One of the things you have to give up, if you develop open-source (or free, or whatever) software, is the right to be credited as you'd wish.
That's not true. One does not need to give up getting credit for one's work when one writes or distributes free software. In fact, the most widely used free software license (the GNU GPL) requires all copies to carry an appropriate copyright notice.
I fail to see where RMS has "been eclipsed" because I don't see anyone involved with the open source movement championing software freedom squarely and without reservation. The people I see talking about software freedom in this way all come from the FSF--Eben Moglen and Brad Kuhn, to name a couple people I've heard speak on the subject recently.
Finally, you and the grandparent post got the name wrong--the name of the movement RMS started is not "open source". It's called the free software movement. It seems fair to call the movement by the name the founder of the movement gave it, no?
If you're looking for a specific essay, read Why "Free Software" is better than "Open Source". It is the best essay I've seen on the differences between the two movements including the practical aspects of why "Open Source" is no replacement for "Free Software" either in name or in meaning. This essay is highly underrated.
How ironic that you celebrate the practical outcome of software freedom RMS started talking about and working for 20 years ago, yet you refuse to cite the name which is most associated with software freedom.
I remain unconvinced and I'll continue to choose to give GNU a share of the credit when I talk about the GNU OS and the Linux kernel.
Interesting how one must choose to license their program under the GNU GPL and one must choose to distribute GPL-covered programs, yet "the GPL forces [RMS']" view of free software on others.
There's no force involved. If you don't like the GPL, don't choose to distribute programs licensed under it. There are entire free software operating systems written by people who are working hard to rewrite GPL-covered programs because they don't like the strong copyleft implemented in the GPL.
Quite to the contrary of what you're saying, the reason the BSD licenses qualify as free software licenses is because they grant the licensee the freedoms free software talks about.
...how many Slashdot story submitters can misunderstand or mistranslate "software libre" as "open source". It must be difficult to believe that some people actually want software freedom and ask for it by name.
Unlike the new BSD license, the GPL claims to have "made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all", thus they would argue that the GPL has been interpreted to grant licenses for patents. However, this could reasonably be disputed and (I'm told) will be clarified in GPLv3. I know of no improvement along these lines coming for a BSD license and no mention of any language in the BSD licenses (old or new) which even mention patents. So even if one's freedom to modify and distribute the software might be in jeopardy with both licenses for now, my guess is that this will change for a lot of GPL-covered software when the GPLv3 is released (my guess on this is in 2005, but I have no inside insight to offer here).
As for restricting freedom to preserve it, one needs to restrict people's power to take away others freedom if one wants to preserve that freedom. We have to choose what's more important--granting power to restrict people's freedom (as the new BSD license does) or restricting anyone's ability to take away freedom for derivatives (as the GPL does). I'm grateful that there are people releasing their code under the new BSD license, but I want to contribute to a commons where distributed derivatives are in the commons as well.
That's where the confusion lies for many people, and ironically, why the term "open source" is no more clear than "free software". "Free software" can be cleared up quite quickly, and this problem chiefly occurs in English, not other languages which don't use the same term to mean zero cost and liberty. But for "open source", it's a different story. To most people, if pressed for a definition, "open source" would mean something like "you can see the source code" despite this being considerably less than what "open source" really means and despite this being refuted by the first sentence in the introduction section of the open source definition.
That obvious meaning for ``open source'' is not the meaning that its advocates intend. The result is that most people misunderstand what those advocates are advocating. Here is how writer Neal Stephenson defined ``open source'':
Linux is ``open source'' software meaning, simply, that anyone can get copies of its source code files.
I don't think he deliberately sought to reject or dispute the ``official'' definition. I think he simply applied the conventions of the English language to come up with a meaning for the term. The state of Kansas published a similar definition:
Make use of open-source software (OSS). OSS is software for which the source code is freely and publicly available, though the specific licensing agreements vary as to what one is allowed to do with that code.
Of course, the open source people have tried to deal with this by publishing a precise definition for the term, just as we have done for ``free software.''
But the explanation for ``free software'' is simple--a person who has grasped the idea of ``free speech, not free beer'' will not get it wrong again. There is no such succinct way to explain the official meaning of ``open source'' and show clearly why the natural definition is the wrong one.
Being part of the "closed group" isn't clearing things up either. Continue in the same essay further down, and you'll find an example where RMS heard how "open source" is being interpreted and misinterpreted (the executive and the audience member, respectively):
At a trade show in late 1998, dedicated to the operating system often referred to as ``Linux'', the featured speaker was an executive from a prominent software company. He was probably invited on account of his company's decision to ``support'' that system. Unfortunately, their form of ``support'' consists of releasing non-free software that works with the system--in other words, using our community as a market but not contributing to it.
He said, ``There is no way we will make our product open source, but perhaps we will make it `internal' open source. If we allow our customer support staff to have access to the source code, they could fix bugs for the customers, and we could provide a better product and better service.'' (This is not an exact quote, as I did not write his words down, but it gets the gist.)
People in the audience afterward told me, ``He just doesn't get the point.'' But is that so? Which point did he not get?
He did not miss the point of the Open Source movement. That movement does not say users should have freedom, only that allowing more people to look at the source code and help improve it makes for faster and better development. The executive grasped that point completely; unwilling to carry out that approach in full, users included, he was considering implementing it partially, within the company.
The point that he missed is the point that ``open source'' was designed not to raise: the point that users deserve freedom.
What it seems like is being said is that Free Software is Open Source whose derivatives are required to be Open Source.
I certainly hope that's not what you are taking away from this discussion because that is horribly mistaken.
Free software is not defined in terms of open source, nor could it be because the free software movement was started over a decade before the open source movement. The term free software was defined well before open source was defined.
Guaranteeing the freedoms of free software for derivative works is termed "copyleft" and, again, has nothing to do with open source. The open source movement doesn't talk about copyleft or distinguish between licenses in this way because the open source movement doesn't talk about software freedom. The open source movement was built to speak to business and it was believed by this movement's founders that it would be easier to do this job if freedom talk was dropped. You'll still find this approach in operation today: Mark Webbink, chief counsel for Redhat, wrote an article not too long ago about "open source licenses" in which he goes around the barn to categorize licenses by which ones require "open source" derivatives, and he conspicuously does not use the term "copyleft".
Software patents could prevent that from occurring and neither BSD license (I recall there being 3 and 4-clause BSD licenses) mentions anything about licensing a patent in such a way that the software can be hacked up.
Copyleft is about preventing others from taking away software freedom in derivatives. There's nothing in the definition of free software that requires a copyleft, and copylefted free software licenses present practical problems some non-copylefted licenses don't. However, I'd hardly say you have fairly framed the issue or arrived at a reasonable conclusion about how useful the definition of free software is.
For example, for the gross majority of users, there is no effective difference between GPL, BSD, or even closed source freeware.
You're conflating the concepts the thread is focusing on. "Freeware" is often proprietary software, software you cannot inspect, share, or modify. With some freeware, you can't even run it at any time for any reason. "Closed source" is a reference to a development methodology that was built to not talk about software freedom. The GNU GPL and the BSD licenses (there are more than one) are free software licenses but they have different effects which make a great deal of difference even to non-programmers. Derivatives from new BSD-licensed programs, for instance, may be licensed under a non-free license and feature improvements the free software user wants. This would adversely impact the free software user and tempt them to switch to the non-free derivative. This would only happen with the GPL-covered program if the copyright holder failed to enforce their license.
Most of them will never even want to download any source code.
Ability and freedom are not the same thing, consider writing, for instance. One may become a very good writer by practicing writing but have little freedom to express the views they really want to express. This frequently happens in repressive countries. US citizens may have freedom of speech but that doesn't make all Americans great speakers. So, understanding why software freedom is important doesn't require one to be a programmer.
On a practical level, even non-programmers can relish software freedom when they learn about what happens when users lack software freedom. In that link, even though Cory Doctorow calls this "buy[ing] open" (a reference to the open source movement), iPod devices would be better if they ran on free software; users would not be subjected to Apple's downgrades (which Doctorow has documented as well). Apple can downgrade iPods without a user's informed consent because Apple ships proprietary software to their users who mostly diligently install whatever they are given. The user has no opportunity to inspect the software to see what it really does, or change it if they don't like what they're being offered. Both of these jobs require source code to be reasonably effective, but delivering a copy of source code is insufficient. One has to have a copy of the source code under a license that allows sharing and modification. And, in a crucial difference between open source and free software, mere "open"ness would not give iPod users the chance to make private undistributed derivative software so that iPod users could keep the improvements they make to themselves.
The lock-in with proprietary and/or patent-encumbered file formats you describe does not "go back to price", it goes to the heart of making one's computer do what one wants it to do--software freedom. There are plenty of organizations that try to compete with larger proprietors and they will try to lock you into their ways too.
Businesses dropping (what they call) "support" by going out of business is less likely than trying to get customers to buy into another planned obsolescence in which no customer can really support themselves. I'm reminded of the many proprietary "kits" NeXT distributed and dropped shortly thereafter, much to the ironic dismay of the proprietary software distributors who were trying to make that OS more attractive by getting customers with the same tactics. Again, we bump into the need for software freedom.
The challenge is education: it falls to the free software movement to teach people about software freedom so that they can value it and then demand it when they do business with software and hardware distributors. Eben Moglen made a point of this in his keynote speech at the third "Wizards of Open Source" conference in Berlin. He was speaking at a conference dedicated to "open source" but he was perfectly clear that what he was speaking about is freedom. You should download that speech from archive.org and hear it for yourself.
First, my apology for misformatting my previous post. I didn't intend to make it one big paragraph.
What would that name be? The thread's article says that "open source" should be that name. But "free software" is the only name so far which refers to what it points to. "Open source" stands for something which doesn't include software freedom (the people who built the OSI purposefully gave that up so they could better pitch to business). If we take the author of the article that drove this thread at face value, the people who stand up for software freedom will, indeed, have to back down from the thing that the free software movement was made to insist upon because they will have to drop the freedom talk for demanding "open source".
As for extremism, it's that spectrum that is often is used to railroad people into appearing unreasonable. Right versus left politics (a false dichotomy to begin with) in the US, for instance, are often taken to be Republican versus Democrat so that anyone who expresses something other than what the major representatives of these two parties want is widely perceived as beyond the pale (never mind how similar the views of these two parties have become). Hence, I would much rather talk about the views being expressed rather than how they fit onto some scale of commonality.
Software isn't non-free by default because of the Berne treaty, it's copyrighted by default. Software freedom has to do with the terms under which programs are distributed; what rights do the recipients get with the program. Freedom doesn't attach to software which is not distributed. So, in the US, if when you save that original program you're working on, the Berne treaty says it's automatically copyrighted to you, but if you haven't distributed it to anyone it's neither free nor non-free.
Copyrighted software can be free or non-free depending on its license. The power to license different copies of software differently to different parties doesn't preclude one copy from being licensed under a free software license.
As for a hypothetically "badly worded [future revision of the] GPL", nobody has to choose that license if they find it not to their liking (either licensing their software under it or distributing software licensed to them under it). Today, nobody has to allow their current GPL-covered works to be upgraded to the latest GPL published by the FSF. I don't see what problem such a GPL would create except for making some waves of disappointment and disagreement with the FSF.
So, no, "freed" software has exactly the same problem as "liberated" software because they both refer to the same process of going from non-freedom to freedom which simply doesn't apply to all free software. That term is not more clear, in fact it draws a distinction that is not relevant for most purposes when discussing free software.
We will undoubtedly come across someone who disagrees or finds it uncomfortable to hear freedom talk or talk of equality between men's and women's social circumstances. But we should continue to insist upon what we want. I want software freedom, including the right to make private undistributed derivatives, so I'm sure to ask for free software by name. Open source would not give me the same rights.
Social progress depends on persistent demands. As Frederick Douglass wrote:
"Those who profess to favor freedom, yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
I find the use of the term "extremist" in your post odd--as if the demand becomes unreasonable if someone can get others to call the demand "extremist"; we need not bother examining what the demand is for if someone we trust calls it "extremist". It is reasonable, fair, and just to demand equal pay for equal work (still denied to women in the US) or desegregated schools (still denied to many non-whites via bussing). Those who want software freedom should also insist on software freedom without backing down to mere "open source".
The difference between open source and free software has nothing to do with precision and being sufficiently technical. The two movements value different things and therefore arrive at different evaluations of licenses and recommendations for what software should do.
People understand freedom quite well, it's the speakers who are reluctant to appear "political" and shy away from freedom talk. This happens particularly amongst Americans trying to explain software freedom, ironically. What these speakers don't understand is that they are still expressing political views when they champion open source values; they are just expressing views with which the business world is far more keen to focus on and give them support for doing.
You could argue that once programs like GNU Emacs were placed under the stewardship of the GPL, they were emancipated from the bonds of proprietary software.
No, that's just what I was saying is not the case. GNU Emacs was always free software. It was never liberated from non-freedom. If I recall correctly, it was first distributed before the GNU GPL had been written; Emacs was under the Emacs license. But that license gave you all the freedoms of free software. Software freedom has nothing to do with being distributed by a corporation. In fact, there are lots of free software programs whose copyrights are held by corporations (for example, Red Hat is a corporation and holds the copyright to some GPL-covered programs).
That would not work for some programs like GNU Emacs and many of the other GNU programs. They were never non-free programs (like Blender which was proprietary then freed). And there is little point in distinguishing between programs that were initially free software versus those that became free software later in their development.
That's a good part of the theory behind the creation of the open source movement. However, the businesses I've talked to are very interested in making private derivatives of free software--taking advantage of a freedom which the open source movement doesn't care about (in fact this was one of the FSF's initial objections to the early versions of the Apple Public Source License; one had to notify one central authority which, as they say, happened to be Apple, in a lot of situations one would commonly encounter, hence the license initially did not respect user's privacy). The same revision of the APSL which the FSF did not call a free software license qualified as an open source license.
The FSF has no problems with the practical goals of the open source movement, except that those goals don't go far enough. Faster, cheaper development of less buggy programs is nice but says nothing about one's freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify software at any time for any reason.
I see a bit of conflict there--the open source movement primarily speaks to business (its why they crafted the message and philosophy centering on practical endeavor like building programs cheaper, making them run faster, and have fewer bugs). Multinational corporations want software patents. So, the conflict is between what you're suggesting (open source makes software patent adoption less likely) and who the open source movement is built to talk to. Hence, I have a hard time believing that a focus on that movement will reduce the likelihood of Brazil adopting software patents.
This phenomenon of cross-licensing refutes a common myth, the myth of the starving genius. The myth that patents "protect" the "small inventor". Those terms are propaganda terms. You shouldn't use them. The scenario is like this: Suppose there is a brilliant designer of whatever. Suppose he has spent years starving in the attic designing a new wonderful kind of whatever and now wants to manufacture it and isn't it a shame the big companies are going to go into competition with him, take away all the business and he'll "starve". I will have to point out that people in high tech fields are not generally working on their own and that ideas don't come in a vacuum, they are based on ideas of others and these people have pretty good chances of getting a job if they need to these days. So this scenario, the idea that a brilliant idea came from this brilliant person working alone is unrealistic and the idea that he is in danger of starving is unrealistic. But it is conceivable that somebody could have an idea and this idea along with 100 or 200 other ideas can be the basis of making some kind of product and that big companies might want to compete with him. So let's see what happens if he tries to use a patent to stop them. He says "Oh No, IBM. You cannot compete with me. I've got this patent." IBM says "let's see. Let's look at your product. Hmmm. I've got this patent and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one, which parts of your product infringe. If you think you can fight against all of them in court, I will just go back and find some more. So, why don't you cross license with me?" And then this brilliant small inventor says "Well, OK, I'll cross license". So he can go back and make these wonderful whatever it is, but so can IBM. IBM gets access to his patent and gets the right to compete with him, which means that this patent didn't "protect" him at all.
Also, note how the difference in the number of patents obtained: IBM has the most patents (so many that they can insulate themselves from the damage the patent system causes). Most "inventors" are not multinational corporations like IBM, HP, Apple, Microsoft, etc. and if they have any patents at all they only have patents that cover the wonderful something they're working on.
Therefore, when IBM gets a license by pressuring a small developer into cross-licensing, IBM gets virtually 100% of the small "inventor"'s patents but gives a license for a very small percentage of its patents. When multinationals cross-license they don't have this imbalance, so they cannot be bullied into cross-licensing all that they have. The imbalance and ill effect for the small "inventor" point out how what you are saying is a myth. Your post is highly overrated.
Whether it is GPL'd or not is just flamewar fodder -- most certainly the submitter's intention.
Do you have any evidence to support the assertion that making mention of the license was "flamewar fodder" and that it was indeed the intention of the poster?
The Snes9x license I found has a curious passage:
"Snes9x is freeware for PERSONAL USE only. Commercial users should seek permission of the copyright holders first. Commercial use includes charging money for Snes9x or software derived from Snes9x."
I don't know what "freeware" means and the license doesn't define the term (as is common for licenses to do). The term is not a legalistic one. In the end, I don't know what rights that confers upon me for "PERSONAL USE" (capitalization is theirs) which are denied to "commercial" users. The use of such language suggests to me that this license is somewhat homegrown which is very unwise. I'm also curious how the copyright holders would enforce usage (that is, merely running the program) as opposed to copying, preparing a derivative work, or distributing copies (the copyright powers that come up most commonly for computer programs). By contrast, the GPL is well-understood and written by lawyers. It appears to grant the rights this license attempts to and implements the copyleft provision.
"The copyright holders request that bug fixes and improvements to the code
should be forwarded to them so everyone can benefit from the modifications
in future versions."
I would have recommended this passage not appear in the license lest it be misinterpreted as a request (which would definately disqualify it for being free software, but not necessarily disqualify it for being open source). They could have moved it to a README file and worded it more clearly as something they would like people to do, but not something required of anyone preparing an improved version.
I don't know whether this license would qualify as open source, as you say. But I know for sure that the GPL, the preeminent free software license, does qualify as an open source license.
Or so those who advertise heavily would like you to believe. I think that values are taught which means we can teach people to value different things, including software freedom. I'm not against providing software that is practical, inexpensive, fast, and as bug-free as possible, but I don't think these technical achievements should be the end of the consideration.
Support with proprietary software is always a trap, of course, because you have to convince the proprietor to do what you want done (you can't do it for yourself no matter how skilled a programmer you are, no matter how talented your hired help is). But Munich was offered a support contract which included "Windows XP [support] for six years -- a year beyond the five-year base contract, and [Microsoft] said the city could skip the next Office upgrade, too".
The cost of locking someone in now pays off in spades down the road when people are less likely to even consider alternatives. Microsoft knows this, hence they are willing to do what it takes to get large clients. The city government of Munich ended up going with a GNU/Linux system instead, but reducing the sale price to $0 is definately on the menu.
Slashdot Mirror
Please do provide specific examples of where RMS is "trying to legislate" what some call "Linux", and be sure to point out how RMS is not merely requesting something which people are free to dismiss or reject.
That's not true. One does not need to give up getting credit for one's work when one writes or distributes free software. In fact, the most widely used free software license (the GNU GPL) requires all copies to carry an appropriate copyright notice.
I fail to see where RMS has "been eclipsed" because I don't see anyone involved with the open source movement championing software freedom squarely and without reservation. The people I see talking about software freedom in this way all come from the FSF--Eben Moglen and Brad Kuhn, to name a couple people I've heard speak on the subject recently.
Finally, you and the grandparent post got the name wrong--the name of the movement RMS started is not "open source". It's called the free software movement. It seems fair to call the movement by the name the founder of the movement gave it, no?
Earlier revisions of the APSL were non-free, but Apple changed it to make version 2.0 of the APSL a free software license. The APSLv2.0 is now a GPL-incompatible free software license.
If you're looking for a specific essay, read Why "Free Software" is better than "Open Source". It is the best essay I've seen on the differences between the two movements including the practical aspects of why "Open Source" is no replacement for "Free Software" either in name or in meaning. This essay is highly underrated.
How ironic that you celebrate the practical outcome of software freedom RMS started talking about and working for 20 years ago, yet you refuse to cite the name which is most associated with software freedom.
I remain unconvinced and I'll continue to choose to give GNU a share of the credit when I talk about the GNU OS and the Linux kernel.
Interesting how one must choose to license their program under the GNU GPL and one must choose to distribute GPL-covered programs, yet "the GPL forces [RMS']" view of free software on others.
There's no force involved. If you don't like the GPL, don't choose to distribute programs licensed under it. There are entire free software operating systems written by people who are working hard to rewrite GPL-covered programs because they don't like the strong copyleft implemented in the GPL.
Quite to the contrary of what you're saying, the reason the BSD licenses qualify as free software licenses is because they grant the licensee the freedoms free software talks about.
...how many Slashdot story submitters can misunderstand or mistranslate "software libre" as "open source". It must be difficult to believe that some people actually want software freedom and ask for it by name.
Unlike the new BSD license, the GPL claims to have "made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all", thus they would argue that the GPL has been interpreted to grant licenses for patents. However, this could reasonably be disputed and (I'm told) will be clarified in GPLv3. I know of no improvement along these lines coming for a BSD license and no mention of any language in the BSD licenses (old or new) which even mention patents. So even if one's freedom to modify and distribute the software might be in jeopardy with both licenses for now, my guess is that this will change for a lot of GPL-covered software when the GPLv3 is released (my guess on this is in 2005, but I have no inside insight to offer here).
As for restricting freedom to preserve it, one needs to restrict people's power to take away others freedom if one wants to preserve that freedom. We have to choose what's more important--granting power to restrict people's freedom (as the new BSD license does) or restricting anyone's ability to take away freedom for derivatives (as the GPL does). I'm grateful that there are people releasing their code under the new BSD license, but I want to contribute to a commons where distributed derivatives are in the commons as well.
That's where the confusion lies for many people, and ironically, why the term "open source" is no more clear than "free software". "Free software" can be cleared up quite quickly, and this problem chiefly occurs in English, not other languages which don't use the same term to mean zero cost and liberty. But for "open source", it's a different story. To most people, if pressed for a definition, "open source" would mean something like "you can see the source code" despite this being considerably less than what "open source" really means and despite this being refuted by the first sentence in the introduction section of the open source definition.
As the FSF points out:
Being part of the "closed group" isn't clearing things up either. Continue in the same essay further down, and you'll find an example where RMS heard how "open source" is being interpreted and misinterpreted (the executive and the audience member, respectively):
I certainly hope that's not what you are taking away from this discussion because that is horribly mistaken.
Free software is not defined in terms of open source, nor could it be because the free software movement was started over a decade before the open source movement. The term free software was defined well before open source was defined.
Guaranteeing the freedoms of free software for derivative works is termed "copyleft" and, again, has nothing to do with open source. The open source movement doesn't talk about copyleft or distinguish between licenses in this way because the open source movement doesn't talk about software freedom. The open source movement was built to speak to business and it was believed by this movement's founders that it would be easier to do this job if freedom talk was dropped. You'll still find this approach in operation today: Mark Webbink, chief counsel for Redhat, wrote an article not too long ago about "open source licenses" in which he goes around the barn to categorize licenses by which ones require "open source" derivatives, and he conspicuously does not use the term "copyleft".
Software patents could prevent that from occurring and neither BSD license (I recall there being 3 and 4-clause BSD licenses) mentions anything about licensing a patent in such a way that the software can be hacked up.
Copyleft is about preventing others from taking away software freedom in derivatives. There's nothing in the definition of free software that requires a copyleft, and copylefted free software licenses present practical problems some non-copylefted licenses don't. However, I'd hardly say you have fairly framed the issue or arrived at a reasonable conclusion about how useful the definition of free software is.
You're conflating the concepts the thread is focusing on. "Freeware" is often proprietary software, software you cannot inspect, share, or modify. With some freeware, you can't even run it at any time for any reason. "Closed source" is a reference to a development methodology that was built to not talk about software freedom. The GNU GPL and the BSD licenses (there are more than one) are free software licenses but they have different effects which make a great deal of difference even to non-programmers. Derivatives from new BSD-licensed programs, for instance, may be licensed under a non-free license and feature improvements the free software user wants. This would adversely impact the free software user and tempt them to switch to the non-free derivative. This would only happen with the GPL-covered program if the copyright holder failed to enforce their license.
Ability and freedom are not the same thing, consider writing, for instance. One may become a very good writer by practicing writing but have little freedom to express the views they really want to express. This frequently happens in repressive countries. US citizens may have freedom of speech but that doesn't make all Americans great speakers. So, understanding why software freedom is important doesn't require one to be a programmer.
On a practical level, even non-programmers can relish software freedom when they learn about what happens when users lack software freedom. In that link, even though Cory Doctorow calls this "buy[ing] open" (a reference to the open source movement), iPod devices would be better if they ran on free software; users would not be subjected to Apple's downgrades (which Doctorow has documented as well). Apple can downgrade iPods without a user's informed consent because Apple ships proprietary software to their users who mostly diligently install whatever they are given. The user has no opportunity to inspect the software to see what it really does, or change it if they don't like what they're being offered. Both of these jobs require source code to be reasonably effective, but delivering a copy of source code is insufficient. One has to have a copy of the source code under a license that allows sharing and modification. And, in a crucial difference between open source and free software, mere "open"ness would not give iPod users the chance to make private undistributed derivative software so that iPod users could keep the improvements they make to themselves.
The lock-in with proprietary and/or patent-encumbered file formats you describe does not "go back to price", it goes to the heart of making one's computer do what one wants it to do--software freedom. There are plenty of organizations that try to compete with larger proprietors and they will try to lock you into their ways too.
Businesses dropping (what they call) "support" by going out of business is less likely than trying to get customers to buy into another planned obsolescence in which no customer can really support themselves. I'm reminded of the many proprietary "kits" NeXT distributed and dropped shortly thereafter, much to the ironic dismay of the proprietary software distributors who were trying to make that OS more attractive by getting customers with the same tactics. Again, we bump into the need for software freedom.
The challenge is education: it falls to the free software movement to teach people about software freedom so that they can value it and then demand it when they do business with software and hardware distributors. Eben Moglen made a point of this in his keynote speech at the third "Wizards of Open Source" conference in Berlin. He was speaking at a conference dedicated to "open source" but he was perfectly clear that what he was speaking about is freedom. You should download that speech from archive.org and hear it for yourself.
First, my apology for misformatting my previous post. I didn't intend to make it one big paragraph.
What would that name be? The thread's article says that "open source" should be that name. But "free software" is the only name so far which refers to what it points to. "Open source" stands for something which doesn't include software freedom (the people who built the OSI purposefully gave that up so they could better pitch to business). If we take the author of the article that drove this thread at face value, the people who stand up for software freedom will, indeed, have to back down from the thing that the free software movement was made to insist upon because they will have to drop the freedom talk for demanding "open source".
As for extremism, it's that spectrum that is often is used to railroad people into appearing unreasonable. Right versus left politics (a false dichotomy to begin with) in the US, for instance, are often taken to be Republican versus Democrat so that anyone who expresses something other than what the major representatives of these two parties want is widely perceived as beyond the pale (never mind how similar the views of these two parties have become). Hence, I would much rather talk about the views being expressed rather than how they fit onto some scale of commonality.
Software isn't non-free by default because of the Berne treaty, it's copyrighted by default. Software freedom has to do with the terms under which programs are distributed; what rights do the recipients get with the program. Freedom doesn't attach to software which is not distributed. So, in the US, if when you save that original program you're working on, the Berne treaty says it's automatically copyrighted to you, but if you haven't distributed it to anyone it's neither free nor non-free. Copyrighted software can be free or non-free depending on its license. The power to license different copies of software differently to different parties doesn't preclude one copy from being licensed under a free software license. As for a hypothetically "badly worded [future revision of the] GPL", nobody has to choose that license if they find it not to their liking (either licensing their software under it or distributing software licensed to them under it). Today, nobody has to allow their current GPL-covered works to be upgraded to the latest GPL published by the FSF. I don't see what problem such a GPL would create except for making some waves of disappointment and disagreement with the FSF. So, no, "freed" software has exactly the same problem as "liberated" software because they both refer to the same process of going from non-freedom to freedom which simply doesn't apply to all free software. That term is not more clear, in fact it draws a distinction that is not relevant for most purposes when discussing free software.
We will undoubtedly come across someone who disagrees or finds it uncomfortable to hear freedom talk or talk of equality between men's and women's social circumstances. But we should continue to insist upon what we want. I want software freedom, including the right to make private undistributed derivatives, so I'm sure to ask for free software by name. Open source would not give me the same rights.
Social progress depends on persistent demands. As Frederick Douglass wrote:
I find the use of the term "extremist" in your post odd--as if the demand becomes unreasonable if someone can get others to call the demand "extremist"; we need not bother examining what the demand is for if someone we trust calls it "extremist". It is reasonable, fair, and just to demand equal pay for equal work (still denied to women in the US) or desegregated schools (still denied to many non-whites via bussing). Those who want software freedom should also insist on software freedom without backing down to mere "open source".
The difference between open source and free software has nothing to do with precision and being sufficiently technical. The two movements value different things and therefore arrive at different evaluations of licenses and recommendations for what software should do.
People understand freedom quite well, it's the speakers who are reluctant to appear "political" and shy away from freedom talk. This happens particularly amongst Americans trying to explain software freedom, ironically. What these speakers don't understand is that they are still expressing political views when they champion open source values; they are just expressing views with which the business world is far more keen to focus on and give them support for doing.
No, that's just what I was saying is not the case. GNU Emacs was always free software. It was never liberated from non-freedom. If I recall correctly, it was first distributed before the GNU GPL had been written; Emacs was under the Emacs license. But that license gave you all the freedoms of free software. Software freedom has nothing to do with being distributed by a corporation. In fact, there are lots of free software programs whose copyrights are held by corporations (for example, Red Hat is a corporation and holds the copyright to some GPL-covered programs).
That would not work for some programs like GNU Emacs and many of the other GNU programs. They were never non-free programs (like Blender which was proprietary then freed). And there is little point in distinguishing between programs that were initially free software versus those that became free software later in their development.
That's a good part of the theory behind the creation of the open source movement. However, the businesses I've talked to are very interested in making private derivatives of free software--taking advantage of a freedom which the open source movement doesn't care about (in fact this was one of the FSF's initial objections to the early versions of the Apple Public Source License; one had to notify one central authority which, as they say, happened to be Apple, in a lot of situations one would commonly encounter, hence the license initially did not respect user's privacy). The same revision of the APSL which the FSF did not call a free software license qualified as an open source license.
But as this highly underrated essay points out, the open source movement provides business with a stamp of approval.
The FSF has no problems with the practical goals of the open source movement, except that those goals don't go far enough. Faster, cheaper development of less buggy programs is nice but says nothing about one's freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify software at any time for any reason.
I see a bit of conflict there--the open source movement primarily speaks to business (its why they crafted the message and philosophy centering on practical endeavor like building programs cheaper, making them run faster, and have fewer bugs). Multinational corporations want software patents. So, the conflict is between what you're suggesting (open source makes software patent adoption less likely) and who the open source movement is built to talk to. Hence, I have a hard time believing that a focus on that movement will reduce the likelihood of Brazil adopting software patents.
You are repeating a myth that is easily debunked by examining how cross-licensing works from the perspective of the "budding software compan[y]". Quoting RMS from his talk on the danger with software patents (or listen to the speech):
Also, note how the difference in the number of patents obtained: IBM has the most patents (so many that they can insulate themselves from the damage the patent system causes). Most "inventors" are not multinational corporations like IBM, HP, Apple, Microsoft, etc. and if they have any patents at all they only have patents that cover the wonderful something they're working on.
Therefore, when IBM gets a license by pressuring a small developer into cross-licensing, IBM gets virtually 100% of the small "inventor"'s patents but gives a license for a very small percentage of its patents. When multinationals cross-license they don't have this imbalance, so they cannot be bullied into cross-licensing all that they have. The imbalance and ill effect for the small "inventor" point out how what you are saying is a myth. Your post is highly overrated.
Do you have any evidence to support the assertion that making mention of the license was "flamewar fodder" and that it was indeed the intention of the poster?
The Snes9x license I found has a curious passage:
I don't know what "freeware" means and the license doesn't define the term (as is common for licenses to do). The term is not a legalistic one. In the end, I don't know what rights that confers upon me for "PERSONAL USE" (capitalization is theirs) which are denied to "commercial" users. The use of such language suggests to me that this license is somewhat homegrown which is very unwise. I'm also curious how the copyright holders would enforce usage (that is, merely running the program) as opposed to copying, preparing a derivative work, or distributing copies (the copyright powers that come up most commonly for computer programs). By contrast, the GPL is well-understood and written by lawyers. It appears to grant the rights this license attempts to and implements the copyleft provision.
I would have recommended this passage not appear in the license lest it be misinterpreted as a request (which would definately disqualify it for being free software, but not necessarily disqualify it for being open source). They could have moved it to a README file and worded it more clearly as something they would like people to do, but not something required of anyone preparing an improved version.
I don't know whether this license would qualify as open source, as you say. But I know for sure that the GPL, the preeminent free software license, does qualify as an open source license.
Or so those who advertise heavily would like you to believe. I think that values are taught which means we can teach people to value different things, including software freedom. I'm not against providing software that is practical, inexpensive, fast, and as bug-free as possible, but I don't think these technical achievements should be the end of the consideration.
Some time ago, it was revealed that Microsoft's Orlando Ayala, a top Microsoft executive for foreign sales, distributed a memo instructing that "Under NO circumstances lose against Linux[sic].". Microsoft has a slush fund to pay for big would-be customers' licenses. Microsoft was prepared to use some of this money to reduce the cost of licensed Microsoft proprietary software for the city government of Munich, Germany. The same article also mentions sharply discounted or free training for city workers, or allowing teachers "to use Microsoft software purchased for the workplace at home for no extra charge".
Support with proprietary software is always a trap, of course, because you have to convince the proprietor to do what you want done (you can't do it for yourself no matter how skilled a programmer you are, no matter how talented your hired help is). But Munich was offered a support contract which included "Windows XP [support] for six years -- a year beyond the five-year base contract, and [Microsoft] said the city could skip the next Office upgrade, too".
The cost of locking someone in now pays off in spades down the road when people are less likely to even consider alternatives. Microsoft knows this, hence they are willing to do what it takes to get large clients. The city government of Munich ended up going with a GNU/Linux system instead, but reducing the sale price to $0 is definately on the menu.
Why should we give anyone the power to deny others freedom? It's not as if we can have all possible freedoms, some of them conflict.