Stallman Does Slides -- and Brevity -- For TEDx

New submitter ciaran2014 writes Richard Stallman's long-format talks are well-known — there are videos going back to 2001 and transcripts dating back to 1986 — but he recently condensed his free software talk down to 14 minutes and set it to hand-drawn slides for TEDxGeneva (video link). He introduces with the four freedoms, as always, and then moves on to spyware, surveillance, non-free drivers, free software in schools, non-free javascript, Service as a Software Substitute and how free software is today necessary for a strong democracy. As usual, the talk is suitable for non-technical audiences.

Comments

Shortest version

[Anonymous Coward]

Communism is good, and I can blind you to the fact that I'm preaching it because OOOOooo, it's technology so there's a part of your brain that shuts off when we discuss it. Just substitute land, food, or any other good for "software" in his talks, and you'll see what's going on.

Re:Shortest version

[Anonymous Coward]

Shortsighted scum.

Re:Shortest version

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I know some of the open source / free software folks are shortsighted scum, but I hang out with them anyway. You've sometimes got to make allowances for friends.

Re:Shortest version

[Anonymous Coward]

Top level AC here. The similarity is in their use of a "this is different" argument to further the agenda. Land "is different" because it's fixed and very little new land is being made. Food "is different" because it's essential, etc.

Attempting to redefine words is also a classic far-left tactic. There is really no ambiguity in free/free if you call it like you see it. The proper word for what RMS advocates is not free. It's public. He wants software to be strictly a public endevour, like a public park, or a public school. Note, there's nothing wrong with having public parks or schools. I take exception to the idea that we should have *only* public land and public schools.

Re:Shortest version

[Registered Coward v2]

There's a big difference between physical things that have limits (land, food, water, etc) and 'intellectual property' which can be copied any number of times at virtually no cost. Until physical items are limitless or there is overwhelming cost to reproduce ideas, GPL and communism will be incomparable.

Actually, a fundamental core philosophy is very similar; the idea that people will contribute willingly based on their abilities independent of what they get in return.The challenge is to get people to contribute beyond that needed to meet their needs. For exam,e, someone might be quite capable of fixing many bugs but will only fix those that impact their ability to us etch software and leave the rest to others. There is nothing wrong with free software and I actually use it; the challenge is how do you get people to continually invest time, money and other resources for which they will get nothing in return?

Re:Shortest version

[ranton]

There's a big difference between physical things that have limits (land, food, water, etc) and 'intellectual property' which can be copied any number of times at virtually no cost.

You are comparing the wrong things. Both physical things and intellectual property have two costs: Cost To Produce and Cost To Distribute. While the cost to distribute is near nothing for intellectual property, the cost to produce is not.

Physical things have limits like land, water, etc, and intellectual property has limits such as the number of smart educated people in the world. Nothing that requires human labor is free. Nothing.

Re:Shortest version

[jbolden]

Its been 20 years. We've seen lots of successful open source business models by this point. Mostly people don't contribute when they get nothing in return rather:

B takes code written by A whom could care less about advancing B's purpose and as a result of the license ends up contributing to C for a purpose B could care less about.

Re: Shortest version

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a troll, and not even a good one. Someone mod this mother fucker down into oblivion.

Re:Shortest version

[Anonymous Coward]

He doesn't propose forcing people to use free software. Only says that it is morally superior. You can agree or disagree, but trying to scare people with big words like 'far left' or even ridiculous comparisons to communism - is disingenuous and achieves nothing.

Re:Shortest version

[Registered Coward v2]

Its been 20 years. We've seen lots of successful open source business models by this point. Mostly people don't contribute when they get nothing in return rather:

B takes code written by A whom could care less about advancing B's purpose and as a result of the license ends up contributing to C for a purpose B could care less about.

Most of the successful open source business models have been around creating a business where selling support and ancillary services brings in the revenue and justifies ongoing development effort. OSS happened to provide a good foundation to build on but the underlying motive is profit driven; it just happens that others benefit as well. There's nothing wrong with that, in fact it helps strengthen support for OSS; it however belies the notion that if you make it free the community will create this wonderful product.

Re:Shortest version

[TheRaven64]

Talking about open-source businesses is missing the point entirely. Most businesses that are successful as a result of open source (or Free Software, for the RMS-style folks) or that contribute significantly to open source are not 'open-source businesses' any more than companies that use Windows and Office are 'closed-source businesses. The difference is that one category of businesses realises that writing software is expensive and copying software is trivial, so spends its investment on the software parts of its infrastructure paying people to write software (typically customising and improving existing projects), whereas the other pays someone for copies of software and hopes that that will give them an incentive to produce software that's more like they want.

Re:Shortest version

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's instead talk the tactics of right wingers ... to be dishonest, to be stupid, to be assholes.

Re:Shortest version

[Anonymous Coward]

"Mostly people don't contribute when they get nothing in return rather:"

Basic issue is that they have to function within a otherwise capitalistic system. If they had food, clothing and shelter covered for the rest of their life, things would perhaps operate differently.

Re:Shortest version

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if those smart, educated people have, say, a personal farm that provide them with the needs for survival with time to spare for other activities?

Re:Shortest version

[smittyoneeach]

It's the "moral" connotation to which I object. There is no means of putting source code on the same behavior continuum as, say, sexual mores or discussion of the afterlife. There are pragmatic reasons to support the FSF, and I do, but they are not moral ones.

Re:Shortest version

[NormalVisual]

Both sides of the aisle possess those attributes.

Re:Shortest version

[jbolden]

Actually no. Most of the successful open source business models are not ones in which the open source product is, for the entity writing the code, just an expense not a revenue source and broad participation help reduce that expense. The assumption had been that ancillary services would be the primary, and certainly there are plenty of those but that has not been the dominant class.

Re:Shortest version

[Registered Coward v2]

Actually no. Most of the successful open source business models are not ones in which the open source product is, for the entity writing the code, just an expense not a revenue source and broad participation help reduce that expense. The assumption had been that ancillary services would be the primary, and certainly there are plenty of those but that has not been the dominant class.

I guess we should star by getting agreement on terms. I consider red hat, for example, makes money selling ancillary services a as predominant model, where those services are everything from installations and updates to added features beyond the base GPL version. Does that agree with your definition? What do you consider the dominate class?

Re:Shortest version

[slashdice]

There are people who have food, clothing, and shelter covered. They're not the people who are contributing. (ok, maybe a few basement dwellers and college students are!)

Re:Shortest version

[jbolden]

We agree on the definition of the the ancillary services and I agree RedHat makes their money that way. I'd say the dominate class would be things like Rackspace which develops (with RedHat) OpenStack but is primarily selling CPU, electricity, network and renting hardware. The management system they use is just an expense. Microsoft / Azure, Amazon / AWS, Verizon's cloud... would all be in the same boat. Or another example would be HP's work which makes its money selling hardware or enterprise packages to run on top of open source OSes.

Re:Shortest version

[Registered Coward v2]

We agree on the definition of the the ancillary services and I agree RedHat makes their money that way. I'd say the dominate class would be things like Rackspace which develops (with RedHat) OpenStack but is primarily selling CPU, electricity, network and renting hardware. The management system they use is just an expense. Microsoft / Azure, Amazon / AWS, Verizon's cloud... would all be in the same boat. Or another example would be HP's work which makes its money selling hardware or enterprise packages to run on top of open source OSes.

It sounds like we are in agreement here. I'd consider Rackspace, Red Hat, et al similar OSS business models.

Re:Shortest version

[Anonymous Coward]

B takes code written by A whom could care less about advancing B's purpose and as a result of the license ends up contributing to C for a purpose B could care less about.

Could care less about or couldn't care less about? The two are opposites and change the entire meaning of what you're talking about. I would seem like you mean "couldn't" but you did write "could" twice there so I'm wondering if that's what you're misunderstanding or there is some other error in the point you're trying to make.

Re:Shortest version

[exomondo]

Its been 20 years. We've seen lots of successful open source business models by this point.

For corporate software yes, not so much for end users. The most common OSS model is support contracts but end users predominantly get their support from community forums, we've seen the advertising model viewed with disdain (and mostly people use adblockers or would patch the software to remove them anyway) then there is paying for enhancements which is another thing end users don't do due to it being prohibitively expensive. Ultimately the changes and improvements to most free software is driven by corporate needs.

Re:Shortest version

[jbolden]

That's one of the things about open source producers and contributors not end users drive the software not purchasers. But that's not necessarily terrible. Android is the most successful OS on the planet, its open. Webkit: Firefox and Chrome. Libre / Open Office (about 18% of the office market). I'd say we are seeing success for end users. Certainly changes are driven by corporate needs but corporate needs and end users align sometimes.

Re:Shortest version

[davydagger]

I know, giving rights to users is going to bring the end of western civilization. I mean what assholes, protecting those people.

Re:Shortest version

[exomondo]

Android is the most successful OS on the planet, its open.

Well only somewhat, most Android distributions use a proprietary GUI layer, or proprietary Google Play Services and pretty much every single one in use has non-free software for driving the hardware. It's open out of convenience rather than ideology.

Webkit: Firefox and Chrome.

Chrome and Firefox are supported by Google's Ad revenues so yes the end user needs are met in order to drive advertising profit.

Certainly changes are driven by corporate needs but corporate needs and end users align sometimes.

Agreed, sometimes they do though often they do not so that is why I don't think free software will ever fully supplant proprietary software.

Re:Shortest version

[RoLi]

The proper word for what RMS advocates is not free. It's public. He wants software to be strictly a public endevour, like a public park, or a public school.

Wrong. I can't change the "public park" according to my private wishes.

If you really want to call some software public, then it must be proprietary software because the government can send people to Microsoft or Apple any time and request them to spy on users, let them hack into computers, etc. - The Windows or iOS ecosystem is in that way just like a public park.

Free software is much more private than that because it is not controlled by a corporation which can be forced to do the government's bidding.

Note, there's nothing wrong with having public parks or schools. I take exception to the idea that we should have *only* public land and public schools.

In fact there is a lot wrong for public schools, and they are one of the things the state should immediately get out of. (and public schools among central banking was one of the planks in the communist manifesto, BTW.) But that is another topic altogether.

Re:Shortest version

[silentcoder]

Nothing in Stallman's philosophy precludes profit-driven development - on the contrary, he actively encourages it !
He precludes a certain METHOD of profit generation, not the idea of profit.

Your response is like saying "We can't have pollution standards because saying you can't make profit by dumping strychnine in my drinking water is the same saying you can't make profit at all".

There is absolutely no free software problem with profit. There is a freedom problem with software that are sold in one PARTICULAR bad way because the harms that it causes to the public far outweigh the profit earned by the seller.

The only thing Stallman has ever done is point out the age-old lesson that if you don't force the medicine seller to tell you what's in his medicine most of it ends up being snake-oil.

Re:Shortest version

[silentcoder]

Quite a lot of smaller projects, notably ones that target individuals, have voluntary donation based business models - and make enough to keep the developers' bills paid so they can write the software. Because a dollar here or a dollar there is not prohibitively expensive, and it adds up quite a lot if you have a few thousand people who do so every month which for a reasonably successful end-user project these days would only require about a 25% donation rate.

This is the exact same business model that humble bundle uses.

For quite a few years I maintained a project that was the market-leader in it's class for free software. I never made money out of end-users but I ran a successful business based on selling features to other business. My software was a management tool used for running a type of small business - a lot of indy such businesses used it, some NGO's distributed it for variations on the theme - but there were also quite a few big companies who were franchising business built around it. They wanted customized management software that would protect their franchised brand and offer functionality that the indy guys didn't care about (like integration between franchises) - and they paid me very handsomely to develop those for them.
Of course they COULD go to anybody to do it - but they didn't because I knew the code better than anybody and could do it cheaper.
For doing it, I would charge them an hourly rate. I would also make them a choice. I could either include the features they wanted back in the main branch for others to use (including competitors) or I could keep it in it's own branch - never publicly distributed to anybody else (hence without violation of the GPL) - and if any other customer wanted the same feature I would have to pay somebody else to clean-room it. But if they wanted feature exclusivity - the rate-per-hour was doubled.
I made very good money that way - drove a nice car, had a nice home. Eventually the technology changed and the market for that kind of business dissapeared almost entirely (actually - mobile replaced it) and so I moved on to other things (no point writing code nobody needs anymore).

Basically - you have no idea how many people successfully do the very things you just claimed nobody does.

Re:Shortest version

[Registered Coward v2]

Nothing in Stallman's philosophy precludes profit-driven development - on the contrary, he actively encourages it ! He precludes a certain METHOD of profit generation, not the idea of profit.

Your response is like saying "We can't have pollution standards because saying you can't make profit by dumping strychnine in my drinking water is the same saying you can't make profit at all".

There is absolutely no free software problem with profit.

Of course, and nothing I said is anything remote to your drinking water example. I did point out that profit drives much free software development; if only because it is difficult to maintain enthusiasm for development by volunteers over time or to get bugs fixed that are not of interest to the volunteers.

There is a freedom problem with software that are sold in one PARTICULAR bad way because the harms that it causes to the public far outweigh the profit earned by the seller.

The only thing Stallman has ever done is point out the age-old lesson that if you don't force the medicine seller to tell you what's in his medicine most of it ends up being snake-oil.

However, free open source software is not the only way to do that. The assumption that non-free software is bad and harmful and by extension free software is good and beneficial is incorrect on particle as well ideological terms. Stallman has a very narrow view of what software development should look like and even what constitutes "free." I simply disagree with the idea that his viewpoint is the correct one.

Re:Shortest version

[jbolden]

Chrome and Firefox are supported by Google's Ad revenues so yes the end user needs are met in order to drive advertising profit.

What's the problem? There has to be some sort of business model to support open source. If it revenue doesn't come from selling software it has to come from selling something. When we talk about consumer software either consumers are going to pay for the software with money, they are going to pay for the software indirectly by buying hardware (like Android) or they are going to pay for the software via. advertising of some sort. There aren't really any other models. Many of the activities required to support general consumers aren't fun, and IT people won't do them unless they are compensated.

Agreed, sometimes they do though often they do not so that is why I don't think free software will ever fully supplant proprietary software.

I agree with that. I was saying it can partially supplant proprietary software.

The most common form of software is one off individual development for a single company. I could see open source owning a huge percentage of that since development costs are almost entirely a pure expense and companies collaborating will often make sense. OTOH that software has lots of proprietary knowledge as well. So some of it is going to have to be closed.

The next most common is niche vertical software. That's likely to stay proprietary as even when it is mostly a vehicle to sell consulting services (like IBM) they don't want their consulting competitors to have access.

Re:Shortest version

[rioki]

I think I get the distinction he is trying to formulate. Red Hat focuses their products around their GNU/Linux distribution, that is without GNU/Linux they would not have a product. Rackspace on the other hand have a product that would exists even without OpenStack. Their primary gains in reduction of development costs, since other individuals and companies are contributing to the effort.

Basically these are the two vectors commercial companies have with free software. Either they provide ancillary services to existing software, that is they are basically consultants; or they copyleft some piece of software that is not their in business model and as a result reduce costs.

Re:Shortest version

[silentcoder]

>However, free open source software is not the only way to do that.

Please provide a way to do that without some ability to audit the source ?

> The assumption that non-free software is bad and harmful and by extension free software is good and beneficial

Being non-free is, by itself, already bad - freedom is worth far more than money. It's generally stupid to sacrifice your life to prevent losing money as it precludes the ability to make more (which always exists), but those who sacrifice their lives to prevent the loss of liberty are widely considered heroes.
Liberty is fundamentally more valuable than almost all other considerations.
This is why the FSF distinguishes between proprietory and commercial software. The one is harmful and the other is not in terms of liberty.
Now there may or may not be other harms - there could be malware in a free software project hoping nobody looks, a non-free program could offer you a way to guarantee you'll win the lottery this week - nevertheless the free software would STILL be superior in terms of liberty.

>Stallman has a very narrow view of what software development should look like
He had never proposed any view on this topic whatsoever. He has DONE software development in a certain style (which, by the way, was no the open source methodology but the traditional bazaar style he knew) but he never declared it a better way of developing software.
He has limited his position purely to the ethical and philosophical issues of freedom, which is a higher consideration than quality or commercial success.
After all - would you agree to a law that said you couldn't tell your friends what you saw on the news last night in order to help Fox make more money by forcing more people to watch the show themselves ?
Surely you would consider that an unacceptable constraint on your personal freedom of speech.
What Stallman's arguments prove, VERY convincingly is that the four freedoms he cares about are all - JUST as important.

People who wish to paint a strawman (which you did) tend to accuse him (falsely) of not recognizing some free software as such - which is actually not true at all. Stallman has NEVER denied that any BSD system is free, nor has he denied that of any GNU/Linux distribution (except for a few very specific cases like the Tivo which really weren't).
He does however refuse to endorse a product that does not share his values. So he won't endorse openBSD or redhat, but that is not denying that those products are free, it's just not endorsing something which (in turn) endorses other things he is opposed to. That's a perfectly reasonable position to take.
If you're opposed to something, would you endorse somebody who, while not themselves engaged in that thing, do however endorse it publicly in the very same sphere where they asked for your endorsement ?

Re:Shortest version

[Registered Coward v2]

I think I get the distinction he is trying to formulate. Red Hat focuses their products around their GNU/Linux distribution, that is without GNU/Linux they would not have a product. Rackspace on the other hand have a product that would exists even without OpenStack. Their primary gains in reduction of development costs, since other individuals and companies are contributing to the effort.

Basically these are the two vectors commercial companies have with free software. Either they provide ancillary services to existing software, that is they are basically consultants; or they copyleft some piece of software that is not their in business model and as a result reduce costs.

Good point. I can see where they would be considered two distinct models.

Re:Shortest version

[exomondo]

Quite a lot of smaller projects, notably ones that target individuals, have voluntary donation based business models - and make enough to keep the developers' bills paid so they can write the software.

For example? I can imagine only the hugely popular ones (like the Humble Bundle) could survive on donation-ware and eve then the Humble Bundle games aren't exclusive to the Humble Bundle.

For quite a few years I maintained a project that was the market-leader in it's class for free software. I never made money out of end-users but I ran a successful business based on selling features to other business.

Yeah, like I said the features are driven by corporations.

Basically - you have no idea how many people successfully do the very things you just claimed nobody does.

And what exactly do you think I claimed nobody does?

Re:Shortest version

[exomondo]

What's the problem?

Well personally I don't think there is one with that model, but have a browse through the comments here sometime and you'll see all manner of people advocating for adblockers and HOSTS files with the "rah rah you have no right to use my bandwidth to show me ads!" mantra. I'm not saying it can't work but certainly if you ask people here it is viewed with disdain.

There has to be some sort of business model to support open source. If it revenue doesn't come from selling software it has to come from selling something. When we talk about consumer software either consumers are going to pay for the software with money, they are going to pay for the software indirectly by buying hardware (like Android) or they are going to pay for the software via. advertising of some sort. There aren't really any other models.

Yeah fair enough. The business of "selling" free software is really non-existent and not everybody requires special hardware for their software that can offset the cost so I agree advertising is really the only option.

The most common form of software is one off individual development for a single company.

Yep, that's why FOSS is so successful in custom setups that deliver services.

Re:Shortest version

[jbolden]

Well personally I don't think there is one with that model, but have a browse through the comments here sometime and you'll see all manner of people advocating for adblockers and HOSTS files with the "rah rah you have no right to use my bandwidth to show me ads!" mantra.

Very true. A lot of the people here like the something for nothing type position. But as long as ad avoidance isn't widespread it doesn't damage the revenue model too much. Once it becomes widespread well then ads have to get more obtrusive or cost of production has to drop.

Yep, that's why FOSS is so successful in custom setups that deliver services.

Sounds like we agree.

Richard's new acronym

[Anonymous Coward]

for SaaS is SaaSS (Service as a Software Substitute).

*phew* Just think, it could've been SaaGNU/SS and our hallway conversations would've taken that much longer.

Re:Richard's new acronym

[Anonymous Coward]

Pronounced Sagnuts?

Re:Richard's new acronym

[Anonymous Coward]

Pronounced Sagnuts?

lol

No thanks

[dugancent]

Stallman's my way or the highway attitude has no place in a free society.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiotic comment! You obviously have no idea of what "Free" means in "Free Society". I would suggest a study of the history of development of economic theory to educate yourself.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, "my way or the highway" is what the copyright industry ascertains by buying politicians. It is easiest to buy politicians in the U.S.A. where corruption is legal, and then use the U.S. military to promote "U.S. values" abroad in order to ensure access to global resources that then are used for using market pressure to promote "U.S. values" abroad.

That kind of "my way or get wiped off the planet" attitude is quite more unfitting for a free society than Stallman's.

Re:No thanks

[carlhaagen]

To me, "free society" means being able to have and express that opinion and perspective without people like you blaming them for being idiots just because they don't side with your view of the world. Think about what you said and its implications for a second.

Re:No thanks

[Smallpond]

Have you noticed that Stallman only has power to the extent that people agree with him? That he has no means of enforcing anything other than by making a convincing argument? His highway has less tolls than any alternative.

Re:No thanks

[0100010001010011]

Give Stallman some software with a BSD license and see how he responds.

He's of the "It's only free as long as I say it's as free as I want it to be" people.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

You talk like a narrowminded dullard who thinks the world starts and ends with the United States.

Re:No thanks

[spire3661]

Stallman is the crazy outlier. Where he stands, at the very edge, is exactly where we need him to be. You dont have to follow all of it, but there would be less of his ideas if he was more concerned with being central and accessible. There is a point to Stallman being far out there, its so the rest of us dont have to. Let him do his thing.

Re:No thanks

[I'm New Around Here]

Ad hominem attacks are all the rage on Slashdot lately.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

This. Stallmans views on freedom are fundamentally flawed.

Just like society in general, some freedoms people should never have, such as the ability to rape, steal and murder.
Likewise in software, there should be some safety protocols in place to prevent abuse.

Sadly copyright abuse is destroying this. But it is no reason to blast the whole proprietary industry.
It is not like open source is the Absolute Good either. There has been much damage caused by products BEING open.
Yes, despite that some people say, security from obscurity is a very basic and simple security measure that DOES work to an extent. (again, sadly, some people abuse this ability and never fucking test code)
Black-boxing code from most people can protect you, even if it is a minor protection. It is one tool in a line of many that is useful.

Not only that, it helps against people blindly copying and pasting your code line for line.
I don't agree with software patents, but allowing that to happen is like leaving your factory doors open so others can come in, switch on your machines and use them to produce their own stuff. Those that do produce open source software and even get money from it have some of the biggest balls. Support services, donations and the belief people will buy even though it is open source are essentially the main ways you can actually work with open software.

Both proprietary and open source has a place in the world.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

What a load of Redmond Propaganda. If I have your binary, I will find lots of vulnerabilities because I am an x86 assembly expert with a CS degree. And I have some serious debugging tools. Of course, I also need plenty of time to do that. So if my financiers are the U.S. military or the Chinese military or the Russian mafia, I will get all your "hidden" bugs. Google did this for a demonstration and found dozens of exploitable bugs in Adobe products.

So you are "secure" against the badly funded criminals, but everything is open to the really dangerous criminals.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, a lot revolves around the U.S. simply because it's politic system is the most readily corrupt one while at the same time wielding extensive power.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

people who try to claim that the bsd license is morally superior are ridiculous. You're just trying to justify your whoring.

Re:No thanks

[smittyoneeach]

Concur. I think that there are a spectrum of motives for doing code, from joy to business.
What matters is that the legal system allow and deconflict a flourishing of motives, not that Any One True Opinion prevail.

Re:No thanks

[Bengie]

Extremism has no place in a free society.

Re:No thanks

[grcumb]

Stallman is the crazy outlier. Where he stands, at the very edge, is exactly where we need him to be. You dont have to follow all of it, but there would be less of his ideas if he was more concerned with being central and accessible.

Just for the edification of the other readers here, which parts specifically do you feel you don't have to follow?

For the record, I know exactly which ones I would choose, but I'm interested to know what exactly you think makes Stallmann a 'crazy outlier'. Because, in my estimation, it would take a lot for someone to qualify for that kind of labeling.

I disagree with his statement that Linux distro maintainers allow non-free components because they're not sufficiently committed to freedom, but I don't think him 'crazy' for having said it. I think his blanket characterisation of profit motive as evil is too much of a generalisation, but tragically, I don't think he's entirely wrong in stating that the effects of profit motive on a lot of commercial organisations has been detrimental to our freedom - dangerously so. So yeah: same conclusion, more temperate language. That's not nearly crazy or even an outlying opinion, to my mind.

There is a point to Stallman being far out there, its so the rest of us dont have to. Let him do his thing.

I take your point, but I remind you that the same could have been said about Ghandi, or even Martin Luther King, when people were blaming him for the violence in Selma and the bombing in Birmingham.

See, the problem I have with this kind of rhetoric is that you seem willing to stand to the side at a witch-burning and say, 'Well, I would never cast a spell, but I can see why people bought magic services from her.' It's a little disingenuous, isn't it, that you would be willing to profit from someone's courage, when you're not willing to defend it?

Again, this isn't a case of 'My Free Software, Right or Wrong.' On the contrary, I'm arguing that you can quibble all you like with the arguments Stallmann makes, and the rhetoric he makes them with. But I have to ask: With an attitude like yours, how much have you actually done to promote freedom?

(Real question: I'm open to correction.)

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

+1. Too many people in this discussion are rabidly calling stallman disenters stupid names to try and color them as "non-free" or "uneducated". Free means not having to follow. Get a grip extremists.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

No true scotsman about freedom!

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Since this a liberal establishment:

Profit by acting, drinking, and by living responsibly!

Re:No thanks

[Eric Sharkey]

Just for the edification of the other readers here, which parts specifically do you feel you don't have to follow?

For the record, I know exactly which ones I would choose, but I'm interested to know what exactly you think makes Stallmann a 'crazy outlier'. Because, in my estimation, it would take a lot for someone to qualify for that kind of labeling.

On a number of occasions RMS has been asked how professional software developers can make enough money to earn a normal middle class income using only Free software licensing, and his response has been that earning money should not be a priority, to the extent that if a developer cannot earn enough money to support a family, that's ok. Software developers shouldn't have children. (example link)

If he had said that most software developers shouldn't expect to have as much money as Gates/Ballmer/Zuckerberg/Jobs/Ellison type people, I'd have been ok with that, but to take it to the extreme that you should deny developers the ability to have children, one of the most basic and fundamental life experiences, that was what tipped the balance into 'crazy outlier' in my opinion.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

And the OpenSSL bug along with various decade+ old bugs in the Linux kernel prove without a doubt that open source is by no means the answer when it comes to security and no better than closed source.

Re:No thanks

[MikeBabcock]

Funny, I'm pretty sure you just made a pun.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

So a free society is when you can blame others but others cannot blame you?

For your info: This would be an unfree society.

Re:No thanks

[david_thornley]

Actually, what I've usually read from him is that most developers do not benefit from the sale value of their software. Most software is written internally, for internal use. (This is changing.) I've had two jobs in which we profited from selling software, and the impression I get is that that's more than usual. The rest of my software development jobs have been in creating software for the company's internal use, with no intention of ever letting that software get out.

Except for those two jobs, which are six years of my career, it wouldn't have made a single difference if everything I was paid to work on was GPLed (although the beginning of my career does predate GPLv1 by a considerable margin).

Re:No thanks

[Eric Sharkey]

I think you've confused RMS with ESR. Those statements sound like chapter three of The Magic Cauldron. This sort of argument is typical of "Open Source" types, who tend to promote open source on the basis of economic arguments, as opposed to "Free Software" types, who promote free software on moral/ethical grounds.

Re:No thanks

[david_thornley]

I can't quickly find it now, but I believe RMS has pointed that out. RMS isn't interested in Open Source software as a better way to write software, but he does have to sell the idea and deal with objections.

Where to draw the line

[TWX]

One of the things that I've always been confused by with Stallman is where he draws the line between what in his view must be free open-source software and what can be free non-open-source, and what can be truly paid commercial software.

This confusion stems from his fairly regular changes as to what Linux distributions he's willing to endorse or criticize. At one point he was very happy with the Debian folks, but at some point decided that their making available non-GPL or other free-to-distribute-but-not-modify software was anathema, and last I looked (admittedly awhile ago) there were only a handful of very obscure Linux distributions that he actually endorsed. They're obscure because they don't have the software available that users want in order to have their computing experiences be the way they want them to be.

I get that the platform being open-source is a good thing, but I don't think that where he draws the line between platform and applications works well.

Re:Where to draw the line

[Grishnakh]

Stallman's a bit of an extremist, and wants all software to be open-source. Remember, it all goes back to when he was trying to get a printer working, and couldn't because the driver was closed-source. That's why he invented the GPL, which just requires you to make source available to anyone whom you distribute software to.

But you're right: some parts are far more important than others. The platform being open-source is much, much more important than any high-level application being open-source. When the platform is closed and proprietary, you have all kinds of problems: you're locked in by the vendor, it's harder to write and debug applications, the platform vendor can have secret APIs to give them an advantage over third-party application vendors (we saw this with MS many times), you're stuck with drivers that vendors provide you and can't upgrade your platform software if the driver providers don't want you to (we've seen this with Windows upgrades, where older but perfectly functional hardware can't be used because the HW vendors didn't feel like updating their drivers for the new OS, since they want you to buy new HW), etc. Whereas if some random application is closed-source and proprietary, that doesn't affect anything at all except that one application.

Re:Where to draw the line

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the things that I've always been confused by with Stallman is where he draws the line between what in his view must be free open-source software and what can be free non-open-source, and what can be truly paid commercial software.

See, you are confused because Stallman's short-term objectives change, when he draws the line differently according to what goals are realistic to achieve.

Others are annoyed that Stallman's principles do not change according to the rage of the day.

There's only one Stallman for everybody.

Re:Where to draw the line

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm confused by your confusion. Stallman's been pretty consistent, unambiguous, and what irritates a lot of people about him, uncompromising. Since you mentioned the distros the FSF endorsed, then perhaps comparing them to the ones they don't endorse would help clear your confusion. http://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html

Re:Where to draw the line

[0100010001010011]

He doesn't even just want it to be open source. He has a problem with anything that isn't GPLv3. Release everything with FreeBSD and see how happy he is.

Re:Where to draw the line

[globaljustin]

drawing a line is the point...

i agree that Stallman's hyper-specific definitions are obtuse and ruin his theories...but they key here is to understand where he goes wrong and why it doesn't matter to discussions about FOSS

in Stallman, you can see the problem many anarchist/libertarian types have across disciplines...the problems they raise are good, their arguments are solid, but their conclusions about how to **move forward and fix the problem** are stilted and unworkable

it usually comes down to **language distinctions** which have deep consequences, and the mistake is to make distinctions linguistically where none exist functionally...you see a sort of logic game where every end is gamed out when forming language ontology...it's a fool's game...

Re:Where to draw the line

[ranton]

One of the things that I've always been confused by with Stallman is where he draws the line between what in his view must be free open-source software and what can be free non-open-source, and what can be truly paid commercial software.

From what I can tell, he draws the line quite clearly. There is no place for traditional paid commercial software. It is okay to make money writing software, but it is never okay to keep even a single line of software secret from the general public.

I don't agree with his philosophy at all, but he seems to make it pretty clear where he stands. I honestly don't know every single public statement he has ever made though, so there could be some inconsistencies I don't know about. With such a hard line stance, it would be hard to not be accidentally hypocritical from time to time.

Re:Where to draw the line

[jbolden]

His position on platforms is:

a) Avoid at all costs embedding not free into free (i.e. what happened with commercial X11)
b) More free is preferable to less free, do the best you can.
c) For (b) the best you can is defined not by "this would be slightly annoying".

Re:Where to draw the line

[jbolden]

He'd be fine with everything being BSD licensed forever (FreeBSD is a BSD distribution / OS not a license). But he's smart enough to know that BSD licensed software doesn't stay that way in the real world. There is a long proven track record of BSD software getting embedded in commercial software and becoming effectively or actually closed.

Re:Where to draw the line

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the point of having the source if you can't recompile and install it on the device you own?

Re:Where to draw the line

[Anonymous Coward]

Pray tell, which piece of BSD software has been closed (as in, the original is unavailable, as opposed to: there is something other than the original, building upon it too)?

Re:Where to draw the line

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you understand why he is unhappy with that license?

Re:Where to draw the line

[Anonymous Coward]

That's actually not his position. His position is that it's not okay to keep source code secret from anyone who you give the binary to, or to prevent them from changing and redistributing it, he never advocated that you have to publish software that you write for your own needs (no, not even when it's based on free software from other people, another common misconception).

Re:Where to draw the line

[Anonymous Coward]

That was not what the grandparent said. There is BSD FTP software in some version of MS Windows. That piece of software is now closed source because I can't see what they changed. See? THIS is the reason why GPL exists.
 

Re:Where to draw the line

[TWX]

From what I can tell, he draws the line quite clearly. There is no place for traditional paid commercial software. It is okay to make money writing software, but it is never okay to keep even a single line of software secret from the general public.

I guess I don't see that view as being compatible with making a career out of writing software, as at some point one needs money for one's efforts, and being paid for one's software is how one makes money from the effort of writing it. It's similar to how authors make money through publishing and selling numerous copies of their books.

To my knowledge, basically everyone that makes a career in FOSS is being paid by a company that puts their own value-add proprietary software on to an FOSS platform, or else is employed by a university that feels it's their interests to have this individual on their faculty as it promotes either interest in their degree programs or in donations. Essentially no one makes money writing FOSS for either specific customers or for the public-at-large, they have to have a 'day job' writing commercial software and they volunteer to write FOSS in their spare time.

I look at FOSS' support as a platform for commercial software as the necessary tax to make the FOSS community possible in the first place, and I honestly don't see how it would be possible to make it happen without that.

Re:Where to draw the line

[0100010001010011]

There is a long proven track record of BSD software getting embedded in commercial software and becoming effectively or actually closed.

Good call on the FreeBSD, it was before my coffee.

Anyway, FreeNAS still exists because a commercial company picked it up. A lot of big companies use BSD for some things because it doesn't have the limitations of GPLv3.

"Everything is free" is a great idea but I need to pay my bills.

Re:Where to draw the line

[Orgasmatron]

You must be very confused indeed if you are wondering about Stallman's view of open source.

He doesn't give a shit about "open source". He believes in Free Software.

You should check fsf.org and gnu.org for more info. This page might be a good starting point.

In general, he does not endorse any distribution that includes non-free software. (This is nearly all distributions.) He also makes no distinction between platforms and applications, or system vs. user software. It should, ideally, all be Free Software.

Re:Where to draw the line

[BadDreamer]

You are confused because you do not understand the concepts. Your demarcations do not correspond to how things actually are. There is no distinction between "truly paid commercial software" and free libre software; most of the GPL software commonly used in the world fall under "truly paid commercial software", because someone paid the developers to write them.

Also, the concept of "open source" is not one RSM endorses, or uses.

What RSM advocates is simply that anyone who receives a piece of software, through payment, downloading for free or whatever method, should also receive the source code for that software and be allowed to use that source code in any way he wishes, as long as anyone else in turn can use what that source code is used to create. This is completely disconnected from the notions of commerical, paid, free (as in beer) and open source (which often is anything but).

RMS draws no line between platform and application - because there is none. In his view, any software which is distributed without free libre source is immoral, period. There are no lines.

Re:Where to draw the line

[Anonymous Coward]

Fools and lawyers...

Re:Where to draw the line

[guruevi]

A LOT of (embedded) appliances. VxWorks, Cisco, Juniper, McAfee, Check Point, NetApp...

Re:Where to draw the line

[Anonymous Coward]

But if my printer came with BSD licensed driver code. then no amount of other drivers based on the same code, no matter how closed source, will take my driver away.

Re:Where to draw the line

[Anonymous Coward]

So, why does he give proprietary hardware a free pass? Why does he not protest when CPUs are distributed in physical form, without a published, freely-accessible maskset?

Re:Where to draw the line

[Bengie]

BSD software did not get closed, the fork of BSD got closed. The BSD software will always be open, if it's not open, then by definition, it is not BSD.

Re:Where to draw the line

[jbolden]

I specifically indicated it was the latter issue he was worried about. The original for BSD licensed software can be available but functionally useless.

Re:Where to draw the line

[jbolden]

I think I was pretty specific in the original that this was the problem. Having an original which is available and functionally useless is not a desirable state. It might as well be closed. The versions in use have to be open not the original.

Re:Where to draw the line

[jbolden]

Anyway, FreeNAS still exists because a commercial company picked it up. A lot of big companies use BSD for some things because it doesn't have the limitations of GPLv3.

Certainly. And that's not uncommon either. It happens. But at this point we have a track record. GPLed products get longer term support than BSD products. And not only that companies on average are more willing to contribute to GPLed products because their competitors or potential competitors are similarly limited.

Re:Where to draw the line

[Anonymous Coward]

You aren't making any sense.

Yes, he prefers GPLv3, of course - you think he would have initiated the creation of GPLv3 if he thought there was nothing to improve over existing licences? And that's all there is to it: He thinks the GPLv3 is the best licence to use for (most) free software, for reasons you will find explained by him if you care, but there is nothing to suggest that he thinks you shouldn't use software under other licences - as a matter of fact, the FSF publishes a list of licences it considers free software licences, which has a whole lot of licences on it.

Re:Where to draw the line

[Anonymous Coward]

You are Wrong. Open source is not a term that can be used in the presence of RMS.

Software must be Free.

If you mention open source you will be (robustly) corrected.

Re:Where to draw the line

[Anonymous Coward]

The word "free" in "free software" isn't about cost, just like "free speech" doesn't mean you don't have to pay to speak.

Re:Where to draw the line

[Anonymous Coward]

Non of those are BSD licensed. They *use* some BSD code. So F**king what? So can you.

Re:Where to draw the line

[trparky]

The whole OS. See Apple Mac OS X as an example.

Re:Where to draw the line

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you're right. If he was really find with a BSD license, then the new direction GPLv3 took over GPLv2 would never have happened.

Re:Where to draw the line

[Anonymous Coward]

They are BSD licensed. Just because they are BSD licensed doesn't imply they are free software. They are proprietary software that contain BSD licensed code while that BSD licensed code are also proprietary software. The fact that you can fork BSD licensed code into proprietary software doesn't change the license of the software.

Re:Where to draw the line

[exomondo]

Stallman's a bit of an extremist, and wants all software to be open-source.

The real problem with his point is that he is so consumed by this idea that we must "get rid of proprietary software" but that is merely a side-effect of successful free software, attacking proprietary software by spreading FUD about it "controlling the user" doesn't make free software any better. We have the choice and by and large people choose proprietary software, not because they don't care about the possibility - however remote - that whatever particular software package they are using may do something seriously nefarious but because free software does not provide a viable alternative.

Prime examples are the content creation, visualization, architecture, engineering, simulation and product design/manufacturing domains. It's all well and good to tell people to use free software but then they wouldn't actually be able to do anything so rather than focusing on spreading Fear Uncertainty and Doubt the focus should be on making free software that is good enough and capable enough to supplant proprietary incumbents. Abolishing proprietary software will come with free software actually being better not by pontificating about what RMS feels people must have.

Re:Where to draw the line

[exomondo]

Plenty of OS X is open source, including the operating system kernel. Only some parts of it are closed source.

Re:Where to draw the line

[trparky]

I thought that they made it as closed source as Windows is. Apple isn't exactly forthcoming with anything that they do.

Then again, this may be my hate of everything Apple coming through on this.

Re:Where to draw the line

[Anonymous Coward]

How about released GPLv1... software in '99!

Re:Where to draw the line

[Grishnakh]

What'd be better is to focus instead on taking over the platform, rather than trying to make Free alternatives to every single proprietary program out there. It's a much smaller and more manageable task, and the benefits are far greater. It really doesn't matter that much if your engineering design program is proprietary; yeah, it'd be better if it were Free or at least open-source, it'd be nice if they used open file formats, etc., but that one program only affects that one function you do on your computer, it doesn't lock you into an entire IT ecosystem you may not want. The platform being proprietary, however, does; just look at what a lock Microsoft has in the enterprise space. You can't easily mix-and-match different components from different vendors (proprietary and/or Free/open-source), because MS's platform software doesn't play well with others. One day, you might decide to switch from your engineering design program to a competing program, and doing so probably won't be a big deal at all (except for the file format problem), as it'll all run on the same platform, and won't require you to change out your desktop computers, OSes, servers, storage subsystems, etc. But your use of a proprietary platform (Windows) has a huge effect on your IT systems.

What's more, we already have a Free platform with Linux (running on both servers and desktops), it just isn't in widespread use on desktops yet (and by extension, because Windows is used on corporate desktops almost exclusively, they also run Windows servers heavily to interoperate with them). Sure, Linux is dominating in webservers because it's cheap and fast (and good), but that's because webservers don't need to tie into corporate desktops or other MS programs like Outlook.

So forget simulations and manufacturing programs; you're not going to find a bunch of volunteers to work on that stuff for free, and if you did, they wouldn't have the domain knowledge necessary to do so anyway (there are some exceptions out there, but they're exceptions). We should concentrate on taking over the infrastructure, not the applications. The applications will be ported by their vendors when there's enough demand.

Re:Where to draw the line

[exomondo]

I thought that they made it as closed source as Windows is. Apple isn't exactly forthcoming with anything that they do.

It's all on their website, you can find all the open source components and the source code for them for the latest release of OS X here. You can find more information on other releases and products at http://www.opensource.apple.com.

Re:Where to draw the line

[exomondo]

but that one program only affects that one function you do on your computer, it doesn't lock you into an entire IT ecosystem you may not want. The platform being proprietary, however, does; just look at what a lock Microsoft has in the enterprise space.

What "IT ecosystem"? These are workstations, they access file servers, internet, email and their workstation applications including Open/Libre Office that all run just fine on Windows, Linux or OS X and can all be managed with tools like LDAP.

But your use of a proprietary platform (Windows) has a huge effect on your IT systems.

No it doesn't.

What's more, we already have a Free platform with Linux (running on both servers and desktops), it just isn't in widespread use on desktops yet (and by extension, because Windows is used on corporate desktops almost exclusively, they also run Windows servers heavily to interoperate with them).

You don't need Windows Servers to interoperate with them, I'm not sure why you're saying that. What specifically is the problem you are having that you cannot overcome?

We should concentrate on taking over the infrastructure, not the applications. The applications will be ported by their vendors when there's enough demand.

We already can do that, but nobody does it because the applications aren't available. There's no demand for those vendors to port to Linux because their clients don't use Linux and their clients don't use Linux because if they did they wouldn't be able to actually get anything done because the applications they need are not available.

Re:Where to draw the line

[schnell]

From what I can tell, he draws the line quite clearly. There is no place for traditional paid commercial software. It is okay to make money writing software, but it is never okay to keep even a single line of software secret from the general public.

Fair enough. Clear line. I guess the problem is that I - as a tech professional but non-programmer - could not give a dead rat's ass about access to a single line of the source code of the software I use. I do not have the skills, time or interest to do a security audit, understand the source of, or contribute to a single line of code to any one of the thousands of pieces of software I have used over the past 30 years. I am happy to pay money for the software I like (especially as I have grown older and had more disposable income), although I have always preferred to find gratis software when it was of equivalent or better quality. But, to be very honest, the "gratis" element mattered to me, not the "free" element. For example, I was and continue to be a huge fan of the MAME project but I do so because I don't have to pay for it, not because I expect to contribute any arcade PCB dumps or source code.

When I was younger, I downloaded and used metric shitloads of "pirated" software that I used because I could, but that was thanks to the "Internet community" of crackers and file sharers, not to the "free software movement." I didn't care about the license, I just wanted the best available software for my platform that I could afford (i.e. $0).

So thank you Richard Stallman for your efforts in making a lot of software gratis for people like me so I could get software for free without feeling bad (really) about "pirating" it. Gratis software was a revelation, and I don't think much of the early Internet would have happened without gratis Apache, Perl or Linux/BSD, for example. But most users of that software cared, frankly, far far more for the "gratis" component than the "libre" element. I hope that someday that Stallman understands that his principles are of interest (Pro or Con) to ~100% of the people who make software, but are of interest to ~.01% of the people who use software.

And at the end of the day, the mass market of people who use software will vote with their feet and wallets and decide who "wins" based on if the free software is good enough that it's worth not paying for vs. the non-free software. So maybe couching this argument more in terms of user experience that means more to the "99 percent" (i.e. software users) would behoove Stallman instead of speaking to the "elite" of software developers if he wants to make a long-term impact on freedom.

Re:Where to draw the line

[Grishnakh]

No it doesn't.

Yes, it does. Go to any big corporation and look at their IT department. It's dominated by Windows in the server room. Exchange, probably the most prominent example, only runs on Windows Server. Same with Active Directory. Yes, it's possible to use openldap or whatever, but no one actually does that with a Windows environment.

You don't need Windows Servers to interoperate with them, I'm not sure why you're saying that. What specifically is the problem you are having that you cannot overcome?

Try running Exchange or SharePoint on Linux.

We already can do that,

No, we can't. There's too many parts of the IT infrastructure that just aren't easily replaced by Linux/FOSS. Exchange is the biggest one, since just about every corporation out there relies on it (rightly or wrongly). Other networked applications frequently have the same problem, where they're made to only run on MS infrastructure, but MS components are of course the worst.

Re:Where to draw the line

[exomondo]

No it doesn't.

Yes, it does. Go to any big corporation and look at their IT department. It's dominated by Windows in the server room. Exchange, probably the most prominent example, only runs on Windows Server. Same with Active Directory. Yes, it's possible to use openldap or whatever, but no one actually does that with a Windows environment.

Right, it's not that you can't, it's that the alternatives aren't advantageous. I'm not sure why you're pushing this agenda that somehow Windows systems are tied to Windows IT infrastructure because that is completely false.

Try running Exchange or SharePoint on Linux.

Those are applications which do not have viable free alternatives. Running Windows does not require that you run Exchange or Sharepoint and running Exchange or Sharepoint on your Windows server does not require that your clients run Windows. You're creating a false dependency to try and justify using Microsoft everywhere.

There's too many parts of the IT infrastructure that just aren't easily replaced by Linux/FOSS. Exchange is the biggest one, since just about every corporation out there relies on it (rightly or wrongly).

Even if you do actually need Exchange for whatever reason that is only one server, the damn thing can be virtualized too if you really want, that creates no dependency on other parts of your infrastructure or workstations.

Other networked applications frequently have the same problem, where they're made to only run on MS infrastructure, but MS components are of course the worst.

Like what? You talk about not needing to create FOSS applications because we need to focus on controlling the "platform" yet now you tell me that the problem isn't the platform but the applications, which is precisely what I told you.

Re:Where to draw the line

[Grishnakh]

Those are applications which do not have viable free alternatives. Running Windows does not require that you run Exchange or Sharepoint and running Exchange or Sharepoint on your Windows server does not require that your clients run Windows. You're creating a false dependency to try and justify using Microsoft everywhere.

Wrong. I'm not trying to justify MS, I'd like to see the company collapse and disappear and most of its technologies go by the wayside. I'm just pointing out the stark reality. No, running Windows does not require Exchange or SharePoint, but please find me a company of any size which doesn't run Outlook and Exchange. It's a de-facto standard in corporations. No, your typical home user doesn't use it, obviously, but every company out there bigger than 30 employees does. That's what I'm talking about with the "platform". It's not just Windows OS, it's the whole MS IT infrastructure that goes along with it in any corporation: Outlook/Exchange, SharePoint, AD, and lots more (don't forget Office). Linux/FOSS can't replace all that, there's still too many missing or broken bits.

Even if you do actually need Exchange for whatever reason that is only one server, the damn thing can be virtualized too if you really want, that creates no dependency on other parts of your infrastructure or workstations.

Corporations "need" Exchange because it provides them email + calendaring, which is pretty important for scheduling meetings so managers can sit around and waste time doing nothing. There's no Free alternatives to this that I'm aware of (I've heard of some other proprietary alternatives, but nothing that's ever gotten any serious marketshare). In theory, it's not really a hard problem, unlike, for instance, stitching together photos to create a panorama (lots of math involved there); it's just a little database work and some specially-formatted emails. But for some reason no one in FOSS has created fully compatible replacements for both the server and client; in fact, the FOSS community seems to have mostly given up on email clients these days thanks to webmail.

But anyway, using Exchange means also using Outlook, and Outlook only runs on Windows. (Yes, it's possible to use OWS in Linux/Firefox; I've done it, but it doesn't work very well. It needs to run on IE to get full functionality, including seeing new emails pop up, as is normal with Gmail.)

Like what? You talk about not needing to create FOSS applications because we need to focus on controlling the "platform" yet now you tell me that the problem isn't the platform but the applications, which is precisely what I told you.

Different applications. You (or was it someone else?) were talking about things like engineering, CAD, etc. applications. Those are usually standalone. They're not part of any kind of "infrastructure". (There are some exceptions, like DOORS and ClearCase, which need central servers.) Outlook/Exchange are, from a corporate point-of-view, infrastructure. As far as they're concerned, the company simply cannot run without Outlook and Exchange, because they rely on those for email communications and scheduling. That's what makes Outlook "infrastructure"; it's a necessary application, and it has a hard dependency on a backend server. Other networked applications have the potential to be like this; for instance, many companies (for some idiotic reason) depend on ClearCase for version control, and that too has a client that runs on the desktop, and a server. (I'm not going to suggest that anyone make a ClearCase clone (client or server), since git, Mercurial, Subversion, etc. are all available and work far better, but it's another example of the same thing but which isn't from MS.) There might be some similar stuff out there I haven't encountered.

Re:Where to draw the line

[lkcl]

there is a beautiful tale which i will share with you, which helps to explain why what Dr Stallman is doing is so important:

"the reasonable man adapts himself to the world. the unreasonable man adapts the world to himself. therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man".

now, if it wasn't for Dr Stallman, the average pathological corporation (see the first few minutes of the documentary "The Corporation") would take whatever it could get (and you only have to look at the 98% endemic GPL violations on android smartphones and tablets to see the consequences of non-GPL software such as android)

so if it wasn't for Dr Stallman sticking to his principles, you would probably be using a computer that crashes 10 to 15 times a day for anything but the most mundane of tasks, and was entirely outside of your control.

Re:Where to draw the line

[gbjbaanb]

I thin Stallman's philosophy is quite simple: its not about free software really, its about freedom to change the software you run (ok, that effectively means free software, but bear with me).

He was originally annoyed that he couldn't replace some unix command, so came up with the GPL so that all software derived from it could be replaced, mainly because you could recompile with different code - but I think he'd be as happy with proprietary stuff in there, as long as you can replace it with your own version.

At least, I hope this is what he intended, as the idea that all software must be free and modifyable regardless is a bit too extreme for me.

Re:Where to draw the line

[silentcoder]

Stallman has only ever allowed for "use a proprietory application" in one sole exception case:
Where there is no viable free alternative.
However, if you believe in freedom - and use it under that condition, you need to also be contributing (in whatever way your particular skills and talents allow) to projects aiming to make a free alternative viable.

Re:Where to draw the line

[CronoCloud]

Dr Stallman

He's not "Dr Stallman". He never earned his doctorate.

Re:Where to draw the line

[Anonymous Coward]

Plenty of OS X is open source, including the operating system kernel. Only some parts of it are closed source.

You do realize that OpenDarwin had to close shop a few years ago after being screwed over on a continuing basis by Apple's "commitment" to opening the OSX operating system kernel?

Those were guys that really wanted to prove that this kind of BSD-based "openness" on a voluntary basis can work.

Re:Where to draw the line

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember this dialogue taking place in a restaurant in Sao Paulo (Brazil):

Somebody at the table: ... and we're licensing this software as open-source.

Stallman: Oh, that's too bad.

I don't think Stallman wants any software to be open-source but free software. He's FSF, not OSI, goals differ.

Anyway, if some random application is closed-source and proprietary, you're locked in by the vendor as well, it's output is usually closed-source and proprietary as well, so you can be blocked out of the work you've done using this proprietary software, it can have bugs you can't debug or fix, you can be blocked from upgrading programs the software interacts with, libraries the software depends on, and even the OS version it is using.

Pretty much the same problems.

Re:Where to draw the line

[CountBrass]

Stallman has always been very clear on these points.

The confusion rests solely in your head: *your* term "free open-source" is at the heart of it.

Watch his TEDx video, you know the thing your commenting on, and he explains it all very clearly.

Re:Where to draw the line

[CountBrass]

You're wrong.

Stallman's objectives have been the same since he established the FSF and he enumerates them as his 4 Freedoms.

The problem is that people, including you, fail to pick up that Free software is primarily about morality and ethics, not coding or technology.

Re:Where to draw the line

[CountBrass]

What? Your post started off "okay but mistaken" and then just descended into self-conscious gibberish.

Stallman's principles and objectives have been consistent. Just because you don't agree with them is irrelevant, even if you try to discredit them attaching derogatory labels to them: if anything you're post was a prime example of being obtuse and you've clearly gone wrong.

Re:Where to draw the line

[Grishnakh]

I don't think Stallman wants any software to be open-source but free software. He's FSF, not OSI, goals differ.

Yes, I know; as I said before, he's a bit of an extremist (some might disagree with the "a bit" part). I mistakenly said "open source" instead of "Free sotware" though.

Anyway, if some random application is closed-source and proprietary, you're locked in by the vendor as well, it's output is usually closed-source and proprietary as well, so you can be blocked out of the work you've done using this proprietary software, it can have bugs you can't debug or fix, you can be blocked from upgrading programs the software interacts with, libraries the software depends on, and even the OS version it is using.

Yes, that's all true, but it's still not nearly as bad as the platform and infrastructure being closed-source and proprietary. Usually, applications only have library dependencies anyway (at least on *nix systems), so upgrading the OS shouldn't be that much of a problem as long as you keep compatible libraries in place. The main problem with proprietary programs is the closed file formats/output. But again, this isn't nearly as bad as having a platform that's proprietary and has bugs you can't debug or fix. Cue the analogy about houses with bad foundations.

Re:Where to draw the line

[Anonymous Coward]

So youre saying that Stallmans definitions are the "correct" ones...

Re:Where to draw the line

[BadDreamer]

If you had any actual interest at all in learning this instead of trying to use it as a bat of some kind, you would already know the answer. But for the edification not of you, dear AC, but of anyone who might stumble on this:

http://www.linuxtoday.com/infr...

Re:Where to draw the line

[BadDreamer]

He does, however, hold 14 honorary doctorates, several from schools which do not mind him using Dr.

Re:Where to draw the line

[Anonymous Coward]

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
-Upton Sinclair

Whenever someone wants a computer to do something new, a program will have to be written. Most people don't know how to write computer programs, and will have to hire someone to perform this. You don't sell the software, you sell your time and skills just like everybody else.

Re:Where to draw the line

[david_thornley]

He was originally annoyed about a printer driver he couldn't change and/or recompile. If it were a Unix command, he would have rewritten it, since there are standard interfaces and behavior, but that doesn't work with a printer driver, which does have to deal with obscure and likely undocumented interfaces. Remember the printer driver: in an odd sort of way, it's at the base of much of his philosophy.

His position is that all software should be Free, which is a bit too extreme for a lot of people (including me).

Re:Where to draw the line

[exomondo]

No, running Windows does not require Exchange or SharePoint, but please find me a company of any size which doesn't run Outlook and Exchange. It's a de-facto standard in corporations.

So because they don't already it's all hopeless?

That's what I'm talking about with the "platform". It's not just Windows OS, it's the whole MS IT infrastructure that goes along with it in any corporation: Outlook/Exchange, SharePoint, AD, and lots more (don't forget Office). Linux/FOSS can't replace all that, there's still too many missing or broken bits.

Again, the two are not dependent on eachother, you can run Exchange and SharePoint on a server and have your other fileservers and workstations as Linux systems, but that won't happen until the people who use those workstations can actually do their work on them, which is why you need the end user applications.

Corporations "need" Exchange because it provides them email + calendaring

There are plenty of other email servers and plenty of CalDAV servers, but like I said that is just one server in an entire corporation.

But anyway, using Exchange means also using Outlook, and Outlook only runs on Windows.

Yeah totally, none of my Exchange-connected calendars or email works at all on Thunderbird or Mail or on my iPhone or Android tablet ... or maybe those all run Outlook?

Different applications. You (or was it someone else?) were talking about things like engineering, CAD, etc. applications. Those are usually standalone. They're not part of any kind of "infrastructure".

So what? You still have this deluded idea that the "IT infrastructure" running some Microsoft applications creates a dependency for the client systems when it doesn't. The real problem is even if you were right and there really was a dependency then alleviating that still does nothing because ultimately the applications for the client workstations to do any work don't exist.

You can already control the platform, you just can't do anything with it because it lacks the ability to run the required applications.

Re:Where to draw the line

[exomondo]

You do realize that OpenDarwin had to close shop a few years ago after being screwed over on a continuing basis by Apple's "commitment" to opening the OSX operating system kernel?

They didn't have to close up shop and they weren't "screwed over", the problem was they had virtually no community interest and in the 4 years the project ran for the distributions created simply weren't of any use to anybody. Of course if you create a useless product nobody wants you are going to shut down.

Re:Where to draw the line

[exomondo]

Having an original which is available and functionally useless is not a desirable state. It might as well be closed. The versions in use have to be open not the original.

Well the original is hardly going to be "functionally useless", if somebody creates a proprietary fork the original doesn't suddenly become useless and nothing stops anybody from keeping the original going.

However on that point all the versions of the GPL up until v3 fail too, having the code for Tivo available but functionally useless means it might as well be closed. Though I'm inclined to agree with Linus in that quid-pro-quo is more important than ideology. People are never going to agree on ideology but working together is achievable.

Re:Where to draw the line

[Anonymous Coward]

We should concentrate on taking over the infrastructure, not the applications.

The applications run on the infrastructure! Infrastructure is completely and utterly pointless and useless without applications.

The applications will be ported by their vendors when there's enough demand.

They might if they see their customers using a platform they dont support but how can those customers do that? They cant. If I am doing professional image editing I wont be using Linux until either Adobe ports CS (which they wont do because nobody who needs CS uses Linux because CS doesnt run on Linux) or there is a viable alternative on Linux which would cause Adobe to lose customers and consider trying to regain those customers by porting CS to Linux.

Re:Where to draw the line

[jbolden]

Well the original is hardly going to be "functionally useless", if somebody creates a proprietary fork the original doesn't suddenly become useless and nothing stops anybody from keeping the original going.

This is precisely what did happen with X-Windows. MIT wrote X-Windows and maintained an MIT licensed version which Unix hardware manufacturers then used as a base for about 60% of the code for their proprietary windowing systems on their OSes. The MIT variant open source variant mostly didn't run at all on actual used hardware and certainly was way way behind the commercial X11s. Hence the XFree86 project took from 1991-1994 till it could get something that would realistic run an X11 at all. It took another 2 years till your average Unix user could get a piss-poor X11 to run on their x86 hardware. It took another 4 years from that until it had caught up to the commercial environments. And still 23 years later Linux X11s are still way way behind OSX and Windows display technologies in terms of performance. Commercial Unix vendors were about 13 years ahead of Windows in 1982-1995. So if you say that Linux is say 5 years behind (which may be an underestimate) that's almost 18 years of lost productivity due to a BSD style license.

That is a disaster for open source.

However on that point all the versions of the GPL up until v3 fail too, having the code for Tivo available but functionally useless means it might as well be closed.

Well not quite. Having the Tivo code does mean someone can make a Tivo like device. It doesn't do them any good in reprogramming their Tivo. So I'd say GPLv2 gets you 80% of what GPLv3 would get you even for Tivo. Besides Tivo couldn't exist if it were reprogrammable the content creators would never permit it.

Re:Where to draw the line

[exomondo]

This is precisely what did happen with X-Windows.

No the problem with X-Windows is exactly what you outlined: "The MIT variant open source variant mostly didn't run at all on actual used hardware". The software was effectively useless already and nobody actually made it useful on any hardware. It's not as though Unix vendors came along, created a proprietary fork and suddenly the original code was useless, in fact that is exactly the basis for XFree86 and had MIT decided not to release that code (or licensed it on a proprietary basis) Linux would be even further behind.

So if you say that Linux is say 5 years behind (which may be an underestimate) that's almost 18 years of lost productivity due to a BSD style license.

Because nobody worked on it and the free software community spent years diddling about even after being given the MIT X-Windows code for free! It wasn't useful to begin with and had it not existed in the first place the other Unix vendors would have built their fully proprietary window systems themselves and Linux window managers would have had to develop that initial MIT code themselves putting them even further behind. It's disingenuous to suggest that had it been GPL these Unix vendors would have still used it and released all their code for the Linux crew to take a free ride on.

The basis was there, the free software community dropped the ball, they could have even created a GPL derivative of the original MIT code and when they finally got their shit together at least there was a code-base to work from. You can't just say you want their code and you also want them to subscribe to your ideology and only offer it on terms that restrict what others can do with it. Fair enough if it is your code but it isn't.

Re:Where to draw the line

[jbolden]

Remember this started with your claim about "functionally useless". Clearly the MIT code which didn't even run on the systems of the 1990s was functionally useless, while the proprietary Unix vendor's X11's were much more advanced.

. It's disingenuous to suggest that had it been GPL these Unix vendors would have still used it and released all their code for the Linux crew to take a free ride on.

We have a track record here. Those very same Unix vendors on GPLed code did precisely this most particularly on the Linux kernel. Instead of writing a bunch of proprietary extensions they ended up collaborating. Even earlier AT&T extended Emacs to X-Emacs and while this was a fork for years nothing was closed so eventually the ideas and code merged into a new unified editor. SGI (who was the furthest ahead) released their core code under GPL with things like XFS. Apple did huge enhancements to GCC which they had to contribute back.

So I don't think it is disingenuous. I think we have multiple cases of clear experimental evidence. No one had hardware like SGI's in the late 1980s and early 1990s they could have contributed back. And once that hardware wasn't $20k but rather $200 it would have formed the basis for Linux enhancements. Features like postscript rendering, which still aren't part of X11 would be if Sun had open source, or at least the core ideas would be open source and so something like an enhanced .dvi could be used in its place.

You can't just say you want their code and you also want them to subscribe to your ideology and only offer it on terms that restrict what others can do with it. Fair enough if it is your code but it isn't.

The idea of the GPL is to make sure it is always common code forever. We have a track record of that working.

Re:Where to draw the line

[exomondo]

Remember this started with your claim about "functionally useless". Clearly the MIT code which didn't even run on the systems of the 1990s was functionally useless, while the proprietary Unix vendor's X11's were much more advanced.

Right, so nothing was lost, in fact it was a net gain for open source yet you're trying to paint it as a "disaster". Nothing about it is disastrous except the Linux crew's (not the kernel team) fumbling.

So I don't think it is disingenuous. I think we have multiple cases of clear experimental evidence.

You forget or ignore that we also have a track record of many things being available via GPL but not used and proprietary versions created instead - like SGI's closed-source IRIX operating system - as well as use of BSD code that is contributed back - for example Apple's use of LLVM/Clang, Webkit and a great many others. SGI also open sourced its OpenGL implementation and performer API even though they weren't forced to. There are just as many counter-examples of either proprietary versions created or BSD code contributed back.

No one had hardware like SGI's in the late 1980s and early 1990s they could have contributed back. And once that hardware wasn't $20k but rather $200 it would have formed the basis for Linux enhancements.

But the idea that you should have been able to force them to do that is silly. Like I said, MIT created a codebase and the Unix vendors jumped on it, but the Linux crew didn't and that is entirely the fault of the Linux crew. Had MIT not created that codebase the Linux crew would be even further behind, they should be thanking MIT for what they were given, not complaining that other people didn't do all the work for them.

Features like postscript rendering, which still aren't part of X11 would be if Sun had open source

And Sun open sourced many things, yet more proof that you don't need the GPL to force people to do that. If they want to release stuff they will anyway, if they don't then they won't use GPL stuff to begin with.

The idea of the GPL is to make sure it is always common code forever. We have a track record of that working.

It's to make sure that all derivatives are restricted to be licensed under the same terms. This makes it unusable in many applications, Webkit is a great example of the flexibility that you get from permissive licensing over restrictive licensing.

Re:Where to draw the line

[jbolden]

You mentioned Webkit twice. Webkit is open source because the rendering engine for Webkit is KHTML which was GPLed software. Webkit isn't proof of the success of BSD code it is proof of the success of the GPL. Apple had to GPL Webcore (KHTML) and Javascript Core (KDE's KJS) and then write the rest in a GPL compatible license. Webkit remained open after Google forked it to Blink because of the GPL.

Right, so nothing was lost, in fact it was a net gain for open source yet you're trying to paint it as a "disaster". Nothing about it is disastrous except the Linux crew's (not the kernel team) fumbling.

XFree86 was BSD386 people mainly and Windows X11 vendors like Hummingbird, not "the Linux crew" for many years. The Linux team didn't fumble they just had to start 10 years behind once they finally got there. That mistake in creating a codebase that ended up closed source was the result of MIT. They hadn't gotten involved yet. Blaming the Linux team for problems that existed prior to the existence of Linux is ridiculous. This was MIT's screw up.

The goal of open source is to have open source software. MIT resulted in closed source software.

You forget or ignore that we also have a track record of many things being available via GPL but not used and proprietary versions created instead - like SGI's closed-source IRIX operating system

IRIX predates almost all GPL software. It BTW contains huge chunks of BSD code. So IRIX is another example of the BSD original existing but being worthless while the commercial version is closed. A disaster for open source given all the technologies in IRIX that could have been in the LInuxes and BSDs of the 1990s.

SGI also open sourced its OpenGL implementation and performer API even though they weren't forced to.

SGI didn't start that until 1998. That was 15 years after they had it when they were abandoning IRIX and moving to Linux. By then they were forced to, become open source because they couldn't sell their workstations, at least on the low end because x86 had beaten MIPS.

It's to make sure that all derivatives are restricted to be licensed under the same terms. This makes it unusable in many applications

Yep. That's right. It makes it unusable for closed source unless they go to the copyright holder and get a proprietary license by writing a check and thus helping to fund the development.

Re:Where to draw the line

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of that is just open source third party applications such as zsh and apache. Can I take only Apple's "open source" software and built a compatible OSX/Ios system?

Remember: GPL is the only reason we have tons of Android ROMs. Without GPL device manufacturers wouldn't have incentive to release kernel sources for their devices, and without kernel sources supporting various devices would become impossible, even the base Android kernel source would be open.

Re:Where to draw the line

[Anonymous Coward]

drawing a line is the point...

i agree that Stallman's hyper-specific definitions are obtuse and ruin his theories...but they key here is to understand where he goes wrong and why it doesn't matter to discussions about FOSS

in Stallman, you can see the problem many anarchist/libertarian types have across disciplines...the problems they raise are good, their arguments are solid, but their conclusions about how to **move forward and fix the problem** are stilted and unworkable

it usually comes down to **language distinctions** which have deep consequences, and the mistake is to make distinctions linguistically where none exist functionally...you see a sort of logic game where every end is gamed out when forming language ontology...it's a fool's game...

This is bullshit.

He was and still is a key part in a movement of people working towards freedom of the most advanced tools available to the masses (computers, in case there's a doubt).
I don't completely agree with him, since to me the issue of freedom is more about structural changes in society (though I'm not really sure what his bigger frame views are), but mainly thanks to people with his convictions we have a chance to use, study and devel tools and be sure they'll be available to all of mankind for as long as it lasts.

I'm part of the linux audio users community, which is a good place to witness how people moved by their will to share knowledge can actually implement solutions to problems that are concrete, and as linguistic as software is.
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user

Sure, if everyone could afford to study and be a part of research colectives, we would have many more high quality libre software for specialized domains, but it's the greed of a few that moves the most.
Hopefully that will change some day, if hope is anything but a language phenomenon.
It's one choice to be brave and keep one's forehead high, or to accept social order and justify it anyhow. It certainly is easier to criticize people who spend their lifes trying to make changes.

Re:Where to draw the line

[gbjbaanb]

I had to explain the GPL to my technical architect, he didn't like it at all until I changed tack and used the example of replacing a component you got for free, then it all suddenly made sense to him (and to be fair, to me too).

I don't like the "viral" nature of the GPL, but the concept that it should be free to replace sounds quite reasonable. I dislike the idea that all software should be "free" as well, freedom is about selling software as much as giving it away, but being able to replace any software, proprietary or not, should be mandatory!

Re:Where to draw the line

[exomondo]

You mentioned Webkit twice. Webkit is open source because the rendering engine for Webkit is KHTML which was GPLed software.

Part of webkit is LGPL and part is BSD, the BSD parts are available.

XFree86 was BSD386 people mainly and Windows X11 vendors like Hummingbird, not "the Linux crew" for many years. The Linux team didn't fumble they just had to start 10 years behind once they finally got there.

Yes I probably should have said the "free desktop crew" and yes they are the ones that fumbled, late to the game when everybody else had already gotten ahead.

That mistake in creating a codebase that ended up closed source was the result of MIT.

It wasn't a mistake, it was intentional. The codebase created by MIT never ended up closed source, but had many proprietary derivatives, it could have had a free derivative very early on if the free desktop crew had anything of value to contribute.

Blaming the Linux team for problems that existed prior to the existence of Linux is ridiculous.

There were no problems, the free desktop crew just didn't get their act together, but it's all about blaming somebody else for that.

This was MIT's screw up.

It wasn't a screw up, I don't know why you keep saying that except that you have some entitlement complex. Don't blame MIT for the failings of the free desktop.

The goal of open source is to have open source software. MIT resulted in closed source software.

The goal of open source is to share code, whether or not you share it and how much you share is up to the author. Free software is a restrictive ideology, you do it their way your you don't work with them at all, it is an absolutist mentality.

A disaster for open source given all the technologies in IRIX that could have been in the LInuxes and BSDs of the 1990s.

It's only a disaster for open source if you take the view that the free software community could not create anything of value and instead was relying on these vendors to do it for them, they had a good code base and they still failed to do anything with it for nearly a decade. That is the failing of the free desktop crew and nobody else.

Yep. That's right. It makes it unusable for closed source unless they go to the copyright holder and get a proprietary license by writing a check and thus helping to fund the development.

And if you want to do that fine, but complaining that you want MIT's code given to you under your terms so that you can have the code of everybody else also under your terms just proves you cannot add anything of value. The free software community had the opportunity to take the MIT code, create a GPL derivative with something of added value and then - if you are indeed right - the Unix vendors would have used that code. But no, the free software movement failed spectacularly and created nothing of value.

Re:Where to draw the line

[jbolden]

What you are calling a failure of the free software crew is what the GPL is designed to prevent. The MIT code was worthless to end users as you admit since it clearly required substantial work to get it to be functional. I don't know what more there is to say. You are basically saying you have no problem with open source software existing in a worthless form that does nothing but stimulate proprietary closed source applications.

And of course the free software crew did add something of value. Eventually they overtook all the proprietary Unixes. And the Linux guys overtook the BSD licensed free systems as well.

Re:Where to draw the line

[exomondo]

What you are calling a failure of the free software crew is what the GPL is designed to prevent.

Yes to try to prevent the failure of the free software crew, that's why they invented it, to try to force everybody into their ideology. MIT had different ideas, proprietary vendors had different ideas and the free software ideology is only compatible with those ideas in so far as code licensed such that they can wrap it in a license that conforms to their ideology.

The MIT code was worthless to end users as you admit since it clearly required substantial work to get it to be functional.

Right, work that the free software crew could have done a decade earlier than they did. You think MIT should have chosen Free Software instead of Open Source in an effort to force proprietary vendors to do Free Software, well I'm afraid you can't force people to do what you want and eliminate choice just because you say so.

You are basically saying you have no problem with open source software existing in a worthless form that does nothing but stimulate proprietary closed source applications.

No, you've got it wrong. I have no problem with open source software existing in a form worthless to end users that exists to build a base for additional software closed or open. What you fail to see is a distinction between Free Software and Open Source, or rather you think they should be the same thing.

Also if it did nothing but stimulate proprietary closed source applications then it wouldn't have been used by the free software crew now would it?

And of course the free software crew did add something of value.

Yes, eventually they copied the proprietary Unixes and got something decent but you're still complaining that they didn't do it earlier and that's their fault, stop trying to excuse them and blame everybody else for their failing.

Re:Where to draw the line

[jbolden]

Yes to try to prevent the failure of the free software crew, that's why they invented it, to try to force everybody into their ideology.

The GPL doesn't force people to change their ideology it does however create incentives for people to engage in socially useful behaviors. SGI when they were working on Linux support for XFS was no different than the SGI that was not helping on X11. The difference was the GPL required that if they offer XFS under Linux to anyone that in a practical sense they had to open source it for everyone. The GPL forced them into all or nothing. But they were able to freely pick between those options when they choose to give XFS away.

well I'm afraid you can't force people to do what you want and eliminate choice just because you say so.

Again I don't like your phrasing but the GPL has a track record of doing exactly that.

Also if it did nothing but stimulate proprietary closed source applications then it wouldn't have been used by the free software crew now would it?

The free software crew at that point had to deal with issues like POSIX. So yes they would have had to emulate Unix's commercial X11 implementation the same way they had to emulate Unix's commercial kernels, emulate Unix's commercial compilers, emulate Unix's commercial schedulers. There was only a limited difference at that point between having the MIT code and X11 having been closed source all along.

Yes, eventually they copied the proprietary Unixes and got something decent but you're still complaining that they didn't do it earlier and that's their fault, stop trying to excuse them and blame everybody else for their failing.

I think I've explained pretty clearly why it wasn't their failing. 10 years later we had a similarly popular piece of software in the Linux kernel. But this time it was under GPL. And this time the commercial vendors had no choice but to cooperate with the free software community. As new features came out for their specific kernels they were immediately incorporated into the kernel proper. So in the early 1990s when Caldera spent a fortune getting the SCO software's API's to run against the Linux kernel that was free for all to use whether you bought Caldera or RedHat or Yellow Dog. The result of being free software is the Linux kernel is the all around best kernel which has supplant almost every other non specialized kernel. And is arguably the most complex / feature rich piece of software ever constructed. All available free.

Same open source crew. Same vendors. The difference was GPL vs. BSD. You can try it to the open source crew's failures. But that same open source crew succeeded in another place and your version of history doesn't explain why they did so.

Re:Where to draw the line

[jbolden]

No, you've got it wrong. I have no problem with open source software existing in a form worthless to end users that exists to build a base for additional software closed or open. What you fail to see is a distinction between Free Software and Open Source, or rather you think they should be the same thing

The way you are using the terms....

Free Software is a proven strategy to create a community of software sharing.
Open Source is a proven strategy for getting a piece of software used by commercial vendors.

I don't see much value in Open Source. What Open non-Free software tries to accomplish is often better handled by a commercial entity selling and licensing their software to other commercial entities. That is Microsoft kernel, API and tools has been much more successful than FreeBSD's. TeX has done much less than Adobe in the last 30 years even though TeX was at least tied 30 years ago with the Postscript family. The Apache web browser which was one of the most successful browsers ever is not fundamentally much more advanced than it was in 1994 and as a result huge stacks for managing internet web services have needed to be developed separately.

Ultimately if you don't care about the four freedoms, then the Open Source just becomes a mechanism for software becoming embedded in commercial applications. Again it has a proven track record of failing at even that, that ultimately the commercial model mostly works better.

You can't however on the one hand object to GPLers asserting that Open Source doesn't stay meaningfully open and then act like it is no big deal when I explain how the X11 code wasn't open. If you don't mind being embedded in closed source applications and being a body of routines for closed source applications say that. But don't pretend that BSD licenses are equally good at keeping software open source.

Re:Where to draw the line

[exomondo]

The way you are using the terms....

Free Software is a proven strategy to create a community of software sharing. Open Source is a proven strategy for getting a piece of software used by commercial vendors.

No, you're wrong again. Clearly you don't have the ability to look at this objectively. Do it again but without the agenda this time.

The only thing free software has proven is that it is a slow follower, the free software PC still doesn't exist (outside some obscure systems with Loongson processors), the free software tablet doesn't exist, the free software phone doesn't exist, the free software smartwatch doesn't exist, etc ... it's proven in the Linux kernel as a base to run other software but outside of that it's just a slow follower of everybody else.

I don't see much value in Open Source.

But the reality is it is used everywhere, the same code is used in both commercial and free software and the decision is on the authors what to contribute back.

Ultimately if you don't care about the four freedoms, then the Open Source just becomes a mechanism for software becoming embedded in commercial applications.

And that's the real clincher, relatively nobody cares about Stallman's 4 freedoms, people care about good software that does the job. Free software has after 30 years still only gained popularity for the sake of convenience, not software freedom because nobody cares about that.

You can't however on the one hand object to GPLers asserting that Open Source doesn't stay meaningfully open and then act like it is no big deal when I explain how the X11 code wasn't open.

It was open, MIT released their open source code and you're just continually excusing the failings of free software on that front and trying to blame MIT and Open Source and proprietary vendors and everybody but the people who actually failed at that time. Why is that?

Re:Where to draw the line

[exomondo]

The GPL doesn't force people to change their ideology

Wrong, if you want to work with the GPL your software has to be free software, so yes it does.

SGI when they were working on Linux support for XFS was no different than the SGI that was not helping on X11. The difference was the GPL required that if they offer XFS under Linux to anyone that in a practical sense they had to open source it for everyone. The GPL forced them into all or nothing.

Right, it forces people. It's either work with us on our terms or don't work with us at all, it's intolerance and that is something we need less of in society, not more.

Again I don't like your phrasing but the GPL has a track record of doing exactly that.

You can dislike it all you want but it's a fact. But this is why the most innovative companies steer clear of the GPL for most of their stuff. The community has benefited greatly from the contributions Google and Apple have made to Open Source that was purely optional and wasn't forced, but you think they should be forced and eliminating that freedom is wrong. If you don't like their products then fine, you're free to not use them but you're not free to force them to do things on your terms.

I think I've explained pretty clearly why it wasn't their failing. 10 years later we had a similarly popular piece of software in the Linux kernel. But this time it was under GPL.

No you complained that they were 10 years behind because they didn't do anything back then and you wanted MIT and the proprietary vendors to do all the work for them.

And this time the commercial vendors had no choice but to cooperate with the free software community.

Wrong, the most popular closed source unix vendor these days is Apple and they have their own windowing system. All the other proprietary vendors pretty much died out.

So I'm not really sure what you're point is, just that you're a GPL advocate? Well I'm an advocate for freedom of choice, not forcing ideologies and bitching when people don't do things my way. If you want it done on your terms then do it yourself.

Re:Where to draw the line

[jbolden]

Apple makes a nice laptop. Linux is on 2 billion containers at Google alone. In server Linux has replaced almost all the proprietary Unixes. In embedded it is far and away the biggest player, all the open source players combined are probably around 1/50th the percentage for Linux. In cellular and tablets huge chunks of Android are GPLed. Huge chunks are proprietary. Less comparatively is BSD licensed.

So if your criteria of success is usage your assertions about the failures of free software aren't supported by the facts. The goal of the GNU project was to create a free Unix comparable to the commercial Unixes. It went beyond that and created a free Unix so good it killed off most of the commercial Unixes.

Re:Where to draw the line

[exomondo]

So if your criteria of success is usage your assertions about the failures of free software aren't supported by the facts.

No I never said that.

The goal of the GNU project was to create a free Unix comparable to the commercial Unixes. It went beyond that and created a free Unix so good it killed off most of the commercial Unixes.

So what are you complaining about?

Re:Where to draw the line

[jbolden]

So what are you complaining about?

I'm complaining about a weak spot and how the BSD licensed induced this. You keep trying to run away from the simple fact that we had multiple systems and the single biggest failure was the result of a BSD induced license. The MIT wrote a bad license and as a result in 2014 Linux still is behind in graphics. The kernel guys wrote a good license and as a result in 2014 Linux has arguably the best kernel around.

I'm done repeating myself. You are just denying the obvious.

Re:Where to draw the line

[exomondo]

You keep trying to run away from the simple fact that we had multiple systems and the single biggest failure was the result of a BSD induced license.

No, the intention was for it to be used by proprietary, open source and free software communities, the BSD license allowed this. The fact is you don't like their intention because it doesn't benefit only you.

The MIT wrote a bad license and as a result in 2014 Linux still is behind in graphics.

Wrong again, MIT wrote a license that fit their goal and licensed their code upon it. It is only a "bad" license if you are beholden to the free software ideology, Linux is behind in graphics because the free software community didn't get their act together and do something about it. If the Unix vendors had written their own implementations without the MIT code Linux would still be behind in graphics again purely the fault of the free software group and nobody else. Stop excusing the incompetence of the free software group by blaming others.

The kernel guys wrote a good license and as a result in 2014 Linux has arguably the best kernel around.

And it's a result of good software development, not the license.

You are just denying the obvious.

The obvious is that you have an entitlement complex and a religious devotion to the free software ideology such that you cannot accept MIT's freedom to have their own agenda and do what they wish with their own code, you are a bigot. Let others do what they wish, stop trying to deny them the freedom to make their own choices.

Shortest version

[hajile]

There's a big difference between physical things that have limits (land, food, water, etc) and 'intellectual property' which can be copied any number of times at virtually no cost. Until physical items are limitless or there is overwhelming cost to reproduce ideas, GPL and communism will be incomparable.

Well

[Ol Olsoc]

I've been in on maybe 5 thousand + meetings. PowerPoint is a dual edged sword. And both sides are kind of dull. The presenter always likes it, because it can make any old crap look nice and crisp, and has an undeserved cachet of credibility to it.

In the end though, it's effect is mind numbing.

If we could go back to pre-PowerPoint days for a moment, there were three main methods of presentation

1. Viewgraphs. These were the old 8.5 by 11 inch Ozalid or halftone images on transparent media placed on a light table with a projection lens.

2. 35 mm slides - this was for when you wanted to have a polished presentation. You knew you were getting some attention when presenting these.

3. Back to the view graph projector - the roll of transparent material that you drew on with a sharpie or similar instrument. Whne you were finished, you rolled a fresh surface, and drew some more.

What was good about these? The first two took a little work to prepare. And despite the idea that labor costs need to be minimized, just teh preparation effort mad you whittle the information down. That whittling process made presentations better.

The third method of real time drawing was pretty crude, but incredibly efficient for brainstorming.

Contrast to today, where it appears not a thought will be left unsaid. Presentations in general have become worse with the advent of PowerPoint. The ease with which you can add "one more slide" maenas that many people will add 25 "one more slides".

In the end, it is mind numbing. Engineers will spend time telling you about some minutiae they find interesting, Bean counters will spend forever trying to justify hiring a 100 k a year person to keep track of pencil theft, which is costing the company 5 hundred dollars a year, and on and on.

I'ts not a get off my lawn issue, it's just that the process has been made so easy it is abused, and pointless points are consistently made.

Re:Well

[CrankyFool]

I give a lot of presentations, both internal to my company and at conferences. Writing presentations is easy, and results in the issues you raised (and many others). Writing GOOD presentations is much harder, and takes a lot more effort.

For me, I find the key to making a presentation that my audience will value is exactly that -- the audience. I try to figure out what it is my audience wants to learn and hear about. I'm not there to talk about whatever the hell it is I want to talk about -- I'm there to communicate something that's going to make a difference for the people in the audience (and, given audience focus, I also make sure I practice my presentations well enough that I know how long they'll take and I MAKE SURE to leave time for questions. Presenters who run out of time are just lazy).

I think presentations are like writing code -- in the end, it's really up to the author, most of the material out there is bad, and the editor (whether vim, emacs, Sublime Text, Atom, IntelliJ, or pick your favorite IDE) has little to do with the quality of the product. At most, and at best, the presentation software makes the mechanical effort a little easier.

Re:Well

[BasilBrush]

I don't believe for a moment that Stallman is reduced to hand-drawing slides because he believes hand-drawn slides are better. And if he does believe that, his slides certainly don't demonstrate it, as pretty much every other TED talk with a presentation is better than this one.

It gives the impression that whatever free presentation apps there are (Libreoffice Impress?) are pretty bad.

Also note the slide where he comperes free software with open source software. He makes the distinction that open source people are more interested in quality, and he's more interested in freedom.

This is one of the major reasons I don't like free software. There is little attention to quality.

Re:Well

[Ol Olsoc]

I don't believe for a moment that Stallman is reduced to hand-drawing slides because he believes hand-drawn slides are better.

Yeah, I don't presume to know his rationale. The hand drawn thing just prodded me to make an observation between projection modes. It's not trying to argue from authority, but doing this sort of thing for 30 some years, I at least have a fairly informed opinion.

And if he does believe that, his slides certainly don't demonstrate it, as pretty much every other TED talk with a presentation is better than this one.

It gives the impression that whatever free presentation apps there are (Libreoffice Impress?) are pretty bad.

Well, we're all allowed to draw our own conclusions, although that is an odd one. Impress is fully functional, and I've done many presentations in it. Perhaps you just don't like Linux?

This is one of the major reasons I don't like free software. There is little attention to quality.

I suppose it depends on the definition of quality. I used to have nightmares trying to go between Microsoft Office for PC, and Mac. It was simply not compatible with itself. For that reason, It fails my quality test.

On the other hand, LibreOffice for Mac, PC, and Linux does not have that problem. I go back and forth, and the only issue is if I'm using an obscure font that might not be on another machine. And if I can get my work actually done, instead of fussing with fonts, background colors, and other non compatible differences, well, we might just have a different definition of quality.

Re:Well

[CronoCloud]

It gives the impression that whatever free presentation apps there are (Libreoffice Impress?) are pretty bad.

More likely, since he uses that MIPS Loongson machine, there probably isn't Libreoffice build for that arch so he had to use whatever he had that would run on it. Heck libreoffice depends on Java for some features and I don't think there's an openjdk mips build either.

Re:Well

[luciano.moretti]

OpenOffice relies on Java.

IIRC LibreOffice has ripped most of it out so that it's not required, but some "wizards" and other features will be unavailable.

https://wiki.documentfoundatio...

Re:Well

[BasilBrush]

If you think LibreOffice is of higher quality than MS Office, then we certainly don't have the same definition of quality. And I don't even like MS Office that much.

Re:Well

[david_thornley]

LibreOffice does do some things better than MS Office. (And MS Office does a whole lot of things better than LibreOffice, but personally I don't care, since I've got vim.)

Re:Well

[Ol Olsoc]

No shit. ;You are willing to accept a file done in one machine in Microsoft Office, and have it not look or print correctly on another machine.

I consider that to be the exact opposite of quality. In large part of why I moved my machines to libre office. I don't have those problems now.

I have spent many hours correcting bitched up Office files. In Office. Some real quality there.

non-technical

[Anonymous Coward]

As usual, the talk is suitable for non-technical audiences.

I'd say the talk is primarily directed at a non-technical audience. There's not anything in it that /. 's haven't heard before from Stallman.

At some point, though, I would like to hear what he has to say on corporations that produce free software, but at the same time have large US military contracts and work closely with the intelligence agencies that are involved with ubiquitous surveillance.

Oh, and the slide showing the relative size of the Linux kernel in importance to the size of GNU was kind of unintentionally humorous.

Re:non-technical

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that the GNU parts are unnecessary and easily replaced. Android has Bionic and you can compile it with LLVM/Clang if you want to. GNU did some great work but you cant just primarily rest on the work you did 20 years ago and add small incremental improvements, you will be replaced. The Linux kernel is far more pervasive than GNU and the license of Linux is GPLv2 out of convenience for quid-pro-quo development, not ideology. GNU needs to stop clinging to Linux for credibility, already things are forking with GNU evangelizing GPLv3 and Linus steadfastly ignoring it, Linux is has long been GNU's posterchild of free software success and they have leeched onto it but it became successful for its development methodology, not GNU's ideology.

More useful link to video

[Anonymous Coward]

A more useful link to the video.

how I prepare a presentation

[John_Sauter]

I started doing presentations back in the days of 35-mm slides. I didn't have to prepare them myself—I sent the text to the corporate slide presentation department, and they sent me back the slides.

I prepared my presentation by first writing out what I wanted to say, word for word. I then distilled that document into a few topic lines, which I had made into slides, generally about three topics to a slide. At this point I discarded the original manuscript. When I gave the presentation I glanced at each slide to remind me of what I wanted to say, then spoke extemporaniously.

Today I prepare the slides myself using LibreOffice Impress, the free equivalent of Microsoft PowerPoint, but I use the same method.

Re:how I prepare a presentation

[Registered Coward v2]

I started doing presentations back in the days of 35-mm slides. I didn't have to prepare them myself—I sent the text to the corporate slide presentation department, and they sent me back the slides.

I prepared my presentation by first writing out what I wanted to say, word for word. I then distilled that document into a few topic lines, which I had made into slides, generally about three topics to a slide. At this point I discarded the original manuscript. When I gave the presentation I glanced at each slide to remind me of what I wanted to say, then spoke extemporaniously.

Today I prepare the slides myself using LibreOffice Impress, the free equivalent of Microsoft PowerPoint, but I use the same method.

I have a similar background, except we had an editor who approved all slides. She was a ruthless, heartless person who lacked a soul while wielding a red pen like calvaryman's saber as she edited. In other words, the perfect editor. To this date, I cringe at a presentation withe text less than 16 pt and more than 20 words on a slide. When I see a sentence with a period on a slide I remember her admonition "Women have periods, slides don't."

Re:how I prepare a presentation

[John_Sauter]

I have a similar background, except we had an editor who approved all slides. She was a ruthless, heartless person who lacked a soul while wielding a red pen like calvaryman's saber as she edited. In other words, the perfect editor. To this date, I cringe at a presentation withe text less than 16 pt and more than 20 words on a slide. When I see a sentence with a period on a slide I remember her admonition "Women have periods, slides don't."

I would liked to have met her. As far as I know my slides never had any approval process, but I think your editor would have liked them.

Re:how I prepare a presentation

[Ol Olsoc]

Today I prepare the slides myself using LibreOffice Impress, the free equivalent of Microsoft PowerPoint, but I use the same method.

You are exceptionally rare and should be commended. I'd say about 1 percent of people do not just pour on more and more crap into their power points.

And I still stand by my assertion that in the 30 plus years I've been involved in presentations, the quality has plummeted. And it really happened when PowerPoint took off. Too much on every slide, at least 200 percent more slides than needed. Graphs darn near unrelated to the topic. I've noted from running meetings, there is a large component of "If I can only keep talking, I can convince you I'm right" B.S,

All in crisp type on a lovely professional looking background.

And note, this really isn't presentation program's fault. It allows an engineer, or bean counter or whoever, to make their own presentations without overview. The results are sort of like what happened when Desktop publishing programs first took off, and unqualified people just figured they would plunk down some money, and suddenly they were a professional. Just like Going to Sears and buying their biggest tool kit and drawers makes a person who never looked under the hood of a car a master mechanic.

A trained communicator in the loop is a very good idea.

Re:how I prepare a presentation

[John_Sauter]

....A trained communicator in the loop is a very good idea.

I would disagree with you only on this point, and only slightly. I would say that a trained or experienced communicator in the loop is a very good idea. I have never had any formal training in communication, beyond a class in public speaking in summer school.

Re:how I prepare a presentation

[Ol Olsoc]

....A trained communicator in the loop is a very good idea.

I would disagree with you only on this point, and only slightly. I would say that a trained or experienced communicator in the loop is a very good idea. I have never had any formal training in communication, beyond a class in public speaking in summer school.

I'm still saying you are the competent exception. If you took one class in public speaking and are an expert, you are not the standard student. You are a savant. Where I worked we had technical editors, visual editors, and general content people who went to school to learn how to communicate ideas professionally and if you are performing at their level you are possibly in the wrong line of work.

Re:how I prepare a presentation

[John_Sauter]

I'm still saying you are the competent exception. If you took one class in public speaking and are an expert, you are not the standard student. You are a savant. Where I worked we had technical editors, visual editors, and general content people who went to school to learn how to communicate ideas professionally and if you are performing at their level you are possibly in the wrong line of work.

Just because I can prepare a presentation that people will listen to does not make me a professional. When I started doing it, the ability to communicate with customers effectively was considered part of the normal duties of a software engineer. Today's professional communicators will invite you to a free dinner and sell you a timeshare. I'm not in their league.

Re:how I prepare a presentation

[BadDreamer]

I know how to do this, as it is part of my job. I prepare and speak, and people listen and (as apparent from their actions afterwards) understand.

Does that mean I could do so on any subject to any audience? No, not at all. I can do it in subjects I know well, when presenting them to a motivated audience. And I can do it without choked powerpoints or flashy graphs.

I find it astounding that not all high tech professionals can do this, but I have experienced so many truly horrid presentations that it appears to be a rare skill.

Free SaaSS can exist

[tepples]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought it was possible to deploy "service as a software substitute" in a manner consistent with free software philosophy. Make the server software's source code available to the service's subscribers and let the subscriber download backups of his account. AGPL was designed for applications intended for use in free SaaSS, and though Google isn't free, it does offer Takeout for the second point.

Re:Free SaaSS can exist

[jbolden]

That's what the FSF recommends. Use the AGPL on SaaS applications.

Incidentally though just to prove the services model their are successful commercial companies using free software SaaS models and selling services like hardware management and monitoring.

Re:Free SaaSS can exist

[Registered Coward v2]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought it was possible to deploy "service as a software substitute" in a manner consistent with free software philosophy. Make the server software's source code available to the service's subscribers and let the subscriber download backups of his account. AGPL was designed for applications intended for use in free SaaSS, and though Google isn't free, it does offer Takeout for the second point.

Actually, since you are not distributing the software there would be no need, under the GPL, to share the underlying code; which is why there is AGPL. However, if software was licensed under the GPL at some point there is nothing to prevent someone from using the last GPL only version and ignoring the AGPL.

Re:Free SaaSS can exist

[diamondmagic]

If you're not distributing the software then the AGPL isn't going to help you.

Licenses only grant permission to distribute software; they're irrelevant if you're not distributing the software to begin with.

Re:Free SaaSS can exist

[Registered Coward v2]

If you're not distributing the software then the AGPL isn't going to help you.

Licenses only grant permission to distribute software; they're irrelevant if you're not distributing the software to begin with.

The AGPL is designed for network software so that if you modify the source and run it on a network you are required to make the source available to your users. It gets around the distribution requirements of the GPL by specifically adding the requirement to "offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network" a copy of the modified source code.

Re:Free SaaSS can exist

[diamondmagic]

Except copyright law defines what distribution is, not the license. And the output of a software program is not copyrightable (by itself).

The AGPL may as well offer everyone a pony; if it's not being distributed (as defined by copyright law), the AGPL doesn't apply. Period.

Re:Free SaaSS can exist

[Registered Coward v2]

Except copyright law defines what distribution is, not the license. And the output of a software program is not copyrightable (by itself).

The AGPL may as well offer everyone a pony; if it's not being distributed (as defined by copyright law), the AGPL doesn't apply. Period.

You are confusing copyright with licensing. A copyright allows control over who may use the work and the terms under which they use it. If I own the copyright I can license the works under the condition if you modify it and run it on network you need to make the source available, which the AGPL does. Distribution, as defined by copyright law, has no relevance to this licensing requirement.

The output of the software is irrelevant to this discussion beyond invoking the AGPL if you have users other than you.

Re:Free SaaSS can exist

[diamondmagic]

If I own the copyright I can license the works under the condition if you modify it and run it on network you need to make the source available, which the AGPL does

Once I have a copy, you can't control what I do with that copy until I want to make another copy. This is defined by copyright law, and includes (among other things):

* Performing a stage play or audiovisual work
* A public performance of a song
* Remixing or arranging a song (a compulsory license can be acquired if the song is commercially released)
* Sending a copy of a novel, software program, or other literary work to another person

What's not on this list: Merely using a software program over the network, as no copy is being made. I don't need to accept the AGPL to legally download an AGPL'd program, put it on my server, and let the general public use it.

Re:Free SaaSS can exist

[Anonymous Coward]

That will not satisfy RMS. He demands that users download and execute the programs themselves. Even if the software running on the webserver is free, and the data which it is using is publicly available, accessing it through a webservice is an unconscionable loss of control, and should be avoided. Instead, anyone who thinks about making web services should create downloadable software packages which end-users can install (using Free software, obvs) for all the potential environments in which they might be run (OSX, GNU/Linux, Windows etc.).

I disagree with this POV, but he expressed this view unambiguously in face to face discussion, with no wiggle room.

Re:Free SaaSS can exist

[Registered Coward v2]

I don't need to accept the AGPL to legally download an AGPL'd program, put it on my server, and let the general public use it.

Not correct. You use it under the terms of a license and must comply with the license as a term of use; which in this case requires making source available; just as the venue has to pay a fee when someone plays a copyrighted song.

Re:Free SaaSS can exist

[diamondmagic]

which in this case requires making source available; just as the venue has to pay a fee when someone plays a copyrighted song.

This is incorrect. Songs are described differently than literary works in the copyright statute, software programs being literary works.

A performance of a song, as I listed, requires a license (and copyright law specifically singles out songs). However, the output of a software program is not copyrightable, and therefore no license is necessary.

Copyright law makes no distinction between using over the network and on your local monitor, and such usage is explicitly defined in US statute as non-infringing. How would you like it, or the FSF for that matter, if copyright law could be used to dictate that you sitting at your computer could be a copyright infringer by merely opening up the wrong application sitting at your desk? I suspect not very much.

Re:Free SaaSS can exist

[Registered Coward v2]

which in this case requires making source available; just as the venue has to pay a fee when someone plays a copyrighted song.

This is incorrect. Songs are described differently than literary works in the copyright statute, software programs being literary works.

A performance of a song, as I listed, requires a license (and copyright law specifically singles out songs). However, the output of a software program is not copyrightable, and therefore no license is necessary.

Copyright law makes no distinction between using over the network and on your local monitor, and such usage is explicitly defined in US statute as non-infringing. How would you like it, or the FSF for that matter, if copyright law could be used to dictate that you sitting at your computer could be a copyright infringer by merely opening up the wrong application sitting at your desk? I suspect not very much.

Again, the AGPL is a license that you must accept to use the software. You focus on the output which is not the issue; the issue is how you may use the software under the license and your obligation as a result of using the software.

Re:Free SaaSS can exist

[diamondmagic]

Again, the AGPL is a license that you must accept to use the software. You focus on the output which is not the issue; the issue is how you may use the software under the license and your obligation as a result of using the software.

Please name the legal requirement that I accept the AGPL in order to use the software. In the US, there is:

* Copyright law
* Patent law

Patents aren't the issue here, and copyright law is not being invoked by merely making the software available on the network (and in fact, this use is explicitly defined as non-infringing).

Re:Free SaaSS can exist

[Registered Coward v2]

Again, the AGPL is a license that you must accept to use the software. You focus on the output which is not the issue; the issue is how you may use the software under the license and your obligation as a result of using the software.

Please name the legal requirement that I accept the AGPL in order to use the software. In the US, there is:

* Copyright law * Patent law

Patents aren't the issue here, and copyright law is not being invoked by merely making the software available on the network (and in fact, this use is explicitly defined as non-infringing).

Contract law

Re:Free SaaSS can exist

[diamondmagic]

Contract law

But the source is free to the public, there's no terms and conditions I have to agree to. Indeed, it would no longer be Free Software, or at least it wouldn't be Open Source Software according to the Open Source Definition.

Re:Free SaaSS can exist

[Anonymous Coward]

You should just man up and admit you were wrong... you're making yourself look foolish.

If I write something, I automatically own all copyrights to that work. Period, end of sentence. Unless I *specifically* disclaim all copyrights and place something in the public domain, I retain copyright control over my work.

I *can* choose to distribute my work under the terms of a license - which falls under contract law - and in no way does granting that license waive my copyrights. A license is, at its core, a contract stating the permissible uses of the software, and the terms under which the license is valid. If you violate the terms of the license, you do not have a license to run your copy of the software. If you do not have a license to run your copy of the software, you have violated my copyrights, and I may use copyright law to force you to stop using my software in a way I have not agreed to.

At NO point, unless I specifically disclaim all copyrights and place my work in the public domain, is the source code "free to the public," where there are no terms and conditions you've agreed to. Beginning to use the software, knowing how it's licensed, is exactly where you agree to the terms and conditions of the license. And ignorance of the law is no defense against violations.

Accepting a license is agreeing to a contract; if you violate the contract, then the owner of the software (the person who owns the copyrights) can use contract and copyright law to force you to stop. If the work is licensed under AGPL, copyright cares about YOUR copy that's being used against the terms of the license - not the redistribution of the work.

Re:Free SaaSS can exist

[exomondo]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought it was possible to deploy "service as a software substitute" in a manner consistent with free software philosophy.

But it's the practicality of it that doesn't work, the same as RMS points out in his The Javascript Trap:
"It is possible to release a JavaScript program as free software, by distributing the source code under a free software license. But even if the program's source is available, there is no easy way to run your modified version instead of the original."

Sure you can release code under the AGPL but that code can call other web services (it does not mandate that other web services - or services of any kind for that matter - be released under the same license) making it impractical to replicate everything on your own system. Moreover whilst you can use the web application from almost any web-connected device you may not even have the hardware to replicate that functionality on your machine even if you have the code.

You do not have control, all you get is the source code that they tell you is compiled into the binary the server is running.

Re:Free SaaSS can exist

[Registered Coward v2]

Contract law

But the source is free to the public, there's no terms and conditions I have to agree to. Indeed, it would no longer be Free Software, or at least it wouldn't be Open Source Software according to the Open Source Definition.

There are, as is pointed out in the link you provided, terms and conditions attached to the use of the software; which do not make it any less free. in fact they keep it free.

Re:Free SaaSS can exist

[diamondmagic]

There are, as is pointed out in the link you provided, terms and conditions attached to the use of the software; which do not make it any less free. in fact they keep it free.

They are terms for redistribution as required to legally make a copy under copyright law. It is not an EULA or other form of contract that must be agreed to prior to receiving a copy.

The GPL does this effectively: "You must include the source code (and other conditions) or you can't distribute a copy at all." This is the only restriction it can legally make, however. It can't restrict how you use the software in private when you don't make copies (including how you or others access it over the network).

Re:Free SaaSS can exist

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not an EULA or other form of contract that must be agreed to prior to receiving a copy.

Bro, you are aware of what the 'L' stands for in GPL, right? (Hint: it's not 'Lemurs'.)

The terms of the GPL *specifically* outline under what conditions you may use it.

not communism

[globaljustin]

Stallman is not a "communist"...it's 2014, and we've progressed as a society beyond pointless politically charged words like 'communism' because it means 'totalitarian state' in some contexts and 'socialist utopia' in others...one has freedom one does not...it has cause **litterally** millions of unecessary arguments for decades in the 20th century

slapping a dumb label like "communist" on theories like Stallman's only serves to cause confusion and pointless arguments

Re:not communism

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds RMS totalitarian in his views.

Re:not communism

[I'm New Around Here]

Commie.

Re:not communism

[Anonymous Coward]

I've met the man, and talked to him for far longer than I should have, and yes he sure as shit is a communist. So shove your scolding back up your ass.

Re:not communism

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds RMS totalitarian in his views.

Against the backdrop of the current U.S. political climate it seems particularly absurd to label RMS of all people totalitarian.

Re:not communism

[Mister Liberty]

The whole labelling is pointless.
The Dutch foreign minister 'croc tears' Timmermans -- he's a socialist and also an apologist of child murder.
Well known public figure Obama calls himself a democrat, and yet he's a murderer by anyone's standards.

Re:not communism

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to explain ? Did he advise against Holland declaring war on Russia because of the MH17 Collateral Damage ? Did he advise against the NATO nutcases who want to start fires left and right ?

Re:not communism

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds RMS totalitarian in his views.

So much the worse for them ... all of you are grossly dishonest.

Re:not communism

[Anonymous Coward]

I've read your comment, and sure as shit you're a stupid lying piece of offal who has no idea what a communist is.

Re:not communism

[Anonymous Coward]

Explanation: It was Collateral damage because the Donezk militas badly needed air defence weapons against Kiev, who attacked with Su25 frogfoot tankbusters. In a combat zone you essentially shoot first and ask questions later. EVERYBODY does this, including America. Civilians better keep out.

Re:not communism

[Anonymous Coward]

RMS in like three sentances: "This society thing doesn't work without all of us contributing. Letting people eat all the bread everyone else worked to produce is wrong. You should be obliged to share or GTFO. *eats foot fungus*"

Yeah, sounds just like the ramblings of a sociopath bent on world domination.

I'm sorry, little snowflake. When your achievements have relied on the efforts of others, claiming it's unfair to expect you to give back is arrogant and selfish.

Re:not communism

[smittyoneeach]

I think his role as FSF cheerleader #1 requires inflexibility. RMS certainly plays the role with gusto. What else is he supposed to do? I guess we'll find out when existential inevitabilities catch up with him, and someone else has to try to be RMS.

Re:not communism

[Anonymous Coward]

you're gay

Re:not communism

[jafac]

Does he endorse the workers owning the means of production? If not, then he is not a communist. End of discussion.

Re:not communism

[davydagger]

me too

freedom is slavery
war is peace
ignorance is strength.

I mean mass survialence, nah, thats some communist fantasy. Companies restricting your access to media, nah, doesn't happen. I mean we can totally trust big brother, its your next door neighbor you need to worry about.

Re:not communism

[MikeBabcock]

Yes. He endorses workers, users, and owners all having equal rights to their means of production. Ownership is still held by the Copyright holder of free software, and that person allows others certain rights. There is no communism here.

Re:not communism

[Anonymous Coward]

No dude, you ARE the only one that does not understand what totalitarian means.
If you did, you wouldn't use it to describe RMS.
Except if you are one of those guys that claim that atheism, the complete lack of religion, is a religion itself. Delusional people are all around us.

gonna enjoy it on my non-free computer + os

[Anonymous Coward]

because with that i have the freedom to enjoy the internet and his shitty rambling.

edit: haha, captcha says "restrain". ironic. just what stallman does to himself through his idiotic ideology.

Re:gonna enjoy it on my non-free computer + os

[UnknownSoldier]

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
  the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
  Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
      -- George Bernard Shaw

Re:gonna enjoy it on my non-free computer + os

[Anonymous Coward]

"...Stallman is unreasonable, ergo his ideas must be 'progress'..."

Link to the video

[BasilBrush]

For those who want something more useful than webm:

http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video...

Re:Link to the video

[Anonymous Coward]

FLA$H??? SRSLY? That can not be "more useful"!

Re:Link to the video

[BasilBrush]

I right click on the video and it says "HTML 5 Player". If you're getting a Flash player then there's something lacking at your end. Perhaps you've not configured YouTube to deliver HTML5 instead of Flash. In which case I suggest you do.

Re:Link to the video

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but if it would be HTML5 it would be Webm on my system not anything else. And that would not be "more useful" than itself.

Re:Link to the video

[BasilBrush]

This isn't complicated. The link gives an appropriate format for everybody. webm is only useful to some. Hence the link is more useful.

The Flash comment was just wrong and irrelevant, as you may be getting webm and I'm getting H.264. Neither of us is getting flash. Although those for whom that is an acceptable format might be. Which again makes the link more useful.

Sildes?

[frikken lazerz]

Even Stallman is using PowerPoint now????

non-technical

[Anonymous Coward]

The Gnu\Linux slide was accurate though... perhaps it would have been better portrayed with Linux as a tree trunk with Gnu roots and branches. Where the roots would be toolchian etc.. and the branches the rest of userland.

Democracy is NOT freedom

[mfwitten]

Indeed, free software projects aren't even run as democratic organizations; rather, they are emergent hierarchies formed via the spontaneous participation of individuals.

Each person involved in free software chooses how to appropriate his own resources—that is, how to appropriate his own capital, including time, intellect, money, etc. Democracy, on the other hand, is about choosing how to appropriate someone else's resources, especially against that someone else's will, especially by threat of violence as punishment for noncompliance.

Democracy is no friend of freedom, and certainly no friend of free software.

Re:Democracy is NOT freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

Projects like Debian are actually run as full blown democracies, with the corresponding bureaucracy.

Re:Democracy is NOT freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

To me that doesn't really work or make much sense, because under your definition only total anarchism would qualify as true freedom. The fundamental problem with total anarchism is that there are always enough dumb/bad people to ruin any system, and by all appearances it seems to be a part of human nature. And I'm not just talking about having enough bad eggs to necessitate putting a barrier around every over pass so people don't throw stuff off & endanger motorists.

Things like rape, murder & coercion would exist with or without government & they must be stopped if morality has any meaning or value at all. In a complex modern society with so many people packed in so tight it seems obvious to me that everyone is on the whole most free with democratic government around to deter bad actions & create justice for victims of crime.

Re:Democracy is NOT freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

Projects led by a benevolent dictator, like the Linux kernel and many others, are equal to more democratic projects in that some people (dictator/majority) get to choose what other people will do. However, Linus rants aside, there's no threat of violence. You won't be on the receiving end of violence for not liking the dictator's or majority's decision (see the people vs systemd, for instance, where everyone is against it and yet are not punished for it). At worst, you decide to get out of the project and fork it.

Re:Democracy is NOT freedom

[mfwitten]

Rape, murder, and coercion are the forcible appropriation of someone else's capital.

Protection and enforcement of capital rights are not inherently governmental.

Justice certainly isn't inherently governmental; in fact, many would argue that governmental organization is inherently unjust.

Re:Democracy is NOT freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh? You are confusing "Democracy" with "Communist Dictatorship". If you don't want American children digging through trash and elderly Americans dying on the streets, you'll need a safety net. It will need to be funded through laws (with a threat of violence) AFTER the majority has agreed that it is a good thing to do and the judiciary has ruled it constitutional. Seems like a reasonable process. Instead of telling us what you oppose, tell us what you propose. Let me guess, money is speech, and votes are not necessary.

Re:Democracy is NOT freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

At a certain point in larger more complex societies such tings seem to inevitably become some form of government. At least they do if you want more protection that what ever little bit can be provided before the perpetrators run away & if you want more justice than the sham provided by mob rule. Governments are human institutions & are probably inherently imperfect like all human creations; however, claiming that they are all inherently unjust & irredeemably broken seems to be one hell of a slippery slope fallacy.

Re:Democracy is NOT freedom

[Phillip2]

This is a silly argument. Democracy is a mechanism for ensuring that a society runs with the consent of the majority. The whole point of society is to put restrictions on what you can and cannot do. This can mean forcing you to do things you do not want. Most of the time, though, it involves stopping a few people from doing things that they want: whether this is murder, or driving too fast.

By your definition of freedom, pretty much everyone in our society is free for the brief period between birth and weaning. After that, it's downhill all the way.

Re:Democracy is NOT freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

"Democracy is no friend of freedom, and certainly no friend of free software."

Freedom and property with unlimited accumulation of property with no democracy is tyranny.

Re:Democracy is NOT freedom

[mfwitten]

Murder and driving too fast are the forcible appropriation of someone else's capital.

The consent of the majority is still tyranny to the minority.

Re:Democracy is NOT freedom

[mfwitten]

You can't have your cake and eat it, too. Either government employees are magically more noble than the rest of humanity, or they are just as imperfect.

There is nothing magical about government.

Indeed, the only characteristic that sets a governmental organization apart from a non-governmental organization is that the governmental organization appropriates other people's resources against their will under threat of violence for noncompliance.

That is, yes, as you say, "such things seem to inevitably become some form of government", but that's because they start taking people's resources rather than convincing them to hand over those resources willingly; in short, you're saying that at worst, we could end up with government.

Re:Democracy is NOT freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

Again with the slippery slope BS. Saying 'because government can do thing A things B through Z follow & everything is evil' is a logical fallacy called the slippery slope. Some slopes aren't so steep that you automatically fall down & some governments are reasonably accountable to the people because of divisions in power, checks & balances & voter accountability. You should also note that I said governments were imperfect human institutions that we can reform, so your talk of magical perfection is a pathetic straw man argument.

Re:Democracy is NOT freedom

[david_thornley]

The concept that rape, murder, and coercion are appropriation of capital disturbs me. I consider them as crimes against the person, which I'd like to distinguish from crimes against property.

The main difference I see is that crimes against property are mostly reversible: if the victim gets enough money, that will normally make up for the crime. That isn't true with rape and murder, and may not be for coercion. (There are varieties of coercion that I'd be fine with for enough money, and varieties I wouldn't be.)

Re:Democracy is NOT freedom

[mfwitten]

I think you dont understand what I wrote.

Re:Democracy is NOT freedom

[mfwitten]

The thing is, your words make no sense. They are specious.

Free software is flexible

[tepples]

Over the past few years, I've learned that people care more about "freedom" when it's called "flexibility". So I've come up with my own sound bite to summarize the benefit of free software: "Free software is flexible software. Using free software gives you the flexibility to hire anyone to make the program do what you want instead of some other big company wants."

FSF says permissive licenses appropriate sometimes

[tepples]

Give Stallman some software with a BSD license and see how he responds.

The FSF recognizes that a non-copyleft free software license is better in some cases, such as when trying to replace entrenched patented MP3 with newcomer free Vorbis (source; more reliable ones would be appreciated). It's also better for programs shorter than the GPL itself, as mentioned in the page about the suggested license for build scripts and the GPL FAQ's recommendation of the Apache License 2.0.

Practical problems with a hard line stance

[tepples]

Things I noticed from the video:

11:25 "Don't bring any proprietary software to this class." So which cell phone running free software should students be putting in their bags instead? Even Replicant OS, which is based on Android Open Source Project with the non-free parts cut out, uses non-free radio firmware.

12:48 "So how to help? Well you can write free software." So how would you go about feeding yourself while you write a free video game? Video games can't rely on support to the same extent as software critical to a business.

Re:Practical problems with a hard line stance

[r0kk3rz]

12:48 "So how to help? Well you can write free software." So how would you go about feeding yourself while you write a free video game? Video games can't rely on support to the same extent as software critical to a business.

Design your game, create promotional materials, launch kickstarter for funds stating final product will be free.

Rinse, Repeat. Gamers get games, you get to eat and write free software

Re:Practical problems with a hard line stance

[I'm New Around Here]

You answered your second question already. You write the indispensable business software first, then with all the money you earn, you support yourself while you write the next video game of the year.

Re:Practical problems with a hard line stance

[parenthephobia]

12:48 "So how to help? Well you can write free software." So how would you go about feeding yourself while you write a free video game? Video games can't rely on support to the same extent as software critical to a business.

Get a job? You don't have an automatic right to be paid for making video games.

If you really feel that you couldn't make a video game whilst also doing other paid work, and you can convince other people that you can make a game they'd like to play, then some of those people will pay you to write it. If you doubt that, Chris Roberts has $52M of evidence to the contrary. 3% of Kickstarter games projects get $100k or more. That's not going to fund a "AAA" development process, but it'd pay your living costs for 3 or 4 years. And sure, only 3% of the people who apply get funded to this extent, but see above: it's a privilege, not a right, to be paid for what you want to do.

Re:Practical problems with a hard line stance

[Anonymous Coward]

11:25 "Don't bring any proprietary software to this class." So which cell phone running free software should students be putting in their bags instead? Even Replicant OS, which is based on Android Open Source Project with the non-free parts cut out, uses non-free radio firmware.

Richard's approach towards cellphones is not to use them. He calls them "Stalin's dream" because it facilitates surveillance anyway, since it can be quite easily be tracked by authorities.

Re:Practical problems with a hard line stance

[Anonymous Coward]

> So how would you go about feeding yourself while you write a free video game?

You've *always* been able to charge for Free Software. RMS doesn't take a hard-line stance against money.

The trick with a Free video game is that you release the art, sound, and music assets under a non-Free license.

But, yanno, you're tepples, and arguing in good faith isn't a thing that you're known to do.

Re:Practical problems with a hard line stance

[BadDreamer]

11:25 The answer is do the best you can. Support those who are the least closed.

12:48 If you are paid to write software, do what you can to have that software under GPL license. If you develop video games, do what Id Software does, and release the code as GPL when it's feasible to do so. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better than not releasing anything ever.

Re:Practical problems with a hard line stance

[Anonymous Coward]

Though the guy has no problem borrowing other peoples' cellphones. If everyone bought into his crap he'd be out of luck.

Re:Practical problems with a hard line stance

[Bacon Bits]

And what happens to the next guy? What happens when there isn't any truly indispensable software left? You just stop making new games?

Re:Practical problems with a hard line stance

[Bob9113]

11:25 "Don't bring any proprietary software to this class." So which cell phone running free software should students be putting in their bags instead?

Depends what your primary objective is. If your primary objective is to have a cell phone with you, you sacrifice freedom. If your primary objective is to give no comfort to those who are harmful to that end, you sacrifice carrying a cell phone.

Me? I'm pretty serious about Free Software, but being connected is also important to me. So I have a CyanogenMod phone, and I'll keep going more Free as it becomes practical and as my budget allows.

12:48 "So how to help? Well you can write free software." So how would you go about feeding yourself while you write a free video game?

Depends what your higher priority is. If financial responsibility, to your lifestyle or to support your family, is most important to you, write proprietary video games. If freedom is most important, you can sell your games through Humble Bundle, have embedded ads and ask people not to disable them, ask for voluntary payments, use one of the crowdfunding systems, live a modest lifestyle and work some other job to pay the bills, or whatever you want; there's lots of ways to make a living while writing Free Software.

Me? I work a pay-the-bills job consulting, working less than full time, live a modest lifestyle, and work on pro-social projects the rest of the time (not Free Software for me at the moment, but with similar goals).

He's not telling you that you must always blindly obey the principles that lead to freedom. He's telling you what principles must be satisfied to be free. He says very clearly, early in the presentation, that being free requires sacrifices. Whether you choose freedom or convenience in any particular choice you make in life is up to you. Just make it with your eyes open; be aware of your personal opportunity cost and the cost to society.

Re:Practical problems with a hard line stance

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting paid to write software is becoming an endangered career. People who make money grinding out CRUD apps for big corporations scratch their itches by working on free software. But these are the people who are getting terminated while corporations rush to outsource. So they may or may not even stay in programming. The free software thing worked in the 80s and 90s when programming jobs were paying well. How is it going to work when programmers aren't highly paid for their day jobs and scramble to make a living or switch careers? We can't all go around doing speaking engagements to make money. How do we support ourselves when programming jobs pay less and less? Free software is going to have to rethink itself. Right now we have corporate sponsorship of some products, but only those which help corporations make money. IBM needs J2EE to compete with Oracle and SAP. Apple needs the LLVM toolchain.

Re:Practical problems with a hard line stance

[sjbe]

Richard's approach towards cellphones is not to use them.

As if land line phones are somehow less problematic from a Free software point of view.

Re:Practical problems with a hard line stance

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes - move on to creating something else that is useful, basically don't make a living out of artificial scarcity.

Re:Practical problems with a hard line stance

[I'm New Around Here]

The next guy can get a job that pays his bills.

Do you think we should be guaranteed money every month just because we want to create a game?

If you want to do something that doesn't make money, than learn to live without money.

Re:Practical problems with a hard line stance

[Anonymous Coward]

They're substantially less of a problem from a "pervasive surveillance" point of view.

That's the point that you missed. Good job.

Re:Practical problems with a hard line stance

[Anonymous Coward]

>Get a job? You don't have an automatic right to be paid for making video games.

And this is why almost nobody takes the FOSS philosophy seriously.

Yes, they happily use FOSS software. Yes, they cheer FOSS loudly. But they do not, for the most part, actually follow the philosophy because they have to pay the bills.

Re:Practical problems with a hard line stance

[Anonymous Coward]

You very obviously have NO IDEA how much effort any of those things takes. You're talking $100,000 before even hitting kickstarter. Idiot.

Re:Practical problems with a hard line stance

[Perky_Goth]

Stallman has stated before that he's ok with proprietary games since they're not functional software.

Re:Practical problems with a hard line stance

[exomondo]

And how much do you think you would need for engine design/development, level design, artists, animators, storywriters, voice actors, motion capture studio rental, music and sound production, etc ... ? And then how much time does it take to actually get started with hiring/contracting everybody involved?

The naive approach is just to say "well design it and put it on kickstarter and everything magically happens" but the reality is that decent games requires a lot of work and a lot of people. Yes you can create dinky little flappy birds on a shoestring budget but you don't even need kickstarter for that, decent production games require a lot more.

Re:Practical problems with a hard line stance

[r0kk3rz]

Obviously you can't just magic a games development studio out of thin air, but you already need to have something to pitch to publishers in order to get funding through traditional methods. The only real difference is that instead of pitching to publishers you're pitching directly to gamers. More traditional funding methods exist for initial backing to start any kind of business, not just games development.

There are a number of ambitious game projects funded this way, certainly way beyond the scale of "Flappy Bird"
Broken Age
Planetary Annihilation
Wasteland 2
Star Citizen

Re:Practical problems with a hard line stance

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe what you did was not very usefull - sorry - profitable and very usefull therfore you don't get payed anymore?

Maybe there is no real use for games?

Maybe the free market is not very good in meshuring the usefullness of a thing but only the profitability?

Maybe I'm a communist? But if so, not one of the dictatorship, central power kind.

Re:Practical problems with a hard line stance

[CountBrass]

Have you been asleep for the last 2 years?

Cell 'phones can be, and are, used to track your location all the time they are on whether making a call or not. And not just by the NSA et al but by your 'phone company.

Re:Practical problems with a hard line stance

[david_thornley]

Thing is, I like some video games. I'm happy to pay for them, because I get enjoyment that, for me, is worth the money. Nobody has an automatic right to be paid for making them, but I'd like some sort of arrangement whereby some people would make them and some other people (including me) would pay them and play the games. Right now, we've got that by making them proprietary software, and it more or less works. I don't see how to get that if all video games had to be GPLed.

Re:Practical problems with a hard line stance

[david_thornley]

That's actually what most shocked me about the first episode of Dexter. He's busy dismembering one of his victims when his cell phone rings. Why the heck did he have it with him?

I have no objection to having much of my normal life under such surveillance, provided I can get away from it when I wish. That's when the cell phone stays home.

RMS uses Arial?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's richly ironic that a man so utterly committed to his ideals has faltered with the fonts on his slides. There are a few sans-serif fonts available licensed under the GNU GPL like the (very ugly) Liberation Sans.

Instead of hand-drawn slides...

[Anonymous Coward]

he should be working on a FOSS presentation editor.

Re:Instead of hand-drawn slides...

[Lord Maud'Dib]

There's an EMACS extension for that.

Also in the name of brevity

[Anonymous Coward]

He ate his dandruff on stage instead of the typical toe cheese.

I, for one, and thankful for Stallman

[jfbilodeau]

I will be snide and I will not post as AC. There are too many comments labelling Stallman as a uncompromising, communist, extremist, liberal, etc... Though it may be true, without his uncompromising stance on freedom, would we have GNU/Linux? Would the Open Source movement even exists?

Sure, there would be source code out there on the web, and the BSDs would probably exists, but he's fighting to ensure that we do not lose the very freedoms that we enjoy with (forgive the term) FLOSS software.

Yes, I run a Linux distro with non-free warts (Mint), I use proprietary software (Steam). But for the most part, I'm in control of my computer, and quite thankful of that. I may not live in the 'ideal' free world of Stallman, but without folks like Stallman and their extreme position on freedom, I suspect the world of computers would be much more closed.

Thank you Richard Stallman for your fight.

BINGO

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of cowards out there call themselves Followers of Christ, but they all love a good hanging of Today's Jesuses like Bradley Manning or Ed Snowden. In other words, we exist in a sea of egotism and nastiness.

Good presentation

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't necessarily agree with everything he has to say (as a developer, my livelihood depends on being paid a reasonable wage for my efforts. With free/open source software, I think that's a harder thing to do), but he does make a number of good points, in a concise way that's easily understood by non-technical audiences.

I'll point out, though, that software "freedom" doesn't necessarily give protection and security from "the bad guys" (the NSA, etc.). Consider heartbleed..

To woo normal people: get a haircut, and shave

[Anonymous Coward]

If he wants to convert "normal people", he should try shaving and getting a haircut, he could end up being bearable to watch.

Surprisingly bad public speaker

[sjbe]

Slightly off topic but I watched the video. I've read a lot of what Stallman has written but haven't heard him speak before. He's a pretty bad public speaker judging by this TED talk. His slides looked like something a sixth grader would draw, he sounded like a robot and he clearly didn't spend enough time rehearsing. He kept looking at his slides as if it was a surprise what was coming next. If you want people to take your arguments seriously, having a good argument is not sufficient. You have to be able to present it well. He's been making these arguments long enough that he ought to be more polished by now. I respect the stance he is taking but based on this talk he's doing a pretty crap job of being an evangelist to the general public.

I really can't imagine anyone coming away from that presentation convinced that they've had their eyes opened. His argument was moralistic but he didn't really explain convincingly the consequences of not-free software or why anyone should care. He explained that we control software or it controls us as if it was axiomatic which it is not. Here on slashdot we understand what he's talking about (whether or not we agree) but a more general audience will NOT be convinced by such a superficial argument especially when presented in such an amateurish way.

Re:Surprisingly bad public speaker

[dbIII]

At least he's not doing the silly long drawn out saint joke with props or the "Linux? Never HURD of it!" joke he used to do. Just be happy with the content instead of expecting him to put on a show since it's much better when he doesn't try to put on a show.

Re:Surprisingly bad public speaker

[sjbe]

Just be happy with the content instead of expecting him to put on a show since it's much better when he doesn't try to put on a show.

That's a bit like saying your boat doesn't leak as much as it used to. It's still a problem...

What's depressing is that he's smart enough to understand the problem but apparently too arrogant to learn how to present his argument effectively.

Re:Surprisingly bad public speaker

[subtleluck]

First time I heard him speak as well. I thought he did a great job. The slides were perfect for the target audience. His enthusiasm was contagious. Either we watched a different talk or your bias is showing.

Re:Surprisingly bad public speaker

[luciano.moretti]

At least he didn't eat something off his foot this time...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Free not open source

[sjbe]

Stallman's a bit of an extremist, and wants all software to be open-source.

No he doesn't. He wants it to be free. Had you watched the video you would have seen him negatively describe open source as a way for people to avoid the subject of free software. He doesn't care at all about open source except insofar as it gets us to free software as defined by himself.

Re:Free not open source

[Anonymous Coward]

Stallman doesn't like OS because he didn't get his way. The other originators didn't want to be so incredibly extreme and that set him off. Truth is, his denial of OS is nothing but his Ego getting enraged.

Re:Free not open source

[Anonymous Coward]

Stallman suffers from NIH! Open Source Software under fair use could allows someone to modify for *personal use only according to the Supreme Court of the United States!

*typical would(could(should)) be sued if uses changes in source code:
1-used in commerical biz
2-used non profit foundation
3-used for profit foundation
4-distributed on internet/blog/digital download/comments/fourm/mailing list/tech_support_group
5-distributed to retail/floppy/cd/dvd/USB/
6-etc

words are not pointless

[globaljustin]

"labelling is pointless"

ugh

using words is "labelling"...if what you say is true then speech itself is pointless

the problem isn't "labelling"...it's people who consciously affect the meanings of words for strategic ends over decades...like the word "feminism"...

with "communism" it's common knowledge that the word isn't helpful for discussion...

"labelling" a thing is necessary...every idea we can think of can be "labelled" by representing it with words

what is pointless?

**arguing over definitions instead of ideas**

many people say "i disagree with Stallman".....which is *fine*...what is trolling is the insistence on making the point of controversy something that will always cause endless arguments

arguing over bullshit is pointless..."labelling" things is necessary

Re:words are not pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

what is pointless? **arguing over definitions instead of ideas**

Actually, a failure to reach an agreement on the fundamental definition of terms before discussing points of contention is a particularly virulent way of ensuring no agreement is possible.

If we both agree that "communism" is a socioeconomic system where the means of production are owned communally, then it would be quite accurate to describe Stallman's ideas as "communist." The ideas of the FSF require that the software (tools of production) are owned by the entire community, and accessible to all of them - you can't write closed source software and lock it up so only you can use it, you share with the community. Communism, before anybody starts ranting about totalitarian states, requires a lack of "the state," as well.

The fact that no civilization on earth has been able to implement a practicable communist system, at least at the "country" scale, suggests that communism has significant implementation issues that need to be worked out, but the conflation of "communism" and "totalitarianism" is foolish. Communism specifically posits that there is no "state" under communism; That most communist states end up totalitarian hellholes is a reflection on the implementation of communism, vis-a-vis human nature, but communism itself - as an ideal - does not allow for a totalitarian, OR egalitarian state, because it does not allow for a state, period.

It's interesting to note that a large portion of "serious" open source development these days is being done by paid programmers working for companies motivated by profit. That suggests something about the implementation of the FSF's ideals - that a) they're not inherently incompatible with capitalism, and b) the development probably wouldn't get done nearly as fast without that profit motive.

In the end, any 'practical' systemic implementation of open source philosophy will *have* to follow the model of modern liberal/democratic/socialist systems: software as "public works project", with either legislative mandate or legislative "enticements" (tax breaks, etc.) encouraging companies developing software to donate their software back to the public domain as well.

Re:words are not pointless

[davydagger]

The fact of the matter is, I've yet to see an intellectual dissent against stallman. The only arguments I've seen amount to nothing more than petty propaganda, and fear mongering about far fetched "what if" situations, while stallman's views can be cited against actual events, at best. At worst, its just name calling, and making fun of his personal flaws. Things that if said about any mainstream politician or celebrity would be out of line.

Truth is:

1. Stallman is well spoken, well written, and articulate.
2. Stallman addresses real issues, and has been, long before most of us knew they were issues.

Re:words are not pointless

[globaljustin]

for sure...i agree with your 1 & 2

IMHO, i think Stallman gets tripped up with execution...which is guided by those uber-specific obtuse definitions he uses for concepts like what 'free and open source' mean

if anything, he's an uncomprimising idealist...

your point #2 rings especially true with my experience here on /. I've been reading since 2001 (didn't make an account until 2006 because **i didnt think i had earned it**) and back in the day i learned alot about how the industry really works from reading these boards, which were posts written by people who were inspired by Stallman

maybe it's a case of being too close to your philosophical hero...we see all his warts & flaws not the ideas which made him famous

Re:words are not pointless

[davydagger]

>IMHO, i think Stallman gets tripped up with execution...which is guided by those uber-specific obtuse definitions he uses for concepts like what 'free and open source' mean

not really. He's addressing the "open source" movement, which came afterwards as an attempt to confuse the issue. He's not being obtuse, he's being co-opted, and addressing the very real social politics. Say what you will. There really is a mass slander campaign against him. Its not an unreasonable point.

RMS is less about technology

[jpellino]

and more about religion. It's about that dogmatic with him. Does he drive a car?

Re:RMS is less about technology

[ArmoredDragon]

I remember him once commenting that if you don't make enough as a programmer because everything you write is free, then you ought to live for free in a college dorm like him.

Or that he believes not being able to code is a social problem in the same vein as not being able to read.

It's just things like that which make you wonder if he's even all there at times.

Free for the community

[sjbe]

Give Stallman some software with a BSD license and see how he responds.

BSD software has a strong tendency to turn into proprietary products - i.e. not free. That doesn't really bother someone like Stallman who is a programmer but it causes a huge problem for the majority of people who are not programmers like myself. My skills lie elsewhere and for the majority of us out there functionally there is little difference to me between a BSD license and a proprietary license.

He's of the "It's only free as long as I say it's as free as I want it to be" people.

Doesn't mean he's wrong. A BSD license may as well be proprietary because eventually it will become proprietary if it is of any use at all.

Re:Free for the community

[Anonymous Coward]

BSD software has a strong tendency to turn into proprietary products

So what? How does someone taking some free software I create and adding it into their own propriety product stop someone else from making some open source software using the same free, BSD licensed code to make their own?

Truth is, it doesn't. Sure thing, the code may be included in a closed source system but the code itself never becomes propriety. It stays open source and completely available for you or anyone else to use.

You argument that

A BSD license may as well be proprietary because eventually it will become proprietary if it is of any use at all.

Is a horrendous POS. It is factually wrong. If you can't see or accept that then you really do need to grow up a little, both politically and intellectually.

Re:Free for the community

[trparky]

A BSD license may as well be proprietary because eventually it will become proprietary if it is of any use at all.

Is a horrendous POS. It is factually wrong. If you can't see or accept that then you really do need to grow up a little, both politically and intellectually.

Ok, so please explain this one.

Take OpenBSD, there's a reason why much of Apple Mac OS X is based upon OpenBSD. Apple needed a new OS, they looked about and saw an already written base operating system with a nice licensing agreement that states that if you make any modifications to the source code you are under no legal requirement release said changes back to the community from which the original code came from. That is essentially what the BSD license states.

However, the GPL states that if you make changes to the source code you are legally required to release said changes back to the community.

That's why Apple OS X is largely based upon OpenBSD. Apple can make changes all they want and they can keep those changes to themselves and the OpenBSD community doesn't have a legal leg to stand on to prevent that from happening.

Re:Free for the community

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so please explain this one.

What are we being asked to explain? Has Apple somehow robbed the world of the original BSD-licensed software they based their OS on?

Or have they simply said "We'll use this as a starting point, but we decline to release our own code to the rest of the world?"

The worst you can argue is that they're being poor citizens - using a "public" good for themselves without contributing back. If the OpenBSD community cared about "preventing that from happening," well... they probably would've chosen a different license - don't ya think?

Re:Free for the community

[MikeBabcock]

Yes, they've robbed the users of their hardware from the ability to use self-compiled BSD on *that* hardware in *that* way because any changes made by Apple are secret and the user is stuck not having them except in compiled form.

When a user has a problem with the OS they're robbed of the ability to fix it themselves by looking at the source code that would've otherwise been available and they're robbed of the ability to expand the abilities of the system without Apple's consent as well.

Re:Free for the community

[Anonymous Coward]

Um... MacOSX ain't based on OpenBSD. It includes a bunch of userland tools from NetBSD, and some important members of the FreeBSD team worked on it. But it can trace its heritage back through Mach and the NextSTEP to BSD 4.3 (I think? Or was it 4.4?) -- the common ancestor of all today's BSDs.

Re:Free for the community

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a neat sidestep there. There is still nothing stopping you or anyone else from taking the original BSD licensed code and doing what you want with it, including trying to emulate what Apple did. The fact that Apple made some entirely different software, using the BSD licensed code as a base has very little to do with anything. If the BSD code wasn't there, they would have just written their own.

If you're angry at Apple for being closed source, then go be angry at Apple. BSD licensed software has nothing to do with it.

Re:Free for the community

[Anonymous Coward]

How does someone taking some free software I create and adding it into their own propriety product stop someone else from making some open source software using the same free, BSD licensed code to make their own?

Because of network effects? The resulting software won't have a chance to compete against the closed version backed up by a large company, and become a viable product.

Re:Free for the community

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, they've robbed the users of their hardware from the ability to use self-compiled BSD on *that* hardware in *that* way because any changes made by Apple are secret and the user is stuck not having them except in compiled form.

By which you mean, no - you're free to install and run the original BSD software Apple based their work on on any compatible hardware as much as you want - they've not limited your access to the BSD-licensed code at all. They've simply declined to release their source code for free.

You're trying to twist the question to make Apple out to be some sort of bad guy - but again: If the OpenBSD community cared about Apple using a derivative of their work in a 'proprietary' product, I'm pretty sure they would have chosen a different license. Since they didn't, we can simply boil this entire debate down to one side of the argument (those with the copyrights) saying "We don't care how this gets used," and those like you (without the copyrights) stomping their feet and shouting about how somebody else should have decided to do something different.

Here's an idea: go re-implement everything BSD has done, and put it under GPLv3 or any other license you prefer. That way, anybody who elects to use your software will be forced to contribute back in a way that the BSD copyright holders didn't feel like forcing. But please, stop bitching about how other people have decided to license their software.

Re:Free for the community

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so please explain this one.

What are we being asked to explain? Has Apple somehow robbed the world of the original BSD-licensed software they based their OS on?

Their gamesmanship has made the OpenDarwin team waste years of time on what they were hoodwinked into believing could become Free Software before they finally gave up on being taken for a ride. So yes, Apple did rob the world of several man-years of developer power by their pretense that they would provide their kernel openly in order to freeload on those who swallowed their bullshit.

That kind of bait-and-kick-in-the-privates game does not work in a similar manner with the GPL.

There are different freedoms. He speaks as if

[jpellino]

physical prisons and EULAS are the same thing. I'm sorry, but when you equate educational use of paid software with teaching kids to smoke cigarettes, you've gone 'round the bend.

Re:There are different freedoms. He speaks as if

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know what an _analogy_ is? And that an analogy is something different than equivocation? And that you have to pay some attention to which aspects the speaker intends to point out as being analogous?

Just in case you really haven't figured it out yet: He was not presenting the argument that proprietary software causes lung cancer, but that the use of proprietary software in educational institutions creates a "habit" that requires effort to break out of, and thus a dependency on the producer of the respective software.

Also, given that he explicitly talks about selling free software, you cannot really have paid much attention if you think that he is against the use of paid software in education.

Free Software? better Free Users

[Anonymous Coward]

It has been written on the wall for a long time. Stallman will eventually give up the "Free Software" discourse, replacing it for the better fitted "Free Users", as oposed to "Propietary Users". He's almost there, judging from the video.

Also, software cannot be Free, only "for free".

As a veteran FOSS supporter and developer I...

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with much of what Stallman claims and congratulate him on such a well constructed and delivered presentation, however I am still left with a felling that perhaps his ideals are, in places, utopian and at odd with some of the baser aspects of human nature such that, while they sound good in principle, they cannot be universally implemented without exposing society to collateral risks. It boils down to this, Stallman seems to see human society as a singular organism that is capable of maintaining its integrity simply though homoeostatic feedback from the open flow of knowledge and information, but the human body can't even manage such a thing without eventually suffering from diseases that are all manifestations of dis-regulation, i.e. cancer, autoimmune or senescence (which is an anticancer mechanism). e.g. True racism is the social equivalent of an autoimmune disease and phenomena such as we see emerging in Syria are humanity's version of cancer.

The human body uses reproduction and evolution to ensure continuity in the face of these problems, but what are the social equivalents of these processes that we need to implement in order to ensure humanity's freedom in perpetuity?

Stallman's utopia seems in part (and I do hope I am wrong) to be like a optimistic eunuch with no immune system who is living blissfully in the moment. How is that sustainable in the face of the nasty shit the universe manifests from time to time?

hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

very good talk.

FSF says permissive licenses appropriate sometimes

[Anonymous Coward]

While I still have a soft spot in my heart for the FSF, I must admit it is not so much of a love affair as it used to be.

GPLv3 (and it's LGPLv3 cousin) pretty much changed the course. Previously Richard Stallman and the FSF were adamant about not being "against business", but then they pulled out all the stops to put a knife in the heart of Tivo (you know, because Tivo had the gall to make a successful business out of FSF software).

Now that Tivo's been dealt a blow, GPL is so "viral" that from a legal point of view, it is untouchable in business. That's why Apache's licenses have been doing so well.

Stallman's Famous toe jam eating video

[Anonymous Coward]

Will there be a video on eating parts of your feet? I'm sorry bit I wouldn't want R.S. I serve me up a bowl of soup, let alone his ideas on OS.

Practical problems with a hard line stance

[Anonymous Coward]

Video games are the worst example... I think it was ID released the code for Quake but the art is still not free. This means anyone can port or package the Quake engine for any device. There is even Quake for a little hand held device called the Open Pandora. People have improved the Quake engine and even created other games. But if I want to play with the original game creators art I still legally have to buy it.

Gaming is a fairly good example where the code is only part of the finished product and people could just purchase art assets for open source game engines.

non-free coffee

[electrosoccertux]

after non-free javascript what's next? Year of GNU/HURD on desktop?

what about the drawing board?

[electrosoccertux]

will we never go back to it?

Yes, I know all that.

[jpellino]

Plus I know that nicotine is physically addictive and a software brand is not. His idea that students in schools that use non-free software "can't learn anything" for programming is simply false. I did pay attention to the part where he says "So you should only bring free software to class, except as a reverse engineering exercise." Again, it's like saying you can't buy a car unless you want to learn to build your own (which you can't do because how the bought car works is a secret). "Instrument of unjust power" - give me a break. If that's true about software, then it's true about everything ever printed, broadcast or distributed, and anything you ever purchased, including clothing and food. "Lighten up, Francis." You wanna make an OS? Great. Join the crowd. But don't tell people they are violating people's basic freedom if they don't embrace your disrtibution model and tell them how wrong they are to do so. Just pitch your stuff. If it's good, people will use it. No need to demonize everyone else in the process.

Re:Yes, I know all that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and you use cigarets by burning them, but you don't burn software! What's the point of enumerating all the aspects that are _not_ analogous?

Re "can't learn anything", he obviously is talking about the ability to learn anything from the proprietary software as an example of how software is built. If you pay some attention to the context, it shouldn't be that difficult to figure out what the speaker means - taking some statement literally and out of context usually won't get you particularly far.

"Again, it's like saying you can't buy a car [...]" - no, once again, you are missing the point. He is explicitly talking about an educational environment, which "buying a car" obviously is not. Though it is telling that you think that it's normal to not know how one's car works. You might be surprised to know that not too long ago, it was very much the norm for that knowledge to be public. Just as it was normal for electrical and electronic devices to come with a schematic. And yes, RMS most definitely would advocate for free software in cars - but that's a separate issue from not teaching proprietary products in school (which, BTW, is a principle not specific to software).

"If that's true about software, then it's true about everything ever printed, broadcast or distributed, and anything you ever purchased, including clothing and food." - Are you serious? You seriously think that the manufacturer of your pants has as much control over you as the manufacturer of your smartphone? Or that it's essentially impossible to alter them to fit your purpose? Or that a newspaper can spy on you as much as your ebook reader can? I mean, whether you agree with him or not, but if you seriously think that the same problems that he is pointing at apply to a donut, you once again cannot have been paying attention much.

Stallman can't separate free in theory

[aussersterne]

from free in practice, i.e. he is missing any concept of substantive freedom or constitutive practice.

Most users can make this distinction easily.

Free in theory but utterly constrained in practice is something most users don't care for. Since most users are not coders, most are much freer in practice with software that "just works." Sure, they *could in theory* be more free with free software that does less, since they could just rewrite the missing parts themselves, without IP encumbrances, but in practice, they would have to dedicate time and resources to learning how to code and architect software that most do not have the time and resources to dedicate.

The choice between "live without functionality that makes you more practically free" and "sacrifice other important parts of your life and study to become a programmer instead if you want that functionality" does not feel like freedom to most users, it feels like constraint.

On the other hand, "take this money that you already have, buy a product that you can already afford, and do the entire list of things you'd like to do" feels very much like freedom to most people.

Stallman's argument is a long-view, edge-case worry that will never affect most users. I'd argue that for 90 percent of the users out there, limiting themselves only to free software would actually make them less free in practice, because the actual, real-world universe of things they could likely manage to do with their tech on a day-to-day basis as a result would, in practice, be shorter.

Stallman's myopia is not new—it goes fairly far back in western philosophy. But as has long been pointed out, finding a way to drop out of society may be the path to the greatest freedom in theory, but in practice, society (roads, planes, trains, automobiles, electricity, grocery stores, and so on) makes most of us more free, even though it comes with a bunch of restrictions (a.k.a. laws) that don't afflict the lone "natural man" that has no connection to it.

But in fact the lone "natural man" is unlikely to ever be able to duplicate, in practice, every enablement and enabling facility that society is able to grant—even if he is free to duplicate them himself, without rules, when outside of society—in theory.

Re:Stallman can't separate free in theory

[CronoCloud]

Stallman's argument is a long-view, edge-case worry that will never affect most users. I'd argue that for 90 percent of the users out there, limiting themselves only to free software would actually make them less free in practice, because the actual, real-world universe of things they could likely manage to do with their tech on a day-to-day basis as a result would, in practice, be shorter.

This^^^^

I run Fedora, but I'm not giving up on the Nvidia propietary driver via rpmfusion.

Re:Stallman can't separate free in theory

[BadDreamer]

This is not even remotely true, as you would know had you actually bothered to read Stallman's arguments instead of only watching this intentionally simplified video.

It is, in fact, one of the main dangers Stallman sees with mixing proprietary software in distributions. Your myopia blinds you to that insightedness of his though, which is an irony in itself.

As to that it will "never affect most users", I will simply let Stallman's record speak for itself.

Original presentation

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite the many regards regarding quality I find his presentation absolutely refreshing, because it's personal and direct, not anonymous like the usual powerpoint presentation are.
Also he talks with passion and does NOT sound rehearsed - that's a big plus.

Re:

[kurkosdr]

(at last, a Stallman lecture that you can sit through) Now, as regards topic, presenting "free software" as the only way to gain customer rights is a recipe for disaster. It basically gives proprietary companies the "right" to never deal with customer rights complaints, because "if you want that use free software".

Closing a development branch

[sjbe]

So what? How does someone taking some free software I create and adding it into their own propriety product stop someone else from making some open source software using the same free, BSD licensed code to make their own?

The BSD license allows developers prohibit others from seeing, using or improving the source code past the point in time where it was put into a proprietary product. The benefits of FUTURE development are not shared. The development branch ends for the community. While I don't have an ethical problem with this if that is what the developer intended, I'm also not going to pretend that the community isn't being hurt. The rest of the world would clearly be better off having access to the source code than not.

Sure thing, the code may be included in a closed source system but the code itself never becomes propriety

Any enhancements to it do become proprietary and original code slowly becomes obsolete in a huge number of cases. After all, there was obviously a reason the added to the code. As soon as it forks into a proprietary product, that development branch is forever closed to the general public.

It is factually wrong. If you can't see or accept that then you really do need to grow up a little, both politically and intellectually.

"Factually wrong"? Prove it. You appear to be arguing that BSD licensed software is not regularly incorporated into proprietary products which is quite incorrect. Since you and I both know that happens on a regular basis (you admit as much) I'm a little puzzled where you think I'm wrong. A useful BSD licensed product WILL almost inevitably become part of a proprietary product at some point. While that if the developer choice to make, it happens constantly. Apple, Sun Microsystems, and countless other companies have significant parts of their business based on taking BSD licensed software and "enhancing" it in proprietary products.

"Factually wrong"? I think not.

Future development is what matters

[sjbe]

Has Apple somehow robbed the world of the original BSD-licensed software they based their OS on?

They have robbed the world of the code Apple builds off that BSD licensed software. The original code has a utility half-life and to remain useful over time it requires continued development. Apple has closed off a development branch that other might find valuable just like Apple did. The ENTIRE reason we give a shit about source code is so that someone can do something with it tomorrow. Otherwise you might as well just release a binary which is what Apple eventually did. Someone basically did Apple's work for them and Apple has gone on to make billions off of that work without so much as a thank you. Nobody can build off their work because they do not share.

The worst you can argue is that they're being poor citizens

That's a pretty bad thing to be accused of.

If the OpenBSD community cared about "preventing that from happening," well... they probably would've chosen a different license - don't ya think?

Probably so. Pity they don't seem to give a shit about the community they live in.

Re:Future development is what matters

[Anonymous Coward]

The original code has a utility half-life and to remain useful over time it requires continued development.

Yes, and Apple has taken on the task of continuing to develop their own fork of it, in-house.

The ENTIRE reason we give a shit about source code is so that someone can do something with it tomorrow. Otherwise you might as well just release a binary which is what Apple eventually did. Someone basically did Apple's work for them and Apple has gone on to make billions off of that work without so much as a thank you. Nobody can build off their work because they do not share.

I'll tel you what: when you write some software, you should choose a license that prevents Apple from doing this. They exist. The fact that they exist, and the people licensing under OpenBSD didn't choose them suggests that they didn't CARE whether or not somebody else used the code they wrote in a proprietary manner. If THEY don't care, then you should stop trying to 'liberate' them, and simply focus on your own software.

That's a pretty bad thing to be accused of.

Not really. Someone who doesn't vote is a pretty bad citizen too. Somebody who does everything they can to get out of jury duty is a pretty bad citizen too. People do this shit every day, and we don't call them names or ostracize them for it. Why is Apple different? Because they've done something that offends your precious sensibilities, but which is fully allowed for both by the law, and by the people who wrote the software and chose a BSD license for it?

You're an idiot.

[CountBrass]

You're an idiot.

"...and wants all software to be open-source."

No, he absolutely does not want all software to be "open-source".

He espouses 4 freedoms which can only be achieved through "FREE/Libre software".

"Open-source" has different aims and he speaks against them.

The rest of your post is equally ill informed and utterly misses his points, which demonstrated either you didn't even bother watching the TEDx video before vomiting out your rather moronic post or you were incapable of understanding.

Free software is literally nothing to do with whether "it's harder to write and debug applications".

Re:You're an idiot.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not "TEDx", you noobie fuck, it's just "TED". It's like you've never ever heard of them before.

Re:You're an idiot.

[Grishnakh]

You're an idiot. It's "TED", not "TEDx". Only a complete moron would make a mistake like that. You've demonstrated you know absolutely nothing about TED with such an idiotic mistake.

Re:You're an idiot.

[CountBrass]

It is TEDx, shit for brains.

Try watching the video before you share your inane ramblings that would embarrass an amoeba: it's right on the splash screen at the start and the end.

Or perhaps you were too busy drooling to notice.

Public performance

[tepples]

Merely using a software program over the network

How is this not public performance of the computer program?

Re:Public performance

[diamondmagic]

A computer program is a literary work; not a song, audiovisual work, or similar. You don't "perform" a computer program, and executing it does not create a copy. If the concept as applied to literary works wasn't clear enough, the statute explicitly singles out computer programs as not infringing during the process of executing them.

Stallman's record does speak for itself.

[aussersterne]

I began to use the GNU toolchain on SunOS in the '80s; RMS and I are of the same generation, and I value his code and contributions.

However, at the end of the day, his utopian and context-independent understanding of freedom falls flat. Freedom is not about potential, or about futures unrealized. It is about agency, today—at least for most people.

In very simple terms, if what you want is the freedom to watch DRM'ed content that you value, then RMS has no answer for you other than sacrifice—i.e. give up that freedom in the interest of some other freedom that he promises will be better. But that's not an answer to the question, nor is it—practically speaking—freedom at all. I want to watch that movie. RMS suggests that I should choose not to, as a matter of ethnical responsibility and self-interest.

But I already know where my self-interest lies—in watching the movie. And the ethical responsibility to others may be laudable—but it rings hollow to call that a measure of freedom: "Your freedom lies in not doing what you want to do, and others not doing what they want to do."

That's a strange definition of freedom, indeed. It's rather like other utopian versions of freedom, say under the Soviet system—"We are all setting each other free! We have almost no freedom at all today, particularly in comparison to others, but by god, someday, maybe a few decades or a few generations down the road, we'll get there and have far more than them! In the meantime, heads down and sacrifice, everyone! And stop complaining!"

You just won't get that far in the world if you're selling that as "freedom."

Re:Stallman's record does speak for itself.

[BadDreamer]

"Freedom" to watch DRM'ed content?

You're asking for the freedom to be shafted.

RMS is asking you to reconsider.

The choice is yours.

I, and most other consumers, have already made the

[aussersterne]

choice. Again—the freedom to do what we want vs. the inability to do the things that we want/need to do, yet labeled conveniently as "more freedom (*though you can't do what you want/need to do with it)."

It's a losing argument. I'm happy to pay for a view. The market has set prices reasonably well. I'm happy to pay for Kindle books, for an iPad, for Adobe Creative Cloud, and many other things. They enable me to do the things that I need to do before I *die*.

Free software can offer none of these things right now. My life is finite; I don't have time to wait for the second coming before doing my computing. The freedom to be shafted? Sure, I suppose if that's how you want to see it. Nonetheless, it's what I want to do. Telling me not to, then selling that to me as "freedom" is just not persuasive. Paternalistic, sure. Persuasively free? Not really.

I used Linux exclusively as my desktop for 17 years (1993-2010). I did it because Linux did what I needed at a price that I needed—for most of that time. Toward the end, it became clear that Linux wasn't able to do the things that I wanted to be able to do—that it was restricting my freedom. The pendulum had swung; I switched to the GNU toolchain way back in the SunOS days because it gave me more freedom, not for ideological reasons, but for practical ones—the freedom to get stuff done that I couldn't otherwise get done; by 2007 or so, being stuck with the FSF world was like using stock SunOS back in the '80s—there were things I wanted to get done that I just plain needed other tools in order to accomplish. I was willing, and remain willing (and most consumers are willing) to pay a reasonable cost to accomplish those things. When powerful computing cost $tens of thousands, GNU was persuasive. But now that it's priced reasonably, we're happy to pay.

The heavy costs of a complete platform switch in mid-life kept me on Linux from about 2007 through 2010, but eventually it became clear that a switch was in order. My labor in maintaining a working Linux desktop and trying to bang free and open software into shape to do the things I needed was exceeding the costs of buying an off-the-shelf solution from a proprietary vendor, by several orders of magnitude.

FSF advocates can argue all they want that somewhere down the road, as a result of my having chosen a "non-free" platform, my freedom will be restricted—but I'll be happy to deal with that eventuality when it comes. I have no interest in sitting around for decades to wait and see if more freedom to accomplish my tasks arrives in pure FSFland; by then, my working years will be over. It's not a tenable proposition.

Re:I, and most other consumers, have already made

[BadDreamer]

Congratulations on your complimentary Cool Aid. But did you have to drink it all in one go?

If you want to get shafted, be my guest. Just don't expect me to thank you, because when you ask for a shafting you reduce *my* freedom by making it that much harder to get rid of DRM.

Why does everyone have to be a showman?

[dbIII]

Why does everyone have to be a showman? For example, Reagan as a professional actor was better at looking "Presidential" than any other US President but that doesn't mean he was the best President of all time. The ideas of RMS should stand or fall on their own merits instead of being sold via a show, and I for one am happy that he's cut the condescending jokes and the time wasting "saint" skit from back when he was trying to put on a show.

but apparently too arrogant to learn how to present his argument effectively.

I don't think that's the reason because he used to try far too hard IMHO to push things, he was doing something like your advice suggests and it was less effective than what he's doing now. The show didn't work earlier so you get bald content laid out instead and hopefully he's also given up on well rehearsed attacks on people that use "free" in terms of a dictionary definitions instead of the personal definition of RMS. It's better to get content than such repetitive time wasting.
For about five years every RMS interview was exactly like every other - a rant at some poor reporter who dared to use the word "free" and the "Linux? Never HURD of it!" joke. That was RMS as a showman. It's better for everyone if he's just himself laying out the information to be taken on it's merits instead of trying to sell something or put on a show.

Also on YouTube

[tiltowait]

The webm video kept sticking for me (right around the part about sacrificing convenience . . .) so I found the TEDx Talks video.

Better video link

[7-Vodka]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I watched and was disappointed.

[JThundley]

I love Stallman, but I was very disappointed in this talk. I had the crazy idea that I'd watch it with my girlfriend to show her some Free software ideals, but I don't think Stallman did a good job here. He clears his throat in a strange way very often and he cut down his speech so much that a lot of the meaning is lost. I found myself mentally tuning out very quickly. I think I could do a better job of explaining his positions quickly to non-techies in an accessible way.

Because he's putting on a show

[sjbe]

Why does everyone have to be a showman?

Because he's putting on a show. Quality of the presentation matters. A lot. Especially if you are trying to persuade others on a topic they are not familiar with. If he's not good at presenting then let someone who is good at it do presentation. I realize he is sort of the figurehead for the movement but part of being a good leader is knowing your limitations. He clearly is not very good in front of a crowd in a context like this. Maybe he's better speaking in other formats but he wasn't good here. Geeks tend to be uncomfortable with the truth that sometimes image matters. Your message isn't just what is being said but how it is being said and by whom. A stupid message well delivered will be far more convincing than an brilliant idea poorly expressed.

Reagan as a professional actor was better at looking "Presidential" than any other US President but that doesn't mean he was the best President of all time.

True but it's a LOT easier to get people to listen to what you have to say if you are charming and persuasive and look the part of a leader. RMS is certainly not charming and at least in this talk I don't think he was very persuasive either and he never has looked the part of a leader. The best leaders aren't always the most telegenic but the ones that aren't usually know that and stay away from the camera. RMS should play to his strengths and it seems that TED talks are not one of them. Frankly as a supported of free software I'm kind of embarrassed that this guy gets the platform. I strongly suspect that a lot of people came away thinking RMS is a weirdo with weird ideas that don't apply to their lives.

It's better for everyone if he's just himself laying out the information to be taken on it's merits instead of trying to sell something or put on a show.

That sounds like it should be right but in the real world it doesn't work that way. He is "selling" an idea and there are ways to do that that work well. Showmanship is a part of the equation. I more or less agree with his thesis but the argument he presented in this TED talk wasn't logical or systematic or credible if you aren't already convinced. If you are going to make the argument that "you control software or software controls you", you're going to have to explain that. It's not axiomatic. It was poorly presented and really didn't understand the audience. He clearly didn't spend time rehearsing or preparing and for a talk like this you have to spend a HUGE amount of time rehearsing and polishing. The reason that politicians sound so polished in their stump speeches is that they've given that exact same speech hundreds or even thousands of times. They know exactly the right cadence, how to deliver the jokes, how to make it sound off the cuff even though it isn't. This takes practice and lots of it.

Remember that he is making a political argument. He's trying to convince and persuade people of an idea that they are not forced to go along with. Simply having the superior argument is not even close to sufficient. You can still lose even if you are right.

No, he's informing the converted

[dbIII]

However, to be blunt, when he did actually try to put some effort into presentation it just came off as fake, silly and condescending so IMHO he's better sticking with his talents instead of trying to put on a show with improvement hampered by so many people going on about how wonderful he is on matters unrelated to presentation.
Also anybody that is going to see him is already "sold" on the idea so content matters more than trying to be convincing.