Producing Open Source Software (2017)
producingoss.com
producingoss.com
I feel like mixing these terms up might put off RMS, amongst others?
Lets see how much Apple Silicon specific optimizations will be upstreamed.
Easy to find out which column I mean, https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/compiler_support
I did not say that they wouldn't upstream Apple Silicon support, rather that they won't upstream everything, just as most OEMs make with their LLVM forks.
God forbid you use the DOM[1] in your JS!
That said, you are quoting out of context, altering DOM makes JS nontrivial. A nontrivial JS should have its source code plainly visible. That was the gist of the article.
Stallman's position is that the principles of Free Software apply to non-trivial JavaScript code. That seems reasonable enough. His definition of non-trivial JavaScript is such that any JavaScript that modifies the DOM, is necessarily considered non-trivial. Again, seems reasonable enough.
If we want an example of RMS being unreasonable, we need only look as far as the Q&A after one of his talks, where he can generally be relied on to bitterly snap at an audience member for some inexact use of terminology, rather than gently clarifying before answering.
I've been trying my best to free beer from its captivity for years.
Academic freedom and religious freedom are accepted terms.
> Freed software" sounds like it was nonfree at some point, which is usually not true...
Under copyright law, it is true. Software defaults to being non-Free. Software is not Free Software unless someone has taken the deliberately step of making it so. I agree though that it's not ideal.
> Even though "libre" is not natural in English, it could get better with time, like with many other words.
I hope you're right, but that's an uphill battle, and so far it's a losing one. We're stuck with Free Software, and clarifying with footnotes. There are also FOSS and FLOSS, but I wouldn't use them outside Hacker News where I can assume the terms will be recognised.
The book addresses the distinction between the two, at first briefly with The terms "open source software" and "free software" are essentially synonymous in this context, and later in some depth. [0] It's not as if the author is ignorant. Perhaps they felt Producing Free and Open Source Software was just too long.
[0] https://producingoss.com/en/introduction.html#free-vs-open-s...
But, I also acknowledge that "open source" is much more widely understood, so I might also choose to put it in the title of a blog post, depending on the target audience.
In my experience this is relatively rare. Whenever it happens on HackerNews the response is pretty unforgiving, as it should be, but it's not a common occurrence.
I'm going to send him a message — the book recommends dead-link Q&A forum software, whilst I've built something new & up-to-date.
Best regards, -Karl Fogel