Slashdot Mirror
Interviews: RMS Answers Your Questions
The Free Software Foundation will be celebrating its 30th anniversary on Oct. 3rd. Recently, you had a chance to ask its founder Richard Stallman about GNU/Linux, free software, and other issues of public concern. Below you'll find his answers to your questions. Learn more about how you can join the FSF here, and help fight the good fight.
Companies Selling Actually Free Software?
by eldavojohn
I found your piece on selling free software to be pretty logical on paper. However, has it ever worked in the wild? Can you name companies or revenues that currently operate on this idea (and I'm not talking about services or support of the software)? I simply can't come up with a widely used monetized piece of software licensed under the GNU GPL whereby the original software was sold at a single price and shipped with the source code -- free for the original purchaser to distribute by the license's clauses. Can you list any revenue generation from that? I must admit I'm not exactly enamored with paying for free software (as in your definition of free) before it's written yet I cannot think of any other way this would fairly compensate the developer.
RMS: I have to exert all my self control to respond civilly after seeing the word "monetize". Implicit in that word is the idea that you want to turn everything into money. The only point in writing a program is to turn it into money. Feh!
I don't object to making money in an ethical way. I don't object to raising money ethically to work on free software. But when you talk in terms of "monetizing", your thoughts have become twisted in a direction that will lead you to be a parasite.
Simply selling copies of free software was an effective way to raise money when I wrote that article, and remained so through the early 90s. As you've noted, that isn't usually the case.
But we have effective ethical ways of funding free software development. For instance, selling support to commercial users, selling exceptions, developing solutions for clients' internal use, and crowdfunding. Simply asking satisfied users for donations works for some developers.
How do you feel about web applications?
by bigsexyjoe
I know you don't like Software as a Service. However, there are some web applications that really only work as a web application. Slashdot is an example of this. Do you feel that creators of web applications should be obliged to make their source code available? Also, if I am employed as web application developer, am I a bad person?
RMS: That's not quite correct. What I reject is somewhat different: Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS). This means a service that does a job that you could do by running a program in your own computer.
The two concepts overlap only partly. I don't think I disapprove of _all_ the things you'd call "Software as a Service", because not all of them are SaaSS.
I don't like to use the term "web application" because it is designed to ignore a distinction I consider crucial, between the software in the server and the software in the client. Even if they are designed to work together, they raise totally different ethical issues.
To avoid confusing them, I insist on talking separately about "services" and "client programs". Of course, I reject a non-free client program like any other non-free program.
As for the server software that implements a service, that doesn't directly affect me as a user of the service. I don't even need to know whether it's done with software or by humans. For your sake, though, if you use software in your server, I hope it is free-libre so that it respects your freedom and you have control over your own server.
Slashdot is a web service. In the past, one could access it with a free web browser -- no special client software was needed. Maybe that is still true -- I don't know. Many web servers send programs to run in the user's browser, generally in the form of Javascript code. Most of these programs are proprietary, and I use LibreJS to prevent those from running in my computer. That means there are services that won't work for me. I value my freedom too much to run their non-free software.
If Slashdot sends Javascript code to the user, it should make sure that code carries a free license and (if minimized or otherwise transformed) a pointer to the real source code.
However, I am not happy about automatically running a program sent to my browser by a server even if it carries a free license. For users to maintain a modified version of that software is inconvenient even if it is authorized. Thus, I'd rather not run substantial Javascript code. If I am going to run a program on my computer, I want to install it the same way I install Emacs, GNOME or LibreOffice.
As always, I don't want to talk about "web applications". We must keep web services and client programs separate.
Ethical treatment of your users calls for making all your client-side software (including Javascript) free.
I don't think web services are wrong _in general_, but they raise various ethical issues. For instance, you shouldn't collect any data about your users, or remember what they do on the site, unless the essence of the service consists of remembering this data. A secondary "social" (I'd rather call it "antisocial") functionality does not justify imposing surveillance on users who want only the principal functionality.
Do not try to excuse adding a brick to the wall of massive surveillance.
Re: On the matter of smartphones
by Anonymous Coward
How do we take smart phones out of the control of corporations and back into user's control? There's GNU/Linux for computers which gives the users freedoms, but there's no equivalent for smart phones yet. I see this as a serious problem because people are largely abandoning computers and laptops to move toward smart phones and tablets. So my question is: How to make a smartphone that truly has the user's interest at heart? (Not trying to sell them apps, spy and track on them, restrict them to a walled garden, etc.)
RMS: There are phones on which you can run Replicant, the free version of Android. Some peripherals don't work, but you can do calls and texts.
Portable phones have another problem: the radio modem processor which talks with the phone network always runs proprietary software, written for a secret processor. Nowadays it checks signatures, so that software is tivoized; Even if we had free replacement software, the processor would refuse to run it.
Even worse, that proprietary program has a universal back door, so it can be altered by commands sent by radio. In most phone models, the modem processor can take control of the main processor and replace its software. Thus, even if you have installed Replicant, the phone company and others have the power to remotely overwrite it with something nasty.
The usual "something nasty" is software that listens all the time and transmits all the speech it hears.
By designing the phone carefully, it is possible to prevent the modem processor from sabotaging the main processor or from accessing the microphone. Unfortunately, we know of no such phone model that can use its peripherals without non-free drivers.
There is another problem that we can never fix, because it is inherent in the way the cellular network works. The phone sends signals all the time it is turned on (except in airplane mode), and the phone network uses those signals to determine where the phone is located. That system records where the phone has been.
In other words, every portable phone is a tracking device.
I know of a possible fix for that: build a one-way pager into the phone. Then you can keep the phone in "airplane mode" (no tracking) nearly all the time, and tell people that they should page you when they have something to say to you. When you are paged, you can decide when it is safe to connect to the phone radio network and reveal your location -- presumably when you are in a place that is not sensitive.
The future of private and free tech?
by Anonymous Coward
My biggest concern in this day and age is the dumbing down and commercialization of computing. What used to be open, interoperable programs has now turned into ad based, proprietary apps. We've gone from having something like Pidgin being able to run all instant messaging clients ad free to now having to download a separate app for every messenger, for example (no one uses the older ones anymore, or they've been shut down). Also, free standards like email have been falling out of favor due to corporate pushes to lock down users into walled gardens like Facebook. Of course there's always the option of not using these proprietary apps, but it really hinders your social life. Also, programs (now called "apps") are designed to milk the users for money, rather than to benefit the users, as you know is the case with things like " defective by design" DRM.
Is there any way computing can truly become free and user centric again, or do you think it's truly a lost cause? If so, how can we do it without losing connection with the rest of the world who will not give up their FB/WhatsApp/Kik (and don't answer their phone or emails anymore)?
RMS: Please don't associate me with advocacy of something "open". I have never used that term.
I disagree with “open source”, of course. However, before that term was coined in 1998, the term "open software" was used to mean something else. It meant that users could choose from various components that could interoperate. I think that's the term this question refers to.
Unix was referred to as "open software", in that sense. However, although Unix was "open", it was not free software or even close to it. Being "open" meant that the user had (in theory) a choice between various proprietary programs -- but that's not freedom, that's only having the chance to choose your master. Being "open" was insufficient because what we need is "free". That's why I needed to write a free operating system, the GNU operating system, to replace Unix.
That's why "GNU" stands for "GNU's Not Unix".
The first step in opposing these evil tendencies is to refuse, firmly and persistently, to yield to them. No matter what anyone else does, I will never be a used of Facebook. I will never use those messenger cr...apps because they are non-free software; not to mention that I won't use the non-free platforms they run on.
If that means there are some people I can't talk with, I will live with that. I might want to talk with them, but not badly enough to surrender my freedom to do it.
Your question presents the issue as an all-or-nothing binary choice, total victory or total defeat. But that's not how it is.
It's a shame that they use those, but we don't need them to _stop_ using those things just in order for us to talk with them. It's enough for them to resume using email and phone calls.
You could send these people a card, once in a while, saying "I'd still like to be friends with you, if you'd like to talk by email or a phone call. I won't be used by Facebook or run WhatsApp. I can't talk with you that way, but that's nothing personal. I'd like to see you some day."
Then either they get back to you or they don't.
On the matter of privacy
by GeekWithAKnife
In your opinion, how can a government strike a fair balance between privacy and snooping powers? Given that the government needs to be able to spy on potentially dangerous people and groups and such desires have grown legs, wings and multiple heads over the years...
RMS: Over the past 20 years, digital technology has been used to implement a tremendous increase in surveillance. Most citizens of the US live under far more surveillance than the citizens of the Soviet Union knew.
As a result, the balance between privacy and investigation is totally skewed. It's not just a little off, it is wildly wrong, so much that it threatens democracy. Democracy depends on whistleblowers to tell the public what the government is doing, so if surveillance is enough for the government to find and imprison whistleblowers, democracy is directly threatened.
We need to redesign digital systems so that they do not accumulate dossiers about people other than court-designated suspects. Read here for more arguments, plus suggestions about how to do this.
We should also praise Edward Snowden vigorously on every pertinent occasion. The US political class -- which mostly tolerates or promotes oppressive surveillance -- condemns him and continues to demonize him. It's up to us to oppose that.
This is why I lead "three cheers for Edward Snowden" when I talk about surveillance in my speeches.
The next big thing
by laffer1
What do you see as the next big issue coming up with software licensing that isn't addressed with the existing GPL and AGPL licenses?
RMS: I don't know of any. GPL version 3 seems to be what we need; there is no flaw or problem that would require another license.
People have suggested making a "Lesser Affero GPL", and I agree it might be a good thing -- it would take the form of an exception added to the Affero GPL -- but the first step is to figure out what it ought to _do_. What uses should it permit that the existing Affero GPL does not?
I am interested in getting suggestions about this from developers that have real software they might want to release under such a license.
Microsoft's Contributions to Free Software
by jrnvk
It seems like Microsoft is starting to contribute more to free products. What's your take on them joining the community, given their rather different approach in historical times?
RMS: Microsoft's most important software continues to be proprietary, and malware too. In fact, Windows 10 is even nastier malware than Windows 8 was.
This is an enormous wrong, and we can't excuse Microsoft for this just because it develops some free programs also.
What are your views on console gaming?
by Kethinov
It's long been possible to run entirely free software on a PC, but the world of game consoles has been a proprietary hellscape for many years. In recent years there's been an attempt to open it up in some very modest ways, mainly through the proliferation of Android "microconsoles" and other Android-based set top boxes. Do you find these new developments to be a step in the right direction and are you worried as I am that they're not catching on very well?
RMS: Alas, I know nothing about them. Since you say "open it up", and "open" is not the same thing as "free", I can't tell from your question whether those projects do, or can, lead to a community based on free games.
What I can say is that I wouldn't run a non-free game any more than I'd run a non-free operating system or a non-free compiler or a non-free messaging program.
Teaching about Free Software in CS courses
by daveagp
I teach CS at a university, often including introductory courses. Regarding free software, what message(s) is/are the most vital to communicate to people who are writing computer programs for the first time?
RMS: Here's the message I would give:
If you become skilled at programming, you will come to notice how non-free programs, denying you the source code, restrict and oppress you. But non-free software is prevalent only because the users tolerate it. As recognition of its injustice spreads, we will be able to put an end to it.
I have chosen free software for this class because I value my freedom and I refuse to give it up. Also because I don't want to be responsible for leading you to surrender your freedom.
Please read this for more about this issue.
Then I'd prepare to spend the next class session discussing that reading.
GFDL?
by ISayWeOnlyToBePolite
The Gnu Free Documentation License (GFDL) has not been embraced with nearly as much love as the GPL and numerous issues have been raised:
by eldavojohn
I found your piece on selling free software to be pretty logical on paper. However, has it ever worked in the wild? Can you name companies or revenues that currently operate on this idea (and I'm not talking about services or support of the software)? I simply can't come up with a widely used monetized piece of software licensed under the GNU GPL whereby the original software was sold at a single price and shipped with the source code -- free for the original purchaser to distribute by the license's clauses. Can you list any revenue generation from that? I must admit I'm not exactly enamored with paying for free software (as in your definition of free) before it's written yet I cannot think of any other way this would fairly compensate the developer.
RMS: I have to exert all my self control to respond civilly after seeing the word "monetize". Implicit in that word is the idea that you want to turn everything into money. The only point in writing a program is to turn it into money. Feh!
I don't object to making money in an ethical way. I don't object to raising money ethically to work on free software. But when you talk in terms of "monetizing", your thoughts have become twisted in a direction that will lead you to be a parasite.
Simply selling copies of free software was an effective way to raise money when I wrote that article, and remained so through the early 90s. As you've noted, that isn't usually the case.
But we have effective ethical ways of funding free software development. For instance, selling support to commercial users, selling exceptions, developing solutions for clients' internal use, and crowdfunding. Simply asking satisfied users for donations works for some developers.
How do you feel about web applications?
by bigsexyjoe
I know you don't like Software as a Service. However, there are some web applications that really only work as a web application. Slashdot is an example of this. Do you feel that creators of web applications should be obliged to make their source code available? Also, if I am employed as web application developer, am I a bad person?
RMS: That's not quite correct. What I reject is somewhat different: Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS). This means a service that does a job that you could do by running a program in your own computer.
The two concepts overlap only partly. I don't think I disapprove of _all_ the things you'd call "Software as a Service", because not all of them are SaaSS.
I don't like to use the term "web application" because it is designed to ignore a distinction I consider crucial, between the software in the server and the software in the client. Even if they are designed to work together, they raise totally different ethical issues.
To avoid confusing them, I insist on talking separately about "services" and "client programs". Of course, I reject a non-free client program like any other non-free program.
As for the server software that implements a service, that doesn't directly affect me as a user of the service. I don't even need to know whether it's done with software or by humans. For your sake, though, if you use software in your server, I hope it is free-libre so that it respects your freedom and you have control over your own server.
Slashdot is a web service. In the past, one could access it with a free web browser -- no special client software was needed. Maybe that is still true -- I don't know. Many web servers send programs to run in the user's browser, generally in the form of Javascript code. Most of these programs are proprietary, and I use LibreJS to prevent those from running in my computer. That means there are services that won't work for me. I value my freedom too much to run their non-free software.
If Slashdot sends Javascript code to the user, it should make sure that code carries a free license and (if minimized or otherwise transformed) a pointer to the real source code.
However, I am not happy about automatically running a program sent to my browser by a server even if it carries a free license. For users to maintain a modified version of that software is inconvenient even if it is authorized. Thus, I'd rather not run substantial Javascript code. If I am going to run a program on my computer, I want to install it the same way I install Emacs, GNOME or LibreOffice.
As always, I don't want to talk about "web applications". We must keep web services and client programs separate.
Ethical treatment of your users calls for making all your client-side software (including Javascript) free.
I don't think web services are wrong _in general_, but they raise various ethical issues. For instance, you shouldn't collect any data about your users, or remember what they do on the site, unless the essence of the service consists of remembering this data. A secondary "social" (I'd rather call it "antisocial") functionality does not justify imposing surveillance on users who want only the principal functionality.
Do not try to excuse adding a brick to the wall of massive surveillance.
Re: On the matter of smartphones
by Anonymous Coward
How do we take smart phones out of the control of corporations and back into user's control? There's GNU/Linux for computers which gives the users freedoms, but there's no equivalent for smart phones yet. I see this as a serious problem because people are largely abandoning computers and laptops to move toward smart phones and tablets. So my question is: How to make a smartphone that truly has the user's interest at heart? (Not trying to sell them apps, spy and track on them, restrict them to a walled garden, etc.)
RMS: There are phones on which you can run Replicant, the free version of Android. Some peripherals don't work, but you can do calls and texts.
Portable phones have another problem: the radio modem processor which talks with the phone network always runs proprietary software, written for a secret processor. Nowadays it checks signatures, so that software is tivoized; Even if we had free replacement software, the processor would refuse to run it.
Even worse, that proprietary program has a universal back door, so it can be altered by commands sent by radio. In most phone models, the modem processor can take control of the main processor and replace its software. Thus, even if you have installed Replicant, the phone company and others have the power to remotely overwrite it with something nasty.
The usual "something nasty" is software that listens all the time and transmits all the speech it hears.
By designing the phone carefully, it is possible to prevent the modem processor from sabotaging the main processor or from accessing the microphone. Unfortunately, we know of no such phone model that can use its peripherals without non-free drivers.
There is another problem that we can never fix, because it is inherent in the way the cellular network works. The phone sends signals all the time it is turned on (except in airplane mode), and the phone network uses those signals to determine where the phone is located. That system records where the phone has been.
In other words, every portable phone is a tracking device.
I know of a possible fix for that: build a one-way pager into the phone. Then you can keep the phone in "airplane mode" (no tracking) nearly all the time, and tell people that they should page you when they have something to say to you. When you are paged, you can decide when it is safe to connect to the phone radio network and reveal your location -- presumably when you are in a place that is not sensitive.
The future of private and free tech?
by Anonymous Coward
My biggest concern in this day and age is the dumbing down and commercialization of computing. What used to be open, interoperable programs has now turned into ad based, proprietary apps. We've gone from having something like Pidgin being able to run all instant messaging clients ad free to now having to download a separate app for every messenger, for example (no one uses the older ones anymore, or they've been shut down). Also, free standards like email have been falling out of favor due to corporate pushes to lock down users into walled gardens like Facebook. Of course there's always the option of not using these proprietary apps, but it really hinders your social life. Also, programs (now called "apps") are designed to milk the users for money, rather than to benefit the users, as you know is the case with things like " defective by design" DRM.
Is there any way computing can truly become free and user centric again, or do you think it's truly a lost cause? If so, how can we do it without losing connection with the rest of the world who will not give up their FB/WhatsApp/Kik (and don't answer their phone or emails anymore)?
RMS: Please don't associate me with advocacy of something "open". I have never used that term.
I disagree with “open source”, of course. However, before that term was coined in 1998, the term "open software" was used to mean something else. It meant that users could choose from various components that could interoperate. I think that's the term this question refers to.
Unix was referred to as "open software", in that sense. However, although Unix was "open", it was not free software or even close to it. Being "open" meant that the user had (in theory) a choice between various proprietary programs -- but that's not freedom, that's only having the chance to choose your master. Being "open" was insufficient because what we need is "free". That's why I needed to write a free operating system, the GNU operating system, to replace Unix.
That's why "GNU" stands for "GNU's Not Unix".
The first step in opposing these evil tendencies is to refuse, firmly and persistently, to yield to them. No matter what anyone else does, I will never be a used of Facebook. I will never use those messenger cr...apps because they are non-free software; not to mention that I won't use the non-free platforms they run on.
If that means there are some people I can't talk with, I will live with that. I might want to talk with them, but not badly enough to surrender my freedom to do it.
Your question presents the issue as an all-or-nothing binary choice, total victory or total defeat. But that's not how it is.
It's a shame that they use those, but we don't need them to _stop_ using those things just in order for us to talk with them. It's enough for them to resume using email and phone calls.
You could send these people a card, once in a while, saying "I'd still like to be friends with you, if you'd like to talk by email or a phone call. I won't be used by Facebook or run WhatsApp. I can't talk with you that way, but that's nothing personal. I'd like to see you some day."
Then either they get back to you or they don't.
On the matter of privacy
by GeekWithAKnife
In your opinion, how can a government strike a fair balance between privacy and snooping powers? Given that the government needs to be able to spy on potentially dangerous people and groups and such desires have grown legs, wings and multiple heads over the years...
RMS: Over the past 20 years, digital technology has been used to implement a tremendous increase in surveillance. Most citizens of the US live under far more surveillance than the citizens of the Soviet Union knew.
As a result, the balance between privacy and investigation is totally skewed. It's not just a little off, it is wildly wrong, so much that it threatens democracy. Democracy depends on whistleblowers to tell the public what the government is doing, so if surveillance is enough for the government to find and imprison whistleblowers, democracy is directly threatened.
We need to redesign digital systems so that they do not accumulate dossiers about people other than court-designated suspects. Read here for more arguments, plus suggestions about how to do this.
We should also praise Edward Snowden vigorously on every pertinent occasion. The US political class -- which mostly tolerates or promotes oppressive surveillance -- condemns him and continues to demonize him. It's up to us to oppose that.
This is why I lead "three cheers for Edward Snowden" when I talk about surveillance in my speeches.
The next big thing
by laffer1
What do you see as the next big issue coming up with software licensing that isn't addressed with the existing GPL and AGPL licenses?
RMS: I don't know of any. GPL version 3 seems to be what we need; there is no flaw or problem that would require another license.
People have suggested making a "Lesser Affero GPL", and I agree it might be a good thing -- it would take the form of an exception added to the Affero GPL -- but the first step is to figure out what it ought to _do_. What uses should it permit that the existing Affero GPL does not?
I am interested in getting suggestions about this from developers that have real software they might want to release under such a license.
Microsoft's Contributions to Free Software
by jrnvk
It seems like Microsoft is starting to contribute more to free products. What's your take on them joining the community, given their rather different approach in historical times?
RMS: Microsoft's most important software continues to be proprietary, and malware too. In fact, Windows 10 is even nastier malware than Windows 8 was.
This is an enormous wrong, and we can't excuse Microsoft for this just because it develops some free programs also.
What are your views on console gaming?
by Kethinov
It's long been possible to run entirely free software on a PC, but the world of game consoles has been a proprietary hellscape for many years. In recent years there's been an attempt to open it up in some very modest ways, mainly through the proliferation of Android "microconsoles" and other Android-based set top boxes. Do you find these new developments to be a step in the right direction and are you worried as I am that they're not catching on very well?
RMS: Alas, I know nothing about them. Since you say "open it up", and "open" is not the same thing as "free", I can't tell from your question whether those projects do, or can, lead to a community based on free games.
What I can say is that I wouldn't run a non-free game any more than I'd run a non-free operating system or a non-free compiler or a non-free messaging program.
Teaching about Free Software in CS courses
by daveagp
I teach CS at a university, often including introductory courses. Regarding free software, what message(s) is/are the most vital to communicate to people who are writing computer programs for the first time?
RMS: Here's the message I would give:
If you become skilled at programming, you will come to notice how non-free programs, denying you the source code, restrict and oppress you. But non-free software is prevalent only because the users tolerate it. As recognition of its injustice spreads, we will be able to put an end to it.
I have chosen free software for this class because I value my freedom and I refuse to give it up. Also because I don't want to be responsible for leading you to surrender your freedom.
Please read this for more about this issue.
Then I'd prepare to spend the next class session discussing that reading.
GFDL?
by ISayWeOnlyToBePolite
The Gnu Free Documentation License (GFDL) has not been embraced with nearly as much love as the GPL and numerous issues have been raised:
- Non compatibility with GPL (both ways).
- Non-freeness (as deemed by Debian) of invariant sections.
- Cumbersomeness of having to print the full license when distributing physical printouts.
Wikipedia for example does not accept contributions licensed under the GFDL only. What do you see as a way forward in addressing the issues raised regarding the GFDL?
RMS: That is a fact.
- Two different copyleft licenses, each with different requirements, can't help being incompatible. Thus, CC-SA is incompatible with the GNU GPL also. The only way to avoid that is if one presents the other as an option, as some other free licenses permit relicensing under the GPL.
- You'll have to talk with the Debian people about that. I am not responsible for their views.
- The GNU GPL has the same requirement: every copy of the work must
_come with_ a copy of the license. I adopted that criterion so that
works won't get separated from their license.
Under today's insane copyright law, a copyright can last for more than a century. We can expect Disney to try to buy a 20-year increase soon, as it did in 1998. If you live 40 more years, works that you write today will still be copyrighted in 2125, unless we have defeated the copyright industry by then.
We have convenient ways for a work to refer to a license, and I expect they will still work 5 years from now, but we can't count on them to function in a hundred years. In 10 or 20 years, the World Wide Web could be wiped out by the cr...apps that most mobile operating systems promote. Or, considering a much smaller change, the US government might confiscate the domain gnu.org for posting forbidden dissident material such as this.
Keeping a copy of the license with the work is the only way we can make sure people several decades from now will see what how are allowed to use it.
I was disappointed when Wikipedia decided to change to CC-SA as its
primary license, but given that it has done so, I can't criticize this
policy.
I know of one way [of addressing the issues raised regarding the GFDL]: release your documentation under the GFDL.
I'm concerned that the issue of systemd wasn't addressed properly by these questions and their answers. Systemd is having a huge impact on the FSF, the GNU project, on Linux, and on the entire open source ecosystem.
Regardless of what you may personally think about systemd, it has clearly been the most divisive force affecting the entire GNU/Linux community ever. We've seen it cause irreparable harm to the Debian project, as well as causing many problems for many people (the huge number of bug reports and mailing list postings begging for help confirm this). Some long time GNU/Linux users have been forced to find alternatives, including the BSDs. Since pretty much all of the major Linux distros now use systemd, even switching distros isn't an option. These people have to leave the GNU/Linux ecosystem altogether.
The FSF should be shitting its pants about what systemd is doing to Linux, to the relevancy of the GNU software, and to the open source movement as a whole. Systemd has shown itself to be on the leading edge of driving Linux users away from GPL/LGPL/AGPL software over to software that's released under the BSD and MIT licenses.
What we're seeing is that a lot of former GNU/Linux users are now using one or more of the BSDs, using lots of non-GPLed software, and absolutely loving every aspect of it. They're getting OSes that are respect and embrace the UNIX philosophy, which in turn makes them extremely reliable and trustworthy. They're getting software that's better than the GNU alternatives in many ways (like LLVM/Clang versus GCC). They're coming to realize that maybe the GPL family of licenses isn't so good after all, and that maybe promoting more freedom, rather than ideology, actually does result in better software. They're starting to use software written for the sake of providing good software to meet real-world needs, rather than using software that was written to fulfill a philosophical agenda.
The GNU project and the FSF won't escape the harm that systemd is bringing to the entire Linux ecosystem. So it's very surprising that they haven't addressed the issue sooner, especially in a semi-prominent interview with a highly tech-focused audience like this one is.
Sentiment? It's because open source threatens people's cushy jobs (real or imagined) so they run out in force to flame RMS, Free Software, GNU, etc any chance they get.
tldr hater's gonna hate.
Keep up the great work, rms ...you're kicking all the right ass!!
I have to agree but it is hard at times
"RMS: I have to exert all my self control to respond civilly after seeing the word "monetize". Implicit in that word is the idea that you want to turn everything into money. The only point in writing a program is to turn it into money. Feh!"
He seems to forget that people need to eat, pay mortgages, and also that they only have x amount of time.
If you are going to spend 40 hours a week working on something you must be retired, rich, getting paid for it, or on vacation.
RMS gets paid for being RMS. Good gig if you can get it.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The FSF and GNU existed before.
Reading what Stallman has to say is always annoying and appalling. Annoying because he isn't very polite to people he's talking to, and he's always demanding folks take actions almost nobody is going to take in order to stave off a future dystopia. Appalling because you realize that all his previous predictions of future dystopia have come true.
It's too bad he didn't deign to answer the first question.
Also, he seems to have weird ideas that individuals are pure-hearted saints, and corporations are inherently evil and malicious. His smart-phone answer, which seems to indicate he thinks no person would ever, knowingly or accidently, do anything to impact the public cell network, should they be able to write their own radio drivers, but outright states that the corporations will install evil software on users's phones as a matter of course, is the most blatant.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Why he could never really get support for the Hurd?
I'm shocked.*
*Not really shocked.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
Would the phone as a pager idea really work? The towers would broadcast messages, and if your device matched the message, you would get a notification to connect to the network? Could you get 1-way text messages this way? If this were implemented on the cell networks, could I read all the broadcast or text messages in my local area by modifying my radio?
See subject: Yet /. "just loves" him (as far as 'polite' etc. - he's just forthright & honest about his views).
* I respect him myself - & I see your point(s) on the "dystopia" part - I think, personally, that "little revolutions" YOU start yourself, WITH YOURSELF & FOR YOURSELF, is how good ideas others notice take hold... doing it, yourself (then, after a good "testing trial run", possibly spreading those out to others, yes, for FREE!).
APK
P.S.=> I find them BOTH (RMS & LT) pleasingly refreshing in a world full of "politically correct" deceitful self-serving twits & weasels actually... apk
Indeed. I'd like to add these words and phrases:
- Best of breed # I want to beat senseless those who trot out this phrase in meetings.
- Managers asking employees if they "have the bandwidth" for additional tasks # Don't use this phrase; it males you appear like you're trying to sound cool
- "Nail jello to a tree" as a description of something being difficult # Sophomoric phrase at best
- "At the end of the day..." # Aaahhhggghhhhhhh, just don't use this phrase
- Ping used in context of contacting a human rather than it's ICMP inference
- Deliverables
- Snackable content
- "What's the takeaway from all this?" # No. Just no.
systemd is licensed under a GNU license. If you don't like it, use something else. I don't think Stallman gives a shit about the anti systemd whining. He is promoting a license philosophy, not dictating which designs are worthy and which aren't.
Free Software is a free market. Redhat sees more benefit in using systemd than in using sysvinit. So do many other vendors. As long as they release under GPL, Stallman doesn't care. If you want something else, GO MAKE SOMETHING ELSE. Your whining is not going to do shit.
Ehm, everyone IS tracking you and spying on you. That's not even a matter of discussion. Whether or not you care about it is something different.
That was his point.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Indeed it is true. We were betrayed. Coincidentally, I was interview maybe 1 or 2 years before the general public went ape shit crazy about systemd by a huge firm in the hotels/hostels business, and they were quite adamant they had Linux, but needed fresh blood to go full FreeBSD. At the time, I did not get it actually, silly me.
My main question is about libre computing. The alternatives are either refurbished obsolete hardware, expensive or a sham at the moment.
The problem with "monetize" is, the sense has become not just "make money from it" but "lock it up".
If by "lock it up" you mean "stop giving it away", then usually yes. Or to put it in /.-speak if what you have is:
1. Create great product
2. Give it away for free, sell service and support
3. No profit
And what you want is:
1. Create great product
2. ???
3. Profit
Then obviously the free software model isn't working for you. RMS doesn't care that you have bills to pay, it's the "ethical" way or the highway and you should rather quit than write non-free code. And that's where he jumps the shark for me, it's like an eco-freak saying that if you can't get to work without your gas guzzler, it's your ethical obligation to quit. Even if it means you can't pay rent and end up homeless, RMS can relate to that. Or that if you don't give away all your wealth and become a Tibetan monk, you're not charitable. In my world I don't have a problem with you taking your code/site/service and going non-free as long as you obey the licenses. If you can beat free software on your own or with just code with more permissive and make money, that's fairly earned. There's nothing wrong with working for personal gain rather than the common good, as long as you're not deluding yourself about it. And if you still want to contribute to free software, do that. It's no more contradictory than Bill Gates hoarding lots of money then giving it away.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Considering OS X is largely made of free software, the leading browser seems to be Google's spin of Chromium, Facebook uses PHP and developed Hack and developed the HHVM for PHP and Hack, Microsoft's putting WebM and VP9 into its proprietary browser, Android is the leading phone OS, and most web services run on Linux or FreeBSD with Apache or Nginx as the web server running apps in PHP, Node, Python, Perl, or Java against MariaDB, PostgreSQL, or some other free database I'd have to guess you're either extremely biased in your viewpoint or haven't really thought about your assertion.
Yes, and rather than say "I hate that term, and here's a quick digression why, but to answer your ACTUAL question...." he went full-on thought police and refused to answer the question because, gasp, somebody didn't phrase it in a way that he liked.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
And many of us unrelentingly believe that tracking and spying is wrong, counter to liberty, and at least in the US, not constitutional for many reasons. The net is cast too widely, and as a result, the innocent are besmirched by it.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
His problem there is assuming the rest of the world cares about his personal definition for a word they have a wildly different one for. The world at large considers the word to mean "make money from".
RMS has spent so long trying to argue that his definition of specific words are right, and never once has he stopped to consider that his tantrums about which word you use and what he thinks it means or should mean, are EXACTLY the reason nobody has ever taken him seriously.
it's like an eco-freak saying that if you can't get to work without your gas guzzler, it's your ethical obligation to quit.
It's nothing whatsoever like that. Didn't anyone ever tell you that argument by analogy is a logical fallacy when the analogy is false?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Agreed. Even if it wasn't, there's nothing wrong with money. It's a medium of exchange.
I need to buy thousands of dollars in plumbing services. I produce IT services. It's really, really hard to exchange those in a useful way without this thing called money that we've all agreed to trade. I can easily turn IT services into money, and plumbers will happily accept money because they can easily turn it into something else they need, like supplies and labor.
Money isn't bad. It's actually very useful.
The "problem" with systemd seems mostly manufactured. Given it's covered by the LGPLv2, I suspect RMS's only concern would be that it isn't under the GPLv3.
Everything you write seems to be unsupported assertions, attempting to drive to a pre-determined conclusion.
I often see claims like this, but they don't make any sense at all. Why would a corporation basically shit themselves and attempt to rip out infrastructure because of systemd? I have yet to hear anything that doesn't sound like reactionary whining, and most companies don't operate in a reactionary "OMG FUCK YOU POTTERING I KEEL YUO" manner.
I have to exert all my self control to respond civilly after seeing the word "monetize". Implicit in that word is the idea that you want to turn everything into money. The only point in writing a program is to turn it into money. Feh!
Strawman alert. The person is asking about how to converts one thing, free software, into money so he can pay the bills. RMS comes up with this bogus argument of "turning everything into money".
I'm not impressed.
The only situation in which I can see myself being "restricted" by closed-source software is if I didn't trust the company, and the product was poorly supported.
You may hold that view right up until the day your favorite closed-source software gets end-of-lifed with major security bugs in it, so you have to buy it all over again. Of course that never happens.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Oddly enough, Linux seems to boot fine on recent PCs in spite of widespread fears to the contrary. Sometimes you need to google for some (intentionally?) obscure bios setting, but that's about it. I suspect that Microsoft knows they will pay dearly if that ever changes.
Sure, you can't boot Linux on a msft surface, but nobody cares. If anybody cared I'm sure it would be done.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
It's nothing whatsoever like that.
How is it nothing like that? I'll give you a clearer quote from RMS:
RMS: Proprietary software is unethical, because it denies the user the basic freedom to control her own computer and to cooperate. It may also be of low quality or insecure, but that's a secondary issue. I will reject it even if it is the best quality in the world, simply because I value my freedom too much to give it up for that.
And this:
He asked questions such as, how do game developers, like himself, make a living without making proprietary software? Stallman replied with a stock statement that such a job is unethical and that he should do something else, and further elaborated that there are lots of jobs writing custom software for clients, and that those clients, if they're not stupid, will demand the source code.
I don't know if I can get it through your thick skull, but RMS says and has been saying for decades that making proprietary software makes you a bad person and the ethical thing to do is to quit your job if you can't do it in an "ethical" = "free software" way.
Didn't anyone ever tell you that argument by analogy is a logical fallacy when the analogy is false?
Didn't anybody tell you that falsely appealing to a fallacy is a fallacy?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
> [RMS]: Most citizens of the US live under far more surveillance than
> the citizens of the Soviet Union knew.
Technically of course he is right. In Soviet times there was no Internet, no cellular network and no technical means to process all this data. So it is obvious that now the governments have more means to spy on citizens. But staying just on technical merits you could have said that "most citizens of the US live now under far more surveillance than the citizens of the Regan era US knew".
The guy is just wrong. I live in Poland which was Soviet sattelite state (quite autonomous since it managed to free itself from Soviet grip). I remember my father talking about his workplace in communist times. Once on his job he joked about the shape of glasses the general Jaruzelski wore - he said he was a welder (since the glasses looked like welders). He said that in company of three other people in his workplace. Yet the next day he was called before party member who reprimended him. And this is not some unusual story - the truth about communist states is that about 10% of people around you were state agents reporting to security service (by will giving them benefits or forced to be f.e. blackmailed).
And that is how totalitarian surveillance works - it uses people not machines. People who spy on you will always be better than any technology (unless the technology gets somehow intelligent which isn't happening in a few decades).
I respect RMS but in this case he is really wrong.
Richard Stallman has been around a long, long time. He's seen the like of systemd before, and he knows what's going to happen.
Seriously, systemd isn't the first huge change to come down the pipe in computing. We've had several. He's witnessed the near death of LISP. He's witnessed the decline of the minicomputer and rise of the micro. He's seen "empires" (software and hardware company wise) rise and fall. He's seen UNIX rise to dominate the server room (IIRC, he's no fan of UNIX). He's seen non-free software dominate the desktop since the very inception of the desktop.
In other words, he's seen a lot of changes to stuff he actually cares about, and seen the aftermath.
I highly doubt he cares that much about the popularity of systemd vs. init. It's software - free software at that - and bugs get fixed, or you move to something else.
Yeesh, you anti-systemd people must not have been around for the ELF or glibc changeovers. It's no different. The world moves on.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
More distributions are choosing it because they feel it's a better solution.
Wrong. More distributions are choosing it because more distributions are choosing it. This is a textbook case of an emperor having no clothes and whistleblowers being vilified for their rude way to denounce it.
Now if YOU think that systemd is a better solution, why don't you enlighten us? Of course you won't, because systemd is not an improvement, it's a fork for the sake of forking, so like everyone who defends it your point is that "that many distributions can't be wrong".
Collective stupidity is a real thing. Look at the subprime crisis in 2008. How the fuck could anyone with a high school education ever believe that putting thousands of C- borrowers together could give an A+ pool? The same madness and lack of critical thinking is now rampant in IT.
systemd is a terrible system, hard to figure out, hard to debug, and extremely unreliable. It doesn't matter how many distros ship with it. It's a piece of garbage and shame on anyone who supports it just because other people support it.
lucm, indeed.
geez, you are really ungrateful. if it wasn't for RM and people like him, you wouldn't have free software or a decent open source model
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Newsflash: Obama is so popular, he's President. And was re-elected.
Waving your hands can't steal my vote, and thankfully it can't take RMS away either.
As somebody actually creating hardware, the age of open hardware is just beginning. It is just insane what is out of patent now, and what is available in free hardware licenses.
Maybe you're buying consumer hardware that doesn't respect your freedom, but that only tells us what you're willing to tolerate. Those of us who follow RMS's lead and don't tolerate loss of freedom are living in a wonderland where everything is just exploding. You can not only get open CPUs, you can buy a whole hardware dev toolchain with eval boards for each motherboard subsystem, all GPL. Chinese factories will sell you the complete toolchain; buy 1 copy of the dev board, you get the gerber files with it; they give you what you need to go to another factory! They know if your product is a success, you probably already like them.
You're just being a basement curmudgeon.
The vast majority of paid software development hours is in-house tools that are not distributed, and can be written under moral and ethical practices. It is exactly this sort of false-dichotomy nonsense that drives him (and me) nuts.
Guess what, software developers don't have to "monitize" their software, or literally, turn it into a thing whose function is to make money. They might instead engage in a standard human behavior that creates revenue, and write or use software that respects their freedom while doing so. Notice, there is no lack of understanding about commerce in this view. There is just a lack of interest in software that exists not to assist a separate human endeavor, but just to make money.
It is like claiming that the restaurant industry will come crashing down if chefs refuse to work at fast food. Or that people who don't want to talk about fast food, because they do something else, must not care about jobs.
So I would say to him "Congrats RMS, Apple, Google and MSFT really should send you a fruit basket, they couldn't have taken over all of computing without your BS dividing the community, congrats
uh huh, yeah because the community was soooo well organised without RMS and there are never splits and etc. Sounds like you've done f-all as well and want to lay the blame entirely on someone else rather than take responsibility for your own lack of action.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I wrote a lot of stuff, but the basic idea is that ... oh fuck it, you're not going to bother to understand why the person who started the sort of psychoacoustic research that led to the vast compression of MP3's, just as one example, do not deserve to be compensated in any way.
The field of psycoacoustics has been going since 1860. Most academic fields are the same in that essentially what looks like a large, major advance from the outside is actually an accumulation of previous ideas with an idea who's time has come. Of all those probably thousand people who have contributed to psychoacoustics over the years a few managed to take their tiny advances and get paid for them without a penny being given to any of the other contributors.
Not only that but the contributors still alive are specifically prevented from being compensated by the patents. So in fact your demands that one person/group be compensated in fact prevent what you claim to be in favour of for all the other contributors.
We can work around patents, I get it. But to deny that to the current developers of cutting edge software?
Let's take another example from a recent Nobel prize. The one on super resolution microscopy. Well, surely anyone getting a Nobel is bound to deserve a patent for their work, right? Except one of the techniques (PALM/fPALM/STORM) was in fact invented by three groups simultaneously and independently of which only one got a Nobel. I think only two out of three managed to get a patent.
Do you believe that one person who was working on it deserves to be able to lock others out even though the others also invented the technique completely independently? If you support patents, that is directly what you support.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
For the companies that I've talked to, the issue isn't so much systemd (which does solve real problems), it's the attitude of vendors like RedHat to their customers. People with large deployments don't like core parts changing without consultation and without a migration path carefully laid out in advance. They also don't like seeing stuff pushed before it's fully baked, especially core infrastructure.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
What makes you think that? Recent benchmarks show llvm/clang well behind across the board. At least it compiles faster
Recent benchmarks? They're comparing LLVM 3.5 (over a year old) with GCC 4.9 (over a year old). With the pace of current development (in both - having some competition has been very good for GCC), those are not recent, they're archaic. Oh, and don't overestimate the benefit of faster compilation when it comes to developer productivity, particularly for C++.
That is precisely the killer advantage of GPL over BSD license. There is no shame whatsoever in porting code if it is good. Rather, it is the professional thing to do. However it is a gross exaggeration to say the GCC team does only that.
The codebases are sufficiently different that it's not really feasible to port code over (unless you just lower GIMPLE to LLVM IR and plug LLVM in as a GCC backend, which is what LLVM used to do and how it was offered to the FSF originally. Fortunately for the rest of the world, the GCC community turned it down). Ideas and algorithms can't be copyrighted and these flow in both directions.
The killer advantage of the BSDL is that people don't have to buy into your ideology to contribute. Microsoft and Azul, for example, are both contributing a lot to improving the garbage collection infrastructure in LLVM (GCC has nothing comparable and the GCC attempt at a JIT involved spitting out a stream of assembly that was run through gas, because GCC doesn't have an integrated assembler, so would be very hard to adapt). In Microsoft's case, they're integrating it into their MIT-licensed CLR implementation. Azul is integrating it into their proprietary JVM. Apple has contributed a lot in this area as well, and are using it in their LGPL'd JavaScriptCore. None of these licenses would permit incorporating GPL'd code, so no contributions from these vendors would appear in a GPL'd project.
The project that's suffering most from Clang is not GCC, it's EDG. They've been selling a proprietary C/C++ front end since 1988, which is used by a lot of vendors. Those vendors are increasingly realising that if they invested half of the EDG license fees in improving Clang, they could be completely independent. The BSDL project is killing proprietary competitors that thrived while the GPL project was dominant. What does that tell you about the relative merits of the two licenses for promoting free software?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
There are distros that are avoiding systemd, but they don't seem to be very popular. Considering that, for example, a Debian user could switch to Devuan with minimal fuss there doesn't seem to be a huge migration. A lot of very vocal opposition, sure, but most users seem to be just upgrading their OS and either not noticing or not caring.
You say systemd is unreliable. That's a very specific claim that we can falsify. Do you have some evidence to support it? I don't mean people complaining on random forums, I mean some specific examples of how it is less reliable than the old systems in stable release versions of major distros.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
" I know of a possible fix for that: build a one-way pager into the phone. Then you can keep the phone in "airplane mode" (no tracking) nearly all the time, and tell people that they should page you when they have something to say to you. When you are paged, you can decide when it is safe to connect to the phone radio network and reveal your location -- presumably when you are in a place that is not sensitive."
This is actually a workable suggestion. The trick is to use a portable 3G/4G device. This can come either as a stand-alone model with its own battery pack or as a USB dongle that must be connected to your PC. The main purpose of this device is actually to provide mobile internet access for a device without a built-in 3G/4G connection (but only wifi or a USB port). But these can also be used to send and receive text messages. Google for mobile wifi or "mifi" to see examples.
You're blaming the person doing the right thing because the average citizen isn't following? If you lived 160 years ago, would you be blaming the abolitionists because there was still slavery?
He's not dodging questions. He answered directly, and he's very careful to articulate his exact position on everything. You seem to be making the argument that he should compromise on his position and that would help free software. Look at the technology world, most people in the open source community compromise on proprietary software, and that is exactly what has brought us to where we are today.
Except Libre/Open Office was being paid for by Sun for the longest time and it is not as good as Word.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Actually I disagree. It is the moderate people that do make the needle move. The crackpots just get all the press. As much as I like FOSS it has not moved the needle much at all. Most people still use closed source software. Even browsers are moving back to closed source more and more.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
On one hand I completely agree with you: He is out of touch with the mainstream. However, I would argue that it is we who have drifted from the mainstream and not the other way around.
We (computer users) are so willing to do things that are obviously against our best interest in order to get a "free" service -- gmail, facebook, linked in, etc.
Yet he is willing to actually go out and produce things that are in the user's best interest in terms of privacy, choice and freedom.
So, yes, he is out of touch but it's important to look at the reference point.
Will
remove nospam. to email!