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Freedom or Power?
mpawlo writes: "As reported by Gnuheter, a new essay published by Bradley M. Kuhn and Richard M. Stallman carries the title "Freedom or Power?". The authors state something that we might have suspected from essays from Kuhn and Stallman before, but now is a little more clear, if still ambiguous: "However, one so-called freedom that we do not advocate is the "freedom to choose any license you want for software you write". We reject this because it is really a form of power, not a freedom." The essay is interesting in the light of an earlier essay published by Eric S Raymond. ... Tim O'Reilly started the debate with his weblog of July 28, 2001: My definition of freedom zero."
Ed. note - FWIW, Stallman and Kuhn are right. Not necessarily in their advocacy of the GPL, but certainly in their description of whether licensing is freedom for the developer or power over others. All licensing stems from copyright law, a completely man-made creation whose sole purpose is to give the writer of creative works artificial power over what others do with those works. If you take the canonical description of freedom ("Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins") and apply it to software, it's pretty clear that true freedom would not let one person control what another does with software.
true freedom would mean I can't be thrown in jail for murdering a bus full of kids
Kudos on a very insightful and reasonable post. The laws that stop people from committing crimes are totally artificial entities: I can't drive through stop lights because the law says I can't, regardless of the fact that I can slam the accelerator and technically I can drive through a stop light. I can't freely go into a tower and shoot at people not because it's hard to get a rifle into a tower, nor because the rifle magically stops working in said tower, but because the law doesn't look favourably on it, and society has mechanisms that prevent. Copyright laws are no less "real" than any of countless laws that allow society to function.
Rather than debate over the types of licences developers are allowed to choose for the software they write, we should instead look at whether it is OK to prevent developers from writing software.
As currently set up I can apply for a license [read Patent] that prevents others from using an idea. This is a much more fundamental issue that the debate over what rights a developer is willing to grant users in a software license. After all, there is nothing to prevent other software developers from producing a competing product providing we solve the patent issue.
At that point, if you do not like the fact that Eric releases some software with a proprietary license, anyone is free to create a competitive product and GPL it. Then the users can decide. Right now, with patents, creating a compatible clone can be impossible.
Author, "Software Craftsmanship The New Imperative" Addison-Wesley (C) 2002
This is what RMS means by freedom. I never have to worry about this under linux. Of course many opensource programers also make proprietary software for work which pays the bills. I think there should be some limits as to whats exceptable in an EULA for example. However as a user I have to make a choice between how much power do I want. Gnu ( power for me) or MS-EULA ( all strict power for ms), or somewhere in between with most software products. I am a poor part time college student so I choose GNU.
http://saveie6.com/
Or should the RIAA and MPAA and all their friends be allowed to write licenses that are contrary to the public interest.
I'm not sure I agree with Stallman about all which licenses are contrary to the public interest, but I agree they exist, and you should not have the "freedom" to use copyright law to enforce them....
However. If I write software, with my time, and my effort, then nobody is going to tell ME under what terms I may let someone else use it. Period.
But copyright law already does that. If you let anyone use your software, they CAN make archival backups. They CAN transfer the copyright and all archival materials to someone else. They CAN implement ANY idea embodied by the work and use it as their own intellectual property. The only thing you have control over is the specific expression you use.
Whereas I agree that posturing over whether one thing or another is freedom or power is semantic and will NOT lead to a logical conclusion to the argument, I am almost completely unconvinced that copyright law as it currently applies to software is appropriate. It can be redefined however the government sees fit - its purpose, after all, is to encourage people to create works for limited time protection, so that public domain eventually becomes quite rich in intellectual property.
Currently many people are finding it less costly in the long run to create new operating systems instead of using those commercially available. That alone tells you we have had a near complete failure of the laws on software IP. It is long past due for a change.
GNU wants to give you freedom.
Nobody has the freedom to do things that are harmful to others. Nobody complains about not having the "freedom" to kill people, because that's not a freedom people have.
Similarly, GNU grants you every freedom except one - you can't take freedom away from other people by relicensing the software with restrictive conditions that don't give the people the same freedom you had.
To take freedom away from people, (i.e. not giving them the freedom that you had) is not a freedom - it's an issue of power. Just as taking someone's life or property away from them is not a freedom, taking someone's freedom away from them is also not a freedom with respect to software.
So it's not that GNU is "denying" you the freedom to license as you see fit, they just want to deny you the ability to take freedom away from other people, which itself isn't a freedom.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Almost everyone of the "RMS should mind his own business" posts here ignores the key argument that he makes. That freedom cannot be limited only to the producer, but also must be extended to the consumer (the code user here). This cannot simply be a bad choice one vs bad choice two, but needs to extend to some of the realities of the world. While it may be simple to say, "well, I have the freedom to make my own software" (which for obvious reasons isn't true for the vast majority of people) is false becase of the power pattents grant.
They are arbitrary, not some divine (or as Rand would say, nature) given right. Say we live in a world where the software producer has total "freedom" to do what he or she would like. O'Riley and ERS would say that no one should have the "power" to take their right to this property away from them. What if the software or hardware pioneers had placed a pattent on a logic gate, or the word proccessor, or the browser, or any number of other broad areas like this. Think of how it would impact the rest of society, this untaped knowledge and technology that is now held from the public behind the iron bars of pattent and property. Sure, in theory I have the ability to say, I don't want to use product ABC with license requirements XYZ, but in pratice no such ability exists, as I must also sustain myself physically (food shelter, etc come to mind).
The reality is that our actions inharently effect others, and the (IMHO) simple way of looking at property, code in this case, as comming with a absolute freedom/power to decide how others use it not only makes little sense philosophically, but also pratically.
(sorry for the typos by the way)
I have special skills (as do many here), I can transform code into working, useful applications, libraries, patches, whatever. It's what I do to sustain myself in an employment capacity.
So, if I write some code at home, for myself, I can't even decide to keep it a secret. I have to release it and it has to be released under the GNU license because otherwise I'll be infringing on the freedoms of others in my power hungry quest for world domination. Yeah, right.
Where's my freedom now ? It's strange that I might want to sell some of my software and give others away, and even write some just for my own pleasure. That's freedom, the freedom of choice, and quite frankly, RMS's infringing my rights to choose far more than Bill Gates has ever tried to do.
So RMS, what do I do to live ? Sweep streets during the day, and write code all night so I preserve the freedom of others.
You've lost the plot buddy. Give the game away.
RMS,
/. community agree with you, people/corporations ought to open up certain projects, as open source is good for the customer - but the notion that somehow software developers are somehow morally obligated to GPL their work is completely nuts.
:)
Please review Locke. People have property rights. If I put my efforts into thing X I have property rights to thing X and thus it is morally permissible for me, not you to decide how to distribute X, if at all.
I, and many others here in the
The ideals behind socialisms, either those of government or those of software, do not work. Without the ability to distribute property (of which software is a type) as one sees fit, one loses much economic incentive to develop in the first place.
Please RMS, check your ego just a little bit and town down the sensationalism, its starting to get rather tired.
Besides, some of my code is far to ugly to ever be open-sourced
Cordially,
Andrew Murray University of Washington
If you think at all like me, then your answers are yes, yes, no. I think that if you buy a toy, then you should be able to take it apart and see what else you can make it do. If you buy Windows, you should be able to sell it to someone else after you are done using it. Quoting a paragraph from a book should be fair use.
And yet the Tivo usage agreement says something about no reverse engineering or disassembling. Microsoft does not let you sell copies of Windows, even if you no longer use it. The third example is a right of consumers that is respected by volumes of law. How are they all similar? In every case the author releases their work under a restrictive license. In all three cases I think the restriction should not be legally binding. This means that I think that creators should not be allowed to release their work under any license they choose. I think there are restrictions that should not be enforced, and license "agreements" that I believe do not mean anything. This is what RMS is saying.
I think what Stallman really means is who has the power? You as teh developer or the user.
In other words, the guy who did the work, or somebody else with whom he chose to share?
Stallman's logic is that the world would be better if we didn't get paid for our work. Like all Communists, he thinks the economy is a zero sum game, in which the current level of wealth could be distributed equally to all and all would be comfortable.
It doesn't occur to him that if it weren't for proprietary licenses, computing would still be in the "Altair box I built in my basement" level for the masses, I.E., the masses ain't got it.
His kind of freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose; nothing of any value, anyway.
The PC hardware which is his primary platform, and which allowed the growth of the low-cost market that is the primary user of his software, wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for Microsoft. They suck, and I don't chose to use their software, but nevertheless I wouldn't have this Linux laptop on which I type this if IBM hadn't had a market to sell it to in sufficent quantity to justify making it and charging a price I could afford, and THAT market chooses Windows every day.
Fortunately the people of the US aren't nuts enough to elect legislators that would enact Stallman's ridiculous agenda. The intelligent stance in computing is to use the right tool for the job, whether that's a processor, a compiler, and OS, or a license.
Communist raisin, I rebuke thee.
Similarly, the ONLY action GNU wants to take away from you is your ability to take freedom away from other people. I think that's perfectly spelled out in the GPL. People don't have the right to take freedom from other people.
It'll be interesting to hear your explanation of how I can "take freedom from other people" by writing my own software and offering it under license terms of my own choosing.
If you honestly believe what you wrote, you're not talking about power, or even ideology. You're talking about religion.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
This argument by RMS is essentially about power -- HIS power. Bill Gates wants to force you to give him money in exchange for software. RMS wants to force you to give him the source code with any software you write.
Both arguments are essentially about the person doing the arguing, not the person on the other end of the transaction.
The right to choose the license under which you will release the work you do is probably the most fundamental freedom of all. Being forced to give away source code, whether you like it or not, is essentially forced bondage.
The GPL as written is an amazing document, one that does an excellent job of balancing freedoms for all parties involved in software distribution. But it doesn't suit all purposes or all situations. Trying to force it into all transactions is an abrogation of freedoms, not an extension.
No, I believe the point that the previous poster was making is that property rights are not absolute. Setting up a straw man like that does not logically make a good point. For example, if I was to own all of the realistate, does that mean you should have no where to live. Its all about finding what is overall optimal, and I don't think that would be in a system where property "rights" are weighed over people's basic needs.
So, OSS is going to have to do what M$ does, and that is buy into the government through a lobbying system.
One reason some anarchists revile Noam Chomsky is because he advocates such activities to achieve the ultimate goal of a hierarchal-less society: in effect, working from within the system to change it, which is inherently contradictory to the very concept of autonomous free zones, etc. (I don't follow this line of thinking myself, but the idea is out there.)
Your characterization of anarchism is unfounded; it is not about defining freedoms, it is about the expectation that human beings are not children to be sheparded through their lives by external conventions or traditional modes of living, thinking and feeling. Anarchism, as a mode of thought, simply expects people to be grown-ups. Most people who have anything to say about the subject--which is to say, most people who are not in any shape or form an anarchist--fail to notice this component of it in their mad rush to disavow any possibility that human beings can live this way.
If you're really seeking to understand "anarchy" from a workable economic perspective, go to parecon.org for more information.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, The Histories
Who appointed Stallman God?
Nobody, of course you're free to ignore him.
In his own way he is just as bad as Bill Gates, for they are both trying to dictate the terms under which we can distribute the software we write, or use the software we use that has been written by others
The only thing he attempts to prevent people from doing is taking freedom away from other people.
I reject both of them for trying to control what I do with the code I write. When I write something, _I_ should have control under the provisions it is licensed under.
One of the underlying assumptions that GNU has, (which I happen to agree with) is that programs are generally useful technical information, just like mathematical formulas or cooking recipies. If you invented a new way of doing math, would you think that you have the right come hell or high water to keep people from using it if you wanted to? Most people don't think so because they realize that math is something too important and too useful to let one person have a chokehold over. Same goes with programs.
So you reject someone dictating terms to you about how you distribute your program. I reject your bullshit laws that throw me in prison for helping a friend out by copying software, and your nonsense regulations telling me I can't use a common sense algorithm in my programs, that instead I am mandated by law to go around my elbow to get to my ass.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
It'll be interesting to hear your explanation of how I can "take freedom from other people" by writing my own software and offering it under license terms of my own choosing
Simple - people should have the freedom to use software. See the free software definition. When you license software under a non-free software license, you take away my freedoms as listed by the free software definition.
Programs, like math formulas, like cooking recipies, like common sense, are generally useful technical information. They help advance society, and it's wrong for someone to deny that to people, just like it's wrong to deny people the ability to use common sense ideas and methods, (read: one click shopping) just like it's wrong to deny people to make use of information that can help them. (think of banning people from using calculus unless they paid a licensing fee)
If you honestly believe what you wrote, you're not talking about power, or even ideology. You're talking about religion
Huh? Where did you get this? My feeling is that you're just trying to brand an idea a religion, (read up on the definition, and I think you'll see the error in this) so that you can slag it. That's what we call a strawman argument.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Would this be a free license? Besides the obvious point that the license would become completely free at some point in the future, there's the practical matter that it will not affect RMS's ability to use my code in any way - the alternative to the RMS-free license is that I don't let anyone see the code (or not without explicit compensation in terms of salary or licensing fees). The only people affected are the 6,127,317,984 people who are neither RMS nor I.
What's the alternative? Is anyone seriously suggesting that I must publish all code I write? If so, why are programmers different from, oh, lawyers? (They must represent anyone who demands their services, without compensation.) Or doctors and dentists? Or taxi drivers. Or anyone else in the service sector?
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Freedom and private property go hand in hand. They are mutually inclusive concepts and cannot exist without each other. This is one reason communism cannot work.., there can be no true practical freedon if we do not have the right to claim things as our own and that includes, as others have already written, the right to express control over our creations.
The choice to give it away, or destroy it is the decision of the creator of that work.
...and that's the end of our show. Donk!
No wonder you're paranoid. You don't understand anything about XP activation. First off, installing software will not affect your activation status. Only installing/replacing hardware can do that (and you have to replace something like six different pieces before you need to reactivate). Also, you can reinstall as many times as you like. You can reactivate up to 10 times, at which point you'll need to call Microsoft on the 11th reactivation. You do not need to buy a new license, nor do anything but tell them you're reactivating, and it's done. Finally, if you bought XP for business use, why didn't your business by a license pack? Buying XP licenses in bulk (5+ licenses, I believe) allows you to not have to bother with activating the system. Perhaps you should research these things a bit more before you start in with the paranoia, eh?
It seems to me that the big argument here is about ownership and property rights, which everyone has strong opinions about, pro and con. However, maybe there is another approach that will make some sense to everyone. Maybe we should think of developers as guardians of their code instead of owners.
The analogy is that of a parent to a child. I don't own my child; she is free to live her own life. But I do have power over her. I gave birth to her and I have the responsibility to raise her until she is old enough to live on her own. As long as I am her guardian, I have the right, in fact the obligation, to make choices that affect her life. I decide what kind of education to give her, what morals to teach her, etc. And it's my right and obligation to protect her in her interactions with others. I set these limits because I want her to become a good, productive,giving member of society.
My code can be like my child (how many developers think of their code as their "baby"?) I created it and I put effort into improving it. I want it to become useful to others. Might I then also have the right to be its guardian and maintain custody of it when I release it into the world? Do I have the freedom to choose how I want others to use it? What do you think?
This is an oversimplification of the slave (user) view of power. As a master (developer), with power over others, granting freedom is a dissolution of power. As far as I can tell, the Tao De Ching, RMS and The Holy Reverend Polyfather feel this is the only justifiable use of power: giving it to others.
MS's use of power is the reverse: the concatenation of power, into larger pools controlled by smaller numbers of people. This reinforces the master/slave relationship, which ultimately devalues everyone involved.
The GPL is a powerful tool for creating freedom. Not everthing falls into a simple top-down heirarchy.
Plus your analogy to home defense is FUD. Is anyone brutally reverse engineering your code to rob you? If they are, is your EULA going to do a damn thing about it? How will you ever know for certain?
Most people don't think so because they realize that math is something too important and too useful to let one person have a chokehold over. Same goes with programs.
Wrong, fundamentally.
Programs are a product. They are a manufactured good that, when combined with a type of electronic hardware, performs a certain pattern of calculations, and interprets the results of those calculations to produce information. They are the application of pure logic and hardware and as such have inherent value as capital goods.
Theorems [for brevity I'll lump all mathematical research into that of theorems] are scientific principles that have no inherent capital value. They are ideas that can be applied to capital goods, but theorems are not capital goods in and of themselves because there is no market for them. There is a prestige market for math research, but everyone's still gotta eat.
Programs are created by programmers. Theorems are derived by mathematicians. Programmers get paid for their output, not their capabilities. Write X, get Y. Mathematicians get paid for being capable of figuring things out. Think about X, get Y.
The point is that money is what makes the world work, and if something, such as mathematical research, isn't worth money by itself (thus being sellable), nobody's going to bother trying to own it. This means that math != software, period.
Oversimplification? Hardly.
Your notion of granting freedom to others as a dissolution of power is just plain wrong. It is a transfer of power. Those who receive the freedom obtain the power that goes with it, including the power to enforce the GPL against those who wrongfully derive from their own work. In fact, it is a power mulitiplier. The author has given some (but not all) power up to the licensees. However, each of those licensees have gained power that approaches that of the original author -- especially with regard to derived work. In a sense, the GPL is an empowering tool, not a destroyer of power.
Your "criticism" of my home defense example is confused and confusing. Not surprising given that you don't seem to understand what FUD is.
PS. I don't rely on EULAs. I use free software.
The freedom to do what I want with my creations is just that -- a freedom.
If I want to write software that I then shred, that's my right. Stallman would force me to give it away.
Screw Stallman.
You are all crying that RMS is taking away your choice as to what license to chose. You want to chose the license for your code, whatever it may be.
I do understand that.
But why are you all advocating the GPL? The GPL forces you to use itself if you alter the program and redistribute it, even if you nearly changed the whole thing. It provides exactly the lock-in that RMS advocates in his article.
If all programs were GPL'ed and we Linux had 95% market share, I would be forced to use the GPL if I wanted to release a program because I sure as hell would link to some library.
Anybody who is against these views by the FSF should use a BSD style license and definitely not the GPL.
Because I want to see a return for my labour. Letting someone give away my product (that's what it is - I produce it) gains me nothing, when I need to see a return for my time. Sure, you can argue that software is overpriced, and marginal costs are low etc etc, but I still need to see a return. I simply can't do that if everyone is free to distribute my work. If you choose to distribute your work for free, that's fine, but I want to distribute mine for money.
You are asking for the ability to choose what someone else is allowed to do. You want the "power" to tell someone else "You can see this, but you can't use what you see" Damn right I do. Our societies choose these things all the time. I can't smoke drugs legally in this country, that's a decision society has made, choosing what I'm allowed to do.
If you invented a new way of doing math, would you think that you have the right come hell or high water to keep people from using it if you wanted to?
Damn straight I do.
I completely reject the concept that I have to show anything I invent to ANYONE. Ultimately I always have the right and ability to destroy any writings, calculations or code that I author before I show it to anyone.
Given the fundamental freedom to keep my thoughts to myself, it is up to you to come up with a way to encourage me to share my inventions with others. This is what intellectual property is all about - encouraging creators to share their work. If you don't like IP, well too bad, because I am not going to give you my work just for your pleasure or convenience.
I reject your bullshit laws that throw me in prison for helping a friend out by copying software
It's not for you to reject. Copyrights and Patents are explicit contracts between the government and the author. If you don't like it, it's up to you to come up with an alternative that authors like better.
Otherwise many will just rm -rf the recipe.
Maybe it's helpful to analyze the point of the GPL in those terms. Like it says, general copyright does not (and cannot) proscribe or prohibit most kinds of use. Modification and redistribution are protected by the GPL and restricted by copyright.
As I read the story, RMS and Kuhn reject the idea of any license which allows anyone down the line to restrict the modification and redistribution rights provided by the GPL. Their moral imperative is to promote sharing, and they recognize that the cost of that is to restrict certain activities of developers down the line.
It's a definite spectrum, but I don't think the FSF is so far on one end as the apparent prevailing opinion of story posters so far would have you believe.
how to invest, a novice's guide
What the authors are saying is that power is asserting your will on other people, that copyright law makes software authors enforce that power, and that that situation removes freedoms from users and other developers.
As you can guess, they're against it. So they recommend the GPL as a means of guaranteeing those freedoms. They do not say that the GPL is the only way of doing so, and they do not say that other licenses should be prohibited by legal or social means.
They only say that certain freedoms are important, that the GPL protects them, and that they do not advocate licenses that restrict those freedoms. Perhaps implicit in this is the idea that licenses proscribing usage guidelines are either pragmatically or legally unenforcable. So the "use" card is useless.
I'm beginning to think that several people intentionally read too much into this for a convenient excuse to complain. (This last comment is not directed at Twisted Logic, who correctly points out that choosing not to use a piece of software is a basic freedom.)
how to invest, a novice's guide
When I write something, _I_ should have control under the provisions it is licensed under.
The question isn't really so much whether you should control the terms of the license, as whether being able to 'license' software has any validity, period. The question is whether society should reserve the right for developers to control how members of that society use the software they write and distribute. And yes, this 'right' to which you lay claim is not a law of nature, but a social construct.
It's very easy to understand why developers might prefer to retain control. What is not clear is whether and why society should prefer this arrangement. If society should give you this right, what does society gain in return?
Or is social progress irrelevant? Is there some legal precept paramount to the greater social good?
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
Fascinating. I was unaware of any society where people were granted total freedom to decide how the fruits of their labour are used.
For an example, I suggest the razor blade. Many people (mostly men) use this device to remove facial hair, and many other people (mostly women) use it to remove leg hair. Some other people use it to remove hair in ... other places.
Do you see the razor companies trying to tell you where to put your razor?
Huh.
And that's not even getting into the fact that the razors are actually being made by people (well, ok, by machines controlled by people); these people, somehow, do not seem to mind the idea that porn stars might use the fruits of their labour in an unusual way.
This is capitalism, folks. You just don't get to decide what other people do with the things you make, once you've sold those things to them.
It's the copyright control freaks who want to setup a non-capitalist state, IMO; if you look back in time, to a time when there were large organizations which held state-sponsored monopolies over certain industries, we called that system of economics feudalism.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
RMS is using an unusual set of terms in this essay. He's using "power" and "freedom" in ways that they are not normally used.
Fortunately, he has the good sense to define his terms.
He defines freedom as:
Conversely, he defines power as:
Under this definition, the first freedom you mention is actually a freedom, not power. The ability to make decisions about who can enter the home where you live is an ability to make decisions that affect mainly you. Most people do not want to enter your home (even if you're Mr. Popular, there are billions of people on the earth :) and are not affected at all; even the ones who do want to visit you, most do not want to force themselves upon you, and the burglars and so on who might want to visit you despite your not welcoming them are not affected nearly as much by your refusal to grant them entry as you would be affected by their entry.
I won't deal with the free-speech example, because it's empty. There is never power to prevent government censorship; the government is the agent of power - when it is powerless, it is not a government.
And, lastly, RMS defends the GPL as being a necessary evil. In a more logical world, the GPL would not have to exist.
I don't know if I agree with RMS, but it's clear you didn't understand him.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Your simple post is attractive for its conciseness, but you conflate the power to take away freedoms and the power to protect freedom. They are different.
The distinction is actually rather obvious. You have the freedom to do anything you like except take away freedoms. You are being too simplistic with your notion of "power"- It's not that all power is bad, but rather that power when used to take away important freedoms is bad.
The GPL takes away no more freedom than is necessary to preserve freedom, and in a world where no one is able to take away your freedom to use information (i.e., a world without copyright), the GPL becomes unenforcable, you're right- but also unnecessary. I can only guess that those shouting loudest about how the GPL takes away freedoms must be paid by microsoft, because the only freedom it takes away is your right to keep someone else from having the same freedoms you have, and the only beneficiaries of such a system would be those who want to take the work of the community and make it exclusively their own.
Your "right to defend my home" example presumes you have an exclusive right to the object you are protecting. Intellectual property doesn't work this way though- the government grants you a temporary monopoly, it is not yours by right but rather because the framers of the constitution thought it would be a good bargain that would maximize social benefit. Unfortunately, they were wrong.
Your "censorship" example raises a good point. Everyone has the right to say that certain things ought not be said, but no one has the right to *keep people from saying those things*. Where is the freedom to censor? It is incompatible with free speech, and free speech is a fundamental right, so it trumps the "freedom to censor". Similarly, the freedom to take away other people's right to use software is incompatible with the freedom to use and modify software for any purpose.
No wishing for more wishes. -the djinni
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
is wholly incorrect. The Open Source movement began years after the Free Software movement began. The goals of both movements are dramatically different. One must understand the underlying ethics of a movement to understand a movement; the ethics that make the Free Software movement what it is are purposefully not present in the Open Source movement. You are expressing a lack of respect and incorrect authorship to credit the GNU GPL as a work of the Open Source movement. For more on this topic please see the Usenet thread starting with this article where precisely this problem was recently discussed at some length. Another valuable source of information are RMS' speeches. He explains clearly why the Open Source movement is not his movement. Please take the time to understand the ethics and history of the Free Software movement so you will not make this crediting mistake again.
No. The Free Software movement and the GNU GPL were made to give people certain freedoms in software. Fighting hierarchies (whatever that means) conveys a profound misunderstanding of what the Free Software movement, the concept of copyleft (key to understanding the GNU GPL) or the GNU GPL are all about.
I disagree with your interpretation of Tim's "0"
... I OWN that code lock, stock and main() ... nobody else has a copy of it or even any idea about the functionality I've created ... it is ALL mine ... now I have a decision to make ...
... in which case, it will never realize it's potential as a "killer app", I can sell it, or I can give it away (in truth there exist more than just that one shade of gray (sell it) in between the black (keep it to myself) and the white (give it away), but for the argument, we're simplifying)
... Stahlman says it's HIS right to tell me what to do ... not only is it morally wrong for me to sell this product of my imagination, it is morally wrong for me to keep it to myself!
... IIRC, it only began with the rise of the OSI and ESR's ascendancy (and challenge to RMS's primacy) as an OSS/FS spokesman. For my money (as both a user and a developer), I'd rather have Eric guarding my freedom than Richard. The way the debate has developed, Eric would allow me, as a user, to choose between the alternatives, Stahlman acts as if there IS no alternative. As a developer, Eric would let me license my software any way I wished. Richard says I use GPL or I act immorally. From one who falls on both sides of the equation, I find that MY freedom is maximized by ESR's point of view, and, ignoring my puny development efforts, as a consumer of software, I find that my own freedom is again maximized under the Raymond/O'Reilly plan.
When I first read his piece a couple of weeks back, it was my understanding that Freedom 0 (in the software context) was the base freedom upon which everything else would be built.
This interpretation stems from the following chain of logic:
I right a piece of code that becomes (in my mind) the next "killer app"
I can keep it to myself
Now, who has the right to decide what I do?
O'Reilly and ESR say the decision is mine (I tend to agree)
This debate over a developer's right to choose is a rather recent development
Give it up Richard. Your grab for power over developers will never work. I am a Free/Open Source Software advocate, but your rhetoric is no longer convincing, even to me. The question is not "Whose freedom do we maximize?" it is "How is freedom maximized?" The answer is obvious.
utter rubbish
Does your boss know you feel this way? I'll take 'craft', but not 'art'. A work of art is a work of man created to induce or display emotion.
The product of a craft is that of a highly skilled individual who may take a creative approach to solving or creating the product, but it does not express anything more than its utility.
Let me put it this way: If you've ever cried looking at code, you need professional help, or you need to get out and see some REAL art.
I think Kuhn and RMS have a very convoluted view of the nature of individual power.
First of all, picking a copyright licence, GPL or not is precisly "to make decisions that affect others more than you". Under the GPL, the author grants some, but not all of the "exclusive rights" given to him by the Copyright Act. If Kuhn and RMS believe that retaining exclusive rights is an "exercise of power" per their definition of this term, then they should advocate placing software into the public domain. Instead they retain some of the power to exclude and use it to achieve their particular agenda. That agenda is not a bad one, but the idea that it is the only one that is acceptable is ludicrous.
In no sense is the exclusion of others from using your software for their own proprietary interests "being able to make decisions that affect mainly you". Who are they talking to when they say "you"? They drift back and forth between the interests of the users, authors, and other developers so it's hard to tell. Their definition of power focuses on "you" being the decision maker, ie the author, so deciding conditions for the exercise of your exclusive rights your code definitely "affects mainly others", since it will be the basis for the exercise of governmental force against them if they violate it.
The essay really moves to the far far left fringe. I think MS was wrong when they called the GPL "un-American", but with essays like this, they aren't far of the mark. The idea that exercising a "right to exclude" is a "power" (presumed bad) and not a "freedom", is simply contrary to mainstream American values. Isn't property by definition an exclusive right? In fact, all rights involve defining a space of action and giving exclusive moral sanction in that space to somebody and denying it to either the government or others or both.
Current copyright law places us in the position of power over users of our code, whether we like it or not. The ethical response to this situation is to proclaim freedom for each user, just as the Bill of Rights was supposed to exercise government power by guaranteeing each citizen's freedoms.
The first sentence is profoundly wrong. If you don't want to be in a "position of power", simply proclaim the software public domain. Of course, the GPL doesn't do this, which compounds the error with hypocracy.
Next follows the most troubling part of the whole essay: that last quoted sentence is a whopper. The implication that it is unethical to exercise your rights if those involve excluding others is the essence of the communist belief system. The Bill of Rights restricts government from violating individual rights, and most prominent among these is the right to property, which includes proprietary interests in intellectual property as a subset of statutory and contractual assets generally.
In summary, the essay is a convoluted parade of offsetting errors: the GPL violates the very principle the authors imply is "unethical" (retaining exclusive rights = "power") , but the idea that it is unethical to exclude others from your property is a far worse concept.
What you are describing is what communist militia did after it got power in Russia and any other states.
Communism (what this essay is really about) is beautiful, but it cannot be legislated, because that DOES limit the freedom of the developer.
Free Software is gaining momentum right now.. I think it will reach a nice balance some day - and I say, let the best man win. Microsoft is a monopoly, but they will not be one forever.. they would be the first such case if it did happen. They cannot protect their monopoly against Free Software, because it's the perfect weapon. Have patience. The Free Software lobby must only fight for its right to exist. Lobbying for the destruction of copyright law can only work to their detriment, and is not a good solution in the first place.
janimal
Anarchy has hippocracy at its core. It wants total "freedom", and you must agree. It would seem as though any form of government fits as a subset of anarchy, how can you deny the freedom to create a system without being non-anarchistic (that isnt even a word is it)? Freedom to control is still a freedom.