Slashdot Mirror
After 30 Years of the Free Software Foundation, Where Do We Stand?
An anonymous reader writes with this interview with John Sullivan, Executive Director of The Free Software Foundation. "There is a growing concern about government surveillance. At the same time, those of us who live and breathe technology do so because it provides us with a service and freedom to share our lives with others. There is a tacit assumption that once we leave the store, the device we have in our pocket, backpack, or desk is ours. We buy a computer, a tablet, a smartphone, and we use applications and apps without even thinking about who really owns the tools and whether we truly own any of it. You purchase a device, yet you are not free to modify it or the software on it in any way. It begs the question of who really owns the device and the software?"
...it raises the question.
Out of the box, the devices are not "Free" in the sense you can modify them directly.
But you ARE legally able to Free any device. Jailbreaking was explicitly declared legal to do, and indeed plenty of people do so.
As long as you are legally able to Free a device, I think we are OK - I don't see the need to force a device to be inherently insecure for millions so thousands of people can expend no effort to modify how a device works.
I still donate to the FSF (and begrudgingly the EFF) every year because I think it's good someone is keeping an eye on all this and striving to make things that are wholly Free. But I just don't see where it's realistic or even a good idea to hold every product to that standard.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Perhaps Stallman and company could be forgiven for initially choosing a misleading term, but why haven't they made any effort to correct their terminology over the years?
Ehhhhh no, it was kind of the other way around. Here's a good article about the rebranding of "Open Source" away from "Free Software."
In the Beginning, everybody understood the "free as in beer and free as in speech" thing. To be honest, it's a wonderfully geeky nomenclature. Free has two (primary) meanings, both of which apply to our software! Using that one word saves bandwidth! But geeks are very poor at branding, or expecting other people to understand their precise use of words.
In the late 90s and early 2000s, Tim O'Reilly and pals redefined "free software" to mean what you think of today as "open source." They kept the "free as in beer" (design methodology) bit but jettisoned the "free as in speech" (social movement) bit because all that commie talk doesn't fly when they're trying to make a buck.
The FOSS community is not unaware of this, and has tried to counteract this with the word "libre," meaning "free as in liberty." But the damage is basically done. And besides, they were the Free Software Foundation first. Why should they have to change? They're not the ones who suck.
Note, in contrast, how vitally important precise and explicit terminology becomes to these folks when they want to receive what they believe to be adequate credit for "the GNU/Linux System". In that case, sloppy terminology like "Linux" simply cannot be tolerated.
No, like I said, the initial naming was good. It was Free. Free as in beer, free as in speech. That one word worked perfectly. Again, this is before the words were muddied to appeal to business interests.
They only call it "GNU/Linux" when you're talking about...GNU/Linux. Again, precise definition. You call your system "Linux" but all those commands you're typing, cp, mv, grep, are GNU. Linux is just the kernel. Android, however, is...the Android variant of Linux, and GNU makes no claim on it and doesn't expect you to call it GNU/Android because there's no GNU in it.
To me, their reaction to LLVM is the most telling sign I've seen yet of what's really important to them. It's all about ego.
No, absolutely not. What's really important to them is the principle of copyleft. That no, they will not compromise when it comes to the principles that free (libre) software must stay free (libre). Today candy, tomorrow shackles. In this world where freaking everybody compromises their principles, it's nice to see somebody who says "nope. Nope nope nope. This is what we believe, and we're sticking to it."
Did you read the rest of what I said about "embrace, extend, and extinguish?" Stallman takes the long view. I honestly have no idea what you're going for with the Apple bit. Apple closes their shit off, won't let you install what you want on your device, spies on you, hands that info to the government...they can take their "benefits" and cram them right up the ass of Steve Job's dessicated corpse.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.