Being Free is Hard to Do

ValourX writes "What is more important to you -- the four freedoms of Free Software, or the ability to maximize the value of your computer? It's a question that comes up on Slashdot often, but rarely is it so well argued as it is in this NewsForge article. How important are the FSF's four freedoms to you? What are you willing to sacrifice for those freedoms?" NewsForge and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.

Comments

Economic balance of freedom software cost.

[theapodan]

Personally, I'm willing to sacrifice the convenience of flash animations, or of photoshop, for a free (as in beer) solution. I'm cheap. The fact that the free (as in beer and in freedom) software often is excellent quality, FreeBSD being my favorite, doesn't hurt either.

However, I can see it being an impediment to adoption of free software because of the sometimes unreasonable demands placed by restrictive licences. The GPL does prevent advances and progress in some cases, such as device drivers, that otherwise would be possible. Same with flash and other non-free media solutions, whether DRM or CSS on DVDs or what have you.

I myself feel however, that sacrificing utility for the benefit of using a free software package, is only rational if the resulting loss in utility is no greater than the benefits. However, it is easy to quantify the benefit of free as in beer software, but harder to economically evalutate the benefits of free as in freedom software.

Re:Economic balance of freedom software cost.

[Mycroft_VIII]

Just curious, but why not change the old function to simply eliminate the problem, or even just simply be an alias of the new function?
I could only assume the new function needed data not suplied in calls to the old function.

Mycroft

Re:Should I bother?

[SealBeater]

Honestly, someone once said (+Orc, a very good cracker back in the day) that someone's work that is done for money will always be inferior to the work of someone who does it for love. I personally would rather use the OpenBSD team's ssh than a commercial one, because I know that the people behind it are doing it because they believe in it, and are going to do their best to put out a superior product, rather than being more concerned for the buck, not the software.

SealBeater

Well argued?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's barely argued at all. His line seems to be:

A lot of people don't value freedom of software that much, therefore anyone who does should stop.

He doesn't even try to actually make a connection between the apparent premise and the apparent conclusion.

Direct quotes:

"Perhaps it is time to let go of some of the high-moral ideals and remember why we started using computers in the first place."

But he doesn't say WHY anyone with these high-moral ideals should let go of them.

"none of us should ever be asked to make unfavorable sacrifices when it comes to turning our computer time into work or money"

Again, why not? Because it makes him uncomfortable to be asked to make "unfavorable sacrifices"?

maybe.... balance?

[ignorant_newbie]

There are some areas which are well supplied by free software. in many of them, the free software is markedly better than the commercial competition. These seem to be things like Operating Systems and Web Servers.

Other things seem to be best supplied by the commercial market - Doom3 & the nvidia drivers that let me play it on my linux box, for example. These things are all good, and there is a place for all of them. Jumping up and down about whether they meet RMS's definition of 'Free' or not is a waste of time, imho.

Re:Should I bother?

[nkh]

I always agree with this sentence: "Do it with your passion for CS."

But I'm just a student and wonder: if you do it for free how will you eat? And then someone always comes and say: "if doesn't matter, you'll always find a way to get money out of your work."

But WHAT is this way to make a living? And please, don't tell me it's "support", I don't believe it anymore... I agree that you can write OSS in your spare time, but I haven't met anyone who wrote OSS for a living (and I don't want answers like Alan Cox or RMS).

Re:Should I bother?

[Ngwenya]

Non-free software or no software. What would you rather have?

False dichotomy. There isn't an either/or except in your premise that you wouldn't have written software were it to be free.

I too write software for a living. People pay me to do it. It's also free software - because it falls below the value line for closed source software for my employer [along with at least 95% of all software written in the company].

I have also written software which has nothing to do with my employer. I do it for the love of it. There are many others in the world with a similar view. I would write software even if I didn't get paid to do it - sure, I'd need another job to keep body and soul together, but I'd still hack.

Anyway, why wouldn't people pay you if it was free software - do you only code for people who sell the software afterwards as proprietary? Most software (95%+) is generated for internal use - so it generally makes sense to release it as free software. Because then it reduces the amount of code the purchaser needs for any new products. The more free code there is generally, the cheaper software production gets in total.

--Ng

Re:Should I bother?

[BillGodfrey]

Alas, I don't do the customisation. I develop and maintain the basis.

Other people sell support contracts and customisations. Because I demand a cut of the support contract fee, I get paid. If I released it under the GPL, I could not make that demand.

Oh yes, I don't want to do the customisations and support myself. My skills lie elsewhere.

Free != zero cost

[Noksagt]

A dozen posts & already many that confuse no-cost software with software that you can do anything with, including viewing & modifying the source & sharing it with others.

A love for zero-cost software isn't bad. I see a lot of people coming to the F/OSS movement because of it. They could run a warez copy of Photoshop, but then they discover the GIMP. After a while, they may discover the fantastic quality of software available & may try more of it. They might discover how wonderfully helpful and intelligent the community is--they are eager to help & are eager to have you contribute back.

I probably wouldn't have started to use F/OSS if it was priced unreasonably. But now I find the other parts of freedom to be much more important. It is frustrating to find commercial software that is stagnant. Bugs are always present in any software (some of which are security vulnerabilities, some of which are just annoyances that I have run into). But with F/OSS, I can usually see if a bug has already been reported, look for solutions, or report it & wait for insight from others. I'm not much of a programmer, but I can also sometimes discover a fix myself. The frustration of not being able to have this basic ability with some nonfree software is horrid.

I recently started to contribute a small amount of money each month to software which I use every day--which I depend on for entertainment and to get my work done. Paying for free software?! Well, at least it is tax deductible & it does make me feel good.

I would definitely say that the four freedoms are more important than zero-cost.

Re:Free != zero cost

[mrchaotica]

You lose freedom as well if FOSS does not have a good package thats as good as the alternative.

You lose something, but it's not freedom. Maybe it's convenience, or maybe it's value, but there's no way it could be freedom because there's no lock-in -- you're still free to switch back to the proprietary software. That may not be -- and probably isn't -- true in the other direction.

----

As an aside, the Gimp is most emphatically *NOT* unusable for "real" web site design work. Want proof? Take a look at those section icons at the top of the page, and the Slashdot logo, and then tell me that those couldn't be easily made with the Gimp. Or take a look at Google and explain how their site would be harmed if Photoshop suddenly ceased to exist. Or are Slashdot and Google not "real web sites?!"

Now I'm not trying to troll either, but unless the web site you're creating is some sort of avant-garde art project, you do not need Photoshop for the design of the site. For that matter, you do not need the Gimp! Maybe ImageMagick would be useful, but that's about it. Why? Because the goal of a web site is not for people to ooh-and-aah over how fancy it is, but for people to get the information they want as quickly as possible. If you feel like you need a fancy design for your site to be successful, you're trying to compensate for inadequate content. Fix the content, use clean, semantic markup, and organize it well, and your site will be successful -- and fancy imagemaps or graphical links or, even worse, graphical text will only decrease the usability of it and drive viewers away.

If this is a revelation you can't deal with, then you should realize that you are actually a graphic designer, not a web designer, and change mediums. Frankly, the web will be a better place without you.

And don't even get me started on Flash...!

Re:Should I bother?

[Ngwenya]

But WHAT is this way to make a living? And please, don't tell me it's "support", I don't believe it anymore... I agree that you can write OSS in your spare time, but I haven't met anyone who wrote OSS for a living (and I don't want answers like Alan Cox or RMS).

You seem to have excluded the set of available answers in the postamble to your questions. A bit like saying "What's the capital of France?" and then saying "Please don't say Paris".

There are many top flight coders who work for companies like IBM, HP, Sun, etc. (eg, Andrew Tridgell, Jeremy Allison, and so on). They all get paid to write F/OSS. But you don't have to be an uber-coder to get into that game. If you work for a reasonable enlightened company [yes, there are a few], they can see that most of the software generated internally has no value as a sales proposition. So get them to release it as free software. Explain that it means that the cost of developing new software will drop, because you can now use and redistribute the work of all the other coders.

Bang - suddenly you're developing OSS for a living. Maybe you do helpdesk other parts of the time, or are a tech support guy. So what? It's still code. The more there is of it, the more it'll get used.

Hell, even the stuff which I've written and been ashamed of is useful - because it let's people know how not to do something!

--Ng

Re:Freedom 0?

[advocate_one]

very important... and a lot of people don't really get why... anyone who bitches about his gpl'd program being used by the military to suppress indigenous tribes with fails to appreciate that vital freedom. It's double edged and you have to fully appreciate this. If your conscience can't cope with it, then don't release it under an open source license. Use your own license to tie it down so that you can deny them the use of your program.

There's a missing fifth fundamental freedom

[MikShapi]

At least as considered by any business who'd want to ingegrate anything, even as miniscule as a c file with 3 functions that calculate CRC.

What's missing is just like "The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public" only the opposite -
"The freedom to improve the program, and not release your improvements to the public" (or sell said improvements to the public for profit)"

This is the issue commonly called copylefting.
What it comes down to is "Free for anyone who's part of our [opensource] club" as set forth by the GPL (If you're a Checkpoint dev, a legal obligation to release all/parts-of the source code of the product makes whatever ran you into that obligation anything but free), or "Free to anyone. Period." as set forth by X11/modified-BSD licenses. The latter offer the fifth freedom.

The obligation [e.g. lack of freedom] to integrate GPL code with [often immense] business-owned closed code serves on one hand to spur [few, IMHO] businesses to go opensource, while keeping a dark "obligation" cloud over Open Source that scares the rest away. I personally ran into this dillema at my former workplace. The result was us using BSD-licensed and commercial solutions, while [to my great dismay] avoiding GPL-code like the plague.
The LGPL is a fair compromise, unfortunately few projects use it. Sometimes you need code from a GPL app, and you're willing to wrap it in a library yourself (and offer that library's code to the public) but since the original dev never considered this and just slapped the GPL on his work, and you can't use it (whereas had he done so with LGPL, you would be able to do so).

The conclusion (which promptly earned me two flamebait mods last time I said this unliked piece of truth here) is that everything GPL is quite unfree to those [nice, evil, fill your own description] people who pay us coders our salaries and feed our families.

I, personally, as a coder who wants to tap open source where I work, would definitely like it to be otherwise. For the GNU codebase to be as legal-obligation-free and accessible as the X11-ilcensed or mod-BSD-licensed codebase (and a big thank you to anyone altruistic enough to use those licenses on his donated code).

Wishful thinking I guess...

Re:There's a missing fifth fundamental freedom

[Noksagt]

"The freedom to improve the program, and not release your improvements to the public"

The GPL allows this.

(or sell said improvements to the public for profit)"

But not this. What incentive do people who believe in the GPL for letting you get a jump-start on a closed commercial product. Strategically useful tools are often placed under an LGPL or BSD-type license if their wide-spread adoption will help the community. But for some things, GPL authors are rightfully greedy. If I developed a free end-user application, I would very much resent it if I couldn't take advantage of someone else's improvements. No one is writing GPLed software to make it easier for you to personally make a buck off it.

The obligation [e.g. lack of freedom] to integrate GPL code with [often immense] business-owned closed code serves on one hand to spur [few, IMHO] businesses to go opensource

If businesses have immense closed code, they have the resources to generate more of it themselves. How would GPLed code help both them and the F/OSS community?

What you see as lack of freedom I see as freedom: users are GUARANTEED the improvements made by others!

but since the original dev never considered this and just slapped the GPL on his work, and you can't use it (whereas had he done so with LGPL, you would be able to do so).

Contact the developer. He may relicense it to you. Since you are selling it, you might want to/have to compensate him financially for a license.

Re:There's a missing fifth fundamental freedom

[MikShapi]

0. Calm down. Your contribution shouldn't cost you your health.
1. Your contribution is greatly appreciated.
2. I [as a coder who is a paid representative of my employer] would greatly like to use your contribution, free, as you intended.
3. As far as my employer is concerned, your contribution, as useful as it is, is not worth GPL-stamping [e.g. opensourcing] 2 million lines of source, millions of dollars he invested into of engineer time, into a product with a competing edge, which is keeping his business afloat. Asking this of my employer, be it fair or not in your view, is unrealistic. He will not commit financial suicide for you. Don't take that as an insult, you wouldn't commit suicide for me either, even if I donated something to you, and I'm perfectly okay with that.
4. The LGPL allows me to take your code, wrap it in a library, and opensource the code of that library alone, not everything [i.e. my employer's entire product] that links to it. My employer uses, My employer gives something [albeit not his head on a silver platter] back to the community. This is what I referred to as fair and compromise.
>> "What do "fair" and "compromise" mean on your planet?"
Does your planet have this thing called "Economy", "Businesses" and "Programmers who have children to feed and thus need an employer to pay them a salary"? Mine does.
5. Being able to use your contribution with no strings attached is what makes your contribution free to him, as opposed to costing him something (even if you view that as free because what he pays never reaches your pocket). The term free [as in beer] is not a result of what you get. It's a result of what it costs him.

Which brings me back to my original post - GPL is free to any members of the OS club. X11/BSD is free to everyone, closed-source software businesses (with which one or two slashdotters may have crossed paths during their careers) as well. And it's you, the contributer, who decides who you want to share with.

Think of a TV ad saying "X if FREE, if only you join our club (which promptly costs money to anyone who's, say, asian)".
Free, eh?

Re:There's a missing fifth fundamental freedom

[Noksagt]

(or sell said improvements to the public for profit)"

To be more accurate: the GPL DOES allow this...it just forces you to make that software you sell Free (as in Freedom). But this wasn't the kind of thing you were arguing about the right for.

Re:There's a missing fifth fundamental freedom

[MikShapi]

Here's an example for you.

A [quite real] company called Qualystem makes a network-boot suite that allows you to boot Windows XP clients off a UNIX/Linux-based server.

There is no opensource alternative for their product. This is said to emphasize there is neither something wrong with their business model, nor are they on the verge of drowning under free&better OS alternatives like traditional UNIX operating systems or products with opensource counterparts are.
Their business relies SOLELY on selling software. Not service. Not hardware. Just software.

Such a company cannot use so much as a line of GPL code without legally binding themselves to commit suicide, hence for them GPL != free. For them, GPL is the most expensive thing in the world.

Re:There's a missing fifth fundamental freedom

[MikShapi]

No.
First, your point is valid, there is not and cannot be an absolute freedom. The BSD license is also limiting to an extent. I cannot claim I wrote the code for instance. I cannot prevent the author from continuing to give it out for free, even if I relicense the same code and sell it.

For myself, I'm not implying anything other that I'm personally greatly appreciative of having an opensource package called "unzip" with a BSD license, which saved me the need to waste 2 months trying to figure out and implement ZIP compression.

I am implying that for my [now-ex] employer, or the example of Qualystem (which I chose for the exmaple simply because I know their software doesn't have an opensource equivalent) GPL is not free as in beer. For them this is the difference between having something people are willing to pay for and not having it, thus the implications of using GPL cost horrendous amounts of money.

I am using the X11/BSD license as a reference point, as they provide similar opensource contributions, only without the unrealistic pricetag designed to wage war on closed-source companies.

This can, I guess, be somehow regarded as a 'Free as in speech' issue (Is my employer free to use the code for his purpose or not?) as well, but the real issue here is money, so I guess the easy way to look at it is the beer context.

Legislate free software into and out of existence?

[DingerX]

Sure, we can all debate the relative merits of GIMP and Photoshop's interfaces, the joys of flash and brew, but the article points why the current environment is unfavorable to free software. It's not so much that commercial software is superior; rather, the freedoms are, in the current environment, irrelevant. Free software only becomes viable when all users are forced to pay for commercial software; that is, when those freedoms (or at least the first three) are enforced across the board. Sticking with the photoshop example, I'm sure there are tons of semi-legitimate and pirated copies of photoshop sitting on people's computers doing relatively simple tasks that could be done just as easily as with GIMP. Let's say Adobe finds a way to shut down all those non-revenue-generating copies. What happens? Maybe Adobe will see a little more revenue. More likely, the the user base of GIMP will increase one hundred fold. Suddenly those freedoms are more than hollow idealism in a pragmatic world, but actually mean something. More users mean more development. Then your Open Source Worker's Paradise is fast becoming a reality. ...and that's when Microsoft forms a coalition with software publishers to build in a costly DRM system that requires every software product to be encrypted to an individual machine in order to work. What do you want to pay today?

Re:Should I bother?

[polyp2000]

Actually you are wrong to think that people dont get paid to write free software. It shows on your part a lack of understanding of how the free software industry works, or maybe what the term free means in this case. Have you read the "four freedoms" link in the article ?

Free software is not about getting something for nothing - it is about your rights, and freedoms and ability to do whatever and use however free software in any way you see fit.

Consider the many companies that sell free software- eg - linux distributions such as Red Hat, Mandrake , SuSe, Novell . Do you think these companies leech the free software in order to create the various distro's they sell ? No ... of course not .. while there may well be many projects they dont have involvement with and perhaps volunteer contributors to their product. They mostly have good teams of developers that "get paid" to work on free software and this in turn gets returned to the community so everyone benefits. While I could go on and find other examples such as IBM - ill leave the googling to you!

I think that you highlight the misconception that many people have - not just individuals but also businesses - that there aint any money in F/OSS. I think it is important to educate people such as yourself the virtues and dispell the myths that abound. In fact, in todays cut throat IT industry its either be Assimilated or die *cough*redmond*cough* free software and open source is rapidly becoming a form of protection for companies - companies like Novell for example - They couldnt have made a better businiess move than going down the freedom route. Think about this way ;companies like Novell may well benefit from the Kernel-Hackers at Red-Hat - While the Red-Hat team may benefit from the Ximian develpers at Novell. To put this in perspective look at Microsoft well , its kind of hard to find an example here because the only business that benefit from microsoft is microsoft since they dont follow this ethic at all.

Admittedly those that are lucky enough to get paid to write free software are severly outweighed by those who write proprietary. But year after year those scales are tipping and I think its fair to say that linux and free software is a like a snowball rolling down a hill, it just keeps getting bigger and their insnt a lot that can be done to stop it. Its changing the way people think!

Re:Depends...

[kg_o.O]

I suppose that depends on how you define "value". Personally, having Free Software and using Free Software has done more to "maximize the value" of my computer far more than anything else I can think of.

My thoughts exactly. The only reason I'd need proprietary OS (ie. Windows) on my PC is to play games -- not having it saves a lot of my time :) Surely there are people who need software available only for Windows that is actually required to do their work, luckily I'm not one of them. Besides, I find Linux simply more comfortable to work on, though some things could obviously be improved, but that's a totally different topic.

Re:Four freedoms vs Max use?

[Neil Blender]

Look up the following: Mplayer, Kaffeine, Xine, LibDVDRead and BZFlag

Dude, you are preaching to the choir. I am a full on linux junky and have been for many years. But tell me, who's the fool: My boss (who has been in the computer business for 30 years) who is given a perfectly capable dual boot(linux/xp) laptop and asks me how do view a dvd under linux OR my wife with fuckall computer experience who can buy an ATHF dvd off ebay, stick it into her XP laptop and be watching it (with sound) inside of 10 seconds?

Me? I will spend the hour or two it takes me now (as opposed to the weeks or months it would have taken me 3 or more years ago) to figure out how to get it to work. My boss - I'll set it up for him, 'cause he's an idiot. My wife? She'll have watched the dvd three times before I'm done.

Free as in...

[burtonator]

What about the 5th Freedom?

Free as in $29.95 ....

Seriously though.. I've made a lot of money selling (my) Free Software for $29.95...

I just had the source in CVS. If you were smart enough to checkout via anoncvs and to the build yourself that was fine.

If you needed help and wanted a really nice installer it cost you $29.95...

This let me work on my little project full time which then turned into a company.

We're 7 people now :)

Re:Free as in...

[Wannabe Code Monkey]

If you were smart enough to checkout via anoncvs and to the build yourself that was fine.

I don't think that meets the standards for free software. You have to actually tell your users that they can get the source, and how to get it. It's not enough that it's possible if they happen to know that you have the code in cvs, and that it's accessible from the internet, and that you allow anonymous access.

Re:I am so sick of this crap

[polyp2000]

Im going to bite this troll...

Simply by saying that you probably dont realise quite how much influence free software is changing the world its not some small bunch of hippies with some ideal to legalise pot. If free software and those that extoll the virtues of it did not exist your world would probably be very different. Have you ever used google ? have you ever looked at a website running on linux/bsd/apache ? ever downloaded a bittorrent file? or ripped a dvd?

The chances are that you have - and all of these things were made possible to you by people excercising their right to create, use and modify free software.

Free software people dont "want" to change the world, they "are" changing the world - and the chances are my friend that you have benefitted from it in many many ways. And ask yourself this question ... what about all those developing countries who are choosing Linux/FOSS are they and their people not going to benefit directly or indirectly from the fact that their goverments have less ties with redmond in america?

Ridiculous

[phr1]

There is no fundamental right to prevent the public from sharing something that you've published. There's a body of law called copyright for doing that, but it's not a fundamental right, it's just an artificial government intervention that people decided to authorize in order to create an incentive for authors to publish. Some people with an overactive sense of entitlement think that copyright is a fundamental right, but that's simply not recognized by history by the law, and any theories grounded on assuming such a right exists are simply hogwash. Without the intervention, perhaps less stuff would get written, and even less stuff would get published, but life would generally go on just fine. For more info, see the book Free Culture (text downloadable from link) by FSF board member Prof. Lawrence Lessig.

The people at your former workplace did exactly the right thing by avoiding GPL code. I'm sure you would say people not willing to honor the terms of your company's licenses (i.e. no sharing, pay for each copy, etc). should not use your company's code. So I don't see why you have trouble with the notion that people not wanting to honor the GPL's terms shouldn't use GPL code.

I myself write closed source code sometimes, but I expect to get paid for doing it. When I write code as a volunteer, it's GPL. I don't see why I should want to do development for your closed source product so you can get money for shipping my code, unless I'm getting some of that money myself. If you want to use the closed source policies to charge people to use code, write the code yourself or pay someone to write it. In wanting to use GPL code in closed source products, it sounds to me like you're just a freeloader looking for a handout.

Re:Being Free is Hard to Do

[stony3k]

I think most of us have forgotten that it took great sacrifices by our ancestors to get the freedoms (in society) that we currently enjoy.
I would argue that without sacrifices we cannot achieve freedom. It seems to me that the sacrifices the FSF are asking us to make are significantly less than those made by our ancestors.
That said, I do agree with the basic premise of the article that we often need to use proprietary software to achieve our needs. The solution is better free software - not giving up the fight.

Exactly

[wirelessbuzzers]

The goal of the GPL is to make all software free.

The goal of the BSD license is to make all software better.

Re:Exactly

[petrus4]

>how the f do you get those bugfixes and
>improvements back into your own program now...
>they're under absolutely NO obligation to put their
>improvements back into the common pot.

This however is the point that the GNU Marxist Brigade seem to keep missing. The definition of freedom is being able to choose *whether* you put improvements back into "the common pot" or *not*.

Also...in terms of Microsloth loving the BSD license, so the hell what? If they appropriated BSD code it'd be the best thing they could do as far as fixing a lot of Windows' problems is concerned. Bill can go and download a copy of one of the BSDs and do whatever the heck he wants with it, same as anybody else. Again, the other point you're missing here is that the parent code tree is still there. Bill can fork it, you can fork it, I can fork it...then we can sell said forks and profit. You can cry about duplication of effort as much as you want, in terms of us writing the same code over and over again...there's no compulsion for that to happen, because people can still *choose* to release improvements, as many do. So that still should not give anyone the right to *force* people to submit improvements. Freedom should be about freedom to choose...Not freedom to only do as RMS dictates.

That is another thing that really annoys me about RMS...His argument with regards to the BSD license uses scarcity thinking and is completely broken, but yet of course unthinking sheeple such as yourself swallow it whole.

Re:Depends...

[devhen]

Hmmm... Wise words.

I remain on Windows for one reason and one reason only: Games. Like many other geeks, video games have become my release (so I don't have to drink.. or hell knows what else). And not a one of the games I am playing right now could be run on Linux. Aside from games, I have all of the tools I need to "live" on Linux.. Internet, email, web programming, software programming.. everything but the games. This is precicesly why I keep an up-to-date and functioning copy of Linux on my drive at all times. It just so rarely gets booted. So unfortunate...

Re:Well, let's see

[polyp2000]

Generally, I think they'll find that most people hold a similar view. OSS advocates often get so caught up in the ideas of modifiability and redistributability that they forget that for most people, it's a total non-issue.

So just because you dont understand or have the ability to modify code its a non-issue? How about the fact that it is modifiable and can be changed by someone who does understand and modify free software can do so? Your should care that software is freely modifiable because you will be the one benefitting when someone else more knowledgable comes along and makes the product better. What happens when the noddy proprietary software vendor goes belly up - bang goes your investment - but if their product was free open source, and the software was of any great merit you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be plenty of foss developers getting their hands dirty.

Just because you are unable to do theses things yourself it doesnt mean that you shouldnt care about it being important - you benefit from it all the time without even realising it.

Proprietry only better if you _pay_ for it

[mabinogi]

The thing that bugs me the most about a lot of the people that complain about a Free Software alternatve to a commerical program not being an effective replacement, is that often those people have not actually _paid_ for the commerical software that they say is so much better.

Those that have forked over $1000+ for specialised proprietry software (Photoshop, Cubase etc) are the ones that have the right to say the features of the Free Software replacements are not up to scratch.
Those who are using warezed versions and have no intention of ever purchasing the software, but say that the Gimp is no Photoshop aren't helping the cause, and show that they have no real interest in advancing the state of Free Software - they just want to get everything for nothing.

Re:Four freedoms vs Max use?

[Neil Blender]

In a way, FOSS has forced me to learn a bit more about what I'm using....The subjective here is have I lost or gained? Me? I reckon I've gained.

And that is the defining difference between me/you (0.0001%) vs my wife (99.9999%) of the world. I want gain computer knowledge and experience whereas my wife, well, she wants to watch Ignignot cleverly trick Meatwad into stealing racks of DVDs and to smoke while he does so.

Article is one long troll

[Henrik S. Hansen]

That article is not well argued at all. It is one long troll with the same old argument that convenience is more important than freedom.

RMS has dealt with this argument time and time again, explaining why he thinks that freedom is the highest goals of all. And I agree with him.

The world needs more thoughtful idealists like RMS, and even more people who listen to what they say.

Re:Four freedoms vs Max use?

[ichimunki]

I'll take four hours installing GNU/Linux over four hours trying to recover from the latest virus invasion on my Windows system any day. Really. How many people do you know that run Windows who haven't had some terrible corruption issue from spyware, viruses, worms, etc?

This four freedoms discussion is more interesting if we're talking about whether to use Photoshop on Mac OS X over the GIMP or whether we're comparing Oracle on some proprietary Unix over postgresql or mysql on GNU/Linux.

Re:Should I bother?

[niiler]

Based on the many DRM and Trusted Computing posts, I suspect that Free software will not become illegal. Rather, those of us who can tinker under the hood and write our own software will become obsolete like the mechanics who used to rebuild cars in their own garages.

While the do-it-yourself mechanic can still rebuild an engine, they need an industry built $10,000 diagnostic tool to do it. Likewise, once DRM sets in, we will need to buy expensive licenses in order to work on the new stuff.

I, for one, feel that this sort of mandatory licensing is like enclosure in the past. We are headed towards a no-individual-ownership society where corporations own everything and we lease the rights to use such things from them. There's something inherently wrong with this from an ethical viewpoint, IMHO.

Free software is not for everyone, granted. But for those of us who use and love it, it means the world.

Re:Depends...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the first paragraph from gnu.org's philosophy page:

Free software is a matter of freedom: people should be free to use software in all the ways that are socially useful. Software differs from material objects--such as chairs, sandwiches, and gasoline--in that it can be copied and changed much more easily. These possibilities make software as useful as it is; we believe software users should be able to make use of them.

Note the emphasis on useful. The argument, contrary to the typical sophist presentation of it being some kind of political viewpoint developed sans any consideration of practical concerns, is eminently pragmatic. By embracing the freedoms the FSF espouses, better software can be produced and made available to you faster than if the know-how is balkanized and made unuseable by innumberable vested proprietary interests.

The counterargument is usually something as simple-minded as "but proprietary software package X does Y, which I like, and there is no free alternative". Forget theory for a moment, the countervailing free software argument is empirical. As the free software movement continues to gain momementum, the number of such examples continues to diminish. Despite the historical record, people continue to say things like "the free software model works for some kinds of software, but software category X isn't amenable to a free software solution, only proprietary will do". It's been said about databases, for example. It's been said about GUI desktop applications. It's been said about multimedia applications. And in every case, free software has put the lie to such assertions.

"The proof of the pudding is in the eating", as they say. Free software is going to eat proprietary software's lunch, in every category of software imagineable.

Re:Freedom 0?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Because it leads to fencepost errors, where the index number of the program is mistakenly used to count the number of elements in the list. You don't actually debug other people's code much, do you?

I Don't Care; I Want Better Software, Period

[reallocate]

Along with everyone who is not a developer, I'm not likely to have any interest in three of those freedoms: Studying the source, redistributing copies, or changing the program for the benefit of the community.

So long as I can use the damn thing, those other 3 freedoms don't interest me.

I'm interested in using computers. I am not interested in writing code. (It's a parallel to watching TV: We all watch TV, but very few of us are interested in learning how to build a television.) Studying the source is of not interest to me, as is changing it.

As a corollary, I believe the only "community" that exists here is a small number of developers who support free software for ideological and political purposes. Otherwise, free software users are no more a community that are Windows users. (An analogy might the small number of vegetarians who actively lobby to for their dietary beliefs versus all the other folks who simply choose ti eat that way.)

I'm interested in more and better software. If some of that can come from free software developers, fine. If some of that can come from proprietary developers, fine. Frankly, though, little new and innovative software has been coming from either source for several years.

Man what a stupid article

[wrook]

Do I value the 4 freedoms more than free price. Damn yes! I've got a GNU/Linux box at home and a Windows box at work. In *no* way do I prefer my Windows box. Some of the apps are nice on it, but *every* time I have a problem with any of them I find myself screwed. If I phone the developer for "support" (which my company pays for) all I get is, "We're aware of the problem and may fix it in the next release". That's it! No other options! And notice, "may fix it". They don't even tell me if it's going to be fixed. And when a new release comes out, I've got to buy the damned upgrade *before I know if it's fixed my problem!* Not only that, I can't just get a patch for my old release with just my problem fixed.

Do I value the 4 freedoms? Hell yeah. How much money would I pay to have those freedoms? Lots, I tell you. Those 4 freedoms are worth more than the cost of a support contract.

Of course, I'm a programmer, so I'm biased. Some people aren't programmers and may not realize the benefits of freedom the way I do. But let's take the example of a friend of mine. She wanted to do some word processing for a report that she had to write. As I worked at Corel at the time, I happened to have a copy of Word Perfect which I gave to her (it's useless to me...). Well, it turns out it was useless to her too. First of all, it was too complicated and confusing for her (She's not a computer person and she didn't need all the features). Secondly the thing was full of bugs on the features that she did need. Constantly, I got calls of "Miiiikee!!!! Fiiiix it!!!!!". I tried to tell her I couldn't, but she didn't understand.

Eventually I got sick of it and replaced it with Abiword. But not stock Abiword. I ripped everything out if it and gave her a stripped down version. Then any time she asked for a new feature, I added it back.

Do I value the 4 freedoms? Hell yeah. Everyday, I program on a Windows box because the market for my latest companies product is Windows. However, I've been tasked with writing portable code (to port to *ix and Mac). To me this means POSIX. But many of the damn POSIX calls in Windows are broken. What the hell do I do? I'm not allowed to fix them. I have to completely rewrite them, or put endless #ifdefs in my code.

But here's the irony of this whole thing. I understand the value of the 4 freedoms. As a consumer, I would never be stupid enough to purchase mission critical software without those freedoms. But....

I can't quite figure out a non-consulting business model that would allow me to give my customers these freedoms. My boss understands the benefit of freedom as well, but doesn't want to be a consultant. So for now, *I* deny my customers these freedoms which I value so highly.

And here is where I disagree with RMS. He feels that it is immoral to continue the above situation. He recommends quitting and becoming a waiter, writing free software on the side. While it is *very* tempting to do this, I'm not going to. Free software will not move into all sectors of commercial development without finding a variety of business models. Michael Tiemann found one excellent and successful business model with Cygnus. Research needs to be done to find others.

Working every day in this moronic proprietary world shows me the problems and gives me incentive to do something about them. Some day I hope everyone can realize the benefits of Free software. Until that day, I'm sure we'll get lots of delusional people who actually think that proprietary is somehow superior (what a bizarre thought). I'm not going to waste my effect trying to tell them they are wrong.

Well Argued?

[pez]

...I'm not so sure.

If these freedoms are not important to the user, there is no disadvantage to using proprietary software and no clear advantage to using free software. In other words, we're talking about how we use software, not the freedom of the press or the right to bear arms, and convincing people that software rights and basic constitutional rights are on the same level is an exercise in futility.

That's like saying that if buying a gun is not important to a particular citizen, then there is no disadvantage to not having a constitutional amendment guaranteeing that right.

Just because fewer than 100% of society doesn't exercise a given right, that in and of itself doesn't make it any less important.

Broken logic.

[Targen]

There's a fundamental flaw in the reasoning in this article, and it has nothing to do with the definition of free software, or the importance of freedom, or any such deep things already discussed.

"What do we do when we have a substandard free software product that we could use, but would be more productive with a proprietary competitor?"
The author argues, throughout the entire article, about productivity; we're talking about a commericial, professional enviroinment, where money is made through using software.

On the GIMP, "It can of course be made to work in place of Photoshop, depending on your needs and budget. But if you have paying work to do, how much of a hassle are you willing to go through to use free software?"
The author argues free software doesn't offer good enough alternatives to proprietary software, still in a commercial, professional enviroinment.

Continuing,
"The majority of proprietary software licenses restrict the user's ability to use, share, modify, and study the software, but there is virtually no enforcement of these terms in the non-business portion of the software world."
The author argues it's acceptable and risk-free to "share" proprietary software as long as you're not going to use it comercially. While I question the validity of this, let's let it pass for the sake of argument.

Free software is criticized as sub-par for commercial use where a job or a contract is on the line, and it's argued that the benefit of free (speech) software being free (beer) is negligible, since nobody's going to sue you for "sharing" proprietary software for personal use. The article sets the bar for free software in business use, which is clearly much more demanding, and excuses the ridiculous cost of proprietary software commonly used in business since it's okay to steal it, but, erm, if you were to use this proprietary software in the same way the author says free software lags behind, you'd get at least a million dollar lawsuit, and at most a visit from the FBI.

"Well argued" my ass.

Re:Freedom 0?

[Tony Hoyle]

They missed:

* The freedom to license *my* code any way I damn well choose. ..but the FSF don't believe in that...

Re:Remember what started it all

[ScrewMaster]

What you're saying is that expedience usually wins out over idealism, and that's true.

Education is Also a Factor

[kravlor]

My first serious brush with Free software was when I took an operating systems course back in college. While many of the principles we discussed were universal (schedulers, filesystems, etc.) we turned to the Linux kernel to look at examples of how you would actually implement a scheduler, filesystem, etc.

Another interest I had was in how P2P networks work. I had no experience in network programming, but a firm grasp of C/C++; downloading the source to a Gnutella client and poking around did wonders. When I later had to contribute to a network-based application in college, I found myself ahead thankful for being able to reference functioning, stable code.

While the article makes the (valid) point that many people do not have the ability to easily modify the software they use, this ability doesn't just magically appear from nowhere; it's something that has to be learned. For me, seeing examples of how certain things are implemented is one of the most effective way to learn.

Besides, there's always the allure of knowing that if you're not satisfied with a Free software product, you can pick it up, study the source, and fix it yourself if you're so inclined!

Re:Four freedoms vs Max use?

[georgewilliamherbert]

So is this the fatal flaw of FOSS? Do folks like you and I fall into the trap of assuming just because it's easy for *us* to do what we do, others should find it easy too? Is this the one obstacle that, if overcome, FOSS could indeed rival others in the desktop market?

Dingdingdingdingding

We have a winner.

There's no reason to claim that all proprietary software has better UI than FOSS, nor that no FOSS has excellent normal user intuitive UIs. However, there is a huge gap between average UI experience in "popular" proprietary software and FOSS in general.

"normal people" don't want to be learning contorted UIs like geeks groove on. They want to be using functions, fast and as easily as possible. Software with less functions but which gets the user to them faster and more easily is superior in "normal users" eyes.

My spouse is both a longtime UNIX CLI and X user with some CS classes in college, and a graphic artist and designer. What she has to say about the quality of the FOSS graphics tools is unprintable. She's used Macs for graphics and layout consistently, and would probably be ok with Windows programs (whose UIs are now roughly tied with Mac) if the platform didn't suck so badly.

The sad part is that the User Interface ideas are things that can more or less be freely adopted from good commercial products into FOSS, if people cared about the problem...

Re:what freedom is

[Brandybuck]

Freedom is the ability to do something without the fear of punishment.

Close, but not quite. Freedom is the absence of restriction. The difference is crucial. Your definition focuses on the consequences of an action, while the dictionary definition focuses on the ability to perform an action.

To add a necessary clarifying point (with regards to that subset of freedom known as liberty), freedom ends where another's freedom begins. In other words, you cannot use freedom to restrict freedom. At the point where you ability begins to restrict another's ability, it ceases to be liberty and is called "privilege".

Copyright infers upon an author many privileges. The only software that is truly free as in having a complete lack of privilege is public domain software. Licensed software is judged by how much privilege it retains (or additionally aquires through contractual agreements) or gives up. Unrestricted licenses like BSD or MIT have the fewest retained privileges, and conseqently the most liberty. Copyleft licenses like the GPL and LGPL enforce a few more privileges and have a bit less liberty. Both, however, are nearly equivalent with regards to most proprietary commercial software.