That sounds like a nightmare. No, thanks!
  - harrytuttle 13y ago
    We've got the next Microsoft already. It's just squarer, flatter, listens even less to its users and throws slightly fewer chairs.
  - mathattack 13y ago
    The thought process came to me many years ago when Microsoft was an example of a startup that built itself from scratch and was very current. I've come around to broader thinking since then. And Microsoft has changed some too. But it has gotten harder to create companies from scratch due to restrictions on developer freedom. (Patents) There are other reasons that have made it easier, but those are tangential to RMS's topics.
will118 13y ago
I didn't think this article was very good at all, I've read all this before. These are just Stallman's exact ideas rehashed under hotwords like Snowden & SaaS... I'd usually try not to whine but I'm not even sure if the quotes they use are from the talk or from years ago.
- bryanlarsen 13y ago
  Probably both. Like a lot of other speakers, Stallman has a few canned speeches. He asks the organizers which one they want, and he gives it. It probably evolves over time, but the differences are minor. The issues Stallman talks about have not changed much over the last 20 years, so his speeches haven't either.
- algebr 13y ago
  I attended this talk and he spoke about Snowden/SaaS for like maybe 5% of the total talk time. Misleading article indeed.
dreen 13y ago
who is a "Hactivist"? why is rms one? the article only says: "Stallman, who looks every inch the part of a hactivist with his long mane of graying hair." does that mean i can Hac if I look like Gandalf? the fact this is not a typo and the explanation given practically discredit anything written in the article
unclesaamm 13y ago
This was a terrible piece. Why/who think Stallman is a crackpot? And what is up with this snide editorializing?: '“Almost everyone in the world using proprietary software is also using propriety malware,” said Stallman, who looks every inch the part of a hactivist with his long mane of graying hair.' I actually bust out laughing when I read that. Journalistic standards, please.
borplk 13y ago
I have to admit before the whole PRISM story I didn't think much about Richard Stallman and thought he's too extreme or delusional. After PRISM however I realised he was right all this time and I was just too stupid and blind to see it. I'm going to read more of his notes. Very few people have what it takes and are willing to pay the huge and continuous cost of rejecting proprietary software/technology. But he has been standing by his principals for a lifetime and I respect him for that.
- rpgmaker 13y ago
  Read this and talk about ominous: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html I think rms has other interesting articles on the same subject but I fail to find them right now, I now I read a few back in the days when I was diving into FLOSS.

71 points by pixelmonkey 13y ago

I attended a talk by Richard Stallman about two years ago, and it revolved around the same ideas. While some of his ideas are a bit too extreme for my taste, e.g., when a guy asked how to make money by building Open Source software he replied something like "get another job", I think that many of them are inspiring. Such as the ones about proprietary formats and owning your own data.

mixmastamyk 13y ago
I thought the answer to this question was, "sell services around the product."
- sp332 13y ago
  Most contributors to major free software projects, like the Linux kernel, are paid developers working for corporations. So I guess it's not that hard to make money on free software.
  - JoachimSchipper 13y ago
    ... or that it's hard to be a major contributor without getting paid for it.
- cytzol 13y ago
  You can't sell services to everything. If you want to sell support for your open-source product, then you get more money (from more support contracts) by deliberately making the interface obtuse and hard-to-use. The GNU manifesto says that eventually "There will be no need to be able to make a living from programming", but it doesn't give much advice on what to do until then. In the future, the software that runs the asteroid miners should be open for the public to see, but in between there and then there'll be private companies trying to mine the most asteroids, keeping their software proprietary as they do.
eksith 13y ago
'e.g., when a guy asked how to make money by building Open Source software he replied something like "get another job"' He's right in a way, don't you think? Let's look at it in another way: Open source is ostensibly about altruism isn't it? You get side benefits like free code review (this is arguable to a degree since edge cases/difficult issues don't get a lot of love), but in the end, it's about giving your work away for the benefit of people you'll likely never meet. So then how do you turn altruism into a business? Some people have (charities are big business these days), but that isn't in the true spirit of altruism. So those who do build open source software without ulterior motives are destined to break even at best.
- icebraining 13y ago
  Open source is ostensibly about altruism isn't it? No. Free Software (Open Source misses the point[1]) is about giving users their four freedoms. There's nothing in the philosophy that implies that you shouldn't charge for it. Personally, my salary - and of the other developers at the company I work for - is paid for writing Free Software, some of which is publicly available, some of which isn't. "Since free software is not a matter of price, a low price doesn't make the software free, or even closer to free. So if you are redistributing copies of free software, you might as well charge a substantial fee and make some money. Redistributing free software is a good and legitimate activity; if you do it, you might as well make a profit from it." http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html [1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.e...
  - eksith 13y ago
    Fair point. Well put. I suppose it's easy to widen the scope of what "Open Source" actually entails and have it fall outside the realm of Free Software.
pixelmonkey 13y ago
I attended the talk covered in this article, and someone actually asked him a similar question there. His reply this time is that, personally, he had never made more money in his life than when companies paid him to fix or improve open source software. And I can see his point! It may not be common, but there certainly plenty of organizations that either have business interests aligned with open source technology (e.g. 10gen, MySQL AB), have open source ingrained into their culture (e.g. Wikimedia Foundation, Mozilla), provide consulting/training services around open source (e.g. DataStax, Elastic Search, LucidWorks), or simply use open source so heavily that they need to pay people to improve it (e.g. Intel, Google). And then, there are plenty of companies (like mine, http://parse.ly http://parse.ly) that take the business perspective that anything that isn't core to our business / competitive advantage not only can, but should, be open source, eventually. Getting a job working on open source isn't some fringe thing anymore. If it feels that way because your employer doesn't allow open source work, you may want to get the heck out :)
- rimantas 13y ago
  And Mozille gets its money wrom where? Google paying for being the default search engine? Is Google search open source?
- emmett9001 13y ago
  hear, hear
bmj 13y ago
I suspect if you really, truly believe what Stallman says about freedom, you would be hard-pressed to find a job in any field. Many of Stallman's ideas echo what Ivan Illich had to say in Tools for Conviviality (though Illich understood that sometimes, some systems were "closed." For example, let's say you want to be a carpenter. You would need "open source" tools that you could hack and fix, or you'd have to simply make your own from scratch. I realize such things exist, but you immediately put yourself at a disadvantage because you'll pay significantly more for your tools than a carpenter buying equipment at Home Depot. Note, too, that I'm not criticizing Stallman's perspective here (I am sympathetic to it)--I'm simply thinking about the ramifications.
- ds9 13y ago
  His concerns are about law and policies constraining freedom, not about building things from scratch. You need not write your own compiler to be consistent with the principles he advocates - Stallman would say you're fine using gcc, because it is legally open for the "four freedoms". And physical goods are already "free" in the Stallman sense, if not patented or subject to restrictive contracts. Both software and hardware have use-value and costs to produce, but only the physical goods have intrinsic market value. The hammer needs materials and significant per-unit labor as well as intellectual contributions, and in the absence of IP, has market value approaching its intrinsic (use) value. Commercial software that is published rather than used only in-house (i.e., monetized on a licensing model) has market value only because of artificial scarcity, and could hardly exist in a "free market" (without state-enforced monopolies).
  - bmj 13y ago
    His concerns are about law and policies constraining freedom, not about building things from scratch. You need not write your own compiler to be consistent with the principles he advocates - Stallman would say you're fine using gcc, because it is legally open for the "four freedoms". Yes, that's right. But what about, say, an electric drill with proprietary schematics? While I may be free to modify the drill as I see fit, it wasn't necessary built for that purpose. Additionally, I can't modify the drill a little bit, and then start producing them myself (I suspect the original manufacturer might have something to say about that). Perhaps I'm splitting hairs a bit, or thinking too deeply about it, but the topic of tools interests me.

mathattack 13y ago

"Richard Stallman, revered by some as a genius (after all, he won a McArthur “genius” grant in 1990) and by others as a crackpot" When I first heard him speak many years ago, I thought he was a real crank. My negative thoughts centered around: 1 - How can we build the next Microsoft without true ownership? 2 - Does his model of thinking demand that 100% of the population be technical enough to troubleshoot their computers? 3 - I can see people writing software for love, but who writes all the documentation? As the years go by, he's one of the few people who sounds less like a crackpot, even though he hasn't softened his extremism. With the current state of patent trolling, it's getting harder to create the next Microsoft. Improvements in GUIs is taking some of the issue away for #2. But I still haven't figured out #3. Edited for formatting

algebr 13y ago
The most coherent and consistent views tend to be viewed as extreme.
- harrytuttle 13y ago
  To start with that is. When they are considered rational, it's probably too late.
gnosis 13y ago
"How can we build the next Microsoft without true ownership?" The next Microsoft? That sounds like a nightmare. No, thanks!
- harrytuttle 13y ago
  We've got the next Microsoft already. It's just squarer, flatter, listens even less to its users and throws slightly fewer chairs.
- mathattack 13y ago
  The thought process came to me many years ago when Microsoft was an example of a startup that built itself from scratch and was very current. I've come around to broader thinking since then. And Microsoft has changed some too. But it has gotten harder to create companies from scratch due to restrictions on developer freedom. (Patents) There are other reasons that have made it easier, but those are tangential to RMS's topics.

will118 13y ago

I didn't think this article was very good at all, I've read all this before. These are just Stallman's exact ideas rehashed under hotwords like Snowden & SaaS... I'd usually try not to whine but I'm not even sure if the quotes they use are from the talk or from years ago.

bryanlarsen 13y ago
Probably both. Like a lot of other speakers, Stallman has a few canned speeches. He asks the organizers which one they want, and he gives it. It probably evolves over time, but the differences are minor. The issues Stallman talks about have not changed much over the last 20 years, so his speeches haven't either.
algebr 13y ago
I attended this talk and he spoke about Snowden/SaaS for like maybe 5% of the total talk time. Misleading article indeed.

dreen 13y ago

who is a "Hactivist"? why is rms one? the article only says: "Stallman, who looks every inch the part of a hactivist with his long mane of graying hair." does that mean i can Hac if I look like Gandalf? the fact this is not a typo and the explanation given practically discredit anything written in the article

unclesaamm 13y ago

This was a terrible piece. Why/who think Stallman is a crackpot? And what is up with this snide editorializing?: '“Almost everyone in the world using proprietary software is also using propriety malware,” said Stallman, who looks every inch the part of a hactivist with his long mane of graying hair.' I actually bust out laughing when I read that. Journalistic standards, please.

borplk 13y ago

I have to admit before the whole PRISM story I didn't think much about Richard Stallman and thought he's too extreme or delusional. After PRISM however I realised he was right all this time and I was just too stupid and blind to see it. I'm going to read more of his notes. Very few people have what it takes and are willing to pay the huge and continuous cost of rejecting proprietary software/technology. But he has been standing by his principals for a lifetime and I respect him for that.

rpgmaker 13y ago
Read this and talk about ominous: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html I think rms has other interesting articles on the same subject but I fail to find them right now, I now I read a few back in the days when I was diving into FLOSS.