I stopped reading after it turned into a rant about how all software should be free. While I understand and agree with some of the complaints about Microsoft, the extreme 'commercial software is bad' position is kind of ridiculous.
There are different types of intelligences, and it seems pretty obvious that he is incredibly strong in some and weaker than the average Wal-Mart shopper in a few.
Saying he has limited mental capacity has a little different connotation than what I meant. Perhaps I didn't express it well. He would appear to be genius-level intelligent in certain regards (math/logic type) and the opposite in others (social, if his Craigslist personals and appearance are any indication). The free software thing is sort of a mixture of the two.
RMS needs to say "all non-Free software should go away" so that some of it will.
And incidentally, if you find yourself trying to convince audiences of stupid people, you may want to stop and ask yourself whether you want to be spending your life that way.
"But Gates didn't invent proprietary software, and thousands of other companies do the same thing. It's wrong, no matter who does it."
That is an outrageous statement.
But this leads him to a militant, legally questionable and altogether obnoxious philosophy that all code therefore must be free, because otherwise it will all collapse into some sort of dystopian future and a black hole where all information is censured and controlled.
But this wasn't the case when Stallman started his activist efforts, and it's not the case now. There is lots of free software and lots of for-pay software and some intersection of the two, and the world seems fairly happy with this situation. And there's really no evidence that the GNU approach has been solely or even significantly responsible for this state of affairs! It really seems like the market has understood the value of open source outside of Stallman's framework for it for quite some time.
From a free-market perspective, the two kinds of software fill different market requirements. Often times closed-source software pioneers an approach, makes an initial profit, and proves a demand which open source efforts then methodically fill. This makes a lot of sense, when you think about it.
He usually emphasizes that it's the best situation for users, and as far as I can tell never mentions software makers in this context.
What he says essentially is software must evolve like an academic discipline. In academia, everything is open and accessible for everyone, so that you can take any one's work, improve it and share your improvement with others in the same manner. That's the way academia worked for centuries, and in fact it worked that way in all political systems.
Note that Stallman is not pushing Computer Science as an academic discipline - not at all. Instead, he says all software must be free as in academia, as I understand it, and there is a reason for that, he says: proprietary software "divides" us like no other product or service we may buy. (Well, you'd add music, video and all kinds of copyable goods to the list of things that "divide" us, but notice that they became cheaply copyable thanks to computers and software.)
So, what's wrong with his point in principle?
Noone was arguing that closed source isn't profitable. "Proprietary software exists" isn't an argument for it's existence & many are unhappy about it.
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>Often times closed-source software pioneers an approach, makes an initial profit, and proves a demand which open source efforts then methodically fill.
I hope you're not saying OSS isn't innovative.
There is definitely slippery-slope rhetoric in the GNU propaganda. Thus far, no slope has existed. That's all I meant to say.
> I hope you're not saying OSS isn't innovative.
I am not saying this, but it is historically true that lots of different fields have been pioneered by closed-source or closed-license-source and that kind of funding. It may shortly thereafter become open-sourced in some fashion, or take longer.
Stallman is suggesting that software should be free because people shouldn't have to pay for it, and so that anyone can modify it.
In theory that sounds great, but the truth is that capitalism has driven most of the software that actually enhances the lives of the majority of people who have computers. Look at the differences between Gimp and Photoshop (or even Paint Shop Pro), or between Impulse Tracker and Logic Pro. (IT wasn't free, actually, but it was really cheap!) Software that people pay for is usually better, and far more useful.
I tried using Gimp at my company for a while to save us money, and I was practically pulling my hair out after ten minutes. It sucks. It really, really sucks. It does a lot of cool things, but it's buggy and it's difficult to use.
If Adobe wasn't rich because they sell their software, their software wouldn't be nearly as good. Same with most other software companies.
Now if it wasn't proprietary, most of the advantages of being able to sell it would go out the window. If everyone had the source code to Photoshop, Photoshop would be nearly worthless. And then everyone would go off and add features when they could, and each feature would only be usable to the person who wrote it. There's no reason to make it usable if you're writing it for yourself.
And that's how Photoshop could become Gimp.
No.
Can you cite a source? For reference, what the FSF actually says about selling software is here - http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/selling.html
Matt, free software is the major reason why PG, YCombinator, YouTube and Google are possible: this is why starting a software company is so cheap these days. Without it you'd be paying "enterprise-grade" fees for shit like a web server, operating system, complier, editor, bug tracker and commercial libraries for reading every imaginable file format or speaking any kind of protocol, plus a thousand other software things an average business needs to exist.
Perhaps Stallman sees something you don't, partly because you take it for granted.
But that doesn't mean proprietary software is evil. There's a place for both, and Stallman doesn't see that. He can't because his religion blinds him to it.
Free software is often better for a given task, and would still be preferable if it were equal. But I like Photoshop a hell of a lot better than GIMP and Windows or OSX (for my laptop anyway, not so much for servers) much better than Linux. Free software still clearly lags behind proprietary in some cases, and always will.
There's plenty of room for both. And it's quite a large error on your part to assume I take it for granted.
For Stallman it is not a question of quality of software but of ethics. And he explains his views without resorting to religion or calling people idiots.
Free software is a wonderful thing and keeping a source code "secret" or patenting stupid shit like "single click buy" is indeed evil, what else you want to call it when closed-source systems are forcing the entire world to reverse-engineer their file formats, communication protocols, etc. How many programmer-hours have been wasted re-implementing JPEG compression, TCP/IP stack, XML parsing, etc etc etc?
Tell me, how is it NOT evil to hold font-rendering patents forcing the entire non-Windows (or OSX) world to stare at fucked-up unreadable fonts? ... and at the same time borrowing anything they want from OSS community when they feel like it (look! there is "etc" folder in windows/system/drivers!) How is it possible to look into SCO vs Linux case and not call Microsoft's envolvement "evil"? If not evil, what is it then?
Moreover, the modern history of computing is actually proving that Stallman's views make perfect sense, even from commercial perspective: look at Adobe, who's actually being forced to open-source because they suddenly realized that this gives them an edge over Silverlight. Just compare that to Macromedia's not so distant dreams of selling crazy ass expensive "Flex servers". Or look at poor Opera fighting against the whole world's efforts of improving FF.
Even your own examples of better software don't apply. On features and flexibility alone, OSX can't hold a candle to even (!) Gnome and wins user's hearts purely on looks. What's more important, however, is that OSX itself is a giant example of open source (BSD) taking over commercial (Windows) with a for-profit company cashing out in the background - I still don't understand why OSS community lets Apple to get away with it: they took all they wanted and haven't given much of their own stuff back. Majority of code you get installed with OSX isn't written by Apple, yet they get to charge you for it. So don't use OSX as an example of successful closed-source product because it isn't.
Also, look back in time: open source systems have been innovating and are responsible for nearly everything we see around ourselves: languages, compilers, internet itself, the list is huge: commercial and closed-loop development hasn't produced anything with an impact, merely playing "catch-up -> copy -> resell" game.
You're an intelligent guy, you like to speak your mind directly and I enjoy your blog. There is probably something in your argument that you just can't get across.
This is not the argument that Stallman is making, and if he could fully grok the simple fact that business and not mankind is that which has benefited from free software, he'd probably go hang himself in despair.
Windows + IIS + VS + SQL Server is not that expensive. Altogether, it's still much cheaper than starting a lawn-care business.