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Bertrand Meyer's "The Ethics of Free Software"
Jarle Stabell writes: "An interesting article titled "The Ethics of Free Software" by OO guru Bertrand Meyer is available online at Software Development (Meyer has IMHO written one of the best OO books. " Warning: Meyer questions some assumptions of open source, so if that's going to offend you, don't read it. *grin*
This supports his point that on a reliability level, OSS and CSS come out the same. I didn't hear him arguing that CSS had less bugs, merely that the "OSS is more reliable" argument didn't hold in his experience. So, then from a users point of view, CSS is ethial. And if users are willing to chose a closed product over an open one, then I consider it ethical to produce CSS, and so the FSF argument that it is immoral to write closed software is shown to be false for me (since morality is to some extent subjective). Which interacts with ethics, only in the realm of business ethics. Which means, that it is up to the owner of the resource to decide whether releasing the source to their product is the right thing. For an individual that's fine. For a corporate entity, the case can be made, and the representative of the corportation will make the decision. I'm not sure how it works with tax-payer funded software (ie Universities). If the software was developed for an educational purpose, which is has served, then it should be release open-source, since that should deliver the most value back to the tax-payers. However when professors start writing software on work time because they want to, should the tax-payer be funding it? , yes but that's not why his arguments were straw-men. ERS's arguments are so easy to push over because they are ridiculous. eg: WTF? Just because his personal project was a personal itch doesn't mean every piece of software is. A lot of good software scratches someone else's itch. ESR takes the features of his project and applies them as universal axioms of software development. It would be funny if it wasn't for the fact that OS advocates keep quoting it.
It attempts to argue for open, collaborative development processes, but spends half of the essay talking about some useful software engineering methods. eg Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around. Sure it's true, but it's as applicable to Cathedrals and Bazaars.
But enough ESR bashing. This is all very well, but it's not what advocates argue. The argument is, "OSS is more reliable". "You can trust our code because it's open". If it's buggy, then it's buggy. Most people don't care why, or how easy it is to fix, they just want to know when it will work. If OSS really can deliver better software, then great, but if it can't (and I don't believe that, on the whole, OSS is by definition better), then ESR (et al) should be honest about it.
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Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Any functioning society must have a minimal amount of coersion (aka. government) such to ensure "negative rights" are upheld. anything else would be anarchy.
If society wants proliferation of intellectual works, there needs to be some form of property attached to those works in order to guarantee remuneration. Without property the free market cannot operate.
Should the free market be allowed to proliferate in intellectual works? Well, yes, if we feel that there is a principle of scarcity at work. It just so happens that it intellectual work there is scarcity - the scarcity of skill & talent to write good books, music, software, etc.
If social forces all of a sudden decide "no, we don't need any as much of a flow of music or books for a while", then yes, intellectual roperty rights can and should be abolished.
-Stu
Hmm. It could be said that CSS was praised by omission, but I think now I have reread it that you are right.
Not me. I don't use VB :) :+)
Great - can I have your job?
This supports his point that on a reliability level, OSS and CSS come out the same. I didn't hear him arguing that CSS had less bugs, merely that the "OSS is more reliable" argument didn't hold in his experience.
Unfortunately, this IS a example of praise by omission - he states that, due to fixes that were promised for a OSS package and didn't arrive, his project had to be scrapped. WTF? What bug could be so bad that it forces the discard of months of man-hours of work, so insoluble that the Dev team for the package *and* his own personal programmers couldn't come up with a fix or a workaround, even given the full code for the compiler, and why was his code so compiler-specific that the code couldn't be ported to another Commerical compiler to complete the project?
and he is right - it is.
Yes, of course he is - but he is judging the whole of the OSS based on RMS and the fact Eric likes guns - That is like judging the entire Christian body on the attitudes of one Religious Zealot and a Deacon that likes to go shooting.
Personally, I believe that OSS is not automagically better than CSS by some innate nature, but feel that OSS is able to GET better faster and easier, as there is less incentive to hang onto patches to release them as a payware "upgrade"
I also believe that to release a package as CSS is an equally moral choice - but it is more moral to support an OSS project on principle if it is as good as, or has the potential to be better than, a CSS equivilent. If the CSS is the perfect $50 package BM gave as an example though, then the OSS package would need to be pretty good to beat it - but equally, if an existing product has bugs (and they ALL do) and the OSS package has bugs (and THEY all do) then you are more likely to get a bugfix for the OSS then the CSS - as a normal user. I don't doubt that exceptional customers can get the undivided attention of the CSS development team - but this obviously cuts into the amount of attention they could pay to the rest of us.
So, then from a users point of view, CSS is ethical. And if users are willing to chose a closed product over an open one, then I consider it ethical to produce CSS, and so the FSF argument that it is immoral to write closed software is shown to be false for me (since morality is to some extent subjective).
I would argue that OSS is no less ethical, at a minimum - and that given you gain the "additional" advantages of open source and free software (maintainability, freedom to choose your own support structure, inability to find yourself "orphaned" if the manufacturer should go bust or just drop the product), it should be considered more ethical to support it - the quality of the product being equal. To state that CSS has no moral value at all ranks alongside the "property is theft" declaration - neither has even the smallest basis, and is almost guaranteed to lose you support from normal people.
<snip "one gets you three" argument> :+)
Which interacts with ethics, only in the realm of business ethics. Which means, that it is up to the owner of the resource to decide whether releasing the source to their product is the right thing.
That's what I said, yes
In ESRs essays, he says that on one occasion, he told a querient that Opening his product's source would be the WRONG thing to do - he would gain nothing from a business perspective and would probably lose customers he already had. RMS would have ranted for twenty minutes on how he had stolen the money from his current user base and should immediately release the code. Many companies now take the middle road - sell their software commercially for as long as it is viable, then release it to the open source community - and that opens a whole new moral can of worms.
For an individual that's fine. For a corporate entity, the case can be made, and the representative of the corportation will make the decision. I'm not sure how it works with tax-payer funded software (ie universities). If the software was developed for an educational purpose, which is has served, then it should be release open-source, since that should deliver the most value back to the tax-payers.
However when professors start writing software on work time because they want to, should the tax-payer be funding it?
If it directly competes with his duties, then the University is entitled to see SOMETHING to compensate them for that loss - either monetary compensation, or prestige. It would be unusual for a professor NOT to research his own papers and publications on Paid time; Universities accept this, and indeed know that the prestige of their institution depends partly on the prestige of their staff, and that prestige depends on their output within their field. Such papers are freely cited by further papers once they are published, and a tree of documents can be built pointing from the latest, cutting edge discoveries right back to the earliest principles.
In a university setting, I can't see any reason why such should be limited to dry paper, if a Professor can give theory, Practice and Proof in one tidy bundle anyone can download and admire.
<Snip "pro-gun"> :+)
Yes but that's not why his arguments were straw-men. ERS's arguments are so easy to push over because they are ridiculous. eg:
1. Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch.
WTF? Just because his personal project was a personal itch doesn't mean every piece of software is. A lot of good software scratches someone else's itch. ESR takes the features of his project and applies them as universal axioms of software development. It would be funny if it wasn't for the fact that OS advocates keep quoting it.
Yep, it is a good example of ESR taking his own personal values and mapping them onto the OSS movement as a whole - a bit similar to the way BM took HIS personal values as a universal moral baseline, and used them like a hammer
However, BM didn't find this (I think largely because he didn't read any of the essays, his moral indignation over Gun Advocacy getting the better of him) so I can only repeat that BM made an unqualified, ad-hom attack on ESR.
It attempts to argue for open, collaborative development processes, but spends half of the essay talking about some useful software engineering methods. eg Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around. Sure it's true, but it's as applicable to Cathedrals and Bazaars. :+)
Indeed - but these are essays, So wander a bit. they are not political manifestos for Bazaar mode OR Cathedral mode programming, or for OSS in general; no doubt if he knew they would be eventually held up as the Icons of the OSS movement, he would have been a bit tider
He is arguing for the sort of programming he would like to see - and quite a lot of OSS code is pretty shabby (so is CSS of course, but this is in the open where you can see it)
<Snip "work in progress">
:+) for free - and sometimes you DO get what you pay for.
This is all very well, but it's not what advocates argue. The argument is, "OSS is more reliable". "You can trust our code because its open". If it's buggy, then it's buggy. Most people don't care why, or how easy it is to fix, they just want to know when it will work. If OSS really can deliver better software, then great, but if it can't (and I don't believe that, on the whole, OSS is by definition better), then ESR (et al) should be honest about it.
I agree - OSS is massively overhyped at the moment; many of the advocates heaping glowing praise on OSS software couldn't code if their lives depended on it, they have made a political commitment and can't miss an opportunity to wave the flag. Add to that the penchant of reporters to "simplify" statements down to soundbites, and such misrepresentations become a little more expected.
Experienced coder says:
"OSS can be more reliable, because when a bug IS found, you aren't forced to wait for the owners to sell you an update, but can look in the code and fix it yourself. If you do the responsible thing and pass that fix back to the maintainers, you have just improved the product as a whole; if two thousand people do this, then you have had two thousand developers work on your code, and what CSS project can afford that? A project's improvement ramps up the more people that join."
Advocate hears this, and what *doesn't* go over his head is this:
When I see projects go wrong, I fix them. When thousands of other people see it go wrong, they fix it too. Eventually we will run out of bugs to fix, and everything will be perfect"
and thinks:
all I have to do is wait
Reporter hears Advocate's version, and finally writes:
OSS software is free, and patches are free; thousands of people are giving you this free, there will soon be no bugs left. Get this now before they wake up and start charging!
The reporter isn't going to write what the Coder said - even if he had heard it, it is far too Geekish. And just publishing "Project X is getting better faster for free than CSS product Y" isn't going to sell papers - he is a reporter, he has a duty to tell people the REAL meaning of his news, and if he jumps the gun a little, he will be eventually proved right - and will have got it in before $COMPETING_PAPER
The only real difference between this process for CSS and OSS is that CSS pay their Advocates, and call them marketing executives.... OSS get them (like everything else it seems
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-=DaveHowe=-
It just shows that he doesn't understand the point of open source at all. The reason why not opening your source is harming your neighbor is that open source will eliminate redundant labor-in closed-source schemes, people have to solve the same problems many times, with the result being a terrible waste of effort.
I have been thinking about this question for some time and would like to here more reasons / more points of view whether OSS really cuts down on redundancy and is therefore more efficient in its "use" of programmers time.
About half a year ago I started to participate in an OS 3D-modeler and also to think about OSS. One of the first ideas about the disadvantage of closed source software was that it forces you to reinvent the wheel.
But what about OSS? On Sourceforge alone, there are at least twelve 3D-modelers in development, most with very similar aims!! You could argue that we will learn from each other and take each others code. But I am not so sure, it costs much time to learn another program, get into the source, and port a part of it. I know that in the half year we are going, nobody has done that and most of the other development groups are smaller. I am quite unsure how to view this situation.
Also, one of the proposed advantages of OSS is that many people look into fixing bugs and that there is someone who will find it "shallow". Is there no redundant work done here?
Another argument seems to be that no dollar per man-hour is paid, therefore many people can look for bugs etc. Does this not lead to redundant work?
With closed source software, you can also try to avoid unnecessary work. For example, in the program I do for a living, I need to create AVIs. I would need at least a week to implement it. There is also a library that can do it, it costs 100$ for one version or 300$ for all, so thats cheaper for us. So, doing the economic thing lead to reuse. However, I agree that this works only on a certain level. Creating AVIs is something that can nicely be "modularized" out into a library.
I hope I dont come over as anti-OSS. I am playing "devils advocate" here because I want to hear the arguments why OSS leads to less redundant/more efficient software development. After all, my OSS-development experience is still quite limited.
2) And then we have the nice "My company isn't big enough to make the changes in the code ourselves. If we have a commercial product then at least we can complain."
Indeed - in fact, we have here an authority on OO programming, who apparently has a group of coders going so deep into something that they find the bugs lurking in the unexplored depths of the compiler. (I note the exact bugs aren't named though - not unreasonable for a non-technical piece, but it would have been nice)
if they were so terrible, they should indeed have been assigned a higher priority by the core coders (but I can't judge, as I don't know what they were). If they were in some obscure area of a library, or in fact merely differed from how the MS compiler handled that function, then a reply of "work around it or fix it yourself" to such an obviously name-heavy development group might well have been in order. The only true strength of OSS is that with CSS, you can only recognise the bug; with OSS, you can recognise it, trace it to it's home, and either fix it yourself or at least give the coders a good idea of what is broken; and give we are STILL waiting for MS to fix Multiple Inheritance in their compilers.......
--
-=DaveHowe=-
I read his long-winded troll, from one end to the other. and Yes, there was some insight until the tirade on how americans are evil, and gun owners are murderers. if I put it in his words, "I bought my gun so I can kill people!, Oh and I train my children to kill people too". Excuse me, but if your country is so perfect, why isnt it utpoia? And secondly, if you "forigners" dont like the fact that in the USA honest citizens are allowed to have guns then please, get the hell out of my country! No law passed (Other than an officer may assassinate anyone found with a weapon on the spot, circa Germany 1939-1945) will stop a criminal that wants a gun from getting one.
The article had some insight, that was instantly destroyed by this lunatics tirade onto political rounds.
Credibality went from 30 to 60 and to -10 .
Next time, if he would write about the topic instead of his stupid views.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The limited comodity is the time and resources that people put behind the software, not the bits themselves. Although in the past information was somewhat linked to comodities that had limited resources, it's not anymore - and trying to apply it like we always had is just unworkable.
Note that I have nothing wrong with the idea that some people want to give software away with provisions that they remain open. My problem with the GPL and Stallman is where proprietary software is considered some sort of 'evil', and that people shouldn't have the right to it. This isn't a great evil - perhaps a misforune - but not something that even comes close (in scale or principle) to slavery.
Well if that's what you think. But surely you've noticed the striking argumentative similarities, is this just a cooincidence? EG. I have a right to own X because I put Y kind of effort into it, I have no incentive to do X without Y, The law recgonizes X as a property right, America's economic success is founded on X?
What about, X started out as a short term limited thing, and now people are trying to make it permanent? - The laws of logic are universal and constant no matter how light or extreme. What would you expect me to think, what is the logical justification for intellectual 'property' ? As one rational person to another - don't the justifications above (for IP) sound rather distastefull to you?
Well, I asked someone, and I was wrong about the tires. Again, that was just a guess.
Fact is, it is not that hard to keep Shabbat. Just put the important lights on timers, don't use electricity (again, except with timers), and don't drive[*] or shop.
The Talmud is in no way anachronistic. The purpose of the Sabbath is to be a day of rest and study; a good idea for the gentile world as well. The French one time tried to move to one free day in 10 instead of 1 in 7 and it was a miserable failure. To cease from work one day a week is a Good Thing(tm). And the things that have a definite positive correlation between them and low conversion rates are intermarriage and the keeping of the Sabbath.
All of the prohibitions in the Talmud were derived logically or from common sense. For example, the Bible begins the sentence about doing no work on Shabbat the same way it begins the sentence about construction of the Mishkan. Therefore, the 39 prohibited forms of labor are the same as the kinds of labor that were used in building the Mishkan. It sounds stupid the way I said it, but it makes very much sense if you look at it logically from a better explanation than mine.
[*] The conservative movement has ruled that it is acceptable to drive on Shabbat, but only to synagogue. This is because many people would otherwise not be able to go to synagogue at all due to the spreading out of the Jewish population.
nuclear cia fbi spy password code encrypt president bomb
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
This is incredibly ironic.
You're saying that you get moderated down a lot on slashdot by 'calling bluffs', and implying that the moderators are hiding a lot of truths from themselves and can't bear to have those truths pointed out to them.
But wait, look: You posted this with a +1 bonus. If you get moderated down so much for 'telling the truth', how did you aquire enough karma to post with that bonus?
So basically, your complaints about getting moderated down are just a bunch of petulant, disingenuous whining.
You're right, Meyer's article would get moderated down a great deal if posted as a comment here. Some of that moderation might be due to the fact that he's saying things many people here would disagree with. But most of it would be because the article is basically garbage. A big chunk of his argument boils down to "ESR likes guns, and RMS is rude to people who disagree with him, therefore open source software is unethical."
And on those relatively rare occasions when you do get moderated down, the reasons are usually similar - sometimes its because you challenge dogma, but mostly its because you've done a poor job of making any point. To claim otherwise is incredibly self-aggrandizing.
It makes me wonder. Has OSS just come over these great thinkers' horizons, so that they feel the sudden inclination to express their views on it?
Maybe its just that now everybody (and not just OSS people themselves) is interested in this subject?
#ifdef wearing_flame_suit
Or maybe its just that there is too much hype surrounding OSS?
#endif
You can tell how desperate they are by counting the number of times they say "innovate" in their press release
Good metric. B.Meyer doesnt say it once, so he doesnt seem to be desperate at all.
This article isn't really about the ethics of free software, it's about the ethics of commercial software and the ethics of free software programmers.
That said this article is overly turgid, and devotes a fair amount of space to the tired old "you're stealing paper clips from the company" viewpoint. It tends to downplay the value of non-commercial activities in the sphere of human endevour and reduce matters to base currency. I'd like to think that most of the things that make me a worthwile human being (or rat) occur when I'm not making money. It's packed full of straw men besides (like a particular free software advocate's opinions on gun ownership); he devotes a fair bit of space to this sort of criticism which he himself earlier calls foul on.
His inclusion of property rights amonst the paramount human rights is interesting, and I think he's commiting the sin of cultural relativism he's warning about; introducing a principle which is primary intended to support his arguments. Personally, I'd prefer to live in a Iain M Banks style world without personal property, if it ment that I could have practically any material thing I wanted. I like the idea that I might one day live in a world where this is at least true of software.
Anyway to take issue with two other points:
"For all that, it is easy to miss the incredible contributions of Microsoft--and its defacto partner, Intel--to the just as incredible progress of the computer industry. By establishing a mass market that enabled staggering price reductions, 'Wintel' has made the computer revolution possible."
There were other PCs before the "IBM-PC" became the dominant type; Acorn, Amiga, Archemedies, BBC, Mac (just off the top of my head). I think at least a couple of them were superior to the PCs of their day. I'd like to think if it weren't for "Wintel" we'd have better machines today; quite frankly PCs are full of hardware bottlenecks compared to some of those more "distributed" architectures.
The story goes on to state that Stallman "resigned"-- presumably meaning that he stopped using the MIT's machines, since it appears from the above that he had already resigned --- because "sometimes, universities take software written by their employees to sell them as proprietary products". (What a shame indeed: that a university would think it has any rights at all on products developed by people it pays, on machines that it owns!)
Indeed what. Would he think it unreasonable that a mathematician publish their work? An economist? A historian? He seems to think it unreasonable that computer scientist would want to publish his.
In short (one more time) this article is about commerce, and takes little notice of issues like academic freedom, art, science or the field of human knowledge; matters which should be included in any proper discussion of ethics.
Excellent point. But if you go back and read the Slashdot interview with RMS, you will see that he says that RMS thinks there are many things in the world that are much more cruical than non-free software. But he thinks he can make the most differnece with FSF, so thats where he puts his time.
I found the following escalation amusing:
The intent is not to fight over terminology, but simply to make do with the limited number of terms in the English language
...
The categories identified here--donated, taxpayer-funded, privately funded, taxpayer-sponsored and privately-sponsored--seem to exhaust the economic possibilities; they provide precise and accurate terminology, more useful in practice than the catch-all term of free software.
...
[RMS uses]the universal appeal of this word, derived from centuries of mankind's struggle for freedom in the usual (political and moral) sense of the term, to defend the authors' own agenda, based on a narrow and controversial notion of freedom. This distortion--the hijacking for private purposes of a word that holds such a sacred aura for most people--is highly unethical.
NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise .... surprise and fear .... fear and surprise .... Our two weapons are fear and surprise .... and ruthless efficiency .... Our three weapons are fear, surprise and ruthless efficiency .... and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our four .... no ....
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
We seem to have a pattern of semi-luminaries speaking out against OSS in a very public manner, starting somewhere around a year ago. One every few months, IIRC.
It makes me wonder. Has OSS just come over these great thinkers' horizons, so that they feel the sudden inclination to express their views on it? Has the rising tide started to threaten the beachfront property of random members of the elite? Or is this just the highbrow variant of astroturfing?
Inquiring minds want to know.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Hey Bowie,
:)
Nice to see you decided to stick around Slashdot. You wrote a few days ago:
After submitting this post, I'll be nuking my Slashdot bookmark and switch over getting my daily fodder from GeekNews.net.
(What can I say, after your tizzy with VA Linux you're famous now. Congratulations.) Anyways.
Personally, I agree with most of what Meyer points out in his article. It's never been fully explained (at least to my satisfaction) why attempting to make money off your own work (and exclusively your own work) is taboo. I've heard people scream bloody murder at me for years for simply trying to sell various little odds and ends i've made, rather than just declare it public domain and give it out for free.
The thing is Meyer misrepresents ESR and RMS's views. They never said trying to make money is wrong. In fact they say quite the opposite. (see www.gnu.org or www.tuxedo.org/~esr) He intentionally made his definition of free meaning free beer, then used that to attack our definition of free meaning free to improve are share with your neighbor.
Ford isn't "depriving" people of transportation by demanding that you pay money for one of their cars.
Once again, wrong "free." You fell for his redefinition of terms techniques. It is a common technique used often, oddly enough, by cults.
For the record I don't think it is fair for anyone to ask that you release your work as public domain.
Have a nice day.
In fact there are three small vendors today who sell Eiffel compilers and there is a GNU Eiffel compiler called SmallEiffel.
It's not clear at the moment whether the GNU Eiffel compiler has come too late.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
C'mon Guys, This article is one man's attempt to excuse his own actions.
My reasons for using free software are simple, I like it. If i didn't, I'd use something else. He should do the same.
RMS may be an extreemist, but that shouldn't destroy his carefully reasoned opinions (which are often right). That seems to be the gist of the argument. This is like reading a Baptist tract writtenagainst the Mormons, If you know anything about the group being attacked, the arguments are obviously falsee and slanderous. (The same is true of tracts written to attack the Baptists, as soon as money is involved, truth goes out the window.) A clear example of this was the assertion by insinuation that ERS supports the murder of women and hcildren in third world countries. IIRC, ESR is a believer in capitol punmishment. You are responsible for your own actions. That is never acknoleged here. It just didn't fit in with the authors prejudices.
Isn't this a scream? I enjoy seeing OO industry figureheads' true views exposed.
Yes, we've learned from OO. (Although it's instructive to note how many practices existed well before OO's time, but which OO claims as its own invention.) But when blowhard Meyer's silly rules would keep you from hiring Donald E. Knuth (who loves C), something is really wrong.
Meyer's counter-response about C "not being suitable for large, flexible, extensible systems" doesn't seem to explain why virtually all mainstream operating systems are written in this language. Are the world's finest engineers really so stupid, or is there something to C's success? Meyer vaguely alludes to there being something rather positive about C, but he drops the topic like a hot potato.
Why is this ridiculous viewpoint advanced at all? Because the minute they admit that OO isn't always the best idea, they lose a little power to scare managers into mandating OO training courses, books, materials, consulting, etc. Those fees are the real reason for the existence of OO per se; virtually none of the techniques are new.
Meyer also suffers from overidentification of design philosophies with individual languages. Only dead languages have this luxury. That's why it's so funny that he mentions Modula and Pascal as languages supposedly less vulnerable to "C hacker syndrome." So we're going to put out ads for Modula-3 people now?
GNU OCTAL http://www.gnu.org/software/octal
Recently ... we have had to cancel one major project, and reengineer a product completely, after wasting many person-months and disappointing customers, because of the deficiencies of two separate GNU products (the GCC compiler for Windows and the editor under GTK). In both cases the scenario was the same: fixes to well-known bugs being promised and promised again; everyone waiting for months and months, until it becomes clear that nothing will happen; in the end, having to write off all the affected developments. Since no one is in charge, and you didn't pay for the products, there is no one to blame.
So Meyer doesn't get it: if you want a specific feature in free software, you can implement it yourself or pay someone to implement it for you. (And if you want it on a schedule, you're going to have to do it that way -- after all, you didn't pay for the product, Bertrand (and would your experience really have been different if you had?). Admittedly, the developers shouldn't have promised what they wouldn't deliver -- but then again, we currently have only his side of the story, and he doesn't show himself in this article to be all that concerned with the truth. Wonderful irony, for an article on ethics.)
But Meyer did neither, and now the poor fellow feels embarrassed, and rather than admit he made a mistake or didn't understand free software, he painstakingly composes a learned-sounding but thoroughly misleading and unfair article attacking thousands of his fellow software developers. What a disappointment.
--
``Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators.'' -- Richard Dawkins
ROTFLMAO!
Who says that Monty Python quotes don't have practical value?
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
Then he started prattling on about how "gun nuts" have "managed to terrorize Congress into maintaining loose gun laws with no equivalent in the rest of the civilized world". It's understandable that he falls on one particular side of the gun issue, but he's reverted to the name-calling and childishness he accuses RMS of. I personally will never own a gun, but if that's his way of showing me that guns are absurd, he'll have to find someone else to convince me.
I haven't even read the rest of the article, it's just not worth it.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
so? when it's cheapbytes selling it to you, then it's cheapbytes that's doing the act of selling. when RH sells it to you, it's RH that's selling it to you. can it really be any more obvious? I can't believe anyone would claim that what RH does is "not really selling". whatever other money sources RH may have makes no difference on the question of whether they are selling software or not. (and besides, they *do* make a sizable chunk of money from sales of official RH products). as for documentation and support, well, commercial software also comes with a book and some support usually, does that make it "not really selling"?
So an argument is necessarily invalid if the line above it says "by Bernard Meyer" but it is (at least possibly) valid if the line above it says "by Ernest Brookner"? This makes no sense. Certainly, the history of someone can be used to provide perspective on other things that the person has done, but for anything to be given serious consideration, it must be considered in isolation.
Put differently: you are a drunkard. Someone tells you to stop drinking, that it will kill you soon. That person, however, is also drunk a lot. Does that mean that the advice is bad? No: alcoholism WILL harm you. The quality of the advice is independent of the person giving it.
Meyer wasn't criticizing a programming language; he was criticizing the people who had used that language.
He's saying that those who choose to use C are likely to program by the principles used in C -- after all, they chose to use C. That's hardly an unethical or evil thing to say. If someone chooses, and therefore presumably prefers, to program in a non-object-oriented language, chances are they will not be the best people to program in an object-oriented way.
You're quite right that they're not the same, and I don't think RMS has ever claimed that they are. I think RMS would object strongly to Meyer's attempt to confuse commercial software with proprietary software
--
Martin
Wow, excellent response.
You put it very elequently.
I disagree I think you'll find that most programmers get paid for developing custom software for various companies (like banks, airlines etc), software which is never sold but only used by the company that funded the development.
It would be interesting to have numbers about this.
Selling shrink-wrapped software like shoes only works for very few large companies (like MS).
No, there are many small companies selling shrink-wrapped software into niche-markets, for example room-planing software for kitchen-studios.
But, people are motivated to write open source software, and do write open source software. It isn't as if there's an academic debate about whether or not people would actually write open source software; they do, in abundance. There isn't a problem with open source software (it is doing just fine) so much as a problem with bigotry and fanaticism among the most visible proponents of open source software. Whenever the focus shifts from writing good software to attacking those who would dare to make a living or, dare I even mention, a profit from their toil, that's when the problem with open source software begins.
/* 3.Software has nothing to do with gun control. Just because someone supports free software doesn't make them gun fanatics. Who is so and naive as to imitate everything somebody does just because they happen to agree with you on one particular point? If you think that you cannot agree with somebody on one point without agreeing with everything else they say about every other issue, then you are a pathetic blind sheep who deserve what you get.*/ I hate to say it, but we all know such people DO exist. In discussions about free software, open source software and the like I've had portions of the GNU webpage parroted to me as cut'n'paste sessions. I think perhaps Mr. Meyer may have been close to as extreme in his views as Mr. Stallman is in his, or as Mr. Raymond is in the views up in his pages. While I do not agree with any of the three esteemed gentleman entirely, I will defend to the death their right to make such statements. I perceived the focal point of Mr. Meyers column to be that people need to give every viewpoint they read or encounter a full and honest evaluation. Mr Meyer was, from what I gathered, attempting to filter the viewpoints put forth primarily by Richard Stallman and Eric Raymond through his own experiences with both software and ethics. Just as he urges the world not to accept RSM's viewpoints as the only way to go about software, even free software, I believe it's fair to say not to do the same with Bertrand Meyer's. "If God had a heard he'd be a UNIX programmer" All flames will be read, laughed at and used as toilet paper.
Yeah, but this is a guy who writes and sells computer languages for a living. I don't think that I can cut him quite that much slack.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Should the free market be allowed to proliferate in intellectual works? Well, yes, if we feel that there is a principle of scarcity at work. It just so happens that it intellectual work there is scarcity - the scarcity of skill & talent to write good books, music, software, etc.
The limited resource is the time and skill that goes into creating intellectual works - not the information itself. That's what should be measued, and thats what companies like redhat make money from without relying on a government grated monopoly that create artifical limits where no natural ones exist. The same goes for music, make money from live performance, not copyrights! Relying on copyrights is anything but minimal coersion.
But one need not accept any of the extreme positions in order to support Open Software, or even Free Software (i.e., GPL). Personally I get a bit tired of the being - taken -advantage - of that tends to accumulate around corporations. The "Do things our way or else!" scene.
.. I can't do much about governments, and they do tend to try to keep down the lesser predators, but where I have any control I'd rather design a playground that was inherently safe than pay someone a lot to wreck it. So I wasn't very impressed with his arguments. They had too much assumed that I disagreed with.
They need to get real. Most of their work is highly derivitive. I don't feel like paying a lot for the clever packaging (though I must admit to being a bit taken with *.rpm's and *.deb's).
I feel that corporations have taken the money game and made it into a center of power, and I don't want that kind of game being played in any important part of my life. Some parts are a bit hard to control
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
We were founded on the idea of defending freedom at all costs, and luckily some of us still believe in that. Other people who don't aren't really supporting Open Source, they're just being cheap.
Well, BM wants us to have to freedom to choose between the different models.
More importantly, I think there are other reasons for OS than freedom or being cheap. Here are three that I would value very high:
- Advancement of technology by enabling others to build on your things.
- Hopefully (see my other post) less redundant work
- Hopefully better quality
So, release a program for free, then sell user manuals for it. Could work, I think...
Unfortunately I dont think so. Lets take one of my programs. There is about 3-4 years in it. I could write a manual, in, say a few month. RMS says technical documentation should be free to copy also. So I could only sell my expertise to extend it, support it etc. Even if I like to do support and even if there are companies which need the software extended, other persons could get into the program in a matter of maybe 1-2 months. So, I couldnt take much more money than the time needed for the specific job is worth. I think it would be unlikely that I would ever get back the investment of the 3-4 years, even if I had the money upfront to make this investment before I can start to earn money. Another point is that I might be tempted to make the software worse by badly commenting the code so that others cant get into it so easy.
As I said, I think this is unfortunate. It would be great if in all circumstances it would be as easy to make money of open sourced sw than of closed source sw and every program would become open sourced.
The author hiself villifies taxpayer-supported free software, but shouldn't something that's paid for by the public be freely available to the public?
You'd think so, but that doesn't seem to be the way things are. Basically, universities have two policies -- either the University owns the software (the policy of the University of California, I believe), or the authors own it (as in the case of the University of Waterloo). In either case, the owners can freely release the software to the public, but there is no obligation to do so.
Arguments about alcoholism can be backed up with statistics, medical evidence, and other objective data. But ethics are slippery concepts must be considered in light of the reputation of the presenter. If John Wayne Gacy tells me that murder is wrong, I'm going to laugh at him even though he's right. However, if he tells me to destroy criminal evidence, not just hide it, I can consider him an authority on the matter. Maybe in the academic world of Rhetoric you are right, but in this argument, Bertrand Meyer does not have a reputation (with me) that makes his arguments persuasive.
Besides, I read his article. He doesn't get it.
Meyer's assertions about C versus OO programmers were not about using object-oriented languages; they were about discipline. If Meyer had said "avoid undisciplined programmers" I would have no beef with him, but he said "avoid C hackers" then offered up a bunch of unsubstantiated reasons why C hackers == undisciplined programmers. It was, as Robert Martin said, bigotry, and it was not ethical.
--Jim
Sorry if this rambled a little bit :-)
Not a problem. I appreciate it. Although I'm still not clear on hw this would apply to open source coding.
I am absolutely knocked out by the apparent response to this, especially considering the disclaimer underneath the link suggesting that those who are extra-sensitive to criticism of free software ideologies might do well to avoid reading the article.
/. comments. :)
This man presents his opinion and states repeatedly that it is his opinion and is based on his detailed definitions of terms such as "ethics" and "morals", and even within those definitions it can't be denied that he certainly says some controversial things. Can it be denied, however, that he doesn't also say some particularly true things?
His reference to a holier than thou attitude by well-spaced supporters of free software is quite effectively demonstrated by some of the criticisms contained within many
It's apparent that many of the ideals behind open source are stopping short of penetrating its advocates' day to day reasoning, causing them to dismiss (or indeed hurl large bags of shit at) anything with which they disagree rather than extracting anything which when isolated or taken in context is useful/true and making use of it.
I'm sure that many of you would agree with his suggestions to Microsoft and its employees, wouldn't you?
OOP is cool, but it sounds stupid, when you say it.
Another achronim, like URL, that should not be pronounced....
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
That's much more interesting than the rest of the linked article. Meyer's hot-air balloon was way too easy to poke holes in (even for me (not a big ESR or RMS fan)). I think he's a little nutso on this point, too.
Here's a short list of things that I personally think are immoral, the idea being to suggest why legal-moral identity is probably not ideal, because it begs the question, whose morality?:
--most gift-giving; because what's given is an obligation to repay, not a gift per se
--owning a dog; because lawn ornaments shouldn't be uncontrollably violent or shit on the sidewalk
--discontinuing junk food I've become addicted to; because I'm still withdrawing from 7UP Gold, Lime Chile Tostitos, and the McDLT
--working for the government; contributing to the enslavement of your fellow man to paperwork, p.c. jargon, and punitive taxation is just plain evil
--going to college; see "working for the government"
Conversely, I don't find cocaine-snorting, anal sex of any sort, giving away copies of Photoshop, or multi-state cop-killing sprees the least bit offensive to my ethics. Not many of my fellow man would enjoy living under my "moral law," however. Can't blame 'em.
So, the idea is to keep the law simple: don't steal stuff, don't hurt anyone who hasn't forced/asked you to, contracts are binding unless fraudulent. Just the basics that most everyone can agree on, simple enough to allow for complex personal moralities that, while goofy and disturbing to most, probably won't end up killing us all. Except the cops.
Now what I need is a (-1, Troll) to balance out those Insightfuls I've been getting lately. Dangerously close to posting with a bonus. Don't want it. Karma is stupid.
Thank you.
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
Interesting article. Meyer points out some glaring problems with the extreme views of many in the free software camp. I found his own glaring problems pretty amusing however. He accuses Richard Stallman et.al. of blanket ad hominum attacks against purveyors of proprietary software, then goes on to his own personal attack on esr:
This is followed by a blistering political attack on "gun nuts", a position I happen to agree with, but was embarrased to see put forward with such venom and vitrol. Bertrand Meyer seems to ignore his own lofty statement earlier in the article that Not that I necessarily agree that esr is a bad person. I do think that the connection between his ideas on guns and hos ideas on open source software was not well established by Mr. Meyer's article. In the absence of such a clear connection, this section of the article can only viewed as an example of the smear tactics Meyer accuses Stallman et al of engaging in.
Some of Meyer's other criticisms hit closer to the mark in my opinion. The idea that anyone who engages in the production of proprietary software is evil is ludicrous and detracts from the effectiveness of free software evangelism. Fortunately, the world is not made up of black-and-white opposites as both Richard Stallman and Bertrand Meyer seem to think. These two stand near opposite poles of a continuous, complicated field of belief and practise. Software developers are free to choose from a variety of open source licenses for their wares, or to sell their time to commercial concerns. Many select several items from the menu presented, to the betterment of themselves, and yes, to the world in general.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
... and ad hominim attacks.
... oops, sorry, wrong TLA.
... I can almost hear William Proxmire, may he rest in peace having repented for his sins: "Do you mean to tell me, the American taxpayers paid for the development of this ... this ... this so-called 'free' software? Without any congressional oversight?")
Meyers starts by saying ethics should be judged by acts, not attitudes. Then he spends almost the entire article attacking attitudes. RMS villifies "non-free" software; that's Bad. ESR villifies gun control; that's Bad. JMS villifies the Shadows
In fact, most of his points in COURSE OF ACTION seem aimed at RMS; ESR already supports all but one (two if "moral premises" means his attitude on guns).
The only "course of action" I think is silly is number 8: "Demand (in the spirit of faithful advertising) that the economic origin of 'free' software be clearly stated, and that the products be classified as one of 'donated', 'taxpayer-funded' and the other categories described in this article." He's asking the Free/Open movement to surrender the moral high ground (to him, naturally): he's saying, there is no such thing as "free" software, so stop using such a nice word for it! Well, tough.
("Taxpayer supported"
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
With this environment, the one big thing Open/Free source has going against it is that nice guys finish last. This is a huge hurdle to overcome and so far the open/free source community is really fairing well. It's nice to see good guys win once in a while.
Don't just whine about poor internet privacy and freedom policies,
One of the author's points against Stallman was that Stallman had alledged that scientists had cooperated, regardless of their countrys' being at war at the time. This was derided because the Japanese commited many attrocities.
... Why should we expect well reasonned commentary on open source from someone just because they write a book on OO?
From this we learn that nothing ever done by a Japanese person could be worth anything because the dictatorship (monarchy, empire, all the same) that once ruled the country did so in a cruel fashion.
I have a bit of a problem with that...
Those scientists could have been trying to cooperate with their American counterparts, and for no sinister motives. I don't doubt that Japan still carried on research during the war, and I don't doubt that many scientists would love to see something come of their work, if they had to give it up.
Nothing there sounds so unlikely as to make me question the story, and the actions of the people around those scientists don't colour the morality of the actions of the scientists themselves.
And then his whole critique on ESR's views of open source software is that guns kill people, and only hideous, very very evil people would ever own guns. That's it. Nothing about the open source. I don't think he got that far on ESR's web page, he simply got sidetracked on the gun issue.
And he doesn't realize that not everyone agrees about things, even the most fundamental things. I myself am not (well, am not a US citizen, so it's accademic) a strong supporter of pro-gun laws, but that doesn't mean I can't read anything ESR writes.
In the end, all Bertrand Meyer ends up doing is kicking around a few straw men, alleging that anyone who doesn't agree with him on all issues should be publically shunned by all leading open source people, and then proclaiming that his views are the only rational ones. Presumably because he isn't Japanese and doesn't own guns.
This guy is barely eligible to troll and they let him write a article? Fame or ability in one area does not translate into ability or intellect in another area. Nobody would expect kick-boxing from Einstein, or Downhill skiing from Napolean, or
This commentary on open source thing has been done to death, unless we can get someone who can evaluate it for what it is, without getting stuck on Stallman's attitude and ESR's guns, then let's just let it go, ok?
I'm a fan of open-source software for the exact reasons you mentioned: being able to contribute. Thinking of an idea or feature, and then actually doing something about it (ie, writing it in) gives me a natural high.
But being a fan of open-source software does not mean I am a fan of the open-source movement. Commercial software is not the work of Satan, it is the work of society. And if you haven;t noticed, people in all societies like to get paid to feed themselves, improve their quality of life, etc. Thinking that all commercial developers are minions of Hell is just plain idiocy.
To not be able to sit down to dinner with a commercial developer without going berzerk about free-software preachings (section 4 of the article) is absolute lunacy! People like Stallman do no favors to any organization.
--
"And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?"
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
It's good to see an article that not only speaks of the GPL license but covers other licensing mechanisms as well. Don't get me wrong, the GPL is great, but there are other licensing schemes out there that also have their place. It's like the "Linux is Unix" argument -- it isn't the only unix, just like the GPL isn't the only free and redistributable software license.
on second thought, I agree with you to a point; to go on with the same example, the GNOME people should publicly be fair to KDE, and vice-versa. but what I want to point out is that people who are devoting their time and effort to a project tend to have a skewed view of the project's importance, on its own and in relationship to others... and that that is perfectly understandable, and even a significant factor in their motivation. so I think it's bad criticism to whine when they're not fair to other projects. the whole basis of the free software movement is that your worth is measured by what you contribute -- not by how nicely and reasonably you speak.
http://www.loria.fr/projets/SmallEiffel
...richie - It is a good day to code.
A Father was explaining ethics to his son. "Ethics is about doing the right thing. Let's say someone comes into my store and I mistakenly over charge them by $20 for something they purchase. The question of Ethics is:
Do you tell your partner?"
[bada-boom-tssss]
___
First, he does acknowledge, right at the beginning, that availability of source code is a core element of free software.
Second, the fact that the software has zero cost is much more than an artifact; while it's true that it's a result of source being freely distributable, it's one of the central elements of open source software.
The so-called ethics of free software are nothing new, just a retake of socialism applied to the software industry. And they have no real justification, just RMS's irrational hatred of the capitalist system as applied to software. This article specifically states this, saying the following:
"The only stated justification for the indictment of commercial software--apart from nostalgic reminiscences of how nice life was in the early days of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and how horrible it became when printer manufacturers started distributing the software in binary form, a tale that may elicit sympathy from the reader but hardly has any universal moral value (I too remember fondly when you could get access to US National Parks for free by just showing a foreign passport, but that doesn't mean the National Park Service has suddenly turned evil)--is that software is different from other wares since it can be reproduced so easily. But this does not stand a minute's scrutiny."
Yet again we see a cogent argument saying that the whole "free software" argument is based upon nothing more than some outdated and irrational views held by RMS, an individual who, like many "great" leaders, has become bitter over something, real or imagined.
I find it funny that so many people are willing to follow his every word proclaiming how free software and open source gives the user more choices despite the fact that his arguments itself are anti-choice and closed in nature. But this inherent hypocracy is overlooked in the frenzy to attack anything that doesn't conform to RMS's "free" ideal.
Linux and GCC are widely praised by their users. Yet not all is rosy. Like commercial software, free software is --- surprise --- of very variable quality. You find the best and the worst. ISE's own experience with free software has included both kinds. Recently, we have had more than our share of the second; we have had to cancel one major project, and reengineer a product completely, after wasting many person-months and disappointing customers, because of the deficiencies of two separate GNU products (the GCC compiler for Windows and the editor under GTK). In both cases the scenario was the same: fixes to well-known bugs being promised and promised again; everyone waiting for months and months, until it becomes clear that nothing will happen; in the end, having to write off all the affected developments. Since no one is in charge, and you didn't pay for the products, there is no one to blame.
No one to blame, but yourself. If you are free you must take responsibility for your own actions, not lay the blame of deficiencies in the world on others. Scratch your own frickin' itch, my hands are busy finding mine, in other words.
He also misses the mark on the infinite nature of software argument. That photocopying a book example just doesn't hold. It's not only a matter of matter (the physical size of the book and paper) but of time (to make the copies) and effort (to make the copies). The LOVEBUG was a good example of infinite Free Software. Nobody wanted it, but it was free and travelled around the world a whole lot faster than a fat man on sled with a photocopier.
Also....I watched the NRA's rally today on c-span (flipping back and forth to cartoons...) and their esteemed leader Mos^H^H^HCharlton Heston. He ended his speech with the famous 5 words...(You'll get my gun when you pry it)"from my cold dead hands" while holding an antique rifle aloft.
My take on the gun debate is this. After all the hand waving and screaming unresolved conflict comes down to force. If one side is screaming "No Guns, No guns!" and the other's motto is as above. I don't usually bet, but I would on that one.
A community shouldn't be judged by the morals and actions of it's leaders (at least not solely). I'm proud to be an American. Clinton sucks. Enough said?
And for the quality issue...
Product F is free software. It comes with the standard no-warranty warranty.
Product P is proprietary software. It costs $50 for the binary-only version. It uses the most advanced techniques of software engineering. It never crashes, or departs in any way from its (mathematically expressed) specification. The seller is, in fact, so sure of those qualities that he will commit in writing that any violation of the specification during execution will immediately lead to reimbursement of the purchase price and compensation for any damages incurred.
That's called a "service contract" and is believed by many to be how they will eventually make money with Free software.
That's enough of this guy for today, time to go out and play.
--
+&x
I have a question that I doubt is addressed in this book, though I'm sure it troubles quite a few people:
In addition to being a programmer, I am a devout Christian. I've contributed in minor ways to a few different Open Source projects in the past, in addition to working on proprietary software at work.
Now, in the Bible it clearly states that we are not to work on the Sabbath. In the past, I have refrained from programming on Sunday, to fulfill this obligation. However, I do wonder: is contributing to Open Source projects considered work? I recieve no direct financial benefit, and I find it to be a very enjoyable activity. However, it also requires a lot of sustained effort and focus. These factors pull in strictly opposite directions.
I'd really appreciate it if I could get some opinions from the Slashdot readership on this. Are there any relevant verses from the Bible that clarify this definition of work? Is it effort? Or is it simply things that you wouldn't do if they didn't make you a living?
I'm looking forward to your input. Thanks.
Comparing Meyer to fanatical Islamic militants is exactly the sort of slander he criticized the free software community for. Now, I agree that he was pretty insulting and offtopic at times (e.g. his gun control rant) but don't attack a straw man like this.
I Am Not A Philosopher, but according to everything I know, the purpose of law _is_ to enforce ethics. Why is murdering illegal? Because the vast majority of society considers it unethical. Same thing goes for stealing, discrimination, etc. Even higher-level laws (e.g. don't litter) break down at some point to ethics. Therefore, yes, law is meant to be a reflection of ethics, and there is nothing "Islamic" about that. If you can find some other use for law, I'd like to know what it is.
What you quoted there is just common sense, and what any ethics professor will tell you.
Something that seems to not have been commented on yet is the somewhat hypocritical nature of the article. The author starts that one should not confuse the idea with the people or the people with the idea. Specifically he makes a point that one should not conde the many good people who believed in communism for the atrocites and suffering tht have come out of communism. He also points out that one should not comdem democracy for the actions of corrupt politcians.
This is a good start and then everything flies out the window. The author goes on to examine the 'ethics' of free software and open source software by examining the ethics and politics of the poster boys RMS and ESR. Very disappointing.
That is not to say that he does not make good points but they are hard to find amoungst the garbage and hypocritical gas bagging of the rest of the article. As others have pointed out there is the definite tone of someone with an axe to grind.
In all a very disappointing article for what is an important issue that does need to be discussed more within and without of the open source community.
I think that you are correct. The source code availability is one issue, but the real issue is the balance of power between the developers, the users, and the "company"s (large organized groups with a legally favored position pre-established). The purpose of Free software it to improve the position of the developers. This is beneficial to the users directly insofar as they are developers, and indirectly as it tends to prevent monopolies from developing. This is not beneficial to companies that are attempting to monopolize any part of the market, so their representatives tend to object. Frequently they do so assuming that their particular special legal advantages are somehow "just". (As you might be able to tell, I find this position highly dubious.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Which of these do you chose? I'll happily run my production system with Oracle on Solaris if I think it is better setup (and in general, I think it is), despite not having the source. (Well I can get the source to Solaris, but...)
Does it? Not for Meyer. He had cancel two projects due to unreliable OSS. The magical "OSS is better quality" argument is bogus. ESR's papers carry no more proof or logic than Meyer's does. The C & the B is full of nice sounding arguments that OSS is better, but it lacks any real proof. Free software is developed in a number of different methods, and some of the best ones are where one or two people work on the tool, and are dedicated to it. The GNU tools are very good, but that is not indicative of all OSS.
If OSS really were as great as its proponent claim, it would be used everywhere. It isn't. GZip is everywhere because it works well. BIND/Sendmail/qmail are everywhere because they work. Solaris, Oracle, DB2, Windows, Office, Photoshop are everywhere because they meet the needs of the users. Don't blindly believe that the OS product is always better than the closed one. It's not that simple.
Sometimes the free product is the best. Sometimes it's not. Anyone who tells you otherwise has their head up their arse. When there is a non-free product that is better than the free one, why is it unethical to use the non-free one?
--
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"All flames will be read, laughed at and used as toilet paper."
You've either got SOME printer, or really tough skin!
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
And until this year, if you wanted to use ISE Eiffel on Windows you had to also purchase a C compiler (Borland recently solved that by making the C command line tool available). .. by ignoring certain embedded HTML tags telling the page how to display.)
Visual Eiffel hasn't had THAT requirement for many years, and SmallEiffel includes the lcc compiler with the Windows distribution. I wonder why ISE Eiffel isn't more popular? The tools (under windows) seem quite good. (Under Linux the Netscape renders the help screens unreadable, although KFM handles them pretty well
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
OpenSource proponents argue that OSS is much more reliable, but Meyer's point is that it's not always the case. He's run into show stopping bugs in Free software, than shouldn't have been there.
The point is that in terms of reliabilty, neither free nor non-free programs have the advantage. /. reponse (as expected) is "yeah we've got bugs, but so do they!" which is hardly the kind of professional, reliable response he's looking for.
The
--
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a musical recording artist != a performing artist. Why would an electronic musician perform it live when the art is in the talent of studio production?
There's room for copyright still. Perhaps not DMCA-style, but some form of it.
-Stu
Meyer writes: the US political system has a remarkable combination of checks and balances making the imposition of a dictatorship rather unlikely; the historical exceptions to this observation--such as McCarthyism and institutionalized racial discrimination--were not, if memory serves us well, met by armed resistance from an outraged citizenry; the Black Panther Party of Oakland would show up when police were detaining black men, and stand at a respectful distance with shotguns to observe for police mistreatment. (this behavior was probably lawful, btw.)
"I agree that being stuck with software that doesn't do what you want is a pain. But does having someone to blame get you out of your hole any faster?"
No. But it allows for accountability. Let's say your company wants to make a product that does Foo. Now, in order to make something that can do Foo, you really need a library that provides Bar. But you can't afford to hire any programmers who know anything about Bar.
Now, you can buy MS-Bar2.0, or you can download gBar. Let's assume both of them have the same tricky bug in them.
If I buy MS-Bar2.0, then there's some accountability. "Look, we knew at the beginning we didn't know how to do Bar. Turns out MS's product has some problems. They've told us that v2.1 will fix it, but it'll be 30 days before that comes out. What do you want to do?"
If I download gBar, there's nothing to be done. "Yes, we have nobody who understands Bar. We tried to save money buy downloading something written by a few college kids in their spare time, and what do you know, it has a bug. And no, we can't fix it -- if we could have fixed it, we would have written it ourselves. Time to go buy MS-Bar, I guess."
Now, which one makes you look worse to upper management?
It may not be a pleasant fact, but carreers ride on this sort of thing. Which bag would you rather be left holding when the smoke clears?
Not representing or approved by my company or anybody else.
"The problem is Free software is being shoehorned into an environment where people are used to proprietry software needing an the vendors to correct bugs. The culture of software distribution means it doesn't occur to them to fix it themselves."
Part of the problem is that not every software house can afford to fix it themselves. The whole reason they bought (or downloaded for free) a solution is because they don't have the resources, the personnel, the experience, or the willingness to write (or fix) the software they had to get.
Not representing or approved by my company or anybody else.
> Is it possible that OO programming is not the be all end all of programming?
Yes, OOP is NOT the end-all be-all of programming.
Read this book:
Multi-Paradigm Design for C++
You know, the same thing occurred to me. I may not be a Nobel-winning physicist but I do know AC flows through a capacitor. So I went wading through my unbelievably cluttered bookshelves and found the book in question: "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman," Bantam Books, 1986. And here on page 261 (I looked up "talmud" in the index) is the quote itself:
I even proposed a practical solution for eliminating the spark. "If that's what's bothering you, you can pit a condenser actross the switch, so the electricity will go on and off without any spark whatsoever - anywhere." But for some reason, they didn't like that idea either.
Maybe he meant "in series with the switch" instead, and I'd guess that would work as intended too, but it is an unexpected pleasure for dumb old me to have caught the great Nobel Laureate in an error!
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
A software license agreement that is not "free" in the sense of Mr. Stallman or Mr. Raymond (they do have common ground) forbids you to alter the product and give it to someone else, even if you give them the sole copy for which you purchased a license. Furthermore, you cannot easily inspect the product to determine if its failure to perform is due to an error or deliberate design.
Personally, I think software liability should be enforced upon those who deliver software without the privilege of changing it. It's ok to make a living from your software, if you want, but you should take responsibility for its quality and manufacture, if you intend to represent it as a product that has value. If you don't so represent it, you shouldn't charge for it...
Perversely, I also think it's perfectly fair to restrict copying, if you follow those guidelines. The immorality I see is the one you find in RMS's printer story -- representation of value in a product (the printer) without responsibility to repair or replace a defective part (software), and provide for its repair and replacement should you yourself become unable. Many companies that create real products make agreements with other companies to provide those services for those products should they go out of business.
I *am* a fan, if you want to call it that, of the open source movement. But for me, there is no moral component to the proprietary/free choice. Others have different morals of course, but for me it's about exploring to its limits a new and humane way to develop software. It's not about wiping out all non-open source software in some jihad.
We've seen the sterility of the scorched desert approach demonstrated quite well already I think. Diversity is the best way to survive catastrophes and promote competition. We should embrace it, and judging by the number of filesystems and platforms Linux supports, we do. Compare a certain company.
I certainly do think that proprietary software is more easily abused and put to evil purposes -- evil hates the light goes the cliche -- but the immorality is in the abuse, not in the license.
As a manager, I don't know if I would want to encourage that kind of mentality in my subordinates. But then again, I'm not in that position, so I don't know what other issues I'd be having to deal with.
To the extent that RMS's point is:
"You are free to release the code that you wrote with whatever license you feel is appropriate."
we are in complete agreement. That doesn't really seem to be his main point though.
Meyer tries to beat up on free software for not offering warranties.
As I understand the GPL, software developers can charge money for allowing customers to sue them for breach of warranty. A lot of customers would be willing to pay this cost, because it indicates reliability.
Of course there's nothing evil about charging money for a warrantied product when the unwarrantied product is free. Meyer didn't do his homework very well.
I was underimpressed by the article.
It does challenge some of the underlying ethics of open source, but I was never persuaded that he really understood what he was writing about. He made several points that are appallingly worthless. Like this one, on the use of the word 'free' by open source advocates:
"This distortion--the hijacking for private purposes of a word that holds such a sacred aura for most people--is highly unethical."
So apparently the linux community has no right to use the word 'free' to describe the software I didn't have to pay for? Excellent point.
His attitude toward Soviet communism is also outdated and embarrassingly inept. Look at this quote:
"It should be pointed out, however, that the existence of a community of dedicated, well-intentioned and sincere defenders of a cause is unrelated to the ethical value of that cause. As an example, one of the tragedies of the twentieth centuries has been the diversion of the energy and passion of countless honest and idealistic volunteers towards support for Soviet-style communism, a regime that cause tens of millions of deaths, uncounted cases of human misery, and the destruction of civil society in entire countries."
Excuse me? Did he just argue that the problem was not the actual people in power, that it was socialist/communist theory???? If you've ever read Marx, and Lenin, you know that this is unsupportable. On paper, socialism works far better than any real system. But it's the idea of soviet 'communism'(this misuse of terms should tip off the reader anyhow)that killed millions, and not Stalin and the others in his regime? Let me guess-Those that died in WW2 were killed by 'fascism,' not bullets, right?
The 'ethics' that this guy practices are exactly what's wrong with the world. He commits nearly every sin of western thought in this article. And he does commit the cardinal sin of western writing-he is arguing from his conclusion at every point in the piece. And his conclusion is that OSS should neither upset nor challenge western society and economics. It just shows that he doesn't understand the point of open source at all. The reason why not opening your source is harming your neighbor is that open source will eliminate redundant labor-in closed-source schemes, people have to solve the same problems many times, with the result being a terrible waste of effort. The only reason to keep software closed is because it's easier for many companies to understand. But if you've ever read one of those license agreements, you've seen the travesty that paying for closed software is. Not to harp on the Marx thing, but those agreements are the example of the alienation caused by our society. Pay software redefined ownership without most people noticing. Free software is the product of people reading those agreements and realizing that there is a better way. This article does well to point out some of the weirdnesses of the movement's leaders, but it is inconsistent in its logic, and worst of all, exposes that the writer has no intention of challenging his own assumptions, which are of the blandest, brand-homogenized, wishy-washy american 'liberal' sort. The author is exactly the sort of person who will contend until he dies that he is a 'liberal,' while really being the worst sort of conservative-the kind that protects and preserves the worst aspects of our society. He's right-it's not wrong for people to want to get paid for their work. Duh. But if that's his idea of the moral and ethical problems of OSS, then his 'morals' and 'ethics' are neither.
If you sell GPLd software, your only guarantee is that you'll see money for the sale of *one copy*. Whoever buys your software is licensed to distribute it however they wish. You may never see another cent after that first sale.
Sure, the FSF says they're not opposed to selling software, but their GPL makes it impossible to ensure the developer will be properly compensated.
*That* is what the author is arguing.
Hands in my pocket
No it does not. I could sell a Linux system with binaries on one CD and source on another, and charge $10,000 for it, and refuse to distribute any other way. As long as I do not prohibit redistribution I am not violating the GPL. I do NOT have to make anything available over the Internet! Red Hat does, but they do not have to. They include the source in their boxed sets, they could stop allowing people to download it from them and still be legal.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
---
Of course we know how the consequences of imposing slavery as a false property right led to devistation, do we really want to experience similar consequences with newer and more modern technologies?
---
Are you seriously suggesting that the enslavement of human beings is in any way comparable to someone not letting you hack on their software?
I'm not sure what's more appalling - the fact that you believe that access to code you didn't produce is a moral right is anything like the abolishment of slavery, or the fact that someone somewhere moderated you up as Insightful...
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Well, of course thats selling, I think the point was that if One of the authors of Gimp decided that he wanted to sell it, he wouldn't be able to sell a single copy. If he decided to sell a brand new improved version and decided to charge $10 for it, he would only sell any copies until it made it to a distro. RedHat could then sell lots of copies without Gimpguy making any money.
First, there's two different senses of "absolute" you're mixing up -- "admits of no exceptions" and "true across cultures"; your examples speak only to the former, not the latter. Show me a society that doesn't place an extremely high value on life in general, even if (as seems plausible) all recognize that there are situations in which it is OK to kill someone else. And besides, the original poster was pointing out that it's unreasonable to simply *assume* moral relativism.
Second point. OK, there's a smiley there, but ... There's just no way of construing that claim that doesn't make it completely vacuous or misleadingly false.
Old story about Abe Lincoln, who stopped a stagecoach he was travelling in to (IIRC) pull some piglets out of the mud to reunite them with their mother. He had been arguing for the claim that no one acts out of anything other than self interest with someone else in the stagecoach (one of the little details that makes it likely apocryphal, but what the hey). Lincoln's opponent said "there, you just did that unselfish act, Abe" to which Lincoln replied "That was the soul of selfishness. Don't you see, I couldn't have lived with myself if I hadn't helped those piglets!"
Lincoln's error lies in assuming that "this is a desire of mine" entails "this is a self-interested desire." He would have felt horrible precisely because he wished not to see the pigs suffer -- the object of his concern was the piglets.
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
Previously ([37], [118]) I thought his ethics was just confused, but as I read further through the article I realise that Bertrand has completely lost it.
Eh, yes, but what does that have to do with anything? There are always more important issues, but that does not make all issues unimportant.
And what does gun control have to do with free or open source software!? Beats me. But even if we try to follow his thread of thought we end up at:
A couple of points are in order, lest anybody should be persuaded by Mr. Meyer's ravings:
Enough! of this madness. Next subject, please!
Hi!
the gpl requires that you also post the binaries and source on an http or ftp server.
Soy el plátano! No tengo gusto de monos!
Did I say they were perfect? No, but just because I don't like them or feel they meet my standards doesn't give me the right to break them.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
So, although I bought a car, it still belongs to the manufacturer. Because they were the ones who created it, it's still up to them to decide what I'm allowed to do with it, or if I'm allowed to mess with its internals. In fact, if the owner of the car company is a fundamentalist Christian, it's perfectly right for them to forbid you to bring gay men into your car!
(set! sarcasm #f)
If you don't want to fix your car yourself, trusting the job instead to the manufacturer, that's your choice. It's nonetheless your car, and you get to do whatever the hell you want with it.
Proprietary software companies, however, license their software to us. We're paying for the right to use it. Legally, then, the above does apply - it remains their software.
That doesn't make it morally right, though. Say I'm well-versed in simulation software and an experienced programmer, and I find that my favourite simulation package has a horrendous bug in it, one which is easily repairable but will cost millions of dollars if not repaired. If the simulation software is proprietary, then I'm screwed - I have to pray to Kibo that the owners of said software are willing to fix it, although I could do it myself, for free, and save me - and them - a lot of trouble. (Note that car repair requires specialised equipment, but programming only requires a compiler and a few utilities.)
Even leaving aside the question of free distribution, which entices the most moral opposition in the Free Software Movement (it means that sharing with your neighbour is wrong, which I personally find despicable), there still seems to be a case against closed-source software, and it should be recognised that the companies which, out of necessity (of protecting their investment - their years' worth of hard work), keep their software' source closed, are in doing so effecting a lot of potential harm on other people - their own consumers, no less! - and thus shouldn't do so lightly. Furthermore, that still shouldn't mean that the software is theirs in anyway, any more than my BMW car is BMW's. (My BMW car? I wish!) Keeping sources closed should serve only the same purpose as patents were designed to serve: to promote the progress of sciences and useful arts.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
OK, I wrote a long rant but deleted it on second thought :-) I just wanted to say a few things:
---
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
I appologize for the long comment, as I am wary about even spending the time to analyze this article, but here goes.
Umm... no. Netscape was sold for a fee (and still is I think) but it could always be gotten gratis from ftp5.netscape.com since at least the 1.1N days.
For me at least, the choice is certain. If I ever need to extend product P, or get product P to work on a system for which it was not originally designed, or if product P's manufacturer goes out of business entirely, I will be out of luck. As I value my worth as a system/network administrator, I cannot use a piece of software that cannot be fixed by me. This is the same reason that I prefer older, user servicable cars to modern "no user-servicable parts inside" cars.
Regarding the no-warranty warranty, there are many groups who are in the market of selling waranties to free software products. For companies (or individuals) that require a high state of waranty that the piece of software will be working and someone can be held accountable, these after-market warranties can make non-warrantied free software viable.
As a final point that has failed to be made, BM doesn't note that there is no way for someone to accertain that product P truely uses the most advance methods of software engineering (Level 5?) unless the source code is open for inspection.
This quote is interesting and kind of funny. I am not sure how KT can compare the linux source to the microsoft source at all. We currently have NT source here on campus, but no one can see it without signing obligitory NDA's. [No, I haven't seen it either.] I suspect that KT's comment may have been taken out of context, possibly talking about the ability of users to run windows vs. linux and not the underlying reliability of the kernel.
Yes, using assignment when you mean comparison is a rather stupid error, that should have been caught by the BSD team. However, the fact that it was able to be caught by someone lends credit to the OSS development model. If such a simple error existed in Solaris, we would have to wait for the Solaris design team to find it, and release a patch. While in BSD or Linux, if such an error is found, it can be corrected rapidly, without a cover-up. [Who knows what fixes were actually done in a service pack? (I might cringe if I knew)]
Yuck. I am rapidly becomming disgusted with myself for spending the time to go through and deal with what is clearly a rant that is substantiated in some cases and not substantiated in others. If this were a peer reviewed publication, I believe that competent reviewers would reject this article. Nevertheless, BM does occasionally make some valid points, such as criticizing the code correctness, reliability, and zelotness of OSS. As a community, we should acknowledge these points, realize that we may not be as bad as BM leads us to believe, and make motions to correct them if possible.
Wouldn't it be wonderfull if Linux (or *BSD) could get Level 5 certification?)
Don Armstrong -".naidnE elttiL etah I"
http://www.donarmstrong.com
Not really. First, he includes "source code available" in his definition; this is a core and important point which differentiates his definition from "free beer". It's true that the definition does not include certain aspects of the GNU definition (unlimited redistribution, derivatives also GPLed), but all of its elements are part of the GNU definition.
Everyone here has been saying that "free speech" software has only to do with freedom, not money. This is not true. Yes, the GPL supposedly permits you to sell software, but it doesn't really. Everything you sell can be redistributed by the purchaser. In other words, it's entirely possible and likely that you sell one copy of your software and then the buyer puts it on an FTP server and you never sell another copy. If your software is distributed under a "free speech" license, it must by common sense also be "free beer". So all of his arguments against "free beer" software are equally valid against "free speech" software.
It is a common technique used often, oddly enough, by cults.
That's not true: the Leader told me it wasn't.
Actually, speaking of common techniques, using an extreme example of something and then damning by association is just as much of a ploy and logical fallacy as using an incorrect definition.
The difference is that Ford don't provide blueprints for the car. That's pretty much what giving the source away would do.
I operate in three modes -- free-beer software consumer, commercial developer and open-source developer.
As a free-beer software consumer, I look for binaries of packages I want to use. I can't be hassled with compiling them myself -- give me an rpm or deb and I'm happy.
As an open-source developer (a grand title to give myself -- I've released a few GPL'd things, including the original kpackage) I decide to give my software away for free -- mainly because I'm interested in fame! However, because I know that my work will best benefit from contributions from others, I release the whole thing under the GPL. Others can contribute, or examine my implementation and decide that it's crap (Python/Qt). This also means that if I stop maintaining my work then it can be taken over, as Toivo Pedaste has done with kpackage. However, *this is my choice* and I accept that others may decide otherwise. I may try and convince them, but the arguments will not be ideoligical.
As a commerical developer, I am being employed by someone to develop a product. It is not up to me to decide the licensing terms. If appropriate, then I can attempt to convince them that going open-source would be a good idea. In many cases it wouldn't. Open sourcing something like a arcady driving game just doesn't make sense. It wouldn't bring in any benefit for the driving game. However, a game engine might benefit from many eyes.
BTW: If you're reading Toivo, then thanks for keeping my credit on there! It is really appreciated.
I read the whole article, and while it raises some worthwhile points (other than the random gun control thing - what has that got to do with anything?), I think Meyer has missed the fundamental link between Ethics and OpenSoftware (I'm going to reserve FreeSoftware for GPL'd stuff).
Under the harsh light of analysis, Ethics are a set of socially pragmatic guidlines. They aren't rules (some are laws, some aren't). Instead, Ethics are social conventions that allow a given society to remain cohesive and functional. That's the extent of them. They aren't "God-given" or some other divinity-enforced, but rather religion has been used as a method of enforcement of Ethics for millenia. Something becomes Ethical in a society when a large majority of the population sees that such a rule/value is beneficial to the society. That's why Ethics change - it was highly ethical to own slaves for virtually the entire course of human history until the 19th Century, when most cultures decided that it suddenly was no longer worth the problems it caused. We now view slavery as unethical.
So how does this relate to OpenSoftware? OpenSoftware is all about pragmatism. There are differing degrees of how pragmatic one wants to be (just as there were degrees of zeal in the abolitionist movement), but the fundamental reason driving the OpenSoftware movement is pragmatism: OpenSoftware provides benefits and advantages to both the developers and users that are deemed to outweigh the disadvantages. In addition, the general viewpoint has come to the pragmatic conclusion that, for most items, closed software is inferior in features to OpenSoftware (by features, I mean advantages to the user/developer population, not bells-and-whistles).
Now, the Ethical thing here is that we have come to realize that a promoter of OpenSoftware is Good. Thus, OpenSoftware developers have high Ethical status, which is a social advantage.
The main point to all this is that OpenSoftware and Proprietary Software aren't opposed - they can co-exists. In fact, given the relative advantages of each, they both should occupy their market niche, and we should recognize that (and criticize those who engage in extremism for no socially-justifiable reason).
This "my-shit-is-better-than-your-shit" absolutism rhetoric is exactly what is unEthical. Ethics is pragmatism, practiced on a cultural level. When we (as a society) decide that one is a clear wholesale detriment to society, then it will generally be deemed unEthical. As long as both methods have defined uses (ie. markets) where their overall contributions outweigh their overall liabilities, they both should survive, heated rhetoric aside.
OpenSoftware is more about questioning the fundamental assumptions that have ruled the Software Industry than about some new large-scale societal revolution. Both sides would be well-advised to remember that.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
"I stopped reading about the time he starts trashing ESR for his pro-gun stance."
Thats really too bad for you, the article was excellent. The mark of a good article is to bring up a large amount of very contentious issues, and in the end tie them all up with constructive recommendations.
What I gleaned from the article (which I read to the end) was that he highlighted all the potential and possible ways that free software and its proponents can become unethical.
Then he proposed a list of ways to avoid these pitfalls, to keep the open source and free software movements on the high ground. Instead of being offended and stop reading the moment an article touches a nerve, read through to the end and realize this article for the professional piece of intellectualism that it is.
My 2 cents. (1.38 cents US)
I like hot tea, and I like iced tea, but lukewarm tea I just spit ot of my mouth. This is what this guy is about - he's trying to put opened and closed source on the same playing field. But the problem is that it's a whole differnet ball game. He reminds me of earlier americans who thought that the free states could peacefully get along with the slave states. People who argued this convientely ignored the fact that slavery by it's very nature was non-neutral and abusive. The same is true with closed software specifically, and intellectual property in general.
As slavery taught us, property rights do not derive from the need for profit, the amount of effort you put into it, or the government's personal backing. They derive from physical limits on comodities and mutual respect of human beings. A point that the author of this post conviently ignores. Infact, intellectual 'property' by it's vary nature is imposive and unethical. It is claiming the right to coerce people into upholding it even if their use of it does not affect you in the slightest.
If he wanted a moral argument, there it is.
Free Software advocates are very concerned about "forking," but I don't see the big deal. Emacs isn't any worse because JWZ forked XEmacs. In fact, the competition has improved it quite a bit. It adds a little extra work for the Emacs community, but it is work that apparently people are willing to do to be able to maintain their choice of text editor.
The same is true for the even more famous BSD forks. Is anyone worse off because their are three BSDs. Their market share might not look as good on paper because it is divided among three different OSes, but I would bet that the FreeBSD user that wants to run a BSD on his new Sparc is glad for NetBSD, and I would also bet that he is glad to have a "secure by default" variant for his firewall.
Forks happen, and if they people forking the software are good enough, we get a horserace. Competition is good for software, and as long as the source code is available everyone wins.
There seem to have been several comments along the lines of "Meyer doesn't get it - it's free as in speech, not free as in beer".
Actually I think he does get it - he's just addressing another issue. He's looking at whether it is a valid thing for a software developer to make money out of the software he develops.
Whether we like it or not one of the most effective ways to make money out of software - is to make it closed source and sell it. Yes you can make money sell services - support etc. Yes you can make money distributing software. But you can also make money selling the software itself.
There is a fundamental irony in the use of the word freedom in all the GNU/FSF advocacy texts. I am a programmer. They want to deny me the freedom to choose the way in which I make money from my skills. I can be paid for writing software provided it is Open Source, I can be paid for supporting/fixing Open Source software. But I cannot be paid for writing closed source software.
Presumably the same people believe that no actor should receive payment unless his work will be free to view. Or that a writer can only receive money for his work if he writes for a free publication
This attitude is even more remarkable when you consider that certain pieces of software are extremely unsusceptible to the Open Source model. Don't forget that much bespoke business software has in effect, business process logic embedded into the design. Such business processes might well be part of the competitive advantage one company has over another. Opening up your source in a case like this could be highly damaging. In short there are situations where Open Source is the wrong choice for software.
Such a radical restriction of freedom - requiring that I only write OSS - requires very good justification. Unfortunately I do not believe that such a justification can be found. None of the benefits which come from Open Source Software are lost if it has to co-exist in a world which also allows Closed Source, Copyrighted software.
Perhaps its because Copyright has always been the dominant model that OSS has had to assert it's opposite characteristics strongly in order to make itself heard. But hopefully this won't obscure the fact that both models can and should continue to live cheerfully side-by-side
RatFinkDo they just hope for donations from our ever so helpful welfare system? What the HELL do you do to make a living? You work 40 hours a week at another job, then put in 40 hours ignoring your family? Yea...ok.
The way society is structured now, I can't make a living an say write development tools...software to help others write software, cause I couldn't then sell my software. Nor could a company pay me for that software...
I think that's what Bertrand was trying to point out...
C
- Sighuh?
Hm, yes, I missed that one. Well spotted!! He is not only confused in his ethics, he is also contradictory. You can make an obscene profit, as long as he is not loosing out on the cash.
Sad.
Hi!
Oh, I agree. I was thinking along more large-scale ideas. Take gcc -- if you end up with 20 different contractors making changes, with some finding their way in and others not. Then put independencies between the changes and you end up with a mess.
The successful software does tend to have a centralized administration, so the masses can go to one place to download it. Code forks are fine, but they have to be maintained. If you ended up with 20 different emacsen, incompatible with each other, then there would be problems. I suppose what I meant was possibly splintering rather than forking.
Does anyone know if something like this has happened?
First, attacking the author is not a valid way to attack an argument. The arguments in the article shouldbe considered independently of the author. (An ad hominem logical fallacy, if you want the details.)
Of course, that is exactly what Mr Meyer did - he declared Eric Raymond's views on guns (and, by extension, himself) to be "repugnant", then turned around and criticized free software because Eric Raymond is associated with it. And that after criticizing the FSF for their "absence of rational justification for the extremist view"!
Hey, sue me -- when there are tens of millions of people with Hotmail accounts, "Zico" is a little hard to come by, and "ZicoKnows" is a lot catchier than the AOLesque "Zico2398." :) Seriously, I think half of my flames come from people just annoyed at my choice of email address. If you notice, though, my account here isn't "ZicoKnows," it's just "Zico." C'mon folks, it's just an email address.
Well, yeah -- if I thought I knew everything, then I wouldn't qualify my remarks with things like "I think" or "I've heard from others" or "this isn't coming from experience," which I did earlier today, or "if there's someone out there who can field these questions, please do," which I did just yesterday. See? If I don't know what I'm talking about, I don't flame on and pretend that I do. I'm definitely no role model, but if more people followed that one little example, the overall quality of posts in this forum would be greatly improved.
Hey, I'd love to believe you, really, but it seems like a lot of posts around here get knocked down as flamebait or trolls when they don't conform to the politically correct view around here, no matter what the tone is. This and this are just two recent examples of that -- or do you think I sounded too cocky in them?
Cheers,m ail.com :)
ZicoHopesThisReplyDidn'tSoundCocky@hot
What I don't get is why Meyer makes such a big deal about ESR. RMS I can understand, and the first part of this essay was more or less pretty truthful. I can't see how someone can consider access to someone else's work a right rather than a privelege.
But ESR? After Meyer spends a few paragraphs talking about how morality is completely subjective and that bad men can have 'good ideas', he rails against ESR for (of all things) his stance on guns.
Excuse me? Regardless of your opinions on gun control, what does this have to do with open-source development? Absolutely nothing.
Really, I don't get it. ESR's views on open-source/free software are completely pragmatic compared to that of many other open-source luminaries. He focuses on the less politically loaded and questionable aspects (ie. code reuse, peer review, external contributions, and so on).
You'd think that, even if he didn't agree with the specifics of ESR's claims about open-source, he wouldn't feel so compelled to clump ESR and other pragmatists in with RMS and his believers. We're far too diverse a group for that.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Very reasonable article. Clearly exposes silliness of RMS ideas. Just read it and tell me if what he says is not true ..
IMO your time is worth something. 'properly' means you recover in money what you spend in time.
Hands in my pocket
There is a huge difference between selling and licensing things. The key difference is that you pay Ford for an object, and you are in general then free to use that object as you see fit; Ford places no restrictions on its use. When one purchases licensed software, however, one is not free to use that object as one sees fit; e.g., if I puchase a copy of Windows, I cannot make copies and give it to others; I am restricted by the license.
The issue, as I see it, is not about money at all. As Richard Stallman often uses it, it is about the freedom to do what you want with what you have, without restricting other's freedom.
You know, I've always wondered why open source software is always assumed to be free-gratuit, and why software sold for money has to be shipped bereft of source code. I suppose the argument is, if the developer ships his software with source code then users will be able to compile unauthorized copies. But obviously it is just as easy, no, far easier, to simply copy the binaries than to compile new binaries from source.
Conversely, suppose I am a software developer and I want to release an application with the usual license restricting the buyer, if he wants to install my application on N computers, to pay me for N licenses. If, like the great majority of commercial PC software, my program is not "protected" by some elaborate copy-protection scheme, then basically the only thing that prevents a buyer from distributing "bootleg" copies of my program is his respect for the license agreement, or at least his fear of being caught violating it. The U.S. software industry is doing quite well, despite such a flimsy protection for its products. Why couldn't I rely on the same thing to protect my copyright and my profits if I released programs with source code?
As a commercial product, software complete with source might, for some users at least, be a valuable convenience - one which might attract customers and win extra market share - if they had the ability to add site-specific hacks to my code, or if they could recompile it to work around bugs and security holes, or merely so they could see what is going on inside the program. In that last consideration, I'm thinking about end-users who generate data files in specific formats that are generated by proprietary programs, such as MS Word .DOC files or AutoCAD .DWG files. My employers have millions of dollars invested in AutoCAD .DWG files. Suppose Autodesk goes out of business five years from now, how are we supposed to get our information out of these files? As customers, we would be a lot happier if at least the .DWG format was specified somewhere, but it is not. So a competing CAD software vendor would have a selling point if he could say, "Our data format is openly documented, so your data can't be orphaned" - in fact, Bentley, which makes Microstation, does make such an argument in their sales pitch. And they'd have a yet better sales pitch if they could say, "Our software is open-source, so neither your data files nor your application itself can ever be completely orphaned. Even if the OS vendor somehow breaks something so our compiled code doesn't work any more," (but what OS vendor would ever do a screwed up thing like that? it's unthinkable, really ;-)) "you could still port our source code to the new OS of your choice."
When you add something to a GPL program, the copyright holders retain their rights to your "derivative work." Similarly, if I were to sell a commercial, licensed application complete with source code, I shouldn't lose my copyright to my proprietary program just because an end-user has modified it and made his own "derivative work" from it. So why does everyone take it for granted that open source == zero cost?
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
RMS's problem is that he is too honest, immediately getting to the heart of the matter and cutting no corners. You can feel the raw indignation, and no honest person could deny that considering the consequences of freedom can be uncomfortable. No wonder he irritates so many. Most people do not have this problem of being too honest.
Contrast this with, say, Bill Clinton, who probably could convince almost anyone of anything, and make them feel great in the process.
Thus, RMS is an easy target for Meyer.
Dammit, I was going to write the same thing only less eloquently and then the phone rang
This is quite correct. Its an argument for open source, rather than free software.
The problem is Free software is being shoehorned into an environment where people are used to proprietry software needing an the vendors to correct bugs. The culture of software distribution means it doesn't occur to them to fix it themselves.
They called slavery a property right, but it wasn't about ownership at all it was about controll. Today the same is true of intellectual 'property', it's not about property at all but controll. Then they said that america's great economeny rested on slavery - but that wasn't true nor did it justify slavery. Today they say it rests on 'intellectual property' dito. They said without slave 'property' they would have no incentive to grow cotton. Today they say that without 'intellectual property' we have no incentive to create and share knowledge. They said I put money effort into slave property - therefore I am entitled to own it, today they say the same thing about intellectual property.
Of course we know how the consequences of imposing slavery as a false property right led to devistation, do we really want to experience similar consequences with newer and more modern technologies?
Meyer evidently was paid for this article. Where did he say that and how much was it? Why?
Because he argues that Free Software writers should always detail the source of payment for their work--he doesn't here.
Well, if he understands it well enough to be able to point out the differences between his definition and the FSF's definition then I'd say he understands it. Or are you talking about whether or not he "gets it", which seems to mean a totally different thing.
I do think he argues against a straw man of his own manufacturing, and he wrongly attacks personalities instead of ideas.
if you seem to think this article is such a bad thing then surely they should respond to refute it? After all, not doing so might make people think that he was right...
No, I don't think Software Development magazine is the right forum for this discussion of ethics. Especially if it is reduced to personal attacks such as this.
As I said, Bertrand Meyer has the right to attack as savagely as he likes the development of Free Software such as Small Eiffel--he has the background and credentials to do so. That would indeed be interesting to readers of Software Develpment and Slashdot. Rants about Gun Control and World War II should be placed elsewhere. Ignoring them here isn't going to cause anyone to believe them true--it only treats them as the Trolls they deserve.
So I started this in good faith, evaluating carefully what Meyer had to say. But... jeez... it quickly started to look pretty rediculous. This guy has "issues". I started picking it apart in some detail, but, I gave up before reaching the end (I read to the end, just didn't bother commenting eventually. I have my limits.). Strangely, the last section is comparatively rational, but it feels somewhat hollow in the context of the rest of the article.
Here we go:
The author is making classic free beer / free speech mistakes. See, for instance, his "categories of free software" that is, really, an obsessive list of how the software was "paid for" (donated, taxpayer-funded, privately-funded, etc). The issue is not cost (acts of charity are nothing new) but freedom.
A quote:
Nowhere in the hundreds of pages of GNU and FSF literature is there any serious explanation of why it is legitimate, for example, to make a living selling cauliflowers, or lectures (as a professor does), or videotapes of your lectures, but criminal to peddle software that you have produced by working long hours, sweating your heart out, thinking brilliantly, and risking your livelihood and that of your family.
Oops. Flawed analogy. Stallman doesn't label it "criminal" or forbid people from selling software products for money. He argues that they should not do so restrictively (ie in "proprietary" fashion). This appears to be more free beer / free speech confusion. The analogy falls down because i can take a cauliflower and do whatever I like with it. I can cook any meal I know how, give it to anyone I like, cut it up into bits and share it out, slice it up, mount it and place it under a microscope to examine its structure. True, I cannot give that individual cauliflower multiple times to multiple people without dividing it. But while I have no idea if cauliflowers can or not, many fruit and vegetables you buy can be planted and grown into new fruit and vegetables, and the same done to those (and I find so-called "Terminator Genes" that attempt to prevent this far more morally obnoxious than "copy protection").
And it's even easier to replicate a lecture: Who honestly thinks it immoral for a student to tell someone about the content of a lecture? The whole point is to diseminate knowledge! The lecturer probably learnt much of the lecture material, not by research, but in lectures they themselves attended, or books they have read.
These things take time and effort. We pay farmers, and lecturers, to take that time and effort. We could choose not to, though, and read the literature ourselves, grow our own plants in our own back gardens. Likewise, we can build our own Linux distributions if we wish -- but we may choose to buy one off-the-shelf, or even pay someone to install it for us.
Another quote:
We may grumble at having to pay for a mere wave in the ether, but is it immoral? Most people don't think so, accepting instead that it would be immoral to obtain the contents of the signals without economic compensation to the people--producers, actors, technicians--who worked on the programs they contain.
Actually, I do have "issues" with that. WTF are adverts for if not to pay those producers, actors, and technicians? We're not talking about cheap-ass banner ads here, we're talking millions of advertising dollars. We're talking constant interruptions to the programs, we're talking adverter-influenced programs (check out the deal with anti-drugs messages in TV programming...) and schedules based around pulling in adverts. Think about that for a moment.
That's a rather specific case, though. In general, I think people have the right to charge whatever they like for products (people can always choose not to buy them). There is a deeper issue though. Quote time again:
In any case the idea that a low reproduction cost should imply a free product has no rational basis. In fact no known moral law implies that purchase cost should even be related to production cost. I may find ridiculous the idea of paying eight times as much for a BMW as for a Toyota Corolla if I guess that it costs far less than eight times as much to produce; but that doesn't make BMW guilty of moral horrors. The issue is economic (how much is prestige worth to the buyer?), with no ethical consequences.
This is quite right. But it doesn't tell the whole story. Here's a list of things I can do with a BMW that I all-too-frequently can't do with proprietary software:
Take it for a test-drive
Get it fixed within days if it suffers a fault
Poke around under the bonnet to see how it works
Fix it myself if I have the tools and understanding
Resell or loan it
Charge people to take them from place to place in it
If I really wanted to, caniballise the parts to use in some other machine
(for some reason DeLoreans are favoured for that last one...)
Some proprietary software lets me do some of those things, but none let me do all of them, and many let me do none of them. Yet they seem like pretty legitimate things to want to do.
Until the 18th century, writers were ripped off by publishers. The gradual imposition of a copyright (due largely in France to Beaumarchais, author of the Barber of Seville and the Marriage of Figaro as well as smuggler of arms to the American revolution) was a major moral correction, re-establishing the rights of the creators.
Sadly this has been peverted such that the artists are once more ripped off, and the consumer too. Makes me cringe with disgust every time the RIAA claims they're trying to kill MP3s "for the artists", while lobbying for artists' rights to their own work to be taken away from them...
The extremist free-software view would have us return, for software, to a pre-eighteenth-century world: you can make money from selling CDs, but cannot protect the contents of those CDs!
Of the entire article, this is the only point that appears to have any value at all. Depending on just how extreme a view one takes, this statement might be correct. Mainly because of the use of the word "protect". Free (speech) Software doesn't say you can't charge for software. It says that you can't protect that charge, ie, prevent people from distributing it openly. In practical terms, this may (or may not, depending on circumstances -- see below) be the same thing, but the ethical standpoint being held (and remember, this is an article on ethics, not practicalities -- or so it claims) is quite different.
Discursion: I am working on a project. I intend to open-source it. I would still like to make money from it. I have precisely zero interest in doing "tech support" or "solutions" for people with it. I already have a day job I enjoy, I am writing the software to scratch a personal itch, want it to be open-source because it deals with security and I think a) people have a right to see for themselves if it is truly secure or not and b) it would be good if people spotted bugs in it, and c) would like to see it ported to other platforms than those I use. But since I have had to make a fairly huge investment of my so-called free time producing it, I would like to get something back for that.
Currently, I see no way to do this; since I do have a day job (side note, I use none of my employer's facilities for the project) I will probably just throw it out into the world for people to use. But I may ask for "honour-system payment". I'd cheerfully have this be "means-tested", ie, if you have are a broke-ass student or whatever, you can have it for free, if you use it commercially, you should pay, but either way you can play with the source.
Of course, most people won't send any money. I know this.
But the problem here is not an ideological one with free software. The lack of ethics is entirely with those people who break the trust by using-but-not-paying. This is another cute sophist trick Meyer uses: He claims to be dealing with ethics, but is actually talking about technology. To clarify, his reasoning seems to be, "Free software says you should open the source and let anyone copy it. There's no way to force people to pay up if you do that. So free software is saying you should not charge for it." This logic doesn't hold up.
This distortion--the hijacking for private purposes of a word that holds such a sacred aura for most people--is highly unethical.
And yet distortion of the free-software philosophy for magazine articles is OK?
Extreme analogies are another dubious rhetorical device.
I find this extremely amusing considering Meyer himself uses analogies with Nazism earlier in this same essay! He continues:
Good advice, Bertrand! ;-)
It would all the same be a mistake to portray that group as slightly eccentric do-gooders. Their propaganda is a campaign of hatred against people whose only "crime" is to want to make a living out of the wares they produce.
Wow. Hate crime! Remind me again, do I file this under "extreme analogy" or "outrageous attacks"?
I have no idea if the anecdote that follows (that I won't quote here) about RMS is true or not. It doesn't ring true to me, but, since I wasn't at the dinner table, I can't really comment. But if it is true, it is still only one person and not the movement which is at fault. In Meyer's own words, "Bad people can defend good causes." Oddly, considering this statement, a large part of the essay appears to be a character assassination of Richard Stallman.
I also find Meyer's comments about the Japanese scientists offensive. He seems to feel that because atrocities were committed during the war, that this invalidates any good or humane act done by them? Surely we should look at each individual person and their own behaviour? Is he trying to suggest those self-same scientists were responsible for the atrocities? If not, how are those atrocities at all relevant to the conversation in hand?
We then proceed to another character assassination of ESR ("gun nut", "lunatic ravings" -- where I live, we don't have guns, and I think guns should not be freely available, but I don't consider ESR a nut for holding a different viewpoint) and a huge rambling rant upon gun control. Can we get back to software, please, Mr. Meyer? Apparently, the fact that Stallman has never "strongly and publically disavowed" ESRs views (Why should he? They're not the same person or even in the same organisation, why would anyone assume they share it?)
Anyway. I've run out of energy for dealing with this. I have better things to do.
By selling, I mean what the author of this article means: earning money from your own software. Yes, of course, if the most basic definition of "selling" is used, then anything offered in exchange for money is sold.
But the author's point was that the GNU people believe that making (non-trivial) money by selling one's own software is wrong. This is true because the GPL prevents you from selling your software in any seriousness.
I guess we should be glad that we have been strightended out about this issue.
And here I thought that when I was paid to do a specific job, I owned the skills that I used to do that job, even if it meant building new tools, or buying new clothes, to do that job.
So I guess every professor at every university does not own the papers that s/he publishes, but rather the university owns them.
I guess that bar owners own the novells that their waitresses write during their breaks (it happens), because "she wrote it on MY counter".
You can see where this is going.
And no, ethics is not about "right and wrong". Ethics is about finding an optimal way to apply an ordered value system to an action in the real world. (where resources are limited and competition for them exists. Thus the distinction between "Act Utilitarianism" and "Rule Utilitarianism". Ethics is about systems of decision making.
Morality is where people get their ordered values. Values like "Pain is Bad", "Freedom is Good", values which cannot all be satisfied all the time, and so we must order them (for me, "Freedom is Good" comes before "Pain is Bad"). Only after we know what we value, can we apply an ethical theory to it, and decide what actions are appropriate TO BEST SERVE OUR VALUES. So ethics is NOT about right and wrong.
And anyone who claims any bullsh*t about "Universal Ethics" either dosn't understand this, or is trying to confuse you to serve the things s/he values.
---
"Elegant, Commented, On Time; Pick any Two"
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
> > Bob Metcalfe, in a recent InfoWorld column, did
> > not hesitate to write that "Richard Stallman
> > is a communist". I do not actually think such comments
> > are particularly useful...
Then why the f*ck did you not hesitate to carefully quote such a "un-useful" comment, Meyer? Fact is, this f*cker Meyer is blatantly red-baiting Stallman, and what's worse, he did it in such a way as to deflect his own personal responsibility for red-baiting him by quoting another guy, and then wig-wagging his finger at him! Christ, tactics like that make Rush Limbaugh seem like an honorable debater.
Also note the obligatory slam in his article against the Soviet Union. Got to bring the old dead Soviet Union into any red-baiting discussion, just for background color (red), even if the subject is half the globe away from that nation and utterly unrelated to that regime. Yeah, yeah, you couldn't get a chicken in Brezhnev's Moscow, yeah, the GPU were bad bad bad, but I'm sick to death of this cliche, this one-sided story about how fanatically, consistently and irrationally awful the Russian Communists always were.
As long as some people are waving the word "Communist" around in the air like a slapjack, let's go ahead and talk about the old Soviet Union. For the entirety of the Soviet regime they had a total of maybe ten years max when they weren't either under active ground attack by merciless invading foreign armies or face-to-face with a coalition of enemy nations, devoted, in the fullest extent of their industrial capacity, to the literal genocide of the Russian race. I am using the words "literal" and "genocide" in their precise meanings. Hitler specifically intended to annihilate the entire Slavic race and he made no secret of his ambitions, instead published them worldwide in his 1924 book Mein Kampf. Go read it; it's online. You owe it to yourself to know history. Go read Toland "Rise and Fall"; the deliberate starvation of all Western Russia was a war goal acknowledged in the formal secret plans for Operation Barbarossa.
Then, no sooner did Russia practically singlehandedly cleanse this ungrateful world of that ultimate maniac Hitler, at a cost of a third of their adult population, than it faced a new enemy, their former ally, the U.S.A., in the person of Curtis LeMay and his "nation-killing," H-bomb-armed SAC. Did you know we buzzed Russian cities with strategic bombers on a regular basis throughout the fifties? Did you know that Kennedy put seven thousand megatons in the air during the Cuban Missile Crisis? Did you know Nixon did it again in the Six-Day War? Did anybody reading this pay any attention at all when Reagan joked on camera about having just ordered an all-out attack against the SU?
The Soviet Union was under seige for seventy years. Now my country, the U.S.A., is the richest nation in the history of mankind, with no military enemies anywhere worth considering, and we've got two million people behind bars today. Scratch the first, fourth, fifth and seventh amendments for the "drug war"; go ask ESR about what happened to that second one. What do you think would happen to what's left of our so-called "freedoms" if the U.S.A. were under seige for one year, much less seventy years?
Damn, I know this rant I just wrote might have got a bit off topic. Sorry. Mod me down if you feel you must. But this endless mindless f*cking red-baiting drives me nuts. You know, this is on-topic here at /. - anybody reading this, if you advocate or use open-source/free/GNU software, these f*cking guys, they're red-baiting you.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Unfortunately for us, to most corporate interests, the idea of people being able to freely modify and redistribute their "product" tends to drive them away. Oh, well. Their loss.
you can sell it, but will gain little money from doing so. You sell it to person X, who distributes the source/binaries on the Internet, which in turn compaines like RedHat take and redistribute in their linux Distro, while you, getting the short end of the stick, get very little profits. That's why if a business/programmer even wants to make enough money to "survive", support contracts will have to be made.
Companies write software to make (MONEY). The OSS/FSF movement doesn't mean the end of paying for software, it just means the end of software business for the little guy. Think about it: let's say all software was free..Beer or Speech. One of Two things will start to happen. 1) Advertising will be the only revenue left for software and the Big companies will have enough money to pay for it. 2) Programmers will be able to get jobs, but only at big companies(that can afford them).
Money will always be there..it will just come in different forms.
And so, I think we finally get to the real point of the article. Meyer is upset because a group was inspired by RMS to write a free compiler which is competing with his own. I had little knowledge of Meyer before this outbust, and I can't say his underhanded attack inspires me to purchase his book or compiler.
Ah, I see what you mean. That's another question altogether. Maintenance is clearly important, but it is the "masses" that are truly critical to Free Software projects.
Part of the fun of Free Software is that the success of a particular piece of software depends entirely on the users. We don't currently have 20 versions of Emacs because users don't like to be stranded. Just because the software is free doesn't mean that the users want to get stuck in some technological backwater.
For example, let's say that the maintainers of Apache all got way too much sun and decided that they would no longer support the English language but would instead standardize on Pig Latin. They could praise Pig Latin until they were blue in the face, and could write tons of code that would automatically translate your HTML to Pig Latin for you, but their users would still ignore them completely. Someone would get a recent copy of the CVS source before the Pig Latin decision and their would be a new version of Apache called Apache-No-Pigs within the week. The users would find bugs in Apache-No-Pigs instead of Apache, patches would flow towards Apache-No-Pigs instead of Apache, and all would be right with the world.
The biggest reason that Linus's word is law when it comes to the Linux kernel is that the people that disagree with Linus know that their version of Linux would have to be extraordinarily more useful than Linus's version for it to fly. And they would have maintain their advantage long enough for their version to get enough users to maintain itself. Linus has the support of the Linux community, and unless someone can come up with something much cooler he will continue to have that support. Linus's versions gets tested, Linus's version gets patched, and Linus's version sets the standard.
That is why people work so hard to get their source included in the kernel distribution. They know that if they can't make their software exciting enough that Linus will include it in Linux that they will be stuck maintaining their own version of Linux by themselves. Which, of course, would be a major hassle.
The same thing is true of gcc. If the contribution is good enough, then it will get in. If not, you can bet that no code that depends on it will make it in either :).
... don't agree with. This is VERY TYPICAL of the US media and journalists out there. You ignore the 95% "good" and pick on the 5% "bad". Again, I see this time and time again.
If anything, the FSF/GNU foundation could be considered a little "radical". But every movement has it's "radical" from the norm, AND THAT IS A VERY GOOD THING! Because 95% of their ideas are "on-the-mark", which is better than most other organizations.
I would argue this is the EXACT SAME THING THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA DOES with regard to the ACLU and NRA. Both are "radical" organizations, picked "apart" by the US media for that 5% that doesn't make sense. But it's that 95% we don't see in the US media that protects our 1st and 2nd Amendments, the #1 and #2 laws of the land that most states required before they would sign the US Constitution.
Take any group, narrow your argument to pick on those "radical" sections that most people don't agree with and you can make just about any case against them. Well done Mr. Meyer, you are no different than the one-dimensional, single-sided, mainstream media that keeps my TV off when the news is on.
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
When I am looking for a reason why I use free software, a lukewarm view toward freedom such as this article fails to scare -- better leave that to MSFT's Chief Software Architect.
ObMSFT: Meyer's little point about MSFT is amusing:
9. For Microsoft, whose unique position in the community creates unique responsibilities: promote a more open attitude towards the rest of the world; open up; be less mean. You can afford to be.
Trusting MSFT to behave? At least Meyer has a sense of humor.
"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that, too." -- W. Somerset Maugham
-- Superlame http://catpro.dragonfire.net/joshua/
I agree that being stuck with software that doesn't do what you want is a pain. But does having someone to blame get you out of your hole any faster? I know you can pay a software house (i.e. Oracle and friends) to give you the kind of support that Meyer would have liked in the cases he refers to, but how much is that compared to paying a contract programmer to fix a problem? Borland or Microsoft aren't even going to blink if you just went to Best Buy, bought their compiler and found out it was broken 10 months down the road. Do you have to site license for 25 seats before they care? 100 seats? Pay $10,000 per year for a support contract?
Frankly, I'd like to know. If it costs as much to get personal programming attention from a big corp as I think it does, I see a big business in the future for programmer houses doing contract-based improvements to free software.
And, for the economic theorists in the audience, you could actually have competition for software improvement contracts. Sure, the people who wrote it would be better at fixing it, but if they decide to be jerky and charge too much, some one else can charge less. Competition == lower prices for everyone. Now the software houses can't treat you like garbage because you aren't enslaved to them for software support.
Perhaps I'm just dreaming, but I think I can get paid just fine in a system like that.
Sure, the FSF says they're not opposed to selling software, but their GPL makes it impossible to ensure the developer will be properly compensated.
And what, may I ask, is "proper." If I work for a commercial company writing a piece of software at $18/hour and they sell it to a customer for $10,000 a copy, how am I being properly compensated? Well, first I agreed to be paid $18/hour, and the company is providing some kind of service to that customer. Namely going through the trouble of hiring me and assigning me to work on a piece of software, etc.
Secondly, I know what the author is arguing, and there is more to free software than free of cost. That is why I TITLED it "Free Libre, not Free Gratis." Your "you'll only see money for the sale of one copy" shows that you are still talking about money. I am not talking about the money.
That moral values are subjective? Well, Duh!
I believe in the principles of the FSF and have put my software under the GPL because I believe that this is the right thing to do and is congruent with my desire to help build a better world. I am aware that not everybody feels this way -- many people I know feel that they owe the world nothing and openly declare that they simply want to maximize their income. Fine. I have a right to consider such people shallow and short-sighted, and they have the right to consider me a dewey-eyed idealist.
Give the original poster some credit: he was arguing that intellectual property right is an outdated concept.
His argument seems to be that there are some things you can not own. Humans being one of them (and hence the reference to slavery). In current law ideas is another example: you can own the expression of an idea (copyright) and the application of an idea (patent), but not the idea itself.
The original poster suggests that intelectual property is such an un-ownable thing.
I'm glad it was moderated up [thanks moderator]! It is an interesting point, and an interesting question:
What things should it be possible to own? What ethics or principles determines "ownability"?
Hi!
- False Dilemna: several instances, including the comparison of "Stallman's world" vs. the O.K. corral.
- Slippery Slope: all over the place
- Prejudicial Language. (Not, of course, that Meyer is the only practitioner of this one!)
- Illicit Minor: Not all free software proponents are RMS or ESR.
- Attacking the Person: both ESR and RMS. (An interesting one-two combination here: attack the people, then extrapolate their characteristics to the entire group.)
I could go on, but I'm just too weary.I don't necessarily disagree with everything Meyer said, but he's just so sloppy...
"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." --Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
The scope of this discussion is,however, clear. We are interested in software that:
Is available from at least one source without payment (which does notpreclude other sources from offering it for payment, for example topeople who want a distribution on CD rather than downloaded, or require commercial support).
This is a profound and fundamental misunderstanding of what Free Software is. *No one* is obligated to give you a copy of any piece of Free Software. Rather, no one is permitted to prevent you from doing so yourself.
If no one made emacs downloadable over anonymos ftp, there would be no violation of the GPL. If anyone told *me* that I couldn't it would.
Simple really.
A far more worthwhile yet difficult study would be to see how free software has actually impacted the state of the art. After all, it's one thing to act based on faith (since such longitudinal studies don't exist), and something quite different to act with some factual basis for an expected result. I'll spare you a long list of examples, but consider Perl or gcc.
1. Richard Stallman is reported in an anecdote to have been rude at dinner, and someone has called him a communist.
2. Linus Torvalds has an ego the size of 2 1/2 Dom Deluises.
3. Eric Raymond has ranted about guns.
Therefore:
The whole idea of free software is stupid, and communist, and furthermore Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman by association with free software are guilty of supporting school shootings, bad manners, and farting in elevators.
What logic!
I'm abandoning all free software and buying a thousand copies of Windows 2000 today! I've been such a FOOL!
I would argue that it OK to do such a thing. The morals in American society are pretty much based on the idea that you can do whatever you want as long as you don't trample on the rights of others; the law is what prevents this trampling. There is nothing inherently wrong with replicating what you have; you are using your resources to share what you have. IMO, the fact that capitalism doesn't inherently give rights to everyone who contributed to something (and hence the originator/creator of ideas) never comes into play. I could go on an on about this (and I have), but I'll stop here for now; I'm currently writing an article fully explaining this argument.
Wow! That submit button is so close to preview (maybe you should get Jakob Nielsen to take a look at them, guys (g))! Anyway, why not disregard my first post, and read this instead:
Whoa. I just finished reading it all (except for the paragraphs I started skipping after 9. THE GREAT SATAN), and I found the intricate structure of manipulative/contradictory arguments based on invalid assumptions shocking. As a summary:
Last I checked, this was not a closed issue: there are people (myself included) who belong to the moral relativism camp. For those who would like to cite the lack of a society that advocates random killing as the final argument against such relativism: the lack of a concrete counter example does not mean that one cannot conceptually exist, or that one will never exist. So, this assumption is the first invalid one.
I originally thought this was invalid, but it's really just a tautology: we must admit that something that is unjustified is unjustified.
This is an obvious setup for Meyer's attack on free software and is invalid. Note that while I do not think that "acquiring someone else's legitimate property against his will" "is one of the universal moral imperatives", the notion of "legitimate property" is required for a certain set of behaviour to be even considered unethical (stealing and vandalism belong to this set).
This is a manipulative argument based on an invalid assumption. The assumption is that actions are objectively ethical or unethical regardless of how the people performing or receiveing the actions feel about them. Note that the first sentence of this argument is a variation of Meyer's first invalid assumption, that
The argument becomes manipulative when it uses Communism as an example. It is well known that many people instinctively regard Communism as inherently unethical, and Meyer takes full advantage of this sentiment by promptly associating free software with Communism. Sure, he proclaims that he does not want to make such an association immediately after he makes it, but why did he use the example of Communism in the first place? Also note that Meyer relies on the Communist association multiple times in his essay.
This statement is contradictory (with the rest of the essay) because it recognizes the difference between not saying that X is wrong and saying that X is right, while the essay goes on as if they are actually the same thing! He repeatedly attacks RMS for not saying that X is wrong as if RMS is actually saying that X is right. Meyer also attacks the whole free-software community for not speaking out against guns as if we are advocating them (which, I realize, we may or may not be).
Okay, so Meyer has painted Stallman as a "hateful" jerk. So after I have been emotionally setup as such, is my thought proccess to go something like, "Hmmm... RMS is a proponent of Free Software, and RMS is a "hateful" jerk, so free software must be a bad idea."? Thanks, but no thanks. Also note that this tactic does not only rely on emotional manipulation, it also relies on confusing (Meyer's) free software with Free Software. Finally, also note that Meyer uses a similar emotional-manipulation tactic as he outlines ESR's (appalling) love of guns.
- Product F is free software. It comes with the standard no-warranty warranty.
- Product P is proprietary software. It costs $50 for the binary-only version. It uses the most advanced techniques of software engineering. It never crashes, or departs in any way from its (mathematically expressed) specification. The seller is, in fact, so sure of those qualities that he will commit in writing that any violation of the specification during execution will immediately lead to reimbursement of the purchase price and compensation for any damages incurred.
The question, which is left as an exercise for the reader, is: which one of these solutions do you consider the more ethical? Auxiliary question: does your answer change if the price of the product becomes $5000? $50,000? $5 million?I was amazed to see this tactic used twice. Of course there are actually four options to choose from, but Meyer decided to omit the two options that do not further his argument.
And, yes, I realize that the intent was to divert attention away from free software and to compare it with the notion of quality; regardless, however, omitting these options affects the reader's opinion in unobvious ways (that are good for Meyer's argument).
I guess that's enough for now (I'm getting tired). Just one more thing:
Boycott Metallica and Dr. Dre NOW!(Please redistribute this
Boycott Metallica and Dr. Dre NOW! (Please redistribute this
Well, this article started out sensibly until it just turned into a Stallman flame fest. Here's the shortest way I can sum up my position on "free" software:
- It is appropriate to be paid for your work, but not repeatedly for the same work. Software developers should certainly be paid for the time they spend working.
- Copying information ("intellectual property") doesn't hurt anyone and should be a protected right. The economics here are irrelevant if everyone writes software/makes music/writes novels because they like to, not to make a buck. (I'd propose that the world would be a lot better off it it were unprofitable to make crappy music and software...)
Sound naive? Well your perspective sounds naive (and outdated) to me. Selfishness is not the only thing that drives the world, or there wouldn't be free software at all. Free software is coming; you can be part of it or you can be obsolete along with your proprietary software.
I think the whole point of this part was to show that some of the FreeSoftware Advocates were so fanatical as to choos product F, if that hypothetical (and he does say it is) situation occured.
// It had been Fat's delusion for years that he could help people. --Philip K. Dick, Valis
Trust me, I know. :) Meyer's sixth recommendation:
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Wow, a great article that really cuts through a lot of bull shit. I especially liked the point that authors of free software might consider acknowledging the designers of the commercial packages that they copy. -Mark Watson
if(bigmoney){
printf("Go to hell %s!\n",&bigcorp);
} else {
rms->sing();
}
There's also a known bug in the random number generator - when used inside subvert_society() it generates larger values than normal. We're not sure why this is...
Forgive me if this is redundant, but even if this thought has been previously expressed, it bears repeating, if for no other reason than to show that many people feel this way.
I love the free software movement. I love the idea, but I do not demonize the commercial software vendors merely for being commercial. What Microsoft has done with Kerberos and other free standards is completely unrelated to being commercial - unlike what the FUD from GNU would have you think, one does not follow the other.
I gladly donate my time to develop/bug hunt/etc. on projects for free because I believe in the free propogation of knowledge because I choose to, but I do not relish the thought of another person forcing it on me.
I have long felt identically to the article's author. The best way I describe my feelings about RMS/the GNU website is this analogy - I am basically conservative, but Pat Buchannan gives me the willies. =)
The difference with software is the "Network effect". The software that other people use affects the software that you can use. E.g. a lot of companies interchange information in Winword's .doc format. If I don't have compatible software I won't be able to communicate effectively with these companies.
So you see that Microsoft has more ability to "force" me to use their product than Ford does. Anyone who "owns" a popular communication standard has far more power than could have been envisaged when copyright law was invented. People are deprived of some ability to communicate with *third parties*.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
I wrote this comment, put in my nick and password, but forgot to put a :(
subject. I hit submit. Oops, no subject. Back. Filled in
subject. Hit submit again. Oh my! My comment was posted as an Anonymous
Coward because I did not notice that IE had clearned my password when I
hit Back. In other words, how about checking if a Nick was entered but
not a password, just like it checks to see if a subject is missing, it
should indicate a problem, not just post my comment as an AC because I
didn't noticed IE cleared my password.
Phillip
To justify your solution on factors that supposedly transcend the problem space is to take a philosophically untenable position.
Both Stallman and Meyers are equally guilty of this.
If they were being honest they would not claim that there exists a 'higher moral imperitive' that justifies their particular solution. Instead, they would admit that this so-called 'higher moral imperitive' is merely another factor within the problem space, a factor which is important enough to them that they would be willing to sacrifice factors that others may feel strongly about in order to attain it.
In other words, if they were being honest we would hear less talk of perfect solutions and far more talk about solutions which are open to discussion and external input.
The correct way to engineer solutions is not to hide or defend the imperfections of your solution but rather to give full disclosure and then full attention to external proposals.
As in code, as in reality.
- a
I learned that Bertrand Meyer has strong differences with Richard Stallman. Many people do.
I learned that Bertrand Meyer thinks people have a right to be paid for their work. Many people feel the same way.
Then he got off on a long, long rant about Eric Raymond's statements about guns and made a demand that Stallman and Torvalds distance themselves from someone who writes about and supports the right to bear arms. Oh, and made political rant about the NRA.
Am I missing something? Since when did Raymond's love of guns and support of gun rights have -anything- to do with Open Source or GNU/FSF/Linux?
I guess I was okay up to that point, but then BM's message was clearly lost in his rant...kinda like when you tell Stallman that you're a commercial software developer....
In space, no one can hear you moo.
The GNU and FSF view is that it is OK to sell anything except software.
Maybe I read different pages at the GNU's site but I was under impression that RMS is not against selling software per se. It's just that in most cases commercial software directly leads to proprietary software -- the one that restricts your ability to make changes and/or share it.
To give you an analogy.
You bought a book. You read it, you liked it. You found a few mistakes/misspellings in it. You corrected them.
Are you allowed to do it by law? Yes. Are you ethically justified to do so? Yes.
Your friend asked you to read the book. You gave it to him (with corrections).
Are you allowed to do so by law? Yes. Are to ethically justified? In most cases yes (unless we take a point of view of some authors/publishers who want your friend to buy a book).
Let's get back to the software. Are you allowed to make changes (if you even can) in proprietary software? No (read disassembly clauses). Are you ethically justified to do so? In many people's opinion (my including), yes.
Are you allowed to share the program with your friend? Neither by law nor by current ethical standards.
Case closed.
But if the work of your life is a great software package, trying to make a living out of selling it --- unless you also give it away, an immediate business-killer --- is a moral abomination.
First of all, it's not necessarily a business killer. If it would be, most software companies would be in financial ruins caused by 'warez kids'.
Second, nobody is saying that selling software is a "moral abomination" (with exception of some kids who have never developed anything worth mentioning). The question is, what right does the author of the software has to restrict modification and/or non-commercial modification of the product. I mentioned "non-commercial" clause because it's one point I disagree with RMS at.
Such balderdash would be easy to dismiss if it were not highly visible from the author's Open Source pages (I came across it when looking for Mr. Raymond's touted essay "The Cathedral and the Bazaar") and didn't have any ethical implications.
Bertrand, Bertrand... We are talking feelings here :-) Didn't you ever write "balderdash" in your personal diary? If guns are what gets Eric high then let it be. It's his personal choice. Don't imply a link between Open Source and guns control issues.
the US political system has a remarkable combination of checks and balances making the imposition of a dictatorship rather unlikely;
Maybe that's partially due to the possibility of armed resistance that such political system was developed.
the historical exceptions to this observation ... were not, if memory serves us well, met by armed resistance from an outraged citizenry;
Just because there was no precedent doesn't mean that there is never going to be one.
and a real aspiring dictator would have means of oppression, such as missiles, tanks and perhaps nuclear weapons, against which even the sophisticated guns on which Mr. Raymond roves ecstatic in his Web pages would be rather powerless.
Well, I don't think that Stalin used any tanks or bombs or even an army in 1937 to whip the country. It was all about quite night visits by a few KGB agents.
Also, why don't you look at guns as a weapon of self defense rather than a weapon of assault only?
But the result of such lunatic ravings, supported by the indefatigable NRA, are clear to everyone: a murder rate higher than in any other first-world country, an endless race between police and criminals for ever more lethal weapons, free availability of murderous devices in the infamous and barely regulated "gun shows" of the Western US, 12-year-olds trained in weapons since kindergarten who go on shooting rampages with guns borrowed from the family cupboard.
I just LOVED how you shifted attention from the FSF and Open Source. Stay on the subject, damn it! This is ad hominen!
People who are callous about human life cannot and should not be hailed as moral examples, whatever the alleged generosity of their views on the far less momentous issue of software distribution.
Assume I have a set of moral views. One of them is to cede my seat in a public transportation to an elderly person. Another one is to kill journalists who piss me off. Am I not allowed to encourage people to follow my first moral view? As far as the 'hailing' goes: nobody is creating idols here. It's perfectly understood that people have flaws. "Role model" game is something that is played in the grade school, not software world. We are not putting Raymond on a pedestal for his gun control views. Open Source has a different goal than NRA. I
t is high time for Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds to state publicly that they do not endorse the views of the gun lunatics, and that their cherished notion of freedom has nothing to do with the freedom to kill children and other innocents.
It's also time for both of our Gods (make it three, actually) to state publicly that they do not endorse the views or lifestyle of every single member of FSF, Open Source or tech community. :-) How fast we degraded to name calling. How fast we degraded to misrepresenting views.
If you cared to read Linus's interviews, you should know that he sees technological advancement as the most important reason for writing open source software. All three of them publicly stated that neither of them shares all views of others. I think that's clear and sufficient. There is no reason to start a fight.
if you find a bug in one of these products, you will have a much easier time reporting it and getting it fixed than if you try calling Sun or Microsoft customer support about a problem with their proprietary, binary-only products.
Yes, but you forgot one more point: "or fixing it yourself" (there is no need to leave stuff out). And this point should be the answer to your next complain: I
n both cases the scenario was the same: fixes to well-known bugs being promised and promised again; everyone waiting for months and months, until it becomes clear that nothing will happen; in the end, having to write off all the affected developments.
Now assume that the two products differ as follows: ... Product P is proprietary software. It costs $50 for the binary-only version. It uses the most advanced techniques of software engineering. It never crashes, or departs in any way from its (mathematically expressed) specification. The seller is, in fact, so sure of those qualities that he will commit in writing that any violation of the specification during execution will immediately lead to reimbursement of the purchase price and compensation for any damages incurred.
Hahahaha! ROFL. Wake me up when the Messiah comes. The only way you can get to this state (given a current commercial world situation) is by introducing a new competitor - your free product "F".
Wanting to get rich is not morally reprehensible.
In itself no. But when you do so but depriving others of their rights, yes. We are running in circles here.
In general, I'm greatly disappointed by the article. The author thinks of open source/free software as of some kind of corporation that acts as one whole. In fact, it's a diverse group of individuals with different opinions. Too much misrepresentation for my likes.
The author questions why people would bother with writing OSS, but what I can't understand is why anyone would bother writing this article. We all know it's perfectly easy to lambast and go on at a system that you don't agree with, but unless there's a positive side to the debate there doesn't seem much point. If one wrote an article simply about 'Microsoft is bad: here's why', I would hope nobody would publish it. Slashdot occasionally gets ridiculed for it's anti-microsoft bias, but this isn't because they publish articles which are simply 'Microsoft is bad', rather than 'Microsoft fucks up again'.
Does that make sense? Who spends their time wasting hours writing about something they really dislike? I can't see that the author actually has a 'passion' for attacking OSS - why doesn't he spend his time more productively writing about something he is passionate about?
1. Regarding the Cost of Reproducibility and Open Source
"A copy of a program has nearly zero marginal cost (and you can pay this cost by doing the work yourself), so in a free market, it would have nearly zero price." (Stallman, Richard "Why Software Should Be Free" http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shoul dbefree.html)
This is a particularly common argument amongst followers of Stallman's "all software must be free" dictum. It also displays an appalling lack of economic understanding (or an equally appalling willingness to disregard economics in favor of rabble-rousing). The refutation goes something like this: the marginal cost of a product is not the only input into a product's price. Any work -- software, audio track, movie, novel, etc. -- has a creation cost equal to the investment in capital goods, salaries, raw materials purchasing, foregone opportunity cost, and so on. This creation cost must be exceeded in order for the creator to turn a profit. In a free market with perfect information, there is no microeconomic incentive to create a product that will not recoup that profit. Stallman's later assertion that it's morally acceptable to add development costs on top of marginal costs bends the economics backwards and misses the point: the marginal cost of a product is secondary, not primary, to the sales price; the creation costs are spread out amongst the number of products expected to be sold.
2. A Consideration of the Notion of Software Agreements as Psychological Assault
"Signing a typical software license agreement means betraying your neighbor: ``I promise to deprive my neighbor of this program so that I can have a copy for myself.'' People who make such choices feel internal psychological pressure to justify them, by downgrading the importance of helping one's neighbors--thus public spirit suffers. This is psychosocial harm associated with the material harm of discouraging use of the program." (Vide Stallman)
This is a remarkable conjoining of two unrelated arguments: "Software agreements are bad" because "We should help each other."
Again, Stallman disregards the cost of producing software in favor of the cost of copying it. What he does not ask is the question: "Should a software developer be obliged to help a software user's neighbor?" In a world ruled by Stallman's precepts, software would have to be completely paid for by the first copy (in which case one can assume that, in most cases, the software would never be purchased at all).
3. On the Psychic Rewards of Software Development
"Programmers also suffer psychosocial harm knowing that many users will not be allowed to use their work. This leads to an attitude of cynicism or denial. A programmer may describe enthusiastically the work that he finds technically exciting; then when asked, ``Will I be permitted to use it?'', his face falls, and he admits the answer is no. To avoid feeling discouraged, he either ignores this fact most of the time or adopts a cynical stance designed to minimize the importance of it." (Vide Stallman)
Here Stallman ascribes his own personal views to other developers. When presented with the fact that many developers are not, in fact, discouraged by the fact that other people will pay for the software they develop, Stallman quickly claims that, yes, those developers say that, but they're either "ignor[ing]" the issue, or they're simply adopting a "pose."
This is an argument that requires no refutation, because it barely registers as an argument at all: Stallman cannot know what goes on in the minds of others, therefore the foundation of his argument is nonexistent.
Addendum: On Guns and Code
Bertrand Meyer's ad hominem attack on Eric Raymond is unconscionable, and an appeal to base emotions in lieu of his otherwise quite sustainable arguments. Having said that, I find that I am of two minds regarding ESR's beliefs (which, by placing in public view, he has opened to public debate): on one hand, his Wagnerian paen to firearms is almost a parody of the most virulent NRA propaganda; on the other, it's hard for me to forget that Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested for essentially being poor minorities (Italians then being a despised underclass) who habitually carried firearms. As Italians and political anarchists, they had a fear -- quite understandable in light of later events -- of police power in America.
However, I do wish to turn that favorite Heinlein quote of the NRA around: an armed society is not a polite society, but only a polite society deserves to be an armed society.
It's hard to even imagine what a perfect world would be like. However, it seems to me that there'll always be a disconnect between the legal and the moral. The problem is that when you create legislation, you must be willing to enforce it. If you are going to enforce the legislation, it means you will be willing and able to impose penalties on those who violate it. If you are going to impose such penalties, you must have a clear standard that allows you to identify wrong-doers. The standard must not be subjective - you cannot expect people to abide by a law that is not clearly defined.
In a perfect world, perhaps there would be a lot more agreement about terms that are currently considered subjective (such as "offensive"). Thus, laws could be enacted that would otherwise be too subjective. I am not sure though: in a perfect world, does everyone agree on the definition of "offensive" (and other currently subjective terms)?
In our decidedly imperfect world, society's moral standards serve to keep people in line fairly well. There are positive and very negative aspects to this of course, since society's standards don't always make a lot of sense (e.g. people who are good-looking are favoured). However, if your peers judge that you are acting like an !%#-hole, or you are just plain too different from them, you will be isolated, and there are very real penalties for being isolated / marginalized in society.
"The nail that stands up gets pounded down." (Chinese proverb (I think))
If you don't properly typecast it's sloppy programming.. yes, the compiler may upcast it for you but I wouldn't count on it. And you're right, I have no clue on how to program.
The software community in general, and the OSS community in particular, seems to have forgotten their mother's admonishment that "If you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all".
".. the key difference is that you pay Ford for an object .. when one purchases licensed software ... I cannot make copies and give it to others"
the real differentiator here seems to be the ease of replication. you are arguing essentially that because it is easy to replicate software and give out copies, it should therefor be allowed.
assuming away reality, for the moment, if there were a magic device that you could pull your car into and have exact replicas made at no (or extremely minimal) cost to yourself, should that be permitted? is that right? is it OK for ford to invest millions to develope a new car only to have somebody spew out an infinite number of replicas of it?
I questioned the "perfect identity" between law and ethics. Law and ethics are different things. The laws may be ethical, but they are not ethics.
And the laws may be un-ethical. Try to persuade the state of Texas (or any of the other nations, states and teritories that still practise the death penalty) that "you shall not kill".
Bertrand cites examples of racial laws as un-ethical. I'm sure you can find your own examples.
This is a silly example, but I'm tired: In England it is the law that you must drive your car in the left side of the road.
This is not more or less ethcal than the more common law of driving cars in the right side. In fact, I can not find a single ethical argument for driving in either side.
The purpose of the law is to make life practical; to enable people to move from A to B with less effort and greater speed.
Less effort and greater speed are not ethical goals, I would suggest.
You can probably find other laws and regulations that are purely practical (and would be a better example than mine!).
Hi!
So RMS thinks its alright to break laws because he doesn't like them?
So, All Knowing One, are all laws perfect in your country?
Apples and oranges.
Software is free to duplicate, cars are not.
It's much different to give something away for free when it doesn't cost you anything than when you'd have to go collect the raw materials and build each copy manually.
Until people understand this basic concept, they shouldn't be writing articles, or coming up with awkward metaphors. The only thing that is directly comparable to software is software, if you have to use a metaphor to make your point then it's because your argument is broken in the original context. If your argument was any good, you'd just make it.
Same thing goes within the free software world, btw. You don't ask Miguel de Icaza to be fair towards KDE; you're just thankful he's making GNOME better.
On the contrary - I expect exactly that. I expect that GNOME's 'betterness' to be based on its own merits - if it is then there is no need to be unfair to KDE. Such unfairness then becomes ethically repugnant
By the way - I am replying to this using orabidoo's own example. I have no knowledge of Miguel de Icaza's attitude towards the KDE project, and have no desire to malign his character
(i know, not good to reply to yourself, but you can't edit messages here)
I have long felt identically to the article's author
;)
This message is ENTIRELY about the portion of the article relating about GNU/RMS. I actually agree w/ESR on a lot of things, and Meyer lost me when he started going off on guns. As many people here have noted, he violates his own statements about morality. But the second half does not invalidate the first.
I was hoping to read a rational, well thought criticism of the ethics of free software and got instead just another foam-at-the-mouth rant at anything and anyone the author disagreed with. His portrayal of both RMS and ESR as ranting lunatics is almost as offensive as his dismissal of the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution as preposterous (well, ok, he only called the second one preposterous - but just start to mess with any one of the ten, as see how long the rest of them survive). He condemns dubious rhetorical devices but fills his article with them. And he fails, as have all who have written such diatribes I have read, to come to grips with the ethical problems that arise when people are forced by economic need to sell cheaply the products of their labor while others who perform no work at all gain far more economic benefit from them.
Deep in my heart I know that it's possible to mount a rational attack on the principles espoused by Stallman and Raymond, if only because it should be possible to do so against any stated position. Anyone who took a debate class should understand that.
But I've gotta say I didn't find that here.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
Information is not Knowledge
If Meyer thinks watching Stallman and a software developer at dinner is contentious, he should have been there when a friend of mine maneuvered RMS into a discussion on software patents with a patent attorney
And just because many of us in the community respect things RMS has done and many of the positions he's taken, that doesn't mean there's either anything resembling universal worship or liking his Whiny Righteous Anger Mode - there are times you put up with it because he has earned lots of Extra Slack points.
If Meyer wants to attack the free software movement by ad hominem attacks against its major players, we really do need to call on the Object Oriented Programming community to reject this person who not only believes that governments should radically outgun their subjects (in spite of the obvious contradiction between this and the last few millenia of experience watching armed governments make wars and oppress their citizens), but who clearly states that they should use the powers they've acquired to help control who has access to what software. (Needless to say, this paragraph is intended as a flame
I've met ESR once or twice, back when I lived on the East Coast, before the Linux revolution happened. He had started doing the printed revised jargon dictionary, and was sharing booth space at the Tre nton Computer Fair with Nancy Lebovitz, the Calligraphic Button maker. Nice guy, and since nobody'd acquired the collection of used 9-track tapes he'd brought (in addition to the book), he decided to be non-attached to property and we frisbeed them into the dumpster.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Illustration of this is precisely in his response to ESR's gun advocacy. As seen from this (Eastern) shore of the Atlantic, of course, he's perfectly right that ESR's views on guns are unethical to the verge of sociopathy - but this is precisely because he's wrong to claim that there are moral absolutes, ethical prinicples which are culturally independent. There aren't. Ethical views are at least to some extent culturally determined, and ESRs must be judged within the context of the culture of which he forms a part.
Those people in the southern United States and in South Africa who in the early part of this century passed laws against 'miscegenation' did so for reasons which they viewed as moral - just as significantly moral as Meyer's (or Stallman's) view their arguments on free software.
Whether or not one views ESRs advocacy of gun-ownership as repellent (and I, being a normal European, naturally do), they are logically independent of his views on free software. Of course one could argue that because ESR's ethical judgement on guns is unsound, therefore his ethical judgement on free software must be viewed as suspect. But in this argument 'unsound' simply means 'different from mine', and, more probably, 'different from my unexamined social prejudices'.
However, the ad hominem argument against ESR falls for a more significant reason. Contrary to Meyer's assertion, ESR makes no claims regarding the ethicality or otherwise of free software, merely about its relative efficacy. Even if the argument that ESR was a poor judge of ethics succeeded, it has nothing to say about ESR as a judge of efficacy.
Which leaves, centrally, Meyer's attack on Stahlman. I found this vituperative, spiteful, and full of half truths and distortions which seemed to me deliberate. The third hand, partial and unverifiable account of the dinner party demonstrates spite.
For an example of half-truths, consider the passage in which Meyer states:
This passage is, I believe, deliberately misleading. In the document to which Meyer refers, Stallman's only significant objection to the BSD licence is that if a software product makes use of many BSD-licensed modules from many different providers, the concatenation of the advertisement lines may becomes unwieldy; a simple, pragmatic objection, not, as Meyer implies, an ethical one.
What Meyer demonstrates is that his ethical judgement is different from Stallman's, and, separately, from ESR's. That's fine. He is (like everyone else) entitled to his ethical judgement, and he is entitled to try to persuade us to agree with him. Having read his argument, however, the conclusion I reach is that his (Meyer's) arguments are intellectually wanting, his conclusions untenable, and his own intellectual stature (on this evidence) slight.
I suspect (and hope) that he is by now ashamed of this piece. If he isn't, then I'm sorry fo him.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
It's about ethics and morality.
/.'ers famously saying "Information wants to be free." The question is "said who?"
The whole point of the article is that there is no absolute definition of morality or ethics. Every time the MPAA/RIAA/ M$ threads come up, there are hordes of
There's no way to prove that information wants to be free. It's just something that some open-source guy said and is now taken as FACT by the people who listened to him.
There's also 'the genie is out of the bottle' arguement that is used for Napster. Napster can be shut down, but there will still be some other program (like Gnutella) providing the same functionallity. This completely bypasses the ETHICAL issue of whether it's right or wrong to use/copy/distribute Copyrighted material (and whether or not Copyright is right or Wrong)
The article is basically saying that people need to take a look at what Free Software leaders are saying, and determine if the arguements made and the source they're from is credible. That's way he can say that the Autobahn isn't evil because it was built by nazis, and hey, this ERS guy is a gun nut, so you might want to consider that when he talks about other moral issues, in the same article.
Just because some guy writes a manifesto, it doesn't instantly make free software better than commercial software. And if it does, what implications does that have in the real world? Should books be free, should televison be free, should cauliflower be free?
Just take the time to think for yourself about the assumptions and agruements made that make free software ethically and morally right, and think about what happens when you apply these same assumptions and aguements to everything else in the world but software.
- My password is slashdot
HY: Hmmm. Then tell me what you think about pirated software.
RMS: I don't call this copying "piracy", because that is a propaganda word. I don't think it is wrong to copy and share information. Governments can pass laws against it, but that does not make it wrong, just illegal.
An unauthorized copy of a proprietary program has the same drawbacks as an authorized copy. If you want to make more copies and share them, you have to do it in secret; and you cannot get the source code.
So I think that unauthorized copies are not much better than authorized copies. The only good thing about the unauthorized copy is that you avoid giving money to the owner. This is good, because the owner does not deserve a reward for making software proprietary.
However, I can achieve the same thing by *not using the program at all*. I use free software instead.
HY: (!! Wow!!) Umm... now, you're ideas are really far-fetched. How do you evaluate your succe....
RMS: (cuts in) I don't understand what you're saying. Far fetched? How can you say it's far fetched? Far fetched means that it can't be done, but I have been doing it for the last 15 years, which proves that it can be done. And the users of free software are increasing.
HY: But...isn't that because you occupy just a very small fringe of the society? It can't be generalized, can it?
RMS: You know, that's basically bull shit. Sheer speculation masquerading its knowledge. It's a cheap shot that someone may make. Of course, I don't have a time machine, so I can't tell if it's going to take over the world. But the free software movement was often claimed to be totally impossible, and yet we managed to continue and grow. This is positive evidence. And what do you have on the negative?
So RMS thinks its alright to break laws because he doesn't like them? You know these murder laws are unjust, I should kill a few people to prove my point. Look how he interrupts the interview guy. Some guy write a little shareware program for windows that proves useful, according to RMS he should receive nothing for his work.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
> Personally, I agree with most of what Meyer points out in his article. It's never been fully explained (at least to my satisfaction) why attempting to make money off your own work (and exclusively your own work) is taboo. I've heard people scream bloody murder at me for years for simply trying to sell various little odds and ends i've made, rather than just declare it public domain and give it out for free.
People IMHO get overboard when they demand someones work be given away for free.
I've writen a lot of software myself. Some for free some for liccens and some I never distributed at all.
Right now a lot of screwed up things are happening in commertal software that shouldn't happen.
Good products are shot down.. ports are killed....
People put up with it becouse "Thats how it's done" but the truth is that is NOT how it's done.
Open source is for authors who want to give software away but don't want someone else to repacage same under a commertal title.
It's happend occasionally....
Then suddenly some kids effort becomes some corperations product.
It's not fair but it happends.
Open source should not ever be about forcing software develupers to open source everything...
I open source becouse for me it's easyer to proffit from open source than it is to proffit from closed.
But thats my choice...
If you sell something and I think it's worth what you ask for it I'll buy it. If I don't I won't. But I will not steal and I certenly won't ask you to open source it.
I'm staying away from closed source myself simply becouse I don't want to deal with software distributors who want to distribute "Windows only" software titles....
Don't want the mess of software companys that won't put non-Windows titles on the shelfs...
Don't want the hassle...
I'll make a proffit a diffrent way... But thats my choice... Not someone elses..
I don't actually exist.
There is a quote from Ken Thomson in the article... "I've looked at the source, and there are pieces that are good and pieces that are not ... My experience and some of my friends' experience is that Linux is quite unreliable. Microsoft is really unreliable but Linux is worse." (IEEE Computer, 32, 5, May 1999, page 61.) Does anyone know what context this was in, or if he said anything nice about Linux later? Or maybe qualified the statement with examples of what is bad?
I agree with a lot of points in the article. I think that the article should have spent more time explaining his points of view instead of bashing others.
I am an Objectivist (www.aynrand.org) and because of that for a long time I strugled with the idea of the GPL and if it would be moraly right for _me_ to endorse it (I don't want to be a hypocrate). In the end I came to a conclusion, the GPL is ok.
In the folowing I will outline some of the points of Objectivism and how they apply to free software. I will then add some comments about free software.
1 Reason
When someone sets out to write a piece of software they have goals. That goal might be to make a good piece of software to better server them selves. If your goal is to say, create a great window manager, it could be a daunting task to do all by your self. A person must use reason to achieve his goal. This person's goal was never to make money off this piece of software. If this person could pool the resources of lots of WILLING people who also want to receive the same goal and by doing so would produce a better application faster reason would direct them to the GPL. The GPL allows for this modal of development if the goal is a better piece of software and not monitary.
2. Self-interest
When a person sets out to develop a piece of software they are most likely are doing it out of self-interest. The GPL allows for this self-interest. The developer might want a better piece of soft ware and not a monetary reward. Most people(if not all) license a piece of software under the GPL for selfish reasons, they want to be able to use a better piece of software(a return) for the least amount of time (there investment).
3. Mutual Consent
NO one is being forced into the GPL. Personal chose is the basis of a free society, free software, capitalism, and objectivism. Everyone who partakes in the software must agree to the terms.
If you feel that GPL software is communistic you are off base. Communism is a system of enforced rules in which the community comes before you. In a communistic society personal choice and freedom are NULL and self-interest is considered a bad word. In a communism the powers that be can take everything from you, with the GPL no one can EVER take it from you. They can add to it, they can change it, they can make it better, but they can NEVER take it from you.
When I speak of the GPL I speak of Reason (to make a better product with the least amount of investment), self-interest (to have a better product) and mutual consent (to agree to the license and hold to it). That is why I chose to make MY software GPL.
Is electricity considered a form of fire? If not then could you drive an electric car with energy cells charged the pervious day (because the electricity would come from coal-burning or nuclear fission surely considered fire).
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
Of course there were the wubbawubba people that abstained from all sex... 'course they were extinct in one generation.
And hey, wolf packs don't randomly kill their own, they must be ethical!
Termite colonies too!
And I'm not exactly sure how you define "culture" and "its own", there are many tribes that share a common culture, but feel no compunction about killing each other, if you're defining "its own" as the people it's considered unacceptable (or undesirable) to kill, your argument is circular. For almost any other definition of members of a culture, I'm sure examples can be found. (presumably you're excluding euthenasia of deformed infants, female infants or even the elderly all of which have occured in some societies)
But yes, there are no existing cultures that have belief structures conducive to the extinction of the culture. If you can come up with a set of behaviors that are common across all human cultures, that cannot be found in ant colonies, I'll consider discussing them as "ethical absolutes". Ones shared by ants I'm just going to write off as "necessary to the survival of any species with a social group larger than the individual".
Unless you want to advance ants and termites as ethical creatures ;)
>Trust me, I know. :) Meyer's sixth recommendation:
> Call the extremists' bluff by questioning their moral premises. Re-establish ethical priorities.
Just to note...
This is NOT calling anyones bluff... It's a misdirection tactic...
I've seen some pritty messed up arguments that basicly argue that everyone is greedy and selfish.
The classic counter argument is "Not everyone is [greedy/selfish/sadistic]"
I have two other responces....
1. A person makes a program for himself. He makes the code available so others can improve it and give the improvments back to him. They give the improvements back to him so they don't need to make improvments every time he updates the program.
In the end they do it for themselfs. In a very real way the code comes back.
Giving away source code isn't a selfless act...
It's a greedy act... It's the kind of greed everyone can get in on...
2. "It happends, telling the world why it'll never happen is foolish when the world sees it happening every day. In the end it dosn't matter why."
I don't actually exist.
That's the claim he makes in the article. Well, it's hard to prove him wrong without a time machine. But the PC revolution was something waiting to happen. If it wasn't the IBM PC, it would have been the Apple Mac. If it wasn't Apple then it would have been Amiga. Etcetera.
But I assume his claim is meant to extend to the following:
Again, this is hard to refute, but I think it's false. As I said, the PC revolution was waiting to happen, Moore's Law ensured this. If proprietory software had not been legally possible then free software would have been written. As he points out, IBM et al were trying to sell hardware at the time and considered the software to be just a supporting tool for that.
[Of course, just cos I've argued with this point it doesn't mean I don't think the rest of the article is a pile of bollocks too ;) ]
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
>>You fell for his redefinition of terms techniques.
> Not really. First, he includes "source code
> available" in his definition; this is a core and
> important point which differentiates his
> definition from "free beer".
Actually, what you fell for was that at the beginning of the article he defines "free" in the "free speech" sense that RMS uses, only to revert to the "free beer" sense in the rest of the article.
"Yes, the GPL supposedly permits you to sell software, but it doesn't really."
There are two different issues that I think you've confused. One, whether the GPL permits selling free software. Two, whether selling GPL'd software is practical. RMS has stated before quite clearly that he is not opposed to selling copies of software. The FSF once sold tapes of Emacs. You can call RMS to task for thinking that selling free software can be a practical enterprise, but calling him to task for being against selling software altogether is a misrepresentation.
Perhaps not, but people will say that without a corporate vendor to fall back on, you could lose thousands waiting for the patch, if it ever comes...
I've waited five years for MS to fix some bugs in Win95, they haven't. Likely never will. They're still in W-ME from what I've heard. That's not a great track record as far as product support goes. And I'm representing a company with over a hundred licenses who has complained many times, by email, fax, phone, and snail mail. I doubt any open project could ignore me more thoroughly.
But, if we had the source, I'm sure in five years I could have tracked some of the bugs down, or, if nothing else, spent some of our budget to hire a consultant to do so. It'd be money we wasted writing our software to avoid the bugs, and in dealing with incompatibilities.
I'd much rather spend a few bucks contributing to a worthy open source project than sitting on a phone, racking up the charges, waiting to talk to a tech who'll assure me that the next release will fix it, if I pay for the upgrade...
Free software breaks the consumer/producer duality, instead of with money, you pay by getting involved. If you don't have the skill or time to get involved, you can pay a third party like RedHat to do the "getting involved" bit for you and in return you expect them to make sure that you get the service that you pay for.
Chilli
-=- Just a random lambda hacker
Nice car analogy - because it's easy to show its flaws:
If Ford would license their cars, they could dictate to you how you use your (no, wait, it's only licensed - it would still be THEIR) car. You must not open it to look at the engine. You must not transport anyone else. You must not lend it to others. And if you could make a copy, you'd only be allowed to make a one for backup purposes, if you're really lucky (and able to circumvent the copy protection). Oh, and if it has a problem, you have to take it back to the manufacturer - you can't just ask a mechanic to fix it (or try fixing it yourself). And so on...
As has been pointed out already, it's not about "free" as in "no cost", it's all about "free" as in "what you're free to do" with it!
-- Eavy (: Linux Is Not UniX
Yup. The first clue. And maybe one or two others. And after that, enough clues to describe it to a consultant who specializes in that sort of thing.
I was writing some complex recursive code using DJGPP a few years back, it was doing really odd stuff, and it was debugger dependant, breakpoints and stuff, or running it in the debugger would change how it worked. I eventually tracked it down to alloca() which I had been using because its features seemed handy. Turns out it had 'features', that undocumented kind. I grabbed the code and narrowed down the likely offending library code to a small segment, then contacted someone involved in the project. Turns out my 'bug' was halfway between a bug and a feature and just undocumented. But yes, I did manage to track down what to me was a compiler bug.
And had I had to fix it, I either could have dove into the library code, or I could have gotten someone else to do it. Were this a business situation, I could have hired someone to do it, at a cost of a few thousand dollars. Much better than submitted a bug report to MS or Borland and waiting a few weeks, possibly only to be told that it's a feature and I'm SOL...
Had this little web project ever seen the light as a business project, 150 people at the company I was working for at the time would have all benefitted from open source even if most of them couldn't identifiy a compiler let alone debug one.
I agree entirely. He wants a world where nothing is free - well I hate to dissapoint him, but often, OSS is not free - and the price you pay is to fit the OSS product to fit your needs (a cost in programmer time) and preferably to fold those changes back into the pool. you do *not* stand about and snivel that the other developers haven't fixed the problem yet - they may have things they need to work more than whatever bugged you.
The problem seems to be he is working from a set of preconcieved results as definite as the ones he claims for Eric and RS - who he immediately demolishes for their personal behavior (by anecdote for RS, though probably true, and because Eric is a self-confessed gun nut, and DARES to be pro-gun on his own, personal website, suddenly everything he has said about OSS is worthless....)
He claims there exists an Absolute base moral code, when in fact all such things are established by the society they exist in (his main example is that killing a innocent man is morally wrong - and indeed, most acceptable societies agree with him; however, it all depends on who gets to define "innocent". if I am "guilty" of holding certain beliefs, refusing to do certain things *I* find morally unacceptable, having certain deformities or genetic abnormalities, I may well be sentenced to death in some societies, who would believe they were doing what was morally right). Second, he states the ONLY reasons free software is free: that it was developed at public expense, that it was given away by a company, or that it was developed by someone with no other monetary concerns. (I am forced to assume here he got so distracted by Eric's gun essay that he forgot to read the OSS stuff on that page). Apache is the prime example here - it was developed by a group of people who, individually, needed to write a webserver, and decided one really good one between them would be easier than one mediocre one each.
ok, to get back to the plot. He then comes up with a mythical Closed Source product, so good that its manufacturer is willing to indemnify the users for loss due to its use, rather than the standard "loss limited to purchase price of goods" deal. Can I have one of those? All I can seem to find on MY shelves are products of the latter kind - whose bugs take months to fix, and often the newer, less bug-ridden package requires you repurchase, rather than get a free update. Most of the rest of this piece seems to be of the same quality - generate a straw-man that can be easily attacked, then attack it. I would be ashamed to have a piece of this quality on my own website, and can't imagine having it in a nationally-distributed magazine.......
--
-=DaveHowe=-
(...which a quote from the linked essay)
A summary:
RMS was paid to write software (EMACS) but thought he had the -right- to release it for free, even though it was written on someone else's time. This right was granted to him by MIT.
RMS then resigned when MIT was charging people for the software that other MIT employees wrote - employees that MIT -paid- to write that software.
Free software has it's place, but commercial software does, too. It takes a lot of time and effort to write good, useful software. If that time isn't volunteered (for free) by private citizens, then someone is paying for it.
If you pay for something, shouldn't you be able to expect something (tangible) in return, if that's what your business is about? Not many businesses survive if they don't have income.
This is just plain wrong. RMS supported himself financially by selling tapes of Emacs for a while. The man must know he's confusing (deliberately?) "speech" and "beer" here.
The unquestioned assumption running through this McCarthyite diatribe is that investors of money are entitled to rights that investors of work are not.
At the risk of sounding (gasp! swoon!) socialistic, the authors of commercial software in most cases don't sell their work, they sell their labour. They get paid a wage, and benefit not one whit from the monopolistic control over the use of the product of their labour that is granted to their employer.
Okay, maybe you can formulate an argument to support this. Maybe the work just wouldn't get done if there aren't benevolent capitalists donating money to worthy causes like Windows 2K. I think not. On the most obvious assumptions about how the world really works, commercial software fails any sane test of efficiency you can dream up:
As a system for generating public good, commercial software is hopelessly inefficient. However, as a system designed to increase and concentrate wealth and power into the hands of a few, it works fairly well.
The challenge for software developers with an intrest in seeing that their work is self-directed, in harmony with their talents, their interests, and their concern for the broader community, is to develop and disseminate an alternative view of society which recognises the true costs of totalitarian control of software and the benefits of freedom.
Matthew.
I'm not sure what you are getting at. A lot of the developers of free software have been poor college students, now they have a chance they would not otherwise have. Red Hat was started from Bob Young's credit card, now it's a giant dev house bumping noses with micro$oft.
Participating in free software helps newbie programmers learn programming and cut their teeth, proving themselves in a practical way. It landed Linus a big job at Transmeta.
Hmmm looks to me like free software is helping little guys succeed more than ever before...
I'm not sure Bertrand Meyer is someone we should be listening to on matters of ethics. In his book Object Success Meyer expressed what I find to be an extremely unethical position when he expressed the opinion that C (and presumably C++) programmers, having learned too many bad habits, shouldn't be considered for "real" OO development projects. Hiring managers should look on them with suspicion, he suggested. In spite of his weasel words about "human betterment", I find this to be little more than an expression of prejudice about C/C++ programmers, and I find it unethical in the extreme.
Robert Martin, of Object Mentor, wrote a nice rebuttal to Bertrand Meyer, which he posted to comp.object and comp.lang.c++, among other Usenet groups.
--Jim
What he doesn't get is that at the heart of free software is the contributions of lots of people. Users choose free software over commercial software, and users test that software and contribute bug fixes.
Proof please? Please prepare a breakdown of features in a major free software project (such as GCC or EMACS), and demonstrate that the "heart" of the project (let's define this as majority of features) is implemented by ordinary end-users and not the core development team (who are listed in the credits file). Please submit your response using lines of code, or major feature sets on a feature list, as indicators.
If you have no evidence, please retract your statement.
His claim is wrong.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.ht ml
Similarly, you are forced to use gas as the fuel for your car, because it is available everywhere, and that is because cars have standardized on gasoline as the fuel. Any other fuel you want to use has to be compatible with the engines designed to run on gasoline.
If you want to power your car with coal or electricity, you're out of luck. As a matter of fact that is one of the reasons we don't have electric cars nowadays. It wouldn't be so hard for gas stations to stock batteries, and switch out your depleted battery for a recharged one.
--SolidGold
--SolidGold
Everything you know is wrong. Or more accurately, inaccurate.
this guy is as much of a nut as he claims rms is. when exactly did eric raymond claim that he or anyone else should be free to kill children? that's not only absurd, but it's disonest and misrepressents eric raymond's views. i actually thought the article raised some very good points, but i just had to stop reading when he started to rant a bunch of anti-gun stuff (especially, implying that access to guns makes people more violent, which is easly proven untrue by that fact that other countries, where civilian gun ownership is allowed, have LESS violence than the US). instead of arguing against some free software / open source views, he's arguing against rms and eric raymond. it's too bad it was ruined by offtopic rants and hypocritical views.
Considering Microsoft's recent actions, I do not think it would have much effect.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
He brings up a few good obvious points.
1) RMS is quite a bit screwy at times, and obviously not ALL proprietary software is evil.
2) ESR is a gun nut, and uses his popularity to spread gun-loving propoganda. (Though that link may have been there before he became hype-king for Open Source.)
3) Not all Open Source software is of a high quality. (duh! 90% of the stuff on Freshmeat isn't at 1.0 yet!)
Unfortunately, he completely violates his own principles. He starts off pointing out that it would be wrong to judge an idea by it's supporters. He then does exactly that by skewering ESR and RMS and claiming an exeption to his aforementioned rule because
Here's a hint, just because RMS or someone critisizing RMS might say so, doesn't make it so.
Next, in skewering ESR's views on gun ownership, he himself uses his article to wage his personal, regurgitated, very weak war on gun ownership. I thought this was an article objectively looking at the free software movement?
He then implies that since RMS doesn't publicly denounce ESR as a gun nut, therefore RMS is a gun nut and all Open Source "followers" (gag. It's NOT a religion to all of us.) are as well.
He repeatedly refers to Microsoft as a company who's only crime is to try and make money off of its hard work. We can forgive him for this, since this article seems to have been written before Y2K and therefore he may not have been clued in on MicroSoft's business strategies.
He brings up the old and very lame "There's nobody to blame" criticism of free software. First of all, you CAN blame the author(s) of the software. Their emails are probably somewhere in the code. Alternatively, you can send your complaint to the sales department at Microsoft. Yes, GPL'd software comes with no warranty of any kind unless otherwise specified. Neither does any shrink-wrap software that I know of. The only time in our industry that you get a warranty with your software is custom, made-to-order, high-price software. This warranty is really just insurance and nothing more (i.e. after the fact), and won't change the fact that a patient died due to a software bug. If RedHat sold you that software, even though you could have obtained it for free, then talk to them about it's fitness for a particular purpose.
He decries anecdotal evidence, then uses it.
He decries gross exagerations, then uses them.
anyhow, enough of my rant.
Why?! In the GNU Manifesto:
It clearly answer why proprietary software are bad: it is bad to the society, by not giving to the society what one has to offer to the fullest extend. If everybody keep on doing it, we waste most of our efforts.
Reproducibility is important to make the judgement that proprietary licenses are bad, but other factors are important to establishing that it is actually harmful to the society. See the following, again from GNU Manifesto:
In any case, "cheap to copy" only means that you shouldn't interfere with me copying it, not that you must not sell it.
The fact is, FSF sell software, and proprietary software producers only license them. FSF sell them by putting them into tapes and CD-ROMs and ask for money in it. The following comes from the WHY-FREE document in GNU Emacs:
Proprietary software producers never admit that the software is sold. Read the software license agreement you have in any software product (maybe driver software accompanied with hardware product) to be convinced about it.
What can you do otherwise if you want to use software license to combat with others who use software license to impede the public?
This may be true from the perspective of Meyer, who clearly demonstrate a strong prejustice against free software. This is not true for most people especially programmers: they does appreciate that they are allowed to use code from others and fix bugs there. It is really a question about freedom, since we are really deprived from such things for proprietary software.
Compare this to the numerous deflections that the software venders put on us, like "software pirates". See who is the one unethical.
But who need warranties?! This is only needed for proprietary software because we ourselves have no SINGLE way to solve the problems there. For GNU software, we are entitled, and encouraged, to fix it anyway. For proprietary software, we are forbidden to do it.
There are still much more to say about it, but I really don't want a browser crash to take all these. I can only conclude by saying I'm really sorry for Meyer.
Wow. Shoulda read the rest of the comments before posting. There are some much better critiques of this article than mine.
I thought this was a semi-reasonable point by Bertrand Meyer. Through the scenario given, BM is attempting to show the absurdity of RMS's position -- but there's really a difference of fundamentals between the two: RMS has stated that free software is a matter of freedom, an intrinsic good, and that he would choose free software over proprietary software even if the free software were technically inferior ( I believe the analogy he gave was free press vs controlled press; even if the latter were superior, we still choose the former).
Once again, name one culture where this doesn't hold - making an exception to notion of preserving life to defend one's home/family is universally held.
You've done nothing more than shoot down your own argument for relativism.
MORAL: Don't be boorish to B. M. at a soiree or he'll yank your panties down over the internet.
It is a shocking and sad truth that most Americans have a moral blind-spot when it comes to Communist propaganda.
This is probably due to the fact that you can't get tenure in an Ivy League school (like MIT) unless you kiss the ass of a small statue of Karl Marx in a bizarre fraternity hazing ritual.
(This point is trite but true.)
Credit has to be given though, to the guy who says "The Emperor has no cloths!" no matter how easy it seems in retrospect or what the guy's motives might be.
The only flaw in his otherwise cogent and well reasoned essay is the gratuitous swipe at the 2nd Amendment. Indeed, it seems ironic that a few lines beyond where he excoriates those who "would have us return, for software, to a pre-eighteenth-century world" he anathematizes Eric Raymond for not subscribing to the Feudal policy of a disarmed peasantry.
One could say that as a typical European Mr. Meyer just doesn't get it and move on. But that leaves us with the disturbing question of whether or not Europeans are aware of their own history. Or are simply unable to learn from it.
Less than ten years passed between this:
"1935 will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future."
and this:
"Arbeit Macht Frei"Of course, that is German history. The French prospective could well be that since the French revolution was a dramatic failure there is no point in making the option available to the people ever again. Truth be told, that is the whole point of "common sense gun laws".
When the founders of this nation sought to establish equality they had two options. They could choose to have everyone in the peasant class (and hence unarmed) or they could have everyone in the noble class. Since universal disarmament would have lead in short order to foreign invasion, the latter option was chosen. If you will pardon a blatantly chauvinistic statement, that was the right choice.
If Richard Stallman embarrassed himself by mentioning "liberty, equality, fraternity" it was not because he was pandering but rather because such ideas are now considered passé - at least by one audience member.
So, to revisit the false choice of mercenary software and Feudalism vs. Free Software and an intact bill of rights this ethically-conscious person would choose the latter. And may I add that no one but an imbecile would disagree.
This is almost certainly not due to people's intention to deny you compensation for what you have done. Either they did not think your contribution was big enough to warrant any non-trivial charge, or, more likely, if what your program does is important to them, they didn't trust you enough to invest the time to learn using your product, and to lock in their data formats to your product, because they felt that you could not guarantee sufficient maintenance to meet their potentially evolving needs.
I believe that a small developer has for precisely this reason only a good chance to actually market a nontrivial product if it comes with a free license, i.e. a license that would enable the user to maintain, or have someone maintain the product for him should the need arise.
An unrelated comment: what seems to be often forgotten in the discussion is the following: FSF's rhetoric does not go against programmers working on proprietary code for a company that wants the code to be secret because they think that this will give their business a competitive advantage. Here the user of the software has a perfectly acceptable interest in non-distribution of the software, and is willing to pay the programmer for such a proprietary solution.
My guess is that most programmers acutally generate their income on work of this type, and relatively few work on software that is indented to be mass-marketed. The companies that mass-market are just a lot more visible, because they have lots of their man-power in public relations, accounting and market research, and rather less in actually developing their core products.
I recently had the "pleasure" of attending two talks of B. Meyer. I essentially learned two things:
- He is a vocal speaker who tries to manipulate his audience.
- His tactics fail on a significant part of the audience (I gathered this from talking to other attendees afterwards).
His main technique is very simple. He starts out with statements of which he thinks that the majority of the audience will agree with. He uses the "validity" of these statements to prove an unrelated point, which on first sight might seem related.It is interesting that he attempts the same technique a couple of times in this article. The most obvious case is probably how he uses ESR's standpoint on gun ownership to discredit ESR's statements about open source software. It seems, as if his discrediting of C/C++ programmers mentioned in another comment falls in the same category (everybody believes that software quality is important, but does that mean everybody trained on C/C++ is a danger to a software project?)
The problem here, as in the talks I listened to, is that his strategy is just too obvious.
Chilli
-=- Just a random lambda hacker
I cannot know how he has developed himself to the point where he is completely a master of his violent tendencies. But he should probably give up software development and get involved in teaching this to others... If this is true.
If this is not, he has reactively blinded himself to the fact that the human race has a violent side. Ignoring it does not make it go away. And refusing to look at it means you do not know where to bring your mental hand to bear when it is about to go out of control in any given situation.
If his point is not, in fact, to ignore violence, he may have gone through the trouble to make this more clear.
Otherwise, this is a fairly well thought-out critique of the "free software" ethos. Apart from the fact that he is rather high-minded about high-mindedness (this does not work well, by the way, unlike, say, "intolerant of intolerance"), his constructive critique does not hurt. It is a fair implementation of a way to compel us to look at our actions and our beliefs.
"The Devil does not know a lot because He's the Devil, He knows a lot because he's old." -- unknown
So what you are saying is that nobody should bother to write a criticism of something they don't like? The author of this piece has some excellent points to make on both sides of the argument and although he does seem to come down quite hard on RMS and the FSF notion of free software he has reasons which he states quite clearly.
I personally found this a very interesting article with a lot of thought-provoking points. I don't really have much of a stake in free software myself at the moment, and not being biased in one way or the other I found this a worthwhile read about an issue which a lot of /.ers seem to think is already decided.
And you'll be in luck soon - the UCITA will make it illegal to publish anything critical about software, so you won't be forced to listen to all of that negativity any more. Great, huh?
But, if you are familiar with the cost structure of commercial software development, the long term cost of a software project is often in the testing, maintenance, and bug fixes, not in the initial writing of the bulk of the code.
Of course, users also end up contributing lots of bug reports and suggestions for enhancements to commercial vendors. But that's only adding insult to injury, because they end up paying for intellectual property that they themselves, rather than the vendor, created.
At the start of this article, he states that good people can do bad things and vice versa.
Why then does he try to draw some conclusions from ESR's gun obsession, when that is nothing to do with free software?
Why does he try to draw a connection between anecdotes about RMS's table manners and Free Software?
He later tries to imply that Free Software is all built with stolen or donated time.
My business survives by selling solutions to my clients. My clients are fully aware that I use and write Free Software in the course of providing them with the solutions they require, and cheerfully pay me all the same.
Is the resulting software "Donated", or am I immorally diverting the funds from my clients?
He then goes on to accuse the Free Software movement of a series of moral lapses ("stealing" other people's ideas) which I agree should be addressed with proper acknowledgements of inspiration used. If it wasn't for the fact that the commercial software world seems to have no compunction about failing to give credit where credit is due, he might be saying something of interest with respect to free software, but as it is this is an industry wide failing for which the Free Software cannot be held answerable.
Debian: GNU/Linux done the Linux way
Did anyone notice the copyright directly below the article? (in the same font as the rest of the article) Kind of subtle . . .
> For the record I don't think it is fair for anyone
> to ask that you release your work as public domain.
Not even if they ask real nice and say "please"? Maybe you meant "demand" instead of "ask".
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
OK so you opened my eyes a bit to a few things. I never really thought about the use of the word "free" in RMS's propaganda, in quite the light he cast upon it. I liked that. Nor had I ever really considered what free really meant (ie Govn't funded, Sponsored, etc). I liked that too.
In fact, I find that I must respond to the article by reforming many views and opinions that I had previously held (I STILL HATE MICROSOFT!!! -though even there I must acknowledge credit...). I also find that some of my own questions about what to do with software I develop will be easier to answer now.
But GEESH! Dude, get offa that soap box! You're starting to sound like a Fundamentalist! ok, there's my rant. Now I critique.
First, Condescending is old hat. Went out of style with Sceptres and phrases like "Your Highness". Second, you commit a serious faux pas by discrediting ESR's views on software by attacking his person. I mean really! gun control and software only belong in the same sentence on the Enterprise (the only software controlling my Smith & Wesson is the padding in my trigger finger). Third, if you're gonna cite stuff, document it okay? You did a good job, mostly, except for when you attacked RMS's personality with the dinner incident (that same faux pas again).
And finally, at least try to LOOK objective, when you're attempting to critique an opposing point of view. You criticized RMS for his strong criticism, but in so doing, you repeated his error. Remember grasshopper! one catches more flies with honey than with vinegar.
Fish
http://tlug.linux.or.jp/rms.html
Regards, Tommy
I think the conventional form of this quote is The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. (Similar...)
Living nearby I prefer Shelly's description:
(No, I dont know what this has to do with the article either...)
Hi!
Bertrand Meyer is a thousand miles off. I must throw in some points that he will probably never be able to understand with his corporate mind-set.
* I couldn't use a UNIX system at my home computer if it were commercial software. Most software I use has better quality than all of Windows software, and I am grateful for all this.
* I am a software engineer, and I think that most commercial software producers are quite evil given that they produce low quality and overcostly stuff. Example: medical imaging/archiving software. If high quality products would be available freely, all patients would benefit. [So I made my DICOM3.0 implementation free!]
* Free software means that you can take it and modify it. [Sucker] If you have a problem with GCC on Windows (whatever that means), perhaps he means on Cygwin32, I don't know, you take the source, and fix the damned thing. The original authors of a free software package have no control on its evolution, so they can't put some known deficiencies to make money out of service. Someone can always come up with an alternative that makes it obsolete, or patch those deficiencies...
* A company can earn money from developing free software, and nothing is wrong with that. And one more thing. think of it like this. An OS should be free, because it has general utility...
* Why is he making things personal? RMS isn't an easy person to get along and ESR is a maniac. So what? Shut up and check the code!
I think that's enough. I could say a lot more but I don't have the energy to refute every idiot's every claim on the planet.
--exa--
I thought the same thing regarding his take on what the free software was supposed to mean to him and the company he works for. They waited! To make a project on opensource vaporware is to make your own trouble. You have two choices... 1) only start with things that are a known quanity, you can see what you get and start from, don't expect anything you don't already get or can build on yourself. or, 2) no, that's the only choice. -pyrrho
-pyrrho
Sure he doesn't quite seem to 'get' OSS but I'd venture that a huge portion of people trying to get real work done dont't have the time, money, or expertiese(sp?) to go fix stuff on their own. When you're up to your eyes in your own project do you think you have time to go muck around and become familiar enough in another to be comfortable enough to send a patch? Would you have the first clue what to fix in a compiler if it was acting buggy? While I code a fair bit I sure as hell wouldn't.
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
Overall, you are still a lot better off than with commercial software. If your need is pressing, you can pay the extra money and get the fix as soon as possible, an option you don't have with most commercial software (and if you do, you are at the mercy of a single company). If you go for a more leisurely maintenance contract, you'll still get the fix roughly at the same time as any commercial vendor would release an upgrade.
And no matter which maintenance option you choose, you won't be paying for your own fix over and over and over again. Once your problem has been solved, you'll get future upgrades for free.
Well, as long as open-source should classify the support the programmers received how about proprietary software? Windows just used taxpayer-supported software when they rip^H^H^Hextended Kerberos. How many commercial products involve the taxpayer funded Internet in their production? Should businesses disclose their use of public highways?
Why is it ok for corporations to use public resources, but when individuals do it, it is disingenuous? By definition, public resources are available as part of the context of life and business. You don't have to apologize for using them.
As an absolute, thats balderdash, and unfortunately your moderation belies the fact that very few moderators have a grounding in liberal thought.
There are a number of ethics that are a fixed aspect of human cultures. The family. Preservation of life. Do you know of a culture that does not value the family structure in some sense? Do you know of a culture that encourages random killing of its own?
It is nonsense to state relativism as a fact.
I guess this is the position taken by proponents of Islamic law: the relligious law is the whole of the law.
I'd be interested to know if the readers of slashdot agree with this statement of Bertrand Meyer in the article.
Hi!
- The (Commercial) software industry (and other information-based industries) artificially impose restrictions on its consumers, while the restrictions faced by the consumer in other industries is natural. As an example, the only reason I can't provide a friend with a copy of Windows (besides my desire to not inflict pain on my friend) is that Microsoft said so, while there are many reasons why it is not practical for me to provide a friend with a copy of my new Ford Focus (acquiring raw materials, for example). This is basically the familiar tangible/intangible distinction that you identify as apples and oranges. It is this distiction that allows me to say that restrictive software (information) producers are depriving people, while tangible producers (who have natural restrictions in place and do not have to impose their own) are not depriving people.
- Meyer proposes that there is no such thing as free (beer) software due to such costs as bandwith and RAM. It should be pointed out, however, that free (beer) software does not necessarily require no resources to obtain (in fact, I would say that it must require resources to obtain (Like my physics prof. said, "There's no free lunch!")). A requirement of free (beer) software is, rather, that the transfer of resources from the consumer to the producer is optional.
That's about the whole $0.02. Oh yeah, and this:Boycott Metallica and Dr. Dre NOW!
(Please redistribute this
Boycott Metallica and Dr. Dre NOW! (Please redistribute this
Normally, I'd make a witty or snide remark here about such laughable logic, but I think that Meyer does more to discredit his own argument than anything I can say.
I saw that too in the article - he was taking both ESR's and RMS's positions as the heart and soul of all free software developers. The biggest problems with that are
1: They're not. I find some of RMS's ramblings insightful, informative, even inspiring at times. Others I find misguided. I think any intelligent programmer who pays attention to the central figures of Free Software/Open Source will agree that it's essential to make one's own decisions about which of all these assertions is and is not worthwhile.
2: They're incompatible. RMS mentioned this emphatically in the recent Slashdot interview. So if ESR's behavior conflicts with RMS's ideals, that is not a basis for considering the movement flawed.
I also think he was off on a bad tangeant with the whole ESR gun control thing. From what I've seen ESR does try to plug his personal cause in the same venues where he supports Free/Open Source software. But frankly, that's his business. I think anyone motivated enough to have a well-developed opinion would want to promote it, if they found themselves in the position to do so. The ethical question is this - if ESR really believes the right to own and carry guns is an important one to preserve, isn't he in fact morally obligated to promote that view - much in the same way as those of us who believe he happens to be wrong on that point are obligated to oppose him? Again, his word isn't law any more than Stallman's is. But hopefully we'll find some useful ideas.
I think the article sort of contradicts itself a bit with the ending - as though its body were written to downplay RMS's ideals, but its conclusion was written to tell everybody to have a good day. The article puts down GNU's accomplishments, saying isn't it ironic (doncha think) that GNU's goal was to create a free system, but wound up being a central piece of commercial unixes... A little too ironic. yeah, I really do think. It's like rain. He also puts down GCC because the Windows port isn't bulletproof (IIRC GNU doesn't even maintain the Windows port)... ho-hum.
I just think it's exciting that one of GNU's original goals, the free system, is finally being realized. Reading RMS material it sounds more like a return to free computing, rather than a "revolution".
Bow-ties are cool.
Since a customer can always grab the source and run with it, a vendor of free software can only maintain its market share if it completes bugfixes requested by users in a timely manner, incorporates changes they make, and in general, does what is in the best interest of the customer. Having the source open prevents the vendor from "sticking it" to a customer, and also prevents the customer from being "locked in" to proprietary standards. It seems to me that open source forces capitalism to do what it was intended...that is, whatever the customer wants/needs.
--Bob
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
People should not be falsely constraind from doing/creating good things, but those before them, for which they stand on such prior work, deserve proper reward. As those who build upon such work will one day be the base of still others....
"CAN" Based IP laws need to be developed
This can happen at the government level but may need to happen first at the development level, such as thru something along the lines of the GPL - an agreement or contract. Once this build up momentum then government regulations are more likely to change.
As a member of the human race, I do not appriciate such false constraints placed upon what we all can do to improve the value and experience of life. Who is to say a cure for something like cancer is not possible because IP law says you cannot do it?
The real problem is in having "Cannot" based IP laws. It's what fuels all the friction and this is NOT efficient in light of the ever increasing rate of our advancements.
3 S.E.A.S - Virtual Interaction Configuration (VIC) - VISION OF VISIONS!
It's amusing that Bertrand thinks that the free software movement's dislike of Microsoft stems from some kind of deep-seated jealousy. If you read between the lines and you know something of Bertrand's history, it's easy to see that this attack, like his earlier attacks on C++ and Java, is itself motivated by jealousy. Eiffel has once again been overshadowed by another technology trend, and, once again, he's not taking it well.
Meyer's book is worth a read - he's got a lot of interesting things to say about object-oriented techniques. His political insight is considerably less reliable.
and
All well and good.
However the author takes great pains to empart these views in the most crude and offensive manner possible. All the while, sick, twisted and bizzare thought excercises are employed to illistrate their arguments (or lack thereof). And interspersed throughout the commentry are reoccuring self-serving claims of unbiased objectivity.
I don't think it was worth reading. But anyone interested should read the 11 points at the end. You'll get an idea of what the article says, and miss most of the trolling.
--
James Gasson
Of course they can. If, as you argue (and I agree) freedom of speech refers to the right, inherent in mankind, to speak without interference, then clearly copyrights fly right out the window. What else are they but a restriction on free speech? (Yes Virginia, unrestricted free speech would include libel, slander, copyright infringements, etc.)
The way in which free speech applies to free software is that people can write any code they want. Even if it's the same as someone else's. It's not so much that it's free from the standpoint of the original author; it's free for everyone else. And human beings generally work better in communities, where people can use each other's strengths, than they do on their own.
The one exception to the free software idea though is that if you redistribute (which no one is making you do, though it's obviously a Good Thing for everyone) you have to GPL that software, rather than take from the free software community and never give back.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Main Entry: product
Pronunciation: 'prä-(")d&kt
Function: noun
Etymology: in sense 1, from Middle English, from Medieval Latin
productum, from Latin, something produced, from neuter of
productus, past participle of producere; in other senses, from Latin
productum
Date: 15th century
1 : the number or expression resulting from the multiplication together
of two or more numbers or expressions
2 a : something produced b : something resulting from or necessarily
following from a set of conditions
3 : the amount, quantity, or total produced
4 : CONJUNCTION 5
No mention of being sold.
--
Patrick Doyle
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Games that are closed source aren't serious. If you have an operating system, communications software, business software, etc, that's closed source, that's a big problem. I can't believe that you can't see the difference.
no sig
I agree he wants to change the law - but I also think he supports breaking it.
In http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html RMS says
"As a computer user today, you may find yourself using a proprietary program. If your friend asks to make a copy, it would be wrong to refuse. Cooperation is more important than copyright."
In other words if someone asks me for a copy of Windows 2000 or Quake III or that $5million bespoke business application I'm using - then it's wrong not to give them a copy.
Ok so he goes on to say that in order to "live an upright life openly with pride" a person should use free software to avoid having to copy copyrighted software. However the message is clear -it's not only ok to break copyright, it's wrong not to if someone asks you.
At the end of the day the thing which continues to leave RMS at the extreme end of the argument, is the fact that he thinks there should be only one model for software development and distribution - an Open one. It is wrong to make proprietary software at all. There should only be Open/Free software.
This is where I fundamentally disagree with him. I see Open software as one of the possible models, a very good one for certain types of software. He sees it as the only way.
Although I try to use free software whenever I can, there is one product that I am deeply locked into (for almost a decade now), and this is the Mathematica computer algebra system. Basically, I don't think one can argue against the proprietary nature of this program on pragmatic grounds, the usual arguments of why "Open Source" is better just don't seem to apply (apart from pains with the current licensing policies, see below). So I think that the moral dimension of proprietary software cannot be avoided here, and everybody may judge for themselves. Here are the facts:
- Mathematica has originally been conceived by a single person (Steven Wolfram) who left academics to set up a company which then developed the product to market.
- The company, Wolfram Research, does little else than further develop and support the product.
- Mathematica is a product of high quality, this is true for the underlying design as well as for the implementations. Of course there are always some bugs, but for a product of this complexity it has surprisingly few.
- The release schedules are reasonable: most updates take several years and compatibility between versions has always been very good (I have seen quite a few major version changes). The company does not seem to confuse regular users with beta-testers - new major releases tend to be stable.
- There is one major competitor, Maple, which is also a proprietary spin-off from academics (the University of Waterloo in this case). So the market place appears reasonably healthy. At the same time, there is no free alternative that comes even close to what either of these programs offers.
- Needless to say, after using a product of this type more or less happily for many years, you'll have acquired a good collections of codes and expertise, so you would not want to change system without very good reason.
Now to the more ugly bits:- The price of the program is so out of range (about $1000 and up for a single user license) that even many academic departments do not want to pay for it. Currently I have to access it over a sometimes slow cross campus X connection from Central Computing.
- Even the student price (around $150, I don't legally qualify) is too much to make purchase of Mathematica a reasonable class requirement. So Wolfram Research has effectively priced themselves out of the mass-purchase educational market (although still affordable to dedicated student), and one has no choice but to use the somewhat inferior, but cheaper and still proprietary Maple in-class. I doubt that this is a wise business decision in the long run, but this is something the company has to answer to themselves. I know even of departments who did high-profile pilot deployments of Mathematica to be currently backing out of it in undergraduate education because of the high licensing costs involved.
- Mathematica has a rather effective copy protection scheme. In fact, due to the otherwise good quality of the software, the license server is by far the most significant single point of failure. You may blame it on the support staff, but even so it is a major pain to deal with and requires constant staff attention for absolutely no benefit. For example, major Linux kernel upgrades will make Mathematica think it has been copied onto a different machine and refuses to start up, sorting this out requires non-trivial paperwork with Wolfram.
- Generally I feel uneasy about having centuries of scientific knowledge incorporated into an expert system, and then marketed as proprietary. Moreover, it raises questions about having a closed box in the loop of scientific discovery (part of the Mathematica code is actually itself written in the Mathematica language, and open for inspection), as it is increasingly used to derive of proof mathematical knowledge. It seems to me preposterous for small companies to occupy such a crucial link in a worldwide human and not-for-direct-profit human endeavor.
So while I continue to feel uneasy about this, I will also continue to use Mathematica for the foreseeable future, and dream that academic institutions (who probably pay most of Wolfram Research's revenues anyway) could pool enough money to buy out the company can convert it into an international center for Computational Mathematics.No, what I'm saying is if you are going to attack the beliefs of your enemies* then attack what they actually believe, not a straw man which you construct, but hide the fact by changing the meaning of the term depending on what your current paragraph is trying to prove.
* for lack of a better term
the long term cost of a software project is often in the testing, maintenance, and bug fixes
I have yet to see testing, maintenance, and bug fixing from certain companies...
But it does. Selling your labour is quite different from selling copies. With software, once the first copy is made, following copies cost nothing to create. If you got paid to make the first copy, then as a programmer you can make a living by getting paid for writing new code.
Banks and airlines can use and produce open source software. Especially when the software can be used to establish an open standard. Bussinesses can get more benefits from open standards than from closed source software.
Of course, there will always be software that is too closely tied to the bussiness that will be considered a trade secret and never released or sold.
So to summarize, it seems to me that programmers will always be needed to write new code and open source can only make the programmer's job more interesting, as you'll never have to implement the same thing over and over (like a web server).
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Okay, so I missed hitting the "8" and hit the "7" instead... sue me.
Stallman's point isn't about selling software. He even says it's OK to sell software as long as you use a free license but of course there is little reason to pay for a GPL'd piece of software. Stallman's reasoning is about the licensing part. If you use a non-free license you deprive the user of his freedoms because most importantly he is not allowed to change the program. This is where the difference between Ford and software lies. If you want to change the engine in a Ford you can do so but if you get a binary-only program you cannot change anything. Granted only a limited number of people know how to program but that is besides the point because if you want to change something you can learn how to change it. There is noone holding you back. There are other reasons to why you should write free software but this one is the most important.
It's not even that, IBM PC's had a CHOICE of operating systems when they came out. It wasn't just MS-DOS, CP/M anyone?
If my memory serves me correctly there was another one as well, something to do with Pascal (obviously my memory doesn't serve me that well today)
How the hell did this obvious flame-bait (regardless of it's accuracy) get modded up?
CONSPIRACY!!!!
:)
I think the following paragraph sums it up; Meyer writes:
Obviously, he doesn't understand that free software isn't a gift from God, it's a collaborative process. Rather than cancelling his projects, he should have fixed whatever he perceived to be wrong with those tools and submitted the fixes to the free software community. Whatever he thought was wrong couldn't have taken his people more than than a few months.
He says he is looking for someone to "blame". He gets that with commercial software. Other people, however, want to get a product out and are looking for an opportunity to fix things, and that's what open source software gives them.
My attitude towards open source software and proprietary, closed source software is that the proprietary software simply makes no sense in the long run in a free market. I believe that the cost structure for software is such that the only rational thing for end users is to collaborate and share development costs, cutting out the middlemen. There might be other vehicles for accomplishing that kind of collaboration, but open source software seems to work particularly well because of its low overhead and simple adoption.
To me, all the current software empires are short term aberrations and market failures that have no place in a free market. The high profits they manage to make ("disequillibrium wages") are themselves evidence for that view.
I think the sooner companies realize the basic facts about the economics of software, the better. In the long run, good, solid businesses to be in are software-related service businesses, hardware businesses that manage to increase their profits through software that is synergistic with what they sell, and entertainment/personal service businesses that use (free) software to drive customers to them. And I think, despite all the rhethoric, that's roughly what Stallman is saying as well.
My economic analysis might, of course, be wrong. But, then, who knows, it might be right, too.
But Ford DOES sell technical manuals for cars as well as parts - you are free after buying a Ford to rebuild or customize as much of it as you like. In fact there are many interesting third party kits to enhance Fords and other cars - you can really think of car engines as almost mechanical API's. Few mechanical devices come this close to being a parallel of software.
If you sell code without the source, it's like selling a car without the technical manuals and forbidding parts to be sold. It limits the potential usefullness to the end user.
Imagine if you could not even change the oil in your car - that's a great metephor for the problem we have today with software, where a couple of OS upgrades may just render your old software useless just as driving a car for 100,000 miles without an oil change would render a car just as dead.
I don't see why you couldn't sell the software you make, and also release the source for free. People who are going to buy the software will probably buy it from you anyway even if they can already get the source for free - especially if you offer any kind of support or tutorial materials (something extra) as part of the cost of the software. Possibly even if not!
You can also think of it as free advertising, in that the wider your software spreads the more likely it is to be used and bought - the total number of people willing to spend money might be a lot higher that way even if you have a smaller percentage of people paying for the product, if you reach enough people.
And the last argument for this is that releasing the software for free gives you a much earlier assesment of the software's usefullness. After all, if you can't even give it away what's the point of dumping a lot of money into trying to market it?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
An interesting essay, but he repeatedly (shall I say, deliberately) confuses ESR's views with RMS's views, and vice versa, to the effect of discrediting them both.
... to become wealthy
"I expect to be quite wealthy once the dust from the Linux IPOs has settled." (http://www.netaxs.com/~esr/travelrules.htm)
There is nothing wrong with this --- except when commercial developers trying to "make a living" are accused of moral perversion because what they are really supposed to want is
From what I've read, ESR views open source development merely as a superior engineering method. I don't recall him having accused makers of proprietary software of "moral perversion" -- this is completely Stallman's point of view.
It is high time for Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds to state publicly that they do not endorse the views of the gun lunatics, and that their cherished notion of freedom has nothing to do with the freedom to kill children and other innocents.
It's quite clear that there's a lot of disagreement between RMS and ESR, and it's quite clear that ESR's views on guns is controversial even within the community. I know this, you know this, and he knows this. Associating ESR's views on guns with RMS and Linus Torvalds is just a lame pot shot.
The thing is Meyer misrepresents ESR and RMS's views. They never said trying to make money is wrong. In fact they say quite the opposite. (see www.gnu.org or www.tuxedo.org/~esr) He intentionally made his definition of free meaning free beer, then used that to attack our definition of free meaning free to improve are share with your neighbor.
(emphasis added by me)
When one must expend such copious amounts of time and effort to so explicitly (re)define common terms so that one's argument is defensible, one has already conceded that said argument cannot stand on its own merits. Why not say "the concepts which we put forth can be thought of in a similar vein to that of the concept of altruism" instead of trying to recompile the English language?
Language is an agent of shared thought. It is a tool of communication, and words have specific meanings. That's why we use them, because with the aid of words we can convey to Others what we are thinking Ourselves. Language is, to be sure, an Open Protocol, but it is nonetheless a standardized protocol, and redefining it at one's convenience to make a point is, IMNSHO, reprehensible.
Tha claim you make against Meyer is equally applicable to RMS and ESR.
--
"We're an apex predator with the fecundity of a base level herbivore... We're a virus with shoes..." RazorJAK
Does that about sum it up?
Maybe things have changed since I studied Aristotelian logic back in my undergrad days, but it sounds a tad specious to me...
Mother Teresa and Dr. Kevorkian, what a hoot! A very nice post! Did you also notice that according to this Meyer character, not only Raymond's wacky gun fetish but also Stallman's table manners are telling arguments against open-source software? His f*cking table manners, for Christ's sake. That's really straining. Next thing we'll be hearing that Stallman's appaling singing voice demonstrates free software's moral inferiority, etc., etc. The nonsense level in Meyer's diatribe overwhelms any sensible point he might have made.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
I also think the Eiffel design contains some serious technical blunders. Within the Eiffel family, I'd say people are better off using GNU Sather.
I like this idea. I'm not sure if it would result in an improvement to the package for everyone. If you've got your original authors being 'jerky' then they may decide not to allow changes made by their competitors to be merged into the main source tree. The result would either be code forks or innumerable patches.
Note that this is based on the original authors being 'jerky' -- but that would depend on your point of view.
While I think the article had some good points (i.e. not all commercial software is bad), it was definitely skewed against the free software movement, beyond just being critical. One assumption that was made in particular sat wrong with me (and is conveniently quoted here):
The problem is that not only does most software include a heavy caveat emptor clause, all software includes it. The author goes on to ask how much would be too much for a product that was sufficiently warranted, and my answer would be quite a bit. Unfortunately, the question is moot. Has the author read some of the EULAs that are required for most software? Caveat emptor only begins to describe the restrictions placed on the purchase. And if you disagree with the EULA, most software retailers won't take the software back because it's been opened, and at most will allow you to exchange it for the exact same product.
When you start to add these factors into the argument, Product F starts looking a whole lot more appealing.
- "Stealth" Dave
Evil is as eval("does");
Two reasons why I think proprietary software is bad:
- It forces competition, not cooperation. Even between KDE and Gnome, there's a lot of code and idea-sharing. With proprietary software, that's a no-no.
- It somehow assumes that ideas are yours and yours only to exploit. A very strange notion which has been countered over and over again by the fact that important inventions typically are done by multiple people, independently. A great software idea isn't yours! It has been build up in hundreds of minds, you just applied some final thinking work! (a shitty idea typically is yours
;-))
That leaves us with the problem how to sustain a healthy software industry without proprietary software. This is an extremely hard problem, but still not a reason to throw your axioms overboard (and that's what you should admire in RMS, whatever you think from him personally).That's a good point. What about astronauts as well. Is GMT the divine time?
The article seemed to be a pile of "who cares" and "tell me something I don't know". So what if (some) free software advocates are single-minded or extreme? Who cares that some are American with peculiarly American political viewpoints? And it's not at all surprising that many free software writers are doing it for Geek Status rather than a sincere altruistic desire to better humanity (though here we can really play the post-facto reinterpretation game :).
What I don't understand is why he makes such a big deal about free software not really being free. Sure, someone had to put time and effort into writing it, and they may very well have been paid to do so, but unless you base your moral code on pure selfishness there's nothing morally wrong with giving the fruits of your labour away (with the obvious caveat that if its work-for-hire then its not yours to give).
Really the only objection to this is that by giving stuff away, free-software advocates are destroying the market for proprietry software - some moral issue!
Idiot/Savant
Hey CompuWorld! How's it going, CompuWorld :) ? Nice mp3 thingy!
no sig
IMO your time is worth something. 'properly' means you recover in money what you spend in time.
Only if there is an agreement between the employer and employee or similar arrangement.
You are aware that most people don't write free software for the money, are you not?
If you buy a book, people WILL stop you from making a copy of that book. I don't understand your point.
Lots in it I disagree with (e.g implicit Commy bashing), lots in it I agree with (gun control), but these are just side issues. His conclusions seem sensible but his arguments dont. He seems to have missed the point of free software, and gets all of his information on it from the community's two most notorious figures. Stallmans habit of turning on anyone who does not support his world view is almost as embarrasing as Raymond's insistence on bringing guns into every discussion no matter how unrelated (not literally of course).
First off he doesnt seem to get that not everyone here agrees that selling software is wrong. He claims Eric Raymond contradicts himself when he says he wants to get rich, no, he just contradicts Stallman.
The GNU and FSF view is that it is OK to sell anything except software.
Well Im not sure what the party line is, but like some others on slashdot I think it is OK to sell anything, but not in a situation of total control, where you can charge an arbitrarily high cost with a legally guaranteed monopoly. This applies equally to music, books and cars. It isnt an issue with cars since they do cost a significant amount to make, it is still a big issue with music, books as well as software.
The gradual imposition of a copyright .. was a major moral correction, re-establishing the rights of the creators. The new idea was that the "software" .. had a value, not just the "hardware"
If this is what copyright is for, it no longer works. It is no longer the software writer that holds the copyright, but their employer. Many companies make all employers sign over ownership of all the ideas they have while under employment, even if not related to their own job.
The major point the writer makes (that some free-software people are nuts, and need to live in the real world) is fine. One of the tings that most annoyed me about the article is that it seems to treat people as part of the property of their employers. They need to improve their marketability, and worst of all, they should say how they were paid while working on any open source project as he seems to ask in this paragraph.
Demand (in the spirit of faithful advertising) that the economic origin of "free" software be clearly stated, and that the products be classified as one of "donated", "taxpayer-funded" and the other categories described in this article.
---
This isn't news: it was published before March.
Meyer evidently was paid for this article. Where did he say that and how much was it?
Meyer doesn't understand "free software"--he carefully points out that his definition of "free" is different from RMS's and the FSF's or Raymond's--then he can say the others are "extremists".
It would be interesting if Meyer explained whether or not he has a grudge against the Small Eiffel and other free Eiffel implementators--does he think that this "free" software is somehow unethical, and if so, why?
In spite of Meyer's emphasis on error-trapping and careful software, I found that the article itself refers discussion to a Forum at Software Development Magazine online--but I couldn't find the forum at the link given.
Most of his arguments are ad hominem--directed to personalities, and not logical arguments directed at philosophical ideas.
His arguments are unbalanced--it is not clear just why he thinks Free Software is important enough to spend so much time in this article discussing it. All he gives are negatives. Okay, "commercial" software is used by many people too--so what?
If I were ESR or RMS I would not dignify this article with a response. I don't choose the operating system I use because Linus is a pleasant guy to talk to, nor do I refuse to use Eiffel because Meyer rants about World War II too much.
He suggests that Free BSD and Linux are no good because a few experts looked at the source and found some errors in them. Meyer neglects to state the obvious: those errors can be found and fixed--what about all the errors in commercial software that can neither be found (except by blue screens of death) nor fixed by users?
I find it quite ironic that in the middle of a diatribe that spends a lot of time complaining about Richard Stallman going off on moral tangents, Mr. Meyer finds time to dismiss my 2nd Amendment rights as "lunatic ravings", and further manages to do so based on deliberate failure to research the historical facts; the same crime of which he accuses Stallman et. al.
Mr. Meyer, I quit reading your article at that point. I have no interest in further hearing what you have to say. Rather ironic that this occured within a few paragraphs of your complaint against Stallman having the same effect on a software executive, no?
--
civil disobediance does not mean breaking the law, that means protesting or starting a campaign or lobby. How about changing the laws you don't like instead of breaking them?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I can't believe Russel wouldn't get it. But he doesn't. Still thinking in the one-realm system.
Look. Our would could be considered to be split into two realms: the physical and the nonphysical. Each realm (and, by extension, the things in it) play by their own sets of rules, and the rules from one realm don't apply in the other. One property of the physical realm is that physical objects can contain representations of nonphysical objects, while the reverse isn't really true. A book, for example, is clearly a physical object, while a story is not physical. But a book can contain a written representation of a story, while a story can't really contain a book (OK, so a book can appear from a story, but try taking any book from your bookshelf and actually putting that book into a story; it doesn't hold).
Why is this important? Let's take the most basic physical economic law: supply and demand. According to this, supply is inversely proportional to demand. Supply goes up, demand goes down. Supply goes down, demand goes up. Simple, no?
Now, let's apply this to any nonphysical object; a piece of software is a handy example, but a song or a story will do. Supply is infinite. Nonphysical objects are simply that way; subtract 1 from 1 and you still have 1. However, demand is quite clearly nonzero; look at how many people use software or listen to music or enjoy stories. This violates one of the founding principles of modern economics.
As long as these nonphysical objects are constrained to physical containers, you're in the free and clear with using the physical system of economics. You have to muddy the waters a bit with various types of law, but it's still quite doable. Look at how many books and CD's are sold today and you can see that it's viable. For the time being, at least.
But with the rise of the Internet, nonphysical things are no longer constrained to physical representations. I no longer need the book to tell the story; if I write one I can publish it myself. If I make music, I no longer need the CD, record, tape, or what have you. If I write software, I no longer need the media for it. So the laws of physical economics no longer apply.
Does this mean that nonphysical things can no longer be sold? Of course not. It does mean that you can't use physical economics for these things; it just doesn't work that way. It takes a "new" type of economics, non-physical economics. The laws are out there, waiting to be discovered. Of course they haven't been discovered yet; there's never been a need for them, so no one has thought about them. But now that it's possible to deal with nonphysical things in an entirely nonphysical way, we do need these.
Physical economics will always be there, of course. Human beings are inherently physical, and we need many physical things to sustain our existence, so that system of economics is not going anywhere. But to try applying those laws where they do not apply is outright ridiculous.
Is the "Free Software" system right? It might be. Then again, it might not; it's only one approach to the problem. It's also misinterpreted a lot, thanks to Richard Stallman's hideously poor word choice when he named the movement; it connotes that software cannot be sold when he in fact has no objections to the selling of software at all. He wouldn't do it himself, but doesn't consider it immoral. Read the GNU Manifesto again if you got the impression that he thinks all software should cost nothing.
Is the current "proprietary" system right? Probably not. While it worked well before the rise of the Internet, it's now starting a downward spiral, thanks to new systems (such as Open-Source) and what is termed "piracy" under the physical system (the very mechanics of which are impossible under the physical system anyway).
But noth could be wrong. Perhaps a new economic paradigm will rise. I simply don't know. Nor, really, does anybody, because no one's figured out how to deal with nonphysical economics yet. Given time it'll straighten itself out. But I doubt it will come all that coon, and until it does the bickering will continue with no real progress being made.
What passes for coherent arguments amoung Windows supporters is amazing...
Also the two examples you gave... both were posted at score 2... One had 2 good lines and the rambled on about a Microsoft product. Not a troll but not worth a score 2...
The other was also posted as a score 2.. This one made a good point... it was short and to the point... it didn't go on and on...
It got modded back up...
In nither case did you make it to score 0 let alone score -1.
There are a few Slashdot moderators who should lose moderator access.. and when thies posts hit M2 they will...
But this isn't isolated to unPC and antiLinux posts.
It's just that some moderators do a bad job. Some push an opinion.. and some mod up "First Post"s
Some just seem to go out of there way to do a bad job...
But on the bulk most are good...
for the bad ones we have M2...
I don't actually exist.
Interesting mistake here - the economic potential of the software developed is usually _reduced_ if it is distributed in binary form, to only a small number of people. It would be more economically useful if everyone could use and improve it. There is the situation where a third party might have the money to improve the software and 'productize' it, but that does not require that the third party need be given a monopoly on the software. Economically, it would be more useful to release the software under a BSD-type licence and get some competition among the companies building on it.
I expect that rather than 'economic value of the software', Bertrand Mayer means 'monetary value to the university', which is not the same thing. Anyway, let's go on:
I think a category has been left out. This is the case where companies develop software and sell it for a fee, but decide to make it free software. There are plenty of people doing this - Red Hat is the most obvious example, they charge for their Linux distribution.
Then there are the cases where the company makes money from technical support, rather than selling copies. Cygnus was for many years the prime example of this, now they're owned by Red Hat. People like AbiSource or Helix Code intend to make money from custom enhancements to the software they write.
One man, however high-profile, is not the same as 'widespread'. Most free software advocates do not agree with RMS, as far as I can tell. Indeed Eric Raymond, mentioned at length later on in the article, explicitly rejects Stallman's views on this. But anyway, RMS would reject your view that free software is anti-commercial per se, eg in this LinuxWorld interview:
Note again that when RMS says 'the free software movement', he doesn't refer to everyone who supports free software. Back to the article:
There are plenty of explanations of the FSF's view on this. For example, see Selling Free Software. The idea is that when selling cauliflowers, you don't impose restrictions on what the purchaser can do with those cauliflowers. You don't make them give up any freedom (in the GNU sense). If you buy potatoes, you can plant them and grow more potatoes. (The closest analogy to the way you're not allowed to copy proprietary software is a genetically modified crop where the farmer is forbidden from saving some and planting it next year.)
To take your professor analogy, it would be okay (in FSF terms) to charge money for a lecture. But it would not be acceptable to stop your students passing on the knowledge they had learnt. RMS has said as much:
So the objection is not to 'selling' but to stopping the purchaser from changing and sharing what he has bought. The question then becomes, what if copyright is the only way to ensure a reasonable selling price for the author? RMS would prefer that the software never be written at all (work as a waiter instead), but personally I cannot agree with that. More from the article...
As the FSF site says over and over again, price is not the issue. Of course zero marginal cost is not a good enough reason for zero price - not in a capitalist society anyway. Have you seen the prices that the FSF charges for its software? It's bloody expensive. The question is - does the extra benefit to users from copyright on software outweigh the disadvantages? Fifty years ago, copyright on books was not a major restriction on people's actions, since copying a book would be difficult anyway. But for something that is naturally easy to copy and change such as source code, the restrictions placed by copyright law are more onerous. I think the loss of freedom is worth it in order to get more software produced, but it's not an open and shut case.
The article then goes on to criticize RMS for a 'skewed moral perspective', use of extreme analogies, and accusing the free software movement of hijacking the word 'free'. But this is a little unfair. Since the FSF concerns itself only with software, it's not surprising that the word 'freedom' on their pages is used only as it relates to computers. RMS is the first to admit that proprietary software is not the only problem the world has, or even the most serious. If every FSF page were prefixed with a disclaimer saying 'this is less important than other moral issues in the world', that would avoid accusations of a 'skewed moral perspective', but what would be the point? It's a mistake to assume that somebody concerned about one issue is a single issue proponent. It might just be that they don't have time to deal with everything, and have decided to focus on one specific area. (I do agree about the analogies getting a bit out of hand sometimes, but most of them work quite well.)
And the use of Eric Raymond to try to criticize free software proponents as a whole is even sillier. He may be a bit of a nut, but remember that unlike RMS, ESR is _not_ in the business of making moral proclamations, at least not in the software area. He does his best to make a practical case for free software - or 'open source software' as he calls it to avoid frightening managers. Bertrand Meyer seems to be arguing:
The article asks:
And? That still doesn't mean that it represents the whole free software movement. ESR doesn't even claim that his 'Open Source' writings represent the whole free software movement, let alone his barrel-of-a-gun writings. Some free software advocates support gun ownership, some don't. (I don't.) The fact that one person has written a web page and managed to get a large number of hits on it is neither here nor there.
That is a bizarre statement. This is not a political party where people are expected to follow the party line. It's not some corporation where any press release represents official company policy. The 'movement' is a lot looser and a lot harder to pin down that Mr Meyer seems to think. There is no requirement on somebody who supports free software to publicly disavow anything that ESR says. His gun ramblings should be treated as what they are, a quaint irrelevance.
I don't see how this has any relevance. Especially since ESR does not want to remove copyright on software, and since the free software movement has nothing to do with gun advocacy - a couple of oddly-placed links on one guy's Web page notwithstanding.
But 'nobody in charge' and 'didn't pay' are not consequences of the software being free. There are companies more than willing to take your money in exchange for providing a guaranteed response to bug fixes. The difference is that with free software, you can shop around and get the best deal for such support, rather than being limited to the company which owns the copyright.
Of course not. Would you expect the FSF to become liable to warranty claims from someone who downloaded the software gratis from an FTP site? However, the GPL explicitly allows someone distributing the software to 'offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee'. It's up to the free market to provide this service for those who can pay for it.
Warranty provision has nothing to do with 'freedom' - unless you count as 'freedom' being able to drag a software author through the courts because you downloaded his software and it didn't work. Again, if you want to provide a warranty for GCC as a profitmaking business, go ahead and do so. But saying 'use this at your own risk' is very different to saying 'you may not change the software; you may not copy the software'. One restricts what the user can do; the other is just an arse-covering legal measure - unfortunately necessary in today's litigious world.
I don't see how the first is unethical, provided it is absolutely clear about there being no warranty. Making false claims would be unethical of course. I don't see how you can expect Product F to provide a warranty if you did not pay anything for it - the author could be bankrupted by lawsuits from users who downloaded a copy or got one from you. There is a third option of course, Product F for $50 _with_ a warranty provided by the author.
I think the point is that the GPL doesn't _automatically_ grant a warranty. But it does provide a base on which you can provide warranties to specific individuals, if they pay for it. That seems sensible to me.
I don't think that any company could get away with this - how would the product establish itself in the market if it were broken? Don't forget that this problem exists with proprietary software too, if it has a support contract. Do you think that Oracle insert bugs so that their customers will subscribe to the most expensive support contracts for guaranteed fixes? It's all rather far-fetched. If you have the source, you'd probably be able to spot if something fishy were going on.
The article continues by accusing free software advocates of character asassination towards proprietary software developers. Again it makes the mistake of equating RMS with 'the free software movement'. There is no collective view on such things, any more than on gun ownership.
Finally, I think that most free software projects do indeed acknowledge where they have used ideas from other programs, free or proprietary. The GIMP's credits section describes it as a 'Photoshop-like' program, and that's about as clear as you could be. Similarly it is obvious where GNUstep, bison, less and so on got their inspiration.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I have a few issues with this article
>Hey Meyer! I question your statement that you should question extremists! =)
Dose his rule apply to himself?
I don't actually exist.
I originally thought this was invalid, but it's really just a tautology: we must admit that something that is unjustified is unjustified.
This is an obvious setup for Meyer's attack on free software and is invalid. Note that while I do not think that "acquiring someone else's legitimate property against his will" "is one of the universal moral imperatives", the notion of "legitimate property" is required for a whole set of behaviour that is often considered unethical (stealing, for example).
Boycott Metallica and Dr. Dre NOW! (Please redistribute this
I'd take a read through Galatians. In it, one finds that the "Law", the Old Covenant, is no more. There is no official Sabbath anymore, although having a day of rest is still desirable.
That way, the various problems with it could be fixed.
Note: for the record, I would have to agree with his assesment of RMS, and disagree with his assesment of ESR.
Example: Using two anecdotes, one from a post to comp.risks and one from Ken Thompson about quality.
It would be much more useful to do an indepth study of the quality issue. My personal guess is that overall, the major open source projects would compare favorably with their commercial counterparts. Minor projects would most likely compare favorably to shareware/freeware programs.
Counter anecdote about quality: My webserver has only needed to be rebooted twice since installing Linux last Summer. Once because I accidentally caused a loss of power, once because a hard drive cable came loose (and it didn't die completely until 13 hours after the hard drive was disconnected)
Something should be added here about the ability of the end user to hire someone to fix the problem in the intentionally bad software, instead of paying the initial developer.
Bertrand complains about the warranty (specifically the lack thereof) associated with GPL programs. How ethical is it to require a developer who allows someone free access to their code should be liable for damages if the users have difficulties?!?!?!!?!
In the opening section, he comes up with his own definition of free software. Instead, it would have been better had he clearly delineated when he was critiquing ESR type Open Source, or RMS type Free Software.
Example: The quote where ESR gloats about making a lot of money from linux IPOs was followed by a paragraph with critique that applies more to RMS type Free Software.
In Section 10 Bertrand berates the free software community for not giving greater credit to commercial software which is emulated.
Should every first person shooter game have to credit Castle Wolfenstein and Doom as contributors? Probably 99% of all software is based at least loosely, on a previous product. True originality is rare. Xerox begat Macintosh which begat Microsoft which begat Gnome.
His attack on ESRs gun rights stance is ludicrous, and based on emotion rather than logic. Does this mean that RMS shouldn't also comment on copyright, MP3, DMCA, etc.? For the record, I disagree with RMS about copying copyrighted material and agree with ESR about gun rights.
I would strike this because when free software works well, it gets contributions from a wide range of sources. If a piece of software is truly free, it isn't very important to me where it came from.
Note: I do however, think that any software created with tax-payer funds ought to be open source if it is released for public use. Of course, I also think we ought to have an extremely limited government, which due to its very small size, wouldn't be writing much software anyway.
Well, I disagree with you on a couple points.
I don't think that Eiffel has any design mistakes, however, I can easily see why people might not like some of Meyer's deliberate design decisions. Meyer has gone very far down a particular road (in terms of OO programming) and come up with something that I think is quite interesting. To really use Eiffel, however, you have to understand how all the parts fit together (and they fit quite tightly). If you buy into the language, the libraries, and the method, then Eiffel has tremendous power.
However, if you don't buy into even a small part of that, Eiffel won't work well for you. Unless all your developers are "on board" with the entire Eiffel paradigm, they're not going to have a good time in the project, nor are they going to produce good code. With Eiffel, it's almost all-or-nothing.
Java is OK, and in my opinion, better than C++. However, some of it's creators' deliberate design decisions don't sit well with me, and overall I don't like it much.
Sather, unfortunately, doesn't seem to be making much progress. The community around Sather is very small, and it is (again in my opinion) not suitable for production systems yet. However, it has some interesting ideas of it's own, and I hope to hear more about it in the future. And of course, some of Sather's deliberate design decisions (like contravariance) don't sit well with me. James
but models don't just exist in a void, laws make them harder or easier. right now free software is discouraged by the legal IP framework, and I'd support the idea of making it more favorable. even if it's without going "all the way" like RMS would.
His arguments are based on a skewed definition of free software. He defines free as available for free (as in free beer). Is available from at least one source without payment He says that they say it is immoral to sell software. The GNU and FSF view is that it is OK to sell anything except software. He uses this incorrect definition of free software (HIS definition, not the GNU definition which he is trying to discredit) In any case the idea that a low reproduction cost should imply a free product has no rational basis. In fact no known moral law implies that purchase cost should even be related to production cost. Either this guy is an idiot or he is intentionally misrepresenting free software. This is not surprising since he believes the ends justify the means: Aside from other reasons, limiting ourselves to judging deeds, not thoughts, is easy to justify on purely pragmatic grounds: you can observe my actions, or at least their results; you cannot tell whether my excuses are real or imagined. OMFG. This guy is just a raving hatchetman. [on ESR]It is high time for Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds to state publicly that they do not endorse the views of the gun lunatics, and that their cherished notion of freedom has nothing to do with the freedom to kill children and other innocents. Once again. Free speech not free beer. 8.Demand (in the spirit of faithful advertising) that the economic origin of "free" software be clearly stated, and that the products be classified as one of "donated", "taxpayer-funded" and the other categories described in this article. This article was so close, yet so far, to being a good essay. I think it is great that there is a discussion going on about the "uncomfortable" issues of ethics of free software. (which RMS accuses ESR of avoiding). Yet his arguments rely so much on a misunderstanding of free software it misses the mark. His definitions change... his arguments are slippery as fish, which is typical of apologists.
But RMS has already redefined free. "Free software" isn't even vaguely related to "free speech".
People aren't allowed to modify and redistribute my free speech.
Freedom of speech refers to your ability to "speak" without the government interfering. The free speech analogy is pointless because the government, with few exception (just as with "free speech") does not limit the kind of software that can be written and sold. In any case, as I understand it, the Supreme Court has consistently held that the "free speech" the Constitution guarantees only refers to freedom from governmental interference. Private institutions are completely and legally able to restrict freedom of speech in a great many circumstances. Such as when you sign a contract saying you won't disparage your employer.
Kinda like a software license, that way.
I guess the difference is that it is okay for YOUR cult leader to redefine terms, but not for others?
Yes, exactly. And when you take away all the smoke and contradictions, what did he actually say: "Don't hate MS", "Don't hate proprietary software."
Well, if he objects to the emotional quality of some people, maybe he should just refer them to a psychotherapist...
If people have had bad experiences that turn into an irrational hatred, then pitching a rational argument at them is not really going to work... And until it's legislated that binary-only distributors can't travel on the same bus as Free-Source-Suprematists, then I see nothing immoral about a little dislike.
But he has casually belittled the main issue of Intellectual Property
He attacked people's feelings, and faults... neither of which addresses the bigger question regarding intellectual property. Software can be easily copied, in the sence that if someone out there is using some extra space on their hard drive to store a copy, it is not costing me anything extra. Yes, he is right that it still costs something, but it doesn't cost me anything. And it could be useful to others, so why should I have the right to control it? The real ethical questions here are immense, and a real problem for society, especially now that society is Global.
We are all standing on the shoulders of giants, so we could be more careful about claiming ownership simply because "I thought of it".
Nitpicking again, I know, but
I know people who have been unemployed, living off unemployment benefits or other state aid, who have contributed to free software as a way of learning new skills and proving them to potential employers. This possibility is not really covered by Bertrand's list, though it could be argued that it is similar to the situation at a University (except that there is no doubt about the ownership).
A similar problem is with people who live at home from their parents' income. Again it could be considered "privately funded".
Any other examples?
Hi!
All the stuff you say is true. However, if I want to come and visit you in a car, I don't have to be using the same car vendor as you. When proprietory APIs and communication protocols are in widespread use, I have to go to the same software vendor to even be able to talk to other people / other apps.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
RMS then resigned when MIT was charging people for the software that other MIT employees wrote - employees that MIT -paid- to write that software.
That is his personal choice. He is free to hold any ideas he wishes, if he thinks MIT was wrong, then he should quit or find some other way to protest. But if MIT thinks RMS is so amazing that they would change their actions based on his willingness to quit, then they must think his mere presence is a valueable comodity, maybe they're dumb and might over estimate his value maybe not. But that is MITs choice.
If I own a business then I am free to do with it whatever I want. I can piss it away, pay all my employee's generous pay, and require them to only show up one day a week, and never check to see if they actually produce anything. Or if I wanted to I could send all the profits to Greenpeace, it is the owners choice. However, the usual practice is for the owner to keep all the profits for himself. I certainly am free to do so, but then no one will work for free (the basic premise of the article). So, you have to compromise and pay employees a wage of somekind. Highly skilled people can easily pick and choose, so they get high wages and lots of perks. Perhaps one of the perks is the right to take your dog to the office or perhaps being able to work 5 or 10 hours per week on some OSS project.
This whole article reads to me like the author thinks writing OSS software can only be theft. But in addition to the very free-market wage-barganing above, it also leaves out how corporations can profitably use OSS. How having a complete OS saves money and development time. There are so many pieces of software that already exists, so many languages, development environments, that you can take advantage of and/or enclude in your product. The only cost for them, is that your product must also be free (libre NOT COST-FREE). You can still make a profit on your product (macmillian for instance). (You can even charge directly for your product, but because of libre how much you can get away with is more limited than a regular proprietory program)
I work for a company that buys redhat CDs, and tens of thousands of dollars in redhat training, and support (sadly because I prefer debian, in which case the money would be going to stormix or valinux/oreilly/SGI or elsewhere). Why do we spend this money instead of simply downloading it? Because we need access to people who really know a lot about particular programs, we cannot afford to staff a complete set of experts on every program (+ plus the kernel, drivers, etc) on the CD.
This is money well spent. We can redistribute most of the redhat CDs, (some non-free crap exists), we have source to pretty much everything, and we get the help we need, when we need it. To go to sun or microsoft, the cost would be much greater, we would not get the source, and we could never distribute any of the technology surrounding our products. When we buy from redhat, we buy specific things we need, when we bought from sun or microsoft we also were required to pay for something that cost essentially nothing to produce.
Years ago I bought a copy of MS Office, it cost me 600 bucks. It cost microsoft the cost of a carboard box, a cheaply printed book, a cd and a hologram to provide me MS Office. At most this packaging cost them 50 bucks to make, probably far less. Now the remaining 550 bucks of the charge was for a very undefined "development costs". Who knows what that figure really should be. Would microsoft have gone bankrupt if I did not buy MS office and help fund the "development costs"? My individual choice made no difference to MS. So the value of a product is a very undefined thing.
There can be a huge dispute about the actual value of software. The historical record of the computer industry is littered with dead products and could-have-been's because the owner placed too great a value on it. The users went elsewhere.
In a way OSS, is just a different business model, that says that undefined cost is so hard to peg at a good value, lets just ignore it, and find indirect ways to fund development, which opens up a great side benefit, that if that value is kept at nor near zero, then you can give freedom (libre) to your users, they can have the source, they can redistribute. As long as you make sure there is another way to generate funds then everyone wins. I get a product (plus source and redistribution) and you get profit.
Exactly where is the evil here? Theft? I don't see it.
The problem with commercial software is that to make sure you get paid the "value" of your software you must take libre from your users, otherwise you make it too easy for people to pirate your software. So you focus on only one way to make profit, and take from me the libre I think is very important. Well, I won't go along with it. You are free to continue to do what ever you want, as long as it is the standard commercial binary-only or Non-Disclosure Agreeement crap, then I am free to ignore you and your product.
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Also, I really think the author takes a cheap, almost slanderous shot at Eric Raymond in his article. He sounds like anti-unix, microsoft-appologist with a bug up his ass rather than a philosopher. He also cannot seem to distinguish between linux and Sun Microsystems, which I think any OSS person could very easily, we just might have a hard time telling Sun from MS.
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
(Sorry about my other message. Let me try formatting that again.)
His arguments are based on a skewed definition of free software. He defines free as available for free (as in free beer).
Is available from at least one source without payment
He says that they say it is immoral to sell software.
The GNU and FSF view is that it is OK to sell anything except software.
He uses this incorrect definition of free software (HIS definition, not the GNU definition which he is trying to discredit)
In any case the idea that a low reproduction cost should imply a free product has no rational basis. In fact no known moral law implies that purchase cost should even be related to production cost.
Either this guy is an idiot or he is intentionally misrepresenting free software. This is not surprising since he believes the ends justify the means:
Aside from other reasons, limiting ourselves to judging deeds, not thoughts, is easy to justify on purely pragmatic grounds: you can observe my actions, or at least their results; you cannot tell whether my excuses are real or imagined.
OMFG. This guy is just a raving hatchetman.
[on ESR]It is high time for Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds to state publicly that they do not endorse the views of the gun lunatics, and that their cherished notion of freedom has nothing to do with the freedom to kill children and other innocents.
Once again. Free speech not free beer.
8.Demand (in the spirit of faithful advertising) that the economic origin of "free" software be clearly stated, and that the products be classified as one of "donated", "taxpayer-funded" and the other categories described in this article.
This article was so close, yet so far, to being a good essay. I think it is great that there is a discussion going on about the "uncomfortable" issues of ethics of free software. (which RMS accuses ESR of avoiding). Yet his arguments rely so much on a misunderstanding of free software it misses the mark. His definitions change... his arguments are slippery as fish, which is typical of apologists.
First he rails about how narrow-minded Stallman's position is and how terrible it is that he draws comparisons between other moral issues and Free Software.
Then he turns around and spends a quarter of the article railing about how terrible guns are and that we should immediately drop support for Eric Raymond and Open Source because Eric has the temerity to support the 2nd Amendment, as do a great many other Americans. WTF do guns have to do with Free Software (specifically GNU)?
What a crock.
This article strikes me as the work of a strongly partisan capitalist trying to intellectually savage a movement that doesn't fit his little worldview. To wit, his breakdown of free software into different categories, i.e. software written on company time vs. software written as recreation vs. software intentionally created by a company, et cetera. Once software is in the pool of free software, it's free software. How does it matter how it got there? This distinction strikes me as having about as much relevance as which river carried a particular drop of water into Lake Superior!
But that's not the worst of it. In the expository section, Meyer states that we shouldn't judge an ideology on the merits of its proponents, like we shouldn't despise the Autobahnen just because the Nazis built them. So why then does he expend the effort of many paragraphs and a few ancedotes (and even a little implicit Red-baiting) attacking Richard Stallman and Eric Raymond? (And attacking Raymond for his gun control views, no less!) It has little relevence to the free software concept, by Meyer's own admission. Sure, he does point out that he's attacking free software by attacking two of its proponents, but he lamely says (to paraphrase) "it's valid because they're such visible leaders." By that logic, closed-source, commercial software has inherent ethical flaws because Microsoft was/is a respected, highly visible leader in that field.
Oh yes, and I had to laugh at Meyer's odd little interjection that it's unethical for the Free Software Foundation to use the word "free" because it's so highly valued by many people. It's a completely unsupported argument, in an article that otherwise takes great pains to back all its positions with a great length of words. And where's the hue and cry over Microsoft's (or any car company's, or freakin' RC Cola's) use of the word "freedom?" At least the FSF states very clearly what it means by "free."
Anyway, I'll come back and read the rest of this article after I've had a nap. I'll even try to keep an open mind (I promise!), but it'll be hard because the first section of this article is brimming with that most famous of biological waste products.
Many of the posts i've seen discredit the person and his views as a whole. I agree, some of the things he says, i believe, have nothing to do with his argument against free(libre) software, and he definitely shouldn't lump ESR and RMS into one category. However, the good points should be recognized, especially on his views that it is *not* immoral to sell proprietary software. Some people may not like it, but it doesn't make it immoral. I think we should take his view much like most philosophers these days take Aristotle's philosophy on human nature. Philosophers like rousseau and hobbes believe in the social contract, where everyone in society was an individual, and only came together in groups because it was pragmatic for their survival. Aristotle was one of the first to say that humans were naturally social creatures. Aristotle also says in the same paper that there are naturally slaves and masters, and that women are inferior to men. However, i think Aristotle brings an interesting view to the table that may not have come up if it wasn't for him.
So, in conclusion, take the sound arguments from Mr. Meyer, while filtering out the unsound arguments. I for one hand agree with much about what he has to say about RMS, but not ESR.
Congratulations, Mr. Meyer. One of the best trolls in the history of /.
A couple of points here - First, RMS does not condone breaking the law, he just points out that - in his world view this law is stupid. RMS does not break any law, he does not condone breaking the law, however he does understand why many people do so. Also notice that he offers another option instead - use free software.
A crank is a little thing that makes revolutions
I think you're right about the Sun Community Source Licence, and the Apple source licence, not meeting the open source definition. But the Qt Public licence definitely complies with it as it as listed as an examples of a license that meets the definition.
Advogato is running a fabulous rebuttal to Meyer's rant. It's worth a read, as it contains many interesting ideas, and is written by none other than the inestimable xiphmont of Vorbis fame.
LILO boot: linux init=/usr/bin/emacs
It forces competition, not cooperation. Even between KDE and Gnome, there's a lot of code and idea-sharing. With proprietary software, that's a no-no.
It's interesting when I read this, because I've often seen this reason given as to why propriety software is better than open source--because competition breeds better software because it forces the people working on the software to try harder.
That leaves us with the problem how to sustain a healthy software industry without proprietary software.
Or, to boil this down to nuts and bolts, just as soon as someone can show me a viable way that I can make enough money writing open source software than I can continue making the strokes on my car and my house and continue taking one week vacations in Europe, without a substantial "hiccup" in my current salary (read: I can't live on my savings for 5 years while an open source project of mine reaches some degree of penetration), then I'll do it in a heartbeat.
Bertrand Meyer alludes to an important point -- but fails to drive it home -- when me mentions the dependence of GIMP on the design of Adobe Photoshop. The open source/free software movement is full of copies of commercial software -- there seems to be very little innovation. In this respect the free software movement bears a striking resemblance to Microsoft. Name a great new idea or innovative product from either "organization", to use the word at its loosest. One answer might be, I guess, Microsoft's software marketing, while the free software people's only real contribution of novelty to software seems to be the fact that it is, er, free. Everything seems to have been invented at Xerox PARC. It's also sad that Bertrand undermines his own position by indulging in a wild attack on "gun lunatics" when, I suspect, what he is actually advocating is reasonable controls to prevent, as far as is possible, guns being sold to the criminally insane. He descends, therefore, to the same level as some of the more wild-eyed, foam-flecked lip ravings of the open source/free software advocates.
The emperor Stallman has no clothes.
I especially liked Bertrand's assertion that the free software world operates under a wrong set of ethical priorities. For the end user the free availability of source code means nothing compared to the quality of the product. The FSF attaches no moral value to quality, and that is why the whole history of the free software movement is littered with cheap hacks, user hostile interfaces and often dysfuncional software. We are supposed to use these products only because as "free" software they allegedly offer superior ethical value.
Richard M. Stallman is a false prophet. I am glad that someone finally took the time to point this out in writing. A must read for anyone who has wasted his time wading through "The cathedral and the bazaar" and the GNU manifesto.
Sorry, I couldn't resist. It's just one of those 'too obvious to remember' kind of things :-)
Monty
My point is that simply because Mr.Meyer does not know something or is not able to imagine it, does not mean that it cease to exist. I would really appreciate if he could in the future keep the topic he understands.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
What a shame that this article starts out with such promise and then fails so miserably.
Of course, it's silly to think that software shouldn't be sold just because the marginal cost of making the second and succeeding copies is very low. Happily, that idea survives only in the writings of RMS, and is generally ignored by the rest of the software community (including most of the folks who are involved in the open source community, who also have day-jobs, for the most part).
What's most unforgivable about this article, however, is the way that it takes RMS to task for behaving publicly and privately as if software sellers are evil incarnate, and for general rudeness in the face of those who disagree, while simultaneously making ridiculous and rude ad hominem attacks on ESR because of his beliefs about gun rights. This article's vituperative and wholly uncalled for moralizing on the topic of firearms is both childish and off-topic.
(Even more interesting, had the author investigated *why* ESR believes in gun rights, he would have learned that ESR is a Libertarian and as such would not agree that software has to be given away for free. But why let the facts get in the way of a good argument?)
In the end, time has burned away the excesses of the "free software" movement and left in its place a tremendous achievement: proof positive that you can make money in software without necessarily keeping the code a trade secret.
Not only is this a boon to software developers, it also enables open source projects to ramp up and evolve more quickly than many of their closed counterparts.
Had the author focused on these aspects, rather than getting exercised about RMS's behavior at a dinner party, or the fact that ESR's gun talk gives him the willies, this might have been a much better article.
How can Redhat charge for the same thing people can download for zero cost? That disproves Bertrand's assumption number one. Software isn't expensive to produce if people do it for pleasure -- it's fully paid-for by the fun. That's his wrong assumption number two. Economics can't be overriden by ethics -- the most efficient result is just that regardless of how you feel about it. You may choose an inefficient result for ethical reasons, but that's your choice. That's wrong assumption number three. And the ethical principle behind libre software is (possibly overriding an efficient result; possibly not) that copyright is unethical -- that it is wrong a priori to use violence (the coercion of the state -- copyright violations can be a criminal offense) to stop something which is not harming you, and indeed, you may not be able to detect. If you gave me a copy of his software, and I was not in the market for it, how does that harm him? How is he ethically justified in bringing in the long arm of the law?
The first reason Bertrand is in a muddle is because he contradicts himself. He says that you shouldn't worry about the source of ideas -- that the Nazis building of the autobahn does not bring approbriation on all highways. Then he goes on to talk about ESR's gun advocacy.
The second reason is that he claims that ethics should overrule economics, then he uses an economics argument to overrule Stallman's ethics. Bertrand is just confused, and his writing reflects that. He's speaking from the partisan position of a proprietary software producer. Small wonder he doesn't like open source -- it threatens his business model.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Meyer writes well, but like those cats that were reared in an environment without vertical lines, he just can't see anything that isn't in his preconceived worldview. [Mind you, that's a common ailment in many people who believe in universals, as he quite openly admitted that he did.]
That's the reason why, despite a lot of analysis of Richard Stallman's writings, Meyer did not level any criticism whatsoever at the freedom of source code which is RMS's primary and vastly most important issue. The entire rant targetted only side issues at best, and irrelevancies at worst.
Meyer, you normally think and write very clearly, but that essay was a beatifully written piece of mental rubbish. To find out why, read the standard piece on Logic and Fallacies --- you've tripped virtually every logic alarm in the book.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
When he talks about the Gimp copying Photoshop but not crediting Adobe engineers for the original work in designing it, I had to laugh.
Since you mentioned anterior contributions, may I add that your paper is more of the posterior variety?
A grave ethical lapse?
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Ever heard that quote before Bertrand?
Hey Adobe engineers! I'm copying your work, which is obvious. Because it's good; which makes sense because why else would I copy it? So thanks!
I disagree I think you'll find that most programmers get paid for developing custom software for various companies (like banks, airlines etc), software which is never sold but only used by the company that funded the development.
Selling shrink-wrapped software like shoes only works for very few large companies (like MS).
Actually I meant 'sell' in the broader sense. The emphasis in that sentence was intended to be on 'closed source'.
Ok so the average programmer does not sell shrinked-wrapped software, he sells his labour to generate software. But that doesn't substantially alter my argument.
The type of bespoke software developed for banks and airlines (which according to you is what most programmers get paid for) is exactly the type of software that is most unsusceptible for Open Source. This is both because the benefits of Open Source are most evident when the software is most generic - but also because the banks and airlines are usually reluctant to share the source with their competitors.
RatFinkSoftware Patents embody Mathematical Forms, which Neo-Platonism locates as Ideas in the Mind of the second hypostatis ("person") of its Trinity. Preventing others from participating in the illumination provided by the Ideas, by claiming to own and license pieces of the Mind of the Demiurge (a.k.a. the Creator), is both blashpemous and morally repugnant.
Copyright is a lesser crime, since it merely restricts particular emanations of the Ideas ("my form of expressing them").
In short, "Information wants to be Free" because the Ideas underlying the creation of the universe cannot be owned by any one collection of material particles.
Traditional (Chaldedonian-descended, such as Orthodox, Catholic, and most Protestand) Christianity, and also some Jewish and Islamic philosophies, adopt the Neo-Platonic stance, and so would have similar theological and philosophical/ethical objections to software patents.
I hope that clarifies the philosophical underpinnings for Dr. Meyer. If he elects to ignore Neo-Platonism, he will, of course, have to rephrase his argument without recourse to Western religious, ethical, and scientific notions, since it is impossible to use these without entwining oneself in Neo-Platonism.
=googol=
Boy, his analysis of the GNU philosophy is dripping with venom, but the man _does_ have a point.
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
What is this guy thinking? He claims that he is an open mind that is going to try to look at the ethics of the free/open source software paradigm, then goes on to attack, not the philosophy, but the people who espouse it.
Meyer makes much of the fact that (he believes) free software supporters hold a universal hatred of commercial software (they don't) and attacks that. But most importantly, he makes intensly personal attacks on RMS and ESR based entirely on their personal political or moral beliefs which are entirely unrelated to the free software movement.
It seems to me that Meyer has aquired some hatred of his own. A hatred of Stallman and Raymond that obviously gets in the way of his original mission.
Hmm . . . reminds me of what he says about free software's feelings about commercial software.
What, pray tell, does gun control have to do with the free software movement?
If I were either RMS or Linus, I'd "state publicly" that I don't like having someone else tell me what my opinions are!
If anyone's up to writing a rebuttal to this guy's article, allow me to suggest the title, "The Ethics of Free Software Critics".
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
I'd love to, but I'm not a SCUBA diver. Otherwise, it'd be mighty handy.
When selling GPL software, you may sell as many copies as the market will buy; but you must make the source code available, and if someone else makes the product available on an FTP server, that's cool too. Your value-add is covenience, or support, or printed manuals, or just a snazzy silk-screened CD in a printed jewel case.
Don't believe this business model works? Look at Red Hat.
Ask your doctor if getting up off your ass is right for you! -- Bill Maher
Meyer evidently was paid for this article. Where did he say that and how much was it?
Why? Because he states opinions which you don't agree with? Personally I think he makes some good arguments, irrespective of whether or not I agree with them.
Meyer doesn't understand "free software"--he carefully points out that his definition of "free" is different from RMS's and the FSF's or Raymond's--then he can say the others are "extremists".
Well, if he understands it well enough to be able to point out the differences between his definition and the FSF's definition then I'd say he understands it. Or are you talking about whether or not he "gets it", which seems to mean a totally different thing.
In spite of Meyer's emphasis on error-trapping and careful software, I found that the article itself refers discussion to a Forum at Software Development Magazine online--but I couldn't find the forum at the link given.
And how does this invalidate his argument at all? This is little better than a personal attack - it says nothing about the points he made either way. Just because he makes a mistake his point about errors in code is wrong?
Most of his arguments are ad hominem--directed to personalities, and not logical arguments directed at philosophical ideas.
Since RMS is the foremost proponent and creator of the whole "free software" philosophy then arguing for or against his views is relevent. After all RMS does put himself foward as the spokesperson for free software. If he doesn't want his views to be criticised then he should step back from the position he has made for himself with the FSF.
His arguments are unbalanced--it is not clear just why he thinks Free Software is important enough to spend so much time in this article discussing it. All he gives are negatives. Okay, "commercial" software is used by many people too--so what?
Since the article is about the ethics of free software I think it fair that he devote a lot of space to it :) It wouldn't really be sensible to talk about hot grits or natialie portman would it? And he doesn't really attack the whole open source idea at all, more the way in which its proponents push the idea that commercial software is inherently a bad thing.
The article is about the ethics of free software after all, not the merits of it.
If I were ESR or RMS I would not dignify this article with a response. I don't choose the operating system I use because Linus is a pleasant guy to talk to, nor do I refuse to use Eiffel because Meyer rants about World War II too much.
Why not - if you seem to think this article is such a bad thing then surely they should respond to refute it? After all, not doing so might make people think that he was right...
He suggests that Free BSD and Linux are no good because a few experts looked at the source and found some errors in them. Meyer neglects to state the obvious: those errors can be found and fixed--what about all the errors in commercial software that can neither be found (except by blue screens of death) nor fixed by users?
No he doesn't, he says that free software is not necessarily any better than closed source software. This point is made separately from the issue of whether or not it can be fixed easily, which he talks about later.
Paraphrasing;-
Don't kill other PPL who are innocent. (Ergo right to life?).. This may be desirable , but TO SOME SITUATIONS, the people IN that situation may find it more ethical to KILL the innocent person, say in war for instance.
The right to reputation , specifically not being misrepresented...... Not universal again, Derision , often to the extreme of outright BullShite is a verry common form of social discipline.
Property.... It's ethical if you own the property, but if you got no food. It's not ethical at all.
The point I am making here is that there is no such thing as universal ethics, principally because (A) You can usually find counter examples, and (B) You can't name their source. *WHERE* do ethics/morals come from? Do they melt if you burn them? Can you buy it? Will it kill you?
There are no ethics in free software, just a bunch of Ideas
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Wow. My first Slashdot post, and I absolutely mangled the formatting by pressing "submit" when I meant to press "preview".
Here it is, hopefully properly formatted:
I post here, because Bertrand Meyer doesn't seem to have an available email address.
Bertrand, I enjoyed most of your article on the subject of free software ethics. It seemed to be a well-reasoned, rational exploration of a subject that sees little rational discussion and much loud, passionate evangelism.
Then I got to the part about Eric S. Raymond, and your personal disagreement with his unrelated views. More specifically, your very loud, passionate, extreme disagreement with his views.
It was absolutely out of place. Whether I agree or disagree with you is immaterial, but I think that particular subject is far from a settled one, and aside from the radical advocates on both sides of the issue, most educated people would agree that it's a complex issue requiring rational examination, not lots of yelling.
It was as if, in the midst of a document exploring the pros and cons of network protocols, the author noted that the inventor of AppleTalk was a prominent supporter of abortion rights, and since that's unquestionably absolutely wrong, he's therefore an evil person, and since he's an evil person, AppleTalk is evil, so we shouldn't use it.
This rant in the middle of a rational discussion soured me on the article as a whole, and made me ask the question: If you're so emotionally charged about this particular issue that you can't help but talk about it for two pages in the midst of an entirely unrelated article, how can I trust you to be dispassionate about your primary subject? How do I know you don't have a terrible hatred of all things free-software that drives you to conveniently discard those facts that disagree with your premise, and trumpet those that do?
It makes the reader wonder...
Eric Adair
In further support of DeK's position, the existence or otherwise of societies that set a precedent for one ethical view or another does not validate nor invalidate the ethics themselves.
Humanity may not have changed much since its beginnings, but we're merely on the first rung of the ladder. This protein form which has tailored so many of our prejudices will be on its way out fairly soon, and in the millions of years after that, in all likelihood not one single element of mankind's most cherished beliefs will survive except as a historical footnote, if that. Those precedents that the universalists seem to require are out there, in our future. Amid trillions of galaxies of trillions of stars, who's to deny it.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Boy, this was certainly a long article. In some ways this is good because it gives the reader a significant chance to understand the author's viewpoints on the subject very well. I've certainly been interested in this since I started following Meyer's work around the time when the first edition of Object Oriented Software Construction came out. The long article is unfortunate, though, because I'm not sure many people will read the entire thing and try to suck all the nuances out; some of the message will get lost in the noise.
One thing that I noticed is that Meyer seems to confuse "free software" (as in free speech) with "open source software" which simply means that you can obtain the source code for the software you are using. I'm not positive yet if I think this is significant in what he is saying in this essay.
The biggest thing that I notice is that some of Meyer's views have certainly had impact on the success of the Eiffel programming language. For those of you who don't know Meyer, he is a Ph.D. who wrote a very large tome called Object Oriented Software Construction now in its second edition. This book, at over 1100 pages, lays the groundwork for his views on how one should construct object-oriented software. He adopts a very conservative view (use strong declared types for variables, cause the compiler to catch as many errors as possible during compilation of the source code, etc.) and makes many strong points that are useful particularly for building extremely large software systems. Although his views go against some compelling ideas from other sides of the object-oriented software camp (such as Smalltalkers), his treatment of the subject in an almost academic manner have made a lot of people pay attention to him.
One vehicle Meyer uses to promote his ideas is the Eiffel programming language. Eiffel is actually used as a "pseudocode" in OOSC and at the end of the text he reveals that it is actually a true programming language that you can get compilers for and use in real development. In my opinion, as a community, computer professionals do too much coding with low-level tools and languages such as C/C++ and I would like to see a higher level language such as Eiffel succeed as a way of allowing developers to consider problems at a higher level, which I think will result in better-quality code. Unfortunately, Meyer's company charges money for all versions of its Eiffel compiler. While the cost isn't prohibitive (it's less than $100 I believe) I don't think anybody is going to buy the compiler to "try it out" on the outside chance than it may be better than what they are using when they can just continue to use GCC for free. The consequence of this is that as a community, developers will keep using the same stupid low-level tools for building EVERYTHING when they could be using more sophisticated higher-level tools for building many pieces of software. I believe that if Meyer could just see this and offer free (beer) ways to get their tools, Eiffel could really take off.
How can they do this and stay in business? (And this touches on the topic Meyer was writing about.) Easy. The base Eiffel compiler could be free (beer, or even speech). Students and individuals would be able to try it out and see that it really is cool and that they can code much more effectively with it. Eiffel would become more popular. Companies would start building software with it, and for this they would like tools such as profilers, safety checkers, etc. These could cost money. Meyer's company could make money off of these more advanced tools that companies will want anyway when building large software systems. Everybody wins.
This doesn't make sense. In this age and time you expect people to have one, or a few subjects that they specialize in, and deeply care about. Of course war and poverty do much more damage than proprietary software; but RMS's issue is software, not war. There are NGOs that specialize in humanitarian aid, and there's the FSF and other organizations that specialize in making Free Software. You don't ask a leader to have perspective, you ask him to be great in his field.
Same thing goes within the free software world, btw. You don't ask Miguel de Icaza to be fair towards KDE; you're just thankful he's making GNOME better.
I stopped reading about the time he starts trashing ESR for his pro-gun stance. When you see someone ranting about 'gun nuts' that generally proves they are a nut themselves. It was too sickening to read onward, his blatant disregard for objectivity (children trained from 12 to use weapons running around killing ? I picked up my first rifle when I was 8 and I've yet to kill anyone) and his complete focus on RMS (who is an idealist, and does not represent the majority of people), to the point where I would like to ask him: "Should I format my Hard disk and install Win2k because of all the poor starving programmers at Microsoft?" Not only that, but he accused RMS of citing without reference, but look at all the 'evidence' he cites w/o reference in his anti-gun tirade. Go figure!
Really, give me a break. In his very trashing and often unjustified attacks on the ideals of RMS he contradicts himself. (he accuses RMS of being a hot-head when his own views in a supposedly 'objective' ethics essay are hot-headed)
In concentrating so much on the GNU he gives token credit to actual products produced by open source enthusiasts, and the spirit of cameraderie it promotes. His argument is that software development should be a self-serving process and nothing else. Having people tell me that I'm a communist and I'm doing wrong and all sorts of other things is really sad, when all I'm trying to do is do something that I like to do, and help other people out at the same time. There is no software, no work at all in fact, that is produced without the help and influence of other people, and to deny their efforts is what is truely selfish.
This only goes to show to me, again and again, that anything written about "Ethics" and "Morals" is generally bullshit and more about telling you how to live then what is "right and wrong", as if anyone could ever define that.
Meyer can say what he wants but obviously he's a much better OO programmer than an ethicist. Of course, other people have said he's a bit stuck up about OO... ah well OO is just another tool for software creation and the way I use it would probably get me on this Meyer guy's shitlist. Time people learn that one method is not the be-all end-all of life.
My sloppy 2.718 cents anyway
Those who do not know the past are doomed to reimplement it, poorly.
Suppose the law were made by people who were informed and interested in protecting the public above other considerations. Wouldn't they simply codify what is right and wrong? Sure, this isn't an ideal world, so we have things like DMCA, but we can dream...
I just binned this when he started criticising Eric Raymond for believing in gun ownership. I'm as anti-gun as you get, but two pages about the NRA in an essay about free software? And that just after he'd spent ages criticising the term "free" when many people reject it for exactly the kinds of reason he was discussing...
Instead of looking for the core arguments and taking them on, Meyer takes the extreme views around free software and slags them off. The nature of the free software community makes this easy, but it does no credit to him.
My point is that "free beer" arguments apply against "free speech" projects. Because of the impracticality of selling free software, all "free speech" projects will be "free beer" projects.
And yes, you can say that selling software is great and encouraged, but the fact is that the GPL makes selling software near-impossible. RMS realizes this; anyone should realize this. RMS is very much against selling software, most likely because of the necessary proprietary nature of software that is sold.
If I, in running a company, save myself a small fortune by using Linux on every desktop, Apache on every server, then I have saved myself a large amont of money. If I now employ a number of programmers to extend those products (or fix bugs), then I am, in effect, paying for the software I use. That payment would appear to go the progrsammers fixing bugs, but when I distribute my bug-fixes / whole new products to others, I am paying *them* back for the service they have given me.
This is why, in my opinion, free software is perfectly viable economically: the misperception is that the only form of payment is money. Payment also occurs in the form of savings, contributions and the respect derived from programming.
Meyer states "The GNU and FSF view is that it is OK to sell anything except software." (Section 4)
... GPL has no requirements about how much you can charge for distributing a copy of free software. You can charge nothing, a penny, a dollar, or a billion dollars. It's up to you, and the marketplace... The one exception is in the case where binaries are distributed without the corresponding complete source code."
This is totally incorrect!!! On the web page http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.ht ml, Richard Stallman writes:
"[W]e encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can."
"Except for one special situation, the
Chris Dolan
Not at all. Competition is when someone else creates a product to compete with yours. When someone simply duplicates your product, they have a huge advantage over you: you have spent huge amounts of time developing software, but now someone else who has not spent a second on your software can simply type "cp" and sell your software just as easily as you can.
You mention the idea of a monopoly often. A monopoly is not gained by being the only person to sell a piece of software, it's gained by being the only, or dominant, person to sell a certain type of software. Compare this to the world of books. If I write a book and publish it with copyright, you can't really say that I have a monopoly. A monopoly is if, say, I restrict anyone else from writing novels.
Capitalism is not about maintaining market share. It's about making money. If I have 99% market share but have not made a penny, my shareholders are not going to be happy.
The problem with open source is that it lacks a motivation for people to write their software in the first place. If someone wants only to have market share and customers (which is a goal in the current inflated stock market), then open source is great. If they want to make money, things are more problematic.
I think Stallman is just misunderstood. When he talks, he talks passionately, and like many other zealots this causes some to reject him and his point of view just as passionately. But the part about lisensing software being immoral, well, Stallman may have a point.
I think it's bad to set restrictions on what someone can do with what they buy (with the exception of things like guns that can affect other people), and that's all closed source lisenses do.
Which brings me to my main point, Since when can't you make money on open source? Look at Red Hat, I can buy a cd from some other vender for cheap, but they haven't gone under yet.
You can have it both ways. Open software and developers who aren't going hungery.
Email: Bertrand.Meyer@csse.monash.edu.au
Home Page: http://www.sd.monash.edu.au/~bertrand/
Simpletoneity, n. -- The phenomenon of many people all doing the same stupid thing at the same time.
I was with him right up until he started his own rant against guns. At that point he lost his rationality, and he lost me. It's funny that someone writing against irrational and unsupported bias should himself present same.
Graham
Graham
Linux - Fast Pane Relief
Unless you are able to program without using one's hands with say voice recognition software, I would advise not doing so on at least one day a week. A friend of mine is undergoing deterioration from RSI. Then again if voice recognition becomes the preferred means of interacting with computers, I think we'll have to take at least one day off from using that as well, as one's vocal cords can easily be overstressed.
I read the article and am amazed at the lack of depth to the article. Meyer kept on ranting about RMS's hatred of commercial software vendors, and ESR's love of guns. Both of these are completely irrelavent to free software... they really are just two people with extreme views on a few topics. RMS and ESR are famous because they are extreme (of course they have made significant contributions as well). Would someone be a famous advocate for playing the middle line? How much do you hear Linus talking about these issues... odds are he tries to stay neutral -- so no article about him.
My point: the article should be considered an attack on the extreme views held by RMS regarding free softare, and ESR regarding guns. Nothing more to speak of there..
-rt-
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
Going back to your original point I think I'm still closer to agreeing with Meyer than you. Part of what Meyer was saying was that the whole "skewed ethical perspective" thing tends to result in people justifying things which they otherwise would not.
The clear case in point here is the issue of breaking software copyright. RMS believes that it is wrong not to copy software if it will help someone out. In other words he believes that the issue of Free Software is so important that it justifies breaking the law.
Meyer does not think so - neither do I. However whether you agree or not the point is that there is a relevance between RMS's "skewed ethical perspective" and the arguments surround Free Software.
Contrast this with what Meyer does to ESR - whose views on gun control have no real relevance to Free Software. Meyer tries to use them nonetheless to discredit him - which is very unfair.
Female Prison Rape in NY
Whether Open Source has zero cost or not is totally besides the question. When the cost is zero, it is an artifact of the freedom to redistribute the code. Bertrand TOTALLY misses the point behind the Open Source movement: it is the ability to modify and/or redistribute the code that brings the community its power.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I didn't forget the post anon button. I didn't think the post would be to offensive, and minorly funny to some people. So, I put my name on it.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
"Nowhere in the hundreds of pages of GNU and FSF literature is there any serious explanation of why it is legitimate, for example, to make a living selling cauliflowers, or lectures (as a professor does), or videotapes of your lectures, but criminal to peddle software that you have produced by working long hours, sweating your heart out, thinking brilliantly, and risking your livelihood and that of your family."
There really is little difference between selling software and cauliflower. The difference is that when you buy cauliflower at the grocery store, the grower doesn't ask you to accept an agreement that states you will not share the cauliflower with your neighbor, or modify it in any way such as cutting it, mixing it with other vegetables, or adding anyting to it (such as dip, cheese, etc...) , nor do they forbid you from growing the exact same cauliflower yourself, whereas these are the things commercial software companies do forbid you to do. You've paid for it, but you don't have the rights to use it however you want. The reason we have economic laws in our society is so that consumers are benefitted. How, I ask, are consumers benefitted when they rightfully pay money in exchange for goods, but are not able to use the goods however they see fit. So the ethical dilemma doesn't have to do with selling software for profit. It's not really an ethical dilemma at all. It's a matter of having the rights to your personal property.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy -- Benjamin Franklin
I have reposted my comment as "[Reformatted] Free Libre, not Free Gratis" Please moderate the parent of this down as redundant. Thank you.
(I wish I could delete posts. Somehow the default formatting option was changed.)
of course you "know". it's written in your e-mail address, even! does it ever occur to *you* that you might not be the ultimate holder of truth, knowledge and common sense? your points of view might get a warmer welcome, and less down moderation, if you were just a little bit less cocky with them.
Then he started using words like "obvious" and "hideous" and I realized that it was just more propaganda. Score -1, Troll.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Mr. Meyer makes some insightful points.
:-) )
However, he does at times lump the whole free software movement together as a monolithic entity. I resent that. I contribute to free software, but I do not share Richard Stallman's extreme viewpoints, and there are many other's like me. I think Mr. Meyer should have made this more clear.
It is also striking that Meyer claims at the outset that he will stay away from controversy - and then proceeds to embroil himself in it! Gun control is, of course, extremely controversial. While I agree that Eric Raymond is a morally dubious character and should not necessarily be quoted or cited in glowing terms, Meyer's argument here strays slightly too far on the side of ad hominem (that is, criticising Raymond's political opinions to cast doubt on the free software positions he espouses) - even while he acknowledges that bad people can have some good opinions.
Finally, the general message that people should be rewarded for their efforts, no matter how enormous this reward becomes, is certainly open to question. The fact that Bill Gates possesses more wealth than serveral entire countries merits some moral condemnation, I believe. If people were not starving and dying of easily and cheaply preventable diseases at this very moment, extremes of inequality might be less outrageous - but, alas, people are starving and dying at this very moment.
I cannot help but think that the aforementioned distortions - the first one a very offensive distortion - and the writing of the article as a whole, are motivated partly by personal financial considerations, over and above what Mr. Meyer will presumably be paid for the article itself. ("Ad hominem" is not a cut-and-dried issue!
Female Prison Rape in NY
Ah, yes..another page is turned in the saga of Linux. People are beginning to catch on.
Personally, I agree with most of what Meyer points out in his article. It's never been fully explained (at least to my satisfaction) why attempting to make money off your own work (and exclusively your own work) is taboo. I've heard people scream bloody murder at me for years for simply trying to sell various little odds and ends i've made, rather than just declare it public domain and give it out for free.
Upon looking at Stallman's own views, I still fail to see how licensing your work "deprives" people. Ford isn't "depriving" people of transportation by demanding that you pay money for one of their cars. If you cant afford it, that's your problem, not Ford's. How is this evil? The whole thing smells a little weird. Quoting from the article:
"..And so on (there are countless other examples). These are extremely strong indictments, based on moral terms. They are morally unjustifiable. Nowhere in the hundreds of pages of GNU and FSF literature is there any serious explanation of why it is legitimate, for example, to make a living selling cauliflowers, or lectures (as a professor does), or videotapes of your lectures, but criminal to peddle software that you have produced by working long hours, sweating your heart out, thinking brilliantly and risking your livelihood and that of your family.
This absence of rational justification for the extremist view that all commercial software is evil is all the more striking given that some other parts of the GNU/FSF literature can be serious and reasoned. Its criticism of software patents, for example, is often cogent, and takes the trouble of presenting the opposite view to refute it. As soon as the discussion is about free software--and that's where it is much of the time--argument yields to irrational excommunication."
In a nutshell, Stallman's point of view is only truly rational if you accept his assertion that Free Software is good, and software licensing is bad.. That sort of thing is purely subjective, and more a question of ideology than anything factual. People need to pay their rent. I need to pay mine. Selling what I've made by my own hand doesn't make me a criminal.
My $0.02,
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
FYI, the reason some Jewish families prepare food the night before is not because anything that might possibly be considered work is forbidden. Rather, it is because we interpret that specific clause of the Bible to mean a prohibition against specific types of _labor_. This interpretation comes from a text called the Talmud, recorded about 130 c.e., that mostly contains interpretations of the Bible. The interpretation lists 39 specific types of labor, two of which are using fire and finishing works, both of which are done by the cooking of food.
:-)
Herein lies the main difference between Judaism and Christianity. It is not the belief in Jesus as the son of G-d. It is that we believe that it is not up to the individual to interpret the Bible according to his own beliefs. We allow the great rabbis of thousands of years ago to act as our proxy, trusting their hundreds of years of logic and analysis. So when you say that Judaism says that any thing that could be construed as work is forbidden, that is not quite accurate. Truth is, we have a few ways to do things that _would_ be considered work, such as using a timer to turn lights on and off. Point is, we focus on specific, technical, logical interpretations of the Bible, instead of allowing individuals to interpret for themselves. So bringing up the original poster's question again, we don't argue about whether doing open-source programming is really considered work. Instead, we focus on the Rabbis' interpretations, asking ourselves if doing these actions would be a certain type of _labor_, instead of having individuals evaluate if it is work according to them.
Sorry if this rambled a little bit
nuclear cia fbi spy password code encrypt president bomb
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
Where did this guy learn ethics?
An example: ursury. [My aplogies to ./ readers who are not from a Judaeo - Christian moral background: I am, so forgive the limited range of sources for my examples, and please, PLEASE, add any from other cultures. That's the point of discussion, isn't it?]
I guess the references in the traditional texts are Lev 25:36-27, Deut 23:19-20, Ps 15:5, Ezek 18:8, 13, 17, Ezek 22:12.
The point is that there is a tradition where the moral/religious law implies a relationship between the cost and price.
I guess that this and similar rules are based on a general belief that you should not profit unreasonable at the expense of your fellow-man. It is the tenth commandment.
Bertrand may not agree with this ethics, but he should say so instead of claiming that it does not exist.
Hi!
- Richard Stallman's views are extreme.
- Eric Raymond is a gun-nut.
- All software has bugs.
- Micros~1 is not the Great Satan.
- Do the right thing.
*Yawn*What? Proprietary software is the most effective way to make money? I think I've heard that before... from RMS. Sorry, but you've completely missed the point of everything the FSF has to say. Check out their website and do some reading. Maybe you will figure out that selling proprietary software has consequences for everyone's freedom. And how exactly are free software advocates denying you the ability to exploit copyright law for your own profit? Presenting you with a potentially pursuasive argument and some high quality software is a little different from putting a gun to your head.
It seems to me that you conclude that free/OS software can not be good.
Why is that?
Repeatedly you (And Bertrand.) give the choice of freedom OR quality.
Why is it then that OSS has a given track record of being of higher quality? What magical development techniques is it that companies will start using that are impossible for OSS programmers to use?
The "free source or good source" is almost as inane as Bertrands "free source or guns everywhere" 'argument'.
Well, obviously GNU is an anagram of gun. :)
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Mosaic was open. I still have source for 2.7b5 languishing in my archives.
However, Motif, the widget set Mosaic used was not. There are free implementations of the Motif API, and Mosaic did work with them (even if it originally took some fudging. I dunno how good they eventually got as Mosaic fell by the wayside just as the Motif saga was getting interesting).
Monty
It gets worse. He charges ESR and RMS with "lunatic raving" within a page-down of this sentence:
"Perhaps the greatest tragedy of that country is that a minority of gun nuts [...] supported by an all-powerful lobby, the National Rifle Association, has managed to terrorize Congress into maintaining loose gun laws with no equivalent in the rest of the civilized world."
If the words "sky-high rhetoric" weren't themselves sky-high rhetoric, that's what I'd call this. Might as well do a point-by-point on this one, since I'm bored.
1) "greatest tragedy" -- The "perhaps" does nothing to modify a statement so outlandish. Supply your own list of greater tragedies. Mine would probably start with, oh, say, 70% functional illiteracy, or, uh, maybe slavery, or, er, the recent resurgence of parachute pants.
2) "all-powerful" -- The NRA does not get what it wants. It wants laws based on an original-intent reading of the Second Amendment. We have no such laws in the US, no matter which interpretation of the founders' original intent you're talking about ("militia" vs. "people").
Forget it. Can't go on.
The sad thing is, the point the guy pretends he's making is valid: Leading open source/free software advocates aren't sufficiently reflective, and they make inconsistent and/or nonsensical statments sometimes. True. Pot-kettle-black.
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
That's a very complex question. Whenever electricity arcs, that's considered fire. Rubber tires might violate the prohibition against tearing (when they rub off onto the road -- I'm not sure about this one). And there are many other good reasons why cars of any form violate the laws of the Sabbath, one of them being the prohibition against carrying on Shabbat.
What if you drive an electric car with arc-free switches, with your whole town inside an eruv? Even then, there might be some other reasons -- again, IANAR. And even if you managed to get everything halakhically acceptable, even the appearance of violating shabbat is not good.
For example, one is forbidden to eat milk products with chicken, even chicken technically is not considered fleishic (because it does not give milk, eating chicken with milk products could not possibly violate the prohibition against boiling a kid in its mothers milk). However, when one eats chicken, it appears that one is mixing milk with meat, and thus it is forbidden.
nuclear cia fbi spy password code encrypt president bomb
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
This business model does not work. It depends on having a limited competition. As soon as Linux gets real popular and x thousand other guys want to sell the same goods without passing any money back to Red Hat bang goes any profit.
You can only sensibly make profit where you control resources. The terms of the GNU licence mean that any profit that is more than nominal will attract competition that can't be defended against. You may view this as a good thing if you are against commercial software; the GNU licence is designed to stop people from controlling resources.
So my advice - don't base a business on the GNU licence if you want to be wealthy.
Well, im not sure EXACTLY what 'trolling' is. It SOUNDS like a comment thats just being negative but doesnt contain much substance, but IMHO the article did have a few points. I can ofcause imagine that a comment (as this one :-) it can be easy to 'miss the points' because one may not read it with the same attention as you would read the initial article... Well moderators are humans too.
/Tersevs
As for the article, some points are valid (among others the old trusty 'if someone put a lot of effort into a piece of work, he should be permitted to sell it without being a bad guy).
As for myself i write GPL:ed software at home, but closed sourced software at work, although i still at work advocate that we should opersource our stuff, and let people use it for free (its embedded sw so they would still have to buy our hardware, but would be able to make improvements).
Why im an open source / free software advocate? Well, above all, im a tech-lover. I want to see progress in the field of technology, and sharing our work, to let others build upon the foundation of eachothers code MUST TECHNICALLY BE A GOOD THING. (just want a better world...)
But we must not be fanatics. People who write closed source stuff arnt neccesary bad guys. Many of the games that i like most (Curse of Monkey island for example) are comersial software. Nowaday i buy every game i really want, because there is a lot of effort behind them and i dont believe that they would have been made without paying customers. True, we are seing free games, some of them will eventually be very good (perhaps Parsec), but how many commercial quality free games are there?
"3) Not all Open Source software is of a high quality. (duh! 90% of the stuff on Freshmeat isn't at 1.0 yet!)"
:)
I'd just like to mention that, imho, 90% of the commercial, proprietary software out there shouldn't be at 1.0 yet.
Who was that guy who said... "90% of science fiction is junk. But then again, 90% of everything is junk." Yeah, I read in Analog, iirc, he actually said junk.
"Seriously, I think half of my flames come from people just annoyed at my choice of email address."
:)
Oh, I can understand that - someone looking at your email address might be insulted, might think you're being arrogent. Now that I've read what you just wrote, it makes a lot more sense.
I don't mind, in fact, I think I agree with you, most of the time.
Would you like to buy some?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The point in question was whether open-source software meets the hype about reliabilty. Any piece of software in which known bugs go unfixed, does not provide the level of reliabity he seeks. There are certainly factors involved (availabilty of the developers' time; that he can fix it himself; that it has no warranty anyway), but the use of such arguments only supports his position. If the argument that "Open Source is more reliable" really means that "Open source is more reliable when we have time to fix it, and if not, just do it yourself", then it should be argued as such. Given the existence of such factors, Meyer's point is correct. For some free projects, reliabilty will be a problem. This is equally true in non-free projects. Perhaps the situation is really "The average reliabilty of OSS is higher" but that's not really meaningful given the range of software available (High profile-commerial software / backyard shareware / high profile OSS / "I whipped it up last night" OSS). Maybe "High profile OSS is more reliable than its equivalent non-free counterparts". But the point is, that the initial argument by the OSI, "OSS is more reliable" is not true at face value. If I need to hire a C-compiler developer everytime I find a bug in gcc, then it's probably not a worthwhile investment for me, if I can simply buy a licence for a (non-free) compiler that suits my needs. As Meyer repeatedly points out, it's all a choice of some set of values/ethics over others. Meyer's personal crusade has always been the quality of software engineering. In his mind a working piece of proprietry software is a better choice than an almost-working piece of free software. You may not have that set of values, but you can't really tell him that his values are wrong. This is definately true. His big rant on gun-control reeks of personal moral decisions. I happen to agree strongly with him, but he didn't present the issue very well. ESR needs to separate his OSS "work" and his personal web-site more. When he hosts the much praised "The Cathedral and the Bazzar" on the same site as his gun pages, he links them into the same package in the eyes of the reader. OSS and Guns become clearly linked as the great passions of the leader of the OSI. This does OSI a great disservice. It however has very little (IMHO) to do with the ethics of Free Software. Apache proves his point. The original basis for Apache was Free Software written at Uni of Illinois (I think) - tax payer funded. People who now contribute to Apache do it for several reasons. I'll try and list them here.
- Their company uses it and needs a bug-fix/enhancement. Company pays for it. Privately funded.
- Their uni uses it. Tax-payer funded.
- They use it non-commerially. They donate their time to fix/enhance it (for their own good). Donated.
That's it. That's the point. Someone's time/resources went into the patch. Whose? Why? The FSF/OSI/SPI (etc) suggest that the fruit of the funder's resources should be able to be used freely by everyone. Why is that the case? Justify your answer. Meyer attempts to argue against that. You could if BM has his way. He is big on robust, well engineered reliable solutions. So is NASA. I believe that the software controlling the shuttles has such guarantees. Regardless, you just accepted his point. If such software existed, would you be willing to give up your "freedom" (the source) in order to use it? If so, then your value system is NOT the same as RMS's. He claims that nothing is more important than the freedom of the software user. Anyone who would use the "super-product" is saying "At some point, software quality becomes more important to me than the freedom of the source". Most of us agree with that. This is one of Meyer's points. Free software is all well and good, but is it meeting the real needs of users? Do people really value freedom over quality?Even RMS has to juggle his values. He used proprietry system to develop GNU. He was in effect saying "I will give up my freedom in order to be able increase the freedom of others". A noble jesture, but the fact remains that he has to sacrifice some things to acheive his end goals. Two of my goals are to write good software, and to spend time doing things I enjoy. I will give up freedom of the source, if I think that if ultimately advances my goals.
That's because RMS and ESR set themselves up as straw-men. By holding relentlessly to a position that they do not adequately justify, they become straw-men. All Meyer does is push their positions to the obvious conclusions. If OSS is so reliable, why do I get these bugs? If freedom is more important than quality, then does that mean a free product without warranty is morally better than a closed product with warranty? RMS and ESR are straw-men because they don't provide adequate support for their positions. And yet you posted this to slashdot.I should have the right to sacrifice that freedom if I choose to. So therefore, the existence of non-free software only serves to offer me that choice. It never forces me to give up my "right" to the source, because it never forces me to use the software. It does offer me the option of giving up the source if I feel that the benefits it offers are worth it. Anytime RMS argues that the proprietry system is evil, he attempts to remove my right to make that choice.
--
Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Bertie also confuses commercial software with proprietary software. Redhat Linux is commercial software. They charge money for it. Nobody's upset with Redhat because they charge money for their distribution. Some people are upset because Redhat has too much market share. Some are upset because they think Redhat is technically flawed. In spite of this, Bertrand says that free software people hate commercial software. That's nonsense on stilts!
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
He says of the FSF:
yet then goes on to espouse the "copyright as a natural right" doctrine: However he merely posits this as an assertion, despite the fact that American common law, English common law, and the American Constitution, all hold that copyrights are granted by the governemnt to promote the common good. In this interpretation of copyright Stallman's arguments take on a different cast. You still may not agree with them, but asserting that someone else's claim as to what constitutes a moral right is groundless by claiming something else as a moral right (without justification) is IMNSHO, not a very good rhetorical technique. It's just more complicated than Meyer (or Stallman) claim.He also attacks the FSF by saying:
(regarding the comparison of the SPA to stalinist russia), but then goes on to attack the free software movement by decrying ESR's views on gun control: Now, I think all of us know that even ESR would condemn the shooting of children at a day camp. Is this not a bit of an extreme analogy? Especially since in ESR's fantasy world (as opposed to Meyer's in which nobody ever would be able to commit acts of random violence), the white supremacist would have died in the hail of fire returned by the camp counsillors.I actually find the whole attack on ESR's gon control views, and his demand that RMS and Linus distance themselves from his views very bizzare coming from someone who said:
It just strikes me that this is not an unbiased, calm critique of the free software movement, it is written with a particular agenda in mind (well, two, to defend commercial software developers, and to attack the gun lobby), and as it decries the use of rhetorical techniques by the free software movement, while using them itself, and can't even avoid contradicting itself, strikes me as little more than demagoguery.Not to say that the free software movement can't be critically examined and criticized. Just this isn't it...
Eiffel failed to catch on widely, and it doesn't look like it's going anywhere. Rather than insulting more and more people, it would be good for Meyer to go back and see where he didn't meet the needs of his potential user community. Unlike what he claims, people in industry are very concerned with quality and methodology. It's just that his tools and methodology failed to meet their needs.
As for open source software, that does have something to do with the success of new tools and languages: most people who make these decisions are simply not going to build a product based on a language that comes from a small vendor. They would be betting many man-years of effort on the success of that one small vendor and be at the complete mercy of that company's future pricing policies and responsiveness.
The two realistic options anybody wanting to popularize a new language has are to open source a usable implementation or to work early towards creating a standard and getting multiple vendors to provide implementations. Eiffel did neither, and so it wasn't a very attractive choice (the fact that many people perceived it to contain some real technical blunders didn't help either). That is perhaps the first lesson would-be language vendors should understand.
Forget demonizing "commercial" developers on moral grounds for a sec; any software publisher whose distributed software doesn't have those three features is a publisher that I simply refuse to take seriously.
Also, there's always the "scratch the itch" factor. If Adobe systems wants to charge n-hundred bucks for Photoshop, that's their choice, but eventually you'll run into a bunch of savvy GIMP hackers eager to brew a free alternative. A side effect of the process used in attracting developers and building a "free-speech" project of that scale in an open environment is that it also becomes "free beer". And Adobe, or whoever, now has to compete, benefiting not only GIMP users, but average folks buying Photoshop for a more reasonable price than before.
Interestingly enough, that also provides a valid reason to revile Microsoft. If Windows controls the desktop, and MS makes Windows nasty to code in, then it becomes harder to port say, the GIMP, to Windows, prolonging the stranglehold of overpriced, proprietary software.
Well, there goes most of that guy's essay!
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
Sigh, yet another piece with highly intelligent and thought-provoking ideas that is ruined by unnecessary appeals to emotionalism. Can we get one opinion piece from an important writer of software that doesn't refer to the Unibomber, gun control, or evoke Godwin's Law?
If only debate could be structured somewhat like software interface, which ironically is one of Meyer's areas of enormous contribution. While it may seem cute to include a ranting against gun control and United States attitudes towards it, surely one can see that such appeals are strictly not needed. What is not needed should be pared away to avoid complication.
As I have gotten older I have come to the conclusion that it is completely impossible to discern true motives or morality of an individual. We simply can't know whether someone in his or her private life chooses to perform many random acts of kindness or is a monster who commits violent crimes. Actually, almost all people's lives are something of a mix of good and evil. (I just read on the news that Bill Gates's foundation is helping to pay for a cheap vaccine for AIDS for about the cost of a dollar per dose that is targetted towards helping desperately poor Third World countries.) Thus it has become more and more irrelevant to me whether someone professes a particular religion, creed, or political viewpoint. I just care whether they can bring the goods technically.
But many principles are culture-independent. Killing an innocent person, for example, is not morally acceptable, regardless of your culture.
This is far from absolute. Killing an insane person in self defense is generally morally acceptable, even though the insane person is innocent. Killing an enemy soldier during wartime is also generally not considered immoral. Many feel that euthenasia should be legal.
Also, ...do not send tanks, troops and aviation to invade your neighboring country
If the neighboring country is committing atrocities against its own people, many would considered an invasion justified.
One point this illustrates is that there are very few moral absolutes. This calls into question the rest of the article, since it uses the idea of moral absolutes as part of the foundation for the rest of the article. Also, it's just plain worrisome when an article "The Ethics of Free Software" can't even define half of its subject matter. (It can't define the other half either, but that's covered in other threads.)
Refuse the distortion of moral values and the criticism of free software as a pulpit from which to spread trendy ideologies of personal oppression.
Interesting perspective. As for me, reading the ESR essay Ethics from the Barrel of a Gun was what finally convinced me to take a gun safety & use class and take up target shooting. It's a fun hobby, and once I've tried enough varieties of gun to know what I like or don't like shooting, I'll probably end up buying one. I also plan on getting a Concealed Carry Permit since in California that's the best way to reduce your chance of accidentally violating much of the vast thicket of obscure and contradictory gun laws.
Eric is inflammatory, but he's also right. John Lott is right too.
I play Nerd-Folk!
Redhat is not charging for their software.
They're charging for the service of placing the software on a physical medium and distributing it to a store. In their S-1 prospectus they make it very clear that their revenue stream is primarily through this avenue and if Internet bandwidth increases significantly it will dry this stream up because their software is, in effect, zero cost.
Secondly, no matter what, softwre is expensive produce, even if you're doing it for fun. This is because when I say "expensive" I'm talking about economic cost - i.e. opportunities lost. Free software is not expensive if your time has no economic value.
My feeling is that OSS is an excellent alternative to mainstream/commercial software for pragmatic reasons, but I A) do not agree that copyright is unethical, B) I do not think OSS principles can be "universalized" because doing something for "fun" is a voluntary act. C) Abolishing copyright won't promote sharing, it will destroy the basis of our future economy. Instead let us work to evolve copyright. The current trend (and the one John Perry Barlow seems to allude to in his famous essay on IP) is to use encryption as the means of IP protection, over laws. Will this work? I have my doubts...
As for Bertrand, yes he makes glaring errors of logic (the man is somewhat of a zealot even in the OO world).
-Stu
Which is more ethical? Making software tools developed in the course of one's taxpayer supported research program available under a liberal open source licence, or quiting your job at the university and taking your taxpayer supported software/ideas and selling them as a closed source proprietary product? (Hint: If you had any federal funding, e.g., NSF, you are required to release your source code.) Cheers, Tim
If Redhat is not charging for their software, neither is Microsoft. One of the things you get when you buy a Microsoft product is a license for the software. In effect you get the same thing when you buy Redhat. Redhat includes the source for everything in their distribution. Therefore, when you buy from Redhat, you are also (in essence) buying a license to redistribute the software. You have a "get out of jail free" card as far as the GPL is concerned. You may think this doesn't matter, but if you're installing a hundred copies of one Redhat, you can be sure that the company's legal department will want to know that you can do that.
Value is subjective.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
If source code availability were the real issue, we would not have so many people screaming from the rooftops about the Sun Community Source Licence, the Apple source licence, and the Qt Public licence and how immoral they all are because they don't fit the open source definition.
These licenses do not guarantee the full "freedoms" of the OSD, but they are legitimate attempts at placating user needs without giving away the family jewels, so to speak.
This is unacceptable to the most vocal of the OSS community, as seen on countless Slashdot articles. They clearly want RMS-style freedom or nothing... and I think Meyer's essay here throws a big fat dart into the centre of their "new moral order".
-Stu
Here Here! This does a fair summary of stating WHY this is such a load of nonsense. This isn't news for Nerds, it's it's own political manefesto railing against Open-Source. What does gun ownership have to do with Open source. Answer - NOTHING! The fact that ESR has policitcal views beyond his opinions of open-source have no bearings on his Open source beliefs. As for RMS's views. I'm more in line with ESR, but at least RMS is consistant, and lives his life in a manner completely consistant with his beliefs. Doubt this dweeb can say the same.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
I don't want to beat this into a dead horse, but I just enjoy discussing these issues, so bear with me... :)
Microsoft charges for their software (the intangible part) through their restrictive licence. One can go to http://msdn.one.microsoft.com to download pretty much any Microsoft product, assuming you're a licenced MSDN universal subscriber.
Redhat does not restrict the service of downloading the source from its site because the GPL restricts them from doing so. In effect, Redhat can't charge for access to its software. The GPL has freed the software, hence they can't make money at it beyond providing a value-added service such as CD-ROM packaging.
The result is that Redhat is not going to be making a significant amount of revenue relative to Microsoft. This is not to say revenue & profit are the sole judgements of everything good and happy. On the contrary. We must, however, remind ourselves that "software is expensive" economically. It takes time, effort, skill, and talent. More software will be created if it (the intangible form) can be regulated through the marketplace -- hence requiring a concept of property. Do we want more software and less freedom, or more freedom and less software? Recall that copyright was created originally to answer the desire for "more books".
Free source code is a worthwhile thing, but to me it's an author's choice to choose whether they want to allow that.
-Stu
I thought his argument was quite logical and understandable.
- Free software must also be zero-cost software.
- Zero-cost software happens to make zero-economic sense (because cheap reproduction costs don't change the fact that software is expensive to produce in the first place)
- Economics can be overridden by ethics
- What ethical principle is there behind libre software? Nothing coherent.
That's the argument.
-Stu
Utilitarianism in my post was just used as an example, I was not claiming that it was the only ethical theory that takes reality into account.
And yes, at some point our deffinitions become axiomatic, and there is nothing we can do about this, because language isn't sitting upon very much (hence all the fun the solipsists suppose that they are having), so you are free to challenge the axiom that I gave. But if you challenge the definition of "ethics" that I gave, then I can just call it "foobarianism", use the same definitions, and its propertys continue to hold, so you don't accomplish much by saying "well thats just an axiom".
---
"Elegant, Commented, On Time; Pick any Two"
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
Bravo!
It was about time someone expressed this idea. I found Mr. Stallman's arguments very disturbing for years. He's a very smart guy but he's also a fanatic and with that comes an unwillingness to understand others' point of view. And yes, very often he sounds like a Communist, whether he realizes it or not.
At the end of the day, software exists to resolve problems. The software that best solves them in a given problem domain tends to win. I enjoy working with Linux to no end; I also encourage our friends and customers to move to it when it makes business, economic, or technical sense. I would not currently replace a large Solaris server or a mainframe running an enterprise application with Linux or GNU or whatever on merits of it being "free software." The reality is that no libre OS is available right now to run a mission-critical system (enterprise, government, military, etc.). Examples of this abound even among the most visible Linux companies: They won't say it out loud, but they'll whisper that they run their companies on SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle, and others where it makes sense.
Mr. Meyer's comment on commercial development was also a nice breath of fresh air:
Even if all commercial software developers became wealthy, there would be no ethical basis for picturing them as greedy liars... At least the entrepreneur who starts a software company, perhaps with the hope of becoming rich, takes a personal risk... That doesn't automatically make him a hero. But it also doesn't make him a despicable thug. There is nothing wrong about believing enough in one's ideas--and ideals--to put one's livelihood at stake.
There's nothing wrong with making a livelihood and improving one's standard of living throug software development. It takes me and the rest of my team a great deal of effort to produce something. We fully expect remuneration from it.
(for the record, we're looking for an Open Source project where we can contribute our Java, Python, or enterprise networking expertise. Instead of flaming me for this comment, send me your suggestions)
Finally, Mr. Meyer's 11-point Course of Action is something that all of us in the software development community (commercial, free software, open source, or whatever label we apply to ourselves) should read, understand, and expand to make this truly a better world.
Have a nice wknd,
Eugene
http://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
RMS was paid to write software (EMACS) but thought he had the -right- to release it for free, even though it was written on someone else's time. This right was granted to him by MIT.
Well, if MIT granted Stallman the right to release EMACS for free, then he had the right to release EMACS for free. How is being aware of your rights "morally unjustifiable?"
RMS then resigned when MIT was charging people for the software that other MIT employees wrote - employees that MIT -paid- to write that software.
The fact that Stallman believes in his moral principles so strongly that he quit a lucrative job with a company that violated those principles doesn't make the principles morally unjustifiable. Much of the United States (outside of the midwest) fosters an environment that actually encourages people not to work for companies they disagree with. This isn't morally unjustifiable -- it's morally nuetral.
Free software has it's place, but commercial software does, too. It takes a lot of time and effort to write good, useful software. If that time isn't volunteered (for free) by private citizens, then someone is paying for it.
Why do people confuse the notion of "Free Software" with "Software Written for Free?" This seems to be a fundemental mis-understanding in the free software debate - the idea that the FSF wants to run all the developers out of business, and make them get jobs at Taco Bell. Most developers deliver solutions to problems. Businesses will always pay for solutions. It is only the "shrink wrapped" non-solution software developer that is hurt by the open source movement.
If you pay for something, shouldn't you be able to expect something (tangible) in return, if that's what your business is about? Not many businesses survive if they don't have income.
Yes, of course. That is exactly what Stallman believes, too. He believes that if you pay for software, you should own the software. You should be able to change the software as you see fit, and you should be able to sell the software elsewhere - in other words, you should have tangible rights to software you pay for.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
this seems like a cleverly crafted troll, but I'll contribute.
Time is relative to the observer. While it may be sunday here, it could be saturday or even monday in some other time zone. Is god aware of this? Does he keep track of joe who is +6GMT or mary who is orbit on the space shuttle and in no particular zone?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
No, a better analogy would be because you bought a Toyota you should be given the plans and detailed instructions on how to build your own Toyota's and should be allowed to sell or give away Toyota's based on those plans.
Granted he got a bit off topic with all the gun control crap, but the point that there are different standards being applied to software is a valid one.
Contrary to many of the memes that we slashdot-ers seem to cling to so jealously, maybe it is time we admit that this whole "movement" is more about how we want to be seen rather than what is right or realistic. For me, this realization struck particularly hard reading a recent local newspaper interview of Miguel de Icaza . In this interview, Miguel complains that Micro$oft failed to hire him, then went on to brag about how Gnome was finally a complete replica of M$ Office. After that he talked about how his company would soon be worth billions and he would be able to hire even more of his friends. Now, does it make me feel good to go to sleep at night knowing that the best of our open source rebels are content to copy what others have done and then want to get paid for it? At least Bertrand Meyer gets points for acknowledging that big blue never saw software as a threat, because they make money from hardware. This is something that most of us would do well to heed. Apache would be crap today if IBM had not dedicated full-time programming staff to improving it. The Apache XML parser is much improved by the fact that Sun Micro donated "Crimson" high-perf code. Now, when Sun and IBM get 99% of their revenues from hardware and services, but they are paying top-notch people to write free software, this whole new economy idea of free software rebels kind of breaks down. The people writing the good software are getting paid! Just because companies give it away in order to bleed competitors whose revenue streams are dependent on software does not mean that anyone is changing the world. When we are young and hot-blooded and don't get paid too much due to inexperience, it feels good and hip to feel like we are part of this rebel movement that is changing the world. I write software that is always sold as part of the hardware (chip design is really just software programming). Luckily, most people don't believe in free software so much that they give away chip designs for free. That means I can feed myself. I enjoy sharing new Linux source with friends and showing off my skills as much as the next guy, but as long as we all believe that this is the only way for programmers to work, we're going to have charismatic folks like Miguel taking our skills for free just long enough to get himself a fat IPO..
For example the GNU Eiffel compiler was developed at the University of Nancy by employees of that university who (in contrast with commercial Eiffel vendors, who need paying customers to survive) get every month a salary from the State, whether the users are happy or not with the product. This is a typical case of taxpayer-funded software.
The "commercial Eiffel vendors" include Meyers' company. He's got to compete with free software.
Ironically, a free Eiffel distribution is probably the best thing that ever happened to those vendors; it increases the population of Eiffel programmers, and thus, of the potential employees of projects that want to spend money on commercial Eiffel implementations.
(I hit return instead of tab, and posted an empty article. Please moderate that one down. Sorry and TIA. --PSRC
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