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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.
ends where my face begins.
The fundamental problem with anarchism lies in this statement. Open Source's GPL itself requires a heirarchy to maintain it, although it was designed to fight a heirarchy.
You need a body of people who act similarly to the RIAA or whomever, investigating people's GPL licenses and behaviors with Open Source software and its derivatives.
Of course, the "GPL police" would wind up chasing large corporations or developers who wish to appropriate GPL'd tech in closed source projects. This would make them rather ineffective, due to the financial disparities between the OSS movement and corporations.
So, OSS is going to have to do what M$ does, and that is buy into the government through a lobbying system.
Goat sex free since 2001
I don't understand RMS's obsession with powerless freedom.
Any freedom that means something is, in some way, an expression of power.
The freedom to own my own home and house my family is meaningless unless I can exercise the power to keep others out.
The freedom to speak out against the government is empty unless there is power to prevent government censorship.
The GPL's guarantees of freedom to take, use, modify and distribute source code are meaningless without the power to enforce them.
Freedom without power is no freedom at all.
Who appointed Stallman God? 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.
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.
When I use software from others I have to make a choice about what license provisions I will agree to. These days I have a lot of choices. I like it that way.
I am perfectly capable of making my own decisions in this regard - and I cannot stomach the idea of others trying to make them for me.
I think RMS and the FSF are going to start losing ground, because they're going to fall into the trap of many politicians who want to change the world: they're going to offend the moderates.
I'm speaking as a USian, of course. As everyone knows, despite the media's obsession with polarized (right and left) politics, the US population is really a vast pool of people with relatively moderate views. Sure, some of them are sharply polarized about *issues* (abortion rights, the economy, whatever), but by and large, they're in the middle of the political spectrum. The first thing a candidate does is hit up his support of the issues while trying to not appear too far to one side, lest he offend the moderates.
There are a lot of people who like the GPL, because it prevents proprietary lock-in and helps create a sense of empowerment and community. The problem, I feel, is that once you put the GPL in your code, you're putting it (and yourself) into the "camp" of the FSF. You're now essentially signing on to the RMS/FSF game plan, even if all you wanted was to see your code not get folded into a proprietary product, and let as many people as possible play with things.
MS kept saying, once you start down the path of the GPL, there's no going back. I hate to say it, but maybe they're right. For all their talk about a software "ecosystem", contrasted against stuff like this, it makes me think they (MS) might have been right after all.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
I can't be thrown in jail for murdering a bus full of kids.
It depends on how you murder the bus. If you put the bus inside a compactor then yes, the kids will die and you should go to jail. If you just climb on the bus, hit the floor with your fists a dozen times, and proclaim "the bus is dead now", you will hardly be thrown in jail for making the kids laugh.
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/
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.
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.
A software license is simply a contract. If the contract says, "in exchange for the use of this software, I agree not to give copies of it away" or whatever, that's not fundamentally different from a contract that says, "in exchange for the use of this software and source code, I agree to publish any changes I make to it".
In no case are you coerced into agreeing to a software license (and if you were, then the crime against freedom would be the coercion, not the license). If RMS says he's opposed to the freedom to choose a "restrictive" license (as if the GPL weren't restrictive...), then what he means to say is that he's opposed to unlimited freedom of contract.
I won't even expound on my personal feelings on the matter, I just think RMS should say what he means.
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?
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
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