ESR Writes About O'Reilly and FSF Differences

dopplex writes: "Over here at Linux Today, Eric S. Raymond has written an amusing piece in which A.) He analyzes the way in which we use the word freedom, B.) Examines the point of view of both O'Reilly and the FSF on 'freedom' and C.) Coins the term 'flerbage,' which I hereby suggest be put into immediate use, just because it's a really cool word." It's cheesy but it is a good way for people to understand the difference between Open Source and Free Software. (Oh, and I figured I'd just mention that I'll never use that F word since I think its stupid)

Case studies

[BlackStar]

Very interesting points from ESR, although I think RMS isn't *that* fanatical. Well, ok maybe. ANYWAYS.

What about looking at some cases in real life? Proprietary licenses. Say.... Windows. Very successful. Likley due to cost, marketing and standardization of a chaotic platform long in the past. Solved a lot of problems with proprietary platforms only running 1-2 applications you needed, so you almost bought one machine per application in some situations. Seems OK for the time. Now, however, with viable alternatives, there are some things like open sourcing (NOT GPL) that may be useful if the modifications could be redistributed, but MSFT still owned the rights to the parts they feel they need to. (Asbestos enabled)

Why not GPL? Enter point number 2. BSD/Mozilla/Extend and contribute like licenses. The SCSL from SUN. Specifically, Java. If this thing was GPL'd off the bat, it would be another fragmented, proprietary implementation of a screwed up standard left in the past not unlike CDE, or even C++ in it's early life. With SUN owning a brand, and enforcing a standard that they don't actually unilaterally define, it's a workable, reliable, and standardized open platform.

Those two cases in point, one must ask WHY the GPL seems to have such problems creating the defining third case study where GPL is the only thing that worked. Well, maybe it has. Let's take Linux. If it was proprietary, it would likely be as big as CP/M about now. If it was SCSL, the buy-in by the GPL crowd would be nill, (err... null, err.. nevermind) and the corporate adoptions to the benefit of the community wouldn't have occurred.

So, we've got three broad and incomplete categories of license, and three broad and incompletely analyzed case studies showing success in each case, and why in those particular cases that license modality was the correct choice for the goals.

So bascially, I would side with Tim on the side of choice, and promote the said flerbage as the yardstick. Evolution finds optimal solutions through excessive choice. Seems to have worked out fairly well. Odd that it still resulted in the occasional individual that opposes the primary mechanism that gave rise to them. I savour the irony.

I'd love to hear why the power of choice would be a bad thing, even if you choose a proprietary license. Try and write a cheat-resistant multiplayer game with open source on both client and server, and see just how far you get before the cheats make the game unplayable except among friends. Lots of papers and discussions on that as well.

And don't raise the "web of trust" and such there RMS and cadre. Defintion of trust on that level would have removed the success of the GPL in the case of Linux, as there could be code in there that trusted people back-doored, but no one has bothered to review. Trust is perception, and perception is in it's very nature incomplete.

Sometimes you just gotta say no when someone wants your recipe. :-)

Respond with thought or not at all if you please.

Re:Excellent

[rgmoore]

I agree - but put a different spin on it. Who are you to say that I cannot cooperate with my neighbor by sharing generally useful technical information with them? Who are you to throw me in jail because I copied something I bought to a CD?

Hear, Hear! This is exactly the point that RMS gets and ESR misses- which is surprising given that ESR is a libertarian. All software licenses are inherently coercive; they use the power of the State through the means of copyright to restrict the rights of the user. The difference between a Free Software license and a proprietary license is that a Free Software license uses that power for the benefit of all (by restricting obnoxious behavior) while a proprietary license uses it for the sole benefit of the writer (by restricting socially beneficial uses like sharing). And sadly, the mere existence of Free Software does not defang the power of proprietary licenses. Big software houses like Microsoft can still engage in serious legal harrassment of just about any computer using business even if they don't actually use any Microsoft software.

Re:Linux Today...

[the_rev_matt]

Rather than listening to a bunch of zealots (for or against either position), why not consult the man who originally *wrote* Linux and is the head honcho of continuing development:

rms asked me if I minded the name before starting to use it, and I

said "go ahead". I didn't think it would explode into the large discussion
it resulted in, and I also thought that rms would only use it for the
specific release of Linux that the FSF was working on rather than "every"
Linux system.
I never felt that the naming issue was all that important, but I was
obviously wrong judging by how many people felt very strongly about it. So
these days I just tell people to call it just plain "Linux" and nothing more. - Wired 9/97

I've seen him express similar sentiments elsewhere several times, but that was the first one I came up with in a cursory google search.