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Comment by nextaccountic | Hacker News Reader

Stallman's version of free is free to the end user. He cares more about whether the end user will have access to the source code and means to modify their software to remove any anti-feature, and less about whatever freedoms the developers of said software would want (such as, the freedom to close the source and distribute only binaries)

Ultimately Stallman was against a kind of digital feudalism, where whoever developed software had power over those that didn't

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I've always thought of it as: Stallman wants the code itself to enjoy freedom, more than caring about the freedom of the people who create and use that code.

> free to the end user

To which none can answer how it creates freedom without mass adoption to actually get the software into end users' hands. The great contradiction in FSF philosophy is to create highly pure software within a monastery of programmer-users while simultaneously insisting to focus on end-user freedoms without reconciling programmer incentives to build what these end users need.

I'm responding to this comment as an end user with a free browser and free OS and it works perfectly fine. Billions of users do in fact.

So there doesn't need to be an answer. He can just show it to you.

Judging by "billions of users", it sounds like you mean Android, in which case neither the browser nor the OS are really free in FSF sense.

You are correct that FSF does not consider the entire system at large as free. AOSP and WebKit are certainly really free in the FSF sense, but sure, almost all Android distributions in practice also contains some non-free software in addition to the free stuff, critically the firmware blobs for radio and other chipset drivers. In principle, you can get a fully free Android to browse the web over WiFi if you have an appropriate hardware; the code for all parts of the stack to do so is available. Things like GrapheneOS come close. Most users can install a fully free browser inside regular Android too (same on iOS, Windows, Mac and desktop Linux). Realistically, the biggest hurdle in the user freedom for Android is not the non-free software, but the devices employing signature verification in hardware/bootloader (i.e. Tivoization).

How much of it is GPL3?

Why would it matter in this context; the GP was asking a theoretical question akin to "how is it physically possible for the sky to be blue?" and I am just pointing at the sky saying "look!"

It is Free Software whether it is BSD or GPL3. By all measures, Free Software as originally envisaged has been a massive success. It's just the goalposts have expanded over the years.

> It is Free Software whether it is BSD or GPL3.

You clearly did not read the FSF manifestos and don't understand their positions. They will call the BSD license "permissive" and will correct you if you attempt to call BSD "free/libre".

> Why would it matter

The FSF didn't build "open source." They actively work to discredit open source. Let's not give them credit for what they tirelessly denounce.

Linux is open source, but did not adopt the GPL3. Firefox is open source but uses MPL. If the FSF is a leader who is responsible for all of these great projects, why doesn't anyone want to use their license?

> ...will correct you if you attempt to call BSD "free/libre".

Wrong. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.en.html

> The FSF didn't build "open source." They actively work to discredit open source. Let's not give them credit for what they tirelessly denounce.

Where did I ever use that term in this conversation?

> Where did I ever use that term in this conversation?

You didn't because you glossed over my central point. Open source's success in the last twenty years came in spite of the FSF, not because of it.

Assuming LGPLv3 and AGPLv3 count too - quite a lot, on both my laptop and phone. Most of the core utilities, pretty much entire system UIs, most applications I run... The MPL browser I use on the laptop and GPLv2 kernel are probably the most notable exceptions, I guess.

And yet despite your theory it appeared to work quite well in practice.

If reality disproves your theory, it's not reality that's wrong.

Open source works. FSF tactics for producing and promoting free/libre do not. Let's not give the FSF credit for what open source does.

> FSF tactics for producing and promoting free/libre do not.

What is your criteria for judgement here? The FSF GPL licenses, in reality have worked quite well, if the criteria is longevity, high usage, popularity, utility and maintained.

If your only criteria is "Well, they're only #2", then sure, by that criteria they did not "work".

Just look at LLVM and GCC, the central subject here. GCC is hanging on while entire ecosystems build on top of LLVM, primarily for technical reasons. What started off as insularity lead to technical weakness. Technical weakness will end in obscurity. What is free after that?

> GCC is hanging on while entire ecosystems build on top of LLVM, primarily for technical reasons.

What are you talking about? GCC usage is well ahead of LLVM usage.

And even if it wasn't ahead, it's still the default compiler for almost every production micro controller in use.

GCC is the default on most deployed systems today.

Git contributors:

LLVM: 5k GCC: 1k

This is not what sustainability looks like:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...

The crossover will more likely be driven by silicon trends providing an opportunity for LLVM's velocity to translate to enough competitive advantage for casual users to want LLVM. Once that happens, you will see some Linux distributions switch over. Hard liners will fork and do what they do, but asking people to use a compiler that gives them a worse result or is harder to work with isn't going to hold the gates.

Linus prefers LLVM for development.

People need to get out of the 90s and look at some data.

Right. That could happen in the future, but your assertion was that it had already happened, and you used that assertion as support for why the GPL already resulted in lower use.

I can't see the future, but I can tell you without a doubt that, as things stand right now, the GPL has been a runaway success for users' rights.

Will that change in the future? Who knows? But that wasn't your claim nor my counterclaim.

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