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> someone's software freedom is impeded Nobody's freedom is impeded. They didn't have the freedom to modify the code in the first place, since they didn't hav

by gress 13y ago

> someone's software freedom is impeded Nobody's freedom is impeded. They didn't have the freedom to modify the code in the first place, since they didn't have the source code. Nothing they could do before has been taken away. It's really intellectually dishonest to use this freedom and morality rhetoric when you're actually talking about compelling people to give away something they have created. Not that I think it's conceptually a bad idea. I see nothing wrong with the idea of the GPL as a concept. A contract that says 'if you use this software, you agree to also give away any code you base on it' seems fine. But I see no reason not to just call it 'permanenrly malleable' software or something like that. It's the faulty rhetoric around freedom that is presented as a moral crusade that is a problem.

superuser2 13y ago
Someone switches to your product, or a new user chooses your product over the open-source alternative. The proportion of people who can modify their software decreases. That is a decrease in software freedom. Not necessarily a bad thing (your product might be legitimately better), but it is a decrease in software freedom.
- gress 13y ago
  Freedom hasn't decreased at all. Those people have exactly the same choices as before. They can use the open-source alternative if they want to change the code. Merely 'using' a closed source product doesn't prohibit them from doing that.
  - superuser2 13y ago
    Lots of people who would otherwise be Linux or BSD users instead use OSX. Consequently, they are not free to modify their operating systems where (had it not been for Apple) they would have been. Their freedom has been reduced voluntarily, but it has been reduced. Forking FreeBSD is not remotely the same thing as forking OSX and you can't "just use the open-source alternative if they want to change the source code" of OSX.
    - dsuth 13y ago
      Their freedom has not been reduced, as they are still free to choose an alternate, FOSS operating system if they prefer. Instead, they have access to more options than they otherwise would have, because it's highly unlikely that Apple would have expended so much effort in improving their OS, which is a competitive advantage for them, if they were forced to turn over all of that work to anyone who wanted it. I really don't like the idea of licences which compel their users to act in a certain way. Freedom cuts both ways.
      - superuser2 13y ago
        Software freedom has a specific meaning which necessarily encompasses freedom to study and modify the software you're running. OSX users do not have this freedom. Hence, prevalence of OSX reduces software freedom. Ability to choose between OSX and alternatives is something but it is not software freedom.
        dsuth 13y ago
        That seems like a narrow definition of software freedom , but in that case I'd argue that the utility gained from software freedom is not as valuable to users as the incentive gained by developers for being able to distribute their software under a more permissive licence.
        dllthomas 13y ago
        There's never a need to distribute software under a more permissive license except enabling distribution of software under less permissive licenses.
        gress 13y ago
        That's a very important need.
        dllthomas 13y ago
belorn 13y ago
I make software, and I do not want people who use it, share it, or modify it to be under the threat of being sued. Legal violence is to me is near equal to physical violence, and thus a moral issue. I do also not care if the legal violence happened because of changes an other developer did on my work. Just because they added something does not give them the right to use what I made into a legal weapon.
- gress 13y ago
  It's hard to know whether you are supporting or rejecting the GPL.
TuringTest 13y ago
There's no intellectual dishonesty here, just a semantic mismatch. You're using the negative definition of freedom, which is the lack of explicit restrictions on behavior; the logic you expose only holds under that particular school of thought. The GPL is instead defined on the tradition of positive liberty, which defines freedom as the number of options freely available to each person to choose. There's a very real risk of those being reduced by permissive licenses, as you can no longer ignore network effects, as negative freedom (being defined over individual atomic actions) does. History shows us that if you allow open source code to be relicensed as proprietary, the competitive advantage of companies building and selling products with enhanced features tend to displace the original project, which gets abandoned. This happened to Unix, to Mac OS X, and is now happening to Android. If this continues for an extended time, the whole ecosystem evolves and the old software becomes unusable, greatly reducing the total options that users can effectively perform - not by an legal or coercive restriction, but because of pragmatic impossibility. There are permissive projects where this doesn't happen (at least for a while) because of the economic incentives of remaining close to the free+open project, but the risk is always there. What good is the permission to run the original, abandoned version of a software project if all the available hardware has been locked and is uncapable of running it, and it's impossible to modify it to support the modern functions that are available in the proprietary platform and required for any productive usage? Those are very real threaths, and the GPL was designed to combat them (as a reaction to the first time they happened on a large scale). Avoiding this "reduced total available options" scenario is what GPL projects call freedom, not "reducing the number of restrictions" definition that you use. Not a problem of rhetoric, but of chosen vocabulary.
- gress 13y ago
  I don't use a 'reducing number of restrictions' definition. That's a straw man that I was responding to. I also don't accept "history shows us" as establishing some law of nature when the history we're talking about is a couple of decades. I think the abandoning of ecosystems can just as easily be explained by them being based on inadequate foundations, than by a mythical horde of developers somehow being prevented from working on them. Usually systems are abandoned because of a lack of economic incentive, after all the displacement you describe can only happen if proprietary development produces enhancements more efficiently than open source. Witness the failure of the Linux desktop. I think 'greatly reducing the total options that users can effectively perform' is a statement that needs much more qualification. To me, that's a function of design, extensibility, and how much leverage a system provides, and is independent of whether the source is available or not. Extending by forking is a last resort. Nevertheless, I do respect the hypothesis that a GPL style open system provides an important counterbalance to proprietary systems. What I do not support is the dishonest use of language and morality to further it. If you are using positive freedom, then there is much more to be gained through improvements in software design - e.g. along the lines of Alan Kay's FONC - to increase leverage - than through ideology.

by gress 13y ago

superuser2 13y ago

Someone switches to your product, or a new user chooses your product over the open-source alternative. The proportion of people who can modify their software decreases. That is a decrease in software freedom. Not necessarily a bad thing (your product might be legitimately better), but it is a decrease in software freedom.

gress 13y ago
Freedom hasn't decreased at all. Those people have exactly the same choices as before. They can use the open-source alternative if they want to change the code. Merely 'using' a closed source product doesn't prohibit them from doing that.
- superuser2 13y ago
  Lots of people who would otherwise be Linux or BSD users instead use OSX. Consequently, they are not free to modify their operating systems where (had it not been for Apple) they would have been. Their freedom has been reduced voluntarily, but it has been reduced. Forking FreeBSD is not remotely the same thing as forking OSX and you can't "just use the open-source alternative if they want to change the source code" of OSX.
  - dsuth 13y ago
    Their freedom has not been reduced, as they are still free to choose an alternate, FOSS operating system if they prefer. Instead, they have access to more options than they otherwise would have, because it's highly unlikely that Apple would have expended so much effort in improving their OS, which is a competitive advantage for them, if they were forced to turn over all of that work to anyone who wanted it. I really don't like the idea of licences which compel their users to act in a certain way. Freedom cuts both ways.
    - superuser2 13y ago
      Software freedom has a specific meaning which necessarily encompasses freedom to study and modify the software you're running. OSX users do not have this freedom. Hence, prevalence of OSX reduces software freedom. Ability to choose between OSX and alternatives is something but it is not software freedom.
      - dsuth 13y ago
        That seems like a narrow definition of software freedom , but in that case I'd argue that the utility gained from software freedom is not as valuable to users as the incentive gained by developers for being able to distribute their software under a more permissive licence.
        dllthomas 13y ago
        There's never a need to distribute software under a more permissive license except enabling distribution of software under less permissive licenses.
        gress 13y ago
        That's a very important need.
        dllthomas 13y ago

belorn 13y ago

I make software, and I do not want people who use it, share it, or modify it to be under the threat of being sued. Legal violence is to me is near equal to physical violence, and thus a moral issue. I do also not care if the legal violence happened because of changes an other developer did on my work. Just because they added something does not give them the right to use what I made into a legal weapon.

gress 13y ago
It's hard to know whether you are supporting or rejecting the GPL.

TuringTest 13y ago

There's no intellectual dishonesty here, just a semantic mismatch. You're using the negative definition of freedom, which is the lack of explicit restrictions on behavior; the logic you expose only holds under that particular school of thought. The GPL is instead defined on the tradition of positive liberty, which defines freedom as the number of options freely available to each person to choose. There's a very real risk of those being reduced by permissive licenses, as you can no longer ignore network effects, as negative freedom (being defined over individual atomic actions) does. History shows us that if you allow open source code to be relicensed as proprietary, the competitive advantage of companies building and selling products with enhanced features tend to displace the original project, which gets abandoned. This happened to Unix, to Mac OS X, and is now happening to Android. If this continues for an extended time, the whole ecosystem evolves and the old software becomes unusable, greatly reducing the total options that users can effectively perform - not by an legal or coercive restriction, but because of pragmatic impossibility. There are permissive projects where this doesn't happen (at least for a while) because of the economic incentives of remaining close to the free+open project, but the risk is always there. What good is the permission to run the original, abandoned version of a software project if all the available hardware has been locked and is uncapable of running it, and it's impossible to modify it to support the modern functions that are available in the proprietary platform and required for any productive usage? Those are very real threaths, and the GPL was designed to combat them (as a reaction to the first time they happened on a large scale). Avoiding this "reduced total available options" scenario is what GPL projects call freedom, not "reducing the number of restrictions" definition that you use. Not a problem of rhetoric, but of chosen vocabulary.

gress 13y ago
I don't use a 'reducing number of restrictions' definition. That's a straw man that I was responding to. I also don't accept "history shows us" as establishing some law of nature when the history we're talking about is a couple of decades. I think the abandoning of ecosystems can just as easily be explained by them being based on inadequate foundations, than by a mythical horde of developers somehow being prevented from working on them. Usually systems are abandoned because of a lack of economic incentive, after all the displacement you describe can only happen if proprietary development produces enhancements more efficiently than open source. Witness the failure of the Linux desktop. I think 'greatly reducing the total options that users can effectively perform' is a statement that needs much more qualification. To me, that's a function of design, extensibility, and how much leverage a system provides, and is independent of whether the source is available or not. Extending by forking is a last resort. Nevertheless, I do respect the hypothesis that a GPL style open system provides an important counterbalance to proprietary systems. What I do not support is the dishonest use of language and morality to further it. If you are using positive freedom, then there is much more to be gained through improvements in software design - e.g. along the lines of Alan Kay's FONC - to increase leverage - than through ideology.