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Men of Zeal
The following was written by Slashdot reader Jonas Oberg.
Men Of Zealby Jonas Oberg
An increasing number of people today feel that the world ought to focus more on the freedom issues of free software rather than the technical or economical ones. Others feel that the issue of freedom scares people and that we should focus on practical benefits of free software, such as price or reliability.
The issue of freedom of software, or speech for that matter, does however scare some people at times. But mostly, the same people have little understanding of the foundation of our community, and often try to reap the benefits -- economically or technically -- from free software without understanding or caring about the freedom of others.
Although the community offers teaching of the nature and purpose of free software, it is often ignored and/or neglected, these newcomers still telling tales of piracy and intellectual property in the context of free software. They have been taught that sharing is wrong and that license fees feed the programmers who write the software. Having difficulty understanding the fundamental error in this reasoning is often the reason why these individuals fail to grasp even the basic concepts of free software.
By building walls around them and their software, they feel they protect their own rights to the software they have produced. But by hiring lawyers to create software licenses that imprison their users, they are themselves imprisoned by the same licenses.
The harm is not immediately visible. If they feel a need to build walls and their lawyers want to write new proprietary licenses, the community is not immediately hurt by this. We might have to work extra hard to reverse engineer their proprietary protocols and programs to implement free software equivalents or replacements, but history has repeatedly shown that cooperation makes this possible, even being obstructed by legal matters or having to avoid patents filed alongside the proprietary program.
The real problem comes if they later decide to jump on the steadily paced free software bandwagon by making a half hearted attempt to make their software workable on free software platforms. It's common that the community immediately cheers when corporation after corporation announces plans to port their software to a free platform, and even more so if or when they decide to release the source code for the software.
But we can not by default wholeheartedly embrace every company that attempts this. We have to look at each offering individually and decide for ourselves whether it would help to further our cause or hurt us in the long run. For every piece of software that is released under a non-free license to run on our free software platform, the temptation to sacrifice a part of our freedom in order to use this new software grows. This goes especially for software that includes the source code, but not the rights to use it freely, thus making the software as a whole non-free.
In time, some of the companies might be enlightened to change their business concepts and release their products as free software, but we should never have used their software or accepted it for use on our systems in the first place. By doing so, we sacrifice our own freedom for convenience. The alternative to using a non-free piece of software could be to use a program that is free software with limited capabilities compared to the non-free program.
It is important to understand the implications of sacrificing freedom and what implications it might cause to the ongoing development of free alternatives. If freedom is of the most importance -- and it should be at all times -- the choice is always quite clear. We have to work to teach those who join us that not only should they join us to maximize their profits, but also to contribute to the world and to help build a free software sharing community. Maximizing profits from free software is worthwhile and I encourage anyone with the opportunity to do so, but the money itself is not likely to stick around unless some of it is invested back into the community that made the profit possible in the first place.
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evilminded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal and wellmeaning but without understanding." -- Justice Louis D. Brandeis
I was just thinking about something related to this, and wondering whether I could stretch it out enough for a Freshmeat editorial. (I'm too cheap to pay for a t-shirt.)
Frequently, when a legal issue is raised here, you'll see a post that "It seems like you need to be a lawyer to work on free software today!" I sympathize with that feeling but I think it's misguided. The real problem is people who think they are lawyers.
Today, free/open/whatever software has thousands of people working on it, a peanut gallery of hundreds of thousands and companies with market caps in the billions. And it's all based on licenses whose legal implications have never been explained by anyone knowledgeable. You get these endless, nasty arguments about the GPL between developers. Small groups of them reach a consensus and then vilify anyone who violates the license as they understand it. No one seems to be interested in asking the opinion of anyone with a genuine clue.
Not to open a KDE/Gnome flamefest (there's a perfectly good one in the next story), but the Debian vs. KDE debate is a good example of this. The Debian project asserts, with an air of complete certainty, that distributing KDE binaries violates the GPL. KDE says it doesn't. Everyone else rants at each other. Does anyone actually know? Does anyone care to know?
I think it's necessary for someone with a pile of IPO cash -- Red Hat, VA, SuSe, Eric Raymond, somebody! -- to get some legal advice and actualy figure out what the GPL and other licenses mean. Better yet, hold a conference and invite some leading IP law professors. Then the rest of us can go back to clawing one another's eyes out without the need to preface it with IANAL.
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What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
And tabloids are just tabloids
And newspapers are just newspapers
And state-issued decrees are state-issued decreens
And military juntas are just military juntas
Freedom starts at home. Unless you are making your tiny piece of the world free you are part of the problem.
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Nobody has yet come up with an explanation of why it is that "The Community" has never, once, come up with a major original piece of work.
perl
Ogg Vorbis
Freenet
DRI
OpenAL
-- iCEBaLM
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All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
Maybe your right, but doing nothing and having no free alternative such as GNU Linux BSD etc leaves us powerless to the whims of large greedy corporations.
Look at DVD's for example. The supposedly free market decided to have region locking and content scabling, causing articfical scarcity (allows them to charge more) and grossly resticts fair use (but is useless to prevent industrial bootleggers who can copy bit for bit). The market will not do what is best for the customer.
These companies (cartels consortium and other variations on monopolies) have profit as their primary motivation, and so long as consumers neglect to excercise their buying power to force them to act other wise and voters are apathetic enough to let their politicians away without doing something about it, corporations will continue to do whatever they think they can get away with to make profit. companies have too much power and not enough responsibility
It is important not to cheapen the stuggle for freedom of the peoples of Tibet and East Timor, but it is also important that we continue and maintain our stuggle for freedom. Yes this may seem out of all scale and proportion but this is slashdot. Now would be a good time to remind you all of the hungersite.u ngerSite
http://www.thehungersite.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/H
(if anyone has a list of similar sites i would appreciate you posting them).
Software is just software people
Software is not just software, not just a mere tool, it is a vital part of what keeps our techonological society running the way it is. It can be an act of expression, even an art form. Just because its primary use is as a funtional tool do not deny its importance or fail to recognise how much of our way of life is influenced by it. Dont berate the geeks for failing to see the bigger picture and then fail to see how software fits into the bigger picture
A few points:
Just because you can freely copy something doesn't mean you should.
Just because you have to pay for something doesn't necessarily mean its bad.
From what I've been able to observe, the business model of free software revolves around service (ala Redhat and others), while the business model of conventional commercial software revolves around product. Linux has proven that commercial products don't necessarily produce a better product but its a little early in the game to predict and gloat over the demise of the commercial model. No matter what, altruism and geek innovation only carries things so far.
Some things you may actually have to pay for. Despite my anti-corporate tendencies and sympathies for the free software movement (even though I'm a techno-whore consultant), I think this insistence on ideological purity is a bit misguided.
Jonas Oberg writes: If freedom is of the most importance -- and it should be at all times -- the choice is always quite clear.
This, quite simply, bullshit. At least in the context of his post/essay. He doesn't mean freedom, as in freedom of choice, he means freedom as $0.00 and no repurcussions to modify/change/stamp your name on it and claim it for your own. He's actually arguing about restricting your freedom. Every once in a while, a vendor makes a product (and they want to be compensated for that product, and glowing peer review doesn't pay corporation's payroll expenses) and every once in a while its a product you either need or want. This guy suggests the honorable ideological response, that is, not to use it at all (rather than pirating it), but its still not very bright. It reminds me of a guy I took a foreign relations class with that kept insisting we needed to "do something" about Tibet. Sanctions? China just trades with someone else. The French, British, Germans, Japanese haven no problem with it. Invade? More people die than are already dying. Dialogue? It's what we are doing now. Its really all we can do. The situation, as unsavorable as it is, is something you have to deal with. Kinda like sometimes having to buy commercial software because a comparable free product isn't available and you don't have the time/money to develop it yourself.
I mean, I'd love to have my food and housing and transportation provided to me for free, and I'd churn out the code I really want to churn out (world creation simulations and games, of course) but reality is I have to pay my food, and housing, and transportation costs, so I charge money to write code I don't want to write. If a company writes software as its primary product, is it so unreasonable for a company to expect to get compensated when you use that product? Does it really make sense for you not to use that product because its not free, its source code isn't available? Even if its useful? Even if no competing product is as good? Even if you need to?
There are lots of cases where free software is superior to commercial software. There are also lots of cases where the reverse is true. You should use the one thats best for you or the company you work for, and not be constrained by some idealogue's idea of purity for the cause.
Consider that communications are essential to organizing a human rights movement. Computers and software are key to communications about human rights today in the way that free speech in a public square was during the American revolution.
If someone else controls our software, we have the potential for someone else to control our communications. We are getting close to scenarios of ubiquitous law enforcement with things like trusted client technology that has legitimate uses, but can also be used to stop your computer from carrying certain messages, like the radio-jammer "iron curtain" of the 50's and 60's.
Consider the people who are empowered in their everyday lives by the availability of low-cost software that they can customize to their needs and pass around to their peers with impunity. Think of the program that is placing Linux systems in the hands of Mexican students as one example.
Do not underestimate the importance of what we are doing here, folks.
Thanks
Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens.
Software is not "just software". It is a form of wealth, like any other useful human endeavor. Unlike the old forms of wealth, it is a form that can be replicated endlessly practically for free. Far from being a minor sideline in the struggle to bring justice to the world, software -- information wealth -- is an important player. For it is clear that wealth is a problem in poor countries; yes, they have bad governments (which need to be changed before anything else), but they are also poor. History has not shown any huge tendancies for individuals or societies to give physical wealth away. Individuals do give some; societies never do anything except transfers within. So how are we going to raise the standards of living of 5 billion people to match our own? Well, we can and will, at least in software wealth. And as information wealth becomes a larger fraction of total wealth, the better off the third world will be (potentially). But clearly, they will be better off without having that wealth sold to them at top-dollar rates by information owners. They are best off in an information commons, created largely by "us" (the rich west), but drawn upon by everyone.
As for voting vs software, I would happily trade my vote for access to the source of all the software I use. My vote, nifty though it is, has never done a damn bit of good (or bad) in the world, since no matter how often I exercise it, I always vote for losers. I have, however, written source 5, even 10 years ago that is still out there in the world, somewhere, doing a small little bit of good for somebody. A grand gesture that is useless, or a small piece of code that is useful? You make the call.
I really think someone should point out that there is no hidden section in the Linux Advocacy FAQ which says "Adopt the most pompous tone of voice possible. Imitate Jefferson when describing software licenses. Patronise. Speak ex cathedra. Above all, bore". And therefore, there is no need to imitate the prose styles of either Eric Raymond or Richard Stallman.
Despite what some think, the "Community" is not a Platonic Republic of beautiful people, creating wonders for the service of humanity. It's a bunch of noisy, egotistic, sometimes vicious people, attempting to knock off a version of Unix for personal amusement and gratification. Nobody has yet come up with an explanation of why it is that "The Community" has never, once, come up with a major original piece of work (don't talk to me about the Internet. Developed in academia and government, a completely different model). But it's quite clear; because there is a place for patents, to encourage investment in new invention (a bore would at this point quote the US Constitution).
And that's the point. There are horses for courses. Sensible, limited patent and copyrights help to stimulate creativity and reward people for doing really great stuff. They have their place. A totally "free" world would be one in which the rewards flowed to loud-mouthed blowhards who managed to steamroller their code through the intensely political process of an open source project, and then managed to lever their one or two projects into spokesmanship for "The Community", or even worse "My Tribe".
Don't believe me? Look at the main characters of the Free Software movement. How many of them don't have more or less serious ego issues? One, Alan Cox. An ego trip for talented programmers is, on balance a good thing. But it isn't a way of life, or a value system. And it doesn't deserve the language of the King James Bible.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Jesus...and all this time I thought it meant "root mean squared".
I just thought that everyone thought "root mean squaring" something was either really likeable or really objectionable.
Now, I'm gonna have to go back and actually read a whole bunch of articles over again. I thought you open source people were just excited to discover the power of squares and square-roots.