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Comment by ldarby | Hacker News Reader

> Open source is a synonym for free software

False, I suggest you read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.e...

It was an exacty synonym in 1998. There have been very minor deviations in very obscure licenses most people haven't heard of, so it's a minor quibble. The article you quote acknowledges twice,

    The two terms describe almost the same category of
    software, but they stand for views based on 
    fundamentally different values.

and

    “Free software.” “Open source.” If it's the same 
    software (or nearly so), does it matter which name you
    use?

OSI's intent was always to refer to the exact same thing as "free software", just use different language, and thus different arguments in favour of it.

Open Source includes BSD style licenses, which allow distribution in binary form only. Free Software doesn't, that's the difference and I think that difference is large enough to make them not synonyms.

That is false. Free software includes BSD licenses. You are thinking of copyleft licenses.

Isn't the parent commenter correct that BSD permits a developer to distribute a binary without offering the source? At the same time, a free software developer can incorporate and distribute BSD libraries without compromising a free license like GPL.

The BSD license does so permit, but this only means that it is not a copyleft license; it is still a free software license.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html#Non-Copylefted...

You are not alone in thinking that only copyleft licenses are free. I think people get this association from GPL = free = Stallman = copyleft, since rms does keep talking about all of those things, so that's what people think he is saying (or they get it second-hand from people talking about what rms said). However, rms has never said that non-copyleft licenses are not free. He does call them weak or pushover licenses, though, but he doesn't think they're wrong.

Ok, thanks for clarifying that, you're right I was thinking that free = copyleft. This came from thinking that open source = non-copyleft + copyleft, and that it doesn't care at all about copyleft, while FS does, so FS = OS - non-copyleft = copyleft.

I agree that OSI thinks the two are the same. "The article you quote" disagrees, and that's the entire point of that article. It's totally fine that you might agree with OSI, but it boggles the mind that you can't see the difference between freedom and free, or that you don't see that the GNU Manifesto was always about freedom. Whatever happened to understanding both sides of an argument?

> OSI's intent was always to refer to the exact same thing as "free software", just use different language, and thus different arguments in favour of it.

If you use "different arguments" than freedom to argue about software freedom, then it's no longer the same movement. The free software movement has always been about ethics. The open source movement has no ethical backing, it values code quality over ethical treatment of users (which is why people talk about "open source DRM implementations" -- since DRM is meant to subjugate users, it cannot be free software. But it can be "open source").

I didn't say it was the same movement. I said it was the same software.

The DRM point you make is nuanced. There can be free DRM implementations -- it would just mean that users could modify the software to remove the DRM. If the DRM is implemented in hardware, like tivoisation, then it is indeed no longer free. I think open source advocates, if they still exist (the open source movement seems dormant because it has "won"), might consider that to be open source. Stallman certainly thinks they would:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-open-overlap.html

wow, I really do not want to quibble with you about something we agree on, so for the record, "hey everybody, I agree with cyphar!"

However: the GPL2 says that you can impose no restrictions on what what people can implement with free software so long as they it is only redistributed as free software, so it seems to me that while DRM'ed software is not free, DRM software itself could be free. Hey, if a DRM scheme could be designed to ensure software freedom, it might even be embraced; we already have GPL clickwrap license clicks which a narrow reading of the GPL might suggest you can't have (it's an "additional restriction" that the original software you licensed may not have had; for instance, if clickwraps are covered by law that the GPL is not covered by, you are forcing additional terms)

I know that the GPL3 had some fine tuning with regard to TiVoization and web servers, but I'm not aware that it would bar DRM software itself; but perhaps.

OK, I found it here for GPL3. You are partially correct that the GPL3 contains some anti-DRM measures but not in the sense you describe:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.en.html "It's always possible to use GPLed code to write software that implements DRM. However, if someone does that with code protected by GPLv3, section 3 says that the system will not count as an effective technological "protection" measure. This means that if you break the DRM, you'll be free to distribute your own software that does that, and you won't be threatened by the DMCA or similar laws."

I thought one aspect of the GPL (copyleft being a clever copyright hack) is that the license applies only to the code you are licensing, and not to other copyrighted works you may have authored, but in a certain sense it does. I'm sure RMS and Moglen and FSF have thought harder about this than I have, so it's quite likely I'm missing something; however they do have broader agendas as well.

If you don't have a system that takes away your freedom with tivoisation, then yes you can have free software that implements DRM. But there's no purpose to that software because it cannot be used to restrict your users (the whole point of DRM). In addition, the software is actually not effectively free because you cannot exercise any of the freedoms because you might get DMCA'd (especially freedoms #1 and #3 -- where modification involves removing the digital handcuffs).

So, practically speaking, you can't have free DRM software. But you can have "open source" DRM software, because there's no part of the OSI that classifies software that acts like such a trap as being immoral. The GPLv3 essentially ensures that a user is not threatened by legal threats about breaking DRM in a piece of free software. It's the only software license that ensures this AFAIK, so I'm a bit sad more people don't use it for firmware and other places where defence against tivoisation matters.

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