Slashdot Mirror
RMS Responds
People have been speaking of me in the context the Open Source movement. That's misleading because I am not a member of it. I belong to the Free Software movement. In this movement we talk about freedom, about principle, about the rights that computer users are entitled to.
The Open Source movement avoids talking about those issues, and that is why I am not joining it. The two movements can work together on software; I even occasionally recommend Eric Raymond as a speaker for a business-oriented conference. But we disagree on the basic issues. (See this document.)
For example, in the Free Software movement, we don't consider proprietary programs such as Applix or Wordperfect a contribution to our community. Instead, we work on free replacements for those non-free programs, just as we have worked for 15 years to develop a free replacement for Unix.
The Open Source people are entitled to present their views, but please don't cite the achievements of Free Software as their successes. GNU software and the GNU operating system come from the Free Software movement.
Also, for the record, I am not a Communist or anything similar. The idea that people ought to cooperate and help their neighbors is much older than Marx--in fact, one notable exponent of this view lived 2000 years ago. And the idea of inalienable rights embodied in the GNU GPL comes from the founders of the United States. People who disagree with me often find it convenient to call me a Communist, but they do so in order to misrepresent my views.
When did he say that?
U need glasses or something?
Put on your glasses and watch http://www.gnu.org/people/saintignucius .jpg for a picture of RMS as an evangelist :)
>Linux is nothing but the kernel itself, yet somehow the "linux community" gets the credit for the complete system
h ntorvalds.xml
Sorry, thank you for playing.
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/990621
says:
"It's not just the kernel, it's all these other things, too. "
Now, I'm sure if someone was wanting to talk about the Linux KERNEL they would say Linux Kernel.
Because, frankly, no one buys/gets JUST a kernel. They get a kernel AND the tools that 'wrap around it'.
Do you wish to dis-avow the 'holy words of Torvalds' on the matter of what Linux is?
*and to defer to RMS, its really GNU/Linux.
How dare somebody give stuff away free on a group/team level basis! Whats next, Free beer? Free cars? we're all going to be doomed!
I don't see why they can't coexsist (sp).
Someone else came up with 'Open Source.' Raymond just helped publicize it, and took all of the credit. See the recent Perens interview on linuxworld.com (which has interjections from ESR, RMS, O'Reilly, etc. one of whom mentioned this)
Aaaawww, ewe no likeah spaghetti code? D=
Thank you...
That has to be the most concise description of that business model
I've ever heard...
Free software doesn't mean programmers don't get paid; just that everyone is free to do whatever they want with the programs afterwards. The vast, vast majority of programmers do work specific to a single client (database systems, embedded systems, web development, system administration, etc.) Companies will still pay programmers to develop these even if they're freely redistributable afterwards.
Honest Answer:
AFAIK, RMS and Co. don't hold the same views for personal property, or even all IP. The catch is that as data has become so easily copiable, transferable, and malleable, it should really fall under different terms than traditional property, because it cannot be owned in the traditional sense. Property and the like can be "owned" in the traditional sense. To put it a different way, it doesn't make sense to share your home with the rest of the world- that would be of benefit to no one and generally unworkable. In contrast, you can share your software with the world easily, and they can take it just as easily- so why not share, especially since it benefits you just as much as it benefits them. For more clarification, see his piece at lwn.net about why he doesn't think the GPL really works for hardware.
~luge
I would argue that. I think the OSI is doing a better job. The problem with RMS's approach is that he's trying to push this morality on everyone, saying Free Software is the "right" thing to do. Well, reality check, morality is subjective. I don't agree with this concept of right and wrong. What I do agree with are the OSI's efforts to promote the economics of Open Source Software.
You could have a look at the following site for informastion about Debian GNU/Hurd :
d .html
http://www.fsf.org/software/hurd/debian-gnu-hur
or this one: (They could be the same page.)
http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html
Sinsen Krysset
There are several ways of looking at it:
When you buy a piece of physical property, you have the right to effectively do with it whatever you want. I can work on, and modify my car. I can give my car to my neighbor. If I really wanted to, I could make a new car. When I buy a piece of software, I loose all of those rights.
In physical property, if I take your chair, you loose it. In intellectual property, if I take your program, you still keep it.
Intellectual property is not real property, in that taking it does not hurt anyone. It's like an idea. In fact, it is an idea. You can't, and for the good of the society, shouldn't try to, stop the flow of ideas. It's not a physical good.
(pmitros, not speaking for anyone but himself)
RMS and ESR just have different audiences; RMS appeals to the heart whereas ESR appeals to those who don't get RMS's appeal.
Come on! Where are my bonus points for being witty and clever?
And where were you when Tummy and all of the AC's were running off at the mouth about beta software for the past three days, Mr. Moderator, with all your power.
I really don't need an editor to do my dishes.
Typical Unix programs are small and have a very specific purpose. This makes them easy to maintain, understand and integrate with other programs.
Emax is the opposite of this model.
Emacs is a do-all program.
No thanks.
Linus once said "People, I am your god!"
However, I think that Linus is just a major Saint,
RMS is our god!
he wants to insist on having some say in the naming of the Linux OS...
The "Linux OS"? What is that, anyway? All this time I have been thinking Linux is the name of a kernel and only a kernel.
Next time, think before you post. And oh yea, if you really did mean to refer to an OS, it's called GNU/Linux, buddy. And RMS is no hypocrite, not with your kind of lame argument anyway.
Compare Free Software to charity organizations before you start calling FSF a communistic organization. Do you consider charity organizations that search for a cure to some particular cancer a communistic organization because they do not do research with financial interests ?? They do research to help humanity. FSF leads projects to help humanity in computing related projects.
Collectivism is a necessary corollary and social extension of altruism. Collectivism is the subordination and subjugation of the individual to the group, tribe, race, class, society or the state. Collectivism is the utter negation of the individual. The central premise of collectivism is that man's thoughts and actions must serve "the common good." The collective (of any size) is reality and self-sacrifice to the collective is the only "value" man has in society. Because a collective is not a real entity, it logically depends upon mysticism to lend it existence - and even then only as a phantom. Collectives are always conceived by elite intelligentsia of mystics of mind who claim to be endowed with magical insight that transcends logic and reality. They in turn provide rationales for the dictators (mystics of muscle) whose only truthful claim is that they are endowed with the might to enforce their whims on innocent victims. Collectivism posits that the individual is a non-entity, voluntary associations among individuals are "anti-social," man's life belongs to the group, and that the group may sacrifice him for the "good of the whole."
This is why their model is broken; because value must eventually resolve to an asset.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they are not.
Because he's a hippie, and hippies suck.
Respect mah authoritah!
There's lot's wrong with communism. I refer you to Federalist #10. A nice little essay in which one of our founding Pimp Daddies identifies the true motivation for a republican legislative system. Can't quote exactly, but he talks about such horrors as common ownership of resources, and warns about the evils of widespread sufferage.
Why, if we were to adopt the beliefs of those fucking commies, before you know it we'd have to live next door to *gasp* black *gasp* people. Or even worse, without the obvious difference of my big house, nice lawn, and expensive car, I would actually have to THINK about what I am. Imagine...I could no longer dismiss poor people as 'stupid' or 'evil'...I'd have to deal with them.
And what about the hungry? You'd actually destroy this mighty segment of the US pop. (about 20 million) And what about all of the police you would put out of work? With the usually all-too arbitrary class differences erased, what is left to motivate muggers and the like?
Of course, with the overwhelmingly homogenious demographic that reads this site, I don't expect to much critical thought about What RMS has to say. Or Jesus. Or Lao Tzu. Or Adam Smith. Or your father.
Just join the Free Grocery Movement ;)
-Eponymous Coward
> Not that i care that much, but it sucks when you put all of your time and $$$ into R&D then release
> something as GPL and another company picks it up and sells it for a lower price... Your R&D cash is
> wasted and you make no profit because someone else is selling your product for USD$1.50.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ------------\
|
Perhaps you can show us an example of where this has actually happened?
You are just commenting on direct benefits of software freedom. In fact, your priorities are based on the indirect benefits. Does that make the idea of software freedom any less appealing? Have you ever developed software, fixed a bug, reported a bug, or asked a question about a software product. The more of those things you do, the more you will appreciate about free software.
Your whole point is about what is restrictive. You will have to expand on that to really make any difference. I could say that joy is more restrictive than emotion. Does that make joy bad?
How can you own anything? For a quick and short reference, check out some thoughts from Chief Seattle. The only way to "own" anything is to be able to defend it by force.
I doubt he has put much thought into what political theories he believes in, but by his mentality he seems to share anarchist type visions. But thanks to western media (mainly the US since he lives in the US) and US government, they have successfully made anarchism synonymous with chaos, terror, and violence which is not at all how anarchism is.
For those who wish to step out of the box, and fed stupidity of the media, I suggest at least reading the Anarchy FAQ here.
For those who believe Anarchism is a utopian society that will never work with more than 100 people, I suggest reading about the Spanish Anarchism Revolution here (brief) or here (long). A list of suggested books for more details of the Spanish Anarchist Revolution can be found here (scroll down). For a list of more Anarchist collectives in practice please visit here. There was an estimated seven million people part of the Spanish Anarchist collective, and it didn't fall apart because it didn't work...it had to do with the war going on around them. If you actually want to know what happened I suggest reading those pages.
I don't believe in state socialism at all because it gives too much power to those in power, no matter how democratic the system is made to be, it is still separated from the common workers, which doesn't fit the real definition of socialism. Those in power end up controlling what the workers produce, not the workers themselves. I certainly believe many people today who think they believe in state socialism would change their mind and support (social) anarchism if they were aware of how it actually works, rather than what they have been "coerced" (brainwashed) into believing.
If the US was so interested in protecting and spreading democracy why do they oppose leftist democratic movements and organizations in other countries and the US? Why would they oppose Anarchism and anarchist movements if it has proven to work and is the ultimate in personal freedom in democracy? Why have many (about all?) of the countries they have bombed and attacked since World War II not been replaced with democratic governments, but usually fascist/right wing ones? Is it possible they are actually fighting for the "good" of capitalism...corporations get cheap labor in "third world" countries with fascist governments...taking the natural resources from the citizens of a nation and using it for their own profits. Too hard to believe? Too lazy to read up for yourself? Rather accept the US government is a gift from heaven and all of those who oppose it are dumb, insane, or evil?
just because Mr. T goes around preaching about
jesus doesnt mean he thinks he is jesus.
it is the same here
you know, rms probably wrote alotta programs
that were used by the american military
industrial complex to go kick some commie ass...
i dont know what the fuck your problem is,
you stupid fuckwads throw around 'communist' like
it was some sort of saturday morning cartoon villain
like 'decepticon' or like this is the hatfields
and mccoys. well grow the fuck up, and get your ass
into the 20th century. go read some fucking history
books about what it means to call someone 'communist' then
shut your little prissy ignorant crazy fool mouth
and leave me the fuck alone!
in short, rms has slaughtered nobody and wants to share programs.
historically communists wanted state control of society, so im sure most of you elitist SOB's can relate.
Let's start the Free Food Movement!
Seriously tough, we have more food than we need. If people didn't have to pay for their food (a free food distribution project, anyone?), and if they didn't have to pay for clothes (again, we have more than we need, our scarcity on it is only from people that does not have enough money to buy them), and housing, and computers with internet connection (don't say we do not have enough -- we have multiuser systems, right?), we wouldn't have to worry about money and would be able to do what we like or what we feel that is needed (like, if we had a clothes outage, some guys would just assemble to produce them -- much like Bazaar-style OSS projects today).
And do not tell me about the "tragedy of the commons". Anyone who is using too much and thus harming others who also have the right to use some thing (like candy) will soon see that people won't give him a large amount even if he later says he have the need for more (ok, needing more is a bit meaningless when it comes to candy, but when it comes to things like disk space this is not the case).
_Linus_ Torvalds.
I don't agree that people should be bound to Stallman's ideas at all. I DO view them as "communist-type" ideals. But, on the other hand, I do have to say I'm glad he's there. One of the things I enjoy most about Linux is the GNU aspects of the system, being able to peek into source anywhere...not having to splurge money out ot visit warez irc channels to get the cool apps. (Yes, I may visit warez channels, but I don't want to risk my $400 to see if Office will do the job). The downside to Free Software, is that you usually yield apps much less feature-rich than the commercial apps...you can disagree with me, that's fine...
Anyhow, I'm kind of iffy with Stallman, but I'll still thank him, the FSF have made computing much more easier and enjoyable than Microsoft ever will...
Check this. That quote is from a Hollywood scriptwriter.
OK, then you like the public domain model, the do-whatever-you-want-with-it model.
Including modifying the code and adding proprietary extensions that will lock users on a single closed-source version of the program.
The public-domain model works only if everybody knows that closed source is evil and rude. Sadly, this isn't the case nowadays. So, to avoid worst-case sceanrios, which _were happening_ at that time, the GPL was born.
Linux won because of the GPL. Without the GPL, Micro$oft would just create M$-Linux and add proprietary misfeatures to aid in consumer lock-in.
And the GPL is fully based on RMS' "nutty" ideas. So it's a Good Thing. Get lost.
There are two reasons why people might choose to protect their software under the GPL:
1. It's the best way of preventing work which they give for free (gratis, nothing) to the community from being 'borrowed' wholesale or in part for someone else's profit.
2. They see their 'payment' for their free (open) software as being the fact that everyone who modifies it must share their changes freely (in an open manner).
The FSF subscribe to both, but particularly the second. They often seem to forget that the GPL is used by people who subscribe solely to the first, and that not all GPL software writers consider RMS to be the second coming.
The man's got a way with words. And absolutely correct about the ways of the RMS crowd. I wish he'd mentioned the fundamental disparity between RMS's idealogical writings at www.fsf.org concerning the freedom of ideas and his key role in enslaving ideas under the GPL licence.
And he could have mentioned other words twisted from their standard meanings by RMS. Unfortunately, it's been twisted so well and so long by him and others that it almost IS the standard meaning in our part of the IT world. I speak of "proprietary". Copyright law gives you proprietary (ownership) rights to the software you write (in most cases). If you don't give up ALL of those rights, your software is still proprietary. Flim-flaming people with near-truths (partial lies) to promote the use of insideous virus-like license deserves condemnation, not praise.
To they to whom much is given, much more is required. May it ever be so.
Lessee what we have here.
Stallman rejects Open Source software in favor of Free Software.
Linux (the entire OS) contains large chunks of Open Source software as well as Free Software.
So I guess there's no way Linux can be a mere "variant of the GNU system which happens to run on the Linux kernel" as Stallman likes to claim. Nor should it be called GNU/Linux.
You can't have your cake and eat it, dude.
No. As you indicate later, you enjoy the "open" aspects of the system. And probably the no-cost aspects. But open, no-cost software was around long before RMS and GNU. What GNU brought to us is the inability to use pieces of this "free" software when developing new software unless we are willing to surrender almost all of our rights to the software that we develop. Most would gladly surrender much of the stuff we write, but many times we cannot (or will not, for spite!), so we must re-write the stuff from scratch. RMS's idealism has no practical value to us in this situation.
The open software world would be a much different and better place if RMS's GPL did not have its most restrictive and viral features while still receiving his efforts in promoting and using it.
..it's called Linux. RMS himself stated that
they don't need HURD anymore since Linux
is available with the exact same license as
the rest of the GNU stuff. They're finishing
HURD only for the kicks and because it's
claimed to be not-so-far from being ready
for actual use. And another thing, Microsoft
has been working on OSes for 15 years and
*they* don't have a stable kernel. Now,
what's that? Bad planning? Or in reality,
lack of resources to do right things, as it
probably is with HURD??
You can do useful things with Emacs, but
not with Word.
Now back to reality. Emacs can do what Word
can do, but Emacs can do a lot more. Metcalfe
seems to think Emacs cannot do word processing,
but I use Emacs 50% for coding and 50% for
word processing with LaTeX. The difference
to Word being that I don't know anything
about laying text out on any sort of media,
but my documents are book print quality
anyway.
crying hooplah buzzwords like wysiwyg and
check-spell-as-you-type all over the place.
Wysiwyg aside, spell-as-you-
is utterly _useless_. You really want your
editor to nag at you anytime you make
an error? Not so. The funny thing is that
you could make emacs do these *-as-you-go
things _and_ real-time-rendering of documents
if you wanted to. Well, to be fair, Word
might be able to lots of funny things if
you can talk COM at it.
Now don't be so hard on someone who forgets, or ignores, the fact that "Reaganism" was all about freeing us to be more philanthropic with time and money that was no longer to be so heavily regulated and taxed. And, in fact, that is what happened for a while in the 80's until the Democratic Congress (with the help of "wet" Republicans) and a recalcitrant bureuacracy figured out how to negate RR's leadership. Anyway that's getting into a whole other polemic. He has a good point, that ESR makes in his notion of the "Gift Culture", that it is fine and wonderfully productive to give of ourselves to others in terms of our time, talent, and treasure. And as long as we give of our own free will, that validates it.
But it is hard to have anything to give if we do not have a measure of that time, talent, and treasure to spare, and that is what free enterprise has enabled us to do spectacularly, and RMS calls on those of us so inclined to be generous with this abundance in the software venue. (I say "free enterprise" as opposed to "capitalism", because capitalism is just a financial/economic mechanism, which Communist countries use/d just as much as "free" countries to bootstrap and build means of production - capitalism is NOT an ideology, just a way to organize an economy to achieve economies of scale - the Soviet government was the biggest "Kapitalist" in the world in its heydey. Free enterprise, however, lets us be "Free to Choose" as Milton and Rose Friedman titled a book of theirs which spells out the marvels of such freedom.)
Peace.
If I understand right, all of the well known
free unices depend on the FSF's software to
even work.
I don't underestand why you'd make an analogy to an food (an essential) since that just seems to make your case weaker, but if you insist..
Yes, the points you made are true and if it was possible to "copy", replicate, whatever, food at negligible cost then not only would that be a wonderful thing but it would be insane to create artificial restrictions on the duplication and distribution of food. What exactly were you thinking?
The creator of software still has copyright
to his software. The GPL doesn't take this
away. If you come up with a brilliant algorithm
for sorting a deck of cards and release a
gpl'd app which implements this algorithm,
you're still free as a bird to implement
the algorithm again in a non-gpl'd app.
Meanwhile, other people are _not_ allowed
to do so since that's derived work. But you,
as the inventor of the algorithm, can implement
it again and license it differently since
that is *not* a derivative work of the gpl'd
implementation!
I'd agree with you, accept for the fact that truly free software has been very successful (arguably more succesful than OSS) over the past 30 years. What Tom is arguing is that there are freer software licenses out there, and he's right. In the true sense of free, BSD is freer than GPL.
Uhhh...Hello Ayn Rand croonie. If he supported ultra-capitalism he would likely not be so insistent of free software even when open source commercial versions exist. If you also take a look at his lifestyle, he is very much a minimalist. Is this sound someone supportive of capitalism? I'm sure he opposes state socialism, but his tendencies seem to be more suggestive that he is an Anarchist...Libertarian Socialist
Libertarianism is a belief in having freedom...modern ultra capitalists in the US decided to transform this from a term often used to be synonymous with Anarchism, to be synonymous with capitalism with no government intervention. Socialism just states the workers control what they create, not that a state has control over them and what they produce, which is what the Soviet Union and China was/are...socialism is more synonymous with Anarchism in it's true definition, rather than the new definition created by mass media, US and Soviet governments.
It's ridiculous people have been so brainwashed by mass media and western governments that anything left and non capitalistic is evil, that they now resort to supporting a very fascist system. Corporations without governments would just be mobile political forces themselves, except the CEO isn't elected democratically, and your life is dependent on keeping a job (so don't risk speaking up and getting fired because then you'll be in poverty and homeless!) It's slavery with money (the slaves got free food, housing, clothing, and resources...now people are paid and have to pay for these things themselves and occassionally they have enough left over to buy some extra items...unless they are lower middle class, in poverty, or homeless....or live in the third worlds where their labor is paid for in pennies). Rulers vs the rulees. Hierachy in any form or name is bad, okay?
Click here if you're really interested in what the Anarchism political theory is, rather than creating it yourself like most people seem to do who think they are so smart. It also has nice (academic) attacks on anarcho-capitalism and capitalism in general.
First, the letter "J" came around much later than Mister Yesu Christos.
And his legend became popular 40 or 100 years after he died.
It is very interesting that in this modern day, if someone says they can fortell the future, or perform magic, we think that they are a nut or a con.
But 2000, somehow things were different. Why is that?
Third go look up "faith" and "superstition" in the dictionary. Both mean:
"Believing in something which cannot be proved."
Or..
Faith: My beliefs:
Superstition: The other guys faith.
Most companies buy commercial software because there's a ready pool of experts out there they can hire to administer the system. There isn't yet an OpenSource support infrastructure out there in the real world to provide 24/7 support when something goes wrong.
The cost of the actual software itself is a small fraction of the cost of supporting users who use the software. Training, helpdesk support, maintaining the network infrastructure, are all more expensive than the initial cost of the software. Because of this, the cost of the whole system needs to be factored in. This is still very difficult when it comes to OpenSource systems. Some would say it will always be more expensive since it's a moving-target. Technical professionals don't sit in IRC and filter through the spam in Usenet newsgroups as part of their jobs. It's just not realistic to expect management types to rely on ad-hoc support.
This isn't just a PC sitting on your desk at home, folks.
Just because there many systems which restrict certain rights to promote the common good which are called free, doesn't mean that those systems are free.
Free does not mean "ideal", nor in it's true sense, does it imply it. True freedom is often a bad thing, but this doesn't mean we should redefine free. That's what I believe the original author was trying to say.
You also seem to be ignoring the fact that free software has been, and still is, very succesful. I'm not sure where we'd be right now if it weren't for the "anarchists" who wrote BSD, Apache, XFree86, Perl, and many others.
It's absurd to claim that the FSF is "tricking" people. They quite clearly state what they mean by free software, and you can read the GPL to see for yourself. And their use of the word "free" is accurate in the "libre" sense, despite what you claim.
I believe he's talking about redhat. $60 at your local software store, $1.50 at cheapbytes. But Redhat sells the manuals, media, and support, which you can't get from cheap bytes.
Jim
70% of all code written is internal custom code that is never sold.
Can we see your data, to back up how you arrived at that number?
If open source/free software were to take over, I can't think of any positions that would be eliminated - except possibly for some of the help desk/support positions that are needed now to support Windows.
To help you in clarifying your thoughts, maybe we should just trim back that particular sentence to it's core:
I can't think
If you prevent someone from enslaving a man, then yes, you are encumbering the enslaver, but one would have to be pretty perverse to say that you're not acting in the interests of freedom.
It's not dishonesty. If you can't modify software, then it is enslaved. RMS wants to free the software -- a software abolitionist. Hence, you get free software, just like free men.
The linkage made between the Free Software and Open Source movements and Communism is weak at best. Perhaps a simple set of analogies might work for the thickheaded who don't get it.
Analogy 1: GPL - If I own a building and I choose to let anyone who cares can use some space in it, that is my right since I own the building. But as the owner of the building I can set a restriction on the use of my property in that your use of my space because any improvements you make to my building don't preclude my right to let any one use my building and consequently benefit from your improvements to it. This is not communistic because I am not the state, merely a generous property owner.
Analogy 2: BSD - If I own a building and I choose to let anyone who cares can use some space in it, that is my right since I own the building. But I have also given your the right to preclude anyone else from using the part of the building you may have improved, including myself. This is not communistic because I am not the state, merely a extravagantly generous property owner.
Analogy 3: Communism - If I own a building, the state takes it away from and lets someone else use it without compensation to me and I have lost my right to license my property to whomever I chose. This is communism because I have no property rights what so ever.
For something to be property, it needs to have a scarcity. Why did the american indians not consider land to be property? Because there was no scarcity of it (at their population densities). Similarily in europe, there was a scarcity and property rights were awarded.
...) can be copied endlessly and for no price other than transportation and media, then how can it have scarcity? It doesn't.
The same thing applies here. Artistic works, once created, can have no scarcity. If an artistic work (image, film, text, software,
Therefore all scarcity in artistic works is artificial, legally granted by the government to increase the price with the 'nominal' purpose of funding the artists who created that work. But in the modern age, preserving that scarcity is difficult to enforce (look at MP3's and the RIAA).
Should that artificial scarcity be permitted any longer?
Convergence
I'll always am going to wear boxers and baggy pants. Once you have freedom to move around, you can't drop it like a passing fad.
Jim
Cmon, at least give it an Interesting rating!
Don't use the wrong words. when people hear things like property, they think of something that can be stolen. When they hear the rights words, they can think of it.
For example, its wrong to 'steal Intellectual Property', but is it wrong to 'duplicate an artistic work'? Both are the same thing, but one phrase sure has a lot of nasty connotations, both in geek's minds, in the public's mind, and in suit's minds.. As RMS does, don't use the wrong words to represent whats actually being done.
When they get you to call 'artistic works' 'property', and duplication is 'theft', they've won half of the battle already.
Or look at 'piracy' and 'unauthorized duplication'. Both are the exact same things, but again have hugely different connotations. Piracy is the the armed robbery of goods (typically of traveling goods at sea or by land), how is that the same as 'unauthorized duplicaton', which does not affect the origional good?
Don't use their 'ill-chosen' words to describe pure concepts.
The average person reading the above message would think you're nuts by claiming 'intellectual property' isn't property, (it says its property right in the main phrase). Replace it with 'artistic works' and people aren't immediatly confused.
[Also see the other article I wrote here on scarcity and why artistic works aren't property]
Convergence
Value can certainly be created by involuntary exchanges. Just find a situation where the parties to the exchange are ignorant of the situation, and then, rather than enlightening them, compel them ("paternalism"). From a purely consequentialist point of view, this is justifiable when what's at stake is particularly large, but libertarianism in general typically considers it bad simply because it is nonconsensual.
There seems to be a confusion still between free software, free, and libre.
Free software (GPL) is inherently unfree. Unlike BSD, it assumes that the software still has value, even when the source code is released. Using that 'free' source code requires paying a price. If a developer wishes to use it, they are required to submit payment, where the payment is the release of the source of the derived application. This is a high cost for most in the proprietary software establishment.
So GPL'ed software is very very unfree, but very libre in that it cannot be made proprietary, ever. This is also why I think that some people almost hate GPL software, because they get confused by 'free', and think they can use it as they wish, then get upset when they find out the real price associated with that source code.
BSD software, or public domain software, is 'freeer', in that the source code has no price attached to using it, or a price of token value, it may be used and exploited cheaply.
BTW, talking with RMS, he would accept a license along the form of: 'this software is proprietary with a license of XYZ for the next year. after that point, it is then licensed under the GPL'. The license XYZ may be with released source code or unreleased sorce code.
I can see building a company with a license of this form, one gets a year or two with exclusive use (which for most software is longer than one generation), and the contribution to the community of the resultant code a year later is true libre code.
Another alternative for libraries and other packages used in developing software, is to release a full package GPL, and sell (with a monetarily price) 'exceptions' to that license to those who do not want to pay the price of using the GPL code. (One can release their own work under whatever conditions they wish to each of multiple parties.) This is how transvirtual is working their Kaffe Java compiler.
Convergence
Test
Looks like RMS's war against programmers continues... When will he figure out that his thinly disguised "something for nothing" campaign won't convince us that it is superior to the more moderate "mutual benefit" approach of ESR.
Your average charity doesn't compete with for-profit ventures. You don't see a brick layers charity going around to construction sites and submitting zero cost bids in competition with local contractors.
The FSF has as its stated purpose, the compete destruction of an entire element of our economy. Why do some programmers value their work so much that they're willing to give it away, thus undercutting their (and their brethren's) earning potential? Is there a deap-seated inferiority complex so ingrained in these people such that they feel so worthless and are so desperate for positive attention that they'll work for free just to feel a little better about themselves? Sad.
The distinction RMS is drawing between "free software" and "open source" is that he considers the approach you describe to be "open source" while programmers working in exchange for nothing is "free software." Kind of throws his hypocritical claims of "libre" vs. "gratis" into perspective, doesn't it?
Your comment about Robert Owens sounds like you're arguing against RMS... Let's not forget that RMS stated in his reply that what makes free software different from open source software is that free software is distributed with no expectation of payment... That would make programmers the "slave gang."
Tom's reactions seem to be typical. When people publicly stake out some particular position in a strongly worded way, it's as though that position were written in stone and any argument to the contrary, no matter how reasoned and logical, MUST be destroyed. First, they will try to find flaws in the logic, failing that they will reiterate some bit of their origional position that is not at issue and/or they will simply restate the origional bit in contention in even stronger language, perhaps with personal attacks and name calling included. At this point they are no longer thinking rationally and are not interested in discussion or debate but rather in badgering thier "opponents" into submission because, after all, they are RIGHT and all who speak contrarily are WRONG. They will refuse to listen to those who disagree, will quickly loose patience, and will cut off lines of communication with "the enemy" and become more reclusive, thus allowing paranoid and delusional thoughts to fester without being checked by outside input. I'm not saying Tom is at this extreme, I don't think he is. I'm simply making some general observations.
I think perhaps we need to get Tom, RMS, Eric Raymond, Linus, the FSF people and numerous others together in one room to hash all this shit out and don't let them leave until they work out their disagreements. We need some real human interaction to help check these Balkanization tendencies.
Interesting. RMS spent so much time claiming that free software was not like free beer, yet now he insists that its defining characteristic is that it is something given away without expectation of gain. So I guess this week it *is* like free beer.
Floppy disks? I'd prefer my EMACS source printed on punch cards (preferably hand punched by monks), so I could waste even more money.
Even if I spend $1000 on EMACS source, whoever I copied it from still has theirs. If I buy $1000 worth of food for somebody to eat, that's food that the supermarket no longer has.
Material goods (food, disks, punch cards, monks) should cost money... source code should not.
The FSF doesn't really view Linux as an interim measure, except to reach their own goals -- building a free OS based around UNIX. Linux is merely a reimplementation, Hurd is a totally new OS based around the principles in UNIX (whether the redesign is for better or worse remains to be seen). It's interim for them because it allows them to design Hurd on free software, rather than the old method of designing Hurd on proprietary software. As for man pages, I have to agree with them. They're OK, but hypertext is a lot nicer (although someone needs to make a good info reader for non-emacs users, I know a lot of people who are put off by texinfo stuff just because of the poor viewer. Maybe we can all follow GNOME's initative and start using XML).
False. RMS *does* run a not-for-profit company, FSF.org. FYI, running a company doesn't imply it must be for profit one. In fact, it's much harder to run charity than something where you make money, I am quite positive on that because I have worked for both and I can tell you for sure that running a non-for-profit company is the hell on Earth, RMS is a very good manager in this respect.
You say it's not a good business model for a company to run on what ends up effectively being donations. On a first glance, you're right, and I'll agree with you that most of the money from the software itself is donations. But the ultimate goal of any business -- even a free software business -- is to make money, and the best gauge of a business model can be how much money it makes the company. For how much free software can make -- even if it *is* donations -- just turn to Red Hat and Cygnus. It's not common sense, but remember, common sense is what tells you the world is flat.
Another quick thing: Yes, anyone can make and distribute the manuals. But the people who make the best and most accurate manuals are the ones who either made the program, or have direct access to information from the people who made the program. For a great example of this, compare O'Reilly working with Larry Wall to just about every other Perl book on the market.
Such a license already exists, and it's called the New Copyleft License (NCL). It has some of the exact same concepts as the GPL (the source is available, you can change it providing the code is still under the NCL), except for two clauses. First, only a designated 'owner' of the code can make profit on it, or any derivatives of it. The owner can grant permission for someone else to make money, as well. Also, after 3 years, NCLd software reverts back to GPLd software. This license, IMO, is ideal for lots of corporations. Even MS would lose nothing by using this license (assuming Windows got a nice rewrite every 3 years rather than every 9). I'm sure this license would also be great for a company like Be, Inc. (as someone else mentioned how any open source or free software license would kill them earlier).
>Free software has no restrictions on it. Period. Anything more than `do whatever you'd like with this' is no longer free. Furthermore, the notion that anyone has the right to force others to obey what they must do with their own artistic output is about as far from free as one can imagine. It's also highly immoral, because it removes the option of choice. No choice, no morality.
I'd call what you're advocating "anarchic software". Sometimes the moral thing to do is to take away choice; i.e. in a "free" society we are (in theory) not allowed to murder people.
Oh yeah... that perl script you invoke to create your amazing anti-RMS rants: is it under what you'd call a free license? I'd love to download a copy, make proprietary changes, and sell it to people as my own!
The FSF has been working for 15 years to develop a free UNIX, besides Linux. The reason it's taken this long is for several reasons:
1) RMS worked nearly by himself to get GNU off the ground in it's early days; Linus had a helpful community from the start
2) GNU always made the kernel a second priority compared to the utilities; again, by the time Linus rolled around, a lot of the utilities already existed
3) (and the most important) Linus wanted a UNIX clone. GNU is a UNIX rewrite. One is to make UNIX accessable to the PC user, another is to make UNIX a better product overall
That being said, Hurd did (and still is) taking an awfully long time to be a usable product, but it's getting there. I think Debian GNU/Hurd 0.3 will speed up development (since anyone can then, theoretically, develop Hurd on a Hurd system).
Today, an Anonymous Coward (whose initials are Travis Simon) reported the death of a Programmer belonging to the cult of Free Software.
It appears that he was hacking on some project, when he spontaneously starved to death. This is yet another in a long string of unexpected starvations.
Unfortunately, the dead programmer was not available for comment.
Finally somebody else that understands. The origional version of this FAQ can be found here.
bakunin(at)hushmail(dot)com
You said:
:) ) :)) )
"...Anything more than `do whatever you'd like with this' is no longer free...."
So, we don't live in a free society, cause I can't
kill you, although I want to.If that's not "free", then I have no problem with that.(And I suppose
you don't have a problem either
"Free" is not "do what you want".Freedom must have
some restrictions in it.More like:"Don't do to
others, what you don't want to be done to you".
(And please, PLEASE, don't tell me you are a
masochist
BTW, I have the ultimate respect for RMS, cause
he doesn't just "have" ideals.He *lives* by them,
and works for them.
nvon
I do think that you are mischaracterising RMS as well as not getting it. Free Software isn't just about giving shit away. It's about creating social wealth. Creating a piece of Free Software is an act which benifits us all, or at least all who use it. It also ensures that there will always be tools (software) available for those who can not afford to buy their own. By creating Free Software society gains, and when society gains you gain, as you are a part of society. One also tends to gain less tangible things such as personal satisfication, a gratifying feeling that something you helped create is being used by hundreds, thousands, or millions of people and perhaps has even changed the world to some extent.
Yes, Chief Seattle's "speeches" are in question for authenticity, but the point they espouse remains: the idea of owning part of the universe is a strange idea. The only thing you own are your thoughts. How can you own anything else? The rest of the stuff in the universe is not yours - it doesn't belong to anybody.
...But he appears to have Discordian leanings .
..."
He says he's an atheist in a footnote to his essay in Open Sources.
Now I'm going to go mildly off topic, and explain something to some people. This is because some pople need it clarified.
Atheists do not by definition have any problem at al with Jesus, nor are we immoral. I am an atheist. I happen to think Jesus was a great guy (from what we know of him). I also tend to agree with other religious philosophers, unless they're talking about religion. RMS seems to agree with me.
And, also tangentially, RMS is really "cute" when he gets upset about something. He REALLY knows how to hold on to his beliefs in a more serious way than anyone. He seems to me to be as determined as Ghandi or the Dalai Lama. That's really neat! I don't even have that kind of spine mostly. Sure, I feel pretty guilty when I sign one of the software hoarders' licenses, and I run GNU/Linux, but nothing like RMS.
-Dave Turner
"... and you can speak out loud about your doubts and fears
-Pink Floyd, the Gunners Dream
He's not a hippie, because in ~1970, the hippies took some origional protest signs, buried them, and declared the hippie movement DEAD. They couldn't bear to see it stomped on by ignorant fools like most of the posters on /. I can't see RMS giving up like this, but I can imagine him at night sometimes, especially after reading /. comments, wondering if ANYONE understands his message.
RMS, I hear you!
-Dave Turner, hacker, idealist, member of the Free Software movement.
>Looks like RMS's war against programmers >continues... When will he figure out that his >thinly disguised "something for nothing" campaign >won't convince us that it is superior to the more >moderate "mutual benefit" approach of ESR.
um... They advocate the same license, for different reasons.
When there's a "capitalist" reason for something, and a "freedom fighter reason" for that thing, that should give everyone hope. Instead, even GPL users find themselves split into two camps who argue about the reason for something. What all GPL users should do is to ignore eachother, and explain why the BSD license is both anti-freedom, AND anti-capitalist.
Especially explain it to Tom Christiansen, who can't seem to figure out that you don't have to release the source of your program even if it uses 99.99999% GPL code, AS LONG AS you don't release the binaries. And I thought being a programmer means that you've got a brain in your skull.
-Dave Turner
Love: the more you give, the more you recieve.
Now if he would just raise his arm a little he would be Adolf Hitler too !
> RMS putting himself in the same league as Christ is too much.
I like to eat every day. So did Jesus (I assume). According to your logic, am I in the same league as Christ because of that?
Maybe you should learn some basic logic before you anything more?
Because the code (and enhancements) may disappear into proprietary (non-free) code and binary-only distribution under the permissive (and arguably more free) BSD license. SunOS, Ultrix, BSDI - the source code is unavailable, yet all are derived from freely available UCB source. Stronghold is a more recent example.
Don't suppose these commercial vendors were exercising _their_ freedom to deny the end-user's?
This is precisely what the GPL attempts to prevent.
-joyspring (forgot my password!)
I'd like to discredit the chapter on police and law by capitalism. There is already a set of competing private organizations which will accept money in exchange for protection. This is called the various mafia syndicates. The efficiency and coordination thereof is legendary.
Tell me, Tom, are you familiar with the concept of the ad hominem attack? You could, for example, just imply that the guy you're replying to is stupid, thus completely avoiding the necessity of replying to someone's points when you can't answer them.
It's also not a bad idea to only respond to one sentence in a 20 line post, completely ignoring the various absolutely valid points made by the guy you're responding to.
Just make sure you include something advertising how fantastically erudite you are, so you don't have to worry about shooting your credibility to shit.
Just for future reference.
--
No matter how hard you work to make something idiotproof, someone will always come along and make a better idiot.
The term "free software" comes not from the software's being free. It comes from the fact that people are free to use the software -- that we as computer users have a right to use the software without restriction.
However, current U.S. law does not recognize this freedom. It allows corporations to use licenses to restrict this right for users of their respective software. Hence, the FSF through the GPL place these restrictions relative to U.S. law on software they distribute, to guarantee this freedom for the users of GPL'd software. it's a matter of perspective and semantics.
Open-source is a broader term referring to software whose source code is freely available (as another pointed out, Free Software is a subset of Open-source software).
That's the whole idea! The idea is, if enough people want to write a program using these Oracle libraries along with readline, they will communicate as much to Oracle, and maybe Oracle will consider opening their libraries or their licenses up....
--algis r
Not all rectangles are squares, but all squares are rectangles.
:)
Not if you're an object-oriented programmer.
Collectivism means to me just the philosophy that a bunch of people working together is better than people working apart. It's a philosophy that most modern businesses seem to follow, and far from a bad thing.
I'll use your term Statism, since your definition of that agrees with mine. I agree that Statism is a bad thing. I disagree that RMS is a Statist. He rarely addresses the Government in his writings, much less the Will of the Government. Where he does address the Government, he is critical of them, particularly how they handle the topic of Intellectual Property. Would a Statist be so critical?
The examples you give are not very illuminating of your ideas. You bring up the conscription of soldiers, in what way can anything RMS is doing be tied into the draft?!?! You say that a common policy is to penalize the productive so the non-productive may benifit. I can see how the non-productive benefit from what RMS is doing, but that is a costless side effect. How is anything he is doing penalizing the productive?
You write:
My problem with RMS is that not only does he wish to give his property away (which, of course, is his right), he wishes to establish a system where everyone is obligated to give away their property. Without property, there can be no other rights.
Here's the rub, here's the only point where i've seen your views differ with RMS's. RMS feels that intellectual property law as it now stands is a crutch to support the non-productive publishing giants. You think that it actually helps productive people. Why bring all this name calling and false representation into it?
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Should've hit preview.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
The Famous Brett Watson wrote:
I've chosen to reply to this particular post because I've rarely seen so many informal logical errors in one place at one time
You don't read Slashdot very often, do you? I was basing my comment that RMS is not a Statist on SQL*Kitten's note that "Statism is the belief that the individual serves no purpose other than the will of the Government (or Church)." I discarded his use of the term Collectivism in favor of Statism because he appears to consider the terms interchangable, but I do not. Statism is a term that we both agree on definition, so it is easier to pick the term where there is no syntactic dispute. I am using his definition of the term Statist.
If a Statist considers the Will of the Government to supercede the Will of an individual, than a I would think a Statist would be unlikely to criticize a government.
When I critisize his bringing up of conscription, I am not dismissing an analogy. He makes no analogy, he is merely pointing out an example which I fail to see the relevance. In World War One, they used Mustard Gas. So there!
When I critisize his example of penalizing the non-productive, again, I cannot dispute the meat of his point, since he gave none. I am asking for some content that I can agree or disagree with.
Perhaps you might look into a course in logical argument yourself. I consider it useless to debate against my wild guess as to the person's argument. I would much rather encourage someone to supply me with a more complete argument, and dispute it on its merits. I know from experience that the original poster is quite capable of forming a complete, well formed argument.
As to the points you made on the subject:
Replacing copyright laws overnight with copyleft is nonsensical. Copyleft is the use of copyright laws to protect the freedom of the document. You cannot replace copyright with copyleft overnight, since copyleft implies copyright laws exist. If you suddenly remove copyright laws overnight, some people might suffer unnecessarily, but nobody (not even RMS) has suggested that we do this. You are guessing at arguments, and arguing against your guesses, not the reality.
Yes, his orignal post implies that intellectual property should be treated like all other property, which is a matter of opinion. Before you can have meaningful debate on matters of opinion, however, first you have to establish matters of fact. His orignal post states as a matter of fact that RMS wants to obligate everyone to give away their [intellectual] property. I ask for some evidence that this statement is factual, because all the evidence I see indicates that it is a false representation.
Do you understand where I'm coming from a bit better now?
----
Open mind, insert foot.
It's not clear to me if you are reading too much or too little into my posts, but you certainly aren't getting it.
I dismiss the notion that RMS is a Statist on the grounds that he has never said anything to indicate that he is. He never says that the Government should be paramount. He never pushes any agenda that would require the government to be paramount. I added the point about him actively critisizing the government as merely another example, yet you interpret it as my entire point. The original poster was making an accusation, and I was pointing out that he needs to back up such accusations with fact.
The original poster defined Collectivism and Statism to be the belief that the individual serves no purpose other than the will of the Government (or Church). I was arguing that, by that definition, RMS is not a Statist. You are making up your own definition of the term, and complaining that I am not arguing against it.
You seem to define Statism as the belief that the law is a tool to enforce sharing property. First of all, I have never heard such a definition of Statism proposed before, and you look like you are molding the definition to fit the target (RMS), which is a serious logical fallacy that I am surprised you don't recognize. Second of all, whether or not he fits this warped definition defends on what property you are talking about sharing. RMS believes that the law can and should be used to enforce that shared property will remain shared. He does not indicate in his writings that the law should be used to force people to share private property, in fact he says the opposite.
If the original poster's line about conscription was intended as an analogy, it failed. An analogy should connect the discussion at hand to something, the line was completely unconnected to the discussion at hand. It is possible to invent connections, as you did, that were not indicated by the original poster. I feel that doing so would be intellectually dishonest. I would rather argue what the poster meant, since it's unclear, I indicated that it was unclear rather than arguing against a fabrication. If you consider that a lack of imagination or dishonest, that is your opinion.
Regarding the replacing copyright with copyleft, you proposed it as if it were relevant to the discussion, so I assumed you thought it was relevant, and pointed out that it is impossible, and not proposed by any of the parties we are discussing. I am not deliberately trying to misunderstand you, I am desparately trying to understand you. If you toss out points along the lines of "If eggs start laying chickens, farmers would have problems", it doesn't help matters.
I agree with your assesment that RMS does not want to abolish copyright law, but he (and I) beleives that it requires some serious work. I strongly disagree that he considers the restrictions of the GPL to be the ideal state of law. He considers them the terms under which he wants to contribute software.
If RMS were made king for a day, and allowed to enact any laws he wants, I strongly doubt he would put in place a law saying that all software must be Free. On the other hand, he certainly would remove the penalties for copying. His ideal of law would be one that would allow and encourage Free Software to flourish, but from what I've read of his, he would not make Free Software manditory.
I am trying to understand the intent of your posts. I am also not trying to "attack the straw man", in case you hadn't noticed, you attacked my post first, I am merely responding.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Look at the phrase replace copyright with copyleft. Your intended meaning, to replace copyright law with something that requires that software be Free, is certainly a possible interpretation, but not the only, or even the most common one. I generally hear that term used by the FSF's critics to mean "replace copyright law (in its entirety) with something that requires that all documents be Free." You don't have to write volumes on each point, but as you should be able to see, a little clarity is important to being understood, particularly since you are posting on the coattails of someone who has argued that RMS wants to force people to distribute software against their will.
That is a very interesting quote you give, and yes, it does indicate that he would replace, as you say, copyright with copyleft, but limited to software, not the whole of copyright law. I am sure he would make changes to the rest of copyright law as well, just not the same changes as he would make for software.
It sounds (to me) like we're pretty much on the same wavelength about what is going on, and we probably would be in agreement on many points as to what should go on. We're really just debating how to debate here, and if that's what you want, fine by me.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
...for being consistent in his message, and sticking to his guns. ("Sticking to his guns" may be a more appropriate cliche' for ESR, over RMS, but you get my point. ;) ) I don't always agree with him, but I have a deep respect for people like him who live by their ideological principles consistently and non-hypocritically.
--synaptik
HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0
NO CARRIER
...for being consistent in his message. I don't always agree with him, but I have a deep respect for people like him who live by their ideological principles consistently and non-hypocritically.
--synaptik
HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0
NO CARRIER
I get tired of hearing this "RMS is a commie" garbage. It makes me think I'm in some 1950's documentary about McCarthism.
I still don't get why people seem to think that since capitalism works on self-interest (true), people are *only* supposed to help themselves (false), and anyone who helps others is not a capitalist (false), so therefore he must be a communist (very, very false).
I recall a discussion about Positive Sum Games in the thread about ESR's new paper. It's an interesting idea to think that by giving something to someone else, the total value increases.
It's definitely something to think about.
He does.
http://www.fsf.org/
Tom, a spade is either a kind of playing card or a garden tool.
Calm down there, Spike
A spade is a spade. If I'm talking to a card shark, I know what he means. Likewise if I'm talking to a landscaper. It's called "context"
Ah yes, a gratuitous slap a Reagan. Isn't it interesting to see how things change. In the 80's, the Wall Street boom was a sign of "Republican greed", now it's a sign of the "Clinton economic miracle". Homelessness is a worse problem than ever, yet the issue seems to have dropped off the left's radar scope. Financial wealth is more concentrated after six years of Clinton than ever. (The only multi-mega-billionaires in the Reagan years were Arab oil magnates).
The poor old lefties still want to carp about Reagan when in fact American under Clinton has been everything the left claimed about Reagan times two.
Who told you that communism was bad? Have you any real proof? What do you call a kibbutz if not a commune? Are they bad? No. What is bad is the perversion that occurs as a result of capitalistic tendencies of the the leaders! True communism is a worthwhile thing! Problem is... the world is populated by people. People are predisposed to looking out for number one (a fact that goes right along with capitalism). True communism (where everyone works for the common good) is or has been a pipe dream to date. So called Soviet Socialism was nothing more than a facade on top of underground capitalizm. Where people are concerned, capitalizm cannot be far behind.
:) We don't always agree - if we did, it would just prove we were brainless.
The profit motive is alive and well within the framework of the Linux community too! Each member of the community is working for his/her own good! It just happens to be good for the community as well. What's good for me is good for you and vice versa.
I knew when I first got into Linux that I was into something good - something more than the intangible assets that computer programs represented - a community.
The community (a word descended from commune just like communism) consists of the whole. The programmers, the documentors, the theoreticians, the users, and the abusers. The community is only as effective as it's organization and it's constituency. You cannot separate the pieces and still have a whole community. As far as I'm concerned, the BSD folks are a VITAL part of the free community! RMS and the FSF are PILLARS of the free community. ESR is a tireless spokesman of the community (the tired part may be a little exaggerated
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
I don't wish to mount a personal attack, but I've chosen to reply to this particular post because I've rarely seen so many informal logical errors in one place at one time. To the author of this post and any others who can't pick the errors, I highly reccommend a course in logical argument or a book on the same. But now, to the matter at hand. Here you have attacked a point not raised by the original poster. The original poster used "Statist" as an alternative term for "Collectivist". You seem to be working on your own definitions of these terms, and there can be no stasis in the argument if you haven't agreed on definitions. Even if we use your defintion of Statism, this would seem to be false. A Statist could well be critical of the incumbent system of government. Perhaps you were thinking of a patriot? Here you dismiss an analogy by arguing that it is not the same issue. That fact is inherent in analogy, and it cannot therefore be used as a valid counterargument. What you must do is demonstrate that the analogy is faulty or irrelevant. One could argue, for instance, that the analogy is faulty because nobody is obliged to write software, whereas they are obliged to become a soldier if conscripted. Once again, you fail to address the point raised by the original poster. The original point was that RMS "wishes to establish a system where everyone is obligated to give away their property." If you are suggesting that RMS giving away his own software does not penalise the productive, then your point is true but irrelevant. On the other hand, it is clear that if copyright were to be replaced overnight with copyleft then many software authors would be deprived of earnings they might otherwise have reasonably expected to receive. That being so, we could reasonably describe this as penalising the productive, or at least a certain subset of "the productive".
A well-formed counterargument to this particular point could have challenged the premises of the original argument. The original argument implicitly assumes that software is property, for example. One can validly question whether "intellectual property" (including software) is justly "property" at all.
When faced with a challenge to demonstrate the validity of "intellectual property" (or indeed software as property), most proponents will themselves fall into one of several informal logical errors. One popular answer, for example, is that copying is stealing. This happens to be true only because of intellectual property laws, and if the question is whether intellectual property laws should exist, then this answer constitutes begging the question. Another popular answer is that "in the absence of a legal means to extract payment, no software (or no good software) would be written". This is also demonstrably false, since if it were true, then Linux, Perl, Apache, EMACS, BIND (etc etc) would not exist because they lack said means. Alternatively, they could soften the statement to "less good software would be written", but that is just speculation and would require something like a parallel universe experiment to have its accuracy tested.
I have no error to point out here, but I would like to draw your attention to the benefits of ridding your own eye of planks before pointing out the speck in the eye of another, so to speak.I believe you are correct in describing the sharing of intellectual property as natural, since in the absence of all laws on the subject there would be no restriction on it other than what you personally choose to share or not to share.
RMS is not an advocate of this kind of "natural" freedom, however. The GPL quite deliberately eliminates a very specific right: the natural right to distribute a program in a binary-only form. In the absence of law, this would be quite possible; it is "natural". The GPL very deliberately restricts this freedom because it can be used to restrict the freedom of others. If you distribute a program in a binary-only form, then you do an "end run" around the rights of others to read and modify your program.
RMS is more correctly described as a crusader than an advocate in any case. An advocate merely points out the correctness of a particular cause or ideal; a crusader dons his battle gear and fights the enemy. The GPL is a sword, and it has always been Stallman's intention to use that sword to advance his cause.
Advocates of non-coercive licences (such as the X licence or no license at all) lack this kind of coercive weapon, which is one of the reasons RMS prefers the GPL. You do good, in his estimation, if you write software and place it in the public domain, but you would do better to copyleft it so that it can be used as a weapon to further his cause.
You still haven't argued yourself out of your own hole. All that is copyrighted is enslaved.
All GPLed software is copyrighted.
Therefore all GPLed software is enslaved.
Your own logic here is self-refuting. If copyright is enslavement of code, then copyleft is also enslavement of code because copyleft uses copyright as a mechanism.
Fortunately for you, you have merely misunderstood Stallman's argument. Stallman believes that copyright as a mechanism lends itself to evil uses more than to good, but his argument is not with copyright. Nor is he trying to free code, but rather people.
If we were to talk about "free software" in the natural English sense, we would either assume that it was like free as in zero cost, or free as in unrestricted. Stallman's "free software" is strictly neither of these since it sometimes costs money and always comes with a load of restrictions known as the GPL attached. This is Tom's gripe with the FSF: they are calling that which isn't that which is.
What the FSF is really peddling is cunningly restricted software which ensures that the majority of users will be as free as possible. The GPL restricts only those freedoms which you could use to interfere with the freedoms of others, but the essence of the GPL is its specific restrictions.
The GPL does two specific things to restrict freedom. One is that it forbids changes to the license terms. In order to redistribute GPL software (in modified or unmodified form), you must agree to abide by the GPL's license terms, which are in themselves a restriction on your freedoms. You must agree to surrender certain natural rights for the purposes of dealing with that particular piece of software. Contrast that with a public domain program which makes no such demands or restrictions on your freedom.
The second prong of the GPL attack is to demand that you make the source code of the program available (whether you have modified it or not). This protects everyone else from nasty people who want to spread binary-only copies of programs, thereby circumventing our right to read and modify the program.
Those points again for the people who missed them the first time. By agreeing to abide by the terms of the GPL (which is the only thing that gives you the right to redistribute GPL software, since copyright restricts redistribution by default), you agree to abide by the following restrictions on your personal freedom.
- It requires that you redistribute the work and all works you derive from it under the GPL also, so that you may not increase the restrictions on others (by reinstating copying restrictions) or weakening the existing restrictions (so that point two might be violated).
- It requires that you make source code available to your programs if you release them at all. Binary-only distribution is streng verboten.
My personal conclusion: Tom's right. "Free" is a misleading term. "Copyleft" is a better term, as is the phrase "All Rights Reversed" (which, you will note, is not the same as "All Rights Reinstated"). The GPL places a minimum number of restrictions on the software with the noblest of intentions, but the software is fundamentally restricted, not free.Whether we as users and programmers are freer with the GPL or the Public Domain is an interesting philosophical question. I might even try to write an essay on it someday. (And while I'm here I'll plug my existing essay, Philosophies of Free Software and Intellectual Property .)
Posted by The Famous Brett Watson:
For a change, I am able to write a brief reply. You ask, what natural rights does the GPL force anyone to give up? The answer: the right to keep your source code a secret. The GPL puts you under an obligation to provide source to any binary you distribute. This might be a good thing for the majority in the general case, but it is not freedom: it is a restriction and an encumberance, and a calculated one.
Some anonymous coward said:
Methinks someone hasn't heard of a little nonprofit organisation called Habitat for Humanity.
Basically--for those who might be unaware--Habitat for Humanity builds houses for poor people under what is literally a "free housing" model. Essentially, if you qualify (you essentially have to be unable to afford other housing and be willing to contribute to helping build the house) they will set you up with loans for the supplies only and they will build one a house.
In return, the people have to help out at construction projects that Habitat for Humanity does for other people...but it works well in the end. People who otherwise couldn't afford decent housing get good houses, and they work to help other folks get good houses.
There are other groups, such as Mennonite groups, that do similar things for homeless families or who work with Habitat for Humanity in helping to build houses. And while they're still paying for supplies, a lot of companies donate supplies (yes, even companies that also sell to for-profit contractors) too so sometimes people can get houses close to free.
In a way, this is similar to how GPL'd software works. Basically the main stuff that is paid for is support (akin to "buying supplies" if not exactly an analogy); people get together and build stuff for the good of the community, and if you want to use GPL'd code you agree to "help out the community" and release your code under GPL too. (Just like how Habitat for Humanity "partner families" get houses built for them, but they have to help in building it and/or help in building other houses.) If you don't want to use GPL'd code and want to keep your code to yourself there are alternatives (just like if you're poor, you can choose not to get a house through HFH and instead live with relatives or in "section 8" housing or in a shelter).
Needless to say, many people use GPL'd software for the same reason a lot of poor folks get houses through Habitat for Humanity instead of living in section-8 housing or with relatives. GPL software (and free/libre software in general) is generally more reliable and solidly built than proprietary software because you've got a crew working on it-- for instance, we all know how much faster security bugs in Linux tend to be fixed than in Win95. (Yes, this is still directly comparable to housing. HFH houses have actually been raised in the span of a day or two, and are solidly built--one learns to do one's own homefixing stuff and one knows where everything is. Most houses done by contractors tend to take far longer. Most section-8 housing is [to put it delicately] in a state of disrepair to begin with, often has folks living there who are causing more damage, and things tend not to get fixed at all.)
(And yes, I realise I've just compared certain Microsoft operating systems to the projects. You may please put down the sharp objects. Now. :)
ObRMS--it's also rather interesting, in light of RMS's now-infamous "Jesus Quote", to learn that HFH is actually an offbranch of a Christian ministry (one that Jimmy Carter was involved in, if memory serves). Basically they're doing it cause they feel "Well, Jesus'd have done the same thing". One doesn't have to be Christian to volunteer time or supplies to them, though. (Just thought it'd be interesting to point that out...and yes, I support Habitat for Humanity, and I also happen to not be a practicing Christian. I think they're among the few folks I've met who do in fact "get it", though.)
Tom Chistiansen argues that the FSF's definition of free software is anything but free. I disagree strongly. There are limitations to what people can legally do with my free speech. For instance, there are libel laws in the United States. Also, certain forms of eavesdropping are illegal. It seems that free means many things, not all of which are compatible. Note that I'm not trying to draw a direct analogy between preventing eavesdropping or libel and the GPL. I just wish to point out that sometimes great freedoms require the sacrifice of other freedoms. The goal is to pick the freedoms worth preserving.
Having had my life improved by the FSF, but only slightly wrinkled by Richard Stallman's sermons, I feel I have come out ahead. Some notable OSS leaders seem to be detracting from this community, making grand statments about nothing that can't be overcome by a little common sense and open-mindedness.
-Paul Komarek
- Most companies don't write software.
- Of the companies that do write software, most don't sell it directly.
- Most companies however use software. For these companies, Free Software increases their profits, since they need not buy exorbitant multi-user license packs.
Your point, again?--
You can easily duplicate software.
And, my point stands regardless: Free Software is beneficial to most businesses. It is only a threat to the minority of businesses that rely on proprietary software sales.
The problem with free food is that no one would produce food under those circumstances, so no food would exist. Free Software, on the other hand, exists, and is growing at a rapid pace.
--
No business has a right to stay in business because it relies on a dated distribution method. If and when Free Software puts proprietary software houses out of business, that's the way the cookie crumbles. I would suggest that software houses get ready for the Open Source model now, or be prepared to face the consequences later.
You just can't seem to understand that Free Software is simply a different business model. It may be one that you don't like, but it is nonetheless a business model. If companies operating under the old paradigm cannot adapt, they will die, and there is nothing that can be done about that.
--
You proved my point. Most of your examples are, in fact, services, and are sold as such.
--
The GPL does not prohibit you from making cold hard cash from selling your software, selling other peoples' software, selling services to maintain, develop, enhance, convert, package, document, install, remove, or configure your own or existing software, or create new software. Claiming "I can't 'own' bits so I'm poor" is not using your brain. You can't disprove a business plan by finding one scenario and quitting.
Care to explain how companies like VA Linux Systems, Red Hat, etc. are making much money if "their model is broken?"
This postmodernist idea of complete tolerance, complete freedom, or whatever, is absurd in any practical circumstance. The result of the permissive, purportedly more "free", licenses is a situation in which there is less free software. Postmodernism is ineffective, and being ineffective is not a moral stance.
This is why the only political achievement of postmodernism is political correctness, hardly an achievement to be proud of. Significant achievements are generally made by people with enough confidence to be a bit more righteous.
What better frees a slave? To buy him away from his enslavement, or to abolish slavery? If you abolish slavery you ensure not only that he will be free forever, but so will his children and his family and all the slaves you hadn't even known. The GPL attempts to do the same thing (even if against a less clearly morally incorrect action as slavery).
First, the GPL demands the continued freedom of a piece of software. Never can it be made proprietary. To allow that sort of transition (as with BSD) is to accept and implicitly encourage proprietary software. That's fine if you accept proprietary software -- the FSF clearly does not, has not, and will not support proprietary software (much unlike the "Open Source" community).
Second, by being exclusionary, the GPL attempts to abolish proprietary programs. Of course, it can't do through legal methods -- copyright law is much too entrenched to be changed now. But by being viral it gives an advantage to free software than cannot be shared by proprietary software. And if GNU and the GPL are truly successful it will become more and more difficult to produce a good proprietary product (this is not the effect of LGPLed software, however).
These are all fitting with the goal of freedom as that the FSF pursues -- not every sort of freedom, but the freedom to use, change, and share software. This is not the semantically-anal "free" you speak of, but a pragmatic and effective free that goes far beyond it.
Maybe their tactics take choice away from people. But so does proprietary software, and there is real competition between the two. If you feel proprietary software is wrong, then you are obliged to attempt eliminate proprietary software. In doing so you won't be coercing the vast numbers of computer users, for whom the proprietary nature of some software is never a benefit, but only the (in comparison) small number of programmers and companies who create the aforementioned proprietary software.
Actually, the only free licence that really makes any sense for a corporation is the GPL. The others would allow for an embrace-and-extend like what happened to RMS himself. If a corp. is at the point where they want to just 'let something loose' it's not in their best interests to have their released work to be incorporated into a competitor's work without having a right to those improvements.
Whether a corp really wants to free a bit of code is another matter...
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Once I finish, the code is thiers to do with as they will. Occasionally I'll come up with tidbits during the process that are worthy of sharing with others and (after I obtain permission by the people paying me) I gift these to others.
So, I'm using OS and FS to earn a handy living, and of the specialized products I produce, some bits are useful and get fed back to help others earn THIER livings.
Sounds pretty feasable to me, particularly as I trip down to the bank to cash the latest batch of cheques. ;)
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
Typically, Collectivist governments participate in policies which appear to support freedom but are in fact the opposite, for example the US government conscripted individuals and sent them out to die to "defend" freedom. But since the government doesn't even respect the right of it's citizens to live, what rights can their possibly be?
Another common Collectivist policy is to penalise the productive, such that the non-productive may benefit.
My problem with RMS is that not only does he wish to give his property away (which, of course, is his right), he wishes to establish a system where everyone is obligated to give away their property. Without property, there can be no other rights.
Aye - and you can't Xerox a loaf of bread either - but even open source author's gotta eat.
This is why their model is broken; because value must eventually resolve to an asset.
to communicate (aka. freedom of expression, free speech, etc.).
Nonsense. Your life is given to you, your survival is not - it requires the application of your mind. It also requires the right of use and disposal over the creations of actions driven by your mind. Therefore, any idea which opposes private ownership of the product of the mind is anti-survival, and hence evil.
Well, for what it's worth, RMS may not be a communist, but he certainly is a collectivist, and that's just as bad in my book, But that isn't the point.
What really irritates me is the way Linux is packaged for consumption by the world. Linux is nothing but the kernel itself, yet somehow the "linux community" gets the credit for the complete system (unlike the BSD crowd, who *do* actually maintain the whole lot). And ESR can't keep out of the limelight - he seems to think that since he coined the term "open source" he's in fact personally responsible for the entire movement!
In reality, in terms of LOC or hours worked or any other metric, RMS and his FSF, or the BSD crowd, or UCB are responsible for far more of the average distribution than the "linux community". And it's ESR and his dreams of glory who obstructing the acceptance of the true prime movers, like RMS.
> It's disappointing that we must once
> again embark upon yet another long, spiteful,
> and completely useless Gnu-vs-Free Software
> flamewar on Slashdot.
Actually, the discussion had been quite civil until your post.
> But I begin to wonder: are the lies somehow
> indispensable to the promulgation of the cult?
The really sad part is that all that venom (compare the tone of TC's post with RMS' initial post) is because RMS wanted some free documentation to suplement TC's gratis, but non-free (by FSF standards) Perl documentation. The whole article could have been replaced with the statement "free means gratis!" without any loss of information.
s/Open Software/Free Software/ig;
/mill
RMS doesn't claim free software to be technically superior but morally. It is ESR that does the former.
Free software can obviosly exist when proprieraty does, so you have to rebut that claim yourself.
Personally I think it is the skill of the developers that determine the technical quality of software (not language, development process, free or proprieraty, etc). I also think the notion of "buying" software is mostly (contract jobs aside) dishonest since I won't own it. I am still out on whether proprieraty software is morally wrong though.
If that makes him a communist, he's in good company - Robert Owens, one of the most successful mill owners of the Industrial Revolution in Britain preached the belief that a well-educated, well-fed, well-paid workforce in a non-heirarchical society produced more and were happier than the maltreated, half-starved slave-gang that was typical in the mills of the time.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Those are simple words. They should be used in
the simple ways that the whole world uses
them. It's far easier to change oneself than
the world.
This assumes that the whole world does, in fact, use the same words the same ways. This is simply untrue.
Webster's aside, there is no One True Right and Holy Standard of what words mean, and there can never be. Word meanings are inevitably coloured by our histories and associations.
I think that defining your terms, in detail, is an excellent start on the path toward clearer understanding. Assuming that we use the same strings of characters to represent exactly the same concepts sounds like a recipe for communications breakdown to me.
-Mars
All of this presupposes that software is a form of property. Many reject that assumption. You can't "take" software in the same way that you can take food, so talking about the distribution of wealth is kind of meaningless.
Yes, that would explain why Red Hat, VA Linux, and others wouldn't fund R&D on free projects... but they do.
And it would also explain why companies like Digital Creations steadfastly refuse to release more than token pieces of their hard-earned code base... but they haven't.
Red Hat is filing for an IPO, VA is rumored to be doing the same thing, and Digital Creations is raking in the money from contracts since releasing Zope. Pretty good business, if you ask me.
70% of all code written is internal custom code that is never sold.
Where I live, that number is somewhere around 99%. I know lots of programmers; very, very few of them see their code sold *at all*, and none in a shrinkwrap box at Best Buy. The one company I know of that sells software sells it as a tie-in to their main business; this software would be more successful for the company if it were free (and indeed that is one direction the company is leaning).
If open source/free software were to take over, I can't think of any positions that would be eliminated - except possibly for some of the help desk/support positions that are needed now to support Windows.
Such strong words! When comparing RMS's message and yours, one wonders who the "radical" fanatic is.
:-)
An opposing view might consider that republican (not the party) forms of government tend to foster freedom more than all-out anarchies. In some cases, freedom must have limits in order to be preserved.
The reason is simple: in order for me to have a right, others must have an obligation. If you have the right to life, I have an obligation not to pull a gun and shoot you. If you have a right to vote, I have an obligation not to obstruct you, either through intimidation and threats or by passing laws requiring some form of "competency test" before you can vote.
I'm not arguing here that the GPL strikes the ideal balance between rights and obligations, but it does promote certain ideas of freedom that are lacking in, say, the Artistic License. Whether you agree or not, you have to admit (and you have, if I read your response correctly) that the GPL does protect certain interests that are not protected by other licenses, and is preferable for this reason.
I suppose my point is this: We don't need this smearing of each other. Can we have some respect?
I think RMS has (again) set a fine example of respecting diversity in this article. He doesn't slam on Open Source or ESR (and even admits that he supports ESR in certain areas); rather, he states his differences clearly and without insult.
(Again, not that RMS hasn't had his moments; his occasional Tcl slams come to mind. Linus seems to have the cleanest slate in this regard; even the infamous Minix slamfest is rather cool by comparison. Or maybe Larry Wall; he's such a fine wordsmith that he can slam on you and still make you feel good.
Tom, you've helped create some of the coolest software in history. I have a lot of respect for you. But I can't reconcile myself with name-calling like this. Please, if you disagree, by all means disagree, but be civil! Don't play the implication game that everyone who disagrees with you is a mindless cretin.
(Oh, and on the name game: We all know it's a historical artifact, but it's also a well-recognized name. Everyone, even the FSF, acknowledges Unix as the inspiration behind the GNU project's architecture. I don't think many people see it as such a big deal.)
I'm sorry, I must have missed that clause in the GPL. Where, exactly, does the GPL require you to give up your rights as copyright holder?
In fact, it would seem that the GPL does more to protect your rights to the software you distribute than, say, the BSD license. With the GPL, you maintain control over the distribution of your code; you can refuse to allow it to be incorporated into proprietary products, or license it for a fee for these cases, or whatever. BSD does nothing to protect against this.
There are advantages and disadvantages to each license model. Frothing at the mouth about the "evil Communist Illuminati Overlords of the FSF" ignores the fact that their philosophy is one of the things that has made Linux possible, and that continues to make it work.
Go read the GNU Manifesto. (If you can keep your lunch down that long.)
Please keep the theatrics out of it. It makes you look like a ranting idiot, especially considering how you enjoy the benefits of his ideas while railing on him. Please, at least respect the code he's written.
He would do away with copyright protection for those who wish to have it. Instead, he would force all software to be freely distributable and sharable.
Yes, and have you read his arguments for it? Copyright, after all, isn't some holy writ or inalienable right. There is a good bit of thought that wonders whether copyright is even enforceable on a global Internet. You may not agree, but your jerking knee won't impress anyone with the quality of its arguments.
The problem with the GPV is that it infects whatever it touches. As Tom Christiansen pointed out in his excellent reply, this is counterproductive to their stated goal of increasing software reuse, since it forces those who cannot, for one reason or another, taint their program with GPV-infected code to reinvent the wheel. This is a Bad Thing.
To you, perhaps. Personally, if I write some code that I don't get paid for, I don't want other people taking it and benefiting from its use without reciprocating in some way. Want to fix it up, steal parts for your pet project, or tack on some doodad you like? Fine, go ahead; just make sure you share, too, just like I did. Share and share alike.
And if you think this hurts software reuse, imagine all the proprietary code that's been integrated into BSD/X licensed code that we don't have access to. I'd sure love to have X Inside's multi-head code, or Solaris's clustering and SMP tech, or even the source to WinSock. Imagine what kind of software reuse heaven we'd have if we had all that!
RMS obviously believes that, if he makes good enough software, the world will suddenly drop their anti-FSF licensing and adopt the GPV instead. He's sadly mistaken, and either intellectually dishonest or delusional. While his supporters paint him as a saint, the wider world sees him as little more than a kook. Is that the kind of champion the idea of making use of open source software needs?
Well, he's doing pretty good so far. It's not everyone that can start a movement like this and drive it for as long as he has. Like it or not, the success of Linux is built on his foundation, and without his license, it would have long ago fragmented into a million quarreling pieces, just as the *BSD scene has done.
And when you consider using words like "delusional" and "kook" to talk about him, consider that you are following him, too. Who is the more foolish, the fool, or the fool that follows him?
This is incorrect. There are many definitions of liberty (which is what you really refer to). Taking the definition from Webster's 1828 dictionary,
Natural Liberty is "... the power of acting as one thinks fit, without any restraint or control, except from the laws of nature. It is a state of exemption from the control of others, and from positive laws and the institutions of social life. This liberty is abridged by the establishment of government."
"Civil Liverty is the liberty of men in a state of society, or natural liberty, so far only abridged and restrained, as is necessary and expedient for the safety and interest of the society, state or nation. ... The liberty of one depends not so much on the removal of all restraint from him, as on the due restraint upon the liberty of others. In this sentence, the latter word liberty denotes natural liberty."
There is a lot of misunderstanding about the GPL and the FSF, and TC gets right to the point about it. RMS & Co. need to change their language of "free software". There is a preconceived notion of what that term means. I suggest what others have already begun using: freedomware, since you don't hear that word and it stirs your interest.
It would be possible to create a version of emacs (Emacs lite?) with a much smaller set of distributed/preloaded elisp packages, with everything but the basics taken out, and get something that loads faster, has a smaller installed footprint, etc. But despite the open-source availablity of all the C and elisp sources, such a special version variant has never been created - so I guess there is no real interest in it. (Despite it being used as convient target to attack by people who don't care for Emacs or are already attached to other editors anyway.)
--
An esoteric scratched itch:
Homeworld Map Maker Tool
The basic notion of capitalism is, you can't make money without some sort of exchange with someone, and that person probably got something they wanted out of it too, which means the more money gets made, the better things get.
The basic notion capitalism isn't about exchanging goods and services for money/other goods and services, its about private ownership of capital. See a previous post of mine. No single person or group owns the rights to a particular free software product. Once the source is out, it belongs to everyone.
By your definition of capitalism, though, I still don't see the logic of your argument. You say free software is capitalistic, and then discuss how goods/services are exchanged for money in capitalist systems, but what does free software have to do with making money? If you post some great new program on the internet, people may be compelled to improve it and give the changes back to the community, but that doesn't involve exchanging anything. You're saying that if anyone wants to use this product, they're free to do so, and if you want to improve it they're free to do that as well. Any capital received as a result of creating this product is purely charity.
Free software is about aiming for a bigger pie, which is fine capitalism, too. Capitalism doesn't have to be about competition; cooperation is just as good a way to make a buck and you're more likely to like what you see in the mirror in the morning, too.
What does aiming for improvement have to do with anything? Yes, both free products and commercial products tend to aim for improvement, but that doesn't mean that these two concepts are the same. And again, free software has nothing to do with making money.
-Chris Andreasen
A few comments by Bob Metcalf starting this whole argument, and because he's the "father of ethernet" everyone assume's his comments are worth getting worked up over. The thing to keep in mind is that he's the "father of ethernet" which doesn't translate to meaning anything were OS's are concerned. That's like getting upset when Bill Gates says that Porsche doesn't know how to build real cars on the expertise of owning a few. I mean, come on!
I've read a couple of interesting books on Xerox's PARC facility (where Bob Metcalf designed Ethernet) -- including currently reading one called Dealers of Lightening which mentions him several times in some detail. Not once was he mentioned in relation to the development of software systems, he was a hardware guy, and in the case of Dealers of Lightening, he wasn't exactly spoken that highly of from a technical standpoint.
So what if he thinks Linux is a passing fad. I think baggy pants with boxers hanging out is a passing fad too, but I'm no fashion expert and don't pretend to be. Just because I don't wear them doesn't mean I'm an expert on why they're not perfectly good to wear.
When such pointless dribble turns into attacks on other people, its really going to far. Everyone needs to get a grip. If Linux Torvalds came out and said he thought Linux wasn't going to work in the long run, lets get worked up. He knows what he's talking about. Bob Metcalf doesn't.
And quit picking on other people too! Blad slashdotters, no cookies for you.
But it is not free to tell someone else what they can do with their lives
Sorry, but being free does not necessarily have to imply being 100% free. For example, America is a free country, it is the capital of the free world. Nonetheless, we have found that laws which restrict freedom are necessary in order to maintain freedom. The GPL seems to serve the same purpose -- I see no prevarication in this.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
Software can be replicated in ways that a physical object can't be. If I give away my bicycle, I no longer have a bicycle to ride myself. But if I give away software or documentation in the form of bits, I still have the bits I started with. Software and reference documentation also need to be modified to meet changing circumstances, which is not true of a persuasive essays or a musical composition. You could GPL the score for a piece of music and might do so as a gesture of support, but no one needs to modify the score to keep it working; music won't break on a new platform the way a program might. (On the other hand, new arrangements of scores -- Rite of Spring for string quartet and piano, or Bach for the Moog -- are somewhat akin to porting music to a new platform...)
Why? The only way I'll buy something is when it offers greater value to me than what it costs. Otherwise, I'll keep my money. Conversely, if I want to earn a dollar, I have to offer you something worth more to you than that dollar.
Andrew Carnegie's motivation in streamlining production of steel might have been to make himself wealthy or philanthropy. It doesn't matter. The result was what mattered, which was cheaper steel and the wealth it created.
Despite his generous donation of money in the creation of libraries, it was the creation of his wealth and its effects that was his greatest gift.
Yes, someone could steal my dollar.
File a patent for something someone else thought up, for instance.
At least in the U.S., if you can prove you came up with the idea first, you can still receive the patent.
Or use free software in your copyrighted program and sue everyone who makes the same "innovation" to the free software.
This sentance confuses me no end.
You are wrong on some points. I'm currently in a programming project involving hundreds, at least, of programmers working in the same company. No project involving hundreds of persons is going to spontaneously unite *and sell a product* without a corporate or institutional overhead to supervise it. Free software works because there is no sales. The sales are done by third-parties providing value-added resources (such as manuals, preparation, packaging, and a CD shipped to your favorite software store).
There are only a small number of folks who can single-handedly write a compiler or a kernel (and now those projects themselves are worked on by many), so the idea that one person is going to be able to control a sophisticated project, even if they are the founder of that project, is ill-founded, especially in a free software environment (where anyone can modify and extend your code).
--
Aaron Gaudio
"The fool finds ignorance all around him.
"Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots." - Jonathan Nolan, Memento Mori
Look if you're doing work that you expect to be compensated for then why release under the GPL, unless you work for a company which is paying you to work on GPL'd code (such as Red Hat, Cygnus, etc), in which case you shouldn't care. Those companies are not selling the code, per se, they are selling their value-added services, and if they didn't feel they could make money off their particular business model they wouldn't be doing business in that way. Unofficial Red Hat distributions can be purchased on the cheap, yet Red Hat is still there and planning on going public. Why? Because enough people still feel they are getting a better deal paying $50-$80 for the official distribution and getting support (however lacking it may be) and manuals, etc than paying $1.50 for a Cheapbytes CD and getting a CD only. Plus, Red Hat (and the other distribution companies) are trying to position themselves in the corporate market, and that will be a much more lucrative endevour than hawking their wares at Electronics Boutique.
--
Aaron Gaudio
"The fool finds ignorance all around him.
"Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots." - Jonathan Nolan, Memento Mori
... and see how far you get.
Issues are being misrepresented. RMS is right to give them redress.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Despite what you might wish "Free Software" to mean, unfortunately you are a couple of decades too late. It means what the FSF defined it to mean, so any argument you may make based on an alternative meaning is simply irrelevant.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Anyone with even half an eye open can see that one of the major strengths of Free Software is that in addition to being libre it is also effectively free of cost.
It's not just the fact that the dollars stay in your wallet that is important, but also the lack of all the payment paraphenalia, and the fact that software is much freer when you can pass it on without worrying that the recipient should pay for it just as you have done. Removing the cost of an item makes it free in far more than just the obvious way.
Now that the world can see that gratis software works just fine, why not bite the bullet and proclaim both types of freedom as worthy goals for software?
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Nevertheless, the money you get from selling free software is still a donation. No matter how you want to think about it, you are getting a donation whenever you "sell" something. It's not a particularly good business model for any company to get all the income from donations, unless it is a non-profit organization like FSF.
I know, the counter-argument is that you can sell support, manuals, etc. but then
1) anybody else can do it, regardless of whether they are contributed code to the project or not, and
2) the people who have contributed code do not get paid. At least not directly. If the company pays them to write free software, then they get their salary from the support money.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
To a businessman it won't make sense . . .
Unless of course, you're the business man who happens to take some college students Open Source research and turns it into a multi million dollar company without spending ANY R&D money! I think Redhat, Caldera, Suse and all the other other Linux distro's would very quickly argue that the GPL does make sense to a business man!
See, the point of (open|free) source code is NOT for companies to spend lots of money on R&D and then lose it. Rather, it's to get all those people who are actually qualified to write the source they want to write to release their code to the public. That is, if I want to write some code for a particular project for myself, at home, what am I going to do with it? Sit on it? Try to find someone to buy it? Yea, good luck. Instead, I'll release it under the GPL so that EVERYONE can benefit from my hard work and late nights.
THAT is how (open|free) source got started!
** Martin
The concept of Intellectual Property is one that gets a little touchy, but I'll present my views and let you make your own decision. . .
What is Intellectual Property? Well, first, what is property. It is the ownership of something. In some cases that something is a unique item -- as in, a particular parcel of land -- in other cases it is not unique -- as in, a Ford Taurus, lots of those around. However, the Intellectual Property laws (ie, copyright and patent) necassarily make all Intellectual Property unique. I find this absurd.
Claiming Intellectual Property is unique is concep t that I have trouble grasping. It basically says that I had a thought that no one else may have. This is clearly not possible. We all know of many occasions where the holder of a patent only got it because he filed a day or two before someone else and similar situations. Clearly multiple unique individuals had the same thought without ever knowing the other one had that thought. How can we say that legally only one had it?
The other thing that the current Intellectual Property laws do is force many people to reinvent the wheel. There are companies and individuals who actually believe that their thoughts are unique and as such, no one else may have them. A friend, who promotes the BSD license, and I, who promote the GPL, were recently having a discussion about this. He pointed me to a company that is producing a high speed switch based on a *BSD with speed enhancements to the IP stack, and didn't release it. He then told me that he would like to write one of those and sell it too. I asked him why he would want to write something that had already been written!
Clearly Intellectual Property is not a unique commodity. Many people can posses the same thought. The idea that the law states that they can't is absurd. This is NOT a communist view. It's a simple fact. In an area where ownership of something is NOT unique, making it unique by (legal) force is all together a waste of time. Both on the part of the people who try to enforce the uniqueness, and on the part of the people who decide to recreate items that have been claimed as unique.
** Martin
And what better way to make sure that you ALWAYS get credit for your "thought" than to release it as GPL, which requires that all other people who use it MUST give you credit?
.feelings are NOT what IP laws are about! They're about obtaining a monopoly on a thought or idea. That's ALL! The social agreements you speak of can be obtained through any of a number of diferent ways!
But. .
** Martin
Began, yes. Tom's "rebuttal" was anything but. He did not address any of the points I had raised. Rather, he brought in a new topic. The topic of force. I asked him to justify this topic. He couldn't and didn't. In the most terse way possible, by stating a 3 word absolute. Which, btw, is the absolute I was asking justification for.
At no time during the exchange did he introduce any new ideas relevent to the discussion. At no time did he address my points that his freedom and the software's freedom are NOT one and the same! At no time did he attempt to clarify any of the points which I was calling into question.
And if either you, or he, think I just wanted to harass him, I feel truly sorry for you opinions of people and their motivations. Though, it would explain much about Tom's writings.
** Martin
For point number one, insert "without giving anything back to the community that created it" to fully understand the GPL.
As for point number two, most of your "concerns" are addressed by the LGPL, or Library GPL. That is, if the orignal author so chooses, then all others can use that code in such a way as to generate a profit without repaying the original author or the community. This is entirely the authors decision, NOT the FSF's. Don't mistake the two.
As for the BSD ReadPotato code, don't mistake "stealing" code for "stealing the use of code". Under the BSD style license any author can steal the use of the code without ever indicating to the original author, the community that helped, or anyone else that they are using the code. On top of that, even if they so choose to indicate WHERE the code came from, they do not owe ANY form of compensation, even it the form of "intellectual property", to either the orginal author, or the community that helped.
As of yet, I would not say that Stallman made any mistake. The GPL has had a significant effect on the world of software develpment, and will continue to do so. I do not believe that that RMS at any time truly believed that the GPL would be the ONLY license available to software developers.
It's absolutely a utopian thought, but lets face it, if no software developer EVER had to write code that's been written before but "protected", the technology of software would increase greater than exponentially.
** Martin
I tried to engage Tom in a meaningful discussion about his ideas in private email. He however didn't want to hear anything contrary to his beliefs. Since his email address is publicly posted here, I figured I'ld share the rest of his wisdom with you. And possibly with him, if Tom should care to respond. Which I doubt.
http://www.nacs.net/~heller/tchrist.txt
** Martin
ESR taking credit for recent press favorable to Linux is like... Al Gore claiming to have helped create the internet because he was somehow involved [with some funding measures].
The "Communism" stab is the most offensive. I guess that kind of politics is still OK with gun toteing tobacco chewing rednecks...
Gosh yes, Tom is correct. This misappropriation of the word free has got to stop. For example, it is often said that we live in a free society, yet I come to find out that I'm not allowed to take people off the streets and lock them up in my house! Where does a society claiming to be free get off telling me what I can do with my life?. Perhaps we have an open society, as we allow people to wander around whereever they want, but as long as I am denied my right to lock them up when I feel like it, we certainly can't be said to be living in a free society.
This misuse of language has got to stop!
> one notable exponent of this view lived 2000 years ago.
Someone needs glasses, sure...
-- LaTeX, The Best There Is
Anyway, my real question was "What is your point". The point seems to have been, "It is okay to force some companies out of business because lots
of others will benefit by getting something for free." Just saying that would have been a lot clearer. Unfortunately, as far as I can see that same
argument applies to every business on the planet earth.
So, what's your point? That that would be bad ? Or that it is unlikely to happen?
But it is illegal to distribute parts of KDE, because the author set the license and it didn't include distributing it linked against QT. It's like making a copy of Windows if Microsoft won't know - you may not get prosecuted, but it's still illegal.
How do these FSF people make money? They work, just like the rest of us. Some write closed code for companies. some are sysadmins. Some are database geeks. Some are 7-11 clerks. Some probably mow grass. And some lucky programmers get paid for writing the very free/open code they are working on, or run companies that support parallel free/open and closed versions of the program (sendmail, listserv, ghostscript come to mind as example programs with companies wrapped around them that provide free/open versions as well as enhanced closed versions of their programs, and related utilities).
Ya need to open your eyes a little bit, eh?
Be an Emacs consultant. Be a Linux Kernel consultant. Whatever.
If you're out of money, you'll eventually figure out a way to make it, one way or the other.
Stop the "sky is falling, and it's those FSF programmers' fault!" routine.
Yes, RMS has a different position on IP versus real property. IP can be copied infinitely with little or no effort. But you can't xerox your car.
While I don't agree with RMS' constant, aggressive demands that Linux be called GNU/Linux, I see nothing hypocritical in his stance. He has never said that we should use other people's code without crediting them. He has consistently said that hoarding software for personal profit at the expense of the convenience of others as well as the quality of software is bad.
He has never even hinted that Linux should stop using GNU tools, nor has he taken any action to take the GNU tools out of Linux. He simply wants credit for the work that the GNU project has done.
You could certainly argue that he's just an arrogant fool who wants everyone to acknowledge his greatness. I wouldn't argue it, but the argument could be made. But, regardless, humility is not a part of RMS Free Software ideology.
He also did it a lot calmer than I did in my reply to the editor of infoworld. To be compared to an outright murderer (Stalin) would be a bit more than I could have take.
Note: Although I was angry, my response e-mail was non-flammable.
I'd argue that intellectual property is special, because the marginal cost of producing copies of digital information is zero, unlike other types of property. It therefore irks me to have to pay a record company if I want to expend my OWN effort to copy a piece of music.
Unless, of course, the individual is a communist or Nazi..., then it merely become a reminder.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
The thing that got me about Metcalfe's thoughtless comment, was it's complete stupidity.
Emacs as a GNU project, is the refinement of almost 30 years development. It certainly wasn't 'writen over a weekend.' Only because of it's GNU development model, it's stable, portable, and so flexible.
Unlike the microbloat product he compares it with. Which has frequent feature/version upgrades without dealing with bugs, acting as one of M$'s biggest taxes.
Being one of the largest sources of virus problems on the win32 platform, it certainly seemes to be that the statement is the wrong way around.
logan
(and that ain't a bad thing)
The basic notion of capitalism is, you can't make money without some sort of exchange with someone, and that person probably got something they wanted out of it too, which means the more money gets made, the better things get.
Now intellectual property, copyrights, patents, and the whole world of proprietary stuff, that's a way to make a buck but we need to remember that it's only one way. It's about angling for a bigger slice of the pie.
Free software is about aiming for a bigger pie, which is fine capitalism, too. Capitalism doesn't have to be about competition; cooperation is just as good a way to make a buck and you're more likely to like what you see in the mirror in the morning, too.
The only time it stops being capitalism is when people start dragging the lawyers in. And the record shows, that's much more likely to be the corps and the purveyors of closed source. From that point of view, free software is better capitalism than most of the capitalists anyway. There's more to capitalism than "whoever dies with the most toys, wins."
Not that anyone will probably read this now that the article is two or three days down the road, but it is worth noting that I am not a leftist or a liberal. I am an active member of the Republican party and have generally voted for substantially right-of-center Republicans.
This being said, I think Reagan was a fraud, and despite what he may have said, he was as big a proponent of Big Government as any president in this century. My slam was not against the right, but against the kind of vacuous, all-talk-and-no-substance, principled-when-it's-convenient kind of faux conservatism that goes under the banner of Reaganism.
I'm a big RMS fan because I'm a conservative. Philanthropy becomes a personal social obligation precisely because the government ought not to be involved in any form of welfare; it is the duty of citizens to do that work. I suppose I differ from many conservatives in that I'm not being cynical when I say that private civic responsibility must take the place of official welfare. Most "Reagan Republicans" just say that to convince the moderates to support cuts in individual welfare in order to fund the enormous corporate welfare system.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Free software is not communism, or even anything close to it. You will find nothing in Das Kapital that bears anything more than the most superficial resemblance to the free software movement. (For that matter, you will find very little in the software industry that resembles "capital" in the traditional sense of the word, but I digress.)
Richard Stallman is a philanthropist. Those of you old enough to remember life before Reagan may recall a time when giving things away to society at large was considered a virtue. Back then, altruism, generosity, charity, and community service did not draw cries of "Communism!" from the peanut gallery. Even in the age of the robber barons --- probably the closest parallel to the current day --- there were esteemed philanthropists whose donations would have dwarfed the incomes of a roomful of today's wealthy entrepreneurs. When Andrew Carnegie built libraries for the entire country, did anyone accuse him of Marxism?
Richard Stallman's contributions to free software, both direct and indirect, could potentially have a dollar value on a par with Carnegie's bequest to the nation, and certainly more than all the token charity work of today's commercial software magnates. The same is true of Eric Raymond, Paul Vixie, Eric Allman, Linus Torvalds and innumerable others.
What has happened to the developer community, and indeed, the world at large, when people who selflessly devote years of work to building great software and donating it to the world at large are reviled for it? I was first attracted to this business in the late 70's and early 80's when hackers dreamed of changing and improving the world with computers, and later with the Internet. What happened to that idealism?
There's nothing wrong with making a buck. There is something very wrong with only making a buck. Generosity isn't a sign of mental deficiency or sinister political views; it is a moral obligation. It's high time that the profit-above-all reactionaries were put on notice that they are social parasites, and that those who devote some or all of their time to the common good are the real contributing members of society.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Tom says - "Free software has no restrictions on it. Period. Anything more than `do whatever you'd like with this' is no longer free."
I think you are confusing free software with free programmers. Free software is libre and the GPL gives it the inalienable right to remain so. Thus programmers are free to do anything with it except enslave it.
Tom says - "The second myth is that GNU is not Unix."
If you can't appreciate the joke I suggest you imagine a little (TM) sign after "Unix".
Yes, if you mean utilities like sed and cat. Emacs is not that kind of program. It is the kind I start up within 1 minute of booting and interact with until 1 minute of shutdown.
It makes more sense to compare Emacs with X, KDE, or Netscape (or even, maybe, MS Word) than to compare it with grep or ls. Of course, you are perfectly free not to use any of these environments if you don't want to.
This is going to sound like bait, and I apologize. Just for the record, I have released a package under the LGPL (backburner, see www.freshmeat.net).
Anyway, I understand the GNU position on intellectual property, particularly as it applies to software. In his article, RMS indicates that people that are calling him communist are trying to misrepresent him.
I guess my question then is do the Free Software people have a position on personal property that is different then their position on intellectual property? What about on real estate property? What about artistic property, such as musical performances?
I am not trying to set a trap here, or bait, or anything of the sort. The free software philosophy is very interesting to me, and this is a question that I have been wondering for some time.
Note that this is a personal question, only remotely related to free software and GNU, and RMS is under no obligation to answer it.
Bill "not fishing... honest" Kilgallon
Mathematically impossible requirements are technically not against policy.
I don't understand why you think these things are dishonest or deceptive.
Of course GNU isn't unix, it is a unix CLONE. since unix is a registered trademark unix is only what the trademark owners call unix. It isn't RMS's fault that the trademark law works this way.
More importantly is how you insist that GPL software is not free. You say it is not gratis. That is technically true, but no one claims it is. When we say the united states is a free country we don't mean you don't have to pay taxes. But GPl software effectively is gratis, since it can be downloaded free of charge, or bought on cd for the price of the physical media.
GPL software is most certainly libre. Would you say it is deceptive to call someone a "free man" if he no longer has the freedom to be taken as a slave? GPL gives you the freedom to use, modify, and distribute software in whatever way you like, with one exception. The exception being the GPL software, and anything derived from it is also under these terms. True, you are not free to make proprietary extensions, but that is entirely necessary if we want to preserve the other freedoms. Do you say you aren't free because you can't kill people or take them as slaves? While in one sense you are less free for not being able to legally do these things, you really are far more free when you can live without fear of being taken slave or killed.
There can be no freedom without property, as you say, but you are mixing physical with intellectual property. If you accept that ideas are not property, then the freedom to write propietary extensions is like the freedom to enslave and torture children. To preserve more important freedoms, this one freedom must be given up.
Hamsters are at least as feathery as penguins. HamLix
ok so my wording wasn't clear. If you choose to be a slave you aren't really a slave. Just a volunteer. If the freed man wants his freedom, he would still be free even if he can't own slaves himself. If no one is allowed to own slaves, then there is no longer a choice to be a slave, as for you to be a slave someone else must be a slave owner. So it really is the same thing. If you choose to do something, it isn't against your will. The against your will part is the key.
To preserve our freedom we prohibit slave owning. Nowadays few would complain that this means we are no longer free, since we don't have that particular freedom. Same with free software. The lack of the freedom to enslave software does not mean the software isn't free.
That's what copyrights are, enslavement of code. It certainly isn't nearly as horrible as enslaving a person, but the point still holds that it is not deceptive to call GPL software free.
Hamsters are at least as feathery as penguins. HamLix
Your argument for the freedom to place software under a restrictive license is based on the idea that copyright is a right. This is the fundamental issue. RMS believes that copyright does harm by sometimes forcing us to use software that has unacceptable restrictions. If you consider copyright to be a mild form of extortion and enslavement, then saying it isn't free because you can't make a propietary version of it is like saying you aren't a free man because you aren't allowed to get rich stealing peoples kidney's, leaving them in a cold bathtub.
Your point seems to be that propietary software infringes on no freedoms, because it is your choice to use the software. If you don't like the terms, you don't have to use it, and if you become enslaved by the software, it is your own choice. According to that logic, as copyrighting software does no harm, it is a freedom you ought to have, and denying you that freedom makes the GPL unfree.
Well, if using software was always completely voluntary, I don't think anyone would have a problem with even the most restrictive propietary licenses. The problem is that we are coerced into using sofware. Of course you could choose not to use computers, go live in the woods hunting rabbits. It's like saying if you don't like cars, don't drive them. To live a normal life, you must drive a car. To live a normal life, you must use computer software. When there is no free alternative, the choice is to go do something completely different with your life, unrelated to computers, or use the restrive software. True it is your choice.
Consider the following situation. Due to circumstances beyond your control, you are desperately poor. A tempting way to get some money to eat might be to gamble. You have no money, so you put your freedom up. You lose, and become a slave. Entirely voluntary, therefore the slave owner did nothing wrong.
In many circumstances, we are lead to use software, even though we can't stand the license. In this case the propietary software is restricting my freedom, and the alternative, to not use the software and live in the woods with a shotgun, is not reasonable. The copyright therefore infringes on my freedom. Since the author's freedom to copyright is interfering with my freedoms, the author must lose the right to copyright, for the users' right to do what he wants on his own equipment comes before an author's right to control all copies of his work.
The issue we seem to disagree on is whether or not restrictive licenses violate the rights of the user. If you accept that they do, then the GPL is not restrictive any more than laws on extortion are restrictive, and is therefore completely and utterly free. If you think that the author's right to control his work comes first, then the GPL is not very free at all.
RMS's wording is completely valid within his framework of beliefs. Just because your definition of freedom is different from what he honestly believes does not make him deceptive. There is nothing wrong with thinking the freedoms the GPL removes are valid, and therefore the GPL is not free. My problem is with Tom calling RMS a decietful user of newspeak, and the FSF not at all being about freedom. Tom's language is offensive and rude to anyone who agrees with RMS.
You don't have to call the GPL free if you don't believe it is, but the issue is not so clear cut that RMS cannot call it free if that is his belief.
Hamsters are at least as feathery as penguins. HamLix
How is not being allowed to use GPL software in your propietary software nebulous? Derivative work is pretty clear cut. If you cut and paste the code, #include it, link with it, make a modification, etc. In other words, if something contains GPL code, that something is GPL as well.
How can you complain about the GPL when you are writing software that is far more restricted? You can't use other peoples proprietary code in your projects, you can't use GPL code either. Is the GPL somehow worse than what you are doing. The GPL makes software less useful in the construction of new propietary software. At least you can look at the code and learn how it works, even if you can't cut and paste it. This negative impact on you is no accident, it is the whole point of the GPL. Considering that you want to use GPL code in making even more restricted code, how do you have a moral argument against the GPL? You have a pragmatic argument, your proprietary projects would be easier if you could use GPL code in them. Well I could achieve my goal of world domination more easily by enslaving you and your family, but my selfish interests don't cause me to deserve more.
You can be a selfish bastard and write propietary software, that really isn't all THAT big of a crime, unless you are Microsoft. But in doing so you accept the idea that you can utterly control your work, and so you have no moral argument against others doing the same.
Hamsters are at least as feathery as penguins. HamLix
he never said programmers shouldn't make lots of money. He said they don't HAVE to. You don't have a RIGHT to make any money at all. If people simply refused to pay programmers, that is their problem. Probably less software would be written if you could never get paid for writing software. Thats just too bad, but it isn't a right. You do NOT decide your own salary, your salary is whatever your customers/employers want to pay you. The current system redistributes money towards programmers in an unfair and destructive way, as we have seen with Bill Gates. RMS simply said that if programmers can only make as much money as clerks than thats the way it is.
I can't make money picking flies out of a dung heap. It is a very difficult and highly skilled job. I use my sensitive and highly trained nose to pick out the flies from the dung. But no one is willing to pay me for it! OH NO! people are benefiting from this! You sneak into farmers' barns and pick all the flies out the dung heap. Now there are less flies, and the farmers are helped. But still they refuse to pay you!!! How immoral! There must be laws to force your salary through the roof.
Well, you dumbass bastard, the world doesn't work like that. If you can't make money selling software, it means you shouldn't be selling software. Maybe you should be selling something that has value!! HOw about SERVICE? sell your service as a programmer. That can make money. Selling something that has no scarcity is not economically feasable. Laws making it economically feasable are completely absurd. Thats like a tax to pay for your fine flatulence you work so hard to produce.
DEciding your salary for you, bah, you can't manipulate the system to set your salary! your salary is what people will pay! if programmers don't make money, then they just don't.
People like you are causing us to head into that horrible world where every time you read a book you pay a royalty, and violating this is punishable by death.
Hamsters are at least as feathery as penguins. HamLix
how about if the state copied your house, and gave copies to the poor. Would this still be communism. You still have your rights to do what you want with your house. The point is other people are free to copy, use, and make derivative houses.
Hamsters are at least as feathery as penguins. HamLix
if slave owning were legal, while you may be free at the moment, that is no garuntee you not be taken as a slave at any time. If i enslave you, but then give you all your freedoms, you are in effect free. In fact you are even more free than if I did not own you, for now there is not a possibility that anyone else will enslave you under worse terms. that is how the GPL works.
No one would care if you could legally own people if this ownership gives you no control over them. Say i place one restriction on my slave, he himself may not own a slave. Is this restricting his freedom? of course. does that mean he is not free? no. lack of freedom to enslave and harm others is not really a lack of freedom.
when you copyright software you enslave it. when you license it under the gpl, you give it the utmost freedom, except the freedom to have children (derivative works) who can become slaves. with a public domain license the software and its descendants can be taken slave at any time. This is not freedom. Freedom is being free and never in the future being able to lose that freedom.
What natural rights does the GPL force anyone to give up? The right to make derivative works and place them under whatever license you choose? Since when is modifying someone elses work and claiming it as your own a natural right? The right to control your own work through ordinary copyright you say? Copyright is not a right, it is an artificial government granted monopoly.
Calling GPL free sofware is exactly like calling a US citizen a free man. Neither are free to be involved with slavery, but no one in their right mind would argue that calling either 'free' is misleading.
Hamsters are at least as feathery as penguins. HamLix
It seems to me that the FSF is simply a more restrictive view of the same context. RMS states that Open Source software doesn't necessarily comply with the FSF ideals. However, the FSF software certainly falls within the Open Source movement. It's like the old geometric addige:
Not all rectangles are squares, but all squares are rectangles.
FSF is the square.
- Vincit qui patitur.
Actually, there's an interesting twist on that: Distribution companies are evaluated at least partially by the contributions they make back to the free source movement. For instance, I'll buy a boxed Red Hat or SuSE set because I like what they've done (hire Rasterman in Red Hat's case, and write drivers so my HP Pavilion display is usable in the case of SuSE).
So they actually do have an incentive to hire people to write free software, because it helps their image and increases their sales.
D
----
this poor guy needs to stop working so hard. he's blathering like an idiot.
You raised some interesting points and I find myself in agreement with some of what you say but I think your detestation of RMS' use of the word 'free' is based upon a misapprehension.
;o) However, I suggest that his use of the word 'free' is more logical than yours which is a confusion between the two established usages.
When we say 'free beer' it is the beer itself that is free - free (gratis) to the user that is.
When we say 'free men' it is the men who are free - unencumbered by restriction upon their own liberty.
When RMS talks about 'free software' it is the software itself that is free (at liberty), not the user. I think you disagree with the term because you have misinterpreted it as meaning 'free (libre) for the user to do whatever they want with'. In other words you are conjoining the second definition of the word 'free' inappropriately in the manner of the first definition. This is a mistake as it corrupts the meaning.
'Free software' means that not the user but the software itself is free from being captured, suborned, or otherwise further restricted. RMS is quite frank about the restrictions on and responsibilities of the user. But GPL'd software is itself free in perpetuity and cannot be enslaved to proprietary interests.
I really don't think there is any attempt by RMS to corrupt or misuse the word 'free'. It's just that the English language has multiple uses for many words and this particular meaning of this particular word doesn't really have any useful synonyms without borrowing from other languages. And we know how good Americans are with other languages and cultures
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I love the software, I could do without the attitude.
Life's tough, isn't it?
The whole point of the FSF is that by using the software, you should also accept the ideas behind it - that software does not have to be hoarded, that there are real, material gains in distributing source freely, and so on. Read the GNU Manifesto for a better explanation.
I really find the attitude of "nice software, pity I have to put up with RMS" offensive. If it weren't for RMS, you wouldn't be reading
Hi Tom, nice to see that you haven't quit your GPL-bashing...
To pick up your art analogy and run with it: The artwork is available to everyone, in infinite numbers. Just walk in and pick up whatever piece you want, and take it home. Great, huh? Now, suppose you decide to make a few additions to that artwork. You slap some paint on here and there, fix up a few places where the original artist missed some spots, whatever. You're free to view that artwork in your own home as much as you want. Stick it in a safe, set fire to it, put it up on the wall with a Picasso, whatever.
Now, take that artwork out of your home and start telling people, "Look at what I painted. Isn't it great? But only look, don't touch - and you're not allowed to copy it." Don't you think that's a little unfair to the original artist?
Or you could take the altered painting, start making your own copies, and hand them out to whoever wants them. Now suppose that they altered it further, and then started selling copies encased in Perspex to other people, saying "This is a painting by me. You're not allowed to make copies. If you do, you can be arrested. You're not allowed to alter the painting, not even to improve it. If you do, you can be arrested. You're only allowed to put that painting on a blue wall. In fact, we've made it so that the painting will self-destruct if it's put on anything other than a blue wall."
Are still following me here, Tom? The GPL provides about the only way to distribute software in its source form without allowing others to reuse the source in a manner that does not allow further replication. If you don't want to accept the ideas behind the GPL, just write your own versions of the software that you need. I mean, you're bitching because you get something for free and then can't reduce others' ability to use that software freely. Interesting way of viewing things.
I'm positive that this is going to do zero good, considering how often you have publicly stated your dislike of the GPL, but if the FSF write software, they get to call the shots - just the way that Larry got to call the shots with Perl.
Oh, and nowhere in the GPL does it force you to release code under the GPL if you write it for your own use, as you well know. Don't try cheap tricks, Tom - they only make you look cheap.
What you do apparently believe is that the people supposedly being deceived are stupid. The reason RMS chose the term 'free' is to make people think about the concept (as he has stated many times); if you use a convenient term such as Open Source, it becomes no more than a label, requiring little thought in its use. I think RMS has been careful enough in his use of the term 'free' to avoid misleading users; he has ensured that either a copy of the GPL or the location of such a copy is included with every piece of software distributed by the FSF. He doesn't assume that users are too simple to understand the concept of freedom - I don't see why you should, Tom.
This response appears to be more pleasant than I have become accustomed to seeing by the three-letter giants of the hacking crowd. Are we seeing the beginning of a new phase of the total movement?
One can only hope.
I am glad though that RMS does represent the hacker community, simply due to his intelligence. However abrasive he may have been or will be overall will not remove that very important quality required for the development and evangelism of Free Software. Funny that my roommate and I were just discussing an annoying person we just met at a party this weekend. She was fairly intelligent, but persistently annoying. We (my roommate and I) came to an agreement that these two qualities are not necessarily dependent on each other. But it's nice when they are in congruence.
ALL HAIL BRAK!!!
Capitalists are often accused of wanting to do better while everyone around them does worse. The only way I can see for that to happen is by fraud or theft. If I want to be a capitalist and live honestly, I can't expect my fortunes to improve while all my neighbors' fortunes are worsening.
A good capitalist reason to write free software (and the reason I do, when I find the time) is to share ideas that you hope will improve the quality of life for everybody. I might decide that the benefits of widely distributing an idea outweigh the benefits of selling it. Then again, some ideas seem to gain credibility by being sold rather than given away.
I'd like to make one more book recommendation, but unfortunately it's out of print. It is The Machinery of Freedom; Guide to a Radical Capitalism by the economist David D. Friedman. Portions have been posted to the web. Fascinating discussions of a lot of different areas of life where libertarian principles could be applied to advantage. Also a lot of good reasoning about why one might choose to be a libertarian. Friedman points out that there are two kinds of arguments about how social things should be done, arguments from first principles, and arguments from consequences. He gives intereseting reasons for preferring the latter, inspite of the intellectual appeal of the former.
When I first read the GNU Manifesto, it seemed to me to have a lot of Marxist-sounding stuff in it. On re-reading it years later, I see that RMS is following out logical consequences of his basic assumptions. It's not all stuff I agree with, but it has its own integrity.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
Unfortunately, works can be removed from the public domain. You can find something in the public domain and put your own copyright on it. This allows you (at least in principle, and with no less legal validity than the GPL) to control the conditions under which it can be copied, distributed, and modified. The GPL allows you to make your code as close to free as possible without the danger that somebody else will reclaim it and make it not-at-all free.
Depending on your point of view, license contagion is either a weakness of the GPL or an adherence to the informing principles. As a professional engineer in a proprietary-centric world, I would prefer the convenience of a license that lets me cut and paste free software into my proprietary work. Personally, I would be happy to attribute the free software, and not try to limit its freedoms for others. But perhaps my employer feels the need to control every line of code, and is willing to do some kind of nasty litigation to un-free the software I used.
RMS wants to live in a free-software-centric world, where his code is protected from any attack on its freedom. He wants the free software world to enjoy the same protection of intellectual property that the commercial world now enjoys. I think the annoying complexities you're talking about aren't due to trickery or duplicity on RMS's part. I think they were necessitated by the legal climate in which he found himself. (Why did the chicken cross the road? For tax purposes.)
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
The sheer number of clauses goes to your objection to the complexity of the definition of `freedom'. Other than clause 2, I don't find a lot of objectionable language. I can see the need for clauses to cover complications like interaction with other IP law (clause 7) or laws in other countries (clause 8). A few clauses are closer to informational than legal, like clause 9 about GPL version numbers. Generally, I share your concern (or what I take to be your concern) about the large number of clauses, but it's hard to fault specifics aside from volume, and the confusing language in clause 2.
I was just looking back over the GNU Manifesto. I think it must have been revised since the last time I saw it. I recall something to the effect that `programmers shouldn't make too much money'. That bothered me, why should RMS get to decide my salary? But I don't find that bit in the current version. Maybe it alienated enough people that it was removed.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
Whatever people may say about RMS, he gets his point across quickly and effectivly. Something that I would like to see more of the regular writers who contribute to Slashdot learn to do :)
FinkPloyd
What the GPL does is place a restriction on the freedom of anyone who choses to change a piece of GPL'd software: you may not give away your changes unless you give away the source. To say that placing this restriction on a person gives him greater freedom is simply Orwellian.
Sure, but nobody's arguing about that. All Tom is pointing out is that the GNU folks are placing restrictions on people who use their software, and then bandying the world `free' about a little to liberally.cjs
The world's most portable OS: http://www.netbsd.org.
I am looking at the larger picture. The GPL does inhibit the way I can use software, yes. That, in fact, is the whole point of the GPL! I cannot do certain things with this software. (I don't find that so bad; what really annoys me personally about it is that it insists that I must put this license on my software, too--Stallman is literally attacking those parts of the free software world that don't agree with his philosophies.)
I don't know where postmodernism comes into this, nor do I see anyone talking about `complete' freedom in the sense of trampling the rights of others. That's just a straw man. As for political correctness and rightousness, I'd say the GPL fanatics demonstrate that far more than the others.
As for the result of `more free licenses' producing `less free' software, that's just bogus. There has been no indication I've ever seen that this is the case. There was a lot of free, source-code-included software out there before Stallman started up GNU, and there has continued to be a lot, under active development, since.
cjs
The world's most portable OS: http://www.netbsd.org.
I beleive that RMS has done (is doing) a wonderful job as an advocate for free software. When people refer him to being a communist (or other ists) it irretates me. People are trying to categorize him without knowing him.
RMS, I bow to you for all the hard work that you have done over the years. May you get the proper credit you deserve.
I like free software just like everyone else. I prefer software that is totally free and not just a commerical app that was release for free. Sometimes there is not a free app out there to be had so going to a commerical app is your only choice. But when people release products as free code/app then you need to take a gander at it to see if it will do what you want. I have found that more and more that the totally free apps have fewer bugs in them than the commerical ones.
Well that is enough rambling by me,
Thank you RMS for all you hard work,
Scott
Scott
C{E,F,O,T}O
sboss dot net
email: scott@sboss.net
Scott
janitor
sdn website family
email: scott at sboss dot net
you made me spray my trini with DP. you're my hero.
-k. ^-^ ^D
actually, muggers wouldn't go away. they'd just change jobs, become the people who "equitably" divided up the goods. you know, you're good friends with this guy, and he makes sure your share is a little more equal than everybody else's. Or maybe she's the person who who decides who get to work where....or do you think that people just choose to be sewer-cleaning teams when they have a better choice?
-k. ^-^ ^D
- Emacs runs on pretty much any hardware that can run [Free|Net|Open]BSD, Solaris, SunOS, Ultrix, or Linux.
- Emacs has a free (of course) API called Emacs LISP (or elisp, for short) enabling you to write pretty much any extension you want. Even, as the homepage notes, a web browser that runs inside emacs.
- Emacs has interactive/context sensitive modes for editing a wide variety of documents, including HTML, Lisp, C++, Prolog...
All this is by way of saying that anyone (Bob Metcalfe) who asserts that Emacs could be written in a night is partaking in something a whole lot stronger than Coca-Cola.Red Hat isn't making money. I don't know about VA Linux, but I doubt you really do either. I think Suse actually turns a profit...but then again their value-added installer isn't open source so I don't think that's a great leg to be standing on.
Just because a company hasn't gone out of business yet doesn't mean their business model is valid.
For the same amount you would spend on floppy disks to copy emacs ("easily duplicated software") you could feed a family of four for a month.
... you have to pay for the media to store it on if nothing else. I think you overestimate how much food costs and underestimate how much the infrastructure for getting your "free" software costs.
Food can't be easily duplicated but it can be grown cheaply. But software can't be duplicated for free either
And, my point stands: Free Food is beneficial to most people. It is only a threat to the minority of businesses that rely on proprietary food sales.
The problem with free software is that no one would produce food under those circumstances, so no software would exist.
I may not be right, but your argument is flawed. Why can't food be free but people charge for the "service" of making sure it has low levels of pesticide or for packaging it in convenient ways? Aren't those the same arguments that free software advocates use? Don't they say that you have to think outside to box a little to understand how money can be made on free software?
And I think you are going to have a much better chance convincing people of the Right To Have Food than the Right to Look at Source Code.
Anyway, my real question was "What is your point". The point seems to have been, "It is okay to force some companies out of business because lots of others will benefit by getting something for free." Just saying that would have been a lot clearer. Unfortunately, as far as I can see that same argument applies to every business on the planet earth.
Making any given thing free is only a threat to the minority of businesses that rely on the sale of it. To everyone and everything else it is a great boon.
So why should software be free but food not?
I think it was Linus who said that RMS is an activist. He has very specifc goals, that alot of people would call utopian. He spends every ammount of energy trying to achieve these goals. Activists like RMS often never reach their goals, but they do important work, and never stop doing it. It's unlikely that RMS will ever see a world of only free software in his lifetime, It's unlikely that Ed Begley Jr will ever see ubiquitous electirc cars. It's unlikely that Ralph Nader will ever see the level of safety and quality that he strives for. Maybe in our lifetimes we will.
I dont always agree with RMS, but there's no hidden agenda to find when he speaks. For what it's worth, I think RMS works towards a noble goal, its utopian nature notwithstanding. Whether it ever happens or not, no one can discount his life's work of trying.
-Rich
Sigh.
Free != Gratis.
The FSF itself sells free software.
RTFEssays on www.gnu.org.
(Probably a troll, anyway.)
---Jason
Do you really think rms and the FSF are insincere? What do you think there ultimate nefarious goal is? To enslave everyone with software they can do whatever they want with except make it less free (I'm not addressing the ultimate definition of free here, but surely you must agree that the Gnu GPL is relatively more free than, say, a Microsoft EULA)? Just because someone has a different outlook on something and thereby uses a word to mean something different (tho related) to what you mean by it, doesn't mean they're lying.
As for the GNU acronym, Gnu is Not Unix, this is a joke . It was a clever and humorous way to avoid a lawsuit, but no-one is actually fooled. Jokes (some forms of jokes, at any rate) and lies are similar in that they are both deliberate untruths, but lies differ in that they are told with the intent to deceive, whereas jokes are told with the intent to make you laugh.
Can you produce any example of where either of these so called lies was believed by anyone (and this doesn't mean someone agreeing w/ rms's definition of free, it means (based on what you said) someone being duped into thinking GPL==Public Domain by reading (not by their failure to read) the FSF's pages). If so, were such people actually harmed? If they were, how did this benefit the FSF as a result. In closing, please try to lighten up. If you're this grumpy all the time, it's probably taking years off your life.
-- THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK -- --
Free has never been about doing anything you want, quite the contrary, its about responsibilities.. Freedom is about trade offs, about balancing your freedoms against everyone else's. Should you be free to shout "fire" in a movie theatre, or to make it as obvious as possible, to go kill off a few of your neighbors. I doubt you'd say that in order for people to be free they should be able to do anything they damn well please.
Well, the FSF has always claimed to be talking about freedom in this light. It's not just about the freedom, but about the responsibilities that go along with that freedom. The FSF has made an attempt via the GPL and other documents to specify these freedoms and responsibilities. Whether they've been entirely successful or not is anther topic...
---
"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will deserve neither and lose both."
"It is better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees." - Albert Camus
You summed it up nicely, thanks for posting.
RMS seems to just take complete credit for Linux. Unless he's talking about some other free version of Unix. He says they've been working "for 15 years to develop a free replacement for Unix," but Linux isn't that old.
It seems that he worked for 15 years to develop a free Unix and has nothing to show for it, while Linus simply said, "hey, I'm going to make a free version of Unix" and then proceeded to do so. While the FSF may have developed a large chunk of Linux (I think I saw an estimate that said 10%), It's misleading for them to say they "developed" Linux.
I love Gnu tools, but I really get sick of RMS taking credit for something he didn't do. At least he didn't mention the term GNU/Linux or any of its other ridiculous synonyms.
Of course, if he was referring to a different free Unix, all of these comments are pretty off topic.
rooooar
God forbid anybody say anything that goes against the popular belief!
rooooar
The specific configuration of "Emacs lite" you describe may never have been created (and I wouldn't be too sure of that, either), but an "editor only" version has been around for about fifteen years, namely micro-emacs. Wonderful little program, I used to use it a lot because it was the only decent editor available on a (8088, 10MHz, 640k) PC.
But I have no use for the hulking monstrosity that is GNU/Emacs.
-- Alastair
They make the software free, the freedom of the software means you have no right to take the software as your property.
You are free, your freedom means I have no right to take you as my property.
As a libertarian, and one who has done a bit of study on politics and economics, the equation of "free software" to "free speech" has always grated on my sensibilities. Those who make such a comparison have no idea what free speech is. To furthermore call it "liberty" (as in the Gnome FAQ) illustrates a basic ignorance. I am justified in using deadly force to defend my liberties, but to think I have the same justification to force developers to release their source code is ludicrous.
I've given up calling this stuff "free software". I prefer open source or community software.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
"Can you produce any example of where either of these so called lies was believed by anyone..."
I certainly can. But do I really need to give a specific example? One needs only to look at the posts on Slashdot on any given day. I hereby offer up some random paraphrased quotes I have seen in the past...
"Why would you willingly enslave yourself to Microsoft?
"I will only use free(dom) software"
"If it's not free software, I have the right to copy it anyway."
"The BSD license does not protect your rights."
And finally, my favorite, "KDE is illegal."
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
"He however didn't want to hear anything contrary to his beliefs."
And neither did you! The "conversation" began cordially enough, until Tom's first rebuttal, then you wandered off into zealotry. After a few more posts of trying to be polite and persuasive, he realized that you did not wish a discussion, but that you only wished to harass him. It wasn't until then that you told you to bug off.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Think about what kind of system you'd have if you actually DID remove everything but the kernel and replaced it with GNU stuff. Calling it "GNU/NT" would certainly be a whole hell of a lot less misleading than calling it just "NT."
And what a worthy cause indeed. I suggest we help them. Anybody got some wood and nails?
God seems to have gone wrong somewhere.... Or does he want another 2000 years?
That has proved itself to be a faulty conclusion because the FSF keeps selling copy after copy after copy of manuals and CD-ROMs, even if we try to be the highest price distributor of everything we sell because we're doing this to raise money to develop free software.
People often have the idea that if it's free software, if you are going to charge something for it, you should charge as little as possible. We think this is completely wrong. You should try to raise as much money as possible. Some of it for yourself, and some of it to donate to free software development.
We don't want people to expect that the price will be small. We want people to expect that the price will be substantial, but there will also be a substantial donation to free software. And when someone sells a copy of something and DON'T donate money to free software development, then they should think that there is something wrong.
Ofcourse, all GNU software and most other free software, you can also get from FTP sites for free, but we hope that people will also buy things from us. Because when they do, they help to improve the software by making it possible for us to pay programmers to work on free software.
There is nothing wrong with selling free software. If selling free software raises enough money for you so that you can work on the programs you develop fulltime, then by all means, go ahead and do it. You can also work as a teacher or consultant for free software if you like.
The only problem with Emacs is in its silly assumption that the user can actually read and write. Believe me, spell as you go is certainly not one of the most contributing features of MS Word, at least for people's improvement.
I've been fairly amused at arguments claiming absence of freedom in the presence of restrictions. The question is much subtler than that. If you live in the United States, for example, you are a free person. Free to do whatever you like, right? No, there are restrictions, because without those restrictions you would not be free. Paradoxical, yes. But you are not free to rape or pillage or plunder under American law simply because you are taking away another person's freedoms. And the goal of freedom in this case has ultimately succeeded by making restrictions.
Those who see restrictions as the antithesis of freedom should devote a little more thought to the subject.
Such is the case here, in pretty much the same form.
The only real question is whether you believe the redistribution, use, and modification of software is a freedom which should be granted to you; in other words, if you believe that the scholarly tradition of improving on your neighbors' ideas in a cooperative fasion is of more importance than the capitalistic idea of intellectual property.
-Jay 'Eraserhead' Felice
Keep the freedom to vote.
It's interesting that you brought up Orwell. One of the Ingsoc slogans was "Freedom is Slavery", of course, and it wasn't just in 1984 that we hear this. The American Legion will tell you that "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance," that in order to preserve the liberties of U.S. citizens, some U.S. citizens must be (essentialy) enslaved (voluntarily or otherwise) in the armed forces. The same logic applies to the GPL, that the price of the software's freedom is protection from non-freedom. The BSD license is like an anarchic nation, one without government, but by extension without protection from tyrrany.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
Sure, I don't always agree with Mr. Stallman, for instance, this GNU/Linux(Seriously, if i take an nt box and replace everything but the kernel, will it be GNU/NT?) garbage has to go, while GNU/HURD is completely acceptable.
The thing i'm writing to say though, is that no matter how much i disagree with Mr. Stallman's actions, I share several of his ideals, i think. I actually do *prefer* "free software" to proprietary stuff that just happens to be "open source," though it's by no means a requirement for me to use a piece of software. (It may become a requirement when there's more "free software" around.)
Well, now that I have nothing more to ramble about, let me say in closing that no matter how annoying RMS is, he's done a lot for our collective lives, and no matter how much he's done, he'll still be annoying sometimes. Let's learn to treat him like we would any other person.
hi Tom,
Ever had a close look at the GNU Website lately?
Notice how they they define software freedom, then explain the purpose of copyleft? Notice how they explain how you can be free without copyleft (like X), but they defend why copyleft is so much better? (and it is).
This seems pretty plain language to me. Please don't slander GNU by saying they use tricks and don't say what they mean. If you go to their website it's very plain. As someone else has said, when you take cheap shots only you look cheap.
ta,
wayne
Maybe I should use Bill's words:
... and that's my tax money too. :( With the various solutions we all know of, this could have been done for $free!
:) and being a cooperative member of society.
:)
"imagine the disincentive to software development if after months of work another company could come along and copy your work and market it under it's own name... without legal restraints to such copying, companies like Apple could not afford to advance the state of the art" --Bill Gates, 1983
Or from a recent TV movie...
Steve: "Our stuff is better, Bill."
Bill: "That doesn't matter!"
Well, in this case, it does matter. And mostly because it's $free$. With Bill and Steve, customers had/have to make a choice between two products which cost a significant chunk of money. And like *most* other things, you get what you pay for. The knock-off (M$ 9x/NT) is made more cheaply works for crap but the hardware is really cheap. The better product (of the two) requires different hardware and works better.
The above-mentioned exception is free software, in particular the GNU/LINUX community's products. If one can call them products. (Can you give something away and call it a product??? But I digress.) In this case, you can use the cheaper hardware, but get the OS and apps for $free - a really big difference.
I work for a state agency that recently spent $500,000 licensing M$ Exchange for mail. A half a million dollars so they could be incompatible with the rest of the 'net world and make sure thier support costs remain high.
I wonder how many people's lives could have been made happier and healthier with that $.5M in the state's health insurance system?
Virtually every major religion of the world today has at it's core being kindly toward others, do unto as you would be done, etc. Well, the core of the original speaker's words anyway, not the crap that comes out of the control and power mill that springs up around each religion as it "matures" and each member tries to manipulate it for their own personal profit/benefit... Is this not the underlying premise of communism/marxism etc.? From each according to his abilities, to each according to his need?
The place where people get confused is where they equate totalitarianism to communism, but the equation looks like this:
Religous founder's words => manipulative controlling dogma
Communist principles => manipulative controlling government
So, I can understand where RMS is coming from.
Except as the result of #2 above, I can't find a place to put capitalism...
I have a hard time believing that the benefit others receive from a coder working to solve a problem and then allowing others to have that code, or writing and releasing code toward the purpose of the approval of his peers is a bad thing. In much the same way that I have a hard time believing that the basic principles of communism/marxism are a bad thing.
I just wish that, if people are going to insult one another and throw derogatory terms around or lead government witch hunts, they use the correct term -- totalitarianism or facism.
Basically, call me a communist if you want, but know what you are calling me. If you call me a totalitarian or a facist, then I may be offended and begin to take issue. But if you call me a communist, I'm going to be proud that I have an interest in helping my fellow man (and yes, woman
BTW, ESR's arguments and the concept of "the gift economy" are also presented from a slightly different angle in "The Celestine Prophecy" by Redfield.
It was also interesting to see a post here in response to that movie that talked about the sum that Apple paid Xerox to look at their technology. Maybe they didn't pay to copy it, but at least they made a token.
And please remember that when M$ bought $150M of *non-voting* Apple stock that *couldn't be sold for five years*, Apple had $1.1B (that's right, Billion) CASH in the bank, not counting physical plant, product ready to ship, other assets, etc. That "investment" was roughly equivalent to what Bill would spend for a media splash for a new product or a charitable (read: tax and pr) donation. M$ did not "bail out" Apple!
Sorry if some of this this is a little off topic, but I felt the need to rant.
Russ
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
Unless of course, you're the business man who happens to take some college students Open Source research and turns it into a multi million dollar company without spending ANY R&D money!
Of course, Red Hat's prospectus for its IPO states that it spends 20% of revenues on R&D. Get your facts straight next time.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
If, as you say, freedom can only mean absolute freedom, citizens of the US are not free. Neither are Canadians like me.
Tools like the US constitution or the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms are rules that promote freedom. They must, however, restrict other freedoms in doing so. For instance, your freedom of speech could reduce my freedom from persecution via hate literature. US law favours those who spread hate literature. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms subjects those freedoms to "such reasonable limits. . . as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society". That way, we can still make hate literature illegal.
If limits on freedom to protect other freedoms aren't acceptable to you, then you are someone who believes that people don't need laws to live together in harmony--in other words, an anarchist.
FSF sees source code availability as key to freedom. The GPL is their "constitution". It restricts some freedoms, in order to strengthen others.
Besides, we already have a name for what you call "free software": public domain.
European=person from the continent of Europe.
African=person from the continent of Africa.
Australian=person from the continent of Australia
American!=U.S. Citizen
Yet, for hysterical reasons, U.S. citizens refer to themselves, and only themselves, as "Americans". They know that there are other countries in North and South America, yet they insist on referring to the United States of America as "America"--as if there was nothing else.
It's doubletalk because people know it's false and say so anyway. It makes a mishmash of the phrase, "In 1792, Columbus discovered America", because what he discovered was a new continent, not the United States (How can you discover something that doesn't exist yet?).
OTOH, I think RMS truly believes GPL'ed software is as free as a U.S. citizen. And they're free, right? Calling something free when has what you believe freedom is--that's not doubletalk. You may be wrong, but you're not a liar.
I simply think that there are degrees of freedom. That freedom is not an absolute term. Disagree if you like.
As for Anarchy, I don't think there's anything wrong with being an Anarchist. It's a valid political stance, and I tried to present it that way, although I don't personally believe it. Ararchy implies a belief that people won't abuse freedom.
Next year, Microsoft could embrace and extend Apache, and no one could stop them. If the people coding Apache don't MIND Microsoft making money off their hard work, that's another story. . .
And what about if you're talking to a card shark who likes to garden?
J4, all I was trying to do was show that words don't mean just one thing. And even if RMS is wrong, it's not lies or propoganda unless it's a DELIBERATE untruth.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH
HA
Your average FSF programmer participates in for-profit ventures. You don't see FSF programmers competing for IT contracts and submitting zero cost bids in competition with local contractors.
The FSF has as its stated purpose the compete restructuring of an entire element of our economy. Why do some programmers undervalue the proprietary system they espouse that they feel it can't coexist with this collaborative movement? Is there a deep-seated inferiority complex so ingrained in these people such that they feel their perceived rightful place in society must be supported by secrets, and, if necessary, lies? Sad.
My point? Both Freed and Proprietary approaches have strength and weaknesses, so it should be a matter of "you do your thing and let others do theirs". If (unlike me) you believe FSF or others will achieve their ultimate goal of making proprietary software obsolete then you had better do something about putting yourself in a position to take advantage of it. I doubt whinging about it on /. won't stop it.
-- open source? sounds like the real book --
I personally dont think RMS cares much about businesses and their GPL'ing of software.. As he says, the GNU project wants to create their own FREE replacements, not to try and convince the rest of the world that we should all give everything away for free and be poor...
That's called giving back to the community.
Common sense says that if you take other peoples work, & hope to get rich off of it, it's a good idea to at least go through the motions of giving back to those other people.
If Red Hat were to continue making lot's of money off of Linux without giving back, their already tenous position within the community would evaporate quite quickly.
Perhaps Heller's point perhaps could have been stated better, but it's in no way invalid. Open Source / Free software is a perfectly valid business model, but you can't expect to get something for nothing.
A socialist economy is a positive sum game, on paper, because assuming it redistributes fairly, all members would benefit the increase in value that occurs when you turn resources into usable goods. All stable economies work on this principle. Capitalism simply does it much more efficiently.
I have a question for you: do you feel entitled to the air you breathe? What about the water you drink? What about the view you see from a tall building, or the right to walk from point A to point B? How do you qualify what is an entitlement and what is property? How do you determine who has ownership of property, when property is fixed, and the number of humans is increasing?
If he did, he would be very into closed source. Not that i care that much, but it sucks when you put all of your time and $$$ into R&D then release something as GPL and another company picks it up and sells it for a lower price... Your R&D cash is wasted and you make no profit because someone else is selling your product for USD$1.50.
To a businessman it won't make sense unless the open source licence DOESN'T comply with those Debian rules.
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
This statement has neatly brought into focus what I personally dislike about the FSF. If the FSF were only interested in source code availability, why am I not allowed to incorporate GPL code into other free and open source projects? Why can't BSD people use parts of GPL programs? Why can't Apache, Perl, XFree, Mozilla and Darwin developers copy and paste code from GPL programs into their code - it will still be available as source code. The FSF wants every piece of free code to be attached to the viral GNU public license. This, frankly, is unacceptable.
Every day when I take my kids out to the car, they play a game. It's a simple racing game.
As soon as the front door is opened, they run to the car. The winner is the one who touches the sliding door first.
The triumphant child accounces their victory by shouting "First!"
This is usually followed by arguements from the other two, along the lines of "But we weren't racing!"
My kids are 3, 5 and 8.
Can anyone explain to me why my kids feel it neccessary to do this? Or why some AC does? Do we have a 5-year-old AC scanning the site, looking for new posts?
Aren't we reading a little too much into a single line of text here? What he said was, "one notable exponent of this view lived 2000 years ago", where this view is that people should cooperate. There are no reasonable grounds for interpreting this to mean that Stallman believes he is Christ.
Jesus did the whole "nailed to a tree" thing because it was God's way of saving the Earth.
In the meantime, we would appreciate it if you laid off the death threats.
Thanks in advance!
--The basis of all love is respect
no, in my experience, most people who call themselves christians want to shove their religion down my throat.
but i know lots of priests (being an irish ex-catholic) and most of *them* are good people. i would say that people who think they are christians probably aren't but those who actually are christians are decent, good people.
If people were equal there would be no need to help others in a general sense. Once help becomes available, it is taken up by two groups:
a - people who actually need help
b - lazy assholes who like to get free shit
Unfortunately there are too many 'b's out there.
I believe the point of this paper is that under a system of indirect representation, it is more difficult for a faction, even a majority, to put its own iterests above those of the country as a whole than under direct representation; furthermore that large republican bodies better insulate minorities the tyranny of dominant factions that smallers ones (thus a Federal system is better than a confederation of states).
Madison does say:
However, in context it's clear in context he is arguing that any minorities (such as landed interests) are better protected in a strong Federal system than in a confederation. This argument is striking, because people who are most in favor of strong defense of intervening to ensure equality of minorities, whereas those who see this as unwarranted interference tend to back states rights.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
That's pretty easy if you ask me (no insult intended) and I have to agree with RMS totally on the importance of this difference.
Meanwhile, I am still waiting for this GNU Operating System he keeps talking about. I mean, they have been working for 15 years on an operating system and still don't have a stable kernel. As far as I know, the operating system is the kernel. Bad planning if you ask me. Sure, the GNU utilities and applications are great but the operating system is called Linux or *BSD or whatever.
...well, i can't expain it all, but some of this insanity is cause by ___YOU_FILL_IN_THE_BLANK___
i dont have time... (does anyone?) just do get a copy of bob wilson's "Prometheus Rising" read the chapter on "The Thinker & The Prover". there he model's some of the why and how.
nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
--Colonel Burr 1783
I have heard that Stallman has or had problems due to repetitive stress injury or carpal tunnel syndrome. I cannot help but wonder if his terse style might not be a result of that. Think of Kirk Douglas at the Oscars a few years ago, recovering from a stroke, with speech impediment he was the most concise, eloquent person out there ("I see my four sons over there, they're proud of their old man...my wife...I love you very much") How much would he have talked if he hadn't had a handicap? There is a book about human vision called "Vision". I haven't read it but David Ruelle (one of the creators of Chaos Theory) commented that it forewent all the usual blather scientists put in their books and got straight to the point about human vision because the author (can't remember his name) was dying of cancer and didn't have much time. Makes you wonder how much energy we waste simply because we're able to!
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
First having the source to an application allows you to counter the so-called CHEATING you're afraid of with better Advertising. And even if something sells for less, believe me if the other party doesn't spend time on bundling books and manuals just like you, they'll lose in the eternal beginner market which is huge.
OSS/FSF/GNU/BSD = little cost + big money
Every project I'm involved in is done without the overhead of Big Ominous Buildings with Big Black Tinted Windows. No R&D $$$ spent on effectively connecting the cubicles. You know those madatory debates about whether a star formation is better for spasmic outbursts of creativity broadcast to the rest of the group or a typical Manhattan/Roman setup for numbing the brain and "helping employee/associates (MCD-Burger King associate program) concentrate on their work.
R&D in open source is done by reading and testing on the computers people already own. No overhead there.
So frankly I don't really know what you're babbling about.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
the horse. Now a moment of silence.
Beats that Godwin's Law Bull anyday.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
All Christians aspire to be like Christ. Of course that's not possible, but it's still a worthy goal.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I would think the atmosphere up there would be too thin. Don't get me wrong, I respect RMS and agree with the fact of what he is saying, but I can't agree with his tone here.
I personally am not fanatical about either view, my main concern is that of most people out there; quality software available to everyone. Whether it's free or just dirt cheap is moot to me, and whether it's "free" or "open" doesn't matter either, in the big scheme of things. Right now the software industry is in the same shape as the auto industry of the 70s and 80s: ugly, inefficient POS everywhere you look. Sure there are some exceptions (the Ferraris, the Porsches, the Lamborghinis) but I'm talking about for the average person, they don't and won't know that what they're using is so terrible, until something better comes along.
That's how I see it. In my estimation of things, Joe Q. User will never make full use of the "free"-ness or "open"-ness of the software, but they will be happier when things work better whether they know it or not.
I'll leave with one of my favourite allegories: Why is it in software if a user screws things up and breaks the system, it's the system's fault? The system is too hard to use? Gas and Break aren't labeled in a car, P D R and N are sufficient for the driver to know what they're supposed to do. When someone crashes their car you don't say "Oh, well the car is too hard to use." Hmm,...
...dave
Think different? I'd be happy if most people would just think...
Dammit, now theres coke all over my damn keyboard. Try to be less funny when I'm drinking.
It may be a good idea that, before you get on rms' case about issues like this, that you hang out in www.fsf.org (or your own copy of emacs) for a while. There is a great deal of reading material there that deals with the origins and goals of the free software foundation.
Now, as for "worked for 15 years to develop a free UNIXand has nothing to show for it," this statement is simply ludicrous. rms and the FSF always had a different approach to the problem than did Linus. The FSF concentrated on producing the tools that make an operating system _useful_, rather than concentrating solely on the kernel (they also had a kernel called Hurd, but that's another story). The FSF produced many of the vast numbers of tools that make development under and use of Linux possible - tools like gcc, gdb, GIMP, make, standard libraries, standard command line tools, the bash shell, various games, tar, and of course, _emacs_.
The tools that the FSF is known for are tools that transcend the Linux kernel, and that are more important than any one operating system. They are tools that will be here well after Linux and *BSD are gone. The FSF has provided us with many of the tools that we could take for granted on a commercial OS, but which didn't exist under Linux (or Windows/DOS for that matter).
So, hey, before you slam RMS, you think you may want to do some reading to get a clue as to what you're speaking about?
Take a look at man bash, man ls, man cat, man tar, man cp, man dd under Linux... Take a look at your compiler, and associated development tools. In terms of tools external to the kernel in the average Linux distribution, the biggest sources are GNU (FSF) and Berkeley...
Without GNU tools, you could boot most free OS's, but you'd be hard pressed to do anything useful with them.
Much as we may not agree with some of rms' ideological stances, he and his organization have done a great deal for our OS's.
this is so true...
> ERROR: IEXPLORE caused an invalid page fault in module MSCONV97.DLL at 0137:01212d19. Stack dumped:
whats wrong with being a collectivist or a communist? is there something wrong with wanting equality between everybody? or is it that you just dont like helping other people? food for thought...
> ERROR: IEXPLORE caused an invalid page fault in module MSCONV97.DLL at 0137:01212d19. Stack dumped:
but you dont seem to realize that that is not true communism. we have yet to see true communism, just man's poor greedy attempt at it.
> ERROR: IEXPLORE caused an invalid page fault in module MSCONV97.DLL at 0137:01212d19. Stack dumped:
i also agree with you here, and i am no communist myself. but i am open to the idea of everybody working together to allow everybody to have everything that we want. now this will never happen ever because humans are stupid, but it is a nice thought now isnt it? :)
the world needs more nice thoughts..
> ERROR: IEXPLORE caused an invalid page fault in module MSCONV97.DLL at 0137:01212d19. Stack dumped:
>1. It's the best way of preventing work which they give for free
>(gratis, nothing) to the community from being 'borrowed' wholesale or
>in part for someone else's profit.
My understanding is that the GPL allows anyone who agrees to republish
the source to 'borrow' all GPL software for profit. (Redhat, etc.)
>2. They see their 'payment' for their free (open) software as being the
>fact that everyone who modifies it must share their changes freely (in
>an open manner).
The FSF demands much more than this. I can appreciate that if I find
bugs in GNU ReadPotato, then it would be most equitable for me to share
my bugfixes and improvements with the codebase maintainer (in return
for her sharing the code with me in the first place) and with all other
users of ReadPotato; and that the community at large would benefit from
this mutual sharing.
But the FSF also prohibits me from using and publishing GNU ReadPotato,
*unmodified* and without any bugfixes or improvements, in combination
with code that is covered under almost any other license terms, thus
*reducing* my freedom to create applications (even other Open Source
applications!) that might benefit potential users of the combination.
Combining GPL and non-GPL code in this manner would remove no
capability from the code maintainer of ReadPotato or the rest of the
greater ReadPotato user community. This aspect of the GPL (or GPV)
thus removes freedom from me and removes benefits from the users of
potential combined software, while adding almost NOTHING to the GNU
community at large.
For comparison with other licenses: If ReadPotato were public domain
or under a Berkeley style license, one would not be able to 'steal'
code that the ReadPotato authors had written (unless you had write
access to all their disks and backups!) or to prohibit users from the
continued use of ReadPotato. But one would be able to keep bug fixes
secret; thus leaving many users with buggy software or developers
wasting time reinventing the fix. If ReadPotato was under the MPL,
then software distributors using ReadPotato would be legally required
to send out bug fixes and improvements to ReadPotato. But one would
not be restricted from using ReadPotato subroutines with code that is
under other license terms, thus potentially benefiting the user
community, but making it difficult for the programming community
to fix bugs in the combined software.
Stallman's mistake was too assume that the GPL would infect a large
portion of all newly written software. What he failed to realize is
that because of it obvious virulence, corporate legal departments would
'innoculate' a great many potential application areas from being
touched by GPL'd software, thus causing a Cambrian explosion in 'OSS'
license mutants. Now the GPL is just one of many.
IMHO.
Then again, there's another problem.
The GNU has recently shown themselves to be _very_ holier-than-thou when it comes to their software. Read the 'Good Coding Practices' on man pages. I _like_ man pages. (sniffle.) And notice how they only acknowledge the existence of Linux as some sort of special case that some fools might use, but only as an interim measure before they migrate to the HURD, which will be competitive any year now...
Linux finally brings free software to _scads_ more than the GNU envisioned, and since it's not in the _exact_ way that the GNU wanted, Linux is treated as some sort of bastard son.
This is not to say that I don't like the GNU. If I didn't have my bash-with-tab-completion, I'd go insane. I'm aware that we'd all have nothing without gcc. I love the software, I could do without the attitude.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I realise this is all wildly off topic to start with, but it explains how I see all this linux/left wing - microsoft/right wing stuff.
Being an ex refugee of the military coup of 73 in chile, I have lived with and been brought up by a lot of left wing people. A while ago I read a little about what happened back then, and it seems to have been a beautiful ideology, which worked in theory, and would have worked in practice had it not been for the opposition of a lot of powerful countries and companies.
I believe that the chilean people who organised, participated in, and backed the left wing government from before the coup were really trying to do a great thing for chile, in the way that seemed best at the time.
What I see as a mistake then, and what can be put right now (Being a buddhist I believe that the Government of Allende was a wonderful cause that I can choose to pick up on, or it can also be a terrible reminder of a failure..), is that those people were following an ideology, and not their own hearts.
Communism, capitalism, and any inbetweens should be taken with a pinch of salt to really work. We aren't fighting to prove theory, but to make our lives better. And it's very similar with O/S's: a pile of features, or the way a product is marketed or written might make it more established, but without common sense, true enthusiasm, and a love for humanity and technology together, it will be a dead end. I might not have had this proved other than with IBM's fall from grace with the advent of newer technologies, but it just makes sense.
Operating systems should never be a religeon or a political side. They are just things that are meant to do what they do best: interpret the computer's mad language, and make it into something more pleasurable and workable for the user.
If linux should really kill off windows, it will just be a repetition of what has already happened, a new dictator with wonderful promises but the same old repression...unless people try to dig deeper, and try to understand why they really deserve a better operating system. And if so, you should nevert lose sight of this understanding.
The GPL is indeed as `bad' as many have said before. Whether by intention or by accident, people are being deceived by the GPL. I know several people who have slapped GPL notices on their code without really reading it. I honestly believe that the GPL should seriously spell out the details in the actual comment that goes on the code.
Some activists advocate ideals that appear to promote this outcome, so they are labeled the enemies of capitalism by those seeking to defend individual fortunes. In truth, most activists care more about making technology work correctly than they do about economic models. If being pro-technology is equated with being anti-capitalist, then what has really happened is that capitalism itself has become anti-technology. This cannot be, because all the wealth of all our nations is based primarily on technology.
The simple fact of the matter is that the industry is technically incompetent, and is now facing some of the consequences. It is not the first time in history that this has happened (railroad and other civil engineering disasters in the U.S. around the turn of the century were the result of similar industrywide incompetence). Operating Systems are not the only area where this incompetence is showing, but OS are where it is most obvious today.
Why is the software industry incompetent? Greed is an easy answer, but other industries have been able to work around the problem of greed in order to gain technical competence. Why has the software industry not done this? To find the answer, all we have to remember is that there is no separation of power and responsibility. Find the people with the power, and you find the ones who are responsible. Who holds the power in the software industry? Certainly not the technologists! No, it is the business community and all its associated nontechnical professions, including law, accounting, management, marketing, etc., that has so far failed to meet the myriad challenges posed by software technology.
Why have they failed? Actually, they are working very, very hard on ways to meet the challenge, but they have not found all of their answers yet. In the meantime, those who have power refuse to share it with their technologists (an approach which makes good sense from their current point of view). Since power is a necessary ingredient in the solution of any problem, many technical problems do not get solved. Problems do not get solved because software is subjected to many inappropriate social concepts, including obsolete laws, obsolete management processes, obsolete accounting techniques, and last but certainly not least, obsolete (or predatory) market communication techniques.
Many of the various movements that come, go, and stay in the technology community are really about reforming these obsolete practices. A sucessful reform will give technologists the power they need to solve problems, while allowing all of the nontechnical professionals to succeed in their pursuits as well. Such power sharing can only be achieved when nontechnical professions understand enough about technology to develop a communication structure, similar in effect to what is used in other engineering fields today.
It will take at least a generation. In the meantime, itch-scratchers will help to keep the industry honest. Even this is too much power for some lawyers and businessmen, who throw around ideas for ways to squash underground software movements via litigation and agency controls. It is not in the best interest of the economy for them to succeed, however, when the outcome is less overall technological progress, because the latter is directly tied to the overall wealth of the economy.
Measure your wealth in hours, not just dollars.
I always love picking out exactly where someone's argument breaks down. When you say, "he no longer has the freedom to be taken as a slave," are you talking about his freedom or somebody else's freedom?
If the man wished to be a slave and was not allowed to be, would we not say that his freedom had been abridged?
"I wish to be a slave. That is what I chose."
"You can't do that: You are free."
"I am free to do whatever I want as long as it is what I don't want to do?"
"You don't want to be a slave. Now go and do as you like. You are free!"
"I have a good idea why it's hard to verify programs. They're usually wrong." --Manuel Blum, FOCS 94
Yes. Go on.
The lack of the freedom to enslave software does not mean the software isn't free.
Suppose for the sake of a very hypothetical argument that I took some free software, say FreeBSD, compiled the sources, and sold it under a different name, say, "FooBarUnix," with a very restrictive, commercialized license. (Please ignore any real world licensing issues I am creating in this example. It is an example of freedom, not of how any particular license works.)
Suppose further that some people actually buy this from me and agree to my license. Have I enslaved them? Or did they volunteer to be slaves of my license?
Regardless of the what I do to the code or the license, I have not "enslaved the software" because I don't own the source from which it came. Anyone can go to the source, or else choose to accept my terms. That's freedom.
The counter-argument is that people might not know where the source is and therefore would have no choice but to accept what I am offering. This argument, however, depends on people being ignorant. They, therefore, need the protection of a restrictive license which keeps them from volunteering for a different restrictive license. But in any case, it's not freedom.
And this is what Mr. Christiansen is saying. There is a difference between freedom and insisting that information remain open. Obligatorially open is not necessarily a bad thing, but it's not free in the full sense of freedom. Freedom is not: "You can do what you like as long as we approve."
That's what copyrights are, enslavement of code.
Perhaps. But any honest philosophy regarding freedom can't exclude the freedom of others. In this case, that particularly applies to others' freedom to copyright their own work and to give it to others under any contract that both parties will agree to. If the receiving individual does not like the contract, that person is free to seek a suitable solution elsewhere.
It certainly isn't nearly as horrible as enslaving a person
Very true. I don't think that restrictive software licenses compare at all well with human slavery, unless Africans were asked if they wanted to be slaves before being shipped to America.
My disclaimer in all of this is that I am an advocate of freedom, of open source, and even of the GPL. I really believe that the GPL is a good thing, but I don't think that it is everything, and it certainly doesn't engender my idea of freedom. Everything has its place, and the GPL's place isn't everywhere, unless GPL software is the best solution for everyone at all times.
In my ideal world, I have the freedom to choose the best solutions when I need them, even if the best solution is a commercial offering with restrictive licensing. I should have the freedom to choose that and not be bound by the GPL to wait for an open source alternative to become good enough. That's freedom.
"I have a good idea why it's hard to verify programs. They're usually wrong." --Manuel Blum, FOCS 94
You seem to believe that the only way for open software to exist is to abolish proprietary software. I'm not sure where you are getting this idea.
If Stallman and other open software advocates are right, then open software should so outshine proprietary software technically and be developed so much faster that proprietary software doesn't stand a chance in the long run. So why the need to abolish what is doomed already?
Somehow, however, you believe that if proprietary software exists, then users will be denied access to open software. Why? If Corel wants to sell WordPerfect, what keeps the KDE developers from making KWord? Since it's open source, it *must* be technically superior, more feature rich, etc.
You would rather that the right of choice be abridged, than the right of ability to copy, modify, and redistribute. Fair enough, but why not keep *all* of these rights intact? If a developer makes proprietary software, this does not mean that open software isn't allowed to compete. On the contrary, open software should excel, if the advocates are to be believed.
"I have a good idea why it's hard to verify programs. They're usually wrong." --Manuel Blum, FOCS 94
I use 'free' software all the time. When I'm working on my unix machines, I generally try to use community available tools for several reasons: because they're free, a lot of people already are using them, so it makes compatibility easier. I don't like to spend money on licenses, etc. because I usually have to wait for that stuff to get approved by the boss, and it's a pain. I have no problem agreeing to the GPL most of the time.
Unfortunately, this has the negative impact of me having a problem that I need to fix, and "Oh yeah, that library has some good functions and routines" but the GPL sez that now I must distribute the source for everything I do that hinges on those functions. Well, I can't do that. SO I have two choices: steal it or write my own. I don't generally have the luxury of time to develop my own set of libraries. Not only is it a waste of time, but I just won't do it. Chances are, I will creatively 'paraphrase' what I need from GPL source, or read the code and then come up with a way to do it. I will concede that the first case is rapidly appraoching theft, the second, hey, you can't prove a thing.
The GPL is a good thing, and so is the Berkeley license actually. I think that having open source stuff has had a great impact on the way we do computing today.
However, I do reserve the right to protect my property, and if that means using a restrictive license then so be it. That's the world in which I work, and those are the systems and products that I have to build.
IMHO, I believe in the spirit of the FSF but I also understand that there is an ideological component that I can't agree with, which is the derivative works thing. That's pretty nebulous. In the 90's it's hard to find something that isn't a 'derivative' work. I also shouldn't have to release my company's competitive advantages over a few header files.
The Free Software Foundation is a very 'ivory tower' kind of organization, and the price for their ideals is that they are not always workable in the real world.
Personally, I feel that this is just another religious war regarding technology. To make the argument that Free Software = Free Speech = Freedom in General is just way too simple, I hope we know that.
You might not know it, but RMS is advocating the ideal form of capitalism.
Perfect competition only manifests inself in markets with no barriers of entry. This is the case with GPL software. You can sell GPL'ed software, but you must make the source available with your case's, thus effectively canceling out any barriers of entry propeitary software might impose.
The form of monopolistic competition in most markets in unhealthy to the consumer in the long run. That is why there are anti-trust laws. Monopolistic competition eventually leads to monopoly.
Selling GPL programs is as pure/ideal as capitalism gets, because when capitalism operates this way, there are no monopolies, and self interest is made to work for the benifit of everyone.
It is near impossible to put a value on something as abstract as a collection of bits, but it is posibile to charge for a service. The results of this service can then be GPL'ed and resold for a nominal (distribution) fee, thus _creating_ wealth.
However, the system in place creates high barriers of entry as it effectively introduces a local monopoly on the patented device, or copyrighted work. The creators of early IP laws were aware of this, and put a time cap on how log this local monopoly can be enforced.
In short, even the people who made these laws didn't think they were a good idea, although it was a necessity to facilitate invention.
Capitalism is more a way of distributing resource, and is not an end in itself.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
Claiming Intellectual Property is unique is concep t that I have trouble grasping. It basically says that I had a thought that no one else may have.
My view of "Intellectual Property" is that it is merely a way of acknowledging someone as having thought of the idea first. And by "thought of" I mean not just having the idea, but having refined it so as to be usable.
I agree that the idea of copyright and patent are really absurd when viewed from the viewpoint of the information itself. But I think that what these really are are social agreements. When someone comes up with a good idea, there is usually some work involved, and if one puts effort into producing something, one may feel a sort of paternal affinity, as if part of oneself has been put into their creation. Now if someone else comes along and just takes it away, how does that make the person who created it feel?
Parents have to let go of their children eventually, although they never stop being their parents. Copyright and patents seem to me to merely be a way or societal convention of respect for those who contribute useful ideas to society. Now maybe they take it a bit to far, but...
Marv
I'm not a journalist, but I play one on slashdot
Actually, the Free Software Movement seems to deny the legitimacy of Intellectual Property. Of course, they do it by choice, rather than with guns (as socialists, communists and collectivists of all stripes typically do it). The only reasons this particular collectivist venture is working are that its participants are doing it voluntarily, when and if and how they like; and the FSF/GNU license does not prohibit profit-taking or attempt to confiscate profits once taken.
"FSF! The means of computation should be in the hands of the people." Or whatever.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Tell me more...
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Capitalism is a positve-sum game. It's the capitalists who speak of MAKING money; before, it was all about TAKING money. Socialism is a zero-sum game; it's about 'redistributing' _the_ wealth.
Capitalism is based on trading a value for a value; sacrifice and altruism are anathema to it. In some ways, working on free software projects is capitalist; but only if you give and well as take, rather than just take.
If you feel entitled to free software, you're a collectivist and a thief at heart; if you think free software is great and contribute to it as well as use it, you're a trader. You don't havbe to get paid in dollars to be a capitalist; you just have to trade something of value you have for some something of value from someone else.
Ayn Rand, the capitalists' philosopher herself, even said there's no thievery or eveil in using someone else's ideas; rather, it's how honest intellectuals make progress.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Big, fat, hairy deal.
The thing that Linux needs most right now is acceptance in the larger community. With acceptance comes mindshare, and development, and programs for the real world beyond the computer room, and the only real chance at putting a dent in M$'s current monopoly.
Right now, Linux is gaining acceptance, and carrying along with it the idea that software source should be accessible to the user so that he can modify and fix and enhance. Businesses are, slowly but surely, discovering that there's something to this model, and they can benefit.
RMS would have us believe that his definition of freedom - essentially, the freedom to force others to act in the same utopian manner as him - is an essential component of the model, and that to use the "open source" label is Just Plain Wrong. This view completely and explicitly ignores the criticality of market acceptance. RMS admits as much in his paper.
To me, the choice is between widely accepted, if just possibly a little "impure", usable, running systems, and intellectually pure laboratory curiosities. I know which I'd prefer to use. I also know which will be accepted in the business world, where people care about other things than intellectual purity.
ESR was right to get away from the term "free software" because of the taint of RMS' communist vision. (Yes, I mean communist. RMS would have it so that the creator of software has no rights of ownership in it. If that's not communist, what is?) RMS can only hurt the cause of getting software available to all.
--
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
I've already said what I think should be different. Do you have other notions?
Again, there are two mis-statements in their publicity:
- `The FSF is about free software, not open software.' (It's the other way around. They believe in encumbrance, which is ipso facto non-free.)
- `GNU is not Unix.' (Of course it is.)
I would be far quicker to support them if they would cease and desist from using intentionally misleading language -- without changing the mechanics of anything else they do! So would a vast number of others of my acquaintance. Perhaps for some things, the GPL is a good encumbrance. I didn't say it had no valid use. But an encumbrance, a ligature, a tar-baby legalistic string that binds in perpetuity--all these things it remains. I repeat: this may in some cases be desirable! But it's far from free.I can't stand dishonesty, even in a good cause. In fact, I'm probably even less tolerant of it in such cases.
Like any radical political organization, the FSF surrounds itself with terminology-twisting rhetoric whose mission is more one of proselytization than it is one of disseminating honest truth. Repetition of half-truths does not make them more true; it just makes them better known. And in any marketing campaign, that's all that eventually counts. Lamentably.
There are two main myths of which the FSF must disabuse themselves of if they hope to be taken seriously by anyone of reputable intellectual and moral integrity. And to do so requires only an alternation of their rhetoric, not a change in licensing policies or software components. One can contemplate that in a completely different discussion.
The first myth is that the FSF has anything to do with free software. It doesn't. Free software is against their principles. That they say otherwise can only be justified by the application of Orwellian newsspeak as common words become twisted into their counterintuitive antitheses for reasons of pure propaganda.
What the FSF espouse is open software, not free software. They require only that software be forever open. This is not necessarily bad, of course. But it is not free to tell someone else what they can do with their lives. They do not allow it to be free in the libre sense, nor do they require it to be free in the gratis sense either. And note that `gratis' is what freeware means to everyone on the street. You can't change that perception. You can, however adapt to it. For some reason, the FSF refuse to do that.
Free software has no restrictions on it. Period. Anything more than `do whatever you'd like with this' is no longer free. Furthermore, the notion that anyone has the right to force others to obey what they must do with their own artistic output is about as far from free as one can imagine. It's also highly immoral, because it removes the option of choice. No choice, no morality.
The thing that chafes the honest people of this world is that it is deceptive to redefine a common word, which is what they've done. I don't care whether they've got a document somewhere where they say `Oh by the way, the word ``free'' in this document means ``comes with catsup''; that doesn't change the fundamental treachery. They didn't need to do this. They could have chosen a more honest and commonly accepted set of terms to effect the same ultimate goal. They didn't. Either they were wickedly clever, or pathetically stupid. And whatever else he is, Richard has never been stupid. I wish he could see that he's hurting himself.
More people need to be aware of the inherent deception that something calling itself `the free software foundation' is dedicated to creating software which is neither gratis nor libre, and certainly isn't free in the way that freeware is assumed to be free. Whether you call it damage control, marketing spin, or evil deception, the bottom line is that calling something that it's not is bound to produce confusion. As I've said a million times before, the solution is simple. Just find a new word, one that's honest and broadly understood. Don't change any licences. Just fix the damn word. Something that claims to be free software, should be. You shouldn't need a complex licence to understand this. If it's something that isn't intuitive to a twelve-year old, it's too hard. `Do as thou wilt' is free.
The second myth is that GNU is not Unix. Like the perversion of the simple word `free' into something that makes sense in no context but that of frothing fanatics, once again we see self-satisfied cleverness smugly wrapped up in word play for the smart people and consequently leaving the common man confused or tricked. Remember the environment in which this tired turn of phrase was coined: the fervent AT&T Unix policing of the word itself. This was obviously intrusive and destructive on their part, and it is no great wonder that RMS should have chosen terminology that would inherently distance himself from that minefield. Unix started in an open environment, and the crap AT&T subsequently pulled nearly killed it.
But in the end, nothing is changed. GNU is Unix, or they wouldn't try to say otherwise. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and smells like a duck, then it most certainly is a duck--or if you prefer, a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet. If you reverse engineer the Unix /bin/cat program, even without ever looking at the source code, producing at last something whose input and output and very name are virtually indistinguishable from your model, then you end up with is a reimplementation of the Unix /bin/cat program. It's still a cat.
This doesn't mean that the FSF are of no use, nor that the GPL has no use. It would be dishonest to make that claim. But there are clearly places where these are not useful. One obvious example of where it is not useful is when it comes to avoiding costly reinvention of the wheel. Consider the miserable programmer who would like to use GNU readline or gdbm or some clever search algorithm from some other GPL-licensed program within a program that needs to use closed and proprietary Oracle SQL libraries. You cannot force Oracle to open its software, so you're screwed. Have a nice time reinventing your own industrial-strength database. No employer will put up with that nonsense, so instead you get to reinvent readline(). That does nothing to further the science or art. It's counterproductive. The real world is full of compromises like this. The inflexibility of the GPL interferes with people trying to get an honest job done, and ends up causing needlessly wasted efforts What a shame!
Of course, there are clearly other places where the FSF and the GPL in fact are useful. They shouldn't go away. If they did, something important would be lost. I do not want to lose that.
What must go away is is the deception. If they'd only stop prevaricating, they could be taken a lot more seriously. But so far--and doubtless in the foreseeable future--what appears to be an unfortunate combination of ignorance and arrogance has prevented them from admitting their fundamental error. This sucks.
The notably oxymoronic `FSF' are engaged in the artful lying of telling half-truths for deceptive and consequently dishonorable purposes, just like any other marketroid, ad-man, con artist, Scientologist, or similar shyster. Remove the lie and keep the religion. They have something to say, and it should be heard. But delete the lies.
It should not hurt their cause to tell the simple truth. What does inflict grievous harm upon their cause is they way that they insist upon splitting hairs like so many lawyers and pharisees rather than honest men. I don't know why they don't see and stop this needlessly selfdestructive rhetoric.
But I begin to wonder: are the lies somehow indispensable to the promulgation of the cult? Can the GPL exist without the deceptive rhetoric? Can the FSF? That would be a sad thing, were it in fact the case. It really shouldn't have to be that way.
What jumps in my face as a proponent of alternative currencies is all the agonizing over the various merits of all sorts of licences and "software philosophy" , but not one word about our money system, which is just as much a price of software as anything written in C.
It is a social information system, nothing more. An agreement among people to use some particular token as a medium of exchange.
Why on earth is everybody taking todays system of managing this medium as a given natural fact? And then people either despise it and get branded as starry eyed utopians, or they maintain that "resistance is futile" and idealism is just waste...
This is just like saying that all OSes are bad/god depending on the first one that you happen to come into contact with....
Oh.. how I wish some of all this clever analysis would be spent on exploring fixes to the current money system.
In my opinion there is literally at least two bugs in it.. Bugs that would cause a memory leaks and overflow in any normal software. In stead they cause money overflow for some, and total deprivation for others. This is NOT the natural sate of affairs.
ESR writes of open source as a "gift economy" and the regular one as a "scarcity economy" is it only me that wonders why there has to be scarcity of something that is essentially information?
Digital cash is just around the corner, and with it private currencies a real possibility, a technical fix may not be that far out of reach.
If I have sparked anyones curiosity with this post please check out http://www.transaction.net/money/b ook/index.html
Quote "There is probably nothing that humans make more efforts for, and understand less about, than money." Gaute
-- We plunge for the slipstream the realness to find
-- We plunge for the slipstream the realness to find
The incredible String Band
The fundamental freedom from which all other freedoms are derived is the freedom to communicate (aka. freedom of expression, free speech, etc.). The idea that "without property, there can be no other rights" is so absurd that one need to expand the concept of "property" to include ideas, expressions and beliefs.
I think RMS is advocating the most natural and normal form of human interaction. Humans like to create and have shown a tendency to share their creations. Humans also benefit from the work and ideas of others. In the entire span of human history, only in the last couple of centuries have we been deluded with fanciful concepts of "intellectual property" and convinced ourselves that the only driving force behind creativity is money. The entire history of humanity demonstrates otherwise.
I have no idea what you mean when you say that RMS is giving his property away (he still holds the copyright for his GPL'd stuff-- what property are you thinking of?) and when did he express a desire to "establish a system where everyone is obligated to give away their property"? You're making this stuff up as you go, aren't you.
It used to boggle me when people laughed at RMS and the FSF movement. RMS' point of view seemed so intuitive, natural and obvious. They aren't laughing anymore. Now many people are attempting to characterize the FSF+OS movements as evil (or worse.... "Communist!"). This is either paranoia, sloganism, or an inability to think critically. There is nothing sinister about all of this.
First they laughed, then they attacked. What's next?
The ACs who do that are lust 11-13 (possibly 14) year old meatheads. They are sitting in front of
;)
a) daddy's PC
b) the PC they got for christmas from their parents which means they'll never have to worry about cash either *grumble*
or c) they are over at a friend's house because their friend got (b).
I saw an article on segfault (first time I had even looked at it).. there was a joke about them banning all first posts. If that could only work...
You are making a bogus comparison. You are comparing a tangible, physical object, with a data stream. The data stream can be reproduced over and over again, without ever having to part with the original. *That* is what makes software fundamentally different than just about any other "good." Software isn't really a "good." It is in actuality a service, but is being sold as a good.
Swiss bank account number: easy to reproduce, not a tangible good, but definitely of some economic value.
Paper money: once again, easy to reproduce (just image it is, for agument's sake), I still have my money if you copy mine, but "uh oh" my money isn't worth so much anymore.
To continue, food is free if it grows in your backyard. You pay for it if someone else grows it. It's a durable good but it has different monetary values depending on who has the ability to produce it.
Intel chips cost very little to fabricate. The silicon they're pretty on is worth $10, tops! Yet Intel (and AMD) sells them for $500+. Intel's doing something here, because otherwise I could just go to the beach and grab some sand.
Water: Free, right? But I'm sure you pay a water bill every month. Wouldn't it be benefit everyone (except the water company) if this were free? I mean, come on, it's not like we're about to run out of water! It's just kinda convenient when it comes out of pipes in our homes.
Electricity: We pay for electrons? That's not even a good! Someone's just transferring them from A to B, creating a charge. And we pay for this? Why? Come on, once one person has electricity, how hard is it to transfer? Come on over, bring a wire, I'll give you some of my juice.
Psychologists: They just talk to you for an hour, what kind of useful information to they disburse they couldn't tell 100 people at once, free of charge? Why can't you just pass on the advice to your buddies instead of having them pay $100/hour to have someone tell you to take it easy for a while?
And finally, software: We pay for bits of information? I thought only marketing departments payed for information. Hell, it's not like software is useful, what's it value?
Come to think of it, are you in college, did you go to college? What the fuck for? What they teach you for $20,000/year you could read at your Public Library. Oh wait, so you're saying there is some reason for you to learn all of this "free" information? Oh, you expect to get a job as a result. I see, I don't see any evidence of your education -- it doesn't look very durable. Oh, but you say it is valuable after all. I see, so you'd pay $80,000 for a piece of paper I could xerox at the local copy shop, but it's actually represent something more valuable and useful to you.
Ok, I'll leave it at that.
To label someone you disagree with Communist or Nazi....much easier than actually using your brain.
Believe it or not the majority of the world has VASTLY different ideas as to what constitutes "intellectual property". Also, you should remember, up until about 30 years ago, the US was THE biggest pirate of books, music and other assorted "intellectual property" in the world. It's only been since around 1982-83 that the US decided what could and couldn't be copied.
I think it was Clemenceau who said "The State has no need to fear its engineers and geologists."
but... Is Free Software really that feasible? Personally, I like to eat, and as such I go to the grocery store to get food. Unfortunatly, when I've chosen whats for dinner, the grocery store insists I give them money. If I can't sell my software, I can't make money. If I can't make money, I can't pay the grocer and eat. Tell me, how can the myriads of developers out there eat if they can't profit from their work?
"What is now proved was once only imagin'd"
"What is now proved was once only imagin'd"
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Test2
Nice idea... Except that (in email) RMS thinks that a 3 year term is a little excessive, and wanted a term along the lines of a year or so.
Do you have a URL for this?
Free software isn't free in that one can use the code for any purpose, that would be public domain or anarchy. There is an obligation to using 'free software' source code. It is that any derivative works must also release source code.. One may still sell the application, one does not have to pay any fee for using the source code.
How is this not free? You can use the software for no price, you only have to accept a minor obligation. Thus the code is available for use free/gratis. I see no misuse of the term free/gratis by the free software community.
Freedom in practice requires obligations too. It permits one to think and act as they see fit, but ALSO obligates them to respect how others think and act.
If free/freedom means that I can act anyway I wish, then to say I cannot perform theft, murder, or any other things known as crime is infringing on that freedom. ``My freedom to swing my fist ends where your nose begins''. You have an obligation to respect others freedom's too.
Thus freedom, like `free software' incurs an obligations. I see no misuse of the term libre or free/freedom as used by free software.
I can imagine why many software developers are angry and annoyed at the GPL, and the codebase under the GPL. They see a beautiful codebase with many useful algorithms and other material, they hear 'free', but -- like freedom -- do not think of the counterbalancing obligations, then they see that they cannot grab that code and exploit it as they wish.
Is it that they are angry that so much high-quality code is just tantalizingly out of reach? Is it that they are in a proprietary mindset and want to freeload off that codebase, and find out they can't? Do they hate the competetion it gives them?
The obligation for using GPL code is either amazingly cheap, (if you believe in free software where all can study it), or incredibly expensive, (if one believes that source code is the crown jewels of a company or product)
Freedom to speak incurs similar obligations. It can be amazingly cheap when you are hearing opinions you agree with. It may also be incredibly expensive when you see the Klu Klux Klan burning an american flag in a rally near a local community center or schoool.
Convergence