Slashdot Mirror
The GNU Manifesto Turns Thirty
An anonymous reader writes: It was March, 1985 when Richard M. Stallman published the GNU Manifesto in Dr. Dobb's Journal of Software Tools. Thirty years on, The New Yorker has an article commemorating its creation and looking at how it has shaped software in the meantime. "Though proprietary and open-source software publishers might appear at the moment to have the upper hand, Stallman's influence with developers (among whom he is known simply by his initials, 'rms') remains immense. When I asked around about him, many people spoke of him as one might of a beloved but eccentric and prickly uncle. They would roll their eyes a bit, then hasten to add, as more than one did, 'But he's right about most things.' I told Stallman that I'd spoken with several developers who venerate his work, and who had even said that without it the course of their lives might have been altered. But they don't seem to do what you say, I observed; they all have iPhones. 'I don't understand that either,' he said. 'If they don't realize that they need to defend their freedom, soon they won't have any.'"
I see very little ever coming from RMS that does not imply or pertain to open-source. If you have certain rights over the software, we're out of the field of proprietary, out of the field of freeware, out of every category EXCEPT open-source. The freedoms he wants are only given by open-source.
Thus, such distinctions only contribute to confusion and buzzwordmanship. I might distinguish liberal licences (e.g. BSD) from less liberal (e.g. GPL) from even less liberal (e.g. MS "open access" source agreements where you can't actually DO anything interesting with the code but might be able to see it) but actually they are all (to some extent) open-source, if not all "Free". The boundary. however, is overlapping if it exists at all and I think we all know that by "Open Source" we really tend towards the licences where you can DO SOMETHING with the code anyway.
So I find all the "not Linux, but GNU/Linux", "not Open, but instead Free" junk to just be unnecessary press facetime.
If you are advocating rights over the software you use, you are implying open-source and the ability to manipulate that source (at least for yourself). It's part and parcel of the same thing. Even if it's in the "we need a way for a user to do X on machine Y and all methods are proprietary", you're basically implying that someone needs to do X on Y in an open-source way to allow the user to do that (e.g. get GRUB bootloaders running on exotic proprietary hardware, etc.).
The ability to audit is also linked directly to the ability and right to see the source.
Thus, let's not try to break the issue down further. You want to be able to see everything the machine does? Then you need open-source, top-to-bottom.
The methodology is the ONLY practical way (maybe only way at all) to implement the philosophy.
Such pedantry is EXACTLY what's confusing people, and tying the word "Free" (which people read without the capital "F") into open-source, where it has little place (most open-source is free in both senses, but it certainly doesn't run to all).