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?"
Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:5, Informative)
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: (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:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:5, Insightful)
Each and everyone of the above is possible with Free software too.
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:4, Funny)
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.
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: (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 (especi
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: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.
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)
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.
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: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:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
He is not sure right now because he uses lynx.
Also, he seems not to browse the Web at all in the traditional sense, as he pointed out last December on the openbsd-misc mailing list [lwn.net]:
He also seems to delegate a lot of web research to others, as evident from a number of posts in the same
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:5, Funny)
It's understandable, the keys is all right next to each other.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
How do you find anyone to agree with if everyone has this keyboard?
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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.
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:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Well, you would get attacked by a bunch of bozos on Slashdot...
</tongue-in-cheek>
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).
Free Software Ethics Lesson (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Oh! I can field this one... As someone who once made a fairly shitty, uncourteous move myself...
See, back in the late 90s I made a fork of the game XEvil. XEvil v1 was GPL'ed, while XEvil v2 was not. I forked a late version of v1 and called it "XEvil Mutant Strain" - added some characters and weapons and stuff, put my name on it, etc. It even wound up on a CD release of Linux games.
So why was this a shitty thing to do? Basically, during all this, I wasn't thinking in terms of how to be courteous to the original author of the software. In the case of Mutant Strain it was like "I'm gonna fork this 'cause I don't approve of your new license" - followed by a lot of shoddy work, and promotion of said shoddy work, using the name XEvil and without being courteous or thankful for the original code I was working from. I didn't do enough to distinguish my project as a fork and I didn't do enough to recognize the original author.
So I can appreciate the perspective from which someone says it was a shitty move to call the fork IceWeasel. I never really thought of it like that before - mostly I just thought the name choice was kind of funnny. But the fact that the name choice is kind of a parody (especially given all the name changes Firefox was subject to early on) is kind of ungrateful in a way - almost like the people who chose the name wanted to express spite toward the Firefox folks for creating the condition in which they couldn't change the source to fit their distribution and still call it Firefox. I think a more appropriate attitude is continuing thanks for making Firefox source free in the first place, even if there are uncomfortable limitations.
Firefox - Iceweasel (Score:3, Interesting)
> iceweasel was kind of a dick move from developers that didn't want to live up to the same expectations as everybody else.
You are missing the point as to who the 'dick' here is. It's Moz Corp. Take the .src.rpm for firefox from Fedora and issue an rpm --rebuild on it. You can't redistribute the result of that command without entering into a trademark license agreement with Moz Corp. That isn't true for any other package in the Fedora repos, because for any other package such a requirement would be c
Re:Firefox - Iceweasel (Score:4, Interesting)
> All they ask, unlike some, is DON'T put my name on it. Is that so bad?
Which is why it is important that we give them EXACTLY what they demand. Iceweasel. If every distribution did it they would suddenly realize that what they thought they wanted wasn't what they actually wanted. Only then can the discussion of a more reasonable trademark policy begin. As a general rule, it is only when you make stupidity painful that people change.
Re:Leave Stallman alone *sobs* (Score:5, Informative)
What are you on about? There was a licensing conflict with Mozilla and Debian, so they forked. If anyone's doing a dick move, it's the Mozilla Foundation for being so anal about their logo.
It's trademark, they defend it or lose it. Blame the system.
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.
He doesn't say Firefox isn't really free software (Score:5, Informative)
He in fact says:
Re: (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.
Firefox isn't Free, but the codebase is (Score:3, Informative)
> Well, you better erase that Linux distro off your hard drive if you'll only use software that doesn't use trademarked names.
It is a matter of how the trademark is licensed. I can rebuild everything in a typical Linux distro and redistribute it. Yes the Debian or Fedora trademarks are an exception but there is an easy method provided to deal with that because modification and redistribution is encouraged. And note how the whole respin scene IS being brought into the fold in both projects and the trad
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Your answers: [gnu.org]
"Can I use GPL-covered editors such as GNU Emacs to develop non-free programs? Can I use GPL-covered tools such as GCC to compile them?
Yes, because the copyright on the editors and tools does not cover the code you write. Using them does not place any restrictions, legally, on the license you use for your code.
Some programs copy parts of themselves into the output for technical reasons - for example, Bison copies a standard parser progra
Pragmatism or idealism...? (Score:5, Interesting)
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...? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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:Pragmatism or idealism...? (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (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?
Re:well, this part makes me wonder if I can share (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What about gaming?
Yeah, what about it? Wesnoth [wesnoth.org] rocks and many old game engines are "free" already (well, Open Source for now). Companies could keep the content proprietary if they like and charge for serving it from their servers, I suppose. Meanwhile you could play with your own homemade content... Sounds good to me.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What about the business world and the wide variety of custom made software tailored to specific business segments?
Don't confuse "paid" with "proprietary". When I've done contract work for businesses, they've all expressed roughly the same sentiment: It really doesn't matter who has access to the source code, so long as the software works.
In fact, the smarter niche companies will insist that they at least have access to the source code themselves, so that they can hire another contractor.
What about gaming?
What about it?
The tricky part is cheating in a multiplayer game. An open source Counter-Strike or Halo client would mean no end to aim
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Is there a necessity for software to be proprietary?
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.
I don't think open-source is inherently incompatible with that economic incentive but if Stallman thinks that open-source is the cure-all for every single problem that can be solved with software then he is just as much
Re:well, this part makes me wonder if I can share (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:well, this part makes me wonder if I can share (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (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?
Facebook and the CIA (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Facebook and the CIA (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah. My favorite spy-story of all time has to be CryptoAG and the NSA. CryptoAG is a Swiss company that manufactures secure communication products, and has been doing so since World War II. Suspicious characters use their services. But it was compromised from the start by the US Government. The story goes that the head of the NSA back in the fifties visits CryptoAG and says something like, "The US Government spends MILLIONS on secure communication software every year. How would you like to earn some of that business? And in a completely unrelated topic, it would sure be nice if we had some way to listen in on what those Communists are yammering on about so we could prevent them from taking over the world, wouldn't it?"
Yeah. CryptoAG products, trusted by dictators, business, and terrorists alike, was compromised for over three decades until the Iranian intelligence agency figured out someone was listening to their conversations and busted CryptoAG.
Well, if RMS says it ... (Score:4, Funny)
Yes (Score:5, Funny)
Agree or disagree?
Yes.
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: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.
Re:Who cares.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Found your problem. What makes you think your "cause" is my "cause"?
That is easy (Score:5, Informative)
Re:That is easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Not so easy (Score:3, Informative)
You're referring to an issue that was solved earlier by altering the User-Agent string to reflect that it was a Debian fork, and you didn't mention that the main reason for this was back-porting later Firefox security fixes to older Firefox versions. The issue at hand is that the Firefox logo has a branding license (see grandparent post) which is incompatible with Free Software licenses and thus it cannot be wholly released as Free Software. (If I recall correctly, the branding license is more clearly inc
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].
Of course it's free (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think Stallman's in reality... (Score:4, Interesting)
Okay, many people have accused him of this, but reading his response how he came about to his free software ideals really doesn't strike me that he quite understands why software costs money. Kind of like how warez kiddies I knew in highschool didn't quite understand why those pirated copies of Photoshop weren't free to begin with. Coding on a PDP-10 in the 80's is great ... but now we're at an age where thousands upon thousands of software developers have to make a living *somehow.* Calling commercially closed source developed software a social problem is extreme. 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. How does he expect software developers to make a living?!
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.)
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.
I'm unsure if RMS is truly free. (Score:5, Funny)
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 wonder which of these is true:
Re:I'm unsure if RMS is truly free. (Score:5, Informative)
It's ok to get some other sap to commit unconscionable behavior on your behalf?
He had the "sap" delete the offending software and replace it with something he wanted to use.
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?
I promise you RMS is capable of installing Linux. I imagine the conversation went something like this: "This thing doesn't have a CD-ROM. I have three speeches in the next two days - could you figure out how to get Linux onto it while I'm packing?"
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
More like "could you figure out how to get a GNU-based operating system onto it while I'm packing?" This is Stallman we're talking about. :)
That's why I just said "Linux". He'll run M-x butterfly to install the rest later.
Who was derived from whom? (Score:4, Interesting)
Richard, you're rewriting history. The licenses of open source software are more often derived from sources like the BSD and MIT licnses, which are at least as old as the GPL.
Firefox could stand to lose Stallman's blessing (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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: (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 free
Re:I Just Took A Huge Shit (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I Just Took A Huge Shit (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:4, Funny)
Additionally, he'd insist on attaching the sandwich's recipe to the sandwich, with a note saying that others who followed this recipe to make their own sandwich who did not do likewise were going to burn in hell.
Furthermore, he wouldn't use a 'black bottle' of sauce, instead, he'd insist on making the sauce himself from raw ingredients, even if the homemade sauce didn't taste anywhere near as good as the sauce in the black bottle.
Finally, he'd insist on calling it a GNU/Sandwich.
Re:I Just Took A Huge Shit (Score:5, Funny)
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:I Just Took A Huge Shit (Score:4, Funny)
You can ask that the guy walk to pick up his sandwich. That's reasonable. You just have to let him know where the sandwich stand is, not prevent him from eating other sandwiches when he eats your sandwiches, and allow him to modify the sandwich including using different sauces and garnishes, bread, cheese, meat and spices, then copy and distribute the modified sandwiches without restriction as long as the sandwich is distributed under a compatible sandwich license.
Some of the terms of other sandwich licenses:
LGPL - same as GPL except specific exception, the sandwich may be combined as a platter with non LGPL side dishes such as fries or perhaps a salad.
BSD (three clause) - the ingredients must be packed with the license warning, the sandwich must be packed with the license warning, you cannot claim your sandwich is endorsed by any individual or organization without prior approval.
Artistic v2 - please note what ingredients were changed from the standard sandwich to produce the modified sandwich.
X11 (MIT) - do whatever you want, it's not our fault if you kill yourself.
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:I Just Took A Huge Shit (Score:5, Informative)
How does he restrict how anyone licenses their software? All he has the power to do is choose how the software he writes is licensed. Considering this, his ideals must mean a lot to people considering the extraordinary amount of free software out there today.
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.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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Re:I Just Took A Huge Shit (Score:5, Informative)
You also gain nothing from their work. The BSD license gives you more freedom to simply hand out your work and not have to worry where it goes to, but the GPL gives you the opportunity to see some benefit out of someone else deriving your software.
Your freedom remains intact when someone derives your code and slaps an EULA on it, but not the user's or the code's (if you believe software has rights of it's own.)
Neither the GPL or the BSD license is there to save your ass, it's to protect the end user.
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.
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.
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 Just Took A Huge Shit (Score:4, Funny)
I Just Took A Huge Shit. It was free!
Good for you buddy. I keep trying, but can only release vaporware.
I'll need to get some prune juice, it's the latest 'open sauce'.
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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.
Re:People scoffed at my contention... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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 fr
Re:People scoffed at my contention... (Score:5, Informative)
"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?
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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: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.").
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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: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.
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Someone who thinks you should expect exponential progress in software engineering is calling someone ignorant and wrong?
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.