Not everyone agrees with this position (I also am not interested in arguing about it) but this is my explanation of this point of view.
No one's software freedom is reduced if I release a closed source derivative of a permissively-licensed open source product. All the rights that existed to the originally permissively-licensed product are intact.
Which doesn't reduce their freedom, since they couldn't modify it -- or have the choice to pay for it and use it -- before I made the proprietary derivative.
The only "reduction in freedom" is based on the assumption that I would have made and shared a Free derivative if I did not have the choice to distribute a proprietary one, rather than either not making a derivative, or making a derivative for my own use and not providing it to others.
I'm perfectly okay with this. The abysmal UX of desktop linux is proof that profit motive is necessary to drive the development of high-quality end user software when that development is difficult and/or not sexy.
But the only assumption required is that someone uses your product instead of the free alternative. He might have higher quality software, but he does have less software freedom.
No, he has the same software freedom -- he has the freedom to choose to use and/or modify the free version and any free derivatives people have chosen to make, and the freedom to choose to use the non-free derivative, with perhaps less freedom to modify it.
If anything, he has less freedom when the creation of non-free derivatives is prohibited.
By this logic, OSX is free software because I have the freedom to choose Windows instead.
I'm not advocating for the prohibition of non-free derivatives, but the position that adoption of propriety software doesn't reduce software freedom is ridiculous.
Freedom is the power to make choices rather than suffer external dictates. If a particular piece of free software exists, the existence of non-free derivatives doesn't reduce anyone's freedom, as they are free to choose the free software.
Stop this condescending, paternalistic treating me like an imbecile who can't make informed decisions about what kind of software to use. Stop acting like you can decide for me what rights I do and do not wish to exercise. Stop acting like the freedoms I want to have, including the freedom to enter into a lawful contract with a provider of proprietary software, don't count because they don't correspond with your values. Stop preaching that my entire system for deciding what software I do and do not want to install on my own computer is wrong because it doesn't match up with your ideology. Just stop being such a @$%^! ideologically-motivated authoritarian. And most of all, stop pretending that your authoritarianism is somehow defending my liberties.
I've got no problem with the GPL. If you want to maintain some sort of legal control over how others are allowed to use intellectual property that you create, you've every right to do so. That goes for releasing the source code with limitations on incorporating it into proprietary software every bit as much as it does for keeping it all proprietary in the first place. What I do have a problem with is you trying to tell me that I'm doing something wrong by choosing to be less controlling about the code I create. And what I have a problem with is you trying to tell me that my choice to place no restrictions whatsoever on what people do with the code I share is somehow stomping on somebody's rights. That includes allowing third parties to incorporate it into proprietary software. If you're uninterested in using that proprietary software, fine, it makes no difference to you whether the software existed or not. OTOH, people who are willing to pay for a proprietary modification might benefit from one existing, and in that case, more power to them - I don't care, and I don't see why 4th parties who don't have any basis for claiming ownership of the software should care.
What I'm bristling at is the line of thinking that says that I would somehow be harmed if Light Table's maintainers had chosen a license that permits proprietary derivatives.
however, you are not representative of the commercial world. patents/copyright mean money, and no business with rational business leadership would choose not to shutdown competitors with patent disputes if possible, let alone not licence code in a restrictive fashion (i.e closed source, not free, etc.)
regardless, this isn't just about copyright and patent disputes. it's about trust. i'm using a computer right now, and i don't trust the hardware, or even the software i'm using. i have no way of verifying that it's doing exactly what it says it's doing, and that it's not doing something that i don't want it to.
which is weird, because.. i own it.
i get into my car, and there are (probably) hundreds and thousands of lines of code between me and the wheels. but i don't know what's going on really? maybe there's something wrong with ECU's management of fuel injection. maybe there's a bug in the ABS controller.
i can't trust any of the electronic equipment that i use. that's.. pretty bizarre, given that i am employed to work on these things, don't you think?
so what purpose does the viral clause in the GPL have? it's simple really -
lets say i program.. a home automation system (one that's not just.. terrible). i've got a few raspberry pi's, some arduinos, all talking over wifi/ethernet. control of things like lights, heating, doors, the whole thing. i've got an app i run on my phone, it's looking pretty slick. the source is a bit of a hack, probable buffer over/underflows, no comments, i only have the app on my iphone.. it's not perfect, but it works. and if it doesn't, i can fix it. the literal last thing i'm thinking about (i almost forgot to write about it, in fact), is the code licence. but fuck it, i can't be bothered. MIT looks simple enough, why the hell not.
a few months later, PicoHard (c) release something amazingly similar, but with more functionality. they have android apps, more polish, they have their own custom wall sockets that switch on and off the power.. you get the idea. it's on sale for a few thousand dollars. but hey, i don't care, i can do all that if i want to. i haven't lost anything, and this company hasn't infringed on my rights.
thousands of people have installed this system now, but nobody (except maybe the original author) knows really anything about how it works.
june 2013 happens, and suddenly there is a guy on TV saying that the government have almost certainly got backdoors in my software. now thousands of peoples rights are infringed.
so, no, please, may you STOP IT.
(the story was, of course, entirely fictional)
Your ad hominem, however, is misdirected. I too oppose FSF's mission to value our craft at $0.00/hour. People have the right to compensation when others enjoy their creative output and if that impedes software freedom, so be it. Software freedom is a good thing but by no means an inalienable right.
I support open source because it's in our collective interests to subsidize the creation of freely available and high-quality platforms/tools with our earnings from proprietary software. I don't think we'd have those earnings without proprietary software, though.
Some people point to the Red Hat model. But most people don't need those kinds of guarantees. Third parties (i.e. every system administrator who's ever been responsible for at least one CentOS box and is not a Red Hat employee) can provide good enough support for drastically cheaper because they don't have the extra costs associated with developing the product.
Without proprietary software, it is in no one's interest to make software. (Well, maybe for personal amusement.) Not even line-of-business software, because you're just handing your competitors the ability to undercut your prices and push you out of the market (similar productivity boost, lower costs than you).
Nobody's freedom is impeded. They didn't have the freedom to modify the code in the first place, since they didn't have the source code. Nothing they could do before has been taken away.
It's really intellectually dishonest to use this freedom and morality rhetoric when you're actually talking about compelling people to give away something they have created.
Not that I think it's conceptually a bad idea. I see nothing wrong with the idea of the GPL as a concept. A contract that says 'if you use this software, you agree to also give away any code you base on it' seems fine.
But I see no reason not to just call it 'permanenrly malleable' software or something like that.
It's the faulty rhetoric around freedom that is presented as a moral crusade that is a problem.
Not necessarily a bad thing (your product might be legitimately better), but it is a decrease in software freedom.
Forking FreeBSD is not remotely the same thing as forking OSX and you can't "just use the open-source alternative if they want to change the source code" of OSX.
I really don't like the idea of licences which compel their users to act in a certain way. Freedom cuts both ways.
OSX users do not have this freedom. Hence, prevalence of OSX reduces software freedom. Ability to choose between OSX and alternatives is something but it is not software freedom.
What business models for software do you prefer, and why?
I have no objection to "paid software" as a business model, because the term is too broad. Paying someone to add a feature I want to a GPL project and release the result is, I think, not something anyone would object to. I have objection to "proprietary software" as a business model, because it collapses the value that the software can provide; I am not convinced that this objection is sufficient to say that proprietary software is always the wrong choice. I have more objection to proprietary software where, having paid, I cannot see the source and make changes (or pay others to make changes).
There are a number of alternatives for funding development of mass-market software that are more compatible with copyleft licenses (donations, threshold pledge models, consulting) and I'm currently working on an innovative project in this space.
If you stop using this misleading word, the whole GPL thing looks more reasonable, but also less like a moral crusade.
This doesn't follow. Like most arguments about proprietary software reducing, rather than not providing, software freedom, it seems to rest on the assumption that if proprietary software did not exist, it would be replaced use-for-use with Free software, that is, that license models have no impact on the creation or distribution of software.
I do also not care if the legal violence happened because of changes an other developer did on my work. Just because they added something does not give them the right to use what I made into a legal weapon.
The GPL is instead defined on the tradition of positive liberty, which defines freedom as the number of options freely available to each person to choose. There's a very real risk of those being reduced by permissive licenses, as you can no longer ignore network effects, as negative freedom (being defined over individual atomic actions) does.
History shows us that if you allow open source code to be relicensed as proprietary, the competitive advantage of companies building and selling products with enhanced features tend to displace the original project, which gets abandoned. This happened to Unix, to Mac OS X, and is now happening to Android. If this continues for an extended time, the whole ecosystem evolves and the old software becomes unusable, greatly reducing the total options that users can effectively perform - not by an legal or coercive restriction, but because of pragmatic impossibility. There are permissive projects where this doesn't happen (at least for a while) because of the economic incentives of remaining close to the free+open project, but the risk is always there.
What good is the permission to run the original, abandoned version of a software project if all the available hardware has been locked and is uncapable of running it, and it's impossible to modify it to support the modern functions that are available in the proprietary platform and required for any productive usage? Those are very real threaths, and the GPL was designed to combat them (as a reaction to the first time they happened on a large scale). Avoiding this "reduced total available options" scenario is what GPL projects call freedom, not "reducing the number of restrictions" definition that you use. Not a problem of rhetoric, but of chosen vocabulary.
I also don't accept "history shows us" as establishing some law of nature when the history we're talking about is a couple of decades.
I think the abandoning of ecosystems can just as easily be explained by them being based on inadequate foundations, than by a mythical horde of developers somehow being prevented from working on them. Usually systems are abandoned because of a lack of economic incentive, after all the displacement you describe can only happen if proprietary development produces enhancements more efficiently than open source. Witness the failure of the Linux desktop.
I think 'greatly reducing the total options that users can effectively perform' is a statement that needs much more qualification. To me, that's a function of design, extensibility, and how much leverage a system provides, and is independent of whether the source is available or not. Extending by forking is a last resort.
Nevertheless, I do respect the hypothesis that a GPL style open system provides an important counterbalance to proprietary systems.
What I do not support is the dishonest use of language and morality to further it.
If you are using positive freedom, then there is much more to be gained through improvements in software design - e.g. along the lines of Alan Kay's FONC - to increase leverage - than through ideology.
I still fail to see what is it that you call dishonest use of language. If freely talking of one's perspective and goals is dishonest, then all ideologies are.
The dishonest use of language is the misappropriation of the word 'freedom', and the moralizing around what is essentially a business problem. But, if you are claiming to be an ideologue, then fair enough.
In which case, I'd love to hear more about how that ideology translates into a better future economic future for software developers. To me it seems to just translate into greater dependence on powerful corporations.
Programmers are expected to work other jobs to subsidize their hobby. IIRC he also suggested that they could sell copies of their software on physical media, but this is irrelevant in the bittorrent era.
He acknowledges that realization of the FSF's goals would most likely end the phenomenon of professional developers and is perfectly okay with this.
It's somewhere on the Philosophy section of the gnu project's website. It's late, but I'll find the specific link later.
Eliminating the revenue from selling the same work multiple times is probable consequence of the FSF's mission. It is uncharitable to say that it is the FSF's mission. It is also false that this implies an hourly rate of $0.00 - there is a huge amount of programming work for which the first copy is the only copy, and that can be sold just as readily as ever in a world using even the strictest AGPL for everything. And that's not even considering donations, threshold pledge systems, &c.
I'm both a user and a developer of commercial software, and I would like for you to apologize for speaking as if you represented anyone other than yourself in this ignorant and hateful screed.
So no ones freedom is reduced if you get the power to sue anyone who modify or share the derivative product? Is this the statement being made?