Stallman wants you to use Free software because it's free-as-in-ideology, not because it necessarily works well or does what you want.
I think he does care how well stuff works and whether it does what we want--he just takes a very long-term view of that goal.
For example, let's say an ok V1.0 piece of open-source software is released under the BSD license. A startup takes the source, modifies it to create an awesome product, and releases that as a closed-source product.
Everyone loves it and adoption goes through the roof. The company gets hugely successful and is bought by Big Tech Corp Inc....who really just wants the talent. They EOL the great product.
Because it is closed source, the best that customers can do now is to reach back to original mediocre BSD'd code and try to replicate the development that went into the awesome product.
BUT--go back to the beginning. If the mediocre product had been GPL'd, then the startup would have been obligated to release their changes as source code. So even though it was EOL'd by Big Tech Corp, the customer base has the up-to-date source code, and can carry on development and support as a community.
Now, I'm not going to say that is a 100% accurate view of the world...the obvious counter-argument is that aggressive licenses like the GPL3 actually discourage business support of products. Thus a GPL3'd mediocre V1.0 would never have been picked up by the startup in the first place, and never would have been developed into an awesome product.
I won't say I know which argument is correct, but I will say I can at least see where RMS is coming from.
Portable, open formats are more important than the mechanisms.
Though, the point is, you can make free software work the way you want or work better. You're _allowed_ to. That isn't necessarily the case with other software; that is the point of free software.
There is more to RMS's version of 'freedom' than just being able to modify the code, the AGPL is a great example of this.
Actually he doesn't....he considers Clang/LLVM to be open source and not free, Clang/LLVM does not restrict users from developing their own extensions and licensing them as they see fit which ironically makes the software not free (according to the RMS ideological software freedom purity test).
If the FSF consists solely of the opinions of RMS then I retract the previous statement and would say that the page mentioned expresses an opinion inconsistent with what is expressed in the email.
"The values of free software are fundamentally different from the values of open source, which make "better code" the ultimate goal."
Clang wants to make a great compiler, they chose the NCSA license to facilitate that, according to the article makes it open source software and not 'free software' rather than 'unfree software'
I get you now, makes perfect sense.
So when RMS says that, he's saying Clang/LLVM opened up the source code in order help their software perform better and see wider usage. Whereas RMS's goal for GCC is to ensure freedom for its users. Technical superiority is great, but it is not the goal, and may be sacrificed if necessary to achieve that goal.
He's not saying Clang isn't free software, he's saying their ultimate goal is not freedom, as contrasted with the FSF.
1) Free means freedom in the copyleft sense.
2) Free means freedom in the open source sense.
3) Free means free as in beer.
In the article RMS appears to be using definition 1, elsewhere on the FSF site the FSF uses 2.
"In the free software movement, we campaign for the freedom of the users of computing. The values of free software are fundamentally different from the values of open source, which make "better code" the ultimate goal."
It's very clear that "free software" in the article is definition 1, since MIT/BSD falls clearly in category 2, LLVM/Clang is NOT free software according to the definitions used in the article, and therefore the position RMS is advocating in the article is that LLVM/Clang is not free software, but rather open source software.
Yes to everyone else in the world, including the FSF, Clang/LLVM is free software but according to RMS it is not.
It is possible to be both unfree, and support dictatorships, like the USSR. RMS's goal with GCC, is to be like the mythical free country that also supports freedom and discourages dictatorships elsewhere in the world.
In other words, your software can be free, and yet support and aid those who would take your freedom away. This is the claim RMS is making of Clang.
"The values of free software are fundamentally different from the values of open source, which make "better code" the ultimate goal."
Perhaps you could provide quotes where RMS in the article says that clang is 'free software'. According to RMS in the article clang is a major set back for free software. (because it's better than their piece of crap)
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
clang is "free software" according to his own definition. It is entirely possible for a specific free software program to be a setback to the goals of the free software movement. His position is that copyleft licenses (very often, and certainly in this specific case) advance the goal of freedom more effectively than non-copyleft licenses. The differing values in this case basically amounts to whether one considers it worth using a copyleft license to ensure that the software being used remains free, or whether one considers it a drawback that a copyleft license may prevent it being used in proprietary software.
Furthermore which compiler-suite served as so long so good in the "dark" pre-LLVM ages?
Biting the hand, which feeds you comes to mind...
This restricts users freedom, that is his point.
GPL is not about the rights of the programmer, it is about the rights of the end user.
This is a purely political decision: RMS wants gcc not only to be free software but he also wants it to be unusable to create non-free derivatives thus making it an active tool in furthering free software. clang undermines this because you can create non-free software based on it thus making it a tool that can easily be used to restrict freedom.
It seems that implicit in this claim is that if non-free software exists, its mere existence restricts freedom. Would that be a fair statement of anybody's position in this debate, or have I gone off the rails?
Will the threat itself restrict freedom? Yes. Can threats cause harm? yes. However, so long its not distributed, no one is threatened.
So, on your question, no, its mere existence will not restricts freedom. The restriction happens once it has been distributed.
> They have been supported by Apple, the company which hates our freedom so much that its app store for the ithings _requires_ all apps to be nonfree.
> The only code that helps us and not our adversaries is copylefted code. Free software released under a pushover license is available for us to use, but available to our adversaries just as well.
> If that enables GCC to "win", the victory would be hollow, because it would not be a victory for what really matters: users' freedom.
> The existence of LLVM is a terrible setback for our community precisely because it is not copylefted and can be used as the basis for nonfree compilers
Sorry about the charismatic way I presented my views, perhaps I should have mentioned my penchant for eating the raw uncooked flesh of freshly slain animals to make it more clear as to whether I was intending to advocate views similar to Hitler.
You may want to look into these links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modes_of_persuasion
If there was any persuasion in it, it was to not use irrelevant association since it do not add anything beyond a appeal to emotion, spun around a fallacy. Hitler, like George Bush, creates a guilt by association while the association is irrelevant tied to the subject matter.
The result thus becomes a polite discussion around the more creative ways of eating meat.
We could debate forever on the semantics of which is more free, but I don't think having the freedom to restrict the freedoms of others is going to encourage freedom.
Interesting that preventing users from doing something with a bit of software (e.g. selling non-free derivatives) is considered restricting freedom.
Kind of self evident when stated from the users point of view really.
I use gcc, and I work as a treesurgeon.
My freedom to swing my fist stops at the tip of your nose; my freedom to modify legalese surrounding GPL software stops when it would deprive others of their "four essential freedoms" (in the words of the FSF).
0. The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
1. The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
2. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
3. The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes.
If you don't believe that these are important and should be respected, then you shouldn't be licensing things under the GPL. If you believe these are more important than the restriction imposed, then releasing under a permissive license is not itself "restricting freedom", but all it is doing (compared to the GPL) is enabling "restricting freedom". When the only thing a change does is make a bad thing possible, it's still better not to make that change.
I find it somewhat interesting we have no viral license that protects freedom 0 and 1 in derivative works but allows adding additional restrictions that conflict with 2 and 3 (or don't, which would make it GPL compatible...).
And I think, that's a better position to be in; I mean, freedom is more important than to have good softwares.
we’re always telling children that they have to learn to share, to be considerate of each other’s needs, to help each other; then we go off into the real world where we assume that everyone is naturally selfish and competitive. But an anarchist would point out: in fact, what we say to our children is right. Pretty much every great worthwhile achievement in human history, every discovery or accomplishment that’s improved our lives, has been based on cooperation and mutual aid; even now, most of us spend more of our money on our friends and families than on ourselves; while likely as not there will always be competitive people in the world, there’s no reason why society has to be based on encouraging such behavior, let alone making people compete over the basic necessities of life. That only serves the interests of people in power, who want us to live in fear of one another. That’s why anarchists call for a society based not only on free association but mutual aid.
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-are-you...
If I may make a parable: Don’t hate the rebels for being violent; hate the oppressive state against which they rebel.
But - you make a good point - a good reason to be against copyright is because abolishing it would defeat the GPL.
Not bringing this up to argue that RMS is correct or reasonable (here or elsewhere), but I just thought it was interesting. RMS may be an unrealistic utopian, but his unrealistic utopia is some mutant form of liberalism - with property rights and commerce etc. - not communism or even big-s socialism.
Because something might be inconvenient to you, it doesn't make it automatically wrong. There's a distinct line between free as in freedom and free as in arbitrariness. The former comes with responsibilities, the later without.
Furthermore take a look at the "USL v. BSDi" lawsuit, where BSD was sued by AT&T for infringing copyright-laws against their own(BSD) source-code, which was incorporated into USL(AT&T's) UNIX-variants!
"Freedom" comes with responsibility, if you want carefree "arbitrariness", then say so, but please don't mix them together, they are fundamentally different!
Furthermore they are not rights - they are desires.
You are free to negotiate terms with people from whom you obtain software, and you are free to refuse software without source code.
What the GPL seeks to do is force other people not to be free to choose their own terms.
Whether you like the effects of the GPL or not, it has nothing to do with freedom.
I can see people in the USA having problems to properly frame his position due to the ideological burden of equating any kind of a demand for sharing and cooperation with communism or socialism, regardless if the demand actually has anything to do with left wing political motivations.
RMS has steadfast refused to even entertain anti-business terms in software licenses as something fitting for a free software license, except to the extent that the "business" involves taking the free software in question and making it non-free.
I picked some pretty harsh possibilities there that seem a little dystopian, but I wouldn't rule any of them out, or any of the million other horrific possibilities that increased coupling of technology to our lives, without (self-)regulation could enable.
If you really want software to 'just work', you should probably first ask, who is it working for?
You are aware that all your attempted examples could simply be called 'not working' when evaluating the software.
I'm also not sure how I could say software is working for me if I must first agree to be dictated the terms of it's use, and agree that the vendor may dictate any new terms in the future, which I must agree to in advance.
Yes, I agree, freedom to have the essentials for human survival is a lot more important than having instant access to the latest BF4 patch.
Care to provide a bit of qualification and relevance to your broad, context-free, ill-defined statement?
If the comment was meant to say that "free software is more important than good software", then it would be great to get a bit of elaboration and qualification for such a contentious statement.
I think that, to a large extent, creating useful software, inasmuch as it is a pursuit of the FSF, isn't an independent goal so much as a mechanism for acheiving the goal of obstructing the development and spread of non-Free software.
I love free; what doesn't feel "free" to me is the GPL, since I can't use just about anything GPL in my job.
My job involves creating non-free software. Given the GPL's goals, it's not a surprise at all that I can't use it.
But it strikes me as ironic that RMS talks about "freedom" when really he's advocating restricting your freedom to use the software.
I understand it's in pursuance of a "greater goal" of Freedom to modify everything, but the problem is that, in the large, free software sucks, and I don't really want to be responsible for making it good.
Sure you can come up with a dozen really great free software packages (I'm using Firefox to post here, for one, and I make builds using gcc daily and gnu make). But I can come up with a thousand that suck -- and that includes the "best" packages in a number of different categories: Image editing, document editing, development environments (Eclipse has some nice bells and whistles, but that doesn't make it not suck), 3d editing... ALMOST everything with a GUI, browsers being a huge exception. [1]
Those are just the categories I've tried and tried again to make Free software work for me, because I am attracted to the ideal of working with Free software. But every time, the paid/proprietary solution has been so much better than the free solution that I've defected and paid for the proprietary version.
No, I'm not going to use free software to support an ideal. I'm going to pay for software that helps me get my work done faster and better. Because at the end of the day, I appreciate good tools, not ideals.
There may come a day when I try to make my own "free" software project, but if I do, it will be because I really want to make a world class tool in that category, and I feel that the free model is the best for that tool. But I will continue to choose my tools based on what they allow me to do, not their source code license, and the proprietary tools I do use offer me more advantages despite being closed source than their open source equivalents.
[1] Don't bother posting arguments about this or that free software package in these categories. Unless it's brand new and awesome, in which case I might like to try it out. Regardless, one example doesn't change my overall point, and I don't want the thread to devolve into "Gimp is great!" "No it sucks!" -- "Good enough" for one person is not always going to be good enough for another.
So your objection to the GPL is essentially that it doesn't grant you the freedom to take away these user rights.
You were talking out your ass, is what you were doing. An anecdote about THREE. INDIVIDUALS. doing X pretty solidly "defeats the point" that X is reserved to "large corporations" - we're not even a mid-sized corporation! None of the three of us currently paying for bespoke development is particularly wealthy (one is a part-time music teacher), if we'd gone overseas (or even out of state) we could lower development cost further, and the scope of our project is much larger than the minimum meaningful chunk of work.
"Bespoke development is cle[a]rly out of reach of most end-users."
Bespoke development is not out of reach of most end users, at least in terms of resources required. I would put forward that basically any user desiring a particular feature or small functionality change - outside of extreme examples - could financially manage it if 1) they cared enough and 2) they found sufficient friends interested in the same, and that for most users and simple tasks, "sufficient friends" is not a hugely high number. Organizationally, most users would presently have a hard time picking an appropriate developer and working with them, but that's a separate problem that numerous groups are working on solving.
With proprietary software, on the other hand, bespoke development is far further out of reach, because there is dramatically less competition - only the original authors can bid to modify a piece of proprietary software so no two groups are bidding on the same job.
Bespoke development clearly is out of reach of most end users. There are billions of end users of computers now. You may exist in a rarefied stratum of the economy that gives you this freedom, but to claim that this is the case for most users is bizarre.
I am astonished that you think that choosing a good developer is the biggest challenge for end users who want custom software.
Your comment about proprietary software is invalidated by the examples of the web, Google Play, and the iOS app stores, which are brimming with highly specialized solutions which are developed because there is a business model to support the developers.
No, it doesn't support my argument. It also doesn't undermine it, and it served as a certain amount of stress relief in the face of an unconstructive and (in my view) absurd response, but it was nonetheless inappropriate and I apologize.
"Bespoke development clearly is out of reach of most end users. There are billions of end users of computers now. You may exist in a rarefied stratum of the economy that gives you this freedom, but to claim that this is the case for most users is bizarre."
Is your argument "it could not be sustainable, because there are not enough developers compared to users"? I don't see any other argument there, but as that one seems easily (if somewhat verbosely) addressed I want to be sure I'm speaking to your actual argument.
"I am astonished that you think that choosing a good developer is the biggest challenge for end users who want custom software."
Not just choosing a good developer, but collectively choosing a good developer, sufficiently defining the task, and communicating with the developer. I do think that is the biggest challenge for users who wish to customize an existing piece of software under a free license. It is not the biggest challenge for users who want to modify or reimplement a large piece of proprietary (or non-existent) software, but that is comparatively rare and it matters less the licenses of existing code. If you disagree, please be explicit about what challenges you think would dominate.
"Your comment about proprietary software is invalidated by the examples of the web, Google Play, and the iOS app stores, which are brimming with highly specialized solutions which are developed because there is a business model to support the developers."
That certainly invalidates any claim there can be no specialization in proprietary software, but I never made that claim. Freedom 1 is a right to modify the software I am running. That presumes there is an existing solution that's not quite what I want. If the license on that solution preserves my "freedom 1", paying someone to modify it is competitive, and therefore probably cheaper and probably better.
"I make builds using gcc daily and gnu make"
I called it out as the only thing I do use.
And I may transition to Clang from gcc if a build problem I encountered with an older Clang version is fixed. That leaves gnu make.
And make sucks for many, many reasons, but that's not Gnu's fault. It's just that all the other building solutions suck more.
It is ironic in a way, but it is only a valid criticism if you consider that you should have the freedom to restrict other peoples freedoms. This is generally considered to be immoral in modern society.
Please read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights and in particularly about the right to be left alone (negative rights).
Freedom of speech, private property, freedom from violent crime, freedom of worship, habeas corpus, a fair trial, freedom from slavery are just a few freedoms that can only be implemented by restricting others. You can't have freedom from slavery without restricting slave owners their right to enslave. Thus the term negative rights had to be made by philosophers and political scientists.
The proprietary model is to trade software for money, and then threaten your customers with lawsuit if they share or modify the program. GPL provide software under the freedom from those threats, with the use of negative rights (ie, the user of the program has a right to be left alone). If you can not make software without threatening your users, don't try to start by taking GPL software.
>If you can not make software without threatening your users, don't try to start by taking GPL software.
Umm...other than using it as it's designed and permitted (e.g., gcc), I don't. Any code libraries that are GPL (or even LGPL, except under specific circumstances) are dead to me. I'm annoyed when my time is wasted coming across one on a search. I would even bail on GCC for the superior Clang but I have one package (of many) that needs GCC to build in my current project for a client.
Almost all GPL code is likely to lose support compared to any BSD/MIT competition in the long term (except possibly for those packages used in server development, since they can be used commercially without being distributed, circumventing the intent of the GPL). Most non-server developers do their best to avoid linking to GPLed software because they're working on proprietary software.
RMS alludes to this in the article: "The existence of LLVM is a terrible setback for our community..." The superior network effects of BSD/MIT-licensed libraries means that those libraries will get more developers, who will fix more bugs and more features, which will then attract more developers, etc. (Not to mention the fact that LLVM is just more awesome than GCC).
As a developer I hate to have to rewrite code. Yet I'm forced to if the only code available is GPL; I can't change my business goals or those of my clients for the sake of a goal that's never going to be achieved. Asking me to is naive. The financial reality is that (most of the time) to make money writing software, you need to sell it (and therefore restrict the rights of those you sell it to).
The first 80% of a project is the most fun and satisfying; most open source projects rarely make it beyond that first 80% (if they make it that far) [1]. Companies that make money writing software will pay developers to complete the libraries they're using. As those BSD/MIT libraries get better, the GPLed competition will fall behind.
[1] Notable exceptions include the abovementioned server software category, where commercial/proprietary developers can use (and therefore will likely contribute to) GPLed code, and projects that have enough income to support full-time commercial development.
> But it strikes me as ironic that RMS talks about "freedom" when really he's advocating restricting your freedom to use the software.
1. The GPL isn't restricting your freedom, your employer is. You are working under contract terms and policy selected by your employer. Your preferences aren't relevant.
2. The GPL isn't restricting your employer from using the software, just distributing proprietary add-ons or integrating parts of it in to their commercial products. They can still use it to compile and ship software, for free, giving nothing in return... that's still a pretty sweet deal when you go and look at the competition. Microsoft will charge you for the privilege of using their inferior compiler (full VS suite aside).
What kind of mindset says "Oh boy! B is giving me more stuff for free than A was, I'm going to go shit on A and make demands!"
That said, not all restrictions are equally problematic - an obvious brokenness would be wanting to mix original-BSD-license code and GPL code; both licenses purportedly free (says even the FSF), but the 4 clause BSD code adds a restriction regarding advertising materials mentioning UC Berkeley.
That's true, but if I'm a person whose only goal in life is to maximize free software, I may still be rationally motivated to license my project BSD instead of GPL. A BSD-licensed project can sometimes attract more users. Of course, that is because some of them will use it in their own non-free projects; but in many cases, their project would have been non-free anyway, and they would have just used someone else's code instead of mine, or written their own. If they use my project, it makes my project's ecosystem stronger, which is good for free software.
"If they use my project, it makes my project's ecosystem stronger, which is good for free software."
Maybe. If they run with your code and build a proprietary fork with a few features on you, and users migrate over, your project's ecosystem may be weaker despite the code being used by more people, and it would be bad for free software. It's hard to say.
I'm freelance. I write games and apps, and I do contract work. I can't use GPL software (except for GCC, which I already noted) in creating any of the products that I create because I need to make money.
Not everyone can make a Free product so popular that they can make money being paid to maintain it. I think there are probably fewer than twenty examples of such products that are actually monetarily successful for their creators, and I've read multiple stories of developers who had crazy-popular free products and who were unable to make ends meet.
Not sure how you expect "my employer" to make money giving products away for free either.
It's not "my employer" but the market realities that restrict my freedom with respect to GPL. I can't even publish an iOS app with GPL code; blame Apple all you want, but iOS and Android are gold mines of contract opportunities. You're telling me I should stand on some feel-good principle and ignore the $125-150/hour contract offers that keep pouring in and instead take a job making free software for 1/3 that amount? If I can even find such a position?
Sorry, I'm taking the money. You can make the sacrifice if you want.
>Microsoft will charge you for the privilege of using their inferior compiler
Express editions have been free for years. And that includes the entire VS suite as well as command line compilers.
>"Oh boy! B is giving me more stuff for free than A was, I'm going to go shit on A and make demands!"
Umm...hello? That's entirely unlike what I said.
What I said was: Lots of Free stuff sucks enough I'm willing to pay for closed alternatives. That's two kinds of payment: Paying with dollars, and paying with the restrictions in my freedom. And I'm saying the transaction is worth it. I'm not making any demands. I am saying that a lot of free software sucks compared to the alternatives, but that's just the truth.
In the case of Clang, it's awesome to me that it's BSD-free. If I need it in a piece of software, I can use it without question. Might it end up in a proprietary package? Yes. But if that user makes changes they'll likely send them back upstream so that other users of Clang will benefit.
Time and time RMS has been proven right about the detrimental consequences of non-free software, but usually over the span of many, many years.
Non-free software has a habit of working well and doing what you want right until it doesn't and then royally screws you.
You can only be pragmatic about it (most of us are) if you are aware of the risks and consequences. Otherwise you're just being ignorant.
Yes, that's pretty much it: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/compromise.html
If a 3rd world farmer is hamstrung by licenses on any tools they have (and seeds they grow), that could prevent them from making those tools better, or crossbreeding those seeds. Same with educational software and material.
Just because the focus is mainly on software, which is admittedly a 1st world problem, doesn't mean the ideals can't apply to the 3rd world as well.
Whoever controls our software, controls our world. Free software isn't a first world problem, it's a gigantic and urgent issue. It's only a shame that so many people don't realize this.
Open source works for a lot of cases (I wholly think BSD licensing is just fine for Clang/LLVM and disagree with RMS on this one), but it's just a pragmatic element. Merely a part of free software. Something being open source doesn't imply any particular redistribution rights and ethical guidelines by itself.
edit: to expound, the world they helped create is one where there is a durable, vibrant, and mainstream OSS culture where anyone with a halfway decent internet connection can download the source code & compilation tools for a state of the art OS. Radicals become irrelevant when they win.
People set up computer centers to help the poorest of the poor. Its a place where they can learn and express themselves.
Try set up such place and then pay for the OS, the text editor, the programming language, the painting program, the video editing, and so on. Compare that to finding some old used hardware being unused, and simply start helping the community immediately.
[1] If you want to hear more, I suggest one of the many talks from Eben Moglen. For a transcript of one, see https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/09NTC_plenary:_Eben_Moglen but its a bit short on details.