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Comment by wvenable | Hacker News Reader

The majority of the sites on the web are non-free software that you interact with -- the browser is effectively a remote terminal. Whether or not large JavaScript is involved seems secondary. I understand the distinction between code running on a remote server and code distributed to me and run the browser but that seems like a more of a technical distinction than a moral one.

(In terms of my own raw time, the percentage of open source[1] software the web I interact with daily is surprisingly high)

[1] Unsure of exact licensing compatibility so I can't say it's all Free Software.

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I was thinking this too. You can read the HTML and CSS of any website, but there's likely no licensing information attached to it. And you'll never see the server side code of most websites.

What's the reason that's not considered a problem? Is it because it's not actually running on the user's computer? Or because you can think of the resulting HTML/CSS as output of the program?

> What's the reason that's not considered a problem

It's considered a problem:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-se...

> The original idea of web servers wasn't to do computing for you, it was to publish information for you to access. Even today this is what most web sites do, and it doesn't pose the SaaSS problem, because accessing someone's published information isn't doing your own computing.

The more grey area that exists the harder it is for me to understand what Stallman's beliefs actually are. "doing your own computing", why is that the center of his moral beliefs?

The longer time passes, the more it feels like Stallman is holding a lifelong vendetta because he had trouble debugging some printers.

Because laws around digital intellectual property are profoundly different from physical goods, even when the goods are intellectual property like a book.

Consider a trivial example. I bought an iOS SSH app called prompt. The authors subsequently release a new version and removed the old one from the store. It works great on my phone and I decided decided to put it on another device. Guess what? It's not on the App Store any more, and my options for using it are limited.

If you log in to the App Store on that device, go to Updates -> Purchased -> Not on this iPhone (or iPad, etc.) you should be able to install it on the new device.

Well if the FSF had its way prompt would never have been made to the degree of polish and quality that it was, because there would have been no financial incentive, no?

Really? So that's why so many of those fancy proprietary web sites run on fully opensource free stacks?

In the same way that Red Hat isn't a thing, right?

> The longer time passes, the more it feels like Stallman is holding a lifelong vendetta because he had trouble debugging some printers.

That ad hominem is uncalled for.

The point of "doing your computing" is the concept of freedom within the Free Software movement.

According to RMS, "freedom is having control over your life". "In a computer system there are just two possibilities: either the user controls the program or the program controls the user".

So, "doing your own computing" is "having control over your life", and thus, having freedom.

My point, that I didn't articulate well, is that over time everything is going to be computing. Some day your pants will have a CPU in it. Do you not have control over your life if proprietary pants software cools your legs when it's hot?

So it seems that the definition of "what is software" has to constantly be redefined OR the whole Free Software thing becomes more and more a luddite idea.

> Do you not have control over your life if proprietary pants software cools your legs when it's hot?

Do you have the source code to firmware on the chip in the pants? Can you install a custom version? That would be consistent with the FSF's viewpoint. They want the user to have full access and control over the software he uses in all devices he uses.

To put a bit of a finer point on it: Stallman has said (paraphrasing; I'm having trouble finding a good source) that self-contained embedded firmware/microcode without an update mechanism isn't "software" in a sense relevant to the Free Software movement. Rather, it's equivalent to a hardwired state machine, and we can judge its behavior as a single object, notwithstanding what its architecture looks like internally.

When did he say this? In the 80s when he established the FSF or recently when the issue came up? This is my entire point, over time the definition of "software" has to be re-evaluated to justify the existence of this ethos; if one man defines what is "software" under this philosophy it doesn't feel like a real philosophy at all.

From his site:

https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

However, if I am visiting somewhere and the machines available nearby happen to contain non-free software, through no doing of mine, I don't refuse to touch them. I will use them briefly for tasks such as browsing. This limited usage doesn't give my assent to the software's license, or make me responsible its being present in the computer, or make me the possessor of a copy of it, so I don't see an ethical obligation to refrain from this. Of course, I explain to the local people why they should migrate the machines to free software, but I don't push them hard, because annoying them is not the way to convince them.

Likewise, I don't need to worry about what software is in a kiosk, pay phone, or ATM that I am using. I hope their owners migrate them to free software, for their sake, but there's no need for me to refuse to touch them until then. (I do consider what those machines and their owners might do with my personal data, but that's a different issue, which would arise just the same even if they did use free software. My response to that issue is to minimize those activities which give them any data about me.)

That's my policy about using a machine once in a while. If I were to use it for an hour every day, that would no longer be "once in a while" — it would be regular use. At that point, I would start to feel the heavy hand of any nonfree software in that computer, and feel the duty to arrange to use a liberated computer instead.

Likewise, if I were to ask or lead someone to set up a computer for me to use, that would make me ethically responsible for its software load. In such a case I insist on free software, just as if the machine were mine.

As for microwave ovens and other appliances, if updating software is not a normal part of use of the device, then it is not a computer. In that case, I think the user need not take cognizance of whether the device contains a processor and software, or is built some other way. However, if it has an "update firmware" button, that means installing different software is a normal part of use, so it is a computer.

It's not like he doesn't consider it software, just that he's OK with not being Free. That said, small details at the edges hardly invalidate a philosophy.

Over time this will be unsurmountable; you'll not have the time to audit everything you contact (it all can be software and you not even know it). The only solution is to live an isolationist lifestyle.

The idea is that we'll verify things as a community; not necessarily that we each have to individually audit things

Remember that rms mainly opposes the distribution of proprietary software. His main goal has always been to have enough FOSS written to satisfy the needs of users, allowing them to avoiding having to choose between performing some task or keeping their rights.

I draw exactly the opposite conclusion: over time everything is going to be computing, yes, and so the whole Free Software thing becomes more and more a fundamental, essential, political idea.

If the objects and systems surrounding you are controlled by software, then your personal freedom to make your own personal choices is determined by your ability to control the software that controls your environment.

I think what it comes down to more than anything is equality. What happens when someone discovers a breakthrough to reverse aging or to improve cognitive functioning? Should that information be public, or only accessible to the rich?

Now take the same analogy to computing. How many people have access to entire data centers to run algorithms for machine learning and AI? Doing your own computing is the opposite of that. Instead of sharing your information, it's saying we should build software and applications that run locally and that are open source so that we can audit the code. It's sad that the norm is everything in the cloud these days without any concern for privacy.

Much HTML and CSS nowadays is not really readable, but minified or obfuscated. It's not the 1990s where reading other people's static HTML was a good way to learn how to make your own websites.

Eh. HTML and CSS is the easy part - you can't really obfuscated, only minify it to remove whitespace, which is easily reversible. All great browser dev tools have built in ways to unminify web assets. And it's even easier for HTML and CSS as they're easily viewable in parsed form (DOM).

My point is that HTML and CSS rarely is "source code" these days, (i.e. "the preferred form for modification") but the output of a tool. Back when we were using assemblers instead of compilers, assembly was considered source code, but now it's an opaque object. It is most HTML and CSS these days: opaque objects. If nothing else, the identifiers and CSS selectors can be easily obfuscated.

CSS is often compiled from other languages like SASS.

HTML is often built from complicated templates.

> Unsure of exact licensing compatibility so I can't say it's all Free Software.

Open source and free software mean the same thing, or at least they intend to mean the same thing. There are very few obscure examples where they differ (for example, the NASA license). You are very unlikely to run across a difference.

https://opensource.org/faq#free-software

https://lobste.rs/s/lexyz5/why_open_source_misses_the_point_...

They do not mean the same thing. They are often coincidentally the same thing, but philosophically they are not the same:

"Why 'Free Software' is better than 'Open Source'": http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.en.h...

(Note: the title is not mine)

No, the intention of "open source" was to have a synonym for "free software".

http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/5-things-we-have-forgot...

They mean the same thing in the same way that "digital rights management" and "digital restrictions management" means the same thing: they refer to the same thing, but give a different slant to refer to the same thing.

Like you mentioned in your article, this indeed seems to be Bruce Perens' opinion. However, notice how both Eric Raymond (on the side of open source) and Richard Stallman (on the side of free software) disagree with him.

If you listen to people like Eric Raymond, open source is all about quality. "Many eyes make all bugs shallow", etc.

If you listen to people like Richard Stallman, free software is all about users' rights: in some cases free software may be of higher quality than comparable proprietary software, but that's just a welcome side-effect -- what matters is that it respects users' rights. In this view, free software would be worthwhile even if it was technically inferior to contemporary proprietary software.

Or to put it another way: if Eric Raymond one days wakes up convinced that Open Source is technically inferior, he must drop it in order to remain consistent with his own justifications. If Richard Stallman one day wakes up convinced Free Software is technically inferior, he will remain committed to it, since technical quality was never his primary goal.

I'd say that's a pretty big philosophical difference!

Yes, I'm very well that they refer to philosophical differences. But they are both talking about the same damn software. Not the same philosophy, but the same software. This is something everyone agrees about, not just Bruce Perens. This is also the official position of OSI, not just Bruce Perens': that open source is just another name for free software.

That is not true, because every free software is open source, but not every open source software is free. (this is me oversimplifying to make a point)

It's not that simple. Open source implies the source is out there for anyone to study. Free software is not necessarily free of charge and readily available.

Nothing prevents you from paywalling a GPL program as long as you distribute sources to legitimate users on request. Free as in freedom, not as in beer.

Open source as formally defined by the OSI is also not necessarily free of charge and readily available to everyone. The GPL of course is an open source license, some revisionist tendencies to use "open source" to refer only to non-GPL-family licenses notwithstanding.

I had never looked up the OSI definition[0], but you are of course entirely correct. So the difference between free and open source software is the "four freedoms", which I think we all knew to begin with.. :)

0: https://opensource.org/osd

The OSI definition includes the four freedoms, just stated in different ways:

"The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose" - "The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor."

"The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish" - "The program must include source code (...) The license must allow modifications and derived works"

"The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor" - "The program (...) must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form."

"The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others" - "The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software."

That's why almost all software considered "open source" is also "free software" and vice-versa.

What example do you have in mind of open source software that is not free software? I suspect you might have a (very common) misunderstanding of what each term means.

From http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.h...

"Under pressure from the movie and record companies, software for individuals to use is increasingly designed specifically to restrict them. This malicious feature....is the antithesis in spirit of the freedom that free software aims to provide. And not just in spirit: since the goal of DRM is to trample your freedom, DRM developers try to make it hard, impossible, or even illegal for you to change the software that implements the DRM.

Yet some open source supporters have proposed “open source DRM” software. Their idea is that, by publishing the source code of programs designed to restrict your access to encrypted media and by allowing others to change it, they will produce more powerful and reliable software for restricting users like you. The software would then be delivered to you in devices that do not allow you to change it.

This software might be open source and use the open source development model, but it won't be free software since it won't respect the freedom of the users that actually run it."

With respect to actual determinations of acceptability of licenses based on official criteria by FSF and OSI, there are some licenses that are FSF-free that have not been OSI-approved (though possibly in all such cases no meaning should be attached to the failure to approve since it simply reflects that the license was not submitted for approval), and, as I think someone pointed out, some OSI-approved licenses that have specifically been said by the FSF to be nonfree. It seems unlikely to me that the current OSI (disclosure: I'm currently a board member) would be inclined to reach a conclusion that is in conflict with a conclusion reached by the FSF as to license acceptability.

> If you listen to people like Eric Raymond, open source is all about quality. "Many eyes make all bugs shallow", etc.

I'm not a fan of ESR at all (he's a bit of a paranoid nutcase), but you are taking that way out of context here.

The "given enough eyeballs" quote was about project leadership styles not software licensing. It was about empowering and accepting many contributors into a project (the bazaar) instead of having a small clique in charge of a project (the cathedral).

> Or to put it another way: if Eric Raymond one days wakes up convinced that Open Source is technically inferior, he must drop it in order to remain consistent with his own justifications.

ESR thought that attracting large contributor bases to projects was the key to improving quality. Not that Open Source automatically means better quality.

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