Agreed wholeheartedly. I've been around the man a few times, and the image most people have in thier minds about him is way off.
His problem is that he's not the most social creature around, so he tends to come off poorly due to his social ineptitude. Take his speech about free documentation at the O'Reilly conference. While it is very nice (and appreciated) that they're releasing awesome manuals, it's not free for all to use. This threatens Free Documentation -- Since there's these non-free manuals that rock (bought a few of 'em myself), people will be less inclinded to write good Free (speech) documentation, which the movement is in dire need of.
RMS was 1010% correct. However, he told it at the worst possible moment in the most outright manner possible, so he came off as a jerk.
Listen to his words. Watch his actions. But try to ignore how he presents the former. He just doesn't know people all that well.
Ten years ago a computer with CPU-level encryption keeping people from viewing their own data/running thier own programs would be unthinkable. Nowadays, it's just another "trusted computing" thing.
And that's your choice. All users should have the freedom to choose what they do to their machines, and the freedom to use non-free programs is one of those freedoms. However, I choose to exercise my ability to use Free Software exclusively.
Personal response since you asked - For me the #1 reason I began to detest using non-Free software is because I don't like to feel like a damned criminal, and I don't like to feel like I'm getting screwed over. Let's say I buy WinXP. I go in the store, I pay for it with cash, and I walk out. When I get home and try to install I'm faced with a screwed up EULA which forces me to agree to terms that I find highly objectionable. I was not presented with this contract at the time of sale when I bought that software.
I don't like being screwed over. Yes, I do read all contracts I agree to. I'd suggest you do the same, you'd be horrified.
Then after I give permissions to that particular software company, I have to input a number to prove to the software that I actually bought it. And for this particular software I may need to call up the parent company and ask them "May I please have your permission to use this software that I legally bought?"
I don't like being treated like a criminal. I buy, I use, end of subject. I will not have to prove to anyone that I am law-abiding.
So I switched two years ago, and Free Software has given me countless personal freedoms that were unthinkable when I was using a non-free system. I no longer need to worry about legality when I want to heavily modify my system to my liking. I no longer feel as if I'm looking at a sealed black box whenever I want to learn something - the entire system is open to explore in any way I choose. The development of the programs I use are not dictated by any one entity, but instead by the users who have our needs in mind.
It sounds strange, but I think freely now. The technology I use is free for me to hack, rip apart, study, put together, package, Frankenstein into my own project, and so on. And through the freedom of knowledge given to me by free documentation, I have learned how to do just that.
Now when I think of using a non-Free system I am filled with contempt. Such a system would not be modifiable and explorable, but instead packaged together at the whim of someone else and kept from study. On top of this it's bound by an EULA which is morally deplorable and legally questionable. With the current copyright and patent laws, the actions of the largest software vendors, and the BSA breathing down everyone's necks... I refuse to use a non-Free system. I'd be giving up a hell of a lot more than I'm willing to part with.
(Note - please be kind, this is a deep subject and I tossed this together off the top of my head while trying to keep it short. This explanation is far from perfect.)
This has nothing to do with GNU Hurd, but instead with Free Software itself - to ensure that users aren't restricted by the software they use it is necessary to have Free versions of _ALL_ parts of the system, including the BIOS. If there is one single part of the system that is non-Free, then the entire system is comprimised.
Contrary to popular opinion, Stallman is the last person in the entire Free Software/Open Source movement that I would expect doing something due to an ego issue. Listen to his speeches, read his writings, hell, email the man himself and ask him if this is due to Hurd. He just wants to see people not chained by thier own technology.
How do I know that there isn't spyware code in my bios revealing information about me without my knowledge? How do I know that the lowest level components of my system will perform without any "Trusted Computing" quirks? If I for some reason need to modify my bios to gain a function (to make boot time clustering easier, for example), how could I do that with a non-Free BIOS? As a student, what if I wanted to study the code to my BIOS so I know how my computer _really_ works, on all levels?
Saying "The license to your BIOS doesn't matter as long as you can run stuff on it" is like saying "The fact that my car's engine is sealed in a lead black box doesn't matter as long as I can still drive." Yeah, on the surface it's true but when you think of the subject with any actual depth it just doesn't make sense.
That's exactly why a Free bios is necessary. I am typing this up in a Free Software browser (Konqueror) in a Free Software window manager (KDE), which run on top of a Free Software graphical manager (X), which runs on top of a Free Software system (Gnu), which runs on top of a Free Software kernel (Linux), which is booted by a Free Software boot loader (Grub). All of this Free Software runs on top of a non-free BIOS.
This raises the question - Am I really Free? When a Free Software BIOS exists, you can make a safe bet that I'll be using it.
(P.S. I'd suggest against using the term Open Source to describe software which is made to protect the rights of the users. There is a huge difference between Free Software and Open Source - Namely OS completely avoids any real mention of software Freedom. You won't find any mention of the four freedoms on OSI's site. Indeed, the only real mention of software freedom is where they call it ideological tub-thumping. This is definitely a Free Software issue, not an Open Source issue.)
For all the people who dismiss Richard Stallman's writings as nuts, I would like note that this story serves as a perfect example of how your freedoms are affected by non-Free software.
You paid your hard earned money for use of this software. You can not legally modify the software to your hearts content (try creating a server/dumb terminal windows distro for your office, for example). You can not look at the source code to find out how the OS _really_ works without signing a draconian NDA. (Indeed, Windows seems designed to be as confusing and difficult to modify as possible to keep people from mucking with it.) You must buy a copy for each computer you install it on, which sucks if you just want to set up a cheap box for your kids. You must comply with a sketchy EULA that when voided makes your copy as legal as one downloaded off P2P. And having read and understood the EULAs to all versions of Windows, I can almost state as fact that a good 75% of Windows users who think they are legal are actually not.
And now you have to call up Microsoft just to get your damn copy of Windows to work. You have paid your money for this software and are assumed to be a criminal for it until you get the smile and node of Steve Ballmer? Wake up and stop bending over! You should not need to knowingly break the law in order to use your software! You don't need to click "next" on draconian EULA's, trying to stay blissfully ignorant of what you have agreed to! The articles written by the Free Software Foundation that talk about freedoms lost are not the ramblings of some dusty academics, they are fighting what people do their best to stay ignorant of every time they sit in front of a computer!
Every Windows user is giving up their freedom to click on icons and be annoyed by clippy. This article is damn good proof that those who speak of software freedom might actually know what they're talking about.
Simply put, we are making an effort to stamp out the commercial sales of M.A.M.E. based systems that advertise the ability to play thousands of games while relying on the customer to obtain the ROMs which can not be legally obtained. What we are not doing is trying to claim ownership of the M.A.M.E. open source emulator or sue its authors. We are concerned about the commercial marketplace, and not the readers of the many M.A.M.E. usergroups and forums.
There is a site called fark.com where long bitchfests break out about the definition of irony every time something is defined as ironic.
On this site, I noticed the very definition of irony taking place. I then proceeded to use it as an opportunity to educate the people from Fark about the definition of irony. Somebody replied to my post calling my post ironic, when it was not ironic. Said poster was very quickly corrected on this in private.
In unrelated news, Alanis Morissette is now my bitch.
I used image switching on a site I was working on, only my image was a bit more disruptive.
Create a 1px x 1px transparent gif and open it in a hex editor. I forgot which bytes exactly to change, but if you change a some of the 01's to FF in the first X bytes, you can create a 64kX64K pixel GIF file that weighs in at roughly 100 bytes. Use that as your switched image, and you will have lots of laughs as you see the hotlinker's sites 50 screens wide by god knows how many screens tall. It makes any site totally unreadable and costs almost zero bandwidth to boot. Works for me.;)
1) Shorter battery life to the DS 2) Load times on a portable don't work 3) Crappy design... 4)...And a company behind it that tells the users to put up with the crappy design.
LINUX IS NOT GNU NUMBNUTS!!! ARE YOU MENTALLY FUCKING RETARDED? Linux was inspired by Minix and is a kernel. The programs you are referring to is the GNU Operating System (coreutils, m4, bash, binutils, gcc, etc.), a Free Software OS that cloned UNIX with many additional improvements. (Do you enjoy --long-flags? I hope you do, POSIX states that all commands should be only one letter ala -w. That's a GNU improvement.) This operating system predates the Linux kernel by just shy of ten years, and runs on top of a little kernel called Linux.
Side note - GNU/Linux is far from a time waster. A couple of months back me and another guy had to fix up a few hundred images for a site we're working on. He's the hardcore Windows user who says that "Linux is faster because you don't run as much stuff as you do in Windows"... well duh. And he doesn't see why this is a good thing.
Meanwhile, I'm a hardcore GNU nut who lives and dies at his commandline. We divided the images up in half and started getting to work, him figuring it would take several days to get it all done. Within two hours I had all the images cropped, and twenty minutes (and a short shell script invoking ImageMagick later) I had everything done. Mr. hardcore Windows point-n-click man had a little less than 75 done.
Never mess with a geek who sits behind a halfway decent shell.
I don't know how much this will help, but you can save streaming mp3/ogg radio streams using mplayer. "mplayer -ao pcm http://your.stream.here:port/" does the trick. This leaves an audiodump.wav file that can be converted via lame.
It would only take about five minutes (if that) to hack together a shell script that does this all automagically for you.
I agree with most of your points. RMS's ideas are at times brilliant, while his presentation of those ideas suck. He is a Hacker/Philosopher, and people of either professions are far from being known as 'socially experienced' creatures. A better presentation of those core ideas is more than welcome.
However, it comes to the point where you need to ask the question - "At what point have we strayed from our original purpose?" Open Source was founded to combat the problems in the presentation of the philosophies, which is good. The word "Free" is ambiguous. Different people value different freedoms, I sure wouldn't present the freedom to create a community to the CEO of a company but would present the freedom to use without restrictions, for example. However, people have gotten a little carried away with Open Source and it no longer represents the "why" but instead the "how".
Presenting the development model as more stable is a very good idea. However, when it's presented as the _only_ reason then things have gotten completely out of hand. What about the freedom to study the source code, providing the community and businesses with better experienced administrators? What about the freedom to take an existing program or set of programs and modify them to create a solution custom tailored for my business or organization? Why do I hear of the development model instead of the freedom of choices it gives you, such as the ability to choose from multiple sources of tech support and other services instead of being chained to one company? To a businessman, is the freedom to have my data not locked into a particular vendor unimportant?
The presentation of Free Software is far from perfect. Obviously. However, usage of Open Source to spread the philosophies of Free Software is even less perfect. The development model is the "how". To present the development model as the "why" is akin to tossing your gun over the cliff and taking on an army with your knife - you simply ignore your greatest reasons to get people to switch in lieu of a few points that sound snappy but have no real true depth.
There is a middle ground. Re-read this post and think "Free Software and Business". All people value their freedom. It's just that different people value different freedoms. There is a better way than what we're doing today. We all just need to get off our butts as a community and provide a better implementation and presentation of the old ways, so to speak.
Correction: Bruce Perens' slashdot profile is here, and if the filters mangle it again then there is a space between 'Bruce' and 'Perens' in his handle.
The comments on this thread (A lot of which have been modded all the way up to +5) goes a long way to show how little even the average slashdotter understands what Free Software and Open Source really are.
Free Software - This is software which is Free, as in speech. As in the wind. As in thought. This software gives the users four basic freedoms -
Freedom 0) The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
Freedom 1) The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs.
Freedom 2) The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
Freedom 3) The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Source: The Free Software Definition. Also I would like to note that not only is "free as in beer" not a part of the Free Software philosophies, but the FSF has sold copies of it's sotware since day one! In the beginning of the movement RMS used to sell tapes of emacs for $300 to put a roof over his head. Today the FSF will sell a rather pricey distro, hand compiled for you by the boys at the FSF. This is _NOT_ about free as in beer.
The Free Software movement is about Freedom to use my programs without restrictions (read your EULA, folks), Freedom to give copies of the program(s) to others (sorry, can't give you a copy of photoshop even if you're going to use it only once), Freedom to modify the programs (This program is close to what we need but does not suit our businesses' needs. I'll have my IT boys fix it.), and the Freedom to create a community working together to create great software. More information can be found on GNU's philosophy pages.
Open Source - While the Open Source definition mirrors the Free Software definition in many ways, the two are far from the same in theory and are almost totally different in practice. Real world experience shows that the Open Source movment is far more interested in bug checking than freedom - insert the "many eyes" statement here. This is more development model than philosophy, while FS focuses on the "why", OS focuses on the "how". This is what gets Free Software fans in arms - we worry more about what the software will let us do than about how the software was made. An excellent explination of this is "It's Time to Talk About Free Software Again", written by Open Source co-founder and Debian guru Bruce Perens (/. profile).
Since this post is getting very wordy, I'll close with something I've noticed over the past year or so - When a lot of slashdotters talk about Open Source they're really talking about the freedoms that the Free Software philosophies have given them. Look around at the stories and comments and keep in mind what both movments really are, you'll be quite amazed.
(Please forgive my terse presentation - this can be a very deep subject and I wanted to keep it as brief as possible.)
I read about halfway through the thread and saw the same old stuff. I'll throw in a few off the top of my head.
Overclocked Remix has thousands of video game remixes available for download. Due to the massive amount of bandwidth this takes up, redistribution via P2P is encouraged. In addition, they have bit torrents up of their remixes, with a total amount transferred of roughly five thousand gigabytes.
Star Trek: New Voyages is a fan made continuation of TOS. With the amount of bandwidth a million episode downloads sucks up, they use and encourage P2P and Bit Torrent redistribution.
The audio section of the Free Software Foundation's website has many speeches by RMS, Moglen, etc that can be shared via P2P as long as there is no modifications to the recordings. So far I've uploaded about 20 copies of their various speeches.
All great journeys begin with a single step. While a thousand songs may not seem like much now, the fact that such a service exists shows how far "we" have come.
A music purchasing service that focuses on cross platform compatibility, no DRM, and gives 50-75% of each sale to the artist? While they have "only" a thousand songs, this shows great potential.
Kudos to who ever reads this reply in such an old topic.:)
I agree and disagree with you. While the Free Software / Open Source "thing" is a mess to say the least, I don't think it has to be so. I can imagine the following after an explanation of the basics of the Free Software movement:
"While Free Software gives freedom to the users, it also gives a lot of freedom to the developers. A direct result of this is the Open Source development model, where many people have the ability to constantly look over the code for bugs and better ways to implement functions. Such a development model is not possible with proprietary software, all development model is done by a few programmers hacking out code while trying to make a release date. With Open Source, however, you have many eyes that can find mistakes that the few never could. As such the software is more reliable, faster, and generally a lot more stable than their proprietary versions."
...And so on, and so forth. In real life Free Software and Open Source work together exceptionally well. They need not conflict when it comes to philosophies. However, I would not prop up Open Source and the end all reason for switching. It should be a major point, not THE major point.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed wholeheartedly. I've been around the man a few times, and the image most people have in thier minds about him is way off.
His problem is that he's not the most social creature around, so he tends to come off poorly due to his social ineptitude. Take his speech about free documentation at the O'Reilly conference. While it is very nice (and appreciated) that they're releasing awesome manuals, it's not free for all to use. This threatens Free Documentation -- Since there's these non-free manuals that rock (bought a few of 'em myself), people will be less inclinded to write good Free (speech) documentation, which the movement is in dire need of.
RMS was 1010% correct. However, he told it at the worst possible moment in the most outright manner possible, so he came off as a jerk.
Listen to his words. Watch his actions. But try to ignore how he presents the former. He just doesn't know people all that well.
Ten years ago a computer with CPU-level encryption keeping people from viewing their own data/running thier own programs would be unthinkable. Nowadays, it's just another "trusted computing" thing.
Think ahead, plan for the worst.
And that's your choice. All users should have the freedom to choose what they do to their machines, and the freedom to use non-free programs is one of those freedoms. However, I choose to exercise my ability to use Free Software exclusively.
Big whoop.
Personal response since you asked - For me the #1 reason I began to detest using non-Free software is because I don't like to feel like a damned criminal, and I don't like to feel like I'm getting screwed over. Let's say I buy WinXP. I go in the store, I pay for it with cash, and I walk out. When I get home and try to install I'm faced with a screwed up EULA which forces me to agree to terms that I find highly objectionable. I was not presented with this contract at the time of sale when I bought that software.
I don't like being screwed over. Yes, I do read all contracts I agree to. I'd suggest you do the same, you'd be horrified.
Then after I give permissions to that particular software company, I have to input a number to prove to the software that I actually bought it. And for this particular software I may need to call up the parent company and ask them "May I please have your permission to use this software that I legally bought?"
I don't like being treated like a criminal. I buy, I use, end of subject. I will not have to prove to anyone that I am law-abiding.
So I switched two years ago, and Free Software has given me countless personal freedoms that were unthinkable when I was using a non-free system. I no longer need to worry about legality when I want to heavily modify my system to my liking. I no longer feel as if I'm looking at a sealed black box whenever I want to learn something - the entire system is open to explore in any way I choose. The development of the programs I use are not dictated by any one entity, but instead by the users who have our needs in mind.
It sounds strange, but I think freely now. The technology I use is free for me to hack, rip apart, study, put together, package, Frankenstein into my own project, and so on. And through the freedom of knowledge given to me by free documentation, I have learned how to do just that.
Now when I think of using a non-Free system I am filled with contempt. Such a system would not be modifiable and explorable, but instead packaged together at the whim of someone else and kept from study. On top of this it's bound by an EULA which is morally deplorable and legally questionable. With the current copyright and patent laws, the actions of the largest software vendors, and the BSA breathing down everyone's necks... I refuse to use a non-Free system. I'd be giving up a hell of a lot more than I'm willing to part with.
(Note - please be kind, this is a deep subject and I tossed this together off the top of my head while trying to keep it short. This explanation is far from perfect.)
I have looked at and understood the code for several programs that I made tweaks to or studied. (Gaim, ls, bash, and multi-aterm are clean AFAIK.)
Thousands of people look over the code to thousands of programs. All it takes is one person to notice something fishy for word to get out.
This has nothing to do with GNU Hurd, but instead with Free Software itself - to ensure that users aren't restricted by the software they use it is necessary to have Free versions of _ALL_ parts of the system, including the BIOS. If there is one single part of the system that is non-Free, then the entire system is comprimised.
Contrary to popular opinion, Stallman is the last person in the entire Free Software/Open Source movement that I would expect doing something due to an ego issue. Listen to his speeches, read his writings, hell, email the man himself and ask him if this is due to Hurd. He just wants to see people not chained by thier own technology.
How do I know that there isn't spyware code in my bios revealing information about me without my knowledge? How do I know that the lowest level components of my system will perform without any "Trusted Computing" quirks? If I for some reason need to modify my bios to gain a function (to make boot time clustering easier, for example), how could I do that with a non-Free BIOS? As a student, what if I wanted to study the code to my BIOS so I know how my computer _really_ works, on all levels?
Saying "The license to your BIOS doesn't matter as long as you can run stuff on it" is like saying "The fact that my car's engine is sealed in a lead black box doesn't matter as long as I can still drive." Yeah, on the surface it's true but when you think of the subject with any actual depth it just doesn't make sense.
That's exactly why a Free bios is necessary. I am typing this up in a Free Software browser (Konqueror) in a Free Software window manager (KDE), which run on top of a Free Software graphical manager (X), which runs on top of a Free Software system (Gnu), which runs on top of a Free Software kernel (Linux), which is booted by a Free Software boot loader (Grub). All of this Free Software runs on top of a non-free BIOS.
This raises the question - Am I really Free? When a Free Software BIOS exists, you can make a safe bet that I'll be using it.
(P.S. I'd suggest against using the term Open Source to describe software which is made to protect the rights of the users. There is a huge difference between Free Software and Open Source - Namely OS completely avoids any real mention of software Freedom. You won't find any mention of the four freedoms on OSI's site. Indeed, the only real mention of software freedom is where they call it ideological tub-thumping. This is definitely a Free Software issue, not an Open Source issue.)
For all the people who dismiss Richard Stallman's writings as nuts, I would like note that this story serves as a perfect example of how your freedoms are affected by non-Free software.
You paid your hard earned money for use of this software. You can not legally modify the software to your hearts content (try creating a server/dumb terminal windows distro for your office, for example). You can not look at the source code to find out how the OS _really_ works without signing a draconian NDA. (Indeed, Windows seems designed to be as confusing and difficult to modify as possible to keep people from mucking with it.) You must buy a copy for each computer you install it on, which sucks if you just want to set up a cheap box for your kids. You must comply with a sketchy EULA that when voided makes your copy as legal as one downloaded off P2P. And having read and understood the EULAs to all versions of Windows, I can almost state as fact that a good 75% of Windows users who think they are legal are actually not.
And now you have to call up Microsoft just to get your damn copy of Windows to work. You have paid your money for this software and are assumed to be a criminal for it until you get the smile and node of Steve Ballmer? Wake up and stop bending over! You should not need to knowingly break the law in order to use your software! You don't need to click "next" on draconian EULA's, trying to stay blissfully ignorant of what you have agreed to! The articles written by the Free Software Foundation that talk about freedoms lost are not the ramblings of some dusty academics, they are fighting what people do their best to stay ignorant of every time they sit in front of a computer!
Every Windows user is giving up their freedom to click on icons and be annoyed by clippy. This article is damn good proof that those who speak of software freedom might actually know what they're talking about.
There is a site called fark.com where long bitchfests break out about the definition of irony every time something is defined as ironic.
On this site, I noticed the very definition of irony taking place. I then proceeded to use it as an opportunity to educate the people from Fark about the definition of irony. Somebody replied to my post calling my post ironic, when it was not ironic. Said poster was very quickly corrected on this in private.
In unrelated news, Alanis Morissette is now my bitch.
Yeah, edit bytes 6 and 8 to FF, that would make it a short integer and thus have an upper boundary of 64ksomething. That should do it.
Yeah, it was a wonderful little replacement image. Totally disruptive, very hilarious, non-offensive (harmless), and costs next to no bandwidth.
You know all those idiotic flamewars that spring up whenever the "irony" tag is used?
Once and for all - THIS is irony. You can shut up now.
I used image switching on a site I was working on, only my image was a bit more disruptive.
;)
Create a 1px x 1px transparent gif and open it in a hex editor. I forgot which bytes exactly to change, but if you change a some of the 01's to FF in the first X bytes, you can create a 64kX64K pixel GIF file that weighs in at roughly 100 bytes. Use that as your switched image, and you will have lots of laughs as you see the hotlinker's sites 50 screens wide by god knows how many screens tall. It makes any site totally unreadable and costs almost zero bandwidth to boot. Works for me.
Reasons the PSP died:
...And a company behind it that tells the users to put up with the crappy design.
1) Shorter battery life to the DS
2) Load times on a portable don't work
3) Crappy design...
4)
LINUX IS NOT GNU NUMBNUTS!!! ARE YOU MENTALLY FUCKING RETARDED? Linux was inspired by Minix and is a kernel. The programs you are referring to is the GNU Operating System (coreutils, m4, bash, binutils, gcc, etc.), a Free Software OS that cloned UNIX with many additional improvements. (Do you enjoy --long-flags? I hope you do, POSIX states that all commands should be only one letter ala -w. That's a GNU improvement.) This operating system predates the Linux kernel by just shy of ten years, and runs on top of a little kernel called Linux.
Side note - GNU/Linux is far from a time waster. A couple of months back me and another guy had to fix up a few hundred images for a site we're working on. He's the hardcore Windows user who says that "Linux is faster because you don't run as much stuff as you do in Windows"... well duh. And he doesn't see why this is a good thing.
Meanwhile, I'm a hardcore GNU nut who lives and dies at his commandline. We divided the images up in half and started getting to work, him figuring it would take several days to get it all done. Within two hours I had all the images cropped, and twenty minutes (and a short shell script invoking ImageMagick later) I had everything done. Mr. hardcore Windows point-n-click man had a little less than 75 done.
Never mess with a geek who sits behind a halfway decent shell.
Mankind sucks.
I don't know how much this will help, but you can save streaming mp3/ogg radio streams using mplayer. "mplayer -ao pcm http://your.stream.here:port/" does the trick. This leaves an audiodump.wav file that can be converted via lame.
It would only take about five minutes (if that) to hack together a shell script that does this all automagically for you.
Freedom exported at gunpoint is not free.
I agree with most of your points. RMS's ideas are at times brilliant, while his presentation of those ideas suck. He is a Hacker/Philosopher, and people of either professions are far from being known as 'socially experienced' creatures. A better presentation of those core ideas is more than welcome.
However, it comes to the point where you need to ask the question - "At what point have we strayed from our original purpose?" Open Source was founded to combat the problems in the presentation of the philosophies, which is good. The word "Free" is ambiguous. Different people value different freedoms, I sure wouldn't present the freedom to create a community to the CEO of a company but would present the freedom to use without restrictions, for example. However, people have gotten a little carried away with Open Source and it no longer represents the "why" but instead the "how".
Presenting the development model as more stable is a very good idea. However, when it's presented as the _only_ reason then things have gotten completely out of hand. What about the freedom to study the source code, providing the community and businesses with better experienced administrators? What about the freedom to take an existing program or set of programs and modify them to create a solution custom tailored for my business or organization? Why do I hear of the development model instead of the freedom of choices it gives you, such as the ability to choose from multiple sources of tech support and other services instead of being chained to one company? To a businessman, is the freedom to have my data not locked into a particular vendor unimportant?
The presentation of Free Software is far from perfect. Obviously. However, usage of Open Source to spread the philosophies of Free Software is even less perfect. The development model is the "how". To present the development model as the "why" is akin to tossing your gun over the cliff and taking on an army with your knife - you simply ignore your greatest reasons to get people to switch in lieu of a few points that sound snappy but have no real true depth.
There is a middle ground. Re-read this post and think "Free Software and Business". All people value their freedom. It's just that different people value different freedoms. There is a better way than what we're doing today. We all just need to get off our butts as a community and provide a better implementation and presentation of the old ways, so to speak.
Correction: Bruce Perens' slashdot profile is here, and if the filters mangle it again then there is a space between 'Bruce' and 'Perens' in his handle.
Free Software - This is software which is Free, as in speech. As in the wind. As in thought. This software gives the users four basic freedoms -
- Freedom 0) The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
- Freedom 1) The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs.
- Freedom 2) The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
- Freedom 3) The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Source: The Free Software Definition. Also I would like to note that not only is "free as in beer" not a part of the Free Software philosophies, but the FSF has sold copies of it's sotware since day one! In the beginning of the movement RMS used to sell tapes of emacs for $300 to put a roof over his head. Today the FSF will sell a rather pricey distro, hand compiled for you by the boys at the FSF. This is _NOT_ about free as in beer.The Free Software movement is about Freedom to use my programs without restrictions (read your EULA, folks), Freedom to give copies of the program(s) to others (sorry, can't give you a copy of photoshop even if you're going to use it only once), Freedom to modify the programs (This program is close to what we need but does not suit our businesses' needs. I'll have my IT boys fix it.), and the Freedom to create a community working together to create great software. More information can be found on GNU's philosophy pages.
Open Source - While the Open Source definition mirrors the Free Software definition in many ways, the two are far from the same in theory and are almost totally different in practice. Real world experience shows that the Open Source movment is far more interested in bug checking than freedom - insert the "many eyes" statement here. This is more development model than philosophy, while FS focuses on the "why", OS focuses on the "how". This is what gets Free Software fans in arms - we worry more about what the software will let us do than about how the software was made. An excellent explination of this is "It's Time to Talk About Free Software Again", written by Open Source co-founder and Debian guru Bruce Perens (/. profile).
Since this post is getting very wordy, I'll close with something I've noticed over the past year or so - When a lot of slashdotters talk about Open Source they're really talking about the freedoms that the Free Software philosophies have given them. Look around at the stories and comments and keep in mind what both movments really are, you'll be quite amazed.
(Please forgive my terse presentation - this can be a very deep subject and I wanted to keep it as brief as possible.)
- Overclocked Remix has thousands of video game remixes available for download. Due to the massive amount of bandwidth this takes up, redistribution via P2P is encouraged. In addition, they have bit torrents up of their remixes, with a total amount transferred of roughly five thousand gigabytes.
- Star Trek: New Voyages is a fan made continuation of TOS. With the amount of bandwidth a million episode downloads sucks up, they use and encourage P2P and Bit Torrent redistribution.
- The audio section of the Free Software Foundation's website has many speeches by RMS, Moglen, etc that can be shared via P2P as long as there is no modifications to the recordings. So far I've uploaded about 20 copies of their various speeches.
That's all that I haven't seen mentioned yet.All great journeys begin with a single step. While a thousand songs may not seem like much now, the fact that such a service exists shows how far "we" have come.
A music purchasing service that focuses on cross platform compatibility, no DRM, and gives 50-75% of each sale to the artist? While they have "only" a thousand songs, this shows great potential.
I agree and disagree with you. While the Free Software / Open Source "thing" is a mess to say the least, I don't think it has to be so. I can imagine the following after an explanation of the basics of the Free Software movement:
"While Free Software gives freedom to the users, it also gives a lot of freedom to the developers. A direct result of this is the Open Source development model, where many people have the ability to constantly look over the code for bugs and better ways to implement functions. Such a development model is not possible with proprietary software, all development model is done by a few programmers hacking out code while trying to make a release date. With Open Source, however, you have many eyes that can find mistakes that the few never could. As such the software is more reliable, faster, and generally a lot more stable than their proprietary versions."
...And so on, and so forth. In real life Free Software and Open Source work together exceptionally well. They need not conflict when it comes to philosophies. However, I would not prop up Open Source and the end all reason for switching. It should be a major point, not THE major point.