Slashdot Mirror
RMS on APSL
We've all heard what Bruce Perens and ESR think of the APSL, so
it's time to give RMS a chance. Read what he has to say. He
brought up some very interesting things which I don't think have been
discussed before, and are very important (the copyright bit).
"Wait for them to get back into the power ring, we shall see how benevolent apple really is."
Are you kidding? Apple spent _millions_ on an internet suite that was bundled with the OS. It was revolutionary, perhaps too revolutionary. It was called Cyberdog. I used it for over a year... you know what? They never did a fscking thing to push it over the other web browsers/Email programs/ftp etc etc etc vendors. They spent all that money and then just put the result out there and left it to twist in the wind...
If you think for one second that Apple embraces and exterminates like MS does, you are just plain out of your fscking mind and, on top of that, have never even _asked_ anybody what the real truth of it is.
Apple's sin is lack of promotion- for years they just ran around making 'cool stuf' (Cocoa? Colorsync? Applescript? OpenDoc? Cyberdog? Project X/HotSauce/MCF?) and did nothing to try and promote it. Meanwhile MS was ripping off companies and ramming their choices down everyone's throats (read Crushed By Microsoft: What I Learned for an example). Who do you think ended up winning? Now, who do you think really deserves your nasty fit of attitude?
You are incredibly wrong and the record shows how wrong you are- if Apple was as you think they are, they would not have been whipped so bad in '97 and '98. It's anybody's guess as to whether they will get fully into your 'power ring' but it's well to remember that Apple's culture is one hell of a lot more like the Linux culture than MS's is. It was an internal gift economy- a playground for Apple programmers to play with nifty ideas while the marketshare collapsed and Rome burned around them. Jobs put in some backbone and some ruthlessness, but man, have some sense of proportion! Do you want a detailed account of all the different ways Apple completely didn't even bother to ruthlessly crush their competitors? God! I don't know whether to laugh or cry- you should talk to some of the OpenDoc guys who got caught holding the bag when _that_ 'cool stuff' ended up unpromoted, un-whipped-on-customers, un-forced-down-everyone's-throat... geez... talk to some people who know the truth, will you?
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
I don't care enough about Apple and it's software to read the whole license myself, but my_trust(RMS) > my_trust(BP) + my_trust(ESR)--and since even those two luminaries *cough* disagree, I'm taking away a belief in the non-free-ness of the APSL.
Which is not necessarily bad. They are doing what they want to do which is fine. Just don't try to convince me they are trying to further the altruistic goals of the FSF.
The whole point of Free Software is that everyone has equal freedom to use and modify the software; no one has veto power. That doesn't seem to be the case with Apple's license.
The termination clause is the killer for me.
I don't usually side with RMS in these RMS/ESR debates, but on this one I think RMS is 100% right, and ESR is 100% wrong. Sorry, Eric.
Bruce Perens says that he is talking with the folks at Apple about these issues. As in the case of Troll Tech and QT, I think there is a good chance that Apple will come around to a truely free license. Bruce, once a very vocal critic of the QT license, is now a vocal supporter of them because they did respond.
It is important to keep the flames down and only talk about the technical problems with the license. Other issues with Apple, whether it is the fact that they are part owned by MS, or they once filed the much hated (in the OSS communuty) "look and feel" lawsuit, or the quality of their GUI, or whatever, should remain seperate issues. IF they fix their license then Apple has done A Good Thing. If they don't, then we should consider it to be "not free software", but no worse than most shareware and as such, it should not get flamed, it should just get ignored.
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
The trend in the software industry over the past couple of years has proven the exact opposite: namely pure software companies trying to sell proprietary shrink-wrapped tools have more and more difficulty surviving. One reason is simple: develop any truly worthwhile idea and Microsoft will embrace it and destroy you. Netscape is just the latest victim. The other reason is that software is more and more becoming a commodity. Any idea you come up with will instantly be followed by others offering more, better, cheaper, faster. The competitive environment makes generating profits through software virtually impossible.
Most important however: customers don't want code - they want a solution to their problem. More and more people are beginning to realize this and understand they don't want to buy computers or software, but want to buy a system or service that gets done what they need done. Hence the market is demanding service not products.
It is for this reason that major corporations like Oracle and IBM are moving into the service model. True they did services in the past, but now both these companies are positioning themselves as 100% ecommerce service companies (IBM has a double reason to do this, since hardware is also becoming a commodity).
What does an inidividual programmer to do?
If you are not cut out to work directly with customers you have two alternatives:
If you like the corporate environment, go work for one of the many major corporations following this trend. More and more of them will be supporting and developing open source projects. Or else find partners who know how to relate to people.
If you believe you are good enough to develop your own products, and have basic social skills, then choose a niche, develop a solution for that niche and give the source away. Customers will pay you for access to that solution. You can charge using a rental model, where you deal with all the upgrades etc. so they dont have to.
In short, making the code free does not mean you can't make money off of your efforts. On the contrary, it offers you the many free software resources that allows you to compete without having billions to spend on R&D.
Notification is a problem. In general, you can take a Linux distribution and just hack it a bit and re-distribute it, as long as you distribute the source code with it. Notification is a bigger problem when it's part of 100 licenses rather than one. Then you have to find and notify 100 people before re-distributing. Or 1000. That's a good reason to keep it out of our licenses.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Like some of the guys above me. I like apple. MacOS 8 is better than windows. OSX will rock. I like the fact that they are trying to go open source. I'm not going to support them until they get the liscence right.
Doing it poorly, and not getting the free part right isn't going to get them very far with the community. Get over the fact that anything that looks like an attempt to purely take advantage of us will be harshly treated. It happens, it is part of the community. Which is what this issue is all about, is it not?
ph43drus
PS RMS is my hero