The FSF Is 30 Years Old; Where Should They Go From Here? (fsf.org)

An anonymous reader writes: The Free Software Foundation is conducting a survey to gather feedback on where they should be focusing their efforts over the next five years. Should they concentrate on IP issues, UX issues, or something else? Is their stance on Free Software versus Open Source a battle that's already lost, and should they compromise? What do users think an ideal world would look like in 2020? And how miserable could things get? Without the FSF (and GNU), today's computing landscape would sure look a lot different.

Comments

To do

[SeriousTube]

Get Hurd done.

Re:To do

[Anonymous Coward]

Da, Comrade. Please to be having potato and half-liter of vodka too. Is cold standing in line.

Re:To do

[unixisc]

Best comment EVAR!!! Seriously, fork Minix and get HURD done. Or, if they don't want to be contaminated by BSD licensed software, work w/ Poeterring to expand systemd into kerneld - make it microkernel, and get the entire systemd suite on it - including editord, under the GPL3 or even AGPL3 license. After that, put emacs on top of it, and they'll have everything they need.

Re:To do

[unixisc]

But Linux kernel is not theirs, and all they do there is strip out any 'non-Free' stuff in the kernel, such as 'binary-blobs' that would make things WORK. Rather than that, why not do something that they BUILD from scratch, which they can bless w/ the GPL3 or AGPL3 license?

Re:To do

[jellomizer]

The problem with ideals, is they are never 100% accomplished, at best your ideal ends up as a major influencing force. But the problem with ideals, is that real life problems get in the way and makes things complex.

The FSF problem isn't that they have noble ideas, but the idea of Free Software, gets in the way to making a career writing software. Now some software you can make a good living with following the ideals with FSF, however other software product it just won't work.
The traditional Software Development (Closed source): You make the software then you sell copies. Simple enough, you just need to make sure that others are not copying your work, thus digging into your funds that you will be using to grow the software and support it.

Consulting: This is all fine and good, assuming the software is Difficult to use, hard to configure, or has a large scope. Not all applications fill that roll.

Distribution: This was a good method back in the 1980's and 1990's but with most of the population with over 1mbs connection, downloading FSF from other sources makes it difficult to make money off of.

Donations: There are some groups that can get donations, however you may have good and important software, that just isn't targeted towards enough people to get the donations to keep it going.

Mixed-License: This works, however it really distorts the ideal of FSF. By saying here you go Free Software but if you want to use it differently then you gonna need to pay up.

Re:To do

[unixisc]

That is a problem w/ not just liberated software, but also open source software, the way it's defined by the OSI. Way around it is shared source - that is when you sell your software, you provide the sources w/ it as well. However, you disallow further downstream distribution. This goes against the ideals of both groups, but it solves the problem of vendor lock in, while protecting the revenue streams of people who wrote that software for a career

Re:To do

[ale2011]

It's not easy to do software for a career. In most cases, it's not the programmer who earns the big bucks. Programmers are deprived of their inventions by assuming they are writing at their employer's dictation. OTOH, users are forced to run obsolete software because upgrades require paying anew. Software producers who adopt the free software model help both ways.

I'm not saying the free software model is easy, but we already tried proprietary software. Perhaps, software is just too complex to fit a simple law of supply and demand. So, what stops us from trying alternatives? It looks as if it is the fear of not earning as much money as possible otherwise. Greed. Not programmers' or users', but money makers' greed, as with any other business. Please consider the environment before using proprietary software...

Re:To do

[unixisc]

I agree w/ Open Source principles (not liberated software). The idea that one should use software that one has the sources to, so that in the event of either a migration or maintenance after an EOL of the software by its original ISV, the consumer can continue to run that software on newer hardware. Imagine if OpenVMS had been FOSS, so that after the demise of the Alpha, a customer could have potentially migrated all that to, say, a Power box from IBM. Or if Windows 7 was FOSS. That way, you're not forced to migrate to a Windows 8 or Windows 10 just b'cos Microsoft wants you, or you're not forced to buy an Itanic or an x64 just b'cos HP wants you to.

Where I break ranks is the requirement that a software author has to allow REDISTRIBUTION of his software. THAT is the killer here. If his customer is allowed to GIVE AWAY what the ISV has written, that dilutes the potential market. What I support is something b/w shared source and open source - that is require the distribution of source code alongside the binaries whenever software changes hands, but allow the DENIAL of redistribution or subsequent competition. That's a win-win: the customer gets the sources to the code so that even if the ISV goes belly up down the road, the customer can hire its own developers and continue to finetune the software according to their needs. At the same time, the ISV doesn't lose further opportunities, since this customer can't REDISTRIBUTE - either for free or for a price - either the original or even modified version of that software w/o the ISV's consent. Oh, and one more thing - I support there being an unlimited number of seats as far as running that software goes.

Re:To do

[ale2011]

Where I break ranks is the requirement that a software author has to allow REDISTRIBUTION of his software. THAT is the killer here.

I see your point. However, constraining redistribution of software may become impractical. Let me explain myself by example. I recall a study on Literary machines before the advent of WWW. It was hypertext, with provisions for per-access micropayment. HTML was much simpler and straightforward, so it won.

What about redistribution of profits? I'm not advocating communism, it has already been tried and failed. I don't have a solution at hand. Yet, it seems to me that software is more important to mankind than the current establishment. Aristocracy passed and nobody regrets. Now we have a different ruling class, based on earning money by selling goods and services. It will pass too. Software won't. How about helping such transition?

Re:To do

[Anonymous Coward]

How about helping such transition?

Transition to what?

Re:To do

[exomondo]

Please face reality. It may have been a nice idea, but obviously, after all this time, will never become practical. Better to concentrate on the rest of their software, and the Linux kernel.

But as the computing environment evolves we see changes that require the FSF provisions needing to evolve in such a way as to satisfy their mission, for example the GPLv3 and the AGPL. The Linux kernel is not an FSF project, while it is licensed under the GPLv2 there is preamble that overrides some GPL provisions with regard to proprietary software. It is not a vehicle for the FSF's ideology, it isn't GPLv3 chiefly because Torvalds disagrees with the FSF's position on Tivoization (and also because it doesn't do copyright assignment to the FSF).

If the FSF wants to stay relevant in the current and future computing environments they need to build a system atop a core that reflects its ideals, not one that is - at least partially - opposed to them and not interested in being an FSF project.

Re:To do

[Anonymous Coward]

Reputation: Your work on FSF projects demonstrates your abilities, making your time more valuable as a consultant, employee, trainer, speaker, etc.

They should rename their OS to COW

[Anonymous Coward]

You are all GNU. GNU says GNUUUU! GNUUUUUU! GNUUUUUU gnus GNUUUUU! GNUUUUU says the unix OS. YOU OPERATING SYSTEM DEVELOPERS!!!

Re:They should rename their OS to COW

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you invent some new dreck propaganda ? It is getting boring.

Huh?

[Hognoxious]

I'm not sure how UX issues are part of their remit any more than child labour or bees dying are.

Re:Huh?

[westlake]

I'm not sure how UX issues are part of their remit any more than child labour or bees dying are.

The user experience is make or break.

The geek ought at least to have learned by now that "free as in beer or free as in freedom" is not a driving force for most users.

Re:Huh?

[thejam]

The geek ought at least to have learned by now that "free as in beer or free as in freedom" is not a driving force for most users.

RMS understood this from the beginning, but from his experience in the early days of MIT's AI lab, he saw the value of (software) freedom, and expended a heroic amount of effort in demonstrating the value and plausibility of this freedom (by jump-starting it with his own implementations), when most others thought proprietary was the only way to go. He has succeeded beyond imagination, at least for server software, wherein UX is less an issue. Now with Android, even end user-facing applications have reasonable UX.

Re:Huh?

[unixisc]

Isn't the GNOME project under their extended umbrella, since GNOME stood for GNU Networked Object Model Environment? Granted, the Networked Object Model Environment aspect has been dead for many years, but ain't it still GNU? If yes, then can't the FSF decide what GNOME should look like, and whether it satisfies their goals of total freedom i.e. GPL3?

Re:Huh?

[AmiMoJo]

What they call anti-patterns, or deceptive UIs that trick the user into acting against their own interests. For example, a prominent UK electrical retailer (Currys) will add an expensive and crappy iPad case to your basket automatically if you try to buy an iPad. You didn't ask for it, and they are hoping you didn't notice it and just won't return it.

By the way, the law says that when returning stuff like that you only need to return the item itself, not the original packaging, so be sure to destroy that so they can't just pass it to the next person who got scammed. Often you can just wrap it in parcel tape to avoid spending money on packing materials.

The FSF takes a stand against things like DRM, this is no different.

Re:Huh?

[armanox]

Yes and no. I think GNOME, while it is technically a GNU project, answers to the GNOME foundation rather then GNU these days, and most of the developers working on GNOME work for Red Hat.

Re:Huh?

[unixisc]

Android has nothing to do w/ anything RMS did. Google put in the investment and effort to get UX experts design it, so that it's easy to use. The 'community' could have done something like that while putting together things like KDE, GNOME, GNUSTEP, et al

Re: Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

But they didn't because they were too busy making half a dozen of incompatible versions and forks of the windowing/UI system instead of working on just one system.

Open sources biggest drawback is that software is forked for political reasons, and is so much worse for it.

Re:Huh?

[Bengie]

"free as in beer xor free as in freedom"

Fixed. You can't have both.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

>> "free as in beer xor free as in freedom"
> Fixed. You can't have both.

Huh? Of course you can.

Whether something costs money is completely separate from what you're allowed to do with it.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not strictly true. Free as in freedom is often also free as in beer, but not necessarily the other way 'round.

Re:Huh?

[Hognoxious]

Well it's the same in that you don't like it and it involves computers.

I suppose that you could drive your car to the polo club, therefore BMW should make saddles. See, I can do tenuous too.

Fix printers?

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, that's what they have been founded for.

Copyleft is important.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not trying to be a troll for the ongoing license flamewar, but copyleft licenses are still insufficiently understood--even among coders.
A lot of what FSF talks about is digital freedoms in general, but I'd like to see them focus more on the realities of copyleft.
When you write your own code, it's your choice what license to release it under. We should all understand the copyleft options, in order to make an informed choice.

Re:Copyleft is important.

[tepples]

Then the FSF would appreciate your feedback on what the license recommendations and GPL FAQ pages leave unclear.

Re:Copyleft is important.

[ray-auch]

They leave unclear and unanswered _why_ there is a clause in GPLv3 that applies _only_ to a specific class of products.
If the Tivo clause is necessary to ensure user's freedoms, then why does it only apply to a class of products / users:

(1) a “consumer product”, which means any tangible personal property which is normally used for personal, family, or household purposes, or (2) anything designed or sold for incorporation into a dwelling.

Or, conversely, why do business / professional users get less protection, why is there effectively a field-of-use restriction in the licence (where it is more restrictive in one field of use) ?

If it is there to ensure freedom, why do only some users get the benefit, and if it is not then why is it there at all ?

Re:Copyleft is important.

[tepples]

Google gplv3 "user product" brought me the article "GPLv3, User Products Clause" by Allison Randal, which links to the GPLv3 rationale document (PDF). However, the explanation to which Randal's article refers is in rationale for draft 3 (PDF), not rationale for draft 4 (PDF), to which the link to the rationale currently redirects. For convenience, I quote the relevant excerpt from the rationale for draft 3 here:

In our discussions with companies and governments that use specialized
or enterprise-level computer facilities, we found that sometimes these or-
ganizations actually want their systems not to be under their own control.
Rather than agreeing to this as a concession, or bowing to pressure, they
ask for this as a preference. It is not clear that we need to interfere, and the
main problem lies elsewhere.

While imposing technical barriers to modification is wrong regardless of
circumstances, the areas where restricted devices are of the greatest practical
concern today fall within the User Product definition. Most, if not all,
technically-restricted devices running GPL-covered programs are consumer
electronics devices, and we expect that to remain true in the near future.
Moreover, the disparity in clout between the manufacturers and these users
makes it difficult for the users to reject technical restrictions through their
weak and unorganized market power. Even if limited to User Products, as
defined in Draft 3, the provision still does the job that needs to be done.
Therefore we have decided to limit the technical restrictions provisions to
User Products in this draft.

And it's not a restriction on a particular field of use; it's a requirement for distribution in a particular form, namely preinstallation in a device. It's not much different from the requirement in GPLv2 to provide "scripts used to control compilation and installation" (my emphasis).

Re:Copyleft is important.

[ray-auch]

Not in the license recommendations or the FAQ though is it - which was the point.

I'm aware of the passage from 3rd draft (which is not in the final rationale), as far as I am concerned it is a sell out to big corporate lobbyists. It basically says: some big corporate suppliers and users thought the status-quo (tivo-allowed) was the correct interpretation and therefore we'll exempt them from requirement to give their users this freedom. Seems some users are more free than others ? I wonder if they asked any of the end-user consumers who thought tivos interpretation was correct, or do those users not count because they are not big-corp? I wonder if they spoke to any small business users (the vast majority of businesses are small after all) about whether or not there saw any "disparity in clout" if they had a say half-million budget and were negotiating with, say, SAP, or Oracle ?

The final rationale says something about extending the provision (another incompatible GPL version and further balkanisation of the GPL world) if problems appear in currently exempted areas. Wonder what the big corporate lobbyists thought of that - "well we'd better be good" or "right we've bought a few years to get ourselves off this GPL stuff" ? Who they were is left unsaid, but various possible suspects are currently now pushing LLVM etc.

And it is not "a requirement for distribution in a particular form, namely preinstallation in a device.", it is "a requirement for distribution in a particular form, namely preinstallation in a device in one field of use" - devices in other fields of use being conveniently exempt from compliance. If you can't comply (say because of contractual, legal or regulatory obligations) then it is a field of use restriction.

Give up

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what they should do. It's over. Well before 2020 you will need a connection to even make the notepad work, and computing is increasingly becoming a service. No more general purpose computers in the home, only appliances, with most of the actual work being done on remote servers. In this environment "free software" will disappear. Embrace the future, centralization and control for everyone under a few supercorporations well connected to the government. It's a done deal already. Get over it.

Re:Give up

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet I can still buy an Atmel Microcontroller by 2020 and solder it to an LCD display and a handmade keyboard.

It will run the FuckAnglosaxonWorldDomination Operating System. Written using an Ada compiler which is not part of the mainstream ("make it fast at any cost") shite.

Also, chances are that I can buy a Chinese CPU or the Russian ELBRUS CPU by then.

Re:Give up

[Anonymous Coward]

A day may come when the courage of geeks fails, when we forsake our custom distributions and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of UEFI and walled gardens when the age of open hardware and unrestricted usage comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we fight!

Re:Give up

[110010001000]

Sure you can do that. But don't try to attach it to a Google(tm) or MicroVerizonSoft(tm) network. Not permitted.

Re:Give up

[thinkwaitfast]

According to most things I read online, that day is already here and past. Look at how much /. has become a political and entertainment site vs geek and tech.

Re:Give up

[unixisc]

A Russian ELBRUS CPU is something you could code on an FPGA, if the Russkies would give you the HDL for that.

Re:Give up

[Anonymous Coward]

It's unavoidable. People grow old and weary, and more pressing concerns take over and push ideals aside. The industry and government face no such restrictions. Generation after generation, they trundle on, crushing all opposition.

Re:Give up

[AuntieAlias]

"A day may come when the courage of geeks fails, when we forsake our custom distributions and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of UEFI and walled gardens when the age of open hardware and unrestricted usage comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we fight!"

Tonight, we program in HELL!

Congrats to Stallman

[Anonymous Coward]

They should go get stuffed. Nobody cares Timmy.

You did actually get the bit about today's landscape looking different. Stallman's retarded freedom policies have held back progress quite some.

Re:Congrats to Stallman

[Anonymous Coward]

I do.

Focus on what they do best

[110010001000]

They need to fight the coming tide of walled gardens and closed systems. The availability of freely programmable general computers is not guaranteed. We are seeing a rush towards closed systems like iOS and Android and corporate controlled app/software stores with signed code. I hope in 25 years end user programmable computers will still be affordable and widely available with access to the Internet.

Re:Focus on what they do best

[Anonymous Coward]

Closed systems are caused by:

1- Companies putting together largely open source software licensed with BSD and LGPL with a bit of proprietary cement.
2- Companies going SaaS, and thus using the GPL saas-loophole to close source their software.

The solution is more AGPL adoption.

But of course this does not address the bigger problem of data management (ex. client data usage and retention), user privacy, etc. This level of obscurity cannot be addressed by the FSF..

Re:Focus on what they do best

[Anonymous Coward]

They need to fight the coming tide of walled gardens and closed systems. The availability of freely programmable general computers is not guaranteed.

They could ... make freely programmable general computers and software that don't suck?

Why's it have to be GNU/Linux, we can't do better than that?

Re:Focus on what they do best

[unixisc]

They need to fight the coming tide of walled gardens and closed systems. The availability of freely programmable general computers is not guaranteed. We are seeing a rush towards closed systems like iOS and Android and corporate controlled app/software stores with signed code. I hope in 25 years end user programmable computers will still be affordable and widely available with access to the Internet.

How exactly is that Replicant project coming along?

Re:Focus on what they do best

[phantomfive]

Good answer.

Re:Focus on what they do best

[grumbel]

Not disagreeing on the overall point, one problem however with the Free Software world is that those fights often go into the wrong direction. Take the app model on iOS and Android, on one side it's a framework that is used to provide a walled garden, on the other side the clean isolation of apps from each other drastically reduces the potential for abuse and in turn provides a flourishing ecosystem of applications. On your average Free Software system by contrast you always have to worry about a 'make install' wreaking havoc, as there is no limit to what it can do. If you run a program you hand your system over to that program, you are no longer in control, you have to trust the software to do the right thing. This goes wrong all the time without even malicious intent, a wrong library here or there and stuff will break.

On the OLPC, which had a similar isolation model for apps, there was this idea of having a 'source' button on the keyboard, you could press it and it automatically jump you to the source code. You could modify things without wreaking havoc and you could share your modified apps with your friends with a click of a button. It never got fully implemented from what I understand, but as a concept it's still an incredible interesting idea for how Free Software should work. A system bulid from the ground up to encourage modification instead of a system where modifications are complicated, time consuming and dangerous. If people here of a new cool app on iOS and Android, they can try it with a few button presses. On a Free Software system I head over to Github, see a long list of required dependencies and essentially give up at that point, as more often then not, it's just not worth the effort.

Instead of fighting against stuff, Free Software would do well focusing more on building the better system. A system where all the software is under a Free license should make it easier to share stuff, but instead it's often harder. All the freedom the license give doesn't really trickle down to the user.

This is just one example, there are plenty other areas, like the fight against Javascript. Javascript is not the enemy, it should be seen as a building block for the semantic web, as it allows to decouple the data from the presentation, something that HTML claimed to do, but completely failed to do in reality.

Re:Focus on what they do best

[serviscope_minor]

On your average Free Software system by contrast you always have to worry about a 'make install' wreaking havoc

By what definition of average? I'll bet almost all free software systems have a working package manager. I don't have to worry about apt-get install doing dangerous stuff.

Re:Focus on what they do best

[grumbel]

I don't have to worry about apt-get install doing dangerous stuff.

Yes, but it does so by being a walled garden. The distri decides what goes into the repository, what version of the program and so on. As a user I can just consume what they provide me, my ability to change or object what they do is extremely limited and any more complex change will break the monolithic dependency tree. It's a system that violates everything Free Software should stands for, it works, but it doesn't give much freedom at all.

Re:Focus on what they do best

[ChunderDownunder]

very slowly I believe, as it's the work of a single figure of volunteers and whatever handsets they use or have donated.

Seems like an obvious candidate for crowdfunding - make a deal with Broadcom and produce a phone for under $100 piggybacking off the r Pi community to help work on the drivers.

Re:Focus on what they do best

[bug1]

They need to fight the coming tide of walled gardens and closed systems

Agreed, i think they need a "free system" licence that articulates their "respects your freedom" hardware certification.
Bring out a licence that allows developers to exclusively work for those who care about freedom.
We need to accept that 'mere aggregation' is damaging to the future of free _sytems_, and can only ever lead to free isolated software components that form part of a system, with the choke points controlled by our adversaries.
(but yea, watch all the hate from the 'i just want free beer' crowd)

Re:Focus on what they do best

[Anonymous Coward]

You're free to modify any part of the dependency tree.

Re:Focus on what they do best

[martin-boundary]

Are you for real? Open source platforms have long since abandoned "make install", with one or two exceptions. In fact, the "walled garden" metaphor was pioneered and developed by open source operating systems such as Debian (apt). The result was (and largely still is) a clean, virus free, simple installation framework. The commercial providers *copied* this idea because what they had was a cesspool. Even the concept of "distro" is precisely a curated collection of free software designed to seamlessly work with minimal fuss and offer a sampling of all the applications an ordinary person is likely to need.

Re:Focus on what they do best

[serviscope_minor]

Yes, but it does so by being a walled garden.

No it isn't. You can side-load software using any other repository system if you like (see e.g. bedrock linux). You can freely add and remove apt repositories and host your own, so you can load (or not) your own software via the main system if you like.

my ability to change or object what they do is extremely limited and any more complex change will break the monolithic dependency tree

They provide complete sources. You can make a deep change and recompile the entire apt repository yourself from scratch with your change embedded, then install it where ever you like at any time for any reason and for no cost. Furthermore you can freely share that altered repository with anyone you like.

You have complete freedom to do what you will with it. No one is stopping you, you have to put in work, that's all. Complaining you're not free is like me claiming I'm not free to walk out of the city in which I live. I am never going to walk out. It's a long and not especially pleasant walk so I won't do it.

This is not like an iPhone where for example Apple put considerable effort into stopping you running your own browser.

It seems like you're really complaining that you can't change a library version and have all existing software still work... well no shit. The software depends on that library.

Re:Focus on what they do best

[grumbel]

Yes and I am also free to jailbreak an iPhone. Just because I can do it, doesn't mean that the system is welcoming to third party software. The monolithic dependency trees used in the Free Software world are worse then what you see in the proprietary world. With Windows, as messy at it is, installing third party software isn't difficult and Microsoft goes to great length to ensure backward and forward compatibility to OS released a decade ago. It's not always works out of course, but it's a lot better then Linux world where every distribution is incompatible to everything else and even to past and future versions of itself.

Re:Focus on what they do best

[grumbel]

No it isn't. You can side-load software using any other repository system if you like (see e.g. bedrock linux).

Yes, I am free to not use the repository system that doesn't work, just like on iPhone or any other proprietary system. If I work around what the system offers then I gain more freedom. That's not a good thing, that's the problem. The repository system should be the very thing that gains me freedom, not the thing that gets in the way of it.

They provide complete sources.

Which are nearly worthless as the system doesn't provide a clean way for me to modify them and reintroduce them into the system. The next time I ran a upgrade my modification will be overwriting by the distribution. And when I put packages on hold or increase the epoch version I cut myself of from security updates and such. Repositories are not build for user modification, they are build around a central authority that provides everything and decides everything. The user can comply or switch to another distri that suffers from much the same problems.

Re:Focus on what they do best

[grumbel]

Are you for real? Open source platforms have long since abandoned "make install", with one or two exceptions.

Virtually every single piece of Open Source software out there uses "make install". Your distribution wraps the result of that up in a package which you can cleanly install and uninstall, but that doesn't solve the fundamental problems with the concept of "make install" (i.e. single global name space into which all packages go, no way to install two different version of the same package, no relocation, etc.). It's a fundamentally flawed approach.

The result was (and largely still is) a clean, virus free, simple installation framework.

Yes and there is nothing wrong with reaching that goal, the problem is that they did it at the expensive of the users freedom. Distributions still have no good way of dealing with software that isn't provided by them.

Re:Focus on what they do best

[serviscope_minor]

Yes, I am free to not use the repository system that doesn't work, just like on iPhone or any other proprietary system.

No, that's simplistic to the point of being deceptive. With apt you can hack it at every single level. You can add new repositories from other people (PPAs) you can create your own repositories (and share them with others), you can make your own dpkgs inside the main tree OR to install dependency free in /opt. You can side load and have multiple installed side by side.

No one makes even the slightest effort to prevent that, and some people actively encourage it. Bedrock Linux is in fact built entirely on the premise that you might want multiple different repositories installed on one machine. Nixos is built on the premise of a functional style packaging system which allows private user packages and multiple versions as a natural consequence of how it's designed.

Even without those you can do it yourself very easily. I have build scripts which create temporary chroot ubuntu installs of various versions (with caching!) so I can get fully automatic repeatable builds of a package I distribute. It builds against 10.04 and 12.04 for compatibility with old systems on my 14.04 machine.

On the iPhone, you have to root it in order to side load in almost all cases, and Apple actively prevent you from doing that by patching root exploits when they happen.

Are you really, honestly claiming that those two systems are more or less the same and that the former is a walled garden where someone is acting to prevent you from doing things?

Which are nearly worthless as the system doesn't provide a clean way for me to modify them and reintroduce them into the system.

Except it does. Grab the source package of the package of interest. Modify the code and make a new dpkg, RPM, tar.xz or whatever. Then use the package manager to install the new package to upgrade whatever the existing version is to the new one. I have literally done this my self AND used repositories where other people have done this for me (e.g. using libreoffice latest version tracking PPA in ubuntu, rather than the default system version).

Or grab the source, and configure && make && make install in a sandbox/VM, then copy the files back over. Now that VMs and containers are really easily available, this has become particularly easy, much easier than it was 5 or 10 years ago on Linux (smug FreeBSD users got jails 15 years ago).

Repositories are not build for user modification, they are build around a central authority that provides everything and decides everything.

Oh. Today I learned apt-add-repository and the AUR don't exist. Funny, I could have sworn I used both of those...

Basically, you're wrong. You can't just attack packages willy-nilly, especially core components and expect everything to work perfectly together. That doesn't mean they're closed to user modifications (they are manifestly not), it means that you need to take some degree of care.

Re:Focus on what they do best

[Anonymous Coward]

They need to fight the coming tide of walled gardens and closed systems. The availability of freely programmable general computers is not guaranteed. We are seeing a rush towards closed systems like iOS and Android and corporate controlled app/software stores with signed code.

And the reason we are seeing that is because the proprietary vendors are creating them and they are indeed good products. Free software will come up with a half-assed also-ran eventually to "compete" with the closed source incumbents.

Free software could theoretically compete with proprietary vendors but like most of the benefits of free software that is really just theoretical. The vision was that users would also be programmers and change and mend things on their systems. What they didn't realise is that a computer and its programs are simply a tool to end users.

Nobody wants a v0.1 release of an attempt to clone a proprietary system that 5 years later will have something stable enough to call a 1.0 release at a time when everybody has already moved on. People want good, usable, innovative products, this is something that FOSS is demonstrably by-and-large incapable of (yes there are very few examples to the contrary).

FOSS desktop, FOSS phone, FOSS tablet, FOSS smartwatch, etc. Relatively nobody wants them because quite frankly they are years late (if they exist at all) and they are poorly executed clones. Hey desktop Linux is a technical masterpiece but as far as being an operating system that can run the programs users want it is shitful, not a very good state to be in for a thing that's primary purpose is to run the programs a user wants.

Re:Focus on what they do best

[Dog-Cow]

Freedom doesn't mean "make it easy". You are just a self-absorbed asshole.

Re:Focus on what they do best

[grumbel]

There are two components to software freedom:

1) Being legally allowed to make a change or redistribute something
2) Having the realistic possibility to make use of freedoms granted in 1)

Number 2) is why the GPL exist, as the pure legality to make a change isn't enough, you also need access to source code and build files to make it practical and those are required by the GPL. The problem arises when the build files don't work, when the dependencies don't match and stuff just doesn't work. That to me is a clear violation of the principles behind 2). If I get the source code and am unable to reproduce the binary then something is very obviously wrong.

Re:Focus on what they do best

[grumbel]

You can add new repositories from other people (PPAs) you can create your own repositories (and share them with others), you can make your own dpkgs inside the main tree OR to install dependency free in /opt. You can side load and have multiple installed side by side.

Yes I can and in doing so I will wreak havoc to the monolithic dependency tree. There is no way to do a simple task such as installing two different version of the same package via apt. The system isn't build with that flexibility in mind.

I have build scripts which create temporary chroot ubuntu installs of various versions (with caching!) so I can get fully automatic repeatable builds of a package I distribute.

Yes and that is the problem. You had to literally abandon your main OS and reinstall a new one to get dependable behavior. That is a failure of the OS, not a feature.

Or grab the source, and configure && make && make install in a sandbox/VM,

Again, you are working around the system. The ability to completely by pass the package manager and doing things the manual way is not an argument for the package manager being good, it's the very reason why it's crap.

Oh. Today I learned apt-add-repository and the AUR don't exist.

Those fuck around with the monolithic dependency tree and cause trouble all the time. The package management system has no means to keep third party apps in a separate namespace.

Re:Focus on what they do best

[serviscope_minor]

Yes I can and in doing so I will wreak havoc to the monolithic dependency tree.

No you don't. This is 100% absolutely wrong.

I'm running 14.04 happily with a bunch of PPAs. I have gcc5 PPA, I have the libreoffice fresh PPA and one or two others. It works perfectly fine and there is no wrecking of the monolithic dependency tree, and regular updated happen just fine.

There is no way to do a simple task such as installing two different version of the same package via apt.

It's not trivial, no, but it's by no means impossible and not even that hard. I have compilers installed from 10.04, 12.04, 14.04 and the gcc5 PPA installed on this machine, all using apt. The former two are in two different chroot environments.

es and that is the problem. You had to literally abandon your main OS and reinstall a new one to get dependable behavior.

???

No, it's because I want to be able to go to any random linux machine and type one single command to get a repeatable build with zero fucking around. It's one of the first rules of good development: one single command to build a shippable executable. It will even work on an arch, gentoo or deadrat machine if I grab the dbootstrap script.

That is good practice.

Again, you are working around the system.

No, because the system allows and heck even encourages such things. It's not "working around" if yopu're using standard features as advertised. This is why it's not a walled garden.

The ability to completely by pass the package manager and doing things the manual way is not an argument for the package manager being good, it's the very reason why it's crap.

If you insist...

Those fuck around with the monolithic dependency tree and cause trouble all the time.

(a) no they don't and (b) no they don't.

The package management system has no means to keep third party apps in a separate namespace.

???

If they're fully third party and carry their own dependencies, then they don't really need to go through the package manager since there's nothing to be managed. So, stick them in /opt and have done with it. Nonetheless, some package managers do explictly allow such things, such as nixos.

But again it's not a "walled garden" because no measures are taken to stop you doing that.

Re:Focus on what they do best

[grumbel]

I'm running 14.04 happily with a bunch of PPAs. I have gcc5 PPA, I have the libreoffice fresh PPA and one or two others. It works perfectly fine and there is no wrecking of the monolithic dependency tree, and regular updated happen just fine.

How cute. You have three PPAs and call that proof that the system works? Try that again at the scale of the Apple or Android stores where you have to deal with a million apps from third parties.

PPAs plug into the monolithic dependency tree, there is absolutely zero tooling in place to ensure that they don't break things. The only reason why things don't break often is because people work very hard behind the scenes to keep things running. The monolithic dependency tree is essentially the Linux version of Window's "DLL Hell".

It's not trivial, no, but it's by no means impossible and not even that hard. I have compilers installed from 10.04, 12.04, 14.04 and the gcc5 PPA installed on this machine, all using apt. The former two are in two different chroot environments. That is good practice.

Yes, because your OS is garbage. Chroots and virtual machines are a workaround for crappy OSs that are incapable of giving you reproducible and verifiable behavior.

No, because the system allows and heck even encourages such things.

Yes, in much the same way as a broken car encourages repair.

This is why it's not a walled garden.

There is one monolithic dependency tree. Your distri controls it.

Take a simple everyday example: You want to install software "foobar", so you do "apt-get install foobar". Awesome, takes three seconds and you are done. That's how it should be. But now "foobar" release a brand new version and you want to use it right now, but distri won't have it for another release for six month. So what do you do now? Wait for somebody to build a PPA? Grab the sources of the .deb and patch them up to the newest version? ./configure && make directly from source? All of this is possible, all of this works. All of this is also a thousand times more complicated then "apt-get install foobar". Just like a jailbreak. Your distris won't stop you from leaving it's walled garden, but it won't give you much of a helping hand either.

Re:Focus on what they do best

[serviscope_minor]

You have three PPAs and call that proof that the system works? Try that again at the scale of the Apple or Android stores where you have to deal with a million apps from third parties.

The apps do not carry dependencies with respect to each other. PPAs which don't carry dependencies with respect to each other also scal arbitrarily. Are you claiming otherwise and do you have any evidence for your claim?

PPAs plug into the monolithic dependency tree, there is absolutely zero tooling in place to ensure that they don't break things. The only reason why things don't break often is because people work very hard behind the scenes to keep things running. The monolithic dependency tree is essentially the Linux version of Window's "DLL Hell".

No it isn't. You have no idea what you're talking about. It is perfectly easy to ship self-contained packages which carry all dependncies. There is no dll hell.

Yes, because your OS is garbage. Chroots and virtual machines are a workaround for crappy OSs that are incapable of giving you reproducible and verifiable behavior.

Wait so because my OS provides facilities where I can get reproducable behaviour it's crappy because I ger reporducable behaviour?

lolwut?

Tell me, what facilities does YOUR OS provide so that you can roll up to an almost random machine, check out your repo, type one command, and get reproducable builds?

There is one monolithic dependency tree. Your distri controls it.

Except (a) there isn't and (b) there still isn't. Between the various chroots, the stuff in /opt and the stuff in /usr/local it's just plain dumb to claim there's a single monolithic dependency tree.

Take a simple everyday example: You want to install software "foobar", so you do "apt-get install foobar". Awesome, takes three seconds and you are done. That's how it should be.

Yep!

But now "foobar" release a brand new version and you want to use it right now, but distri won't have it for another release for six month. So what do you do now? Wait for somebody to build a PPA? Grab the sources of the .deb and patch them up to the newest version? ./configure && make directly from source? All of this is possible, all of this works.

Yes, yes it does. That's nice I have options. You've also missed a bunch.

All of this is also a thousand times more complicated then "apt-get install foobar".

Uh...

sudo apt-add repository foobar-ppa
sudo apt-get install foobar

That's like totally a thousand times harder.

And there's also the option of providing a .dpkg which dumps it into /opt. That's very easy.

Or just untar it in to /opt.

So many single command options.

Just like a jailbreak.

You literally cannot see the difference btween an open system where you can do what you want and a closed system where (a) you cannot and (b) the manufacturer will close any routes if they find them. This is amazing.

Your distris won't stop you from leaving it's walled garden,

Then it's not a walled garden. Apple prevent you very actively from leaving.

but it won't give you much of a helping hand either.

You know, other than providing the whole PPA mechanism specifically for leaving. And the debootstrap script so I can leave via a different route with a single command. And the chroot command. And the whole LXC infrastructure. And the compiler tools so I can complile source packages.

So yes apart from the huge heaps of facilities they provide to let me leave they don't help at all.

Easy.

[Anonymous Coward]

And how miserable could things get?

Mobile-centric (we're already headed there) with mandatory identification tied together through the bullshit of a combined arms effort of Facebook-Google-Apple.

UX to increase user base, in turn for HW compat

[tepples]

If UX of a free application is worse on the whole than UX of the more popular proprietary alternatives, improving free software UX may increase the user base. In more concrete terms, there might be more GIMP users if GIMP were as easy to learn as Photoshop. User base is important because only the economies of scale associated with user base can make hardware makers willing to ensure that their products are compatible with GNU/Linux or other free operating systems.

Re:UX to increase user base, in turn for HW compat

[MacTO]

While it is important for FLOSS developers to look at UX, the vast majority of FLOSS has nothing to do with the FSF beyond using their license agreement. UX has also been outside the scope of FSF efforts, and choosing to put more emphasis on it is bound to alienate a lot of their supporters.

So yes, look at UX. Yet choose the right people for the job.

Re:UX to increase user base, in turn for HW compat

[stephanruby]

In more concrete terms, there might be more GIMP users if GIMP were as easy to learn as Photoshop.

Adobe Photoshop is easy to learn? Seriously? Hopefully, Gimp developers can do better than Photoshop in terms of usability. In my opinion, both Gimp and Photoshop are very difficult to learn.

And the only app that's breaking new ground in terms of usability is Inkscape (not that Inkscape is a substitute for either Photoshop or Gimp, it's not, but it's becoming better and more usable than all the other proprietary vector graphics alternatives).

Re:UX to increase user base, in turn for HW compat

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who tried to learn gimp, then bought PS, PS is far, far easier to learn than GIMP. Not having the worst fucking GUI paradigm ever helps quite a bit.

Re:UX to increase user base, in turn for HW compat

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the first thing that came to my mind was making Linux desktop offerings more user friendly. They aren't bad now, and in some ways are definitely better than Windows, but MacOS has raised the bar in some important ways that I think the free software world needs to catch up with.

Re:UX to increase user base, in turn for HW compat

[unixisc]

But ain't GNOME a GNU project?

Re:UX to increase user base, in turn for HW compat

[MrKrillls]

The way I see it Gimp and PS both have awful interfaces and are both a handful to learn. But, photoshop has a larger and more professional set of tutorials from outside the project, like videos on youtube etc. Gimp suffers from having fewer tutorials and a generally lower quality level. The two are similar enough though that I just look for the best tutorial for my needs, from either program, and then figure out how to adapt the results to what I'm using.

Re:UX to increase user base, in turn for HW compat

[Anonymous Coward]

GNOME is more of a Red Hat project.

And I'm not entirely convinced they're aware that they have users!

Re:UX to increase user base, in turn for HW compat

[stephanruby]

As someone who tried to learn gimp, then bought PS, PS is far, far easier to learn than GIMP.

I guess I didn't want to risk buying, if I wasn't able to learn how to use it during its free 30-day trial.

Not having the worst fucking GUI paradigm ever helps quite a bit.

It's not the worst. Blender is the worst. This is not to criticize the capabilities of Blender. I have huge respect for the project itself. It's just that its usability is truly the worst.

I guess you could say Gimp is second worst, but I really don't think that Photoshop is that far behind in terms of usability. After all, people have gotten used to the Macromedia tools and the Adobe tools (thanks to company-sponsored piracy of their own tools). But now that option is pretty much gone. I must be blind, but I don't see any reason of why Photoshop might be easier to learn than Gimp.

Re:UX to increase user base, in turn for HW compat

[armanox]

I'm not sure that I would call Adobe products 'easy to learn' - I learned how to use Photoshop and Pagemaker while I was in school (running on System 7.....wow that was a long time ago). When I got into GIMP I bought a book (just like I have/had books on using Windows desktop, Linux desktop, Sharepoint, Drupal, etc; from across the years of adding new skills) to guide me,

Re:UX to increase user base, in turn for HW compat

[Anonymous Coward]

If UX of a free application is worse on the whole than UX of the more popular proprietary alternatives, improving free software UX may increase the user base.

That's what we now call "the Mozilla fallacy". If you change your UX to mimic a competitor, you will lose your current userbase, instead of attracting the competitor's. Who needs nifty plugins, right?

The other falacy you're committing is "new is better". But new UX often isn't.
One of the biggest issues with OSS is that each time they reach some level of polish, they overhaul their whole UX, undoing years of work.
And then we get things like not being able to set a different background for different virtual desktops (KDE5), because it doesn't fit in their "architecture".
(How hard can it be?? If you can set it once, just use some event to change it after the desktop changes. I mean, we're talking about rendering an image FFS!)

I'm not saying that all UX changes are bad, but people get tired of yet another "let's move everything around for no apparent reason".
And then they stick to old versions, or find more stable alternatives.

Re:UX to increase user base, in turn for HW compat

[Hognoxious]

As MacTO points out below, the connection is peripheral at best. If their name was the FSTETUF you might have a point.

P.S. Do you have some phobia about definite articles?

Re:UX to increase user base, in turn for HW compat

[squiggleslash]

GIMP isn't harder to use than Photoshop, it's just both hard to use (in the same way Photoshop is because it's a large complex powerful application) and different from Photoshop, so people evaluating it as a Photoshop replacement inevitably find it "harder to use" because they have to learn how to use it all over again.

Believe me, if most people used GIMP and then had to evaluate Photoshop they'd be complaining about the Photoshop UI.

As someone above pointed out, simply cloning the competitors UI isn't going to help here - see Mozilla. Nor would "simplifying the UI", that would just mean users would desert the application in droves as it'd no longer do what they want - see GNOME 3 for a case study in how not to do it.

You can probably tweak the UI so it's a little easier to use, but I'm not sure such tweaking would ever solve the "People are used to Photoshops UI" problem.

Re:UX to increase user base, in turn for HW compat

[ale2011]

As someone who tried to learn gimp, then bought PS, PS is far, far easier to learn than GIMP.

I guess I didn't want to risk buying, if I wasn't able to learn how to use it during its free 30-day trial.

I had bought the whole suite, Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and LiveMotion. Hard to learn, hard to upgrade, overly slow because of ubiquitous scripts. Switching to Gimp, Inkscape, Gedit, Tex, and other compatible stuff was such a relief!

Yes, one has to be a bit cuter. That's not the kind of software to spoon feed its users. In return, learning yields the ability to choose one's own food.

Re:UX to increase user base, in turn for HW compat

[Anonymous Coward]

I had bought the whole suite, Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and LiveMotion. Hard to learn, hard to upgrade, overly slow because of ubiquitous scripts. Switching to Gimp, Inkscape, Gedit, Tex, and other compatible stuff was such a relief!

Can you quantify what was so hard to learn? The advantage of adobe software when with working with vector and raster graphics is that you can move your work between their environments and edit them as you go without losing information, that is hugely advantageous and something you simply cannot do between GIMP and Inkscape. Evangelists of the FOSS alternatives often forget that we have a workflow, I want to be able to carry that work through and edit it with the appropriate tools without losing data or having to worry about saving things in vector or raster formats and going back to merge them. Illustrator can open PSD and you can apply the appropriate tools to raster components in that environment and vice versa with Photoshop and AI formats.

Re:UX to increase user base, in turn for HW compat

[exomondo]

That's what we now call "the Mozilla fallacy". If you change your UX to mimic a competitor, you will lose your current userbase, instead of attracting the competitor's.

He didn't suggest they copy the competitor's, he suggested they improve their own if users find the experience of using that software to be poor.

The other falacy you're committing is "new is better".

No, he didn't say new. He quite clearly said that if people find the user experience worse on the free software than on the proprietary software then such a thing should be improved. This could mean going back to the old Firefox UI or from the GNOME3 UI back to GNOME2 style for example.

I'm not saying that all UX changes are bad, but people get tired of yet another "let's move everything around for no apparent reason".

His suggestion was to improve it if it is identified to be poor, not just "move everything around for no apparent reason".

Re:UX to increase user base, in turn for HW compat

[exomondo]

As someone above pointed out, simply cloning the competitors UI isn't going to help here - see Mozilla.

Mozilla's problem wasn't that people found it hard to use, in fact before Chrome most users were using Firefox and then switched to Chrome - in spite of the fact that they had to go with a different UI - because it was better.

Re:UX to increase user base, in turn for HW compat

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope nope nope!

UX nothing, its feature parity thats the big deal. Most people using computers use them as a means to an end.

You can have the best UX there is, but if free program X do not match proprietary Y feature for feature, people will not switch.

But if it does, they will come as long as they know it exists.

This whole UX thing is a massive distraction that seems to drag in with it all kinds of "social consciousness" language that is nothing but a equally massive energy sink.

Ever since the web got popular attention during the dot-com bubble, the FOSS world seems inundated by liberal arts students that know how to draw colorful rectangles around nonsense labels but little else. They wanted a piece of the attention (and money) but didn't want to be seen as nerdy, so they came up with "geek" and things have been crapifying ever since.

Re:UX to increase user base, in turn for HW compat

[Anonymous Coward]

Barely. It operates under its own foundation, and most of the developers are on RH payroll.

Re:UX to increase user base, in turn for HW compat

[Anonymous Coward]

After that.

Mozilla has been tweaking the Firefox UI to make it more like Chrome, in the hope that this will win users back. Not realizing that the users left not because of the UI but the bugs, and felt the bugs were bad enough that getting used to a different UI was worth the cost.

And as they make Firefox more and more like Chrome, the cost of switching to Chrome becomes lower, while the reasons to stay disappear.

Re:UX to increase user base, in turn for HW compat

[dolmen.fr]

UX has also been outside the scope of FSF efforts

The first published software of the FSF / GNU was GNU Emacs. Can you really assert that user interface is outside the scope of a text editor?

Re:UX to increase user base, in turn for HW compat

[Anonymous Coward]

The first published software of the FSF / GNU was GNU Emacs. Can you really assert that user interface is outside the scope of a text editor?

Outside the scope of a text editor, no.

It's *definitely* outside the scope of Emacs!

Re:UX to increase user base, in turn for HW compat

[malditaenvidia]

You better be joking, surely you don't use many keyboard shortcuts if you think Mac OSX is more usable than windows in any way, shape or form.

Make Defensive Publication Possible Again!

[nomentanus]

Having watched inventions wander away from me and become private (first to the patent office with a whole bunch of cash now wins thanks to changes to U.S. law) I know how vital defensive publication is. Now I see that the OIN and linuxdefenders.org related defensive publication service defensivepublications.org has been discontinued. The website still exists, but won't take further submissions if you try to submit them. Without being able to keep open inventions open, we're in a heap of trouble. I'd like to see easy, reliable, court-provable defensive publication come first. I am suppressing several inventions right now that I believe would greatly benefit open source (etc) because such a service doesn't exist; as I wait until it does exist again. That's all I can do on my budget right now.

Well

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel that right now there are companies with multimillion dollar IT infrastructure, and then companies with a few tens of thousands invested. Per-employee efficiency-per-dollar at the larger companies compared to the smaller companies might be something to look at. Especially as it relates to open source software and methodology.

Twelve versions of MSVC, the hourly billing of working around Windows, and specific forms or entire applications for each triviality, not to mention the expected certifications that employees are expecting compensation for... or, one or two guys with emacs and some unix boxes.

In many instances, the latter scenario is the more productive and goes on to spawn a [societally cancerous?] instance of the former.

These are the issues of free software.

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery!

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

Twelve versions of MSVC, the hourly billing of working around Windows, and specific forms or entire applications for each triviality, not to mention the expected certifications that employees are expecting compensation for... or, one or two guys with emacs and some unix boxes.

In many instances, the latter scenario is the more productive and goes on to spawn a [societally cancerous?] instance of the former.

No the reality is they can never deliver, so they either end up being acquired by a large company or end up as just another failed kickstarter or a dead pre-1.0 release on sourceforge or github. They spend most of their time fucking around trying to get shit to work with Linux and end up with a load of Frankenstinian junk that nobody wants, thats why there is no libre ipad or iphone or smartwatch or even decent laptop.

what a ridiculous summary

[Anonymous Coward]

None of the questions in the summary appear in the survey.

In general, the last 5 years have been great for free software, and the last 30 nothing short of *fantastic*. And the FSF played a big part in it.

"Free software" and "open source" are different things by definition, whathever the FSF "stance" is. Open source software is not always free software.

However bad things turn out, it can't get more miserable than this summary.

Captcha: horrify

I know their direction...

[Lumpy]

They need to hire more lobbyists and lawyers. get people to actually band together to be members and scare the hell out of the congress critters that are hell bent on being the enemies of the people and work only for their corporate masters.

congress is afraid, deathly afraid of the NRA.... we need to get the FSF at the same level of fear.

Re:I know their direction...

[tepples]

A 501c3 charity can't hire lobbyists. Did you mean FSF should affiliate itself with a PAC, much as NORML Foundation (a charity) and NORML PAC are affiliated?

Re:I know their direction...

[Anonymous Coward]

False: A 501(c)(3) organization may engage in some lobbying, but too much lobbying activity risks loss of tax-exempt status.
If it were otherwise, contributions to political parties would be tax deductible.

Re:I know their direction...

[Anonymous Coward]

congress is afraid, deathly afraid of the NRA.... we need to get the FSF at the same level of fear.

The NRA has guns!

Re:I know their direction...

[colinrichardday]

But the courts have ruled that encryption is weaponry.

Let 'em eat Pi

[tepples]

The availability of freely programmable general computers is not guaranteed. We are seeing a rush towards closed systems like iOS

The last couple times that argument was made (by betterunixthanunix and AC), the answer was "let 'em eat Pi" (AC and BasilBrush). What makes you see a rush away from things like Raspberry Pi and Arduino?

and Android

The last time I read the Android Compatibility Definition (CDD), it required all Android devices with Google Play to accept self-signed applications through adb install.

Re:Let 'em eat Pi

[110010001000]

Android is still a closed walled system. There is a rush towards closed systems and it is gaining momentum. There isn't a rush away from Pi or Arduino, but there isn't a guarantee that such systems will remain available forever. I can see a day when ISPs start requiring "approved hardware" in order to connect to their networks for example. I can also see a day when Google starts requiring Google approved apps and turns off the adb install route. It may not be today, or tomorrow, but it is a threat.

Re:Let 'em eat Pi

[Anonymous Coward]

when ISPs start requiring "approved hardware"

Why would they care, as long as they're getting paid? If anything, non-approved hardware will just cost more money to operate.

Re:Let 'em eat Pi

[Anonymous Coward]

A threat to open a market for someone else. Don't buy their product, and someone else will step in with an open system.

Re:Let 'em eat Pi

[110010001000]

Because Google is your new ISP and Google makes ChromeOS devices. You need a ChromeOS device to get on the Google network. Don't think that can happen? Microsoft planned to do this type of thing in the 1980s until the Internet foiled their plans. It is a great revenue stream.

Re:Let 'em eat Pi

[110010001000]

But everyone is buying "their" product. That is why Android/iPhones are everywhere and open phones are not.

Re:Let 'em eat Pi

[tepples]

Android is still a closed walled system.

How so? Android is free software. Or by Android did you mean Google Play?

I can see a day when ISPs start requiring "approved hardware" in order to connect to their networks for example.

Back in 2005 or so, users such as Alsee were predicting that home Internet access would be locked down using Trusted Network Connect by 2015. It's 2016 now.

Re:Let 'em eat Pi

[westlake]

What makes you see a rush away from things like Raspberry Pi and Arduino?

The boards appeal to the system builders, the technical hobbyists, a very small segment of the population. There are 700,000 ham radio operators in the U.S. 327 million cell phones.

Re:Let 'em eat Pi

[thinkwaitfast]

What can 327million people do that 700,000 can't? The panama canal was built with tens of thousands of people. NASA employs 18,000 and spacex fewer than 5,000. Why o you have to win to be relevant?

Re:Let 'em eat Pi

[tepples]

What can 327million people do that 700,000 can't?

Constitute a sufficiently large market to enable enough economies of scale to convince peripheral makers to support it rather than making peripherals compatible only with Macs and Windows PCs.

Re:Let 'em eat Pi

[110010001000]

Android isn't Free software. It is controlled by Google, Inc. It may be free, but it ain't Free.

Re:Let 'em eat Pi

[tepples]

I agree with you that Android's development model is too cathedral-like for some critics. But I was referring to the free software licenses that apply to the operating system (apart from Google Play). Linux and OpenJDK are under the GNU GPL version 2. Most of the rest of Android Open Source Project is under the Apache license.

Re:Let 'em eat Pi

[Anonymuous Coward]

How so? Android is free software.

No, it's not.

I'm yet to see an affordable android device that doesn't require proprietary drivers for video, gps, etc.

Even after "rooting" your device with some dubious "tools" downloaded from warez-like sites or by scouring fulldisclosure and writing your own exploit, most of the time you won't be able to install a modified system; for all intents and purposes it's a pure proprietary device.

Or "tivoized", if you like the term better.

Re:Let 'em eat Pi

[deragon]

You might be able to get Android source code for free, at least a large part of it (exluding binary blobs), but my beef is that when I buy an Android phone, it does not come rooted and for some models, I cannot root it (there is no recipe). When there is a way, it is not easy. Most basic freedom is able to get root/admin powers on your device, and now more and more devices does not make it easy to get them.

Re:Let 'em eat Pi

[tepples]

Then be choosier in what you buy. Nexus devices can officially be flashed with a rooted ROM.

Re:Let 'em eat Pi

[phantomfive]

To be fair to Alsee, he also said:

"I predict we are going to discover that people seriously suck at predicting the future."

Re:Let 'em eat Pi

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a retarded argument. Because no device that you like exists, therefore the software is closed. Some devices may indeed be closed, and if that offends you then you should buy a device which is intended to be tinkered with, rather than a device for which tinkering represents a security threat. Either way it does not affect your ability to take AOSP sources and do whatever you like with them.

You can also, as tepples mentioned, write your own apps, sign them yourself, and install them on whatever device you like. It's not particularly difficult, and that ability is not going away any time soon.

I don't recommend holding your breath for open source GPS or baseband radios though. I'm not even sure that would be legal at this point; certainly the FCC would disapprove.

Re:Let 'em eat Pi

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the geek mentality that completely ignores reality and practicality. You genuinely believe the combination of AOSP and something like a Raspberry Pi is actually an alternative for those folks considering an iPhone or a Galaxy? The code in the AOSP repo is free but in practical terms Android is not.

An easy way to comply to GPL3 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right now, many companies consider the GPL3 as a definitive non-starter. This comes from reputation, as developpers don't like to read licenses, and trust lawyers on this. And it's always easier for lawyers to say no when they have the smallest of doubts. GPL3 is a part of the reason GCC is being menaced today, as LLVM and Clang have a large corporate backup, sometimes from previous contributors to GCC that do not like it. The fight is not over yet, as GCC continues to attract big names like ARM and Intel, but they are hedging their bets and working with Clang (and Apple) as well.

My opinion is that FSF should try to engage some manufacturers and show them that the GPL3 is not an issue. In the car space, they can be more responsive as they see Google and Apple as threats, not allies, and for them computing is a tactical battle. If HP can end up advocating for the GPL3, it should be possible to work with the Automotive Grade Linux group to show that the GPL3 does not prevent success. It could be an intervention in the compliance conferences, it can be the setup of checklists of things to do, it can be software that makes it easy to fill all requirements, especially around DRM and trusted computing, in a benefical way both for the final user and the manufacturer. But something needs to be done to build communications between the FSF and possible GPL3 users to calm their fears.

Or the FSF can continue to claim that there is no problem with GPL3, and watch as many possible users and contributors avoid them.

Re: An easy way to comply to GPL3 ?

[dnaumov]

GPL3 is more restrictive than GPL2, there is no way around this truth. A lot of companies are avoiding GPL2 like the plague, so trying to sell them on a "but this one is only very slightly worse for you" license is an absurd exercise in futility.

Re: An easy way to comply to GPL3 ?

[Digana]

> there is no way around this truth

Of course there is because it's simply not true.

For example, the conditions in GPLv2 make it impossible to combine GPLv2-only software with Apache or with AGPL software. Thus, GPLv2 has a restriction that GPLv3 does not. As another example, GPLv2 has fewer methods for conveying source code than GPLv3, and thus it is more restrictive.

But beyond this nitpicking on the meaning of "restrictive", let us look at the real thing most people object to about GPLv3: the anti-tivoisation clause. Let us remember what it actually is about: along with the source code, you must convey any cryptographic keys necessary to allow the modified version to run. This is very similar in spirit to the same clause that requires you to convey installation scripts. In other words, it has always been the responsibility of downstream users to make sure that everyone can use the software.

It really is not a crazy restriction to ensure that people convey the necessary data in order to ensure the software can be installed. In fact, that's why GPLv3 calls all of this (install scripts, authorization keys and so forth) "Installation Information". GPLv2 already had this condition. GPLv3 merely added clarification of what "installation information" means. This clause also only applies if you are distributing the software together with the hardware ("User Product").

GPLv3 is more widely feared than understood. So, understand it, and help others understand it too.

Re: An easy way to comply to GPL3 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution is obvious: BSD and real free licences and that's it... screw the GPL insanity

Re: An easy way to comply to GPL3 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

The incompatibilities between the various flavors of GPL (see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#AllCompatibility) and with other licenses (see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html) is just another good reason to avoid the hassle of GPL altogether, both when choosing code and libraries to interface with and depend on as well as choosing licensing for your own open source code. Other licenses protected the 4 Freedoms just as well with far fewer words.

Re: An easy way to comply to GPL3 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Other licenses protected the 4 Freedoms just as well with far fewer words.

False statement. Given that you are obviously literate I suspect that you are lying, rather than being ignorant. Why you would do that, with something so easily identified as false, I don't know.

Re: An easy way to comply to GPL3 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

GPL3 is more restrictive than GPL2, there is no way around this truth. A lot of companies are avoiding GPL2 like the plague, so trying to sell them on a "but this one is only very slightly worse for you" license is an absurd exercise in futility.

That's the exact BSD license pitch, and look where it's gotten them. In the late 90s, NetBSD looked like the obvious choice for embedded devices because it had a much better license for the stuff gadget-makers want to do, and it was cleaner and better-factored for porting to new machines, for example CPU support factored out of platform support, and ASIC driver code shared across different busses to which that ASIC could attach. In the embedded world, every device you make is a new computer architecture, and you have to port the OS to it. Also everything is schedule-driven: the same product six months earlier is worth massively more. Together this should have given NetBSD an obliterating advantage over Linux. And there were lots of bonuses thrown in: it was easier to track HEAD with NetBSD because this was pre-git so Linux had no revision control, and Linux was full of spazzy rewrites (route, route-ng, route2, etc.) while NetBSD wasn't. Also, NetBSD had excellent support for cross-compiling the entire system, not just the kernel, which is great for bringing up a new architecture. In Linux you are stuck in "distro" hell. But the portability and (according to you) the license, alone, should have been decisive. For many companies, it would. They did use BSD. Some even admitted it (the BSD license requires them to admit it, but project folk were too timid to "antagonize" any possible corporate partner or source of employment).

However NetBSD was missing a couple key things, like good support for using NAND flash directly, and some host-target debugging stuff. Presumably the companies that used it added the missing features, since there's no other way to make gadgets within a competitive bill-of-materials cost, but we'll never know because the work happened behind the proprietary wall, and they never shared it.

Fast-forward 10 years, everyone runs Linux on embedded devices because it's just better, to the point of "duh". It is massively supported from both directions, SoC manufacturers and gadget manufacturers. Work is shared. Even if the GPL is often violated, the work is shared more than NetBSD, and over time they now have an undeniable practical lead, even if NetBSD retains points for style. Aside from the software capital they've evolved to cooperate more, especially now that we have git which allows impatient EEs with their 9-5 attitude and communication problems to produce work that can be upstreamed, and a clearer incentive to do so (git pull origin).

Stallman was right about the best way to organize things. However he's right even further than he claims: companies don't act in the economy's long-term interest, or even their own long-term interest. A series of disinterested neckties make a series of shallow decisions, narrow in considered scope and time. If pressed they may make ideologically regressive decisions, ie. "I'm not participating in that commie neckbeard bullshit." The evidence is right on the floor for anyone to see: an operating system with a significant head start did everything you "ew, restrictions" people told it to do, squandered their superiority and faded into irrelevance, because free software folks were right and you were wrong.

Re:An easy way to comply to GPL3 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

GCC is dead, it just hasn't realized it yet, and it is thanks to the GPL3.

Companies used the GPL2 with no issues, but then the FSF threw a tantrum because they couldn't control how GPL software was used, and they decided to punish people and bring them into line with the GPL3.

But the result was a corporate move away from the GPL to things like Apache, and a similar move by a lot of open source developers.

At some point (it is just a matter of when, not if) someone will put out a Linux distribution built with LLVM, and then Intel, IBM, ARM, etc. will say why are we wasting money duplicating effort, and focus their resources on LLVM. At which point Red Hat will be forced to confront the reality of either switching to LLVM or being the sole developer of GCC.

As for HP, does anyone really care about them anymore? The fact that he is calling for everyone to move to the GPL3 tells you just how out of touch with reality HP is because it will never happen. There was a chance with the GPL2, but the GPL3 killed it.

Re: An easy way to comply to GPL3 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is it false? You can't say something is false without saying why. It makes you look like a shill.

RPI

[Anonymous Coward]

The RPI can be your PERSONAL CLOUD. I suspect they have pwned the Linux kernel, but I hear one can use some xBSD on the RPI.

There are RPI Laptop projects.

Or:You can add your own SPI-based LCD display and a bunch of batteries and a voltage regulator.

Don't be a pussy - BE A FREE MAN. BUILD YOUR OWN COMPUTER. STOP WHINING.

Re:RPI

[drinkypoo]

The RPI can be your PERSONAL CLOUD.

No, no it cannot. Cloud computing is being able to spin up as many VM, container etc. instances as you need, and be billed accordingly, on someone else's hardware which might be located anywhere. If you build your own "cloud" what you have actually done is built your own "server" or "cluster".

Cloud computing is just shared cluster farming with on-demand instances, so it's not magical. But it is something specific, and it's not plugging in a Pi and loading it with Debian.

Re:RPI

[unixisc]

With RPI, ain't there the issue of Free/non-Free WiFi chipset & drivers? I'd think that an Arduino might be more compatible w/ the FSF's religion

Re:RPI

[Kjella]

Actually when people use something like iCloud they have no concept of instances. Their data is just out there somewhere, the cloud is essentially the 2010s name for cyberspace. And everything else syncs against the cloud whether it's cell phone, tablet, laptop, pc, whatever. And I think that's really the business definition too, if it's in the cloud it's not your servers and not your job managing them. You're just buying the service. I could see benefits from organizing a large company the same way internally, one group runs their "cloud" with some headroom for expansion and everybody else is charged according to use. The point is, do you have the same flexibility to start up, shut down and repurpose servers as the cloud solution.

But back to individuals, what you want is the sync/backup service so physically it is just a 24/7 server but it's the software that matters. Are there clients so that when you take a photo with your cell phone you don't have to think about it, it just auto-syncs. If you added a contact as you were working on the laptop and need to call him on the phone to say you're late, is the contact there? If you update your music playlist on the cell phone because you're tired of the song, will it still play on your desktop back home? The cloud is 99% integrations, 1% hardware. I don't think most people would want to self-host anyway, but just like web hotels you'd have cloud hotels. Your choice of provider, costs/GB for storage, bandwidth, SLA and so on. At least it wouldn't be centralized at a few mega-corporations and you'd have the choice to do it yourself.

Re:RPI

[KGIII]

Pfft... Sync to the internet? I don't... I use 47 Lithuanian boys, who mimic the chittering of squirrels, to carry my packets back and forth. When one of them brings back a bad packet (one to sync with one of those newfangled cloud thingies) I beat him with a stick until he learns to filter it better!

Err... Yes, yes I'm very tired. :/

Umm

[Anonymous Coward]

Make sure they dont bunk up and lose eff.org

Re: Umm

[Anonymous Coward]

Make sure they dont bunk up and lose eff.org

EFF?

Boy, you aren't the sharpest tool in the shed, are you?

die in a fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes.

Novelty still bars a patent

[tepples]

first to the patent office with a whole bunch of cash now wins thanks to changes to U.S. law

I'm not sure what you meant by that. True, the America Invents Act changed the priority of U.S. patent applications from the old "interference" proceedings to the first inventor to file. But this affects only priority between patent applications. Both before and after the America Invents Act, lack of novelty still disqualifies an invention from a patent. And if an invention is published by someone else before it reaches the USPTO, it is not novel. In fact, the AIA expanded the scope of prior art to include foreign publication and public use.

Re:Novelty still bars a patent

[martin-boundary]

lack of novelty still disqualifies an invention from a patent

It does not, that is the point of the "$PATENT with a computer" meme.

Lack of novelty is a meaningless phrase that means something warm and fuzzy to the public but has no true power to stop obvious inventions from being patented.

Re:Novelty still bars a patent

[tepples]

I thought recent rulings at the Supreme Court had shut down the "prior art + on a computer = patentable" formula.

Re:Novelty still bars a patent

[Anonymous Coward]

Both things are worth pointing out - but effective defensive publication is vastly harder than one might think, and there's little incentive to disqualify a patent if your intellectual property nonetheless remains out of your hands. It's a tremendous expense that's all downside, so it's very unlikely. De jure, novelty still rules. De facto - first to file rules.

Figure out

[Anonymous Coward]

Figure out why the GPL has died and adapt accordingly.

CGNAT and ISP TOS defeat RPi ownCloud

[tepples]

The RPI can be your PERSONAL CLOUD.

Running ownCloud on a Raspberry Pi board isn't so useful once your home ISP puts your connection behind a carrier-grade network address translation (CGNAT), citing IPv4 address exhaustion. Then you won't be able to reach the RPi in your home from outside your home. Likewise once your home ISP terminates your service for running a server at home in violation of the ISP's acceptable use policy for home accounts.

Or are you willing to move to a different city just to get a different ISP?

Re:CGNAT and ISP TOS defeat RPi ownCloud

[Anonymous Coward]

CGNAT is a deal breaker in my case.

If a carrier use CGNAT I will without a second of hesitation move to a different carrier.

If all carriers I could connect to would use CGNAT I'd disconnect from the Internet.

I'm not kidding.

Re:CGNAT and ISP TOS defeat RPi ownCloud

[unixisc]

You could then run IPv6 itself. I believe even GNU supports it

Red Hat certification

[tepples]

not to mention the expected certifications that employees are expecting compensation for... or, one or two guys with emacs and some unix boxes.

Are you trying to tell me that people don't expect compensation for certifications in RHEL, a distribution of GNU/Linux?

DFSG and OSD are substantially identical

[tepples]

Open source software is not always free software.

I'm aware of philosophical differences between users of the two terms. But I wonder what substantial difference you're seeing between the terms with respect to the software itself, as the Open Source Definition published by Open Source Initiative is nearly word-for-word identical to the Debian Free Software Guidelines.

Re:DFSG and OSD are substantially identical

[Anonymous Coward]

The differences are not philosophical, they're political, and are explained here: https://opensource.org/faq#free-software (emphasis mine):

At the same time, the term "open" applied to software source code was sometimes used to imply source code being merely inspectable or visible or available, as in the phrases "open computing" and "open systems" that were adopted by proprietary Unix companies' marketing efforts in the 1980s. OSI's term "open source", as detailed in the Open Source Definition, has since clarified that open source specifically entails not mere inspection access but also conveying to recipients the perpetual right to fork covered code and use it without additional fees.

The OSI speaks in the past tense, but that's still how the term is generally applied. You rarely hear people refer to non-free source code as "free", but it's still very common to hear people refer to it as "open", just because it's available for inspection. If it's a swan, and not a duck, why keep calling it a duck and try to change what people understand by "duck"? Let's keep calling it a swan, like we always have.

Essentially, the OSI adopted the Debian Free Software Guidelines, but decided to call it something else, so they decided to removed the 20 or so occurrences of "free software" from the text. Quite a useless thing to do, and only creates more confusion. This wasn't the first (nor the last) time the OSI proved unhelpful and useless in the free software advocacy.

Re:DFSG and OSD are substantially identical

[unixisc]

I'd think that the answer lies in the comparison b/w installing something like an Ubuntu distro on your computer - say Lubuntu or Xubuntu - vs installing Trisquel on it. Would Trisquel recognize all the hardware on your computer? If yes, a good first step. After that, would all the liberated software that they come packaged w/ be adequate for your needs? If yes, then you're right - there is no difference.

Copyright

[sims 2]

Oh ideal?
Well we could stop giving all the tv coverage to terrorists maybe even go after those mass murdering telemarketers.
Copyright could be rolled back to a reasonable length.
We could eliminate another disease worldwide like we did with smallpox.
We could go back to having the option to pay for software.
We could have a sell it or STFU law to prevent companies from claiming losses on patents and copyrights they have absolutely no intentions of ever using.

As for worse
Well copyright could be extended another 100 years.
Because that's why!
Both paid and free games could be ad supported with no way to disable them because piracy.
All applications could become freemium want to be able to select text? $0.99 5 uses. Uninstall a program $9.99 each.
We could have our rights further eroded for the fight against terrorists Eg having broken encryption in the US while everyone else has security.
We could see the return of polio here in the US due to lack of education and care.

Re:Copyright

[tepples]

Copyright could be rolled back to a reasonable length.

Unlikely. Reversing a past windfall would likely be deemed a "taking", requiring "just compensation" pursuant to the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution or foreign counterparts.

Well copyright could be extended another 100 years.

Unlikely. The only excuse that the U.S. Supreme Court ever allowed for across-the-board re-extension of the term of copyright in works whose copyright term had already been extended was harmonizing its copyright term with that of the EU. The EU hasn't extended its copyright term since.

Re:Copyright

[sims 2]

First I figure it could still be done if the new length applied only to new works after a set date.

Second I hope you're right but there happens to be a certain perpetually protected mouse who will test that in 2024.

How come drugs have limits but a book of cat names can go multiple lifetimes? Ridiculous.

Most pressing issues:

[Qbertino]

GNU/Linux: Let it go. We all know what GNU has done for FOSS, but your Branding sucks.

FS vs. OS: Seriously, let it go. Keep on fighting, but stop the infighting.

Your branding and marketing sucks big time, across the board. Get some professionals and listen to them.

FOSS Projects: E-Mail needs a replacement. Start building one. Encryption and anonymity as core of the specs. Build Branding, marketing, professional UX and proper Clients for all Plattforms. Yes, including Apple. Lets get going with this overdue problem.

We need a feasible distributed Facebook Killer. Diaspora is Meh, with shitty branding and UX and others are even worse.

Those two endeavors would have a huge positive impact.

Re:Most pressing issues:

[rasmusbr]

Email works just fine. You can get increased anonymity through Tor.

Facebook is proprietary, so it would be nice if there was an alternative, but it's unlikely that the alternative would ever become more popular than Facebook itself.

FOSS projects should focus on building fundamental stuff that others can build on top of.

Don't build a Gmail clone or a Facebook clone. Build a web server that can automatically scale from 1 connection per day to 1000,000,000 connections per day and back down again to 1 connection per day, without ruining the person who owns the web site (that's the tricky part). If you do that then other people will build an anonymous web mail service on top of that, and a Facebook clone, and a Youtube clone, and a ton of other stuff that nobody has even thought of yet.

Re:Most pressing issues:

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you are welcome to go right ahead and do everything you said.

Or, you know, we will go back to doing what we do and you can go fuck your self.

Re:Most pressing issues:

[Anonymous Coward]

FS vs OS? Why there is a HUGE difference, and I seriously doubt your intelligence if you don't get that.

Open source: you can read it, but that's it. You have no additional rights. The code belongs to some company (say, JIRA source code, some old MS source code).

Free: you may change the code as you like, redistribute it with your changes, and so on.

Why are we even arguing about this???

Re:Most pressing issues:

[Anonymous Coward]

professional UX and proper Clients for all Plattforms

I can agree with quite a bit, except this. Any UX professional is likely to fuck your UI over to make it an eXperience, get an UI expert to get an easy to use functional UI instead of an eXperience. I had to move away from UNITY on my laptop for the simple reason that half the power ( and CPU time ) went into always on animations and compiz extensions, fuck that mandated eXperience.

Re:Most pressing issues:

[Anonymous Coward]

email is not broken. how people use email is broken.

Re:Most pressing issues:

[carton]

FOSS Projects: E-Mail needs a replacement. Start building one. Encryption and anonymity as core of the specs. Build Branding, marketing, professional UX and proper Clients for all Plattforms. Yes, including Apple. Lets get going with this overdue problem.

We need a feasible distributed Facebook Killer. Diaspora is Meh, with shitty branding and UX and others are even worse.

These are the wrong kinds of projects for FSF to sponsor. There are armies of hipstercoders with well-trimmed beards and MacBooks in cafes attempting to tackle this problem to improve their Personal Brand. By this I mean, they are getting high attention in the contemporary world, and don't need attention-boosting by the long-sighted greybeards of FSF. They also have a low multiplier, in terms of code written and software freedom gained, since they're meant to be used by regular people and not programmers. They get more absolute use than the proposals below, but are not FSF work, just independently important work.

git is an example of a project FSF might have sponsored. People getting paid to write software who want to upstream their changes have lower barrier-to-entry through not just the convenience but the process that grows around git, so it's created a culture of upstreaming among corporate Linux users that used to fork and forget. Code review tools to replace the adhoc code review happening on the sub-mailinglists where most Linux kernel code is traded could be helpful, especially if it fits the processes of the companies actually writing the code, sign-off of ownership or whatever else they need, though they may already be happy. This would be more interesting to work on in the 90s, but is more solved now, maybe.

Another might be, a lighter-weight less-finished version of Android for use in televisions, printers, "internet of shit" devices, that communicate through passive-matrix LCDs like refrigerators or overlays like televisions. If it were rigidly-open enough that any company using it would have to give the user control of the device, and compelling enough that many companies wanted to use it, then this could increase software freedom significantly. It could perhaps even contribute if the manufacturers insisted on putting in some proprietary blobs, but I would prefer something more revolutionary. Even when included by "mere aggregation," on an embedded device binary blobs are infectious because once you allow one in, it makes tracking top-of-tree really hard. The OS could, for example, have a sandbox for blobs, like NaCl in Chrome, to reduce this infectious effect.

Another might be, an open CPU and compiler for 0.5GHz single-core applications. There was some research paper about a legacy-free low-cost CPU that was performance competitive with ARM using half the gates.

Another might be, an open toolchain for NVidia, targeting CUDA applications not graphics. I guess there is one in TensorFlow that Google just released? I don't totally understand it. but if NVidia could be convinced to use gcc to do their JIT, even if they continued releasing binary drivers, they may contribute back to a free software foundation-layer driver that's good enough to write scientific applications. This would give people a lot more computing freedom because the applications for these GPUs are broadening.

This was a tough one

[Kjella]

The free software movement has been successful at achieving its goals over the last 30 years.

I mean no doubt open source has scored victory upon victory from cell phones to supercomputers, but the FSF's goals? Most users do not use a platform or applications that gives them the "four freedoms". Users in general do not see proprietary software as wrong. In fact much of their data has moved from proprietary code to proprietary services, which use open source including GPLv2 software in their delivery but don't distribute it. I don't know any service I use using the Affero license, the "GPL for SaaS" license. And with online services the DRM is more or less baked into the service, naturally it won't work without the server side and you get to do a lot more live cheat detection and bans.

A lot of the code that big companies has released is under the Apache 2 license instead of the GPL, things like Android and LLVM has gotten far more attention lately than the GCC. The lone exception is the kernel, but it mostly lives in its own "universe" not affecting user space and drivers have found ways to use blobs when they want to. In short, I don't think RMS is happy with the state of things, maybe not even the direction things are going. But I'm happy that open source keeps "hollowing out" proprietary software, if it runs on top of a LAMP stack or Docker container or whatnot they're interested in making the foundation stronger. Eventually the layer thins out to where OSS volunteers making something "good enough".

Re:This was a tough one

[AmiMoJo]

You have to ask where we would be without the FSF. The answer is "a lot worse off". Pushing the GPL and free software, especially in the early days of the internet when GPL software became the de-facto standard for a lot of things, has created a better, freer world. No exaggeration.

Re:This was a tough one

[Anonymous Coward]

No doubt that the FSF was important in the beginning, and the GPL was a big part of that.

The problem is that the FSF is still stuck in the 1980s, with their one move into the present (GPL3) being a disaster given that it provided a lot of the push to use Apache licences for everything.

The inherent problem for the FSF is the unsolvable contradiction between their freedoms and the use of computers by the mass public in a always on networked world.

The so called "walled gardens" have come about because it is the only way to keep the less ethical people from taking over the net. The mass public simply can't deal with the issue of malware, etc. so we moved to a walled garden model to keep it off the devices. If there weren't people being evil then the walled gardens wouldn't be necessary.

The other big issue is that the free software community has failed the FSF by failing to provide a quality GPL based product. Gnome self destructed, KDE is a mess, most of the apps are at best average, etc. You want free software to take over the world, then you need to provide a quality environment. That means a desktop that works, and quality software to replace what is used elsewhere. Yes, Windows has issues, but is survives because of the software. Gimp sucks, it is nowhere near a substitute for Photoshop, Libreoffice is glacially slow, there is no Autocad, etc, etc.

Alternative needs economies of scale

[tepples]

Don't buy their product, and someone else will step in with an open system.

How are you so sure about that? I didn't buy an iPad, and the alternative (a netbook) got discontinued at the end of 2012. There need to be a substantial number of people not buying a piece of hardware in order for manufacturing an alternative to be profitable

Re:Alternative needs economies of scale

[thinkwaitfast]

It's relatively easy to assemble your own pad or phone from freely available hardware.

Re:Alternative needs economies of scale

[110010001000]

Really? How do I assemble a phone? Not realistic.

Re:Alternative needs economies of scale

[Anonymous Coward]

You can make one out of a Raspberry Pi!

Is there anything it can't do?? :)

To distinguish GNU/Linux from Android

[tepples]

GNU/Linux: Let it go.

"GNU/Linux" is shorter than "End/user/Linux/other/than/Android".

Get A Job?

[Anonymous Coward]

And move out of their parents' basement.

where's the source of the survey?

[lkcl]

yaaa, i'm not filling out the survey until i've seen the full source code and an MD5/SHA1 checksum that shows the source code is what's actually running on the server. i wouldn't want my data to be sold out by the FSF or intercepted by the NSA due to MD5 or SHA1 collisions ohshit...

Re:where's the source of the survey?

[ais523]

It's here, linked from the footer of the page.

I'm not sure there's any method to guarantee that the source they linked is the same as the source they're running, but given that it's AGPL (and thus doing otherwise would be illegal), it seems highly likely that the FSF is in compliance; they seem like one of the least likely organizations to commit a GPL violation.

To Switzerland

[gnaarly]

They have a clinic there

D'oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Like all other 30 year olds, find a new job with more opportunities, get a ring for that special lady and move into a house with an extra bedroom to enlarge the family.

Re:D'oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen to that. I left programming behind when it stopped being fun, although I should have done it earlier when I was already seeing the writing on the wall. I had some withdrawal symptoms but as you fill your life with more meaningful and fulfilling things, you begin to look at old computer-obsessed you with a sense of pity. How could we ever had that much passion for cold machines? How could we ever think we could find fulfillment in writing endless sequences of instructions?

Now I can see the FSF, the EFF and other similar organizations for what they are: enthusiasts who are trying to recapture the "glories" of the past, when we thought we had some control over the technology that would shape the future. Of course we were deluding ourselves, but we were young and naive. It's kind of sad seeing men in their forties or fifties still so desperately clinging to the past. They look like those nature lovers who plan some big rally to save the local groves only to wake up in the morning and find the trees they wanted to save already cut down. All they can do is look sadly at the stumps.

Move on, the sooner the better. The more time you pass clinging to a long gone past that is never going to come back, the more difficult it will be to let go. There's a life out there. Go and enjoy it.

And keep Stallman out of the limelight, please

[JonathanF]

You hit the nail on the head, and I'd add that the leadership (namely Richard Stallman) is sometimes more of a liability to the FSF than an asset.

It's a group built around ideas, to be sure, but it's hard to sound reasonable when your leader is the definition of unreasonable: forcing people to refer to a product a certain way (it's Linux in real life, Richard, not GNU/Linux), refusing to accept that any use of closed-source software is okay, and so on. Paradoxically, he's more trapped and enslaved than many of the people using the closed software he rails against. If Stallman were around in Tunisia during the Arab Spring, he wouldn't have been out on the streets securing real, meaningful freedom (because that would involve using the "evil" Facebook and Twitter)... he'd be too busy asking the existing regime to use FOSS.

In other words: argue for free and open software by all means, but don't pretend as if your only options are to either switch completely to FOSS or else be forever tainted as a human being. The FSF needs a leader who is cool with you running open source apps on Macs and Windows PCs, and understands that it's the goal of free/open source code that matters, not how "pure" you are.

Re:And keep Stallman out of the limelight, please

[Anonymous Coward]

You have no fucking idea what you are talking about. FSF exists BECAUSE of RMS principled stance and willingness to live in a manner consistent with them.

Everything else is just watered down nothing.

Re:And keep Stallman out of the limelight, please

[AmiMoJo]

Strongly disagree. We need an FSF with strong principals. Time and time again Stallman has been proven right, sometimes decades later. He predicted the DRM, the walled gardens, renting software and media without ever really owning it, not being able to trust our computers at the hardware level.

While this unwillingness to compromise might mean the FSF can't do some things, it provides an essential standard that everything else can be measured by.

Re:And keep Stallman out of the limelight, please

[sunderland56]

You hit the nail on the head, and I'd add that the leadership (namely Richard Stallman) is sometimes more of a liability to the FSF than an asset

Sometimes??

FSF is stuck in quicksand until they get rid of RMS and concentrate on what people want and need, not crap like Hurd and replacing things like Google Earth.

Re:And keep Stallman out of the limelight, please

[unixisc]

I dislike RMS as much as the next guy, but HE had abandoned HURD long ago. That's now just a pet project of some people, assuming that there is ANYBODY working on it. But yeah, OpenStreetsMaps has not been the success he hoped it would be.

Re:And keep Stallman out of the limelight, please

[HatofPig]

... don't pretend as if your only options are to either switch completely to FOSS or else be forever tainted as a human being.

No. Switching to FOSS is the ideal which we are kept from achieving by reasons of practicality. But we should aspire the complete switch, and remain uncomfortable with compromise until it becomes possible. Your flair for drama makes it seem like an either/or proposition for everyone. But I use nvidia drivers, while wishing I didn't have to, and it is fine. But purity is rather what we need from ideological leaders like Richard Stallman. The taint of proprietary software/hardware is historically contingent, and will only last as long as we let it.

Re:And keep Stallman out of the limelight, please

[lkcl]

The FSF needs a leader who is cool with you running open source apps on Macs and Windows PCs, and understands that it's the goal of free/open source code that matters, not how "pure" you are.

absolutely not. you fail to understand the critical, critical importance of leading by example. read this story, please: http://www.habitsforwellbeing....

imagine that the scenario you describe were to be the case. Dr Stallman (or his replacement) says, "Don't use proprietary software! It's Bad", and one person pipes up in the crowd, "But You Don't Believe That, You Use Proprietary Software And Proprietary Apps, So Why Should We Bother To Listen To You?" .... and there's no answer, is there?

another example: a slave driver tells people "don't own slaves, it's inhumane!"

another example: a known corrupt judge passing sentence on people

another example: a paedophilic or gay priest advising people on marriage counselling...

another example: a bankrupt life-coach telling people how to make money...

by breaking and abandoning the very principles that you expect others to follow, your position is totally and utterly false.

Re:And keep Stallman out of the limelight, please

[Pentagram]

it's hard to sound reasonable when your leader is the definition of unreasonable

Obligatory George Bernard Shaw quote:
"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."

Re:And keep Stallman out of the limelight, please

[Anonymous Coward]

> Dr Stallman (or his replacement) says

Oh man, talk about kiss-ups. His Ph.D. is honorary. He only earned a bachelor's in school.

Re:And keep Stallman out of the limelight, please

[JonathanF]

The FSF needs its principles, but the current state of FOSS is such that adhering to the ideology in its absolute form hurts you more than it helps.

Stallman uses a junky laptop, only the most basic of internet services, and no personal cellphone at all. What kind of example is that? Not much, at least not for someone who's supposed to be an important advocate. The irony is that he's highly dependent on other people to get things done, and many of them are using some form of the proprietary software he refuses to touch.

Yes, rail against DRM, warn against the risks of being reliant on walled gardens, but remember what they say about perfect being the enemy of good. Stallman arguably hurts the FSF's cause because his insistence on a purist lifestyle is not only unrealistic, but limits his ability to spread his message.

Stop!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop giving stuff away! It's devaluing the profession.

The FSF is doing enough to promote diversity and p

[ShieldW0lf]

I was going to finish the survey, but then I saw this question. There's no way to express my desire for them to stop promoting diversity and participation of underrepresented groups, and I don't want to be counted among those who oppose egalitarianism in the community.

People want their code to be truly free.

[Anonymous Coward]

People have moved away from using the GPL family of licenses because they want their code to be truly free.

They don't want it to be "free" in the GPL sense, where such code is still encumbered by numerous restrictions. That's not freedom in any way, even if GPL supporters wrongly claim that it is.

Just look how lengthy the GPL is compared to the BSD or MIT licenses. The GPL requires pages and pages of legalese. The BSD and MIT licenses require just a few sentences!

Freedom doesn't come from having a huge list of restrictions. Freedom comes from the lack of such things.

The BSD and MIT licenses offer freedom. The GPL offers restrictions and the removal of freedom. Forcing others to use code you wrote in very specific ways is not freedom; it's tyranny.

A lot of people do want their code to be free. So they do the sensible thing and use truly free licenses like the BSD and MIT licenses. These licenses promote freedom for both developers and users, unlike the GPL which takes freedom away from both.

Re:People want their code to be truly free.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Forcing others to use code you wrote in very specific ways is not freedom; it's tyranny.

PLEASE! Nobody is "forcing" you to use any code. You can accept what is given to you on the terms of the giver, or you can write your own.

Your problem is you think you're entitled to use other people's work, any way you see fit. You aren't.

Re:People want their code to be truly free.

[Anonymous Coward]

The BSD and MIT licenses offer freedom. The GPL offers restrictions and the removal of freedom. Forcing others to use code you wrote in very specific ways is not freedom; it's tyranny.

Hyperbole much?

Re:People want their code to be truly free.

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of OS X used to be free. It's not anymore, even if it's the same code.

Re:obvious

[unixisc]

That, or Liberated Software Foundation, which would also indicate their Leftist ideology in their name more cleanly, than a term that forces you to think in terms of foreign words like libre vs gratis, or 'free as in freedom vs beer'.

To ensure subscribers run approved antivirus

[tepples]

Why would they care, as long as they're getting paid?

Because a Trusted Health Check keeps virus-infected machines off the ISP's private network.

Independent creation

[tepples]

How come drugs have limits but a book of cat names can go multiple lifetimes? Ridiculous.

Because in theory, copyright doesn't apply to you if you've never had access to the older work. Patents apply to everyone. The longer term of a copyright is said to balance the possibility of independent creation.

retire?

[ooloorie]

The FSF has made big contributions in the past, but I'm not sure they are so relevant today. The FSF says:

The Free Software Foundation is working to secure freedom for computer users by promoting the development and use of free (as in freedom) software and documentation—particularly the GNU operating system—and by campaigning against threats to computer user freedom like Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) and software patents.

It seems to me there are now many other organizations that do this, many of them arguably more effective than the FSF. In addition, the FSF seems to have a certain degree of mission creep, not focusing on creating and promoting free software, but also trying to achieve other political and social goals.

Re:The FSF is doing enough to promote diversity an

[Tailhook]

ISIS is beheading a sufficient quantity of infidels.

[ ] Strongly disagree
[ ] Disagree
[ ] Neither agree nor disagree
[ ] Agree
[ ] Strongly agree

FSF suckers can suck my dick

[jtayon]

Twice in my life my GPL/BSD code has been hijacked by developers.

Not MS developers.

FSF enthousiasts.

Once for the CL5480 multihead driver that never was released in 2000 to be used in display wall.

The guy was a FSF enthusiast and this money helped him build the "biggest free software cooperative" in France.

But the end justify the means. It was integrated in a proprietary product and the code like with GNU ADA was availalble to the people not knowing to ask for it.

This year by someone closed to me, that is a debian packager.

He made a move to ask for R&D credit based on my code made on my free time with a BSD license while fighting for all the technical choices I made that made the solution works.

I am sick of the FSF zealots, they can go fuck themselves. There are the worst enemies of the developers.

And lastly to voice my concerns with this, in my early days I tried to raise the awareness on the topic... I directed a topic in FSM in France the "free software beyond the licenses".

Yet again, for being unnice to FSF and FSF zealots I was blacklisted... My topic given without reference of our names (I was not alone) to some libertarian crappy opportunists turning the topic in a joke with no respects for my moral rights.

Ok I am a troll, ok I am an asshole. But I have rights on my intellectual property as a developer, and FSF has been the most influential organization that resulted in me being fucked on my code, creations

SO: FUCK THE FSF.

Re:FSF suckers can suck my dick

[unixisc]

The problem you have is that RMS/FSF do NOT believe in intellectual PROPERTY. They don't believe that what your mind produces is property - rather, they look at it as knowledge - something that should be as free as the air you breathe. The worst part of it is that RMS has systematically opposed anything that makes it profitable for developers i.e. anything PRACTICAL that would help you make money. Like when he suggested making money by writing documentation, and then turned around and demanded that documentation should be liberated just like software.

It is telling that most of his life work has been involved in FSF activism, as opposed to software development. Somewhere deep down, even HE does not appreciate working for the 'community' and not getting compensated for it, like he won't be.

Re:FSF suckers can suck my dick

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem you have is that RMS/FSF do NOT believe in intellectual PROPERTY.

Well, of course they don't because there is no such thing as Intellectual Property. The term itself is a contradiction.

Proof: I have the plans to build a flying car that's powered by rainbows and Troegenator beer. You like the idea so we reach an agreement that I sell this idea to you for $50. After a little while, I realize I didn't really want to sell it to you and you decide that it's not such a great idea after all. So we decide that I'll give you your $50 back and you give me my idea back.

But wait! You can't give me my idea back! If it were actual property you could. But since it's not, you can't.

It would be more accurate to call IP "Imaginary Property"

Granted, there has been a massive amount of legislation passed in all realms of IP (copyright, patent, trademark, etc) that confer a few of the qualities of real property to a myriad of different intellectual concepts. In the end, though, it's all smoke and mirrors. None of it is actually property. They've just been trying to convince you that it is. And you fell for it.

Just so you know, the world was doing just fine and progress was being made -- creative works flourished, inventions were born left and right -- for all of human history before the ridiculous idea of "everything must be owned" started being written into law, a mere ~300 years ago, not even a blip on the human timeline.

So, yea, you're right: they don't believe in Intellectual Property. They also don't believe in the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus. Do you?

anything PRACTICAL that would help you make money.

Um, you do realize that money is a fictitious construct as well, don't you?

Don't you?

Nevermind, we're not even gonna get into that. I just wanted to point out that referring to something that is completely made up as "practical" makes no sense at all.

You're SO lost that you have no idea that you're lost at all. You exist in a room whose walls are illusions built (and maintained) by people you will never know.

Re:FSF suckers can suck my dick

[Anonymous Coward]

>The problem you have is that RMS/FSF do NOT believe in intellectual PROPERTY.

He doesn't like the term. It's not property, the name is newspeak.

He supports copyright and in fact is now speaking to the pirate party because they want to reduce copyright to 5 years. If that happened, copyleft wouldn't work anymore either.

Software patents, he's against that - obviously. Think about it, patenting maths. Absurd. Also useless or harmful for the progress of technology (which is what patents are officially for).

Trademarks are fine and mostly useful for identification of models, standards etc.

These three things have nothing in common and there's no gain in conflating them.

>They don't believe that what your mind produces is property - rather, they look at it as knowledge - something that should be as free as the air you breathe.

Not quite. If you give the tangible part of "your mind's produce" (also known as "the product") to *someone else*, you are supposed to give them all they need to improve on it themselves or to contract someone else to do it for them.

If you don't give your product to someone else, do what you want.

What they don't want you to do is to give "your mind's produce" only including some things the user *didn't* want (backdoor, DRM, surveillance, snitches, format lock-in, ...) to the user. Or worse, not tell him what exactly "your mind's produce" was in his case.

Note that they are not forcing you - it's just a brand you can use to tell others that you respect your user's freedom. (Make no mistake, that brand is very powerful and popular - especially among IT professionals.)

>The worst part of it is that RMS has systematically opposed anything that makes it profitable for developers i.e. anything PRACTICAL that would help you make money. Like when he suggested making money by writing documentation, and then turned around and demanded that documentation should be liberated just like software.

Stop closing down stuff already. God. Just liberate it *and* sell it. They do.

> Somewhere deep down, even HE does not appreciate working for the 'community' and not getting compensated for it, like he won't be.

Errr he's being paid for it and the big donations will last a long long time.

It's always funny to see this weird parallel universe where people think rms is unpaid, doesn't know what he's doing and people using weird newspeak like the goddamn "intellectual" "property".

(Didn't think that would be on slashdot, though. Weird)

Source code is NOT at all like property.

rms knows Noam Chomsky, so of course he'd be against newspeak - as would be anyone who thinks about it for 5 minutes. Language is what we think in and blurring the language is the first thing you have to do to make people act against their best interests.

Maybe you don't see what's going on, so anyway:

What software companies want is control. Control over people. They want to be the new lords, lording over the peons, seeing everything the peons do, controlling what they can do and so on. This isn't conjecture, some already are like that.

What the FSF wants is independent programmers writing programs on behalf of whoever needs them and then releasing them under a license that ensures that they and no company has control over it (just remove your hand from the product already, I'll not drop it, I promise). It has grown out of earlier attempts (software which used different, shorter licenses) which time and time again have been perverted as instruments of control. This had to stop and so now GPLv3 license shuts down this avenue of abuse.

Attempts to rebrand software as "property" like the land of the landlords in the middle ages are so transparent it's kinda funny.

Re:FSF suckers can suck my dick

[unixisc]

GP was complaining about FSF principles resulting in him being ripped off. In other words, something he did for no price was sold by someone else elsewhere. Which is perfectly legit w/ the FSF, but he saw himself getting shafted.

Intellectual property takes many forms. In case of software, it's not just the idea of doing something: it's also the how-to, amongst other things. What the GP described was code that he had written, and which others used in profiteering. Had he NOT written or NOT provided that code, they'd not have made that cash, so he feels that the license gives him the shaft. Which is a perfectly legitimate POV

If you think that money is a fictitious construct, is that what you tell your renters or mortgage every month? And your credit card vendors?

Re:FSF suckers can suck my dick

[unixisc]

Software patents definitely make sense. The SCOPE of it is something one can debate - like rounded cornered rectangles vs an IPv6 ULA assignment mechanism. One of them is too broad, the other reasonably right, since there are any number of ways of doing the latter. So of course, ALL patents should not be granted, but SOME should.

If you are giving something away to someone else, it should be up to you as to what exactly you give. Like if you give a cooked rotisserie chicken to somebody, then that's fine. You shouldn't be required to provide them the recipe, or let's say, the appropriate condiments that go w/ it, even though that might be nice. But that's what the GPL does.

As for liberating AND selling something, there is a cliche for that. It's called 'having your cake & eating it too'.

Re:FSF suckers can suck my dick

[Your.Master]

All property is imaginary. A construct of laws. You could make an argument in principle for own body being inherently sovereign, but even then people argue about it with things like fetal rights / abortion / mandatory vaccinations / organ donors / etc., not to mention that abhorrent ideas like slavery have existed which prove that people can indeed claim ownership on another's body.

The idea that property's defining attribute is that you can "give it back" is a strange invention of yours. Property is, literally, entity-dependent rights, as opposed to universal rights. Often these are fairly exclusive, just 1 person or a small family unit of people.

So, yea, you're right: they don't believe in Intellectual Property. They also don't believe in the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus. Do you?

Intellectual Property is real. It's defined strictly in law and loosely by social convention, which are the only places where any notions of property are defined. This disbelief in Intellectual Property is completely unlike disbelief in Santa Claus. They don't believe Santa Clause exists; they may or may not believe Santa Clause existing is a good thing. They don't believe Intellectual Property existing is a good thing, but they absolutely agree that it exists.

Just so you know, the world was doing just fine and progress was being made -- creative works flourished, inventions were born left and right -- for all of human history before the ridiculous idea of "everything must be owned" started being written into law, a mere ~300 years ago, not even a blip on the human timeline.

The world's also doing fine now. Creative works are flourishing and inventions are happening at an unprecedented pace, with a large bulk of them happening well within the last 300 years as you cite. That makes this a ridiculous argument.

Furthermore, things recognizable as IP law go back thousands of years. There are records of ancient Greeks using something like a patent (with a 1-year term). Actual things called patents in English go back over 600 years. It's not as new as you suggest.

Um, you do realize that money is a fictitious construct as well, don't you?

Don't you?

Nevermind, we're not even gonna get into that. I just wanted to point out that referring to something that is completely made up as "practical" makes no sense at all.

In one sentence you point out that money is fictitious, and in the next you say that it makes no sense to refer to something fictitious as practical. I conclude that, to be consistent with those two claims, you must believe that money has no practical use. Do you agree that this is nonsense?

The problem is that you are playing fast-and-loose with the definitions of fictitious, imaginary, and made up. Using one definition, I can agree that fictitious things like comic book characters have no real life utility in and of themselves, although media featuring those comic book characters -- and in fact, the shared *idea* of those comic book characters as a representational artifact -- does have utility. Using another definition of fictitious, I can agree that money is fictitious. But you can't use the same definition for fictitious in both of those statements without reversing position on one of them; it's insanity.

Furthermore, if completely made up things are not practical, then there can be no possible problem with IP law in practice because it's completely made up. I do not believe you really have trouble making sense of these statements.

This is my problem with the FSF movement and RMS in particular. A lot of the arguments contain a huge amount of newspeak redefinitions or recastings of terms and acronyms and a) often they are nonsense, and b) even if they did make sense, you're spending all your time arguing semantics and not substance. It really, *really* doesn't matter whether IP stands for intellectual property or imaginary property, what matters is wheth

Re:FSF suckers can suck my dick

[Anonymous Coward]

Software patents, he's against that - obviously. Think about it, patenting maths. Absurd.

I don't understand the distinction between general utility patents and specifically software patents.

I make the argument that virtually everything that's patented -- not just software; everything -- is reducible to understood mathematical principle. In most cases it's fairly straightforward; in a few cases it would take a little prodding by a clever person to figure out the math. Why then is it math when the invention is instantiated on a computer, but not math when it's instantiated physically? The only exceptions would be those inventions which happen to incidentally use physics principles that we haven't quite solved yet.

These three things have nothing in common and there's no gain in conflating them.

They have in common that they are non-physical, which has been termed "intellectual". This is pretty obvious I think. But it's true that they have distinctions within the group. That's the fate of all heirarchical classification schemes.

rms knows Noam Chomsky, so of course he'd be against newspeak - as would be anyone who thinks about it for 5 minutes. Language is what we think in and blurring the language is the first thing you have to do to make people act against their best interests.

I find this quote quite interesting because I personally find RMS and the FSF to be among the worst modern offenders for producing newspeak. They say they are clarifying things, but recasting "intellectual property" as "imaginary property" gains nothing. Recasting "Digital Rights Management" as "Digital Restrictions Management" gains nothing. Restrictions and rights are opposites; management of one entails management of the other. Rights is a positive word and restrictions is a negative word, that's the summation of it. I'm sure the FSF would say something like you have a natural right to everything until restrictions are added on top of it; but you can just as easily claim that you don't have a thing at all until those rights are given to you. Each side wants to bias the conversation. It's typical for rational people to discuss issues using the terms of each side's proponents (pro-choice and pro-life, not anti-choice and anti-life), so long as it isn't brazenly inaccurate or overbearing (eg. a new political party pops up that names itself "the current ruling party") because that's a fairly unbiased heuristic, and people look stupid when they say "open sores" or shit like that.

Re:FSF suckers can suck my dick

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't believe in intellectual property until you start contributing to one of their projects or they offer to adopt it themselves; because that includes the requirement that you sign over your copyright to them.

Re:FSF suckers can suck my dick

[Anonymous Coward]

All property is imaginary. A construct of laws.

Really? So that motorcycle sitting in my garage is not actually there? It's "imaginary"?

That house that I built? I didn't realize that was also a "construct of laws" either.

Good grief! I'm starting to wonder if those socks in my drawer are made up too! For a while there I was actually convinced that all those things, that property of mine were actual physical things that I could touch. Thank bog you came along to set me straight. I would have kept on believing they were actually real things if you wouldn't have told me they were all in my head!

...which prove that people can indeed claim ownership on another's body.

Hahahaha! Too funny. I know you don't realize it, but you're actually arguing against yourself. Sure, people can "claim ownership on another's body" but that doesn't mean they actually have ownership over it. Just like people can claim ownership over IP.

The idea that property's defining attribute is that you can "give it back" is a strange invention of yours.

Hardly. I challenge you to name a single piece of property other than IP that you can't give back. I double dog dare you.

Intellectual Property is real.

Wait a second. Didn't you just say all property is imaginary? You can't even manage to stay consistent with your own damned argument. Which isn't surprising because it makes no sense in the first place.

Honestly, I can't be bothered to tear apart the rest of the nonsense you spew. It would be easy, but time consuming. And a waste of my time because it's clear that you have zero interest in embracing reality and prefer to regurgitate the lies you've been told.

Good luck in life kiddo. You're definitely gonna need it.

Re:FSF suckers can suck my dick

[minderaser]

They say they are clarifying things, but recasting "intellectual property" as "imaginary property" gains nothing. Recasting "Digital Rights Management" as "Digital Restrictions Management" gains nothing.

It only gains nothing if you're too stupid (or just refuse) to realize the terms "Imaginary Property" and "Digital Restrictions Management" are the correct terms for what is actually happening. That's clarity.

Re:FSF suckers can suck my dick

[minderaser]

because that includes the requirement that you sign over your copyright to them.

What a complete bunch of horseshit. Stop lying.

Re:FSF suckers can suck my dick

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does the FSF require that contributors to FSF-copyrighted programs assign copyright to the FSF?

Decentralized AI helpers to counteract the cloud

[Anonymous Coward]

Increasingly people will be manipulated by AI agents whose only goal is to monetise them. What we need is AI that benefits individuals and protects them from being gamed.

Some of the things they could do:

Help counteract manipulative search engine results.
                  By obscuring the exact search terms
                  By sifting through endlessly unrelated chaffe
Help determine where the dark patterns are.
Help people determine who the manipulators are be they real or AI

Re:The FSF is doing enough to promote diversity an

[Anonymous Coward]

So I'm not the only one thinking they waste time and resources on promoting "diversity" thank goodness. Too much ideology and collaboration with movement groups and so little of substance actually done...

Re:Decentralized AI helpers to counteract the clou

[Anonymous Coward]

Additionally get an idea what the manipulators are pushing for so that some determination can be made whether their manipulation is positive or negative.
Find out what exactly is being censored by comparing robot.txt to search engine results.

I'm 30 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

When they find out, let me know.

Become less ideologically bent

[Anonymous Coward]

Become less ideologically bent and advocate common-sense regulation of capitalism (government as referee) rather than the overthrow of capitalism. Upholding the doctrine of first sale and the right to modify hardware you've been sold is common-sense. Trashing the entire concept of intellectual property and advocating for all software to be public is not common-sense.

Re:Become less ideologically bent

[unixisc]

Actually, the next thing they COULD look at is explore ways to have 'liberated hardware' - where one would have the designs to make any object that one has, and be able to take that to a manufacturer to be produced. That could be where future opportunities lie

Re:Become less ideologically bent

[The Finn]

Agreed. I can bootstrap a complete OS and software stack, even cross-compile it to multiple hardware platforms, but I can't do the same thing at the hardware level. I'm stuck with multiple levels of proprietary hardware and firmware. I can't get HDL to my RasPi. I want the ability to bootstrap a complete hardware design (physical circuit boards, RTL, and ALL platform firmware) between multiple independent hardware and silicon vendors. True multiple-sourcing. If I had the facilities (board manufacturing, fab process) I could do it myself. I expect FPGAs to grow good enough to handle this in my lifetime, but they are still tied to proprietary toolchains, and designs for the FPGA silicon itself is not Free or Open.

How about promoting the GPL?

[martin-boundary]

The FSF has dropped the ball in the last 10 years, there needs to be a campaign of awareness and a new push for adoption of the GPL. The GPL was the reason that the open source ecosystem grew and thrived in the 90s. It encouraged people to contribute, knowing that corporations weren't going to take over their work and turn it into products with nonfree agendas. Now the ecosystem is a shadow of its former self, and the world at large is infested with spying, ad-serving, nickel and diming products explicitly designed to keep open source in check.

In the last 10 years, online freedom has been reduced dramatically through the efforts of hardware and software companies like Google and Apple, who take the community's work and turn it into products: free-as-in-beer (with ads) but not free-as-in-freedom. The smartphones, chromebooks, Windows laptops we buy today are built on open software roots but explicitly prevent us from having root access and controlling our privacy. And when the hackers toil to make root available on personal hardware, those companies shortly bring out an update explicitly designed to destroy that access.

Some ideas

[AHuxley]

File systems, cryptography, networking logging, a deeper understanding of safer cpu, gpu options that cannot hide malware, ship with trapdoors, backdoors.

Re:The FSF is doing enough to promote diversity an

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I found that shibboleth pretty disheartening too. I wonder how much longer the cause of software freedom will remain the FSF's primary goal. :(

Mobile

[Anonymous Coward]

FSF has really helped to foment the conversation, but it can't be about making the software itself. This isn't one of the core strengths of FSF.

Advocacy, asserting themselves into the conversation and moving it forward, inspiring the people who ARE good at software to do the right thing... that's one of the best things the FSF can do right now.

Forget the datacenter. It's been won. Forget the desktop; it's a less important battlefield. Almost every single man & woman, and many kids in the developed world carry mobile devices with them everywhere. And this is a place where the FSF's philosophy has not made enough of an impact. Our mobile devices work against us, and we can't even see what it's doing to us. This is where we need focus.

Re: The FSF is doing enough to promote diversity a

[ShieldW0lf]

For any of you who find it confusing, that was an example of begging the question.

Another example is "So, do you still beat your wife."

Re: UX to increase user base, in turn for HW compa

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did I buy photoshop CS4 and not use GIMP? Because my job requires using Photoshop CS4, not GIMP, and other products that can read/write PSD files are unable to do what Photoshop CS4 does. Now why do I have CS4 and not CS5/6/CC? Because there are no improvements in later photoshop versions that my clients use. Everyone uses a version of photoshop between CS2 and CS5

But it's a poor example

[JonathanF]

Here's the problem: if he's leading by example, he makes a great case for proprietary software.

Stallman is so insistent on FOSS everything that there's very little he can actually do by himself. He uses a garbage laptop (to maintain 'pure' firmware, of course) and only the most basic of internet services. He's missing out on so much, both technologically and in life, that your iPhone-toting aunt is probably more liberated than he is.

You're using extreme arguments -- it's software, not a crime against humanity. The FSF leadership should certainly embrace Linux and open source programs where they can, but they shouldn't turn themselves into digital hermits in the process. Set an example that's realistic and positive, one where the leader can actually participate in the real world instead of retreating from it.

Re:But it's a poor example

[twistedcubic]

You already know Stallman isn't "missing" a damned thing. He has told people millions of times it is better to use inferior free software instead of being enslaved by a proprietary equivalent. In my example, if I remove all proprietary software from my life (stop using Netflix, replace Radeon hardware with Intel, use a phone with free firmware), the only change is that I would be a lot more productive. Maybe you should compare your accomplishments to Stallman's and consider doing the same?

FSF Foundation of Word-Slaves

[Ruralhack]

FSF is CULTure driven instead of future driven.

he is about due for a gold watch - age 65

[peter303]

Many of his generous labors were not paid very well.

github has changed the nature of free software

[peter303]

Open source-code is now manageable in a semi-professional manner. A user can offer his/her own code or participate in others projects. (kudos to githubs oredecssors too)

Adjustment layers

[tepples]

Can you quantify what was so hard to learn?

For one thing, how to work around the lack of nondestructive filtering. Photoshop has had adjustment layers since version 5. Not CS5, actual 5, well over a decade ago.

Re:Adjustment layers

[Anonymous Coward]

The question was not how it was difficult to replace Photoshop (we all know PS has a huge head start), but how Gimp was harder to learn than Photoshop. As in, person knows neither program, doesn't know anything about adjustment layers or anything else that MS Paint doesn't have.

Re:Adjustment layers

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose I should have been clearer:

Can you quantify what was so hard to learn compared to the GIMP?

Not a great comparison

[JonathanF]

Problem is, this presupposes that the unreasonable man is effective. DRM and walled gardens are much more present than they were when Stallman first warned about them; Linux has made little progress in PCs outside of the data center; most attempts at selling products based on openness (Firefox OS, Jolla) are dead or dying.

When Shaw made that quote, he was also assuming that the unreasonable man was engaged with the world, actively trying to change it. Stallman is lately defined more by what he avoids, by a retreat into a safe space where his world view is never challenged. A revolutionary doesn't change the world by running away from it.

UK

[Anonymous Coward]

UX makes or break free software. ever wondered why it isn't the year of the Linux desktop yet?