Free & Proprietary

by sant0sk1 • 18 years ago

36 92 18 years ago

sspencer2• 18 years ago

Stallman's inability to see how damaging his rhetoric is to his cause is rapidly overshadowing any of his achievements.

I went to HOPE 2006 in NYC a few years ago, and ran into him while heading to a lecture about Asterix PBX use. As a huge admirer of GNU tools and the GNU/Linux operating system in particular, it was thrilling to finally get to meet one my heroes. For about a few seconds.

I shook his hand and somewhat shyly asked him to sign one of the few paper-based items I had in my bag, a copy of (surprise surprise!) PG's "ANSI Common Lisp". He refused outright, claiming it was not "free" in its licensing and printing.

I shit you not. The man is that much of an asshole.

I just goggled at him for a moment, and wandered away in a daze.

Don't get me wrong, I love his ideas. Information wants to be free. But to be so mindlessly pedantic about little things like what he is signing detracts from his cause.

pg4• 18 years ago

Odd. What's not free about ACL? All the code is available online with a notice saying you can use it for whatever you want.

http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/paulgraham/acl2.lisp

sspencer2• 18 years ago

Was that available in 2006? If so, I guess he just meant the book, which is even more bizarre. So he won't sign any book not published by a "free as in speech" publishing house?

Curiouser and curiouser.

sfg• 18 years ago

I do not think he is talking specifically about the code. From http://www.gnu.org/doc/gnupresspub.html:

"GNU Press publishes ...books on computer science using freely distributable licenses... We believe the reader should be free to copy and redistribute it, just like our software".

I do not know what right readers have to distribute ACL, but if it is in anyway restricted then I would guess that is what he means.

kleevr• 18 years ago

I recently watched the documentary called "Revolution OS" and became disenchanted with the guy as a personality.

(The movie is available on the NetFlix WatchNow service...ironically only if you run windows+IE+MediaPlayer.)

andreyf12• 18 years ago

It's also available on Google Video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7707585592627775409

or as avi: http://vp.video.google.com/videodownload?version=0&secur...

It's funny, but I thought Stallman was portrayed very well in that movie. I found final scene in which he describes what "the whole GNU project" is in one sentence especially touching - it's my favorite in the film.

aggieben5• 18 years ago

To me the great irony is that FSF software isn't really free either - it just has its own restrictions that it prefers to others'. To me, FSF is synonymous with "hypocrite", and seems to have sprung directly from Stallman's own peurile bitterness, and not from anything so noble as what they claim.

Even if you like the FSF stances (and I have no problem with that), I think it's hard to argue that their idea of "free" is really, truly free as Stallman likes to pontificate.

I shit you not. The man is that much of an asshole.

After years of stories about interactions just like the one you described, interviews, and countless mailing-list flame fests, this should be perfectly obvious to anyone.

Let anyone think I'm picking on Stallman because of personality differences, here's another: Theo de Raadt. He is most definitely an asshole - but at least he's consistent, focused, and not judgmental.

ericb2• 18 years ago

The MIT license and the BSD license are much truer to the idea of "free" than any FSF licenses.

The FSF licenses cause more proprietary code to come into existence (duplication at a great cost to society) when companies cannot integrate GPL products with their proprietary licensed software. So companies write their proprietary version of the component and no one can see the source, or the source of their subcomponents.

bitdiddle6• 18 years ago

So what's your definition of "free"?

I believe FSF code, as in GPL is free. There are four freedoms that come with it. The only restriction is that one can't deny others the same freedoms. You're also free not to use it.

I find it interesting that so many criticize RMS for his character and style. I find myself very tolerant of people who are very talented programmers. I think RMS is a pretty decent programmer. Emacs, GCC, ... have added a lot of value over the years.

derefr• 18 years ago

I think of it like this: GNU's "free" is really "the freedom of software." That is, it's not what's better for the users/property owners (think fascism) but what's better for the software itself, as an entity (think democracy.) Your right to freely use the software stops where the software's own right to not be "jailed" begins.

To put it another way, the GPL is definitively the license that will apply to AI entities in the future, who, I suspect, will be their own copyright owners. ;)

andreyf12• 18 years ago

To me, FSF is synonymous with "hypocrite"...

The FSF licenses aren't about giving individuals more freedom, but about ensuring more freedom for everyone. Think of each time someone accepts a license as an edge in a graph - with his licenses, Stallman doesn't want to just add more edges to the graph, he wants to change the shape of the graph all together.

brent2• 18 years ago

You honestly think his rhetoric (mostly ignored) overshadows emacs, gcc, and gdb? You must be kidding.

Also, if he wasn't such a pedant from the start we'd be MUCH worse off.

andrewf• 18 years ago

The whole book is an invariant section!

Tichy• 18 years ago

Calling him an asshole for not giving you an autograph? I am rather impressed by his determination. He should have double checked the license for ANSI Common LISP, though.

henning2• 18 years ago

Irony: Matt uses Wordpress, free software that owes its success to the proprietary software from Six Apart starting to really suck.

aston• 18 years ago

Where's the irony? Matt thinks proprietary software has its place, and he likes free (as in beer) software.

henning2• 18 years ago

Where is the awesome proprietary software that has smashed Wordpress to pieces which he referred to? His analysis about relative quality is off the mark. Looking at Photoshop and ignoring Emacs, gcc, gdb, git, Apache, and all the other great free software isn't fair.

drewcrawford2• 18 years ago

This is a fantastic essay. I appreciate Stallman's work, but I find myself much more aligned with the likes of the OSI or Apache Foundation than the FSF. It is refreshing to see Stallman's philosophy intelligently challenged.

One rather large supporting argument the author overlooked: Stallman/FSF have appeared to largely reverse their stance on open standards; his/their views on OOXML and C# are incomprehensible to me. We could argue the technical advantages of ODF vs. OOXML all day, but the total sum of the philosophical difference between the two is zero.

LogicHoleFlaw3• 18 years ago

I believe that the FSF's stance on the OOXML standard is that the standard is so unwieldy, obfuscated, and incomplete that it is infeasible for any group but Microsoft to implement it, and that that deliberate infeasibility is sufficient reason to exclude OOXML from being ratified as an ISO standard.

davidw4• 18 years ago

> The market and the individuals who comprise it, rather than Richard Stallman, should decide, as they have in the past, which software people use.

Yes, although there's a footnote there: in winner take all markets, the externalities can drive people to feel 'forced' into choices. You can buy a car from whoever you want, pretty much - they're all interchangeable. But try living in the corporate world without .doc. It is finally starting to become feasible, but it's a tough, uphill battle.

That makes people frustrated.

drewcrawford2• 18 years ago

The reason .doc is ubiquitous is because, at one point, MS had the best product and it was adopted by the market. There was no coercion--it was a choice between MS Word or a vastly inferior product.

Today, things are different. There are many wonderful office suites. But it's no good saying that we should restructure the pie as if office suites were new instead of old--Office is ahead because OO and iWork and whoever else were years late to the game. If they continue to be superior, they'll gain market share in spite of MS's best efforts.

davidw4• 18 years ago

I'm not saying someone should step in and 'restructure' anything, just that there's cause for users to be a bit grumpy with the world because some markets are 'winner takes all'.

> If they continue to be superior, they'll gain market share in spite of MS's best efforts.

The point of big network externalities is that that doesn't necessarily happen. Qwerty and Betamax being cited (albeit disputed) examples - I'm sure there are other good ones.

bitdiddle6• 18 years ago

.doc a best product. Sorry no way. Word to this day cannot produce anything near as good as Tex. I daily watch long email threads of collaborators struggling to share .doc files written with different versions of Word on different platforms.

sayrer• 18 years ago

I don't think this post is a good way to frame the argument. In particular, it's pretty hyperbolic when it comes to the effectiveness of Gates' philanthropic efforts. Like, what kind of madman would oppose the greatest giving campaign the world has ever seen?

America's earlier robber barons showed similar changes of heart. It seems incredibly misguided to frame an abusive monopoly as a triumph of laissez faire economics. Adam Smith would not approve.

mattmaroon11• 18 years ago

I was more saying that you shouldn't attack Gates FOR his philanthropy, as Stallman does. Not that his giving makes his business practices or proprietary software immune to criticism.

gwniobombux2• 18 years ago

Nope, Stallman does not attack Gates FOR his philanthropy. That's misstating the facts. He questions the mode of operation of the Gates Foundation based on an LA Times article, possibly this one: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx0...

bitdiddle6• 18 years ago

I agree that one shouldn't attack Gates FOR his philanthropy, but one should look closely at that foundation before forming judgments one way or the other. There are lots of questions about it with respect to his views on drug patents and one can legitimately question the investments. After all, the Perkins institute for the blind was founded by a drug dealer.

Moreover I didn't read the RMS as attacking the foundation.

I was put off by the tone of many of the blogs pieces about the RMS article. I've never seen RMS as "bitter" about MS. I think it was good timing on his part during this little love fest at Gates' retirement to point out that MS has not done much for computing science. RMS has given programmers a lot, much of it for free (as in beer and as in freedom). The only thing he seemed to be bitter about is the Linux versus Gnu/Linux thing.

I suppose this reflects my age, I felt the same way about the Arc bashing when it was released. RMS walks the talk, say what you want about him but you know where he stands. I wish we all had a similar regard for the US constitution.

pingswept• 18 years ago

The point about all else being equal, Matt would choose the free over the proprietary is a good one-- that's more or less how I feel as well.

Matt, if you're listening: do you pirate a lot of software? (I don't mean this as an accusation; I'm genuinely curious. If I had to guess, I'd guess no, but who knows? (Uh, you do). I also realize that there's a reasonably good chance that you won't want to answer "Yes, I pirate all of Adobe's products," or whatever, in public, even if it's true.)

Most people I know don't mind pirating software and don't think about DRM until it stops them from doing what they want. I think that's one reason that free software has, in many cases, failed to beat proprietary software.

brent2• 18 years ago

"... so I appreciate the benefits of free software as much as anyone.

But at home I use some proprietary technologies too. Windows and OSX can be found on the computers there, because they’re still both much more user-friendly than the free alternatives for everyday use, and they have a far more vibrant ecosystem of developers and applications."

Obviously you don't appreciate the benefits as much as anyone.

andreyf12• 18 years ago

It's hard to argue that the man who was the world’s richest for decades could have somehow done better for himself or his shareholders, or the world at large.

Easy - if he had pushed Microsoft to release an open standard instead of .doc, .xls, et cetra, he would have done better for the world at large by leaving a competitive market for office products.

Another - if he had insisted IE6 were standards-compliant and open source, he could have saved companies in web development a whole lot of time and money, and done a lot more good for the world at large.

In the long run, this would also have been great for MS shareholders, as the short-term gains of dominating the office and web browser markets are offset by the long-term damage to the MS brand.

mattmaroon11• 18 years ago

Lol. There aren't short term gains for dominating Office. There are billions of dollars per year for decades. Creating a competitive market would be the worst thing he could have done for himself and his shareholders (though probably a good thing for the world).

andreyf12• 18 years ago

Creating a competitive market would be the worst thing he could have done for himself and his shareholders (though probably a good thing for the world).

That would be a great argument for legally enforcing (certain) software be F/OSS...

andreyf12• 18 years ago

It's obvious that up to this point, proprietary software has created a vibrant ecosystem and immense profits that probably would not have existed were all software open source. It's driven the computer revolution, which is the most significant shift in technology and user behavior in living memory.

I would argue that open source technology has been a much more "vibrant ecosystem", and that open source software is creating a much more "significant shift in technology" than proprietary software is.

I don't think it's reasonable to say anything about what the world would be like "if all software were open source", or how that would happen.

tokipin• 18 years ago

i think the idea is that $$ is a huge incentive

rw• 18 years ago

This Matt fellow needs to lay off the vitriolic rhetoric if he wants to be taken seriously by those he criticizes.

bayareaguy6• 18 years ago

Focusing on touchy-feely stuff like whether some software is better because their spokesperson is a genius/is a kook/made money selling software/popularized the editor millions use/wants to help some people with their riches/doesn't wash their hair because they are afraid of getting soap in their eyes/etc is fun but not really satisfying.

Matt, I think there is some merit to your argument but you fail to take into account the fact that many of the applications you think are superior also have long histories relative to their relatively unencumbered counterparts.

If I look for new proprietary software, I don't tend to see many examples that are as superior to open source software in the same way I might say Microsoft Office is to Open Office. More often I tend to see proprietary software left in the dust as in the case of Apache vs IIS unless I look for niches.

Can you cite any good examples of well-known new proprietary software that is clearly superior then their open source alternatives?

Note I say "open source" and not "free".

mattmaroon11• 18 years ago

Photoshop, and GIMP has been around for a very long time.

bayareaguy6• 18 years ago

Wikipedia says Photoshop has its origin in code from University of Michigan written around 1987 wheras GIMP was started as a student project at UCB around 1994. That gives it a 7 year head start.

axod2• 18 years ago

I agree with most of this, but certainly not the line "It’s driven the computer revolution, which is the most significant shift in technology"

Microsoft in my view completely stifled any innovation for ages with their monopoly and unethical business practices. We went backwards in some cases. If it weren't for microsoft I think a lot more innovation would have happened in computing.

Thankfully that's all changed now.

mattmaroon11• 18 years ago

Do you agree that an order of magnitude fewer people would be using PCs? (I'm assuming that all proprietary OS monopolies are equal, since if MS were never born its possible Mac or IBM would have achieved what Microsoft has.) I don't see how 10% of the developers we have now, even in an all open-source world, could have created anything like what currently exists.

axod2• 18 years ago

No we'd more likely be using GEM or DR-DOS which were both years ahead of what ms was offering.

Jem2• 18 years ago

This probably isn't appropriate for posting here, but I'm out of ideas...

Does anyone have a contact email for mattmarroon.com? There's an infected iframe distributing malware in his Twitter Revisited post but I can't find a way to get in touch with him (no published emails and his whois is protected).

ptm• 18 years ago

you could use his startup contact form - http://www.draftmix.com/help/contact_us

Jem2• 18 years ago

Thanks!

rplevy• 18 years ago

Matt, I want to focus on the part of your argument that FOSS is related to Communism. First, let's define our terms. Hopefully this is not a false accusation, but it seems like you are using "Communism" in the way that conservative politicians and radio hosts use it, i.e. as a straw man political system that is assumed to be restrictive and contrary to free Democratic ideals.

Communism is too loaded of a word, but I think for our purposes "democratic socialism" is a suitable replacement. Democratic Socialism, successfully practiced throughout the world, and very compatible with the goals of many progressive Democrats in the US.

I will contrast Democratic Socialism with Market Liberalism. Market Liberalism is the idea that markets should be unrestricted and do not need to be regulated because they regulate themselves. However there seems to be a consensus among economists that this rosy rhetoric is just not true. The failure of this model may ultimately make the failure of European Communism look like child's play.

I think if I had to define the primary difference between Market Liberalism and Democratic Socialism it would the idea that society should be able guide and shape itself intentionally. This guidance is accomplished by making the structure of society be programmable by the people (instead of the structure being determined by blind market forces).

Market Liberals want to put the future in the hands of complex systems that are not directly related to any human values or guidance. That is the primary difference I think.

Their childish definition of freedom as being able to "do whatever you want" is simply a fairy tale. Freedom has more to with defining the constraints of government, via democratic process, such that the citizenry are maximally empowered, and minimally hampered.

The Market Liberals have no concept of the citizen or duty to cultivate community, the group-level. They only believe in the individual, the selfish gene/meme. They believe in a grossly misguided notion that markets optimize and automatically generate solutions, so that we don't need to choose our own direction as a society. It doesn't take a PhD economist to know how wrong this is. Computer scientists should also know how wrong the market liberalist model is-- optimization does not come for free! At least not in any reasonable amount of time. And as far as government is concerned there is such a thing as "too late".

So, Democratic Socialism does have a relationship to FOSS, though not a necessary one. FOSS shares a philosophy that works well with notions ranging from cooperativist economies (Libertarian Socialism) to Marxism, to plain old vanilla regulated capitalism. The philosophy of government that it clashes with is this permissive "let the market be free" philosophy, in which people can "do whatever they want". The reality of that system is not freedom for people but oppression of the weak by the strong, the gated fortress lifestyle, and gridlock on innovation due to the lower bandwidth of information exchange.

LogicHoleFlaw3• 18 years ago

I feel compelled to say something here. I don't know that I'll be heard over the din, but so be it.

Stallman and Gates stand at two ends of a particular spectrum. The fundamental question is about what rights the users of a piece of software should have. On Gate's end the belief is that the users' right is simply to use the software. Stallman's belief is that the users' right is to use, redistribute, and modify that software. Modern copyright law falls in line with the proprietary side. The GPL is a hack leveraging that same law to guarantee that the users of software governed by it, or software derived from the same, retain the rights of use, distribution, and modification so long as they also abide by the GPL under which they recieved that software. The key point of the GPL is that it restricts recipients of the software from distributing derived works under licenses which restrict the rights of the users more than does the GPL. That is the key point of contention. It is a recursive conditional grant of license dependent upon propagating those rights with derived works.

The key point of proprietary software is that the copyright holder retains the exclusive rights of distribution and creation of derivative works. Copyright law grants broad powers to the author to restrict recipients of software from redistributing it or deriving new software from it. That's the mechanism by which copyright law operates. The intention of the law is to create a framework which encourages the creation of new works by securing those exclusive rights to the author. That exclusivity is not a natural right, but is a statutory one granted by Congress under the powers given it in the Constitution. Developers of proprietary software generally use those rights to ensure that they recieve payment in exchange for the use of the software. Developers of software released under the GPL use those exclusive rights to ensure that all future users of their software retain those same rights.

Disagreement over what the rights of the author are and what are the rights of the user generates the friction on this Gates <-> Stallman continuum. Most people fall somewhere in-between those two extremes. Stallman believes that it is a moral imperative to ensure that all users everywhere retain what he sees as fundamental rights. Gates believes that it is imperative that the authors retain the power to define what rights they grant to the users.

Is Stallman extreme? Absolutely. Is Gates extreme? Absolutely. But both of them are self-consistent and stand as useful measuring sticks by which to measure different approaches to copyright. Stallman may be an ass, but he's an extremely principled one. Gates may be a robber baron, but he exemplifies the power which is wielded via exclusive copyrights, and he stands to do a great amount of good in his philanthropical efforts. Both of them are talented technical minds who have pursued their goals passionately. Both of them have had a huge impact on the modern software landscape. Which of them is right? Personally I think that one needs to measure the results of their efforts to decide. And that's a very subjective and touchy subject which I won't go into here. You'll have to decide for yourself what approach is right for you as a developer of software. I think it's great that the choice is there to make.

Please note that all I'm writing about now is philosophy. I'm not going to touch practical implications yet.

If I have made a factual error, please respond and correct me.

Free & Proprietary

Related Stories