|
|||
Quote:
"Distributing a program to users without freedom mistreats those users" (his definition of the quality of freedom associated with software being that of allowing actions as required by his four freedoms) "If the users don't control the program, the program controls the users. With proprietary software, there is always some entity, the “owner” of the program, that controls the program—and through it, exercises power over its users. A nonfree program is a yoke, an instrument of unjust power." -- https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-...important.html There are some problems of overwrought language with the second statement and maybe it's debatable how powerless or without choice a buyer of proprietary software is. But even taking only the first milder statement combined with the golden rule, the idea looks okay to me as a moral statement. But then the question for me is whether wrong is quantifiable and whether you can say, "well that's wrong but it's only a little wrong so I'll continue taking jobs producing proprietary software in the absence of good offers for jobs producing free software." Is that the not as bad as fallacy (I learned about in an unrelated thread on this site, thank you) in action or is there a real sense in which degree of wrongness can be quantified and it's legitimate to have a threshold for yourself below which your violations don't cause you to lose sleep? Whether BSD developers would act the same, I don't know. For one, even some (a lot?) of the GNU developers contribute to GNU for non-philosophical reasons so it's hard to say how much the philosophy drives the coding. But assuming some philosophy, or at least attitudes, drive people to some degree, there seems a fundamental difference beyond (or subsuming?) simple dislike of copyleft on the side of many BSD people. I've seen BSD writing in places express a very different moral idea (or simply a motivation? but I'll treat it as an ethic anyway), one that it's good to put something well crafted into the world and have that used (under any license). I guess, in the narrow sense the good is to avoid some fool getting it wrong when they try themselves with the harm coming back on the developer or the world at large. Then in the general sense, perhaps (not sure if I can really infer this), there's the sense of it being good simply to create and add useful well crafted things to the world for their own sake. Like it's good we have televisions (maybe that's a bad example) so the inventor of the television did a good thing. The difference comes when you look at some software that's well done but under a proprietary license and ask whether it would be better that that software exist or not exist. FSF/GNU people generally would say better it not exist while BSD people I doubt would say that in general. (Though it's hard to be sure, since BSD people like less to have philosophical debates (so... sorry for this?), and the places where I have seen them I often tuned out because I didn't like the tone or didn't find the arguments compelling, e.g. BSD licensing being superior to copyleft argued in the form of a pissing contest over which license is shorter textually or is most free in the sense of being free from expressed restrictions in the license. I like the way Jeremy Allison meets the latter kind of argument, which he complained about encountering in its crudest form, I think it was here: http://faif.us/cast/2011/may/10/0x0F/ ) Last edited by thirdm; 5th June 2014 at 04:35 PM. Reason: punctuation |
|
|||
Quote:
Yet - there should be nothing "wrong" or "immoral" about selling a bicycle, but not the detailed drawings that would make reproductions easier. Why be forced to help your competition? It's pretty much the same deal with software, so long as there are alternatives. IMO - the problem RJS was trying to head off, and has tentatively thwarted, is a situation developing in the world where all vendors of software are proprietary, and act as an aggregate entity to exercise unjust power over users. That's my opinion of his opinion. Some large companies act with the force of an aggregate - all by themselves (Microsoft, Apple). So, there is a difference between a hardware driver vendor who is one among many in a vibrant, competing ecosystem, and an overly dominated area, such as is the case with MS. Again, I can't read RJS's mind, and I know that his statements sometimes read as very strong ideological concepts. But, any business man knows that you bargain for more than you know you will get, and figure the realistic figure into the books. This is another way of saying that monopolies are immoral, but business in general is not. One article I read in support of Free software gave the example of all (proprietary) vendors being forced to install back doors for you know who - and there being no Free Software alternative. Last edited by censored; 5th June 2014 at 06:43 PM. |
|
|||
Quote:
It's common for people to define the word freedom in different ways. I've been trying to learn more about traditional philosophy. You talk about freedom in the way that Hegel meant it vs. how J.S. Mill did and you're talking about pretty different ideas. Think of it that way with rms. It doesn't mean you have to agree with him, but it may help you understand where he's coming from. Last edited by thirdm; 5th June 2014 at 09:24 PM. Reason: punctuation |
|
|||
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
|
|
|||
Quote:
GPL=Hegel BSD=Mills If that's the case, I'll think I'll stick with Mills. |
|
|||
Quote:
|
|
||||
Quote:
There is a difference between maintaining freedom and maintaining freedom as long as the use-case fits your personal philosophy. Edit - I would like to extend my personal definition of freedom, if I might. Freedom is the right to do what you want, when you want, where you want, with whom you want, however you want, in whatever matter you desire, so long as your actions do not infringe on the freedom of others. If I fork an open source project into a proprietary project and extend said project with proprietary extensions, people have a choice of paying for my proprietary version or freely (typically) using the open source version. I have not revoked their freedoms in any way (I have provided them, to the contrary, with an alternative). If you say I have to now release my proprietary extensions to the world, you are in fact revoking my freedoms. Control is control, no matter how you cut it.
__________________
Linux/Network-Security Engineer by Profession. OpenBSD user by choice. Last edited by rocket357; 5th June 2014 at 10:40 PM. |
|
|||
Quote:
I'll only remind you you started out with, "THAT is what bugs me so much about Stallman. He has a very narrow definition of "open source" and decries anyone who doesn't precisely meet his definition." Yet you seem to have your ideas of what rights should be ceded in free software licenses and are criticizing people who who prefer copyleft for not following your preferences. Or maybe you just can't get by the use of the word free. I'd recommend Jeremy Allison's thoughts on that. If I recall, the BSDers who were harrassing him with this argument he in exasperation told, "fine, you can have the word free, whatever." Point is you don't have to use GPL software if it's that bothersome to you not to be able to include it in non-GPL works and that they're not unclear about what they're trying to accomplish with copyleft. |
|
|||
The main differences between BSD & GNU licencing to me is that BSD is totally free of any uneccessary impediments on its use, it just basically states 'don't say you wrote it'.
Whereas, under GNU licencing you are obliged to provide the source code when asked to do so, (you used to have to supply it alongside your program at one time). I believe in FREE software for the masses, to do the normal regular things that people do. However if someone wants to create a specialist program, I believe they should be able to licence it as they see fit, as long as they are not using someone elses work in it that has been licenced differently or not for commercial use. That is where the GNU licence seems to annoy some people. Edit: I very much appreciate all programmers who give to the community so freely, no matter what licence they put it under.
__________________
Linux since 1999, & also a BSD user. Last edited by bsd-keith; 6th June 2014 at 09:35 AM. Reason: Addendum |
|
||||
Quote:
Quote:
But I disagree. Proprietary software is not the devil that Stallman believes it to be. Yeah, he's got some accurate points that companies DO utilize their licenses to screw their users over. I agree with him 100% on that. But the core of that issue is *not* proprietary software. 99.99% of the users out there do not give a flip if they have access to the source code, or even if bugs get fixed (unless it directly affects their workflow, of course), or to go a step further, most end users don't even care if security patches are put in place. Think of your typical Microsoft user, or typical Mac user. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've been called out to help a family member or friend with their "computer issues", and they're doing things like disabling Windows firewall while their machine in plugged directly into the internet with a public IP on it. I know you've had similar experiences so there's no need to expound on that. For people like you and I, who do indeed care about source availability, proprietary software is not a good match, and we seek out other sources of software that we can tinker with. Beyond that, we are enforcing our preferences on others when we demand they release their source code. Sure, I disagree with Stallman's policy that other developers release their source code. It's a political issue, not unlike government assistance (i.e. should homeless people go to their local church where they are likely to get assistance, or should the government raise taxes so they can assist the homeless? Think about that. It boils down to "do you trust others to do the right thing?" If yes, you trust the developers to release code free of encumberment. If not, you sue them into releasing their code).
__________________
Linux/Network-Security Engineer by Profession. OpenBSD user by choice. |
|
|||
Quote:
It happens I was reading today some of the comments on an IBM employee's blog about setting up OpenOffice under Apache (it was linked from an old Bradley Kuhn blog entry). If you'll remember some interpreted that as an attack on Libreoffice and copyleft. It was interesting in the comments, Jeremy Allison (geez, how many times have I mentioned this guy -- but he's an entertaining speaker, nearly as funny as Bob Beck, check him out) suggested FreeBSD made out poorly in their interaction with Apple. I suppose he was thinking Apple made out like gangbusters on their code, since Apple has some astronomically larger number of users than FreeBSD. But then a FreeBSD contributor chimed in saying that it was great for them. Some of them got jobs out of it and lots of useful code comes back down to FreeBSD from Apple. Link: http://www.robweir.com/blog/2011/06/...penoffice.html So it's complicated. I can see decent arguments all around (and some bad too -- for instance, the Why you should use the BSD License article on FreeBSD's site is mostly dreadful IMO). Last edited by thirdm; 6th June 2014 at 09:04 PM. Reason: typo |
|
||||
I do not agree with a few of his ideas, but I do agree with most of them. Perhaps a good way of stating my is opinion is; I agree with his general concept of free software, but do not agree with a few of the specifics. Whether one likes him or not, his influence on open source in general, and Linux in particular, cannot be denied. And of course, it is not necessary to like someone to respect them. Although I have lost a small amount of respect for him due to his silence concerning the systemd threat/conspiracy/lunacy.
|
|
||||
Quote:
I dislike that he went on Alex Jones' Show. Hard to take someone serious after they've been on Alex's show. Not that upstanding persons (whatever that means) haven't been on his show. Its just that I have always looked at Alex Jones' show as the place to go for people that like conspiracy but not actual researching. That show is more about attention (show biz) than spreading information. |
|
|||
Don't worry, you're not the only one who doesn't know who s/he is......
__________________
Linux since 1999, & also a BSD user. |
|
||||
To understand why Richard Stallman doesn't actually care about UNIX and why GNU (GNU's Not UNIX) is not really about UNIX - look no further than his own comments:
https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html Quote:
|
|
||||
I find it interesting that after all these years, his dreamed of GNU OS is still nowhere near to becoming a reality. The closest GNU has gotten is the recently released Gnusense, which is just, as far as I know, a Libre Debian. They created the user applications a long time ago, but the kernel is still being created? Interesting. But then, I have not thoroughly researched the developments. So I do not know how many factors I am unaware or.
|
|
|||
The latest release of GNU Hurd was just about a year ago.
I can't comment further, as I've never used it. |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Stallman: How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand? | J65nko | News | 0 | 15th October 2013 12:27 AM |
Opinion for new SOHO Machine - Processor and Windows compatibility | IronForge | OpenBSD Installation and Upgrading | 4 | 1st January 2013 12:44 AM |
Stallman: Did I say Jobs was evil? I meant really evil. | J65nko | News | 1 | 30th October 2011 08:18 PM |