Hacker News Reader

Comment by dasil003 | Hacker News Reader

RMS is awesome. The fact that he's out there fighting the good fight every day so I don't have to is incredible. We all owe him a lot, and we should demonstrate that by contributing back to open source as much as we can.

That said, I think he's totally out of his league on the software as a service model. At the very least he needs to spend a lot more time mulling it over. As far as I see it, freeness of javascript more or less meaningless in a web application. The fact is that the barriers to making web applications free are much higher, and there are a lot more legitimate arguments as to why it shouldn't be free. Of course Stallman would argue for freedom under all circumstances, and he's right that web applications do present a risk to freedom of software in the long run, but I don't think it's as easy to argue from his idealogical standpoint when it comes to web apps. Too much baby flying out with the bathwater.

View on HN

This sounds like a web developer arguing that all software should be free, except web apps.

In my opinion, all software should be free, when all groceries are free.

Groceries are (usually) free, meaning if you buy an apple, you're legally allowed to use it to grow yourself an apple tree.

I assume you didn't mean free in some other way, right?

But your planting of a tree doesn't automatically prevent the farmer you bought the apple from from making any money.

If I have to release my code under GPL, I can't make money charging thousands for it (low volume type of app). If I can't make money from it, I won't spend years developing it. Not having the app would make it harder for some pharma scientist somewhere to cure cancer. Everyone loses. Communism doesn't work.

You are not forced to release your code under the GPL. You can spend years developing it and release it however you want.

However if you choose to release under the GPL you will be standing on the shoulders of giants. You will have whole new avenues of development opportunity opened up to you as a result.

"Communism" does work in the sense of the Linux ecosystem that you see around you every day. Not only that, but companies like Microsoft are forced to innovate because open source eventually catched up to them. Without free software all software would be tied up in a morass of patents and licensing fees. Progress would have ground to a halt, and we would wait with baited breath to pay $500 for the latest version of Windows crafted upon their latest business model to coerce upgrades from all their regular customers.

If you are adding 1000 man hours on top of 50,000 man hours of development that you are getting for free, is it moral for you to give nothing back? The GPL is simply a way for the contributors of the 50,000 hours to say that you can use their code if you share in return. It's not clear at all why you think you should be entitled to that code.

> It's not clear at all why you think you should be entitled to that code

I never said I was. In the GNU utopia, Linux killed MS and all libraries are GPL.

My options are:

1. Spend years writing apps that help cure cancer, GPL them and starve. (not exactly hypothetical)

2. Develop some Web apps that are not bound by GPL. Make money.

What do you think I will choose in your GNU communist utopia?

Unless the apple was grown from Monsanto seeds... http://www.mindfully.org/GE/2003/Monsanto-Reaps-Anger12may03...

you're legally allowed to use it to grow yourself an apple tree.

Legally, sure (modulo plant patents). Practically, you can only do it as long as you don't mind it being a crab apple tree. (Apples tend not to breed true; if you want a tree that is sure to produce edible apples you have to get it by grafting.)

Just so you know, if you plant an apple tree from an apple you buy at the grocery store you will likely be sued for patent infringement. Though, it's probably sterile anyway.

So, the idea of a "free apple" is a pipe dream.

Freedom. Freedom.

Not cost-nothing, but without-legal-or-other-arbitrarily-imposed-limitation-on-use.

Or, given the context, should that be Free-DOM?

As far as I see it, freeness of javascript more or less meaningless in a web application. The fact is that the barriers to making web applications free are much higher, and there are a lot more legitimate arguments as to why it shouldn't be free.

But you'll keep running them on those servers powered by free software running on a free operating system stating how open solutions are better, wont you? How is that for bigotry? It's like you are deliberately trying to stir up a troll-storm.

But please: Do give me some insights on why making web-based applications free poses any more challenges than freakin' kernel-code.

Sorry, I made a leap there and you misunderstood me.

What good is free javascript in a web application where a significant portion of the code lives on the server?

The fundamental issue of software freedom is trivial when you are running software locally. I'm running this software locally, and I want to be free to do with it as I will.

However web application software has the local component (JS) and the server component. The software that is running on the server is clearly not being run by the end user and therefore the notion of freedom is not so clear. Sure, we can make it "free" by releasing the source of the server code, but setting up a server may be non-trivial. Or it may be useless without the data from the service. Maybe the user's data could be released, or maybe it's intertwined with other user's data.

The point is, I care very much about freedom of software in general, but having free javascript by itself is essentially useless to me in the vast majority of cases.

Thanks for clearing that up. That statement makes a lot more sense.

There are a lot of free javascript libraries out there, and quite a few which doesn't directly involve server-callbacks, and leaves you with the power to hook things together as you please. In that case, free javascript libraries still makes a lot of sense.

For situations where the bulk of the solution is actually server-side code, I wouldn't really call that a "javascript library", but some regular server-side solution with added javascript/AJAX functionality. And in those cases I can be willing to agree with your statement.

That's bullshit. He's not fighting any good fight, and even if he were, he's doing it in a way (very much like PETA) that makes sure he's seen as an unpalatable nutjob by any sane individual. His own extremism will prevent him from accomplishing anything.

He's already accomplished a very great deal, exactly by doing things in the way you say will prevent him from accomplishing anything. Of course, you may believe that this is incidental.

What has he really accomplished? All he has done is shift the focus from desktop development to SAAS models. Why do you think all software companies are doing SAAS now? We can use gpl on the server and not have to release our code. Just like google. You get the best of both worlds. FOSS becomes the infrastructure.

FOSS can't compete in this space because they can't afford the servers - you have to have revenue to make it in SAAS.

I think that SAAS was inevitable anyway. You just can't control what people do with their own machines, unless they're not really their machines in fact, and that makes SAAS one of the few ways to make money from software in the long run. The main effect that Stallman had was to push openness farther and faster than it otherwise would have gone at this point, and to make FOSS a legitimate alternative to completely closed systems. The SAAS world is still better than the world in which the IP regime managed to turn the freedom to read into the war on drugs 2.0.

In many ways, the SAAS world is worse for free software. First, have you lost freedom 0. How many times have you heard about someone being kicked out of Facebook or Twitter, for example? You have lost an unstated freedom - the freedom to control your data as you see fit. (It's a lot easier to reverse engineer software that has your data than pull it off of a company's servers who have a vested interest in locking you in.)

You absolutely have the freedom to control your data. What you can't control is their data about you. You shouldn't be able to control someone else's data, no matter what it's about.

There sure are a lot of Free Software extremists then! Even if you're in the open source camp, you're still part of the Free Software camp to some extent. It seems like a lot of people actually like fighting this fight?

Being an articulate advocate for an extreme position is an accomplishment all by itself. It opens people's minds. It makes people smarter.

I think RMS's positions are extreme. I don't share most of his views, including his latest concern about javascript. But I admire the man for knowing his own mind and speaking for his beliefs directly and honestly. You don't get mealy-mouthed bullshit from RMS. No evasions, no fog-of-words, no equivocations. I love him for that.

Also, he is more right than I once thought. When I first read "Right To Read" I thought it was ridiculous, extremist, absurd. Well, after seeing what "they" have tried to do with DRM, I was wrong. I think we are still a long way from that dystopia, and the momentum (right now at least) is in the right direction. But he saw something I didn't, and I try not to forget it when reading other things of his I don't agree with.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com