Stallman Unsure Whether Firefox Is Truly Free

Slatterz writes "Among the theories Stallman bandies about in this Q&A are: Facebook may not share private data with the CIA, Firefox isn't really 'free software,' and his dreams of a day where nobody is involved in developing or promoting proprietary software. Agree or disagree?"

Leave Stallman alone *sobs*

Firefox is a strange case, since initially the sources were free software but the binaries released by the Mozilla Foundation were not free. They were non-free for two reasons: they included one non-free module, Talkback, for which sources were not available (even to the Mozilla Foundation); and because they carried a restrictive EULA [end-user licence agreement].

I think these two problems have both been corrected, so maybe the distributed Firefox binaries are free software today.

He is sure Firefox was not free.

He is knows the problems have been corrected.

He is not sure right now because he uses lynx.

Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs*

It's understandable, the keys is all right next to each other.

Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs*

He's said in the past that he doesn't have a problem with Trademarks as long as it is easy to remove them.

It's all part of the idea that you should make it clear that you modified the program so that the original programmer's reputation isn't harmed by any bugs you introduce.

He doesn't say Firefox isn't really free software

He in fact says:

Firefox is a strange case, since initially the sources were free software but the binaries released by the Mozilla Foundation were not free. They were non-free for two reasons: they included one non-free module, Talkback, for which sources were not available (even to the Mozilla Foundation); and because they carried a restrictive EULA [end-user licence agreement].

I think these two problems have both been corrected, so maybe the distributed Firefox binaries are free software today.

Pragmatism or idealism...?

I'm sure we're going to get debates about pragmatism versus idealism. Isn't idealism just pragmatism with an eye to the future? Both want to get the best. The pragmatist wants the best of what is available now, the idealist is prepared to sacrifice now for the best that it can be in the future.

Re:Pragmatism or idealism...?

Ideally, they are the same. Pragmatically, there are differences.

Mod Parent Informative, not Funny

The -- ahem -- "idealist" says "these are my principles, I don't violate them".

The "pragmatist" says "I just want this done by Friday and will violate my principles for the sake of that."

At first glance, it looks like the second person values action and results more than principles. But that's actually not the case: She just has a different principle: expedience, "getting it done by Friday", and values this more than her other principles.

Thought experiment: make it so that the thing won't be finished on Friday unless the pragmatist kills someone. You will discover a closeted (horror!) *idealist. In most cases, the thing won't be done on Friday.

To sum up: this is a false dichotomy, and a tiresome one.

Re:Pragmatism or idealism...?

Isn't idealism just pragmatism with an eye to the future?

Pretty much, yes. RMS's point - with which I agree entirely - is that it's impractical to give control of your data to someone else. If you go with proprietary software, that's exactly what you're doing. The other party may very well treat you respectfully, and it may even be in their best business interest to do so, but that says nothing about whether they'll stay in business or whether the giant corporation buying them will be so customer-oriented.

People talk about using proprietary solutions for their practicality. That might be true in the extreme short term, but in the long term that just doesn't make sense. Idealism is pragmatism. The two are inseparable.

well, this part makes me wonder if I can share

some of what he is smoking....

and his dreams of a day where nobody is involved in developing or promoting proprietary software

I mean, I'm all about open source but nobody developing or promoting proprietary software? What about the business world and the wide variety of custom made software tailored to specific business segments? What about gaming?

Re:well, this part makes me wonder if I can share

It's necessary for there to be an economic incentive to develop software. Nobody is going to donate millions of man-hours to write the software for the F-22 out of the goodness of their heart. Nobody is going to donate the man-hours to write the software for my insurance agency or hospital.

Nobody is asking them to. The developers that wrote the F22/insurance/hospital software would still get paid, because the software has to actually be written, and they'll get paid for modifications and support too. What they can't do is get their customer reliant on some bit of closed software, and then jack up the cost of that software a couple of years down the line when replacing it with something else is almost impossible.

What's the worst that could happen if hospitals actually used open source systems? That open standards would be developed and utilised, and that information interchange between systems would be many times easier? That patients might have some degree of control over their own data? That vendor lock-in, the type leading to the failure of the "£50 billion, largest civilian IT programme in the entire history of the world" [blogspot.com] might be avoided? I could support that.

Re:well, this part makes me wonder if I can share

You are talking about in-house software which employs about 90% of programmers out there. People will continue to commission that sort of software regardless of the copyright model or lack of one. The only difference free software makes is that they will have a pool of free libraries to use which will make development cheaper and the end product more reliable.

Facebook and the CIA

If the CIA needed access to the Facebook databases and were unable to get it (either through social, legal or technical measures), I would consider that to be a massive display of incompetence. If the world's most highly funded spying agency isn't capable of accessing Facebook accounts from a cooperative company, then it (the CIA) should be shut down, since it's clearly going to be of no use at all against more determined opponents.

Yes

Agree or disagree?

Yes.

That is easy

It is not. The Firefox logo is not free [mozilla.org]. Thus, any software that includes that logo is non-free also, and Debian developers know it very well [debian.org]

Re:That is easy

The logo isn't source code, it's just a picture. A picture which happens to be a trademark. Mozilla's beef is with Debian or anybody else messing around with code or the settings and still trying to palm it off as Mozilla Firefox. People are still free to branch the code and call it anything they like, which is just what Debian has done. I really don't see what the issue is here. There are lots of registered trademarks in the open source movement - Linux, Ubuntu, Debian, FSF, Firefox, Java, Apache, Red Hat, Novell, Sun etc. etc. etc.

I'm unsure if RMS is truly free.

I have no personal evidence that he is currently free, thus he falls into the same category for me as Firefox does for him.

More disturbing (from TFA)...

I received an EeePC as a gift, but I could not run it because my conscience will not let me agree to the EULA. Finally, I asked someone to install a free GNU/Linux distro so the machine could be used.

I wonder which of these is true:

• It's ok to get some other sap to commit unconscionable behavior on your behalf?
• He is not able to install Linux? (Possibly because he keeps looking in the library under 'G'.)
• Installing Linux is not worth his time, but he has a sap with less worthy time to do these things?

Re:I Just Took A Huge Shit

You could offer a homeless man on the street a free sandwich, and if he had to walk a block to get it, Stallman wouldn't think it was free.

Re:I Just Took A Huge Shit

You could offer a homeless man on the street a free sandwich, and if he had to walk a block to get it, Stallman wouldn't think it was free.

He'd also have to make it himself, and not use any sauce with a logo on the bottle.

Re:I Just Took A Huge Shit

As long as you don't prevent the homeless man from analyzing the sandwich, copying it, and giving it (or copies of it) away without making the recipients walk a block to get it, Stallman would probably say it's Free.

Re:People scoffed at my contention...

Oh, the woe! Stallman is trying to get people to voluntarily stop engaging in practices that create artificial scarcity for the purposes of artificially inflating stock values. If he succeeds, the CEOs of our companies will no longer be able to justify their huge compensation and golden parachutes, and will no longer be able to dangle the promise of riches, in the form of stock options, in front of us so as to trick us into accepting lower pay, long hours and lousy benefits.

What a bad, bad man he is.

Re:People scoffed at my contention...

No he isn't. He appears to support the idea of paid software development and paid services, but insists that the users of that developed software should have the right to copy, modify and redistribute it.

Anyway, I agree with him. Having worked for 2 years with a contracting company that was almost 100% Linux and open source, I can say that the open source software development and services arena is very profitable. We never had a customer complain that the solution we delivered was either based on open source, or that our changes would be open source due to the GPL or whatever. What customers cared about was a) did it work and b) did it not crash (the two are somewhat related). As long as we checked those boxes, they were very happy - you'd be surprised at the number of contractors who try to deliver overly fancy solutions but fail on those two basic points.

More software developers should ask themselves "What's the worst that could happen if my customers could modify and redistribute this software"? For proprietary software, it means you can no longer hold customers to ransom and insist on yearly revenue generating "updates". For developers who get paid for hours worked doing actual development and support, this is no problem. I prefer the latter - getting paid for actual work just seems more honest.

Re:People scoffed at my contention...

"You can even be a programmer. Most paid programmers are developing custom software--only a small fraction are developing non-free software. The small fraction of proprietary software jobs are not hard to avoid." Richard Stallman [kerneltrap.org]

"Programmers could develop custom software by day, develop general purpose free software for fun. Or pay people for developing free software. Or sell support, or copies of free software." Richard Stallman [d-axel.dk]

It seems RMS fully supports the idea of paid software development. I wonder why so many people think differently - poor reporting, or just personal bias?

Re:Who cares....

Then you should be thankful that he does CARE that it is free as in freedom. Because if everyone did what you did, we'd be stuck with free-as-in-beer crap (i.e: Crappy closed-source drivers, flash plugins, OS's) with no interoperability, tuned for the corporates' benefit rather than your benefit, etc.

Only caring about getting your immediate work done, and not caring at all about encouragement of the right kinds of software in the future is short-sighted and actually damaging to the causes.

Re:I have a dream too

If corporations and other profit-seeking entities were not involved, free and open source software wouldn't have gotten anywhere.

You are ignorant and wrong. Software up to 1979 was not copyrighted (it was an "innovative" use of copyright by Bill Gates at the time that started this trend).

Many interesting software advances: OS design (Multics, Unix, etc), programming language design (Lisp, C) were all done without software copyrights and were really "open source" or "Free Software" by today's definitions.

If anything, the involvement of for-profit corporations using closed-source has crippled the progress of software, as you would expect exponential progress in a field such as software, but arguably software progress has slowed down since 1979.

Re:I have a dream too

You seem to be pretty knowledgeable about free and open-source software... so I'm a little surprised by some of the things in your post.

Specifically, you say:

Stallman [should] stop begrudging others the right to make their own products and sell them

Stallman has been very clear over the years that he has no issue with people monetizing software, making money off of programming, or even selling software. He merely emphasizes that anyone who obtains software must have access to code.

You seem to think that consulting is the only way to make money in an all-OSS software ecology. I don't think that's the case. In addition to programmers being paid by the hour to code, it's not hard to imagine situations where well-organized "payment requests" are created. Someone codes v1 of a product (or releases a beta), and then requests funds to deliver the completed version. Once the requested money has been sent in (by interested buyers), the full version (with source code) is delivered. (The buyer could be other companies or many individual consumers.)

Would that be different from current software business methods? Yes. But I don't think it's impossible (the main reason it doesn't exist more routinely today is because everyone finds it simpler to just do the same thing as everyone else), and companies could continue to make profits from selling innovating new software. I'm not trying to specifically advocate that this would be better; merely pointing out that Stallman's "software should be free" is not in conflict with people making money. (You may not like the details of alternate money-making models, but that doesn't mean they are not viable.)

I just don't think it's fair to say that Stallman is against selling software, or that consulting is the only way to make money off OSS.