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Richard Stallman Calls Open Source Movement 'Amoral', Criticizes Apple And Microsoft For 'Censoring' App Installation (newleftreview.org)
Richard Stallman recently gave a 9,000-word interview in which he first reminisces about his early days at MIT's AI Lab where he "found something worth being loyal to" -- and then assesses how things have played out.
Open source is an amoral, depoliticized substitute for the free-software movement... [I]t's not the name of a philosophy -- it refers to the software, but not to the users. You'll find lots of cautious, timid organizations that do things that are useful, but they don't dare say: users deserve freedom. Like Creative Commons, which does useful, practical work -- namely, preparing licences that respect the freedom to share. But Creative Commons doesn't say that users are entitled to the freedom to share; it doesn't say that it's wrong to deny people the freedom to share. It doesn't actively uphold that principle.
Of course, it's much easier to be a supporter of open source, because it doesn't commit you to anything. You could spend ten minutes a week doing things that help advance open source, or just say you're a supporter -- and you're not a hypocrite, because you can't violate your principles if you haven't stated any. What's significant is that, in their attempt to separate our software from our ideas, they've reduced our ability to win people over by showing what those ideas have achieved...
For a long time, Microsoft was the main enemy of users' freedom, and then, for the past ten years or so, it's been Apple. When the first iThings came out, around 2007, it was a tremendous advance in contempt for users' freedom because it imposed censorship of applications -- you could only install programs approved by Apple. Ironically, Apple has retreated from that a little bit. If a program is written in Swift, you can now install it yourself from source code. So, Apple computers are no longer 100 per cent jails. The tablets too. A jail is a computer in which installation of applications is censored. So Apple introduced the first jail computer with the iPhone. Then Microsoft started making computers that are jails, and now Apple has, you might say, opened a window into the jail -- but not the main door.
Stallman cites free-software alternatives to Skype like Linphone, Ekiga, and xJitsi, and also says he's In favor of projects like GNU social, a free software microblogging server, and the distributed social networking service Diaspora. "I know they're useful for other people, but it wouldn't fit my lifestyle. I just use email." In fact, he calls mobile computing one of the three main setbacks of the free-software movement. "[P]hones and tablets, designed from the ground up to be non-free. The apps, which tend now to be non-free malware. And the Intel management engine, and more generally the low-level software, which we can't replace, because things just won't allow us to do so....
"[P]eople in the software field can't avoid the issue of free versus proprietary software, freedom-respecting versus freedom-trampling software. We have a responsibility, if we're doing things in the software field, to do it in a way that is ethical. I don't know whether we will ever succeed in liberating everyone, but it's clearly the right direction in which to push."
Of course, it's much easier to be a supporter of open source, because it doesn't commit you to anything. You could spend ten minutes a week doing things that help advance open source, or just say you're a supporter -- and you're not a hypocrite, because you can't violate your principles if you haven't stated any. What's significant is that, in their attempt to separate our software from our ideas, they've reduced our ability to win people over by showing what those ideas have achieved...
For a long time, Microsoft was the main enemy of users' freedom, and then, for the past ten years or so, it's been Apple. When the first iThings came out, around 2007, it was a tremendous advance in contempt for users' freedom because it imposed censorship of applications -- you could only install programs approved by Apple. Ironically, Apple has retreated from that a little bit. If a program is written in Swift, you can now install it yourself from source code. So, Apple computers are no longer 100 per cent jails. The tablets too. A jail is a computer in which installation of applications is censored. So Apple introduced the first jail computer with the iPhone. Then Microsoft started making computers that are jails, and now Apple has, you might say, opened a window into the jail -- but not the main door.
Stallman cites free-software alternatives to Skype like Linphone, Ekiga, and xJitsi, and also says he's In favor of projects like GNU social, a free software microblogging server, and the distributed social networking service Diaspora. "I know they're useful for other people, but it wouldn't fit my lifestyle. I just use email." In fact, he calls mobile computing one of the three main setbacks of the free-software movement. "[P]hones and tablets, designed from the ground up to be non-free. The apps, which tend now to be non-free malware. And the Intel management engine, and more generally the low-level software, which we can't replace, because things just won't allow us to do so....
"[P]eople in the software field can't avoid the issue of free versus proprietary software, freedom-respecting versus freedom-trampling software. We have a responsibility, if we're doing things in the software field, to do it in a way that is ethical. I don't know whether we will ever succeed in liberating everyone, but it's clearly the right direction in which to push."
... to freedom lovers.
People typically criticize Stallman based on style, because they can't touch him based on substance.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Enjoy your cartoons, then.
Crazy old man yells at cloud.... and spreads misinformation about how things work...
Open source is amoral meaning that it shows no concern about whether behavior is morally right or wrong. However, this doesn't mean it's immoral (conflicting with morals). What this does is provides people with the source code and the choice of acting morally. This is real freedom for the recipient of the source code. The "free-software movement" removes this choice from the recipient of the source code by obligating them to act a certain way.
I'm just a guy that likes to write code that does something nice for people. I can only speak for myself but whether people want to use my code morally or not really my interest so I don't try to make it my business.
Do note that GPL'd tools are used as a basis for the most insidious and invasive systems devised (e.g. Facebook).
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Stallman can afford to take this stand because he understands what is involved in programming; the ins, the outs, the nitty gritty.
br> My mom doesn't have the time, energy, inclination to learn how to program or maintain a home spooled build or double check the source code of every app she uses. She just wants it to work. And apple, for all of the complaints about the walled garden provides products that just work.
For comparison look at Android. Android has a much more open applications market. Also look at the Android current scandal involving hundreds of applications, ad fraud and millions of dollars. The casual user doesn't have the time to figure out if a particular app is also a time bomb, bitcoin miner, ad fraud machine or something else.
Yes, apple keeps things locked down with so tight it squeaks. But it also limits malevolent actors from stealing from innocent people. People trust that apps in the apple app store are not malicious. And that is the trade off: Safe Apps that aren't malicious instead of the android wild wild west.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
"Apple computers" != "iThings", Richard.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
with the big US brands that allowed PRISM deep in their own networks?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
That's his opinion. Others may say that open source is moral but the value system isn't precisely equivalent to Stallman's. Stallman is effectively claiming that his value system is the one and only.
Bullshit -- that would only require a single tamper-resistant IC on the phone, maybe paired with a fingerprint reader. The rest of the device could be completely user-repairable without damaging security. As far as Samsung, their bloatware sucks. Go Motorola -- they're making an effort to be repair-friendly and their Android flavor has a minimum of bloatware. Also: the non-Scamazon versions of their phones officially allow bootloader unlocking.
Even if I cannot tell that I agree with everything 100%, still it is an interesting article.
It is not hard to install a dual-boot Linux, or to install GIMP parallel to the PhotoShop, etc. And give them a try, at least from time to time.
It would make the commercial soft to work better, when one have a ready alternative. This way I use nowadays mostly GIMP and OpenOffice, not for ideological reasons, but because they have features which I need.
The ONLY thing Apple and Google should be doing for their "app store" approval process is to make sure the app is not malware, i.e. won't infect/compromise your system.
That depends on a precise definition of "compromise your system" on which all parties can agree. If you let Apple define "compromise your system", you end up with the present App Store Review Guidelines, just with an excuse below each line item as to why Apple deems a violation a "compromise" of the iOS experience.
You do realize that
a) Nearly 100% of the userspace that makes your "Linux" system run is part of the GNU project? And, that much of it (enough to bootstrap the first "linux" distributions) was initially written before the Linux kernel was created. [old guy here, I ran Linux + GNU since nearly day one of Slackware, and everything worked really well (replaced SunOS for me; where I was already running a ton of GNU because it was technically superior to the included Sun bits)].
b) RMS was one of the folks who said we don't need the HURD since we have a gpl licensed kernel with Linux now.
c) The HURD has some really neat features, but without the imperative of needing a kernel, it has turned into a research kernel. I wish RMS and others did not have the opinion that the Linux kernel satisfies the requirements for a kernel for the GNU System (every "linux" distribution there is). Maybe replace Mach with L4 or something, but much of the ideas around the HURD are really interesting.
d) If your a BSD guy, that license was influenced by RMS as well. RMS visited Berkeley (multiple times), and tried to convince them to release their (cleaned of ATT copyrighted code) kernel under the GPL. He did not succeed in getting them to use the GPL, but they were swayed enough by his arguments that BSD is not a closed commercial product with rights owned and royalties paid to the Regents of the University of California. And, for a long time, you needed GNU userspace to build BSD kernels.
e) RMS has accomplished more in his lifetime than most of us (almost certainly, you too) can ever hope achieve. Probably most will never achieve even 5% of RMS's life works to date. Like him or not, he deserves respect.
Software with readable but all rights reserved source code is sufficient to safeguard privacy
How much "Software with readable but all rights reserved source code" executes on a typical end user computing device, compared to the amount of software whose source code is a trade secret?
Stagnation doesn't mean failure. Just look at MacOS 9. Apple took a bunch of shit and glued it together after that thing died. Just goes to prove no one just builds something 100% from scratch. Apple is just good at taking credit for it.
The Simpsons hasn't been enjoyable since the late 90s.
Circumcision is child abuse.
a) Nearly 100% of the userspace that makes your "Linux" system run is part of the GNU project
Not necessarily. Sure, you're running GNU/Linux if you use Debian, Fedora, or any other system built on GNU Coreutils, Bash, glibc, GCC, GTK+, and the like. But a lot of my Xubuntu laptop's RAM is occupied by things like X.Org X11, Xfce panel, Thunar, Mousepad, Firefox, GIMP, and other things that aren't "GNU software" because FSF doesn't own the copyright. GNU exceeds Linux in distributions like these but is by no means the majority. There also exist Linux systems that use little or no GNU software, such as Alpine Linux, Android, OpenWrt, and Starch Linux.
Open source is explicitly amoral, and nobody who knows what they're talking about says otherwise. Open source was designed precisely to strip the moralizing out of free software. Because there are many, many people and companies who find free software useful as a strategy for many things but don't share Stallman's belief that it's a moral issue.
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What a rant. Your problem is it just exposes you as an ignorant idiot.
Amoral is not the same as immoral. The GPL is the way it is because RMS is taking a moral stance on software. Using a permissive license is in his view amoral because it is taking no moral stance. It's not in his view immoral (against his morals).
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Sorry, but I don't want someone dictating to me what I can and cannot do with my own software based on some cockeyed sense of "morality".
Especially since people all tend to be at least MILDLY hypocritical at times.
Also, if I'm putting out my own software in OSS, I don't want to limit the reach of my project with arbitrary "morality clauses".
That kind of shit is pure poison.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
That's the problem.
*dingdingdingding* We have a winner!
This is me, exactly. (Well, I'm not the AC who posted that, but he said exactly how I feel about it.) The computer doesn't care about your morals. Neither do your customers. They just want software that works.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
You talk like someone who's never really *used* OS X. It was, and is, a Unix system that anyone can install and administer. That makes it a Very Good Thing, especially compared with the crap that is Windows.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Thank you for the correction. I know FSF deliberately refuses to issue guidance for how much GNU software qualifies a distribution for the "GNU/" name. But is there a definition for whether a particular package is part of GNU or not?
I say maybe, because we all know we need him as society needs the crazy guy living in the mountains warning of how things can go bad.
But while Stallman is right 95% of the time he also needs to get over the fact that for most people - including me - free (as in speech) software and open source software are the same thing. In fact, open source is a more distinct term than "free" and thus much more precise. We all know that if MS offers some "open shared source" bullshit that restricts its users it is not open source, it's fake open source. Every single person I know when talking about FOSS thinks about software that is open source under some OSI certified FOSS license, be it GNU, BSD, MIT or whatnot. For a good society they are all equally valuable. As for douchebags still attempting a malicious lock-in with fake open source: We can call them out and ignore them. FOSS has won. MS knows this and if some manager at MS still thinks he can screw us over and expect us to learn a system that is no other than badly disguised corporate lock-in, then he can go and screw himself, die in a fire and have is software become obsolete technical liability in less than a decade (.Net anyone?).
My 2 eurocents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
What Facebook has taught me is that most people are sheep. Based simply on what people share (absolutely ridiculous things that they believe is true, and don't care one iota about validating or verifying, that any normal person with common sense should know is almost certainly a scam). Do any of you have friends or family members who just kept infecting their computer over and over opening emails or links or believing some popup on a web page that said their computer was infected and they needed to download a tool to clean it? That is the "normal" general population in an online computing environment. They do not care about the technical aspects, only the most superficial functionality the software provides.
My conclusion is that the average person *requires* some gatekeeping and protection against their own lack of interest, lack of effort and lack of motivation to protect themselves. When it comes to platforms / hardware, like iPhone, or Android, or Windows, people gain an impression of that platform by how easily it lets them shoot themselves in the foot. Oh, they won't accept responsibility that they are the problem. Of course not. But if platform Y makes it harder to shoot themselves in the foot than platform X, then they will perceive platform Y as being better. Because it is, from a user experience point of view.
Stallman makes an assumption in his reasoning that everyone is him. And that is flawed. He is atypical, in regards to computing and software.
Finally, I will say that this statement is flat out wrong:
Apple. Ironically, Apple has retreated from that a little bit. If a program is written in Swift, you can now install it yourself from source code.
That has nothing to do with Swift. Since the beginning of 3rd party iOS app development (iOS version 2), you could always install and run any software you compiled on devices that you physically connected to the Mac. That could be in Objective-C or C++ or C, and of course now includes Swift as well. Additionally, XCode has always been free.
Better known as 318230.
It is amoral and unpolitical.
It is not unmoral.
There is a difference in being neutral and in being negative.
If open source software is amoral, then why try to impose a moral code of conduct among developers? Criticizing others for their censorship, while at the same using censorship to impose one's morality, is either a lack of self-awareness, or pure hypocrisy.
I'll have you know that when it rains there is often water under his bridge, and from time to time he swims in it.
The entire point of the Open Source movement's founding was to build a movement that would create Free Software that didn't have an ideology associated with it beyond "This is the way that the highest quality software can be built." You might argue that that is a moral point of view, but you'd then have to assert that, say, Agile project management or Managed Code (eg JVM, CIL) are moral movements too. They aren't, at least not in the traditional sense.
Free Software (whose baggage the OSI was formed to leave behind) was based on the central principle that nobody has the right to hide from you knowledge, or prevent you from using that knowledge. You have to admit that's an entirely different moral ballpark compared to "we can make better software if more people can contribute to it."
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
you mean the GNU project sucked up other successful projects, even the C compiler they made was total shit until another group rebuilt it properly...and then GNU took it back
HURD proves Stallman and company can't manage a medium-sized effort to save their life, let alone a real life kernel.
Stallman is okay for idea guy but actual real world stuff not his forte.
in HURD case it does mean failure, 35 years of trying to build something and it's as useless as it ever was.
Dude, don't get him started on Cloud...
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
My decision tree when deciding to use a product or service starts with:
Not the other way around. More often than not, the walled garden provides a much better experience.
Second: the web is an open platform, and with the progress of JavaScript applications, the walled garden mentality has the potential to become moot.
No matter what process you use, if all you're trying to do is create high-quality software, then that is an amoral position, because it is indifferent to morality.
However, if you're trying to create free software in the sense that RMS means (free as in freedom) then that is a moral position. It means you want the software you create to include certain freedoms that others have when they use your software, and that persist no matter what others do to that software.
Creating high-quality software and creating free (as in freedom) software are not incompatible goals.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
RMS is an absolutist that believes that the author or a work should have fewer rights than those who receive the work.
He quite firmly believes that it is immoral for someone who creates a work (a program) should not be allowed to do what they want with that program; that they SHOULD HAVE TO distribute the source code for the work. If RMS had his way, all software would always be mandated to be GPL, and licenses like BSD and MIT would not exist.
I am sorry, but I fundamentally disagree with many of RMS's viewpoints. If I am the one spending all of the blood, sweat, and tears creating a work, then I should be allowed to distribute it however I want.
https://xkcd.com/225/
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
Yet somehow enough people enjoy watching them that they're commercially viable, and continue to be produced and maintain a broadcast slot.
I agree about the decline in quality of the program.
But a lot of people still enjoy the show.