The reason not to work for Microsoft R&D is that, whilst you will be comfortable, well fed and well off, you will lead an empty life and they will suck your soul out of you.
Isn't that pretty much how employment in general works?
For some employers more so than for others, I feel:)
The GP/GGP's comments seem about right to me. I always did wonder how MS Research could do so much cool stuff, and yet have so little of it make it to market with any of the coolness still attached.
But it's not. The point is that the whole open source methodology doesn't gain you anything if people don't fairly evaluate the changes in a data-centric way
Is that true though? I think the big win of Free Software is that massive redundancy and parallisation of the process, and the fact the Darwinian selection will tend to weed out the weaker projects over time. If your software isn't fun, easy to use, efficient and stable, people are going to migrate to something else. Free market forces make for one hell of a design review.
What they do instead is post "I hate this", and submit bugs that are basically "change this to exactly what it was one year ago".
Well, yes. Some of them do, certainly. The trouble is that the sort of rational, cerebral evaluation you seem to be advocating probably isn't practical for a project with 12 million users.
On the other hand, that doesn't really excuse going to opposite extreme and saying "well, no one on the mailing list objects - it must be good". Or "it works OK on tablets, and the Gnome dudes are really getting up my nose - so the users are bound to love it".
What we need is an evaluation process scaled to the size the contemporary communities, and I'm not suggesting that will be an easy problem to solve.
Still, offering Unity as an option for desktop Ubuntu rather than the default, and getting a release or two's feedback from people he didn't feel it was being forced upon them... would probably have been a good start.
Do you want to know why the developers of these new open source UIs don't value input from the general public? Because 99.5% of that input is just complaining. There's so much "I hate this" noise that it's impossible to find the 0.5% with the brilliant ideas of how it can be improved.
Hmmm... trouble is Sturgeon's Law applies to everything, not just FOSS project feedback.
If you're the type of person who hates change, stop downloading the new version with the changes! You'll be happy, the developers who won't have to listen to your griping will be happy, everybody's happy.
That probably works better for single programs than it does for desktop environments, and certainly in the case of entire distributions. I mean, if you're happy to run without security updates, recent versions of non DE programs and all the rest, then fair enough. But most people aren't.
Tell you what, let's have a car anaolgy. Most people get used to driving their cars. They get to know the limitations of the vehicle, and the strengths, and the build habits around these features. Changing all that is not something undertaken lightly.
But with Unity, it seems to me that a whole load of people, a lot of them basically "sunday drivers" have gone in to get the oil changed, and found out that Canonical have moved the brake pedal in order to accomplish this.
And they may well have moved it to a more efficient place... but I can't help feel they've gone about it in a deeply wrong way.
You won't help the project by continually opening up the same bug over and over again.
Hey, don't look at me, I don't even use Ubuntu. I run debian, have FVWM as my window manager, and I know enough to work around most of the minor annoyances that crop up.
But I still think a lot of projects are being needlessly heavy handed in rolling out new features.
For stuff such as php or javascript that has to be distributed, it can be shown that the code is the same if necessary
I'm being pedantic, I know, but that's true in the case of Javascript, but not PHP. PHP sits on the server and the only code the user ever sees is it's output.
All it takes is one disaffected developer. It happens all the time
So the code of a PHP can be inspected "if necessary" because if the need arises, then as if by magic a disaffected developer will appear and leak the source code. To be fair, I suppose it's no more unrealistic than your "protection" against incompatible closed source forks.
Look, this has been fun and all, but it seems like every point in the last exchange is an evasion like that one. In most cases I think you know perfectly well what I mean, and I really don't have the time to keep dragging you back to the point, just to have you ignore it again. So I'm going to make a few closing observations, and then leave the last word to you, should you desire.
You know, I seem recall someone from Microsoft saying that the free software movement was (so far as he was concerned) basically a bunch of guys working for IBM for free. And that's Microsoft's vision for Open Source. They'd sooner it went away altogether, but if not, they like us all to be working for Microsoft for free.
I don't know if you designed RtPL to facilitate Microsoft's vision in this matter, but I don't see how you could have come closer if you had tried. You give away the absolute minimal rights required to get someone to debug your software, ensure that the project originator can keep strict control of the project And unlike BSD you don't require the creator's copyright to be acknowledged in binary distribution. If all you want out of Free Software is an unpaid workforce, I'd say you have created the perfect licence.
Monetizing, we've discussed a few times. You've repeated asserted that RtPL makes it easier for a developer to monetize his code, but despite repeated invitations to do so, you've yet to explain how to offers any advantage over the GPL. There are some fairly clear advantages when it comes to monetizing someone else's code (whether they like it or not) but you've not responded to that point either.
Your "protection" against corporations introducing deliberate incompatibilities into a closed release is, frankly, laughable. To say that you protect against a case, and then say that protection relies upon modern corporations either Doing The Right Thing, or failing that, to them admitting to wrong-doing, and that in a case where you couldn't possibly prove the transgression? The next time you have this discussion, you might also point out that they'll abide by the licence terms because otherwise Santa Claus will put them on the "naughty" list, and they'll find nothing but coal in their stockings come Christmas Day. In fact, I think I would have found that more convincing.
The "no derivative works" issue is going to cause problems. I don't know what your background is, but you don't understand how PHP works, and while I think you can #include a.c file, I don't think I've ever seen it done. As such, I think you probably have an exaggerated idea of the power of shims and wedges. It's not efficient design to wrap abstraction upon abstraction, which is pretty much what you'd need to do if you have a large number of coders all retaining their own copyrights. Of course, if the project requires all copyrights to be assigned, then the problem largely goes away, but since that was such a searing indictment of the GPL when the GNU project did it, it would probably sound a little strange if you suggested it for RtPL. Even if it is the screamingly obvious solution.
Lastly, while it's not strictly part of the licence, the general attitude of "no one should ever write code until they'
For stuff such as php or javascript that has to be distributed, it can be shown that the code is the same if necessary
I'm being pedantic, I know, but that's true in the case of Javascript, but not PHP. PHP sits on the server and the only code the user ever sees is it's output.
You can run a PHP server locally, of course and host applications that way. You'd have a valid point in that instance, but I'm not aware of any application that does that.
In general, the only way to check the source of a PHP app is to get a court order and seize the servers.
For c/c++, and to a lesser extent java, it's more of a problem... but this is the same with any compiled code, whether RPL or GPL or prorietary licensed code where the licensee has broken the terms of the license.
I don't think that's true in the case of the GPL. For one thing, you can request the source. If they don't supply it, they're in contravention. If they do, and it doesn't compile to the same image, or do the same things, they're still in contravention. Just ask Harald Welte.
As for derived works, no, you can't, same as you can't derive your own Harry Potter book
And like J.K.Rowling, you are entitled retain the "no derivative works" option. I never said otherwise. What I'm questioning is whether retaining that particular right leads to a better developmental model, and if so, from whose perspective.
If the day ever comes when I need to rewrite portions of J.K.Rowling's books in order for them to share a bookshelf with Terry Pratchett, then the same questions will apply there, too.
Corporations (just like all coders) would have an incentive to do fixes and feature adds the proper way, since it eases their burden for maintenance, etc
If corporations always thought like that, then the "Unix Wars" you referred to earlier would never have happened. And Microsoft would never have chosen an implementation of Kerberos incompatible with the rest of the world. To pick two examples at random. Sorry, but no sale on that point.
Their suggestions and extra eyeballs - financially incentivized eyeballs to actually get the code fixed by the original author so as to save them money in both the short and long term - is a good carrot to offer via the RPL.
See, a lot of corporations out there view Free Software as basically a cancer. Many of them take the view that it drives down their profit margins reducing the artificial scarcity underlying their business model, and that it makes it far too easier for newcomers to compete with them. Some think that the world would be a better if all Free Software were to die a horrible death and the world go back to the way it was in 1980.
Do you really want to argue otherwise?
I don't think the software license should ever become the primary consideration when laying down the architecture of a new project.
And yet it is a major consideration for any project, because it dictates not only what resources you have available, but also what limits you can do to finance the project. Selling software+services is more profitable than selling services alone.
Oh, sure. I mean:
"do we want to use the GPL because there's a hell of a lot of of GPL code we can legally use if we comply with the licence?"
"should we use BSD? We'll get more corporate buy in, but if we do anything really cool, the big players will brand it as their own, and we'll never see a cent."
"do we use a closed licence? There's still a hell of a lot of LPGL we can use and it doesn't obligate us in the least."
All valid questions. Not ones that necessarily need to be addressed Day One, but worth thinking about.
Well, if people are going to lie, they're going to lie no matter what, right?
Well, if you're talking about Joe Coder from down the road (known him since he was seven, talk to his mom every week at church), then your touching faith in basic human honesty is probably well founded.
But that's not the context in which we were operating. Let's back up a bit. I said:
... you will have made it very easy for the likes of Microsoft and Apple to take the code, rebrand it, tweak it enough to break compatibility, release it under their closed licence, and then throw marketing at the issue until no-one even uses your original software, or even remembers that you wrote it.
The Respect the Programmer License addresses that issue. Anyone can use, for example, a library you wrote, but all modifications to the file have to be made by the original author. So, no breaking compatibility, and any suggestions or feedback they give benefit everyone.
If someone chooses not to distribute the source, it's going to be hard to show them in breach of the licence
To which you just replied
(since I can't seem to nest blockquotes more than three deep).
Well, if people are going to lie, they're going to lie no matter what, right?
So, a hypothetical corporation wants to hijack your project by closing the codebase and bundling a closed, incompatible version with their widely-deployed product. You tell me the RtPL provides protection against just that circumstance. And now you're telling me that said protection relies entirely upon huge software corporations telling the truth. Even in cases where to do so would go against their best interests. Seriously?
What'll you do for an encore? Fire-proof safes made out of tissue paper?
The "inability to make derived works" is dealt with in more detail here - in particular answers 7 and 8.
So you can't make derivative works, just like I said. But it is generally possible to code around that restriction by using the same techniques we already use to work with hostile licences and closed hardware. I'm having a hard job accepting that as a plus point, but fair enough.
OK, maybe if we lived In an ideal world, and if everyone followed Robert Martin's design principles and paid particular attention to the Open/Closed Principle, then this wouldn't be particularly inconvenient. But we don't live in that a world, and even if we did, I don't think the software licence should ever become the primary consideration when laying down the architecture of a new project.
You're also requiring a certain understanding of Comp.Sci/Software Eng. before you can effectively interact with the licence. That's going to raise the barrier to entry to the free software world, and in particular lock out a great many kids and hobbyists who might otherwise have become great coders. If you're really worried about Free Software losing talent, that should be a major concern.
Oh, I'm not saying the free software is going to die - quite the contrary, I think it has a bright future (I *HOPE* it has a bright future).
I guess that's probably where we differ then. I think Free Software has a bright present. The challenges I see in the future are less to do with monetizing code and more to do with corporate attacks on the IP (Darl McBride and MS's patent trolling are examples).
We need solutions to that problem, because otherwise, we're always going to have quality issues
mmmm... I run Debian and XP in about equal measure at the moment. Debian is at least as stable as XP, and has a wealth programs installed that I just couldn't afford if I bought the proprietary equivalents.
(that, plus the constant forking going on).
As for forking... I really don't see the problem. If there's a disagreement about how best to take a project forward, forking means you have the right to try and prove your point. Inkscape, for instance, is a fork of Sodipodi. As I understand it. the Inkscape guys have done stuff they could never have done as part of Sodipodi, and the result is a better program.
Forking, I think, is partly a project management issue (things should never really get so bad as to bring about a hostile fork) and partly a case of survival of the fittest.
The other thing to consider is that if things are so bad that half the devs walk out to fork the project, they'd probably still walk out even if they couldn't make the fork. The downside there is that if the forkers are right, they would have to start from scratch. And we probably wouldn't have Inkscape, or at least anywhere near its current form.
Anyone can use, for example, a library you wrote, but all modifications to the file have to be made by the original author. So, no breaking compatibility, and any suggestions or feedback they give benefit everyone.
To an extend, I suppose. If someone chooses not to distribute the source, it's going to be hard to show them in breach of the licence though. I mean with the GPL you ask 'em for the source and see if it compiles into the same program. With RtPL they just say "we re-wrote one module from scratch because it didn't do exactly what we needed". Hell, if they were feeling particularly ethical at the time, they might even have done that.
Also, the inability to make derived works is going to be seen as a drawback in a lot of circles. If I need feature X in my app, I have to rely on you thinking X is also a good thing. And if you approve of X, I still need to wait for you to update the source before I can legally use feature X, even if I sent you the patch file.
And then the need to have an official person commit all patches is going to be a bottleneck for any large project, since we have to wait for that person to find the time to commit apply all the patches submitted.
I'm not saying RtPL is a bad thing. if you're using an scripting language, and if your users see a clear advantage in the project founder having control of what features are added, it could make a lot of sense. That said, I can imagine scenarios where it would have significant drawbacks. I'd hate to try and do something that required small changes to three or four files, all of them written by different authors, for instance.
Going off at a tangent for a moment... I often think the thing people miss about Free Software is that it's a very Darwinian environment. Lots of projects start up, but only the best of them gain any real traction. Most projects fail, and that's probably a good thing because in most cases if means people are using something that better suits their needs.
And it occurs to me that the same is probably true of Free Software licences. People assume that the GPL has been successful because it was one of the first FLOSS licences. But it's seen off challenges from any number of licences written to improve on it in some way.
I wonder if the GPL is successful mainly because it is well suited to the task of distributed, collaborative software development.
The alternative, of course, is to bundle your code with code from a more permissive license instead of GPL code.
Which let's face it, doesn't make it any more likely that you are going to make any more money from it. You'll still be offering support contracts.
On the bright side though, you will have made it very easy for the likes of Microsoft and Apple to take the code, rebrand it, tweak it enough to break compatibility, release it under their closed licence, and then throw marketing at the issue until no-one even uses your original software, or even remembers that you wrote it.
Of course, some people would see this as a good thing. But I don't think I'm ever going to be one of them.
If someone releases their code under the BSD/MIT/RtPL(RPL) licenses, they WANT the code re-used in both open and closed projects
Equally, if someone releases their code under the GPL, they probably want the code to remain open. In neither case is anyone putting a gun to anyone's head.
It's hard to see why sauce for the goose isn't also sauce for the gander in this instance.Unless you really do believe the RMS has the power to Cloud Men's Minds by putting a big blue PNG on the front page of a website.
Remember all those ads that say "past performance is no guarantee of future performance?"
I know that people have been predicting the death of Free Software and the GPL practically since Stallman wrote the first draft. Usually with most of the same arguments you've rolled out in this discussion.
In Stallman's case, we have the FSF anti-android FUD attack last month claiming that device manufacturers are at risk because the kernel is GPLv2, and now this latest "we're more open". The man seems to be grasping at anything to remain relevant
I don't think that's entirely a fair assessment. He's just a bit single-minded, is all. If I were to write a program that could eliminate global poverty and bring about world peace forever, Stallman would still condemn it if it ran on windows and was distributed under a non-free licence.
Of course, balanced against that is the fact that he'd instantly start a project to develop a Free Software version.
and the obvious one - he loses everything if copyright becomes unenforceable, which means that copyrights are of utility even to him
I don't know about Stallman, but the point is certainly not lost on the FSF. I've seen FSF types argue that, all other considerations aside, it's worth preserving copyright because without it the GPL has no leverage. Which seems to me a bit like wanting to preserve malaria because malaria vaccines save so many lives.
As for his personal issues, it's all collateral stuff that anyone who checks out his past behaviour in trying to understand why he's doing what he's doing is going to come across
I just don't see how any of that has a bearing on either his ethical standing or the utility of his licence.
The major problem I see in the future is that independent developers can't monetize their code if it uses GPL code as well.
There's a lot to talk about in that sentence.
Firstly, saying "can't" is too strong. There are lots of people making good money from offering support services. I know you'd like to see a better solution than software support, but that doesn't mean that no options currently exist.
Secondly, you've yet to show that anything is changed in this respect. I can't see any reason why this is a problem in the future when it doesn't seem to be a problem right now. (OK, you talk about Android apps - I'll get to that in a moment).
Thirdly, if it's their own code, there isn't a problem monetizing it. They can close the source and release future versions under a proprietary licence.
If it's not their own code though... then we said into murky waters indeed. The problem becomes not "how do I monetize my code" but "how to I monetize everyone else's hard work, if necessary over their express objections?". And that's a harder proposition to sell, I'm afraid.
Eventually, this means a smaller pool of developers, or developers moving to where the money is (we're seeing the latter already - iApple development makes more $ for developers than Android, and it's going to stay that way
We're also seeing developers being paid to work on free software projects by organisations that use the software. Which not only keeps the devs working on the project, but also means they can work longer and harder. Swings and roundabouts, I feel.
The fundamental problem here is that, as a business plan or a career path, deciding to write free software for a living is always going to suck . There's no getting around that. In the majority of cases you're going to be better off getting a paying job and doing the free software development as a hobby. Changing the licence is not going to fix that.
The "oh, we'll sell free apps and make $ of the ads we serve" will dry out same as the "oh we'll make money off support" did, when everyone is copying everyone else.
I'm not aware of the support model drying up, particularly. MySQL were doing very nicely from it until Oracle bought them out. RedHat still are, so far as I can tell. It's not a guaranteed income stream, certainly. But then what is? Particularly in the realm of software?
So the alternatives that I see are BSD/MIT/RtPL and other licenses that let you use source that you can read, or licensing code.
So, just to be clear: by "source that you can read", you mean a licence that doesn't require you to release all the source, so that you can keep certain modules closed and proprietary? And by "licensing code" you mean re-licensing code, so you can take an existing project, modify it and sell it as closed, proprietary software?
Is that a fair understanding of what you wrote? Because that's fair enough if that's what the project founders want, but not everyone is going to want that.
And by and large, the people doing the monetizing are not going to be the same people who did the actual work.
Whether this is good or bad is beside the point - the fact is that the restrictions do exist
My concern is more the vast array of inferences you seem to be drawing from that single data point. You've taken the fact that the GPL fails to be free from every possible point of view (something you can say about any licence) and from that you're inferring a deliberate intention to deceive on the part of Stallman, and from there onward to hypocrisy, control-freakery and scary sounding hints about social agenda.
Personally, I think a more reasonable explanation is that Richard thinks the licence he wrote is the best thing in the world, and when he talks about it, he occasionally forgets to word his sentences like a lawyer debating how many founding fathers can dance on the head of a constitutional amendment.
Occam's Razor suggests that my version is probably the better of the two, at least to my way of thinking.
and that in a distributed world... where your code is sometimes going to be sitting on a server, and sometimes distributed on many people's computers... the GPL is a problem.
It's still a long way from "The GPL in its current form may not be well suited to deployment in the cloud" to "Stallman is deliberately deceiving us to further a hidden agenda".
Now as to my personal feelings, up until he started with the Andoid FUD last month, I had zero issues with him. It's only after he started that I did my "due diligence", and I am underwhelmed
So your due diligence on a software licence extended to an investigation of the author's personal hygiene and genital-scratching issues? Now that's what I call being thorough!
Seriously, if you say there's nothing personal involved then obviously I have to believe you. But purely as a matter of feedback, you should be aware that that's not how you are coming across at the this end. The tone of this thread is less "I have concerns about aspects of the GPL and how they may affect the community in the future" and rather more "Stallman is a nasty, smelly, dishonest person, and I hate him! Hate him! Hate him!".
On a more general point: if we split these hairs much finer, we're going to need to borrow the Large Haddock Collider and risk annoying the Higgs Boson. Perhaps we're getting to the point where we should agree to differ?
It was on that basis, said that both the FSF and Stallman are being misleading and hypocritical, and don't even meet their standard for what "free software" is.
Now, here, I don't think we're ever going to agree. I think the definition they intend us to use is the one in the Free Software Definition. As opposed to 29 words in an attention grabbing blurb. Aside from the clue in the name, it's also the definition they actually say they use on the page in question. Always assuming anyone bothers to read beyond the big blue PNG, obviously.
See my point? In this case "share" software == "distribute" software.
That still seems like a bit of a stretch to me. If I copy a windows disc and give it to a friend to copy, then I am breaking the law. If I copy, let's say Pidgin onto a USB stick and give it to a friend, I'm fine. OK, strictly speaking he's entitled to ask me for the source code, and if he does, I'll probably just point him at the repository. I'd say those two cases probably cover 99.9% of all user experience of the GPL. It just doesn't seem like a big deal.
Now if I set up a server somewhere and offer the same code for download, then I have a few additional responsibilities, and if I ignore them, I run the risk of getting an email from the copyright holders asking me to kindly comply with the licence. If I'm determined to flout the terms of the licence, it may end up going to court, but on the whole, I either offer the source code as a download, or else stop distributing it, and it's still not that big a deal.
It's okay to have licenses that contain restrictions such as the GPL, but to claim that they're "free as in free speech", and to blatantly market them as such is dishonest.
Personally, I doubt there's any intent to deceive here. I also doubt there's any particularly dire consequence if someone does misunderstand, and I really can't see how misleading distributors would benefit anyone, Stallman included.
Honestly, I think you're letting your personal dislike of the man colour your judgement.
[ I thought I hit "submit" on this about 8 hours ago... ]
Linus has already said he has zero interest in migrating to the GPLv3
Agreed. And for what it's worth, I think if he did want to move to V3 the project could probably code around the bits where there's no clear author or where they couldn't get permission to change the licence.
It would take some time though. Which was more or less my point: there are valid reasons for asking for copyrights to be assigned to a project rather than held individually. Especially if the same code is already released under the GPL. I don't think I'd set a project up that way, but it's not necessarily a hallmark of evil, either.
Stallman and co have been unleashing a lot of verbal diarrhea because the GPLv3 simply isn't interesting to most devs - and that means that they're not able to push their social agenda.
I don't know about "not interesting". It hasn't gained as much traction as they'd like, certainly.
Nothing wrong with having a social agenda, though. Well, I suppose it depends on what the agenda is; In Stallman's case it's always been to move the economics of software to a post-scarcity model, something else he's always been up-front about. I can't see that as a bad thing, in itself.
However, the fact is that people want stuff that works more than they want stuff that's "free as in the restricted world or RMS"... it's sad, because even Vista is now more stable than KDE... KDE craps out on me several times a day, despite always updating. Openbox and LXDE? Updates killed them both a month ago. Gnome? Don't even ask.
Debian and FVWM. Never have a problem:)
I don't really see how you lay the current update cycle issues at Stallman's feet though. I mean the distro that hews closest to his ideals is perhaps Debian, and that's very stable with a 24 month release cycle. Ubuntu on the other hand is leading the charge for faster release times and pressuring projects to keep pace. I do sometimes wonder how much of impetus for that comes from Canonical's need to commercialise their investment in Ubuntu.
but the recent emphasis on quick release cycles, with the sacrifice of stability, coupled with the difficulty of devs to monetize their code under the GPL, means that we lose most of the supposed benefits of "many eyes."
I guess if the benefits of many eyes are only "supposed" benefits, then it doesn't hurt us to lose them:)
More seriously, I can see your point about release cycles meaning less time to debug. I'm not sure I'm convinced, but I see where you're coming from. As for monetizing code, I can't see how anything has changed in that respect that might imperil the Free Software development model.
The definition you refer to is NOT on the front page of the fsf.org website.
No it isn't, and I never said it was. What IS on the front page is a line that says (paraphrasing) "this is what we mean by 'free software'" and then a link to that definition, helpfully labelled "The Free Software Definition".
It's a marketing blurb. It simplifies things to grab attention, and it doesn't claim to be definitive. As opposed to the Free Software Definition, which does.
Even then, it says "you deserve to use", and from a purely user perspective, nothing it says is incorrect. If it said "distribute" instead of "use" then I could maybe see your point.
As it is, the only way I can imagine this image misleading anyone would be if they spent five seconds looking at the page, and then leave never to return, convinced they knew all there is to know about the FSF. And really, anyone with that strategy is going to get unintentionally misled by a lot of web sites, not just the FSF.
He also has a history of minimizing the freedom of the developer by demanding the assignment of copyrights for any contribution to GNU software. Funny how the GPL wasn't "good enough" if it's someone else holding the copyrights, hmm?
Well, arguably, if Linus had made a similar requirement for the kernel, we wouldn't have the "it's not feasible to migrate to GPLv3" kerfuffle that we had a while back.
That's not to say I think that would have been a good idea - I prefer the way Linus does things. But I think you can make a good case for doing it the GNU way, too.
It's time we grew up as a community, and realized that we need to walk away from the freetards - they've gone slightly power-mad in thinking that they can lie with impunity
I must admit, when people start using terms like "freetard", I tend to think "flamebait" and dismiss the message as such. It's especially a pity when someone's been arguing their point as well as you have. One word, and you lose so many of your audience.
No - look at the definition on the front page of the FSF web site http://fsf.org/.
Well, I did. The one I found said this:
The FSF advocates for free software ideals as outlined in the Free Software Definition
If there's another incompatible definition on the page, please do quote it, because as it is, I'm sorry but I can't see your point at all.
It's just another example of the latest round of hypocrisy from Stallman (or have you forgotten his connection with the FSF?) Two weights, two measures...
I really don't see a conflict of interest there. Now if he was demanding people use a licence that let him rebrand and sell other people's hard work, all in the name of freedom, that would be hypocrisy. As it is, I don't see it.
The same hypocrisy that says "the GPL extends enough rights to protect developers sharing code and end users... except for when developers want to add their code to GNU, in which case, a license under the GPL isn't enough - gimme your copyright, b*tch".
Well, it's not as if you need to have your project in GNU in order for it to be Free Software. Sure, you can take issue with the acceptance criteria for GNU, but that's a separate issue to my mind.
He's a control freak
That's quite possible. Certainly he's got one hell of an ego. On the other hand, without that, he'd never have been able stick to his guns for nigh-on 30 years. So I tend to cut him some slack; I think the Free Software movement has done far and away more good than harm.
Apart from that... I've never met the man, so I can't comment on his personal habits, but nothing that you mention constitutes hypocrisy on his part.
Remember all the complaints about forking in the Unix universe? Now, Unix is pretty much standardized, and it's GPL-based linux that has hundreds of distros with incompatabilities.
Again, an issue separate from Stallman's ethical standing. And really, I think that's something of a paper tiger. I mean, by and large the same software is available and running on distros as diverse as Slackware, Fedora, Debian and Gentoo.
There may be a certain duplication of effort involved, some extra work to handle different layouts... but what's the alternative? You'd need to have some sort of central controlling body with the authority to tell people what they could and do not do with their distros... and that doesn't much sound like freedom to me.
Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute,
study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it means that the
program's users have the four essential freedoms:
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it
does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source
code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor
(freedom 2).
The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions
to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole
community a chance to benefit from your changes.
Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
So we can see that the software is intended to be free from the users perspective primarily, rather than that of the distributor, and the specific freedoms vouchsafed are clearly defined.
I'm afraid I'm still not seeing any hypocrisy here. You can say a lot of things about Stallman, but one thing is he is, is consistent.
1. "free from restriction"? The GPL license is full of restrictions, on copying, on redistribution, etc. That's not "free as in free speech".
meh. When people complain that the GPL is "insufficiently free", the freedom they want is generally "the freedom to take other people's hard work and release it under any damn terms they feel like". It's an interesting idea: maybe one day some will persuade MS that users of MS Office have a moral right redistribute the product as (say) public domain. But until that happens, it's hard to take the notion too seriously
The key point here is "freedom for whom?". Stallman's priority has always been freedom for the software user. As such he designed the GPL to maximise the freedom of the user, while at the same time making very difficult for distributors to erode those freedoms.
The GPL has always stated up front that it seeks to ensure certain freedoms, but not all. I'm not a huge fan of Stallman, but In this, he has been entirely consistent. You may not like what he's trying to achieve, but it's hardly fair to accuse him of hypocrisy.
What's so wrong about using backports.debian.org? Is it so hard to add one line to your/etc/apt/sources.list? Why is this sub-optimal?
Depends on what you're used to, really. I came to Debian from Gentoo, and so I'm used to tinkering with files in/etc. But I can imagine that if my only Linux experience had been Ubuntu, I might have found editing system files by hand to be a weird and scary experience.
That said, I'd have thought it was easy enough to add the backports repo to synaptic under Debian. I'd guess most Ubuntu-ers have had to do that at some time.
I've been using it for a long time, and My Yahoo is my home page, but I'm not married to Yahoo. (I do feel nostalgic about it sometimes, for lots of reasons which I won't go into
I feel nostalgic for Yahoo, I must admit. I remember them around 1995 or so when I was on the web using Mosaic and with a monochrome monitor. Yahoo search was the best thing in the world back then, and their home page had lots of cool stuff, like hot sites that were genuinely interesting.
And then it changed. They crammed more and more junk on the front page. Horoscopes. Puff photo-coverage for minor celebs. The search bar, (my principle reason for visiting) got shoved out the way somewhere to make room for links to paying customers, and suddenly it was no longer a joy to use. That was also about the time they started polluting the search results with paid-for links. Admittedly, they were doing this along with every other search engine on the planet, but by this stage the only reason I still went there was because they were marginally better than the alternatives.
And then Google showed up. Nothing on the first page but a logo, a search box and two buttons. And search results where the first half dozen hits didn't instantly take me to someone selling marginally related goods. What a breath of fresh air that was...
I loved Yahoo mail as well. I had an account for years - still do in fact. But then they started pressuring me to buy more space, and refusing to let me even report spam without paying extra. And they kept moving the mail button on the homepage, in what seemed like an ongoing attempt to obfuscate the services that I found useful.
I stopped using Yahoo mail long before Google got in on the act. The account's still active, so I guess they didn't mean all those threatening sounding alerts demanding more money from me.
And the pattern repeated, time and again. I was a big fan of yahoo groups. And then they started inserting adverts into the message threads. Not just a discrete banner on the message window, but a full page message with some sniffy text from Yahoo saying how because it was a free service you had to read the following advert. And then the next message would be the advert. After which, now that you'd thoroughly lost your train of thought, they'd return you the thread proper.
They do seem to have got better recently. I don't go there much, but when I do it looks cleaner and less deliberately annoying than it used to be. And if those impressions are accurate, then there are probably a lot of people who'd find Yahoo useful.
But I think they've got their work cut out for them. I think they burned too many bridges, back in the day.
I just hope the moral of the tale isn't lost on Google.
Actually, the OSP doesn't apply at all here. That's purely covering people who want to create 3rd party implementations of certain microsoft specificatons. So the Mono boys were covered for instance, but not necessarily the application you create using Mono.
Then again, that's not an issue at all here, since this uses MS.NET rather than mono, and presumably has all the rights that you'd get for any other C# application you made with Visual Studio.
So broadly speaking (IANAL either) you could well be right. The toolchain issues could still prove problematic, however.
In other news, Verisign is trying to get non-stupid companies to pay to prevent their brands from being registered as company-is-stupid.com sites.
So, clearly, what we need here is a.stupid TLD. Then we can get all the stupid companies to take.stupid domain names, and the clever ones can stay as they are. That should work exactly as well as the.xxx TLD is going to work.
Of course it all falls apart if someone is clever enough to take the "is-stupid" suffix and register it under.xxx, or indeed.stupid. But then... what are the chances of that happening?
Slashdot Mirror
For some employers more so than for others, I feel :)
The GP/GGP's comments seem about right to me. I always did wonder how MS Research could do so much cool stuff, and yet have so little of it make it to market with any of the coolness still attached.
I guess it just goes to show - one man's informed criticism is another man's whiney complaint :)
Is that true though? I think the big win of Free Software is that massive redundancy and parallisation of the process, and the fact the Darwinian selection will tend to weed out the weaker projects over time. If your software isn't fun, easy to use, efficient and stable, people are going to migrate to something else. Free market forces make for one hell of a design review.
Well, yes. Some of them do, certainly. The trouble is that the sort of rational, cerebral evaluation you seem to be advocating probably isn't practical for a project with 12 million users.
On the other hand, that doesn't really excuse going to opposite extreme and saying "well, no one on the mailing list objects - it must be good". Or "it works OK on tablets, and the Gnome dudes are really getting up my nose - so the users are bound to love it".
What we need is an evaluation process scaled to the size the contemporary communities, and I'm not suggesting that will be an easy problem to solve.
Still, offering Unity as an option for desktop Ubuntu rather than the default, and getting a release or two's feedback from people he didn't feel it was being forced upon them ... would probably have been a good start.
Hmmm... trouble is Sturgeon's Law applies to everything, not just FOSS project feedback.
That probably works better for single programs than it does for desktop environments, and certainly in the case of entire distributions. I mean, if you're happy to run without security updates, recent versions of non DE programs and all the rest, then fair enough. But most people aren't.
Tell you what, let's have a car anaolgy. Most people get used to driving their cars. They get to know the limitations of the vehicle, and the strengths, and the build habits around these features. Changing all that is not something undertaken lightly.
But with Unity, it seems to me that a whole load of people, a lot of them basically "sunday drivers" have gone in to get the oil changed, and found out that Canonical have moved the brake pedal in order to accomplish this.
And they may well have moved it to a more efficient place ... but I can't help feel they've gone about it in a deeply wrong way.
Hey, don't look at me, I don't even use Ubuntu. I run debian, have FVWM as my window manager, and I know enough to work around most of the minor annoyances that crop up.
But I still think a lot of projects are being needlessly heavy handed in rolling out new features.
Yes, it is.
True enough.
rapid release development methodology would be the perfect way to prototype new UI ideas and designs
Can't argue with that.
Bit of a non-sequiteur there, though, I feel. The gratuitous insult doesn't really follow from the string of incoherent buzzwords.
So the code of a PHP can be inspected "if necessary" because if the need arises, then as if by magic a disaffected developer will appear and leak the source code. To be fair, I suppose it's no more unrealistic than your "protection" against incompatible closed source forks.
Look, this has been fun and all, but it seems like every point in the last exchange is an evasion like that one. In most cases I think you know perfectly well what I mean, and I really don't have the time to keep dragging you back to the point, just to have you ignore it again. So I'm going to make a few closing observations, and then leave the last word to you, should you desire.
You know, I seem recall someone from Microsoft saying that the free software movement was (so far as he was concerned) basically a bunch of guys working for IBM for free. And that's Microsoft's vision for Open Source. They'd sooner it went away altogether, but if not, they like us all to be working for Microsoft for free.
I don't know if you designed RtPL to facilitate Microsoft's vision in this matter, but I don't see how you could have come closer if you had tried. You give away the absolute minimal rights required to get someone to debug your software, ensure that the project originator can keep strict control of the project And unlike BSD you don't require the creator's copyright to be acknowledged in binary distribution. If all you want out of Free Software is an unpaid workforce, I'd say you have created the perfect licence.
Monetizing, we've discussed a few times. You've repeated asserted that RtPL makes it easier for a developer to monetize his code, but despite repeated invitations to do so, you've yet to explain how to offers any advantage over the GPL. There are some fairly clear advantages when it comes to monetizing someone else's code (whether they like it or not) but you've not responded to that point either.
Your "protection" against corporations introducing deliberate incompatibilities into a closed release is, frankly, laughable. To say that you protect against a case, and then say that protection relies upon modern corporations either Doing The Right Thing, or failing that, to them admitting to wrong-doing, and that in a case where you couldn't possibly prove the transgression? The next time you have this discussion, you might also point out that they'll abide by the licence terms because otherwise Santa Claus will put them on the "naughty" list, and they'll find nothing but coal in their stockings come Christmas Day. In fact, I think I would have found that more convincing.
The "no derivative works" issue is going to cause problems. I don't know what your background is, but you don't understand how PHP works, and while I think you can #include a .c file, I don't think I've ever seen it done. As such, I think you probably have an exaggerated idea of the power of shims and wedges. It's not efficient design to wrap abstraction upon abstraction, which is pretty much what you'd need to do if you have a large number of coders all retaining their own copyrights. Of course, if the project requires all copyrights to be assigned, then the problem largely goes away, but since that was such a searing indictment of the GPL when the GNU project did it, it would probably sound a little strange if you suggested it for RtPL. Even if it is the screamingly obvious solution.
Lastly, while it's not strictly part of the licence, the general attitude of "no one should ever write code until they'
I'm being pedantic, I know, but that's true in the case of Javascript, but not PHP. PHP sits on the server and the only code the user ever sees is it's output.
You can run a PHP server locally, of course and host applications that way. You'd have a valid point in that instance, but I'm not aware of any application that does that. In general, the only way to check the source of a PHP app is to get a court order and seize the servers.
I don't think that's true in the case of the GPL. For one thing, you can request the source. If they don't supply it, they're in contravention. If they do, and it doesn't compile to the same image, or do the same things, they're still in contravention. Just ask Harald Welte.
And like J.K.Rowling, you are entitled retain the "no derivative works" option. I never said otherwise. What I'm questioning is whether retaining that particular right leads to a better developmental model, and if so, from whose perspective.
If the day ever comes when I need to rewrite portions of J.K.Rowling's books in order for them to share a bookshelf with Terry Pratchett, then the same questions will apply there, too.
If corporations always thought like that, then the "Unix Wars" you referred to earlier would never have happened. And Microsoft would never have chosen an implementation of Kerberos incompatible with the rest of the world. To pick two examples at random. Sorry, but no sale on that point.
See, a lot of corporations out there view Free Software as basically a cancer. Many of them take the view that it drives down their profit margins reducing the artificial scarcity underlying their business model, and that it makes it far too easier for newcomers to compete with them. Some think that the world would be a better if all Free Software were to die a horrible death and the world go back to the way it was in 1980.
Do you really want to argue otherwise?
Oh, sure. I mean:
All valid questions. Not ones that necessarily need to be addressed Day One, but worth thinking about.
On the other hand
Well, if you're talking about Joe Coder from down the road (known him since he was seven, talk to his mom every week at church), then your touching faith in basic human honesty is probably well founded.
But that's not the context in which we were operating. Let's back up a bit. I said:
To which you just replied (since I can't seem to nest blockquotes more than three deep).
So, a hypothetical corporation wants to hijack your project by closing the codebase and bundling a closed, incompatible version with their widely-deployed product. You tell me the RtPL provides protection against just that circumstance. And now you're telling me that said protection relies entirely upon huge software corporations telling the truth. Even in cases where to do so would go against their best interests. Seriously?
What'll you do for an encore? Fire-proof safes made out of tissue paper?
So you can't make derivative works, just like I said. But it is generally possible to code around that restriction by using the same techniques we already use to work with hostile licences and closed hardware. I'm having a hard job accepting that as a plus point, but fair enough.
OK, maybe if we lived In an ideal world, and if everyone followed Robert Martin's design principles and paid particular attention to the Open/Closed Principle, then this wouldn't be particularly inconvenient. But we don't live in that a world, and even if we did, I don't think the software licence should ever become the primary consideration when laying down the architecture of a new project.
You're also requiring a certain understanding of Comp.Sci/Software Eng. before you can effectively interact with the licence. That's going to raise the barrier to entry to the free software world, and in particular lock out a great many kids and hobbyists who might otherwise have become great coders. If you're really worried about Free Software losing talent, that should be a major concern.
I guess that's probably where we differ then. I think Free Software has a bright present. The challenges I see in the future are less to do with monetizing code and more to do with corporate attacks on the IP (Darl McBride and MS's patent trolling are examples).
mmmm... I run Debian and XP in about equal measure at the moment. Debian is at least as stable as XP, and has a wealth programs installed that I just couldn't afford if I bought the proprietary equivalents.
As for forking ... I really don't see the problem. If there's a disagreement about how best to take a project forward, forking means you have the right to try and prove your point. Inkscape, for instance, is a fork of Sodipodi. As I understand it. the Inkscape guys have done stuff they could never have done as part of Sodipodi, and the result is a better program.
Forking, I think, is partly a project management issue (things should never really get so bad as to bring about a hostile fork) and partly a case of survival of the fittest.
The other thing to consider is that if things are so bad that half the devs walk out to fork the project, they'd probably still walk out even if they couldn't make the fork. The downside there is that if the forkers are right, they would have to start from scratch. And we probably wouldn't have Inkscape, or at least anywhere near its current form.
To an extend, I suppose. If someone chooses not to distribute the source, it's going to be hard to show them in breach of the licence though. I mean with the GPL you ask 'em for the source and see if it compiles into the same program. With RtPL they just say "we re-wrote one module from scratch because it didn't do exactly what we needed". Hell, if they were feeling particularly ethical at the time, they might even have done that.
Also, the inability to make derived works is going to be seen as a drawback in a lot of circles. If I need feature X in my app, I have to rely on you thinking X is also a good thing. And if you approve of X, I still need to wait for you to update the source before I can legally use feature X, even if I sent you the patch file.
And then the need to have an official person commit all patches is going to be a bottleneck for any large project, since we have to wait for that person to find the time to commit apply all the patches submitted.
I'm not saying RtPL is a bad thing. if you're using an scripting language, and if your users see a clear advantage in the project founder having control of what features are added, it could make a lot of sense. That said, I can imagine scenarios where it would have significant drawbacks. I'd hate to try and do something that required small changes to three or four files, all of them written by different authors, for instance.
Going off at a tangent for a moment... I often think the thing people miss about Free Software is that it's a very Darwinian environment. Lots of projects start up, but only the best of them gain any real traction. Most projects fail, and that's probably a good thing because in most cases if means people are using something that better suits their needs.
And it occurs to me that the same is probably true of Free Software licences. People assume that the GPL has been successful because it was one of the first FLOSS licences. But it's seen off challenges from any number of licences written to improve on it in some way.
I wonder if the GPL is successful mainly because it is well suited to the task of distributed, collaborative software development.
Just a thought.
Which let's face it, doesn't make it any more likely that you are going to make any more money from it. You'll still be offering support contracts.
On the bright side though, you will have made it very easy for the likes of Microsoft and Apple to take the code, rebrand it, tweak it enough to break compatibility, release it under their closed licence, and then throw marketing at the issue until no-one even uses your original software, or even remembers that you wrote it.
Of course, some people would see this as a good thing. But I don't think I'm ever going to be one of them.
Equally, if someone releases their code under the GPL, they probably want the code to remain open. In neither case is anyone putting a gun to anyone's head.
It's hard to see why sauce for the goose isn't also sauce for the gander in this instance.Unless you really do believe the RMS has the power to Cloud Men's Minds by putting a big blue PNG on the front page of a website.
I know that people have been predicting the death of Free Software and the GPL practically since Stallman wrote the first draft. Usually with most of the same arguments you've rolled out in this discussion.
I don't think that's entirely a fair assessment. He's just a bit single-minded, is all. If I were to write a program that could eliminate global poverty and bring about world peace forever, Stallman would still condemn it if it ran on windows and was distributed under a non-free licence.
Of course, balanced against that is the fact that he'd instantly start a project to develop a Free Software version.
I don't know about Stallman, but the point is certainly not lost on the FSF. I've seen FSF types argue that, all other considerations aside, it's worth preserving copyright because without it the GPL has no leverage. Which seems to me a bit like wanting to preserve malaria because malaria vaccines save so many lives.
I just don't see how any of that has a bearing on either his ethical standing or the utility of his licence.
There's a lot to talk about in that sentence.
Firstly, saying "can't" is too strong. There are lots of people making good money from offering support services. I know you'd like to see a better solution than software support, but that doesn't mean that no options currently exist.
Secondly, you've yet to show that anything is changed in this respect. I can't see any reason why this is a problem in the future when it doesn't seem to be a problem right now. (OK, you talk about Android apps - I'll get to that in a moment).
Thirdly, if it's their own code, there isn't a problem monetizing it. They can close the source and release future versions under a proprietary licence.
If it's not their own code though ... then we said into murky waters indeed. The problem becomes not "how do I monetize my code" but "how to I monetize everyone else's hard work, if necessary over their express objections?". And that's a harder proposition to sell, I'm afraid.
We're also seeing developers being paid to work on free software projects by organisations that use the software. Which not only keeps the devs working on the project, but also means they can work longer and harder. Swings and roundabouts, I feel.
The fundamental problem here is that, as a business plan or a career path, deciding to write free software for a living is always going to suck . There's no getting around that. In the majority of cases you're going to be better off getting a paying job and doing the free software development as a hobby. Changing the licence is not going to fix that.
I'm not aware of the support model drying up, particularly. MySQL were doing very nicely from it until Oracle bought them out. RedHat still are, so far as I can tell. It's not a guaranteed income stream, certainly. But then what is? Particularly in the realm of software?
So, just to be clear: by "source that you can read", you mean a licence that doesn't require you to release all the source, so that you can keep certain modules closed and proprietary? And by "licensing code" you mean re-licensing code, so you can take an existing project, modify it and sell it as closed, proprietary software?
Is that a fair understanding of what you wrote? Because that's fair enough if that's what the project founders want, but not everyone is going to want that.
And by and large, the people doing the monetizing are not going to be the same people who did the actual work.
My concern is more the vast array of inferences you seem to be drawing from that single data point. You've taken the fact that the GPL fails to be free from every possible point of view (something you can say about any licence) and from that you're inferring a deliberate intention to deceive on the part of Stallman, and from there onward to hypocrisy, control-freakery and scary sounding hints about social agenda.
Personally, I think a more reasonable explanation is that Richard thinks the licence he wrote is the best thing in the world, and when he talks about it, he occasionally forgets to word his sentences like a lawyer debating how many founding fathers can dance on the head of a constitutional amendment.
Occam's Razor suggests that my version is probably the better of the two, at least to my way of thinking.
It's still a long way from "The GPL in its current form may not be well suited to deployment in the cloud" to "Stallman is deliberately deceiving us to further a hidden agenda".
So your due diligence on a software licence extended to an investigation of the author's personal hygiene and genital-scratching issues? Now that's what I call being thorough!
Seriously, if you say there's nothing personal involved then obviously I have to believe you. But purely as a matter of feedback, you should be aware that that's not how you are coming across at the this end. The tone of this thread is less "I have concerns about aspects of the GPL and how they may affect the community in the future" and rather more "Stallman is a nasty, smelly, dishonest person, and I hate him! Hate him! Hate him!".
On a more general point: if we split these hairs much finer, we're going to need to borrow the Large Haddock Collider and risk annoying the Higgs Boson. Perhaps we're getting to the point where we should agree to differ?
Now, here, I don't think we're ever going to agree. I think the definition they intend us to use is the one in the Free Software Definition. As opposed to 29 words in an attention grabbing blurb. Aside from the clue in the name, it's also the definition they actually say they use on the page in question. Always assuming anyone bothers to read beyond the big blue PNG, obviously.
That still seems like a bit of a stretch to me. If I copy a windows disc and give it to a friend to copy, then I am breaking the law. If I copy, let's say Pidgin onto a USB stick and give it to a friend, I'm fine. OK, strictly speaking he's entitled to ask me for the source code, and if he does, I'll probably just point him at the repository. I'd say those two cases probably cover 99.9% of all user experience of the GPL. It just doesn't seem like a big deal.
Now if I set up a server somewhere and offer the same code for download, then I have a few additional responsibilities, and if I ignore them, I run the risk of getting an email from the copyright holders asking me to kindly comply with the licence. If I'm determined to flout the terms of the licence, it may end up going to court, but on the whole, I either offer the source code as a download, or else stop distributing it, and it's still not that big a deal.
Personally, I doubt there's any intent to deceive here. I also doubt there's any particularly dire consequence if someone does misunderstand, and I really can't see how misleading distributors would benefit anyone, Stallman included.
Honestly, I think you're letting your personal dislike of the man colour your judgement.
[ I thought I hit "submit" on this about 8 hours ago ... ]
Agreed. And for what it's worth, I think if he did want to move to V3 the project could probably code around the bits where there's no clear author or where they couldn't get permission to change the licence.
It would take some time though. Which was more or less my point: there are valid reasons for asking for copyrights to be assigned to a project rather than held individually. Especially if the same code is already released under the GPL. I don't think I'd set a project up that way, but it's not necessarily a hallmark of evil, either.
I don't know about "not interesting". It hasn't gained as much traction as they'd like, certainly.
Nothing wrong with having a social agenda, though. Well, I suppose it depends on what the agenda is; In Stallman's case it's always been to move the economics of software to a post-scarcity model, something else he's always been up-front about. I can't see that as a bad thing, in itself.
Debian and FVWM. Never have a problem :)
I don't really see how you lay the current update cycle issues at Stallman's feet though. I mean the distro that hews closest to his ideals is perhaps Debian, and that's very stable with a 24 month release cycle. Ubuntu on the other hand is leading the charge for faster release times and pressuring projects to keep pace. I do sometimes wonder how much of impetus for that comes from Canonical's need to commercialise their investment in Ubuntu.
I guess if the benefits of many eyes are only "supposed" benefits, then it doesn't hurt us to lose them :)
More seriously, I can see your point about release cycles meaning less time to debug. I'm not sure I'm convinced, but I see where you're coming from. As for monetizing code, I can't see how anything has changed in that respect that might imperil the Free Software development model.
No it isn't, and I never said it was. What IS on the front page is a line that says (paraphrasing) "this is what we mean by 'free software'" and then a link to that definition, helpfully labelled "The Free Software Definition".
It's a marketing blurb. It simplifies things to grab attention, and it doesn't claim to be definitive. As opposed to the Free Software Definition, which does.
Even then, it says "you deserve to use", and from a purely user perspective, nothing it says is incorrect. If it said "distribute" instead of "use" then I could maybe see your point.
As it is, the only way I can imagine this image misleading anyone would be if they spent five seconds looking at the page, and then leave never to return, convinced they knew all there is to know about the FSF. And really, anyone with that strategy is going to get unintentionally misled by a lot of web sites, not just the FSF.
Well, arguably, if Linus had made a similar requirement for the kernel, we wouldn't have the "it's not feasible to migrate to GPLv3" kerfuffle that we had a while back.
That's not to say I think that would have been a good idea - I prefer the way Linus does things. But I think you can make a good case for doing it the GNU way, too.
I must admit, when people start using terms like "freetard", I tend to think "flamebait" and dismiss the message as such. It's especially a pity when someone's been arguing their point as well as you have. One word, and you lose so many of your audience.
Well, I did. The one I found said this:
If there's another incompatible definition on the page, please do quote it, because as it is, I'm sorry but I can't see your point at all.
I really don't see a conflict of interest there. Now if he was demanding people use a licence that let him rebrand and sell other people's hard work, all in the name of freedom, that would be hypocrisy. As it is, I don't see it.
Well, it's not as if you need to have your project in GNU in order for it to be Free Software. Sure, you can take issue with the acceptance criteria for GNU, but that's a separate issue to my mind.
That's quite possible. Certainly he's got one hell of an ego. On the other hand, without that, he'd never have been able stick to his guns for nigh-on 30 years. So I tend to cut him some slack; I think the Free Software movement has done far and away more good than harm.
Apart from that ... I've never met the man, so I can't comment on his personal habits, but nothing that you mention constitutes hypocrisy on his part.
Again, an issue separate from Stallman's ethical standing. And really, I think that's something of a paper tiger. I mean, by and large the same software is available and running on distros as diverse as Slackware, Fedora, Debian and Gentoo.
There may be a certain duplication of effort involved, some extra work to handle different layouts ... but what's the alternative? You'd need to have some sort of central controlling body with the authority to tell people what they could and do not do with their distros ... and that doesn't much sound like freedom to me.
That would be this, then?
Following that link, we get:
So we can see that the software is intended to be free from the users perspective primarily, rather than that of the distributor, and the specific freedoms vouchsafed are clearly defined.
I'm afraid I'm still not seeing any hypocrisy here. You can say a lot of things about Stallman, but one thing is he is, is consistent.
meh. When people complain that the GPL is "insufficiently free", the freedom they want is generally "the freedom to take other people's hard work and release it under any damn terms they feel like". It's an interesting idea: maybe one day some will persuade MS that users of MS Office have a moral right redistribute the product as (say) public domain. But until that happens, it's hard to take the notion too seriously
The key point here is "freedom for whom?". Stallman's priority has always been freedom for the software user. As such he designed the GPL to maximise the freedom of the user, while at the same time making very difficult for distributors to erode those freedoms.
The GPL has always stated up front that it seeks to ensure certain freedoms, but not all. I'm not a huge fan of Stallman, but In this, he has been entirely consistent. You may not like what he's trying to achieve, but it's hardly fair to accuse him of hypocrisy.
That's good to know. I'll bear it in mind in case I ever get bored with editing /etc/apt/sources.list using vi.
Or if I decide to start using a Gnome desktop.
Depends on what you're used to, really. I came to Debian from Gentoo, and so I'm used to tinkering with files in /etc. But I can imagine that if my only Linux experience had been Ubuntu, I might have found editing system files by hand to be a weird and scary experience.
That said, I'd have thought it was easy enough to add the backports repo to synaptic under Debian. I'd guess most Ubuntu-ers have had to do that at some time.
I feel nostalgic for Yahoo, I must admit. I remember them around 1995 or so when I was on the web using Mosaic and with a monochrome monitor. Yahoo search was the best thing in the world back then, and their home page had lots of cool stuff, like hot sites that were genuinely interesting.
And then it changed. They crammed more and more junk on the front page. Horoscopes. Puff photo-coverage for minor celebs. The search bar, (my principle reason for visiting) got shoved out the way somewhere to make room for links to paying customers, and suddenly it was no longer a joy to use. That was also about the time they started polluting the search results with paid-for links. Admittedly, they were doing this along with every other search engine on the planet, but by this stage the only reason I still went there was because they were marginally better than the alternatives.
And then Google showed up. Nothing on the first page but a logo, a search box and two buttons. And search results where the first half dozen hits didn't instantly take me to someone selling marginally related goods. What a breath of fresh air that was...
I loved Yahoo mail as well. I had an account for years - still do in fact. But then they started pressuring me to buy more space, and refusing to let me even report spam without paying extra. And they kept moving the mail button on the homepage, in what seemed like an ongoing attempt to obfuscate the services that I found useful.
I stopped using Yahoo mail long before Google got in on the act. The account's still active, so I guess they didn't mean all those threatening sounding alerts demanding more money from me.
And the pattern repeated, time and again. I was a big fan of yahoo groups. And then they started inserting adverts into the message threads. Not just a discrete banner on the message window, but a full page message with some sniffy text from Yahoo saying how because it was a free service you had to read the following advert. And then the next message would be the advert. After which, now that you'd thoroughly lost your train of thought, they'd return you the thread proper.
They do seem to have got better recently. I don't go there much, but when I do it looks cleaner and less deliberately annoying than it used to be. And if those impressions are accurate, then there are probably a lot of people who'd find Yahoo useful.
But I think they've got their work cut out for them. I think they burned too many bridges, back in the day.
I just hope the moral of the tale isn't lost on Google.
Actually, the OSP doesn't apply at all here. That's purely covering people who want to create 3rd party implementations of certain microsoft specificatons. So the Mono boys were covered for instance, but not necessarily the application you create using Mono.
Then again, that's not an issue at all here, since this uses MS .NET rather than mono, and presumably has all the rights that you'd get for any other C# application you made with Visual Studio.
So broadly speaking (IANAL either) you could well be right. The toolchain issues could still prove problematic, however.
So, clearly, what we need here is a .stupid TLD. Then we can get all the stupid companies to take .stupid domain names, and the clever ones can stay as they are. That should work exactly as well as the .xxx TLD is going to work.
Of course it all falls apart if someone is clever enough to take the "is-stupid" suffix and register it under .xxx, or indeed .stupid. But then ... what are the chances of that happening?