Miguel de Icaza responds to latest RMS article
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Linus also seems like a much happier guy.
Judging an idea based on how happy those who believe it are seems like a dangerous heuristic.
This is where I see a problem.
Can somebody suppress my rights (to share, to sing, etc.), in the form of terms? Is a right is something that I can trade?
I don't understand these issues much, just doubts :-(
You're making some fundamental logical errors here.
Your first premise is that you have these rights. But where's your rationale for that?
The simple truth is that you only have these rights if the objects under consideration are yours. But you have no right to share my books. You have no right to share my house. You have no right to share my property. And you have no right to sing my song.
Unless I give you my permission to do so, of course.
So, your first premise is wrong.
Your second premise is that it's suppression if you were not given all possible permissions. But you agreed to the terms with a free will. No one forced you to do that. No one pointed a gun to your head telling you what to do. In fact, you are free to do the same work I have done to author the work, in the first place.
So, your second premise is also wrong.
I don't know what your conclusion is but it's probably wrong, too, because your premises are.
I was asking whether you can set terms that limit my rights? You are not government, right?
I don't think you understood my 2nd question at all.
No, as i said, I was not concluding anything.
There are basically two contexts the word "right" is used: an moral and a legal context.
If the right you're talking about is an moral one, you surely can trade it. This happens all the time since people differ in moral judgements. For example, some may say you have a right to health. Assuming the premise is true, you can still "trade" it for the (subjective) benefit of smoking.
If the right you are talking about is a legal one, it depends on the law. I don't think, for example, that you could sell your right to vote. However, there are other rights you can sell. For example, copyright gives you certain rights that you may sell or trade.
If the movie theater also restricted your right to write a negative review afterwards, say, it would be a bit dicey.
Some contracts that suppress rights might be defensible BUT the point is that such contract are not apriori valid.
Indeed, your the military example shows the need for limits; there's a reason that only the state can operate with the contract you describe. If a private organization could do such a thing, there would serious trouble on many fronts (private armies = bad things).
False. You do NOT have the right to restrict what I do with "your" ideas, once you've shared them with me - be it software, sonnet, or poem. The government may limit my fundamental freedom by enforcing a limited-time monopoly, but only in order to encourage you to work on your ideas.
It is NOT your fundamental right to have such monopoly indefinitely.
Nobody is restricting you from creating a similar food or software (unless there is a patent, which is an entirely different issue). You have the right to create your version, and I have my right to sell only the product, not the process that made it.
I often wonder what RMS would do if he had the power to enact a law mandating that all software be free software - as a form of "positive liberty". Judging by his writings, I get the feeling he'd do it.
My copyright of a work doesn't restrict your ability to copy the idea. In fact, this is what many Open Source projects do: they copy the idea or a proprietary software, but not the software (ie. the work) itself.
These fundamental freedoms can impede progress, and so the US constitution allows congress to enforce limited-time monopolies for authors on their intellectual creations. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause
What you're talking about is 'copyright', the right to give your creation to someone and restrict their ability to use said creation once they have it in their possession. That's more a little more complicated than ' to do what you please with your own creation'.
See this is the insane part. How can anyone believe that? No one forces you to use their proprietary software. If you don't like proprietary software, write your own equivalent software and use that. (Of course these days it's sometimes hard to get your own software onto devices, but rarely is it impossible).
Here's a better example: almost all webdesign, graphic design, and other jobs of that type want you to have experience in Adobe products. So what ends up happening is that because people want the jobs, they learn Photoshop. Now it may be a great program, but it's still proprietary and you get locked into Adobe's upgrade cycle because the latest version is The Industry Standard...always, it's fucked up how that works really.
So if someone has had experience with the GIMP or some other free software, and can do the work just as well as a Photoshop user, their resume will be dumped because the Adobe name has a lot of weight. That someone will then figure out that to get a job, they'll also have to use proprietary software.
You don't live in a vacuum where you can do what you want.
Getting a job has obviously benefits for you, otherwise you would no try to get it. But there are also always costs.
These costs include wasting time on learning how to design in the first place and quite a lot of other activities. And it may also include to get a Photoshop license.
After all, you are not required to use it for your private stuff, too!
Also, these "market forces and monopolies of various sorts" hold true for "free" software: If I'd like to get a job as a sys admin, I may have to deal with Apache and Samba althought I really, really hate it!
Where's my right of not being required to deal with Apache and Samba?
The fact that a lot of public records are stored only to be used in proprietary software is a disturbing trend.
You're arguing two different things here.
You can have closed proprietary programs and have completely open standard file formats.
Yes, file formats /can/ be seen as a different issue, but its often the reason I end up using proprietary programs.
One can have a closed program with a open file format, but not an open program with a proprietary file format, why? Doesn't it suggest an interesting link between proprietary programs and proprietary file formats? Do you still think they are really independent issues?
Exactly. So comparing it to slavery is ridiculous.
You're right though, they are interlinked. Still, no one is forcing anyone to use proprietary software.
However, he is making a valid point and you are neglecting to see it.
Not everyone is a super-man that can ignore the influences of their environment. We have to deal with other people and their sometimes strange ideas and you're assuming that we don't, or at least you're assuming that there are no negative consequences for ignoring the rest of the environment and doing what you want.
You're right. I don't think there are. But then I'm completely against the minimum wage for similar reasons. You're not forced to get a particular job.
Sure, but can you have open free programs and closed, locked-down, proprietary formats? It's a separate issue, perhaps, but it's a very closely related one.
I don't think the field of writing software has many true geniuses really. We're all just cranking out code.
Coming up with new algorithms is impressive, but churning out code is less so IMHO.
Are we still talking about the guy who wrote some software and made it open source?
Do you not think Linus would have just made his own compiler+toolchain?
If you are judging the truth of a premise sure, but for an attitude to take?
According to pragmatism, the truth of an idea is at least partially determined by the effects of that idea.
RMS doing the soulja boy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C6r6fG4k40
> Everything else
I agree. If you're doing free software, you're writing it for free, so make it a fun thing. You can only "fight to take down the man" for so long.
And yet what do we see? Microsoft, Apple, etc. trying to dominate things. They don't want anyone to even think about ethics and freedom for users and developers.
Because of their actions I think it's even more important to take ethics and freedom into consideration.
It's like politics...the reason to pay attention is because everyone else is an asshole and will eventually try and screw you over in some way.
However good or bad the CodePlex Foundation's actions, we must not accept them as an excuse for Microsoft's acts of aggression against our community. From its recent attempt to sell patents to proxy trolls who could then do dirty work against GNU/Linux to its longstanding promotion of Digital Restrictions Management, Microsoft continues to act to harm us. We would be fools indeed to let anything distract us from that.
It isn't fear-mongering when there is something to fear. Miguel also has a short memory and doesn't remember all the times Microsoft has spread FUD about GNU/Linux and free software.
Who do you think has a better chance of changing Microsoft's policies? RMS or a group of people working internally?
This is not a war, and anybody that is trying to make it look like one is manipulating people.
There is plenty of room on this planet for both closed and open source solutions, let the market decide. Long term that should skew the table in the direction of open source, you really can't compete with free.
But there will always be closed source, just as there will always be open source.
No need for all this polarizing. Miguel definitely seems to have managed to get to the 'moral high ground' in this whole argument, he comes across as reasonable and nice, but that doesn't mean that that should decide the argument.
Everybody is entitled to his own opinion, nobody is entitled to their own facts, especially not in something as objectively qualifiable(sp?) as software.
This whole 'drama queen' episode has gone on long enough, let both deIcaza and Stallman go back to their respective IDEs (at a guess, Visual Studio and Emacs) and write some code to prove their point instead of all this prose.
It's Peyton Place for programmers.
What you're saying is you don't want to make a concrete decision and you want options to be open to you.
This is not a war, and anybody that is trying to make it look like one is manipulating people.
It's a war between many businesses, non-profits, users, developers, etc. Do you want to be stuck with Microsoft Windows everywhere? Or Intel's x86 hardware everywhere? Intel, Microsoft, Apple, etc. will all do what they can to kill the competition.
That's not manipulation, that's the truth. You can try and ignore it, but computer history is full of conflict between various companies who tried to force their ideas and "standards" upon the rest of the industry and on their competitors.
Maybe you just hate the word "war". Call it competition then, or conflict, or a struggle, or whatever else you want.
No need for all this polarizing.
Yes there is. One idea is opposed to the other. How can there not be polarization?
This whole 'drama queen' episode has gone on long enough, let both deIcaza and Stallman go back to their respective IDEs (at a guess, Visual Studio and Emacs) and write some code to prove their point instead of all this prose.
This is actually Stallman's point, and it was also the open source movement's point. Code is not enough. There is also the discussion of freedom or the discussion of marketing.
You want to completely ignore the discussion. I don't mind, you can step out if you like, but what you're saying is exactly what a proprietary software company would like. They don't want discussion at all because discussion means legitimizing alternatives.
If you don't want to take part in the discussion, the confrontation and war of ideas, then don't take part in it.
No, what I'm saying is I want to be able to make my own decision regardless of people trying to make it seem as if the one or the other side is 'evil'.
I've long ago decided the world of closed source is no longer mine. But that doesn't stop me from having respect for those that try to change the closed source world from the inside, and it doesn't stop me from having respect for those that try to keep it alive.
I just don't agree with them.
> It's a war between many businesses, non-profits, users, developers, etc. Do you want to be stuck with Microsoft Windows everywhere? Or Intel's x86 hardware everywhere? Intel, Microsoft, Apple, etc. will all do what they can to kill the competition.
Possibly. But that does not mean I'm going to have to stoop to their tactics in order to make my points. The last time I wrote software for or explicitly supported closed source platforms is very long ago.
> Yes there is. One idea is opposed to the other. How can there not be polarization?
Because there is a lot of gray stuff in between. Closed source software that ends up being open sourced. People working for closed source companies writing open source in their spare time using company resources (with approval), closed source companies donating money, equipment, programmers and other resources to open source project and so on. Dual license software, etc. To polarize means that the issues are black and white. They're not.
> This is actually Stallman's point, and it was also the open source movement's point. Code is not enough. There is also the discussion of freedom or the discussion of marketing.
So, let's do it. Let's not attack people on the other side of the imaginary divide, if it even exists. The best way to make sure that Microsoft and company are irrelevant is to make their software irrelevant. To literally outcode them. Once that's done, there is really no fighting with free.
Very opinionated people, even if narrow-minded or wrong, are useful to conversations.
If you don't have an opinion, you can just say, "Wow. Yeah. I agree with him."
If you do have an opinion, you can reflect against that simplistic strong-opinion to explain why it's wrong.
Either way, it's good to have some black and white in the paint palette.
No offense to Brian Eno, he's a pretty smart guy and has a lot of stuff to say that makes sense, also outside his domain. (and makes interesting music, 'the pearl' is my favorite music to code by).
But it doesn't generalize.
It's just that it does not generalize from Brian Eno to 'leaders in other fields'.
There are people that it applies to and there are those that it definitely doesn't apply to, in other words, being a leader in one domain does not automatically qualify one for comments on other fields, that varies on a case-by-case basis.
Brian Eno is exactly the kind of person for who it does seem to work.
Two shoe salesmen were sent to Africa in the early
1900's to scout the territory.
One telegraphed back: "Situation hopeless. Stop. No one wears shoes."
The other telegraphed: "Business opportunity. Stop. They have no shoes."
A perennial business strategy is to create commercial means for satisfying needs that commerce creates -- of the creation of scarcity out of abundance, be it food, education, health, etc. So it goes with software as well. On one side there is "opportunity"; on the other, exploitation.
I don't know how this relates to Miguel & Richard, though; their issue seems to be the classic "radical vs liberal" split.
That said, I don't think I'll ever understand the Mono project. As a former C# coder (back in 2004), the project was doomed to failure from the getgo. No .NET developer in their right mind would use it as it'll always be lacking in features compared to Microsoft's implementation.
It's such a sad project because Microsoft gives it no love, yet has no problem using it as an example of how "open" their platform is. Seems like a complete waste of talent to me.
The larger Mono projects on Linux are built on the language and CLR features implemented in Mono; and don't rely on Microsoft libraries like WinForms. And as far as language features are concerned, the downloadable Mono compiler even implements part of the C# 4 spec.
Also, the popular Linux/Mono apps hardly work on Windows.
Actually I need not have replied; "....as it'll always be lacking in features compared to Microsoft's implementation" -- i just realized this was pure trolling. Try /.
How can this possibly be a good thing? It either means mono is a poor .NET substitute, or the linux mono apps are less cross platform than apps written in other languages - also a bad thing.
The problem is that .net is such a vast 'hunk of stuff' that there isn't any way for a single person or a small team to implement is perfectly and the imperfect implementations are fundamentally flawed - ie, memory leaks and strange bugs making mono apps fundamentally unreliable.
Of course, another layer of irony is that before Microsoft became the safe choice, this was a favourite tactic of IBM, who are now considered an open source friendly company.
I think you SHOULD use past performance of a corporation as part of a rational thought process in deciding whether to use software. But FUD is never justified because emotion has no place in rational decisions.
I think FOSS can "embrace and extend" just as well as Microsoft!
(FWIW, I respect rms's purity of ideology, and I respect how it broadens the debate, but I don't think his extreme represents a desired end goal.)
I don't think one can say that RMS didn't achieve much. He supplied the seed, directly or indirectly, to many free and open software accomplishments. I don't think that would have happened if he'd been wishy-washy, flexible, easy-going guy. He'd certainly have been easier to like, but probably not as effective.
And to reiterate, I don't subscribe to rms's opinion, or think he's right on everything, or anything in particular without further investigation. But I do think lack of compromise is harder than it looks.
So I look at something like Mono, it's a remarkable piece of technology. It's a fairly lightweight managed VM, just like Java but completely and 100% opensource, built on opensource for opensource. It works too and it works pretty well at what it does. There is no "good" or "evil" component to it. Now Microsoft potentially have patents that cover parts of it that they could threaten to use, that's a risk but that risk will also expire at some point. The Linux kernel also has patents that potentially cover parts of it, including patents the Microsoft owns but that's not being treated as a taboo... RMS waters his own statement down by blurring that line between technologies and how the technologies are used.
Instead of bullying Miguel, he should bully MS to further clarify their stance and continue to open their position on the technologies used by Mono. he should be fighting to free that stuff rather than bash one of the biggest contributors to his movement.
There is nothing in ideological purity that demands ignorance of other opinions. And just because you're cognizant of someone's opinion, doesn't mean you have to agree. RMS can say what he wants, and I'm sure he's not ignorant of other's opinions. If you don't like what he says, don't do what he says. If you don't like his philosophy, maybe you shouldn't use GNU software? He doesn't force you to use any software. (Which is more than can be said for lots of corporations.)
Commercial != non-free. Stallman doesn't, to my knowledge, have an issue with the former. He rather dislikes the latter.
Hackers nowadays take free software for granted, but without rms, it may well never have happened. If we (developers who rely on open source software) can afford to compromise and parlay with the enemy now (and make no mistake, before rms got pissed at the path software development was taking and took it upon himself to start a one-man war on behalf of all of us, proprietary software was an enemy), it is because the movement has gained sufficient momentum and become too strong to destroy.
I mean, imagine the reaction of a pragmatic person to the decline of the hacker culture at MIT's AI lab, where it all started. Shrug, move on to whichever job paid the highest/offered the most interesting work, continue living life. If every hacker were pragmatic, then open source would never have gotten started. It took someone who was willing to do it when it didn't make sense to do it to get the entire movement started. I think rms was not only important, he, or someone like him was necessary at the time. He was the snowflake that started the avalanche. Come the moment, come the man, as they say, and rms was that man.
Oh well, I doubt I will convince anyone who is unable or unwilling to imagine how difficult it is to give up personal advancement for the sake of others that rms deserves respect, if not gratitude, but there it is. I think it needed to be said.
On a tangential note, is anyone else going to FOSS.my 2009 at KL? If so, are you planning to attack rms as a ninja? :)
Maybe, but this does not mean that Open Source would not have happend.
Project Gutenberg, for example, was already started in 1971 to to archive and digitize cultural works. The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) started in 1977. The GNU project, however, started in 1983.
In other words, the idea of sharing copyrighted works such as literature and software was known before Stallman. Basically, Stallman was quite late in the game. Additionally, other attempts to freely distribute code started after the GNU project, but independently of Stallmans ideas. For example, the Apache project, IIRC.
Overall, it's save to say that we'd have some sort of Open Source movement, due to earlier examples of code sharing and independent attempts, even if Stallman would not have done what he did.
Maybe, we'd even have a "better" Open Source movement.
Also, the ability to have an ideology does not deserve respect, per se. There were quite a few people with ideologies who made millions of people suffer.
If all the software that deIcaza and Stallman helped produce would be removed from your average Ubuntu box it would probably not get into booting, let alone do something useful. That doesn't give either of them the right to pretend to speak for everybody or to try to carve up the world of software in to camps.
(I'm firmly in the "This man is completely insane" camp).
It takes real conviction to literally dedicate your life to projects like this, and RMS has that to spare.
He's not insane, he is just the opposite of politically correct, and while that can be charming in a person that is not the perceived spokesperson of a large community when you are you'd do well to moderate your language.
If you don't it costs because it gives your opponents plenty of opportunity to claim the moral high ground.
The funny thing here is that if RMS really wishes to see closed source vs open source as a battlefield then his way of going about waging the war aids the enemy by giving them a couple of really good opportunities to get him bad PR.
I don't think that's smart.
There's something comforting about Stallman's intransigence. Win or lose, Stallman will never give up. He'll be the stubbornest mule on the farm until the day he dies. Call it fixity of purpose, or just plain cussedness, his single-minded commitment and brutal honesty are refreshing in a world of spin-meisters and multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns.
—Leonard, Andrew, Salon.com
And I find name-calling and posturing to be in conflict with 'brutal honesty'.
Comparing closed source with slavery is pretty insane though.
I'm sorry, but however much I disagree with a lot of RMS's opinions the man has been making spot-on predictions about the development of proprietary software for over 20 years and time has only been proving him right. While many of us appreciate de Icaza's efforts on GNOME, all Mono has done is provide more validation to a fundamentally proprietary platform, when that effort could have been spent creating a FOSS stack that could rival Java and .NET while trying to solve some of their problems.
He has also received the Free Software Foundation award for the Advancement of Free Software, which is why it is kind of a big deal when RMS turns around and calls him a traitor.
"Migheul de Icaza responds to..." vs. "A response to..."
I wonder if the major disconnect between RMS and deIcaza is that deIcaza deals with the people at Microsoft, whereas RMS only sees them as a corporation. Thus, deIcaza might see them as a diverse and malleable entity and RMS would not. Of course, I don't have the inside scoop here, so I'm just conjecturing and could be completely wrong.