Will they keep the repo in GitHub? :)
https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/3hsab9/could_emacs_b...
None of the GNU projects (that I've ever seen) are officially hosted on GitHub.
Official Git repo: https://savannah.gnu.org/git/?group=emacs
Unofficial github mirror repo: https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs
https://github.com/gcc-mirror/gcc
It seems out of sync though.
I have more goodwill towards github than I do for RMS, with his gcc shenanigans.
Either way, GitHub is proprietary, so it is against GNU's principles.
Just like I don't need to see the exact farm where my tomatoes came from, or which mine the metal came from for my car engine, I don't need to see every single line of code for my Netflix player.
Seriously, where's the ethical concern there?
Where do you draw the line from "I don't trust anyone, I need to verify everything", to "I trust them enough to not worry too much", to "I don't care"?
Not that your analogy is even correct. An end product like metal would be more like a circuit, not amenable to modification in of itself. The Netflix player is general-purpose software running on your property which you are forbidden from studying, using for any purpose, modifying or redistributing. The ethical concerns are enormous and no metaphor to physical objects is applicable when the stakes are so different.
Voluntary association does tend to work in this case, but it doesn't change the fact that a party is engaging in unethical behavior. Furthermore, the ultimate end result of "Don't like it, don't use it" is the erosion of choice.
You are NOT required to use any proprietary software.
Oh, hell yes, you are. Government agencies, who have a duty to serve the public, run proprietary software all the time. Meaning they are deprived of computational sovereignty and cannot guarantee they are performing their duties unfettered. If you've been to public school in most countries, you are taught to use proprietary software in IT classes. An institution devoted to learning compels students to use software that explicitly forbids being learned from and studied. Even more harmful are proprietary formats, which are like a lock and time bomb on your data, yet are ubiquitous.
Network services are a big ethical dilemma of their own and yet practically unavoidable.
Software is essential to contemporary civilization, and you will be using lots of proprietary programs. You cannot reasonably expect people to become hermits over it.
It's the same logic as religion, who feels I shouldn't be allowed to marry someone of the same sex even though it doesn't affect them in any way.
What a load of nonsense. It is the proprietary software vendor who deprives users of freedom. Your analogy is backwards and completely inappropriate. Free software mandates you have the freedom to run the program for any purpose, so gay marriage would be unrestricted. Proprietary vendors would have terms that may or may not restrict it.
The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Note that "access to the source code" is not one of the four freedoms -- it's merely a precondition to be able to satisfy them.
ed: It might be interesting to note, that most of these freedoms exist for physical objects: you are generally allowed to fix broken physical things, even those that are under patent protection. Or to make sure stuff fits where you need it. And you generally can sell/give away stuff you're not using. These rights are actually protected by law.
Free software could be viewed as a rather conservative measure towards ensuring that we get these "everyday" rights wrt software as well.
I'm not sure if you were implying that the 4F are replicating what happens with physical objects; I would disagree with this. The 4F expect from software much more than we expect from any other good or service we buy/rent/consume.
You are free to attach a metal head to a shaft and call it a hammer, and look at other hammers for inspiration, if your hammer doesn't work quite right.
You are of course right that it only goes so far -- and this is perhaps most scary in the field of bioengineering -- with the possibility of a) sterile produce (you wouldn't be able to plant a potato any more), and b) patented/"copyrighted" gene sequences -- making it illegal to plant certain "proprietary" produce without a license grant.
I do agree that the analogy is flawed -- is the shape of a fork more like the api or the source code? I suppose the main difference is that many useful physical things are trivial conceptually (once you've had/seen the idea).
Your arguments are framed as if to make them valid, but they are still fallacies. The MIT licence exists for a reason, and the reason it's the most commonly used. It's the non-extremist licence.
Anyway, I'm done. Arguing with extremists is a fools errand. I believe there is a place for all models.
You say that copyleft removes your freedom to choose to distribute a program as proprietary software. This is correct, but you portray it highly disingenuously, like it's an equally weighted choice.
Generally, freedom has the most influence when its recipients are those at a lower position of power. The power of the software vendor is to have full control over the usage of the program, ostensibly either to provide a better UX (which is dubious), to exercise their IP (an ethical landmine), to benefit from unsustainable per-unit business models that ignore software's intrinsically anti-rivalrous, non-scarce and intangible nature, or other reasons.
Let us see how the user is affected. And keep in mind, all programmers are users. Programmers will be using other people's software at dramatically higher quantities than they will ever write anything individually. As such, user freedom is of paramount importance to them.
Now, for a certain amount of convenience on part of the vendor, the user is put in a position where they cannot a) run the program for all purposes that they may desire to use it, b) study and change it to adjust it to their needs, c) share it with friends, neighbors and acquaintances and d) enrich their community by sharing modified copies. In other words, they get software without most of the benefits that actually comes with having things be software in the first place.
As such, the users lose individual and collective control for the benefit of the vendor, but at a deadweight loss for everyone else. Because, when the software leaves the vendor into another person's machine, how it's used is in no natural sense of any interest to them. Not anymore than a chef is interested in how other people use their recipe. This has been accepted as the first-sale doctrine by courts across the world.
I therefore conclude that user freedom should be given at all times where the software is user-facing.
It solves your problems, and mine. Middle ground. Compromise.
What is wrong with MIT?
Thus getting for free the work invested into LLVM, being able to sell the modified version and LLVM developer don't see a dime from it.
The person to whom you replied seems to quite literally be talking about "people who see no ethical concerns with proprietary software" as such. Some people do.
You want to know why they do? There are many resources available online that you can use to read up on why they do. If after reading them you still don't need to see every line of code on your Netflix player, you will still be disingenuous if you pose "problems with proprietary software as such" as some kind of ending of a reductio ad absurdum. Disagreement is fine; you don't need to be confused by it.
I also find people unethical who would go out and punish or actively prevent a fellow human being who seek to understand software which is currently running on a machine that they own.
I also admier people who fixes broken software on their own machines and then goes to share the improvements. I find ethical concerns when people try to prevent those improvements from being run or being shared.
Those proprietary software which isn't covered by the above concerns are unlikely to be ethical concerns to me, but what is then the definition of proprietary software?
> I face backlash from people who see no ethical concerns with proprietary software
I think this could be clearer. RMS himself has stated [0] that selling exceptions is perfectly fine, so even free software zealots do not object to proprietary licensing in all of its forms. I think most people object to proprietary licensing in some forms. This is a case where speaking in riddles and platitudes is not effective policy.
> or who are apologetic to "open source" instead
Again this is a platitude turn of phrase. I support some kinds of open source and not others, as do I expect most thinking people. Does that make me "apologetic"? Am I the problem? No clue.
> Usually it's in the form of some smartass who will redefine the word "freedom" to mean something different from the context at hand
Quite frankly, one could accuse the entire Free Software movement of this, as that is essentially its purpose: to redefine the loaded term "freedom" in a nonintuitive way.
But accepting for the sake of argument the FSF's vision of software "freedom" as the correct definition, I am not convinced it is an actual view instead of a post-hoc rationalization. For example, the FSF claims [1] the RPL is non-free for 3 reasons:
1. It puts limits on prices charged for an initial copy.
2. It requires notification of the original developer for publication of a modified version.
3. It requires publication of any modified version that an organization uses, even privately.
Now my question is this: which of the four freedoms, specifically, give rise to these objections? Because from my POV the RPL not only protects the four freedoms, but does so strongly, for exactly the reasons here that are presented as so-called "objections".
So, the only conclusion that I can draw, is that the 4Fs are a lot of nonsense, a "just-so" story to explain why GPL License is Best License. Freedom is allowed to go so far, but no further, until GPL v4, and then we can go further.
I am sorry if some of this seems trollish or offputting. I promise it is not. I have read probably hundreds of books and essays on this and I cannot find anything that satisfies me that "Free Software" is an intellectually defensible philosophy. This may be because the people who are best-positioned to defend it have better things to do than defend it to me.
I want to like the free software community, and we do collaborate, in a sense, but it is always strategic and not ideological. It just so happens, in cases, the GPL and my objectives are compatible. But the FSF's objectives and my objectives are not really compatible at all. So there is the same funny taste in my mouth from working at cross-purposes that I get when writing proprietary software. It has the same artificiality.