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Comment by TuringTest | Hacker News Reader

"Unfortunately, the fundamentalist FOSS mentality we encountered on Reddit is still alive and well. Some Linux blogs and Podcasts simply won’t give us the time of day. This is not a problem with the mainstream tech blogs and is a problem unique to Linux."

It seems weird that this guy will try to promote his product to the Linux community and chooses to do it by insulting its user base.

While not all Linux users have a problem with using proprietary source (and those would be their natural clients), most got attracted to the platform for the advantages of its open and freely usable code. IMHO it would do him good to understand and respect the reasons why his potential users value free-libre-open source software, and learn to communicate without disparaging them.

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I think you'll find that those who seek to "use our community as a market but not contributing to it" (as the older essay https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.htm... points out) will namecall when they think it suits them. He's not the first to do this. Another proprietor called GNU/Linux (which they too called "Linux" perhaps to avoid drawing attention to software freedom by referring to GNU at all) "unAmerican" http://web.archive.org/web/20010508201537/http://news.cnet.c... and "a cancer" http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_c... . Now that proprietor wants us to believe they "[heart symbol] Open Source". Perhaps they do.

But the real harm here is the loss of software freedom for users of that program, not the cost of the program or some bad PR from its developer. That's what users rightly objected to and that's what is the incompatibility between free software and proprietary software. Unfortunately this also serves as another example of how someone talking about "open source" (Canonical in this case) pushes for a loss of software freedom--the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify published computer software built around an examination of how people treat each other ethically with regard to their computers.

>It seems weird that this guy will try to promote his product to the Linux community and chooses to do it by insulting its user base.

Please don't act like you are a representative sample of all linux users. FOSS centric guys are vocal but distributions like Ubuntu became very popular in part because they included and automatically installed proprietary wifi and GPU drivers right from their installer CD.

That you feel insulted reading someone talk about "fundamentalist FOSS" doesn't mean every linux user feels insulted reading the sentence.

Linux users that accept some closed-source code won't feel insulted. I get that.

So, it is OK to insult FOSS centric guys because they'll never be his clients?

The FOSS guys I know have strong convictions but don't generally try to jam their views down the throat of others.

The FOSS fundamentalists, on the other hand, seem to seek the mantle of victimhood so that they can gleefully unleash their vitriol.

Thankfully, the former outnumber the latter 10-1.

Hi there - I'm the author of the post in question. I chose my language carefully. I do think FLOSS only is a fundamentalist position. The word is used to describe a religious believer who interprets scripture literally. I did mean to bring the baggage, but to provoke thought rather than to insult. And I must stress, this only applies to those who believe in FLOSS ONLY, completely turning their back on proprietary software. It's my opinion that this is not a rational position. Proprietary software can complement FLOSS. This is for the people who write to me and say "Not open source? Forget about it!".

Personally, I am a fan of FLOSS. What's not to like? But sometimes private companies compelled to compete in a free market produce better software. Seems to be especially true of consumer facing software. Think Gimp vs. Photoshop or Sketch.

Also, I don't think this is true anymore: "most got attracted to the platform for the advantages of its open and freely usable code". It used to be true, but I think Linux has wider appeal now. And I think that's a good thing.

This shows you just do not understand either free or open source software. Plenty of companies in open source are "private companies compelled to compete in a free market." Indeed, this describes nearly all the money that drives open source development. Red Hat isn't running a charity. Neither is Google.

RMS is as fundamental as they come and even he has no objection to selling software.

People are taking insult from what you say because you misrepresent their position.

"This shows you just do not understand either free or open source software." - Please. Read my comment above for clarity on my position. If you reject ALL proprietary software based on ideology, I think it's fair to say you have a fundamentalist position.

We looked into open source models and couldn't find one that made financial sense for us.

Red Hat is the only truly Open Source company, and it's an important part of their branding.

Google contributes to FOSS super strategically and absolutely no "magic sauce" is FOSS.

What's not to like indeed? With FLOSS you get access to rewrite the code to suit your needs, independence from the provider, possibility to create as many copies as needed (no volume licensing)...

And most importantly, a guarantee that any paid investment to improve the code will be available in the future, no matter what happens to the original provider company. If you pay for closed source instead, the company going bankrupt may convert those investments into sunk cost.

You don't seem to understand that, by being closed source, your product lacks all those desirable properties. Having a strong desire for those benefits which disqualifies any product not complying with them, seems perfectly rational, it's just that they have a different balance of values and benefits from yours, which apparently only value the provided features.

Those traits are desirable, but not essential for most of our users. I still maintain that rejecting ALL proprietary software is a fundamentalist position. The purpose of software is to do a job - to add value on your behalf or on behalf of a company. Although a FLOSS philosophy should factor into the equation when choosing software, it is unlikely that it should be the primary consideration (although there are cases where it could be). If you simply rule out proprietary software on principle, you are doing your company or yourself a disservice. You are failing to extract the best 'work done' from yourself or your colleagues because of an ideology. Hence the use of the word 'fundamentalist'.

I do understand that by being closed source, our software lacks the desirable properties you have mentioned. But we have not been able to find an open source model that makes financial sense for our company.

> FOSS mentality we encountered on Reddit

Reddit is well known for not attracting the best communities and the most reasonable people.

My intention with this comment isn't to promote a culture of weaponized offense-taking. And I'm not even sure if the OP meant the term "fundamentalist" as an insult. But if so ...

I think this would be insulting to persons who self-identify as Fundamentalist Christians [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_fundamentalism

Oh please, don't act as if "fundamentalist" didn't have negative connotations in English. Fundamentalist Christians may decide to identify themselves with that word, but I've never heard of a FLOSS group calling themselves "Fundamentalist Open-Sourcers".

Besides, the insult was not merely in that term, but also considering a "problem" (for him, maybe!) that some Linux users may want to keep their systems pure in terms of no-proprietary software (thus maintaining the Four Freedoms for their whole system), and complaining that popular venues in the community won't advertise his product for being closed-source, which is entirely their prerogative.

> Oh please, don't act as if "fundamentalist" didn't have negative connotations in English.

You may have misunderstood my point. Based on the assumption that the OP wants to avoid unintended insults, I was pointing out the issues one could associate with using "fundamentalist" as a term of derision.

I'm not trying to play PC-police. I was just raising the point in case the OP would want to know.

tl;dr

There are many English words that basically indicate membership in a particular group. Using those words as a term of derision is a slight against the target of those words and the original group.

E.g., "vandal", "gyp", or "hysterical". Or to whit, treating "fundamentalist" as synonymous with blind dogmatism.

Ah, thanks for clarification.

Is "vandal" really politically incorrect these days? As far as I can tell from Wikipedia the Vandal people have died out and there is no one left to take offence from having their ethnic name associated with property damage.

> Is "vandal" really politically incorrect these days?

I have no idea. I'm not sure if most persons' definition of "politically correct" is sufficiently nuanced to cover this application.

It sounds like the author hit a little too close to home.

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