How I realised “Free Software” is a better term than “Open Source”
naughtycomputer.uk
naughtycomputer.uk
> Free Software gives us as a society the freedom to control our computers. And it gives us as individuals the freedom learn how to program them if we want to.
Most people are not car mechanics yet they benefit from the rules that require 3 party products and repair shops to be allowed to operate.
And the ability to rapidly build upon the work of others reduces the barriers for new, interesting products to be built, which benefits everyone, even non-programmers.
Look at the biggest companies in the world (google, apple, facebook , amazon, microsoft ..) they own platforms i.e. infrastructure! but since these platforms aren't free you hear constant complaints from those who try to build a life on top of them (app store ranking not fair? Search not fair? OS/messenger/web browser/social network is walled garden? Etc.)
But even breathe the suggestion that taxes should support building reliable infrastructure (i.e. already existing free software projects) and you'll get a "government shouldn't interfere with functioning business" response.. no matter what structural risk that business carries for society and even though the "interfering" is just offering a viable alternative.
They're doing neat things, and I'd love to see it up and running.
Please don't go on about 'privately produced law' or how private roads will replace public roads. I used to be an ancap and looked into PPL quite deeply back in the 90s - the field has made little progress since then that I can see, and appears to serve mainly to assuage the conscious of ethical libertarians, providing flimsy-yet-vaguely-plausible reason that something will fill the void when their desired collapse of government occurs.
>"Government is largely immune from the consequences of their mistakes, even disastrous ones - if a private business does a mistake that harms people, they can be fined, or even put out of business, but if a government agency does it, it usually ends up with somebody getting early retirement with full benefits, and that's it."
Are you freaking kidding me? Private business doesn't make myriad of mistakes and keep on going, even being rewarded? Did you miss the 2008 financial scandal? BP managed to poison an entire vast ecosystem and shoreline populated by millions, they're still going strong. Have you ever heard of the term 'golden parachute'?
Do you have any ELI5 about stuff like (A) whether there's anything interesting in ancap stuff or if it's just repeating the same simplistic dogma all the way down and (B) how to get ancap folks to recognize the validity of agnosticism (i.e. somehow get them to take the first step from blindly dogmatic to being able to express their ideology as interesting ideas they like but acknowledge that they can't actually know omnisciently that it aligns with reality…)
<eyeroll> standard statist nonsense which thinks by changing labels the essence of things changes. See how easy it is to argue a position when you think argument means finding a name to call your opponent?
> Please don't go on about 'privately produced law' or how private roads will replace public roads
Please don't attach your comment on discussion with voices in your head to mine. I never said anything about private law or roads.
> Private business doesn't make myriad of mistakes and keep on going, even being rewarded
Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. Government always do, that's the point. Excepting violent revolution, of course, but you don't want to go there, do you? That's the difference - business very well may escape the consequences of mistakes, just as murderer can escape justice. That happens and nobody would pretend otherwise. But for the government consequences are not even on the menu - like for an executor in state prison, there's not even a question whether he can be accused of murder - of course not. That's the whole difference.
> Have you ever heard of the term 'golden parachute'?
Yes, I did. And a private company can afford only finite number of those. Unless, of course, it is too big to fail - in which case, government comes in, which can force me, the taxpayer, provide the gold for those. I don't like private sharehodlers being fleeced, but what is even worse is when I'm being fleeced even without being a shareholder. And that's what the government does.
There is however no perfect way to do it, and neither political party would want to take a extreme side. The right do not wish to stop medical research funding (private pharma can't survive without the government supporting the industry) even if some will be wasted on incorrect definition of "reliable". The left would not want to stop oversight programs and just hope that everything will work. As such we get some form of middle ground.
We see how well they are kept in shape in countries where the money doesn't go to them.
I don't want electricity that only runs for a few hours in the day, or roads full with crates created by the weather almost unusable when there is a bit of heavy rain.
The full license is posted with the software download, via a pop up EULA-style window before the download proceeds complete with an "I Agree" nuisance button.
The market starts with a price discovery model where I suggest a price and allow the person pay whatever they want. After some data gathering, I simply obfuscate the "pick-your-price" mechanism.
Yes, this is a bit of cherry-picking, where I employ some dark patterns. My reason for this thought experiment is the crux of this article and discussion: How do you explain software in the English language for which the rights of the end user are enshrined while leaving a profit-path open for the creator? My reply is: You don't. You focus, instead, on making the process of obtaining the software as friendly and service-oriented as possible.
I wonder how spectacularly this idea will fail?
I would say you will fail most spectacularly, but it seems to work for RedHat Enterprise Linux
GNU encourages software creators to sell their software for as much money as they can make while using their license. What I am playing around with as a thought experiment is a method to create a market that trades the scarcity of a software writer's creativity for money.
And yes, the attempt would probably fail spectacularly. Anyone who wants to attempt to execute on my idea is free to do so. Ideas are cheap. Execution is expensive.
The SRPMS are typically public so you can compile them yourself, but official binaries are only available through RHEL subscription channels.
I bet RedHat gets nothing from home users.
You by definition do not need to agree to any free software license before you use the software, you can vehemently disagree with it or completely ignore its existence.
The license only exists to give you extra rights you didn't already have under standard copyright law (permission to distribute the program & modify it, under certain conditions).
An EULA is a dubious legal hack used by proprietary software to deprive you of rights you'd have had anyway if not for the EULA, which is the exact opposite of how free software works.
Edit: A lot of people are replying to this saying I'm incorrect. I'm not. A lot of free software licenses such as the GPL v2 spell out explicitly that they have nothing to do with anything except copying/distribution or modification:
> Activities other than copying, distribution
> and modification are not covered by this License;
> they are outside its scope.[...]
The Open Source definition also asserts this by proxy. Licenses aren't allowed to impose any restrictions on users that they wouldn't have anyway if they had no license to the software.
Really, if you use free software you can just completely ignore all the licenses and you don't need to understand or have read any of them. This is one of the beautiful things about free software that separates it from EULA-using proprietary software.
Of course you need to understand the licenses if you want to distribute the software in any way, but that entirely falls under the umbrella of activity you didn't have permission for without the license, it would be copyright infringement by default.
This is also why free software organizations like the FSF would as a last resort sue someone for copyright infringement, not violating the GPL (but of course adhering to the GPL would bring them back into compliance).
This is different from proprietary software companies which might sue you over violations of their own made up rules, which you supposedly agreed to via the EULA.
The EULA is a hack to try to apply contract law to your use of the program, whereas free software & open source licenses purely piggy-back on copyright law.
All those licenses are a way to say "here's stuff we allow you to do, which you didn't have legal permission to do anyway in the absence of this license, given certain conditions" (or no conditions for e.g. the WFTPL).
1. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#NoDistributionR...
The license are the terms you must agree with or else you are breaking copyright law, if you ignore it and do things covered in the license you can be sued.
If you do not need to agree to a license before you use a piece of software, then EULAs would be invalid. You do need to agree to the license before you use the software. That the license grants permission to run the software for any purpose, usually with a disclaimer of liability, is irrelevant.
If you do not comply with (for instance), the terms of the GNU GPLv2, then you no longer have a license to the software. That means that you must cease distributing and using that piece of software or be at risk of a lawsuit from the copyright holder.
As they should be according to 17 USC 117: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/117
The standard dodge is that it refers to the "owner of a copy", while EULAs claim that you do not own a copy and are only "licensing" it. Which is BS in my opinion, but regardless the GPL specifically doesn't make that claim, so you don't need to accept anything to run GPL software.
> If you do not need to agree to a license before you use a piece of software, then EULAs would be invalid.
I believe the GPL was written the way it was, in order to remove any concern that it might not be enforceable. If someday the courts decide EULAs aren't enforceable, the GPL would still stand.
Of course, the GPL also relies on standard copyright law forbidding modification and distribution without express permission, so if the courts ever change that then the GPL is in trouble since it's not an EULA. But that seems pretty unlikely.
My hypothetical model is choose not to do GNU's marketing. Frankly, they do a good job of it without my help. However, I cannot hide the fact that the software is GNU licensed. The EULA-style pop-up approach is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but presenting the license before download is vitally important.
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#NoDistributionR...
That is incontrovertibly false and has always been false.
Per the GPL v.2, clause 5 (https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.en.html):
"5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it."
A end-user is free to run GPL software without accepting the terms of the license. However, they may not distribute it (modified or not) without accepting the terms of the license.
>You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program. Ancillary propagation of a covered work occurring solely as a consequence of using peer-to-peer transmission to receive a copy likewise does not require acceptance. However, nothing other than this License grants you permission to propagate or modify any covered work. These actions infringe copyright if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or propagating a covered work, you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so.
GPLv3 does require a patent grant if you convey the software, but as GP states, you wouldn't have the right to do that otherwise anyway.
EDIT: And as per the FAQ[0]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#NoDistributionR...
[0] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#NoDistributionR...
Check out AGPL. It exists specifically to remove the "loophole" of using the software without distributing it.
> Really, if you use free software you can just completely ignore all the licenses
For some very narrow definitions of use, maybe. But not if your usage includes building upon it, which is what OSS world excels at.
So it falls squarely under distributing the program, which you didn't have permission to do without the license itself.
> But not if your usage includes building upon it[...]
Building upon it & distributing the result, but yes, this is what OSS is great for, but unrelated to my point that you as a user can completely ignore the license & don't have to know about it. You can just follow standard copyright law.
Don't you confuse "distribute" and "let users interact with" now?
IIRC AGPL doesn't make a distinction about whether i send the bytes of the program over the network (distribute the program) or let a user send input and receive output to/from it (interact with the program).
Are you missing the difference between distributing the program and distributing its result? The latter lands firmly into "usage" category.
> So it falls squarely under distributing the program
No it doesn't. This claim makes zero sense - it's like saying if I send somebody a Word document it's the same as if I sent them a copy of Word. That's baloney.
> you as a user can completely ignore the license & don't have to know about it.
Looks like you somehow ignored the whole comment. Again, only if "user" means "never modifying or building on it", which in OSS world is a very restrictive condition.
> You can just follow standard copyright law.
Did you just claim "following standard copyright law" and "ignoring the license" is the same and both things are easy and obvious? There are people that get literally thousands to millions of dollars income by helping people to "follow standard copyright law". It's not something that you can follow just by going on with your business - it's insanely complicated and dense set of laws (actually, a lot of sets since we're in a global world now and each country has their own) and dismissing having to comply with it as "just follow the standard" is plain ignorant. Of course, if you're a random Joe or Joann, the chance that somebody would come after you is low (though see Prenda Law case), but if you have any money riding on it, be assured it's very far from "just ignore everything and follow the standard" - you don't even know what the standard law is unless you're a lawyer, and unless you also spent time studying caselaw and such (or asked a lawyer), you have very little chance of getting it right.
> Are you missing the difference between
> distributing the program and distributing
> its result? The latter lands firmly into
> "usage" category. [...] it's like saying if
> I send somebody a Word document it's the
> same as if I sent them a copy of
> Word. That's baloney.
So the analogy is not sending someone a Word document being like distributing Word, neither the APGL or the GPL cover that. It's setting up a paid-for VNC service where users can access your copy of Word.
The GPL explicitly permits this sort of thing, because it's quite lax about defining network interaction, the AGPL is more strict.
> Again, only if "user" means "never modifying
> or building on it", which in OSS world is a
> very restrictive condition.
If and when I've done that whether I've modified or built on it has little bearing on whether I'm committing copyright infringement.
> Did you just claim "following standard
> copyright law" and "ignoring the license" is
> the same and both things are easy and
> obvious?
That this isn't how things work is something the GPL itself explicitly states. The same applies to any free software license, the GPL just happens to be a rather verbose license which goes out of its way to explain the basics of copyright law to you.
False; copyright law makes it an exclusive right of the copyright holder to make copies and derivative works (the former is where the name "copyright"—the right to copy—comes from); distributing them may increase the likelihood of damages or other penalties beyond whatever minimum statutory damages exist for such a violation, but it is not the root violation that brings copyright law into play.
As in, such projects carry baggage, in the form of conflict and infighting among developers, and one can expect irritating pedantry when discussing use and preferences.
Usually, you'll encounter something akin to fanatical fans, expressing highly opinionated views about minor details. Sometimes it's because lawyers have been involved. It's not necessarily toxic, but often reflects splintered cellular activity, among groups seeking to distinguish themselves from one another for some reason.
They are, because pursuing your rights is a political move.
"Free software is a political movement; open source is a development model." — Richard Stallman [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#cite_note-95
>Usually, you'll encounter something akin to fanatical fans <...>
As in any fight for freedom there are all kinds of people: those who do not understand, those who pretend they do not understand, those who do not know why they are fighting, and so on. No one of them defines the goal of the fight though.
Thankfully, Most languages don't have this problem, since they have 2 distinct adjective for "gratis" and "freedom".
Free Software sounds cheap or trashy. It requires explanation. "Free as in beer, and Free as ..."
Open Source is a marketing term to avoid that stigma.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
* free - b/c freemium or worthless
* open source - a term big companies who don't care about it like to use to project a positive image of themselves
* libre - imo the best term atm. However, it just doesn't sound alluring.
Idk, how about Freedomware ? ;)
I think the "big companies who don't care about it" thing is exaggerated. Who cares about what terms they use?
https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/about/free-libre-open
---
The author misses the most important reason, in my opinion, why "free software" is also a bad term: people think they already know what it means, and thus don't really pay attention when you try to explain it. As such, I've stopped using it completely during my advocacy.
Instead, I use "FLO software", "software freedom", or "unrestricted software" - the latter being good for when I don't have time to explain fully but also don't want to give the wrong impression.
I liken democratic institutions such as free elections and due process to the differences between Open Source and Free Software. We don't do these things primarily because of their instrumental utility or because they necessarily yield the "best" results (e.g. Brexit, Trump, climate policy, etc.). We could imagine a political framework with a benevolent computer working as dictator that might do a better job, for some definition of better.
Instead, we have free elections and due process because we believe that they are, morally and ethically speaking, the right thing to do. If you believe as I do, that the human capacity for reasoning is greatly magnified by computers, then that's a recognition that human cognition and computers are in some way linked. Computers are the factors of production. De-democratizing those factors of production—even if Microsoft/Apple/Google/Facebook make a great product—is de-democratizing human thought to some degree.
Personally I don't care, as I mostly use commercial software, but I bet those FOSS devs that helped change the landscape and won't be able to access whatever code comes in their devices might think otherwise.
How are you enjoying the PS 4 features that were added to FreeBSD and LLVM?
Already updated it with your set of changes?
Companies contribute code because the upstream project will maintain the code for them!
Sony PS4 is a horrible example to cherry-pick. They probably didn't do any serious modifications to anything, they mostly built their stuff on top. A much better example: Netflix upstreaming their reimplementation of sendfile() to FreeBSD. Because it's been upstreamed, they don't have to maintain it for compatibility with other upstream changes anymore, people who make those changes will fix the sendfile() code.
We would still be using Solaris, HP-UX, Aix, Tru64, DG-UX to this day.
You probably meant "proprietary software". Please say so.
Much free software is also commercial. A famous example is RedHat. A less famous, but much more common example is custom software: written for a fee, it is definitely commercial. And it's Free too much of the time: customers often have access to the source code, and the right to do whatever they want with it.
"Free" and "commercial" are not mutually exclusive.
> Free" and "commercial" are not mutually exclusive.
Red-Hat earns money in enterprise consulting and support, they withdrew from the desktop market because in what concerns the desktop, games and mobile markets, they are indeed mutually exclusive.
Which happen to be the markets I care about.
Almost all commercial software is proprietary. So much that free is barely a blip on the radar. It's reasonable default much like a person can say they ate a lobster without specifying it was red rather than the ultra-rare blue or gold varieties. Everyone will assume the default of red unless specified otherwise.
It's much more prevalent than people think, partly because it is rarely discussed or acknowledged.
If we look at web applications, you can be assured that the vast majority of them use free software somewhere in the stack. It's usually the case that the majority of dependencies in such products are "free".
Everything that makes OS X special is proprietary.
At least they're doing a nice, open-source project with LLVM. I'll give them credit where it's due.
There's a difference between them being proprietary software and using some free components somewhere. You about to suggest Windows ecosystem is open or free because they used some open-source code in Windows somewhere? Or IBM's mainframes are open because they can run Linux VM's? Or the Facebook platform itself is open since they use and contribute so much FOSS?
They're all still proprietary with the motivations, methods, and limitations that come with it. They can use whatever available components they want to build proprietary software. It's still the dominant model, though. That's why I'm constantly running into systems I have no source for, can't modify, and can't extend to deal with their horrible UX. They're all closed to me even if some OSS or FOSS is inside.
I would not go so far as to say that almost all commercial software is proprietary, but it is true that a lot of it is.
[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/05/06/five-worlds/ It is posible that Spolsky's post is non-exhaustive
"Internal and throwaway software is almost always free - the users and developers are either one and the same, or both are part of the same organization."
This one is proprietary, shared source by default. In practice, it may have the advantages of FOSS for users within the company. It depends on the politics of the company, what 3rd party stuff it integrated with what licensing terms, and so on. Medium-to-large companies like IBM also treat stuff in one unit as owned by that unit even charging other units for using it often with a discount or certain allotment for free usage. Quite the opposite of FOSS. Now, if hobbyists or companies share their internal or throwaway code, they have to put a specific license on it. They might throw it on Sourceforge or Github but I still have no right to it without a license. This is why we encourage an open-source default on submissions to code sharing sites w/ user able to change it to another if they choose. So, status of throwaways and internal software still varies. And that's without getting to the fact that patent suits can hit you if a license doesn't factor in patents. It's why I don't fully trust BSD licenses as ensuring anyone can use it when it is something covered by patents.
Software is free when the user is free. This also counts if there is only one user.
Not quite.
Almost all software people use is proprietary. Almost all software developers write is Free.
This is not contradictory. People mostly use massively distributed software, made by a relatively tiny number of people. Developers generally work on custom software, that has zero or one customer.
If we care about how much money can be gained with Free Software, one should look at the production, and see that custom software is a fine way to make a living. If on the other hand we care about freeing people from proprietary software, you want to look at the consumption, and see that there is much too much proprietary software around.
It's not free until it's unencumbered by copyright or patents. I don't trust that in the least in the U.S.. Maybe in some other places. Here, anything you produce and use might get you in trouble. That doesn't feel Free. ;)
Surely you wouldn't sue yourself over your own claims?
You can't guarantee that in the us. We're not even legally allowed to show someone a work with a copyright claim. We can't even reproduce a patented thing whether we knew it existed or not. Copyright and patent trolls increasingly sue businesses to the tune of billions of dollars. The risk is there so long as the system works the way it does.
Free software's 'users are the customers' mindset competes with the 'users are the product' trope that proprietary software can get quagmired in.
Even if the Free software version is a smaller community, the mere fact that a user-centric alternative exists can help prevent this.
As terms, none is "better" than the other, those are different things. A simple google search will reveal the definitions.
However originally the opposite is the case: The FSF explains free software with the four freedoms [1], the OSIs Open Source Definition has 10 points [2]. If you dig into them you'll realize that they more or less mean the same. Which is also usually the point I tend to make in these debates: How you call it isn't so important, important is what it means.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition
The whole article reads like parody tbh. Also like the argument that true software freedom involves not being free to use proprietary software, because politics, and the bit about treating non-free software users as heretics also being important for "a society that stands up for what is good"
Open-source w/ its differentiators focuses right on the benefits to the user. I follow-up with real-world examples with things such as car development or repair to help them see necessity of the benefits. Also explain how copyright and patent monopolies reinforce the problems with simplest examples I can get. This approach has worked well where people usually agree with most of it regardless of political spectrum. The next thing they ask is about quality of stuff nobody was paid to write. Replies to that seem to boil down to whether they trust me to assess and tell them the truth. Very impacted by their own beliefs on work ethic and markets.
The "I've now changed my mind" bit seems suspicious, like he planned it out from the very first article. I suspect he'll publish a third piece in a few weeks saying neither term sounds OK, then suggest his own new term that "just occurred to him". Of course all 3 articles will have been a marketing strategy for the new term from the very beginning.
I personally like "open software" (without the "source") because it sounds like it includes the important ideas from both "free (libre)" and "open source", but without suggesting anything about a free price. It also suggests an "open process" of development, something lacking in many free(libre) and open source projects.
Now should we require the cell-phone manufacturers to make their batteries replaceable on ideological basis? It probably makes it cheaper to produce the cell-phone if the battery is non-replaceable.
Similarly making your software open-source probably has costs associated with it.
Should we insist that every producer of software must make their product open-source? If it is unethical to produce closed-source software then clearly we should. No?
From the manufacturers point of view, it's cheaper and more profitable. It doesn't help the consumer though, I upgraded phones sooner than I otherwise would have because my battery was dying.
>Similarly making your software open-source probably has costs associated with it.
In the current climate, yes. If all software was already free, you could save a lot of money not needing to repeat work that has been done.
We ideally should insist all software is free, but not everyone agrees that proprietary software is unethical and laws aren't always driven by what is ethical.
No, it misses the essential point: Software freedom is primarily about power, not about being able to modify software.
If by "you", you mean "noone", that's not really what free software is concerned with.
What free software is concerned with is if there is only one party that can swap out the battery, and that party is not you, therefore making you dependent on a monopoly.
Building software that literally noone can modify (aka "unmaintainable code") might be a bad idea, but for reasons largely orthogonal to software freedom.
Free software has limited overlap with that particular benefit of Open Source.
At this point in time I think of the two things as widely different so the question does not even come up what's the better term.
Also, GPLv2 does not say anything about patents.
When the only thing standing will be the Linux kernel, don't be surprised by the amount of "freedom" you will get.
How much do you think companies will bother to give back once they alienated GPL software, given the actual contributions?
Nothing of relevance I tell you, just enough to keep the masses happy, AOSP style.
I won't care, as I said I mostly use commercial software anyway, but it will feel good to say "I told you so".
Plenty of permissively-licensed software projects have strong contributions from commercial users.
The AOSP, BSD and LLVM ones surely aren't such projects.
AOSP doesn't get any of the Google Services stack nor OEMs changes.
The BSD hardly get any updates from all those routers and embedded devices using them, to the point they were forced to beg for donnations last year.
clang is being adopted by embedded vendors that had to contribute their changes back to GCC and now don't need to keep doing it.
SQLite and Postgres are the main examples I think of for this.
> The AOSP, BSD and LLVM ones surely aren't such projects.
AOSP is almost entirely ongoing contribution by the primary commercial user, so it would probably fit the description, though I was thinking of—without having stated—specifically third-party commercial users, so it wasn't what I had in mind.
> clang is being adopted by embedded vendors that had to contribute their changes back to GCC and now don't need to keep doing it.
Clang has a lot of corporate contributors, including all of the big three tech companies. Not sure if any of the big contributors have closed downstream derivatives or if they are just open-source users contributing back. Sure, copyleft prevents downstream use that doesn't contribute back, but it doesn't necessarily maximize contributions back.
For my part I agree freeloading is a problem, but clearly GPL2 and 3 hasn't solved it. It certainly isn't a general solution. True, the Linux kernel gets real support from a couple of companies (principally Redhat) but everyone else freeloads. Remove the patent grabs and maybe you'd see more contributions, but maybe a new form of license is needed, or much better: we need the govt to fund this infrastructure; the present situation is like having volunteers build some highway some of the time while the government sits on its hands. Crazy if you ask me. Of course, Apple and Microsoft (and maybe Google) who want to have everyone on their wholly-owned toll roads would disagree strongly with me.
Sadly, GPL - because it punishes contributions with patent loss, among other things - has a terrible record in curing freeloading. Yup, I agree it's a real problem. Nope, no very good solution in sight.
Now I've got images of a commando raid on a data center running through my head. They're throwing open the doors to the cages and racks. Jerry Bruckheimer, call me. Let's talk.
In it he describes that he searched for better terms than "free" as in free speech not free beer and there were 60ish of them, but they all had problems of their own.
the Free software movement did more to help open source OS's happen because it was it's goal, than open source has done to create free OS's (because their focus was only the specific problem they were solving, and not the holistic many parts of an open source OS.)
Open source is less likely to pass the same licenses and freedom it was built on down to the next iteration, for it's not legally required to do so (which is why whether you got freedom with your X software or not was a function of where you got it from. X software was free, but became unfree if you got it compiled from certain vendors.
Open source documentation is also important, as software wit documentation is better/easier to improve software.
When you use non free software, you advertise that you're ok with not helping anyone else that might want you to, because you can't give them a copy of what you have.
When about half of linux is Gnu and Gnu preceded linux, it's pretty unfair to the Gnu community that they get about 0 credit from many publications, events, the general public.
Thus you can give free software to the world, and they'll never even understand what free as in speech and not beer is.
Free software is a political movement, open source software is more politics agnostic. I think credit should be given where it is due, for only accurate assignment of credit can reward the good and punish the bad.
P.S. Stallman is happy to see you make money on Free software. Free as in speech, not beer. Also the best numbers I could find on what percentage of linux is actually Gnu code is about 8% and linux code was about 9% with the amnt of Gnu going down quickly if you were working on an embedded system. I believe those numbers were from debian and 2014, but I'd be happy to hear a better analysis.
For work & daily computing/tinkering, I don't mind ditching Windows completely and use FOSS system like Linux (I mean GNU/Linux).
But leaving those AAA games is... kinda hard. Really really hard...
>It's like saying police brutality is good because it deters bad dudes. If we have to do despicable things to force people to pay for things then our society is broken.
lmao
Admittedly it's a bit of a prisoner's dilemma; no one wants to put in the (certain) effort of packaging up their software for external consumption for the (uncertain) benefit of external help. But the culture is definitely shifting.
Most software people see is mass-distributed software: browser, OS, office suite, games… And it is much easier to extract money mass-distributed software when it is proprietary.
In reality, most software that is actually made is custom software. Software that only a handful of people see, because it has only 1 customer, if any. Making that software free makes it easier to extract money from (at least in the short term), because source code availability is often sold for a price (the understanding being, giving the source code also means giving up on exclusivity for later maintenance).
Do you have a source for this claim? (not denying, just curious to look at the numbers!)
I don't have anything more precise, but it seems to make sense.