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ESR Advocates Proprietary Software
mvdwege writes "Apparently, Eric Raymond has decided that proprietary software is now a good thing, according to The Register. I must say it is rather revealing how easily he is willing to compromise on this particular freedom. Is his earlier vocal proclamation of the importance of freedom (still visible on his homepage) mere posturing? And if so, how about his vocal support of other freedoms?"
That's true. You can't exactly sell "service" for most application (except perhaps access to an online service forum, etc). But many people I know, who are on Windows, take the software for free as well, legally or not. Many people, not just Linux users, are accustomed to "free" software in this day and age. The age of buying boxes at CompUSA is mostly over and has been killed by the internet, except for things like Photoshop, etcetera (where a lot of people still get it for free).
That said, it's just perplexing to me that Apple doesn't provide an iTunes app for Linux, presumably binary for the DRM. They make money off the users using it, not from the app itself.
Anyway, the people who pay for many of the apps like Photoshop are businesses, it's irrevelant if it is on MS or Photoshop, they still will pay to remain compliant. Are you sure you weren't being thrown a curveball, since another very public side of Linux is the one IBM is displaying?
Well all I think him and Maddog are saying is that a comprimise must be met. People expect multimedia play from their PC's and thus far, evn though progress is being made, it is slow. It's a small sacrifice to make in order to win the bigger battle.
At the same time, it will win software manufacturer support and more people will realize that they can make software for Linux that is proprietary. While the Linux community has always said this, some software manufacturers are still scared due to the militant ideal of keeping EVERYTHING free. I too think everything should be free but I don't think it's going to be possible without making concessions. Allow some through the door to get others involved and then once critical mass has been achieved, people will start creating their own options.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Do you intend to insinuate that anyone who doesn't believe all-out in free software must be lacking principles?
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
In my opinion, the real solution is for us to start designing our own hardware.
www.opencores.org is a repository of open source hardware designs.
www.opencollector.org is another.
The Open Graphics Project is about to release real open hardware. They're focusing on graphics right now, but they have aspirations toward other kinds of hardware.
Rather than giving up control of the software just to get the hardware, take control of the hardware!
(BTW, I'm much less concerned about proprietary apps than closed-source drivers. Drivers are a major source of potential system instability. They need to be open source. Applications are isolated to their own process spaces and can't crash the system when they crash. I think a closed-source iTunes for Linux would be wonderful!)
ESR, Eric S. Raymond, is not associated with "FOSS". FOSS is a term used when one wants to give credit to both the Free Software and Open Source movements without favoring either. ESR is a proponent of the Open Source movement and one of the people who started the Open Source Initiative over a decade after the GNU Project and the Free Software movement had been going.
The Free Software movement advocates exclusively for free software because only free software respects users software freedoms (the freedoms to run, inspect, share, and modify software). The Free Software movement examines these issues in terms of ethics, speaks to all computer users, and takes a far broader view than the Open Source movement which never discusses user's freedoms and examines these issues in terms of a developmental process that is chiefly aimed at businesses.
The OSI has given a remarkably disrespectful view of the differences between the two movements, reducing the difference to "ideological tub-thumping" in their FAQ. The Free Software Foundation has a far more informative and respectful view in an essay on the differences between the two movements.
Digital Citizen
ESR, as much as I have my misgivings about him, didn't quite say that proprietary software was a "good thing". All he said was that in today's changing landscape of computing, GNU/Linux risks being left behind if it cannot achieve a compromise with proprietary software and systems. In other words, far from saying that proprietary software is a good thing, he is saying that compromise with proprietary software is a necessary evil in ensuring that GNU/Linux does not become irrelevant. A valid point, but I must ask ESR how far he is willing to take compromise. His mention of iPods and the like seems to indicate that he's willing to go far enough as to compromise on the issue of DRM, which remains a deeply contentious issue for the entire Free Software/Open Source community. I for one believe that compromising on the issue of DRM to the level required by the media conglomerates would mean that the Free Software/Open Source community will become shackled and closed, no different from the proprietary software systems that F/OSS has been so touted as an alternative. Compromise is a very dangerous game... Frankly, I don't believe that F/OSS should be playing to the twenty-something-iPod generation demographic if the goal really is to dominate the desktop. What we need to do is convince the corporate IT procurement departments that GNU/Linux is a viable alternative to Windows. That's how the IBM PC became the de facto standard. If GNU/Linux can own the corporate desktop, owning the home desktop will be a lot easier. Using different systems at home and at work is extremely painful, and once more businesses start using GNU/Linux workstations, this will drive GNU/Linux home desktops.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Isn't the definition of "freedom" choice?
That's only half of it. You also have to include "as long as my choice does not restrict the freedom of others". Without that clause simply "choice" would lead to less freedom than more freedom. I think the majority of FSF advocates have no problem with a person using proprietary software as long as it doesn't restrict their own freedoms. For example having proprietary software forced upon you, like certain kinds of DRM. But as long as there remains a choice between Free and Non-Free there shouldn't be an issue.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
> I think the only release that would be welcomed with open arms (no pun intended) would be a release that while paid for, still releases
> the source code and rights to use and distribute it.
And just why would the source have to include redistribution rights? Commercial 'open source' software is a perfectly reasonable thing once you get past the mental blocks put up by a generation of commercial==closed thinking. Binaries are a technical artifact caused by compilers having a speed advantage over scripts. I say copyright should be adjusted to only allow a copyright on the actual created contect, i.e. source. Binaries should only be derived works like a translation of a book. Then you could fix bugs the vendor didn't care enough to bother with, port it, etc. But it would still be a copyrighted work and you couldn't give out copies anymore than you can pass out copies of Photoshop now. I'd like to live in a world of all free software. But until that day arrives a world where the commercial stuff came with a src.rpm would be almost a good.
Democrat delenda est
I've plugged my ipod on a fresh install of kubuntu 6.06 and it worked out of the box. I don't see where the problem is.
find -name "*base*" -exec chown us {} \; ; ln -s
Oh yes, I know that is the current reality. I'm arguing that we as a society have zero reason to permit it. You should not be able to have both a trade secret and a copyright on the same thing. If you manage to obtain the secret formula for Coke you can publish it because they opted to keep it secret instead of patent it or copyright it. Copyright is just an arbitrary contract between society (as expressed through our elected government) and creators. Part of the deal is that we get the content, and the innovation, in exchange for a limited monopoly. By allowing them to lock it up companies go kaput and take it with them to their graves.
Democrat delenda est
His belief is predicated upon the notion that the move to 64 bit computing means people are about to make choices about the next generation of operating systems.
Then this writing fails. 64-bit OSs as overrated and overhyped. The move from 16- to 32-bit was dramatic. A lot of people, including those around here, seem to naively believe the move from 32- to 64-bit will be a similar event. It will not. 64-bit will be meaningful for some servers and some other high end applications, for the rest there will be no appreciable immediate benefit. *IF* Joe User gets all excited about 64-bit in the near term it will probably be due to a successful Micorosoft marketing campaign designed to artificially create an upgrade cycle. Barring this there will be a slow migration to 64-bit as Apple and Microsoft make the 64-bit versions of their OSs the default version, not an optional upgrade. In other words Joe User will get 64-bit when he happens to buy some distant new machine (4-5 years ?). The near term upgrades and build-to-order options will be a minority. I'll do it, I'm a programmer, I want my code to be 32/64-bit clean.
I think OpenSource, Free(GNU) and Propitary software should mingle more. There should be more GNU software available on windows, and more propitary software available on Linux and other OSS operating systems.
Some things will never be Free, some things will always be free... they should at least work together though. It's insane in this age that applications are still written only to work on one platform and virtually impossible to move between them.
Id like to see for example KDE applications on windows and World of Warcraft on linux, without any nasty hacks. Quite dificult with Warcraft coded for windows only DirectX+D3D, and KDE using QT, for which the Windows version isn't Free.
POSIX and Windows are both operating systems that use hardware memory management to seperate otherwise unsafe (written in liberal mid-level languages like C) processes from one another, using a security model based largely upon user ownership. If a large number of jobs have to be done that require communications between the different programs performing the different jobs, a single program - running in its own memory space - is generally written that manages all the jobs, rather than the jobs being split out one-per-program.
Programs are loaded from files on disk, from a simplified file system that uses hierarchical name management and that's based upon arbitrary length binary files. From the point of view of the user, there are running programs and files.
This is essentially classic 1970s computer technology. In terms of where it became the standard for system design, that's roughly when it dates to.
There have been serious attempts since then to reform that model, but generally they haven't gone anywhere. The 1980s was full of simplified systems where all processes ran in the same memory space - Windows, Mac OS 6+, AmigaOS, Sinclair QDOS, etc. At the other end of the spectrum, there were many abortive attempts to break up operating systems into more simplified units protected from one another. None of these design changes are present in Windows, Mac OS X, or GNU/Linux, either the simplified or the microkernel strategies (with good reasons for both.)
The 1990s saw the beginning of managed code. While this probably does represent the future of computing, we're not seeing it yet. As yet, managed code only exists in mainstream operating systems running as high level processes at the same level as other ordinary user applications. Mac OS X, Windows, and GNU/Linux do not use managed code, they merely support it.
File systems have been reformed several times. DEC VMS supported native rich file types with record indexing. This has yet to appear anywhere else. Mac OS introduced forks and added creator and type information to the file system. While present for legacy reasons, Apple has deprecated support; Microsoft technically supports file forks in NT but has made no effort to use them or encourage their use; GNU/Linux has only recently started to support additional metadata, and the feature is barely used. Systems like Smalltalk, NewtonOS and PalmOS blur the differences between files and other objects. Achieving minor success on PDAs, their approaches have yet to really have any serious impact.
Essentially, Mac OS X, Windows, and GNU/Linux, are the latest, most optimal, versions of what you saw in the seventies. That's not a terrible thing, but 64 bits gives us the opportunity to rethink why we're programming the same way we did thirty years ago. In particular, the combination of managed code and the massive 64 bit address spaces gives us a chance to revisit the question of how we can most efficiently prevent operating system and application components from treading upon one another, and how we can keep the system secure.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I believe that is what I'm doing—from the perspective of the effect of that behavior on the users.
I don't mind paying for free software, in fact I've done so for individual programs as well as entire free operating systems. But I refuse to believe that the effect on users is unimportant or that one can't run a business by distributing and building upon free software. Plenty of large and small businesses (including my own) would prove me wrong by their mere ongoing existence. I would rather do business in an ethical way which means respecting my clients software freedoms while meeting their needs for a fee.
Digital Citizen
I mean, it seems like the main reason the transition to 64-bit is taking so long is closed-source drivers (and software) that are only available in 32-bit versions. For example, the only reason I'm still running 32-bit Linux on my Athlon 64 machine is that I need closed-source wireless drivers (32-bit only), and various closed-source plugins and software that's also 32-bit only (Flash, codecs for various audio/video formats, Java, ...)
It's fair to say that Linux might well not even exist without the work that RMS and his cohorts did in the first years of the FSF's existence.
It's also fair to say that it's NOT true that if RMS hadn't done what he did that someone else would have. It is not to be taken for granted by anyone that without RMS & FSF, sooner or later we would have ended up in essentially the same place we are today.
I know what it's like to have to get a company's permission to write software on their computers, and to pay them a LOT of money for the 'privilege'. NOT FUN. RMS has changed all of our lives in a way that we can only understand by knowing the history and by sitting back for bit and actually thinking about it.
I can't say that for ESR. All he ever did for me was threaten me for using his US service mark 'open source' on my web site, a service mark he didn't actually have. I find it easy to ignore him.
Only for DOS/Windows users. For Mac users it was largely a non-event, bar some software incompatibilities. Ditto most flavors of Unix.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Or alternatively and preferably, until these ingrates have all been implemented around and driven out of business. Yes, I would far rather live in a world where the people who seek only to accumulate wealth and power (at the expense of all else) end up losing. And that's the only reason why these 'providers' act in this manner.
Nobody has a 'right' to endlessly increment their wealth and power, nor is it desireable for society that anybody ever do so.
Agreed, I was going to argue something similar and then read your entry and decided not to re-invent the wheel. (Ironic, given your argument).
When it comes to the GCC, a need was filled long before the OSI existed. Thus, not as much interest in re-inventing the wheel.
If the GP really believes that a player who is first to market, is dedicated/committed, and creates/exploits network effects is in the right, then viva the closed source revolutionaries!
Yes, they can be granted the title of being in the right place at the right time. And if they do something positive in that place should be praised for it, but to be considered universally in the right for achievements that mainly took place in the past isn't a good thing.
In my mind, the FSF has burned a lot of good will that they have earned through their work on GNU. Yet I will not ignore either "contribution".
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
>>We CAN'T write and distribute Free Software for most of that stuff because of patents.
>We can't write free software - but we can get multimedia stuff to work, if we pay for the license to do so. You can get your DVDs to work 'out-of-the-box' on Linux - just use Linspire. People who believe in the ideals behind Free Software won't (including me), but for those that are worried about 'losing the desktop', options are available.
If this was the thing holding Linux back from being a massive success, Linspire would be selling millions of copies. That they aren't says something.
I thought Ubuntu gobbled up so much mindshare precisely because it works so well, right out of the box. (That, and the generally helpful boards for those new to Linux.) Ubuntu doesn't hesitate to use non-free (as in speech) code when there isn't a free alternative.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Of course it works with iPod. Take a look at:
/etc/fstab. You may think "oh, this is simple stuff" (and for a lot of us, it is); but most people don't want to deal with the system at that level for something as trivial as getting an iPod to work! It's why a lot of Linux users (like me) defected over to OS X in the first place.
* GNUpod and gtkpod
* iPod Shuffle Database Builder
And then there's another one with a funky name I cannot remember.
I think your post, and the majority of other posts on this thread, serve to illustrate the fundamental disconnect that's in play here.
From GNUpod's home page: GNUpod is a collection of Perl-Scripts which allow you to use your iPod... If you really think this is what your typical person (you know, the type who have better things to do in the evening than sit around hacking Linux kernel modules) wants, then I don't think I can explain it to you.
gtkpod is much closer to what these "normals" would want. But it looks like there are still problems with iPod Mini support; you need a separate program to handle podcasts; there's no support for DRM'ed AAC (one of ESR's exact points, I believe); you have to use a different program to rip CDs to mp3/aac/whatever, and then manually import them.
Plus if you go to the troubleshooting links, you'll find "solutions" that talk about manually editing
Frankly, I think ESR's thoughts on this are spot-on; and most of the posts here today are serving to prove his point, although the posters don't realize it.
#DeleteChrome