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by Richard Stallman - Published on Dec 07, 2012 01:52 AM

One of the major advantages of free software is that the community protects users from malicious software. Now Ubuntu GNU/Linux has become a counterexample. What should we do?

Proprietary software is associated with malicious treatment of the user: surveillance code, digital handcuffs (DRM or Digital Restrictions Management) to restrict users, and back doors that can do nasty things under remote control. Programs that do any of these things are malware and should be treated as such. Widely used examples include Windows, the iThings, and the Amazon "Kindle" product for virtual book burning, which do all three; Macintosh and the Playstation III which impose DRM; most portable phones, which do spying and have back doors; Adobe Flash Player, which does spying and enforces DRM; and plenty of apps for iThings and Android, which are guilty of one or more of these nasty practices.

Free software gives users a chance to protect themselves from malicious software behaviors. Even better, usually the community protects everyone, and most users don't have to move a muscle. Here's how.

Once in a while, users who know programming find that a free program has malicious code. Generally the next thing they do is release a corrected version of the program; with the four freedoms that define free software (see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/...), they are free to do this. This is called a "fork" of the program. Soon the community switches to the corrected fork, and the malicious version is rejected. The prospect of ignominious rejection is not very tempting; thus, most of the time, even those who are not stopped by their consciences and social pressure refrain from putting malfeatures in free software.

But not always. Ubuntu, a widely used and influential GNU/Linux distribution, has installed surveillance code. When the user searches her own local files for a string using the Ubuntu desktop, Ubuntu sends that string to one of Canonical's servers. (Canonical is the company that develops Ubuntu.)

This is just like the first surveillance practice I learned about in Windows. My late friend Fravia told me that when he searched for a string in the files of his Windows system, it sent a packet to some server, which was detected by his firewall. Given that first example I paid attention and learned about the propensity of "reputable" proprietary software to be malware. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Ubuntu sends the same information.

Ubuntu uses the information about searches to show the user ads to buy various things from Amazon. Amazon commits many wrongs (see http://stallman.org/amazon.htm...); by promoting Amazon, Canonical contributes to them. However, the ads are not the core of the problem. The main issue is the spying. Canonical says it does not tell Amazon who searched for what. However, it is just as bad for Canonical to collect your personal information as it would have been for Amazon to collect it.

People will certainly make a modified version of Ubuntu without this surveillance. In fact, several GNU/Linux distros are modified versions of Ubuntu. When those update to the latest Ubuntu as a base, I expect they will remove this. Canonical surely expects that too.

Most free software developers would abandon such a plan given the prospect of a mass switch to someone else's corrected version. But Canonical has not abandoned the Ubuntu spyware. Perhaps Canonical figures that the name "Ubuntu" has so much momentum and influence that it can avoid the usual consequences and get away with surveillance.

Canonical says this feature searches the Internet in other ways. Depending on the details, that might or might not make the problem bigger, but not smaller.

Ubuntu allows users to switch the surveillance off. Clearly Canonical thinks that many Ubuntu users will leave this setting in the default state (on). And many may do

The code is licensed so liberally that Stallman's arguments literally boil down to "everyone can use it so it's not free".

Given that Stallman's main organisation, the Free Software Foundation, almost actively supports the BSD license, declaring it a Free Software License compatible with the GPL, I wonder what it is that drives you to say such a thing. A feeling that since the truth normally supports Richard, it's worth spreading almost any lie in the hope of discrediting him?

It would seem that the gap is closing, in terms of both the performance (of the compiler and the executables it produces) and the error messages:

http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/ClangD...
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p...

This bug (“broken support for unicode plane 1”), reported almost five years ago, made me switch from screen to tmux.

And the bug is still there.

The submitter used a link to the announcement of a 4.2.1 minor bugfix release, which isn't very informative if you want to know about new features in 4.2.x. They really should have linked to this announcement instead, which says:

Hello everyone,
 
it is my pleasure to announce release of GNU Screen v.4.2.0
 
available at http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/screen/
(I will also upload to ftp.gnu.org as soon as my access is authorized)
 
Many are probably using it due to their distributions packaging
development versions, so they know at least some of changes.
Short list of them:
  * layouts
  * window groups
  * better mouse support
  * vertical split
  * new and expanded commands
 
For full list of changes please check Changelog.
 
Please note that due to some changes it may be not possible to attach
to sessions created with older binaries.
 
With this I also plan to put v.4 into maintenance mode and start
developing v.5 with cleaned up source code, new features (some already
in development tree, currently outside of official repository):
  * 256 color hardstatus
  * truecolor
  * firstline hardstatus
  * top line caption
  and more
 
Amadeusz Sławiński

And the Changelog is here: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/screen.git/tree/src/ChangeLog?h=screen-v4.

The submitter used a link to the announcement of a 4.2.1 minor bugfix release, which isn't very informative if you want to know about new features in 4.2.x. They really should have linked to this announcement instead, which says:

Hello everyone,
 
it is my pleasure to announce release of GNU Screen v.4.2.0
 
available at http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/screen/
(I will also upload to ftp.gnu.org as soon as my access is authorized)
 
Many are probably using it due to their distributions packaging
development versions, so they know at least some of changes.
Short list of them:
  * layouts
  * window groups
  * better mouse support
  * vertical split
  * new and expanded commands
 
For full list of changes please check Changelog.
 
Please note that due to some changes it may be not possible to attach
to sessions created with older binaries.
 
With this I also plan to put v.4 into maintenance mode and start
developing v.5 with cleaned up source code, new features (some already
in development tree, currently outside of official repository):
  * 256 color hardstatus
  * truecolor
  * firstline hardstatus
  * top line caption
  and more
 
Amadeusz Sławiński

And the Changelog is here: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/screen.git/tree/src/ChangeLog?h=screen-v4.

The truth about C: https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/... Now seriously. Pascal was published some 2 years before Kernighan and Ritchie released their masterpiece. Having the opportunity to have a long look at Pascal and yet coming up with something like C shows a very strong character.

Pascal is pretty bad at doing anything really useful. C is better for doing embedded bit-twiddling. It's been a while, but I remember trying to do something bit-intensive and finding that Pascal required far too much typing to get results. Not as much typing as COBOL, perhaps, but C was the obvious choice. I wish they'd used C as a teaching language instead of Pascal when I was in school.

The truth about C:

https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/...

Now seriously. Pascal was published some 2 years before Kernighan and Ritchie released their masterpiece. Having the opportunity to have a long look at Pascal and yet coming up with something like C shows a very strong character.

That said, proprietary code can be open too.

No, it can't, by definition. If it's not available to everyone, then it's not "open" in this context. To quote the OSI, "Open source software is software that can be freely used, changed, and shared (in modified or unmodified form) by anyone". The essential missing part here is that sharing must be allowed, and the sort of commercial arrangements that get you source to proprietary code don't allow that.

Proprietary software that makes source available to customers has some of the properties of free software. But since it can't satisfy all of the GNU project's four freedoms, it's not appropriate to refer to those products as free software either.

Visual Studio Express is Microsoft's zero-cash programming environment. Why do you want a high-cost office suite with a lousy macro engine to be discounted to free when they already offer their actual development suite pro bono. It's upgradeable to more complete Visual Studio versions later. This will encourage Microsoft-centric code, but that can be avoided and it's less specific of a tie-in than VBA. C#, C, C++, and more are included.

If you don't want to be tied to Microsoft-specific tools even on Windows there are other options. Those include other office suites and other actual development tools.

LibreOffice/OpenOffice have OOBasic and can be scripted with Python and Java if you really want. These things are zero-cash and open source.

You can use Lazarus and FreePascal (Wikipedia article about FreePascal) or Eclipse and Java/C/C++ if you'd rather. Or you could use Eric and Python. Or Padre and Strawberry Perl, complete with MinGW. Some of the IDEs are more or less general and language agnostic, while others are mainly narrowly targeted.

Don't forget MsysGit (git for Windows) if you're not using Cygwin and haven't already chosen a version control system.

Really, you could be teaching with a good programmer's editor rather than specifically with IDEs too. vim, Emacs, jEdit, Gedit, and others are applicable. Some of them are powerful enough to make that line between editors and IDEs very fuzzy.

What, exactly, would a free copy of Word get you that isn't already available?

Linux doesn't make your dick bigger.

No, and thank goodness for that -- why mess with perfection?

GNU/Linux and Android systems do, however, make your freedom bigger -- not perfectly so, but contrasted with the freedom-shrinking offerings from MS and Apple, Linux is a clear win.

And, more relevantly, on a tech site (this is still one, right?), we ought to expect people -- especially those who ask loaded questions -- to know that Linux is a kernel and is common to both GNU/Linux and Android systems (as well as a few other rarer OSes).

1999 called. http://gcc.gnu.org/java/

From The Law of Success 2.0:

RMS: So if I'm using the free program and I make a change in it, which I know how to do, then I could publish my modified version and then you. Perhaps you're not a programmer; you would still be able to get the benefit of the change I make. Not only that, you could pay somebody to change the program for you, or you could join an organisation whose goal is to change a certain program in a certain way, and all the members would put in their money, and that's how they would hire a programmer to change it.

I believe there's pretty much a single person who has the "right" to cast a stone in this whole situation.

wc, cat, sort, head, tail, split et al. Source here.

Maybe not, depending on the license.

In fact, protecting the integrity of the software by using a digital signature is expressly the use case that GPLv3 is trying to forbid.

Obligatory RMS

I think there were rather understandable exceptions to "tainting everything it touches". Like the Runtime Exception, seen here: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gc...

You can download the successor to vim here. FTFY.

At least Firefox can be altered to become what you want it to be because Firefox respect's a users software freedom. Far more important than vagaries like "fast" and "not bloated" is how a program treats its users. Proprietary browsers leave users no opportunity for improving the program. Thus security issues in proprietary programs go unfixed and are exploited for years. This, in turn, allows others to invade people's computers and leaves users helpless. This is exactly what happened with Apple's iTunes for over 3 years. I would not be surprised to learn that software proprietors including Microsoft, Google, and Apple are doing similar things with proprietary web browser programs as well.

So while I like trustworthy programs like other computer users, I know that I can't ascertain the trustworthiness of proprietary programs like Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Apple's Safari, and Google's Chrome. The extent to which any of them are built from software that respects my software freedom is irrelevant because proprietary programs and their updates are essentially black boxes. I can't possibly inspect or fix all of the software I use, but I can put myself in a position where I stand to benefit from the improvements a lot of programmers make by exclusively running software that respects my freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify—free software—freedoms I value in their own right.

i've worked with webkit a *lot*. for example, i helped denis with the port of webkit to directfb. in doing the python-webkit (direct) bindings http://www.gnu.org/software/py... i covered a *lot* of different ports of webkit. here's the summary:

* when compiling the standard webkit to run on a 400mhz ARM9, the gtk port started up in around... i think it was somewhere around 8 seconds. this was tolerable. it used about 130mb of memory to load a single basic page.

* when compiling the DirectFB port to run on the same system, it started up in about 3 to 4 seconds, and used about 1 or 2mb less memory. this was great!

* when compiling the Qt4 port to run on the same system, it took NINETY SECONDS to start up, consumed DOUBLE the amount of memory, and was basically completely intolerable.

the directfb port basically used an older (revision 1.2) version of the lite toolkit. to say it's light-weight would be an understatement: it's absolutely awesome. qt4 has unfortunately turned into a bit of a monster. gtk by comparison has remained reasonably level-headed, and when it (finally!) has the equivalence of COM's co-classes added to the gobject introspection layer gtk will become highly significant, strategically.

the only thing that the directfb-lite port lacked (at the time i was involved) was a window manager. this basically meant that you could only have one browser window open, and you had a callback for dealing with console alerts, which you had to then deal with yourself. i _thought_ about doing the same trick that mozilla does (which is most clearly demonstrated in b2g) - namely to implement the windowing system *in* webkit itself, in a high-level language: that would be cool. not many people are aware that firefox's menus including the toolbars and tabs are actually implemented *in javascript* (!), and the main browser "window" is merely a (secure) frame. b2g is an extension of that.

so anyway, the point is: there are lots of ways this can be achieved. you can implement the window manager externally and treat the browser as an isolated "component". you can go the other route and implement the window manager *using* the browser engine. but the main point is that either way, gtk and qt4 are to be honest complete overkill. it's only when you have things like co-classes built-in to the underlying infrastructure (like COM has) that you get any _real_ flexible benefit from the widget set, and as neither gtk nor qt4 have those, there's honestly really no point having them around.

The Hurd already shipped.

You have an interesting attitude considering that every license I've ever seen revokes your right to use the software if you breach the license terms.

What about the GPL? I don't think it says you lose your usage rights if you violate the terms - I think you're 'just' violating copyright... it's about distribtion, after all.

I get why purists hate it, because it takes away the nice hours and days of tinkering for something to work.

No, you quite clearly don't get it. The clue, regarding the objection of the purists, is right there in the word purist. Relevant FSF page.

I'm not a purist myself (I run Mint Linux in VMware on Windows 7), but you are confusing Free Software proponents with OS hobbyists. The former advocate gNewSense. The latter play with Syllable, MenuetOS, Haiku, etc.

Um, there is a bit more to TPM than that!

So when Apple's proprietary encryption software suffered a problem, Apple users could do nothing but wait for Apple to deliver a fix; there's nobody else that are allowed to fix Apple's proprietary software but Apple. And when that fix ostensibly arrived, Apple users had to hope it wasn't bundled with some malware too (as is often in proprietary software).

I shouldn't feed the troll, but Apple released the patch and simultaneously announced the issue so there was no waiting. IIRC the trusted jailbreak community had a patch the next day. As to the rest of your rant, if you're trying to glamorize non-proprietary software by comparing it's benefits to someone technical vs. my six year old using her iPod then you really don't have much of an argument. And to those people who may have known about this and fixed it without telling anyone (which puzzles me why you made that an example of why non-proprietary software is better): FU you selfish bastards.

So when Apple's proprietary encryption software suffered a problem, Apple users could do nothing but wait for Apple to deliver a fix; there's nobody else that are allowed to fix Apple's proprietary software but Apple. And when that fix ostensibly arrived, Apple users had to hope it wasn't bundled with some malware too (as is often in proprietary software).

This bug was caught during an audit—"The vulnerability was discovered during an audit of GnuTLS for Red Hat.". Nobody but the proprietor can audit proprietary software. But with free software, users have the freedom to audit the code they run, patch that code, and run their patched code; users can choose to fix bugs themselves or get someone else to fix bugs for them. And users don't have to always trust the same people to do work on their behalf. Users can also choose to wait for a fix to be distributed, and then they can choose to check that fix to make sure it doesn't contain malware. For all we know some users have long spotted and fixed this bug in GNUTLS. Since all complex software has bugs bugs are unavoidable. We're better off depending on people we choose to trust. Software freedom is better for its own sake.

The OpenSSL license is not compatible with the GNU General Public License.

The difference in philosophy can have radically different outcomes seen most clearly in the case of powerful, reliable proprietary software (adoption/recommendation for open source proponents versus rejection/replacement for free software activists is a starkly different outcome). Richard Stallman's essays on this topic point out this different reaction and the difference in philosophy that leads to the different reaction (older essay, newer essay). But those essays highlight all the more that the post to which I initially responded in this subthread is attacking the messenger (Richard Stallman): the /. thread where that post would have been on-topic is still available for posts. Moderating that post up is moderating up an ad hominem attack.

There's nothing wrong with raising and defending skeptical views, but there's been no serious defense of those views even in other followups. This thread only offers more vague attacks plus a thin layer of congratulations for working together (which, as you point out in your /. post and Stallman points out in the aforementioned newer essay, "people from the free software movement and the open source camp often work together on practical projects such as software development"). Any skepticism would have been far more fruitful and honestly raised if it was raised with the one person who could have addressed the many misperceptions in the posts. I encourage the original poster to raise those issues head-on from the most authoritative source available—the man himself in his own words.

The difference in philosophy can have radically different outcomes seen most clearly in the case of powerful, reliable proprietary software (adoption/recommendation for open source proponents versus rejection/replacement for free software activists is a starkly different outcome). Richard Stallman's essays on this topic point out this different reaction and the difference in philosophy that leads to the different reaction (older essay, newer essay). But those essays highlight all the more that the post to which I initially responded in this subthread is attacking the messenger (Richard Stallman): the /. thread where that post would have been on-topic is still available for posts. Moderating that post up is moderating up an ad hominem attack.

There's nothing wrong with raising and defending skeptical views, but there's been no serious defense of those views even in other followups. This thread only offers more vague attacks plus a thin layer of congratulations for working together (which, as you point out in your /. post and Stallman points out in the aforementioned newer essay, "people from the free software movement and the open source camp often work together on practical projects such as software development"). Any skepticism would have been far more fruitful and honestly raised if it was raised with the one person who could have addressed the many misperceptions in the posts. I encourage the original poster to raise those issues head-on from the most authoritative source available—the man himself in his own words.

The difference in philosophy can have radically different outcomes seen most clearly in the case of powerful, reliable proprietary software (adoption/recommendation for open source proponents versus rejection/replacement for free software activists is a starkly different outcome). Richard Stallman's essays on this topic point out this different reaction and the difference in philosophy that leads to the different reaction (older essay, newer essay). But those essays highlight all the more that the post to which I initially responded in this subthread is attacking the messenger (Richard Stallman): the /. thread where that post would have been on-topic is still available for posts. Moderating that post up is moderating up an ad hominem attack.

There's nothing wrong with raising and defending skeptical views, but there's been no serious defense of those views even in other followups. This thread only offers more vague attacks plus a thin layer of congratulations for working together (which, as you point out in your /. post and Stallman points out in the aforementioned newer essay, "people from the free software movement and the open source camp often work together on practical projects such as software development"). Any skepticism would have been far more fruitful and honestly raised if it was raised with the one person who could have addressed the many misperceptions in the posts. I encourage the original poster to raise those issues head-on from the most authoritative source available—the man himself in his own words.

And I don't see why Emacs should run stuff like compilers from the editor - that's what multiple xterms are for.

Because you can then just click on error messages and go from one error to the next using M-g M-n and M-g M-p and Emacs will keep track when you insert/delete material to fix an error?

Or have an even wilder mash-up of source code and output and error messages like preview-latex?

"There are two basic types of transfer methods, each with its own advantages and limitations. Both types of connection make use of a remote shell access program such as rsh, ssh or telnet to connect to the remote host. "

Each of those requires their own daemon.

You might not want to call it "Open Source" when RMS himself makes a clear distinction between "Free Software" and "Open Source".

for most real world software houses, this doesn't happen anymore

Source? Evidence? Cygnus didn't seem to have trouble finding customers for GCC support.

As a compromise, the company I work for publishes all of our data formats (at least in my division) and nearly everything exports to XML. That means competitors and free software can create their own implementation, and people have. [...]

I don't know if that's supposed to mean the program is free software or not. If the software is nonfree, then there's no compromise that is a substitute for software freedom. Getting data out of the program won't give users an idea of what's going on when the program runs. If the program is nonfree, malware may be running. Or maybe features the users want aren't implementable by people they trust.

In the recent Clang thread, you seemed to say quality of software either isn't important to you, or at least is less important than the software being free software.

I'm not sure what post of Stallman's you're referring to because you linked to nothing and quoted nothing. Your statement is without a clear basis in anything he said, and therefore seems specious. I'll assume you're referring to his post on the GCC mailing list in which he says:

For GCC to be replaced by another technically superior compiler that defended freedom equally well would cause me some personal regret, but I would rejoice for the community's advance.

So when you follow up with:

As someone who writes software for a living, this seemed like a "jump the shark" moment. (But maybe you jumped this particular shark long ago.)

you seem to have no serious issue to raise, just name-calling. What part of what he said to the GCC list convinces you that Stallman "seemed to say quality of software [...] isn't important" as if that was to be a seriously considered alternative? For many years, GNU programs have been known as considerably powerful, GCC being one of them. Given the totality of what Stallman has been saying since 1984 it seems so much more reasonable to conclude that Stallman believes software freedom is more important than technical superiority that I suspect you're trolling.

Code quality is an achievement won with hard work, to be sure, but the fight for securing software freedom has historically taken considerable time in addition to any technical improvements needed. When people's attention is diverted away from ethics, the community suffers. This is true in every field of endeavor, software development is no exception. As the open source movement was designed to not talk about how people treat each other (1, 2), we need a careful and thorough rejection of the notion that programmers can afford to ply their talents without regard for how helping proprietors hurts our community. The free software movement gives us that ethics-based critique and it also gives us practical software with which to further improve our community.

In the recent Clang thread, you seemed to say quality of software either isn't important to you, or at least is less important than the software being free software.

I'm not sure what post of Stallman's you're referring to because you linked to nothing and quoted nothing. Your statement is without a clear basis in anything he said, and therefore seems specious. I'll assume you're referring to his post on the GCC mailing list in which he says:

For GCC to be replaced by another technically superior compiler that defended freedom equally well would cause me some personal regret, but I would rejoice for the community's advance.

So when you follow up with:

As someone who writes software for a living, this seemed like a "jump the shark" moment. (But maybe you jumped this particular shark long ago.)

you seem to have no serious issue to raise, just name-calling. What part of what he said to the GCC list convinces you that Stallman "seemed to say quality of software [...] isn't important" as if that was to be a seriously considered alternative? For many years, GNU programs have been known as considerably powerful, GCC being one of them. Given the totality of what Stallman has been saying since 1984 it seems so much more reasonable to conclude that Stallman believes software freedom is more important than technical superiority that I suspect you're trolling.

Code quality is an achievement won with hard work, to be sure, but the fight for securing software freedom has historically taken considerable time in addition to any technical improvements needed. When people's attention is diverted away from ethics, the community suffers. This is true in every field of endeavor, software development is no exception. As the open source movement was designed to not talk about how people treat each other (1, 2), we need a careful and thorough rejection of the notion that programmers can afford to ply their talents without regard for how helping proprietors hurts our community. The free software movement gives us that ethics-based critique and it also gives us practical software with which to further improve our community.

In the recent Clang thread, you seemed to say quality of software either isn't important to you, or at least is less important than the software being free software.

I'm not sure what post of Stallman's you're referring to because you linked to nothing and quoted nothing. Your statement is without a clear basis in anything he said, and therefore seems specious. I'll assume you're referring to his post on the GCC mailing list in which he says:

For GCC to be replaced by another technically superior compiler that defended freedom equally well would cause me some personal regret, but I would rejoice for the community's advance.

So when you follow up with:

As someone who writes software for a living, this seemed like a "jump the shark" moment. (But maybe you jumped this particular shark long ago.)

you seem to have no serious issue to raise, just name-calling. What part of what he said to the GCC list convinces you that Stallman "seemed to say quality of software [...] isn't important" as if that was to be a seriously considered alternative? For many years, GNU programs have been known as considerably powerful, GCC being one of them. Given the totality of what Stallman has been saying since 1984 it seems so much more reasonable to conclude that Stallman believes software freedom is more important than technical superiority that I suspect you're trolling.

Code quality is an achievement won with hard work, to be sure, but the fight for securing software freedom has historically taken considerable time in addition to any technical improvements needed. When people's attention is diverted away from ethics, the community suffers. This is true in every field of endeavor, software development is no exception. As the open source movement was designed to not talk about how people treat each other (1, 2), we need a careful and thorough rejection of the notion that programmers can afford to ply their talents without regard for how helping proprietors hurts our community. The free software movement gives us that ethics-based critique and it also gives us practical software with which to further improve our community.

Mod this one up everyone... the ONLY question out of all of these that we can't guess Stallman's answer to.

Sorry, but there's no need to guess what he'd say because he has published his thoughts on this long ago. Perhaps his position has changed, but if it had changed I'd expect an update to the aforementioned article at its current location, not an announcement of anything new on /..

How would the Swedish Pirate Party's platform affect copylefted free software? After five years, its source code would go into the public domain, and proprietary software developers would be able to include it in their programs. But what about the reverse case?

Proprietary software is restricted by EULAs, not just by copyright, and the users don't have the source code. Even if copyright permits noncommercial sharing, the EULA may forbid it. In addition, the users, not having the source code, do not control what the program does when they run it. To run such a program is to surrender your freedom and give the developer control over you.

So what would be the effect of terminating this program's copyright after 5 years? This would not require the developer to release source code, and presumably most will never do so. Users, still denied the source code, would still be unable to use the program in freedom. The program could even have a "time bomb" in it to make it stop working after 5 years, in which case the "public domain" copies would not run at all.

Thus, the Pirate Party's proposal would give proprietary software developers the use of GPL-covered source code after 5 years, but it would not give free software developers the use of proprietary source code, not after 5 years or even 50 years. The Free World would get the bad, but not the good. The difference between source code and object code and the practice of using EULAs would give proprietary software an effective exception from the general rule of 5-year copyright — one that free software does not share.

He also proposes a reasonable fix:

So I proposed that the Pirate Party platform require proprietary software's source code to be put in escrow when the binaries are released. The escrowed source code would then be released in the public domain after 5 years. Rather than making free software an official exception to the 5-year copyright rule, this would eliminate proprietary software's unofficial exception. Either way, the result is fair.

I can only guess neither you nor the original poster tried looking up keywords in a search engine (like "stallman copyright pirate party") to find the article. Also, perhaps neither of you understand that Stallman is not a member of the open source movement nor has he ever been. Thus it is not his interest to frame this issue in terms of a "closed source" anything (to use the original questioner's words). Stallman explains his position on the difference between his movement, the free software movement, and the younger proprietary-friendly open source movement in a pair of articles which have been published for many years (older article, newer article) and in just about every talk I've ever heard him give. In fact, the intro to this /. story pointed you to one of these articles.

Mod this one up everyone... the ONLY question out of all of these that we can't guess Stallman's answer to.

Sorry, but there's no need to guess what he'd say because he has published his thoughts on this long ago. Perhaps his position has changed, but if it had changed I'd expect an update to the aforementioned article at its current location, not an announcement of anything new on /..

How would the Swedish Pirate Party's platform affect copylefted free software? After five years, its source code would go into the public domain, and proprietary software developers would be able to include it in their programs. But what about the reverse case?

Proprietary software is restricted by EULAs, not just by copyright, and the users don't have the source code. Even if copyright permits noncommercial sharing, the EULA may forbid it. In addition, the users, not having the source code, do not control what the program does when they run it. To run such a program is to surrender your freedom and give the developer control over you.

So what would be the effect of terminating this program's copyright after 5 years? This would not require the developer to release source code, and presumably most will never do so. Users, still denied the source code, would still be unable to use the program in freedom. The program could even have a "time bomb" in it to make it stop working after 5 years, in which case the "public domain" copies would not run at all.

Thus, the Pirate Party's proposal would give proprietary software developers the use of GPL-covered source code after 5 years, but it would not give free software developers the use of proprietary source code, not after 5 years or even 50 years. The Free World would get the bad, but not the good. The difference between source code and object code and the practice of using EULAs would give proprietary software an effective exception from the general rule of 5-year copyright — one that free software does not share.

He also proposes a reasonable fix:

So I proposed that the Pirate Party platform require proprietary software's source code to be put in escrow when the binaries are released. The escrowed source code would then be released in the public domain after 5 years. Rather than making free software an official exception to the 5-year copyright rule, this would eliminate proprietary software's unofficial exception. Either way, the result is fair.

I can only guess neither you nor the original poster tried looking up keywords in a search engine (like "stallman copyright pirate party") to find the article. Also, perhaps neither of you understand that Stallman is not a member of the open source movement nor has he ever been. Thus it is not his interest to frame this issue in terms of a "closed source" anything (to use the original questioner's words). Stallman explains his position on the difference between his movement, the free software movement, and the younger proprietary-friendly open source movement in a pair of articles which have been published for many years (older article, newer article) and in just about every talk I've ever heard him give. In fact, the intro to this /. story pointed you to one of these articles.

Mod this one up everyone... the ONLY question out of all of these that we can't guess Stallman's answer to.

Sorry, but there's no need to guess what he'd say because he has published his thoughts on this long ago. Perhaps his position has changed, but if it had changed I'd expect an update to the aforementioned article at its current location, not an announcement of anything new on /..

How would the Swedish Pirate Party's platform affect copylefted free software? After five years, its source code would go into the public domain, and proprietary software developers would be able to include it in their programs. But what about the reverse case?

Proprietary software is restricted by EULAs, not just by copyright, and the users don't have the source code. Even if copyright permits noncommercial sharing, the EULA may forbid it. In addition, the users, not having the source code, do not control what the program does when they run it. To run such a program is to surrender your freedom and give the developer control over you.

So what would be the effect of terminating this program's copyright after 5 years? This would not require the developer to release source code, and presumably most will never do so. Users, still denied the source code, would still be unable to use the program in freedom. The program could even have a "time bomb" in it to make it stop working after 5 years, in which case the "public domain" copies would not run at all.

Thus, the Pirate Party's proposal would give proprietary software developers the use of GPL-covered source code after 5 years, but it would not give free software developers the use of proprietary source code, not after 5 years or even 50 years. The Free World would get the bad, but not the good. The difference between source code and object code and the practice of using EULAs would give proprietary software an effective exception from the general rule of 5-year copyright — one that free software does not share.

He also proposes a reasonable fix:

So I proposed that the Pirate Party platform require proprietary software's source code to be put in escrow when the binaries are released. The escrowed source code would then be released in the public domain after 5 years. Rather than making free software an official exception to the 5-year copyright rule, this would eliminate proprietary software's unofficial exception. Either way, the result is fair.

I can only guess neither you nor the original poster tried looking up keywords in a search engine (like "stallman copyright pirate party") to find the article. Also, perhaps neither of you understand that Stallman is not a member of the open source movement nor has he ever been. Thus it is not his interest to frame this issue in terms of a "closed source" anything (to use the original questioner's words). Stallman explains his position on the difference between his movement, the free software movement, and the younger proprietary-friendly open source movement in a pair of articles which have been published for many years (older article, newer article) and in just about every talk I've ever heard him give. In fact, the intro to this /. story pointed you to one of these articles.

Mod this one up everyone... the ONLY question out of all of these that we can't guess Stallman's answer to.

Sorry, but there's no need to guess what he'd say because he has published his thoughts on this long ago. Perhaps his position has changed, but if it had changed I'd expect an update to the aforementioned article at its current location, not an announcement of anything new on /..

How would the Swedish Pirate Party's platform affect copylefted free software? After five years, its source code would go into the public domain, and proprietary software developers would be able to include it in their programs. But what about the reverse case?

Proprietary software is restricted by EULAs, not just by copyright, and the users don't have the source code. Even if copyright permits noncommercial sharing, the EULA may forbid it. In addition, the users, not having the source code, do not control what the program does when they run it. To run such a program is to surrender your freedom and give the developer control over you.

So what would be the effect of terminating this program's copyright after 5 years? This would not require the developer to release source code, and presumably most will never do so. Users, still denied the source code, would still be unable to use the program in freedom. The program could even have a "time bomb" in it to make it stop working after 5 years, in which case the "public domain" copies would not run at all.

Thus, the Pirate Party's proposal would give proprietary software developers the use of GPL-covered source code after 5 years, but it would not give free software developers the use of proprietary source code, not after 5 years or even 50 years. The Free World would get the bad, but not the good. The difference between source code and object code and the practice of using EULAs would give proprietary software an effective exception from the general rule of 5-year copyright — one that free software does not share.

He also proposes a reasonable fix:

So I proposed that the Pirate Party platform require proprietary software's source code to be put in escrow when the binaries are released. The escrowed source code would then be released in the public domain after 5 years. Rather than making free software an official exception to the 5-year copyright rule, this would eliminate proprietary software's unofficial exception. Either way, the result is fair.

I can only guess neither you nor the original poster tried looking up keywords in a search engine (like "stallman copyright pirate party") to find the article. Also, perhaps neither of you understand that Stallman is not a member of the open source movement nor has he ever been. Thus it is not his interest to frame this issue in terms of a "closed source" anything (to use the original questioner's words). Stallman explains his position on the difference between his movement, the free software movement, and the younger proprietary-friendly open source movement in a pair of articles which have been published for many years (older article, newer article) and in just about every talk I've ever heard him give. In fact, the intro to this /. story pointed you to one of these articles.

I don't know about "Internet.org" specifically but as for using anything tied to Facebook, Instagram, and similar services: Try watching any of his recent talks, from the most recent talks to the talks dating back about a year or three. He tells you right at the top of the talk what he thinks of Facebook, Instagram, and the like—he dares to call them by their proper name: surveillance engines—and he asks users to not participate by not uploading copies of his talks and photos with him to these services. You can also read his personal website on Facebook detailing many reasons to avoid Facebook. I imagine any other service that works similarly ("Google+", for example) will receive a comparable critique.

It seems unlikely to me that any program started by these organizations will be anything other than come-ons to lose one's privacy to these data collection companies.

There are free software web browser add-ons you can install on your free software web browser: Priv3, NoScript, and various cookie editors/filters which will help you deal with the monitoring various services use when you get an offer to be tracked with a "like" button or similar thing. There's more work to be done on this ground, to be sure, but this is a good start.

There are some confusions in what you're asking. It isn't Stallman or the FSF's job to supply anyone with a business model. It's the FSF's job to lay out the ethical argument to defend their case that nonfree software is unjust and that we all deserve software freedom. Put differently, and not to equate nonfree software with slavery (slavery is more oppressive than nonfree software), but ethical arguments against slavery don't have an obligation to provide alternative labor sources to exploit. Ethical arguments against slavery have to lay out why people should be treated with human dignity as equals and not as slaves. With that, there are some approaches you should consider:

1. You can learn to be more charismatic, if you think it necessary, but plenty of speakers with important messages (including talking about issues of life and death) are not charismatic (charisma being an eminently subjective quality). Speakers including Noam Chomsky and Jeremy Scahill get large standing-room-only audiences of engaged listeners while delivering their ideas in a perfectly reasonable way because of what they have to say and write. I find this approach to be far more respectful to the audience than that of a charismatic speaker who delivers horrible messages like US President Obama who charismatically tells the world that he'll continue George W. Bush's wars against terror, or deflects serious discussion of what he does every Tuesday when he picks whom to assassinate (sometimes referred to as "Terror Tuesdays"), or when he delivers content-free acceptance speeches like he did in Grant Park spouting vague platitudes about his forthcoming presidency (as Adolph Reed Jr. pointed out on an interview with Bill Moyers, Obama gave "evocative statements" with "no real content"), and more).
2. You can learn to write other software. You can learn to do other jobs besides writing software.
3. All software needs support, regardless of user interface. There are also features businesses will pay for that need to be added to extant free software, such as directory service-related features desired for easier mass deployment within their organization. You can learn to write software that is sold based on its support; other organizations have charged large sums of money based on software they did not initially write; Cygnus which, until it was bought by Red Hat, provided GCC consulting services.
4. Apparently other people find ways to develop and distribute software via Internet download, make money, and do loads of other jobs all while not exploiting people.

Stallman is not going to address your reference to "open source" in the way you expect because he is not a representative of the open source movement, nor has he ever been. Perhaps you would have done well to read the summary /. provided on this story and the links contained therein. One of those links pointed you to a long-published article about how Stallman is not a spokesperson for "open source" and he has pointed out significant differences between his older movement—the free software movement—and the younger open source movement which focuses on development methodology (and is therefore willing to install and recommend nonfree software). That newer essay updates an older essay which has been published in print as well as online.

Also, developing and distributing free software doesn't always mean publishing GNU GPL-covered programs. There are lots of other free software licenses from which to choose depending on the details of the program and one's goals in distributing the program.

There are some confusions in what you're asking. It isn't Stallman or the FSF's job to supply anyone with a business model. It's the FSF's job to lay out the ethical argument to defend their case that nonfree software is unjust and that we all deserve software freedom. Put differently, and not to equate nonfree software with slavery (slavery is more oppressive than nonfree software), but ethical arguments against slavery don't have an obligation to provide alternative labor sources to exploit. Ethical arguments against slavery have to lay out why people should be treated with human dignity as equals and not as slaves. With that, there are some approaches you should consider:

1. You can learn to be more charismatic, if you think it necessary, but plenty of speakers with important messages (including talking about issues of life and death) are not charismatic (charisma being an eminently subjective quality). Speakers including Noam Chomsky and Jeremy Scahill get large standing-room-only audiences of engaged listeners while delivering their ideas in a perfectly reasonable way because of what they have to say and write. I find this approach to be far more respectful to the audience than that of a charismatic speaker who delivers horrible messages like US President Obama who charismatically tells the world that he'll continue George W. Bush's wars against terror, or deflects serious discussion of what he does every Tuesday when he picks whom to assassinate (sometimes referred to as "Terror Tuesdays"), or when he delivers content-free acceptance speeches like he did in Grant Park spouting vague platitudes about his forthcoming presidency (as Adolph Reed Jr. pointed out on an interview with Bill Moyers, Obama gave "evocative statements" with "no real content"), and more).
2. You can learn to write other software. You can learn to do other jobs besides writing software.
3. All software needs support, regardless of user interface. There are also features businesses will pay for that need to be added to extant free software, such as directory service-related features desired for easier mass deployment within their organization. You can learn to write software that is sold based on its support; other organizations have charged large sums of money based on software they did not initially write; Cygnus which, until it was bought by Red Hat, provided GCC consulting services.
4. Apparently other people find ways to develop and distribute software via Internet download, make money, and do loads of other jobs all while not exploiting people.

Stallman is not going to address your reference to "open source" in the way you expect because he is not a representative of the open source movement, nor has he ever been. Perhaps you would have done well to read the summary /. provided on this story and the links contained therein. One of those links pointed you to a long-published article about how Stallman is not a spokesperson for "open source" and he has pointed out significant differences between his older movement—the free software movement—and the younger open source movement which focuses on development methodology (and is therefore willing to install and recommend nonfree software). That newer essay updates an older essay which has been published in print as well as online.

Also, developing and distributing free software doesn't always mean publishing GNU GPL-covered programs. There are lots of other free software licenses from which to choose depending on the details of the program and one's goals in distributing the program.

There are some confusions in what you're asking. It isn't Stallman or the FSF's job to supply anyone with a business model. It's the FSF's job to lay out the ethical argument to defend their case that nonfree software is unjust and that we all deserve software freedom. Put differently, and not to equate nonfree software with slavery (slavery is more oppressive than nonfree software), but ethical arguments against slavery don't have an obligation to provide alternative labor sources to exploit. Ethical arguments against slavery have to lay out why people should be treated with human dignity as equals and not as slaves. With that, there are some approaches you should consider:

1. You can learn to be more charismatic, if you think it necessary, but plenty of speakers with important messages (including talking about issues of life and death) are not charismatic (charisma being an eminently subjective quality). Speakers including Noam Chomsky and Jeremy Scahill get large standing-room-only audiences of engaged listeners while delivering their ideas in a perfectly reasonable way because of what they have to say and write. I find this approach to be far more respectful to the audience than that of a charismatic speaker who delivers horrible messages like US President Obama who charismatically tells the world that he'll continue George W. Bush's wars against terror, or deflects serious discussion of what he does every Tuesday when he picks whom to assassinate (sometimes referred to as "Terror Tuesdays"), or when he delivers content-free acceptance speeches like he did in Grant Park spouting vague platitudes about his forthcoming presidency (as Adolph Reed Jr. pointed out on an interview with Bill Moyers, Obama gave "evocative statements" with "no real content"), and more).
2. You can learn to write other software. You can learn to do other jobs besides writing software.
3. All software needs support, regardless of user interface. There are also features businesses will pay for that need to be added to extant free software, such as directory service-related features desired for easier mass deployment within their organization. You can learn to write software that is sold based on its support; other organizations have charged large sums of money based on software they did not initially write; Cygnus which, until it was bought by Red Hat, provided GCC consulting services.
4. Apparently other people find ways to develop and distribute software via Internet download, make money, and do loads of other jobs all while not exploiting people.

Stallman is not going to address your reference to "open source" in the way you expect because he is not a representative of the open source movement, nor has he ever been. Perhaps you would have done well to read the summary /. provided on this story and the links contained therein. One of those links pointed you to a long-published article about how Stallman is not a spokesperson for "open source" and he has pointed out significant differences between his older movement—the free software movement—and the younger open source movement which focuses on development methodology (and is therefore willing to install and recommend nonfree software). That newer essay updates an older essay which has been published in print as well as online.

Also, developing and distributing free software doesn't always mean publishing GNU GPL-covered programs. There are lots of other free software licenses from which to choose depending on the details of the program and one's goals in distributing the program.

Stallman has said in numerous talks that he doesn't own a cell phone because not only due to lack of respect for his software freedom but also because they are (more properly identified as) trackers. He rightly objects to handing over data to track his location, as is part of a cell phone's normal operation. As with so many of these issues, his precience in looking out for his own privacy predates the headlines—Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept report that the NSA has been using SIM cards (commonly used with cell phones) tracking data to target drone attacks: "What's more, he adds, the NSA often locates drone targets by analyzing the activity of a SIM card, rather than the actual content of the calls. Based on his experience, he has come to believe that the drone program amounts to little more than death by unreliable metadata.".

As for "openness of source", you'd do well to read the summary /. provided on this story and the links contained therein. One of those links pointed you to a long-published article about how Stallman is not a spokesperson for "open source" and he has pointed out significant differences between his older movement—the free software movement—and the younger open source movement which focuses on development methodology (and is therefore willing to install and recommend nonfree software). That newer essay updates an older essay which has been published in print as well as online.

Stallman has also long pointed out that code in unchangeable hardware (code in ROM, for example) is equivalent to hardware in that the user and the developer are facing the same hurdles to modify that code. So I'd imagine that a toaster with code in ROM would be a candidate toaster for him to own. But so many devices these days have updateable code. If the code can be changed the user and developer might not be on an equal footing with regards to who is allowed to change that code (free software grants you the freedoms nonfree software does not grant). Thus this more common occurrence raises all the issues he's been talking about, writing/publishing software for, and organizing against for decades.

Stallman has said in numerous talks that he doesn't own a cell phone because not only due to lack of respect for his software freedom but also because they are (more properly identified as) trackers. He rightly objects to handing over data to track his location, as is part of a cell phone's normal operation. As with so many of these issues, his precience in looking out for his own privacy predates the headlines—Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept report that the NSA has been using SIM cards (commonly used with cell phones) tracking data to target drone attacks: "What's more, he adds, the NSA often locates drone targets by analyzing the activity of a SIM card, rather than the actual content of the calls. Based on his experience, he has come to believe that the drone program amounts to little more than death by unreliable metadata.".

As for "openness of source", you'd do well to read the summary /. provided on this story and the links contained therein. One of those links pointed you to a long-published article about how Stallman is not a spokesperson for "open source" and he has pointed out significant differences between his older movement—the free software movement—and the younger open source movement which focuses on development methodology (and is therefore willing to install and recommend nonfree software). That newer essay updates an older essay which has been published in print as well as online.

Stallman has also long pointed out that code in unchangeable hardware (code in ROM, for example) is equivalent to hardware in that the user and the developer are facing the same hurdles to modify that code. So I'd imagine that a toaster with code in ROM would be a candidate toaster for him to own. But so many devices these days have updateable code. If the code can be changed the user and developer might not be on an equal footing with regards to who is allowed to change that code (free software grants you the freedoms nonfree software does not grant). Thus this more common occurrence raises all the issues he's been talking about, writing/publishing software for, and organizing against for decades.

Stallman has said in numerous talks that he doesn't own a cell phone because not only due to lack of respect for his software freedom but also because they are (more properly identified as) trackers. He rightly objects to handing over data to track his location, as is part of a cell phone's normal operation. As with so many of these issues, his precience in looking out for his own privacy predates the headlines—Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept report that the NSA has been using SIM cards (commonly used with cell phones) tracking data to target drone attacks: "What's more, he adds, the NSA often locates drone targets by analyzing the activity of a SIM card, rather than the actual content of the calls. Based on his experience, he has come to believe that the drone program amounts to little more than death by unreliable metadata.".

As for "openness of source", you'd do well to read the summary /. provided on this story and the links contained therein. One of those links pointed you to a long-published article about how Stallman is not a spokesperson for "open source" and he has pointed out significant differences between his older movement—the free software movement—and the younger open source movement which focuses on development methodology (and is therefore willing to install and recommend nonfree software). That newer essay updates an older essay which has been published in print as well as online.

Stallman has also long pointed out that code in unchangeable hardware (code in ROM, for example) is equivalent to hardware in that the user and the developer are facing the same hurdles to modify that code. So I'd imagine that a toaster with code in ROM would be a candidate toaster for him to own. But so many devices these days have updateable code. If the code can be changed the user and developer might not be on an equal footing with regards to who is allowed to change that code (free software grants you the freedoms nonfree software does not grant). Thus this more common occurrence raises all the issues he's been talking about, writing/publishing software for, and organizing against for decades.

Stallman has already advocated coercion: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy...

Thank you for the article, but it does not really address my question.

In that article he tries to convince people to chose GPL over LGPL for libraries. At most, the consequence here is that someone is unable to use the library in question because he does not agree with the terms.

What I am asking is different: I would like to know if he would make it a crime to use a proprietary license.