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Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software

• einhverfr 13y ago
  I think Stallman misses the point that many of us who are at least latent distributists see in free/open source software. Freedom can't be defined as a freedom from restriction or a Lockean framework of liberty, as Stallman imagines, but rather the freedom to engage creative or productive endeavors without micromanagement from others.[1] The question, rather literally is who has a right to tell you what license your works go under, and under what circumstances. If freedom to create things is economically valuable (and I think it is), then one need not worry so much about people misappropriating things because in the end they cannot out-compete what is free and open. Yeah, SunOS forked from BSD. How is it doing these days compared to the open source versions? These days, my preferred license is the BSD license. I am uncomfortable with the MIT license's sublicensing grant, and I am even more uncomfortable with the AGPL, which strikes me as a demonstration that freedom in the name of freedom is ultimately self-consuming and self-defeating. I am willing to tolerate the GPL and in fact most of my works are licensed under that license for legacy code reasons. But I still prefer the BSD license. This license is very simple. I own my work and give everyone else a right to use it. They own their own contributions and an decide how to license those. Since freedom to create new solutions with the software is economically valuable, there I can expect that the original BSD-licensed versions will win out over the long run. [1] http://ledgersmbdev.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-distributist-view-on-software-freedom.html http://ledgersmbdev.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-distributist-view...
  • mpyne 13y ago
    > Freedom can't be defined as a freedom from restriction or a Lockean framework of liberty, as Stallman imagines, but rather the freedom to creative endeavors without micromanagement from others. Freedom certainly can be defined in such a way, even if you don't happen to fall in with that definition. Put bluntly the big question between the two major license types is whether you're pushing for individual freedom or collective freedom. Rather I think the point that Stallman misses (or more likely, chooses to argue against) is that many open source programmers deliberately choose not to be "Free Software" political activists, but simply choose open source licenses for technical or social (but not political) reasoning. They don't want to save the world, they want to sling the best code.
    • rout39574 13y ago
      He doesn't miss it; he outlines it specifically in the linked article. He correctly identifies it as a philosophically different approach to software, and to licensure. He hopes to communicate to those who have that short-sighted view, that their interests are not best served by focusing on just the code.
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  • jordigh 13y ago
    The free vs open source thing is irrelevant to what you're saying above. Both the GPL and the BSD licenses are free and both are open source. Some BSD distributions even make a point of calling what they're doing "free software", e.g. http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html
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      • jordigh 13y ago
        This is true even for the BSD licenses that are not GPL-compatible. "Free software" doesn't mean "GPL-compatible only."
        • icebraining 13y ago
          The GNU project even has a full list of GPL-Incompatible Free Software Licenses: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLIncompatibleLicenses http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLIncompatibl...
      • dragonwriter 13y ago
        > This is true because the 3 (and modified 2) clause BSD license are GPL compatible and approved by the FSF. They might be compatible with the GPLv3, because of its allowance of extra terms; they are strictly incompatible with the GPLv2, een though the FSF claimed that they were compatible with it when the GPLv2 was the current GPL version (the FSF's claim that they are compatible -- a self-interested one to induce people to relicenses BSD-licensed code as GPL-licensed code, is indefensible since both versions require specific copyright notices, the BSD license itself, and the specific disclaimer of warranty included as part of the BSD license, and all of those requirements are additional requirements incompatible with the GPLv2.) The FSF has an overt interest in promoting the relicensing of code under the GPL which gives them a motive to exaggerate the degree to which this action is valid under other licenses. They are not neutral, objective party when it comes to license compatibility.
  • _delirium 13y ago
    > I am even more uncomfortable with the AGPL, which strikes me as a demonstration that freedom in the name of freedom is ultimately self-consuming and self-defeating I actually read the AGPL as driven by mostly pragmatic factors. It didn't even come from the FSF initially, but from a developer (Affero) who believed it fit their business strategy better than the existing licenses. One of the traditional business strategies built on the GPL, which RMS does not greatly like, but is quite possible to do, is the dual-licensed GPL/proprietary approach. People who are willing to GPL their own software may incorporate your code under the GPL's terms. Other people who prefer more traditional commercial terms can, alternately, purchase a commercial license. In the webapp setting this approach no longer works, because the GPL only covers "distribution", and a webapp backend is never distributed. Therefore nobody will buy a commercial license. The AGPL more or less restores the traditional GPL terms in the webapp setting, where you have to GPL your product if you ship an app containing the GPL'd code: only now, deploying a public webapp is a form of "shipping" (which is how most software devs actually do see the situation... deploying a live webapp is a modern-day form of shipping software). And in practice, it seems the most common alternative to the AGPL in this setting is to just keep your code fully proprietary, so competitors can't build on it. I think in that sense AGPL is helpful if it encourages more releases, e.g. if it encourages more companies to take the Launchpad approach with their code (AGPL) rather than the GitHub approach to it (proprietary). The other common alternative is to release the source but under a non-OSI license like "free for noncommercial use only, commercial users must buy a license". The AGPL seems at least more generous than that.
    • jordigh 13y ago
      > One of the traditional business strategies built on the GPL, which RMS does not greatly like, but is quite possible to do, is the dual-licensed GPL/proprietary approach. He actually does like it: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions
      • aaron-lebo 13y ago
        It isn't obvious to me why he makes this exception. He is very rigorous in many of his other beliefs (GNU/Linux, this "open vs "free" debate). If he does not agree with BSD/MIT licenses because they inevitably allow companies to limit the "freedom" of their customers, how is selling an exception any different except that the open source project is now making money? I mean an argument could be made at that point that you are selling off your principles to the highest bidder. I don't necessarily believe that, but still...
  • Spooky23 13y ago
    Your preference for BSD is certainly valid, but it's valid because of your objectives. If you want a software package that you own to be openly collaborated, but still controlled by you, the GPL is a great copyright construct to do that with. There isn't a right answer here. I think Stallman has an ideologically pure argument that is appealing to me as a consumer, but not always ideal for my business needs. I disagree that BSD solutions will necessarily "win" in the long run. There's no incentive to share.
    • yxhuvud 13y ago
      There are plenty of incentives to share. They can be summarized by this: Code that you don't share is code that you have to maintain yourself. Code that you share is code that you can offload the maintaining to someone else.
      • Spooky23 13y ago
        I agree. But offload != collaboration. With BSD, there is no legal incentive for somebody to take their ball and go home, or take your ball and sell it. Depending on what you want, that can be a good thing. Making commercialization difficult is not always bad -- if you own the copyrights, you can license to commercial users under terms favorable to you.
        • einhverfr 13y ago
          Also I don't think the BSD license makes it harder to commercialize software than the GPL does. You can't have a dual license model without the GPL, and that also requires copyright assignments. And once you do that, you are controlling not whether the software can be commercialized but merely who can commercialize it.
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    • midas007 13y ago
      Licenses are a toolbox, like the tech they cover. Wanna stop basically everything commercial related? AGPL Wanna stop tivozation? GPL 3 Wanna allow tivozation? GPL 2 Wanna allow general commercialization? 2-clause BSD EDIT: if anyone remembers the OSS license feature matrix site that's new, plz reply.
  • aaron-lebo 13y ago
    A friend recently introduced me to the ISC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISC_license http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISC_license which is similar to the MIT and BSD except extraneous language has been removed. If you like the simplicity of BSD, maybe you'll like this even more? OpenBSD uses it.
  • brianpgordon 13y ago
    > I am uncomfortable with the MIT license's sublicensing grant I did a little research to try to figure out what you meant; tell me if I have it right: MIT allows you to redistribute the code under a different license. The problem is that the sublicense might be more permissive than the MIT license, potentially allowing someone to bypass the requirements of the MIT license. Is that what you meant?
    • einhverfr 13y ago
      Not quite. One right that can be passed on is the right to sublicense, which gives the licensee the right to issue new licenses. The licensee cannot provide downstream licenses to rights he or she did not receive. So the license can never be more permissive than the existing one. The difference is that under the BSD license, the original author grants licenses and requires notice on downstream redistribution. Someone can add code, however, and add restrictions to that code. The MIT license allows something very different, which is the right of a mere licensee to negotiate licenses (provided they are no more permissive than what was granted) on behalf of the licensor. So you can take MIT licensed code with no changes and relicense it under the GPL. The BSD license requires that you license only your code in it (and the corresponding work as a whole) under the GPL, but the MIT license allows you to add restrictions to code you did not author.
  • koide 13y ago
    I don't think he misses the point. He just doesn't find it a good one. I mean, you are of course entitled to your opinion, and to call his a mistake, but saying RMS "misses the point" of what he's been working on almost 30 years is a bit disingenuous. And I personally disagree with the statement that BSD-like licenses are definitely better than GPL. As always, it depends. What would have happened to Linux without GPL? Would it support as many devices as it does? Would it be as widespread as it is? On the other hand, I agree that a BSD-like license has been a plus for PostgreSQL, by permitting the existence of various 'PostgreSQL enhanced' companies selling their versions and offering support. What's ultimately more important than the license is the people working on the project and the community that forms around it. They are what ultimately lead to success or failure, not the choice of a license.
    • zanny 13y ago
      > What's ultimately more important than the license is the people working on the project and the community that forms around it. Is it? Look at the router industry - licenses like zlib, the busybox license, and the "no copyright" sqlite licenses have enabled an entire industry to take open source software and use it for profit without having to invest developer hours to making it themselves. But they still sell that software, and take away their users freedoms, on their routers. Every time I buy a new one, I have to either look for one with an open source firmware already installed, or be very careful to make sure one I get is supposed so I can reflash it (if its even possible on some models) to reclaim my freedoms. Tons of other embedded devices do the same. As long as Linux at least is gpl v2, they can get away with using the kernel as well as long as they don't modify it directly. And who knows how much open source code Microsoft and Apple have in their OS installs that has been heavily modified without any of that work being contributed back to the source projects while those companies profit off license key sales?
      • koide 13y ago
        Yes, it is. I don't understand your point. There are people taking advantage of both GPL and BSD. Some (not all) of the GPL violators can be made to comply, and none of the BSD "violators" can be made to comply, because they are not actual violators. All of the previous statements do not alter at all that all the software pieces that are "taken advantage of" are huge value contributions to society at large and that their success is not dependent on the license choice. If you are angered by "other people profiting with my free software" you will of course choose GPL to have an option to sue. If you don't care, you will choose BSD or GPL for another reason. Neither option will make much of a difference on the success of your project.
  • HerraBRE 13y ago
    My apologies if this is slightly inflammatory, but in my opinion preferring BSD-style licenses over copyleft licenses is both selfish and elitist (or classist, if you will). It's an attitude which says that as long as the elite class of techies get freedom to do as they like, that's good enough. The freedom of the end-users does not matter, even to the point that when Free Software advocates ask developers to take their end-user's freedoms into account, that request is met with outright hostility. It's a very selfish and one-sided type of freedom. Freedom for us, not for them. Freedom to oppress, monetize and lock-in the peons who don't know how to code.
    • clarry 13y ago
      Permissive licenses give freedoms for techies and users equally. If it's free for one, it's free for the other. Less permissive licenses, and the GPL in particular, restrict both users and techies. Users can be subject to oppression, monetization and lock-in if they are willing. But it is their choice. And if they so want, they can grab that free code and hire a developer to "oppress, monetize, and lock-in" the other guy. If he is willing to be oppressed.
    • dragonwriter 13y ago
      > It's an attitude which says that as long as the elite class of techies get freedom to do as they like, that's good enough. The freedom of the end-users does not matter I actually don't see the additional restrictions in the GPL as doing much for end users, per se. The real beneficiaries are still developers, just developers one level further removed from the licensor than the beneficiaries of the freedom in permissive licenses. But if you think that a substantial portion of the people using your work under a permissive license are themselves likely to offer a Free/Open license (whether permissive or copyleft), a copyleft license actually may reduce the freedom actually experienced by the indirect beneficiaries as well as that experienced by direct licensees.
    • joesb 13y ago
      What freedom does BSD takes from users? Users are equally welcome to use BSD code. BSD allow anyone to do anything to BSD code. GPL prevents developers from doing everything to GPL code. That says more about users being selfish and eilitst than the other way around. Why? Just because they are end-users means they are better then me? That's exactly selfish right there.
  • EGreg 13y ago
    I would say that the FSF is using Free Software as a weapon to get all the other proprietary software to open up. Usually the biggest barriers to entry by free software are network effects and proprietary agreements. See the recent article about Bloomberg http://mattturck.com/2014/03/19/can-the-bloomberg-terminal-be-toppled/ http://mattturck.com/2014/03/19/can-the-bloomberg-terminal-b... (I bet someone at bloomberg read it because they released an article the next day: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-20/tesla-can-topple-the-car-dealer-monopoly http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-20/tesla-can-t...)
    • einhverfr 13y ago
      That's why so much new software is FOSS. It's basically the only way to break in without massive funding and unrealistic expectations. Again, freedom is economically valuable.
  • mcguire 13y ago
    "Yeah, SunOS forked from BSD. How is it doing these days compared to the open source versions?" How is BSD doing compared to Linux? (Keeping in mind that BSD is officially something like 20 years older than Linux.) I wonder how much better it would be doing if it hadn't been forked so many times by so many really smart people in the 80's and 90's?
    • einhverfr 13y ago
      I can personally count the FreeBSD contributors in the LedgerSMB community. I don't know that firm counts are really possible but I would say FreeBSD ports were one of the first packages formally added (even before Debian). It's hard to say for sure. However, from what I have seenof the FreeBSD community, they seem quite active and vibrant.
  • belorn 13y ago
    > The question, rather literally is who has a right to tell you what license your works go under, and under what circumstances. When ever I see this question put forth regarding GPL, I see it as extremely dishonest question. No one want to license software just for licensing sake. What some people want to do is to prohibit copying, modification and usage of work in order to create profits. The question you actually asking is: Who has the right to tell if restrictions on copying, modification and usage is allowed on a work. It has nothing to do with freedom, and the answer is always going to be the author. Political philosophers has long since past agreed that permission to restrict other people freedom is not liberty.
    • einhverfr 13y ago
      > The question you actually asking is: Who has the right to tell if restrictions on copying, modification and usage is allowed on a work. It has nothing to do with freedom, and the answer is always going to be the author. Political philosophers has long since past agreed that permission to restrict other people freedom is not liberty. Read the full blog post. The question goes effectively to a question of enumerated liberties vs work ownership, and myself siding with the latter. There may be lots of reasons to license or not under the BSD license but once you do, then you are saying that anyone downstream gets to own their own work. Again I define "own" and "work" in the piece. I would recommend you read it.
  • thatthatis 13y ago
    Well said. I've tried in the past to articulate the "creator's freedom" that you're talking about. To my view copy middle is the only truly free as in freedom licensing paradigm. But, I also don't think proprietary software is necessarily evil.
  • dTal 13y ago
    >Freedom can't be defined as a freedom from restriction or a Lockean framework of liberty, as Stallman imagines, but rather the freedom to engage creative or productive endeavors without micromanagement from others. How is "freedom to engage creative or productive endeavors without micromanagement from others" not a "freedom from restriction"? Is the implication here that using the GPL is tantamount to "micromanagement from others"? Because I don't really see it. >one need not worry so much about people misappropriating things because in the end they cannot out-compete what is free and open. Yeah, SunOS forked from BSD. How is it doing these days compared to the open source versions? That's not the example I would pick. How about Apple forking FreeBSD? >The question, rather literally is who has a right to tell you what license your works go under I'm not sure what this has to do with GPL vs BSD. Nobody has the right to force you to use a particular license. Ideally, nobody gets to change the license of code you wrote either, just because they changed a variable name. It is this particular guarantee that the GPL provides and BSD doesn't.
• chroem 13y ago
  It seems like HN is mostly missing the point. Stallman's four essential freedoms are intended to fix proprietary software vendors abusing their users. For example, let's say there's some "open source" software that allows you to read the code, but prevents you from distributing it. Well, what's stopping them from slipping in a nasty backdoor in their binaries if you're not allowed to compile your own clean version? I'm really shocked, and quite frankly disgusted, that you all can be so critical of free software after all that has come to light about the NSA.
  • einhverfr 13y ago
    > For example, let's say there's some "open source" software that allows you to read the code, but prevents you from distributing it. I think btw that is a bigger restriction than allowing you to distribute the binary but not read the code.
• vezzy-fnord 13y ago
  What's more is that terms "open source" and "closed source" by themselves allow many companies (like GitHub) to sneakily evade the stigma of shelving out proprietary software. After all, you can view the source, right? So it must be open source! And it technically, is, too. Even if not by the OSI definition, it still fits the criteria, because having source access is only one piece of the puzzle. What's more is "closed source" sounds much less scary than "proprietary". Now you might say that the same can be said for "free software". Not if you explicitly denote it as "libre" or "free as in freedom", in which case its meaning becomes unequivocal. Terminology matters.
  • jasonlotito 13y ago
    > After all, you can view the source, right? So it must be open source! And it technically, is, too. No. It's not. It's technically viewable source, or readable source, but it's not open, which as you know, needs to meet certain criteria. Those of us who have been around long enough know this old game. Microsoft has tried this in the past. If it doesn't pass by OSI, it's not open source, and that matters to some of us. It's also why being an "open source" company is meaningless to many of us.
• ramonex 13y ago
  "all existing free software would qualify as open source" - does Stallman missed Freeware software? I hate this guy.
  • mpyne 13y ago
    Stallman has a rather precise definition of "Free" software, which does not include freeware (i.e. "free as in beer") software.
    • vertex-four 13y ago
      It's not just Stallman insisting on it. "Free software" has been a well-defined term for a long while now.
• jestinjoy1 13y ago
  I got the point "Free" in Free Software. Whether it ends up in giving the software Free since we can modify and redistribute Free Software?
• captainmuon 13y ago
  The distinction between Open Source and Free Software seems increasingly silly to me (as a user and someone who has to program for his job, but is not a developer, and is not terribly interested in licenses). Both are open source (lowercase) as in, I can see the source openly. That's what's important for me, personally. Then there is the question of Copyleft or not, which is partially orthogonal to that. Copyleft is this neat hack of the copyright system where you can make people who use your code (and care about copyright) share their code, too. I think the real question Stallman is addressing is copyleft vs. non-copyleft. ) In fact, I'd be really happy if e.g. Microsoft would "open their source", that is show the source code to Windows, even under a ultra non-permissive license a la: "You may not use this for anything."
  • jordigh 13y ago
    Is the distinction between "advanced interrogation techniques" and "torture" also silly to you? How about the distinction between a republic and a democracy? Or the distinction between socialism and communism? Copyleft vs non-copyleft is not the distinction between free and open source. The distinction is about the emphasis in the language, that's all. Stallman wants people to think about their freedom. The open source initiative wants to sweep this freedom talk under the rug.
    • jessaustin 13y ago
      Yes, it depends, and no, respectively.
  • vezzy-fnord 13y ago
    In fact, I'd be really happy if e.g. Microsoft would "open their source", that is show the source code to Windows, even under a ultra non-permissive license a la: "You may not use this for anything." That is proprietary software. Source code by itself is useless when you have no rights to go with it. This is why "open source" is such a sly term. Companies can very easily pull off shenanigans like in your hypothetical scenario and then hide behind the banner of "open source". They would also technically be correct, even if not abiding by the OSI. After all, it sure as hell isn't closed source! Free software, so long as you specify "libre" or "free as in freedom", is unequivocal. Bullshit like freely viewable source without distribution rights doesn't cut it. Your views are misguided, and are even potentially harmful.
• sdegutis 13y ago
  I used to put a lot of stock into RMS's philosophy of How The World Works Best™. Now I ask myself why I don't just treat it any differently than reading some random blog on the internet. Yes, RMS has done great work in leading emacs through the ages. That's pretty awesome. But that doesn't really give him any credibility in the realm of philosophy. And such a social and human topic as software licensing is pretty genuinely venturing into actual philosophy.
  • splawn 13y ago
    Correct me if im wrong, but I don't think he just invented this mindset out of nowhere. It was born from the hacker culture at MIT before industry completely took over software production. Im not very hip on philosophy, what makes someone a credible philosopher?
    • zenbowman 13y ago
      Absolutely, but that model relied on programmers being paid by MIT, who was in turn paid by the US taxpayer. It was never going to pay for millions of programmers salaries, it was designed for the elite few. I think the past decade has shown that free, open source, and completely proprietary software can all co-exist without negatively affecting consumer choice.
      • icebraining 13y ago
        Absolutely, but that model relied on programmers being paid by MIT, who was in turn paid by the US taxpayer. It was never going to pay for millions of programmers salaries, it was designed for the elite few. My paycheck disagrees with the assertion that the model relies on programmers being paid by MIT. It's certainly less profitable than writing proprietary code, but I see no reason why it can't pay for millions of programmers' salaries. And no, the fact that it doesn't right now is not proof of that, because proprietary software crowds out free software jobs. I'm talking about the hypothetical situation of all software written being Free.
        • 13y ago
• herge 13y ago
  It seems that the only reason why people would prefer BSD/MIT over the GPL is to say "I want people to give me their code for free but I may want to sell it in the future."
  • clarry 13y ago
    Or maybe they just want their code to be unquestionably free. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7404914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7404914 Besides, there's nothing wrong with selling software. And for what it's worth, I can sell GPL software too, even though it's not free.
    • dublinben 13y ago
      Placing any license on code imposes restrictions. The only "unquestionably free" license is public domain.
      • clarry 13y ago
        Actually the restrictions are imposed by copyright law. A license is used to lift away these restrictions. I would agree about public domain, if it existed everywhere in a usable manner.
      • nycticorax 13y ago
        This is just incorrect. By default, you retain the copyright to things that you write. Which means that others can't make copies without getting your approval. And in many jurisdictions, it is not at all clear that you can relinquish your copyright simply by declaring your work to be in the public domain. So by default, there are legal restrictions on what others can do with things you write. It's called a "license" because it enumerates the things you are explicitly _allowing_ others to do with something you hold the copyright to. Without a license, the default "rules" of copyright apply. Licenses don't impose restrictions, they remove them. Liberal licenses (BSD, MIT, etc) allow you to do nearly everything you can do with something in the public domain. Copyleft licenses (GPL, etc) allow you to do somewhat less, with the notion being that this restriction of your freedom increases the overall freedom of everyone.
• bjourne 13y ago
  The point, for me at least, is to increase the total volume of freedom in the world. Here is a radical thought: Western Civilization hasn't reached "freedom peak". The freedom level can continue to rise or it can decrease. Peasants in the Middle Ages probably thought they were free. We think we are free. How silly do we think those peasants were? How silly will future generations think we are? It depends. If everyone just shrugs their shoulders, then we can easily slide back to the Middle Ages. Freedom is not monotonically rising all the time. What I, who likes computers much more than people, can do to generate freedom is write free software. It's not much but it provides value and proves that valuable stuff can be produced without a profit motive and that salary slavery isn't necessary to ensure that good software is programmed. That's why I like the GPL. In a way that is saying "This is highly valuable software, but you can have it for free, provided..." vs BSD "Do whatever you want with this shit I just wrote for fun." Free software is great fun and I contribute to it only because I like writing code, but as a side effect of that I'm also, well, improving the world one tiny step at a time.
  • aaron-lebo 13y ago
    You can have an end goal of increasing freedom and just disagree that coercing people in any way shape or form to spread that freedom is either wrong or counterproductive. Especially if you have a belief that simply sharing knowledge is a way of increasing freedom and human advancement, "do whatever you want with this shit I just wrong for fun" can be just as powerful. Really when you get down to it, the battle is still open source (however you want to define it) vs non open source, and squabbles between copyleft vs permissive can miss the larger picture.
    • phillmv 13y ago
      They really don't. I have almost zero control over my phone (a situation that only slightly improves with Android) and even then limited control over my workstation. You're not even allowed to use GPL'd code on Apple app stores. It'd be great if the distinction were merely academic.
    • zanny 13y ago
      The GPL operates under a spectrum: Proprietary software takes away your rights <----> permissive <----> free software guarantees your rights It is about the user, not the developer. The free software movement for the most part sees the power of the developer to take away a users rights as unethical, and does what they can (via copyright) to correct that.
• IgorPartola 13y ago
  Free Software is dead. Long Live Open Source Software. The reason for this is simple: Free Software is simply too radical for most practical uses. The majority of users don't care about the philosophical benefits of one over the other and are never going to contribute back to the original project (think of the millions of Android/Linux or Firefox users). On the other hand, OSS allows plenty of practical benefits: you can view the source, fork it, often times contribute to it. It's often done on good faith. Think of all the projects released under the Apache or MIT licenses which are doing so great. Who cares if someone somewhere is not contributing back: most people that matter do and the license does not hinder them. The GPL is an appropriate license for lots of projects, such as the Linux kernel. Those are too important and too large a target to leave to good faith. However, something like a JavaScript framework of the week does not benefit from being GPL. Also, think of all those BSD distributions. Having said that, open source your technology now. Not your secret sauce, but most of your code can be OSS. No reason to hide the Rails app that runs your site. It's not why you are making money, so open it up and let others take a peek. The worst thing that's going to happen is that nobody will look. Chances are, nobody will clone your exact product because you are likely delivering value that's past just the code you are writing.
  • Flimm 13y ago
    Copyleft and permissive licenses are all both free/libre and open source. The distinction between free/libre and open source does not lie in the distinction between copyleft and permissive licenses.
  • fluidcruft 13y ago
    You seem to be under the very, very, very mistaken understanding that "Free Software" requires either the GPL or copyleft. Apache, MIT, BSD, GPL are all both Free Software licenses and Open Source licenses. The definitions make "Open Source" and "Free Software" almost synonymous. But the term "Open Source" is much easier to co-opt and abuse. There are a variety of things that broadcast themselves as "Open Source" based only on the sense that "Hey you can look at our code! You can't actually do anything with our code, but hey you can look at it, so duh, it's Open Source!". This is not actually Open Source. The problem with Open Source is that it seems intuitive that these Open Source posers could be correct--the "open" vs "open" clarification is more difficult and nuanced and not-intuitive esp. compared to clarifying the meaning of Free in Free Software as "free as in freedom" vs "free as in beer".
• gress 13y ago
  The problem is that code doesn't afford freedom. Money does. So to the extent that a license inhibits users of a codebase from making money, it is anti-freedom.
  • dllthomas 13y ago
    To the extent that the Underground Railroad inhibits would-be slave-owners from making money, it's anti-freedom. Note that I'm quite emphatically not saying these are exactly the same thing, but pointing out by example that there are other factors that can clearly be far more important.
    • gress 13y ago
      It's not clear at all what you are trying to say. If you think there are other more important factors, why don't you just say what they are?
      • dllthomas 13y ago
        There are some obvious important factors - most importantly the ability to extend my software (or pay others to do so) and to thereby ensure continued interoperability.
        • gress 13y ago
          Why are these more important than the ability for developers to make money?
          • dllthomas 13y ago
            In general, because an increasing amount of our lives are dependent on software and there are far more users than developers. Note crucially that we're not talking about all ability to make money (as we would be with Non-Commercial clauses); we're talking about the difference between the ability to earn money based on copyleft code (demonstrably non-zero) versus non-copyleft code (probably more).
• hacknat 13y ago
  There are a host of issues that one could take with Stallman's proposals/ideas, but one that I think doesn't get much attention is the slight falseness in some of his assumptions. We give up our freedom to a plethora of things in the world all the time that we all interact with (be it cars, planes, microwaves, televisions, etc). I interact with tons of products that I know, in theory, could threaten me because they are closed systems, but I use them anyway. I suspect RMS does the same and I'm sure he and I try to be cautious and judicious of our use of these things (many others are probably not). For example, I use Gmail. I know that there is a possibility, however remote, that my correspondence could be hacked or used against me in some way, because of the distributed and closed source nature of the program I'm using. I don't care though. I simply don't trust Gmail with correspondence that is sensitive to my personal life and I get along happily. How is Gmail impinging on my freedom if I am able to choose, taking a knowing risk? I know RMS would respond that since I don't have access to the source that I actually don't know the risks that I am taking, but I think this is a straw man. Even if every product in the world was open source we would all still be taking risks with them, because there is no way we could spend our time reviewing all of the specific implications of every product.
  • fluidcruft 13y ago
    If your statement proves anything it's that you are unfamiliar with RMS and his writings beyond what trolls write. Also, what on Earth do you think you are proving by building a strawman and then explicitly arguing about it being a strawman?
  • mwfunk 13y ago
    That's actually probably not how RMS would respond. He goes out of his way to emphasize that Free Software is fundamentally about morality rather than any sort of pragmatic reasons like security. He would probably make some analogy equating you choosing to use Gmail with some hypothetical people in the past choosing slavery or indentured servitude because they either didn't know any better or had no better choices in life. He might even chastise you for choosing expediency over moral correctness, and he might even question your own morality because you are contributing to the capital-E Evil in the world by doing so. You might think that this is somewhat crazy and shortsighted and absolutist and nonconstructive, and you might question the groundedness of someone who equates other people's choices in mail clients with things like slavery, and you'd be quite correct in feeling that way. If you then vocalize these concerns, you will be roundly flamed by one or more CS undergrads claiming that you just don't get it and that you either need to get on board or be steamrollered by history. You might think said CS undergrads are also a little lacking in the groundedness and perspective departments, and you'd probably be right about that too.
• yeukhon 13y ago
  To begin, my position on this matter has been clear for years: both free software (as defined by Stallman) and non-free software (as defined by Stallman) can co-exist. I believe in free market (not ideal free market). --> For the free software movement, however, nonfree software is a social problem, and the solution is to stop using it and move to free software. We in the free software movement don't think of the open source camp as an enemy; the enemy is proprietary (nonfree) software. But we want people to know we stand for freedom, so we do not accept being mislabeled as open source supporters. These two quotes strike me. Why should we label proprietary software as enemy? If we clone all proprietary developers to work on free software alternatives, then we definitely have more options to choose from. The problem is not a social problem -- it isn't that people, average like my parents, don't know free software exists - but because there aren't enough to choose from. Like I said, if you can clone all of the developers to work on free alternatives every day, you will definitely have free alternatives. If you only have a handful of people working part-time as a hobby to contribute to free software, how can you compete with proprietary software? I am not against free software. I like free software (as defined by R.S). I like open source. I also think proprietary softwares have value. Note here on HNs a lot of people run X-as-a-service. In the ideal world, if everyone knows how to program, if everyone has access to a computer, if everyone has time, we could have the old Internet back; imagine a world where everyone can write, distribute and host their free X-as-a-service for people to use? That's why knowledge base like Wikipedia is important to us. I like this ideal world, but at the moment this is not easy to achieve. You don't need to teach me to use free software. If it is free and open source, and reliable, I will use it. But if the interface is ugly, unusable, crashes all the time, and if there is no reason for me to contribute back (say an IRC client), I will dump that software and look for something else. I am a programmer, but I am not going to contribute to every software I use. I don't have the time. I don't have the necessary skill. I have more important things to do like finishing my work, looking after my family, relax, cooking, working on my hobby project, and getting enough sleep. --> But software can be said to serve its users only if it respects their freedom. What if the software is designed to put chains on its users? Then powerfulness means the chains are more constricting, and reliability that they are harder to remove <delete chars> Sooner or later these users will be invited to switch back to proprietary software for some practical advantage. This is a good time to re-mention MS Office vs LibreOffice/OpenOffice. I am fine with LibreOffice's Word processor and PowerPoint program until I need to do something complex. If I just need a quick PPT or a quick doc I can get away with LibreOffice. But when I need something complex, polished, I like to use MS Office. True I have been raised to use MS Office since I was a kid. It is true MS is locking me in all the time, but it is simply because the features in LibreOffice is still lagging behind. I will be happy to dump Office completely if LibreOffice continue to improve. --> Under pressure from the movie and record companies, software for individuals to use is increasingly designed specifically to restrict them. This malicious feature is known as Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) (see DefectiveByDesign.org) and is the antithesis in spirit of the freedom that free software aims to provide. And not just in spirit: since the goal of DRM is to trample your freedom, DRM developers try to make it hard, impossible, or even illegal for you to change the software that implements the DRM. I don't want to start a flame war on DRM. This is as dirty as complex as politics. After reading the FAQ on http://www.defectivebydesign.org/faq#what http://www.defectivebydesign.org/faq#what I will point out a few striking remarks: If you purchase electronic copies of games from Steam, you can't sell them or share them with a friend after you're done playing them. I don't see this as a violation of my freedom. If the license given to me is restricted to my account, why is it okay for me to distribute it to my friends and everyone in my friends' circles? The other examples may be violation of freedom, I won't argue. What do you propose? Create a universal gaming platform where you can download games and all you need to access a game is to own an account. Say pay $29.99 and I can run a Steam game I didn't purchase but acquire from my friend? If Steam has a feature to transfer game (say only once) but locked to Steam platform, is that a violation of freedom? Are Hollywood the one to blame? Not exclusively. This way, all their customers remain dependent on them, and helps maintain their dominant position in the market. I think this is a direct attack on anyone who is trying to come up solutions. If you are a solution technology company, your job is to create a solution. Just as Google is an excellent search engine I feel attached to using it because it provides what I want 8/10 times. As a customer of Google's search engine, I am okay with Google keeping its dominant position by using the search engine. When Google SE fails to deliver the right results I might use Yahoo, Bing or even DDG. --> I feel like a lot of the free software advocates seem to be against the existence of proprietary software and any business depends on proprietary software development. As I have said before, I think both can co-exist. Do I want free software? Of course. I would like to own a free copy of Mac OSX and able to modify from start to finish. But I don't think everyone should be told to use free software.
• midas007 13y ago
  "Why Free Software missed the point of Open Source.": doing WTF you like, commercial or not.
  • dllthomas 13y ago
    To be clear: Free Software does not object to commercial activity. Copyleft requirements happen to get in the way of some commercial activity, which the FSF and related community finds objectionable for reasons unrelated to its commercial nature. Stallman opposes "noncommercial" requirements in licenses, no FSF license has these, and such clauses are reason to call a license "nonfree".
    • thatthatis 13y ago
      Gpl on commerce, in a nutshell: Sell this software without ability to modify: tyrant Use this software to create a closed REST API: no problem
      • dllthomas 13y ago
        The license doesn't prevent the latter, but the FSF doesn't approve. There's also the AGPL, which would forbid the closed REST API. None of that means there's no opportunity to make money. People might pay for convenience (I don't have to set up and run my own server, even though I technically could) or access to networks - if Facebook AGPL'ed their whole stack, people using Facebook would keep using Facebook because their friends are on Facebook.
        • thatthatis 13y ago
          So, where is the line where providing services with the software becomes acceptable? An API is obviously a service provided with the software, but so is consulting using a GPL statistical package. How, and where, can you draw the line between those things?
          • chriswarbo 13y ago
• EGreg 13y ago
  For the record I am more of an open source guy. I think tools are used by people in all sorts of ways and I care about how good they are and that they should gently encourage the right kind of culture. Free software is about liberty as the foremost social value and derives everything from there. It would be interesting to many laissez faire market advocates that almost all the Free Software advocates are extremely leftist civil libertarians. In fact the whole thing might not compute for anarcho capitalists because the main enemy of Free Software -- which is restricted or unfree software -- is produced and used, not by governments, but by corporations. You might realize why they are so leftist and why they actually use the copyright laws to ENFORCE software freedom (an interesting twist!) when you realize that their main enemy is privately held companies who build large platforms on top of proprietary codebases. I am for open source for practical reasons, they are for free software for philosophical reasons. And lookit: The PRIVATE COMPANY (which anarcho capitalists so admire as the outcome of a completely laissez faire society) is in fact the government over its little jurisdiction, which is the proprietary installed code base that people have. Such as the Bloomberg terminal, or Windows or the iPhone. In many industries, you have to pick one of several companies and they all are run as feudalism. They grant certain favors to some app developers and not others. You can't just deploy apps you write on them. The exceptions are Linux and the Web, etc. Which have in fact become the most widespread operating system and platform, respectively. Linux and other open source software did it using licenses on their code that USED GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT THROUGH COPYRIGHT to prevent the software being used by companies to lock people out. The Web did it through a culture of openness where every user could View Code and browsers had to conform to standards of bodies like W3C and WhatWG. My point can be summarized as usual: people create groups, and if it's not governments then it's companies. Someone will always be lording it over others, creating barriers to unrestricted freedom. And the most we can do is have systems to guide things away from terrible abuses of power.
  • EGreg 13y ago
    One of my friends (who is an anarcho capitalist) replied: There's nothing wrong with creating groups, as long as nobody forces me to be a member. I'll read about open source vs free software, but I think you know my view: I'm against IP because I'm against legal fictions, because they violate natural property rights. No one is forcing you to become a member of New York City or your particular town or state. You can move. What anarchists are really lamenting is the lack of available space where people havent set up a group with a government. That just goes to show how it emerges naturally out of other states, which can briefly be described as close to anarchist. And sometimes those states arent so glamorous. Anyway it's the same in software. It takes massive effort to build a system that is completely free for everybody. That is what the Free Software movement has done. But they are besieged at every turn by PRIVATE, proprietary interests such as businesses who lick their lips and want the "freedom" to use the software those guys built to RESTRICT the freedom of THEIR users. So the Free Software Foundation and its allies have a great ally in the US government and copyright laws! They use them specifically to banish infringers who would use software licensed under GNU License for example without giving their users freedoms. Interesting? Government helping keep people more free. Thats what happens when the perps are private companies and not governments. And to address your point - it is just as hard to move away from Windows and Mac, or from Android, iPhone and Blackberry all of them etc. as it is for you to move from the United States. Sure it's possible. But first you need a massive effort to build a natio-- err I mean a platform that is based on principles of freedom. And along the way you will need the help of governments to defend it from people easily coming in and ruining the whole thing because they were "free" to take what you built for their own selfish interests. The dynamics are almost exactly the same! But it's an interesting case study because software battles are virtual, hurt less people, and softwrae moves really fast. Yet you can actually see the problems that would happen with anarchy without enforcement. Even today, the free software movement is developing new licenses to combat a new threat: hardware that will only run an approved version of an open source program.
• sethish 13y ago
  This licensing terms of this article is not compatible with the GPL or the Debian Free Software Guidelines.
  • dublinben 13y ago
    This article isn't computer code, it's an editorial.
• Toenex 13y ago
  tl;dr Open Source is a necessary but not sufficient requirement for Free Software.
• pbbakkum 13y ago
  While its intentions are noble, in my experience the GPL is Free as in "you probably need a lawyer to ensure you're not violating it". Doubly so for AGPL. The irony of RMS spreading his own vision of "Freedom" is that the GPL restricts things which he doesn't agree with, which seems to violate the most basic principle there. I've been involved with several organizations which try to avoid GPL code, by policy, in favor of MIT/BSD because it raises too many issues. Not saying GPL hasn't done good things (my understanding is that much of Apple's compiler work is public bc they started with GPL code), but the wind seems to be blowing towards less restrictive OSS licenses.
• mixologic 13y ago
  Imagine a world where all software adheres to the tenets of Free software. Our freedoms would continue to be egregiously curtailed by website Terms of Service Agreements at, Contracts with the service providers of hardware devices, Firmware restrictions like UEFI safeboot, and legal straightjackets like software patents. I dont understand how the philosophical underpinnings of just the software are really all that effective in guaranteeing any sort of freedom without also having all the other freedoms we're already denied.
• ilaksh 13y ago
  The name "Free Software" is bad. The explanation is confusing. The idea that you can have a class of software that is Free but not GPL is confusing, and I'm not sure what he means unless he is just saying you can use other copyleft licenses. The obvious practical reality in our society driven by money is that if your product must include its source code then you may have some big problems making money or maintaining whatever competitive edge you had. Whatever your license says or the law says, if the source code is available its a good chance some people are going to copy your software and distribute it for less. Also, as far as old-school copyleft components (such as GPL, not LGPL), if including the component in my software means that I have to distribute the full source of my application, that means that I go from having a product that is only available by purchase to a product that someone can compile on their computer for free. The reality is that we live in a monetary society and people aren't always honest. And insisting that source code be distributed with proprietary software is not compatible with business. Now, I believe that the current form of the structural aspects of society related to business and the monetary system are ultimately incompatible with the truthful holistic application of science (technology) and with ethics in general. We need to fix that. Until we do, copyleft isn't practical for many products.
  • EGreg 13y ago
    I once wrote Richard Stallman suggesting what I thought was a much more helpful name, keeping all the good connotations but with less of the ambiguity: Liberating Software But I never heard back.
    • theorique 13y ago
      Some people use the term "Libre" or "Free as in Speech" also.
      • EGreg 13y ago
        I know that. That's why I wanted to choose a two-word English phrase which immediately conveyed the right thing without the downsides.
• bdicasa 13y ago
  How does the free software movement live in a capitalistic society? I'd be all for writing and contributing to free software if I could make a living off it. But I need to make a living, and that likely isn't coming from writing free software. I charge for my software because I want the freedom to choose what I create, rather than just pounding out code for someone else to make a profit from.
  • chriswarbo 13y ago
    > How does the free software movement live in a capitalistic society? One obvious way is to sell Free Software. The market has raced to the bottom recently, but a while ago a lot of GNU development was funded by Free Software sales. Compare this to proprietary software, which can't operate in a capitalistic society. It relies on government interference in the software market to create an artificial scarcity (ie. copyright).
    • bdicasa 13y ago
      How does one sell free software?
    • dragonwriter 13y ago
      > Compare this to proprietary software, which can't operate in a capitalistic society. Er, what? > It relies on government interference in the software market to create an artificial scarcity (ie. copyright). Capitalistic society relies on government involvement in the market to create property rights; among the property rights that were features of the systems for which the term "capitalism" was coined is copyright. So, to say that proprietary software cannot exist because it relies on government for the system of property rights that underlie it is a gross misunderstanding of "capitalism".
  • einhverfr 13y ago
    > How does the free software movement live in a capitalistic society? Define "capitalistic." If you mean free market there are all kinds of ways it can live. If you mean investor-backed corporations, then the answer is dual-licensing.
• cottonseed 13y ago
  It is interesting to read this through the eyes of the burgeoning Open Source Hardware (OSH) community. There seems to be an Free Hardware Foundation in Italy, but I have never seen it mentioned before, and rarely do I see discussion of the sort of essential freedoms I see Stallman is talking about. However, I often see people struggling with (and reverse engineering) proprietary hardware, firmware and software. Hardware tools often come feature locked and internals are intentionally obscured, down to sanding the labels off chips. When the question of open tools comes up, the response is usually something like this: "How much demand is there for, say, a 100 MHz open 'scope that costs a bit more than a Rigol?" Taken from a recent discussion about Free/Open Hardware: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7375771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7375771 Does the Free Hardware movement need a Stallman?
  • vanderZwan 13y ago
    Eh... you do realise Arduino comes from Italy, right? That's not a coincedence. I'm currently studying Interaction Design at Malmö Hogskola, and have had David Cuartielles as a teacher. I have also seen Massimo Banzi give a workshop on the Arduino in the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design. So I can say from experience that there are Stallmans for open hardware out there.
    • cottonseed 13y ago
      I think you misunderstand my comment. I know there are lots of advocates for OSH. But I don't think there is someone like Stallman who is advocating for free as in speech hardware the way Stallman does for software. I don't see the "social and ethical values" of the kind of freedom that Stallman talks about reflected in OSH discussions. However, I only see the English language part of the conversation, so something different might be happening in Europe/Italy.
• lazylizard 13y ago
  Anyone is free to copy, modify, publish, use, compile, sell, or distribute the original SQLite code, either in source code form or as a compiled binary, for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and by any means.
• einhverfr 13y ago
  Question: If I license my software under the GNU Free Documentation License and include invariate sections, is it still free?
• markhahn 13y ago
  Stallman is wrong that proprietary software hurts users; that's the essence of his critique. It's sad that so much software has sailed under the GPL flag of convenience, simply because it existed and could avoid license bikeshedding. Most of the efforts embodied in Linux or even GCC are not motivated by RMS's political spin. What's really unfortunate about his noise is that it has consumed the air that should be supporting more fundamental topics - especially the nature of protocols (which must be free, documented and unencumbered in order to really qualify as protocols.) The IETF really embodies the philosophy that has made the net a success.