5 ms·

"Stallman wants you to use Free software because it's free-as-in-ideology, not because it necessarily works well or does what you want." And I think, that's a

by sepeth 13y ago

"Stallman wants you to use Free software because it's free-as-in-ideology, not because it necessarily works well or does what you want." And I think, that's a better position to be in; I mean, freedom is more important than to have good softwares.

gress 13y ago
Execept it's not even that. It's a narrow definition of freedom. Free as in socialism vs free as in capitalism.
- sepeth 13y ago
  I believe, it is broader than you think: we’re always telling children that they have to learn to share, to be considerate of each other’s needs, to help each other; then we go off into the real world where we assume that everyone is naturally selfish and competitive. But an anarchist would point out: in fact, what we say to our children is right. Pretty much every great worthwhile achievement in human history, every discovery or accomplishment that’s improved our lives, has been based on cooperation and mutual aid; even now, most of us spend more of our money on our friends and families than on ourselves; while likely as not there will always be competitive people in the world, there’s no reason why society has to be based on encouraging such behavior, let alone making people compete over the basic necessities of life. That only serves the interests of people in power, who want us to live in fear of one another. That’s why anarchists call for a society based not only on free association but mutual aid. http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-are-you-an-anarchist-the-answer-may-surprise-you http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-are-you...
  - gress 13y ago
    I totally believe in cooperation and mutual aid. I believe it's critical for that to be based on trust and individual choice, or it is meaningless. This is why I don't like RMS's attempt to force it on us.
    - teddyh 13y ago
      In that case, you ought, logically, to be against all forms of copyright and patents.
      - gress 13y ago
        I am against patents, and I agree that by implication copyright is harmful too. I tend not to be an absolutist so am still considering my position on it, but I can't really defend copyright strongly.
        teddyh 13y ago
        Well then; Should copyright cease to exist, the GPL would have no power and would no longer have any meaning. But while copyright does exist, the GPL will continue to work against the imbalance of power copyright (and, lately, patents) create. If I may make a parable: Don’t hate the rebels for being violent; hate the oppressive state against which they rebel.
        gress 13y ago
        The GPL doesn't work against the imbalance of power created by copyrights. It works to strengthen it by reducing the options for individual creators to make money from their efforts, and buttressing the power of established interests. But - you make a good point - a good reason to be against copyright is because abolishing it would defeat the GPL.
- slurry 13y ago
  RMS had a pretty testy interview with Z magazine a few years back. Was very emphatic that his vision of the future included businesses, and swatted down several attempts by the Z people, who wanted to abolish all businesses, to get him to reconsider. Not bringing this up to argue that RMS is correct or reasonable (here or elsewhere), but I just thought it was interesting. RMS may be an unrealistic utopian, but his unrealistic utopia is some mutant form of liberalism - with property rights and commerce etc. - not communism or even big-s socialism.
  - gress 13y ago
    Property rights for everyone except software developers.
    - kevin_bauer 13y ago
      If your freedom/rights takes the freedom/rights of others away, what may you argue about, if your freedom/rights is also taken away? Because something might be inconvenient to you, it doesn't make it automatically wrong. There's a distinct line between free as in freedom and free as in arbitrariness. The former comes with responsibilities, the later without.
      - gress 13y ago
        This is true but irrelevant because the freedom to distribute software without the source code does not take away anyone else's rights.
        kevin_bauer 13y ago
        I beg to differ! As the NSA-debacle shows, it takes my right away to a) ensure there's no backdoor, b) the software i get does exactly what was promised and c) in a way and quality as advertised. Furthermore take a look at the "USL v. BSDi" lawsuit, where BSD was sued by AT&T for infringing copyright-laws against their own(BSD) source-code, which was incorporated into USL(AT&T's) UNIX-variants! "Freedom" comes with responsibility, if you want carefree "arbitrariness", then say so, but please don't mix them together, they are fundamentally different!
- nullc 13y ago
  RMS's free software work isn't against capitalism any more than anti-slavery people's work is against capitalism. RMS has steadfast refused to even entertain anti-business terms in software licenses as something fitting for a free software license, except to the extent that the "business" involves taking the free software in question and making it non-free.
mhurron 13y ago
Given that software is a tool, I would say it is more important that it work.
- sparkie 13y ago
  Is it more important even if it allows somebody to remotely disable the breaks on your car while you're doing 50mph? Or perhaps disabling your camera while you're being assaulted by a police officer? What about the predator who's monitoring your children's activities and location because they downloaded a game? I picked some pretty harsh possibilities there that seem a little dystopian, but I wouldn't rule any of them out, or any of the million other horrific possibilities that increased coupling of technology to our lives, without (self-)regulation could enable. If you really want software to 'just work', you should probably first ask, who is it working for?
  - mhurron 13y ago
    Yes, software working for me is more important than the theoretical ability change or rewrite the software in some vague idea of source code freedom. You are aware that all your attempted examples could simply be called 'not working' when evaluating the software.
    - sparkie 13y ago
      It's a bit too late to find out if the software was working for you after the fact though. You can only evaluate the software in the first place if you have freedom 1, otherwise, you are going on hearsay, or this absurd notion that complete strangers are trustworthy by default. I'm also not sure how I could say software is working for me if I must first agree to be dictated the terms of it's use, and agree that the vendor may dictate any new terms in the future, which I must agree to in advance.
BlackDeath3 13y ago
>freedom is more important than to have good softwares Yes, I agree, freedom to have the essentials for human survival is a lot more important than having instant access to the latest BF4 patch. Care to provide a bit of qualification and relevance to your broad, context-free, ill-defined statement?
- sepeth 13y ago
  You can find the context by accessing the outer scope (parent comment(s)), you will also need to read the email.
  - BlackDeath3 13y ago
    I think I have a workable understanding of the context. If the comment was meant to say that "free software is more important than good software", then it would be great to get a bit of elaboration and qualification for such a contentious statement.
oakwhiz 13y ago
That depends on the situation. There are certainly some pieces of software for which I feel that it is more important that it merely functions well at some task, and closed-source software is acceptable for that purpose. There are other situations where closed-source software makes me uncomfortable because I do not have certain guarantees about its security, reliability, or flexibility. I would say that the majority of situations are better served by open-source software, but not everybody feels that way.

by sepeth 13y ago

gress 13y ago

Execept it's not even that. It's a narrow definition of freedom. Free as in socialism vs free as in capitalism.

sepeth 13y ago
I believe, it is broader than you think: we’re always telling children that they have to learn to share, to be considerate of each other’s needs, to help each other; then we go off into the real world where we assume that everyone is naturally selfish and competitive. But an anarchist would point out: in fact, what we say to our children is right. Pretty much every great worthwhile achievement in human history, every discovery or accomplishment that’s improved our lives, has been based on cooperation and mutual aid; even now, most of us spend more of our money on our friends and families than on ourselves; while likely as not there will always be competitive people in the world, there’s no reason why society has to be based on encouraging such behavior, let alone making people compete over the basic necessities of life. That only serves the interests of people in power, who want us to live in fear of one another. That’s why anarchists call for a society based not only on free association but mutual aid. http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-are-you-an-anarchist-the-answer-may-surprise-you http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-are-you...
- gress 13y ago
  I totally believe in cooperation and mutual aid. I believe it's critical for that to be based on trust and individual choice, or it is meaningless. This is why I don't like RMS's attempt to force it on us.
  - teddyh 13y ago
    In that case, you ought, logically, to be against all forms of copyright and patents.
    - gress 13y ago
      I am against patents, and I agree that by implication copyright is harmful too. I tend not to be an absolutist so am still considering my position on it, but I can't really defend copyright strongly.
      - teddyh 13y ago
        Well then; Should copyright cease to exist, the GPL would have no power and would no longer have any meaning. But while copyright does exist, the GPL will continue to work against the imbalance of power copyright (and, lately, patents) create. If I may make a parable: Don’t hate the rebels for being violent; hate the oppressive state against which they rebel.
        gress 13y ago
        The GPL doesn't work against the imbalance of power created by copyrights. It works to strengthen it by reducing the options for individual creators to make money from their efforts, and buttressing the power of established interests. But - you make a good point - a good reason to be against copyright is because abolishing it would defeat the GPL.
slurry 13y ago
RMS had a pretty testy interview with Z magazine a few years back. Was very emphatic that his vision of the future included businesses, and swatted down several attempts by the Z people, who wanted to abolish all businesses, to get him to reconsider. Not bringing this up to argue that RMS is correct or reasonable (here or elsewhere), but I just thought it was interesting. RMS may be an unrealistic utopian, but his unrealistic utopia is some mutant form of liberalism - with property rights and commerce etc. - not communism or even big-s socialism.
- gress 13y ago
  Property rights for everyone except software developers.
  - kevin_bauer 13y ago
    If your freedom/rights takes the freedom/rights of others away, what may you argue about, if your freedom/rights is also taken away? Because something might be inconvenient to you, it doesn't make it automatically wrong. There's a distinct line between free as in freedom and free as in arbitrariness. The former comes with responsibilities, the later without.
    - gress 13y ago
      This is true but irrelevant because the freedom to distribute software without the source code does not take away anyone else's rights.
      - kevin_bauer 13y ago
        I beg to differ! As the NSA-debacle shows, it takes my right away to a) ensure there's no backdoor, b) the software i get does exactly what was promised and c) in a way and quality as advertised. Furthermore take a look at the "USL v. BSDi" lawsuit, where BSD was sued by AT&T for infringing copyright-laws against their own(BSD) source-code, which was incorporated into USL(AT&T's) UNIX-variants! "Freedom" comes with responsibility, if you want carefree "arbitrariness", then say so, but please don't mix them together, they are fundamentally different!
nullc 13y ago
RMS's free software work isn't against capitalism any more than anti-slavery people's work is against capitalism. RMS has steadfast refused to even entertain anti-business terms in software licenses as something fitting for a free software license, except to the extent that the "business" involves taking the free software in question and making it non-free.

mhurron 13y ago

Given that software is a tool, I would say it is more important that it work.

sparkie 13y ago
Is it more important even if it allows somebody to remotely disable the breaks on your car while you're doing 50mph? Or perhaps disabling your camera while you're being assaulted by a police officer? What about the predator who's monitoring your children's activities and location because they downloaded a game? I picked some pretty harsh possibilities there that seem a little dystopian, but I wouldn't rule any of them out, or any of the million other horrific possibilities that increased coupling of technology to our lives, without (self-)regulation could enable. If you really want software to 'just work', you should probably first ask, who is it working for?
- mhurron 13y ago
  Yes, software working for me is more important than the theoretical ability change or rewrite the software in some vague idea of source code freedom. You are aware that all your attempted examples could simply be called 'not working' when evaluating the software.
  - sparkie 13y ago
    It's a bit too late to find out if the software was working for you after the fact though. You can only evaluate the software in the first place if you have freedom 1, otherwise, you are going on hearsay, or this absurd notion that complete strangers are trustworthy by default. I'm also not sure how I could say software is working for me if I must first agree to be dictated the terms of it's use, and agree that the vendor may dictate any new terms in the future, which I must agree to in advance.

BlackDeath3 13y ago

>freedom is more important than to have good softwares Yes, I agree, freedom to have the essentials for human survival is a lot more important than having instant access to the latest BF4 patch. Care to provide a bit of qualification and relevance to your broad, context-free, ill-defined statement?

sepeth 13y ago
You can find the context by accessing the outer scope (parent comment(s)), you will also need to read the email.
- BlackDeath3 13y ago
  I think I have a workable understanding of the context. If the comment was meant to say that "free software is more important than good software", then it would be great to get a bit of elaboration and qualification for such a contentious statement.

oakwhiz 13y ago

That depends on the situation. There are certainly some pieces of software for which I feel that it is more important that it merely functions well at some task, and closed-source software is acceptable for that purpose. There are other situations where closed-source software makes me uncomfortable because I do not have certain guarantees about its security, reliability, or flexibility. I would say that the majority of situations are better served by open-source software, but not everybody feels that way.