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Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software

298 points by codelizard42 11y ago

outside1234 11y ago
tl;dr: "Free Software" is a religion that vilifies just about any commercial use of open source (Tivo, Apple, etc.). Open Source is the response to that that finds a pragmatic middle way.
- astazangasta 11y ago
  Ah, pragmatism: the reason we bombed Cambodia.
  - odiroot 11y ago
    Why the downvotes? I got a sensible chuckle.
    - fleitz 11y ago
      The truth often has the curious property of both being funny and offensive.
- zimbatm 11y ago
  It's easy to dismiss the freedom of tinkering as a religion. If it wasn't for that most entrepreneurs on HN wouldn't be able to start their own business at a fraction of original costs.
- davexunit 11y ago
  What an unbiased summary. Thanks for sharing.
- belorn 11y ago
  Like the pragmatic way of reinventing software because they are of the "wrong" license. Or are we talking about the pragmatic way of not updating software for several years because of licenses?
- madez 11y ago
  You berate free software as a religion while it is clearly not. Also, you say that it stands against commercialisation, while it does not, either. It only goes against excercising power over others to extort money, or literarily take their freedom away. In a way I think free licenses like the AGPLv3 do what the government should be doing. But today government is too easily influenced by companies, so it often doesn't act in the best interest of its people.
vinceguidry 11y ago
I love Stallman because he takes the very very long view and has shown himself to be remarkably adaptable over time. The battles he's fighting today are the same as they were 30 years ago, and they're still relevant. He's an anchor to a world that would be very much unmoored without him. Carry on, you magnificent bastard.
- aaron-lebo 11y ago
  I prefer permissive licenses like BSD/MIT over GPL for every project I work on/use, but I'm glad Stallman is around. He frames the issue, moors it as you said. Weird analogy perhaps, but MLK was acceptable to the establishment partially because you had more extreme individuals like Malcolm X. RMS makes permissive licenses acceptable because he's suggesting something more radical. Overton Window maybe?
unholythree 11y ago
I appreciate Stallman's views and agree with many of them but I just wish a slightly different word was chosen for the free in "free software". Now you have a situation where you need to correct an understandable misconception for the layperson almost everytime free software comes up.
- codelizard42 11y ago
  This is one of the reasons people in the Free Software community have been recently shifting away from wording like "free as in freedom", "Free and Open Source Software"/FOSS in favor of the use of the word "libre", "Free and Libre Open Source Software"/FLOSS
  - aschampion 11y ago
    Introducing more arbitrary jargon isn't going to make the distinction any more clear to a layperson, but if you do choose a neologism "libre" is just plain awkward.
    - unholythree 11y ago
      I disagree, I think it's better to have a term that requires explanation than a term people will misinterpret. There's an existing connotation of free as $0 that you have to combat, rather than a simple new word/term to define.
    - delecti 11y ago
      I'm not sure calling it a "neologism" is accurate. It's a borrowed word that has a clearer meaning than anything in English. Such a thing is hardly unprecedented in English.
    - superskierpat 11y ago
      This may be because I'm from quebec, but this is perfectly fine for me, its a word that is much more precise, since if the word does not have a proper translation, its a better idea to use the external, but uniquevocal, word.
aaronbrethorst 11y ago
This malicious feature is known as Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) Making up a new name for DRM, regardless of what you think of it, sounds childish and silly.
- quadrangle 11y ago
  It's not childish and silly at all. DRM is Digital Restrictions Management. That's what it is. It isn't an institution or a program code or anything, it's literally just language summarized. It's not like USA, it's more like LOL and AFK. Adapting it to a more accurate meaning is perfectly fine.
- codelizard42 11y ago
  Childish it may be, but rephrasing the term this way does better cover the majority of the actual use cases of the technology in the wild, IMHO
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  Didn't Stallman habitually refer to a certain disk operating system as 'MS-DOG'?
  - icebraining 11y ago
    Well, Emacs does (did?), but I don't know if that was rms' doing.
  - eosrei 11y ago
    It wouldn't be surprising if RMS said that and you got me to look it up. The source for "MS-DOG" seems to be Morten Welinder (http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/doc/msdog.html http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/doc/msdog.html)
- alayne 11y ago
  Reminds me of http://everything2.com/title/POSIX_ME_HARDER http://everything2.com/title/POSIX_ME_HARDER
btilly 11y ago
I think this is an important distinction to be aware of. Licenses like the GPL exist for a reason. And that reason is an attempt to maximize the amount of software that is free. Licenses like the MIT and BSD license exist for a different reason. And that reason is to give people who want to share what they did on generous terms a way to do so. And historically this was done in the belief that enlightened users would see it as being in their interest to contribute back. The result was that people who used generous licenses got frustrated that others would come along, use their software, criticize the original author for "not protecting freedom", then create a modified version that the original author was not free to use as they wish! Historically the free software movement was very clearly described with long essays by Stallman. With the open source marketing campaign, there were essays that people who liked more generous licenses could get behind. And indeed lots of people began producing free software with no encounter with the ideas that started the free software movement. The link above was Stallman's response to this. If you understand the conflict, then you can form your own opinion. Here is mine. When you choose a license, you should choose correctly for what you want to have happen. Would it outrage you for someone else to take your code, put a pretty GUI on top, sell it, and make millions while you make nothing? Well then, you shouldn't use a BSD license. By contrast you shouldn't use the GPL if your response would be, "Bully for them, I had fun and they made the world better." Conversely if someone else used an open source license, DO NOT assume that their motivations are yours. It is their code with their choice of license chosen for their reasons. Respect that.
- PaulHoule 11y ago
  For instance, the Gnu Public License serves the needs of Oracle very well and quite possibly helped MySQL AB be salable to Sun and thus to Oracle. Most of us who use MySQL are limited by the GPL, whereas Oracle has the right to use it in other ways, license it to specific customers on different terms, etc.
  - iwwr 11y ago
    That's why Stallman prefers distributed code copyright: if contributors own their contributions, then dual-licensing won't work. On the other hand, this prevented a project like the linux kernel from moving to gplv3 since the distributed corpus of contributors could not all agree to switch.
belorn 11y ago
The difference is most noticeable when a console or phone has open source software running which one can't modify, run or distribute because of DRM or patents. The software might be of better quality because it uses a common shared base, but as a user I have a hard time valuing it above proprietary developed software.
teh_klev 11y ago
Given how long ago this was written, the title should probably include the original publication date (2007).
forrestthewoods 11y ago
I continue to have a radically different opinion on what free means from Stallman. And that's fine! I've warmed up slightly to his viewpoint over time. Not enough to touch GPL software with a 10 foot pole. But slightly warmer none the less. I'm even glad he's out there vocalizing his view. That's generally a good thing. In the meantime I, and seemingly most of the community, will continue to use and push MIT style licenses.
- madez 11y ago
  Besides the fact that there is a lot of GPL-licensed software out there, what makes all this software so abhorrent to you that you wouldn't even come near to it? In general, I think rants need stated reasons.
hga 11y ago
I think a lot of this depends on what you place the most value in. While agreeing that the things RMS/GNU/FSF value are worthwhile and important, I place a higher value on "quality" and wide adaptation.
- stephenr 11y ago
  This is one thing I think many people don't realise. For RMS, code quality is not the #1 goal.
  - oldmanjay 11y ago
    You understate things a bit. In the view of rms every aspect of a software project is a sacrifice on the altar of the GPL, if necessary. It makes sense to have that policy when your goal is eradication of copyright, which is a goal quite a few people do share with the FSF. The trouble is, that's a destructive goal, and software is a creative enterprise, so things are fundamentally at odds and weird results happen, such as the refusal to allow a modular structure in GCC to prevent undesirable uses. A strange definition of freedom indeed! Edit: typo
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y ago
      The FSF's goal in essence is copyleft. Copyleft requires copyright law in order to work. As such, the FSF certainly does not intend to eradicate copyright, very much the opposite is true.
  - anon1385 11y ago
    I'd go even further than that. For RMS he'd rather a problem not be solved using computers at all, if solving the problem with computers would require or even just enable non-free software. The most recent example of this was the debate over refactoring tools in emacs that used an AST generated by gcc. RMS was against this, even though all the code involved was free, because it would mean exposing the AST generated by gcc to external processes, some of which might be non-free. So he'd rather people not have refactoring tools at all, than enable the possibility of a non-free IDE existing that uses the AST from gcc.
diminish 11y ago
Seeing this article again in previous discussions https://hn.algolia.com/?query=why%20open%20source%20misses&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=why%20open%20source%20misses&s... I suspect HN is refreshing its user base every 1 year or so.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- icebraining 11y ago
  we require contributors to the GNU project to (...) assign the copyright to us. Nope: "When the developers of a program make it a GNU package, they can decide either to give the copyright to the FSF so it can enforce the GPL for the package, or else to keep the copyright as well as the responsibility for enforcing the GPL." http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html
thsealienbstrds 11y ago
I can't help but think that the spirit of free software, namely control over your computing/computer, is more relevant today than it ever has been. Just that the problem doesn't really seem to be in any particular computer program... It's a shame that even the FSF has no solution for web services that make mass surveillance possible.
brudgers 11y ago
I admire Richard Stallman and believe that his efforts are among the most important contributions to practical ethics in the last 50 years...yet [and we knew there had to be one] the issue I have with the GNU license is that it is a license. It's use relies on all the same implicit threat of state sanctioned violence and its infrastructure as its closed proprietary opposites. The GNU license is meaningless without modern intellectual property focused trade agreements to provide teeth when there is a violation. The GNU license is inherently litigious. That's the nature of licensing. Alternative licenses are also de jure, but some are de facto non-litigious by virtue of permissiveness. The primary contract for a GNU license is legal and the social contract is secondary...I'm not giving back when I am coerced by the threat of legal sanction into the act. Gifts don't come with strings attached, and it is reasonable for someone to hold the ethical belief that true giving means placing creative works in the public domain. Which is to say that GNU lies on a spectrum and reflects some noble ethical values and not others. Among those ethical values GNU does not reflect are many that deem an intellectual property infrastructure backed by state sanctioned violence on behalf of wealth [e.g. music downloader prosecutions] worse than actions which GNU's copyleft prohibits.
- arto 11y ago
  Note that Stallman himself is quite comfortable with his notions about mandatory sharing being enforced through state violence: "Richard is against abolishing copyrights because, to his view, without copyright, enforcing copyleft would be impossible." http://rudd-o.com/monopolies-of-the-mind/thoughts-after-my-dinner-with-richard-stallman http://rudd-o.com/monopolies-of-the-mind/thoughts-after-my-d...
  - quadrangle 11y ago
    Indeed, Richard Stallman is self-described "not an Anarchist". So? Anarchism has lots of neat ideas and is right about a lot of philosophical things. It's a daunting challenge to convince anyone that it could practically work. On a large scale, it remains only theoretical discussion divorced from reality.
    - 11y ago
jakejake 11y ago
I think the cause would be better served if RMS would stop calling it "free" software and stop with the speech/beer analogy. As hilarious as the wordplay may be, most people simply don't get it. The other irony is that GPL is not even free (as in speech) either, it imposes rather strict conditions.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  I feel like you get the explanation reversed - everyone gets it, but it's just not that funny. Jokes that aren't funny are off-putting, not attractive.
  - jakejake 11y ago
    I should have added *sarcasm regarding the funny part. I have to disagree though, most users have no clue what that means other than it costs them nothing. And many developers simply ignore and violate the terms because they don't understand the restrictions.
  - quadrangle 11y ago
    it's not even supposed to be a funny joke. It's just an idea, "think free as in speech, not as in bear" is a plain thing to say just explaining which definition of the word is meant. It's not a joke or clever.
    - quadrangle 11y ago
      s/bear/beer
- grok2 11y ago
  I doubt that he is going for wordplay. Rather, he is trying to convey that it's not the price he is talking about when he says "free", but "freedom". And it's a simple example that makes the distinction and sticks. Maybe he should've called it "Freedom Software"?
- phkahler 11y ago
  >> The other irony is that GPL is not even free (as in speech) either, it imposes rather strict conditions. The only "strict condition" is that it enforces the golden rule. That's really all its designed for.
clarky07 11y ago
IMO, Free Software misses the point. it's open source things like MIT and BSD that actually allows entrepreneurs on HN to start businesses at a fraction of the cost of before. GPL helps not even a little bit. Open source is awesome, and amazingly useful to the community. "Free" software that I can't sell, is of almost no use to me or any other entrepreneur. Some people might be independently wealthy, the rest of us have to actually charge for our software so we can try to attain that goal. "Free" software doesn't benefit nearly as many people as "open source" software.
- callahad 11y ago
  > "Free" software that I can't sell, is of almost no use to me or any other entrepreneur. The Linux kernel is a strong counterexample to that claim.
  - clarky07 11y ago
    i've used linux plenty during my life, and yet i see very few people using it personally. i find Mac and Windows to be better in almost every way, and I doubt I ever use Linux again. i will give you servers though, they are certainly useful, and obviously key to many businesses. I'm not sure them being "free" is any better than it being "open source" though. It wouldn't change the equation at all, except that we might have a better version of linux that someone could also sell....
  - clarky07 11y ago
    As I'm thinking about this more, I think it almost makes my point even more. The only thing about Linux that is useful for an entrepreneur is that it is "free as in beer". How many startups are looking at the source code for Linux, ever? Certainly thankful for cheaper servers, but that could be accomplished with MIT or BSD, or even closed source.
    - callahad 11y ago
      And yet, in a competitive marketplace for servers, the BSDs and closed source operating systems have not succeeded to nearly the same degree as Linux, despite predating Linux by many years. Why do you think that is? (I'm not trying to be a jerk and ask rhetorical questions; I'm actually pretty jazzed that you're thinking about this critically.)
jokoon 11y ago
Eitherway, it will be difficult for some lonely, hard working programmer to release some code and attract contributors or make money out of it. This debate is just about politics of business and project management regarding the law, nothing more really. I don't like this debate, because its political nature does not have so much importance nor relevance. If you don't make money thanks to a project, you still need some time to work on it, and if it doesn't bring you money, how can conciliate this project and a paying job ? Unless your company understands open source and agrees to attract contributors, but what if you can't find any ? There are not so many programmers like Linus Torvalds out there who can really make it like he did. He is the best example open source has, but I think citing linux over and over to praise the open source model is really dishonest. Writing decent quality, open source software is really hard in term of management and business. There is not a lot of money to make in open source, or else it's pretty difficult to find a way to monetize it. You must be talented, find a network, and still find a source of income. It's pretty much like research. If you have time and food, go for it, but nothing will build a project better and faster than investors full of cash and NDAs. Nobody cares about open source or free software. Everyone just want to work in the industry, have a career, some colleagues, and not get screwed by lawyers. Open source will drive away lawyers, but it might also drive away cash. Not everybody can just code at home, without any income or on welfare, and just hope to become like carmack or torvalds. It's true that computer software is spoiled by money, but it's not specific to software.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  > Nobody cares about open source or free software. Everyone just want to work in the industry, have a career, some colleagues, and not get screwed by lawyers. Open source will drive away lawyers, but it might also drive away cash. Not everybody can just code at home, without any income or on welfare, and just hope to become like carmack or torvalds. This paragraph is utterly incorrect in a way I find almost senseless. It's almost like trolls from the 90s wrote it for you. I mean that in a technical sense, I'm not trying to disparage you. It's just a point of view I haven't seen espoused in over a decade. Edit: quoting against edits
  - capkutay 11y ago
epx 11y ago
"Why free software misses the point of open source."
epx 11y ago
"Why free software misses the point of open source."
MichaelCrawford 11y ago
"Open Source is the enemy." -- unknownlamer http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2005/7/21/161557/626/8#8 http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2005/7/21/161557/626/8#8
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
agounaris 11y ago
I cannot accept anything from a person eating something from his foot during a speech!
mekoka 11y ago
My issue with free software is the ideology. I tend to have mixed feelings about movements that claim to absolutely know what's good for humanity, no matter how noble the cause. I believe that if given the power to reach their goals we'd notice that a fraction of that same humanity will still end up suffering some consequences. Unless you can acknowledge that I cannot be a firm supporter. In the context of software, I'm more comfortable with open source because it has shown that it is aware of the "it depends" nature of the field today, and is capable to adapt to get to 60% of the goals _right now_ by reaching some compromises, rather than going nowhere because of principles. This is the definiton of Open Source, a really short read http://opensource.org/docs/osd http://opensource.org/docs/osd To me it's good enough. Some open source licenses can indeed be too restrictive, but as Stallman says himself Fortunately, few programs use such licenses. However, depending on your point of view free software as an ideology can also be too restrictive. Change is gradual and happens over time, but you need to give a chance to different parties to warm up to unfamiliar ideas. Open source accomplishes this. Free software as an ideology does too, albeit at a much slower pace. I think it's Max Planck who observed that (I'm paraphrasing) the world doesn't change because old smart people tend to warm up to new ideas, it does because as they die out, growing generations are familiarized with these same new ideas from the start. As I see more startups (and new executives from old companies) embracing open source, I have to concur. I understand Stallman's advocacy here and am even glad that it has perdured the way it has. It is a reminder of an ideal world towards which I feel open source actually strives to get. I'm still personally convinced that open source will be able to more successfully reach these goals with its flexibility than free software would with its rigidness.
curiously 11y ago
but here's the absurdity of free software. you got someone spending thousands of hours writing it and releases it. then you got hordes of freeloaders who bitch and moan about missing features and bugs for something they didn't pay for. So lot of developers try different ways like cyber-begging (donations), licensing, selling support which tends to only work for people who have reached critical mass where for majority of projects and software nobody bats an eye. and in closed free software (bundling malware, ads, annoying features). The latest is crowdfunding but some esoteric video compression library for some specific distro nobody is going to take out their wallet for. people who never pay for shit are the ones that are the most abusive. it's fucking appalling and my own negative experience of open sourcing and of other developers have made it clear that software or code is never to be released for free unless your motive is to monetize it later.
cwyers 11y ago
Or Free Software misses the point of Open Source -- Open Source isn't just Free Software done wrong, it's done by people with different motivations and values than Stallman.
ndesaulniers 11y ago
I think both stances have merit. Anyways, here's a plug for a meta-project; an open source definition of open source; https://github.com/nickdesaulniers/What-Open-Source-Means-To-Me https://github.com/nickdesaulniers/What-Open-Source-Means-To... kind of surprised no one has split hairs over free vs open source, yet.
ajarmst 11y ago
I sometimes think that RMS is to a certain extent the victim of the "the first task of a successful revolution is to kill all the leaders of the revolution" effect. Raymond and others sort of hijacked what was essentially a political philosophy and dressed it up for commercial palatability. (Full disclosure: I am NOT an ESR fan, which tends to colour my view of the events, despite not really sharing RMS's deep concerns---or, at least not his energy for them.)
danbmil99 11y ago
After the rhetorical dust settles, the fact remains that GPL-licensed software gives me less freedom than the same software licensed under an MIT/BSD style license. The latter allows me to create and distribute a closed-source, proprietary version; the former prohibits that. There is a reason the MIT/BSD style licenses are typically referred to as "more permissive" &/or "less restrictive".
- ekianjo 11y ago
  you donT get that its not yor freedom it protects, its the software users. A frequent misunderstanding.
  - danbmil99 11y ago
    When I download a piece of code under the BSD license, I am the user. I am free to do whatever I please with that code, including to modify it, and release the modifications under a different license (ie executable only, heavy DRM, whatever). Anyone is still free to use the original release under the original license. They can modify it, improve it, and perhaps release those changes again under the BSD license. No one has lost any freedoms at all under these scenarios. What RMS and cohorts really want is not freedom the way it is usually understood. As he explains clearly, he wants a world without reliance on any proprietary, "non-free" (by his definition) software. By extension, the free software crowd is basically against the concept of intellectual property in its entirety. What the GPL does is create a scenario where users are restricted from ever creating modified versions of the software licensed under terms of their choosing. The viral nature of the license forces users to continue enforcing those restrictions on all descendent versions of the software. The goal, quite clearly, is to foster a world of software that is fundamentally impossible to "sell" commercially in any shape or form. The new restrictions on patents and services in the AGPL3 make this agenda strikingly clear. In the world I inhabit, permissive licensing frankly provides a way for a multiplicity of parties to communally build things of potential use to all members of the community. However, it does not restrict those members from branching off the communal tree for profit or any other reason. The collective work stands as a sort of "commons" that all farmers can allow their cattle to graze on. However it also allows for each farmer to maintain private grazing lands in addition to the commons. Yes, in such a scenario some farmers could game the system by over-grazing -- in the analogy, that would mean taking lots of code and never giving back. Naively it would seem the GPL approach is better for disallowing this selfish behavior. But in the real world, the price for such draconian policing is the inability of anyone to create a reasonable business case for developing software -- no one can ever profit from the work they contributed. Richard Stallman may be fine with that scenario (I understand he was born wealthy), but it doesn't work for anyone who has to sling code for a living.
golergka 11y ago
Once again, I find myself not agreeing with Stollman, but having an utmost level of respect for his level of arguments and rhetoric. I wish that people whose opinion I actually share could support these opinions in such an intelligent manner.
hyperpallium 11y ago
I'm sure this has been discussed many times, but instead of saying "free software, that means free as in freedom, not free as in free beer", why not just call it "freedom software"?
Lorento 11y ago
There's a powerful part of the "free software" ideology that's not explained well at all here - the GPL helps to force non-free software out of the market. Unlike, say MIT which can help non-free software get a leg up over free software. This part is kind of aggressive and can be seen as negative, which I imagine is why the FSF doesn't directly address it much.
jveld 11y ago
Reading Stallman these days always gives me such mixed feelings. I appreciate the fuck out of all the work he's done for the software community, and admire his courage and willingness to stand out. Overall, I think his agenda to keep the power of computing available to everybody is extremely important. Now more than ever, with computers everywhere and internet of things seemingly just over the horizon. But these terminological squabbles seem to me like the worst kind of bikeshedding. Open source may have began as a way to depoliticize free software, but the battle has ended and "open source" has won. People who are not advanced computer users have never heard of "Free Software," the FSF, GNU, or Richard Stallman. On the other hand, "open source" software has some name recognition among folks like, say, my mother. Young developers (such as myself), have discovered Free Software through an original interest in "open source." With that in mind, I think it would make sense to just use the terminology people are comfortable with, and continue making the same distinction by promoting "ethical open source" or "permissive open source" or something like that. If the worry really is that the language around open source is everywhere scrubbed of the original free software ethos (I'm not too sure about that), a sensible move would be counter that by staking out a corner of "open source" and using it to promote ethical software. Chastising people for the way they speak just sows hostility among potential friends. Stallman always talks about the importance of language, and Orwell's shadow is clearly visible over these rants. But "open source" isn't euphamistic doublespeak - it's not inherently more difficult to think about ethical software when you call it open source instead of free. From an outside perspective, the only difference is that "free software" has a confusing double meaning that "open source" doesn't. Free software (or whatever) already is fighting a battle for relevance. Why choose an uphill battle? FOOTNOTE: The fact that Stallman's pet terminology is always linked to his personal organizations also damages his credibility. It makes it easy to dismiss him as sour grapes. I personally think he deserves recognition, but then again, there's no shortage of software named after GNU...

298 points by codelizard42 11y ago

tl;dr: "Free Software" is a religion that vilifies just about any commercial use of open source (Tivo, Apple, etc.). Open Source is the response to that that finds a pragmatic middle way.

astazangasta 11y ago
Ah, pragmatism: the reason we bombed Cambodia.
- odiroot 11y ago
  Why the downvotes? I got a sensible chuckle.
  - fleitz 11y ago
    The truth often has the curious property of both being funny and offensive.
zimbatm 11y ago
It's easy to dismiss the freedom of tinkering as a religion. If it wasn't for that most entrepreneurs on HN wouldn't be able to start their own business at a fraction of original costs.
davexunit 11y ago
What an unbiased summary. Thanks for sharing.
belorn 11y ago
Like the pragmatic way of reinventing software because they are of the "wrong" license. Or are we talking about the pragmatic way of not updating software for several years because of licenses?
madez 11y ago
You berate free software as a religion while it is clearly not. Also, you say that it stands against commercialisation, while it does not, either. It only goes against excercising power over others to extort money, or literarily take their freedom away. In a way I think free licenses like the AGPLv3 do what the government should be doing. But today government is too easily influenced by companies, so it often doesn't act in the best interest of its people.

vinceguidry 11y ago

I love Stallman because he takes the very very long view and has shown himself to be remarkably adaptable over time. The battles he's fighting today are the same as they were 30 years ago, and they're still relevant. He's an anchor to a world that would be very much unmoored without him. Carry on, you magnificent bastard.

aaron-lebo 11y ago
I prefer permissive licenses like BSD/MIT over GPL for every project I work on/use, but I'm glad Stallman is around. He frames the issue, moors it as you said. Weird analogy perhaps, but MLK was acceptable to the establishment partially because you had more extreme individuals like Malcolm X. RMS makes permissive licenses acceptable because he's suggesting something more radical. Overton Window maybe?

unholythree 11y ago

I appreciate Stallman's views and agree with many of them but I just wish a slightly different word was chosen for the free in "free software". Now you have a situation where you need to correct an understandable misconception for the layperson almost everytime free software comes up.

codelizard42 11y ago
This is one of the reasons people in the Free Software community have been recently shifting away from wording like "free as in freedom", "Free and Open Source Software"/FOSS in favor of the use of the word "libre", "Free and Libre Open Source Software"/FLOSS
- aschampion 11y ago
  Introducing more arbitrary jargon isn't going to make the distinction any more clear to a layperson, but if you do choose a neologism "libre" is just plain awkward.
  - unholythree 11y ago
    I disagree, I think it's better to have a term that requires explanation than a term people will misinterpret. There's an existing connotation of free as $0 that you have to combat, rather than a simple new word/term to define.
  - delecti 11y ago
    I'm not sure calling it a "neologism" is accurate. It's a borrowed word that has a clearer meaning than anything in English. Such a thing is hardly unprecedented in English.
  - superskierpat 11y ago
    This may be because I'm from quebec, but this is perfectly fine for me, its a word that is much more precise, since if the word does not have a proper translation, its a better idea to use the external, but uniquevocal, word.

aaronbrethorst 11y ago

This malicious feature is known as Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) Making up a new name for DRM, regardless of what you think of it, sounds childish and silly.

quadrangle 11y ago
It's not childish and silly at all. DRM is Digital Restrictions Management. That's what it is. It isn't an institution or a program code or anything, it's literally just language summarized. It's not like USA, it's more like LOL and AFK. Adapting it to a more accurate meaning is perfectly fine.
codelizard42 11y ago
Childish it may be, but rephrasing the term this way does better cover the majority of the actual use cases of the technology in the wild, IMHO
GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
Didn't Stallman habitually refer to a certain disk operating system as 'MS-DOG'?
- icebraining 11y ago
  Well, Emacs does (did?), but I don't know if that was rms' doing.
- eosrei 11y ago
  It wouldn't be surprising if RMS said that and you got me to look it up. The source for "MS-DOG" seems to be Morten Welinder (http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/doc/msdog.html http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/doc/msdog.html)
alayne 11y ago
Reminds me of http://everything2.com/title/POSIX_ME_HARDER http://everything2.com/title/POSIX_ME_HARDER

btilly 11y ago

I think this is an important distinction to be aware of. Licenses like the GPL exist for a reason. And that reason is an attempt to maximize the amount of software that is free. Licenses like the MIT and BSD license exist for a different reason. And that reason is to give people who want to share what they did on generous terms a way to do so. And historically this was done in the belief that enlightened users would see it as being in their interest to contribute back. The result was that people who used generous licenses got frustrated that others would come along, use their software, criticize the original author for "not protecting freedom", then create a modified version that the original author was not free to use as they wish! Historically the free software movement was very clearly described with long essays by Stallman. With the open source marketing campaign, there were essays that people who liked more generous licenses could get behind. And indeed lots of people began producing free software with no encounter with the ideas that started the free software movement. The link above was Stallman's response to this. If you understand the conflict, then you can form your own opinion. Here is mine. When you choose a license, you should choose correctly for what you want to have happen. Would it outrage you for someone else to take your code, put a pretty GUI on top, sell it, and make millions while you make nothing? Well then, you shouldn't use a BSD license. By contrast you shouldn't use the GPL if your response would be, "Bully for them, I had fun and they made the world better." Conversely if someone else used an open source license, DO NOT assume that their motivations are yours. It is their code with their choice of license chosen for their reasons. Respect that.

PaulHoule 11y ago
For instance, the Gnu Public License serves the needs of Oracle very well and quite possibly helped MySQL AB be salable to Sun and thus to Oracle. Most of us who use MySQL are limited by the GPL, whereas Oracle has the right to use it in other ways, license it to specific customers on different terms, etc.
- iwwr 11y ago
  That's why Stallman prefers distributed code copyright: if contributors own their contributions, then dual-licensing won't work. On the other hand, this prevented a project like the linux kernel from moving to gplv3 since the distributed corpus of contributors could not all agree to switch.

belorn 11y ago

The difference is most noticeable when a console or phone has open source software running which one can't modify, run or distribute because of DRM or patents. The software might be of better quality because it uses a common shared base, but as a user I have a hard time valuing it above proprietary developed software.

teh_klev 11y ago

Given how long ago this was written, the title should probably include the original publication date (2007).

forrestthewoods 11y ago

I continue to have a radically different opinion on what free means from Stallman. And that's fine! I've warmed up slightly to his viewpoint over time. Not enough to touch GPL software with a 10 foot pole. But slightly warmer none the less. I'm even glad he's out there vocalizing his view. That's generally a good thing. In the meantime I, and seemingly most of the community, will continue to use and push MIT style licenses.

madez 11y ago
Besides the fact that there is a lot of GPL-licensed software out there, what makes all this software so abhorrent to you that you wouldn't even come near to it? In general, I think rants need stated reasons.

hga 11y ago

I think a lot of this depends on what you place the most value in. While agreeing that the things RMS/GNU/FSF value are worthwhile and important, I place a higher value on "quality" and wide adaptation.

stephenr 11y ago
This is one thing I think many people don't realise. For RMS, code quality is not the #1 goal.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  You understate things a bit. In the view of rms every aspect of a software project is a sacrifice on the altar of the GPL, if necessary. It makes sense to have that policy when your goal is eradication of copyright, which is a goal quite a few people do share with the FSF. The trouble is, that's a destructive goal, and software is a creative enterprise, so things are fundamentally at odds and weird results happen, such as the refusal to allow a modular structure in GCC to prevent undesirable uses. A strange definition of freedom indeed! Edit: typo
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y ago
    The FSF's goal in essence is copyleft. Copyleft requires copyright law in order to work. As such, the FSF certainly does not intend to eradicate copyright, very much the opposite is true.
- anon1385 11y ago
  I'd go even further than that. For RMS he'd rather a problem not be solved using computers at all, if solving the problem with computers would require or even just enable non-free software. The most recent example of this was the debate over refactoring tools in emacs that used an AST generated by gcc. RMS was against this, even though all the code involved was free, because it would mean exposing the AST generated by gcc to external processes, some of which might be non-free. So he'd rather people not have refactoring tools at all, than enable the possibility of a non-free IDE existing that uses the AST from gcc.

diminish 11y ago

Seeing this article again in previous discussions https://hn.algolia.com/?query=why%20open%20source%20misses&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=why%20open%20source%20misses&s... I suspect HN is refreshing its user base every 1 year or so.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

icebraining 11y ago
we require contributors to the GNU project to (...) assign the copyright to us. Nope: "When the developers of a program make it a GNU package, they can decide either to give the copyright to the FSF so it can enforce the GPL for the package, or else to keep the copyright as well as the responsibility for enforcing the GPL." http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html

thsealienbstrds 11y ago

I can't help but think that the spirit of free software, namely control over your computing/computer, is more relevant today than it ever has been. Just that the problem doesn't really seem to be in any particular computer program... It's a shame that even the FSF has no solution for web services that make mass surveillance possible.

brudgers 11y ago

I admire Richard Stallman and believe that his efforts are among the most important contributions to practical ethics in the last 50 years...yet [and we knew there had to be one] the issue I have with the GNU license is that it is a license. It's use relies on all the same implicit threat of state sanctioned violence and its infrastructure as its closed proprietary opposites. The GNU license is meaningless without modern intellectual property focused trade agreements to provide teeth when there is a violation. The GNU license is inherently litigious. That's the nature of licensing. Alternative licenses are also de jure, but some are de facto non-litigious by virtue of permissiveness. The primary contract for a GNU license is legal and the social contract is secondary...I'm not giving back when I am coerced by the threat of legal sanction into the act. Gifts don't come with strings attached, and it is reasonable for someone to hold the ethical belief that true giving means placing creative works in the public domain. Which is to say that GNU lies on a spectrum and reflects some noble ethical values and not others. Among those ethical values GNU does not reflect are many that deem an intellectual property infrastructure backed by state sanctioned violence on behalf of wealth [e.g. music downloader prosecutions] worse than actions which GNU's copyleft prohibits.

arto 11y ago
Note that Stallman himself is quite comfortable with his notions about mandatory sharing being enforced through state violence: "Richard is against abolishing copyrights because, to his view, without copyright, enforcing copyleft would be impossible." http://rudd-o.com/monopolies-of-the-mind/thoughts-after-my-dinner-with-richard-stallman http://rudd-o.com/monopolies-of-the-mind/thoughts-after-my-d...
- quadrangle 11y ago
  Indeed, Richard Stallman is self-described "not an Anarchist". So? Anarchism has lots of neat ideas and is right about a lot of philosophical things. It's a daunting challenge to convince anyone that it could practically work. On a large scale, it remains only theoretical discussion divorced from reality.
  - 11y ago

jakejake 11y ago

I think the cause would be better served if RMS would stop calling it "free" software and stop with the speech/beer analogy. As hilarious as the wordplay may be, most people simply don't get it. The other irony is that GPL is not even free (as in speech) either, it imposes rather strict conditions.

oldmanjay 11y ago
I feel like you get the explanation reversed - everyone gets it, but it's just not that funny. Jokes that aren't funny are off-putting, not attractive.
- jakejake 11y ago
  I should have added *sarcasm regarding the funny part. I have to disagree though, most users have no clue what that means other than it costs them nothing. And many developers simply ignore and violate the terms because they don't understand the restrictions.
- quadrangle 11y ago
  it's not even supposed to be a funny joke. It's just an idea, "think free as in speech, not as in bear" is a plain thing to say just explaining which definition of the word is meant. It's not a joke or clever.
  - quadrangle 11y ago
    s/bear/beer
grok2 11y ago
I doubt that he is going for wordplay. Rather, he is trying to convey that it's not the price he is talking about when he says "free", but "freedom". And it's a simple example that makes the distinction and sticks. Maybe he should've called it "Freedom Software"?
phkahler 11y ago
>> The other irony is that GPL is not even free (as in speech) either, it imposes rather strict conditions. The only "strict condition" is that it enforces the golden rule. That's really all its designed for.

clarky07 11y ago

IMO, Free Software misses the point. it's open source things like MIT and BSD that actually allows entrepreneurs on HN to start businesses at a fraction of the cost of before. GPL helps not even a little bit. Open source is awesome, and amazingly useful to the community. "Free" software that I can't sell, is of almost no use to me or any other entrepreneur. Some people might be independently wealthy, the rest of us have to actually charge for our software so we can try to attain that goal. "Free" software doesn't benefit nearly as many people as "open source" software.

callahad 11y ago
> "Free" software that I can't sell, is of almost no use to me or any other entrepreneur. The Linux kernel is a strong counterexample to that claim.
- clarky07 11y ago
  i've used linux plenty during my life, and yet i see very few people using it personally. i find Mac and Windows to be better in almost every way, and I doubt I ever use Linux again. i will give you servers though, they are certainly useful, and obviously key to many businesses. I'm not sure them being "free" is any better than it being "open source" though. It wouldn't change the equation at all, except that we might have a better version of linux that someone could also sell....
- clarky07 11y ago
  As I'm thinking about this more, I think it almost makes my point even more. The only thing about Linux that is useful for an entrepreneur is that it is "free as in beer". How many startups are looking at the source code for Linux, ever? Certainly thankful for cheaper servers, but that could be accomplished with MIT or BSD, or even closed source.
  - callahad 11y ago
    And yet, in a competitive marketplace for servers, the BSDs and closed source operating systems have not succeeded to nearly the same degree as Linux, despite predating Linux by many years. Why do you think that is? (I'm not trying to be a jerk and ask rhetorical questions; I'm actually pretty jazzed that you're thinking about this critically.)

jokoon 11y ago

Eitherway, it will be difficult for some lonely, hard working programmer to release some code and attract contributors or make money out of it. This debate is just about politics of business and project management regarding the law, nothing more really. I don't like this debate, because its political nature does not have so much importance nor relevance. If you don't make money thanks to a project, you still need some time to work on it, and if it doesn't bring you money, how can conciliate this project and a paying job ? Unless your company understands open source and agrees to attract contributors, but what if you can't find any ? There are not so many programmers like Linus Torvalds out there who can really make it like he did. He is the best example open source has, but I think citing linux over and over to praise the open source model is really dishonest. Writing decent quality, open source software is really hard in term of management and business. There is not a lot of money to make in open source, or else it's pretty difficult to find a way to monetize it. You must be talented, find a network, and still find a source of income. It's pretty much like research. If you have time and food, go for it, but nothing will build a project better and faster than investors full of cash and NDAs. Nobody cares about open source or free software. Everyone just want to work in the industry, have a career, some colleagues, and not get screwed by lawyers. Open source will drive away lawyers, but it might also drive away cash. Not everybody can just code at home, without any income or on welfare, and just hope to become like carmack or torvalds. It's true that computer software is spoiled by money, but it's not specific to software.

oldmanjay 11y ago
> Nobody cares about open source or free software. Everyone just want to work in the industry, have a career, some colleagues, and not get screwed by lawyers. Open source will drive away lawyers, but it might also drive away cash. Not everybody can just code at home, without any income or on welfare, and just hope to become like carmack or torvalds. This paragraph is utterly incorrect in a way I find almost senseless. It's almost like trolls from the 90s wrote it for you. I mean that in a technical sense, I'm not trying to disparage you. It's just a point of view I haven't seen espoused in over a decade. Edit: quoting against edits
- capkutay 11y ago

epx 11y ago

"Why free software misses the point of open source."

epx 11y ago

"Why free software misses the point of open source."

MichaelCrawford 11y ago

"Open Source is the enemy." -- unknownlamer http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2005/7/21/161557/626/8#8 http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2005/7/21/161557/626/8#8

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

agounaris 11y ago

I cannot accept anything from a person eating something from his foot during a speech!

mekoka 11y ago

My issue with free software is the ideology. I tend to have mixed feelings about movements that claim to absolutely know what's good for humanity, no matter how noble the cause. I believe that if given the power to reach their goals we'd notice that a fraction of that same humanity will still end up suffering some consequences. Unless you can acknowledge that I cannot be a firm supporter. In the context of software, I'm more comfortable with open source because it has shown that it is aware of the "it depends" nature of the field today, and is capable to adapt to get to 60% of the goals _right now_ by reaching some compromises, rather than going nowhere because of principles. This is the definiton of Open Source, a really short read http://opensource.org/docs/osd http://opensource.org/docs/osd To me it's good enough. Some open source licenses can indeed be too restrictive, but as Stallman says himself Fortunately, few programs use such licenses. However, depending on your point of view free software as an ideology can also be too restrictive. Change is gradual and happens over time, but you need to give a chance to different parties to warm up to unfamiliar ideas. Open source accomplishes this. Free software as an ideology does too, albeit at a much slower pace. I think it's Max Planck who observed that (I'm paraphrasing) the world doesn't change because old smart people tend to warm up to new ideas, it does because as they die out, growing generations are familiarized with these same new ideas from the start. As I see more startups (and new executives from old companies) embracing open source, I have to concur. I understand Stallman's advocacy here and am even glad that it has perdured the way it has. It is a reminder of an ideal world towards which I feel open source actually strives to get. I'm still personally convinced that open source will be able to more successfully reach these goals with its flexibility than free software would with its rigidness.

curiously 11y ago

but here's the absurdity of free software. you got someone spending thousands of hours writing it and releases it. then you got hordes of freeloaders who bitch and moan about missing features and bugs for something they didn't pay for. So lot of developers try different ways like cyber-begging (donations), licensing, selling support which tends to only work for people who have reached critical mass where for majority of projects and software nobody bats an eye. and in closed free software (bundling malware, ads, annoying features). The latest is crowdfunding but some esoteric video compression library for some specific distro nobody is going to take out their wallet for. people who never pay for shit are the ones that are the most abusive. it's fucking appalling and my own negative experience of open sourcing and of other developers have made it clear that software or code is never to be released for free unless your motive is to monetize it later.

cwyers 11y ago

Or Free Software misses the point of Open Source -- Open Source isn't just Free Software done wrong, it's done by people with different motivations and values than Stallman.

ndesaulniers 11y ago

I think both stances have merit. Anyways, here's a plug for a meta-project; an open source definition of open source; https://github.com/nickdesaulniers/What-Open-Source-Means-To-Me https://github.com/nickdesaulniers/What-Open-Source-Means-To... kind of surprised no one has split hairs over free vs open source, yet.

ajarmst 11y ago

I sometimes think that RMS is to a certain extent the victim of the "the first task of a successful revolution is to kill all the leaders of the revolution" effect. Raymond and others sort of hijacked what was essentially a political philosophy and dressed it up for commercial palatability. (Full disclosure: I am NOT an ESR fan, which tends to colour my view of the events, despite not really sharing RMS's deep concerns---or, at least not his energy for them.)

danbmil99 11y ago

After the rhetorical dust settles, the fact remains that GPL-licensed software gives me less freedom than the same software licensed under an MIT/BSD style license. The latter allows me to create and distribute a closed-source, proprietary version; the former prohibits that. There is a reason the MIT/BSD style licenses are typically referred to as "more permissive" &/or "less restrictive".

ekianjo 11y ago
you donT get that its not yor freedom it protects, its the software users. A frequent misunderstanding.
- danbmil99 11y ago
  When I download a piece of code under the BSD license, I am the user. I am free to do whatever I please with that code, including to modify it, and release the modifications under a different license (ie executable only, heavy DRM, whatever). Anyone is still free to use the original release under the original license. They can modify it, improve it, and perhaps release those changes again under the BSD license. No one has lost any freedoms at all under these scenarios. What RMS and cohorts really want is not freedom the way it is usually understood. As he explains clearly, he wants a world without reliance on any proprietary, "non-free" (by his definition) software. By extension, the free software crowd is basically against the concept of intellectual property in its entirety. What the GPL does is create a scenario where users are restricted from ever creating modified versions of the software licensed under terms of their choosing. The viral nature of the license forces users to continue enforcing those restrictions on all descendent versions of the software. The goal, quite clearly, is to foster a world of software that is fundamentally impossible to "sell" commercially in any shape or form. The new restrictions on patents and services in the AGPL3 make this agenda strikingly clear. In the world I inhabit, permissive licensing frankly provides a way for a multiplicity of parties to communally build things of potential use to all members of the community. However, it does not restrict those members from branching off the communal tree for profit or any other reason. The collective work stands as a sort of "commons" that all farmers can allow their cattle to graze on. However it also allows for each farmer to maintain private grazing lands in addition to the commons. Yes, in such a scenario some farmers could game the system by over-grazing -- in the analogy, that would mean taking lots of code and never giving back. Naively it would seem the GPL approach is better for disallowing this selfish behavior. But in the real world, the price for such draconian policing is the inability of anyone to create a reasonable business case for developing software -- no one can ever profit from the work they contributed. Richard Stallman may be fine with that scenario (I understand he was born wealthy), but it doesn't work for anyone who has to sling code for a living.

golergka 11y ago

Once again, I find myself not agreeing with Stollman, but having an utmost level of respect for his level of arguments and rhetoric. I wish that people whose opinion I actually share could support these opinions in such an intelligent manner.

hyperpallium 11y ago

I'm sure this has been discussed many times, but instead of saying "free software, that means free as in freedom, not free as in free beer", why not just call it "freedom software"?

Lorento 11y ago

There's a powerful part of the "free software" ideology that's not explained well at all here - the GPL helps to force non-free software out of the market. Unlike, say MIT which can help non-free software get a leg up over free software. This part is kind of aggressive and can be seen as negative, which I imagine is why the FSF doesn't directly address it much.

jveld 11y ago

Reading Stallman these days always gives me such mixed feelings. I appreciate the fuck out of all the work he's done for the software community, and admire his courage and willingness to stand out. Overall, I think his agenda to keep the power of computing available to everybody is extremely important. Now more than ever, with computers everywhere and internet of things seemingly just over the horizon. But these terminological squabbles seem to me like the worst kind of bikeshedding. Open source may have began as a way to depoliticize free software, but the battle has ended and "open source" has won. People who are not advanced computer users have never heard of "Free Software," the FSF, GNU, or Richard Stallman. On the other hand, "open source" software has some name recognition among folks like, say, my mother. Young developers (such as myself), have discovered Free Software through an original interest in "open source." With that in mind, I think it would make sense to just use the terminology people are comfortable with, and continue making the same distinction by promoting "ethical open source" or "permissive open source" or something like that. If the worry really is that the language around open source is everywhere scrubbed of the original free software ethos (I'm not too sure about that), a sensible move would be counter that by staking out a corner of "open source" and using it to promote ethical software. Chastising people for the way they speak just sows hostility among potential friends. Stallman always talks about the importance of language, and Orwell's shadow is clearly visible over these rants. But "open source" isn't euphamistic doublespeak - it's not inherently more difficult to think about ethical software when you call it open source instead of free. From an outside perspective, the only difference is that "free software" has a confusing double meaning that "open source" doesn't. Free software (or whatever) already is fighting a battle for relevance. Why choose an uphill battle? FOOTNOTE: The fact that Stallman's pet terminology is always linked to his personal organizations also damages his credibility. It makes it easy to dismiss him as sour grapes. I personally think he deserves recognition, but then again, there's no shortage of software named after GNU...