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Evaluating the Harmful Effects of Closed Source Software
New submitter Drinking Bleach writes "Eric Raymond, coiner of the term 'open source' and co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, writes in detail about how to evaluate the effects of running any particular piece of closed source software and details the possible harms of doing so. Ranking limited firmware as the least kind of harm to full operating systems as potentially the greatest harms, he details his reasoning for all of them. Likewise, Richard Stallman, founder of GNU and the Free Software Foundation, writes about a much more limited scope, Nonfree DRM'd games on GNU/Linux, in which he takes the firm stance that non-free software is unethical in all cases but concedes that running non-free games on a free operating system is much more desirable than running them on a non-free operating system itself (such as Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac OS X)."
Having XFCE and ubuntu earlier today granted me with some artifacts tween the gimp and firefox which built up until the screen was complete garbage, and its been a number of years, possibally since windows 98 days since I have seen that on the MS side
Windows may suck for a long list of reasons, but for some odd reason, will millions of brilliant nerds working for a goal, more shit gets screwed up on OSS systems, more frequently. Personally I went from a windows only mindset in the mid to late 90's to a linux only mindset in the 2000's, just to end up dreading having to boot linux in the 2010's
http://archive.org/details/EbenMoglen-WhyFreedomOfThoughtRequiresFreeMediaAndWhyFreeMedia
Now more than ever.
Until there is open source hardware and software both, users will never have full control of their computing devices. Full stop. It's nice to want all of this.
As long as large companies make and sell compelling hardware and software products, people will buy them without a care as to the license. People want transparent tech. They are not religious about the legal underpinnings.
Aren't they evil? What if you have an open-source laser, and you use it to write a speech for a demagogue that is used to start a war?
Seriously, most people don't care, they won't worry, and if there's anything that bothers them, it's the deluge of spam offering to sell them penis enhancements and that other thing that's been popular there.
That's evil. Open-source or closed, that's the worst part of the world of computers.
Sure, open source is great (I've contributed), but I think too much of either side is wrong. It's unethical to take what's not yours, be it because you don't want other people to rip you off, or for some other reason. So charging for software makes it inconvenient for people who want it. But think about the people who spend hours and hours coding. How do they afford coffee to stay up writing software so open-source freeloaders can consume whatever they feel like? I've contributed to open source, only to have my work resold as someone else's. Look, I'm not against open source, but to make a blanket statement and call all closed source software unethical is absolutely stupid.
Whilst I can see the points being made, and understand them, there is little difference between closed and open source from an ordinary end-user point of view. If they are unable to examine, update, modify, and build the software themselves there is no real difference between open source or closed source software. To the contrary closed source is likely to better serve their particular needs as the closed source vendor has to persuade them to spend money on it.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
What about the harmful effects of software not being developed that meets a businesses needs? If you do not pay for it it doesn't get developed.
People say yeah linux can do everything Windows can do or clueless. Redhat, IBM, and thousands of others donate and develop code for Linux so you can use it on a server at work.
The 100% no non free code linux kernel was 200k in the 1990s and unpractical. Just because it was given away doesn't mean it was free to make. More to the point Windows meets the needs much better than Linux to desktop users because they are willing to pay Microsoft to fine tune and make sure it works right on their pc. You do not have to worry an update will hose your system due to the lack of an ABI or some weird wifi will randomly disconnect (issue with my laptop with linux).
What is so evil about getting paid? If you need shit done you provide value to barter that we call call cash in exchange for their labor. That is capitalism 101 and is the most efficient system.
All this non free software is worth every penny for those who need JIT inventory in Access/SQL Server to the accountant who purchases statistical add on packages for Excel so his employer can pay him. If you do not like it go get a job or write your own solution.
Also someone should get paid handsomely for his or her contribution and there is nothing wrong with that.
http://saveie6.com/
Why is it that I don't seem to have any of the problems others do with Linux? Across my home and business use I have 4 totally different desktops of different ages and capability along with two laptops, again quite different in age and power, yet I have no issues with any of them. They all run debian (or one of it's derivatives).
Why also, do people totally miss the point of FOSS and focus on price rather than freedom of choice? In fact, it is quite legally and acceptably possible to make money out of libre software. Redhat seemdo it very nicely. However, I personally am more interested in the ability of organise my desktop in such a way that maximises my ease of use, and productivity, without some idiot OS telling me that I can't use a mouse click that way. Most Windows users are quite astonished at the way I can stack up and organise active views on various projects.
When I was younger, I would write free software or shareware, put it into public domain, and archivists would make a business out of making disks with free software on it. This is how I view Richard Stallman, just a parasite on free software who collected together one of these archives of other peoples free works without contributing to that body of work in any substantial way.
So I don't view him as any kind of spokesman for anything, simply because he actually doesn't do the work, he just takes the credit.
If I go to a library, does the librarian get credit for writing the books? Is he spoken to as though he's the worlds most famous author? Yet RMS is listened to as some sort of spokesman for the programmers whose work he simply archives!
What the submitter has done is put a very sensible article about the dangers of close source software, and juxtaposed with RMSs idiot comments and it lessens the original article by quoting that idiot.
Take a page from the book of Kickstarter. If people can see exactly how their payment/donation is contributing, they will be in a better position to make the decision for themselves. No one wants to overpay or be ripped off. Transparency in funding should be the next step in modern day open and other projects. The philosophy of developers being confident about their flow of operations speaks volumes about what their work represents.
I remember a website with a simple 'in the red' meter on the homepage. If incoming donations were sufficient to meet current costs, the arrow pointed to the middle. If insufficient. to the left, and if in surplus, to the right. I never saw this arrow at anywhere less to the extreme right. Such a meter could easily be placed in a dialog window or somewhere.
We should do everything we can to allow honesty to be rewarded.
in which he takes the firm stance that non-free software is unethical in all cases but concedes that running non-free games on a free operating system is much more desirable than running them on a non-free operating system itself
Why single out games as "potentially not as harmful"?
Moving from non-free to free is a process. It is a process that does not happen overnight. First get the vendors to compile for Linux. Then, if any feel like it, they can move to Free Software and make money through support like IBM, Oracle, and SAP make the vast majority of their profits on support (the actual sales of their closed source software is a minor component of their profits).
Without getting major companies to start moving their paid, closed source software to Linux first, you/re /never/ going to see Autocad or the like as Free Software on Linux.
Absolutism is counter-productive and turns off the people and companies we need to get on the side of Linux. I'm sorry, but ESR is full of himself and full of shit.
--
BMO - Long time Linux user, and user of Free Software and believer of Free Software as a laudable end goal, but the world is not as neat as ESR thinks it is, can be, or should be.
... is that games are expensive to develop. I like the oldschool id Software / Volition habits of releasing source-code to commercial games after they are released so that up and coming game developers can learn from them. I think as games have become more closed they are hurting the industry as a whole.
I don't mind for profit games as long as 1) I own the game 2) I get the source at some point after the sales window so that the game can be maintained by fans. Since game companies don't have the funds/will/manpower to support old games as technology moves on.
This is another example of ESR ignoring the dangers of closed-source software in his devotion to "pragmatism." There is always a role for the monks of society, and RMS is the monk of free software. It's relatively easy to be a pragmatist. It takes something special to be a monk.
I don't live like RMS, but I find his insights to be important. The dystopian future from The Right to Read, especially, is being carried out in terms of years instead of decades. The secret to RMS's "fanaticism" is his long-term planning. Pragmatism seems to work now, but sooner or later closed-source is going to hurt you.
The elevator example is not that good. ESR has forgotten about elevator breakdowns. Elevators also usually include surveillance and phone-home equipment, which have implications for reliability, privacy, and vendor lock-in.
The microwave example is not that good, either. Many modern microwaves have an insanely complicated user interface, and I wouldn't mind replacing it with a more intuitive one. Not to mention what silly things you could do with a microwave if you could network it.
Have a nice time.
Figureheads need to write placatory articles lest they should get caught playing L4D2 on Linux ...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
I think open source is great for some things (compilers, browsers), but it doesn't work for games. Games require too much of a coordinated development effort and involve multiple disciplines beyond programming.
Any attempt at serious discussion of the actual topic will be STRONGLY discouraged.
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The problem is USERS aren't getting it. It's not only the user base though. It's developers included. You have to demand free software support for the ecosystem to grow and improve. Most of what we have has essentially been the remnants of non-free software companies which have "donated" code they can no longer profit off. Sometimes it is a last ditch effort to survive- although this usually fails.
You can't go and buy computers from Dell, EmperorLinux, and others who are entrenched in the non-free software world and actively working against freedom. But it gets worse. Companies like System76 and ZaReason are little better. Don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying any of these companies have ill-intent. The problem is they are all alike in hindering the development of a free software ecosystem. These companies don't take freedom into consideration and users pay the price.
There is only one place to readily get freedom friendly hardware. It's sad, but true. ThinkPenguin is the only company restricting its catalog to freedom friendly chipsets. It's not a small catalog either. It's the largest catalog of GNU/Linux hardware for GNU/Linux users in the world (shipping from the UK and USA). All others "supporting freedom" (including those which ship truly free operating systems) are shipping laptops and desktops incompatible with free software. All are shipping systems dependent on any of a number of major problems. Just to name a few: "Trusted Computing", proprietary drivers/firmware, installing wholly non-free operating systems (Microsoft Windows), BIOS based digital restriction management software (yes, anybody selling systems from HP, Lenovo, IBM, Dell, and Toshiba with GNU/Linux). Digital restrictions in the BIOS can prevent you from even making your system work properly with GNU/Linux or at all! Even the distributions which include the non-free software won't work in many cases because you can't replace the wireless card with a GNU/Linux compatible one (free or non-free). And the situation is getting worse. You may actually see the free software market come into existence due to the worsening situation. That's how bad it's gotten.
Here are some facts: Currently there are ZERO chipsets which can be used in new USB wireless cards. There are no free software compatible bluetooth chipsets for use internally in laptops. Some companies are reverting to releasing non-free drivers (Creative). Digital restrictions in the CPU (Intel) may eventually prevent GNU/Linux users from streaming video from sites like: Netflix (does not yet work with GNU/Linux- and zero support for free software), Hulu (also no support for free software), and Amazon Prime (again- no support for free software).
We need to put up a fight against non-free software, digital restrictions, and similar hindrances. We need to wean ourselves off it. If you can't afford to rid yourself of non-free hardware at least make the effort of not buying it going forward.
ThinkPenguin is working with chipset manufacturers, distributions, and others to fix many of these problems. However this is NOT something which can be done without significant community support and action. Some form of a financial contribution to free software is needed from every single GNU/Linux user to help fund development efforts and prevent the market from declining into even more of a hellish mess. There is fortunately a sufficient number of people who care to get the ball rolling already... but a completely free system (not just a free BIOS + free software compatible chipsets) won't be possible until the elimination of the x86 architecture. That will probably require hundreds of thousands of users if not more to really get the right combinations of chipsets and components needed manufactured, working together, and in a form that can replace a typical laptop currently.
What matters is you, me, and everyone else in the GNU/Linux community is making a commitment. It's less critical that you eliminate all non-free software overnight than your commitment and initiation
"Games make another interesting intermediate case. Very low reliability harm â" OK, it might be annoying if your client program craps out during a World of Warcraft battle, but itâ(TM)s not like having your financial records scrambled or your novel manuscript trashed."
I think the author misses some very important issues here. Its a fact that you can expect people to be less weary when playing games (thus relaxing). So if something "weird" happens they're bound to more easily ignore it.
Another important aspect is that many games tend to enforce online connectivity these days. Thus making them very suited to be used as some kind of interface / gateway which allows access to more.
And while your financial records may not be included within the game, what about the platform running said game? An XBox or PS3 may easily give access to credit card information which is used to purchase stuff. A PC game may give access to a whole pot of gold: the PC environment itself, which may allow for whole new levels of intrusion.
"Conclusions: we need to be most opposed to closed-source desktop and smartphone operating systems, because those have the most severe harms and the highest positive-externality stickiness.".
The author also overlooks another very important aspect with regards to open vs. closed source. In almost every case you take open-source "as is" because the author will almost every time free himself from any kind of responsibility with regards to running his software. You take it "as is" and when something goes wrong then you should have foreseen it.
Closed source otoh. often has loopholes attached to it. Even embedded in law. If I buy software and that software suddenly decides to erase my hard drive and I can prove this behavior then there's nothing stopping me to file a complaint at the nearest police station and have the author of said malware picked up for (for starters) destruction of my property. I can even file a suit for damages.
Of course this isn't the case all the time, there are cases where you simply have to agree (without actually doing anything) with a user policy which is even longer than my reaction.
But even so I think its stupid to look at open vs. closed in such a narrow minded way. You can't compare the two "just like that" because there are bound to be much more issues attached to it. From law to user policies to a sense of not merely purchasing software, but also a sense of insurance.
Companies for example buy software with an expectation. They may even demand their expectations to be met, thus the responsibility of fulfilling all that rests on the shoulders of the party selling the software. This is also a scenario which is often also hardly possible with open source software. And before anyone starts to cry: "RHEL", that is exactly my point.
While OSS in general may provide zilch guarantees it doesn't mean that its totally impossible; there are plenty of well known exceptions. And IMO the same can be said about closed source.
Its not a black/white situation. Unfortunately it seems that's usually the way people approach this topic. And that is IMO also your main problem.
I just hope Raymond and Stallman also plant their own crops, cook their own food and never eat out. Otherwise their nutrition and effectively their health is in the hands of another party, which likely doesn't provide the exact recipe for the preparation of said food.
Or is software a topic special enough to them that this hypocrisy with consuming closed-source food is OK?
Funny thing is, I don't actually like Steam anymore. I've written a post which explained why I don't use it anymore and why I'm worried about the increasing reliance publishers are having with it. but I'm surprised Stallman is not pushing entirely against it completely. I would have thought he'd at least grant some leeway with playing proprietary games as opposed to linking full access to your software to a DRM platform.
As for harmful effects of closed source software in general, I think most people on the planet who rely on such software are doing just fine. It's really not that big a deal - if it were it wouldn't be so hard to convince non-nerds why free software is supposedly so important; for most people issue with closed-source software are at best hypothetical, and will likely only ever be that.
Most people on Slashdot are fucking idiots.
While the above post could have been better written, I'd say it does summarize rms pretty well. Wouldn't call him a troll.
Reading ESR's article, what he describes makes sense. The more complex the software, the more bug prone, and that's where the contrast b/w the open source and closed source methodology stands out. The emphasis has been more on having open source OSs, but w/ all those Linux and BSD distros out there, we have a plethora of choices. However, there are far fewer choices when it comes to applications software - how many open source counterparts are there to Adobe apps, tax software like TurboTax, Quickbooks, and so on? It's really the shortage at the user level software applications like this that has held off the acceptance of open source.
I like the examples he gave, and the 5 dimensional spectral axes that he set up based on the reliability harm, the unhackability harm, the agency harm, the lock-in harm and the amnesia harm. That at least establishes a scale on which to put things, rather than an 'open-source good, closed source bad' slogan. The comments section in his thread made interesting reading, w/ the examples of the elevators, the microwaves, the washing machines, the smartphones, and so on.
Apparently you failed the click the Eric Raymond link, yet you succeeded to have a vocal opinion about him.
"Richard started the whole Free/Libre software movement."
No he didn't, he just branded it, now he talks as though he created all of it.
"He wote Emacs and a whole host of other software"
Then he can talk with the authority of the Emacs author and be heard by his user base which is tiny.
I don't like RMS, he talks crud, and he's taken as a spokesman for FOSS which he is not. He's an idiot who runs and archive that stamped his brand over others work and does not speak for them, but pretends to.
They (canonical) have made a lot of decisions in recent releases that I question. Many of them have led to what I believe is a train wreck of a Distro. Once upon a time it was the bees knees but today? Nah.
I moved away from Ubuntu in 2008. I settled on CentOS. Yeah I know it is generally regarded as a server OS but it works find on my T500.
Go on, come back from the dark side and try a different Linux distro.
That's all very well for the small number of elite programmers who have the free-time, skills and learning ability to just knock out a complete recompile of GNOME (say), or Open Office. For everyone else it makes no difference whether some of the major packages they use are open / closed / free / restricted or written in a foreign language. The number of people who HAVE decided to make customisations to anything is small (n.b. If you're thinking or replying "I have and do so on a regular basis", you're a Slashdot reader, so you're implicitly excluded from the ranks of "ordinary people")
Even for moderately experienced programmers, the complexities of pulling all the needed source, dev. tools and change management packages that any particular piece of OSS might have decided to use, learning whatever language(s) the authors chose, chasing down all the dependencies to get them to work on YOUR personal platform and THEN hacking through over/under/poorly/out-of-date/non-existent or just plain wrong code documentation and build instructions makes the task a monumental effort in futility if all you want to do is alter it "to suit your personal requirements". Much better to just toss an unsuitable package and find another that's better - or just to change your needs to match what software is available.
Anything but trying to alter a major piece of OSS
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Unethical to have to pay someone for the work that they put into developing a product??? This generation were born crack babies!
As a person who works for a company that develops primarily OSS, and as one who has only worked on OSS software personally and professionally for the last 5 years (yes, *everything* I've written in the last 5 years is open source and free as in beer), this self-serving argument smells and looks every bit of the offal it is.
I *want* easy, and I don't get that in OSS. As an end-user I get a built-in requirement for self-support, reams of learning curve, and a huge disparity of support and resource between it and my commercial alternatives. I've decided life's too fucking short to search for drivers, so I happily use Windows (Apple's Walled Gardens and their tenders can still go straight to hell, though). As a developer, I've surpassed the command line as so many of our long-dead ancestors surpassed the flint knife, and remain happier for it. I'm happy to know it's there to gut and prune when paid-for tools fail to address the nth degree, but I no longer have to prune a forest with only an axe when the chainsaw is sitting right there.
On the dirty end of the stick, OSS is a life of 99% altruism, 1% payback. If not for the sponsorships of Universities, parents and self-funding it would have collapsed long ago as the community of users is almost exclusively take with no give. The most vocal advocates are usually in two categories, a) those comfortable enough on alternate means of income to be self-aggrandizing and elitist, and b) lampreys with 0% contributions under their belt who use OSS to make a living but never contribute an iota back. The rest who try and build a commercial enterprise around OSS are attacked for not being altruist elitists themselves for instead living on what few alms might be handed to them, which is as fecklessly self-defeating an argument as I've ever heard.
My living is in OSS, but my ass is firmly seated on top of commercial software (or, when possible, commercial OSS). Why? Because *mostly* it is still the more viable choice for those with more dollars than hours to burn. When community truly becomes so, I'll happily wave that banner as high as the rest.
One could argue that harm is multiplicative, that an increase in one category makes all the other categories worse as well. I'll take it as additive, however, as that seems more intuitive. OS sum: 46. Toaster sum: 2. Drivers sum: 20. I just realised this isn't helpful to me at all. I'm not using any closed drivers. Maybe it will inform someone else.
One thing he barely touches on, if at all, is that you can't assing harm to categories of devices. There is a big difference between my main home workstation, which I develop software on, use to record TV, store data, and hundred other things, vs. my laptop which I use to check my email and IM. There is a big difference between the elevator at the physics department, with only 7 floors and a good set of stairs right next to it, vs. the elevator that goes 100 m under ground to the LHC experiments, and is the only way up/down in case of an emergency.
looking at harm alone is one-sided. We use software for a reason. Where there is only a closed source version then you have to consider whether the benefits outweigh the harm it might (or will, if you're paranoid) inflict. esr does concede this point in passing but the tone of the article, focusing on harm, probably get more headlines.
Unfortunately, some open source projects suck, and if the only quality solution for a particular requirement is closed source then you decide based on the perceived cost / benefit. I've contributed to a couple of OS projects that had the potential to fill a need I had. Eventually I ended up using a commercial solution because its cost was a bargain compared to the amount of time I was sinking into what was starting to look like a bottomless pit. I didn't particularly want to do this, but it ended up being the best way forward.
So where's the harm in making this decision? I seriously doubt that some arbitrary developer is going to jeopardize a commercial relationship by infecting their own software with nasty stuff. If anything, given recent events, this is more likely with open source projects. But I don't have the source code, so I guess the world is going to end.
I'll be glad to switch if something better comes along, but as those projects were not itches that I need to scratch,I'm happy to support someone who want payment for their efforts.
So unless these "markets" (wow, a term I've never heard of before ) use fresh air or leaves as a unit of transaction, you might as well just go out and buy a commercial package. I know there's a difference between OSS and zero-price (different again from zero-cost - everything has a cost), but once you're in hock to a third party to support your customisations and fix whatever bugs they introduced - now and for every new version, you may as well reduce the commercial risk and just buy an OTS solution.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
To sum up the hollow page "Non-free DRM'd games are bad because they deny freedom in some unspecified way. I don't understand it, so I'll just rant a little bit." I have a lot of respect for Stallman's general goals, but this one he missed the bus on. Having good games available for Linux opens more doors for prospective Linux enthusiasts. Good FREE games aren't going to happen, so stop that daydream. While I dislike DRM, Steam's compromise presents a way to increase the usability of Linux. If it helps to make Linux acceptance take off, perhaps people will take notice and good applications will start being brewed for Linux.
When I was an undergrad, I tried to run Matlab only to discover that there were too many other people on campus using Matlab -- apparently the license our school had only allowed 50 concurrent Matlab users. That, in a nutshell, is why free software matters for non-programmers -- proprietary software almost always comes with arbitrary restrictions, and sometimes those restrictions are enforced by the software itself.
Free software eBook readers do not delete your books when Amazon asks them to. Free software tablet OSes do not prevent you from installing pornography software if you want to do so. Free software movie players do not prevent you from fast-forwarding through commercials. These are things that non-programmers care about; how is free software not relevant to them?
Palm trees and 8
I have been working for the past 1 and 1/2 years on writing a game for mobile. It is closed source.
Over the years I have contributed to several open source projects.
We worked extremely hard to make this a reality. Our customers are extremely happy with it. When someone purchases the game, they do it because to them, the value they are getting is higher than the value of the money they spent, otherwise they would not do it. Likewise, the value of the money is higher to us, than a single copy of the game. So everyone gets higher value in a voluntary exchange, there is 2 winners, and no loser.
So who the hell is Richard Stallman to tell me or my customers that we are doing something wrong? How the hell are we harming our customers, if they were being harmed, they would not buy the game. Only our customers have the right to decide if they are being harmed or not.
You know what is wrong and unethical: to interfere in a voluntary exchange between two people. That is restricting on both mine and my customer's freedom. I am glad that this extremism has not made it into legislation. The only exception to this would be if the transaction involved harming another person or his property which is not the case by simply selling a game.
you are not entitled to...host or provide matchmaking services for the Software or emulate or redirect the communication protocols used by Valve in any network feature of the Software, through protocol emulation, tunneling, modifying or adding components to the Software, use of a utility program or any other techniques now known or hereafter developed, for any purpose including, but not limited to network play over the Internet, network play utilizing commercial or non-commercial gaming networks or as part of content aggregation networks, without the prior written consent of Valve
http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/
Do you really want GNU/Linux to become that sort of a platform? One where you are free to use the software as long as you never try to peek under the hook or escape some software vendor's online services? The point of GNU is to be a free OS (this is not necessarily the point of the Linux kernel), one where people do not have to worry about license servers, arbitrary restrictions on use, lawsuits, NDAs, or other unfriendly licenses.
Palm trees and 8
All distributions have the same software packaged differently.
The fact that it's packaged differently is part of the problem. If your program relies on a feature introduced in particular version of a library, but the user's distribution has only an older version, you're stuck. I've run into this problem often with the version of SDL_ttf in Ubuntu. A bunch of features were introduced in SDL_ttf 2.0.10, yet Ubuntu 12.04 is still on 2.0.9.
OnStar is an assistance, diagnostic, and navigation system built into GM cars that operates over the cellular phone network.
True, users are making the decision to run non-free software. But in making this decision, users are not considering whether the software is free or non-free. They're just choosing "software" or "no software", and in some categories, all "software" happens to be non-free. For example, users are making the decision that they want to run high-production-value video games or video games designed for platforms with physical buttons. These happen to be non-free because I still see no way to fund the production of high-production-value video games as 100 percent free software and free cultural works.
In the worst case, one must choose between "computers where the CPU / BIOS / UEFI / ... can hide any function the designers want from the user" and no computer at all. So how should people prevent this worst case from becoming the case?
there is now more than ever of this software selling to individual users (think all the mobile phone apps as an example). The market is there, it's healthy and it has plenty of competing open or free source software.
Nearly two years ago, I made a list of ten applications for which I could not find a close substitute distributed as free software. Which if any of these now have a freely licensed substitute?
The model you speak of is fine for software that needs ongoing support, but not all kinds of software need ongoing support. Video games, for example, don't need ongoing support if they have a mode other than online multiplayer on a publisher-controlled server. This includes single-player mode, multiplayer with multiple gamepads, multiplayer over a LAN, and multiplayer on a private server.
...simply having a different revenue model - paid support - is ethical?
They're simply different business models, both with the same goal.
What's the difference between paying $349 for an operating system and tools and getting a year of support and getting that operating system for free and paying $349 for a year of support? Or a 'subscription'?
Unless people are going to argue that support should be free as well, it's an argument based on hypocrisy. (I'm not anti-free software, my company creates a free framework and has free support, BUT we also have some 'non free' mobile products.)
If there was no copyright, [copyleft] licenses would be unnecessary.
Case in point: If someone were to take your public domain program, improve it, and distribute the improved version without source code, someone else with a lot of time on his hands could lawfully disassemble it, thoroughly comment it, and distribute the program and its commented disassembly to the public. This already happens less-than-legally.
If you develop open source software, people will compile your app from source and you won't get paid.
If you develop closed source software, people will pirate your app and you won't get paid.
The problem is one of taking the work of another without paying for it, and computers are good at copying - be it the binary bits of closed source software or the source code of open source software. Ethical people will pay for their software, unethical people won't, and releasing the source has very little to do with whether your users behave in an ethical fashion.
If you used a license other than the GPL, you could sell your software (the binary), and allow registered users to download the source. Since you have copyrighted it, additional users would still be required to buy the software, or commit copyright infringement (which happens to be a problem which nobody - closed or open - has currently solved).
The primary difference between open and closed source is that open source authors regard their users as their friends, and closed source shops regard the users as their enemy. The problem of copyright infringement remains unchanged, and the difference is largely a matter of how you treat your paying customers.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Some closed source software benefits from pirated software, because it expands its audience among possible customers. Open source software never benefits from it.
"Never" is a strong word. Open source emulators of classic video game consoles benefit from the pirated ROMs that they can run. This is why Fedora's repository includes no console emulators. Though a small number of freely distributable games compatible with these consoles is available from sites like PDRoms.de, this collection is not "substantial" enough in the eyes of Red Hat's legal department to overcome a threat of a lawsuit from Nintendo.
And in the other direction, free software designed to run on the Windows operating system benefits from pirated copies of Windows.
Maybe you should consider a different format for your retardedly large spreadsheet data logs.
Oh, wait, let me guess... It's output by some proprietary software and you're just stuck with whatever it happens to output.
This has happened even with an industry-standard, software-agnostic tab- or comma-separated text file that, for example, Python's csv module can parse and emit. Microsoft Office Excel can see all rows, while the various versions of OpenOffice.org Calc and LibreOffice Calc that I've tried can see only the 65,000 or so.
If you don't want to pay for their support you are free to hire your own support staff, which isn't exactly an option for consumers.
But a lot of software products intended for home users don't need a lot of ongoing support, such as any video game that isn't MMO.
There are more than 25,000 packages in Debian.
And among these packages, several kinds of software are underrepresented in main.
So, RMS is all about the freedom for the users.
According to RMS: "Nonfree games (like other nonfree programs) are unethical because they deny freedom to their users."
Is there anything unethical about trying to shame users (by throwing about loaded words like "unethical" ) into giving up their freedom to use nonfree software?
Do we really have to advocate FOSS by binding the consciences of those who don't choose to use it, and turning it into a moral issue?
Can't we just give reasons why we think FOSS is better, without resorting to the demagoguery?
I'm free to use non-free or free software, and I like it. If you are true believer in freedom, then let me be. I'm smart enough to make the choice and responsible enough to accept the consequences.
You can open-source the code for engine and sell the data
Atari and Majesco tried that, using the free ScummVM engine to run one of its old games, but the game ended up recalled because Nintendo didn't want any copylefted software on its platform. Besides, if a game has a freely licensed engine, how can the publisher deter people from casually unlawfully copying the data?
I'm free to use non-free or free software, and I like it. If you are true believer in freedom, then let me be. I'm smart enough to make the choice and responsible enough to accept the consequences.
I would mod you up, but I already commented in this article.
You may say you know there is a difference but you proceed to go off in la-la-land as if you didnt know. So just to be clear - it's about freedom, not price. Having a situation where you can contract *whoever you want* to do the work is entirely different from being beholden to a monopoly supplier.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Let's revisit this when I can make greeting cards and do my taxes on Linux, okay? Linux has nothing that will let me just make a greeting card without starting from scratch in a blank drawing program window and laying out the entire card. Yes, there are online tax services you can access from a browser, but I will not use them because I want my taxes to be kept private on my local hard disk. When open source can meet these two requirements, we can get rid of closed-source software.
Murdering foreigners via a remote control drone based on evidence provided by paid informers - now that's unethical.
I want to take full advantage of my hardware.
If you need workarounds for pretty much everything, your system is not worth it.
It is almost laughable that after all this time Raymond and Stallman are still trying to tell people how they should use and develop software, and how independent developers and software firms are allowed to make a living. It is ironic that Raymond and Stallman have made careers trying to transform software development from a profession to a part-time hobby.
It is alarming that people still take those two cartoon characters seriously.
and in other news....
ESR was all about "Open Source", but this sounds a bit like he's starting to lean against closed source. I wonder if he groks the implications of that distinction.
If you switch to an open source/free VOIP software it would be much more trustworthy and could be encrypted in a way you can trust (more). If you watch OTA TV it can't spy on what you watch. On-star... Well OK, it's hard to build your own car. But to say people should just give up on privacy altogether is pretty stupid IMHO.
If that's the case, don't expect to be profitable for that specific business model. They need to change their business to something that will make sense.
You want the government to create a law to protect your failing open source business model?
The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
so don't use that h/w. use the various others that are available.
Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony all have the same restrictions on their hardware: nothing not signed by the hardware maker is allowed to run, and copylefted software does not get signed. What other company makes comparable gaming hardware and markets it for connection to a television monitor?
if sony had a monopoly in game consoles, i'm sure this behavior would not have been tolerated in court.
Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony worked together to successfully take down Lik Sang in court.
Nobody implied anything about about government regulations. The person who does the business ought to have a business plan. Inside that business plan ought to have a model in which describes how that business fulfills a specific niche. If something conflicts in the business plan (proprietary software harms the users), then something about that business needs to be changed. Generally, this business model involves the following:
1. Research a marketable software solution
2. Invest a big cost into developing a perceived software solution
3. Publish the solution under proprietary terms: apply artificial scarcity to information
4. The software solution is available for purchase through a select number of people as this keeps the supply low and maintains a perceived value to the solution.
5. Recover the cost by amortizing the development costs
This model ought to be changed somehow. The way I'd recommend is to change the assumption that the business should sell with artificial scarcity. The business can instead sell something that isn't artificially scarce: time.
1. Research a marketable software solution
2. Negotiate a price to a customer to deliver the solution
3. Develop a solution within the boundaries of the expectated budget to that customer. The time spent on development is the cost the customer will pay: time is being sold here.
4. Recover the cost by delivering a solution within the customer's budget
The government sets up systems so that trade can occur and the producers have an incentive. There are lots of laws we have made up by fiat, to produce the things that society wants/needs. Personally, I don't believe in anything called "natural law", but people have convinced themselves that "natural law" exists and then say that governments are just enforcing them. For example, I don't believe in any inherent law of land ownership or property ownership. We create them because they help society function better. One can easily imagine hippy-commune type of societies where everything is shared and no one owns anything. That kind of society is not evil or wrong. The ideas of property ownership and land ownership are created by fiat by mankind to help society function better. (No, they aren't created by "god" or "natural law".)
Also the "create a law" part your talking about is a centuries old existing law known as "copyright".
I'd also recommend that if you're going to dis copyright law, then you might as well be consistent and ditch all the laws surrounding intellectual property - including the FSF ideas about open source. Otherwise, you're talking about using government power to enforce your ideas about how software should be shared. So here's the question aimed right back at you: You want the government to create a law to support open source software? Sounds to me like you have created insufficient incentives for the producer, i.e. you've created a broken business model.
There are two sides to the argument about Free software. I understand the concept of free software being free as in freedom. I appreciate the freedom that Linux has given me over the years and I'd pay good money to have it on my desktop. However, there is something to be said about the negative economic effect that all this Free software has. When you flood the market with "Free Software" there is a cost incurred. That cost is incurred by the developers and workers in the software industry. Free software does have a cost. That cost is the jobs that would have been created had the software been sold. You can say that bill gates is rich enough but what about all those people who work for him or for other companies that compete against him. Releasing that software as free along with the source code you crash and burn the market. It then becomes difficult if not impossible to make money in that market segment. The people who argue that free software is more ethical then non free software are really very short sighted in my view or they don't care that workers are not able to make a living.
Ask yourselves. What happens when all those workers who work in the software industry decide its not profitable to make software anymore? Where will you get the software from? This is a similar argument made in an interview I once watched with Dambisa Moyo. She talked about African aid. She indicated an example of Mosquito nets for Africa. She said that when aid groups dumped mosquito nets on the market in Africa it crashed the market. The people who had local businesses making and selling mosquito nets would then go out of business and there would be no one to repair the mosquito nets when they broke. This is an unintended consequence. I would argue that flooding the market with free software also has an unintended consequence of driving software developers out of the market. Eventually no one will make software and we won't have an industry.
1. Research a marketable software solution
2. Negotiate a price to a customer to deliver the solution
This makes the assumption that one customer will be willing to pay for the entire development. If the customers are home users, the step "Research a marketable software solution" will result in a conclusion that this assumption is not true. How should price negotiation proceed if no single customer is willing to pay the whole bill? Or are you claiming that software intended for home users is not marketable?
Write a small kernel of a game
So how does the developer ensure that at least some end users will care about one's "small kernel of a game"? Other Slashdot users have told me that Minecraft is an edge case that happens fewer than a half dozen times a decade, and a developer shouldn't expect other games to take off in this way.
Sponsored development. [...] In game advertising.
F-Droid, a software repository for the Android operating system specializing in free software, considers advertising an "AntiFeature", and its package list has a machine-readable list of "AntiFeature" elements for each package. You always have to assume that someone on F-Droid (or a counterpart on another platform) is going to surgically remove whatever anti-features you put in your freely licensed product and release that version. So how would the developer be able to assure the advertiser of impressions?
Special paid versions. Offer special versions on actual physical media with merchandise. [...] With free software anyone can change the names of the characters
And with free software anyone can change the names of the characters and burn a CD. Given the discrepancy between what it costs to hire an artist for even one hour and what an end user is willing to pay, it will be difficult to think of a "special paid version" that the original developer can produce at far lower cost than anyone who just installed Visual Studio Express (or a counterpart on another platform).
Clearly some people care, otherwise this thread wouldn't have hundreds of messages of people flaming back and forth.
The readership of Slashdot is an edge case, whose priorities share little in common with the general public. A video game requiring players to have a Slashdot account, for (ridiculous) example, would sell poorly.
Do average people care about free software? No, I don't think they do. Is it important. Yes, I think it is.
Yes, you care. But my point is that not enough people care to make freely licensed video games financially viable. Either one person has to care enough to sponsor the whole thing, or enough members of the general public have to care enough to drop some money into one's Kickstarter project. A first-time developer is going to have a hard time getting either of those scenarios to play out.
What you're talking about is a temporary, ultimately counter-productive economic benefit from maintaining a system of artificial scarcity. Right now, the software industry is riding a bubble of artificial price inflation, based on perceived scarcity. For example, a severe premium is paid to license Oracle RDBMS over open source alternatives, without recognizing that a large part of the Oracle solution is basically a commodity at this point. Yes, there IS some value-add over competing FOSS solutions ... but Oracle charges as if the solution as a whole were value-add, when in fact only a few small parts of the solution, or a few specific use cases for the product, really act as differentiators.
History would say it's inevitable that market forces will eventually deal with this situation - industries based on artificial scarcity don't survive over time.
But fear not - once the energy being applied to maintaining artificially-inflated prices on things like Windows, Oracle, etc. is freed up, there WILL be other, truly value-add software development efforts to focus on.
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
It's interesting that society seems to move from disregarding what's considered "traditional morality" (i.e. traditional family, modesty) only to come up with new rules, i.e. free-trade coffee, don't drive an SUV, open software. I mean, really, it's hard to keep up. People seem to arbitrarily make up new rules of morality and ethics. I mean, we shun the notion of God or a prophet handing down some absolute sort of laws, but we decide that some computer geek can just, at a whim, claim some new sort of ethics that everyone should follow. I actually find the latter more shackling.
Look at it, they were an underdog hemorrhaging money. Jobs comes back from close contact with Disney with a penchant for pillaging stuff that's freely available and repackaging it in the most closed way possible. Disney also pillages the Public Domain, stealing from myth and fable and then adding a tiny circled 'C', making it their own. If you don't believe you, they've got a million lawyers with pillow-cases full of legal briefs to beat you down with. It's clear that disembodied spirit of Walt Disney is running Apple.
90% of everything is crap. Also, crap is relative.
...mention, that nobody really is (that is here in Real World) forcing you to do anything. How about you concentrate on that part of my previous message in relation to yours before that - You'll be less annoyed (or not, depends on which world you live in ;) ).
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.