RMS on evil developers, spying social networks, the legitimacy of Anonymous

http://rt.com/news/richard-stallman-free-software-875/

by Tsiolkovsky • 15 years ago

92 112 15 years ago

dimitar2• 15 years ago

I think its unfortunate that RMS speaks at RT - a channel that broadcasts Russian government propaganda and weird conspiracy theories.

pnathan4• 15 years ago

He's in Russia this month, as I recall the FSF newsletter's information.

dimitar2• 15 years ago

And what? He couldn't find any credible media to speak to?

chousho• 15 years ago

A doctor doesn't go to heal the healthy, but the sick. If this channel really does broadcast propaganda, where better to spread words about freedom?

spodek2• 15 years ago

From the article: "Stallman is the man behind the concept that every computer program must be free for users to study and modify as they want."

Does he suggest software must be free?

We know he doesn't say the must be free in cost. Does he say they need to be free as in speech? I've never heard him say that. I don't think of him as telling others what they must do.

I feel like a lot of the polarization around what he says comes from misunderstanding. This feels like one of them.

dchest5• 15 years ago

Does he suggest software must be free?

Yes.

taylorlb• 15 years ago

and not just monetarily free, but free from ownership by any one interest or group

willvarfar• 15 years ago

> I don't think of him as telling others what they must do

Then think of him as telling others that they mustn't limit others

brmj• 15 years ago

He consistently states that he views this as a moral imperative. He's not exactly telling everyone that they have to, but he is saying it is fundamentally morally wrong not to.

bct4• 15 years ago

I'm not sure why it matters either way; it's not like he's going to send goons to your house if you don't release your source.

Dove• 15 years ago

Does he suggest software must be free?

If you mean must as in, it should be illegal to do otherwise, I'm not sure. I don't think so, but given that he casts the conversation in terms of human rights, I can't entirely tell.

But if you mean must as in, does he really think all software, without exception, should be free? Absolutely. I think that's clear from the linked article alone.

spodek2• 15 years ago

I meant must as in must. I know the should part.

I think the difference between must and should is significant.

topbanana• 15 years ago

Yes. Can't wait to see AirTrafficControl-buntu.

spindritf• 15 years ago

Free air traffic control software doesn't really sound absurd. Software doesn't give one air traffic control centre any advantage over another. That's not how they compete if they compete at all, so they may as well give it away.

chewbranca• 15 years ago

Sounds more appealing than "Windows for Submarines" - http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20081225.aspx

magic_haze• 15 years ago

This is not far from reality, actually: most ATC programs run on oss stacks anyway. Only, I can't imagine anyone willing to maintain those vast mountains of unmaintainable code gratis.

flatline• 15 years ago

I really respect many of Stallman's views but I still have trouble reconciling GPL'd software and sustainable commercial innovation. Doesn't the GPL level the playing field to such an extent that the competition can undercut your business model with trivial ease? I would hate to put a bunch of work into something that I planned on making money from only to have perfect copycats overnight. Selling support only scales well for some software.

jshen• 15 years ago

I don't think your reasoning applies to most software. I'm guessing most software these days runs on the server. Think of heroku. If they open sourced their full stack they still wouldn't have to worry too much about copycats. It still takes a lot of expertise and work to run something like heroku, and they are always making progress which the copycat would have a hard time keeping up with.

DasIch• 15 years ago

It works perfectly if you use GPL'd software for a web service or you don't actually sell the software but service for it.

anon1385• 15 years ago

It works perfectly if you use GPL'd software for a web service

I think RMS sees that as a loophole in the GPL rather than a desirable feature. Hence the existence of the AGPL.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/index_html

We recommend that people consider using the GNU AGPL for any software which will commonly be run over a network

prodigal_erik• 15 years ago

Or charge up front for the labor (which is inherently scarce) rather than writing on spec and charging for copies (which never needed to be scarce).

dchest5• 15 years ago

What I understood (from one of his talks), Stallman doesn't care about your business model. As simple as that -- if you can't figure out how to make money while writing free software, that's your problem. The software may eventually be written by those who can figure out the business model, by those hired to write such software, or by those who don't care about making money.

As for how this affects commercial innovation, I don't know. [Added:] I guess, the point is that human rights (according to RMS, proprietary software restricts freedom) are more important than innovation.

polymatter• 15 years ago

or you can simply write the software and give it away as part of your portfolio. A visible portfolio of good code will lead to more/better paid work.

SkyMarshal• 15 years ago

More likely that human rights are more important than making money. GNU/Linux and its ecosystem has demonstrated that innovation is orthogonal.

pnathan4• 15 years ago

This is my chief difficulty with the GPL as well. As a profession, we can't self-destruct with an ideology of giving everything away in a society which we have to pay rent, insurance, etc.

I don't have a solution, wish I did.

ajross4• 15 years ago

This is a fallacy. It's equivalent to arguing that any increase in productivity (which is precisely what this is: less effort expended to develop software) is bad. But it's wrong. Over time, those freed from obsolete jobs are employed by society to do new stuff (stuff that wasn't practical before because of labor costs) and we all benefit.

And even in the short term this is pretty much just plain wrong. Almost all GPL software is written by people paid to develop GPL software.

bfrs4• 15 years ago

Oh god, the rent! Thanks for the reminder.

I wonder when we will cross the post-scarcity point on housing. Considering that about 50% of my monthly expenses goes to rent, I think reducing the cost of housing is where most of my mental energies should be devoted. My partial solution is "Commodity Housing", i.e., housing so abundant that what you pay is close to the maintainance costs, which I estimate would be on the order of $50-60/month (excluding electric/gas, water/sewage and garbage disposal expenses which most of us already pay for separately).

I can't seem to figure out why, when there is so much land in the U.S. [1], the rents are still so crushingly high [2]? I only have a partial answer in rent controls [3] and zoning laws.

[1] http://persquaremile.com/2011/01/18/if-the-worlds-population...

[2] http://shine.yahoo.com/green/simple-life-in-manhattan-a-90-s...

http://financiallyfit.yahoo.com/finance/article-113345-10728...

[3] http://www.baycitizen.org/columns/elizabeth-lesly-stevens/sm...

@pnathan: I reposted this above, hoping it gets more visibility. Once again thanks for the rent reminder.

rdouble• 15 years ago

His views on free software come from a very different idealized reality than what actually exists. From the GNU Manifesto:

In the long run, making programs free is a step toward the postscarcity world, where nobody will have to work very hard just to make a living. People will be free to devote themselves to activities that are fun, such as programming, after spending the necessary ten hours a week on required tasks such as legislation, family counseling, robot repair and asteroid prospecting. There will be no need to be able to make a living from programming.

maigret3• 15 years ago

Which has some truth in it. Our world is already struggling to keep people employed despite continuous productivity gains. As developers, we know the next 20 years will probably be low risk for us, but many professions are endangered. Who will be a truck or taxi driver when the Google car will work fine? Who will need secretaries when Siri will be evolved? New technologies are just not creating that much jobs.

Note that I am not disagreeing with you, I just suppose that RMS may not be completely wrong.

bct4• 15 years ago

The key phrase being "In the long run". We won't get to that idealized reality if we make the wrong decisions in our current reality.

pessimizer• 15 years ago

And to a significant degree, he and people who used the concepts and structures that he originated have pushed reality in that direction.

bfrs4• 15 years ago

I wonder when we will cross the post-scarcity point on housing. Considering that about 50% of my monthly expenses goes to rent, I think reducing the cost of housing is where most of my mental energies should be devoted, instead of yet another social/local CRUD app. My partial solution is Commodity Housing in urban areas, i.e., housing so abundant that what you pay is close to the maintainance costs, which I estimate would be on the order of $50-60/month (excluding electric/gas, water/sewage and garbage collection expenses which most of us already pay for separately). I can't seem to figure out why, when there is so much land in the U.S. [1], the rents are still so crushingly high [2]? I only have a partial answer in zoning laws and (ironically) rent controls [3].

[1] http://persquaremile.com/2011/01/18/if-the-worlds-population....

[2] http://shine.yahoo.com/green/simple-life-in-manhattan-a-90-s....

http://financiallyfit.yahoo.com/finance/article-113345-10728....

[3] http://www.baycitizen.org/columns/elizabeth-lesly-stevens/sm....

Jach• 15 years ago

If you own the copyright over your GPL'd code, you can do a multi-license business model and sell/build proprietary stuff on top of the open core. (Or open stuff on a proprietary core, or a mixed core, etc.) When other people do the same thing, suddenly you have even more open cores out there (besides the ones done without profit motive) to build stuff on that you'd otherwise have to reinvent at a negative cost factor.

Mixing open and proprietary, while perhaps not in line with RMS's views, is still a great way to make money, and you can even do it with the GPL in many circumstances. (Not always though.) In the gaming industry, I find philosophically pleasing the approach of Carmack and some indie companies who make a credible commitment to open sourcing the software (not necessarily the art assets) at a certain date in the future while making money on it at release.

Edit: I also want to add that copycat fears are generally out of proportion. Copycats usually don't win, as in displace the original's dominance. (What usually happens though is the original starts copycatting others to keep a safe, steady income flow, and possibly to crush newcomers if the thing being copycatted isn't sufficiently novel. You're not going to get big by copycatting, though you might get a modest sustaining profit.)

omouse5• 15 years ago

I think the multi-license model does work with RMS's views, it's just that you have to make sure that you're selling the same software; the GPL version cannot be limited or treated as trial software.

Using a proprietary license for businesses means that you can punish them for refusing to use GPL'd software by making them pay more. When they accept the GPL, then you reward them with a lower price (but not free, you can charge for GPL software too ;-) ) hopefully encouraging more GPL'd software to be released into the world.

The point is to reduce how much proprietary software there is and increase how much free software there is and multi-licensing uses a carrot and a stick based on pricing to do that.

tptacek2• 15 years ago

Of the open source licenses, GPL is (ironically) the friendliest to commercialization because its terms make commercialized forks difficult (because it's difficult to close-source the fork).

One reasonable strategy is to adopt one of the fascist GPL variants (like AGPL3) and then offer a commercial license alongside it.

chc2• 15 years ago

But then you can't accept any contributions, so you lose much of the benefit of the GPL, right? If there is going to be any community around the source, it will have to be a fork, and to you it will effectively be closed source since you can't relicense their code.

omouse5• 15 years ago

Commercialization isn't necessary for innovation. Stallman sees a world where software is free because it's abundant. There's a whole different system of economics there. Your current business model is based on our free market system where profits rule which means that giving away your software for free is stupid and unsustainable.

Different economics means much less competition and much greater co-operation. Even if there are perfect copycats selling overnight, they're hitting a different market than yours. They may going after a local market or one based on a particular language

jerrya4• 15 years ago

With software patterns the US has become a dangerous place for software development, including innovative software development

That's close to how I feel about patterns as well.

bitwize• 15 years ago

Yeah, that Gang of Four, man. Almost as bad as the original Gang of Four.

stock_toaster• 15 years ago

Four horsemen of the scrumpocolypse?

tux1968• 15 years ago

RMS is likely to be judged very kindly by future historians for fighting the good fight. But let's hope that it's not because his worst fears have come to fruition.

neilk• 15 years ago

Oh yeah, he's one of those guys that nobody wants to talk to when he's alive and in everyone's face, but will be widely praised after he's safely dead.

plg• 15 years ago

I think it's great that RMS still generates debate. These are issues that we should always be thinking about and debating. What a wonderful legacy.

shocks3• 15 years ago

I agree with a lot of RMS' views, but I would be very interested to know what he thinks about computer games (PC, and consoles). Can anyone shed any light on this?

The way I see it, games are much like an interactive film. It's an experience someone has personally created for us. It's more of an art than a computer program. I'm aware of open source games, but I wonder how an open source model would affect a game like Battlefield 3? Cheating would surely be rampant. I certainly do not expect Terabytes of data when I watch a film so I can make the changes I want, nor do I expect sheet music when I buy an album. Games are as much of an art as music & films.

What about consoles? They are viciously protected from custom modifications. I don't agree with this, I believe it's our hardware and we should be allowed to do as we wish (hey Microsoft, blowing fuses in my NVRAM without telling me is really not cool).

dchest5• 15 years ago

See this talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_3i7ZX_Gvk "Copyright vs Community".

Text: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-versus-community.htm...

Search for "I distinguish three broad categories of works".

shocks3• 15 years ago

Many thanks for this.

pantaloons3• 15 years ago

> Cheating would surely be rampant.

Not at all, as it is anybody can modify the game binaries in the same way they would modify the source code (albeit with more difficulty).

Cheating is prevented by having a central server validate all client actions for consistency, or in games without a simulation server (Starcraft II) having clients compare a game state hash and disconnect if they differ.

Client side cheating (Wallhacks, Aimbots) are not preventable without a locked down client, open source or not.

shocks3• 15 years ago

But open source would make cheating far more "assessable". It would be a trivial job to modify the opacity of walls for example - I imagine such a feat would be substantially harder without access to the source code (of course, still possible).

It's easier to trust a "cheating hack" if it comes as a source code patch or the source code is readily available. If I was so inclined to cheat, I certainly would not trust a strange patch/executable from some shadowy figure I knew nothing about.

JoshTriplett2• 15 years ago

> Client side cheating (Wallhacks, Aimbots) are not preventable without a locked down client, open source or not.

You can easily prevent wallhacks; just don't tell clients information they shouldn't display to the user, such as the positions of players the user can't currently see.

omouse5• 15 years ago

In opensource code, you would have decentralized servers run by various groups that may or may not accept "cheating" (cheating is just a different set of game rules). You could have peers validate the game rule set for each of their peers as well so that everyone playing on servers is agreeing to the "cheats".

jerrya4• 15 years ago

Similarly are distributed computing projects like SETI at Home which (last I knew) were explicitly NOT open sourced because allowing others to see the code would explicitly undermine their trust in the computations done remotely.

I haven't seen RMS address that either; I think his views would be interesting.

seiji• 15 years ago

Zealotry is not compatible with nuance.

dchest5• 15 years ago

Can't such software be reverse engineered?

Also, the home page for BOINC (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/) says it's open source.

tikhonj• 15 years ago

Isn't the natural solution to something like that just to do some redundant computation? I think that's how people deal with similar problems in services like Mechanical Turk. It would, at worst, make the computation three or four times less efficient but would limit both active meddling and errors. Also, relying on a closed source for security is a bad policy anyhow.

redthrowaway• 15 years ago

>I would be very interested to know what he thinks about computer games

See Stallman's Reddit AMA (#7): http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/rms-ama.html

Essentially, he thinks that the production quality associated with studio games is not worth the sacrifice in user freedom. Your point about games being much like film is an interesting one. Elsewhere in the AMA, he says that he doesn't consider proprietary software that controls, eg, a microwave, to be unethical as it's functionally indistinct from hardware. Now, with some games (cough BF3) being functionally indistinct from movies, it would be interesting to know whether he believes those, too, are unethical. My guess is yes, as there are many things like DRM and data collection going on behind the scenes that the FSF is opposed to.

rbanffy3• 15 years ago

It's really ludicrous we all know the business model of record labels and movie studios, of selling the right to use and possess something that costs nothing to duplicate, is dead while we are still delusional about our ability to sell software licenses...

paulhauggis• 15 years ago

"costs nothing to duplicate"

I have a challenge for you. Make the last Metallica album in your home without making copy. How long do you think it will take you? How about Photoshop?

If you find it's difficult, it's because the original is what costs money, not the duplicate.

I also find it interesting that you can't see the value in bits that "cost nothing to copy".

Yet, with currency, it's just ink and paper (physically worth considerably less) that represents much more in value. I'm not sure why this concept is so difficult to grasp when we've already been using it for many years before digital content.

steve-howard2• 15 years ago

I was particularly shocked by the following:

"The Anonymous protests for the most part work by having a lot of people send a lot of commands to a website, that it can’t handle so many requests. This is equivalent of a crowd of people going to the door of a building and having a protest on the street. It’s basically legitimate. And when people object to this, let’s look at who they are and what they do. Usually they are people who are doing much worse things"

So he's saying that DDoS attacks are legitimate, and anyone who doesn't think they are is up to no good?

IvarTJ• 15 years ago

If I understand, he is first of all referring to DDoS attacks where many people voluntarily traffic a server with common computer setups, not when a small number of people pull off major attacks using extra resources such as unwilling puppets.

steve-howard2• 15 years ago

It's still an intentional denial of service.

RMS on evil developers, spying social networks, the legitimacy of Anonymous

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