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Free Software, Free Society
What's between the covers Free Software, Free Society is divided into four sections:
- One: The GNU Project and Free Software (10 chapters)
- Two: Copyright, Copyleft, and Patents (6 chapters)
- Three: Freedom, Society and Software (5 chapters)
- Four: The Licenses
The book starts off on a good note. Key to understanding nearly everything in the book is a basic understanding of what source code is. Since Stallman's usual audiences don't need to have this explained, Richard E. Buckman and book editor Joshua Gay provide a three-page introduction ("A Note on Software") which is as good and concise an explanation as I've ever seen of the meaning of "source code," "compiler," "assembler," "machine code" and "operating system." Without quibbling over details that space has made them gloss over, this section is a good mental boot camp for anyone reading the book with no programming knowledge at all.
This note is followed by a topic guide which walks a prospective reader through the contents of the book better than a table of contents can, pointing out what concepts are dealt with in the book's chapters, a sort of micro-index. (And in a book this brief, it helps make up for the lack of a more thorough index.)
Lawrence Lessig's introduction largely repeats what Lessig has said in the past about the openness of software. One paragraph in particular sums up one of my favorite analogies when it comes to Free software, and one which I think translates well to those familiar with other fields, like art and architecture:
"... Law firms have enough incentive to produce great briefs even though the stuff they build can be taken and copied by someone else. The lawyer is a craftsman; his or her product is public. Yet the crafting is not charity. Lawyers get paid; the public doesn't demand such work without price. Instead this economy flourishes, with later work added to the earlier."
Old hat, new hat.
Those familiar with Richard Stallman will no doubt recognize at least some of these essays, or at least their cores, because of the persistence with which Stallman has spread the word of the origins and underlying philosophies of the GNU project and the Free Software Foundation. The first chapters of the book may bore readers who have heard dozens of times the story of Stallman's experiences with the Incompatible Timesharing System (ITS) in the MIT AI lab, the dissolution of the software-sharing society there, and how it directly led to his quest for a complete Free operating system. Stallman is an engaging writer, though, and I found myself enjoying it even though I have heard the story several times before.
The chapter in this section most likely to trouble those set in conventional thinking when it comes to software is Chapter 4, "Why Software Should Not Have Owners."
Despite the title, the book does not consist entirely of essays; it also includes a transcript of Stallman's speech at NYU in May of 2001, which shows how consistent Stallman's speaking is with his writing style. Some people have derided Stallman (and the FSF) as too academic, removed from the realities of normal computer users and the business world which right now implicitly favors non-Free software, so it's interesting to note the context of that speech -- it was a direct, welcome reaction to the prodding of Microsoft Vice President Craig Mundie's speech on the same campus earlier the same month, in which Mundie casually referred to the "viral aspect" of the GPL, and declared that Free software "puts at risk the continued vitality of the independent software sector."
There's also Stallman's short story "The Right to Read" and even (Chapter 10) the text and score of the Free Software Song. 'The Right to Read" may be the part of the book most appropriate for reprinting in tract form to leave around public libraries: this is a story, not quite hypothetical enough, about a future where every time a book is read, it must be unlocked with a password and authorized by those who hold the strings of copyright -- and sharing books is prohibited. Replace "books" with "e-books" and the story becomes less an allegory as a description of current reality.
Just as current are Chapters 12 ("Misinterpreting Copyright -- A Series of Errors") and 16 ("The Danger of Software Patents"). Stallman's arguments here, despite his protests that practicality is secondary to ethical interests, are eminently practical and should be read by everyone whose work touches either copyright or patents. And contrary to disparagement sometimes heaped on the Free software movement, he does not dismiss either of these in toto -- he simply points out forcefully ways in which these protections can be dangerously perverted.
Some of Free Software, Free Society's contents may strike readers (whatever their level of interest) as needlessly pedantic. I'm thinking here specifically of Chapter 21, "Words to Avoid," which lists 14 words and phrases Stallman discourages in the context of Free software as he defines it. On second glance, I think even this chapter is well suited to the book, since the reasoning presented for his objections to each word on this list (a paragraph or two apiece) will be most informative to people not already steeped in the lore and leanings of the Free Software movement. Some of these (I'll tease by saying that the entry for "content" is my favorite) squeeze in some humor as well.
Stallman's philosophy is what drives his attachment to Free software, but this book is not just a collection of harangues -- there's a great deal of practical advice as well.
Chapter 8, "Selling Free Software" is an essay found in earlier form on the GNU website, which in a few hundred words obliterates a persistent myth about Free software -- that it can't be sold or can't make its sellers a profit. Stallman emphasizes the differences that the GPL has on distribution terms, but lays out the terms clearly:
"Except for one special situation*, The GNU General Public License (GNU 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, so don't complain to us if nobody wants to pay a billion dollars for a copy."
Helpfully, that older chapter is preceded by one written earlier this year, "Releasing Free Software if You Work at a University." This is a particularly short chapter -- it takes up only two pages -- but the brevity is to Stallman's credit. I would like to see many more case studies beyond the single example presented (a GNU Ada compiler developed at NYU with Air Force funding, with a contract that specified its source code would be donated to the FSF) but these would probably be better in a book with a narrower scope. By not dwelling on unneeded specifics, Stallman has saved space to explain arguments and tactics which may be useful in persuading your school to endorse a Free software license. I also learned in this chapter that "The University of Texas has a policy that, by default, all software developed there is released as free software under the GNU General Public License." (Can anyone tell me more schools where this is true?)
The practical upshot of a philosophical book. Free Software, Free Society is not a book for casual reading, and has no thrills, cliffhangers or suspense -- unless you apply the thoughts within to current, real situations, in which case you can probably find more excitement than you might care for. When Stallman wrote "The Right to Read," no one had yet been arrested for making eBooks accessible or copyable. This book is intentionally didactic and persuasive.
Your library (local or school) should carry a copy of this book because it is distillation of ideas that are philosophically important but by no means abstract. And if the libraries available to you don't carry it, I suggest filling out a book request form -- which you may be able to do right from your computer. (Here are two online examples from Yale and New York City's branch libraries.) Likewise for (as appropriate) your school's computer science department, law school and business school. It would also make a nice gift to your Congressional representatives, since many of them seem to have forgotten that preserving a free society supposed to be their highest aim.
This is a book worth buying, reading, and passing on.
* That exception is when source code is not physically included with binaries; the source code must then be available upon request from the binaries' provider.
You can purchase Free Software, Free Society directly from the GNU Press site. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
..A new book from the GNU Press called Freee Software, Free Society collects several of his essays...
is that freee as in beeer, or freee as in--
ok, sorry, had to do it
I post links to stuff here
..the online or downloadable version of this book?
there is too much of RMS-bashing these days, here on slashdot and on a lot of other places. Sure, whatever his faults, he has contributed significantly to the software community in general. How many people here can say that? It pays to remeber that even the greatest of minds (Edison, Newton, etc) were often on the wrong side; that doesn't detract from their acheivements.
I find Stallman instead to be one of the most persistently, relentlessly reasonable people whose thoughts I've ever encountered. Stallman may be a dogmatist,
Almost by definition, a dogmatist can't be reasonable, since dogma itself, as a tenet, is not subject to reason.
After seeing Cringely's Triumph of the Nerds PBS series, in which he pointed out that every person who became wealthy off of hi-tech in the '80s did it by exploiting the innovators, I've had a funny feeling that somebody's going to do the same with "free" software.
My colleagues tell me no, that's not true. But just yesterday we started looking into replacing our commercial database engine with MySQL. Lo and behold, for our commercial use, we have to pay for it.
That's fine, in itself. I think it's fine to pay people for work they did. But think about all the contributors to MySQL, who were doing it because it was "free" and "open" software. MySQL AB (the company who really does control MySQL) is going to make an awful lot of money from all that work. They wouldn't be backed by Venture Capital money if they weren't. But all those contributors shall see not a cent!
I don't mean to pick on MySQL, but I think it's an interesting example. Open source and "free" software is a disruptive technology, just as something like Shareware was when compared to the Freeware model of the early '90s.
But I think it's naive not to expect to see some people make an awful lot of money out of code that others contributed to free. I fear history will repeat itself.
Regarding the comparison of free code to the law, I think Stallman (and Timothy) might be disappointed to read this at LawMeme. For those who don't want to follow the link:
Apparently, nothing is sacred. :-)
Interestingly enough, O'Reilly had a page devoted to the software that was used, and it sure wasn't open source (PageMaker or FrameMaker, IIRC),
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
is the book copyrighted? If not, is it under any license agreement? Or can i scan it in, and redistribute it on the internet (in its entirety, with obvious credit that RMS was the author and not me?)
obviously, since the book has physical attributes, i wouldn't believe or suggest that a physical book itself would be free... but i'm curious if he eats his own dog food.
tangental question...
how did it come about that Lessig's eBook was protected to the point of being unusable? Did not he write it? (/Yoda) And did he not have control over how its protections were to be set? I am a devotee of Lessig's ideas (not to the man himself), but this has always bothered and confused me.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Some people say vi zealots are unreasonable. I disagree, I think you should have to press a special sequence of characters before you can edit a document. ;)
Random is the New Order.
If RMS will use the proceedes to buy and use:a bar of soap, a razor, and nail clippers. Wash those filthy ankles!
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
Stallman is often criticised as a fanatic ideologist. Do you remember Linus Torvalds saying 'ideology sucks' or 'linux is just for fun' ...
Well, today, linus is working for Palladium
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=6487
so, although we don't know precisely ideology is leading us... we can get a picture of what absence of ideology leads to.
War doesn't prove who's right, just who's left.
What's the big deal with Free Software? Why can't he broaden his focus to other area's of engineering and intellectual property? Why is software the only profession that has a foundation (FSF) to make it free.
My theory is that other professions have a much larger barrier of entry then software development. It's easy as a software developer to cheapen the value of the time it takes to write code, whereas with an airplane you can't cheapen the value of raw materials. It's sad to see that the most valuable aspect of any product - the time put in by people - is the least valued by RMS (from my perspective).
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
How about redistributing the book then? There is PostScript, you know.
Free implies free. And besides that, even if you don't think so, FSF does:
(from gnu.org)
The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
That's a dogmatic definition of 'dogma.' The word has the same root as 'doctor' (whose medical meaning is quite recent - the sense of 'professor' is much older) and 'doctrine,' which originally referred to teacher and teaching. So a 'dogma' is generally a received teaching, but that does not at all mean (1) that there is no reason behind the teaching, or (2) that the student is not encouraged to reason about it. The same root is in the Greek word dokein one of whose meanings was 'think.' It also shows up as both 'orthodox' and 'paradox.' Also, 'document.'
Basically, a dogmatist is anyone who professes to have a consistent teaching. While famous examples include Philo of Larissa's elaboration on Plato's Academy 4 and the doctrines of the Councils of the Catholic Church, these do not nearly exhaust the senses of the word. Your definition of dogma as not subject to reason sounds like itself a bit of dogma - something you have been taught, but in this case by someone whose reasoning about it is based on perhaps a judgment about the Catholic Church's instances of dogma, rather than an open study of the history of the term.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
A lot of people get too caught up in his philosophy and overlook the fact that he's a coding god. I liked this article that sheds some light on his coding abilities.
A musician without the RIAA, is like a fish without a bicycle.
the people who don't give a damn about the bits being free or recognize MSFT as evil are probably not gonna be the ones who'll buy the book, so this is pretty unlikely to change any minds.
On the other hand, Wal-Mart is selling a PC with Linux for $200, showing how the most expensive part is the Windows tax. Now THAT will do a LOT of good as it'll get middle America gets comfortable with Linux.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
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That's either a troll or someone who is very ignorant about how Stallman uses the term "free". Here's a hint: he is not opposed to selling things.
I'll make this point again. I can easily go to the GNU project page, look at the definition of Free software (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html), and see that freedom to redistribute code is a pre-condition for Free software.
I wonder what would happen if I bought the book, scanned the pages, and started distributing them online... I'm sure it would be interesting, at any rate. My opinion is that if there was a commitment on their part to allow this, it would be available (possibly for fee) in an electronic format. But it's not.
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
RMS is intolerant of perspectives that differ from his own.
I believe you're stretching the meaning of tolerance a little too far here. Tolerance is useful when we are describing the ability of individuals to get along without significantly interacting. It is a stepping stone from hatred to understanding; i.e., if you can't accept or sympathize with homosexuals, you should at least tolerate them since they don't do you any harm.
But RMS gets very angry at people who try to harm his ability to create software by closing off avenues of inquiry through abuse of the idea ownership system. They are harming him, and they are harming his ability to contribute to the software community.
If there were no relationship between what he gets angry about and his contributions to computing, you would be right that the issues are distinct. But they have everything to do with one another.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
No it doesn't.
.. both of which promise (despite the model being broken today) that the ideas DO become available to the general public for 0$ after the author has been compesated enough for those ideas to continue working on his/her next idea.)
> The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
RMS's essays are available for Free as In Beer, all over the web. Also free as in speech, because you dont have to pay for the book to get access to the ideas and thoughts that went into them.
RMS isn't charging you because the only place to get the ideas in the book is buying the book. He's charging you because you should be free to charge whatever you like for you work; you simply shouldn't be able to sell the product by withholding the ideas in the product unless you purchase.
Today, we have tons of Franchise Pimps: companies that produce exclusive works and dont allow you access to the ideas of those works without buying those works. They hold the ideas hostage behind the distribution layer of those ideas.
RMS isn't doing that; he's charging you because some work went into collecting, compiling and publishing those works.
That is, you're paying for the BOOK, not the IDEA. Just like how software should be; you should be paying for the work, not the exclusivity of the ideas behind that work (because presumably, those ideas should be protected in some limited term by copyright or patents
Free doesn't imply free; you just assume, contrary to the very function of copyright and patent laws, that holding ideas hostage and manipulating your asking price because your ideas are exclusive to your distribution/publication layter, is required to make money. Nothing in history supports this view, although the current mindset in business has yet to take their beer blasses off (pun intended.)
"Old man yells at systemd"
Although it would be great to type "cp ~/transport/airpanes/boeing747/TF1000 ~/transport/airpanes/boeing747/TF1001" and create a new airplane, its not possible. Software has no marginal cost, and therefore has a very small cost overall (1 person uses a program, which took 100 hours at $20 an hour to produce, cost of the program is $2,000. If 1,000,000 people use it, cost is still $2,000)
There are free documentation (hmm, wheres the online version of *this* book) licenses, as you can copy an electronic form of a book easilly. You cant copy an airplane.
MySQL is dually licensed under GPL and a commercial license. MySQL AB can do this since they are the creators of the code.
If you wish to use the software under the restrictions of the GPL, you are free to do so. But if you wish to do something not allowed by the GPL, then, and only then must you purchase the commercial license.
This is clearly spelled out in MySQL AB's licensing section:
Had they made MySQL LGPL or BSD licensed rather than GPL, then this restriction wouldn't exist.
You can do anything with MySQL that the GPL allows. But if you want to do something not allowed, you still can, but you must pay MySQL AB.
I don't see how you can find any fault with this.
No, the public will when they realize you're holding ideas hostage in order to profit.
You're using scarcity to drive up your asking price; and market fundamentals state that using exclusivity and rarity to influence market price runs against the very notion of an open market where competition manages the effenciency of resources and work.
And what utopian world is that? The Utopian world of patents, where YOU HAVE TO PUBLISH THE METHODS OF YOUR IDEA TO EVERYONE ON THE PLANET before collecting a SINGLE CENT OFF OF IT?
"Old man yells at systemd"
So? If it can be cheapened, it will be cheapened. That's economics.
Once software writing becomes almost too cheap to support new software development, supply and demand says that it will stop getting cheaper. No big deal.
The only "free" license is no license - public domain.
In order of "free" to "non free"
EULA -> copyrighted program -> copylefted [GPL] Program -> BSD -> public domain
GPL forces everyone else to release modifications as GPL. BSD allows modifications released as anything, as does public domain.
Assume you had rights to do anything by default
BSD & public domain dont restrict *DEFAULT LEVEL*
GPL restricts rights to restrict rights of other people using modifications
Copyright restrict rights to copy
EULA restrict rights to use.
Assuming you have no rights by default
EULA grants limited rights to use the program *DEFAULT LEVEL*
Copyright grants rights to use the program without redistributing
GPL grants rights to use the program and redistribute the program on condition you allow others the same rights
BSD/Public domain grants rights to use the program and redistribute the program and change the licence to a more restrictive one
In current copyright law:
EULA restricts rights
Copyright neither grants nor restricts rights *DEFAULT LEVEL*
GPL grants rights
BSD/Public domain grants more rights
Dunno the difference between BSD and public domain though - BSD used to have advertising clauses, not sure now.
Why would it suck? You (the figurative you, not you in particular), have released this code freely, you have no interest in trying to profit from it. Someone else uses that code, and is able to implement it in a commercial application, and they can make money selling it. How has that harmed you? The free software you released is still out there for anyone else to use in any manner in which they see fit.
In order of "free" to "non free"
EULA -> copyrighted program -> copylefted [GPL] Program -> BSD -> public domain
Or the other way around, doh!
along with this message...
and on the first page of every chapter is this notice...Comment removed based on user account deletion
The only licenses i have a problem is those who havent anyting in them stopping embrace and extend. If the BSD license had a paragraph that stated "anything changed that hinders functioning with the original must be disclosed" i would support it fully. And yes, i have Microsoft in mind because they are the only ones that have a vessel big enough to do this easily.
Never forget kerberos.
HTTP/1.1 400
RMS has stated in the past that there are many battles out there more important than software, but that there are also people out there more qualified than he to fight those battles. He chose software because no one else was doing it and he was (and is) capable of doing a very good job at it.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
No. He doesn't have a valid point. Free software doesn't mean gratis. Neither does a Free society.
OTOH, I do think that it should be moderated as funny.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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Sorry, but in the leap to appear clever and insightful a bunch of posters though they could post something witty about not being able to download the book. Unless you're talking about downloading the physical book into that replicator you just invented, it's an idiotic question. Just about everything Stallman has ever written publically is on gnu.org and/or stallman.org.
"We obviously need a new moderation category: (-1, Woo-fucking-hoo)" --Mr. AC
' You cannot "compile" a book into an unreadable format'
Sure I can, it's called PGP.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
GPL forces everyone else to release modifications as GPL.
No, you can keep the modifications to yourself.
If, however, you choose to distribute these modifications, you must distribute them as GPL, and not some other license.
There is no real measurement of how free something is, as there is no 1 dimensional axis.
To the software user - the GPL is free-er because it requires the distributors of software to that user to release the source. It even allows him to make secret changes not as GPL, as long as he doesn't distribute them.
To the software creator - the GPL is less free, and also in regard to a specific GPL'd source, it is less free.
I prefer the freedom for software users, as the "freedom" of software creators/distributors is not at all valuable, and not to be confused with other things meant to give software distributors an incentive to create work.
Congratulations, you have your ideal world, and you didn't have to do any work to achieve it! Your ideal world, in which there is a mix of MIT, BSD licenses, the GPL, and the licenses of Microsoft, Sun, Sony, and so on, is the world we live in now.
The proponents and owners of the "fascist" licenses are now trying to enlist the governments of the world to help them maintain a stranglehold on the market and people's freedoms to use computers to their full potential. The DMCA is a product of your ideal world.
Your freedom (as in, your freedom to think what you want, read what you want, spend your money as you want, work and live where you wish, maintain your privacy as you wish) is becoming inextricably linked to your freedom to control computers and software. Repeat: IF YOU CANNOT CONTROL COMPUTERS AND THE SOFTWARE THEY RUN, YOU WILL LOSE YOUR FREEDOM. Put another way, severe restrictions can and will be put on how you are allowed to live your life.
Your "ideal world" is the vision of a lazy person who thinks (or hopes) that everything will work out for the best. RMS is not such a person, which is perhaps why you do not seem to understand what the FSF is about.
sure, rms thinks it's great to sell things. who doesn't. but but but....anyone is free to distribute the code...in fact, even if i sell my software under the GNU license, i have to include the source code.
Yep, just as a book should include the words that are put together to make it a book, software should include the code that is put together to make it software.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
The GPL license puts restrictions on what you can do.
Must we have this discussion again?
The GPL puts restrictions on adding restrictions. The restriction not to add restrictions is a restriction reducing measure. No wishing for more wishes, no freedom to restrict freedom.
Your oversimplified interpretation of the word "free" is laughable. If there are 1 billion people in the world, the GPL guarantees 1 billion people every freedom related to the software in question save one not only for the original work, but for every possible derivative work. A non-GPL license preserves no rights at all relating to derivative works. The only case in which the users end up with less freedom under the GPL is in a case where a piece of software is BSD/MIT licensed, and no one actually creates a closed derived work- in which case no one wanted to exercise that freedom anyway, and therefore no one would actually have been restricted from doing anything anyway. So among all possible users, the freedom granted by the GPL is provably greater than that granted by your precious MIT license.
My ideal world is one where there is a wide mix of software and sofware licenses in use. Some are free, like MIT. Some promote social goals, like GPL. Some are commercial. And some are facist.
Don't they teach you how to spell in troll-school? You can keep your "facist" licenses.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Free software came in the back door as sysadmins starting putting Linux servers all over the place in corporations. European development has been somewhat anti-corporate America in its orientation.
I think RMS would gladly trade support in broad base of technology workers over support from their bosses. He's trying to change consciousness not change software vendors.
Why should it be available for free download? Is it code? I don't think the Free SOFTWARE Foundation has any ideological interest in making content unrelated to code available for free of charge.
Note that they do want content to be unencumbered by license agreements, but there's no indication they think it should be gratis.
What doesn't the ACLU worry about rainforest decimation? Why doesn't the EFF broaden their focus to workers compensation?
An organziation needs a focus. If you broaden your focus too much, you dilute your message and risk alienating potential supporters who agree with part of your message but not all of it. And if you're a small organization (and compared to say the ACLU, the FSF is microscopic), you only have so much time and energy to spend. By focusing they increase their chances of doing good.
Furthermore, software has a certain special place in copyright law shared with few other areas. Software is both functional and expressive. Without the source, it's functionally impossible for an end user to modify it. I'd be hard pressed to modify my copy of Microsoft Office, but I can pretty easily modify my car or a book I've purchased.
This has nothing to do with the cheapening of developer time. Remember that RMS comes from a developer background. Many Free Software supporters (like myself) are professional programmers. He highly values the time put in by people, and so do I. But the person who built my car also put in alot of time, but I'm free to modify it, install off-brand parts, and general do as I will with it. Why does the personal who wrote my software get to control how I use it?
Let's look at an idealized "perfect Stallman world" in which he gets everything he wants (as near as I can tell). It becomes hard to sell software, because once one copy is sold it will be copied and resold for increasingly smaller prices until it has a zero price. Does this mean no software will be written and software developers will starve? Certainly not. First, more software is written strictly for in-company use. There was never a goal to sell it. If the company is concerned that there are valuable secrets in their in-company software, they can use "trade secret" law to protect it from being spread just fine. This leaves the much smaller segment of software for sale. Will the market shrink? Perhaps. However, much of the value of purchased software has always been support and warrantee. (Well, that's the theory. In practice much commericial software has useless support and disclaims any warrantees, but anyway...). So there opens a market for selling support and warrantees, and who best can support and warrantee the product besides the authors? Also, if software is open, there opens a large market for developers who will assemble existing products to create customized solutions for particular clients. Ultimately, the software is needed. The people who write the software need to make money. Something will be worked out, be it the Street Performer Protocol, tips, sponsorship by a company providing support and warrantee (essentially what RedHat and many other distributors do now), or something else.
I'm a software engineer and I support Free Software, and I'm not worried in the slightest about Free Software destroying my career. I may need to remain flexible, especially when I take jobs writing software for sale, but the work will remain.
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I think it's important to point out: while the GPL isn't entirely free, it's certainly freer than the default rules for works protected by copyright. If you're going to take a hard line position than any restriction makes software non-free, even MIT/BSD licenses aren't free (They require that the copyright notice and warrantee disclaimer remain intact). Ultimately the only things that are totally "without restriction" are things in the public domain. (And regrettably, you can be liable for things you put in the public domain, which is why the MIT/BSD licenses have the restrictions that they do.) At some point you need to draw a line between free and non-free. I chose to draw it at "United States copyright law is the beginning of non-free." It sounds like you draw it at "Anything more than requiring a copyright statement and warrantee disclaimer is non-free." But I think it's important to specify where your line is.
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the guy at the supermarket who talks to himself while stacking the oranges
i've always wanted to walk up to and start a conversation with that guy (wow, we must shop at the same store), but I don't want to be rude and interrupt. sometimes i find myself going back to the produce section later just to see if i can get a word in edgewise, never any luck yet. let me know if you make it through, i've got a long list of questions i want to ask.
All freedom is individual, since the whole world is composed of individuals. The whole world can never be free until each individual is free.
That is why the individual must be the focus instead of the group. This is why free societies form their groups through cooperation rather than control.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Microsoft is the expert on Capitalism. Not RMS.
Puh-lease! Capitalism cannot exist in the face of a monopoly, it is predicated on the idea that competition creates excellence.
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist, and they hold several legal monopolies (ownership of ideas through copyright/patent) that extinguish any hope of such competition.
Microsoft is the expert on avoiding competition, not succeeding at it.
Microsoft Employees feel more "valued" than many open source developers
This is because the normal competitive state of this economy is screwed up by monopolies. I'm sure management at Standard Oil felt more "valued" before their trust was busted than after. Duh.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
If you ever looked at his consulting rates, you wouldn't say that. 10 years ago, his rates were (justifiably) $200/hr. Seems like he values his time and effort quite highly. I suspect he does of others too.
His point is that holding ideas hostage is morally wrong, and that you should find other means to recover those costs. Free Software most emphatically does NOT mean the programmer isn't paid.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Obviously, you don't see this a value, but what the GPL is trying to accomplish is ensure that everyone the software is passed to has the same rights you do.
Ah! I get it now! The Free Software Foundation and Richard Stallman are NOT for freedom. They are for equality.
I like equality, but I won't trade my liberty for it.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Fact #1: 90% of code -- or better yet, coding time -- is used in app customization and internal app development. This is conservative. There are zillions of smallish apps that boxed software doesn't cover.
Fact #2: Comercial distribution methods existing prior to OSS were unable to get software and software libraries on the hands of developers in a timely and costly fashion. I won't dwelve on the reasons for this, but it is a fact that if you worked in a company ten years ago and asked for a license of the XYZ library, 5/10 times it'd get refused, and 3/10 it'd take so long to purchase it'd be useless.
Consequence: Software developers working with closed code only, are destined to reinvent the wheel countless times. Creating the same XML parser as their competitor down the corner, reimplementing quick-sort for a smalish processor, etc...
OSS solves this problem. Granted, it solves it, costing a lot to the sellers of the 10% mass production code. Accidentally, these are also monopoly owners and own a much larger share of the software market income, by grabbing the specific software value, and selling it at mass production rates -- which would bring prices down in any other industry.
Overall, the whole economy is much more productive with OSS. Today, this is a fact. There are no signs that the rate at which software is produced is decaying because of OSS. If it is not, and if software is costing less, efficiency is rising. If efficiency is rising, I couldn't care less for the Microsofts and Oracles of this world.
Some of this could be transposed to other professions. But then again, I don't suppose civil engineers hide the algorithms for calculating suspension bridges. Not now, and not when those were invented.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you
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Freedom zero is exactly that.
The GPL implements this freedom by stating:
in section 0., which discusses aplicibilty.
So, are you trolling? Or just ignorant?
The license that you mention that forbids using the software to engage in violating human rights is not a Free Software license.
Please peddle your FUD elseware.
-Peter
No, it's not available for free download in book form.
Even the review restates a paragraph that explicitly says you can charge for a product. To grossly oversimplify, the *only* requirement the GPL makes is that the source code accompany any binaries, and that the buyer has the right to modify and/or redistribute the binaries or source code under the terms of the GPL.
The *real* question is, can you OCR the text and post it on the net yourself?
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
That is absolutely wrong, and I'm afraid that saying it makes you look ignorant. Copyright law puts restrictions on what you can do. If I write a program, and let you have a copy, copyright law forbids you to distribute it, or to distribute derivitive works based upon it.
The GPL removes some of those restrictions: it allows you to redistribute the work, or derivitives based upon it, under certain conditions. What those conditions boil down to is that you cannot reimpose the restrictions which the GPL has removed.
Free software should mean software that can be used freely, without restriction.
Sounds like the GPL to me. I can take a copy of Redhat and peddle it for whatever the market will give me. I can make a derivitive work and do the same. The only thing the GPL stops me from doing is preventing you from enjoying the same freedoms that I enjoy. I'm not surprised that bothers you; most folks seem to think that freedom is fine, as long as the other guy doesn't have it. That's an unstable situation, of course. You're someone else's ``other guy''.
It allows you to restrict the freedoms of others. The extra freedom for you comes at the expense of my freedom. I can understand why that might seem attractive to you, but I can't understand why you think that tradeoff should be attractive to me.
My ideal world is one where there is a wide mix of software and sofware licenses in use.
Sounds OK to me. Stick to the ones you like, and I'll stick to my favorites.
See what I've been reading.
I think you're missing the point.
Free (as it's referred in FSF rhetoric, or libre) doesn't imply no cost. It only implies that once you have the information, you are free to do with it is as you please. Freedom of information once it's obtained is the key. The publishers of the book have decided that they want monetary compensation for a hard copy of their book, so pay up if you really want one. Once you have a copy, you're free to copy, repeat or whatever the text of that book as you see fit.
Sure, the copying of text from a book to a computer is highly less convenient than downloading a tar ball and distributing it on gnutella, but the freedom is there just the same.
arcane for life
I think you will find that the book is available in a freely redistributable electronic format. You should read the messages posted here again.
Besides, it isn't in conflict with his principles for the book to not be available in a digital format. It would be in conflict if the book didn't have a notice in it explicitly permitting you to make copies of it, but the book does have such a notice.
I think you will find it extremely difficult to impossible to find any trace of hypocrisy in anything RMS does. You are so conditioned to find it by the behavior of all of our other public figures in the US that I don't blame you for thinking RMS must practice this vice as well. But, as far as I can tell, he doesn't.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
It's easy. I did it. Here's the steps:
/ 1750232&mode=thread&tid=117 and http://www.gnupress.org/book13.html
t tp://plsinfo.org/
1) go to Google
2) enter library
3) click on the link
4) find their online catalog, and the link that says something like "If does not own an item, you can suggest that we purchase it."
5) follow the directions there, giving them a link to both http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/05
For those of you living in Silicon Valley, here are some links to get you started:
http://www.menloparklibrary.org/libcats.html
h
Can your IM do this?
You are arguing different definitions
This is true, I explicitly dispute the myopic view of freedom that imagines there's only one person in the world.
definition of free which you'll also find in the dictionary
No, the dictionary does not ask the question "freedom for whom"? Freedom for one selfish closed-software maker or freedom for everyone? Everyone gets more freedom as defined by the dictionary under GPL because one person no longer has the 'right' to take everyone else's freedoms away.
The non-GPL license preserves exactly the same rights to derivative works as it preserves initially.
Erm, not positive what you're trying to say here, I think you're trying to say BSD license is the same as public domain regarding derivatives? Clearly it's not the same as GPL: GPL frees you to use/build on derivative works, and derivatives of those, and so on. BSD allows anyone to make closed derivatives, of which no further derivatives are allowed. And that's the ONLY freedom BSD gives you that GPL doesn't- the freedom to restrict the freedoms of others.
created and distributed
Well, if it's not distributed to you, you don't have it anyway.
The GPL relies on copyright
True, but in a trivial sense. In a world without copyright GPL would be redundant, you'd already have the rights to derivative works.
Countries that do not buy into your copyrights can just ignore the GPL.
This is a distinction without a difference: they can just ignore the BSD and proprietary licenses, too. Licenses are only good where legally enforced.
the software author must be willing and able to sue the infringer
Eben Moglen of the FSF has been publically boasting that he's looking for a good test case for the GPL. Picking on a free software project is like robbing an old lady, such a case would get deluged with legal aid.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
My problem with FSF and RMS is actually the basic tenet of the moment: the idea that the producer (developer) has no more rights than the consumer (user).
Thank you. I've been saying this myself on slashdot every so often. The person who does the work, who puts the time into the creation should have more say in what happens to that creation than the schlub that sits on the sofa and picks his nose. Maybe it's that old Protestant work ethic, maybe it's from having "The Little Red Hen" read to me too much as a child. I don't know. But it just seems so intuitive that the person who does the work, gets a say. If you don't do the work, i.e., sponge off the work of others like a slug, you don't get a say.
That having been said, you have to admire RMS for his contributions. He practices what he preaches.
Absurd. Freedom does not mean the power to do whatever you will. That's anarchy.
The FSF thinks that free software should be a right -- perhaps derived from the right to free speech. Thus, they've engineered the GPL to prevent corporations from taking free code and using it as the base on which to build code that is not freem, thus violating what the FSF considers to be a right.
Its very simple: the FSF wants to give the user and developer freedom, but not the power to take away other people's freedomrights...and the FSF considers free software a right; they also consider proprietary software a violation of that right. Thus, they don't want to aid in the creation of proprietary software.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Sorry that people have the audacity to question your viewpoint
I can understand why RMS gets testy sometimes, it's frustrating to have to go over something so basic so often. It's like arguing over a restaurant check with post-modernists who don't believe in hierarchical arithmetic systems.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
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A full 30 minutes before you posted your message someone had posted, quoting from the copyright page in the book, that unlimited copying is legal, so long as the copyright notice is preserved. It seems to me that the classy thing to do would be to publicly withdraw your slur.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
If you can consider them 'neighbors' rather than 'competitors' you'll really be getting the point.
Competition generally seems to lead to people breaking each other's kneecaps, also to one person cornering the market and making it unfree. Maybe you consider it overwhelmingly important to have the liberty to be able to carry out such hypercompetitive practices (if you don't they'll be done to you, under capitalism) but they convey no social benefit- they're worse than 'socialism' in the long run, at least the type of 'socialism' the USA has often practiced.
You simply cannot play society as an elitist power game- it doesn't work. Society is about the social- funny how the very words lead you to 'social-ist'! It's like taking care of the environment by limiting the 'freedom' of that chemical plant over there to dump PCBs into the ground-water and kill everyone over a very long term. It is always the case that individuals have options that harm society far more than they benefit the individual. It is those 'freedoms' that have to be denied.
Everybody will have different opinions on which options those are, mind you- but consider murder, robbery, copyright (just kidding! Or am I? ;) ) etc.
Where is ..the online or downloadable version of this book?
No where. And it doesn't need to be. If the book was licensed like the GPL, then anyone who bought a copy could redistribute the text. But there is a separate libre license specifically designed to deal with documents, and so the GPL doesn't even apply.
Not only that, but Stallman has a long history of funding his open-source work by selleing books.
I recall when I first encountered emacs. Stallman was selling a manual for it to raise money - which I believe he was using to pay his rent.
The manual contained EXACTLY THE SAME MATERIAL as the free online documentation contained in the distribution. But the printed form was handy - and (depending on what your computer resources were) often cheaper than printing it out yourself, as well.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"Software has no marginal cost, and therefore has a very small cost overall (1 person uses a program, which took 100 hours at $20 an hour to produce, cost of the program is $2,000. If 1,000,000 people use it, cost is still $2,000)"
Except most software takes thousands of hours to produce at far more than $20/hour. Try tens of thousands of hours at $80-100/hour. So your typical software product is in the millions of $ to produce.
A very small marginal cost does not equate to a very small cost overall. Producing software is not like creating widgets, you don't calculate cost based on marginal cost, but rather on recovery cost. Software is a high risk activity, for every product with an 85% profit margin you have more products with a 85% loss margin.
This is because after you've spent $10mil and you sold your first copy for $40, you are still running at a loss. Your hope is to sell 250,000 copies to break even on the initial development, but the reality is you have to sell more than that in order to cover cost of marketing, distribution and support and so forth. That's not guaranteed by any means, so you had better be creating something people want and are willing to pay for.
In RMS's world, the first copy should sell for $10 million, everybody else get's it for free. This works well if it's the Government creating the software, and it also solves the whole problem of having to please consumers in a market. This is why FSF proponents are typically found proposing ways to get the Government to fund all software development.
It is socialism at it's finest.
Technically true, but missing the point.
The GPL gives you rights above and beyond normal copyright law, but those rights come with restrictions, to ensure that you don't go trampling other people's similar rights.
Most other liscences (that are not BSD style, or public domain) do not do a good enough job of balancing the rights of the individual vs. the community.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
So? If it can be cheapened, it will be cheapened. That's economics.
No, economics is supply and demand of softare. RMS is saying make it free - not because the demand is free, but because it's the Right Thing to do. No one is screaming "software is too expensive", except for the people who's bread and butter is coming from it. I find this extremely odd - you won't find this in any other industry.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
If one believes in equality, democracy, and the drive to make a better humanity, one can easily be lead to believe that everyone's time should be equally compensated.
So your time playing XBox is just as valuable as my time being productive? I believe in democracy, and I believe that everyone is create equal, but if you want to be a communitist or communalist then why live in the USA, and why not fight the political fight instead of (excuse the expression) poisoning a legitimate industry?
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Start here: Free Software Definition.
Then look here for links to most speeches and essays:Philosophy
Umm, what world are you in? That is how things are today. You bash the GPL, then say it exists in your ideal world, which is the current state of things.
Methinks I smell a troll.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Well, at least the answer has been modded up. Those essays are all over fsf site. Go there and you'll find.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
You're missing my point when I used the word broaden. I'm saying, his philosophy is really not a software related philosophy, but it's a socioeconomic philosophy which involves all products and services, not just software. His focus on software, IMHO, makes him look like a utopian idealist computer nerd!
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
And you can download the texinfo sources from anonymous CVS -- see http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/rms-essays for details.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
but i am expressly talking about property rights. socialism by its very nature is opposed to property rights. remember, if they can tax it, they can take it. if they can take it, you don't own it. property rights are at the heart of a truly free society. (btw, there is a HUGE difference between property and IP). another post though...
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the book provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.
So does anyone have a URL for an online version of the book - scanned in or otherwise?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
a) Stallman never talks about "Intellectual Property", accept to say that he dislikes the term. Instead he talks about patents, copyrights and trademarks as distinct concepts. He even recognises the differences between different sorts of copyrightable works. So to say that he doesn't believe we have any right to IP is plain wrong and downright mischeavious.
b) The belief that an idea is free once it "leaves the confines of your skill" was first recognised by the founding fathers of the USE. Would you describe them as "communist"?
The fact is, and this is the reason Stallman doesn't use the term Intellectual Property, ideas (and expressions of those ideas) by their very nature aren't property. The world isn't cheapened if I share an idea or it's expression idea freely. In fact, the world is enriched.
This is so full of errors I can hardly bring myself to comment on it. Nonetheless: the fact that you say "He [Stallman] finds the idea of paying someone for a product to be reprehensive because he fears the power money brings" suggests to me that you haven't even read the GNU website. Here's the link.
GNU
You can check out the source from CVS. Also, most of the essays are already on the GNU philosophy page, and the rest are being put up this week.
We do request that if you download the book rather than buy it, that you make a donation to the Free Software Foundation instead to help offset the cost of producing and formatting the book for publication. Indeed, I am frankly afraid that our meager savannah resources will collapse from the slashdot effect.Sincerely,
Bradley M. Kuhn
Executive Director, Free Software Foundation
Strictly speaking, if you can't modify it, you don't really own it, you're simply getting a service, not a product. Every example you cite is a service that you temporarily take advantage of, not a product. I can't modify a hotel room, leased car, bus, rented or borrowed DVD, or cable TV box because I don't own those items. However, a DVD, book, car, or house that I purchase I'm free to modify (within the bounds of appropriate public laws, naturally).
The same thing that is wrong with selling cars, books, or houses that can't be modified. We're moving toward a society were we don't own anything, where you live at the mercy of those holding the power. Because I can modify my car, if I own a Delorian, I can make or purchase replacement parts even though the original company is long defunct. I happen to If my software's provider goes out of business, well, I'm out of luck. If I need new functionality, but the provider isn't interested in providing it, I'm out of luck.
If software publishers are interested in providing a service instead of a product, they could at least be honest about it. Of course if they were honest (before you pay for it, you have to sign a contract agreeing that you are purchasing a service and that you own nothing), I expect customers would react negatively because people don't like living under leases and licenses. The current technique of "selling a product", then changing the sale of a product into a license when you install it is a cruel joke that only persists because everyone ignores it.
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Fact #1:
.NET, XML, Web Services) you'll see more code reuse without the need to open up the source - just the need for reflection and/or documentation.
Please site your references for this "fact" (actually, I suppose that you're not far off but I'm not interested in what you or I "feel", I need real references).
Fact #2:
This has some truth, but the bottom line is it's MY software, not yours to decide what's best for society. Thanks to OOP becoming more and more useful as well as common platforms or communication layers (Java,
Oh, and go ask any civil engineering company for even some details on the physics modeling software used for the last major bridge that they built. These companies compete on designing bridges that take up less space and raw materials while achieving incredible levels of structural integrity. It's the physics modeling software that let's them do this, and we'll see how likely they are to let the competition in on any of the details, let alone the source code and algorithms for their models.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Microsoft is not a "convicted monopolist", they have a monopoly on the Desktop OS for x86 and Office Productivity product spaces. Apple is competing just fine, and it's not MS's fault that until late Linux has failed on the desktop, and that Sun and Netscape (via all Web Based Software) couldn't take over the desktop with Java like it thought it could.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
With any discussion about RMS and his myriad of contributions, it's great to look up a little history in order to keep perspective.
In particular, I recall the era of Emacs vs Lucid Emacs vs Epoch (basically 3 variants of Emacs, some incompatibilities, a lot of confusion, and a bit of a dropped-ball on the part of the FSF).
Wind your way-back machine to 1992, via deja.com: Lucid Emacs threads
You may even see a few familiar names in there, such as a kid named Marc Andreesen...
My example is: RMS has given us Emacs and GCC as two of his best efforts. But, he's also been pretty difficult to work with over the years (aside from meetings and other examples others have posted). I have to wonder how this has affected the development of HURD, which started in 1990.
My perspective is... He's a great coder, and has made lots of valuable, tangible contributions. BUT... He should not be a front-man for the idea of Free Software. It's difficult for a lot of people to get past the poor messenger, and to the message itself (think "business decision makers" for a moment)
Sorry this is unfocused. I am orbiting around the "great contributions, but still makes me cringe" vibe of RMS.
How can a new improvement to code "stay" anything? It's new. Its state is undetermined.
The original code "stays" free, of course, since the free version still exists. The improvement, however, is the product of the labor of a third party who should be given the opportunity to choose how their code is licensed.
The problem is that when I buy a TV, it is not easily modified. The manufacturer does not give me the production notes to help me dissasemble it. But legally, I CAN dissamble it, for educational pruposes or otherwise. OSS is totally different. I can make a change to it, but I can then sell multiple copies of it. This has nothnig to do with personal ownership, and everything to do with corporations profiting off of the backs of programmers who work for free. EULA's aside (which have yet to be proven that they have any weight in court), no one is stopping you from using SoftIce on a program and recompiling it for your own use - I essentially do that all the time via NOCD "Cracks" so that I don't have to use my CD for games that I OWN. I don't need the entire source code to Quake to make this modification. The difference, again, is that I'm not selling this software to people on ebay. Heck, even Microsoft is not going after people who modify their personal XBox's - they just won't support you. (Note: They ARE going after _Businesses_ who are makeing devices for the purposes of piracy - this is seperate from our individual right to open up the box).
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
"Except for one special situation*, The GNU General Public License (GNU 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, so don't complain to us if nobody wants to pay a billion dollars for a copy."
Yes, but the first person who buys it from me can turn around and sell it for N - 1 dollars (where N is what I charged for it), thus undercutting me.
I feed and clothe my family with the money I make writing commercial software. I write desktop software which ships in the millions of copies, and no, in general consumers are not willing to pay for consulting services, support, or documentation like they do in the corporate IT world.
Free software works best when the software itself is of secondary importance and tied in with something else (service/support, hardware, etc.) that people actually buy. When there is nothing to tie in with, then there is no way to make a living doing it. In other words, in RMS' opinion, software has zero value. Thanks, but I choose to believe that the time I and my co-authors invest in our software is worth compensation.
When Richard Stallman's screeds start acknowledging and accomodating my way of life, get back to me. Until then, he has no relevance to me.
The GPL puts restrictions on adding restrictions. The restriction not to add restrictions is a restriction reducing measure. No wishing for more wishes, no freedom to restrict freedom.
If you write some software yourself in your own time and on your own equipment and want to release it under the GPL I fully support your right to do so. It's yours, so by definition you can do with it as you please.
But if you are paid from the taxpayer's money to write software as many academics and researchers are, then you don't own it, I do, along with every other taxpayer. You therefore have no right to enforce a license placing any restrictions, positive or negative, on what I can do with it, because it's not yours in the first place.
I think you're expanding his view unfairly. He feels that many products and services aren't appropriate to cover with his views on freedom. (Stallman says as much in this Slashdot interview, "The ethical issues about copying and modifying works depend on the kind of work and how people can use it.")
Software is a special case (not the only special case, naturally, but definately a special case). Software is functional and expressive. If it was only functional, you couldn't copyright it. If it was only expressive, you couldn't patent it. As a functional device, you should be able to modify or repair software you've purchased (like you would a car or a house), but you're denied the ability to do so. As an expressive form, you should be able to deconstruct it, analyze it, and create derivative works from it, but you're denied that ability as well. For better or worse, software has ended up as a weird crossroads in law, in part because it so new laws have been clumsily thrown at it, and in part because it's a unique creative form. As such, it deserves to be discussed and considered as a special case.
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Please take the time to learn the difference between the Open Source and Free Software movements. It is not at all appropriate or helpful to associate Richard Stallman with the Open Source movement or disassociate him with the movement he started--the Free Software movement.
Digital Citizen
Ideas are not owned in an exclusive way the same way physical property is. GPL is a way of correcting a wrong-headed legal construct.
Regarding taxpayer money, why should industry get to close off avenues of inquiry that stem from it? Then only they benefit. The largest possible number of taxpayers should benefit from government software and from derivatives thereof. The best way to do that is GPL, since nobody can take away everyone's right to a particular improvement to the software.
Here's another way of looking at it: The ability to add restrictions to derivative works is itself a restriction on the free use of the code. I can't build on non-GPL'd code the same way someone else has. The simplistic understanding of freedom that people push "no restrictions whatsoever!" can't account for cases where you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. The GPL is a recognition that we must choose one set of freedoms or another, and the choice it makes is for the greatest amount of freedom for the greatest number, rather than a tiny amount more "freedom" for a very small number of people.
Again, the only "freedom" that BSD type licenses preserve with respect to the GPL is the freedom to restrict the freedoms of others.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
It's big of you to call for "a somber, factual, reasonable, respectful debate" after calling RMS a "rude", "interupting", "unpresentable", "shrill", "adversarial", "divise" and bigoted messenger. More name calling, how typical. Go away no one here needs closed source binaries and I'm tired of your form of debate.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Some people say vi zealots are unreasonable. I disagree, I think you should have to press a special sequence of characters before you can edit a document. ;)
M$ Word zealots think they should pay for an editor they can not use from a remote terminal without having special software installed that displays a desktop so you can mouse over a link that tries to call software on the local box anyway. Brain dead.
What does this have to do with the price of tea in China?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Yes, as long as you credit RMS as the author.
Yes. As long as you leave the bits in the book that say who the authors of the individual essays were.
Without the protection afforded by a government granted monopoly, the author wouldn't have a choice. Absent a government, the author wouldn't be able to enforce copyright at all.
Besides, I don't think proprietary software will exist in 10-20 years. It's horribly economically inefficient. It won't survive. It's the wrong way to do things.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Yes, the person who makes the table controls the conditions under which it is sold. Those conditions may include the way the table is used, sure. And you as a purchaser should be free to either:
1) negotiate the terms under which it is sold
2) Purchase a table with different condition
or find someone else to deal with. (We won't get into the issue of a table monopoly here.)
If you read the inside cover of most books, you'll see something like "This book is sold under the condition that it not to be resold under a different cover." Or something like that, don't have anything to hand here at work. What it means is that the book is sold to you under the condition that you may not rip the cover off and put your own cover on it and resell it. Doesn't mean you can't sell the book, just that you can't repackage it and sell it.
As others have pointed out, you are free to copy and give away RMS's book, under the condition that you put in the copyright notice. So there's a couple of examples from the real world. That's why the book is essentially GPL'ed, not put out under the freebsd license. I think I got that right. Under GPL, redistributors must credit original authors and make source code available (another restriction on the use of your table -- if you copy it, you provide blueprints so people can build their own) but with freebsd, people can just steal it and never give you credit. Is that right? Not sure here.
It's about everyone having choices, including the producers. It is your choice to be an idiot and say that the table may only be used to serve turkey, and that it violates the terms of the sale to serve ham on the table. People make contracts for all sorts of stupid things, and they should be free to do so.
Not that we as Americans are consistant about this but:
You are not compensated for anything but the value you provide to someone else. That compensation is the point where the amount you are willing to accept for it crosses the amount someone is willing to pay you for it. Since the amount of value you can give someone by spending your time is different depending on person and task, people get compensated differently.
It is not what you should get, it is what you can get.
The reason people are willing to pay for software as it is cheaper than paying with their own time to create the software. Open Source and Free software affiliates have recongnized that the gentleman's agreement (sorry for the sexist connotation, we need a new word here) about sharing code is in the best interested of all involved. I write code, let you use it, but you provide insight/code back that increases my value to a greater degree than if I had merely sold it to you.
Put it this way. If a competent Software Developer can get paid $50 and hour to customize code for a client (no value to anyone but the client and a potential hacker) Then selling code for $25 bucks a pop versus something that will save him thousands of hours of development time makes the free software route worth while. Developing software is time ($) intensive. THe more code that is in the publically usable pool, the more time that can be spent on the customizations for a particular client.
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
*g* looks like I yanked some objectivist-mod's chain real hard with that post. Good. "society about the social and cooperation more beneficial than competition" a troll, my ass ;)
Socialist concepts work just as good as capitalist ones- no better and no worse. It's all in how you implement them, and in what types of problems arise when you take 'em too far.
And I'm not sure what the point is of deciding things like "for something to be a right, it has to be both universal and simultaneous, and impose no burden or cost onto others." According to who? Is this some sort of axiom that you're supposed to accept unquestioningly?
Just to annoy, how about this slight alteration: "because burden is inevitable and natural, it should be both universal and simultaneous, therefore the functioning of society should impose roughly the same burden upon everyone, relative to their ability to bear it, and the same cost on everyone relative to their ability to pay it. So, the more power you have in society, the more burden you should bear- and the more wealth you have, the more you should pay."
How's that grab ya? ;)
Regarding taxpayer money, why should industry get to close off avenues of inquiry that stem from it? Then only they benefit. The largest possible number of taxpayers should benefit from government software and from derivatives thereof. The best way to do that is GPL, since nobody can take away everyone's right to a particular improvement to the software.
Let's say that a govt. department, like the DoE write some code, and release the source to version 1.0 in the public domain. Organization A, which is itself a taxpayer, and whose shareholders and employees are taxpayers, take this code, and with their own time, money and equipment develop it into version 2.0, a commercial product. That in no way restricts the right of the public at large to version 1.0 source code, yet it means that A also see a tangible benefit to all the tax they pay.
This is freedom; restricting the right of A to benefit is not. Stallman's idea that you can charge what you want for GPL products is ridiculous, A would sell precisely one copy in that model, and would be highly unlikely to be able to recoup their investment if their product was aimed at the mass market.
GPL is anti-freedom therefore when it is applied to anything that is not developed entirely with private money. Stuff that is developed entirely privately can be released under whatever license the original owners prefer.
Proprietary software cannot "take" your freedom. Nobody is forcing you to purchase or use it. If I purchase a piece of proprietary software, it is because I am willing to voluntarily agree to not copy and redistribute it. It appears that you wish to remove my freedom to make that decision.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Yeah, you picked one piece of my post, and took it out of context. Try again.
You want to apply what RMS says of software to other works of authorship. If you do, I tend to feel you are right, but, if I remember correctly, when RMS has been questioned on this, he has basiocally said that he does not know if other works should be treated the same as woftware but that he knows that software should be. I think he feels software documentation should be treated like software though.
Yes, this is true. He's self-deluded, but not a hypocrite. Frankly, I think it's still hypocritical, or if you want a nicer terms, logically inconsistent and convenient. Having a digital version of the book available for free redistribution doesn't stop him from charging a fee, does it...?
This is a common misconception with the GPL. If i distribute software under the GPL, I do not have to do so for no charge, I can charge what I like os long as the buyer is willing to pay. If he is not willing to meet my price, I can lower the price to one that he finds acceptable, or I can choose not to let him have a copy. What I cannot do is sell him a binary price at an agreeable price and then try and charge a bunch of money when he asks for a copy of the source.
Wrong, although it is commonly cited by Free software supporters as a misunderstanding by the uninitiated. This is what will happen in the real world: you will spend 3 years of your life developing a piece of software, sell it for $100, someone will buy it and either 1.) resell it for $40 with a mere $100 initial investment and drive you out of business. or 2.) decide your software should be free, put the source up on a file sharing service.
So you see, free redistribution does effectively prevent someone from charging a fee for writing software. Note that I am completely for distribution with source. It's the unrestricted redistribution that leads to problems.
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
it means that A also see a tangible benefit to all the tax they pay.
They see a tangible benefit if it's GPL'd too- they get to use the code, and can even sell derived works. They just can't be the *only* ones who benefit.
That in no way restricts the right of the public at large to version 1.0 source code,
Sure it does- it restricts a particular derivative of that source code from being created. Sometimes these are trivial enhancements or bugfixes. Furthermore, you have to worry about patented enhancements being added, etc. so in practice you are obligated to check all the other derived works to make sure you haven't discovered the same obvious extension someone else has already bottled up in a patent. With GPL, you don't have to think about any of that which is a boon to innovation, and since everyone can use and modify the derived works you make if you distribute them, everyone gains.
This is freedom; restricting the right of A to benefit is not.
That's the craziest Orwellian newspeak I've ever heard. Copyrights and patents that restrict the use of derivatives of software restrict my action. Your theory is that the more a corporation can profit, the more freedom we have. Huh?!
GPL is anti-freedom
And... black is white, night is day, work is freedom, etc. etc. I've heard all this somewhere before.
Lovely homepage, by the way. It reminds me of work where I'm forced to use win2k. Thank goodness for Cygwin!
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
RMS has made an enormous, enormous positive contribution to the entire world.
But he is unbelievably poor at marketing. He is terrible at helping create a connection between his valuable ideas and the minds of other people.
It is common that technically knowledgeable people are terrible at marketing, but RMS is even worse than normal. (I've had minor personal interaction with RMS.)
The answer is to find a philanthropically-minded person who will fund a PR department for RMS.
It is good to remember that Bill Gates is unbelievably poor at marketing, also. Mr. Gates once yelled at Time Magazine editors in a meeting with them, for example.
There is nothing stopping you from making money off of GPLed software. Red Hat certainly has a business model. Aside from opinions of that business model, the GPL has not stopped them from pursuing it.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
The word "software" refers to computer code, any document, film, video, music or any other "information" that is cheaply reproduceable as an object such as a CD, disk, cartridge or datastream that can be used by a piece of "hardware" such as a computer, VCR, or CD player. This term has been used in such context for decades.
I would say that this applies.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
own) but with freebsd, people can just steal it and never give you credit. Is that right? Not sure here.
Both force you to give credit. In fact, BSD used make it so that you have to have give credit much more prominent than GPL, which the FSF objected to. Check around for BSD and the advertising clause.
It's about everyone having choices, including the producers.
Actually, if you read the FSF site and interviews from the proponents, it becomes clear that they don't want the producers to have that choice.
Je ne parle pas francais.
Or did you only mean your in favor of your "right" to profit from code others wrote in a unilateral exchange?
/., you are missing the point of FSF.
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Again, as so many people here on
Read this interview before you get back to me: http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/
Note were Kuhn mentions that the choice of software license is a choice the developer SHOULD NOT HAVE.
I like the GPL. It basically says, you want this software, you pay back in your changes. THAT IS FAIR. And as a producer, I have a choice in making my software under this license. Again, I have a CHOICE. If FSF had their way, I wouldn't have that CHOICE. That is slavery. Note again, I'm talking as me as a producer, not as a consumer.
Je ne parle pas francais.
"But RMS needs to become a little better at how he shows himself to the world, or listen to those who can help him do so."
I agree. How do we: 1) find the money, and 2) convince RMS to accept a PR department?
With regards to payment, you are very wrong. This is a mantra of almost biblical proportions by now, but I shall risk repeating it: Free as in speech, not in beer.
He doesn't. There are many, many works that are GPL'd but are not considered to be part of the GNU project.
The question of why he refers to "Linux" as GNU/Linux or GNU+Linux, is answered in Stallman's various speeches (and I presume, in this book). I shall endeavour to clarify.
Prior to the formation of the GNU project, the world of free software, as Stallman knew it, was declining. Stallman alone decided to rectify this. He began by writing the software which would allow a "free" version of UNIX to exist. This software consisted, amongst others: a text editor (GNU emacs), a compiler (GCC), binary tools (binutils), and so forth.
Naturally, an entire Operating System written by one man would take a great deal of time. So the GNU project, embraced that software which would help complete the free version of UNIX that the GNU project envisioned. Notably TeX and X11 -- both massive projects that didn't need to be re-implemented because of the licences which both where distrubuted under. ie. they were "compatible" with the GNU philosophy. (I mention this because it highlights that the GNU project doesn't lay claim to "ownership" of these very important parts of the free operating system Stallman initiated).
By 1991, a complete UNIX system existed except for the kernel. Enter, Linus Torvalds: Linus' implementation of a UNIX kernel fitted precisely the kernel shaped hole in the GNU project. Initially, the GNU project didn't notice the Linux kernel, but other people did, and saw that it was good. However, a kernel on it's own is useless. For a working operating system, various tools need to exist. So, when people started looking around for tools and other software that they could use with this new kenel, they found the GNU project. This is not a coincidence.
Whether or not you believe the Operating System is "Linux" with a few GNU tools added on, or the GNU Operating System completed with the Linux kernel is a matter of perspective. Personally, I believe it is the latter. Stallman's suggestion that you refer to the various operating systems that utilise Linux as GNU/Linux is simply a request that you recognise my perspective -- the work of the GNU projet.
I like the following analogy: The forest is populated by many trees. One of those trees represents the compiler, another represents the tools that manipulate binary files, or text files. Yet another tree represents the kernel. The entire forest however, is the GNU project. It is acknowledges that if this forest didn't exist there would be a few unconnected copses or individual trees representing non-proprietary software but the forest as a whole wouldn't exist if Stallman hadn't planted it.
The request that you refer to the Operating System as GNU/Linux is a suggestion that you see the forest and not that single tree that represents the kernel. In other words, the people who reject this request, metaphorically, can't see the forest because of the trees.
He's not, and the GNU project never claims otherwise. However, to take that idea, to modify it and then to deny other people to view those moderations (as the BSD licence allows) can "harm" original author as he is one of those people to which access has been denied. Other people have benefited from his work, so why shouldn't he (or more pertinently, society) benefit from the work of others? Especially when their work has utilised his? The GPL addresses this.
It doesn't. But don't you consider the re-implementation of something that someone else has already achieved as wasted effort? Again, the GPL addresses this.
I don't see this as a fact. Please point out instances where Stallman wants to control products that he isn't the copyright holder of.
Of course it is; and looking at my keyboard, it astonishes me that I that I managed it.
The constitution of the USA doesn't include IP protection -- IP is a nonsensical term. It does however, include the concept of copyright.
Copyright was intended to provide the creators of copyrightable works with an incentive to create. It was never meant to be a mechanism that granted ownership. The "for a limited time" statement supports this. In other words, copyright is a meant to be a means to an end, not an end in itself.
I'm really not the man though, to discuss this in any great depth. I implore you to read the writings of Lawrence Lessig if you wish to explore this subject further.
doesnt matter, thats how much it cost to produce one copy of the program
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I've heard Stallman complain that the biography Free As In Freedom has a lot of inaccuracies in it, but I'm not clear on what he really thought was inaccurate. I think the only example of an inaccuracy that he gave was that it presented things as RMS/GNU==cathedral and Linux==bazaar, whereas he says GNU was doing bazaar before Eric Raymond was. Other than that specific example, is there anything in this book that shows what he think was wrong with Free As In Freedom?
Find free books.
Are you willing to trade my liberty for your liberty?
The Free Software Foundation and Richard Stallman are for equality to the extend that everyone should have the same liberties; they believe that it's wrong for you to take liberties that reduce another person's liberties.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Actually the MS "tax" isn't really that high.
$100 more gets you a floppy drive and windows. OEM versions of windows XP Pro run around $130.00(home version is even cheaper)....way less than the cost of the hardware.
MS software is cheap; sure the quality isn't great, but look at Microsoft's competitors: Oracle, IBM...etc. All these guys compete in the corporate space with better, much more expensive products.
The only time Microsoft's software looks expensive is when you compare it to free software. Then everything looks expensive.
My point is this: Run software that suits your purpose for the lowest cost...free or otherwise.
-ted
Further, most software shouldn't be treated like an airplane -- a big price tag for a complete product. Software development is most effective, and most cost-effective, when it's done incrementally, building on other software that accomplishes a similar purpose. OSS facilitates this model of software development in a way that closed source absolutely cannot. In this view, rather than buying a $10 million package, a company spends a few hundred thousand enhancing an existing package to make it better suit their needs. They do this because the cost of doing it is less than the profits that will be generated by the resulting system. They can choose to keep their enhancements to themselves for competitive advantage, or they can publish them, allow them to be incorporated into the public version of the package and get ongoing enhancements and bug fixes for free.
This model isn't viable for all software, of course, and Stallman tries to push it a little further than it can really go, but it does work just fine for many kinds of software, particularly infrastructure software, like operating systems, desktops or basic productivity applications. And the net result is software that is not only less expensive to everyone but is also more flexible and reliable (though generally not as polished).
I'm a programmer, and I get paid (very well, actually) to write software, yet I'm not in the least bit afraid of OSS. On the contrary, I see it as a marvelous opportunity to be able to reduce wasted programmer effort so we can focus on newer, cooler stuff. Why does it not frighten me? Consider Eric Flint's comments about giving away fiction (Eric is an author of Sci-Fi novels -- good ones):
As long as people want software, people will get paid to write it, manage it, distribute it, fix it, improve it, etc.
Free software isn't socialism, it's just a different business model.
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No one is screaming "software is too expensive", except for the people who's bread and butter is coming from it.
What? Are you trolling? Insane? Unable to leave the house?
*Lots* of people complain about the high price of software. Go talk to any CIO at any of the vast majority of companies in the world (the ones who are in business to build something other than software), and they'll tell you that software is bloody expensive. Look at the budgets governments have for buying and developing software -- they're huge. Go read some books on software engineering or software design, and you'll find that the underlying theme of all of them is precisely: How to build and maintain software more cheaply.
Of course, the current cost of the software must generally be less than its value, or all of these people wouldn't shell out the bucks to pay for it, but that in no way means they don't think it's too expensive. Companies are constantly looking at problems and saying "Gee, we could save a ton of money if only we could automate that, but it'd cost more to automate it than we could save... if only software were a little cheaper..."
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Coke's secret formula is "encoded" in a can of coke and could theoretically be discovered through advance reverse engineering.
And were someone to do this reverse engineering and start selling an identical product, it would be completely, 100% legal business. Coke doesn't come with an EULA.
So, what's your point?
You have decided that programmers should give away their "secret formulas"
No, no, no. We have decided that programmers should be free to choose to give away their "secret formulas", so that they can benefit from the enhancements made by other programmers.
angsty nerd socialists who are annoyed that they suck at programming and want to steal from those who don't.
Um, cheap shots have to *hit* to be worth anything. The biggest proponents of Free software -- the programmers who write it all -- are clearly not lousy programmers. Actually, it's the lousy programmers who fear OSS, because they don't want the world to see their sucky code.
Linux -- so bad they can't even GIVE that shit away!
Tell that to IBM.
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What company would fund the development of an essential software system knowing that upon completion, the source code would be freely available to all of its competitors?
Why would it become freely available to all of its competitors? If the company wants to keep the competitive advantage to itself, it can do that. By publishing the source it will probably get some free enhancements and bug fixes, which may or may not be a good trade.
Keep in mind: Most software development is done by companies who *don't* make money by selling software.
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Thanks to OOP becoming more and more useful as well as common platforms or communication layers (Java, .NET, XML, Web Services) you'll see more code reuse without the need to open up the source - just the need for reflection and/or documentation.
Uh, huh. Ask any experienced developer whether he'd rather have documentation or access to the source code. Documentation is always wrong.
And if docs and reflection are enough, then why is it that I commonly find myself decompiling Java classes so that I can understand *exactly* what they're doing?
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"The vast majority of software is not developed on a speculative basis (build it and hope they buy it), most of it is built on contract or in house, and the only risk involved is to the buyer, because the guys writing the software are on hourly wages or salaries. "
Huh? You ask me to widen my horizons, and yet you clearly don't grasp the concepts.
Whether or not software is built on contract or in house, there is still cost involved. That cost is still speculative in nature. The only difference is how that return on investment is calculated. One way is unit sales, the other way is increased business opportunities.
"In this view, rather than buying a $10 million package, a company spends a few hundred thousand enhancing an existing package to make it better suit their needs."
This is called buying off-the-shelf software. It may not literally be off a shelf, but it was developed by a third party. You pay them to customize and deliver it to you. The extent of the customization determines the cost. OSS doesn't make much of any difference to this model because it is rare to find OSS software in the specific niches companies would need. Most OSS software addresses general purpose needs, or needs specific to admins and developers because of the lack of motivation to go beyond those needs.
"I'm a programmer, and I get paid (very well, actually) to write software, yet I'm not in the least bit afraid of OSS."
I'm not the least bit afraid of OSS. I am, however, afraid of the FSF and their attempts to lobby governments into nationalizing software development.
"As long as people want software, people will get paid to write it, manage it, distribute it, fix it, improve it, etc. "
The difference is whether you work in a Bill Gates world where you receive a goodly salary and stock options, or you live in Richard Stallmans world where you receive $40k a year and 3.1% federal worker cost of living increases.
"Free software isn't socialism, it's just a different business model."
A business model which has thus far failed, resulting in it's proponents working harder and harder to lobby government agencies to outlaw commercial software and nationalize software development.
After all, that has been RMS's goal all along...
"What the facts show is that people will program for reasons other than riches; but if given a chance to make a lot of money as well, they will come to expect and demand it. Low-paying organizations do poorly in competition with high-paying ones, but they do not have to do badly if the high-paying ones are banned. "
- Richard Stallman in the GNU Manifesto
In the future I think it would be wise for you to stop confusing FSF with OSS. The two are not the same, and if you need clarification on that you need only ask Stallman.
I promise you that my personal actions will in no way affect your liberty. Which is why I will continue to use the BSD and MIT licenses for my own code. You might not agree with my choice, but my act of using them will in no way affect your life, liberty or property.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Back in the end of XIX century, Gustavo Eiffel built a record arch bridge in my home city, the D. Maria Pia bridge. Back then, naturally, the design method was a secret, and Eiffel was known for rigid safekeeping of those secrets.
How long did it take for the record to be beaten, with the same construction type, the same construction methods, and a different engineer? Eight years. The time to build the D. Luís bridge. Did Eiffel lose a lot with the spreading of his construction methods? No! In fact, on the contrary. He was at his time regarded as an innovator, and spawned an era of iron and steel constructions of epic proportions.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you
My ideal world is one where there is a wide mix of software and software licenses...
Congratulations, you have your ideal world, and you didn't have to do any work to achieve it! Your ideal world, in which there is a mix of MIT, BSD licenses, the GPL, and the licenses of Microsoft, Sun, Sony, and so on, is the world we live in now.
What a strange conclusion. Suppose that I believe that an 'ideal' society should be a democracy. Does that mean that I should like a democratic society in which the majority has decided that DRM is mandatory? Of course not, the prerequisite for an ideal society is not in itself a sufficient condition. An even clearer example: suppose that I believe that an ideal world should be free of crime. A world without life would qualify if this were the only necessary condition.
The proponents and owners of the "fascist" licenses are now trying to enlist the governments of the world to help them maintain a stranglehold on the market and people's freedoms to use computers to their full potential. The DMCA is a product of your ideal world.
That stranglehold clearly favors certain kinds of licenses over others and thus goes against the parent posts: "That way people can decide which licenses and which software they want to use and support. Let a thousand licenses bloom!". How can I choose freely when:
- DMCA is used to kill GPL'ed DVD-players?
- encryption issues may not be discussed freely?
- (broad) patents are used by established players to bully (potential) competitors?
- monopolists are allowed to abuse their power?
I may not agree with the parents stance on fascist licenses, but that doesn't mean that he somehow agrees with the DMCA (au contraire, his position seems quite libertarian). Your accusation is FUD, pure and simple.
Your "ideal world" is the vision of a lazy person who thinks (or hopes) that everything will work out for the best.
Or perhaps it is the vision of someone who believes that the awful laws which have been (and will be) created should be fought in congress, by smart congressmen who were and will be elected by educated Americans. The GPL can never undo bad laws or preserve your liberties. If you believe that RMS or the GPL will somehow save you from a police state you fail to understand what is really at stake.
The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
Huh? You ask me to widen my horizons, and yet you clearly don't grasp the concepts.
Nice assertion. Care to support it?
Whether or not software is built on contract or in house, there is still cost involved. That cost is still speculative in nature.
I believe I said that there is risk to the company who pays for software development. It's a very different kind of risk with in-house or contract development, though. A company that builds and sells packaged software has to make assumptions about the number of people who will buy their software, how much they'll pay for it and whether or not competition will beat them to it. A company that builds software in-house knows to a very high degree of certainty what the return is going to be, their major risk is the investment required, and it's much easier to effectively estimate software development costs, or to shift the risk to a third party by negotiating a fixed-price contract than it is to gauge the whims of a fickle marketplace.
This is called buying off-the-shelf software. It may not literally be off a shelf, but it was developed by a third party. You pay them to customize and deliver it to you.
Are you considering a company's own employees as a "third party"? If not, then you completely missed the point. If so, well, I fail to see the utility of that view.
OSS doesn't make much of any difference to this model because it is rare to find OSS software in the specific niches companies would need. Most OSS software addresses general purpose needs, or needs specific to admins and developers because of the lack of motivation to go beyond those needs.
Wait a few years. Companies have only just recently started to understand how Free software can benefit them. There are several projects out there working on building business management systems, inventory management systems, etc. Right now, it's operating systems and application servers that have good OSS solutions. In a few years Peoplesoft and SAP will be fighting with OSS competition.
The difference is whether you work in a Bill Gates world where you receive a goodly salary and stock options, or you live in Richard Stallmans world where you receive $40k a year and 3.1% federal worker cost of living increases.
Bull. I live in a world where I do customization of OSS and build proprietary software on top of OSS (mostly GPL'd) for more than three times that figure, plus stock options.
Software development requires hard work by smart people. If that work only pays $40K then those smart people will do something else and software won't get written. But the demand for software exists. Ergo, the people who can do it will get paid well.
A business model which has thus far failed
Yeah. Tell that to IBM. Or to Sun (who has adopted GNOME as their standard desktop). Or to Apple. Or to any number of smaller companies like Sleepycat and Trolltech.
Bwahahahaa!! Thanks for the belly laugh! You've got that completely backwards. It's the likes of Microsoft, with Palladium and their support for the CBDTPA who are trying to legislate Free software out of existence.
With regard to the article you linked to, I have to say that I think it makes perfect sense for governments to choose open source wherever possible, because a government's data shouldn't be controlled by a private company. And keep in mind that the proposed CA law has been proposed in response to an egregious abuse by the world of proprietary software.
I do think a government that restricts itself to only Free software is doing itself a disservice, because Freedom doesn't work for every category of software. However, governments should absolutely *insist* on open file and data formats.
"What the facts show is that people will program for reasons other than riches; but if given a chance to make a lot of money as well, they will come to expect and demand it. Low-paying organizations do poorly in competition with high-paying ones, but they do not have to do badly if the high-paying ones are banned. "
Yeah, Stallman has some ideas that are silly, unrealistic and socialist (continue on down the manifesto and read about the Software Tax). No one gets everything right. What's your point?
In the future I think it would be wise for you to stop confusing FSF with OSS. The two are not the same, and if you need clarification on that you need only ask Stallman.
Of course they're not the same. At work I constantly have to deal with the subtle differences in licensing issues and sometimes we choose to write something ourselves rather than use a Free alternative because the license requirements are unacceptable. Most of the time, however, Free software is a better deal -- costs next to nothing, permits us complete freedom to fulfill our customers' requirements and, if we contribute our changes back, provides a steady stream of bug-fixes and enhancements at a very low ongoing cost. BSD-style licenses are often a little easier to work with, but it's no accident that software with BSD-style licenses tends, in many cases, to have a less robust community supporting it.
Again I ask, what's your point?
Frankly, I think you make the same mistake that Stallman does: you think software must all be developed one way. Free software, BSD-ish licenses, shared source licenses and closed source all have their place (restrictuve EULAs, however, should be shunned). Competition among business models and licenses is good.
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They see a tangible benefit if it's GPL'd too- they get to use the code, and can even sell derived works. They just can't be the *only* ones who benefit.
They aren't the only ones - anyone who wants to can develop the 1.0 code, and release their work commercially or GPL'd or under any other license. No freedom is being removed there. Remember that the software was funded entirely by the public up until 1.0, so it belongs in the public domain. Whatever anyone wants to do with it with their own money is no business of developers who wrote it with taxpayer funding - it doesn't belong to them, it belongs to the people who paid for it.
Sure it does- it restricts a particular derivative of that source code from being created. Sometimes these are trivial enhancements or bugfixes. Furthermore, you have to worry about patented enhancements being added, etc. so in practice you are obligated to check all the other derived works to make sure you haven't discovered the same obvious extension someone else has already bottled up in a patent
As I said, anyone who wants to can branch the 1.0 source code. If you branch it in one direction and I branch it in another, there's no conflict there - unless we are using it to create competing products in which case it still doesn't make a difference, because we both started with the same headstart. Patents are a whole 'nother discussion and are really nothing to do with open or closed source. After all, anyone can recreate a patented invention from looking at the patent documentation, they just can't use it without the author's permission.
That's the craziest Orwellian newspeak I've ever heard. Copyrights and patents that restrict the use of derivatives of software restrict my action. Your theory is that the more a corporation can profit, the more freedom we have.
In the case of the vast majority of software, the thing that adds value is not patented intellectual property, it's the fact that someone spent time and money finding out what users wanted, building it, testing and debugging it, and documenting it. GPL actively seeks to prevent people from making money by doing that, since redistribution of source means that anyone can get it without reimbursing the developers for their time.
And yes, in the general case, the more a corporation can profit the more freedom we all have because barring market distortions, a corporation can only profit by selling customers what they want at a price that they are willing to pay. A corporation who doesn't will quickly go bankrupt.
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"Nice assertion. Care to support it? "
That's supported by my responses to your ridiculous assertions.
"Are you considering a company's own employees as a "third party"? If not, then you completely missed the point. If so, well, I fail to see the utility of that view. "
No, you brought up the example of using OSS software developed by others and then customized. I pointed out that's being done today with third party companies, furthermore it's rare to need to modify any general purpose software such as what OSS creates.
"Yeah. Tell that to IBM. Or to Sun (who has adopted GNOME as their standard desktop). Or to Apple. Or to any number of smaller companies like Sleepycat and Trolltech. "
These are what you term successes? IBM is in the hardware and services business. Apple is a hardware company. Sun has become a complete failure in competition against OSS. Where are Sleepycat and Trolltech balance sheets? Neither are publically traded unlike VA Linux and Redhat which are both bleeding red.
Where's your comparable Symantec, Microsoft, Adobe, Compuware? Anything?
"Bwahahahaa!! Thanks for the belly laugh! You've got that completely backwards. It's the likes of Microsoft, with Palladium and their support for the CBDTPA who are trying to legislate Free software out of existence. "
Ok, now you are clearly a troll. You can't even evaluate the present state of the tech market correctly, how could you possibly try to forecast the future?
"Yeah, Stallman has some ideas that are silly, unrealistic and socialist (continue on down the manifesto and read about the Software Tax). No one gets everything right. What's your point? "
This thread is about Stallman, is it not?
Why do people hold him in great esteem if he's clearly a lunatic and not working for your best interests?
"BSD-style licenses are often a little easier to work with, but it's no accident that software with BSD-style licenses tends, in many cases, to have a less robust community supporting it. "
Yeah, Apache has been a complete utter failure.
You're obviously mistaken, the best examples of OSS software in widespread use have been under the BSD licenses.
"Frankly, I think you make the same mistake that Stallman does: you think software must all be developed one way. Free software, BSD-ish licenses, shared source licenses and closed source all have their place (restrictuve EULAs, however, should be shunned). Competition among business models and licenses is good."
There's a difference between competition and coercion.
Microsoft promotes competition.
FSF promotes coercion and tells you it is competition. They're very communistic in their aims and tactics.
That's the point.
That's fine. Heck, while Stallman and the Free Software Foundation would rather that you use the GPL, they're happy with the BSD and MIT licenses and cheerfully agree that they are Free Software licenses. After all, if all the software in the world was licensed under the BSD license, they would have exactly what they wanted. You are granting us all liberty to your software; I thank you for it, and I suspect the FSF would thank you for it.
The FSF is against proprietary software. With proprietary software the publisher benefits from liberties denied to end users (the freedom to distribute copies and the freedom to modify). There is where equality comes into play. Ultimately there must be some limitations on liberty. The most obvious is when your liberty takes someone elses liberty away (which is why slavery, murder, and kidnapping are illegal). There are also times when we trade personal liberties for the betterment of society (this is what copyright strives for). However, when liberty is taken from one person and given to another, the situation deserves to be closely scrutenized and constantly reconsidered. Copyright is exactly such a case. In the absence of copyright, we would be free to make and modify copies to our heart's content. Copyright has taken away this liberty from millions of people, granting the liberty exclusively to a minority. The FSF believes that the current balance of copyright is not reasonable and should be changed. (I find Stallman's essay, "Reevaluating Copyright: The Public Must Prevail sums up their situation well.) As a short term work around in the area of software, the GPL and the LGPL are offered as partial solutions. ("I can't change the rest of the world's software, but I can make my software Free and ensure that it always remains Free.") The FSF's only concern about the BSD license is that software released under the BSD license can be made proprietary external parties. This has nothing to do with the BSD license, and everything to do with copyright.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
No, you brought up the example of using OSS software developed by others and then customized. I pointed out that's being done today with third party companies,
Now I see what you were getting at. Sure, it can be done that way. It can also be done the OSS way. In a free marketplace, the most effective approach will win. Care to place a wager on the outcome?
furthermore it's rare to need to modify any general purpose software such as what OSS creates
Why do so many people spend so much time, effort and money doing it then?
Do you build everything from scratch? Or are you even a developer? Based on some of your posts, I wouldn't be surprised to learn you're a professional astroturfer.
These are what you term successes? IBM is in the hardware and services business. Apple is a hardware company.
Precisely. I never claimed that selling OSS was a good business, but selling services and hardware built on OSS is very good business. You said there was no business model. There most certainly is a business model; it doesn't involve a direct exchange of software for cash, but programmers still get paid, and the software still gets produced and end-users get it all for less money and have more ability to make it do exactly what they want. So what's the problem with that?
Regarding Trolltech and Sleepycat, they are a couple of companies that demonstrate that dual licensing can also be profitable. You complain that they're not public. Why? Wise, conservative companies stay privately held unless they need large infusions of cash for growth and can't get it any other way. Are they profitable? They both claim to be, and small, privately-held companies tend not to live long if they're not consistently profitable, so there's ample reason to believe them.
Why do people hold him in great esteem if he's clearly a lunatic and not working for your best interests?
How do you get from "Many good ideas mixed with a few extreme ones" (and the extreme ones have softened over the last decade, since the 1993 GNU Manifesto) to "clearly a lunatic"?
You're obviously mistaken, the best examples of OSS software in widespread use have been under the BSD licenses.
Apache is the exception that proves the rule. Do you think Linux would be more successful if it were under a BSD license? Linus doesn't. It's the guarantee that other people will be forced to give back their enhancements that makes many programmers willing to contribute their own efforts to a project. It certainly has a large effect on my willingness to contribute my time to a project.
Microsoft promotes competition.
Oh, come off it, how much do you get paid for writing this outrageous crap? Microsoft has been convicted in federal court of anti-competitive practices, and the conviction was supported on appeal. And all this in the very pro-corporate US court sytem. The Europeans aren't going to be nearly as nice. How much more evidence do you want?
FSF promotes coercion and tells you it is competition. They're very communistic in their aims and tactics.
Coerced? Exactly *who* does the FSF coerce?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I personally don't have much of a problem with bare-bones vanilla copyright. If you look at the history of software, that's not the problem. The problem is licensing.
Licensing (any licensing) places additional restrictions on top of copyright. They supercede copyright. Can't make archival copies? Blame the license. Can't reverse engineer the software? Blame the license. Can't post negative reviews? Blame the license.
[Not all licenses are licenses. GPL, BSD, and MIT are not true licenses, since they are not contracts. The GPL is close, but there is still no need to enter into any agreement in order to excercise any right granted by copyright.]
Copyright is a useful compromise. It's not perfect. It certainly curtails some unalienable/natural rights of the user. But the alternative is licensing. If copyright disappeared it would not affect software much, because you don't need a copyright if you have a EULA, NDA or other license. Copyrights, despite their faults, manage to place creative works into the public sphere, instead of keeping them in the private sphere.
Or to phrase it another way, copyrights are the nationalization of private creative works. As a borderline anarcho-capitalist, I am divided on this point. I can certainly see the FSF's position and understand the problem. But I don't think the anarcho-syndicalism of copyleft is the answer.
My opinion on a possible solution is to keep that useful-but-ever-so-putrid compromise of copyright, but make some minor to moderate alterations to it. Make it so that copyright cannot be superceded without an explicit contract agreed to before the distribution of the work commences. Limit the term of copyright to a reasonable span (25 years flat, for example). Place into public domain all works that have been abandoned. Allow greater copying and distribution rights to the public under certain situations (similar to the educational fair use exception). Etc. Etc. Etc.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
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Freedom does not mean the power to do whatever you will. That's anarchy.
Freedom is a state of being. Anarchy is a system of governance. They two are not mutually incompatible. In fact, anarchy would be the system of governance-- that is, none at all-- that offers the most freedom to its citizens.
So yeah, freedom does mean being able to do whatever you will.
The FSF thinks that free software should be a right
No, they don't. This is a misrepresentation of the FSF's ideas. The FSF has some pretty crazy ideas about intellectual property, but they're not going so far as to say that software is a right. What was that you said about something being absurd?
Once again we see an example of this user, dh003i, picking something arbitrary and senseless and calling it his right. So far we've seen drug abuse, prostitution, deviant sexual practices, and now access to software source code.
When do I get to call not having to listen to your claptrap my right?
I write in my journal
Actually, no, anarchy is not a form of government. Anarchy is the absence of any government. Use a dictionary: They [anarcy and freedom]... are not mutually incompatible. In fact, anarchy would be the system of governance-- that is, none at all-- that offers the most freedom to its citizens.
What world do you live on? Here on planet Earth, anarchy and freedom are incompatable. Why? Because given free reign to do what they will, people will invariably rape, murder, steal from, torture, assault, etc. their neighbors, thus depriving their neighbors of freedom. Their neighbors will likewise do the same in return. This creates a situation where no-one has any freedom, but where there is only Fear and War. I'd have thought you would have read Hobbes' "The Leviathan". Though I disagree with his solutions, I agree completely with his analysis of the nature of man in the natural state of anarchy.
No, they [the FSF] don't [think that Free Software should be a right]. This is a misrepresentation of the FSF's ideas.
Well, their website seems to disagree with you. Let me give you a few quotes from their website As further notice, in an e-mail to me, RMS told me something along the lines of "the definition of free software is the minimum standard". That implies that free software should be a right. However, that is not certain, and I'm sure you won't believe my unverifiable "evidence". I will e-mail the FSF and put the question to him directly and post it in a reply.
Once again we see an example of this user, dh003i, picking something arbitrary and senseless and calling it his right. So far we've seen drug abuse, prostitution, deviant sexual practices, and now access to software source code.
No, I have no arbitrarily picked this. I have stated what I believe to be the FSF's position. I am not sure if it is my position, but will ponder the issue. All of my positions derive from one premise: that we should have the right to do whatever we want, so long as we don't violate other's rights; that we should be free to do as we will so long as we don't prevent others from doing the same. At the current time, my position on copyrights, patents, and trademarks mirrors that of Lessig: I think both the scope and duration of all of the aforementioned needs to be drastically reduced. Some things -- such as life-forms, business models, and biopirated information taken from Indigenous cultures for example -- should not be patentable period. Some things should not be allowed to be trademarked: Nike is a perfect example (as that comes from the Greek godess of victory, as does the Nike symbol). Copyright scope should also be reduced; for example, fair use should be drastically expanded, as should the public domain. Books like "The Wind Done Gone" should be covered under fair use. I am much more severe, however, than Lessig in terms of duration: I think that, though 20 years for valid patents is fine, life + X for copyrights is not. Copyrights should get at most 20 years of protection.
When do I get to call not having to listen to your claptrap my right?
No one's forcing you to listen. Remember, the right to speak does not mean the right to be heard? (though it does mean the right to have the potential to be heard). You're the one trolling around
If you really don't want to listen to "my claptrap" then you can stop reading my posts. If -- because I'm always modded up so high -- you find reading my posts unavoidable, then simply add me to your foes list, and modify all foes to have a -6 default, and set your threshold to 2.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Actually, no, anarchy is not a form of government. Anarchy is the absence of any government.
/. responding with irrelevant tangent-issues to everything I post.
You're one of those people who argues that white is not a color because white is the absence of any color, aren't you?
Here on planet Earth, anarchy and freedom are incompatable. Why? Because given free reign to do what they will, people will invariably rape, murder, steal from, torture, assault, etc. their neighbors, thus depriving their neighbors of freedom.
You're invoking Wilson's logic here: the idea that there's such a thing as "freedom from." Freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom from assault, that sort of thing. That is, of course, nothing more or less than semantic gymnastics. Freedom in the transitive sense-- that is, freedom to-- and freedom in the intransitive sense-- freedom from-- are totally different ideas. The idea of freedom as security-- that is, intransitive freedom-- can't really be called freedom at all, without diluting the word to the point where it's meaningless.
RMS, incidentally, has no problem with this. He twists the word "freedom" every way from Sunday and sees nothing wrong with it. You should know better, but I suppose the fact that you don't is par for the course.
Though I disagree with his solutions, I agree completely with his analysis of the nature of man in the natural state of anarchy.
Then how can you be a Libertarian? Again, you should know better!
That implies that free software should be a right.
Have you learned nothing from our conversations? A "right" is nothing more or less than a prohibition backed by the threat of force. The Bill of Rights grants you a "right" to keep and bear arms only in the sense that it prohibits Congress from making a law limiting your ability to do so. Because the Bill of Rights is part of the Constitution, and the judiciary is empowered to act with authority to enforce the limits set down in the Constitution, this prohibition is backed by the threat of (legal) force. As long as everybody respects that, the prohibition stands, and your "right" is protected.
Of course, as soon as the majority decides that they no longer believe you should be armed, your "right" will evaporate.
Do you have a "right" to access to source code? In order to answer that question, we have to translate it. A right is a prohibition. Is there a prohibition on the ability to restrict your access to source code? In other words, is there anything stopping me from keeping source code that I write away from your greedy, prying eyes? No. Should there be? Absolutely not.
And here we are again, back where we began. The GPL makes it impossible-- legally-- for a person to do certain things with source code. One cannot modify the source code and then distribute objects built from that source code without also distributing the revised source code, for example. The GPL is a prohibition. (Six pages of prohibitions, actually.) A prohibition limits the freedom of the people to which it applies; it takes away options that you otherwise would have had in the absence of that prohibition.
The GPL, then, leaves the people who subscribe to it with fewer freedoms than they would have had. The GPL is, in a sense, "anti-freedom:" it sucks the freedom out of those who use it.
Calling software licensed under the GPL "free," then, is an abomination.
I will e-mail the FSF and put the question to him directly and post it in a reply.
Don't bother. I don't really care what RMS or any of his followers has to say about "rights." I already know that their ideas are not compatible with reality, so there's no point in even posing the question. Fortunately, the FSF is as irrelevant as they are fringe, so it doesn't really matter in any sense but the purely academic.
All of my positions derive from one premise: that we should have the right to do whatever we want, so long as we don't violate other's rights; that we should be free to do as we will so long as we don't prevent others from doing the same.
I have already demolished this idea in another thread. I see no reason for you to bring it up again here. Allow me to summarize: the world does not, and never will, work in the way that you describe, and it would be very bad if it did.
Some things -- such as life-forms, business models, and biopirated information taken from Indigenous cultures for example -- should not be patentable period.
Wait. "Biopirated?" What you are describing-- the taking of ideas from one person or group by another by force-- is the textbook definition of piracy, and yet you advocate it across the board. And then you have the audacity to declare the taking of knowledge from one particular sort of group-- primitive societies-- to be "biopiracy?" I'm barely able to stand up under the weight of all this irony.
Some things should not be allowed to be trademarked [...] Copyright scope should also be reduced
Wrong and wrong. Fortunately, you aren't making the laws.
You're the one trolling around
Actually, I'm doing my best to make sure that your insane ideas do not go unrebutted. I consider it a public service. Besides, from the looks of things, it appears that you have a number of ACs-- or maybe just one very persistent one-- on your tail. If what I'm doing is "trolling," I hesitate to even wonder what you'd call that particular fan club of yours.
I write in my journal
They aren't the only ones - anyone who wants to can develop the 1.0 code, and release their work commercially or GPL'd or under any other license.
Not if someone patents an obvious extension or bugfix; or if someone abuses their monopoly power in the marketplace to hijack the standards and impose their will. Plus, if authors get rights to derivative works from their books, surely the public is entitled to derivative works from software they funded?
the thing that adds value is not patented intellectual property, it's the fact that someone spent time and money finding out what users wanted, building it, testing and debugging it, and documenting it.
I agree, so let's drop all the intellectual property protections and have fair competition based on ability to build test, debug, document and support.
redistribution of source means that anyone can get it without reimbursing the developers for their time.
Not if you don't distribute the source til you get paid. There's other ways around it too, and I guarantee if we drop this idea-ownership foolishness crafty programmers will find ways to get paid.
barring market distortions, a corporation can only profit by selling customers what they want at a price that they are willing to pay
1. That's not freedom, that's fair pricing. BIG difference, although they're both valuable.
2. Monopolies distort markets. Idea ownership is a legal but dangerous set of smaller monopolies; Microsoft's market position is an illegal and even more dangerous monopoly.
I'd be shocked but pleased if anyone besides us actually read this.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
You misunderstand. It's true I'm not forced to purchase or use it (except at work where I'm forced to use win2k).
But that's not the point. I am not free to make derivative works, I am not free to write similar works, to a significant extent in the case of copyright and completely in the case of software patents.
You're free to no copy or redistribute whatever you like, but you want to stop *me* from copying and redistributing.
bah.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
- Regarding anarchy. Thank you for admitting that you were wrong in calling anarchy a "form of government". That is the most absurd idea I've heard from you yet. Calling anarchy a form of government because it is "the absence of any government" is like calling chaos a form of order because it is "the absence of order".
- Regaring freedom. Freedom and anarchy are still incompatable, despite what you say. If I have freedom, I am (for example) free to do as I will with my own body. During a time of anarchy, someone can abuct me, tie me up to a chair, and torture me. In such a state, you can not say that I have any freedom what-so-ever. I don't have the freedom to move; the freedom to do what I want with my body; or the freedom to eat, drink, and sleep when I want. In short, anarchy will rapidly lead to a situation where few have freedom...physically strong individuals will prevent others from excercising their freedom. Of course, we don't have absolute freedom in society either; that's where rights come in -- to gaurantee us certain freedom's. In anarchy, you have no more -- if not less -- freedom than you would under a dictatorship; in the freest society possible, you still wouldn't have absolute freedom. In so far as is physically capable, the only people I can think of who have ever had absolute freedom are Lucy Irvine and her "husband G" when they were Castaway voluntarily on an abandoned island. Read the book and decide if absolute freedom is a good thing. For the only way one can have absolute freedom (or close to it) is to be all alone (or in this case, all alone with one other person).
- Regarding the FSF and its Free GNU GPL License. Again, there can be no such thing as absolute freedom, unless one is all alone (in which case one can do whatever one wants, but may not much enjoy it). The FSF and the OSI define what requirements a license must meet to be free (for the most part, they are the same, though the OSI is a little more lax). If a license meets those requirements, it is defined as free. In short, those requirements are a set of freedoms that a license must guarantee the user. The GPL meets every one of those requirements, thus it is a Free as in Freedom (and OSI-certified) license. The GPL basically prevents you from doing one thing: using a GPL'ed program as the basis for a program which you will license and distribute under a license other than the GPL. In that immediate sense, yes it is less free than the BSD license. But over the long haul, it will create a world with more freedoms, as developers won't be able to restrict the freedoms others may use (if they base their code off of GPL'ed code). These ideas are very much compatable with reality. I'm sure the "reality" you speak of is the "reality" that people want to get paid to write software. Nothing in the GPL prevents that -- nothing mandates that you give your product and the source away for free online, or anywhere else. You can sell your product for whatever price you want. And you don't have to give the source code with your product, but simply the offer to provide the source code (at the cost of shipment); also, note that nothing in the GPL mandates you provide your source code in a format which is easy to copy and distribute accross the entire internet. You could provide it on paper in hand-writing, for example (or another way making it unscannable by a computer).
- Regarding my central premise, that we should be free to do as we will so long as we don't prevent others from doing so, so long as we don't violate the rights of others (note, that my central premise is almost identical to the Golden Rule). No, you have not demolished this idea, except perhaps in your own very closed mind. Your arguments for why victimless crimes (for example) should be illegal are flimsy at best. Again, please try to use valid logic. Simply because the world does not operate the way I suggest it should does not mean that it never will, nor that it shouldn't. 500 years ago, people would have scoffed at the idea of a society as free as the US...they also would have called you a infidel for trying to say the Earth revolves around the sun. The world is changing, and its changing towards being more free, and away from your tyranical visions of utopia. When the world operates as you suggest it does, that is "very bad". You're utopia has been "realized" many times throughout history, and the results were all abhorrent: the execution of Socrates, the French Revolution and the mass-beheadings of aristocrats, the Salem Witch trials, the lynch mobbings of African-Americans here in the US. That is what your ideas amount to.
- Regarding biopiracy. What's wrong with biopiracy isn't that biotech companies use the knowledge of indigenous people. The problem is they get a patent for something they didn't invent: patents are supposed to be an incentive to invent, but they certainly can't be an incentive to invent if they aren't given to the inventors (but rather, those who tresspass on the inventors land). Please try to be honest while debating. I have not said I think that there should be no copyrights, patents, or trademarks: I have only said that, as Lessig realizes is needed, we restrict both the scope and duration of all of the aforementioned.
- Regarding trademark, copyright, and patent laws. You offer no solid rebuttal of my position. Trademark laws exist to protect the public and allow people to easily distinguish one product from another. Thus, corporations shouldn't be allowed to trademark certain things, or to chop up the English language between themselves. For example, symbols such as Nike in the public domain. In other cases, the law is extended beyond its domain, such as Intel Inside and Yoga Inside. Patent laws exist to encourage innovation and invention. New and superior business models naturally provide their own reward, and we shouldn't force the rest of the business world to operate inefficiently (that is a Pareto inferior outcome). Certain things shouldn't be patentable because they aren't inventions but discoveries. Life-forms shouldn't be patentable. Furthermore, patents exist to promote invention/progress and serve the public interest. When they don't, exceptions should be made. Patents shouldn't mean that people who can't afford drugs should die; those people wouldn't have been able to pay for the drugs in the first place, so they should be sold them at the cost of production (or rather, we should allow corps to sell generic drugs to them at cheap prices). Patents also shouldn't prevent scientific progress, as they often do by creating prohibitive barriers. Copyrights exist only to promote the creation of new pieces of writing, acting as engines of freedom. Their purpose is to act as an engine of free speech, not to benefit the authors. Thus, they only be of sufficient scope and duration to do such: I think that is 10-20 years. Make them too short, and there isn't enough incentive to create; too long, and no-one can make derivative works, thus they start to inhibit what they were intended to promote. In short, the thing to do in all of these areas is find the optimal balance between too much protection (i.e., anything over 50 years) and too little (i.e., none).
- LOL at your high opinion of yourself -- "doing a public service by rebutting my insane ideas". Firstly, my ideas aren't insane -- they're simply practical suggestions on what we could do to make a better society, in which we all have more rights. Secondly, you haven't rebutted anything other than in your own self-loving mind. Somehow, I doubt that if we took a poll, many
/.ers would agree with you. Not that that means anything -- the opinion of the masses is irrelevant to whether or not something is true/right/good.
Btw, please stop harping on this rights issue: whether rights exist a priori or not is irrelevant, because they are only significant if protected by force. Yes, the only rights we have (or which are meaningful to us) are those we defend with force. Also stop harping on this appeal to popularity/force. Just because something is popular does not mean that it is right, nor is something right if it has powerful forces behind it. Simply because the majority *can* force something on the minority doesn't mean that its right (or even that it will happen). In reality the "will of the people" is rarely abided by in the Legislative branch of our government, which only acts as a central point of bribery for big-money special interest groups.P.S.: Feel free to continue being my stalker. I'm rather flattered and have always wanted one. Don't expect me to repay the favor though: I see no need to troll you around
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
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First of all, you talk too much. Spend a little less time in front of the keyboard, and a little more with your friends or family, if any.
/.ers would agree with you. Not that that means anything -- the opinion of the masses is irrelevant to whether or not something is true/right/good.
The FSF and the OSI define what requirements a license must meet to be free (for the most part, they are the same, though the OSI is a little more lax). If a license meets those requirements, it is defined as free.
I do not recognize the authority of the FSF to define what "free" means. Their definition of the word "free" is as close to the opposite of "free" as I can think of. When the FSF calls a license "free," what they really mean is, "most highly restrictive," and that bugs me.
In that immediate sense, yes it is less free than the BSD license. But over the long haul, it will create a world with more freedoms, as developers won't be able to restrict the freedoms others may use (if they base their code off of GPL'ed code).
Ah. Finally, we get to the point. But a world in which developers aren't free to use "free" software in whatever way they see fit doesn't sound like "a world with more freedoms" to me. Sounds like doublethink, instead.
I've said this many times before: if RMS and his cadre of fanatics would stop using the word "free," I wouldn't have a problem with them. There's nothing free about the FSF's software; it's covered by a license that's just a restrictive as any other, and moreso than some.
(Most everything else you wrote I didn't even bother to read. Boring as all hell, your writing, and so repetitive. I just skipped to the end.)
Somehow, I doubt that if we took a poll, many
You know, I've been toying with a theory about you for a while now, and I think I'm just about done with it. You believe that you know what's right and what's wrong. You believe that you know what should and should not be allowed. And the opinions of people who disagree with you are irrelevant-- as you say here-- because you are right.
Usually you get this kind of fervor and absolute certainty from people who believe they've heard the word of God. But you are an atheist, and in fact you take every opportunity to mock the beliefs of religious people. So... where do you get your certainty from?
I haven't figured that one out yet, entirely. The only thing I can guess is that you believe you are smarter than everybody else-- or at least smarter than those irrelevant masses you so quickly disregard-- and that you, therefore, are capable of figuring out right and wrong from first principles. This should be allowed, that should not be allowed, and so on; you've got it all planned out in your head. And you honestly believe that the world would be a better place if everybody just did what you say.
That doesn't make you a philosopher, friend. That makes you a sociopath.
I just wish you would recognize your own limitations. I wish you would accept that other people have just as much authority to decide whether-- for example-- prostitution is right or wrong as you have. Instead, though, you yell "logical fallacy!" at every turn in an attempt to demonstrate that you are right because your reasoning is more sound. The world, though, is of course not a debating classroom, and your cries of fallacy, even if they were all right on, mean nothing at all. Some things-- again, let's just prostitution as an example-- are wrong for purely moral reasons, and as such are not subject to the rules of your logical debating game. "Why is prostitution wrong?" you ask. "Because it's bad," the world replies. This drives you nuts, because you can't argue against it. So you just cry "fallacy!" instead, as if that meant something in this context.
You can try to rationalize it all you want, friend. The truth, however, remains that you are not as smart as you think you are, and that most of the world disagrees with your ideas. You are, therefore, irrelevant.
See, it's going to go down something like this. You're going to stand up in front of the world and proclaim-- for example-- that prostitution is a victimless crime, and that it should be "de-illegalized" or some such. The world is going to say, "That's nice, dear, but we disagree," and they're going to walk away. This will, no doubt, send you into fits of apoplexy. At which point I will laugh, and then go make myself a sandwich or something.
I write in my journal
I do not recognize the authority of the FSF to define what "free" means.
Disagree all you want. You can also disagree with the authority of the dictionary to define that word. The simple fact is, that the FSF is an authority on what Free Software means. The OSI is an authority on what "Open Source" means, a slightly more lax term than Free Software.
But a world in which developers aren't free to use "free" software in whatever way they see fit doesn't sound like "a world with more freedoms" to me.
A world where developers are "free" to impose the most restrictive EULA's on their end-users doesn't sound free to me. Also note that no-one has to accept the GPL license.
There's nothing free about the FSF's software; it's covered by a license that's just a restrictive as any other, and moreso than some.
Not according to the FSF or the OSI. The GPL offers many freedoms to end-users and developers which proprietary licenses don't. It places one restriction on developers that the revised-BSD doesn't -- they can't modify and redistribute under a different license. So, in the very immediate term, the revised-BSD is more free than the GPL. But in the long term, the revised-BSD may lead to a situation where there is much less freedom than there would be had the GPL been used (because under the GPL, all derivative will be Free Software, but not necessarily so under the BSD).
You believe that you know what's right and what's wrong.
No, actually I know there is no absolute right and wrong. Right/wrong, justice/injustice, rights, morals, ethics, etc is all something which human beings made up. It is not a natural phenomena of this world, but rather a man-made one, which is not absolute and can be reshaped.
And the opinions of people who disagree with you are irrelevant-- as you say here-- because you are right.
Actually, the opinions of anyone and everyone is irrelevant to what the truth is. 500 years ago, people thought the Earth was flat -- wrong. ~300 years ago in America, people thought that there were witches who cast magic spells and thus needed to be killed -- again, wrong. When will you get it? Your opinion, my opinion, the opinion of everyone else in the world, is completely irrelevant to whether or not something is true. What you are suggesting is that if a tree falls in the middle of a forest, and there's no-one there to hear it, it didn't really fall -- that is a rather arrogant view.
I don't need to have absolute certainty, because I know that all this morals, ethics, justice, injustice is just stuff we made up. That doesn't mean it serves no purpose, but it also doesn't mean that we have to accept whatever the status quo is. The vast majority of people would be happier if the laws were derived from my first principle.
And you honestly believe that the world would be a better place if everybody just did what you say.
No, I believe the world would be a better place if everyone left their neighbors to do as they please in-so-much as possible (that is, in so far as their neighbor's activities aren't significantly directly harmful to them). I believe the world would be a better place if people tolerated other's actions as much as possible. That means, if your neighbor decides to have sex with a prostitute, fine -- doesn't necessarily harm you or anyone else; if your neighbor decides to rape your daughter, not fine -- does harm you and your daughter.
I don't believe the world would be a better place if everyone did as I said. I say "don't worship any god, that's all non-sense which is a waste of your time"; yet, doing such makes some people happy. I have certain preferences and hobbies (for example, reading poetry) which would invariably bore or make miserable others if they did the same. The same thing which makes me happy, might (for example) make you miserable. We should be thankful of that, as it allows for win-win situations for everyone.
Some things-- again, let's just prostitution as an example-- are wrong for purely moral reasons, and as such are not subject to the rules of your logical debating game...because it [prostitution is] bad
Prove it. You can't. You can only say "most people believe it is" which I don't think is even the case. Nothing can be better evidence for the non-existence of morality/ethics as an a priori entity than that we can't prove any moral/ethical statements in the same solid sense that we can prove scientific facts.
If I think the world is flat, you can say, "no idiot, its round..." You can show me photographs from space. You can take me out to a flat desert and show me that if I walk far enough, you're head will dissapear over the horizon, even with a high-powered telescope. If all else fails, you can put me in a hot-air balloon and tell me to keep going in one direction.
Not the same with any moral statement.
There are a few reasons why people say prostitution is "bad", but none of those reasons can convince anyone who starts out from a different first principle. Even assuming that prostitution is "bad", I can show that it is worse to criminalize it using reasons which would convince almost anyone starting from almost any first principles.
The simple fact is, you can't even define what criteria something must meet if it is to be titled "bad", because (from what I've seen) you're beliefs are just a collage of different "feelings" you have. You can't show why something's bad, or prove why its bad.
Neither can I show that my first principle is right or wrong, nor would I try because I believe that human beings invent what is right or wrong. But I don't have to, I just have to show people that under most circumstances, they would be happier if it were obeyed, which is easily demonstratable, as the greatest unhappiness to people comes from the ultimate violations of that first principle (i.e., rape, torture, murder, despotism, etc).
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
The simple fact is, that the FSF is an authority on what Free Software means.
True, in the sense that "Free Software" is a trademark under the control of the Free Software Foundation. False, in the sense of un-capitalized "free software," which is what we're talking about. And in this case, the FSF's definition of Free Software (the trademark) is completely incompatible with the definition of "free software" (the notion). So incompatible, in fact, that I hold the opinion that the FSF's use of the word "free" is so inappropriate as to border on the deceptive. I'm quite close, in fact, to calling it out-and-out fraud.
A world where developers are "free" to impose the most restrictive EULA's on their end-users doesn't sound free to me.
Then you need to revise your definition of "free." A world in which people are free is, by definition, a free world. Q.E.D. If you are trying to say that freedom is a double-edged sword, then you are correct, if somewhat trite.
The GPL offers many freedoms to end-users and developers which proprietary licenses don't.
Perhaps, in some cases. But it offers far fewer freedoms that the BSD license does, or, indeed, that releasing software with no license at all would. The only difference between the GPL and another non-free license is the specific details of which activities are prohibited.
But in the long term, the revised-BSD may lead to a situation where there is much less freedom than there would be had the GPL been used (because under the GPL, all derivative will be Free Software, but not necessarily so under the BSD).
So... the fact that the GPL means that users are not free to create unrestricted derivative works somehow means that an all-GPL would would somehow be more free? I hope you realize how insane that sounds. It's positively, to invoke your idol, Orwellian. "In order to be free, we must all be enslaved. Only when we are all enslaved can we all be free!"
No, actually I know there is no absolute right and wrong.
You are mistaken on this point. Someday you probably realize this. There is a chance that you may live out your life as an amoral sociopath, but for your sake and the sake of those around you, I hope you come to your senses.
The fact that our ideas of absolute right and absolute wrong are not based on natural, physical laws is not relevant. Every man has a conscience. You, it seems, have learned to ignore yours, but that doesn't mean it's not there.
Actually, the opinions of anyone and everyone is irrelevant to what the truth is.
I thought you said you didn't believe in absolute right and absolute wrong. Now you're saying that opinions are irrelevant. Which is it, friend?
Your opinion, my opinion, the opinion of everyone else in the world, is completely irrelevant to whether or not something is true.
I agree. Your opinion is irrelevant to the question of whether or not-- for example-- prostitution is wrong. My conscience says that it is. I am in the majority on this point. Your opinion that it is not, therefore, has no bearing at all on the question.
No, I believe the world would be a better place if everyone left their neighbors to do as they please in-so-much as possible (that is, in so far as their neighbor's activities aren't significantly directly harmful to them).
You are also mistaken on this point. The world would be a better place if everybody lived a sound, decent, moral life. That is not the natural human tendency, however, so we need laws to govern behavior. You would abolish most of those laws, resulting in a policed anarchy. No decent person wants to live in that kind of world. You, therefore, must not be a decent person. That's okay; it's not incurable. You can get better if you put your mind to it.
That means, if your neighbor decides to have sex with a prostitute, fine -- doesn't necessarily harm you or anyone else
It does indelible harm to the fabric of civilized society. It devalues sexual relations, and trivializes the bond between lovers. This harms us all in an observable way. That's why it must not be permitted.
Prove it. You can't.
I don't have to. It's not even up for debate. It is moral truth. The only reason you deny it is because you have convinced yourself, somehow, to ignore your conscience.
Prove that life has inherent value. You can't. But that doesn't mean it isn't true. It just means that that idea doesn't require proof in order to be accepted as true. Didn't somebody once say, "Logic is all well and good, but it's no substitute for thought?"
Nothing can be better evidence for the non-existence of morality/ethics as an a priori entity than that we can't prove any moral/ethical statements in the same solid sense that we can prove scientific facts.
Trying to answer a moral question using science is about as helpful as trying to answer a scientific question with morality. You're missing the mark, friend.
I write in my journal
I agree with you that the views in the parent message seem libertarian, and that is the problem I have. I believe the notion of pure freedom, in which nobody forces anyone else to behave in a way they do not want to behave, is a fantasy. This is different from the example that the ideal world is a democracy; anyone who thinks about it can see your points. Democcracy leads to some incredibly stupid things, but at the same time, it's the best thing we've got so far.
As for protecting freedom with a software license, any situation in which some people feel oppressed by others is changed through law, whether through the enforcement of it, the refusal to enforce it, the creation of new law through peaceful or violent means, or the repeal of law.
In this specific topic, you are correct; the GPL cannot undo bad laws. Under US copyright law, however, it can protect your freedom. This is one reason why I believe that no advocate of more restrictive software licenses has tried to challenge the validity of the GPL. A successful challenge to its validity would challenge the validity of all software licenses, and possibly the basis on which they rest: you rcopyright allows you to dictate terms of use.
The GPL, with no context, does not protect the freedoms it tries to address. But it does protect those freedoms through US copyright law.
Responding to a few relevant points, and a few tangents:
So...the fact that the GPL means that users are not free to create unrestricted derivative works somehow means that an all-GPL wo[rld] would somehow be more free?
Lets say if the GPL allowed derivative works to fall under any OSI-certified license. So, I make a GPL'ed program X (which solves a problem that hasn't been solved before), modifications of which can fall under any OSI-certified license. You then take my program X and make optimizations and feature improvements to it; you call your program Y and release it under the BSD license. A company then comes along and makes modifications to your BSD-licensed code and adds a GUI to it, making it easy to use. They release their program, Z, under a standard draconian EULA. It subsequently becomes the dominant program for its type of function, obtaining 95% market share, and taking users away from programs X and Y (which formerly accounted for 100% of the market, and now account for only 5%). Because these Free Open Sourced programs have lost many users, they have less feedback, and developers are less motivated to develop vigorously for them. Thus, by following your suggestions, we have went from a situation where 100% of the software used for a given problem was FS/OSS, to one where only 5% of it is. This is hypothetical, but the point is clear.
Summary: The revised-BSD type licenses offer more freedom initially, and the potential for greater freedom down the line if no-one proprietizes modifications; but they also allow for greater risks to invasions of proprietary software.
Every man has a conscience. You, it seems, have learned to ignore yours, but that doesn't mean it's not there.
Just because every man has a conscience doesn't mean that there is an absolute moral truth. Different men have different consciences. Mine doesn't tell me that prostitution, stripping, other other sex-work is wrong. It, however, tells me that rape, murder, torture, stealing, assault, sexual assault, child-molestation, etc. are wrong. My conscience also tells me that you and others like you trying to micromanage, control the lives of, and violate the rights of everyone around you is wrong. In all cases, reasoning backs up my conscience.
Also, referring to your conscience is meaningless. Where does this conscience you speak of come from? Well, there are two possible sources: (1) Its the results of genetic programming which affects neuronal factors; (2) Its instilled by society. Of course, I'm not suggesting that there are "conscience" genes -- that's absurd: they come about through complex gene interactions, which affect the morphology of (for example) synapses in the brain. Of course, what you call a "conscience" may be the result of both our genetic makeup and societal factors. In either case, if your source of "absolute moral truths" is what your conscience says, your on thin ice. Consciences vary from person to person within a nation: apparently, David Berkowitz' conscience told him it was right to kill people. They also vary from nation to nation: in many areas of the Middle East, its considered the morally appropriate thing to beat one's wife for showing her face in public.
In short, it seems like your absolute moral truth comes from "what you feel". This is obviously hogwash, as feelings tell people to do very cruel and ruthless things. The terrorists who ran a plane into the WTC on 9/11 thought it was right to kill 9,000 people: their "feelings" or "conscience" told them that it was right to kill 9,000 people.
I'll take a more personal example: the case of Carla Fay Tucker, the axe-murderer who was executed. Despite supporting the death penalty, my feelings made me feel sorry for this pretty woman who'd converted to being a devout Christian. That was obviously hogwash. If she'd been a fat ugly 6'5 African American who'd converted to being a Muslim, neither myself nor few others (who support the death penalty) would have "felt" sorry. Thus, if you support the death-penalty, the reasonable to do is ignore your feelings and support her execution.
My conscience says that it [prostitution] is [wrong]. I am in the majority on this point.
You keep on insisting that you're in the majority on every point. Firstly, this has no relevance to the truth (or lack of a truth) on the matter. Secondly, you have offered no statistics to show you're in the majority. That said, my conscience and that of many others disagrees with your conscience: we think that prostitution is not wrong. Prostitution is just a profession, and should be given as much respect as any other profession which does not violate the rights of others. Prostitution, like all other legitimate professions, serves a societal need: the need for sexual relief, for those who can't (or don't want to bother) getting it in a relationship.
Your cries of how prostitution destroys the institution of marriage, destroys sexual intimacy, and degrades women are nonsense: (1) Institutions, such as marriage, have no right to exist perpetually; (2) Good marriages spring from good relationships, and that is the responsibility of those involved in the marriage to obtain; (3) Nothing says sex has to be an intimate act between two people -- for some it is, for some it isn't, for some it is in some cases but isn't in others: if you or anyone else wants sex to be an intimate experience, prostitution isn't stopping that; (4) The actions of one woman reflect only on herself, and it is those who would judge all women by the actions of a few woman who degrade women, not the prostitutes. Nothing prostitutes or their customers are doing is going to stop you or anyone else from having valuable and meaningful sexual relations, nor trivialize the bond between you and your lover. The significance of your relation with your lover is your and her responsibility to establish and nourish. Take personal responsibility for a change.
I don't have to [prove that prostitution is wrong]. It's not even up for debate. It is moral truth.
You have to prove its wrong if you want to justify forcing your opinion that its wrong on everyone else. Just because you think its a morally wrong thing doesn't mean it is. Others don't. You arrogantly speak of moral truths as if you are some kind of authority on them. Outside of areas on which 99+% of society (in the US) agrees on -- such as rape, murder, torture, stealing, child molestation, assault, sexual assault, etc -- there is great debate on some of these "moral truths" you speak of.
Truths require proofs to be accepted as fact. That's what you want -- for us to accept that prostitution is wrong as a moral fact. You want us to accept that with the same certainty that we accept that gravity pulls objects towards the center of the Earth until a force of equal and opposite resistance is met. You want us to accept that based on what? Your word? Your conscience? Our conscience disagrees with you. So, if you want anyone who disagrees with you to accept that prostitution is wrong, you have to prove that it is wrong just as soundly as you can prove (and show) gravity. The only way for you to do that is take on the burden of the argument by staring with the initial assumption on moral or legal issues that others start out with.
Even if you can show its wrong, that doesn't mean it should be illegal. There are many things that most people think wrong but that they don't think should be illegal. For example, most/some people think the following things are wrong: (1) For priests to protect confessed rapists and murderers; (2) For lawyers to get guilty people acquitted; (3) To say cruel and hateful things; (4) To commit blasphemy. Despite that, most people don't think these things should be illegal, nor is there any good argument for why they should be illegal.
Prove that life has inherent value. You can't. But that doesn't mean it isn't true.
I assume that here you mean the life of a human being (and I'm not talking about a zygote/embryo here). Other forms of life have little or no inherent value to us: I could care less about any other form of life outside of human beings, except for how it can benefit human beings. Few if anyone think that yeast has any inherent value, or that infectious viruses or bacteria have any value. Some PETA-nutcakes apparently think that any life-form capable of feeling pain has inherent value and "rights".
In any case, it is obvious that this "sanctity of life" we speak of is something we invented, like all matters related to ethics and morality. It is not an absolute truth of the universe, nor is it one of nature.
. It just means that that idea doesn't require proof in order to be accepted as true.
What you're saying is that we should just accept these "moral truths" on faith. In some cases, that's fine, because there is almost a perfect consensus among the US population that various things shouldn't be allowed. For others, such as prostitution, drug-use, abortion, euthanasia, there isn't. Many don't accept these "moral truths" you spew, and in fact believe the opposite. Until you can convince most people that something is wrong and that it is significant enough to illegalize (in that it violates other's rights and harms) you have no basis for illegalizing it.
What you want is for everyone to do as you say: if you think/feel something is wrong, you want the law to mandate that no-one do it, no matter what anyone else thinks. You are the one who wants to be some kind of dictator. You spew out self-righteous and arrogant moral statements, and expect everyone to accept them on faith. Furthermore, you have no first principle from which you derive how all these things are morally wrong, thus no-one can reason with you starting from your first principle.
I, on the other hand, and others, do have first personal principles. My minimum principal is the Chinese Golden Rule: Do not do unto others, as I would have them not do unto myself. My principal for what makes a good moral action is to Do unto others as I would have them do unto yourself. Despite these being good rules or personal actions, they are not ideal to base laws around (because, they would, for example, be impractical, mandating good summaritan laws and laws requiring us all to "voluntarily" give to charity). Thus, my first legal principle is that people should be able to be free to do as they will, so long as they don't prevent others from excercising that same freedom. This is, in essence, a subset of the two moral first principals.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
They release their program, Z, under a standard draconian EULA. It subsequently becomes the dominant program for its type of function, obtaining 95% market share, and taking users away from programs X and Y (which formerly accounted for 100% of the market, and now account for only 5%).
That would only happen if Z were superior to X and Y; if it were not, or even if it were equivalent to X or Y, most people would continue to use X or Y rather than switching to Z. If you don't want people to use Z, the answer is not to restrict the freedom of the company that produced Z to release its software under whatever terms it likes. The answer is to improve X or Y to the point where it is a better option for users than Z. The answer, in other words, is to produce "open source" software that is better than its "closed source" competitors.
If, on the other hand, you wanted to make sure that nobody was ever able to use your product X for commercial gains, or whatever your own personal agenda might be, you're certainly entitled to release the software under the GPL or a similarly restrictive license. But if you do, don't call it "free." That's inaccurate and, at worst, deceptive.
Thus, by following your suggestions, we have went from a situation where 100% of the software used for a given problem was FS/OSS, to one where only 5% of it is.
To which the response would be "so what?" This is only meaningful if you accept that "open source" software is inherently a good thing. It's not. If all the software in the world were crappy, but "open source," that would be a bad state of affairs. If all the software in the world were excellent, but "closed source," that would be a good state of affairs.
So the fact that, in your example, more people used "closed source" software than "open source" software is not meaningful. What's meaningful is that product Z is superior to X and Y, and that's a good thing. If the GPL had been applied in your example, we would have been stuck with product X, or possibly product Y, which would have deprived us of the superior product Z. Which would be bad.
The revised-BSD type licenses offer more freedom initially, and the potential for greater freedom down the line if no-one proprietizes modifications; but they also allow for greater risks to invasions of proprietary software.
Again, that's only meaningful if you consider "proprietary" software to be an inherently bad thing. It's not.
Truths require proofs to be accepted as fact.
This is the most important thing you've said. On this point, you are absolutely incorrect. Until you realize this, you will never understand my point of view.
I write in my journal
If you don't want people to use Z, the answer is not to restrict the freedom of the company that produced Z to release its software under whatever terms it likes.
Not the answer according to you. Fine, in that case, you license it under something else. It is a guarantee for people who believe in the FSF.
The answer is to improve X or Y to the point where it is a better option for users than Z. The answer, in other words, is to produce "open source" software that is better than its "closed source" competitors.
Well, that's one answer, and is always preferable. There's no reason not to also use the other solution, which is the GPL, which guarantees no derivatives will be proprietary. Also, it might not always be possible to make the FS program better -- there might be hundreds of corporate competitors, pouring in millions of dollars each. There is a problem, and there is a solution: The GPL. May not be the solution you like, but too bad.
This is only meaningful if you accept that "open source" software is inherently a good thing. It's not.
Please take care not to use FS and OSS as synonyms, and please take care not to use "open source" in place of OSS (OSI-certified). It is inherently a good thing: the same program will be better if its GPL'ed and EULA'ed, because bugs will be fixed faster, and the user will know what (s)he has.
Simply put, people using FS & OSS as opposed to proprietary software is meaningful and good if you value freedom. If you don't value freedom, then, fine, it doesn't matter. I know that freedom and rights are meaningless and hold no value to you.
Again, that's only meaningful if you consider "proprietary" software to be an inherently bad thing. It's not.
It is.
Truths require proofs to be accepted as fact.
This is the most important thing you've said. On this point, you are absolutely incorrect. Until you realize this, you will never understand my point of view.
I suppose I should re-state my original statment for slightly more clarity: "Assertions require proof to be accepted as fact."
You may be some kind of lemming who will accept whatever some authority-figure tells you. You may expect others to do the same and accept whatever you tell them. But rational, responsible, thinking people don't. When people have accepted things as "true" without proof, it has always resulted in regrettable situations, as I've pointed out before (Earth = flat, witches, etc). The truth is the truth no matter what we say -- our believing a false statement (i.e., earth = flat) is true doesn't make it any truer, nor vica-versa. However, you still need to prove any assertions you make -- or at least provide supporting evidence for them -- if you expect people to accept them.
I understand your point of view perfectly. You think that you are an absolute authority on right/wrong -- as if there is such a thing as matters of fact -- and that everyone should just accept what you say without thinking for themselves. Furthermore, you think that you should be allowed to force your opinions regarding what is right/wrong on everyone who disagrees with you.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
It is inherently a good thing: the same program will be better if its GPL'ed and EULA'ed, because bugs will be fixed faster, and the user will know what (s)he has.
:-P
;-)
That's not quite right. I'll agree that it's inherently a good thing if software is better maintained. Being released with the GPL, however, is no guarantee that software will be better maintained. This is a common fallacy. In fact, since the GPL prohibits some classes of users from working on the software, I'd say it's even less likely for GPL-licensed software to be better maintained than software that does not include an exclusive and restrictive license.
The best software, of course, remains that which is commercially supported, and for which customers pay; the people who maintain that software do so because they are bound to do so by contracts, rather than by their own whims. A bug in a piece of "open source" software could, if no maintainer wants to fix it and no user is capable of doing so, go unfixed forever. No bug in a piece of commercially supported software could so go unfixed, however, because the vendor is contractually obligated to the customer. Having been on both sides of that particular equation, I can testify to its effectiveness.
Simply put, people using FS & OSS as opposed to proprietary software is meaningful and good if you value freedom.
But I just got through demonstrating to you that the GPL is not equivalent to freedom. The GPL is, in fact, equivalent to all the other restrictive licenses. Licenses like the BSD license, which place no practical restrictions on users, can truly be called free: those sorts of licenses leave the user free to do whatever he wants to do. The GPL does not leave the user free to do whatever he wants to do. The GPL, therefore, does not equate to freedom.
You can talk about licenses in terms of varying degrees of freedom, of course; one license might be "more free" than another depending on how many or few restrictions it places on its users. But it is not correct to simply, and without qualification, call the GPL "free."
This really isn't that complicated. You can use the GPL if you like-- I certainly don't mind-- but don't delude yourself or others into thinking that "GPL" equals "free."
It is.
It's not times infinity.
I suppose I should re-state my original statment for slightly more clarity: "Assertions require proof to be accepted as fact." You may be some kind of lemming who will accept whatever some authority-figure tells you. You may expect others to do the same and accept whatever you tell them. But rational, responsible, thinking people don't.
Nope. Still wrong. People accept all kinds of assertions with no proof at all. Can you prove that the sky is blue? We both look at it and we agree that it's blue, but can you prove that I'm perceiving it the same way you are, and that my idea of "blue" coincides with yours? No. Can you prove that a baby is beautiful? No. Can you prove that you are a sentient, self-aware individual? No.
Proof is not required for truth. After all, Keats said, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." He had a point.
If you want a more technical, even scientific, explanation, look no further than Godel's incompleteness theorem. He said, as I'm sure you're well aware, that any system of symbolic logic will contain statements the truthfulness of which cannot be evaluated within the confines of the system.
Then again, it may be true that I am lying.
Also, it's not about accepting what other people tell you. It's accepting what you see with your own eyes, what your conscience and your intuition tell you. The human mind has the capacity to recognize truth, and to recognize right and wrong, even in the absence of reason or intellect. I really don't understand why you deny this, and it makes me a little sad that you do.
I understand your point of view perfectly.
Obviously not.
You think that you are an absolute authority on right/wrong
No, I think I am an absolute authority on my own opinion of right and wrong, and I think that my opinion of right and wrong is just as good for you as it is for me. I hold others to the same standard of behavior as I hold myself. That doesn't mean that I know what's right; it only means that I have an opinion on the subject.
and that everyone should just accept what you say without thinking for themselves.
No. I do, however, think that people who rationalize away truth in the name of logic are missing the Great Universal Boat, if you know what I mean.
Furthermore, you think that you should be allowed to force your opinions regarding what is right/wrong on everyone who disagrees with you.
To the extent that I'm a voter, yes. Voting is, essentially, an act of violence. It is the forceful imposition of the will of some-- the majority, in our system-- over all. I get to cast one vote, just like everybody else, and that gives me the "right," if you don't mind a little verbal shorthand, to impose my will-- if I am in the majority on a given question-- on all citizens of our society. If I'm not in the majority, however, my "right" to impose my will evaporates.
I believe I have the same right to force my opinions on you that everybody else has.
I talk and I talk, and still he does not listen. Whatever shall I do?
I write in my journal
I'm not talking about making money. I'm talking about the ability to own your work. GPL prevents someone from owning their work, so it's a limitation on freedom. Stallman is a champion of communism in software, not individual liberties.
Vote for Pedro
Reality has shown that OSS/FS programs get bug-fixes and other such patches quicker than do proprietary programs. Check out the times between bug-notifications and fixes for MS Windows v. Linux and *BSD. Proprietary venders are under no obligation to fix bugs: they simply do whatever will maximize profits. They will, in fact, hide bugs when it serves their purposes, so as not to lose possible income sources. With OSS/FS software, you get full and complete disclosure, and history has shown that problems are fixed quickly. If they aren't, and something is important to you, organize a consortium to pay for fixing the problem. This will ultimately be cheaper overall thna paying a company, because the consortium doesn't want to make a profit, but just get the problem fixed.
You can talk about licenses in terms of varying degrees of freedom, of course; one license might be "more free" than another depending on how many or few restrictions it places on its users. But it is not correct to simply, and without qualification, call the GPL "free."
Firstly, few people do that. In fact, the FSF doesn't want people to call the GPL "free" because of the vagueness of the word (i.e., free could mena zero cost or free as in freedom). I and others call the GPL Free Software...it can also be called Open Source Software, as it is OSI-certified. Secondly, we simplify things significantly in many occasions; we, for example, say we live in a "free country" which is mostly true, but not completely true. I've already demonstrated, the GPL will result in situations where there is more Free Software and less restrictions, thus more freedom.
People accept all kinds of assertions with no proof at all.
Yes, people accept all kinds of assertions without proof or evidence at all. In those cases, they are idiots. Want examples? Well, I'll put religion at the top of that list. Next to that, comes the belief in sorcery and witch-craft. Then there's the fact that some people accept that aliens from Mars come to Earth and abduct the humanoids to perform rectal exams. Many people accept all these absurd assertions without any proof at all. In those cases, they are idiots.
Can you prove that the sky is blue?
Proof or evidence. I can provide evidence that the sky is blue to a person who can see. I can point to the ocean and say "that's blue" and then point to the sky and say "that's blue too". Any person who can see will be able to tell that they are different shades of the same color.
Can you prove that a baby is beautiful? No.
Wow, you get more and more looney as you go along. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Saying something is beautiful is about as meaningless as saying something tastes good. No, nothing is absolutely beautiful, nor does anything absolutely smell good or taste good, etc. It's a matter of personal preference. I can tell you that asparagus, for example, tastes good to me. I can't tell you "it tastes good"; well, I can, and people do this all the time, but what they mean is "it tastes good to me". Just as I like asparagus, other people -- most people, unfortunately -- think it is disgusting.
Can you prove that you are a sentient, self-aware individual? No.
By the definitions of the words "sentient", "self-aware", and "individual" I can prove that.
Proof is not required for truth.
I did not say it was. I said that proof is required to convince rationally acting people that an assertion is true: we should all require proof, or evidence, before taking something for the truth.
Of course, the truth is the truth whether we can prove it or not. Atoms were always the fundamental building blocks of life, even back 2000 years ago, when no technology could prove the existence of atoms.
I knew that you would eventually bring up this point regarding "eyes". Anyone who can see will tell you that the sky is (normally) blue. The evidence is what we see, and that we all agree. Furthermore, since there is universal agreement, there's no need to debate the matter. Controversial moral issues are another thing, however. You seem to argue as if "conscience" is a sixth sense. If it is, it is a rather poorly conserved one. My sixth sense tells me that its wrong to force a woman to give birth and that its wrong to force a man in extreme terminal pain to live his life like that; that of the Christian Right tells them the opposite. In other words, because there are major differences in what my conscience, your conscience, and everyone elses conscience "perceives" to be right/wrong, you cannot rely on it as a determining factor.
Ultimately, you are asking me and anyone else who disagrees with you to (for example) just "accept that prostitution is wrong". Then, by some miraculous leap, you ask us to just accept that it should be criminalized, despite evidence which shows that its criminalization harms the prostitutes (by making them more susceptible to rape) and society at large (by opening up a black market).
When asked why we should accept this "moral truth" you say something like "look to your conscience". Unfortunatley, the conscience of many people disagrees with you. In response to that, you say one of two things: (1) You have no conscience; (2) Your conscience is corrupted. This amounts saying that anyone who disagrees with you either has no conscience or that their conscience is corrupted. You then say "some things don't require proof to be accepted" implying that we should simply listen to what we feel, and again run into the same problem that not everyone feels the same way as you do. It ultimately boils down to you wanting me to accept what you say is the truth on faith.
I do, however, think that people who rationalize away truth in the name of logic
Again, you're assuming that you know what the moral truth is, and that those who disagree with you are trying to "rationalize away the truth". The reality is, that there is no absolute moral truth, but that morality varies from nation to nation and individiaul to individual. Even if there was an absolute moral truth, we'd have no way of knowing whether we knew it or not. Opinions on the morality of controversial issues are about as subjective as "chocolate or vanilla ice cream": it boils down to personal preference, not some universal truth.
For example, you say prostitution is -- in an absolute sense -- morally bad. That's as absurd as saying that vanilla ice cream is -- in an absolute sense -- really bad tasting (and those who think it tastes good must have some kind of mutation).
I believe I have the same right to force my opinions on you that everybody else has.
As much as I wish the legislative branch of our government was a direct-democracy, it isn't. We don't get to impose our will on anyone. We get to elect a representative -- a Senator and/or Congressman. They then subsequently break almost every promise they made while running for office and accept numerous bribes, thus completely negating any targetted influence we may have.
You keep on speaking as if we have a Democracy -- we don't. We have a Republic, where the elected officials are supposed to represent the constituents. However, that's not the way it works: the way it works is that they accept bribes from various corporations and organizations, and then represent those interests, so as to get more bribes which will help with elections.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen