Comment by arp242 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by arp242 | Hacker News Reader

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The main reason I wrote this was to counter some libertarian ideas/zeitgeist. The original draft (from, ehm, maybe 2 years ago) was titled "The libertarian fallacy", but I felt this didn't do service since libertarianism is quite broad (indeed, I have quite a few libertarian leanings myself).

The second reason is indeed that I do plan to write some other things to point out some of the FSFs failings as I see them, both in their philosophy and some more pragmatical things, and the appreciation of the complexity of "freedom" is one of them.

I agree that as it stands it's not well argumented, but this will be an article on its own (soon™, although a kind of proto-draft is available as some comments I made at [1]). I have this kind of complex dependency tree in my head on what to write in what order.

I hate how you phrase this as a "smear campaign" though. I don't expect everyone to agree with me, but I do expect people to recognise I'm arguing in good faith, and "smear campaign" implies that I don't.

[1]: https://lobste.rs/s/gywiju/freedom_isn_t_free#c_73fmon

I think you if target a specific organization or movement, you should put more effort into portraying their position fairly if you want to be taken in good faith. The Free Software movement doesn't just say "GPL increases freedom", it has a whole Philosophy section which is easily available at the GNU website, describing why they think the Four Freedoms are essential and override the others.

I'm quite familiar with the various writings on the topic, and if there is an in-depth examination of the various trade-offs involved with Free Software then I have not read it. Much of it seems, quite frankly, rather dismissive.

> I think you if target a specific organization or movement, you should put more effort into portraying their position fairly

I think that's not an unfair point. I have commented out this sentence until such a time I have written a more extensive article on it that can be linked. I also don't really want to focus on the details of specific examples with this, but rather on the bigger picture (I was very hesitant to include it as an example at all, as it's not a debate well known outside of the programming community; I may change my mind and remove it altogether).

> I have not read it

Then try reading instead of typing, especially https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-power.en.html

I have read that. I have read most things I could find on the FSF and GNU websites about this years ago already, and again several weeks ago. And I think that's exactly the kind of casual dismissiveness I'm talking about which barely even recognizes that there are any trade-offs involved at all, much less address them.

The introductory philosophic essay lays it out very clearly:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html

> we should perform a cost-benefit analysis on behalf of society as a whole, taking account of individual freedom as well as production of material goods.

You cannot say in good faith that the essays fail to recognise or address the existence of trade-offs. Please take note.

Given that statement, would you be surprised to hear that FSF has multiple time stated that GPL is a strategy with benefits and drawbacks and not an end goal in itself? Similar they see permissive licenses as positive thing, but not the optimal strategy in many cases. It depend on the project, the situation, the authors, the community and so on.

Ok, I'm ready to believe that you're acting in good faith. I'm going through a difficult divorce, which makes me touchy about the smearing. If someone wanted to start a FSF smear campaign, it would be a good strategy to write insightful articles like yours sprinkled with negative remarks about the FSF. IMHO, you should clarify (or remove) this part of your article.

Yeah; I removed it. See my other reply on this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24132388

To quote the article:

>When people say “GPL increases freedom” then they’re right. When others say “GPL limits freedom compared to MIT” then they’re right too. It’s just a matter about which freedoms exactly we’re talking about, and for who.

I think it's pretty clear that the freedom the FSF is advocating for is freedom for the user primarily, and only secondarily for the developer. They're a political organization and this is one of their principles, and those who counter with effectively "but what about my freedom to restrict the user?" are missing the point.

You may disagree with the FSF's position on ideological grounds, but if you do so it's unhelpful to argue that something is "more" or "less" free without first establishing common definitions. You probably have different working definitions of "freedom" in that context at that point, and arguing without reconciling those is likely to result in the two parties arguing right past each other.

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