Why Free Software Is More Important Now Than Ever Before

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/09/why-free-software-is-more-important-now-than-ever-before/

by hexis • 13 years ago

383 274 13 years ago

Admire him for his dedication, and for his sacrifice, but his message is not getting through, and it's getting through less each day. Freedom is not an end to most people, it is a means (source: I'm one of those people). I'm not sure what tack he needs to take, but the current one is not going to suddenly start working after so many years of not.

lifeisstillgood• 13 years ago

Stallman does not need to change - either his message or his tack. He is, sadly, right. And the world will hit a confluence of circumstances where we must confront the choice between free/libre software and opaque surveillance.

If Mohammed waits long enough the mountain will move.

jamesaguilar7• 13 years ago

I think the literal falsity of your metaphor speaks for itself. Mohammed can wait as long as he wants. The mountain isn't going anywhere. Things don't have to end up a certain way because it's "right" for them to. And being "right" has failed to win many a time.

dinkumthinkum13• 13 years ago

Well that's just ridiculous. You can't just hand wave and say Stallman's view is right or is the way things should be. Many would not really want to live in Stallman's Utopia.

Stallman freely admits that his view probably entails a certain destruction of programming as a profession that is worth more than ditch digging or deincentivizes a lot of innovation ... I like RMS as a person, and he was a brilliant programmer at one point, but let's be honest, he might as well be using a type writer with a telegraph system.

What is it that you think shows RMS as being clearly right?

ewzimm• 13 years ago

Because it's so easily modified and distributed, free software has become the most common software in the world. Consumers might not care about licenses, but anyone who develops software has gained an enormous amount from free software. Without the FSF and others like them, we would likely be far behind in software development because exposure to source code might be a special privilege.

Nux2• 13 years ago

I'd love to look at some numbers. I'd say that his message gets to more and more people and the current circumstances are making free software more relevant than ever.

I think the ratio of people caring (or not caring) is the same, but sheer numbers must have increased with time.

How are you trusting your Windows/Macos today? :)

Imo, his tack will not work any better because most people continue to not give a shit about their freedoms. Take away "convenience" or "entertainment" and you've got yourself a revolution.

jamesaguilar7• 13 years ago

trusting your Windows/Macos today

Well enough for day-to-day purposes. And therein lies the problem with Stallman's perspective, as it affects the common man.

dinkumthinkum13• 13 years ago

Oh hogwash. RMS is principled but his "all or nothing" approach is less effective than PETA.

The reality is most people don't understand Stallman, neither his detractors or supporters. For most of you that "support" Stallman, he would deride your love of open source as little more being evil or masochistic.

To paint detractors or non-followers of Stallman as mindless entertainment watchers or whatever is very simplistic.

tjr4• 13 years ago

If freedom is not an end for you, but a means, in what respect is it a means?

jamesaguilar7• 13 years ago

Depends on what freedom you're talking about. To give one example, the freedom to vote is important to me because I think the world would get less fun if we had a monarchy or autarchy. But if there was evidence of some form of government where I didn't get to vote but I would be happier and more fulfilled? Happy to give democracy up if the evidence is convincing enough. Freedom of vote is not an end, it is a means to good governance. Similarly with most freedoms.

M2Ys4U2• 13 years ago

I don't think Stallman needs to change his approach or message.

We do, however, need somebody to augment his arguments with ones that will reach people like you.

jamesaguilar7• 13 years ago

Granted. I was inappropriately treating Stallman as "the free software movement." He does not, himself, need to change.

dinkumthinkum13• 13 years ago

Rather than worrying about rhetoric, though, why don't we question whether Stallman is actually right or whether his Utopia is somewhere we really want to live?

oscargrouch• 13 years ago

Good point!

Also, there are something pretty much uncovered right now, that is data, information, privacy, and rights concerning data itself.. its not just a matter of source code anymore.. in the age of the internet it also involves data..

We need a new powerful preacher to augment his message over new uncovered domains..

Thanks to Snowden, people pretty much wake up for it right now.. we lost our virginity, and we are learning the bitter price for our inocence

exceptione• 13 years ago

If freedom is a means then the question should be answered: to what?

A man could be free or otherwise he is bound to servitude.

→ If freedom is a means—possibly intermediately—to obtain freedom then freedom is still an end.

→ If freedom is not a means—possibly intermediately—to obtain freedom then one's end will be to serve someone else.

itchitawa3• 13 years ago

Sadly, the word "free" always has strings attached. For GNU, the GPL license disallows "The freedom to make and distribute copies of your modified versions, when you wish." You're not allowed to attach non-free code or remove the over-complex license agreement, which can make the whole software useless for many purposes. It's not right to call GPL software free, it should rather be "no cost and slightly restricted use".

epistasis2• 13 years ago

I wish he'd stop using the word "free" and only use "libre." The FSF and Stallman's definition of "free" (as it pertains to freedom) is not mine, and I have found few that actually agree with it. Open source's definition of freedom is far more universal, I believe. And using "libre" also gets around the "free as in pizza" distinction.

thejteam4• 13 years ago

I don't like "free" but I wouldn't want a new term to explain to a layperson either.

chatman3• 13 years ago

Open source's definition is incomplete when it comes to protecting the freedom of users. And, libre doesn't imply "free as in pizza" to me.

Daishiman• 13 years ago

That's more of a problem with the English language.

e12e9• 13 years ago

I think the GPL is widely misunderstood by developers. The freedom the GPL is concerned with, and the reasoning behind it, is to preserve the rights and freedoms of the user.

That is, when you acquire a product (for free, or for a fee) -- it seeks to make sure that you can do use that product as you wish. And that if you re-sell it, or share it, those same rights are available for the next user down the line.

The GPL achieves this by bending copyright into copyleft. It is not concerned with allowing people to make money repackaging a piece of software and locking it down in various ways.

So, it is all about freedoms, just maybe not the freedoms that some developers thinks it is/should be about.

epistasis2• 13 years ago

What specific rights and freedoms does the user have with libre software that they do not with open source software?

itchitawa3• 13 years ago

Yes, it's good for end users, but it's not complete freedom so GNU shouldn't make that claim then in the fine print add "...but some kinds of use are restricted." They should be more open and say "freedom for end users but not free to modify and distribute".

curiousdannii• 13 years ago

I would say that the GPL is instead primarily concerned with the freedom of the software, not the authors or users. GPL software can never be taken hostage, even if that inconveniences every human who might want to use it. It's appropriate for some things, but not for everything.

thejteam4• 13 years ago

There is certainly a need for a radically simplified version of the GPL. The average person does not understand all of the ramifications of the license. Here's a scenario that hinders the distribution of open source software:

Teacher: Here, children. Here is some free software. Parent of child: Thanks. It is GPL. Give me the source. Teacher: Huh?

There needs to be a license that is similar to the GPL in scope but is readable and clear about what is required to a person who has never compiled software in their life and is not a lawyer. Open source projects need to realize that not everybody is a software engineer. Not everybody is up to date on the latest terminology. If they want laypeople to download and distribute code, make it easy to get. And above all, communicate clearly in language they can understand.

thristian4• 13 years ago

Have you read the GPL? It uses fairly simple language, no legal jargon, and it's a lot shorter than some EULAs I've seen. I imagine a lot of people just mentally file it under 'legalese' and skip over it, but even a "simplified" GPL wouldn't prevent that.

tedunangst3• 13 years ago

That's a fun game to play. Go to a local Linux users group meeting. Borrow somebody's Debian DVD (someone always has one) and install on your laptop. Wait a year. Look that person up and demand they mail you the source for the exact binaries you installed a year ago.

code_duck2• 13 years ago

That's an odd example. In that case, im pretty sure the teacher, who apparently has no idea about programming, could simply direct the parent to the website of the creators of this GPL software, where the source is available.

yxhuvud• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISC_license is as simple as it gets.

tjr4• 13 years ago

Sure: the GPL does not grant you the freedom to alter the license under which the software was given to you, nor to mix the software with other software under a conflicting license. To do either of those things would work against the freedoms that the GPL explicitly promotes.

Other licenses, such as the X11 license, let you embed the software into proprietary projects. So in that sense you are granted more freedom. But doing that denies other freedoms that the GPL explicitly grants.

dllthomas12• 13 years ago

You can absolutely mix GPL software and incompatably licensed software. What you cannot do is redistribute that combination.

belorn2• 13 years ago

The author of the above comment do not understand software licenses, and the whole commented is constructed around that confusion.

You're not allowed to ... or remove the license agreement

No license agreement allows you as a recipient to ignore the license. At best, you can redistribute a "all right reserved" copyrighted work, while you yourself follows the license. At no point can you actually remove a license and then use it in a way that require authorized permission under copyright law.

You would also have a hard time finding such copyright license. Both BSD and MIT requires that the license are kept in all copies. Removing the license there would be as illegal as it would be to remove the GPL.

Simply put: if you get sued for copyright violation, its the license that the accused must raise in defense. Removing it is guarantied to be illegal except in rare situations such as wtfpl.

itchitawa3• 13 years ago

I just discovered this is a popular political debate so shouldn't be in HN. I do understand how licenses work, just take issue with using the word "free" for something that has artificial restrictions. This comes from frustration of running up against brick walls of "no, you're not allowed to use our software for that" when I tried to use the so-called free software.

NegativeK• 13 years ago

This is discussed frequently.

The BSD license grants you the freedom to restrict the freedoms of others.

The GPL license restricts your freedom to restrict the freedoms of others.

It's not right to call GPL software free, it should rather be "no cost and slightly restricted use".

Is there anything that meets this definition of free? The BSD license doesn't grant this; software under it can have unlimited cost and no source code available.

comex2• 13 years ago

As much as his core message is debatable, it's usually pretty coherent and logical. However, I'd like to criticize one specific part of this essay: the claim that Chrome auto-updates are a "universal backdoor". Although silent updates tend to viscerally feel a bit creepy, they differ little in practical consequence from regular click-through ones: it's not like most users verify the binaries of every package update on their system, so having the user click through just makes an attacker with a fake update wait a little longer. Note that Chrome auto-updates can be turned off, and both the updater and the updated software are (mostly) open source and you are free to compile your own version, so it's hard for me to see the problem.

(for the record - it would be nice to have a system to prevent one server from distributing malicious updates to one user, perhaps by verifying with multiple independently owned servers. However, I do not know of any mainstream software that does that, including free Linux distributions, so it's unfair to criticize Chrome for the lack.)

chatman3• 13 years ago

updated software are (mostly) open source and you are free to compile your own version

The "mostly" part kills your argument. That means, the updates contain non-free parts and are hence unsafe. Chrome should be avoided if Chromium or Firefox works for you.

comex2• 13 years ago

Any binary compiled by a third party could be malicious, whether it's supposed to be compiled from free source code or not, whether it's Google or Mozilla or Debian. Verifiable compilation would partially solve this and would indeed make the non-free parts a problem, but this is another thing that nobody is doing (yet).

edit: Of course this also has nothing to do with the silentness of the updates. :p

rmrfrmrf2• 13 years ago

I would highly encourage anyone who hasn't heard Richard Stallman speak before to look up a few interviews with him before reading this article. This article is written exactly how he speaks, so the tone and cadence are much more dynamic if you have the proper background.

I have to say that Stallman very recently inspired me to start contributing to open source projects. A few weeks ago, I made my first (one word, lol) contribution to an open source project on Github. As minor of a fix as my code was, it felt really great to be part of something like that. It also caused me to do a lot of introspection: I found myself, up until that point, becoming flat-out bored with "consuming" content. I now find myself, rather than frequenting (ok, I still frequent) HN, looking for open questions on StackOverflow to answer or finding open source projects to contribute to. I wonder if that's a sign that, eventually, communities like Reddit and HN will be usurped by social media sites that focus less on consumption and more on contribution. Based on my recent experiences with contribution, I strongly encourage everyone else to do the same; it's really a much more rewarding way to procrastinate!

chatman3• 13 years ago

That is good to know RMS inspired you. Just a suggestion, instead of contributing to "open source" projects, look for "free software" projects.

eurleif• 13 years ago

I understand that "free software" is what RMS prefers, but why is it better to contribute projects using that terminology? Aren't most open source projects also free software projects, even if they don't call themselves that? Isn't contributing to free software a good thing, regardless of what it calls itself?

kazagistar• 13 years ago

What? If they are GPL compatible, what does it matter?

rmrfrmrf2• 13 years ago

My apologies; that's what I meant. I tend to (incorrectly) use "open source" synonymously with "free software" when writing informally.

In this case, the project that I contributed to was distributed under the MIT (Expat) License, which, to my knowledge, is GPL compatible.

w1ntermute• 13 years ago

I love how rms has been preaching for decades, while most of the tech community snidely ignored him. And yet, in the end, everything he warned about turned out to be right.

kaolinite• 13 years ago

Such as? I've heard this said a lot but not heard any examples of non-obvious statements that he predicted, which have turned out to be true.

metaleks• 13 years ago

He predicted eBook DRM in the 90s:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

Decade2• 13 years ago

Sometimes the obvious needs to be said.

Most obvious: In 1997, Stallman wrote an essay in which the protagonist requires a copyright holder's permission to read a book. In 2009, Amazon remotely pulled "1984" out of Kindles.

From the beginning, Stallman has said that closed software holds users hostage. In 2003, Stallman started saying that Windows spies on users. Now, besides the features Stallman was complaining about, we find out that the NSA works to make software less secure, Microsoft actively gives vulnerabilities to the NSA, and Apple is tardy about applying security updates. Both Microsoft and Adobe are trying to get users to switch to unwanted annual subscriptions instead of traditional license ownership.

Stallman has also said that cell phones spy on users. That is increasingly apparent, with cell phone records available for the taking and fake cells to do individual stings.

roel_v6• 13 years ago

This is said so often, but it's plain not true. In the late 1990's he was considered much more of a hero than nowadays, as in the first decade of the 21st century people (not coincidentally, imo, after the first dot com bust) people starting to realize that he's just a religious fanatic with no clue on how to effectuate meaningful, practical change.

dcre• 13 years ago

I feel similarly about this to the way I feel about vegetarianism: doesn't eating 95% less meat have virtually the same effect as eating 100% less? (Not that I've reduced my meat intake by that much.) I don't really believe that consequences are the only thing that matters (and RMS seems like someone who would agree with that). I guess I'm weak-willed.

How many people read his perspective, agree with it (or at least have it resonate deeply with them), and yet still use plenty of non-free software? Google Search, Gmail, virtually any iOS or Android app, .NET, Windows, Adobe, etc. I know I do.

thristian4• 13 years ago

RMS and the FSF have always talked about Free software as a moral and ethical issue, rather than achieving some measurable benefit, so saying "reducing proprietary-software usage by 95% is almost as good" is a different discussion than the one RMS is trying to have. Which is not to say that it's a Bad Thing To Discuss, just different.

Personally, I try to stick to Free software wherever I can, but there are definitely times where I say "screw it" and use something proprietary. For example, my government has an income-tax-filing application that's free-to-download but proprietary. Technically I could get a paper copy of the form, fill it out by hand and send it in, but in the long run I'd rather have the temporary safety of automatic form-validation over the essential liberty of tax-software autonomy. Maybe that's completely unjustified and I'm a terrible person, maybe it's the right decision for me but the wrong decision for society at large, I dunno. If I had an infinite lifespan and could take the time to re-implement all the proprietary software I encounter, I'd like to think I would, or at least contribute, but given I've got Stuff To Do...

Honestly, I think Step 1 of the Free software movement is just to encourage people to think about the consequences of their (software licensing) actions. Some people will agree, some people will disagree, some people will agree in principle but put "ensure software Freedom" at the bottom of their list, just underneath "learn Esperanto", and I think that's OK. As usual, the real problem is exploitation of the uninformed and uneducated, and the more people there are with informed, educated opinions the better off society will be.

jfb• 13 years ago

I think there's an interesting sort of parallel between the differences between Stallman/FSF and those of the O'Reilly "open source" camp; and the differences between deontological and consequentialist ethics. In some ways, it seems like software consequentialism fits neatly into Gabriel's "Worse-is-Better" categorization. As a self-hating meat-eating OS X using Kantian, this is dismaying to me.

memset2• 13 years ago

I (like many of us) have been reading and following RMS for many years now. It is fascinating how things that I used to feel were impractical about his ideas ("if proprietary software gets the job done, then why shun it? We live in a world where we must be practical, etc.") now seem imperative.

This point struck home with his mention of education: how frustrating it is that so much of it lives in, say, Matlab, as compared to any other numerical package!

How frustrating that we all depend on Microsoft Excel (or Google Docs) to do pivot tables!

How frustrating that we depend on github to store our code.

How frustrating that we depend on AWS for our servers.

I spend a lot of my professional life migrating from one closed system (eg, deployments on Rackspace to AWS; cc processing from PayPal to Braintree; accounting from Quickbooks to Netsuite) to another.

I wonder if, in practice, so many of these frustrations would have been alleviated if we, as an industry, had adopted the "impractical" view of insisting on using only free software.

Udo2• 13 years ago

I don't think Github belongs on that list.

cscurmudgeon3• 13 years ago

Last I checked Github itself is neither open source nor free.

Myrmornis• 13 years ago

I love github, but as it is not open source there's no point pretending it doesn't share some of the frustrations that closed-source software bring. Out of all the software I use day-to-day it is the only one that regularly has me thinking "I wish I could change this, or look for an issue or PR discussing changing it". I want mathjax support!

forrestthewoods2• 13 years ago

Frustrating? Are you fucking serious?

How god damned magical is it that not only do all of these things exist but that they are cheap and easy to access. The many, many, many orders of magnitude increase in productivity and possibilities enabled by software in the last 50 years is beyond astounding.

It's not frustrating. It's AMAZING.

nightski• 13 years ago

I don't believe he said that the services themselves are frustrating, but rather the fact that we rely on individual providers (with proprietary implementations) of these services so much.

angersock• 13 years ago

And my, how these golden handcuffs glitter!

dinkumthinkum13• 13 years ago

I think you are looking at it wrongly. Most would look at this and say "How wonderful it is that we can use these things to do X."

Honestly, no one put a gun to your head to use Matlab. No one prevented anyone from creating libre free Matlab.

For some reason I think someone was incentivized with something, not sure what it was, to create such a useful system for doing numerical analysis.

You say you've spent your "professional" life doing these migrations ... Do you regret the money you've made? =)

I mean working with proprietary formats has issues but I don't think it is always intentional vendor lockin.

As far as the integrating payment systems and github etc etc ... It makes wonder if you're under the impression that there are no integration issues with free software systems??

dingaling• 13 years ago

Do you regret the money you've made? =)

I'm not the OP but I do these sort of grinding transitions from one proprietary system to another in project after project.

Yes it pays my salary but it is mind-numbing, soulless work that offers no intellectual stimulation or prospect for technical learning.

So I regret that it is what I have to do to make money.

mariusz79• 13 years ago

You're forgetting that it may seem like no one put a gun to our heads to use Matlab, if you're in school - you're required to use it. The same goes for MS Office, Visio, and hundreds of other programs. Can you imagine how good Octave, LibreOffice or any other open source application would be, if instead of forcing users to buy proprietary versions of software schools and/or students were required to donate just 1% of the cost of proprietary software to open source alternative?

hnriot• 13 years ago

Nonsense, we don't depend on Excel for pivot tables, lots of other software can do that, likewise we don't depend on github, AWS or any of the other examples. This is total hogwash.

abalone7• 13 years ago

A fundamental weakness in the free software argument is that it lacks a solid, broadly applicable proposal for remunerating the effort of software engineers.

A similar argument could be made for the abolition of copyright -- with the same weakness. It helps explain why the free software community has not yet delivered things like Google Docs, Github and AWS.

This does not necessarily invalidate Stallman's argument about the benefits of free software. But without a clear mechanism for producing free software it's little more than a letter to santa claus.

Here's a thought -- what about government support? My impression is that FSF tends to focus on volunteerism and heroics. But government support has produced a lot of the free and open core science in high tech (e.g. DARPA), and via procurement, even supported bringing it to market.

Why not steer the FSF troops towards advocating direct government funding for free software projects and services like a public cloud?

ISL3• 13 years ago

... has not yet delivered things like... Github

http://gitlab.org/

Open source software alone can't spin up hardware. It makes sense to pay someone for providing a physical service.

Github is getting paid already for developing what will someday influence a definitive open-source interface to git and collaboration.

Photoshop is really nice software. The GIMP is too, and perpetually improving. Closed-source programs are sometimes the vanguard to show the world that a particular idea is important and useful. Any sufficiently useful closed-source program will be cloned into open source in today's environment.

15-20 years ago, the world had a plethora of closed-source options for a gui-based OS. These days, open-source offerings compete on near-equal footing.

It's almost as easy as typing:

apt-get install debian

on any keyboard anywhere to get access to a functional GNU/Linux system. A lot of closed-source programmers earned a lot of money showing us what features of that system have mass appeal.

Is a government-funded public cloud not beholden to the government which funds it?

hkmurakami• 13 years ago

One reason would be that (particularly in light of some govt agendas revealed recently) that govt funding would inevitably steer and even corrupt the development of FOSS.

There's even talk about how the NSA, who contributes to open cryptography standards, may have been deliberately placing vulnerabilities in said standards.

davidw6• 13 years ago

The problem, defined more concretely, is how to fund the creation of what economists call a "public good":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#The_free_rider_prob...

Both copyright and government provisioning of the good are ways around the problem. Both are effective in some situations and of course have problems of their own.

I think the government has a role to play in software development in terms of 'basic research' types of stuff. The US government is responsible for the creation of the Internet, and CERN money created the web. But to leave all software development in the hands of the government does not sound like a great solution to me, either, to put it mildly.

pjmlp3• 13 years ago

A fundamental weakness in the free software argument is that it lacks a solid, broadly applicable proposal for remunerating the effort of software engineers.

This is the main reason why after a period on my life, where I was a strong FOSS advocate, nowadays I don't care that much what license a software has. I was anyway already living from coding, before discovering the FSF back in 1994.

It is easy to be a FOSS advocate when still living at the parent's home or as an university student. The problem starts when you want to make a living out of it.

That is why in the end, most desktop software is closed source and the majority of FOSS friendly companies that sell software, have moved it behind a SaaS paywall.

Still one can see how few people are willing to support FOSS developers, when looking at how much money they donate, or how quick someone comes up with a fork when money is asked for.

hershel• 13 years ago

It's not enough to earn money. Technology markets are a winner takes all market, so you have to make enough money to be the winner.

roel_v6• 13 years ago

Jeebus, I jumped the shark by upvoting you after reading only the first three paragraphs (internet attention span, I know), but the last two make me want to double-downvote you. You seriously want government to spend even more, and on funding some people's hobbies FFS? Why not give handouts to, let's say, cabinet makers, to make beautiful furniture for everybody who wants it but doesn't want to pay for it? Talking about cognitive dissonance...

amirmc• 13 years ago

"It helps explain why the free software community has not yet delivered things like Google Docs, Github and AWS."

I'd bet that each of those has benefitted hugely due to FOSS. I might even go so far as to say they wouldn't exit at all without it (though I don't know what underlies Google Docs).

FOSS is great for things 'under the hood' but very few things in the mainstream are FOSS throughout. I find that interesting, as it's indicative of the different pressures in open-source vs closed-commercial environments (remuneration is one such issue).

betterunix4• 13 years ago

"A fundamental weakness in the free software argument is that it lacks a solid, broadly applicable proposal for remunerating the effort of software engineers."

Quick counterexample: the many thousands of programmers whose job is to adapt or maintain free software for the organizations that use it. That includes people working for small companies, large companies, the government (civilian and military), non-profits, political campaigns, etc., etc., etc. It is almost never the case that any software package meets all its intended users' needs, and someone needs to adapt the software when that happens.

"without a clear mechanism for producing free software it's little more than a letter to santa claus"

Clearly such a mechanism exists, as free software is very important and widely used.

"My impression is that FSF tends to focus on volunteerism and heroics"

Hm...

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

maxharris• 13 years ago

Why not steer the FSF troops towards advocating direct government funding for free software projects and services like a public cloud?

"Government funds" come out of people's paychecks. What you're asking for is that everyone be forced to contribute to projects that you approve of, regardless of whether those people value those projects or not. I can't see a valid reason why someone that doesn't know about, need or want "free" software should be obligated to pay for it. What about their own needs, desires, goals and concerns? People need to be left free to keep the money they earn so that they can better their lives and pursue the things that matter to them.

I really like sports cars - I like them a lot. I think they're inspiring to look at, fun to drive, and I could make the argument that there are a lot of people, ranging from children to the elderly, that feel the same way about them. Each of us would love to own, maintain, collect, restore and design new sport cars. Generally speaking, love of these things is connected with all sorts of other interests, including science, math and engineering, art (sculpting, photography, etc.) Just like software, albeit to a lesser extent, sports cars have have some arguable "public benefit" (i.e., a concrete benefit for a finite, delimited subset of individuals in society).

Now imagine that we came up with some kind of government program would shower sports cars on anyone that applied for them. Why should my aunt - who barely drives - be forced to subsidize my sports car hobby, at the expense of her own desire to travel on a cruise ship to Alaska while she still can? (She is 79 years old.)

At this point, maybe you'd say, "Well, software benefits everyone far more than cars do. After all, even people that don't use computers at all benefit from the improved efficiency (lower prices, increased quality, etc.) that computers bring to our economy. So all we're doing here is recouping costs from free riders."

I don't have the space to do much more than to hint at the answer. This is by no means exhaustive, but one fundamental issue is this:

When you say, "benefit," what do you mean? In my view, a thing is not ultimately beneficial to a person unless they come to see for themselves how it is a benefit to their lives, via their own independent judgement. Sure, identifying what's good for other people is fine. But then insisting that they agree with you if and when they do not actually agree subverts their independent judgement, which is the very thing required to produce and select the things needed to improve their own lives. No one should be compelled to eat a meal that wipes out their olfactory bulb and tastebuds.

dllthomas12• 13 years ago

"A fundamental weakness in the free software argument is that it lacks a solid, broadly applicable proposal for remunerating the effort of software engineers."

I'm workin' on it...

duairc• 13 years ago

It lacks a solid, broadly applicable proposal for remunerating the effort of software engineers.

How about this: abolish capitalism. I mean, sure, I agree with you: under capitalism, where people are denied access to the necessities of life (food and shelter) unless they sell their labour to capitalists in exchange for money, it's difficult for people to find the time to fully commit to developing free software. The solution to this is to abolish the system that denies people access to the necessities of life. And this is not crazy: people already live in houses (and for the ones that don't, there are tonnes of empty houses that nobody is using). Food literally grows on trees (unlike money). There's no good reason why everybody couldn't automatically have a place to live and enough food to eat without having to pay rent to some capitalist. I wish more free software advocates understood the more radical implications of the free software argument (and as you say, the same goes for anti-copyright advocates) rather than pretending that it's ultimately compatible with capitalism. It isn't, and we shouldn't want it to be either.

ISL3• 13 years ago

This point struck home with his mention of education: how frustrating it is that so much of it lives in, say, Matlab, as compared to any other numerical package!

Check out GNU Octave:

www.octave.org

It's not Matlab (particularly toolboxes), but for day-to-day work, it's fine, and it will run a lot of *.m files. All of my thesis data analysis is done in Octave. I could choose Matlab (we have a site license), but I want anyone in the world to be able to check my work exactly.

roel_v6• 13 years ago

"but I want anyone in the world to be able to check my work exactly."

The problem is not that they can't, the problem is they don't want to. Solve the real problems first before worrying about imaginary ones. (this is one of the main flaws in most of GNU rhetoric, btw, and I say this as someone who 10 years ago made the 'access to source code is a moral right' argument and actually believed it).

infinitegravity• 13 years ago

"I wonder if, in practice, so many of these frustrations would have been alleviated if we, as an industry, had adopted the "impractical" view of insisting on using only free software."

We'd live in a world with a lot less software and where computing was restricted to hobbyists. Propietary software exists for a reason, and its not because the world is run by the selfish and evil.

I love free software, too, but the thing to remember, and this is true for any discipline -- a massive amount of people will support something because they have the incentive to get money from it. A lot of people love programming, but a lot of people love money even more, and if the geniuses who went to Harvard and Stanford and UC Berkeley decided that they could make much more money in biotechnology or surgery, then that's one less Microsoft or Google in the world that's bad for us users. If these people loved programming more than money, their software wouldn't be proprietary. It's much much easier to make money off proprietary software than free software. Yes, there is dual-licensing and support and donations, but ultimately you cannot directly and legally charge users, your biggest market, to use your program; this logic is supported by some evidence: recently Red Hat reached a billion dollar valuation, making it the most valuable company to be majorly devoted to free software. That's amazing. Bill Gates on his own is worth $56B, though.

I think most people, and most people encompasses the people that make the proprietary software that we rely on most, look for money first and idealism next. We'd have RMS's work and some of the early MIT and UCB hacker's work without the incentive of money, but to get so far as multibillion dollar companies that produce programs 99% of us are reliant on? Impossible without the incentive of money.

olivier1664• 13 years ago

Money isn't only incentive. It also measures the peoples needs. "Do my clients need XXX?" correlates with "Do my clients will pay $$$ for XXX?". For organisation, replacing the need by the money allow to take explainable decision. Fame, power, influence or passion are far less easier to measure than money.

FrojoS3• 13 years ago

I too believe that our civilization should be build on free software and I think the best existing financing solution is crowdfunding. The idea is based on free market capitalism and while it has been around for a while we now know that it works. Kickstarter has demonstrate that it can not only raise millions to finance hardware development and commercial games [2] but also substantial money for free software [3]. I truly believe that at this point, all we need is to propagate this idea and help FOSS developers to crowdfund their projects. Once a project has collected enough money for a first working version, subsequent development can be financed by donations, support or merchandizing. Major updates could again be financed over crowd funding.

[1] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper... [2] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/659943965/planetary-anni... [3] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joeyh/git-annex-assistan...

briandear• 13 years ago

It's hard to get cheapskates to pay $.99 for an app, let alone donate -- at least not at a level to compensate for a company to make any money or even pay the bills. When clothing stores start operating as donationwear then maybe donationwaring the software industry could follow.

The problem is that many people fail to see software as an actual product that needs to be produced. Hopefully Ducati can lead the way with a donation-sponsored business model. Maybe that could illustrate the free-rider principle more clearly.

zaphar• 13 years ago

Here's the thing: Kickstarter is one of those SaaSS systems that RMS was arguing against.

Idealism gives you a target but not a roadmap. As others here have said without Propietary software much of what we have in software just wouldn't exist. Kickstarter wouldn't exist. If the whole world were full of enough people who shared RMS's Ideals then his Ideals would be workable. It's a bootstrapping problem. And RMS spends so much time complaining about the bootstrapping that it sounds like he'd rather not get there all if that's what it takes.

Maybe that's not what he actually thinks but that's how he comes across.

Me? I do want to get there and I'm willing to bootstrap to do so.

ginko• 13 years ago

Non-free software still makes the users surrender control over their computing to someone else, but now there is another way to lose it: Service as a Software Substitute, or SaaSS, which means letting someone else’s server do your own computing activities.

I have lots of respect for RMS and I very much agree with his stance against SaaS, but I feel creating FSF versions of terms is only harming the message he is trying to tell. It reminds me of 1984's newspeak in a way.

cma• 13 years ago

Gratis

mkr-hn2• 13 years ago

Gratis is just another word for free. It's no less ambiguous.

repsilat• 13 years ago

I was OK with "Digital Restrictions Management" because the original acronym is just as political, but when RMS says "iBad" and "iGroan" instead of "iPad" and "iPhone" I have to roll my eyes. I thought we grew out of that sort of thing after we left "Micro$oft" behind.

dgesang2• 13 years ago

Micro$oft got left behind? When did that happen? ;)

wslh4• 13 years ago

I am waiting for the GNU mea culpa.

While I strongly support free software movements, they are not up to the height of the current circumstances. How can I replace my mobile phone OS (and hardware) with a free and completely open source? I am waiting for that. It seems the new mobile trend (iOS/Android) caught them off guard.

tjr4• 13 years ago

You might look into helping the Replicant project, which is working on free software for mobile phones: http://replicant.us/

joe_the_user4• 13 years ago

I don't understand what you think GNU has to apologize for.

GNU is limited by the amount of resources that people into them. In these days of NSA spying and such, the usefulness to society of GNU's having enough resource is becoming clear. But the people most to blame for GNU not having those are ... everyone who haven't contributed (which I'll admit includes me). Those to blame for GNU not having resources probably wouldn't include GNU itself.

wslh4• 13 years ago

Every organization is limited by resources.

I can restate my original (downvoted) comment as: I have a high esteem and respect for GNU but I think they can do more to fight in new causes. It's an intuition.

davexunit• 13 years ago

Waiting around won't advance free software. We could use your help.

wslh4• 13 years ago

I am not waiting passively.

bluecalm• 13 years ago

I am for one ok with propriety software. A lot of people want to make money by writing closed binaries and a lot of people want to buy them. Arguable a lot of cool things came out of this model. In ideal world you could write your software, make it open source so advanced users could hack/verify security of it and still don't lose any (or many) customers, unfortunately it doesn't work that way in our world.

What I am not ok with though are monopolies, lock-ins and influencing education. There is no excuse to teach/use/promote any of the propriety software in schools. There is no reason to use any of that in government institutions. If one vendor has so prevalent position that there is no (or almost none) alternative then it's a monopoly and it's time to deal with it using antitrust laws (which by the way aren't nearly strong enough these days). If there is no free alternative developing it is great project for government to sponsor.

If people not force-feed Excel, Word, Photoshop, Matlab etc. during their education days still want to use that for convenience later in their career - let them. Just give them real choice by educating them with open tools.

joe_the_user4• 13 years ago

"I am for one ok with propriety software... What I am not ok with though are monopolies, lock-ins and influencing education."

I think one important point is that closed-source proprietary software inherently implies lock-in. Some portion of proprietary file formats are crappy bags of bytes because the company wants a lock-in and some portion are that way because of simple laziness and you can't easily sort which.

The other thing about people using matlab is that society at large, the scientific community and such-and-such large groups pay the price of crap being caught within matlab and whoever writes the original code can just move on.

spongle2• 13 years ago

Actually no. Microsoft at least (this thread mainly targets them) doesn't lock you into any file formats. Why?

a) I've always been able to export/extract data at will.

b) All their protocols and formats are specified openly here: http://www.microsoft.com/openspecifications/en/us/default.as...

millstone3• 13 years ago

There is no excuse to teach/use/promote any of the propriety software in schools.

Of course there is, especially for vocational schools. If you're targeting a career, you want to learn the software that is most often used in that job capacity, so you can put that on your resume and improve your chances for landing a job.

It's somewhat different for primary and secondary schools. Generally these schools do not teach individual programs. Instead they teach concepts, and use the program as learning aids. From that perspective, the most important thing the software can do is to just work, and then get out of the way. It's more important that students learn mathematics, than it is for the educational programs to be open source.

If people not force-feed Excel, Word, Photoshop, Matlab etc. during their education days still want to use that for convenience later in their career - let them. Just give them real choice by educating them with open tools.

The vast majority of Excel, Word, and Photoshop users cannot directly benefit from open-ness, because they are not programmers. Matlab may be an exception.

GeneralMayhem2• 13 years ago

I'm still not sure, after all these years of almost identical rants and writings, that I fully understand RMS's views. I don't see why freedoms 2 and 3 (distribution) have anything to do with freedoms 0 and 1 (control). If you want to know what's happening to your data, all you need to know is what's happening on your computer, which means you need to see the source. That's a cause I agree with 100%. I don't understand why you also need to be able to give a copy to your friend.

vezzy-fnord2• 13 years ago

It goes with a moral value that RMS and FSF have been very persistent about: strengthening the community and helping your neighbour.

RMS even once gave a talk at one of 2600's HOPE conventions where he said that given a moral dilemma of having to give a copy of a proprietary program to a friend and violate the license versus not giving them a copy and sticking to the license, it would be best to go ahead and violate it.

Of course, he later went on to explain that free software would serve to get rid of this moral dilemma and that it would be optimal to not use proprietary software at all.

RMS' speeches always highlight the value of the community and the role free software plays in strengthening bonds. I believe he's right, as file sharing in general has become an invaluable part of daily life in the developed world.

GeneralMayhem2• 13 years ago

Sure, but again, that has nothing whatsoever to do with the rhetoric of freedom. It dilutes the message, and it's needlessly antagonistic. It alienates people like me who don't think the model of getting paid for what you build is a bad thing.

And of course, his scorched-earth, perfect-or-nothing style of morality doesn't help - open source should, even to RMS, be a lot better than Windows, but he never acknowledges it. When you have little enough public support to begin with, focusing on the things that separate you from potential allies isn't a good way to do business.

Of course, I'm not anywhere near as successful or accomplished as RMS, and probably never will be, so maybe I shouldn't tell him how to do his job. Maybe he just doesn't give a shit if anything actually changes, so long as he stays pure, and if that's what he needs to sleep at night, then fine. But that doesn't make it look any less counterproductive from where I'm sitting.

PeterisP• 13 years ago

Freedoms 2 and 3 are required so that the first freedoms work in practice. You don't want simply to be able to see and modify the source - you want as much people to see the source so that they as well can find the backdoors for your benefit; you want others to be able to make improvements and distribute them so that the improvements benefit you as well.

And given the nature of business, it is critically important that people are allowed to do this even against the wishes of the original creator/distributor, because it is the only way to prevent 'anti-features'. If your software vendor has intentionally inserted a backdoor, you need others to be able to legally distribute a fixed version; if your software vendor has intentionally not included some compatibility you need (say, with your own product file formats), you need to be able to distribute a fixed version of their product to your customers.

chernevik4• 13 years ago

I am constantly amazed by and grateful for free software. I write with vi, code in python, work with data in MySQL and Postgres, grapple with text with sed and awk and a host of utilities. I teach courses on MySQL, I think the Windows / closed approach has unnecessarily deadened the average user's ability to appreciate and explore and use their computers. Open source, as idea and software, is great.

But.

"When you use proprietary programs or SaaSS, first of all you do wrong to yourself, because it gives some entity unjust power over you. . . . It also wrongs others if you make a promise not to share."

Yeah, why? Because RMS says so? There is NO possibility of a closed source usage that is "just"? Is there anything like an argument for this, outside of some Marxist-derivative account of the inevitability of economic structures? That closed source might be bad is possible -- that it is so bad that no reasonable person of good will can possibly hold some other opinion really isn't.

Freedom is the right to make decisions, and some times bad decisions. Claiming authority to judge the bad, and thus invalid, decisions, really lays the foundations for some serious power moves. Maybe RMS thinks corporations and free contract and market forces are some kind of sham, and maybe he's right, but it isn't as if there isn't another point of view. Why do I have to sign up with a core ideology to be supportive of open source? Actually, why do I have to sign up with an ideology that sounds positively hostile to a lot of what I think and believe?

The technical arguments for open source are tremendous. The ethical arguments for it aren't bad. But setting the whole debate in terms agreement with one man's morality is a non-starter for me.

Now I can use and support open software without signing up for the whole ideology. And I do. But the two are so associated that I often feel my own integrity requires using some bandwidth expressing disagreement with large chunks of the "open source philosophy". That's a poor use of time, and it diffuses the best arguments. Insisting on open source as some moral imperative is poor philosphy, and poor rhetoric.

joe_the_user4• 13 years ago

"Freedom is the right to make decisions, and some times bad decisions. Claiming authority to judge the bad, and thus invalid, decisions, really lays the foundations for some serious power moves."

Uh, having the technical means to make unilateral decisions for someone else (often secretly) is what lays the basis for "serious power moves" as we've seen with the NSA. "Judging someone" is also known as "expressing your opinion". Stallman expressing his opinion hardly gives him the serious power that, say, NSA arrogates to itself by installing backdoors in people's computer, using secret laws to seize private keys from service providers and so-forth.

ajross2• 13 years ago

This seems like a strawman. You aren't disagreeing with the specific points, you're saying that because you don't agree with everything in the essay that you're ... somehow offended by it. And I understand that, because I lived for years in that same "RMS is a unrealistic pinko commie idealist whose ideas don't work in the real world" camp. The thing is, he was right. He was right about pretty much everything.

So sure: you don't like his tone, and I understand that. But I don't think you're completely clear on his points.

chernevik4• 13 years ago

This isn't his tone, it is the foundation of his argument -- closed source is necessarily and fundamentally immoral, nay, evil. That's an extraordinary claim, which drives his thinking to absolutism. And its bases have implications far outside the field of software.

joe_the_user4• 13 years ago

Maybe RMS thinks corporations and free contract and market forces are some kind of sham, and maybe he's right, but it isn't as if there isn't another point of view.

While RMS may be something of anarchist, I would also like to point out that here he is making a very kind of argument. That is, when someone uses proprietary, closed source software they are inherently signing a "mystery contract", meaning that since because they inherent don't know what the software will do, they inherently give away some of their knowledge. And moreover, given that software (in the form of browsers etc) is now used as people's "window on the world", people potentially give up a lot of their freedom (and the NSA revelations certainly show the potential here).

I think all of the argument for the efficiency and desirability of free markets hinge on full information availability to allow free choice. And so I actually think a libertarian could agree that proprietary soft is inherently undesirable just as they'd agree a "contract for slavery" would inherent undesirable.

chernevik4• 13 years ago

Much of theory and thinking on markets recognizes information assymmetries. That's one reason trust, reputation and enforceability of contract matter. People buy stuff in functioning markets without full knowledge or transparency all the time.

And sure, some decisions are so clearly lousy that they can't be respected / enforced -- such as a contract for slavery. But they are few and far between. Saying an iPhone is the same thing as indentured servitude is a pretty long reach.

dinkumthinkum13• 13 years ago

So, like I'm on your side but RMS view is more complex than that. But I think even if the criticism attacks somewhat of a strawman view, I think you are essentially right. However, I think it is simpler to just say regardless of whether or not RMS view is "morally right," which is a rather complex matter itself, I think it is enough to recognize the reality that it is an unworkable Utopia that virtually no one would really want to live in and certainly would not led us very far toward technological innovation ... And before anyone gets up in arms about, Stallman has freely admitted as much and remains principled and undaunted by that. I get it. Apparently, Kant wouldn't haves lied to the murderer either ... but let's get real here.

emiliobumachar4• 13 years ago

You do not have to "sign up with a core ideology to be supportive of open source".

If you feel morally obligated to express your opinions on the issue often, and is worried about the time it takes, I humbly suggest a blog post with a short-ish url.

millstone3• 13 years ago

You might be interested to learn that out of your list (vi, Python, mySQL, Postgres, sed, and awk), only MySQL is released under a free software license (GPL). The others are released under BSD or BSD-like licenses.

my own integrity requires using some bandwidth expressing disagreement with large chunks of the "open source philosophy".

You're looking for the distinction between "free software" and "open source." The FSF is very vocal about the difference, which is great, since it is important. See rms's article at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html .

"I love open source, but I don't buy into the free software ideology" is totally valid, and apparently a popular position, judging by the choice of licenses in software you listed!

chimeracoder• 13 years ago

You might be interested to learn that out of your list (vi, Python, mySQL, Postgres, sed, and awk), only MySQL is released under a free software license (GPL). The others are released under BSD or BSD-like licenses.

The BSD license (and "BSD-like" licenses) are free software licenses. "Free" does not mean "copyleft".

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html

auggierose• 13 years ago

I respect RMS and his point of view. But I don't believe in any religion, not even the RMS variety.

b1daly• 13 years ago

I know I'm not unique in being bugged by RMS's ideas but I do feel the need to attempt to articulate why. There has been, in the rarified world of tech commenters, an increasing number of people claiming Stallman has been proven correct by recent events. This seem to converge around the rise of iOS propriety "walled garden" (and similar systems) and the Snowden leaks.

I don't see it. The argument shouldn't be that systems have come to dominate that are closed.Stallman is making a moral argument, as such there need to be proportional harms being enabled by such closed systems.

Potential harms are not the same as actual and his arguments seem to focus on those. In the mean time the world goes about its business and people are happily using all sorts of software. Along with free (as in beer) software like that of Google, and relatively secure systems like those of the big tech companies, many are also use various flavors of "libre" and open source software.

An accounting of harms, potential or otherwise, needs to have benefits included, otherwise it remains an exercise in ideology.

This nags at me as well in hysterical discussions of NSA spying, which sometimes strike me as a sophisticated form of chicken littleism.

If one stubbornly sticks to an absolutist form of ideology for many years, eventually some of the predicted harms, or at least similar ones, might come to pass. But this didn't mean the ideology is correct. Without a more complete and balanced analysis it's hard to say.

I feel similarly about the absolute conviction displayed by some that NSA spying is an absolute wrong. While it does seem bad In some ways, it is not a slam dunk in my view. I can see some value in spying if it substitutes for more violent methods of control, and if it does actually lessen crime/terrorism.

chestnut-tree• 13 years ago

I am fine with closed-source applications. For me, the most important thing is open file formats, protocols and codecs. Open formats, protocols and codecs should not be owned by any company.

Most programs manipulate data in some way. Open formats let you switch from one program to another without losing your data. It opens up opportunities for paid, free or SaaS solutions and users can choose whatever suits them best. For most people, their concern is about their data: what happens if they stop using program x which manipulates their data in a proprietary file format.

PDF is a good example of this - once a proprietary file format, it is now an open standard. There are dozens, if not hundreds of free and paid-for programs that let you create, edit, view or save PDF files. (Some of the Free Software viewers are better than Adobe's bloated Reader software.)

Just imagine what the state of graphics programs might be if Photoshop PSD files or Illustrator ai files were open formats? Or if everyone used a common word-processing or spreadsheet format?

keithpeter• 13 years ago

Nice article to point students at: software has less 'valence' for them than, say, clothing (c.f. No Logo, Naomi Klien) and so we might get a discussion going.

I'm surprised that noone has mentioned the recent restarting of the gNewSense project, version 3.0 is Debian Squeeze with blobs removed. I'm posting this using the live ISO from a USB stick with a USB wifi adaptor (Thinkpads have wifi cards that need closed firmware). Everything else works. The release announcement was posted on HN but only gathered 3 points...

EGreg2• 13 years ago

RMS pretty much saying the same thing he always says, but this time in Wired.

hacknat• 13 years ago

>If the users don’t control the program, the program controls the users.

I hate that he says this. And, he says versions of this a lot. Of course there are times when he is right, but I think a lot of times he’s not.

Most of us make trade-offs. I use Gmail, I know that it might not be the best product anymore, I am certainly aware that my private correspondence is being crawled by Google. Here’s the important thing, I don’t care. It’s not that I trust Google, I just don’t think that trust is something that I value from my email provider (others might, and they should seek their email service elsewhere).

Why would you ever trust a company? Any why is it owed to you that you should get to live in a world where you can?

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