5 ms·

In the world RMS wants, Apple would not have the right to develop Swift and make it proprietary. That's pretty incredible to me, and far more relevant than dis

In the world RMS wants, Apple would not have the right to develop Swift and make it proprietary. That's pretty incredible to me, and far more relevant than discussing Swift's barriers to adoption. In RMS's world, hackers close ranks to make sure the power stays in the hands of the people, not the corporations. Sure, corporations might develop a bit of proprietary code now and then, but they are outpaced by armies of hackers writing GPLed code and replicating any innovations they develop. All the best compiler toolchains are GPLed in this world, and corporations are basically forced to participate in the Free Software movement, or suckle at its teat. It would not be possible in practice to sell software, because any software your computer could run would have to be GPLed! A lot of other stuff happened instead. Now we have hackers working at corporations writing open-source code and sharing it with other corporations and the world. Companies don't sell software so much as provide various human and computer services. Corporations aren't evil, they can provide funding and organizational structure that is actually pretty valuable. And so on.

gillianseed 12y ago
>In the world RMS wants, Apple would not have the right to develop Swift and make it proprietary. In the world RMS wants, people would shun proprietary software due to it not giving them the rights which are afforded to them through copyleft. This is what he is advocating, that people should not accept proprietary software due to it not respecting their rights, not that proprietary software should be illegal.
- quadrangle 12y ago
  aside from obfuscated or secret source, proprietary software relies on legal restrictions. RMS would be perfectly fine removing the artificial legal restrictions that proprietary terms use if it didn't hurt the ability to protect software freedom for free software. Proprietary software terms should be illegal.
__david__ 12y ago
What you're saying is misleading. Here's how I would say it: "In the world RMS wants, Apple would not have the right to develop Swift on top of a GPL-ed compiler platform and make it proprietary." That's not incredible at all, and makes perfect sense. I've never seen the the Free Software movement as "hackers" against "corporations". Places like Cygnus (bought by Red Hat) made a mint selling Free Software consulting services. Nobody ever had a problem with that. They thrived because they were good and they solved real problems for people. None of that is antithetical to either the Free Software movement or corporations.
boomlinde 12y ago
> In the world RMS wants, Apple would not have the right to develop Swift and make it proprietary. I am glad that you are more clear about this position of his than he is himself. Personally, I would never have guessed it.
- hga 12y ago
  The utopia he desired circa ... 1988 or so was one where all programmers were paid to do their thing by the government, and all software was his type of free.
  - dgreensp 12y ago
    Great, we programmers can quit our jobs and compete for a small number of government grants like the academics! :)
    - hga 12y ago
      Well, it was implied that everyone would be eligible for these grants, but, yeah, in reality, only a few would be allowed to program, and one reason RMS probably didn't think about it is that he's a good enough programmer that he'd qualify. Except, of course, the process would be very political, and he doesn't play that game at all well.
- djur 12y ago
  "The FSF campaigns for free software adoption and against proprietary software." - fsf.org/about The FSF position is and always has been that the distribution of non-free/proprietary software works against the "freedom of computer users". That last word is important, because the FSF concerns itself with the rights of end users, not programmers or software companies. That's the big philosophical divide between "free software" and "open source": the 'free' side makes an ethical/consumer protection argument concerning end users, while the 'open' side makes a pragmatic argument mostly concerning developers (cathedral vs. bazaar, etc.).
  - boomlinde 12y ago
rdtsc 12y ago
> A lot of other stuff happened instead But before that happened something else happened (which is more important, and you forgot about it, it seems) and that is GCC, Linux and other free software. Linux runs on tiniest embedded devices, Android phones, military hardware, servers, and so on. It was possible in large by GCC and GNU. Have you been around in the early 90s and 80s. Having high grade OSes or compilers that were free as in beer or speech would have sounded ridiculous. You'd sound like you were from Mars if you talked about such things. Yet here we are. We have reliable, high grade operating systems based on ideas of fruits of free software movement -- CentOS, Ubuntu, Deb etc. Because of GPL in large anyone can take advantage and reap the benefits of shared work (such as by using CentOS instead of RHEL) while letting Redhat employees still put bread on the table. Show me Apple's OS X code that was modified for NetBSD and FreeBSD projects? Where are those improvements? I haven't seen them. So yes now this "service" and "cloud" stuff is happening. But let not forget that for this to happen the even the idea of "open source" and "free software" as viable alternative had to take root. I believe if it were not for GPL and Stallman we wouldn't have had this culture of sharing between large corportations.

gillianseed 12y ago

>In the world RMS wants, Apple would not have the right to develop Swift and make it proprietary. In the world RMS wants, people would shun proprietary software due to it not giving them the rights which are afforded to them through copyleft. This is what he is advocating, that people should not accept proprietary software due to it not respecting their rights, not that proprietary software should be illegal.

quadrangle 12y ago
aside from obfuscated or secret source, proprietary software relies on legal restrictions. RMS would be perfectly fine removing the artificial legal restrictions that proprietary terms use if it didn't hurt the ability to protect software freedom for free software. Proprietary software terms should be illegal.

__david__ 12y ago

What you're saying is misleading. Here's how I would say it: "In the world RMS wants, Apple would not have the right to develop Swift on top of a GPL-ed compiler platform and make it proprietary." That's not incredible at all, and makes perfect sense. I've never seen the the Free Software movement as "hackers" against "corporations". Places like Cygnus (bought by Red Hat) made a mint selling Free Software consulting services. Nobody ever had a problem with that. They thrived because they were good and they solved real problems for people. None of that is antithetical to either the Free Software movement or corporations.

boomlinde 12y ago

> In the world RMS wants, Apple would not have the right to develop Swift and make it proprietary. I am glad that you are more clear about this position of his than he is himself. Personally, I would never have guessed it.

hga 12y ago
The utopia he desired circa ... 1988 or so was one where all programmers were paid to do their thing by the government, and all software was his type of free.
- dgreensp 12y ago
  Great, we programmers can quit our jobs and compete for a small number of government grants like the academics! :)
  - hga 12y ago
    Well, it was implied that everyone would be eligible for these grants, but, yeah, in reality, only a few would be allowed to program, and one reason RMS probably didn't think about it is that he's a good enough programmer that he'd qualify. Except, of course, the process would be very political, and he doesn't play that game at all well.
djur 12y ago
"The FSF campaigns for free software adoption and against proprietary software." - fsf.org/about The FSF position is and always has been that the distribution of non-free/proprietary software works against the "freedom of computer users". That last word is important, because the FSF concerns itself with the rights of end users, not programmers or software companies. That's the big philosophical divide between "free software" and "open source": the 'free' side makes an ethical/consumer protection argument concerning end users, while the 'open' side makes a pragmatic argument mostly concerning developers (cathedral vs. bazaar, etc.).
- boomlinde 12y ago

rdtsc 12y ago

> A lot of other stuff happened instead But before that happened something else happened (which is more important, and you forgot about it, it seems) and that is GCC, Linux and other free software. Linux runs on tiniest embedded devices, Android phones, military hardware, servers, and so on. It was possible in large by GCC and GNU. Have you been around in the early 90s and 80s. Having high grade OSes or compilers that were free as in beer or speech would have sounded ridiculous. You'd sound like you were from Mars if you talked about such things. Yet here we are. We have reliable, high grade operating systems based on ideas of fruits of free software movement -- CentOS, Ubuntu, Deb etc. Because of GPL in large anyone can take advantage and reap the benefits of shared work (such as by using CentOS instead of RHEL) while letting Redhat employees still put bread on the table. Show me Apple's OS X code that was modified for NetBSD and FreeBSD projects? Where are those improvements? I haven't seen them. So yes now this "service" and "cloud" stuff is happening. But let not forget that for this to happen the even the idea of "open source" and "free software" as viable alternative had to take root. I believe if it were not for GPL and Stallman we wouldn't have had this culture of sharing between large corportations.