My Talk at Microsoft
stallman.org
stallman.org
(from the "Suggestions I gave to Microsoft" section)
This is something I agree with. I don't think that Microsoft are likely to apologise for EEE [1] as that is likely just considered 'business' and part of the zeitgeist; neither do I think that Microsoft necessarily needs to endorse or support GPL as they are definitely unlikely to be using it for any products for the foreseeable.
They should, however, be a bit more repentant about starting a McCarthy-esque red scare against all things open source. I don't think those things were appropriate at the time and they really should at the very least be acknowledged as part of the "Microsoft heart Linux" initiative.
Part of me, though, thinks that Microsoft's recent adventures in Linux have been more 'Black Friday' than 'Good Friday'.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend%2C_and_extin...
I have no doubt that Microsoft is in the first category, but a company that would be in the second one would understand the importance of making public excuses for past stances.
Now they are trying to compete in the cloud, and the dynamics are different. They know Windows servers aren't going to beat out Linux servers. They need to use honey instead of vinegar to win people over.
It's a different company with different revenue streams, thus a different approach.
In the cloud, it is dwarfed by other companies so it needs to play the OSS game well to win over devs. But I have no reason to think that their main ethos has changed.
Especially since we're still suffering from it. There are enough project & program managers who see the words "open source" on an engineering document & send us back to build or buy some alternative.
Without those assurances, and without investigating the project myself, I’d probably turn it down too.
Support contracts can be very lucrative.
I work with a company that generally stays away from open source software, unless they have an in-house developer that can maintain it.
Most open source projects (unless it's backed by a huge company that also charges for support) are run by volunteers that have a day job. This means that support will be non-existent beyond what the developer(s) feel like and bug fixes/updates may or may not happen. This doesn't work that well when a company relies on this software for any critical task.
That someone wouldn't be liable if they distribute the source for their modifications doesn't increase the risk, it decreases it by providing an alternative to paying damages for infringement that they otherwise wouldn't have, since the GPL author will typically accept compliance in lieu of monetary damages.
And the easiest way to violate them is simply to have installed more copies than you're licensed for, which is an issue the GPL doesn't have.
Do they preface with a "I'm not a lawyer" disclaimer and claim that anything they say is non binding?
Or, as rms went to some lengths to explain here and elsewhere, free software.
Paying attention is important in this particular case.
This may or may not be the case, insofar as an organisation can be said to have a position on a vague notion.
As per the article, rms is seeking that:
"Publicly take back Microsoft's attacks on copyleft made in the 2000s. Ballmer called the GPL a "cancer"."
I suspect rms doesn't care terribly much if MS were 'against all things open source' since no one really did, or does, know what that might mean.
When someone in a marketing team of a company sends a message, they usually speak for the company, not for themself, except otherwise explicitly stated. So indeed, we can't expect a huge company like Microsoft have a uniform opinion on all things, but Microsoft as an entity stills sends a more or less coherent message if they take care of their communication.
And I would not blame someone understanding a statement from Ballmer for Microsoft's official stand if the statement was made when he was the head of the company and the company did not issue an apology or a clarification after the fact.
So, at the time Ballmer was a) definitely talking about free software by mentioning GPL, and b) probably not particularly interested in, or aware of, the split by the 'open source' proponents.
They ship the Linux kernel as part of Windows now. They ship updates for it through Windows update. It's in beta, but will be released this quarter, I think?
In my mind, .net core and vs code and countless smaller projects are a complete renunciation of their previous public statements. Maybe Stallman can’t see that because they MIT license those things, but why ask for more talk when you are already getting action?
Edit: here’s Ballmer turning around in public on the cancer thing. https://www.zdnet.com/article/ballmer-i-may-have-called-linu... so I really don’t see what more Stallman wants.
You say that as if it were a condemnation. Everybody who runs a business is an opportunist, pure and simple.
Larry Ellison? Scott McNealy? I'm sure I could think of others if I had the time. Ballmer was merely the most visible because MS was at the top of the food chain at the time.
We've gone through periods in our culture where we glorify greed and self-interest. (Commentary like yours makes me think of Reaganites or Ayn Rand.) We've gone through other periods where we acknowledge the need to band together. (Think 1960s hippies.) A functioning person probably needs both types of influence at various times of their lives. I get really tired of how many people glorify or worship the former and neglect the latter.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
Ballmer is not a Devil. Open source was costing him billions in lost Windows revenue from Google, Amazon and many other companies. Right now, with hindsight bias, we feel that the path to capitalizing on open source was OBVIOUS - it wasn't. Cloud computing wasn't a thing when Ballmer was in power - an existential crisis for the Microsoft.
The new guy Nadella is no Saint or Altruist. Right now, it's obvious business sense to embrace open source - particularly because of Azure unlike 20 years ago.
People talk about Saint Nadella and forget that Nadella's just taking the glory for Money makers that were started & financed by Ballmer - Xbox, Azure, Office 365, Hololens, Surface Pro, Windows 10...
Google which built its business on open source, embraced open source much early with Chrome & Android. However, they are doing a tactical retreat - butchering those two money makers and making key parts of them proprietary.
If Jobs were still running the show at Apple when he built NextStep, he wouldn't have embraced Unix. At that time, only broke people did open source but now big companies can go broke trying to build everything by themselves.
Just follow the money and most people are easy to understand. Google won't stop spying on people because of money. And Apple will join the fray once the financial guys can prove that they'll make more money selling customer's data.
Could it be (I'm not an apple fanboi though I like my 2015 MBP) that Apple's financial predictions suggested that a lone company not selling customer data might be able to flip that to their advantage in the marketing or minds of its users? Apple privacy is a recurrent même so it seems they succeeded intentionally or otherwise
> Perhaps his new-found peace with Linux is linked to yoga, a practice he said he has taken up after leaving Microsoft in 2014.
In this case what is being asked is not a grudge that needs to be addressed. Keep in mind the underlying context of the suggestions => "what can Microsoft do". So this is, in my eyes, more of something that Microsoft can choose to do for themselves - admit that they said things in the past that were not exactly true. A self initiated internal cleaning of the air as they continue to engage the public community. This is not something that they have to do to address a grudge. It should be mostly symbolic to the external world. So, is there value in Microsoft actually coming out and saying it? Well, that's for Microsoft to decide.
They were created in response to Bill Gates comment that people who want to weaken or eliminate intellectual property laws were "some new modern-day sort of communists" https://boingboing.net/2005/01/05/bill-gates-free-cult.html
I need to see some real contrition and proof that they understand all the things they did were wrong so I can be convinced they won't repeat the same behavior. Otherwise it just sounds like an abusive partner begging you to take them back.
That seems like a potentially super important project yet it does not have a wikipedia page. That's abnormal! It was even discussed here in 2017!
It's better to not go down that rhetorical road. If they haven't heard of your solution, let them evaluate it and come to their own conclusions about whether this specific solution doesn't meet their needs for some reason or other. Don't plant that seed, especially if you would consider it a favorable outcome for your particular solution to be used.
I don't know anything about Taler, but I assume he didn't say "something like GNU Taler" on purpose, for just the same reason that he doesn't work on some other project like Taler, because there's no specific alternative that he can recommend which is at least as good in all ways, from at least his own perspective.
Writing "something like GNU Taler" is almost a suggestion to fork the project, when we haven't even talked about what particular characteristics of Taler would make it a favorable choice, and what benefits. If, in the end, it's better or cheaper for them to build their own whatever it is, better than it would be to work with you on your project, they'll have no trouble coming to that conclusion on their own.
This tweet[1] struck a chord with me when I saw it the other day, I almost couldn't find it when this thread reminded me:
>> I just don't buy the "many eyes make all bugs shallow" thing. It takes so much time to build the context to understand wtf some code is doing that the "many eyes" get whittled down to "very few" very quickly
> This is not just a technical problem, it's a social one too. In practice, 99.999% of users of open source software engage with and expect to be treated as customers of open source, not as collaborators in a communal endeavor to build and maintain it.
To these people, it is a product. For a healthy community, we may need to find a way to get them to see it as a project. And perhaps not just one (eg. how many open source projects are in your team's product stack, and how often do you all think about that?)
Payment processing software like Taler is most useful when integrated/embedded in as many websites as possible, including sites that use proprietary javascript. Even if the Taler implementation used only javascript with a Free license, using it on that site would require enabling both Free and non-Free javascript. Thus it would be preferable to Free Software advocates if Taler implementations were written to work without requiring javascript.
Html and css can also have licenses, and they are frequently generated by server-side code running what is almost certainly a proprietary license, one that is opaque to the user.
He remarks on the obfuscated nature of much JS as violating the principle of user interaction with the code; but HTML5 is very frequently generated in highly-convoluted form from server-side scripts that the user has no access to.
He remarks on the uncertain license of JS, but that applies just as much to HTML5 code.
He's concerned with tracking, but there are a number of ways to track a user using HTML5 alone. Cookies, canvas, webrtc, user agent, tracking images...
And he refers to HTML as mere markup, but the reality is that with no JS you can create a web application using HTML5 and server-side software as complex as any you can do in JS.
If i make a storefront based on Tomcat that relies on no JS, does the user have the freedom to inspect the software? Do they know the license, if I don't explicitly post it?
Suppose I sell a digital good to a customer in the EU and use Taler to handle this. I need to know which country's VAT to collect, and I need to justify my choice to the tax authorities of any EU country that asks.
That seems to rule out using a platform that makes my customer anonymous to me.
> Direct GitHub to promote correct and clear use of licenses and the best use of copyleft (GPL version 3-or-later).
I remember when I was very green, that list of licenses on the GitHub repository creation page is very very confusing to me. I don't know which is which and which one I should use, and most importantly, what's the effect of my choice.
It could be great if GitHub can improve that list a bit to help people to make wiser choice before a repository is created.
However, my opinion is, the list better be designed in such way that users don't need to access to another website to understand what they're about to do.
It shouldn't be very hard, some sort of license description would do the work, I think.
I don't quite understand why that is a goal in itself. If it's due to accessibility why not ask to "Help make the web more usable for people with disabilities"? Maybe I'm missing something here.
Well… https://keithclark.co.uk/labs/css-fps/
You could also argue that DOCs and PDFs are software.
I'm sure he'd agree that people should also not include proprietary software in those files as well, but doing so is far less common than webpages, at least for stuff the average user is going to run into.
And how many people are actually programming in HTML/CSS vs JavaScript? A proof of concept is one thing, but most users won't run into it.
> It is theoretically possible to program in HTML and CSS, but in practice this capability is limited and inconvenient; merely to make it do something is an impressive hack. Such programs ought to be free, but CSS is not a serious problem for users' freedom as of 2019.
As someone else pointed out, "what about proprietary HTML and CSS?"
Stallman has no ability to recognize the need for others to protect their own work, he only wants his free access to the fruits of others' labor.
Don't want to run proprietary JavaScript? Then bite the f'ing bullet and don't visit websites that have it. Don't expect everyone else to conform to your wants.
If you want to have a discussion about freedom then let's do it in a rigorous way, go read the GNU page, read about the 4 freedoms then get back and explain your point more clearly.
His point is that proprietary software is bad and you should now write it and not use it, I agree with him and I still run some proprietary blobs, I do not feel forced to do anything or feel shamed.
His job is (was) convincing others that he is right. He's trying to influence people's thoughts and actions. I think a critique of how he goes about that is warranted. Of course we can look the other way, but obviously that doesn't work to the benefit of his goals.
Ideally the Javascript would be freed, but making it optional might be a more feasible goal.
Dropping JS will just lead to a lot of non-free software written in [something else]. It's not like non-free software will suddenly stop existing. You're not banning English because of the content that might use it.
There must be a better approach to this than "I'm not running any code because some of it may be non-free".
With JS enabled any site could potentially run non-free code so this has no benefits. As far as I can tell the proposed solution wasn't to develop some tech that ensures (somehow) that all functionality JS provides is transferred to something "free-only" but rather to give up that functionality entirely. That's not a solution, that's just running away from the problem.
There's no fix for criminal activity on the internet (objectively worse than non-free code) and yet I don't think anyone (RMS included) is proposing to sever the connections just to make sure they don't accidentally encounter such activity. The more radical comparison would be "bad stuff" in society and completely isolating yourself from it.
For some, open source software isn't just seen as a "nice to have", but the only way to avoid a society where freedoms are limited by dependence on software which works against us by design.
Even if nearly everyone uses GPL for their JavaScript, you still need to go through this process for every site that may use non-free software, which is a royal pain.
Perhaps a "better" solution is to fight to have browsers check the license of JavaScript before loading it (either prompt the user, or have a browser setting for acceptable licenses), but that's a much harder battle than promoting JavaScript-less web pages, especially since the user has control of blocking JavaScript today.
https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/
https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/free-your-javascript.ht...
It can be a bit fickle. I recently tried to make code comply with it and it didn't initially work because I was using a non-standard version of the ISC license with one different word.
It's not clear to me why I shouldn't tolerate closed-source Javascript that I can nonetheless inspect, archive, and edit on my own machine, but I should tolerate a closed-source SaaS backend that I can't inspect, archive, or edit.
Of course proprietary software limits freedoms, but does it limit freedom more than serverside logic? There are equal legal restrictions on both codebases, but I can't even exercise fair-use freedoms with code that I literally can't touch.
Maybe I'm atypical because I work with Javascript a lot, but I don't think it's that hard to read minified JS. Modern browsers have a lot of tools to help with that -- you can set breakpoints on DOM manipulations, you can autoformat the code so it's not just a jumble of text -- you can even pause execution and add custom code to functions that can do additional logging or subvert existing behavior.
And because the industry is at least somewhat focused on minimizing bundle size, it's pretty uncommon outside of captchas for me to see obfuscated code -- most of the time, you'll only be dealing with minification.
I don't know how WASM is going to affect this -- I suspect it'll be more problematic. But I manipulate minified JS all the time. It's a very 'inspectable' language, for lack of a better term.
I suspect that's hyperbole; browser inspection tools are really good, and I regularly inspect and edit minified code. Even outside of the browser, I've patched and fixed bugs in minified 3rd-party dependencies where I didn't have access to the source code. It takes a little while to untangle the code, but it's not hard -- just time consuming.
I don't want to dismiss people who struggle with that, but I also don't think I'm that special or amazing of a coder. If I can do something, odds are pretty good that other experienced programmers can too.
But, given a choice between serverside code that you absolutely can't inspect no matter what, and a binary blob that you can read with a bit of extra work, wouldn't you prefer the binary blob?
Where serverside logic is concerned, it doesn't even matter if the underlying code is Open Source. I still can't inspect the instance and tell if it's running the correct code, or what its parameters are.
Mobile gui's without javascript would be horrendous. On top of that, that's the platform you're minifying for.
I don't minify javascript to hide what's running, I minify it because a 3KB file is a lot less to download than a 12KB file.
So what? You design an entirely new language that: A) Can't be minified (How?) B) Has to be open source C) Can't be obfuscated (virtually impossible to prevent)
I'm sorry, but the stance is kinda dumb.
But if the firmware isn't modifiable by anybody (including the manufacturer) because the capability to update it was never built in the first place, then no capabilities are being withheld from the users of that product.
Distribution rights are a lot clearer with firmware on the device and a driver in code.
With firmware on the card, the interface between the kernel and the card is likely to be more well defined and thus easier to replace either side.
The idea behind 'free' software was that you should have access to/control of the software running on your devices, not everyone else's. It was originally a pragmatic solution to a problem, not an abstract ideology that it's morphed into for some.
[1] It's up to the business in question to care about the software running on their computers.
He'd push for AGPL for that. Also Stallman doesn't like SaaS: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...
Consequently, I consider this as something the GNU project failed to address. Why isn't there an official GNU webbrowser with a reasonable Javascript implementation? One where the browser and the JS engine would be free software and which could be seen as a reasonable platform for a modern web?
It's just like you should not need to take orders from people on the street so as to be able to understand what they're trying to tell you.
But hypothetically if Microsoft fully implements all of what RMS suggested would Windows be listed as an approved distro on gnu.org?
https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-non-gnu-distros.html
https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guideli...
Ehhhh... I very much like that my source code repository host isn't consistently nudging me to a specific license, thanks :).
(Also, GitHub already does recommend licenses to some extent; there's a short list of highlighted ones in the license selection dropdown.)
the numbers are not that bad, consider someone asks me to write them a tool for them to manage their electronic store inventory, tasks etc. I am the developer the shop is the client, I get paid and they get the programs and the source code. This is what it should be and not land int he situation where you get a change later and you don't have the source code.
Or someone hires me to write a program to apply a filter for an image, this program will run on my client server , because it runs on a server only my client will have the source and because the users won't run it on the browsers I do not need to send them a copy of the source.
Anyway there are more jobs where you are paid to write software and the client also gets the source and does whatever he wants with the code, as long as all users that run the program can get a copy of the source then it is free software. you don't have to make the code public on Github
Linux Kernel is a widely known example, but not the only one.
Further, there are funding models that do not require "donations" to fund libre software, "Free" does not mean free in cost, it means freedom.
Some options include
1. Paid Binary Dististrbution
2. Support Agreements
3. Priority Features
4. Customization
5. Hosting / SaaS
6. Paid documentation access
7. Donations / Tips
8. Normal Invoicing (most people forget You can invoice a company for GPL software, nothing prevents it. This is often good for Bean Counters)
There are others as well
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
There are many companies, including facebook/google/etc, that employ kernel developers who primarily write free software. There are companies that follow the opencore model, and many of their developers only work on the open portion (e.g. elasticsearch, mongodb, nginx, etc). There are some people who offer consulting for their free software and make good money by that. There are some companies where almost all development is free software, and money is gotten through other means (e.g. mozilla, redhat).
Free software does not have to mean working for free. It doesn't even mean you can't charge money for it (free as in libre, not free as in beer).
That being said, I agree that funding free software development is a large problem. Right now, the most sustainable model is a company to be interested in a project and to pay developers to work on it (e.g. linux), or for a company to own the project (e.g. firefox, mongodb).
There's no great funding story I know of for open source projects that are important, but maintained by people on the side (e.g. most of gnu coreutils, random libraries big projects depend on, etc).
However, your comment sounds more grim than reality is, and also conflates free as in libre with free as in beer.
Yeah, sure, you can't work for free, but that doesn't mean you can't make free software and charge people for it.
We pay eventually -- in this case the "free" software is paid for with a loss of freedom elsewhere, in this case by giving up your private information and fulfilling our role as as "consumers" using their code.
There are many that would rather actually pay in a transparent fashion.
Comparatively, science and mathematics, which software is arguably conceptually closer to, haven't ended as human endeavours for want of direct commercial exploitation.
>
> Release the source code of Windows under the GNU GPL.
>
> I know that is a stretch, but from what I heard there. it isn't totally impossible.
I do not remember who or where exactly it was, but i remember someone influential from Microsoft that was asked about open sourcing Windows (not necessarily under GPL) and they also said that it isn't totally impossible.
You can run windows software elsewhere. What more do you need ?
There's lots of developers who are working on products targeting Windows today (for momentum, their customer's requirements, etc). Those devs encounter Windows bugs and generally workaround them. But if instead they could patch them and/or provide patches upstream, it would be a huge benefit to them and likely some benefit to Microsoft as well.
The second would be to bring classic theme back :-P
I'm thinking it can help them win some government contracts outside the USA (by saying "you, and anyone else can see that there aren't any backdoors"). The potential open-source community can expand Windows markets the same way it did for Linux, making sure Microsoft remains relevant.
So I think it unlikely because Windows developers aren't calling for it and Linux developers don't care about it. Sure they'll open source particularly services and applications, especially as they move to more platforms. But I doubt they'd open source Windows itself.
> Others assert that inviting me was opposition research and nothing more.
Honestly, why would Microsoft in 2019 even need to either convince RMS to give up free software or to research him at all?
Could someone illuminate what this was about?
https://sourceforge.net/p/clisp/clisp/ci/default/tree/doc/Wh...
This is an absolute lie. I know for a fact he has cancelled talks he's agreed to after being contacted by various factions of activists.
MS infamously supported Oracle in pushing copyrightability of interfaces. Did they ever announce the reversal of their position?
To his points, I'd add:
* Stop pushing lock-in, and support open interoperable standards.
This has improved in some cases with MS, but in some it remains as bad before (ActiveSync, DirectX and etc.)
[0]: https://www.wired.com/2015/04/microsoft-open-source-windows-...
Just like OSX is based on Darwin which is Open Source, and Android is based on Linux, that doesn't provide any more freedom for users or encourage interoperability.
I agree with RMS here, in that user privacy is aligned closely with user freedom. I also believe the Internet is losing ground on this point.
https://www.stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#23_Septe...
>I know that is a stretch, but from what I heard there. it isn't totally impossible.
Really? Does anyone have more info about that?
If they mean the entire OS - kernel, userland, shell, the bundled programs that come with it - no, that won't happen, not least because Microsoft doesn't own the rights to all of that code: any third-party licensor could put a stop to that overnight.
This one puzzles me. I thought patents were the big threat for UIs? Or is he talking about copyrighted APIs?
Once that occurs then we will all trust Microsoft without reservation. Even Stallman.
>we do recognize [Microsoft] as the company that has separated more users from their freedom than any other
Is this still true in the age of the iPhone?
However, consider Microsoft Office, which is widely used, and has some network effects. If a friend uses an iPhone, that does not really impact me (where I live). In contrast, Microsoft even has impact on people who would consider not to use their products. I'd also bet that there are far more Microsoft Office users than iPhone users. Windows also has huge network effects.
I agree with you though. The iPhone is a big offender in that it does not really allows you to run any code you could otherwise run on it, the only supported way of installing apps is incompatible with the GPL and Apple controls what you run on your Apple device (which some people find it's a feature).
Why are we releasing this document in PDF format? Shouldn’t it be in docx or XPS? https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20110104-00/?p=11...
Why we don’t want you and your Android green bubbles in our iMessage chat https://www.fastcompany.com/90391587/why-we-dont-want-you-an...
Because it's pre-rendered and doesn't reflow, etc -- a very annoying format for anything other than as a target for printing.
The second link is saddening and I know iMessage is a problem in some areas of the world. Here, people expect that most people don't have an iPhone… and the problematic messengers are of course Facebook and WhatsApp. At least, here, it seems that most people understand that you don't want to use them. But you are still locked out of group discussions. You rely on people who like you to keep you posted because they want you to be at whatever event is being discussed there, and you are that one person who is not in the group chat.
> it isn't totally impossible.
> so we can run them without any nonfree software
Edit: removed my suggestions
> how about: "It's totally possible"
That completely changes the meaning.