Applying the Free Software Criteria
gnu.org
gnu.org
1. Only the use of the AGPL license. No other license is considered free, because all other licenses can be used in some way to limit the freedom of users. As soon as a license more free than the AGPL comes along, only that will be the free license. (In contrast, the FSF promotes the Apache license, the LGPL, and similar, when it is strategic to the free software agenda.)
2. Never interoperate with non-free software. To do so is to condone actions that may prolong someone's lack of freedom. The fact this may be necessary for their work or personal life is irrelevant. (In contrast, most GNU software runs on Windows, which Stallman probably sees as no different from it running on the proprietary Unices he wrote it on.)
3. Do not allow the execution of non-free code, if your free program executes code. (In contrast, gNewSense or IceCat will execute any x86 or javascript you throw at them, even if it doesn't have licensing metadata that identifies it as free.)
The FSF and Stallman are in fact quite tolerant in an absolute sense compared to our hypothetical SLF. This doesn't even go into the other strategies or tactics such an extreme group could engage in, such as firebombing the Microsoft offices or forcibly liberating source code. Instead, the FSF restricts itself to very tame boycott politics.
You in particular have a gross misunderstanding of Stallman's strategies and tactics, even if you might understand his goals. Stallman is a moderate. He thinks pragmatically, even if he's sometimes wrong (protesting DRM at apple stores is probably a waste, as is protesting furriers, but sometimes you can't help but want to speak out).
In the real world, Stallman is still a radical. The English meaning of the word freedom cannot be twisted for suiting one's philosophy. True freedom lies in allowing your work to be modified without restrictions - like the BSD or Apache licenses offer. Daemonizing software released under those licenses, and proselytizing against their use IS radical.
The free software movement with its copyleft licenses strives for this kind of freedom, but having been yet unable to eradicate IP law, essentially uses it to undo itself. "My creation rejects intellectual property and so must everyone who uses my creation."
It seems contradictory because it is, and it is very self aware of that. Because licenses like the gpl aren't an end in themselves, they are simply a crude attempt to mimic the idyllic end game: no copyright law covering software at all.
I will not link you to any of the numerous examples of Stallman doing so, because you must find your own truth, and you must make your own DuckDuckGo searches.
If you have any honor, you will do this. If you do not, you have blinded yourself and chosen, willfully, ignorance over knowledge. Nothing can forgive this.
2. The point of the parable of the SLF is to pose an actual radical group in the software freedom space similar to the actually radical groups in other political spheres such as animal liberation (ALF), environmentalism (ELF), feminism (Wimmen's Fire Brigade), socialism (RAF), anti-racism (Black Panther Party), or queer liberation (Bash Back!). The outlook of a radical is fundamentally different from the outlook of a liberal. A radical does not negotiate. A radical does not not make strategic compromises. This is rarely a strategic or tactical choice and more often an ideological one, and it seems mostly orthogonal to the effectiveness of the radical group (history is rife with radicals who have made enormous gains, often being entirely transformative on the societies they set out to change). Stallman does not demonstrate any of the qualities of a radical other than that his views are very different from most others. But this alone does not a radical make.
3. Arguing from a definition is a weak stance indeed. It is an appeal to the most meaningless of authority. Stallman disagrees that freedom lies in allowing your work to be modified without restrictions; he rather posits that freedom lies in the ability of a user to have total self-determination over the code that they execute. Neither of these definitions is in a dictionary, and a dictionary cannot offer any source of philosophical, ethical, or moral truth, nor should it. This is a deeper matter than that.
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/02/08/210241/rms-obj...
1. If nobody uses your free software because it doesn't interoperate with what other people use, then you're really not accomplishing much by making your software free.
2. If you want to empower users, you can't very well tell them that they aren't allowed to use certain kinds of software just because you don't want them to. That would be quite hypocritical.
My speculation would be that the position is deemed ethical because Stallman's view [as I understand it] has always been based on the primacy of freedom for the user. Stallman has not [so far as I am aware, though admittedly I do not approximate a one-eyed king on HN] ever suggested that users should be absolutely prohibited from installing and using non-free software. Only that it not be included under the "Good Houskeeping Seal of Approval".
What Stallman has done here, as elsewhere, is a pair of tasks. One is to carefully define a set of terms and the second is to state his position with respect to those terms. Agree or disagree (and it's more important in disagreement I suppose) one can reasonably know more or less exactly what one is agreeing or disagreeing with...e.g. this exactness is the reason that the issue of interoperability as a possible contradiction can be raised and clearly articulated.
Stallman speaks absolutely in the sense of clarity. He knows his position and his beliefs. My opinion is that they have perhaps done more to shape the current software ecosystem than anything else. We live in a world where a common moderate position for sober business women is an Apache type license not a 30 day trial binary, cripple ware, or even shareware...let alone something sold by a four-legged meat eating sales team. Great wealth has been built upon a shared commons, and programmers and developers have vastly benefitted in their economic lives.
But hey, for what it's worth, every piece of JavaScript we run is free software compatible. Hooray! https://github.com/idno/known
It's preposterous to suggest that non-free programs limit individual freedom and liberty. Quid-pro-quo: the undeniable biological, evolutionary instinct to receive something (money) for a rendered service/product (software) simply cannot be deemed criminal. There's very little incentive to charge money for something whose blueprint is free. RedHat is the exception in the software world, not the rule. Very few profitable free-software based companies thrive - take canonical for instance, they're barely profitable despite putting out a VERY high quality Linux distro
Plus, why stop at software - why not release the blueprints of EVERYTHING ever made? Oh - and please tell your ambitious school going kid to NOT aim to finish first, because, when he grows up to be a successful inventor, Stallman and co. would have brainwashed the masses into daemonizing inventions that aren't made public property!
FSF/Stallman in way claims that charging for software is criminal or even unethical.
The whole point of Free Software is to give and preserve rights for end users, rights which enable end users to do what they want with the software they recieve, like examining it to make sure it doesn't do anything bad (for the user), modifying it to do what the end user wants, copy it, etc.
Now obviously this makes it incompatible with the traditional way of commercial software, which is proprietary distribution of binaries, which often also comes with DRM schemes further limiting what the end user can do with said software, and worst case, exploiting the end user by enganging in hidden or poorly-disclosed unwanted actions (spyware, rootkits etc).
A mindset to open this advantage up is somehow being selectively applied to software.
In a truly open and free market, malicious elements that include spyware, rootkits .. etc will get rooted out. Additionally, regulation from the justice department and FTC tries to maintain the free-ness of the market, so that one company doesn't abuse its position.
In this light, the GPL is simply not compatible with the tenets of economics - which by the way is how evolution and biology has programmed all of us.
BSD/Apache/MIT kind of permissive licenses offer true freedom. They allow for jointly harnessing the resources of many to build infrastructure that has widespread use - an approach that allows companies to focus on their value-add rather than re-inventing the wheel.
Stallman is a vocal detractor [1] of ANY permissive open-source license. This is unfortunate for someone who actually played a pivotal role in the big success that open-source is today.
[1]: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/02/08/210241/rms-obj...
I disagree, what products and services typically rely on is price which in turn is typically based on just how well a company can exploit workers and negotiate cheap prices for material, and of course advertising to make people buy their particular version out in a sea of thousands of practically identical products.
>A mindset to open this advantage up is somehow being selectively applied to software.
Because the FSF is concerned about software, due to it's founder being a developer. I'm sure there are efforts to have better dislosure of contents, preparation and materials used for the type of physical products you brought up.
>In a truly open and free market, malicious elements that include spyware, rootkits .. etc will get rooted out.
I find that incredibly naive, pretty much every company wants to exploit their customers for maximum return, Microsoft recently turned their OS into the equivalent of spyware in order to harvest user data for ad targeting, meanwhile the governments are actively making use of malicious elements to compromise as many end users they can in order to surveil them.
>which by the way is how evolution and biology has programmed all of us.
What? Are you saying we are actually programmed to hide our discoveries in order to be able to take advantage of our fellow man rather than share our knowledge in order to advance ourselves as a species ?
>BSD/Apache/MIT kind of permissive licenses offer true freedom.
For the developer, Free Software offers 'true freedom' for the end user. Ah, the old 'true freedom' nonsense.
>an approach that allows companies to focus on their value-add rather than re-inventing the wheel.
Meanwhile everyone needs to re-invent the value-add functionality, so you are still re-inventing the wheel.
It ends up saving proprietary companies money because they can lower the amount of developers they need, since they don't need to write as much code, only the 'value-add', this leads to less developer employment.
If anything you should be disliking permissive code rather than copyleft, since it is the former which really threathens developer jobs in the proprietary software sector which you seemingly fear for.
>Stallman is a vocal detractor [1] of ANY permissive open-source license.
Well obviously since they do not protect any of the end user rights which Free Software was created to protect. Again Free Software is about giving rights to the end user, not the developer.
Patents are bad, right?