Ask HN: Do you believe in GNU's Free Software? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you believe in GNU's Free Software?

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"“Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.” We sometimes call it “libre software,” borrowing the French or Spanish word for “free” as in freedom, to show we do not mean the software is gratis. You may have paid money to get copies of a free program, or you may have obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got your copies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to sell copies." - From the GNU Website.

Do you believe in Free Software? People often talk about the benefits of open source, but they tend to switch to proprietary, partly-proprietary (Jetbrains is a good example. Only parts of their products are open source), or corporate controlled open source (Corporations like Microsoft who espouse open source, but not free software because most of their stack is proprietary), when there's convenience to be had.

Is free software a lost cause? If we believe in things like right to repair, must we also believe in free software? Is using free software for financial benefit and then not contributing back simply by promoting and using free software immoral? Are we building a bad future for software by not fighting for something like the Free Software movement?

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> Do you believe in Free Software?

> If we believe in things like right to repair...

> immoral

When it is phrased like that (and it often is phrased like that) it sounds like a religion. Also the notion that there is no compromise to be had also seems very religious. I already have a religion and Free Software isn't it.

I support the majority of the goals of the FSF, SFC, OSI, and EFF. Some of them overlap, some I don't agree with (particularly the FSF's stance on handling nonfree firmware), and some goals of mine aren't represented by any of the above groups.

What I absolutely reject is the all or nothing approach even implicit in the question. If I buy a piece of proprietary software or hardware that does not mean I don't "believe" in Free Software or that it is a lost cause. It means I want to play video games with my friends. It means the way I put food on my family's table depends on it sometimes (although 99% of what I do is FOSS even for work).

Even in religion we make these moral distinctions of how closely we're willing to cooperate with evil in the course of our daily lives. I don't want to live the ascetic lifestyle of Richard Stallman. And to imply that I should to really consider myself a supporter of Free Software is what drives me and a few other people away from such a movement. Not to ramble about my FOSS CV, but I release software under the GPLv3, I've donated to FSF, SFC, OSI, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD just to name a few, I've spent hours tabling for the FSF at different events. Because I sometimes use proprietary software does that excommunicate me from the belief of Free Software?

Once people start crossing the line from promoting an ideal to promoting an identity, that's when they lose me.

I think that the difference between where we are now and the RMS view is he sees free software as yet another constitutional right, a right that we could have only known about after the advent of the computer. Many people would die defending their constitutional rights, or at the very least lay quite a bit of their lives on the line for it. What got me thinking about this was an RMS talk where he was saying how the least we can do is suffer some minor inconveniences to support free software. Like maybe tool A is rough around the edges or doesn't have feature X, Y that tool B does, but tool A is FOSS, so we pick A anyway as a vote for free software.

So my question is twofold: do we believe that FOSS is a right, and where do we draw the line between dedicating our lives to fighting for FOSS, and only using it when its completely convenient.

On the one hand we have RMS, whose ideology has led him to a path where he can pick from maybe a handful of computers where he can get everything FOSS, and if he needs something where there is nothing FOSS to cover it, he can't use it. He can't enjoy modern gaming, or VR, etc. On the other hand, we have people who will buy a tool if it's better than the FOSS solution, who never consider FOSS into their calculus of picking one tool over another on principle, or an even greater sacrifice - refraining from doing an activity on a computer because the only solution is not FOSS.

> and the RMS view is he sees free software as yet another constitutional right

Do you have a source for this? His writings and talks are extensive and I have not seen an instance where he makes this argument. He's said evil and not evil, moral and immoral, but I've never seen him make a constitutional argument. I've never seen him lobby to even make proprietary software illegal.

> So my question is twofold: do we believe that FOSS is a right

Would this right to Free Software be absolute where our other rights are not? Let's say we made Free Software a constitutional right. What about Germany? What about Japan? Would we outlaw the use of nonfree software from those countries? Why stop at software? What about copyright and patents? Isn't in immoral to not copy and share a textbook with someone? To try to only solve this at the level of rights it ignores the sociological and economic solutions and impacts as well.

> where do we draw the line between dedicating our lives to fighting for FOSS, and only using it when its completely convenient.

So to be in favor of Free Software I have to dedicate my life to it? If that's the case then I draw the line at the very beginning. I'm not dedicating my life to Free Software, or even to software for that matter. If you mean am I willing to give FOSS the first look and even ignore some of its warts to use it over proprietary software? Then I do that almost 100% of the time. Am I going to to release any software I have control over under a free license? I do that 100% of the time. I jump through A LOT of hoops to try to use as much FOSS as possible. But... I enable DRM in Firefox and install ffmpeg and nonfree codecs so I can watch streams instead of using Chrome. I use Steam on Linux and use Proton instead of just installing Windows. My life _could_ be a lot simpler if I didn't try to support FOSS as much as possible.

Also, there has been a lot of really cool and really interesting work done in FOSS since the FSF. Like I said my job is almost entirely based on and around FOSS. If you would've told me that in 1998 when I first installed Red Hat for the first time I wouldn't have believed you. I would've hoped it would've been true, but it seemed like a dream. There are so many interesting ideas around FOSS. To focus on the narrow definition and work of just the FSF is a mistake.

See..to me the obvious answer is of course not, for roughly the same reason that church services aren't filled only with e.g. priests and monks.

I believe that Stallman is correct in most of what he says. When he started his movements the threats were lower than there are now. But looking at the current state of the industry things are scarier than I ever imagined to be 10 years ago. People cannot even imagine how much data is collected from them each day. And the simplest way to collect data is to sell people phones, and make them install apps instead of letting them use the site (with potential ad blockers).

I've made some experiments on my phones (bot Android and IOS), and you would surprise how many of the apps are "calling home". Because those apps are closed source, God knows what information they are sending back to their servers.

In one of his talks (it was some TED talk) he even drew pictures of companies with leashes around the necks of their users. In his words, if the source code is not available, the software owns the user, the user doesn't own the software.

I think this is something that the majority of programmers don't care about. I mean, most programmers only concern themselves with engineering. They rarely care about the societal affects of what they build, let alone how it's built. One area I agree with RMS on is that open source is essential to transparency from companies as to what they are doing with our inputs.

That's unfortunate... and I recognize myself in the programmer you've mentioned. I've written software that i am not proud of ... from an ethical perspective. In the last months I've become a little bit more concerned of the things I am building.

I believe in free software but I do not like GNU and FSF zealotry.

See: https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html

"Debian also maintains a repository of nonfree software. According to the project, this software is 'not part of the Debian system,' but the repository is hosted on many of the project's main servers, and people can readily find these nonfree packages by browsing Debian's online package database and its wiki."

So Debian isn't kosher because it's too easy to load non-free software?

I understand why some feel they must be militant about this sort of thing and I'm grateful for their dedication; however, it's off putting to the general public and most of the community.

I wish any effort, particularly those built around online communities, weren't infiltrated and run by the militant.

The militancy comes from years of "See? I fucking told you so!" every time some company does exactly what they said they wouldn't then everyone just forgives and forgets again. I was almost through the militancy phase and moved on to apathy, even bought and installed Windows 10, but then Windows 11 fired me back up :)

> I believe in free software but I do not like GNU and FSF zealotry

I don't believe you believe in free software.

> Free software (or libre software)[1][2] is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions.

If you believe in that, how can you consider what the FSF stands for 'zealotry'? They are simply standing by their principles, which has undoubtedly pushed forward the state of the art in software over decades.

> I don't believe you believe in free software.

Serious question - why should OP of that comment care at all?

This is the equivalent of a deeply religious person saying "I don't think you're very Christian"

Ok, that's fine. Good for you?

I believe the world would be a better place if all software was free, and I think that is a worthy goal to be pursuing. In that sense, I believe in free software.

I don't think the FSF as an organization is very effective in working toward that goal or promoting that goal. They're pushing away too many people and organizations who could've been their allies.

On the contrary, I think they've been very effective in avoiding being corrupted and destroyed from within (as is the norm).

It takes a super strong moral foundation to stand firm against the onslaught of corporate commoditization, and the FSF has managed to do it. I know RMS rubs some folks the wrong way, but he's been not only extremely prescient and decades ahead of his time, but THE main reason that the FSF has endured where so many others have failed.

It's a common saying that the FSF is old or promotes an aging philosophy that's not current with the times, usually meant as a stepping stone to some sort of modernization not only in procedures but principles, which is exactly how other projects have been destroyed. Popular appeal may wax or wane, but there can be absolutely no concession in the core philosophy of the FSF. Keep broadcasting an uncorrupted message, and let people tune in [1].

RMS fully understands this and it'll be a sad day when/if he's replaced by someone who doesn't.

[1] A look at the -healthy and invigorated by newcomers- Emacs community is testament that the state of affairs is not dire.

On the other hand, X would have been GPL and not MIT if Stallman hadn't been ranting to the X developers at MIT in the 80s and generally leaving a bad impression.

See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj02_UeUnGQ&t=1705s

> I don't think the FSF as an organization is very effective in working toward that goal or promoting that goal.

Okay, I can understand that line of reasoning, and I agree to a certain extent.

The FSF is aging, and their philosophy is not playing well anymore with the public.

Anyone can start a new free software organization if they think they can improve on it

We need more blobless drivers and not more :)

AMD Radeon cards shouldn't require a blob to even turn themselves on and get 3D acceleration.

I believe in free software, and I understand the value in GNU and FSF zealotry even though I don't fully "practice" it. It's worth it for the setting of a good and useful "Overton Window" of software.

Proprietary software is a societal ill, like spyware is. Getting people to understand that will be similar to when societies have figured out other things are wrong, like child labor is wrong. While proprietary software runs rampant, certain parts of our overall freedom and privacy has regressed in comparison to before computers, and in comparison to how they should be. It is not a lost cause to think that the software we depend on to live our lives should act in our interests, and having the 4 freedoms on that software is simply an essential part of it acting in our interest.

Without free software we would be in the hand of a couple corporations with nowhere to go.

So yes, I believe in GNU's Free Software.

These freedoms definitely make sense to me. If they were not present we would be living in a very different world where large corporations would keep us in walled gardens and no possible alternative. We would have software available for study but never to tinker with and make something useful.

Its incredulous that I can use a Linux distributions, compilers, multimedia tools and various application for my day to day use; not just a side hobby. You may argue about how good it is, but more or less you would get by. Yet I am not tied to a company with trillions of worth. The development happens in open and its driven by community of developers contributing out passion.

Playsatation and macOS are the examples where companies built heavily out of open source software, but they kept their systems closed. So you can have the code but its not a useful. You still are not in control about how software runs on it. Your only option is to not use it.

I own a PS4 and enjoy it very much. Thankfully its only for gaming, so I am not restricted. I wonder if it was an open platform people would have built many amazing things for it.

The PS4 makes a surprisingly decent PC all things considered: https://youtu.be/CmneiL9O5RY

I wish companies weren't so hostile towards this sort of thing. I'd certainly buy a PS4 if I could confidently use it as a media server without worrying that Sony could shut it all down overnight.

we need people like stallman and organisations like GNU, EFF & co. desperately.

their goals might not be reachable, cause reality is rarely pure, but to me it's a principal necessity.

why? it's the counter weight to the microsoft of the late 90s and early 2000s. profit above all, we will try to get you, bind you and squeeze you with everything we can use - and more. GNU is the natural mirror perspective, which is needed for - balance.

and if we get a "more GNU" world ... i personally would think that is a good thing.

I'm not a programmer so I can't practically exercise my user freedoms.

If I was a programmer, I also couldn't practically exercise my user freedoms for most of the software I use. Maybe one programmer could maintain a fork of vim, but it takes a small company to maintain a true fork of larger projects like Firefox, Chromium, and LibreOffice.

If you want control over your workflow, a program with a stable extensions API will go a lot farther than a free software license.

I prefer free software because it is gratis and doesn't spy on me.

Anyone here with some experience single-handedly maintaining a fork of a large project?

Having the option to exercise your freedoms (or, say, contract someone to do so, or band together with other users to do this) is an important protection for you as a user, even if you will not directly exercise it yourself. It can for example inform the relationship the original vendor has with you, and how they treat you.

"But I'm never going to patch it anyway" is a bit like "Privacy? But I have no secrets", which implies you will never have secrets and don't want to have the option to, even if external factors not under your control change.

By the same token, just the mere existence of free alternatives does a lot to keep developers of non-free software honest in some cases, even if they don't gain competitive market share.

OTOH, ironically the existence of free software has also let the developers of non-free software off the hook in important ways. For example, if you look at any large proprietary software maker, you will often find that their most skilled engineers are the ones with experience developing free software - because they have additional years of high-density experience that companies fail to provide an equivalent environment for (low incentives to mentor, more extreme specialization, etc.). So proprietary development shops have had to be far less sustainable wrt/ training and recruiting because the community has picked up the slack. Which I'm not sure is a good thing - healthy teaching relationships and learning opportunities for experts on the one hand, business models and competitive salary on the other, rather than both in one spot.

> If you want control over your workflow, a program with a stable extensions API will go a lot farther than a free software license.

You underestimate the effect of other programmers having that freedom. Even without being a kernel hacker myself, I get the benefit of an OS that does not spy on me.

That's why the freedom to redistribute modified copies is so key - the resulting ecosystem of free software is in many ways more important than the individual rights from which it results. So it's a mistake to think you don't benefit from the software freedoms, just because you individually don't exercise them.

I have a couple private forks of software that I maintain for one reason or another. I've got a fork of a Discord theme with minor CSS changes I keep around and update once every few months, as well as the GTK app Password Safe with all of it's UI/UX changes pinned the way they were before GNOME took it over. The experience is pretty fine all things considered. I rarely ever need to hop in to change stuff around unless an update is pushed that I really want to ingest, and when it does happen it rarely takes more than an hour to get things sorted out and working again. It's not half as scary as it sounds, really.

Not a fork, but I'm building an application on my own that's roughly meant to be equivalent to Home Assistant, on account of some entertainment related projects with very low budgets, and some big complaints about how Home Assistant treats SD cards.

Even though it's not a fork, I have constant problems with trivial changes in libraries between versions. I'd think a fork could be even worse.

I suspect someone with an hour a day, or a few hours a week, could maintain a fork of LibreOffice and keep it in sync with upstream, if they didn't change too much, but it would suck.

The ability for small companies to do forks is where the real benefit is IMHO. I'm using Kiwi Browser on Android, which seems to get security updates within a few days of Chromium, and supports extensions on mobile.

Do I believe society is better off with free software compared to the alternatives? Yes, I do.

Do I believe the GNU project, the GNU licence and the related software has done good for society? Yes, I do.

Do I believe the Free Software Foundation has done more good than harm in getting the idea of free software (free as in freedom, not free as in beer) out in society? Yes, I do.

Do I believe every act by any representative of the GNU project or the Free Software Foundation is good? Of course I don't, they are people with their own ideas which do not necessarily always agree with mine.

So, Free Software for the win, it will take time but it has in many ways happened already and will continue to do so.

The more software is integrated in hardware which used to be free of such - tractors, cars, household appliances, etc. - the more important the freedoms proposed by the Free Software Foundation are. The more intrusive surveillance by government and commercial entities becomes, the more important it is to have access to free alternatives which do not report back to their 'Owners'. Free software plus the right to repair are essential to keep society out of the grip of commercial entities who first and foremost are beholden to their bottom line, second and increasingly so to some ideology and/or political party.

Increasing the availability of useful tools to anyone interested in software development and computing / technology in general is where I think FOSS has excelled.

A simple example might be a free, open-source blueprint for a typewriter. People can improve the blueprint, anyone can use it. Now, to build an actual typewriter based on this blueprint, there's where individual investment of time and money is required - but anyone can do it, there's no patent lawyer waiting to halt that process.

Note also that branding and reliability do matter even in open-source. Two typewriter manufacturers working off the same open-source blueprint could make very different quality typewriters, and the one with the better reputation has a market edge (just not one based on exclusive access to some old IP).

Now, let's say you use the typewriter to create a best-selling novel. Here the creator should be able to retain rights to the novel, and since good writers are not all that common, the notion that the novel should be free and open-source doesn't really work that well if we want to have writers making a living and continuing to write. An alternative approach, such as a state-sponsored program to support authors, or a billionaire-financed private foundation program, would quickly become little more than a propaganda factory.

The kind of scenario that gave rise to the open-source movement might be described as the notion that authors who used a propriety typewriter to write their novel owe a fraction of their revenue to the typewriter blueprint owner. The whole Oracle-Google-Java-Android business comes to mind for example.

The following is strictly related to my thoughts on getting software developed and distributed (i.e., funding / incentive models for building an maintaining the software).

My personal views -- it really depends on what the software is for. In the case of foundational software (OS, libraries, utilities) then Free software has some major advantages that outweigh the disadvantages. The disadvantages of Free software come from the lack of paying customers that fund development. But in the above use case many of the primary users are also developers, who have an incentive for contributing back improvements. (In the case of OS an Libraries, I consider the primary users to be developers, as end-users use software that runs on top of this foundation, even though users also use the OS, they typically primarily use it to execute other applications).

For the next layer above, you have applications software. If the app is aimed towards businesses, then the funding model of businesses licensing the software from a vendor with a pool of developers seems to have positive returns, that outweigh the potential contributions that can come up from making the code follow the four Software Freedoms. Same may apply if the app is aimed at non-technical users. For apps aimed at technical users, many of these can fall under the previous category of foundational software.

The next category is entertainment related software. This I consider almost equivalent to books, a movie, or music. Most of the value is in the creative side, vs the technical side. Therefore Software Freedom applied to a game brings not much more value than the same type of Freedom applied to a blockbuster movie.

> Do you believe in Free Software?

> ...

> Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price.

Yes, I do. And every day I'm reminded of how right and how forward thinking Stallman has been all along.

It's really a matter of freedom vs price.

At this point it's not even about software alone, it's about software and hardware. You literally cannot trust most of the TVs you buy not to spy on you because you can't inspect the software, and there is no way to load a modified version of it.

You are forced to throw away perfectly functioning stuff (sonos speakers for example iirc?) because the software will refuse to work. Stuff you paid with your own money. And the e-waste, the pollution!

And so on and so forth... On many other topics.

When talking about black and white images we take into account the full pallete of grayscale tones. For me free software is everything gray and above on the scale between pure freedom and closed.

Of course all these questions do not have a right or wrong answer and are highly dependent on one's values and ideology.

As for me: yes, I believe in Free Software, I do not consider it a lost cause, and I'm in awe that Stallman had the foresight to raise the issues when he did.

Yes the four freedoms matter. Software controls our lives and its effects often trump nations and laws. If we do not have the four freedoms then software is will tend towards despotism.

This is widely understood by the general public if one uses the word 'algorithms' instead of software.

Everybody knows algorithms run more and more of our lives and they are proprietary and secret.

Many folk know algorithms amplify are used justify discrimination and unfairness ( 'The computer says no' ).

The public understands the need for the four freedoms when applied to algorithms, at least the freedom to see the alogorithm, to understand why it came to it's decision.

The public understands that democracy can be undermined by algorithms, opinions affected, conspiracies run riot and riots started by algorithms promoting content. Perhaps sometimes intentionally by its authors or just gamed by powerful and state level propagandists.

Software will run more and more of our lives, like Moore's law it will grow exponentially and currently largely unchecked.

The four freedoms need to be applied more widely to algorithms in general if we are not to lose our cherished freedoms and democracy.

"Either the user controls the software, or the software controls the users":

https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM?t=57

> Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to ...study, change and improve the software. Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price.

As an individual, free software is valuable for a me if I can modify it at will, say at most with one month work and without having to learn arcane techniques. However this is not the case most of the time, so using free software not so different from using a proprietary system.

For example I type this on a Linux laptop, which is unable to enter a proper sleep mode even if it was possible on Linux 20 years ago. The fancy keyboard lights up its key every few minutes without clear reason. I am using the Chromium browser but it does not display correctly the non Western characters and when I make a right click, garbage appears.

How could I modify all this within a month time frame or even a few years? It's impossible.

The situation would not be different if I was using a proprietary system.

Why continue using that free software, given the issues, if it doesn't fit your definition of valuable free software?

I am not complaining, I am answering to "Free software as the freedom to ...study, change and improve the software."

This is just not true for most modern open source software.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you were complaining. I was just curious where else you feel the value lies in that software, if freedom isn't it?

Maybe be it's just that I have advocated for open source at my company for a long time. I remember playing with and trying to improve smallC [0] in the 1980' when there was no GCC.

Yet, at the same time, TurboC from Borland was an incredible product. I would be happy to have today a similar editor for Java and PHP.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-C

That brings up another thought I've had over the years. From an end user perspective, which is more valuable -- a Free Software program that is very difficult to understand and modify, or a non-Free program that has a well documented extension API?

For example, if the world of web browsers consisted of a non-free browser that was ported to run on almost any platform that had a well documented extension/plugin system, vs. a Free web browser that was a mess of spaghetti code that no one would really want to touch, and didn't support any extensions -- which browser would be more valuable (both in general, and in specific ways)?

These questions seem lost in ideology. The free software movement gave me an operating system and critical applications so I can do my work without big company garbage interfering.

Unfortunately there is a low ceiling to the utility of copylefted software as my experience in commercial software development shows that any commercially successful development based on copylefted software invites scrutiny such that one must constantly prove that every feature of the software can be directly linked to published source code changes. Any failure to do this can result in costly and distracting legal actions. Because this is onerous software developers who seriously wish for success and profit minimize exposure to copylefted source code. This makes it clear that freedom is a complicated business of trade offs and not a matter of ideological purity tests as the hype surrounding copyleft implies.

I speak only for myself, but to me these two sentences clash with one another:

> The free software movement gave me an operating system and critical applications so I can do my work without big company garbage interfering.

[...]

> Because this is onerous software developers who seriously wish for success and profit minimize exposure to copylefted source code.

I couldn't say them without feeling I'm internally adopting a double moral standard in order to justify my goals.

>>copylefted software invites scrutiny such that one must constantly prove that every feature of the software can be directly linked to published source code changes. Any failure to do this can result in costly and distracting legal actions.

Well, where I live the burden of such proof is on the accuser. I am not aware of any case as you describe [but I could be wrong].

> Do you believe in Free Software?

What does it mean to "believe" in Free Software?

I believe Free Software (as defined in your post) exists and will continue to exist for the foreseeable future.

> Is free software a lost cause?

This question seems to assume that Free Software is a cause, which is notably absent from the GNU definition you presented.

The Free Software we are talking about is more of an assertion that you have a right to something, and not just a licensing model. By right, I mean something akin to a constitutional right - as in it's in the public's best interest for you to be able to see the source code of the programs you run, be able to modify them, etc. It's your right, as the owner of a piece of software, to be able to do these things. It's not about free as in price, but free as in speech (which is a constitutional right).

I do, even for the oldest software. I even used to praise MIT's Dungeon over Zork because I tought it was under the public domain, but it wasn't. I hope one day some old MIT guy sets the pre-Infocom Zork (Dungeon) as libre software.

On most modern games, AAA games today suck, full of microtransactions, DRM and "always online" policies even for simple player runs. Nowadays I mostly play libre games and most of the music I own it's under a CC license.

The semi-infamous Nanowar band existed in Jamendo, among lots of other composers. Also, the TextFiles guy mirrored every CC Album from Jamendo to archive.org.

https://archive.org/details/jamendo-albums?noscript=1

So, there's no excuse today to get legal and libre gaming and media. You have libre game engines which allows you to play thousands of games from GOG, for example.

On comic books: https://comicbookplus.com/ I like both mistery/noir and sci-fi ones. Nowadays what it's being sold today it's 90's remakes on movies and Marvel comics, so in the end there's very few "new" and "groundbreaking".

Yes, "new" stories about hackers, dystopias and such, but that kind of media either already was on public domain or in copyleft-like fanfiction thru web sites and previously, Usenet and freeware interactive fiction games, if not libre.

On the "libre" term from Spanish, English speakers could spell it as "leebehr" or "lihbah (UK)".

I do not see anything immoral about using nonfree. Or at least, it's no more immoral than any other case where a company makes a worse product, and there are many of those.

I do absolutely believe in free software(And even more importantly, open APIs on hardware), I use it when I can, and contribute what I can(In the form of code, bug reports, and answering questions).

Currently I have close to zero paid software, just games and some cheap apps.

But I do have some proprietary freeware that I have no intention of giving up, until a free alternative arrives. I don't see any good replacement for Obsidian notes(I've tried basically all the FOSS apps and even had a go at building my own).

The only reason I have any moral objection is just because free software, obviously, all things being equal, is better.

But trade secrets exist for a reason. I'd much rather live in a world where firefighters have proprietary drones, than no drones at all, or crappy ones.

And I really couldn't care less about binary blobs. I just consider them almost like a part of the hardware, as long as they are freely redistributable for personal or commercial use.

I believe in competition: if there’s a proprietary piece of software, that’s not an issue, because you can just make your own version.

e.g. don’t like JetBrains? Make your own IDE. Sure it will take effort and a group collaboration, but it’s honestly not too much to expect a large group to make a reasonably comparable IDE. In fact, there is a reasonably comparable open-source IDE: VS Code. And this is the case for most proprietary software.

The problem arises when you can’t make your own version of software, because it uses exclusive resources like undocumented hardware or certificates, or you’re required to use the proprietary version by law. Or if it’s just too difficult to make and too important. At a certain point, the software becomes a public utility and should be something like FOSS.

It’s exactly like physical goods. If someone sells a cup but i don’t like it i can make and sell my own version. But i can’t do the same with internet broadband, social security, or insulin. So these are all regulated

if there’s a proprietary piece of software, that’s not an issue, because you can just make your own version.\=

It's possible to make your own version only if the smaller building blocks are free. If you had to pay $2000 to compile your program, $100 to edit it, $1000 for the different tools (test suite, framework, etc) to develop it, how many people would be able to afford to develop a competitor?

I like having the freedom to use libre software, but also having the freedom to choose non-libre software, as the need arises.

I do not hold "free software" as a religious belief, no.

I do, however, believe in property rights. As such, if a developer wishes his/her creation to be freely available, I believe that this wish should be respected under the creator's terms.

As for free software as an idea, I think it has been equal parts awesome and crap.

I would say yes.

And I would go a step further, I owe my career to the Free Software and Open Source movements.

It's not that I couldn't have made my way in a world of proprietary software, but that world of money, license restrictions, vendor lock in, black boxes and deferring control to some megacorp's product managers, neither appealed nor was very accessible.

I'm not a purist to the extent RMS is, but I consider the 4 freedoms the FSF promotes to be very important practical features. Most of the gripes I have at home and work with software ultimately pertain to missing one of those features.

Much like religion itself; the key to finding the value in it is "accepting that it (or you, or whatever) will never be perfect," but generally trying to go in that direction regardless.

I think one people strongly undervalue is the extent to which "Free Software" is already overwhelmingly successful. Don't compare it to the platonic ideal that Free Software talks about, compare it to the much worse situation(s) we'd be in if we hadn't already digested and worked with the concept for the past few decades.

And keep fighting.

I like Linus's response for GPL v3. [0] GPL v2 was good. Version 3 is a little over.

In practice enterprises avoid using everything licensed under GPL v3 (e.g. Apple freezing Mac OS's Bash veraion), that blocks innovation cause good software usually backed by large amount of budget, especially those with GUI, like Windows, Android, Microsoft Office, Chrome etc.

[0]: https://youtu.be/PaKIZ7gJlRU

GNU isn't the only Free (not to mention free) philosophy in town. I believe it to be the only one whose licenses start out in a combative posture, e.g. "The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast,..." (Is this claim even true?)

I believe in Free Software and I also believe in positive, cooperative attitudes, which is not the attitude that GNU puts forth.

I think this is "combat," though. That was the entire point of the movement starting. It was people who liked sharing things, and saw that "software ownership" (thanks to our default legal and practical notions of IP) was an inevitable direction that needed to be directly addressed.

I do, but I think a lot of people misinterpret the ideals of free software amidst all of the extremism. Free software is about user freedom, not necessarily free-as-in-beer or even developer freedom, to an extent. The purpose of free software hearkens back a few decades, to when proprietary Unix vendors dominated the market by selling mostly the same thing with small tweaks that were by-and-large designed to promote lock in. When Linux and BSD started reaching critical mass, these businesses closed up shop.

Why?

Well, the users were free. They were no longer forced to use proprietary systems that were designed by people who had different priorities than them. This empowered people to build the internet as we know it, and ever since then the dream has been to design an equally liberating software that can live up to the opus that is The Internet. As a user, I still use proprietary software on a daily basis; even Stallman does when he orders his Big Mac at the McDonald's kiosk. But I also appreciate having options; 3 years ago I finally said that I was fed up with Windows, and luckily for me there was software I could install on the hardware I already owned to let me escape it. I had options. I was no longer forced into a position where I was abused as a customer or target market.

So that's what I believe in. Empowering the individual to make choices, so they aren't trapped when proprietary systems decide to turn to shit. Without options, we have no democracy. Without democracy, there is no competition. Without competition, there is no innovation. And without innovation, we don't get new options.

> "Ask HN: Do you believe in GNU's Free Software?"

It's about a day after this was originally posted and there are less comments and upvotes than there are for a post about Twitter adding an edit button. I believe that constitutes its own answer to the question.

I don't particularly appreciate how a group of nerds from the 80s have some supposed interpretational sovereignty over what "free" software means. The added restrictions on the GPL don't make the software more "free" than BSD/MIT, and I don't like how this is falsely presented as additional user freedom while most users would never look inside the source code or make modifications to it.

I prefer developers release their source code because they want to and not because an overengineered LICENSE.txt compels them. That looks more like free software to me.

The GPL isn't that bad per se, but I don't like the notion of making a folder of textfiles more "free" by adding restrictions on its usage (by people). It feels contrary to that advertised user freedom. The GPL looks like the attributed freedom of that folder with some textfiles is more important than people's freedom. That is still fine for lots of use cases, but its whole framing by the FSF is what irks me.

I believe in a Free Software. At the same time I do not believe at the Free Software.

Without a way to pay for work of developers no software can be good enough. So in a way I do not believe in a FS. But I believe that we need to find a way to a Free Software, and that it can be found.

Free Software is not about price.

The Apache idea of Free Software being a contract diverse entities can adhere to collaborate on building high quality software that satisfy their needs is quite flawless. It's just not more widespread because there is a huge amount of cheap software competing with it, and cheap proprietary software tends to have short term advantages over free software.

The GNU idea of Free Software being a side effect of learning and science is getting out of fashion due to constraints over the academic workers. Publish or perish is killing it.

The Linux idea of Free Software being "hey, I've solved this thing, maybe it can help you too" is being reborn with the recent revolt over maintenance burden and community bureaucracy.

The RedHat way of Free Software being a marketing tool was never reliable, but if you make developer tools, you must deal with it nowadays.

So, the same idea has a world of different motivations. Some are being fulfilled perfectly well, while others are hurting. In particular, the GNU ideal got spread way outside of the public that could hold it, and if on its core public, it's suffering. But it's not the only one motivation, and it's certainly not the most important one either, because it could never scale.

I'm a drop in the sea, but I "believe" in free software

> Is free software a lost cause? If we believe in things like right to repair, must we also believe in free software?

I definitely think that the "right to repair" your software is a good idea, and access to the source code is required for this. However, this does not mean freedom to copy and distribute the software.

I think the insistence on "True Free Software™" and "True Open Source™" is holding a lot of things back. Merely access to the source code (under any license) for the "right to repair" would already be an enormous leap forward, so let's start with that instead of also insisting on these other, IMHO less important, things.

Earth could benefit from mass SSPL adoption. It's only (computer) science if it's verifiable and reproducible. To this end, free software is the way to go.

Had to google that and scroll past a S. S. Public Library to find what you are even talking about...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Side_Public_License

Crap, I'm sorry.

I am more of a pragmatic myself, I believe in good software. For me GIMP has no use if it can't retouché like I want it to.

I don't believe in viral GPL based enforcement of free software and things like GPL being used as mechanism to keep out ZFS and things like that.

But weak-copy left and MIT style licenses are great and are winning.

Go back 10-20 years and we live in a much, much, much worse world in virtually every domain.

Not to mention open hardware, open FPGA, open chips and so on.

How many databases are still closed source today? How many compilers? How many programing languages?

Compare now to the 90s and its actually mind blowing how different everything is.

There is a good talk by one of the authors of the X windows system as to why MIT for them was a mistake and how he'd wish they'd used the GPL. One could argue that a copycenter license is really just doing you doing the work of corporations for free, and when it comes time for them to contribute back to the hard work you've done, or to avoid fracturing the community by creating non-free addons, etc.

I agree that there is a lot of open source software, but there is also a pattern of corporations taking what they can and then building their own proprietary walled gardens around it. Most normal people still interact with the world through non-free software, a lot of which spends time spying on them, which is one of the main points RMS makes about why source code should be a right.

And GPL prevents that only partially. As GPL does nothing to prevent Amazon Cloud. We know that Amazon internal Linux has changes. Its only about distribution.

And not sure how X history would be different. Yes, for a program that we know would turn universal eventually it might have been helpful. It also might not have ever been open source or whatever.

And again, a weak copy left like the CDDL style license might have been even better. The MPL 2.0 explicitly allows other open source licenses as well.

The MPL 2.0 is what I think is pretty idea for a lot of things.

Sure, but the important question is: Would the weak licenses even exist in their current form if not for the visibility of the strong ones, or would "ownership creep" have likely eaten the weak ones, pushing them in a further proprietary direction? Hard to prove, of course, but I believe this is certain.

> Are we building a bad future for software by not fighting for something like the Free Software movement?

Yes.

yes, Free software is why we can even have this conversation. What's the question here?

No.

Not if I have to share my existence with zealots.

Your screed sounds like a bad parody of extreme religious ideology.

I don't believe in it as moral imperative. It conflicts with my libertarian moral imperatives (right to create a contract that stipulates what people can do with what they otherwise own). However I do otherwise believe in it as a value, in the same sense that owning a house rather than renting is a value. You're more self-sufficient, and there's more dignity in not having people be able to pull strings on you. Free Software means fully owning your devices without strings attached by others. Again strings attached isn't immoral but it has downsides.

The community aspect is pretty cool too.

So, I use some proprietary software, but I keep it in a safe box (separate device or VM), and treat it the same way I treat external services, more or less. (I wonder if Stallman could be convinced of this). By default I try to make everything FOSS.

Actually I'll extrapolate a little: The strings attached can turn into something similar to political control, or sometimes actual political control. This is admittedly a leftist (or modern right-populist) sentiment, but it's evolved from my basic libertarian notions. Large companies can have their arms twisted by the government, or they can have their own ideological missions. Free Software, maybe self-hosted services in particular, give us an escape hatch at least.

I differentiate between "believe" and "support".

I support free software, have been an FSF member for decades, and that's all swell and spiffy.

But I fall short of believing in free software, because this is and intellectual, not a moral choice. The libertarian, common-sense argument for free software has massive traction.

However, it simply does not follow that an (arguably myopic) choice for two parties to enter into a non-free software licensing agreement is somehow "immoral". It's a business decision, folks. Non-swift decisions are made all the time.

Furthermore, I'd contend that free software helps itself through evangelistic zeal and moralizing arguments not at all. When I'm in the mood for good preachin', I'll head to church.

I believe in open source but not in free software. Keep a software its not easy and we should pay for it. But the source code must always be open. That’s my 2 cents.

How else shallt he custody of software that's important to civilization be handled? Give it to Microsoft to administer? The Pentagon? how about RIAA?

No i don't but there might be cases where such a license worked well however there are newer licenses i expect to work better.

I believe the ethical principles of Free Software have a stronger basis than the software development methodology arguments of open source.

That is, I see "open source" as primarily an assertion that "open source" practices lead to better software. Eg, the argument that people will submit patches, documentation, etc. 'for free', or that the wider user base for no-cost open source software will lead to additional sources of revenue like consulting and support work for that software.

My experience has been that no, they don't.

On the other hand, "open source" can certainly be used as a sales loss-leader, or as way to commoditize one's complement (https://www.gwern.net/Complement ), and it gets the umbrella of terms like "community" and "volunteer contributions" that mask what Zed Shaw correctly refers to as "Begger Barons" (https://zedshaw.com/blog/2022-02-05-the-beggar-barons/ ). ("The Beggar Barons aren't stealing this labor though, they're just using unscrupulous business practices and social manipulation to beg for free labor.")

> Is free software a lost cause?

I don't see a way that I can support myself and family with a business model built on free software-only I tried and it failed. And the problems seem insurmountable.

Like, if you sell free software, how do you let people demo it? How do you provide discounts to academics?

So, yes, it's a lost cause. At least not until we have Universal Basic Income. ;)

But with that said, if you don't have to worry about money or reputation, then yes, GPLv3 it!

Just bear in mind that if it's useful then you'll get people begging you to switch to MIT or similar permissive license ... so they can use it, in their commercial projects, and not have to worry about finicky license details or ethical arguments.

> If we believe in things like right to repair, must we also believe in free software?

Right-to-repair might restore the right to fix the software in your car. I wasn't aware that it also gave you the right to take the modified software and sell it to others.

> Is using free software for financial benefit and then not contributing back simply by promoting and using free software immoral?

Stallman says "The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose" is freedom 0 of the four freedoms of free software.

So, no.

> Are we building a bad future for software by not fighting for something like the Free Software movement?

I do not wish to die on the cross of St. IGNUcius.

The primary goal of free software is software freedom and an open code base is only a means to achieve that. Open source movement in many ways was an attempt to deemphasize the freedom part. Any attempt today to reemphasize software freedom is silenced with accusations of purism, zealotry and cultism - that is evident even in this discussion. I have a strong feeling that this is a result of carefully crafted and deliberate narrative rather than of independent opinion.

Until about a decade ago, I used to believe that free vs proprietary model was just a developer preference. But last decade has consistently proven this to be completely wrong. I wouldn't mind per-deployment price for software as long as it treats me with respect and not as cattle to be milked. But time and again, we see proprietary software abuse the obscurity provided by binary-only-distribution to hide all sorts of anti-user code - anywhere from subtle nudging using confusing interfaces, to outright backdoors and malware. Yes, there are still proprietary software that operate ethically. But the threat is far too great that it emphasizes the need for completely open code bases.

That may vindicate open source software. In fact, I believed that open source and free software were practically identical due to the similarity in ways they operate and the licences they use. Here again, big tech has proven that it can push anti-user software as open source. Chrome is a great example - open, but still manages to send your every search letter-by-letter to the server. It also automatically logs you in at the first chance it gets. But chrome is far from being the only offender in this category. Almost all big OSS projects hide many such dark patterns.

Again, I often get shutdown when I mention this. The argument is that the code is open and so I should modify anything I don't like. Yet, it's a fact that such projects exist despite the thousands of developers who hate it. Here is the reason why being open is simply not enough. Software emphasizing freedom tend to be composable, simple and often easily modifiable (eg: emacs, suckless). Many OSS projects take away that freedom by making the codebase too bloated and complicated to be practically forked and maintained by even small to mid size teams. Development of many of them are dictated by one or two big companies that often unilaterally push designs that are hugely unpopular with the community. Another similar dark pattern is to hide bug reports and resolutions behind paywalls. The number of ways in which large OSS projects hurt user freedom is way too many - I will need an entire article to list just the ones I know. Essentially they achieve proprietary level of abuse in a free-looking package. It's difficult to use them in any way different from what its developer intended. People seem to miss the fact that such projects nudge you to part with your coins and that they exfiltrate enough data to implement an ad-hoc social credit system (eg: Don't be surprised if your health insurance premium is influenced by your search history).

> but they tend to switch to proprietary, partly-proprietary, corporate controlled open source, when there's convenience to be had.

This is an important point. Users - at least technically capable ones - must decide if the convenience they get is worth the risks they take with these software. In addition, it isn't as if free software can't be made convenient (the evolution of Blender is a good example). But it takes effort. And that isn't coming due to less money involved.

> Is free software a lost cause? > Are we building a bad future for software by not fighting for something like the Free Software movement?

Free software is a philosophy more than a movement. I believe that there are enough people with awareness to keep it going. There are enough pieces present out there to implement any level of software freedom - from chip designs to whole application suites. The missing part is the awareness, ability and willingness to deploy them. There is great cost in terms of money (free systems are costlier because they don't sell your data), time and effort. But considering the dystopia we're already in, it may be well worth investing in them.

no.

I believe in free software as a sensible and laudable approach to software, but not as the all-encompasing-single-organizing-principle that GNU seems to. It's a model of development that is of varying importance for different software deployments.

In general, I think the way I would say it is that I agree that, all things being equal, it would be better if all software were FOSS. The problem is not all things are equal and the GNU vision of FOSS is not helpful with that reality. Most often, when I find myself discussing FOSS, it's in a context where the FOSS advocate wants to push their overall goal for all software over the specifics of the situation.

There are a minority of software projects where I think it's very important, but I think the bulk of software projects can be closed source if that works best for the creators and I'm skeptical the harm outweighs the good.

So I believe in it but not the way GNU talks about it? And I think their approach probably does more harm than good.

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