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Comment by Drakim | Hacker News Reader

Copyleft is about maximizing the users's rights, not the developers's rights. Companies can't take linux, put it on a router for sale, and then say that their customers/users aren't allowed to know what's going on on the box in terms of backdoors and spying. The users have a right to look at the source code if they wish.

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It may focus on user's rights, but it still requires technical expertise to exercise half of the 4 freedoms: #1 (inspection & modification) and #3 (distributing your modifications). Merely knowing to ask "can I see the source code" I would put into the "technical user" realm. Overwhelmingly, most people don't know or don't care.

The other two freedoms #0 (freedom to run) and #2 (freedom to share) are readily obvious to non-technical users. "Double click to run" and "drag and drop <on external drive> to copy". Unfortunately, they are also often permitted by non-free/libre software. So non-technical users that can readily see they can do #0 and #2 and generally have no litmus test to further determine whether the software is "free/libre".

This is a case where the ideology's practical concerns hamper its purity. I critique despite generally liking the FLOSS ideal, but it's important to know its flaws.

The users don't have to be technical to benefit from those freedoms though - there's a level of indirection involved. I might not have personally scrutinized every line of the Linux kernel, but knowing that there are tons of people in the world with the ability and motivation to do that inspires confidence.

I am not arguing that one has to be technical in order to benefit from those freedoms. I like FLOSS and agree users in general benefit.

I am saying that your example, for instance, stills falls under the "how does a non-technical user simply verify the software they just downloaded respects their freedoms?" which is an very real educational and cultural problem. For example, see the massive money and numerous gun ranges, gun stores, gun clubs, and other gun-associated organizations in the US that work to educate the "unskilled" general public on "how to be aware, recognize, and exercise their rights and freedoms" under the 2nd Amendment while respecting local laws. Folks generally are 1) aware they have the right and 2) have a low-friction no-special-technical-skilled path to exercising that right. The FLOSS movement is nowhere near that level of educating and making aware non-technical users of their freedoms, their digital rights, and how to then act upon them and exercise them. Folks generally are 1) unaware of libre software and 2) don't have a low-friction no-special-technical-skilled path to exercising that right.

They can take Linux and put it behind a locked bootloader that makes it impossible to replace with your own kernel. Sure you can have the modified sources but you can't do anything with it. Hence GPL3.

Users don't care about any of that, but developers are certainly hindered by restrictive licenses, which in turn hurts users.

I never found a right to see source code compelling as a real right. To read the assembly and modify something they bought, sure, but not an entitlement to the source.

Nobody is forcing you to use GPL code. It is stinking of entitlement to demand that you get to use other people's code regardless of what they think about it.

I don't feel entitled to it, I just consider the prevalence of copyleft bad for the developer community. License however you want, doesn't mean I'm entitled for criticizing it.

What might be stinking of entitlement is the idea users have an inalienable right to source code.

What about the prevalence of proprietary software? You can’t use that for anything without making a contract with the author either.

Users and developers are not different beasts. Users with source code are more likely to become developers. Developers are more likely to become users if they can tinker.

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