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My biggest issue with gpl/copy left is that it is a _kind_ of freedom obtained by forgoing other freedoms. It isn't a more _free_ platform, it is a more _open_

My biggest issue with gpl/copy left is that it is a _kind_ of freedom obtained by forgoing other freedoms. It isn't a more _free_ platform, it is a more _open_ platform. If I work on a gpl product I give up important characteristics of ownership in that work. I lose certain freedoms to gain others. I define freedom as the ability to do as I wish. The gpl restricts that, and thus can't be said to be totally free. The gpl is an interesting and in many ways compelling philosophy, but it ties you to its philosophy - it doesn't allow you the freedom to follow your own. --- You mention long term value. I think that, like the medicine patent system, copy middle gives us higher long term ecosystem value at the expense of short term value. I should put my assumptions into an economic simulation some time and really model out the question of in which circumstance copy middle vs copy left gives higher long term value.

saurik 13y ago
All freedoms are inherently subjective: freedom from slavery is a restriction on owning other people. This is why this discussion is so hard: the people who have to choose a license are the people who have to give up freedoms for others to be more free. One argument is that the second groups of people (end users) happens to superset the first group of people (developers) and is fundamentally larger. To maximize freedom thereby would have the developers "take the hit" (although again: developers are users, too). This is, in fact, precisely what I spent so much time a few months ago discussing: I encourage you to read what I wrote then, such that I need not repeat myself endlessly here. To be very clear: I directly address your entire concern about relative and subjective freedom in that precious discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6209724 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6209724 As for your comments on the short vs. long term issues related to "#_advances_open_sourced", I think that is an interesting discussion to have at another time, as it is off-topic today: Stallman, as I have argued, does not care about attempts to maximize "value" in the way you have defined it, whether in the short or long term; instead, he has defined "value" as "freedom", and I imagine (or at least hope) that a future where mankind is living without all the fancy toys we have, but where the things we have we actually own ourselves, with nothing between us and modifying those things in the way we please would be a "win". All attempts to maximize the thing you care about are, to him, probably nothing more than a distraction. Again: that's not to discredit the things you care about; it is only to say that the goals themselves are mere opinions that people have, and that to understand others requires thinking in their terms.
- thatthatis 13y ago
  I think you've fairly accurately portrayed Stalman and the FSF. But, I don't care very much if Stalman wants x or y in the world. I'm less concerned with debating his intent in a literature review way than I am with choosing the licenses that lead to the best outcome for humanity in the future. The question shouldn't be what he wants, except to the extent that it inform the larger question of "what is good for society." So I don't see why you would think that my rubrik for what is best for society is off topic here. "I have a right to own slaves" is a bad analogy, it doesn't mirror the kinds of trade offs we're discussing here. Slavery is not a case of balancing rights between two people, it is a case of one person's supposed right negating all rights in the other person. It's not very dissimilar from "I have the right to kill."
  - saurik 13y ago
    > So I don't see why you would think that my rubrik for what is best for society is off topic here. It is off-topic because it assumes that other people share your rubric. It is off-topic because it ignores the real question, which is whether that rubric is even the correct rubric to have. It is off-topic because it has nothing to do with whether Stallman should have said the things that he did. Let's say that someone else showed up, and said "we should be trying to optimize for money in Apple's bank account; instead of GPL, which seems extreme, we can strike a better balance that provides more money into Apple's bank account". Do any of us here care about the amount of money in Apple's bank account? My contention is that caring about how much software in the world is open source, or how much software in the world exists, or what powers mankind has given access to that software, is an interesting and potentially valid rubric; and, it seems to be at least a major component of your rubric. Sadly, this means you are thereby doomed to spend forever arguing over how to best make tradeoffs to help you optimize for that rubric when dealing with people like Stallman. You will bring up that rubric, and they will seem incompetent to you, because they just don't get it: "they are throwing away so much value". And they, in turn, will look at you as naive, because you are attempting to optimize for something they don't care about and would be perfectly happy to throw away entirely. Trying to argue whether, in the long term, BSD or GPL (for example; feel free to insert any decision that must be made instead) is good or bad for that specific rubric is entirely irrelevant to them, because even if BSD was amazing for that rubric, and even if GPL was miserable for it, at the end of the discussion the GPL advocate will say "well, that was an interesting waste of time: now where were we on trying to get everyone to use GPL?". You won't succeed in convincing them of anything: you are just wasting time. Now, maybe, on the other side, I'd make some inroads with you by trying to argue that, in the long term, making things "too free for developers" actually comes around to "bite you in the ass" and that you end up in situations where, for example, all major mobile browsers are now effectively closed source in a world where everything is increasingly moving to mobile-only platforms, and that by having invested so strongly in WebCore (LGPL) instead of Gecko (GPL) we caused that reality by allowing WebKit (BSD) to exist... but this is going to be a really long and really painful argument that has nothing to do with Stallman hating on gcc, and it is not one I feel like I should have to spend my time today arguing. I honestly don't even think these arguments really get anywhere, and tend to just make everyone angry. > "I have a right to own slaves" is a bad analogy, it doesn't mirror the kinds of trade offs we're discussing here. Slavery is not a case of balancing rights between two people, it is a case of one person's supposed right negating all rights in the other person. It's not very dissimilar from "I have the right to kill." sigh As you seem to only be quoting the things I am saying in these immediate comment threads, without taking into account the expanded context I've now linked you to twice, I am going to have to consider this conversation a waste of time :/. The extent to which that exact analogy matters in the full argument I asked you to read is clearly "not much" (it was there, and is here, just an example of freedoms being relative; in the full argument I went into extreme detail on exactly how the freedoms here are subject), and yet you seem to only be responding to the teaser summary I laid out in this comment. I should not have to repeat that entire thread here: all I asked you to do was to read that discussion and come back, and I do not understand why that is so hard for you to do :(.

saurik 13y ago

All freedoms are inherently subjective: freedom from slavery is a restriction on owning other people. This is why this discussion is so hard: the people who have to choose a license are the people who have to give up freedoms for others to be more free. One argument is that the second groups of people (end users) happens to superset the first group of people (developers) and is fundamentally larger. To maximize freedom thereby would have the developers "take the hit" (although again: developers are users, too). This is, in fact, precisely what I spent so much time a few months ago discussing: I encourage you to read what I wrote then, such that I need not repeat myself endlessly here. To be very clear: I directly address your entire concern about relative and subjective freedom in that precious discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6209724 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6209724 As for your comments on the short vs. long term issues related to "#_advances_open_sourced", I think that is an interesting discussion to have at another time, as it is off-topic today: Stallman, as I have argued, does not care about attempts to maximize "value" in the way you have defined it, whether in the short or long term; instead, he has defined "value" as "freedom", and I imagine (or at least hope) that a future where mankind is living without all the fancy toys we have, but where the things we have we actually own ourselves, with nothing between us and modifying those things in the way we please would be a "win". All attempts to maximize the thing you care about are, to him, probably nothing more than a distraction. Again: that's not to discredit the things you care about; it is only to say that the goals themselves are mere opinions that people have, and that to understand others requires thinking in their terms.

thatthatis 13y ago
I think you've fairly accurately portrayed Stalman and the FSF. But, I don't care very much if Stalman wants x or y in the world. I'm less concerned with debating his intent in a literature review way than I am with choosing the licenses that lead to the best outcome for humanity in the future. The question shouldn't be what he wants, except to the extent that it inform the larger question of "what is good for society." So I don't see why you would think that my rubrik for what is best for society is off topic here. "I have a right to own slaves" is a bad analogy, it doesn't mirror the kinds of trade offs we're discussing here. Slavery is not a case of balancing rights between two people, it is a case of one person's supposed right negating all rights in the other person. It's not very dissimilar from "I have the right to kill."
- saurik 13y ago
  > So I don't see why you would think that my rubrik for what is best for society is off topic here. It is off-topic because it assumes that other people share your rubric. It is off-topic because it ignores the real question, which is whether that rubric is even the correct rubric to have. It is off-topic because it has nothing to do with whether Stallman should have said the things that he did. Let's say that someone else showed up, and said "we should be trying to optimize for money in Apple's bank account; instead of GPL, which seems extreme, we can strike a better balance that provides more money into Apple's bank account". Do any of us here care about the amount of money in Apple's bank account? My contention is that caring about how much software in the world is open source, or how much software in the world exists, or what powers mankind has given access to that software, is an interesting and potentially valid rubric; and, it seems to be at least a major component of your rubric. Sadly, this means you are thereby doomed to spend forever arguing over how to best make tradeoffs to help you optimize for that rubric when dealing with people like Stallman. You will bring up that rubric, and they will seem incompetent to you, because they just don't get it: "they are throwing away so much value". And they, in turn, will look at you as naive, because you are attempting to optimize for something they don't care about and would be perfectly happy to throw away entirely. Trying to argue whether, in the long term, BSD or GPL (for example; feel free to insert any decision that must be made instead) is good or bad for that specific rubric is entirely irrelevant to them, because even if BSD was amazing for that rubric, and even if GPL was miserable for it, at the end of the discussion the GPL advocate will say "well, that was an interesting waste of time: now where were we on trying to get everyone to use GPL?". You won't succeed in convincing them of anything: you are just wasting time. Now, maybe, on the other side, I'd make some inroads with you by trying to argue that, in the long term, making things "too free for developers" actually comes around to "bite you in the ass" and that you end up in situations where, for example, all major mobile browsers are now effectively closed source in a world where everything is increasingly moving to mobile-only platforms, and that by having invested so strongly in WebCore (LGPL) instead of Gecko (GPL) we caused that reality by allowing WebKit (BSD) to exist... but this is going to be a really long and really painful argument that has nothing to do with Stallman hating on gcc, and it is not one I feel like I should have to spend my time today arguing. I honestly don't even think these arguments really get anywhere, and tend to just make everyone angry. > "I have a right to own slaves" is a bad analogy, it doesn't mirror the kinds of trade offs we're discussing here. Slavery is not a case of balancing rights between two people, it is a case of one person's supposed right negating all rights in the other person. It's not very dissimilar from "I have the right to kill." sigh As you seem to only be quoting the things I am saying in these immediate comment threads, without taking into account the expanded context I've now linked you to twice, I am going to have to consider this conversation a waste of time :/. The extent to which that exact analogy matters in the full argument I asked you to read is clearly "not much" (it was there, and is here, just an example of freedoms being relative; in the full argument I went into extreme detail on exactly how the freedoms here are subject), and yet you seem to only be responding to the teaser summary I laid out in this comment. I should not have to repeat that entire thread here: all I asked you to do was to read that discussion and come back, and I do not understand why that is so hard for you to do :(.