Stallman Unsure Whether Firefox Is Truly Free 905
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?"
well, this part makes me wonder if I can share (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
disagree (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow, Stallman's done a lot of great things but he's marginalizing himself with these statements that are borderline silly.
It's similar those ridiculous things that hippies would say in the sixties like "I dream of a world where everyone takes LSD" or "drinks the kool-aid" and then everyone will form a Terra-wide circle and sing "age of aquarius".
The idea is out of touch, his hair is out of touch, he really needs a healthy dose of reality.
Re:People scoffed at my contention... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Pragmatism or idealism...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well Richard (Score:2, Insightful)
Facebook may not share private data to the CIA
There's private data on Facebook? I thought the whole point of sites like this was to enable teenagers and not-quite-grown-ups to plaster all nitty gritty details of their lives on the internet in unreadable blue-on-pink pages.
Firefox isn't really "free software"
He's not the only one [wikipedia.org]. But as always, normal people don't really care if free software is 100% kosher as long as it works well for them.
and his dreams of a day where nobody is involved in developing or promoting proprietary software.
People who have trade secrets to hide will develop proprietary software, that's a fact of life. Video card manufacturers for instance may not want to reveal the underlying structure of their hardware through the driver code. I fail to see how this is morally wrong.
It's a royal pain in the ass to end users who may be forced into a particular OS because of feeble driver support, but the motives of the driver maker is understandable.
Who cares.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I realize his opinion was an 'I'm not sure' opinion rather than what the OP stated, but still. I use Firefox, it's free, and it does what I want. The other conditions he puts on it are irrelevant to me. If it stops being free (as in beer, not freedom) or doesn't do what I want, I'll go elsewhere.
Re:People scoffed at my contention... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:People scoffed at my contention... (Score:4, Insightful)
Stallman isn't mostly harmless. He's let the wind out of the sails of a really pernicious business model. For the people who were prospering on the basis of that model, he is pretty much the antichrist. The reason you think he's mostly harmless is that you are not one of those people, not that he is not effective (a less polite way of saying "mostly harmless.").
Re:People scoffed at my contention... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you believe that then you have never heard him talk.
He believes that all software should be free software and if you can't make a living off free software then that's not his problem. He say's you should get a different job instead of being a paid programmer while still working on free software.
Ironic from a man who lives in a bubble, he's never had to have a real job his whole life.
I can't remember the podcast, he said this on, it was around 5 months ago I would say.
Re:well, this part makes me wonder if I can share (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:3, Insightful)
I say leave Stallman alone and never give him any more attention. Give him credit for what he did. But now he is just trying to micromanage the process as best he can to try to meet his software Utopia. Universal Acceptance of Free and Open all the way software is impossible. There will be people who want to keep credit for their work, people who want to make money off of their work, and they do not want to make money supporting their software.
Re:That is easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who cares.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
The trademark problems don't make Firefox non-free (Score:4, Insightful)
You can always replace the logos and distribute the same software you got, so, it is not Firefox that isn't free, it's the logos. There are packages where everything is free, but on Firefox, just the software is free.
That, of course, doesn't make the problem less anoying to distro makers.
Mod Parent Informative, not Funny (Score:5, Insightful)
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:I have a dream too (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:5, Insightful)
Each and everyone of the above is possible with Free software too.
Re:The trademark problems don't make Firefox non-f (Score:5, Insightful)
That, of course, doesn't make the problem less anoying to distro makers
Pot? Hello, Kettle! The distro makers are all doing the same thing. You can take the source code to Fedora Core and make your own Fedora-like distro, but you can't use the the trademark 'Fedora Core' nor can you use the Fedora logo or any other trademarks.
Re:He doesn't say Firefox isn't really free softwa (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, you better erase that Linux distro off your hard drive if you'll only use software that doesn't use trademarked names. No, no, you can't use Debian either, because the name Linux is trademarked, too.
Re:People scoffed at my contention... (Score:3, Insightful)
The small fraction of proprietary software jobs are not hard to avoid
I'd like to see where he gets that from, I've never talked to anyone personally that works in a company that develops free (as in beer) software.
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:4, Insightful)
Ya, that's pretty much why I can't stand him. He talks about freedom, but wants to dictate how I, as a developer, can market or sell the product of my effort. He thinks only those that match his mindset are worthy of creating software. He can go fuck himself.
When was the split? (Score:3, Insightful)
In the 1990s, there was a philosophical split in the free software community between those of us who wanted freedom and those who only appreciated the practical by-products of free software.
In the 1980s there was a philosophical split in the free software community between those of us who wanted to write and share good code, and those who wanted to make a political movement out of it. The split was created by the GNU Manifesto, long before one group of people in the 1990s decided to pull together in response to the Free Software Foundation's politicization of the community.
Re:I Just Took A Huge Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Well his views are freedom at the cost of freedom. He wants a world where all the software is free. However by enforcing this he restricts people on their freedom of choosing how to license their software. I am OK if you choose to release it via GPL but I don't like being harassed if I choose to release my code via closed source, or a non RMS Approved Open Source License.
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:2, Insightful)
iceweasel was kind of a dick move from developers that didn't want to live up to the same expectations as everybody else. They are free to release a non-branded version, but it's a dick move and completely unappreciative to name it that.
Trademark law in this case is supposed to protect people from installing something which differs from what they thought they were installing. IP isn't always the enemy, sometimes you need to know what something actually is in order to know what to do with it.
Re:well, this part makes me wonder if I can share (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't you think Blizzard could make the same money when WoW was free software?
But how would Blizzard make money from a free Warcraft 3, a free Starcraft 2, or a free Diablo 3? Or did you mean to shut out all games that aren't massively multiplayer?
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:5, Insightful)
You want to dictate how I, as a computer user, can use my computer. You think uses of software you wrote are things you can control. You can... :P
Point is, either we decide original developers of software get to define policy or we frown on letting anyone define policy and let people do what they want with it. Many in the opensource community favour some form of the latter
Re:Mod Parent Informative, not Funny (Score:2, Insightful)
"Principles" that you are willing to violate are simply preferences.
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:5, Insightful)
You talk about freedom, but want to dictate how I, as a user, can use, share, and modify software.
The fact that something is the product of your effort doesn't grant you sovereignty over that thing's use. The luthier doesn't get to determine what songs I play on the guitar he made.
Open source development (Score:4, Insightful)
How does he expect software developers to make a living?!
Simply by getting paid to write code.
As they've always been.
What Stallman wants to change is that as much as possible of this code, once written, should get distributed :
1. with its source.
2. with authorisation to play around with said source
As an example, a huge amount of the contributions to the Linux kernel (which is GPLv2) are done by professional developers paid by IBM, Novell, RedHat, etc.
RMS' dreams are to extend this model to as much companies as possible.
Of course then there's the problem that not all companies are going to hire developers to write GPL code, simply because the some companies count on making money by selling said software.
(Unlike, for example, companies whose main income is done by selling hardware, services. Or academia who are state-sponsored. etc.)
idealist VS pragmatist (Score:3, Insightful)
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."
Could not one say a pragmatist is one who has a set of "ideals" but realizes that list may contain mutually exclusive goals?
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:4, Insightful)
He does no such thing. You are free to develop, market, and sell your own code however you like.
It's only if you want to use someone else's that you need to play by their rules.
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, these rights do make old fashioned selling of programs a little harder but he doesn't explicitly say you can't do that. Cedega is open source and you can even download the latest source from cvs but still transmeta is able to sell it.
Re:People scoffed at my contention... (Score:3, Insightful)
No one is garenteed the right to a successful business. So it turns out that hippies living in their mom's basement are capable of churning out professional quality software. This is not a situation to complain or litigate about. This is an indicator that perhaps writing proprietary software is not the best business to get into.
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I'm unsure if RMS is truly free. (Score:1, Insightful)
#3 is closest to the mark. Newsflash: He's busy.
Does your boss have a secretary? Is the secretary a sap?
Re:Who cares.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Found your problem. What makes you think your "cause" is my "cause"?
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:2, Insightful)
Knock RMS all you want (Score:5, Insightful)
There is one thing about RMS that constantly amazes me. He is always on the right side of things. It usually takes several years before people start to understand what he is saying, but eventually everyone comes around.
The biggest misunderstanding that people have about Stallman's positions is the assumed fundamental disconnect between "capitalism" and "free software." He's not a communist, but he values his freedom above profit. If anything, that is historically a very "American" position.
He has no problem with making money, but he has a problem relinquishing his ownership rights and control over his property (his computer) to some other entity (proprietary software).
It is a reasonable and rational position, especially since Microsoft, Apple, and so many other companies are in bed with MPIAA, RIAA, etc. Web sites collect so much data about us. Are we really free? Is our own computer really our own property?
In many ways, and this my sound radical, the right to create proprietary software is similar to the right to own slaves. Look at proprietary software in voting machines! Is there a better example of the destruction of human rights and democracy by proprietary software?
I understand the desire to sell your product and keep the source code a secret, but no other aspect of human technology works that way. Every electronic component is documented. Every part in a car is documented. Every building is built with approved materials and is inspected. Every switch, nail, screw, and device is documented and open to public inspection. Why is not software? Why do we allow large corporations to sell us software that does not necessarily operate in our best interests? Do you think DRM is in any way beneficial to you a stake holder? Do you think it is right that YOUR DVD player will *not* let you skip a commercial?
The freedom to restrict another's freedom is not freedom, it is tyranny. There may be financial gain in such actions, but is freedom something that we fight for only to sell to the highest bidder?
Re:I Just Took A Huge Shit (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't agree with his ideals at all, and cannot stand the GPL.
So, I'll continue to use the BSD license. Yes, someone can take my code and use it in a closed-source app. I'm OK with that. If I thought it was worth the time/effort to sell it, I wouldn't release it via BSD. If they think they can make money off my work, they're welcome to try.
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:4, Insightful)
And you get to determine how much you will sell a copy of your software for and how that transaction takes place too.
Re:I Just Took A Huge Shit (Score:4, Insightful)
It is an issue that he doesn't have the power to do so. But if you have ever listen to his speeches he is not at all open to ideas other then his own.
Re:I Just Took A Huge Shit (Score:2, Insightful)
Before RMS spoke about it most of you were for Cloud Computing now you are against it. You're a bunch of sheep.
Your sig: I don't know about the rest of /. mindset crowd, but I'm neither 'for' nor 'against' any technology really. I've always said that people should use what works.
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:2, Insightful)
Mod parent up. Grandparent already has the "freedom" to deal in slavery, and thinks RMS wants to deny him that freedom. He thinks he'll be a slave owner. And that such ownership is the only way to profit from software.
Sure, RMS would like to make dictatorial software ownership untenable. This is being done by offering a better way, not by being coercive and trying to outlaw the status quo. GP is free to market or sell his software any way he likes, as permitted or enabled by law.
To offer a better way is to upset the status quo. The GP is upset alright. Must feel the future of his buggy whip business is a mite uncertain.
Free Software != Communism (Score:5, Insightful)
This has been discussed many, many times here. Sharing ideas is different from sharing physical goods. Making a copy doesn't take the original away from its owner.
Re:I have a dream too (Score:3, Insightful)
Someone who thinks you should expect exponential progress in software engineering is calling someone ignorant and wrong?
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:1, Insightful)
No he doesn't.
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:3, Insightful)
You are not forced to use open source or closed source software. Unlike slavery where you are forced into it with no choice of where to go. Closer would be like the freedom for your company to hire people with Employment at Will (Where you can fire the employee for whatever reason you want, or they can quit without any penalty) or Employment based on a contract.
There is a degree of freedom with closed source tools. You can purchase a license and able to use the code the way you choose. Vs. a GPL (especially if your project expands beyond any ones control) There is no way to get the software licensed they way you need to use it.
I agree there should be more acceptance of open source technology, and show valid ways you can profit from it was well. However saying you must follow this unless you are deemed imoral, is a very scary concept.
Re:I Just Took A Huge Shit (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:4, Insightful)
Hint: when you start calling proprietary software developers "slave owners," you're a member of the "fucking crazy" subculture. You are the problem.
Re:I Just Took A Huge Shit (Score:3, Insightful)
If they think they can make money off my work, they're welcome to try.
it's not about making money off your work. that's not what the gpl prohibits. it's about not letting people steal your freedom.
Re:I Just Took A Huge Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
If they think they can make money off my work, they're welcome to try.
[The GPL is] about not letting people steal your freedom.
No, it's not, and it's that sort of doubletalk that makes those of us who can't stand this crap cringe.
It's about not letting people close off their modifications to your code. THAT'S ALL.
If I release a project under a BSD license, and someone decides to use that to base his code off of, releases it under a proprietary binary-only nazi-EULA, where has my freedom gone? Oh wait, I still have it. I still have the copyright on my own code, I can still do whatever the hell I want with it. My freedom is unchanged.
Re:I Just Took A Huge Shit (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Knock RMS all you want (Score:3, Insightful)
These are by and large well written comments.
Thanks.
However, I think Stallman has a narrow mind re the difference between open source and free software. He goes on tirades about the BSD license which is far more open than the GPL.
I think the BSD license does not protect against the "freedom to create slaves," and is thus while an actual piece of software may seem "more free" the net result is less freedom for down-stream users. The BSD license allows a proprietary organization to eliminate down-stream freedom.
In some ways, Stallman is killing his own cause in his zeal.
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."
Stallman would be better off embracing all forms of open source software.
Obviously, we must agree to disagree.
Petty infighting between BSD and GPL must stop.
If you honestly believe and can articulate why a particular action is immoral within the context of an important ideology, how could you maintain your integrity and violate your ideals?
For instance, RMS believes "free (as in freedom) software protects freedom, and the BSD license harms effective freedom." Why would you assume RMS could choose a course of action counter to his ideals?
Historically speaking, the claim of "pragmatism," is the swan song capitulation.
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:5, Insightful)
Hello? Mods on crack!
iceweasel was kind of a dick move from developers that didn't want to live up to the same expectations as everybody else.
I'm not certain why you think it's a "dick move" to do something that you're allowed to do. But I AM certain that they are living up EXACTLY to the same expectations as everyone else.
Trademark law in this case is supposed to protect people from installing something which differs from what they thought they were installing. IP isn't always the enemy, sometimes you need to know what something actually is in order to know what to do with it.
Yes, certainly. However, given the previous statement, you seem to propose that if GPL code has a trademark associated with it that only the trademark holder "should" be able to distribute the code. That is obviously a horrible position.
So, it's a "dick move" to remove the trademark as requested so you can distribute the software? Uh, I don't think so. The *opposite* would be far worse - if people who associate trademarks with GPL code have some standing to prevent distribution of the code (not the trademark).
Re:That is easy (Score:4, Insightful)
Mozilla.org decided to use both. That means that you can not create any image derived from the Firefox logo. So for example all these iconsets and wallpapers are illegal [blogspot.com]
Linus, and Debian have trademarks on their names and logos, but the artwork is free-software so, derived works are allowed [lwn.net].
Re:I Just Took A Huge Shit (Score:1, Insightful)
However by enforcing this he restricts people on their freedom of choosing how to license their software.
Except that he 'enforces' nothing as he as no power to do so (except in the limited case where *he* controls the copyrights to a given piece of code, in which case it is surely his right to use any license he wants to?) Also he has shown no signs at all of wanting to gain the powers necessary to 'enforce' the one true licensing model by changing the law.
He persuades, maybe even harangues; he does not enforce.
I am OK if you choose to release it via GPL but I don't like being harassed if I choose to release my code via closed source...
Who *is* 'harassing' you? Stallman, a man you've (presumably) never met or communicated directly with, who doesn't know you even exist? Do you have an imaginary stalker as well? Do you have some sort of persecution complex?
Most of the anti-Stallman posters on this thread seem to think Stallman is trying to get non approved licenses banned and the related developers imprisoned or something.
Here's the news: He is just trying to persuade users of software that it is in their interests not to get locked in to proprietry non-open software. OOO! Scary!
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:5, Insightful)
You give up no freedom in choosing to use proprietary software.
Except for the freedom to modify it to suit your own needs. The freedom to maintain it if the company goes out of business. The freedom to know how it stores your data so you can migrate to something else if your needs change. The freedom to move it onto a replacement machine if your current one dies. Yeah, except for, well, everything, you give up nothing.
Use language properly, stop beating dead horse. (Score:4, Insightful)
Zealot: "a fanatic or an extreme enthusiast"
Fanatic: "A person marked or motivated by an extreme, unreasoning enthusiasm, as for a cause." or "a person whose enthusiasm for something, esp. a political or religious cause, is extreme"
Stallaman is an extreme enthusiast for user's freedoms, if you want to call that enthusiasm extreme, that is your prerogative.
But Stallaman has enough long reasoned philosophy about software licensing (which is what the GPL is all about) which many people, including for profit corporations, are embracing, that to claim he is delusional ( delusion: "a mistaken idea or belief") is at least highly debatable.
As for the childish meme that Stallman promotes any kind of communist or socialist ideology, well, it is frankly a baseless, tired statement.
Multiple for profit companies use GPLed software to make business and people like you, forget that humans are not rewarded only by money, also the GPL is based on a conceit that does not exist in communist societies: copyright (which is only understandable in a capitalist society, where the state is not automatic owner of whatever the populace produces).
So to insinuate Stallman uses a capitalist conceit because his love of communism is frankly a catch 22 that people spreading this nonsense need to explain satisfactorily.
But go on, keep trying to spread nonsense with no base in reality, we will gladly keep correcting you.
Re:I don't think Stallman's in reality... (Score:4, Insightful)
I couldn't imagine an age of software development where I could buy something, freely replicate it and expect the application developer to make money on it in other ways than dragging their heels on supporting it.
That age is today. Tell me again who's not living in reality.
Material communism vs. information communism (Score:3, Insightful)
Thus the reason he is labeled a ZEALOT.
The man is delusional and just needs to go visit any communist/socialist society and live in it to discover that his ideals just don't work because human nature will not allow it.
Well, I think there's an interesting question in there:
material communism seems not to work, but what about when we're talking about information? Information which can be shared at virtually no cost, and which (in the form of computer programs) can be complex, practically useful, and still trivial to copy and share - is "communism" when applied to such a substantially non-material "property" still impractical? Or do the different rules at play make it work?
That said, I would say RMS pushes things a bit too far... Hoping for a day when free software totally supplants commercial software, for instance. If technology stopped moving forward, if the capabilities of the machines stopped dramatically increasing so quickly and the concepts of what people need from the software running on them stabilized, then I could see the opportunities for proprietary software diminishing significantly. If machines could be made intelligent enough to program themselves, the same condition could occur. In either case, the system would then presumably be accessible enough that snybody who wanted the machine to do something a little differently would be able to make it happen - and the issue of whether that change is shared or not would be pretty meaningless. In the current world I don't see that working - things still change too quickly in the world of computers for hobby development to catch up, let alone take over.
To me, the best role of free software is to raise the baseline standard for computing. That is, you have these commercial developers creating new software that pushes the limits of what you can do with your machine - and meanwhile you have free software which raises the standard for what users can do without those applications. Low-cost or no-cost software with lower capabilities than commercial applications helps to raise users' expectations, which in turn acts as another force driving innovation in the high-end stuff. If this no-cost software is "Free Software" in the FSF sense, then it raises the baseline for programmers as well, because they can access and reuse the source code from the application to push the baseline further.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:5, Insightful)
I choose to use Windows because I like playing games, and I work on a few open source (!) Windows apps/libraries. It is a conscious choice that necessitates certain restrictions.
It's the same as life in general. If you want to stay out of jail, that necessitates obeying your country's laws (ignoring the whole "don't get caught" thing). That doesn't mean you're not free to kill someone - to the contrary, you're quite free to kill whomever you wish.
The freedom to control consequences is not a prerequisite for the freedom to choose.
Software is the same way in many respects. While you are free to use Microsoft Word in whatever way you wish, you are not free to disassemble it - and that is something you consciously agree to when you install the software. Any claims that it is not a choice are ridiculous.
If you don't like the terms of use of proprietary software, don't use it. That, in and of itself, is an exercise of your freedom to choose.
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:5, Insightful)
Not possible. If someone takes a debian system, and modifies it, they need to be able to redistribute it. Even if mozilla grants a license to debian, they can't grant a license to all debian users without just granting a license to the world, at which point you'd get spyware makers making "optimized" builds of firefox, fooling tons of non-technical users. Since the mozilla foundation's mission is improving the internet for everyone, that would run contrary to their goals.
The world (Score:2, Insightful)
would appreciate if Stallmann would just shut up.
His penetrant narrow-mindedness about commercial software is just annoying. A solid mixture of open-source and properitary software is the solution. Not everything can be free, not everything must be free
Re:Pragmatism or idealism...? (Score:3, Insightful)
i give control of my money to a bank, and control of the contents of my food to the people who grow, harvest and package it. I give control of the materials used to build my house to the builders and architect and so on....
Whats so special about *data* that its wrong to work in partnership with people who manage things for you?
Did RMS knit his own clothes and grow his own food?
The guy is an idiot, and his laughable naive ramblings should be ignored
Re:Who was derived from whom? (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't misquote him and then argue against the misquotation. He said the license criteria are derived from the FSF's. You changed it to the licenses. He's talking about how the Open Source Definition [opensource.org] was based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines [debian.org], and he's absolutely right.
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh come off it with the strawman. Employment isn't slavery. You know quite well that employees can quit and slaves can't. Slaves can't refuse unethical, illegal, unhealthy, or dangerous work. But some employers actively try to maneuver their employees into a bind, believing they can squeeze more work out of the desperate employee and that turnover will be less likely. Why do you think US health care is so messed up? Employers saw this as a way to gain more leverage over employees. Bulk rates are only part of it. Thanks to tax breaks, they can get the same amount of health insurance for far less money than an individual can. Ever wonder why COBRA costs so much more than the exact same insurance while employed? Nothing at all fair about that, is there? This all makes the hireling less an employee and more a slave. I am all for employment. I am against slavery, and I'm against turning employment into slavery or trying to disguise slavery as employment.
When it comes to software, people don't have as much freedom as you seem to think they do. When you've just got to have MS Word because your correspondent demands the .doc format and even OpenOffice can't get that perfect every time, you're not free. When you must use an interactive website that only IE can render, you're not free. When a must-use website requires Shockwave, which is available only for Windows, you're not free. You cannot quit these programs. If MS decides to "upgrade" everything to "take advantage of new features" which is really code for making all the old versions and formats break, you have no choice, you have to pay MS for new software you shouldn't have needed. Slavery is one form of coercion, this lock in is another form of coercion.