Do you believe in Free Software? People often talk about the benefits of open source, but they tend to switch to proprietary, partly-proprietary (Jetbrains is a good example. Only parts of their products are open source), or corporate controlled open source (Corporations like Microsoft who espouse open source, but not free software because most of their stack is proprietary), when there's convenience to be had.
Is free software a lost cause? If we believe in things like right to repair, must we also believe in free software? Is using free software for financial benefit and then not contributing back simply by promoting and using free software immoral? Are we building a bad future for software by not fighting for something like the Free Software movement?
> If we believe in things like right to repair...
> immoral
When it is phrased like that (and it often is phrased like that) it sounds like a religion. Also the notion that there is no compromise to be had also seems very religious. I already have a religion and Free Software isn't it.
I support the majority of the goals of the FSF, SFC, OSI, and EFF. Some of them overlap, some I don't agree with (particularly the FSF's stance on handling nonfree firmware), and some goals of mine aren't represented by any of the above groups.
What I absolutely reject is the all or nothing approach even implicit in the question. If I buy a piece of proprietary software or hardware that does not mean I don't "believe" in Free Software or that it is a lost cause. It means I want to play video games with my friends. It means the way I put food on my family's table depends on it sometimes (although 99% of what I do is FOSS even for work).
Even in religion we make these moral distinctions of how closely we're willing to cooperate with evil in the course of our daily lives. I don't want to live the ascetic lifestyle of Richard Stallman. And to imply that I should to really consider myself a supporter of Free Software is what drives me and a few other people away from such a movement. Not to ramble about my FOSS CV, but I release software under the GPLv3, I've donated to FSF, SFC, OSI, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD just to name a few, I've spent hours tabling for the FSF at different events. Because I sometimes use proprietary software does that excommunicate me from the belief of Free Software?
I've made some experiments on my phones (bot Android and IOS), and you would surprise how many of the apps are "calling home". Because those apps are closed source, God knows what information they are sending back to their servers.
See: https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html
"Debian also maintains a repository of nonfree software. According to the project, this software is 'not part of the Debian system,' but the repository is hosted on many of the project's main servers, and people can readily find these nonfree packages by browsing Debian's online package database and its wiki."
So Debian isn't kosher because it's too easy to load non-free software?
So yes, I believe in GNU's Free Software.
Its incredulous that I can use a Linux distributions, compilers, multimedia tools and various application for my day to day use; not just a side hobby. You may argue about how good it is, but more or less you would get by. Yet I am not tied to a company with trillions of worth. The development happens in open and its driven by community of developers contributing out passion.
Playsatation and macOS are the examples where companies built heavily out of open source software, but they kept their systems closed. So you can have the code but its not a useful. You still are not in control about how software runs on it. Your only option is to not use it.
I own a PS4 and enjoy it very much. Thankfully its only for gaming, so I am not restricted. I wonder if it was an open platform people would have built many amazing things for it.
their goals might not be reachable, cause reality is rarely pure, but to me it's a principal necessity.
why? it's the counter weight to the microsoft of the late 90s and early 2000s. profit above all, we will try to get you, bind you and squeeze you with everything we can use - and more. GNU is the natural mirror perspective, which is needed for - balance.
and if we get a "more GNU" world ... i personally would think that is a good thing.
If I was a programmer, I also couldn't practically exercise my user freedoms for most of the software I use. Maybe one programmer could maintain a fork of vim, but it takes a small company to maintain a true fork of larger projects like Firefox, Chromium, and LibreOffice.
If you want control over your workflow, a program with a stable extensions API will go a lot farther than a free software license.
I prefer free software because it is gratis and doesn't spy on me.
Anyone here with some experience single-handedly maintaining a fork of a large project?
Do I believe the GNU project, the GNU licence and the related software has done good for society? Yes, I do.
Do I believe the Free Software Foundation has done more good than harm in getting the idea of free software (free as in freedom, not free as in beer) out in society? Yes, I do.
Do I believe every act by any representative of the GNU project or the Free Software Foundation is good? Of course I don't, they are people with their own ideas which do not necessarily always agree with mine.
So, Free Software for the win, it will take time but it has in many ways happened already and will continue to do so.
The more software is integrated in hardware which used to be free of such - tractors, cars, household appliances, etc. - the more important the freedoms proposed by the Free Software Foundation are. The more intrusive surveillance by government and commercial entities becomes, the more important it is to have access to free alternatives which do not report back to their 'Owners'. Free software plus the right to repair are essential to keep society out of the grip of commercial entities who first and foremost are beholden to their bottom line, second and increasingly so to some ideology and/or political party.
A simple example might be a free, open-source blueprint for a typewriter. People can improve the blueprint, anyone can use it. Now, to build an actual typewriter based on this blueprint, there's where individual investment of time and money is required - but anyone can do it, there's no patent lawyer waiting to halt that process.
Note also that branding and reliability do matter even in open-source. Two typewriter manufacturers working off the same open-source blueprint could make very different quality typewriters, and the one with the better reputation has a market edge (just not one based on exclusive access to some old IP).
Now, let's say you use the typewriter to create a best-selling novel. Here the creator should be able to retain rights to the novel, and since good writers are not all that common, the notion that the novel should be free and open-source doesn't really work that well if we want to have writers making a living and continuing to write. An alternative approach, such as a state-sponsored program to support authors, or a billionaire-financed private foundation program, would quickly become little more than a propaganda factory.
The kind of scenario that gave rise to the open-source movement might be described as the notion that authors who used a propriety typewriter to write their novel owe a fraction of their revenue to the typewriter blueprint owner. The whole Oracle-Google-Java-Android business comes to mind for example.
My personal views -- it really depends on what the software is for. In the case of foundational software (OS, libraries, utilities) then Free software has some major advantages that outweigh the disadvantages. The disadvantages of Free software come from the lack of paying customers that fund development. But in the above use case many of the primary users are also developers, who have an incentive for contributing back improvements. (In the case of OS an Libraries, I consider the primary users to be developers, as end-users use software that runs on top of this foundation, even though users also use the OS, they typically primarily use it to execute other applications).
For the next layer above, you have applications software. If the app is aimed towards businesses, then the funding model of businesses licensing the software from a vendor with a pool of developers seems to have positive returns, that outweigh the potential contributions that can come up from making the code follow the four Software Freedoms. Same may apply if the app is aimed at non-technical users. For apps aimed at technical users, many of these can fall under the previous category of foundational software.
The next category is entertainment related software. This I consider almost equivalent to books, a movie, or music. Most of the value is in the creative side, vs the technical side. Therefore Software Freedom applied to a game brings not much more value than the same type of Freedom applied to a blockbuster movie.
> ...
> Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price.
Yes, I do. And every day I'm reminded of how right and how forward thinking Stallman has been all along.
It's really a matter of freedom vs price.
At this point it's not even about software alone, it's about software and hardware. You literally cannot trust most of the TVs you buy not to spy on you because you can't inspect the software, and there is no way to load a modified version of it.
You are forced to throw away perfectly functioning stuff (sonos speakers for example iirc?) because the software will refuse to work. Stuff you paid with your own money. And the e-waste, the pollution!
And so on and so forth... On many other topics.
As for me: yes, I believe in Free Software, I do not consider it a lost cause, and I'm in awe that Stallman had the foresight to raise the issues when he did.
This is widely understood by the general public if one uses the word 'algorithms' instead of software.
Everybody knows algorithms run more and more of our lives and they are proprietary and secret.
Many folk know algorithms amplify are used justify discrimination and unfairness ( 'The computer says no' ).
The public understands the need for the four freedoms when applied to algorithms, at least the freedom to see the alogorithm, to understand why it came to it's decision.
The public understands that democracy can be undermined by algorithms, opinions affected, conspiracies run riot and riots started by algorithms promoting content. Perhaps sometimes intentionally by its authors or just gamed by powerful and state level propagandists.
Software will run more and more of our lives, like Moore's law it will grow exponentially and currently largely unchecked.
The four freedoms need to be applied more widely to algorithms in general if we are not to lose our cherished freedoms and democracy.
As an individual, free software is valuable for a me if I can modify it at will, say at most with one month work and without having to learn arcane techniques. However this is not the case most of the time, so using free software not so different from using a proprietary system.
For example I type this on a Linux laptop, which is unable to enter a proper sleep mode even if it was possible on Linux 20 years ago. The fancy keyboard lights up its key every few minutes without clear reason. I am using the Chromium browser but it does not display correctly the non Western characters and when I make a right click, garbage appears.
How could I modify all this within a month time frame or even a few years? It's impossible.
The situation would not be different if I was using a proprietary system.
Unfortunately there is a low ceiling to the utility of copylefted software as my experience in commercial software development shows that any commercially successful development based on copylefted software invites scrutiny such that one must constantly prove that every feature of the software can be directly linked to published source code changes. Any failure to do this can result in costly and distracting legal actions. Because this is onerous software developers who seriously wish for success and profit minimize exposure to copylefted source code. This makes it clear that freedom is a complicated business of trade offs and not a matter of ideological purity tests as the hype surrounding copyleft implies.
What does it mean to "believe" in Free Software?
I believe Free Software (as defined in your post) exists and will continue to exist for the foreseeable future.
> Is free software a lost cause?
This question seems to assume that Free Software is a cause, which is notably absent from the GNU definition you presented.
On most modern games, AAA games today suck, full of microtransactions, DRM and "always online" policies even for simple player runs. Nowadays I mostly play libre games and most of the music I own it's under a CC license.
The semi-infamous Nanowar band existed in Jamendo, among lots of other composers. Also, the TextFiles guy mirrored every CC Album from Jamendo to archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/jamendo-albums?noscript=1
So, there's no excuse today to get legal and libre gaming and media. You have libre game engines which allows you to play thousands of games from GOG, for example.
On comic books: https://comicbookplus.com/ I like both mistery/noir and sci-fi ones. Nowadays what it's being sold today it's 90's remakes on movies and Marvel comics, so in the end there's very few "new" and "groundbreaking".
Yes, "new" stories about hackers, dystopias and such, but that kind of media either already was on public domain or in copyleft-like fanfiction thru web sites and previously, Usenet and freeware interactive fiction games, if not libre.
On the "libre" term from Spanish, English speakers could spell it as "leebehr" or "lihbah (UK)".
I do absolutely believe in free software(And even more importantly, open APIs on hardware), I use it when I can, and contribute what I can(In the form of code, bug reports, and answering questions).
Currently I have close to zero paid software, just games and some cheap apps.
But I do have some proprietary freeware that I have no intention of giving up, until a free alternative arrives. I don't see any good replacement for Obsidian notes(I've tried basically all the FOSS apps and even had a go at building my own).
The only reason I have any moral objection is just because free software, obviously, all things being equal, is better.
But trade secrets exist for a reason. I'd much rather live in a world where firefighters have proprietary drones, than no drones at all, or crappy ones.
And I really couldn't care less about binary blobs. I just consider them almost like a part of the hardware, as long as they are freely redistributable for personal or commercial use.
e.g. don’t like JetBrains? Make your own IDE. Sure it will take effort and a group collaboration, but it’s honestly not too much to expect a large group to make a reasonably comparable IDE. In fact, there is a reasonably comparable open-source IDE: VS Code. And this is the case for most proprietary software.
The problem arises when you can’t make your own version of software, because it uses exclusive resources like undocumented hardware or certificates, or you’re required to use the proprietary version by law. Or if it’s just too difficult to make and too important. At a certain point, the software becomes a public utility and should be something like FOSS.
It’s exactly like physical goods. If someone sells a cup but i don’t like it i can make and sell my own version. But i can’t do the same with internet broadband, social security, or insulin. So these are all regulated
I do, however, believe in property rights. As such, if a developer wishes his/her creation to be freely available, I believe that this wish should be respected under the creator's terms.
As for free software as an idea, I think it has been equal parts awesome and crap.
And I would go a step further, I owe my career to the Free Software and Open Source movements.
It's not that I couldn't have made my way in a world of proprietary software, but that world of money, license restrictions, vendor lock in, black boxes and deferring control to some megacorp's product managers, neither appealed nor was very accessible.
I'm not a purist to the extent RMS is, but I consider the 4 freedoms the FSF promotes to be very important practical features. Most of the gripes I have at home and work with software ultimately pertain to missing one of those features.
I think one people strongly undervalue is the extent to which "Free Software" is already overwhelmingly successful. Don't compare it to the platonic ideal that Free Software talks about, compare it to the much worse situation(s) we'd be in if we hadn't already digested and worked with the concept for the past few decades.
And keep fighting.
In practice enterprises avoid using everything licensed under GPL v3 (e.g. Apple freezing Mac OS's Bash veraion), that blocks innovation cause good software usually backed by large amount of budget, especially those with GUI, like Windows, Android, Microsoft Office, Chrome etc.
I believe in Free Software and I also believe in positive, cooperative attitudes, which is not the attitude that GNU puts forth.
Why?
Well, the users were free. They were no longer forced to use proprietary systems that were designed by people who had different priorities than them. This empowered people to build the internet as we know it, and ever since then the dream has been to design an equally liberating software that can live up to the opus that is The Internet. As a user, I still use proprietary software on a daily basis; even Stallman does when he orders his Big Mac at the McDonald's kiosk. But I also appreciate having options; 3 years ago I finally said that I was fed up with Windows, and luckily for me there was software I could install on the hardware I already owned to let me escape it. I had options. I was no longer forced into a position where I was abused as a customer or target market.
So that's what I believe in. Empowering the individual to make choices, so they aren't trapped when proprietary systems decide to turn to shit. Without options, we have no democracy. Without democracy, there is no competition. Without competition, there is no innovation. And without innovation, we don't get new options.
It's about a day after this was originally posted and there are less comments and upvotes than there are for a post about Twitter adding an edit button. I believe that constitutes its own answer to the question.
I prefer developers release their source code because they want to and not because an overengineered LICENSE.txt compels them. That looks more like free software to me.
The GPL isn't that bad per se, but I don't like the notion of making a folder of textfiles more "free" by adding restrictions on its usage (by people). It feels contrary to that advertised user freedom. The GPL looks like the attributed freedom of that folder with some textfiles is more important than people's freedom. That is still fine for lots of use cases, but its whole framing by the FSF is what irks me.
Without a way to pay for work of developers no software can be good enough. So in a way I do not believe in a FS. But I believe that we need to find a way to a Free Software, and that it can be found.
I definitely think that the "right to repair" your software is a good idea, and access to the source code is required for this. However, this does not mean freedom to copy and distribute the software.
I think the insistence on "True Free Software™" and "True Open Source™" is holding a lot of things back. Merely access to the source code (under any license) for the "right to repair" would already be an enormous leap forward, so let's start with that instead of also insisting on these other, IMHO less important, things.
But weak-copy left and MIT style licenses are great and are winning.
Go back 10-20 years and we live in a much, much, much worse world in virtually every domain.
Not to mention open hardware, open FPGA, open chips and so on.
How many databases are still closed source today? How many compilers? How many programing languages?
Compare now to the 90s and its actually mind blowing how different everything is.
Yes.
Not if I have to share my existence with zealots.
Your screed sounds like a bad parody of extreme religious ideology.
The community aspect is pretty cool too.
So, I use some proprietary software, but I keep it in a safe box (separate device or VM), and treat it the same way I treat external services, more or less. (I wonder if Stallman could be convinced of this). By default I try to make everything FOSS.
I support free software, have been an FSF member for decades, and that's all swell and spiffy.
But I fall short of believing in free software, because this is and intellectual, not a moral choice. The libertarian, common-sense argument for free software has massive traction.
However, it simply does not follow that an (arguably myopic) choice for two parties to enter into a non-free software licensing agreement is somehow "immoral". It's a business decision, folks. Non-swift decisions are made all the time.
Furthermore, I'd contend that free software helps itself through evangelistic zeal and moralizing arguments not at all. When I'm in the mood for good preachin', I'll head to church.
That is, I see "open source" as primarily an assertion that "open source" practices lead to better software. Eg, the argument that people will submit patches, documentation, etc. 'for free', or that the wider user base for no-cost open source software will lead to additional sources of revenue like consulting and support work for that software.
My experience has been that no, they don't.
On the other hand, "open source" can certainly be used as a sales loss-leader, or as way to commoditize one's complement (https://www.gwern.net/Complement ), and it gets the umbrella of terms like "community" and "volunteer contributions" that mask what Zed Shaw correctly refers to as "Begger Barons" (https://zedshaw.com/blog/2022-02-05-the-beggar-barons/ ). ("The Beggar Barons aren't stealing this labor though, they're just using unscrupulous business practices and social manipulation to beg for free labor.")
> Is free software a lost cause?
I don't see a way that I can support myself and family with a business model built on free software-only I tried and it failed. And the problems seem insurmountable.
Like, if you sell free software, how do you let people demo it? How do you provide discounts to academics?
So, yes, it's a lost cause. At least not until we have Universal Basic Income. ;)
But with that said, if you don't have to worry about money or reputation, then yes, GPLv3 it!
Just bear in mind that if it's useful then you'll get people begging you to switch to MIT or similar permissive license ... so they can use it, in their commercial projects, and not have to worry about finicky license details or ethical arguments.
> If we believe in things like right to repair, must we also believe in free software?
Right-to-repair might restore the right to fix the software in your car. I wasn't aware that it also gave you the right to take the modified software and sell it to others.
> Is using free software for financial benefit and then not contributing back simply by promoting and using free software immoral?
Stallman says "The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose" is freedom 0 of the four freedoms of free software.
So, no.
> Are we building a bad future for software by not fighting for something like the Free Software movement?
I do not wish to die on the cross of St. IGNUcius.
Until about a decade ago, I used to believe that free vs proprietary model was just a developer preference. But last decade has consistently proven this to be completely wrong. I wouldn't mind per-deployment price for software as long as it treats me with respect and not as cattle to be milked. But time and again, we see proprietary software abuse the obscurity provided by binary-only-distribution to hide all sorts of anti-user code - anywhere from subtle nudging using confusing interfaces, to outright backdoors and malware. Yes, there are still proprietary software that operate ethically. But the threat is far too great that it emphasizes the need for completely open code bases.
That may vindicate open source software. In fact, I believed that open source and free software were practically identical due to the similarity in ways they operate and the licences they use. Here again, big tech has proven that it can push anti-user software as open source. Chrome is a great example - open, but still manages to send your every search letter-by-letter to the server. It also automatically logs you in at the first chance it gets. But chrome is far from being the only offender in this category. Almost all big OSS projects hide many such dark patterns.
Again, I often get shutdown when I mention this. The argument is that the code is open and so I should modify anything I don't like. Yet, it's a fact that such projects exist despite the thousands of developers who hate it. Here is the reason why being open is simply not enough. Software emphasizing freedom tend to be composable, simple and often easily modifiable (eg: emacs, suckless). Many OSS projects take away that freedom by making the codebase too bloated and complicated to be practically forked and maintained by even small to mid size teams. Development of many of them are dictated by one or two big companies that often unilaterally push designs that are hugely unpopular with the community. Another similar dark pattern is to hide bug reports and resolutions behind paywalls. The number of ways in which large OSS projects hurt user freedom is way too many - I will need an entire article to list just the ones I know. Essentially they achieve proprietary level of abuse in a free-looking package. It's difficult to use them in any way different from what its developer intended. People seem to miss the fact that such projects nudge you to part with your coins and that they exfiltrate enough data to implement an ad-hoc social credit system (eg: Don't be surprised if your health insurance premium is influenced by your search history).
> but they tend to switch to proprietary, partly-proprietary, corporate controlled open source, when there's convenience to be had.
This is an important point. Users - at least technically capable ones - must decide if the convenience they get is worth the risks they take with these software. In addition, it isn't as if free software can't be made convenient (the evolution of Blender is a good example). But it takes effort. And that isn't coming due to less money involved.
> Is free software a lost cause? > Are we building a bad future for software by not fighting for something like the Free Software movement?
Free software is a philosophy more than a movement. I believe that there are enough people with awareness to keep it going. There are enough pieces present out there to implement any level of software freedom - from chip designs to whole application suites. The missing part is the awareness, ability and willingness to deploy them. There is great cost in terms of money (free systems are costlier because they don't sell your data), time and effort. But considering the dystopia we're already in, it may be well worth investing in them.
In general, I think the way I would say it is that I agree that, all things being equal, it would be better if all software were FOSS. The problem is not all things are equal and the GNU vision of FOSS is not helpful with that reality. Most often, when I find myself discussing FOSS, it's in a context where the FOSS advocate wants to push their overall goal for all software over the specifics of the situation.
There are a minority of software projects where I think it's very important, but I think the bulk of software projects can be closed source if that works best for the creators and I'm skeptical the harm outweighs the good.
So I believe in it but not the way GNU talks about it? And I think their approach probably does more harm than good.