To begin, my position on this matter has been clear for years: both free software (as defined by Stallman) and non-free software (as defined by Stallman) can co-exist. I believe in free market (not ideal free market).
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For the free software movement, however, nonfree software is a social problem, and the solution is to stop using it and move to free software.
We in the free software movement don't think of the open source camp as an enemy; the enemy is proprietary (nonfree) software. But we want people to know we stand for freedom, so we do not accept being mislabeled as open source supporters.
These two quotes strike me. Why should we label proprietary software as enemy?
If we clone all proprietary developers to work on free software alternatives, then we definitely have more options to choose from. The problem is not a social problem -- it isn't that people, average like my parents, don't know free software exists - but because there aren't enough to choose from. Like I said, if you can clone all of the developers to work on free alternatives every day, you will definitely have free alternatives. If you only have a handful of people working part-time as a hobby to contribute to free software, how can you compete with proprietary software?
I am not against free software. I like free software (as defined by R.S). I like open source. I also think proprietary softwares have value. Note here on HNs a lot of people run X-as-a-service. In the ideal world, if everyone knows how to program, if everyone has access to a computer, if everyone has time, we could have the old Internet back; imagine a world where everyone can write, distribute and host their free X-as-a-service for people to use? That's why knowledge base like Wikipedia is important to us. I like this ideal world, but at the moment this is not easy to achieve.
You don't need to teach me to use free software. If it is free and open source, and reliable, I will use it. But if the interface is ugly, unusable, crashes all the time, and if there is no reason for me to contribute back (say an IRC client), I will dump that software and look for something else. I am a programmer, but I am not going to contribute to every software I use. I don't have the time. I don't have the necessary skill. I have more important things to do like finishing my work, looking after my family, relax, cooking, working on my hobby project, and getting enough sleep.
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But software can be said to serve its users only if it respects their freedom. What if the software is designed to put chains on its users? Then powerfulness means the chains are more constricting, and reliability that they are harder to remove
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Sooner or later these users will be invited to switch back to proprietary software for some practical advantage.
This is a good time to re-mention MS Office vs LibreOffice/OpenOffice. I am fine with LibreOffice's Word processor and PowerPoint program until I need to do something complex. If I just need a quick PPT or a quick doc I can get away with LibreOffice. But when I need something complex, polished, I like to use MS Office. True I have been raised to use MS Office since I was a kid. It is true MS is locking me in all the time, but it is simply because the features in LibreOffice is still lagging behind. I will be happy to dump Office completely if LibreOffice continue to improve.
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Under pressure from the movie and record companies, software for individuals to use is increasingly designed specifically to restrict them. This malicious feature is known as Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) (see DefectiveByDesign.org) and is the antithesis in spirit of the freedom that free software aims to provide. And not just in spirit: since the goal of DRM is to trample your freedom, DRM developers try to make it hard, impossible, or even illegal for you to change the software that implements the DRM.
I don't want to start a flame war on DRM. This is as dirty as complex as politics. After reading the FAQ on http://www.defectivebydesign.org/faq#what I will point out a few striking remarks:
If you purchase electronic copies of games from Steam, you can't sell them or share them with a friend after you're done playing them.
I don't see this as a violation of my freedom. If the license given to me is restricted to my account, why is it okay for me to distribute it to my friends and everyone in my friends' circles? The other examples may be violation of freedom, I won't argue. What do you propose? Create a universal gaming platform where you can download games and all you need to access a game is to own an account. Say pay $29.99 and I can run a Steam game I didn't purchase but acquire from my friend? If Steam has a feature to transfer game (say only once) but locked to Steam platform, is that a violation of freedom?
Are Hollywood the one to blame? Not exclusively. This way, all their customers remain dependent on them, and helps maintain their dominant position in the market.
I think this is a direct attack on anyone who is trying to come up solutions. If you are a solution technology company, your job is to create a solution. Just as Google is an excellent search engine I feel attached to using it because it provides what I want 8/10 times. As a customer of Google's search engine, I am okay with Google keeping its dominant position by using the search engine. When Google SE fails to deliver the right results I might use Yahoo, Bing or even DDG.
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I feel like a lot of the free software advocates seem to be against the existence of proprietary software and any business depends on proprietary software development. As I have said before, I think both can co-exist. Do I want free software? Of course. I would like to own a free copy of Mac OSX and able to modify from start to finish. But I don't think everyone should be told to use free software.
> I believe in free market (not ideal free market).
Nothing about proprietary software reflects a free market. The entire proprietary software industry can only exist through the existence and practice of copyright law. Nothing about copyright law has anything to do with the usual tenants of free markets - voluntary exchange, property rights, and informed transactions. It is just made up rules with (maybe) good intentions and catastrophic consequences.
> Why should we label proprietary software as enemy?
Because it violates Richard Stallmans, and anyone who agrees with him (so at least the entire FSF and GNU project) ethics.
> I also think proprietary softwares have value.
The act of being proprietary adds no value to any software. It only serves to take away potential value in the ability to trust, understand, reuse, and modify it. The only exception is software that only functions through its obfuscations, such as DRM, and that entire class of software is implicitly anti-user and only functions to take away more freedom.
> but at the moment this is not easy to achieve.
The ease of accomplishing something should never be just cause to work for or against it.
> because the features in LibreOffice is still lagging behind. I will be happy to dump Office completely if LibreOffice continue to improve.
You probably (assumptions here) have done no part to fund or participate in the continued development of LibreOffice, while you have paid Microsoft for their Office suite. You are directly incentively the continued usage and development of proprietary software without doing anything for the free alternatives. Even if you have contributed to LibreOffice in some way, you are still sustaining the proprietary freedom depriving Microsoft suite through both your purchase and usage of it.
> I don't see this as a violation of my freedom.
Free software has three tenants - the ability to study, modify, and share software. Implicit to Steam is a violation of (at least) one of those freedoms. You are free to not consider them freedoms in your ethical outlook.
> But I don't think everyone should be told to use free software.
It isn't about forcing anyone to do anything, it is about removing the force already imparted upon you by proprietary software vendors that restrict your ability to modify or redistribute software. Richard Stallman (probably) doesn't give a shit if you use emacs or a competitor, as long as both are free, or at the least that you understand that you are sacrificing your freedoms to use convenient proprietary alternatives.
Nothing about proprietary software reflects a free market. The entire proprietary software industry can only exist through the existence and practice of copyright law.
Not exactly, since Freedoms 1 and 3 could still be abridged even without copyright, by just releasing binaries.
It's also worth mentioning that without copyright, all GPL-licensed code would enter the public domain, so you would then be free to modify it and only release the modified software as a compiled binary.
That's the plan (although RMS/FSF would also be happy with a less egregious copyright system; eg. like the early 14 year copyright system).
In the mean time, the copyleft is a clever hack which exploits the current copyright system to make it less biased against Free Software. If the copyright system goes, so does the bias, so there's no need for copyleft anymore.
It is just made up rules with (maybe) good intentions and catastrophic consequences.
Not necessarily catastrophic though I can see this as an argument to defeat patent trolls.
My main point is that in a market where can freely consume a freeware, free software and fully proprietary software is a free market. A world with only free software is still one sided.
The act of being proprietary adds no value to any software. It only serves to take away potential value in the ability to trust, understand, reuse, and modify it.
There isn't always a need to actually understand, reuse and modify a software if the user only wants to use it. Proprietary software cannot be studied and trusted fully -- that's true, but if there is no free alternative competitive sacrificing is how we live in this world.
You probably (assumptions here) have done no part to fund or participate in the continued development of LibreOffice, while you have paid Microsoft for their Office suite. You are directly incentively the continued usage and development of proprietary software without doing anything for the free alternatives. Even if you have contributed to LibreOffice in some way, you are still sustaining the proprietary freedom depriving Microsoft suite through both your purchase and usage of it.
Using a software is already participating in the continued development of LibreOffice.
If I could take a train to get to work in 15 minutes, why would I bike for 45 minutes to work every day? I may bike occasionally, but definitely not everyday. If LibreOffice is convinent to do everything I need to do with MS Office, I'd switch permanently. If not, they will both co-exist on my computer.
How will removing MS Office do any good to free software if I don't actually write code for LibreOffice in the first place?
Is there not enough people already writing code and plugins for LibreOffice suite? Sounds like free software moment is pushing people to write free software because they don't have enough developers who are willing to put time writing code for free software.
Implicit to Steam is a violation of (at least) one of those freedoms. You are free to not consider them freedoms in your ethical outlook.
That's why free software movement from R.S. is radical to me.
It isn't about forcing anyone to do anything, it is about removing the force already imparted upon you by proprietary software vendors that restrict your ability to modify or redistribute software.
The force imparted upon me is due to the fact the free alternatives aren't good enough or just don't exist. If there exists one that works really well, like proprietary software, the force is not as strong as you think.
If we shall, free software is awesome, it has the ability to study and modify the software in any way the user wants, now, how do I make a living off my work?
> If LibreOffice is convinent to do everything I need to do with MS Office, I'd switch permanently. If not, they will both co-exist on my computer.
LibreOffice will never be as convenient if you keep paying Microsoft to improve Office. If you truly cannot switch to LibreOffice 100% then you might consider making donations to LibreOffice for the same amount as an Office license would cost. That way, at least you're not being biased against LibreOffice.
> My main point is that in a market where can freely consume a freeware, free software and fully proprietary software is a free market. A world with only free software is still one sided.
And my argument is a world with only free software is just one without copyright law. How about we add in a new kind of software - loanshark software. You have to pay monthly and you get a random file from the source code each month as per the EULA. We don't have much of that software around, though, so I guess the market is lopsided and needs more balance?
It is all artificial, and yes, even the release-the-source part of the GPL is artificial. But if we lived in a world without copyright, we wouldn't need the release the source stipulations because you couldn't profit off artificial scarcity of information anymore anyway, so not releasing the source would just be considered a dick move. But platform lock in matters a lot less when you have no way to profit by "having the platform" since you can't enforce distribution restrictions.
> but if there is no free alternative competitive sacrificing is how we live in this world.
What software is there without free alternatives? I'd get started tomorrow on any unique problem not addressed to some degree by a free software project. If you are going to argue "the proprietary has more features and convenience than the free", then of course it does, our current copyright regime enables the profiteering off information denial, you can make profit off of denying freedoms. So businesses can bloom under it. It just means you are leeching value out of artificial constructs and are redirecting effort and money artificially.
> Is there not enough people already writing code and plugins for LibreOffice suite? Sounds like free software moment is pushing people to write free software because they don't have enough developers who are willing to put time writing code for free software.
There are never enough people. We could have most of the human species devoted to the development of free software and we wouldn't have enough. There is always work to be done, especially if you are claiming MS office as having features Libre doesn't - then yes, Libre is understaffed and needs either funding or developer hours to make it better, and that is your (and my, and everyone elses) responsibility if you believe in software freedom. If you don't, and won't consider it, then the entire argument is moot since the whole position of free software assumes a belief in it by providing its rational argument for why it is optimal and why proprietary software is bad.
> That's why free software movement from R.S. is radical to me.
And your stance is radical to me, because I think respecting a users freedom should be assumed, not extraneous.
> If we shall, free software is awesome, it has the ability to study and modify the software in any way the user wants, now, how do I make a living off my work?
You do the same thing you do anywhere else, you propose value and seek compensation for your work. "I want to add bloom filters to GIMP, but will need about 400 hours to do so, and at $50 an hour that is about $20000 of work, so if I can raise that money I'll implement the feature".
The same thing applies to pretty much all other copyrighted works, but this is beyond the scope of free software arguments and into the anti-copyright movement, but it boils down to "charge for scarce resources, not for artificially restricted infinite information".
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For the free software movement, however, nonfree software is a social problem, and the solution is to stop using it and move to free software.
We in the free software movement don't think of the open source camp as an enemy; the enemy is proprietary (nonfree) software. But we want people to know we stand for freedom, so we do not accept being mislabeled as open source supporters.
These two quotes strike me. Why should we label proprietary software as enemy?
If we clone all proprietary developers to work on free software alternatives, then we definitely have more options to choose from. The problem is not a social problem -- it isn't that people, average like my parents, don't know free software exists - but because there aren't enough to choose from. Like I said, if you can clone all of the developers to work on free alternatives every day, you will definitely have free alternatives. If you only have a handful of people working part-time as a hobby to contribute to free software, how can you compete with proprietary software?
I am not against free software. I like free software (as defined by R.S). I like open source. I also think proprietary softwares have value. Note here on HNs a lot of people run X-as-a-service. In the ideal world, if everyone knows how to program, if everyone has access to a computer, if everyone has time, we could have the old Internet back; imagine a world where everyone can write, distribute and host their free X-as-a-service for people to use? That's why knowledge base like Wikipedia is important to us. I like this ideal world, but at the moment this is not easy to achieve.
You don't need to teach me to use free software. If it is free and open source, and reliable, I will use it. But if the interface is ugly, unusable, crashes all the time, and if there is no reason for me to contribute back (say an IRC client), I will dump that software and look for something else. I am a programmer, but I am not going to contribute to every software I use. I don't have the time. I don't have the necessary skill. I have more important things to do like finishing my work, looking after my family, relax, cooking, working on my hobby project, and getting enough sleep.
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But software can be said to serve its users only if it respects their freedom. What if the software is designed to put chains on its users? Then powerfulness means the chains are more constricting, and reliability that they are harder to remove
<delete chars>
Sooner or later these users will be invited to switch back to proprietary software for some practical advantage.
This is a good time to re-mention MS Office vs LibreOffice/OpenOffice. I am fine with LibreOffice's Word processor and PowerPoint program until I need to do something complex. If I just need a quick PPT or a quick doc I can get away with LibreOffice. But when I need something complex, polished, I like to use MS Office. True I have been raised to use MS Office since I was a kid. It is true MS is locking me in all the time, but it is simply because the features in LibreOffice is still lagging behind. I will be happy to dump Office completely if LibreOffice continue to improve.
-->
Under pressure from the movie and record companies, software for individuals to use is increasingly designed specifically to restrict them. This malicious feature is known as Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) (see DefectiveByDesign.org) and is the antithesis in spirit of the freedom that free software aims to provide. And not just in spirit: since the goal of DRM is to trample your freedom, DRM developers try to make it hard, impossible, or even illegal for you to change the software that implements the DRM.
I don't want to start a flame war on DRM. This is as dirty as complex as politics. After reading the FAQ on http://www.defectivebydesign.org/faq#what I will point out a few striking remarks:
If you purchase electronic copies of games from Steam, you can't sell them or share them with a friend after you're done playing them.
I don't see this as a violation of my freedom. If the license given to me is restricted to my account, why is it okay for me to distribute it to my friends and everyone in my friends' circles? The other examples may be violation of freedom, I won't argue. What do you propose? Create a universal gaming platform where you can download games and all you need to access a game is to own an account. Say pay $29.99 and I can run a Steam game I didn't purchase but acquire from my friend? If Steam has a feature to transfer game (say only once) but locked to Steam platform, is that a violation of freedom?
Are Hollywood the one to blame? Not exclusively. This way, all their customers remain dependent on them, and helps maintain their dominant position in the market.
I think this is a direct attack on anyone who is trying to come up solutions. If you are a solution technology company, your job is to create a solution. Just as Google is an excellent search engine I feel attached to using it because it provides what I want 8/10 times. As a customer of Google's search engine, I am okay with Google keeping its dominant position by using the search engine. When Google SE fails to deliver the right results I might use Yahoo, Bing or even DDG.
-->
I feel like a lot of the free software advocates seem to be against the existence of proprietary software and any business depends on proprietary software development. As I have said before, I think both can co-exist. Do I want free software? Of course. I would like to own a free copy of Mac OSX and able to modify from start to finish. But I don't think everyone should be told to use free software.