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Comment by syshum | Hacker News Reader

I am sure you will consider me a "Stallman acolyte" even though i am not

Having said that, I think the compromises the "Open Source" community has given to commercial companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Oracle have done much much much more harm to the community and goals than " Stallman acolytes" ever have.

Nor do i believe the goals of Free Software were impractical and as we move into a more connected world where privacy, censorship, and security are more important than ever due to automation, IoT and the normalization of technology the fact that more or less 4 corporations control the underlying fabric of that technology to the point were even the "open standards" are bought and paid for by them should be terrifying to everyone.

Of course I am just fear mongering Stallman acolyte right....

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>"Open Source" community has given to commercial companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Oracle

What are some examples of these 'compromises'. From what I have seen, all these companies publish source code and abide by copyright law for any open-source code they use in their products.

Or are you simply against the principle of for-profit companies making money from open-source?

Open Source vs Free Software is very simple

The Open Source community only cares about the Source Code, they are generally developer centrist, and generally work with "open sourcing" tools, libraries, languages and components used to build applications.

Looks on github's open source projects, what is the ratio of Full Applications, compared to libraries, tools, and components? Probably over 100 libraries, tools, and components for every 1 application

Open Source community has become a purely developer community that does not give 2 shits about the freedom of users or consumers. Most of the devs in open source today are building SaaS, PaaS and IaaS services that are closed source or non-source distributed "open source" services meaning that is perfectly legal to incorporate open source in to a SaaS product and not release the source code.

Free Software however believe all users of the software have a equal right to the source code as the developers. The recent Nest development of them closing their API is a clear example of the difference, if it was a Free Software based API I would have the ability to run my own Nest API server, but while Nest uses many open source libraries the service itself is Closed Source.

That is main compromise and divergence that happened between Free Software and Open Source.

As to making money off Free Software, I have no problems with that, it is not part of this issue. Open Source advocates like to bring that up as a red herring to divert the conversation from the primary debate. Often claiming that if they can not close their final product "they can not make any money" as an excuse why they do not support Free (Libre) software

>The recent Nest development of them closing their API is a clear example of the difference, if it was a Free Software based API I would have the ability to run my own Nest API server.

What changes in GPL / FSF licensing would enforce the changes that you want to achieve?

There is no change in licensing that could achieve those changes. Companies will just use other software/rewrite the libraries, and blacklist the license.

https://opensource.google.com/docs/using/agpl-policy/

From a certain perspective it's not compromise at all.

>Having said that, I think the compromises the "Open Source" community has given to commercial companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Oracle have done much much much more harm to the community and goals than " Stallman acolytes" ever have.

So what? First, when you develop software you get to choose the best licence for you. Open source means that big companies can use your software. If you open the source under a permissive licence then it's because you wanted that to happen and didn't expect anything in exchange.

Second, users have the choice of what software they run, and they aren't going the way of Stallman acolytes. Why? Well, we all have our reasons.

But all in all everybody wins.

I guess that depends on your definition of "wins" which I am sure differs greatly from mine.

>Second, users have the choice of what software they run, and they aren't going the way of Stallman acolytes. Why?

yes they do have a choice, as it is given they are manipulated by marketing and ignorance of the topic. As recent as 2017 survey's showed most people (like 80% of the population) where still classified as technologically illiterate. Companies with m/billions of dollars for marketing generally win the consumer race, it has nothing to do with the technology.

>So what?

Do I really need to lay out all the issues that have already resulted from the undue influence of google has over the IETF and W3C, or the issues Orcale has caused due to their influence over java and their lawsuits against google, or Entire history of Microsoft and their anti-competitive practices?

Do I need to layout the dystopia that is on the horizon?

> Do I need to layout the dystopia that is on the horizon?

Yes. Not because I disagree, but because I’m not seeing it as potentially being a part of that 80%

For starters, consider that Stallman, and his kind set the goal posts far enough away that the field we get to play on is very large. Without them, there wouldnt be a field or anything to play with. We would be paying a subscription to watch it at home and it would probably have commercials.

This is a great point. Stallman and the FSF have an extremely positive impact merely by widening the Overton window.

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